Slashdot Mirror
Pick Your Own Net Person Of The Year
And none of it is good.
Definitions of greatness and influence are definitely becoming more fluid. Winston Churchill once held that spot, along with Stalin, Eisenhower, Einstein, Mao, Gorbachev and various inventors, world leaders and political figures.
How fitting that the man the nation's allegedly most influential newsmagazine chooses to usher in the new century has left this legacy to the world, according to the cover: "E-commerce is changing the way the world shops." Maybe the editors of Time need to get out more.
Is this really all that dramatic; the most significant person on the planet in l999? I shop online all the time, and it seems pretty non-revolutionary to me - I give them money, they send me stuff in cardboard boxes. Will historians down the road really be poring over Jeff Bezos life and times on Amazon to define the history of the l990's, or even of the Internet? That's a grim thought.
Bezos is mostly interesting because he's the perfect metaphor for the greedy, commercialized, insane atmosphere currently surrounding all things Web. Aside from causing the invention of some very nifty commercial software, and craftily evoking a wholesome commercial image, his big idea is to amass goods in warehouses - toys, electronics, books and music - and send them to people who want them. As is well known, he hasn't made a dime in profit, yet he's amassed billions. He's also attacking the very culture he's supposed to embody by suing competitors to block the spread of innovative software.
This makes him the man of the hour in terms of Web commerce, but it's not greatness or even influence. Can you recount a single thing this person has said or done that you will remember for years, or be talking about next month. Maybe one-click shopping is more significant than we realized.
All you need know about Bezos are the "Six Core Values" he preaches to Amazon's employees wherever he goes:
- Customer Obsession
- Ownership
- Bias for Action,
- Frugality
- High Hiring Bar
- Innovation.
I was nearly moved to tears. This is stirring stuff in corporate terms, an ideological blueprint for the rampaging corporatism infecting the Internet, if for nothing else.
I might have come up with a different list, not that anybody asked. My man of the year might be Linus Torvalds, who - unlike Bezos - really did change the world, liberating computer software and the information it carries from one company's tyrannical grip for many millions of people.
This year, Open Source become something much bigger than a geek obsession, turning into a full-blown mainstream social and commercial movement. Tim Berners-Lee might be on my short list. He did, after all, invent the very Web that on which Bezos is taking in billions this year. Or Jonathan Postel, who died last year, but whose work to keep the Internet free and open a generation ago is right now bearing fruit all over the planet. "Q" wouldn't be my top choice, but he'd have to make the list, just for kicks. He loved making weird, neat stuff.
Or a group cover: some programmers and developers who truly are transforming not only commerce but the way we do almost everything, including think, learn, publish, watch movies, acquire music, and interact with one another.
I might pick the housewife in Dayton, Ohio who put up a website to give away free coupons and stuff and gets a half-million hits a day, (many more readers than The New York Times. Or some of the elderly people on Senior Net who use the Net to post farewell messages to their friends and families before they die.
Or perhaps the protesters who organized online, then went to Seattle and began the laborious process of taking on the fat, greedy companies who are choking individualism.
I might put on the list one of the creators of ICQ, Hotline, or even AIM, all of which are transforming communications, creating more new kinds of communities in a day than was once possible in years. Or a geneticist who, for better or worse, is slaving away on the Human Genome Project, and is about to unravel the secrets of human life.
Those are just a handful of the Net People of the Year I might consider.
Jeff Bezos doesn't come close.
How about you?
My vote is for the IPO. In the time magazine "thing of the year" there was never any reason not to pick and object.
Well, the IPO madness really proves how wacky this economy is, and how nuts it is to invest in the stock market.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Imho, the whole man/woman of the year is highly ridiculous. Sure, some people do nice things, but there are quite a few people who do nice things, all in very different fields. Comparing them is like comparing linux with a medium-sized fish.
How 'bout the "nameless, faceless" IT workers who are going to party out the new year with a few checklists of tests......
--WooooHoooo--
Neil Stephenson for: "In the beginning was the command line". (Cryptonomicon was neat too.)
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
Obviously, Bezos wouldn't even come close to my list. But there are so many people, it's hard to narrow it down.
How about the creators of Apache, whose webserver put a lot of the web into being?
Or, as Katz mentioned, Jon Postel, who fought for the 'net to stay free?
Or Linus Torvalds, or the BSD guys, or RMS, who have all provided free tools to help people get servers up and running and make themselves heard around the world?
And especially all the developers who have put in countless hours making these Open Source projects work - you all are keeping the 'net free for everyone. Good job.
... myself. No, reallly. In the last year, I have really influenced my life, and in a good way. I have overcome the shackles of The Man(tm), lived on Kraft Cheese & Macaroni and peanut butter for a few months, to now be making more money than before and doing what something I really enjoy, Linux stuff.
So, I implore all of you to follow in my footsteps and vote for me too. After all, do the same stuff, follow your dreams, and maybe next year you too can be Slashdot's Man Of the Year.
Thank you, and God bless.
One, because he found something that really harnesses the internet, a worldwide garage sale (instead of selling under cost but making up for it in volume) connecting people across the world one to one.
Second, he did as a hack for his wife (collecting Pez dispensers) instead of trying to become a mogul.
Thirdly, Ebay turns a profit (unlike Amazon).
George
My Vote goes to Al Gore, inventor of this fine Internet, and architect of the e-commerce revolution.
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
Judge Jackson. His ruling(s) will have the most lasting effect.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
to be picking person of the year. Some terrorist (or heroic security person) might change our minds come Dec. 31!
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
I believe we can't forget a man who died this year and contributed with all his knowledge and practice to the Unix world. A person only can be called a programmer if already read "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" or "UNIX Network Programming". Rest in peace Richard Stevens, a man who believed in the diffusion of knowledge.
"Learning, learning, learning - that is the secret of jewish survival" -- Ahad A'Ham.
"Learning, learning, learning - that is the secret of jewish survival" -- Ahad A'Ham
I vote for the IPO as the "thing" of the year. Time Magazine never had anything against nominating an inanimate object or concept, so I recommend the Linux IPO. Nothing represents the silliness of the past year more than the astounding market capitalization of recent Internet and Linux IPOs. RedHat and VA Linux being two of the most unbelievable.
When the market regains its senses, I am hoping that price/earnings returns to a more respectable level. I work for a company in business for 135 years, 40,000 employees, an amazing brand name recognition and cash flow - and the market cap of RedHat right now exceeds our by 1 billion. Go figure.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Wow, I cannot believe it, but this might be the first Katz article I can actually stand on its face. Bezos was a damn cynical choice, but keep in mind, this is the same magazine that made Adolf Hitler their "Man of the Year" back in the 30s.
Anyway, Time has again won my own personal "Shittiest Periodical of the Year" award. Congrats!
What happens when (or rather, if) Amazon actually makes a profit? Will Bezos be labelled "The Greatest Person in the History of the Planet?"
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Sprinkling your postings with those question-marks-indicating-incompatibility is no way to go through life!
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Similarly, there is no doubt at all that Jeff Bezos & Amazon has had a tremendous influence on the news this year. Every news program mentions shopping on the web, there have been stories about Malls panicing, and for the first time, there is apparently enough money being spent on the web to make taxing it a subject of discussion.
Bezos' achievements may or may not be great. Personally I think it's too soon to judge. However there is no doubt at all that they have been the source of much news over the last year.
Anyway, my vote for man of the year is Steve Jobs. My reasons are as follows...
- Bought Apple back in black. Who else could have done it?
- The iMac. Stunning marketing - they outdid even Microsoft's best. That alone deserves an award.
- MacOS X - Caught the "open source" wave ahead of everybody else...
- ...then blew it on louzy licensing.
- Played copycat with Microsoft by trying to hoard Firewire. Net result: Manufacturers moved to USB.
- Has never claimed to have "invented the internet" - something no other Time Man of the Year contender can claim.
For both the victories and the failures, I vote Steve in for Man of the Year. Now, in the interests of removing any complaints of sexism on my, or slashdot's, part - I also nominate Monica Lewinsky as Woman of the Year - few people could singlehandedly embarrass an entire continent so thoroughly..The top on my list for time would be a group cover featuring Rob Malda and the rest of the brigands that started and maintain slashdot.
;)] read my news on the net.
:)
All of you who run this place, whoever you are should be held in high regard for changing the way I [and at least a few other people
Capitalism pisses me off.
Patent wars piss me off.
People flooding the internet with advertising and money grubbing schemes piss me off.
Slashdot does NOT piss me off.
I need more things in my day that bring me satisfaction that reading Slashdot does.
-C
I think it makes some sense when you're singling out Churchill, who saved the world, or Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War..Maybe even Gates in some context..but I agree, it's a weird notion as applied to e-commerce
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I might've put Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com as man of the year maybe in 1997 or 1998 but certainly not in 1999. This may be the first year that online shopping becomes more mainstream, but Amazon isn't in the forerunners of new ideas anymore.
I'm not really sure WHO I would pick... lots of things happened in 1999, and I'm not sure who would deserve such an honor. After all, is some rich famous person really that much better than the behind the scenes people who don't get any credit? It's like the Miss America pageant... is some beautiful chick who wants to save the environment really better than an ugly one who is actually DOING something to save the environment. The ideas don't necessarily make the labor.
