The award, presented by Finland’s president, Tarja Halonen, is among the largest of its kind. It was established in 2002 along the lines of the Nobel prizes and is backed by the Finnish government.

“Building the web, I didn’t do it all myself. The really exciting thing about it is that it was done by lots and lots of people, connected with this tremendous spirit,” Sir Tim, 49, said at the award ceremony in Helsinki.

The prize committee outlined the award to be given for “an outstanding innovation that directly promotes people’s quality of life, is based on humane values and encourages sustainable economic development”.

Sir Tim is recognised as the creator of the internet while working in the early 1990s for the CERN Laboratory, the European centre for nuclear research near Geneva, Switzerland.

His graphical point-and-click browser, “WorldWideWeb”, was the first client that featured the core ideas included in today’s web browsers – Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla among them.

“To aid IT professionals in planning and testing for the deployment of Windows XP SP2, Microsoft is making available this preview, based on Release Candidate 2 (RC2) of the SP2. Additionally, we have established 11 newsgroups for sharing information.

If you are only updating one machine, you should install the Windows XP SP2 RC2 via Windows Update. In most cases, your download time will be greatly shortened, and when you are done, you will also have the Release Candidate version of the Windows Update V5 client installed.”

An excellent article from a very intellegent writer – see his website for more information.

“The security of your computer and your network depends on two things: what you do to secure your computer and network, and what everyone else does to secure their computers and networks. It’s not enough for you to maintain a secure network. If everybody else doesn’t maintain their security, we’re all more vulnerable to attack. When there are lots of insecure computers connected to the Internet, worms spread faster and more extensively, distributed denial-of-service attacks are easier to launch, and spammers have more platforms from which to send e-mail. The more insecure the average computer on the Internet is, the more insecure your computer is.

It’s like malaria: everyone is safer when we all work together to drain the swamps and increase the level of hygiene in our community. This is the backdrop from which to understand Microsoft’s Windows XP security upgrade: Service Pack 2. SP2 is a major security upgrade. It includes features like Windows Firewall, an enhanced personal firewall that is turned on by default, and a better automatic patching feature. It includes a bunch of small security improvements. It makes Windows XP more secure.

In early May, stories were written saying that Microsoft would make this upgrade available to all XP users, both licensed and unlicensed. To me, this was a very smart move on Microsoft’s part. Think about all the ways it benefits Microsoft. One, its licensed users are more secure. Two, its licensed users are happier. Three, worms that attack Microsoft products are less virulent, which means Microsoft doesn’t look as bad in the press. Microsoft wins, Microsoft’s customers win, the Internet wins. It’s the kind of marketing move that businessmen write best-selling books about.

Sadly, the press was wrong. Soon after, Microsoft said the initial comments were wrong, and that SP2 would not run on pirated copies of XP. Those copies would not be upgradeable, and would remain insecure. Only legal copies of the software could be secured.