RIP DMR

DMR passed away on October 8 at the age of 70. He was the creator of the C progamming language. I can remember in college when I took a C class that the book that we had to used was The C Programming Language, written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie and was where I learned K&R style.

I found a really good article today regarding Dennis Ritchie that I believe sums things up nicely. An excerpt follows:

"By creating C, Ritchie gave birth to the concept of open systems. C was developed so they could port Unix to any computer, and so that programs written on one platform (and the skills used to develop them) could be easily transferred to another.

In that way, Ritchie has shaped our world in much more fundamental ways than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates have. What sets him apart from them is that he did it all not in a quest for wealth or fame, but just out of intellectual curiosity. Unix and C were the product of pure research—research that started as a side-project using equipment bought based on a promise that Ritchie and Thompson would develop a word processor."

main( )
 {
        printf("goodbye, dmr\n");
 }

DerbyCon

This year was DerbyCon's inaugural year and after attending, I can say that it was an incredible conference!

The idea behind putting on DerbyCon came about from conversations that Dave Kennedy (ReL1K), Martin Bos (PureHate), and Adrian Crenshaw (Irongeek) were having at a recent CTF event in Louisville. Their motivation arose from a desire to see more of the "old-style talks" and events of the conventions of the past.

From the moment when we arrived until the time that we left, there was never a lack for something to do. Top notch talks ran all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning.

There was also a CTF event, which ran from after the keynote on Friday until Sunday at noon. It's an event that is easy to get caught up in.

Another event that was running simultaneously was a lockpicking village where people, myself included, leaned some of the basics of picking locks and the fun sport that that can be.

A lot more can be said, such as the openess and feeling of comraderie that existed but for those who missed it, Dave Kennedy has a wrap up post here.

RIP Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 56 on October 5, 2011

Known as the "father of the computer revolution", Steve Jobs founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976.

There is a interesting quote that I heard that was attributed to Mr. Jobs. It matches the mind of an innovator. It goes...

"There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will."

—Steve Jobs

While many speak well or ill of him due to either his vision or Chinese labor and lack of charity, I leave his accomplishments and life to speak for themselves.

Whether or not you liked him or Apple, he changes the face of a lot of industries.