You sure have my vote
jonkatz@slashdot.org
My vote goes for Tim Berners-Lee as the inventor of the web as first choice. No web - no Slashdot (no websites at all), no Linux (most of the collaboration that made Linux possible was done over the net), no Apache (since there would be no websites), and very likely no Open Source Movement (since exchanging those Open Source/ GPLed programs is somewhat difficult via BBS or the mail). And without Tim I would be currently without a job!
My second choice would be Linus Torvalds - since Time's Man of the Year (sic) is usually someone who had an impact THAT YEAR. Linux has come-into-its-own/received-the-bulk-of-its-hype this year even though its been around for a while previously.
Personally I think the whole Time MOTY thing is somewhat silly. So many people do extraordinary things in any one year that picking out one to laud is laughable.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I thought she invented the Internet?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Huh ?? Never heard of this one, but probably should have, given my circumstances !
Jon, are you pushing too much corporatism on Bezos?
Are you taking your personal peeves and using them to beat Time's selection of Person Of The Year over the head?
I am in absolute agreement over the coming corporatism conflicts with individualism, but Bezos is just nowhere near obsessed enough with profit to be representative of the money-at-all-cost ethic. Amazon's patent lawsuits are driven far more by myopia than actual plan, and will probably be dropped once the christmas season ends anyway. Worst case scenario, they're an example of "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Katz, email me if you actually read this message. I have something WRT Amazon I'd like to discuss with you.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Oh, come on, if she got on the cover of Time I'd finally get to see her and I'm curious about the woman the virus was named after. All I know about her is that she's a topless dancer here in sunny Florida and the Melissa virogen appaently thought she was hot. Heck, it could be the first ever issue of time with a centerfold...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Sacrilige! You cry. But wait! Stop and think for a moment. Every single celebrity to feature on the cover of this magazine has suffered terrible misfortune. The Times Curse has a long reach, with those it pastes on it's front cover suffering public humiliation, bankrupcy, personal disasters and even (in the case of Pricess Diana) death.
Why should we wish such ill-fortune on our brightest and best? Or, indeed, any other fellow human being? Nay! It's far, far better that Amazon.com has called upon this evil fate, than for it to have befallen any suffering member of the human race.
I applaud Amazon for it's courage and bravery, to direct this evil Curse upon itself, to spare humanity further pain. I think it best if we send our condolences to the directors.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Rob Young, love him or hate him, has also made a notable contribution to the net this year, for it was his company, Red Hat, that first demonstrated to the larger world that you can build a successful company by pursuing your dreams. He's a good orator and promoter of Linux, and a lot of people bought into the belief that Linux really is the future of computing on the Internet. While some (many) disdain the fact that people refer to "Linux" and "Red Hat" interchangably, we should all be happy that they're here with us, supporting the Linux community.
Another name of my list, equally important in a different fashion, is David Bowie (whose website is here). No, he's not a tie-dyed Linux boy, but have you seen the extent of what this guy has done this year? He practically concocted the first major "aid" event that had its roots in the Internet community (that's NetAid). It's so important that, in today's high-paced, high-technology world, the people who need our help the most aren't the mindless goobers who live and breathe Microsoft products, it's the children and families who are destitute in so many areas around the world.
It's easy to forget, but suffering takes many forms in this world. It's highly commendable that people like him (and U2's Bono), who are in a position that they don't have to give a damn, are trying to make a difference. The net is a great way to communicate this message, since so many people (with money) are here, online.
Daltorak.
It has been argued that Jobs has already changed the world... desktop computing (on any platform) is what it is today because of Apple's R&D. And in this last year, Jobs has continued to revolutionise the state of personal technology and how it affects me... many times more than what Amazon has done for me.
I dunno about Amazon.com (or is it .org, I can never remember) revolutionizing the way I buy books, but I know Napster has revolutionized the way I buy music. Free Beer for all. (now it's just a matter of waiting for the laws^H^H^H^Hhangover.)
+&x
That is why my nomination for person of the year goes to:
--
Una piccola canzone, un piccolo ballo, poco seltzer giù i vostri pantaloni.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
The subject line sums up my feelings on this topic. Most of society believes that personal wealth is a direct causation of personal character and ability. As a result, polls which are taken of the general population will reflect this. Jon is only trying to, albeit verbosely, to point this out.
Best wishes
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
You never worked in tech support.
I did my time there, over 6 years, and I mostly escaped in 1999, so I deserve it!
You never worked in tech support?
You never worked in, tech support?
You never worked, in tech support.
You! Never! Worked in Tech Support?
apologies to T. Pynchon.
George
Time Magazine never had anything against nominating an inanimate object or concept,
an Inanimate Carbon Rod!!!
(don't laught at Inanimate Carbon Rod)
+&x
Best wishes
tom
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
I said this in the previous discussion, but I think it bears repeating: Give Bezos a break.
/. crowd was on the Net before 1995. For those of you that were, which was the first website to conduct serious "e-commerce", selling real things, not just shareware or porn? Amazon.com.
I assume that most of the
And Amazon not only has become the de-facto Internet bookstore (when you post a link about some obscure book, how many times do you go looking for it on bn.com?) but also the gold standard for e-commerce sites.
Amazon may not be the world's best or most profitable Web company (incl. patent rant here) but noone can deny that Bezos had a vision and worked hard to make it a reality. And by doing so he legitimized commerce over the Internet which is really the primary reason, us techies are doing better now than any other professional group.
I was hoping for better memory from this crowd...
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
My vote for man of the year goes to the judge in the Microsoft case. He stood up to Microsoft were even the Supreme Court would not in it's previous decision on Apple vs. Microsoft, the GUI wars. Everyone knows Microsoft is a monopoly, finally it has been decided legally. Of course, the trustbuster lawyer who argued the case for the government might not be a bad choice either. This case WILL change the computer revolution more than anything done by Amazon.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Is for the troops of K4 in Kosovo and the other peacekeeping forces deployed world-wide, under the concept that "peace on earth, good will towards men..." is an idea that these men and women believe in strongly enough to be out there, putting their lives on the line every day.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
'nuff said
Insert mind here.
Tim Sweeney, the main engineer of the Unreal Engine, which spawned a variety of shitty games, a fun pretty roleplayingish game, a mediocre but pretty game, and one of the best games of the year. Probably no single person before or since has done more to congest the net than TS, with the possible exception of that Carla Mack chick I keep reading about.
-troll taker
Compared to some past "people of the year" who actually made a contribution, for better or worse, for mankind, Jeff Bezos is a disappointing choice. The concepts quoted from the Time article on six core values, etc. are not revolutionary. Many, many non-ecom corporations are spouting the same rhetoric now. "Focus on the customer" "cut costs", etc. Interestingly, part of Bezos'cost cutting includes moving away from custom code to off the shelf(http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?IWK 19991115S0087) Elements of e-commerce truly are revolutionary. When I used E-bay for the first time, for instance, I thought that this was truly a new way to conduct transactions, to bring buyers and sellers together in a new, better way. But, e-com in the Amazon.com sense is not the second coming that everyone predicts. Like mail order, there is a limit to what transactions people will do on line. For instance, I can't ever see myself buying clothes online - the experience of examining the fabric, the seams, etc, prior to buying make this something I have to do the old fashioned way. When the e-commerce bubble bursts, and it will, it won't be pretty. I hope it doesn't drag the innocent along with it. In a year, Time's choice for person of the year may look vaguely ridiculous DP
Motor Trend is notorious for 'selling out' their car of the year to the highest bidding car company. Basically, the car manufacturer that promises the biggest amount of advertising dollar spent gets to have one of their new vehicles named car of the year. Maybe TIME is doing the same thing? Anyone know if Bezos has sent them a large check?
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Well, let's look at some pros and cons here:
There's the linux-fish logo from thinkgeek.com
You can eat fish, you can't eat Linux (Though you could eat Linus, I guess)
Fish have adapted to their living enviornment. So has Linux
Fish can swim. Linux can't.
Fish smell after being out for awhile. Linux doesn't smell even after being left out for a great while.
Fish DNA contains quite a bit more data than Linux' code. (I think)
Fish have been around longer. The Selacanth (sp?)) have eluded extinction for millions of years.
Both the Fish and Linux can perform distributed tasks (think Beowulf, think schools of pirhanas)
Microsoft may be eaten up by Linux. If Gates died at sea, he would be eaten up by the fishes.
Anyone care to add more?
Time has a poll at http://www.pathfinder.com/time/poy/
asking whether or not you agree with Time's choice.
Let's not forget that Time's "Man of the Year" for 1936 (or was it '37?) was Hitler.
Glag to see Katz comments about Linus Torvalds. They will surely sit well on this bulletin board. But his use of the term open source is annoying and hypocritical. I mean the term was only invented to make free software more palatable to the corporate entities which he denounces in his article. I use the term free software and I hope you will too.
Wow..This article tears into Bezos for alot of stuff that really isn't his fault. Amazon.com was revolutionary a few years ago, when they were the first ones to do commerce online, on the scale that they're doing it. If it wasn't so revolutionary, how come it took Barnes and Noble almost three years to catch up? Also, this whole Bezos-is-evil-because-of-the-patent thing is out of control. The directors of a corporation have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholders. I agree that the patent is stupid, and everyone should be able to have one-click ordering, but it's not Amazon's fault that they did what they were legally obligated to do. If you want to bitch, send your complaints to the USPTO.
I don't think that Bezos should be man of the year, but maybe he deserves a look for hindsight-man-of-5-years-ago...
