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Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

news.mit.edu

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Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#241

Post by [deleted] »

chubot wrote: post #201
gambler wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

If that's true, then it's not the fault of the web's designers. Suppose you are an architect and you a build a house for a family of five. Then someone buys the house and it into an auditorium. And then they say, "Wow this is really shitty place to hold concerts -- the acoustics are terrible. What a bunch of amateurs." Is that your fault? If the web is a genius for hypertext, but not for app delivery, then he should…

[deleted]

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#242

Post by tcdent »

jacquesm wrote: post #212
shurcooL wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm a fan of the indie web ( https://indieweb.org/ ).

I like indieweb but I'm not on board with their 'design first' slogan. I think to be most effective such a thing should be 'content first'.

Content, in terms of quality; and subsequently curation/censorship?

Otherwise, content falls into a specific set of mediums (text, images, video, sound), all of which are assumed on a modern platform and aren't worth reconsidering. Design and presentation, however, has infinite possibility.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#243

Post by pbhjpbhj »

chrisseaton wrote: post #234
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's still a mister. It's whether you buy in to "this is a male adult" vs. "I must respect this person's title because HM The Queen bestowed it on them". Mr Berners-Lee surely won't feel offended because the person addressing him isn't a [UK] royalist?

Calling him Berners-Lee sounds like you would rather not use titles at all, which seems like a defensible position. Calling him Mr Berners-Lee sounds like you're going out of your way to deliberately use the wrong title, which just seems rude.

All adult males in the UK that you don't know the first name of but do know the surname of are called "Mr $Surname" as a social norm. Adjusting that designation because the Queen says so is very common too, but maintaining the status quo is just being apathetic towards the Queens edicts.

Most of her subjects do not complain. Some of them think we should have done away with such notions of reigning over other people already.

FWIW outside celebrity circles it is often considered quite gauche to insist on such pompous titles.

If you insist I'd be happy with calling him Professor Berners-Lee (even assuming he doesn't still have an active official professorship). If you want to talk about proper titles then is Sir Berners-Lee also rude when it should, by the right of HM EIIR be "Professor Sir Berners-Lee" [when spoken]?

If you're worried about recognition I think Mr Berners-Lee is not lacking in that department and was already party to the Queens inner circle as a holder of the Order of Merit which appears to be a far greater royal honour than a "mere" KBE. He has my utmost respect, if you doubted it.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#244

Post by OJFord »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #231
chrisseaton wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use a title at all if you're going to use the wrong one?

He's still a mister. It's whether you buy in to "this is a male adult" vs. "I must respect this person's title because HM The Queen bestowed it on them". Mr Berners-Lee surely won't feel offended because the person addressing him isn't a [UK] royalist?

That's not the case though, just as, more obviously, 'Mrs' isn't limited in meaning to 'this is a female adult'.

Increasingly and to the point of arguable totality, such titles are bestowed by popularity, committee, and HM Government. Damned shame, since it would mean more what it should were it not given to celebrity riff-raff for 'services to sport'.

I digress. You say it's fine as a non-'UK royalist' to use an improper title; I say I bet most of the world doesn't use even Mr, and I'd do my utmost to pay proper respect to local custom and any honours.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#245

Post by OJFord »

DanBC wrote: post #155
robotresearcher wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sidebar issue: all these rules apply to knighthoods from the UK crown only. And under these rules non-Brits may be knighted but do not use the title 'sir'. Thus Bill Gates KBE is not known as Sir Bill. (edit: Today I learned that Kazuo Ishiguro is British. The statement below is completely wrong. I've managed to get his nationality wrong while enjoying his books for 20 years!) So in the specific case of Kazuo Ishig…

Kazuo Ishiguro is British. He's not called "Sir" because he has an OBE. He needs a GBE or DBE for the "Sir". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire

And were he not British, he would not be entitled as such - Gates and Geldof iirc are such examples; sometimes (incorrectly) titled 'Sir' in press.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#246

Post by shurcooL »

gkya wrote: post #218
shurcooL wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm a fan of the indie web ( https://indieweb.org/ ).

I'm sorry if this has to do with my sleepiness, but from that page I don't understand at all what this is. A kind of social CMS? A bloggers community? The page is rich in word count but poor in being informative. I'd be very grateful if somebody could give a little explanation of what this is, because, it seems to be an interesting thing.

The other reply gives a good answer. I'll suggest reading over the about page (https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb:About), I think it's more informative.

Indie web is about people owning their data and having control over it. It's about being able to build what you want for yourself. It's a direction, a set of ideas and principles that some people enjoy.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#247

Post by hutzlibu »

gkya wrote: post #223
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…

Torvalds didn't add anything to CS. He just wrote a Unix-like kernel. The kernel took off and the project grew to include thousands of devs and became the biggest OSS project ever, but still, it's a kernel, not much different in essence from any old Unix kernel. Git? Again, popular project, nothing new. It was even started contemporaneously with Mercurial, which is essentially equal to it, and both are no new inventi…

"IDK but having created a popular project should not be equal to a big innovation in the field."

So you seriously think that "new" is better, then "well done"?

I don't think it makes sense to compare those 2 things and value one higher than the other. Of what use are innovations, if you can't use them in a "popular project"?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#248

Post by hutzlibu »

hardtke wrote: post #143
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.

It's hard to top antibiotics in terms of useful inventions.

I suppose our world could function without antibiotics, but not without the transistor ...

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#249

Post by flukus »

tcdent wrote: post #242
jacquesm wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like indieweb but I'm not on board with their 'design first' slogan. I think to be most effective such a thing should be 'content first'.

Content, in terms of quality; and subsequently curation/censorship? Otherwise, content falls into a specific set of mediums (text, images, video, sound), all of which are assumed on a modern platform and aren't worth reconsidering. Design and presentation, however, has infinite possibility.

> Design and presentation, however, has infinite possibility.

Most of the possibilities get in the way of the content.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#250

Post by flukus »

XJOKOLAT wrote: post #216
mike-cardwell wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you miss about RSS feeds? They're still there... It's very rare that I come across a blog that doesn't have one, even now...

You're right, of course. It's possible I'm still pining for my perfectly set-up Google Reader account which I cannot quite replicate. That still hurts! RSS felt ubiquitous (to me) back then. Anyway, to the point, try using RSS with facebook in the above context. I hate being locked in - hence I gave up on FB. It's trash to me until it solves this issue.

> Anyway, to the point, try using RSS with facebook in the above context.

For me they're different things. RSS is for things that I want available until I get around to reading them or until I manually mark them as read, this is precisely what I don't want out of facebook.

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