Slashdot Mirror
Sir Tim Berners-Lee Named Greatest Briton
mOoZik writes "BBC News is reporting that Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, has been named the Greatest Briton of 2004. Berners-Lee had this to say about the honor: 'I am very proud to be British, it is great fun to be British and this award is just an amazing honour.'"
What has he done for us LATELY?
That was classic intercourse!
Honor*
Oops, that's probably flamebait
Prost Frist, and, uh, stuff like that.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
as to the authenticity of the claim that Tim Berners-Lee is the "father" of the web. A blog entry here aparently has evidence that some of Tim's earlier efforts are actually stolen. I can't directly vouch for the authenticity, but there are some strange but compelling connections made.
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
...welcome our new British internet-inventing overlords.
What? What do you mean "it was Al Gore"?
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
... however - how many people out there in "the real world" know that the inventor of the web is a limey, pommy brit?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, has been named the Greatest Briton of 2004
Prince Harry was taken out of the running for Greatest Briton recently for some reason...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
At the same awards ceremony, Jane Tomlinson (who suffers with a terminal cancer) was awarded "Greatest British Campaigner". I think that is just a little bit more significant. She has raised £1,150,000 (~USD$2,170,970) for Cancer Research.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/ 4215561.stm
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
... But this guy didn't really CREATE or FATHER the world wide web, thousands of people created it, and thousands of people will continue it for years to come. No-one can be attributed to be the creator of the net. What about ARPA-net and MIL-net, I thought they were american inventions?
Never heard of him.
WWW != NET
and fashion designer Sir Paul Smith was named as Greatest Briton in Business.
Post ceremoniously the members of the committee were named Most Humorous Official British Committee. The award shall be presented to them by Mr. Eric Idle wearing nothing but a pair of knickers designed by Sir Paul Smith. Mr. Idle is busy at the moment and is expected to make the presentation some time before Easter.
The guy spells 'honor' with a 'u'??
That's unamerican!
"greatest Briton"?
Hmmm. I'm British. I wonder what my ranking is?
14,223,921st greatest Briton?
Ho HO! Indeed! And what a rollicking good time being human as well! Its a smashing good time up here at the top of the food-chain!
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Why the hell was that modded "interesting", if not that for someone on /. knows who Schopenhauer is - well, no proof even for that since it's a fortune citing - ?
I am quite astonished, honestly.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Good Luck To The "Greatest Briton"
Want to understand SUNs Stance On GPL?
(Cite)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What the heck? Do they have tea-parties and watch Monty Python all day? How the heck can it be fun to be from a country? It's not like it's pre-Christian Polynesia and you get to boink nubile exotic Island girls all day long and eat sweet tree-melons while basking on the beach.
"Chip cheerio churrah! Off to sweep some chimneys!"
Oh what fun!
It's great fun to have bad teeth! Pip pip!
Now we know who blame for "www."
Long live no-www.com!
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OK, I did some searching for the Neowin article on this, and can just as well post it here too. ;-)
It's a bunch of fun historical documents.
- Screenshot of Tim-Berner Lee's web browser/editor gizmo (apparently two apps in one suite, kinda like Mozilla?)
- Web page (from 1992) describing a very early version of HTML
- Description of the web (from 1992)*
- The original WWW proposal from 1989**
- History of the web
* = It tells you why the WWW was made... "Tim decided that high energy physics needed a networked hypertext system and CERN was an ideal site for the development of wide-area hypertext ideas"
** = excerpt: "Note that the only name I had for it at this time was "Mesh" -- I decided on "World Wide Web" when writing the code in 1990."
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Has got a funny name and funny clothes : http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,339109,00.ht ml
Why the hell was that modded "interesting", if not that for someone on /. knows who Schopenhauer is - well, no proof even for that since it's a fortune citing - ?
I, for one, found it interesting that another slashdotter might allude to the silliness of national pride, since, after all, it is taking pride in other people's accomplishments. Personally, I keep my national pride to a miniumum, since I'm no more responsible for the great things America has done than the awful things. Same goes for racial pride. I am not responsible for the great things others have done, nor am I responsible for slavery just because I'm white. I think people should be as proud as their skin color as they are of their hair color. Likewise, there should be no shame.
2004's greatest American: Lynnie England, liberating Iraq one attack dog at a time! America: love it or lynch someone.
--
make install -not war
He added an extra letter to the word honor. Just like a Brit to waste letters like that.
Schopenhauer was right, wouldn't you say? 'Life without pain has no meaning' ...
I'm surprised no-one from the States has said anything about the guy's teeth. From Austin Powers to the Simpsons' 'Big Book Of British Smiles', that's all we ever get to hear. British=Bad F*ckin' Teeth.
