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Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

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Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#191

Post by noblethrasher »

chubot wrote: post #168
madiathomas wrote: post #14

This goes to show how hard winning Turing award is. One would have expected someone who invented the most useful invention of the 20th century to have won this award long time ago. Maybe I am just overvaluing www because of the impact it had on people's lives. EDITED: 20th century, not 19th.

I always felt that Tim Berners-Lee was not respected enough in both the computer science and programming communities. I felt it especially after working for over a decade at Google, which literally built its entire business on TBL's architectural concepts. For example, Google and other search engines would not work without the principle of least power [1], which a lot of people, including Alan Kay [2], somehow don't…

I don't want to detract from TBL's accomplishments, especially on this occasion but, he didn't solve the hypertext problem insomuch as he decided that the really hard things like provenance and bidirectional linkages weren't important. Google and Facebook did solve those problems, but only for commercial benefit. Moreover, it's clear that TBL regrets that early decision to the degree that he rails against the walled gardens.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#192

Post by tannhaeuser »

cr0sh wrote: post #137
logicallee wrote: post #12

For anyone who doesn't know, the www is a a "hypertext" project where documents can contain links to each other. By clicking these links, a wide variety of content is exposed. For example, consider how much easier it is to use Wikipedia than to have to look up references in the index (page numbers by word occurrence) of a printed book. You can just click on a link and follow it. In all, most people spend most of thei…

TBL created the web, certainly - but hypertext prior to the web goes far back as an idea (at least as far back as Alan Kay - also an ACM Turing Award winner, IIRC)...

While hyperlinks are the essential contribution (which however existed long before the web already), I think the foundational work of encoding text digitally and universally (pioneered by SGML inventor Charles Goldfarb, James Clark, the TEI project, and many others) isn't honored adequately here.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#193

Post by kolme »

chubot wrote: post #168
madiathomas wrote: post #14

This goes to show how hard winning Turing award is. One would have expected someone who invented the most useful invention of the 20th century to have won this award long time ago. Maybe I am just overvaluing www because of the impact it had on people's lives. EDITED: 20th century, not 19th.

I always felt that Tim Berners-Lee was not respected enough in both the computer science and programming communities. I felt it especially after working for over a decade at Google, which literally built its entire business on TBL's architectural concepts. For example, Google and other search engines would not work without the principle of least power [1], which a lot of people, including Alan Kay [2], somehow don't…

"The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs."

-- Alan Kay

That quote is pretty unfortunate. I guess nobody's perfect.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#194

Post by cuspycode »

chubot wrote: post #168
madiathomas wrote: post #14

This goes to show how hard winning Turing award is. One would have expected someone who invented the most useful invention of the 20th century to have won this award long time ago. Maybe I am just overvaluing www because of the impact it had on people's lives. EDITED: 20th century, not 19th.

I always felt that Tim Berners-Lee was not respected enough in both the computer science and programming communities. I felt it especially after working for over a decade at Google, which literally built its entire business on TBL's architectural concepts. For example, Google and other search engines would not work without the principle of least power [1], which a lot of people, including Alan Kay [2], somehow don't…

With all respect to Tim Berners-Lee, I think the principle of least power is overrated. For example, even binary Horn clauses are Turing complete[0]. Whatever configuration language you can come up with (HTML, CSS, or whatever), it's either Turing-complete or not, and if it's Turing-complete there is no danger of executing infinite loops as long as you have some cutoff for resource requirements. The only thing that matters is whether the code is properly sandboxed before it tries to do any I/O.

[0] https://www.ps.uni-saarland.de/Publications/documents/devien...

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#195

Post by gambler »

chubot wrote: post #168
madiathomas wrote: post #14

This goes to show how hard winning Turing award is. One would have expected someone who invented the most useful invention of the 20th century to have won this award long time ago. Maybe I am just overvaluing www because of the impact it had on people's lives. EDITED: 20th century, not 19th.

I always felt that Tim Berners-Lee was not respected enough in both the computer science and programming communities. I felt it especially after working for over a decade at Google, which literally built its entire business on TBL's architectural concepts. For example, Google and other search engines would not work without the principle of least power [1], which a lot of people, including Alan Kay [2], somehow don't…

>For example, Google and other search engines would not work without the principle of least power [1], which a lot of people, including Alan Kay [2], somehow don't understand. That is, if the web language was a VM rather than HTML, there would be no Google.