But, of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong
Juiced? Or Not?
Well I have to agree with Katz regarding the way Bezos has 'revolutionized' the way we shop. Cripes, it's catalog order without a telephone! Couldn't Time have at least used some imagination in coming up with someone that has actually done something revolutionary?
How about the people involved with the peace process in Ireland? What are they ~ rump roast? Or the main force behind a free operating system that offers people a real choice, and the freedom and opportunities to compute for free? Or.... hello Time ~ is anyone in there?
They call me the working man. I guess that's what I am.
Recently I helped a group of senior citizens get wired. Looking at the wonder and excitement in their eyes I was reminded, "Its the USER stupid".
mitd -- Made in the Dark
"One good thing about spam... You don't gotta answer it"
Jon Katz. Hands down. After all, he's given us /so/ much interesting stuff to talk about.
-- Slashdot sucks.
An inanimate carbon rod!
My father, a retired school teacher who lives in New Jersey, made his first on-line purchase this year. This is a man who does not own a computer, still does not have e-mail, and doesn't seem to be phased by it.
He bought a book from Amazon.com as a gift for my uncle's birthday. Now, he has no idea about any patent disputes. He could care less about Amazon's reported tendency to SPAM people -- the people who annoy him most are the people who solicit charitable donations by phone between 6 and 9 PM.
He just wanted to be able to order a gift for my uncle quickly and know that it would be delivered giftwrapped with his message on the card. He didn't have to call anyone. The whole process took a little over 5 minutes, and would have taken less time if he had ever used a mouse before.
When someone like my father knows enough to go on-line and buy something from a place they heard about called Amazon, and he feels comfortable enough to do it himself, the impact of millions of similar transactions really can be considered a major change.
So, you can pooh-pooh this all you want. But, the on-line shopping capability will be considered as revolutionary as the introduction of catalog / mail order shopping was in the 1800s.
Once Time Magazine decided that this is the idea that best represents change in the year 1999, they simply had to pick a person that best represented the concept to the average person. I think they picked Bezos because the average consumer in North America or Western Europe had not heard of him, but had been exposed to the company that he created.
Why does this bother so many people so much?
BTW, I think Linus Torvalds would have been an excellent choice as well, because he represents the maturation of the non-Microsoft technology base. But, if you think about who Time Magazine's audience is, it's not really surprising that they picked Steve Jobs as a runner up to Bezos instead of Linus.
Another point that I would like to touch on briefly is that Jobs resonates more with Time than Linus does because the average consumer does not buy technology -- they buy the products and services that are delivered via technology. So, as momentus as Linux and the OpenSource movement is from our perspective, it has not really exploded in the public's mind as much as the applications of OpenSource (i.e. the Internet and Internet delivered applications, like shopping) have.
--
Dave Aiello
-- Dave Aiello
I guess you haven't read the revised version of "The Road Ahead" where Bill talkes about he invented the internet the day after he invented DOS and the day before he invented magnetic media.
George
Somehow I knew this article was going to happen on Slashdot. So I've had some time to think about my answer. My first thought was Linus Torvalds. But that just seemed too easy--not creative at all.
So I thought about who else might be a better choice. Really I tried... In the end I still came back to Linus.
Despite his accomplishments he remains humble. Despite his influence he refrains from wielding it like a sword. Despite his success he still leads a somewhat modest life. Yet he's become an icon.
I think he's set an excellent example by sticking with what he believes is right and being honest with himself and everyone else. In doing this he encourages other people that feel the same to acheive their goals in the same way. We don't have to step on each others' necks to get somewhere in life.
Let Time go ahead an nominate Jeff Bezos--it just goes to show what THEY respect in a person enough to make them man of the year.
Linus is NOT the only one that deserves mention, obviously, but I'll leave that to everyone else.
numb
Top of my list would be Tish Williams, who just did her last column for Upside today, and will be going to thestreet.com. She takes various tech business related events and delivers a commentary on it in a nonconventional way. Humour is a big thing, and if you are ever the subject of one of her pieces prepare to be insulted, even if she is being supportive. Shes awesome. And she cares about her readers, at least the hardcore ones. We are often mentioned in her articles, she will sometimes write about things we bring up. And every friday she answered readers letters, whether they be love letters, propositions for a four way, or serious discussion of her articles. And they are real letters, I've had one of mine replied to. there is a linked discussion board as well, where we discuss things from communism to Tish's latest pic. Tish herself often posts in it. There is even at least two fan sites, the main one at here I don't know where the other is off the top of my head. I think a journalist who can inspire such loyalty and devotion, and return it to her fans definitely deserves consideration.
Other possibilities: Linus Torvalds(obvious)
Jon Katz(For finally writing a reasonably concise article)
Natalie Portman and those who make grits(For keeping the idiots from trying to post half baked ideas about the topic, and ensuring said idiots get moderated down)
I think Bob Young has to go at the top of my list. Having watched the CEO of a former employer go thru the IPO process, I learned it's one of the hardest things you can do to yourself.... without having to dodge Mindcraft, Caldera's Lizard, hordes of "yet another Microsoft" detractors, and getting away with putting the GPL into his initial SEC filing... all of which he did and still emerged with flying colors.... and worth how many zillion bucks? With which he promptly buys Cygnus, one of the more brilliant moves I've seen in the market at large. One gcc to compile them all, and in the darkness bind them. :)
Second would be ESR, for this reason: The man is now worth more than most of us will gross in a lifetime, and he hasn't (so far) let it get to him. I kowtow to his superior Zen.
Then there's Linus, of course. The man is unflappable, affable, utterly straight-shooting, and besides taking us from 2.2.pre to 2.4.pre in the space of a year and somewhat of an orderly fashion, there's Crusoe, whatever that is, but if he's hacking on it it's going to be ubercool (and may make him Man of the Year next year).
I got one more dude that's probably going to get cheers on one side and jeers on the other... but for the mainstream, this guy has caused more waves, IMHO in a positive direction, than any other single person, at least from my Americentric viewpoint.
Jesse "the Governor" Ventura.
So there it is. Flame away.
"We cannot legislate against all of the stupid things people will do." -- The Governor
Actually, that year Steve Jobs was *supposed* to be the man of the year.
Time diligently sent a reporter to interview Mr. Jobs for the story. The writer caught Jobs at a bad time, the meeting didn't go very well, and the reporter sent back an article that was basically just a smear job.
Time realised that they couldn't print such a biased, mud-slinging article, and the reporter refused to rewrite it.
Up againtst a deadline, Time dropped Steve Jobs, and settled on the personal computer.
Or that's the way the stort goes anyway.
john
Imagine all the people...
You're right! Katz introduced that term. I wonder why he did that? The Time Magazine thing is called "Man of the Year".
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
...for his excellent contributions in keeping the Northern Ireland peace process on track. Somehow that seems a far more worthwhile achievement than selling a few books.
I would have chosen Alan Greenspan as Net Person of the Year. It's his economic policies that are making the investment of venture capital and the IPO funding of the net possible.
You seemed to be pretty happy with the amazon experience when they were flogging your book in February (see here). Why the change of heart? Their business model hasn't changed. Could it be that you're just aping the actions of others? Do you ever do anything else?
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Sure, the Fed may think that inflation is down - just because a basket of goods at the grocery store hasn't gained in value.
But I can tell you that my - and most people's - most valuable possessions have rocked through the roof - my house , and my stock portfolio.
Anyone with a company who has a 401k plan in the last 5 years has reaped astronomical rewards. Anybody fortunate to put 10 or 20% down on a house within the last 2 years has seen huge gains.
These are heady times for all - and the valuations of the stock market and the massive amount of consumer debt incurred by the above average joe goes along with the territory.
So, I choose all the baby boomers whose wealth has recently skyrocketed due to the roaring '90s.
Your .sig has expired... you'll probably want to point it somewhere new....
For what, saying that Amazon doesn't turn a profit?
If you think that is flamebait, give me your address. I'll send you $ 900, you send me back $ 1000, and I'll nominate you man or woman of the year.
I think Amazon's business model is incredibly risky, and too close to a Ponzi scheme for my liking.
Whatever,
George
Oh really,
Well tell me how many women YOU know that would be tickled to be called 'Man of the year'.
If 'New Woman' had a 'Woman of the Year' contest and YOU won, would you be happy?
I hate PC as much as the next guy, but this title needs to be chenged to something more gender neutral.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Katz needs to get out more. Please explain to me how Jeff Bezos qualifies as "greedy". Oh, I forgot, if someone has more money than Jon Katz, then he must be greedy.
And let me tackle this issue of profit ONE MORE TIME (by me and others). Amazon can make profit anytime they want. All they have to do is dial back their advertising. However, since they are smart (and clearly know more about business than Jon Katz -- not saying much), they have chosen to spend money on building their brand. This is why they are one of the top brands on the Internet. Jon, it's not rocket science. Go take a business class.
I will grant you that the "patent issue" disturbs me. However, other than that, I have never gotten less than superb service from Amazon, and Bezos deserves every dollar he has earned. Yes, I know the concept of earning money is foreign to Katz, but some of us actually believe that people who provide thousands of jobs and provide a valuable service to the economy deserve what they make. Apparently all the Amazon customers agree.
