That obit at The Register includes a link to a tribute by Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky that is worth an independent link:
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I agree.
Am working on getting his physical site, online domains, websites, etc., upgraded and on automatic fiscal support and physical (where needed) backup.
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H/T @jacksarfatti
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Outside, looking up, per advice here, I said, "John Walker, a NYT writer considers you strange and has called you ‘prickly.’ "
The wind picked up, rattling the bare tree-twigs, and I dunno there was a very brief sound like . . . laughter.
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Thanks. I needed a smile today.
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Definitely John.
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What a tremendous privilege to have interacted with such a brilliant man! (I was going to write “interacted remotely”, but the fact is, interaction with him and the rest of you dear polymaths on this site and others does not FEEL “remote “; rather the opposite.)
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For some time, I’ve been considering the possibilities of “i-friendship”. As you observe, to me it does not feel remote. It is not at all like so-called ‘friends’ on social media. I tried only Facebook and quit after a few months because it felt and was actually remote and toxic to boot. I think the real thing depends on self-assembly of a self-selected group of individuals who allow themselves to be known and who desire to know others. This, in turn, requires a good bit of self knowledge and self honesty. The accurate, honest responses to others permit us to see ourselves in the ‘mirror’ of other peoples responses to our words and deeds.
My mental model for this derives from my experience with 12-step recovery. There, dependency on chemicals (or behaviors for process addictions) is replaced by a healthy dependency on a group - not an individual - instead of a substance (or behavior). For this to work, all participants must be honest and abstain from power games. This, itself, is book length material (and many have been written). Yet to be written, as far as I know, is book length treatment of i-friendships. Long story short, I believe they are real, a novel phenomenon, very valuable in post-modernity and in need of scholarly exploration and explanation. My relationship with John Walker was a beacon in this regard, as are my relationships with many Scanalysters. They involve much of my thought, time, analysis and - at times - writing. Otherwise put, these feel like and share characteristics with flesh-and-blood friendships I have had (a limited number of) throughout my life.
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This is my first post on Scanalyst… I only joined recently, after a short exchange with John.
My experience with John goes back 50 years. I started working at a small company with about an acre of Univac computers. I was only a year out of college, and John was just a couple years older than me. He was already quite adept with the Univac 1100 series computers whereas for me it was something new. Working in the same system support group, I was amazed (and privileged) to be right there learning from him. I got to play Animal. I could see programming techniques that were fascinating in their creativity as well as clarity. My career in software was made far better because John was there. I still have wonderful memories of projects I did which incorporated techniques I learned from John.
John’s ease and sense of humor made it a pleasure to work with him. I still hold a very clear memory of the time I came into work on a Sunday morning and saw him sitting at a terminal. He’d been gone on a trip for two weeks and I hadn’t expected to see him. I said “John, you’re back.” His immediate reply was “No I’m not. I’m an imposter I hired to impersonate myself.”
Although I’d not seen John for the last 40 years, I still would pop an email to him once in a while and he always responded as if the time had not passed.
I’ll miss him. My sincere condolences to Roxie. And to all who knew and appreciated him. RIP.
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Thank you, Bruno.
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Great tribute
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A few days ago, nearly 70 old friends and associates of John gathered for a memorial tribute, in the style of a classic AutoDesk pizza and beer bust (or so they said, as oddly I was the only one there who had never actually worked at AutoDesk).
Many wonderful stories were told and everyone expressed such warm feelings for him. Glasses were raised all around.
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Hello, @Bruno. Both your comments, this one and the one about the 70 people at the JW Memorial Pizza Party, are appreciated by plenty of people, I imagine, as well as by myself. Neither in tech, nor from California, nor residing in the same hemisphere as he, I am just one of the many Online Kindred Spirits. Yet what you say, Bruno, speaks to me. I am grateful.
Some months ago our host here made reference in a post to a Housman poem, saying that he had been thinking about it a great deal recently. Here it is:
*Smooth between sea and land
Is laid the yellow sand,
And here through summer days
The seed of Adam plays.
Here the child comes to found
His unremaining mound,
And the grown lad to score
Two names upon the shore.
Here, on the level sand,
Between the sea and land,
What shall I build or write
Against the fall of night?
Tell me of runes to grave
That hold the bursting wave,
Or bastions to design
Of longer date than mine.
Shall it be Troy or Rome
I fence against the foam,
Or my own name to stay
When I depart for aye?
Nothing: too near at hand,
Planing the figured sand,
Effacing clean and fast
Cities not built to last
And charms devised in vain,
Pours the confounding main.*
Verse 1: I thought, okay.
Verse 2: “Yeah! RW and JW!”
Verses 3, 4, and 5: “Laudable; commendable.”
Verse 6: “No and no! It’s not nothing. Sure, you needed more time to build cities, and ships, and systems here, and to write more stories, and who knows what else. But it’s not nothing. In friends, in students, and - no doubt - in grandstudents, that spirit and those standards live.”
And wherever he is now, he’s doing all that stuff, and more, anyway, and with people, some of whose names we know, others of whose names we can only hope to learn at some future time.
Perhaps the next life is like rolling down a river on a capacious foredeck, with comfy chairs, brandy and cigars, and unhurried conversation with Xenophon, Newton, Twain . . . you fill in the blanks. I do, as I go along each day. Best to you all.
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RIP John Walker
I was in apprenticeship (Informatiker EFZ) and was looking for a secure RNG, when I first came across John’s Hotbit Server and the fantastic fourmilab website. This was back in the early 2000s.
From then on, I became an occasional visitor to the site and, seeing how fourmilab hails from Switzerland, I’ve thought that, maybe, some day, I’d get in touch with John and ask him if I might come for a visit, see John’s lab and have a chat maybe with such a great mind. Funny also to think that I lived quite close to the fourmilab HQ a bit earlier, when I attended l’ecole superieure de commerce in La Neuveville back in 1998/99!
A few weeks ago, I once again visited the fourmilab site and noticed that HotBits had been decommissioned. For some reason I immediately got a very bad feeling. A few google searches later, my notion was confirmed: John is no longer with us. Very sad news!
So I signed up here on the Scanalyzer, in order to pay my respects.
Godspeed, John Walker! And my sincerest condolences to Roxie.
NB: Scanalyzer seems to be a nice community of sane folks. I think I’d like to come back here often.
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Welcome. Please stay. I’m only sorry it took such a sad (devastating, actually ) event to bring you here. Funny how place names sometimes have mystical properties. Merely seeing “La Neuveville”, where I got off the train from Zurich to visit John, gave me a frisson.
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Somehow we share this fate.
I asked John a question via the Fourmilab website.
Then I naturally wanted to know more and found the news of John’s passing.
May his transition into the subtle world be smooth.
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Sadly, I only recently learned of John’s passing. He was a friend and mentor at the beginning of my career. I’m surprised to see that hardly anyone mentions his work in Voice over IP. I was building a similar product when I saw he had created Speak Freely, and we started working on it together in the mid-90s. Over 1 million people downloaded Speak Freely (at least that I know of), probably making it his most popular product other than AutoCAD.
At the time, most people called it Internet Telephony before the term Voice over IP became more widely used. John was gracious and always willing to show me how things worked. I’m sure I peppered him with way too many questions, but I learned so much about software development from him. His projects were always cool, especially when it related to space or science in general. He was never arrogant when he certainly could have been with his success with Autodesk. I’ve always appreciated that most about him.
Unfortunately, we lost contact around 20 years ago, and I deeply regret that. I would have loved to work on other projects with him. I consider myself very fortunate that God placed such a remarkable human being in my life. John will be missed by more people than he will ever know.
-Brian Wiles
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