According to Engadget,

Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with creating the World Wide Web, recently said that his only real regret about the whole shebang is forcing people to type out the (essentially unnecessary) double slash after the “http:” in URLs. Speaking at a symposium on the future of technology, he noted (in reference to the dreaded marks) the paper, trees and human labor that could have been spared without them.

To which Engadget responds:

Hey Tim: don’t sweat it! You’ve done us enough good turns that we’re willing to overlook it.

Amen.