---
Why do you repeat my name three times? And actually I'd like to attract less attention..But the answer is, I do use MS cause I have to for my other writing, and although we get most of the quotes, some get thru..just a fact of life..Sorry, but probably won't change for awhile. I can live with it.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I made the point in the column that the selection is the most significant person of the year, not the best. The point of the column is that he isn't nearly the most influential...
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I was getting copied on the following through Internet Soc. I thought some of you might find it interesting. It starts with Gordon Howell, President, Electronic Commerce One writing the editors of TIME and then we see a reply from Vint Cerf. Pretty neat. Gordon also pushes for a deeper look into who has made a contribution to society. I think you all will enjoy this.....
:-)
.com entrpreneurs; he is more an example of 'right place, right time' with a huge PR achinge behind him than someone who has single-handedly really made a difference on the
First Vint:
------------
big smile
v
Now Gordon (you can take it from here):
-----------
At 10:46 AM 12/21/99 -0800, Gordon Howell wrote:
vint --
your modesty merely confirms my observations!
I have nothing but admiration (and a teensy bit of envy!) for Jeff and wouldn't diminish his achievements. My point is that this award sets
a milestone in history which will be looked at centuries hence. The long lens of history tells us that we don't by and large remember the names
of the entrepreneurs who made their fortunes digging the California gold, but we *do* remember that it was Sutter's Mill where it all happened. (of course you might argue back that TCP/IP could look a little different in a century...
However I bow to your gracious decline of the "People who really matter Man of the Year award" and suggest that we collectively create the "Geek of the millenium Award" and bestow it on Jon Postel.
Happy holidays to you. See you in the next century should the world still exist...
-gordon
Subject: Re: Time magazine "man of the year" choice
From: "vinton g. cerf"
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 20:20:27 -0500
X-Message-Number: 2
Dear Gordon,
Your letter to the Time editor is most kind. One imagines that the conventional wisdom is that business leaders have the most significant visibility when it comes to perceived impact. One has only to see the frequency with which Bill Gates is mentioned to appreciate this perspective.
There is some truth to the idea that people who are able to unleash the energy of the business sector have the most significant impact on everyone else, even if they did not invent the technology that allows them to succeed. So on balance, I think it is not entirely inappropriate for Jeff Bezos to receive this recognition.
Vint Cerf
Wishing everyone: http://HaveAVeryMerryXmas.com/
__________________________________
Editor --
I must express my diasappointment (and that of many of my professional colleagues in the Internet industry) at the choice of Jeff Bezos as Man of
the Year.
While all credit is due Jeff for his vision and drive, and being an inspiration to all the other budding
internet. In common with what many people are doing right now, Jeff creamed one of the more obvious candidates for Internet e-commerce.
While my hat is off to a great web site and business, he has little more to offer than any number of other potential choices, if you are specifically looking for an 'e' entrepreneur. One might even argue that Steve Case of AOL has more right to this position, as he has brought more people into contact with the Internet than anyone else.
However, to paraphrase Einstein, Jeff has only succeeded by standing on the shoulders of others, and I think that the final choice of the millenium really should have gone to one of these pioneers. In approximate order, I would suggest:
1. John Postel. Without his selfless dedication to managing the underlying administration of the Internet, the Internet would not be where it is today. His tragic death late last year has been perceived as owing in no small part to the personal energy he committed to the cause which
has made Jeff Bezos a wealthy man
2. Tim Berners-Lee. As the acknowledged sole inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim has resisted what I suspect are hundreds of opportunities of lucrative employment, board positions, equity in in order that he can maintain an unbiased position as director of The World Wide Web Consortium -- the organisation devoted to managing the standards of the WWW.
3. Vint Cerf. As one of the inventors of TCP/IP - the underlying protocol which make the Internet happen - Vint is a tireless promoter of the Internet and the need for social parity and the proper balance of regulation. His behind-the-scenes influence at the highest circles of government and corporations has been instrumental in keeping the Internet on course and out of proprietary hands. "The Internet is for Everyone" according to the founder of the Internet Society, and a key player in the development of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the key body defining the technical standards driving the net.
An infuential publication such as Time needs to look behind the hype to find the real movers and shakers, and promote these people as the reason we - and Jeff - are where we are today.
Sincerly,
-gordon
[have copied to members of the Internet Society for reference. My
statements are purely personal however.]
(for reference: Internet developer since 1983, founder of perhaps the UK's longest established Internet consultancy, co-founder of Scotland and England chapters of Internet Society, founder of Scotland's Internet Exchange, EuroAmerican internet business entrepreneur)
--
Gordon Howell, President, Electronic Commerce One
Jon Katz's articles all seem to refer to the evils of corporatism and greed. I am baffled by this. Profit is the fundamental motive behind businesses in this economy. It can also be a significant motive for many individuals. According to my understanding of the world, the internet would not be where it is today if it weren't for this motive. Would it be so readily available, if it weren't for the profit motive of ISPs? Or telcoms providing the cables and networks, or Nortel/Cisco/whatever providing the equipment? Or the distributors distributing the goods? What about all of the hardware manufacturers, who, due to intense competition, are constantly striving to produce better goods at cheaper prices? (And succeeding.) Would technology be evolving as fast as it would, if it weren't for the currently massive incentives to improve the productivity of countless businesses? Everyone in the field is making a fortune because businesses can save so much money. (setting aside the stock market, there are still huge profits being made) It is also providing services to individuals where none existed before. Technology, without that profit motive, would largely remain some theoretical construct. It would have remained where the internet was when it was first founded -- as an academic & scientific interest. (Not that being that is bad -- just that it wouldn't be *nearly* as useful today as it is if it never changed from that.) From a pure technological point of view, there are many not-so-nice things out there. Microsoft, for instance. But Microsoft doesn't care about technology in and of itself, just as Amazon doesn't care about innovation or free speech by itself; Microsoft wants to sell and market the products people will most readily buy, which are not the most reliable, and Amazon will, to the limits of the law, make the most money possible (read: convince enough customers to buy from it), regardless of the consequences. Thankfully, in both cases it *does* involve some innovation and advances. Sometimes more, sometimes less. If it weren't for Microsoft's ease of use, would the internet be where it is today? (Seriously. It might be, but I'd argue that it played a strong role nevertheless.) As for Amazon and its patent lawsuits -- if I were an investor, I'd be disappointed if it did anything less. The problem isn't with Amazon -- it's his responsibility to go to the limits of the law to further his business -- but with the law itself. As an citizen, I'd object to the specific legalities. Personally, I wouldn't have him or Microsoft act in any other way.
I don't see any smart quote problems in this column, less somebody else on /. changed them..where are they?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I would just like to make a couple comments on Berner-Lee. Yes, inventing the web was cool, but he's also the driver a major change in the net that is not good. Namely away from the open process for setting standards based on the IETF working group model, and towards standards set by the corporate membership model of the W3C. Interestingly, I've read that Berners-Lee has basically dictatorial powers at W3C and that as part of becoming a member you have to agree that his word is the law there.
In the new world of Net administration, users don't count for much, only corporations with enough dough to join organizations like W3C.
Need I justify him as Man of the Year?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
You're right, I consulted now my copy of "Unix Network Programming 2nd Ed. Vol. 1". Sorry by my error. Thank you for correcting me.
"Learning, learning, learning - that is the secret of jewish survival" -- Ahad A'Ham
When you merge together staples of the Internet like that, you're taking away choice (either intentionally or not) and that just seems like it goes against the entire impetus of the Web.
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
I don't normally agree with katz, but I do this time. I wish more people realized that the rampant commercialism that is this holiday season (in the US for the most part) is really not what it's about. Same for the net... It's about freedom, free speach primarily, and the ease of sharing ideas with minds who are alike. I think i would have chosen Linus as well, but the programmers.... What about Larry Wall or Tom Christansen? Perl is the language of CGI that im gonna guess that about 85% of websites use if they have any CGI at all... This year has been about net interactivity.. we could give credit to the guys that made it possible? I know they aren't the only ones, but that's just my 2 cents. --Matt
Actually, you have a point here. Why is everyone here so worked up about who "Time Magazine" votes as person of the year, when noone here READS (or cares to read) it! I've certainly never popped into the newsagent with the intention of buying that glossy drivel to partake in its literary masturbation.
It's a "fashionable" magazine for people with no identity, where the significance of "Man of the year" stretches about as far as its glossy back cover which is soon to be a crumpled up in a few peoples dustbins. There's 6 billion "person of the year"'s on this planet, and one rich billionaire (yes, that's why Time like him) does not constitute any more of a person than the next guy.
Nominate yourselves. You all deserve it.
Hmm .. Time magazine, a regional publication covering about 5% of the world population, singling out and praising one man for something half of mankind can't even begin to understand. Tell me just how newsworthy that is? *yawn*
ProcessTree - Isn't it time your computers started paying for itsel
Person of the decade:
GNU/Stallman.
Person of the century:
Linus. Because he's cooler than Charlie Brown.
Person of the millenium:
Harriet Tuxman. For helping to free the penguins.
