RIP Robert J. Walsh, who amongst other things founded the Hollywood Film Music Library and composed the themes for
Black Dahlia and the original
Transformers series.
RIP Charles Wang, co-founder of Computer Associates (now called CA Technologies)
RIP Melvin Ragin, a.k.a. "
Wah Wah Watson", master of the wah wah pedal.
Wah Wah Watson played for The Temptations, The Jackson 5, The Four Tops, Gladys Knight & The Pips, The Supremes, Herbie Hancock, the Pointer Sisters, and many many more.
RIP Bernard Landry, one of the founders of the Parti Québécois.
I hated his politics but respected the man himself.
RIP Douglas Rain, one of the founding performers of the Stratford Festival ... and the voice of HAL 9000.
Wow! Talk about a double whammy today...!
Nobody stays dead in comic books. Not even Uncle Ben is sacred these days.
He'll be back in time for an extra special issue when sales flag.
I'll hold you to that, because I can't imagine a Marvel film without a cameo by Stan.
Speaking of which, I wonder if he'd filmed a cameo for Avengers 4?
I know he filmed a whole bunch of cameo scenes back-to-back so they could be inserted into various Marvel movies, but I don't know if they've already been used or if there are still some in the queue.
William Goldman, author of
The Princess Bride,
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
Marathon Man and numerous books and screenplays,
has passed away at age 87.
RIP Bill Godbout, who amongst other things co-created with George Morrow the S-100 data bus (which made personal computers possible) and sold surplus hardware at discounted rates to computer hobbyists in the 1970s and 1980s (which made designing the Altair, Apple I, and other computers of that vintage possible).
His family has been left with nothing -
he lived in Concow, and was unable to escape from the Camp Fire.
GoFundMe page to help his next-of-kin - if everybody who has a home computer kicks in a dollar or two in thanks to the man who supported the people who created the earliest home computers, well...
RIP John Wharton, another of the early home-computing pioneers.
Quote:Wharton was the architect of the machine-language instruction set of the Intel 8051 micro-controller, one of the most widely used (for a time, the most widely used) chip in history (PDF). In a 1999 profile, The New York Times described him as "a Zelig-like presence in Silicon Valley for more than two decades", detailing his skill at reverse engineering.
Quote:Wharton made a discovery in the document Gates had left behind. It was the technical reference for an Intel-compatible operating system developed and sold with a plug-in board. In July 1980, Gates' Microsoft bought the one-man outfit who sold it without revealing its purpose: the default operating system for the new IBM PC.
"I had to inform Mr Gates that the operating system he thought he had bought was a copy of CP/M. Not only were the first 36 functions identical, but also the parameter passing mechanism."
Correction.
He dropped dead. Whether or not he's still fighting for equality is uncertain.