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Badtux the Snarky PenguinIn a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin. Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped. |
Friday, April 27, 2007Death noticesThis is about three people who died this week. Two people's death made it into the news. One person's death was noted only by members of a particular community of geeks and nerds.David Halberstam wrote the book The Best and the Brightest about the lies that got America into the Vietnam War. JFK's brain trust, certain that they knew better than the American people what the best interests of America were, decided to lie to the American people rather than tell the truth. Because if they told the truth, then the American people would not support going to war in Vietnam. The result was that once the lies were uncovered, American support for the war collapsed and Americans never believed their leaders again when it came to Vietnam, even when their leaders were right. A similar book could be written about the lies that resulted in America going to war in Iraq, except the title of that book would probably be The Dumb and the Dumber, where solid "C" students and graduates of two-bit Bible colleges decided that telling America the truth would not result in America supporting war against Iraq. David Halberstam was killed in an auto accident in Palo Alto this week while being driven to the airport after a seminar on his work. He was 73 years old. Jack Valenti was the long-time head of the Motion Picture Assocation of America. He is most famous for three things -- abolishing the Hays code and thus allowing movies with high levels of sex and violence to appear on-screen if rated accordingly, suing Sony for creating the VCR saying that the VCR was "to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" and would destroy the movie industry, and suing a small magazine for daring publish vulnerabilities in the encryption scheme used for DVD's saying that if DVD's could be copied it would destroy the movie industry. It's not really clear if Valenti was ever right about anything but he was an influential lobbyist who often appeared on Capital Hill to make outrageous statements like the Boston strangler one in support of whatever agenda the big movie studios wished him to support. He died of a stroke yesterday. He was 85 years old. Fred Fish is the guy whose death didn't make the news, I learned about it from one of Fred's former business partners. Fred was an engineer at Motorola in Phoenix in the mid 1980's working on compiler technology for their new microprocessors when a new computer called the "Amiga" came out. Fred started collecting public domain and freeware for the Amiga and distributing it as floppy disks and floppy disk images via the UUCP network (a predecessor of the modern Internet) and via mail, the "Fish Disks". He also wrote a backup program for the Amiga called "BRU", which is still being sold for Unix systems today though he sold all rights to it long ago. Fred did a lot of work for Cygnus Consulting on the GNU "C" compiler and debugger in the early days when they were porting Richard Stallman's original VAX-oriented GNU "C" compiler to other architectures, and was often paid with Cygnus stock, eventually holding a significant number of shares. When Red Hat bought Cygnus, Fred got a bunch of money out of it, paid off the house, bought a big boat, and lived his dream of cruising around the world. Fred and his wife had just moved to Idaho when Fred died. I worked with Fred's son when I lived in Phoenix, and met Fred a couple of times. Fred was one of those fireplug-built guys who was almost as wide as tall, built sort of like a short football lineman. I didn't really interact with him except to say hello and thanks for all the Fish Disks, but from all accounts he was a nice guy. I guess all I can say is goodbye and thanks for all the fish. Fred was 54 years old. - Badtux the Life and Death Penguin Labels: life, obituaries Posted by: BadTux / 4/27/2007 12:10:00 PMComments:Damn, I knew of him, but never ran into to him. We were at the same events out in the West a few times because one of the Amiga consultants in San Diego mentioned trying to find him or of talking to him.Another micro pioneer down, and at 54. Damn. # posted by Bryan : 27/4/07 2:34 PM
Why are the great ones always taken way too soon? :-( |
About Me
I am a black and white and yellow multicolored penguin making his way as best he can in a world of monochromic monkeys. ArchivesApril 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / February 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 / May 2005 / June 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / October 2005 / November 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / April 2006 / May 2006 / June 2006 / July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / March 2007 / April 2007 / May 2007 / June 2007 / July 2007 / August 2007 /
Cost of the War in Iraq
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"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce." -- Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
-- Plato
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