[LINK] FW: Dennis Ritchie has died

[Tom Koltai]

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au
> > [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Robin Whittle
> > Sent: Thursday, 13 October 2011 11:41 PM
> > To: Link mailing list
> > Subject: [LINK] Dennis Ritchie has died
> > 
> > 
> 
 Who would have thought Colossal Cave (OK Mammoth Cave) could 
 have turned into a phone operating system (err, IOS/Android). 
 Just goes to show there's more to writing games than most 
 people know. 
 
 As a mark of respect, I am now going to attempt to boot Theos 
 onto a virtual and see if I can load the original Mammoth 
 cave. If I can find the original file and the compiler... 
 It's on a 1600 BPI Colorado tape. Ahhh, no 1600 BPI scsi tape 
 drive hooked up - Ok, big job. Maybe another day.
  
 However no request was ignored by Dennis, regardless of how 
 inane it was. One hell of a nice dude (with the exception of 
 writing man pages, and comments) there are few that added 
 more to our current comms environment. Politicians will 
 concentrate no doubt on the recent passing of Mr. Jobs which 
 would be a shame. Dennis was one of those quiet achievers - 
 although one that was (initially) religious about the purity 
 of Sys III Unix. In Communist countries he would get a bronze 
 statue in Android Square in memoriam. 
 In America, he might get a half hour special on the History 
 Channel. Few men who live life manage to leave something 
 meaningful behind. Dennis Ritchie was one of those that 
 managed to do so.
 
 I doubt that apart from the emerging nations, there are many 
 on planet earth that do not have part of their lives enriched 
 by "C" and the unix libraries on a daily basis.
 
 That's four billion people. Most of whom don't even know. 
 
 Thanks Dennis.