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John McCarthy Has Died

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101–110 of 231 posts

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#101

The death has not been added to nndb, so I'm slow to believe it. nndb, for those of you who don't know, is the information source used by wolframalpha for its people results

How quick would it be added to nndb?

nndb has been very fast for reporting deaths in the last few months. A few hours at most.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#102
post #20

This really needs a better source. There's no citation provided, and Wikipedia can't keep any details of his death up without one. Basically, I have a spoonful of salt to hand.

Agreed. I did a quick Google News search and turned up nothing. Could be legit, or vandalism, but there's really no way to know until we have confirmation. - --EDIT-- Since I wrote this, I've seen one source appear, in Portuguese[1]. It's still unclear whether this story is legitimate, or if they simply copied wikipedia / the buzz surrounding the story. - --EDIT 2-- Globo is apparently the largest media conglomerate…

*Portuguese

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#103
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This news site supports the claim (if you translate it): http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2011/10/morre-john-mc...

They also provide no source, and they published after it was published here. Not reliable.

"Não há detalhes sobre a causa de sua morte" = "There are no details about the cause of death".

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#105
post #92

What a pity. I sense a black bar coming. The last few weeks have been terrible, one icon after another has fallen. What is different from other fields is that computing is still a young enough field that almost all of its luminaries except for the earliest ones are still alive. I fear the avalanche has only barely begun, and at some point the frequency of these will become high enough that either we will stop to noti…

Eventually, I think, there will cease to be icons within the industry. What we have now are the people who invented the internet/computers and the basic components.

The people who are doing the inventing now are just as smart, but they aren't creating fundamental things, they are improving on an existing system.

We don't say, "engineer team y invented the iCore series of processors." we sort of just say "Intel is coming out with a new set of processors."

I'm not sure if I am making my point very clear. :\

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#106
post #92

What a pity. I sense a black bar coming. The last few weeks have been terrible, one icon after another has fallen. What is different from other fields is that computing is still a young enough field that almost all of its luminaries except for the earliest ones are still alive. I fear the avalanche has only barely begun, and at some point the frequency of these will become high enough that either we will stop to noti…

Death is the only guarantee in life and in fact is necessary for human ecology. I too am deeply saddened by this loss, but am supremely grateful that a man like John McCarthy was able to contribute to the humanity's knowledge. May his work be the foundation in many more advances in human understanding, and may his void be filled by someone who respects this journey.

RIP, John.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#107
post #88

Unfortunately it's true. I just heard back from Peter Norvig, who says "He died peacefully in his sleep last night."

What sad news. I do hope that Standford makes a statement, just to clarify.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#109
Well shit. I said it about a week back [1] (maybe a little indelicate, but in my defence, was a little over-wrought):

The technology pioneers who were in their 20s/30s in the the 60s/70s are now really old. The next few years will likely see a bloodbath.

Granted, he wasn't that young in those times, but the point holds. We're going to see a bunch of luminaries 'move on' in the coming months :(

[1] https://twitter.com/#!/shr1k/status/125712526397816832

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