I think it's quite strange that, as far as the tech community goes, some of the worst press Amazon.com in general, and certainly Jeff Bezos in partical has ever received is the decision by Time magazine to inflict the moronic "Man of the Year" award on him. Do you think perhaps Jeff called Time up, and said "Listen, Bob. You make me man of the year, and I'll give you and all of your friends a 40% discount on DVD's, and free shipping!". Yeah, right. I basically agree with most of the tech crowd on the point of the patent lawsuit against B&N - Thou shalt not store customer info in cookies because yea verily I hath done it first? TOTAL BS, but that's corporate America for you. The folks in Amazon's legal department probably subscribe to the eat or be eaten philosophy of business, because those corporations that don't (didn't) have long since been naturally selected out of the corporate gene pool. Is this justification for the personal attacks on JB? He was the diabolical mastermind behind the patent thing, right? Suuuuuure he was! He's also considering hiring Elvis as director of PR!
Personally, the number one reason that I have seen people be apparently bitter about Jeff Bezos being "Man of the year" for is that Linus Torvalds, or anyone associated with any kind of hard technology, isn't.
"I don't marshal my words to be quotable" - Captain Sodium, Gigsville...
Well, even though Al Gore invented the internet while he was tobacco farming in Tennessee, I just cannot give him my vote. Nor Jeff Bezos, for that matter. Not even my two favorite Bills, Gates & Clinton. While Slobodan Milosovic crossed my mind, even he was not the person I consider most influential. Steve Jobs and the resurrection of Apple was an important story, but still not my choice. My vote gets split between Janet el Reno and Ken "Shining" Starr. They are the biggest ballbusters of the year, and I appreciate their work. Normally I would be opposed to them, but sometimes even devils can do good deeds. Rah!
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
I didn't pick Stalin, Time did. Like him or not, he sure influenced the world. Hitler was a Man of the Year too, not because he was a great guy, but because he influenced life. Get it?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I couldn't help it. I liked the subject title.
I think it was in 1984. Here's hoping they'll release a Baby Bezos pinball game!
Played copycat with Microsoft by trying to hoard Firewire. Net result: Manufacturers moved to USB. Huh? Firewire and USB are apples and oranges. Firewire is a high bandwidth bus. USB isn't. You might as well say that the regular serial port beat out IDE for use with mice and modems.
This post sounds like an old AI program I had for my Amiga called Ractor. It had a database of philosophical and other sayings and would remember everything you typed and feed it back into the dialog. -Jedon
Bezos, in my opinion, represents all that could go wrong down the road. I understand that commercialism must drive the net now, but this whole patent thing scares the bejesus out of me. RMS, on the other hand, represents what must be considered the good side, with Linus a close second.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
The TRUE people of the year will never appear in a magazine or on tv or even be mentioned in something like this forum. Kindness and heroism are sometimes their job, like the paramedics that pick up broken bodies off the interstate and try to put them back together again, or the doctors that see them in the emergency room. Sometimes they are the good people who visit a nursing home and make an old person smile one last time. Maybe it's the anonymous person that donates generously to a charity that makes a few children a lot happier during the holidays. There is not ONE person of the year, and if there was, you certainly wouldn't find him/her trading on Wall Street. Most of the truly great people pass in and out of our lives without us ever knowing it.
Milkman Dan, of course!
"Stupid Patty and stupid Selma!"
IMHO the "person(s)" of the year should be, as Jon pointed out, all the nameless, faceless people who used the internet to derail the WTO confernece and put the more troubling aspects of globalization on the front burner for the general public.
;)
When was the last time most Americans gave two seconds' thought to the World Trade Organization, or the costs & benefits of globalization in general? Granted, the protesters in Seattle pretty much hijacked the debate, but without them there would have been NO debate.
From world trade, to land-mines, to Linux, the true paradigm-shift (tired phrase but true in this case) brought about by the Internet is the ability of geographically and culturally disparate people to organize for both commercial gain and social justice. Just look at the Nobel Peace Prize. Three of the last five laureates have been organizations, The Pugwash conference ('95), Committe to Ban Land Mines ('97) and Medcins Sans Frontieres (99). And to hear Jody Williams put it, the Internet was THE vital factor in the success of the land mine initiative. That and Princess Dianna's contribution.
I seriously doubt if Amazon.com will even be a player in 3-4 years. Heck, they'll just be another online shop. Sure they were the first, but someone had to be. This was an idea whose time had come and someone would have done it eventually.
Lastly, I can't beleive anyone cares what Time Magazine says anymore. What a worthless rag!
"Being Irish, he possessed an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through brief episodes of joy." -W. B.
Actually, if you'd go to the site and read the article, you'd notice that your gripe has been rendered moot. It's Time's "Person of the Year". Jon Katz posted it as "Man of the Year"...
LouZiffer
LouZiffer
But I get to be Slashdot's Woman of the Year.
I often get passed over in all of the 'Man of the Year' crap. Being as I'm not a Man.
The reasons:
I read Slashdot.
I've got positive Karma.
I've never made a 'first post' (well...there was that one time but the monkeys made me do it!)
I use FreeBSD and Linux.
I've built my own kernel.
I'm post-geek
I read Jon Katz's articles at least 13% of the time (that's more than you!)
I survived the wrath of Phil Hughes
I have a Tshirt signed by Linus
I own grrl.org
I've got root.
Be sure to send mail to malda@slashdot.org to vote for me!
Lisa
People should have applauded his efforts then, not now.
My suggestions for man of the year would be people who did groundbreaking things this year... the people who organized the first Linux expo, ESR for being what amounts to the open-source diplomat to the real world, etc. etc. etc.
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
eBay, on the other hand, really did put technology to create something that simply wasn't possible before. How in the world would you have found another waffle collector (for example) before eBay?
Whether you like/approve of/use eBay or not, you have to admit that it is a more innovative application of e-commerce than Amazon.
Plus, eBay actually makes money.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
The real purpose regardless of whatever Time may say about their Person of the Year, is to recognize the most talked about person of the year. Furthermore, since that person must be the most talked about as remembered in late December, it must be someone who is being talked about in December. The fleeting fame of such eminent personages as Ms. Lewinski and Ms. Tripp, or the flash-in-the-pan Mr. Clinton is not enough. Whether you prompt whispers of scandal, or accolades of commercial triumph, you must have the staying power to arrive in December with your name still on the lips of the masses.
Nor is it important if they all pronounce the name the same way. Surely Amazon and E-commerce and indeed correct pronunciations of Mr. Bezos' name. There is no relevance in whether the speaker has every shopped online, or at Mr. Bezos' pixillary boutique. Such minutiae are rightfully assigned to the honourable choice, Other. Yes, by a plurality of the people who have heard of him and not of all of the other candidates, in the past two weeks, he was chosen from among the short list of finalists.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I might put on the list one of the creators of ICQ, Hotline, or even AIM, all of which are transforming communications, creating more new kinds of communities in a day than was once possible in years. Or a geneticist who, for better or worse, is slaving away on the Human Genome Project, and is about to unravel the secrets of human life.
Woah there, horsey. ICQ development for multi-OS platforms has been stagnant, to say the least. This is not impressive or redeeming in any way. AIM has been as bad as Amazon vs Barnes recently, pushing Yahoo and Microsoft out using of the AIM protocol to make an alternative client. Hotline's creator, Adam Hinkley, was a 17 year old kid who did change a lot of people's online lives--however the company was ousted from him by some sleazy investors in Canada. He no longer has control of the program, and is being sued in the Australian legal system.
Finally, the man who runs the Human Genome project is a raging capatalist in every sense of the word, a person who believes that his scientific discoveries should be soley his. This raises incredible moral and ethical issues, along the same lines but with more ramifications than the Amazon/LinkSynergy/Doubleclick patenting claims.
IMHO, none of those people deserve the award, completely ignoring the fact that theses technologies had little impact on the world in 1999. How about Kofe Anan or Madeline Albright being nominated for mediating and resolving large international conflicts? Or the Ireland peace process's apparent success? Let's stand back from technology for a moment and realize that no matter how big the net grows, there will be at least 50% of the world which will never surf the internet.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
Robert A. Mundell - American born Professor of Economics at Cornell University. Granted the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economics. Did the basic research showing the importance of freely exchangable currencies to economic growth. His work has led to the startling growth of international trade improving prosperity for most of mankind as countries changed their currency policies according to his research. Also known as the grandfather of the Euro because of his development of the idea of "optimal currency areas". Few people have had a more profound impact on the world, yet are so little known outside academia.
Douglas Englebart - The ubergeek. Most famous for the invention of the mouse, but in fact had a far more profound influence. He envisioned computers as a revolution because of their potential to extend and enhance the fundamental intellectual processes of man. On December 9, 1968 he gave what has come to be known as the 'mother of all demos'; the first public demonstration (beore Xerox PARC was founded) of a computer that offered a windows interface, videoconferencing, internet connectivity, black on white text, context-sensitive help, and a mouse.
While a lot of other people give Timothy Berners-Lee credit for deveoping the world wide web, it is notable that all of the technologies used in a web connected computer were demonstrated by Doug Engelbert 25 years earlier.
Here is someone that created a nifty little device that helps millions of us organize our lives, get stuff done and be on time, or at least more often then we use to be.
Then after taking his idea to the world, sells to a big company and cashes in. He acquires the big office, big company experience and critical contacts. Once he's exhausted that educational avenue he leaves.
Does he retire no, he re-invents his initial device, licenses the OS, improves it then releases it to the world and goes head to head with the company he just left.
Little fish gets eaten by big fish. Little fish pops out the back much bigger and better off for the ride. Then goes on to slowly tear away at the bigger fish. What an elegant story.
What about Bill Gates? His products have changed my life. I love Microsoft. What's this Linux thing I keep hearing about?
