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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!amelia!eos!eugene
From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.misc
Subject: DISCUSSION: Formation of soc.obit
Message-ID: <2972@eos.UUCP>
Date: 23 Mar 89 03:10:28 GMT
Reply-To: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif.
Lines: 46

Sorry to interrupt people's bashing of international network stars
(well Brad did make the SJ Merc).  But I have kind of a sober
proposal for a new news group.

Recently, in one of the fringe rec groups, a certain well-known
personality recently died. Who isn't important.  He had nothing
directly to do with computers (hated them in fact), but in that case,
I made a move to approach the Geographic Board of Names to honor that
person.  (you have to wait 2 years, BTW)

It was also during that time I had a chance to correspond with another
net guru about some wisdom once published by Alan Perlis at Yale.
I once met Perlis, and he was much older than I thought.  Netters,
clearly we are getting older.  In fact, a lot of netters are older
than many might think.

A couple of years ago, two very nice postings came from former
Univ. of Utah people eulogizing the passing of Elliott Organick
(remember MULTICS?) and they were posted to comp.arch.  This
wasn't completely appropriate, but I think clearly, this will
happen with the aging of our computer systems and early computer
pioneers.  Dan Slotnick (one of the fathers of parallel processing)
from the U. Ill died a few years ago.  Maurice Wilkins is getting older.
And so on.

While the topic maybe grim, it is news.  And newspapers do
have obit columns.  In the case of people like Organick.  Some from
ex-students might be collected.  I don't propose moderation (Gawd, who's
got the time), but relevant groups might be cross-posted, if
soc.obit was the only follow-up.

Problems: people eulogizing the loss of their cat (if people don't
like cats), the loss of their computer systems (see Levy's comment
about Stallman in Hackers [I've no objection in that case]).
Personal attacks on these mourner by people less serious could be
a problem.

Further discussion, or need we say more?  A straw poll
ran about 4:1 in favor before I sent a cancel notice out.

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
  "Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
  Domains, the zip codes of networks.