Kay's criticism of the Web is very well justified and (like most of his high-level criticisms) typically misunderstood. He doesn't criticize it as a repository of hyperlinked documents. He criticizes it as platform for application delivery, which it became. Modern web with all its scripts is a VM -- and badly designed one at that.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#196

Post by [deleted] »

stan_rogers wrote: post #102
nojvek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never quite figured out how sirs work. I know Knights were addressed with sirs and the Queen had something to do with it, but how does it work in a multicultural UK?

Knighthood is a life award. You are given the rank of Knight Commander of an appropriate order or made a Knight Bachelor (no particular order; lower precedence when it comes to deciding who walks in front of whom). The knighthood dies with the knight. Again, the "Sir" attaches to the given name ("first" name, even if that comes last or somewhere in the middle, or is a compound name in itself). In general, the "Sir" i…

[deleted]

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#197

Post by jarmitage »

kolme wrote: post #193
chubot wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt that Tim Berners-Lee was not respected enough in both the computer science and programming communities. I felt it especially after working for over a decade at Google, which literally built its entire business on TBL's architectural concepts. For example, Google and other search engines would not work without the principle of least power [1], which a lot of people, including Alan Kay [2], somehow don't…

"The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs." -- Alan Kay That quote is pretty unfortunate. I guess nobody's perfect.

Kay is bang on.

1. http://worrydream.com/TheWebOfAlexandria/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot

3. Comment elsewhere in this thread about how we have been forced into turning a document system into a VM.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#198

Post by syshum »

jacquesm wrote: post #20
sametmax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullying in schools will happen anyway. Should we create a standard so that it's done properly, in a way everybody can reproduce ?

That's a dumb analogy. Bullying is one-sidedly bad, hence there being a bully-victim relationship which is non-consensual. Content owners have - in principle, legally backed - the right to distribute their content in any way they see fit, and content consumers have the option to refuse that content if the format it is presented in is un-acceptable to them, this is a consensual producer-consumer relationship. If you f…

>>Content owners have - in principle, legally backed - the right to distribute their content in any way they see fit, and content consumers have the option to refuse that content if the format it is presented in is un-acceptable to them, this is a consensual producer-consumer relationship.

you are giving content "owners" (and I use that term losely, because legally they are Copyright Holders not owners, copyright is not property) many more rights that are simply not granted by copyright law.

DRM is used in way to massively exceed the authority granted to creators by copyright, they abuse DRM and you claim the rest of society must just "take it" because "that's the market"

Well there is no "market forces" when it comes to content because the government grants upon a person a monopoly over a copyrighted work, this exhausts many market forces. Sure you can claim a general market of "Movies" but due to the nature of the product these are not interchangeable widgets that normally constitute a market.

>If you feel 'bullied' to consume content with DRM the problem lies with you

The "being bullied" is a weak argument, i will give you that, but what about platform or time shifters. Should the MPAA be able disable my bluray player with a code on all new bluray discs? Should MPAA be able to tell me which HDMI cable I must buy and which monitor on my PC is acceptable?

Should the MPAA be able to force me to use Chrome instead of Midori.

If I buy content today, that can play on Firefox, but then next year google revokes the Widvine license firefox uses, it is acceptable that now the content I paid for is unusable by me?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#199

Post by kahirsch »

peterkelly wrote: post #34
icebraining wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia and himself, he wrote up a proposal and was encouraged by his boss to implement it as an "unofficial" project: https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html#Influences

You can read the original proposal here: https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html

I love how the announcement[1] on Usenet of the first release of the "WorldWideWeb wide-area hypertext app" contains a sentence that seems sort of unlikely and almost arrogant, yet within four years had proved to be a prophetic understatement.

> This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access.

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.sys.next.announ...

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#200

Post by syshum »

noblethrasher wrote: post #191
chubot wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt that Tim Berners-Lee was not respected enough in both the computer science and programming communities. I felt it especially after working for over a decade at Google, which literally built its entire business on TBL's architectural concepts. For example, Google and other search engines would not work without the principle of least power [1], which a lot of people, including Alan Kay [2], somehow don't…

I don't want to detract from TBL's accomplishments, especially on this occasion but, he didn't solve the hypertext problem insomuch as he decided that the really hard things like provenance and bidirectional linkages weren't important. Google and Facebook did solve those problems, but only for commercial benefit. Moreover, it's clear that TBL regrets that early decision to the degree that he rails against the walled…

>Moreover, it's clear that TBL regrets that early decision to the degree that he rails against the walled gardens.

he rails against the walled gardens while at the same time putting things into the standard, like EME, they powers them.

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