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
Along this vein, I vote for the teachers in elementary, secondary, and all schools who taught me to read, write, and think in a procedural manner. Their efforts are, to a person, far more valuable than Bezos' ever could be.
If virtue is its own reward, jsut imagine what vice offers!
yes, he did do all that you said for the internet, but don't forget he's a ... dipshit.
"There is no spoon."
In many ways Jeff Bezos symbolizes the current public mindset of Internet companies: worth loads of money but profitless. As such I wasn't that upset with the selection, although there are lots more deserving people. But then last night (Tuesday) during the previews for 60 Minutes II they were "interviewing" Mr. Bezos about what the future of the Internet and technology was going to be... And that's when I thought "That's it, TIME did a real disservice to the 'Net." They were actually asking him stuff like "what's the next computer chip going to be like" as if he would have any idea. He may be a "good" business man or salesman, but he is NOT some expert on technology, Web/'Net or otherwise. And that's what he is being promoted as. Shame on you TIME, shame!
Either Alan Cox or Linus Torvalds. This has been the year for Linux,and these guys make it happen. Bob Young also comes to mind as the guy that helped bring Linux to commercial viability
My journal has hot
I guess you need to play to your largest audience, but are there not any people worthy of Person of the Year except those that are regularly mentioned on Slashdot? Naming Linus as your man of the year just rings with so much disingenuousness, why won't you just tell us what you really think and not what you think we want to hear?
1. Jon Katz (just kidding)
2. Christopher Locke
pronoblem
So please, do not confused capitalism and corporatism. Capitalism existed before corporatism, and the only "plus" of corporatism is the same "plus" as fascism (which is a version of corporatism with the state more directly tied to the corporations) -- it's a great way for increasing the wealth of the individuals in power. Which also has some trickle-down effect (though not as much as Reagan hoped for), but at what cost?
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Darth Maul
Now there's a face that was EVERYWHERE this year....
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
I have a friend from Sweden who came to visit us while this was eating up all the newstime. He was highly amused by the whole thing. He told me that, in Sweden (and this was backed up by another swedish friend), there had been a really messy debacle recently when a politician had used her (political? Business?) credit card to buy groceries. The fact that she had paid the money back didn't matter, she had USED it for personal purposes. This was a big deal over there. Having an affair would be considered not too great but definitely the personal business of the involved person. For politicians in most countries, this makes it fully the domain of tabloid reporters, something the main news wouldn't bother with other than a brief mention. True, Charlie-boy's affair got spread all over the news, and Di was killed in a paparazzi accident, but it was paparazzi, NOT true news reporters. Tabloids everywhere sprouted stories. We got most of _our_ flood of info about Monica from the normal news, the six o'clock news and other such things.
As my friend said, Americans are sex-crazed and have no idea how to handle it. We're royally messed up when it comes to sex, we call it taboo and then get obsessed with it. New York City abolished the ban on women going topless - it's legal now, when weather is bad. But the _very_ day it happened, a lot of women ripped off their shirts - and were promptly arrested for things like Disturbing the Peace. We're nuts.
Besides, to be honest, I have serious doubts about Hillary's aim in marrying Billy anyway. I don't think she NEEDED a loving, adoring, faithful man, I think she needed one who SEEMED to be that. I think she wanted power and realized what the easiest and sometimes best way is for a woman to get that, especially in 'traditional' politics. Not that she really needed it - she herself has the capability to kick ass. But in a country controlled as much by right-wing facists as left-wing maniacs, being married _and_ strong will get you respected (not loved, but at least respected) by both sides. Good political karma.
Monica was a distraction, and a good one too. Lots got done, good or bad, while everyone was thinking about _her_.
Of course, I'm an opinionated B*$&), so take that as you will. *grin*
To get back on topic, however, my 'person of the year' lists would have to include _some_ corporate individuals. After all, their businesses are our economy. Many of them, however, would be people who don't get noticed much but have an _effect_.
Larry Wall (he is the one who did it, right?) would be on it, for designing Tux and getting him out there. Face it, without a mascot (read: marketing gimmick), nobody gets anywhere anymore. It's a sad fact of life. That linux is suddenly being noticed as a decent corporate OS is going to vastly change the lives and work of many many people. Anything that goes mainstream changes, but it also gets _recognized_. M$ being such a big part of American lives, I think this qualifies.
Madeline Allbright would be on it also. This is a woman who has used her power, has made decisions that would paralyze other people, and has kicked ass while doing it. I'd love to see Winston Churchhill and Madeline Allbright in a room together. I suspect they'd either love or hate each other, and either way it would be entertaining for any who saw it. *cackle*
Not to mention that the things she does have a worldwide effect, not just effects in the USA.
Offhand, with my brain occupied by other things, I can't think of the whole list. Just had to toss in my couple of pennies' worth of silliness.
-Elthia
While those in the crypto community who were both knowledgable and honest were vocal about 56-bit keys being vulnerable, Gilmore put his money on the line to prove it unequivocably. See Deep Crack Page at EFF
The results: the Clinton Administration was forced to admit in public that their export controls were a farce and needed serious revision. Now even PGP is freely exportable. The public will benefit from stronger security software as more products appear from relaxed export controls and the lack of weak encryption such as single DES.
Furthermore, Gilmore funded the development of FreeSWAN which was released this year. FreeSWAN is a free, open source IP/SEC implementation for Linux that gives you real, secure VPN capabilities. Developed outside the US, it's free of any type of import/export restrictions.
Whether or not you feel Gilmore deserves as much recognition as the likes of Bidzos, I highly encourage you to download and install FreeSWAN and begin using it. Provide your coding expertise if you are outside of the US as there is plenty of work to be done.
Ubiquitous, strong, link-level encryption between all nodes on the 'Net WILL have a significant impact on the world. People like Gilmore are leading the way.
Run, don't walk, to FreeSWAN Home Page and get it. Install it on your firewall. Setup VPN's between you and all of your friend's networks. This is the real way to "Jam Eschelon" ...
I don?t see why people won?t stop bitching about Katz?s articles. There?s nothing wrong with them. If they look funny, it?s probably your fault. You?re probably aware of this anyway. Now stop complaining, for Christ?s sake.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
There are people who, in their posts, seem to be saying two things: (1) Bezos does not deserve the award, because he is a greedy corporate business type, and money should have nothing to do with who deserves the award. AND (2) What is so great about Amazon.com? It doesn't make any money, like eBay does, so Bezos doesn't deserve the award. Am I the only person who sees quite the contradiction in those statements? Choose one or the other, but you aren't going to be very persuasive trying to defend both simultaneously.
God is real unless declared integer
A friend of mine has this inside joke about one click shopping - whenever the subject of the lawsuit comes up, we burst out laughing and then declare we won't be doing anymore business with Amazon.
See, when it was first put into place, my friend didn't know it. And then, with a slightly misguided mouse click, he bought an antique map of New Zealand. The map, which was about $50.00, was promptly shipped to his front door despite his email efforts to reverse the order. He spent the next several days cursing Amazon's name. He still hasn't been able to return it, and he's considering trying to sell it on Ebay now.
So much for "innovation".
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/9
... I remember when September happened in September, not all the damned time.
extra big ?
+&x
All right, this is pure Jon Katz. This man seems to hunt for a good event to comment on, put a nail on it and then hit it as hard as he can, as many times as he can (missing the nail as much as hitting it, but that doesn't seem to bother him, as long as he hits something). Okay, so Bezos may not be exactly his best pick for the "Net Person of the Year". Fine, he didn't change my life either. But we can't argue that he somewhat changed the way commerce is done. Hey, we live in a consomation society and, as consumers, we make shopping and buying a central part of our lives. There's hardly a day in the average american's life without him buying something. A lot of people are starting to shop and buy on the internet. IMHO, online shopping is one aspect that helped a LOT of people to familiarize with the internet. So it can make sense to choose Bezos as the Net Person of the Year. Your other choices? Common, man. Linus Torvald : while he certainly did GREAT work to open people's mind to alternatives to Windows, he didn't reach the average net user. Very few of the average computer users ever heard of Linux yet, and even fewer of them have actually seen it running on a box. Same with most GPL programmers : they do a fantastic job, one that will have important repercussions on the future of computing, but still, most people haven't seen or used any of their work. The ICQ creator? That's a good one, I must admit. It allowed people to use the internet to carry converstations, instant messenging style. That had a lot of impact, and of all your proposals, that's the one I like the most. Anyway, all of this to say that you have to consider not only what this guy changed for you, but what he changed for the average net users. Linus Torvald and the guy who created ICQ changed a lot more than bezos for me, but i'm not self-centered to the point of believing that it was the same for most people. As a member of some GPL projects myself, I know that I am doing work to improve the internet and computing community, only I have to admit that Open Source is only beginning to change the way people think. In some future year, why not? But not this year, sorry. Flame away.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Really. The end of the millennium has clearly guided events and attention to an overwhelming degree: Y2K bug, millennialists, terrorists, media outlets looking for something safe to talk about instead of real news, etc. Also witness the fact that I am just plain sick of it, and can't wait for it to be over.
Tick, tick, tick...
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
He was in office, so were 534 other congressmen. Did he start any bill before say 1990 that did something involving the Internet? If he did something like that, he could get some slack for the remark. Otherwise, it's just pure stupidity.
:)
What about that Love Canal he found and brought to Congress, declared a disaster a year before he even got into Congress.
