Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

news.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 305 posts

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#81

Post by jacquesm »

sametmax wrote: post #73
jacquesm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another pointless analogy. Food with poison in it is illegal to sell. Supporting DRM sends a message that you do no agree with (and that I do not agree with), we can agree that it's not a good message but we are not without power in this: you and I can simply decide never to use that feature and not to support companies that use that feature. Copyright law is here to stay, rights holders will try to use technology to…

> Food with poison in it is illegal to sell Is is not. Only poisoned food that kills you quickly. You have plenty of legal food that harms your body or gives you diseases that are legal. We just call them junk food, alcohol, and other names because they are morally accepted. You accept DRM as fact of life. We don't. Because it isn't. It's just the next move pulled out by the majors to try to lock in the consumer. It…

Idealism is not going to get you very far in the marketplace. Accepting reality as it is and your place and power within that reality is key to both not feeling continuously frustrated and actually achieving some measurable change.

You are essentially trying to ignore the fact that the Berne convention exists and that it (and not ideals) govern the position of rights holders. TBL is a pragmatist, first and foremost, that is why we have the WWW, not because he is an idealist who has forsaken his idealism.

As such, his benefits to society are such that few people can claim to have changed the course of history to such an extent, if you wish to argue that DRM is not a 'fact of life' then you are out of touch with life.

Major rights holders 'making more money that [sic] ever' is not automatic, they require our cooperation and consent.

And that consent and cooperation are ours to withdraw.

Any other changes are political and likely an uphill battle.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#82

Post by seejay »

Jaruzel wrote: post #77
seejay wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the minus points here. Did I piss a bunch of people off? I genuinely loved OPs comment here (gave it an upvote). So instead of saying "woman" here If I just "assumed" he is a man and said congratulations "man" or "bro" would I get plus points?

Your comment, although well-meaning, also didn't add anything to the conversation. People tend to vote those down.

Thank you very much! in that case I'd be ok with the down votes. But the first reply I got here from someone I assume who is in charge of HN was "OP is a man" so I can't help but wonder what's really going on in the minds of these down voters.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#83

Post by vxNsr »

seejay wrote: post #59
seejay wrote: post #22

Holly crap! Congratulations woman!!!

I don't understand the minus points here. Did I piss a bunch of people off? I genuinely loved OPs comment here (gave it an upvote). So instead of saying "woman" here If I just "assumed" he is a man and said congratulations "man" or "bro" would I get plus points?

You've derailed this thread without adding anything substantial. HN usually frowns on that. Also though, your comment came off as political.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#84

Post by TuringTest »

marcofloriano wrote: post #46
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-...

It may be good, after all we are talking about private information. Some degree of control and exposition are welcome.

The problem is that such control is not imposed by you, but by the network owner.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#85

Post by olavk »

protist wrote: post #25

What about the WWW did he invent? Not hypertext, not SGML, not even MIME headers. There were even other competing hypertext systems like Hypercard and Gopher. TBL is extremely overrated.

He invented the URL, which is the most important component of the web, since this is what makes cross-system hypertext possible. Hypercard was not networked and Gopher were not hypertext, and neither allowed you to link to external objects. The genius of the web was that it was not a closed system, but via URL's allowed links across information systems and protocols. This is probably why the web succeeded while all the other walled-garden systems failed.

Note that TBL never expected HTTP and HTML to replace all other protocols, they were just intended as a hypertext system which could connect to all the existing systems like Gopher, NNTP and so on, thereby increasing the usefulness of all the systems.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#86

Post by peter303 »

I remember doing internet research before there was the web. For example in the late 1980s I studied California earthquakes. The USGS had a public ftp site where they put daily epicenter map images (jpeg?) and text databases of epicenters. I wrote automated scripts to download new stuff.

I remember there even internet search engines at the time. People wrote automated scipts to look for public ftp ports and compiledbthe results. The internet only had a few thousand addresses at the time, so it wasnt an ardorous process. I think one of these databases was called archie.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#87

Post by Cyph0n »

madiathomas wrote: post #72
Cyph0n wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diffie and Hellman won it only last year, 40 years after their seminal paper was published! It is indeed a very tough award to get.

Odds of becoming a US dollar billionaire are higher than odds of winning it in your lifetime.

That's a nice way to put it :P

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#88

Post by jasonkostempski »

qplex wrote: post #51
danielpatrick wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of fact, this is what Sir Berners Lee is working on right now at MIT. https://solid.mit.edu/ The issue is not storing the data, just like "email" doesn't store data. It's just a protocol and a data format. This makes it interoperable across whichever industry player wants to spring up and compete for your service. Ex: Don't like gmail? Go to ProtonMail. And you don't lose the ability to interact with peop…

So does one export their existing network information to these open formats? I don't think the companies who currently hold that information will part with it willingly.

If it catches on, I assume a bunch of services will pop up offering to export you data. All they'll need is your password.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#89

Post by softawre »

qplex wrote: post #51
danielpatrick wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of fact, this is what Sir Berners Lee is working on right now at MIT. https://solid.mit.edu/ The issue is not storing the data, just like "email" doesn't store data. It's just a protocol and a data format. This makes it interoperable across whichever industry player wants to spring up and compete for your service. Ex: Don't like gmail? Go to ProtonMail. And you don't lose the ability to interact with peop…

So does one export their existing network information to these open formats? I don't think the companies who currently hold that information will part with it willingly.

They already do allow you to export your data, right?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award

#90

Post by sametmax »

jacquesm wrote: post #81
sametmax wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Food with poison in it is illegal to sell Is is not. Only poisoned food that kills you quickly. You have plenty of legal food that harms your body or gives you diseases that are legal. We just call them junk food, alcohol, and other names because they are morally accepted. You accept DRM as fact of life. We don't. Because it isn't. It's just the next move pulled out by the majors to try to lock in the consumer. It…

Idealism is not going to get you very far in the marketplace. Accepting reality as it is and your place and power within that reality is key to both not feeling continuously frustrated and actually achieving some measurable change. You are essentially trying to ignore the fact that the Berne convention exists and that it (and not ideals) govern the position of rights holders. TBL is a pragmatist, first and foremost,…

While I agree with your conclusions, I nevertheless don't think we should endorse a bad status quo.

When Firefox came around (as Phoenix), it didn't endorse ActiveX, making a lot of sites unusable. It chose fair standards.

What would have happened if they decided that they were too small and that Microsoft was so big that ActiveX would be inevitable anyway ?

Note that eventually the DRM won't affect me. I'm tech saavy enough, so I will always find ways to get around them. I think they arm society as a whole, and that you should say no.

I had an interview proposal with google some years ago. I refused politely. Google is inevitable, I still do have a few gmail addresses and use the SE. And it pays well. And their projects are cool. But I said no because I believe I should not be part of it.

I'm doing my part.

You don't get a democracy if you are not doing your part. Even if it means you will loose. Strategic vote is just promoting immobility.

I'm all for pragmatism, but it has to be used in conjunction with bigger goals.

Now you don't have to be perfect, I'm certainly not, but I still think that M. Lee decision sent the wrong message.

Post reply on HN