Listen, you shiny-gobbed sons of bitches, these are Darwinian survival aids. If we got into a fight and I bit you with these babies, you'd bleed to death in thirty seconds or get a dose of gangrene and end up taking your fingers home in a bag.
Right. I'm off to throw bricks at a dentist. What ho, my lily-white arse.
Woman: "King of the who?"
Arthur: "The Britons."
Woman: "Who are the Britons?"
Arthur: "Well, we all are. We are all Britons, and I am your king."
Woman: "I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective."
Dennis: " You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--"
From. Memory. Where do I collect my geek stripes?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
So, what he is saying is, that in spite of all temptation to belong to other nations, he remains an Englishman?
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
This article puts into strong relief that greatest of British attributes:
Modesty
I was at a friend's house over the holidays and I noticed that he had received the distinction of being the World's Greatest Dad! Top that, Sir Tim!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
When I ask someone who invented the Internet they say "Ummm, um. Bill Gates!" Seriously, most people do think Bill Gates/Microsoft invented the Internet. Few people outside the web developer community has ever heard his name, even though he's made one of the most important inventions of the century.
Good lord... I give the man credit much in the same way you might give Steve Jobs credit for putting 2 and 2 together with regard to the GUI and home computers. Very brilliant, but the man didn't invent the concepts upon which the web sits. And yes, I know he coded the specific implementation of these things and that's worthy of much praise, but he didn't come up with the concepts that made all of it possible. How about a Slashdot article looking over the very long history of people who came up with these ideas long before the technology existed to actually implement it. Berners-Lee stands on the shoulders of intellectual giants and I applaud his vision, but "father of the WWW" is going a bit too far. This fanboy-style worship of what he did is almost as annoying as how nationalistic British people are when talking about it. Look into the history of it. There's much more to the story of the creation of the WWW.
Hypertext Gopher. Ooh, ahh, big invention there.
Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the Internet.
Okay, so let's take a look at the original quote again:
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
This would seem to predict that people who have something to be proud of have no need of national pride. You would expect, then, that these people would be less inclined to it. Sir Tim Berners-Lee might disagree. So would a whole lot of other British and American heroes. So would the vast majority of the officers in the US military, who generally hold degrees in higher education. What happens instead is that these people view their accomplishments as part of the greatness of the their country, and rightly attribute their chances to do great things to it.
National pride is a social imperative that helps keep a country cohesive and working together. The United States would have had a much harder time getting through WWII without it. It generated the amazing cash flow to New York after 9/11. The examples go on and on.
My theory about you: in forsaking national pride, you seek to distance yourself from the "common man," because you view him as lazy and ignorant - especially them dern rednecks. (I mean, this is Slashdot. We can assume at least half the population here believes that. "Joe sixpack?" Heh.) Thus, it's a manifestation of your selfish pride.
What a swap: national pride for selfish pride.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Perhaps you miss the point. As I see it, a nation voted a geek as their greatest. Which country this was is irrelevent.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
I am English, but I am not proud of it. Having considered the odds, I am aware that I am very lucky to have been born north of the poverty line at all, let alone to have escaped any of the countries that the Soviet Republic fucked up; some theocratic hellhole in the middle east; China, North Korea, etc etc. I'm relieved, glad, even, but not proud. :)
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."
-- Oscar Wilde
(and he is from great britain, you see)
it wasn't Tony Blair?
Ask George.
Personally I think Liz Hurley ought to be declared "Greatest Briton"... (Or maybe Keira Knightley...or Kate Beckinsale...or Kate Winslet...or...)
Well, maybe Jordan, who really IS "Greatest Briton"...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Was it Al Gore?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Wales, Scotland, England, and Norfolk make up Great Britain. Northern Ireland, which is still part of the UK, is not part of GB.
"We were once so close to Heaven,
Peter came out and gave us
medals declaring us
the nicest of the damned"
("Road Movie to Berlin", They Might Be Giants)
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
This would seem to predict that people who have something to be proud of have no need of national pride.
...and selfish pride ;)
I make no such prediction. I am aware that my feelings about national pride are in the severe minority.
National pride is a social imperative that helps keep a country cohesive and working together. The United States would have had a much harder time getting through WWII without it. It generated the amazing cash flow to New York after 9/11. The examples go on and on.
Do you really need national pride to help other people?
My theory about you: in forsaking national pride, you seek to distance yourself from the "common man," because you view him as lazy and ignorant
I don't "seek" to distance myself from the common man. I think putting oneself on a pedestal is an unhealthy and dangerous thing. But you have to realize that some people are just better in some things than others. I lack social skills, physical strength and a number of other things. Does that mean I'm a bad person? I hope not. Should people treat me differently? Perhaps they might treat me accordingly. Should they treat me poorly? I don't think so. The same goes for intelligence.