What about him and the Tipster being the basis for Love Story? I mean, he couldn't sit down with the author beforehand and at least pay him off to be able to claim this?
Then there's the audio clip Rush Limbaugh plays every now and then, at some museum sort of place, Monticello perhaps. Anyway, Al says something like, "Now who is this?" The person giving him the tour says, "That is George Washington." That's just plain hilarious.
Then there's the time he said how his father "saw thousands of Tennesseans were forced to obey Jim Crowe Laws, he knew America could do better." Yet, his pop voted against the Civil Rights Act. Go figure.
In 1986, he says he'll forever fight against evil cigarette companies for causing his sister to die of lung cancer. In 1988, while campaigning for president, he tells how he farmed it, hoed it, dried it out, loves it, etc at a tobacco farm.
So Mr. Quayle reads potatoe off a card, he's a moron for life. Al's done plenty more to show us what his head's made of.
1. John Postel (explaining _his_ achivement to the public might do a lot to wise up Time readers (and editors)
2. Linus (explaining _his_ achivement to the public might do a lot to wise up Time readers (and editors)
4. David Boies
5. Penfield-Jackson (the findings of fact are better written than anything published in Time within memory)
6. Matthew Arnison, Aussie main architect of the Seattle Web site which allowed such quick distribution of (accurate) images/dispatches from Seattle's WTO protests
7. Commander Taco!
8. Buzz Lightyear
You know -- CmdrTaco!!!
Why? Because he invented [drumroll] Moderation! The whole concept of users rating comments, thus driving good comments upward and bad comments downward has resulted in tremendous time savings for every user of Slashdot. Not to mention that this concept has now spread across the net and is used by many other sites (in various mutated forms). Of course, I doubt that TIME has ever heard of him, but I predict someday even *they* will use a form of moderation.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
If you were to nominate her, it would have to have been for last year's person of the year. The news came out Jan 24, 1998 or so. It was on the news just about every day, through his final admission of lieing on August 17, through the culmination in the Impeachment December 19. That pretty well covers nearly all of 1998. :)
This year there was only what, a month or two of the Senate trial, which we all knew wouldn't have the votes to complete his removal. Since then, there's been nothing. Well, except for Baba Wawa's little interview, which didn't have as many viewers as ABC was expecting.
Time is to Man of the Year what MTV is to music... without a music video, you don't have a hit single. Without being telegenic / media friendly, you don't have a shot at Man of the Year. Scientific / humanist accomplishment is pretty much secondary to what will look good on a magazine cover.
Actually, I'm pretty sure what he was referring to was the fact that his vice presidency was fairly instrumental in raising/allocating money for the creation of Internet2, which is supposed to use next generation Internet technology.
-Bcheck out the transcript of the CNN interview where Al Gore says: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Time Magazine's Man of the Year is designed to generate PR and sell magazines, and it has nothing to do with anything in the real world. Didn't they give it one year to "the computer"? Doesn't "the Internet" deserve it just as much?
Actually, you're correct, in that Newton did say that, but Einstein also has a famous quote relating to that same idea: "A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others."
He could print it in his column in _Brill's Content_ since it deals with the media. Or rather, it deals with the media in matters dealing with Rupert Murdoch.
That would be a good piece for the magazine. When he writes for it, I usually read what he has to say, since it passed editing.
Lowmag.net
Why worry about the person of 1999? 1999 is already over. Whose vision is most important for the year 2000 and onward? Whose concept of community, ownership, collaboration, innovation and trade will prove most insightful, ethical and useful? Dee Hock.
Besides, it doesn't matter if they happened to have done anything this year, only that their works have caused influence.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
...is how you spell that old fish.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
...The TCP/IP Illustrated series. Volume 1 is perhaps the best end-to-end TCP/IP reference, ever. I'm going to go read it right now. You're right. He's awesome.
Ok, I'm sick and tired of this shit, and I'm willing to put my Karma on the line to make my point heard.
Stop bashing Katz EVERY FUCKING TIME HE POSTS A GODDDAM STORY! Nobody wants to hear your opinion on whether or not Katz knows what he's talking about. He certainly posts things with more content than your half-assed complaints about him, or your "NATALIE PORTMAN PETRIFIED" or your "MAE LING MAK" bullshit. He posts stories that cause people to think and have discussions. This obviously isn't just a news site, it's also a discussion site, and Jon Katz does a great job of promoting discussion between people by talking about controversial issues. If you don't like it, go to your goddamn preferences page and disable Katz' stories! It's not very hard.
On a very related subject, I think it's time for a Slashdot poll on disallowing Anonymous posting. This is getting ridiculous... as more people hear about Linux and Slashdot, it's just going to attract more Windows-weenies who post crap like the stuff I noted above.
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
Ahh.. I remember the days before naked statues were all the rage and Natalie Portman was still just a high school student. In those days, MEEPT would bless us with words of wisdom regarding cheese or somesuch. Those were the good old days.
Anyways, I'm done reminiscing. Let the stone buttocks remarks fly again.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
If there was ever a TIME Man of the Year in my adult life that I was personally upset about it, it was Newt Gingrich in 1995.
And the CEO of Amazon, regardless of who he is, has quite a way to go before he sinks that low in my mind.
OTOH, if I was going to choose the Man of the Year based on their pioneering in electronic commerce, and effectively defining the future of shopping, I would have chosen Jason Olim of CDNOW, which I had heard of long before Amazon.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I think the Onion was on to something with their selection: Death http://www.theonion.com/onion3546/death.html Death keeps very busy creating the events, both man-made (the Balkans, suburban high schools), and natural (earthquakes, hurricanes, mud slides, etc.) that gives Time a new cover story every week. You'd think they would show some appreciation.
MEEPT!!!
You can vote there for who you think it should've been. I would've hyperlinked it, but they might accuse it as a bot, since the HTTP REFER env var will show slashdot.
Sosumi. just kidding. DONT!
Although he didn't live to see the end of the Millineum, he did more that most to define it.
root@localbrain root>ps ax |grep thoughtd
Kosovo was highest on the list, however more people give credit to Clinton and Albright than for those members of the military(s) who planned and fulfilled the missions, and none at all for K4 -- who has the more difficult job of building the peace.
So this post is kindof a personal protest on behalf of those who are on the front lines.
And while some may mock my belief(s) in God, please know that I mean it when it when I borrow and change a quote from Tiny Tim (in Dicken's "A Christmas Carol", not the singer) and say "God bless them, one and all."
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
If you read the magazine, the award is for whoever had the biggest impact on the news, it's not necessarily sayin they're good or bad.
I've seen much more news about Columbine, Monica Lewinsky, and the Microsoft trial this year than I've seen about Jeff Bezos. The way I see it, Time doesn't care about the most important or most influential people; it just wants to promote the corporate image. Jeff Bezos might have been a good choice when Amazon.com first started, but there were many people who had a much bigger impact on the news this year than him.
that's funny.
i think you lose the nomination (not that you'd make the best woman of the year, being as you are an AC) because you don't see the humor in having the domain of grrl.org
and if i have to explain a joke to you, you've wasted my time.
My vote would go to Linux and the stock market. And when you combine the two, you get Red Hat and VA Linux!!
-Man cannot survive except through his mind. --Ayn Rand
Slashdot != "the public."
:)
Plain and simple.
The "public" mentality is probably much closer to Time magazine than to Slashdot. Sad but true.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Ok.
Yes, I remember for the first time being on Yahoo and seeing banner ads (which were obscure as well) reading, "Amazon.com, Earth's biggest bookstore." Oh yeah? I thought.
They got their money through their selection. Jeff Bezos is just some greedy, money-hawking freak running around screaming, "We need to sell more shit!" It wasn't enough that Amazon just sold books, they suddenly needed to sell everything on the planet, tarnishing the reputation and the freshness Amazon upheld at it's start. I remember seeing a show on PBS a while back (Geeks 3.1.1 whatever) in which the host walked around an Amazon warehouse with the founder of the company. He was just a modest nerd with a passion for books and one day came up with an original idea, "Why not sell books over the internet?"
That's why we're pissed. Because Amazon was built on that principle, and we all remember those days (as you said) when we could browse through one of the internet's first merchandice stores and say, "Wow, I've been looking for that book for ages!" Or just, "Wow." We were there for the same purpose the book nerd created the company: books. Literature. We don't want an auction while we're there and we don't want Dentist Barbie. We want books. Nothing more, nothing less. They needn't sell Dentist Barbie to make a fortune.
And because everyone knows Amazon's still got the biggest selection, we end up going there.
But we're pissed because we don't want to buy from a greedy capitalist company such as the one Amazon's become...which is why we use Linux in the first place ^_^
And that is why Jeff Bezos doesn't deserve this. We see it, Mr. Katz sees it, why don't you?
miyax
Linus Torvalds liberated computer software for the masses? Uh, don't you mean RMS? Last I checked, Linus did not invent "liberated" (free) software.
Regards,
Think about it .. what does an award like this say? It says "Look, you don't have to be using Microsoft Word or whatever to produce quality work. You can produce quality work using any tool that you like." Is this the kind of thing that we want to have generally-known? Absolutely not.
Rarely have I seen a purer example of extreme sarcasm than this. (But okay, it was a bit hidden in the midst of other paragraphs where it was less clear that it was sarcasm.)
