Posted by
Hemos
on from the memorializing-the-great-ones dept.
disappear writes "A nice (albeit primarily nontechnical) article about the late, great Rich Stevens is in Salon today. A gentle, sweet look at the author of TCP/IP Illustratedamong other books."
I took a class from Stephens
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3
A couple of years ago I was at the USENIX technical conference in New Orleans. I took a unix network programming tutorial from him.
In just a few hours I went from almost zero knowledge, to being fairly confident of my ability to write decent networking code in C. He was a wonderful teacher. He'll be missed.
Mana - the impacts of people
by
namespan
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· Score: 3
"It blew my mind," says his sister, Claire Stevens. "I knew he wrote those books, but it never made a dent. I had absolutely no idea that all these people knew and were touched by him." Claire and Richard's wife, Sally, accepted the award on Stevens' behalf. Stevens died on Sept. 1, 1999. He was 48 years old.
I've spent a little bit of time among some polynesian cultural enclaves in the US, and taken a class or two on polynesian culture, and this statement resonated with an explanation of mana
once given to me (by Paul Cox, in case anyone knows who he is...). It goes something like this...
Most people tend to view mana as a mystical energy, and in some senses it both is this way and is viewed this way by polynesian people. But it's not simply a quality existing in the person; it's the result of the sum of the person's relationships -- their community, their family, etc. Part of it is their standing, but part of it is just the existence relationships themselves.
In US culture, it sometimes seems that we discount these things -- or downplay more subtle things. Sure, people fawn over CEOs and those who are rich and celebrity (which Robert Pirsig says is to social relationships what porn is to sex... celebrity=ersatz mana? or real?), but we miss other things. It's interesting to me that Steven's sister could be entirely unaware of her connection with someone who had a powerful relationship with a community. It's interesting how much we see people as individuals, and often fail to realize all the personal vectors that converge on them... or us.
-- Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
It would be nice to see a highly respected author take over the series from Mr. Stevens and coninue pumping out new editions - these texts are too important not to be updated.
I'm not sure what the protocol is for creating new editions of a book by a deceased author, but I would really like to see these books stay the definitive texts in their fields.
It disappeared for a while after his death, but Gary Wright, co-author from TCP/IP Vol II, put Steven's old home page back up. It's a treasure chest of cool info. The FAQ is good reading if you've read any of his books.
Gary still keeps the Stevens spirit alive too
P.S. The site is still running on a BSDI machine and I used vi to update the pages.:-)
Rich Stevens is Part of Slashdot's Sordid Past
by
tealover
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· Score: 5
Do you remember when he passed and there was this guy making nasty comments about him, basically saying that he was happy that he had died? There were so many outraged people that day. I remember reading a response from Tom Christiansen, who knew Rich very well, who basically wrote a moving comment and stated that he was ashamed about what he was reading.
It was interesting to watch the responses from the multitudes of people who, although they didn't know Rich personally, respected his talents and book writing skills. I myself have learned quite a bit about Unix and Networking from Rich and feel ever indebted.
-- --
You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Slashdot Mirror
In just a few hours I went from almost zero knowledge, to being fairly confident of my ability to write decent networking code in C. He was a wonderful teacher. He'll be missed.
"It blew my mind," says his sister, Claire Stevens. "I knew he wrote those books, but it never made a dent. I had absolutely no idea that all these people knew and were touched by him." Claire and Richard's wife, Sally, accepted the award on Stevens' behalf. Stevens died on Sept. 1, 1999. He was 48 years old.
I've spent a little bit of time among some polynesian cultural enclaves in the US, and taken a class or two on polynesian culture, and this statement resonated with an explanation of mana
once given to me (by Paul Cox, in case anyone knows who he is...). It goes something like this...
Most people tend to view mana as a mystical energy, and in some senses it both is this way and is viewed this way by polynesian people. But it's not simply a quality existing in the person; it's the result of the sum of the person's relationships -- their community, their family, etc. Part of it is their standing, but part of it is just the existence relationships themselves.
In US culture, it sometimes seems that we discount these things -- or downplay more subtle things. Sure, people fawn over CEOs and those who are rich and celebrity (which Robert Pirsig says is to social relationships what porn is to sex... celebrity=ersatz mana? or real?), but we miss other things. It's interesting to me that Steven's sister could be entirely unaware of her connection with someone who had a powerful relationship with a community. It's interesting how much we see people as individuals, and often fail to realize all the personal vectors that converge on them... or us.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I'm not sure what the protocol is for creating new editions of a book by a deceased author, but I would really like to see these books stay the definitive texts in their fields.
It disappeared for a while after his death, but Gary Wright, co-author from TCP/IP Vol II, put Steven's old home page back up. It's a treasure chest of cool info. The FAQ is good reading if you've read any of his books.
Gary still keeps the Stevens spirit alive too
Do you remember when he passed and there was this guy making nasty comments about him, basically saying that he was happy that he had died? There were so many outraged people that day. I remember reading a response from Tom Christiansen, who knew Rich very well, who basically wrote a moving comment and stated that he was ashamed about what he was reading.
It was interesting to watch the responses from the multitudes of people who, although they didn't know Rich personally, respected his talents and book writing skills. I myself have learned quite a bit about Unix and Networking from Rich and feel ever indebted.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to