Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sir Tim Berners-Lee Named Greatest Briton

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the particularly-exemplary dept.

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.'"

6 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Why 2004? by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 5, Funny

    What has he done for us LATELY?

    --
    That was classic intercourse!
  2. Re:And typically there are some doubters by ninthwave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Thats odd as one of the points Sir Tim Berners-Lee was making with all the British papers who were asking him how rich he would be if he had patented "his" idea, was it was not his idea, it was just using things already invented together, and tweaking it for sharing. He himself seems to acknowledge the simple principle that science and technology is a building process off the works of our forefathers in our fields.

    He is very humble about it as he does not see it as a pure invention, the press on the other hand just can't be bothered to learn. The web needs an inventor. Did Edison invent the light bulb?

    Something in the human condition needs this widget here was made by inventor Goosebury. Why I don't know, maybe we understand ideas better when we have a psychology to project the idea onto.

    --
    I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
  3. Re:Errant U's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny


    don't spoil it with ignorance now

    Shouldn't that be "ignourance".

  4. Re:And typically there are some doubters by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Informative
    Wrong on both counts. Bell did not invent the telephone (though he did patent a design that couldn't work first) - he was a thief.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 434963,00.html

    Monday June 17, 2002

    Italy hailed the redress of a historic injustice yesterday after the US Congress recognised an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell.

    Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death.

    The vote by the House of Representatives prompted joyous claims in Meucci's homeland that finally Bell had been outed as a perfidious Scot who found fortune and fame by stealing another man's work.

    Calling the Italian's career extraordinary and tragic, the resolution said his "teletrofono", demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell, who had access to Meucci's materials and who took out a patent 16 years later.
    ... further down ...
    He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost. Two years later Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for a telephone, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union.

    Meucci sued and was nearing victory - the supreme court agreed to hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell - when the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him.
    , and Edison did not invent the light bulb http://www.naturalhandyman.com/iip/infelectrical/l ightbulbhistory.shtm He just improved it. Others had already demonstrated working light bulbs.
  5. Re:More important than Sir Berners-Lee is ... by hanssprudel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm so very sick of posts like this. There is always some holier-than-thou slashdotter who'll tell us how we should be ashamed of ourselves for developing technology instead of giving our money to cancer victims/sick kids/homeless puppies etc.

    Let me put this out there for you: Who do you think has made a greater contribution to cancer treatment, Jane Tomlinson, or Tim Berners Lee?

    Well, Tomlinson may have collected money that can be used to fund a few more researchers in a field where hundreds of millions are already spent, and finding the solution is not a matter of man-hours. TBL on the other hand, created a brilliant new communication medium that has completely revolutionized the sharing of information between people.

    As somebody who works with research (though not directly related to curing cancer - shame on me!) I can attest that the World Wide Web is an invalvuable tool that has completely changed for the better the way scientists are able to cooperate, publish, and access each others information. Tim Berners Lee wasn't just good at begging together money: he actually created something great, something that brought society forward, something that has improved the efficiency and wealth of all walks of life.

    When efficient treatments for cancer are found, Tim Berners Lee will have deserved some of the credit for it, like he deserves some of the credit for every scientific achievement from now on. All due respect to Miss Tomlinson, but her achievement does not close to compare.

    The same thing goes, btw, to the recent post about the Linux community matching Gates' donation to childrens vaccines. Gates may vaccinate ten million children, but the result will most likely be that those children will have another twenty million children, also living in poverty, and also needing vaccines. The Linux community, on the other hand, has given to developing world a fantastic tool with which wealth can be created, and development spurred.

    Let us not fall for the socialist fallacy that the only good thing one can do in life is to give away ones money. People like Tim Berners Lee CREATE wealth, which is a greater virtue then passing it around!

  6. Re:Strange, fortune just printed this out for me.. by crimson30 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.