P.S. Regarding vi being old fashioned...not to stir up a religious war, but it was created in 1977, so it's 22 years old. Emacs was first created about 1974, so it's 25 years old. The age difference is pretty much insignificant by now.
(And Bill Joy studied emacs before creating vi. He followed a different design path in large part because Unix only had 128k available in those days! Emacs, on the other hand, was (a) running on DEC 10's -- big machines... and (b) was implemented interpretively in Teco, not in a compiled language.)
Personally, I use vi because it is keystroke efficient, powerful (e.g. its regular expression search and replace was there years and years before Stallman added the same to emacs), does not cause repetitive stress disorder from control/alt/meta keys, and is lightweight.
I admire emacs for its boundless power, incredible array of add-ons, for its elisp language, and for its elegant underlying design (e.g. key bindings, buffer gap editing).
But it really doesn't matter which editor you prefer. Try them both. I used emacs (the Teco version) exclusively for a year and a half, long ago. It's clearly very cool... just not my current preference.
Every time I've heard of a new vi keybinding mode for emacs, I try it out, to see if I can finally switch to emacs. So far, none have them have been complete emulations.
Anyone know of a really perfect vi keybinding for emacs? At least as good as "vim" is as a clone of vi? I want ":" commands, too...)
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
And of course he designed and implemented all the protocols, routers etc :)
Once again, Time's "Person of the year" does not mean its someone who you should look up to or aspire to be, its who had the most influence in one year. I personally don't agree that Bezos influenced world events the most, but I don't even want to start on that now.
- Dave
I would nominate the person who invented Pokemon. That has done more to change the world than an e-commerce site.
...
Gotta love monkies!
...
PCs would very likely not be here without the original 6502-based Apple computers, which were designed in a garage by a ubergeek named Woz, or Steve Wozniak, who was, is and remains uninterested in the profit motive, and currently teaches children if I'm not mistaken. It was done for coolness factor entirely, and Woz had to be argued into even starting a business- and initially balked and refused to do so! He was persuaded by...
Steve Jobs, who is more responsible for 'Microsoft's ease of use' than they are. In a situation where everybody did DOS, and he could have done well by using his Svengali-like talents to sell DOS better than the next guy, Jobs wanted more. He was always pushing for something though he didn't himself know what he wanted- after seeing the Xerox PARC demos he wanted that and more, and personally berated, inspired, terrified and hijacked an entire team of geeks into creating the next-generation Alto and inventing most of the territory in the bargain. Jobs is not and has never been particularly interested in money either- he wants rock-star like fame and influence, and wants to be the one to revolutionise the world. He sort of managed it once, and continues to be very good PR specifically because he's more interested in the ability to shock and impress than he is in the likelihood of delivering reliable value to stockholders.
It looks like most of your examples for the benefits of greed actually refer to people who were and are motivated by completely different reasons! The reason isn't the same- curiosity, geek value, ego, government socialism- but it seems that in every case it's something other than capitalist greed that produces results.
Is there _anything_ useful that classic unadulterated greed has produced? What's the percentage in innovation, cooperation, progress? Isn't it true that greed _never_ produces anything worthwhile, only seizes on existing things and magnifies/hypes/ruins them? Granted, the magnification and hype can have uses, but one would not want to rely on a greed-motivated world. Nothing would get done!
No building is built without any foundation, and similarly no achievement we may consider can possibly be suppoted by just one man. BSD and Linux have armies of coders, quietly hacking in the background. No man is an island. One person suggested the Ebay founder. This site is maintained daily by a regiment of web-gurus, who deserve the recognition just as much, if not more than the founder, who needs do no more than sit down and reap the rewards of an idea. We cannot simply credit a good idea, for those come often, and die just as often. We must also salute the work that goes behind it, so we must consider the dark nights spent coding the webserver and OS that supports that site. I nominate everyone that had a part in the daily wonders we all take for granted, for without them the occaisional monumental achievement is nothing. These peons are the ones we all depend on, whether we know it or not. The only people often nominated are too often the ones that already have been recognized for their achievements. We cannot allow them to go unnoticed, but there are hundreds of small footsteps that do go unnoticed. While we worship these deities, we ignore those who stand in their shadow.
Ok They want the founder of e-commerce? How about the original Fantacy Plaza set up to sell copys of DYM and ended up selling books, software and all kinds of junk.. shutdown at the end of the 1980s a few years before Amazon came into existence and no one knows what happend to them.
/. is pritty cool and desveres a nod more than Amazon...
Annother is CompUstore Compuservers on-line store. It sold junk.. pillows in the shape of computers.. chcolate in the shape of computers... etc.. you know the kinda junk you'd find at a gift shop.. sort of an Internet gift shop a few years before anyone heard of the Internet.
They were both cutting edge but couldn't convence the general public that eventually everyone would be buying stuff on-line... Ironicly they both had "One click shopping"...
Alternitvely I'd say Ebay is pritty cutting edge.. I don't think on-line auctions could even work on a BBS considering the one user at a time problem.
I know Commander Taco would like to get some votes for himself but he knows good and well Usenet, FidoNet and BBSes have him beat by a number of years. Still
Accually Time should have skipped the trendy notion of e-commerce and gone with the brouder Internet... yes the father of the Internet... he should get Man of the year... With out him there'd be no Amazon.com... and we'd still be calling long distence just to order books on-line... or at least I would... I miss FP thow they were a grand deal better than Amazon....
I don't actually exist.
this is what i was saying in the article posted
about this originally and it is so true.
what do we get out of it besides total greed
and destruction ?
nothing....
it should be somebody like linus or tim berners-lee for sure.
thinking that it is anything else is delusional.
again, remember who time is owned by: a huge conglomerate devoted to greed so dont expect anything less next time dont be surprised when they pick another putz.
Katz has enumerated quite a few of the cyber-movers and shakers, but he seems to have forgotten that Time is a news-magazine. Thus, when they pick their man of the year, they are looking for someone who has shaped the news of this year, not who has made a lot of useful changes. His examples are the very antithesis of how the select the (wo)Man - the nameless, faceless programmers are changing our lives, doubtless, but they sure haven't been in the news.
A famous example of this would be Adolf Hitler, who got the nod in `38 or `39, can't remember. I certainly wouldn't call his changes "useful," but he shaped news (in Time, at least) more than anyone that year. In 1980 they picked the Ayatollah. Same reasoning.
People tend to liken the Time magazine MOTY selection to a Nobel prize - choosing people based on merit and goodwill. When people like David Ho (trying to cure AIDS) or Carter (promoting peace and goodwill towards man) are named, ostensibly this is true. However, that is not their selection criterion.
With that in mind, I still have qualms as to the validity of their selection. E-commerce has really only been in the news for about a month now. Compare with Columbine. You know there had to be some tempation there to name Klebold and Harris; no two names were in the news more. I'm absolutely shocked that Jon "Hellmouth" Katz somehow forgot about Columbine when he wrote this piece. I guess he just didn't understand the award.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Here are some names in the category computer/net/geek person that were mentioned, in some random order.
After thinking about it for some time, my vote would go to Grace Hopper. Interestingly enough, Thompson/Ritchie, Knuth, and Berners-Lee were not mentioned. That Thorvalds or Wall weren't mentioned didn't quite surprise me.
A general person of the century was discussed as well. Suggestions were Hitler, Churchill, Kennedy, Roosevelt, Ghandi. But someone mentioned Truman. Because he dropped "the bomb", and because of the Marshall plans. But also because he didn't drop "the bomb" in Korea. It took me a while to realize that first using atomic weapons, and then realizing that it's better not to ever do that again might have been the most important decision of the century. The world would have looked extremely different had we continued to use atomic weapons.
As for the person of the millennium, Galileo was the clear favourite, way ahead of Newton.
-- Abigail
Who better to be the man of the century, who will be remembered by future generations for centuries afterwards. then the monopolistic dictator of Microsoft?
ahaahhahahahahahah!%!##!!%##!%1#
sigh.. sometimes I just can't help myself..
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
Times "Man of the Year" or "Woman of the year" or "Thingie of the year" is not about who was the greatest or most important or who had the best 3/4 profile shot on the front of a magazine.
Its all about who was the most important newsmaker. Who made lots of news and who was the person to read about or listen radio stories or watch television spots.
Keep that in mind when you critique Times choice. There was a groundswell in the Mac community to make Steve Jobs man of the year. I certainly would call Steve Jobs a greate humanitarian. He's an arrogant Jerk who happens to be a great business man. And he made lots of news.
Man of the year is really about The press acknowledging someone they feel is important by their own criteria in there own little world. We nerds are in our own little world with our counter culture, Linux, science interests etc etc. Journalists are no less weird, they just don't think like Nerds.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Stefan
--
Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages. --Terry Pratchett in "Wyrd Sisters".
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
I can't think of one person i would pick to be my man of the year. Linus MIGHT have been it a few years ago, but this isn't the year of Linux...this is the year of his creation (for a few). Clinton was on that list a few years back, but today i can't think of one damned person who i thnk of and say "you know...that person is a Role Model!"
By the way. let's get off this internet kick if we're going to seriously discuss the person of the year...Steve Jobs (or the Mac if you want to get technical) was on that list because the personal computer revolutionized the WORLD! E-commerce is changing the way 28 fucking people shop. When was the last time you got toilet paper and some dinty more beef stew off e-bay? Ask yourself - who changed the WORLD this year???
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume