23 Oct
2024
23 Oct
'24
2:56 p.m.
Good point
I don't see much impact of that on this one. Other than editing in his
brother's statement that it was a heart attack, I don't see anything
obvious in this about whether it was pre-written long ago, or freshly
written. (XMODEM was already extremely popular 40 years ago)
Would the fact that NYT took 10 days before publishing it be an
indication that it was NOT previously written? I would have thought that
the reason for a "death file" was so that an obituary could immediately
follow the news.
I don't know much of anything about Edson de Castro, other than Data
General Nova.
But I like to think that if I were tasked to write about him, I would ask
around [to people such as you? :-)] and try to find out more about the
other things that he did (such as working on PDP-8).
But, I don't have your newspaper experience, so maybe that would be
unrealistic.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Wayne S wrote:
> One last thing…
> Most news organizations have a death file for famous people.
> Their obits have already been written.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Oct 23, 2024, at 14:23, Wayne S <wayne.sudol(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I do understand that opinion in and i agree. It’s that having worked for major
newspapers for 35 years, i know the way stories are written and how much work goes into
them and how much editing and fact checking is done. There is only so much space for words
and can’t be covered, so the writer and copyeditor have to trim the article. Xmodem,
while important, is not something the average reader would know or remember much about,
but a lot of people would remember BBS systems since they were all over the news back
then.
>> If you were to write an obit of Edwin deCastro, who recently died, what
accomplishments would you emphasize?
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>>> On Oct 23, 2024, at 14:10, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2024, Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
>>>> I have to respectfully disagree.
>>>> This is an obituary for a person who has died, which is not a complete
history of his life. The articles are rather lengthy, for an obituary in a major newspaper
where space is limited. I think the author did do some rather deep investigation. He did
talk to Ward Christiansen‘s brother for remembrances and information.
>>>
>>> We can get along without agreeing :-)
>>>
>>> If you will pardon some exaggeration to make clear my point,
>>> it is somewhat like going into detail about Henry Ford being co-founder of
Kingsford charcoal, and then only two mentions, in passing, of making cars. :-)
>>>
>>> Yes, I admit that is an exaggerated analogy.
>>> CBBS WAS extremely important and significant.
>>> But, I think that XMODEM had even more long-term impact.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com