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Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

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Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#201

Post by chubot »

gambler wrote: post #195
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…

>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 have just said so. That is not a very hard sentiment to express. "The Web was done by Amateurs" doesn't capture it.

But I don't even think that's true. If the web were really bad as an application delivery platform, someone should have supplanted it by now. Alan Kay or someone else should go design their own awesome VM for application delivery. I guarantee you it will fail, for reasons of fundamental to its design, while TBL's platform succeeded for reasons fundamental to its design.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#202

Post by chubot »

cuspycode wrote: post #194
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…

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 m…

Not sure I agree with you overall, but I do agree with the distinction between computational power and I/O (or capabilities). That's a very important design criteria for languages for distributed systems.

I think the problem would be that the computation would get cut off at different points on every machine, leading to an unstable ecosystem. Remember the browser has to run on devices with at least an order of magnitude difference in resources, probably 2 orders now.

Generally, you want to guarantee that your style computations terminate. Now it appears that CSS doesn't actually provide that guarantee, since it's Turing complete :) But I guess it's close enough in practice.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#203

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

losvedir wrote: post #21

When I was an MIT student I worked one summer at CSAIL. The office I was in had only a single occupancy bathroom. One afternoon I went to use it and just as I got there I saw that TBL was exiting. Once I went in and sat down, I noticed that the seat was warm ! Highlight of my life right there, having my butt warmed by the residual heat of the inventor of the www's butt. Ahem, in any case, congrats to him! Definitely…

> the inventor of the www's butt.

Ah ha! I did suspect he was not acting alone - who did the other bits and bobs?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#204

Post by sanderjd »

gambler wrote: post #195
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…

>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…

I think people understand the argument, they just don't fully agree with it. Personally, while I agree that we have ended up with a fairly poor universal VM, I find it to be a fascinating example of path dependency. Maybe we would be better off with one repository of hypertext and one well designed universal VM, but what path would we have taken to get there?

The hypertext repository was so compelling that everyone installed software to access it. Then that universally available software was so compelling that people found ways to run increasingly complex applications on it. And that's how we naturally found ourselves where we are today.

I don't see any reason to think that engineering a more perfect solution all at once would have worked better than this natural progression.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#205

Post by [deleted] »

nindalf wrote: post #104
cjbprime wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I'm following you -- yes, the Queen knighted him. How does the multicultural part come in? (Women receive the same award but it's called a Damehood and their prefix is Dame.)

If Kazuo Ishiguro is knighted, should he be addressed as Sir Kazuo or Sir Ishiguro? The point being that people of Japanese descent might place their first names after their last names.

[deleted]

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#206

Post by noblethrasher »

syshum wrote: post #200
noblethrasher wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The goal of advocacy is to rouse a sympathetic collective that you can leverage at the bargaining table. But, when the time comes, you play whatever hand you have.

The W3C has to negotiate with industry. But, unfortunately for us that care about the open web, its position is weak.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#207

Post by shurcooL »

jacquesm wrote: post #3

Key quote (for me) from the interview: "A social network is disempowering because you put a lot of energy into it, all your personal data out there, and tell it who your friends are. You can only use that information inside the silo of that particular social network." source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604052/webs-inventor-tim-...

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

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#208

Post by inopinatus »

e12e wrote: post #54
simias wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least it's still mainly interoperable with 3rd party solutions through open standards. I host my own email and as long as you adhere to the guidelines (use DKIM, make sure your IP range isn't part of some blacklist, triple check your postfix config etc...) you don't feel like a 2nd class netitizen.

Not quite. You still (in my experience) need to go through obscure web-forms to avoid having gmail/hotmail black list your domain. And even then gmail is way too aggressive with its spam labeling. I've seen replies to an email thread be marked as spam by gmail when the sender is in the recipient's address book. Gmail considers anything beyond big corporate email providers as second class participants - and so does th…

I'll echo Simias. If you behave like a first-class citizen and follow all the current standards and protocols, then you'll be accepted as one. I've been running private mail services for decades, and by keeping pace with changing expectations I've never had a problem with deliverability.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#209

Post by netvarun »

I was watching the penultimate episode of Halt and Catch Fire Season 3 this morning while doing my morning run at the gym. Towards the end of the episode, Donna faxes over a document about this great new invention, she recently encountered as a VC, called the 'WorldWideWeb' to Joe. Pretty coincidental :) Thanks, Tim!

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#210

Post by jacquesm »

syshum wrote: post #198
jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't buy blueray discs and don't use Midori, don't use any content at all that is DRM encumbered.

Yes, that will limit your choice but so what, if enough people do it the coin will drop.

That's my solution to this whole DRM issue and I've yet to find a 'must-see' thing that was DRM encumbered.

Copyright law gives rights-holders all kinds of options, and digital tools have given them options to make it harder to do some things that are not per-se violations of the law but that are also not explicitly granted as rights.

And that's a huge difference from a legal perspective.

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