Is it so wrong to recognize that you are smarter than some people? It doesn't mean you have to belittle people or treat them like idiots. Why must being better than anyone at anything and knowing it translate to being pompous? Sure, I get frustrated with stupidity and ignorance, but that doesn't mean I'm an ass about it. And please, don't picture me as some typical computer geek who thinks he knows it all. On the contrary, I'm an unsuccessful nobody... and not much of a computer geek.
As for laziness, as long as someone is self-reliant and not an unappreciative burden, I don't see a problem with laziness. It's only natural. I think people should be free to be lazy if they so choose.
especially them dern rednecks
I'm going to dig a hole here and share my feelings on this one, however misguided they may seem. I used to be active duty military and I was in a career field that was highly populated by said folk. The issue I had with the beer-swilling, tobacco-chewing, nascar-watching types was a culture clash. These folks were plenty intelligent in many matters, especially job related mechanics, which in many regards they were my superiror. But, regardless of who was better than who at what, we seemed to have some tension from misunderstanding one another as far as lifestyle and motives and such. So... do I get a little bitter and hostile around redneck types? Eventually, it seems. Do I judge them at first sight? I can't seem to help it. Do I treat them like they're subhuman? Absolutely not, because I've met amazing people of all nationalities, races and cultures. But still, I find it difficult not to stereotype, given the fair amount of homogenity in some cultures.
You'll note that I keep bringing up race and it's because I feel that national pride is akin to racial pride, which is why it is a source of some disgust for me. Nationalism may bring people together (like racial pride), but in the process, it also tends to draw lines in the sand.
What a swap: national pride for selfish pride.
How about national pride for global humanitarianism?
Anyway... feel free to shoot holes in my logic. I'm not above being wrong.
yeah right!
Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent the internet, he invented HTML.
So far, we've seen that:
- Bell did not invent the phone
- Marconi did not invent radio communications
- Edison did not invent the light bulb
- Tim Berniers-Lee never said he invented the Web
- Al Gore didn't invent the "intarnet thingee" or Gore-tex
It's not what you know that can hurt you, it's what you know that isn't so...had a routine where he worked out who was in line to to the throne ahead of him, everyone, including foreigners and the dead, were, with the exception of Lisa Riley.
See above
Why can't it just be "Great Human". I'm not trolling and am probably off-topic here but the sooner we lose the barriers on this planet called "countries" the better. I was born and currently live on the continent of Australia. But I don't consider myself "Australian". It simply doesn't mean anything to be born here. I am Human. As is everyone else. I could have been born anywhere and would still be encouraged to have the same feeling about where I'm from. But before you come back with "What about your national pride!" if everyone one on the planet has it then doesn't it really cease to mean anything? How can anyone's country be better and then anyone else's? (And I'm not refering to political climates) It just dirt...
Those damn redcoats taking credit for another American invention!
Once again you F'n stupid americans have to point out how stupid "yall" are just becouse hes british it doesnt meen he talks like he's a 1930's stiff upper lipped ponse. you should all learn to behave before we take for granted you all talk like george dubbya not like a ponse more like a nonse.
I Predict A Riot
but I shan't achieve peace of mind until the last fool running around quoting Diderot hither and thither has been beheaded with the head still up the arse.
While Sir Tim is indeed British, imho it's ironic, nay tragic, that none of his seminal work was done in a British istitution. Shame, shame, shame. I wonder why?
Screenshot of Tim-Berner Lee's web browser/editor gizmo
Cool, it looks just like my desktop!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I meant the World Wide Web.
If it weren't for Sir Berners-Lee and his world wide web, I'd have a fulfilling life. Instead, I'm posting to /.
JADBP
You know, it was about a month into my first web programming job when I realized that HTML is spectacularly ill-designed to do what we were trying to do with it - namely, to automate it (with scripts) rather than hand-code static pages. For example, try writing the code to auto-generate a selectbox. It's tricky, it takes about a half-hour, and it always feels like a hack.
Why is it so bad? Because there's no syntactic consistency in the interfaces to different commands, like SELECTBOX, TABLE, INPUT etc. On top of that, the browser implementations tend to suck. You have no idea how many web pages I've written that were composed almost entirely of FONT COLOR, because font color doesn't nest.
Five years later, they've created all kinds of new ultra-hyped languages, like XML, and web scripting is still just as broken as it ever was. So, I don't know if you were kidding when you said that HTML is "an awful markup language," but if you were referring to scripted implementations (which is 90% of the web these days), then you were absolutely right.
Going back a few decades in history... In 1945, Vanaver Bush wrote about his vision of Memex
"Bush saw the ability to navigate the enormous data store as a more important development than the futuristic hardware. Here he describes building a path to connect information of interest:
When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined [...]
Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. "