The Author of Ping is Reported Dead

Wedman writes: "This is in the Nanog Archive, dated 2000-11-21: 'Mike Muuss, the author of the PING program used on networks everywhere, died last night in a traffic accident on US route 95 in Maryland. He was an alumnus of Johns Hopkins." Seems appropriate on Thanksgiving to thank a man who created something that we all rely on every day.

...

[Garthnak (110033)]

This is a very sad event. I have read a few articles written by Mike Muuss, and, like many people on Slashdot, I use ping practically every single day. He will be sorely missed by the community.

If you hadn't noticed, Mike received the lifetime achievement award from USENIX in 1993.

http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ [army.mil]

--Garthnak

My condolences

[rice_burners_suck (243660)]

This is sad news to read, regardless of whether or not its thanksgiving. May we all remember his name each time we use ping.

As for all of you who are cracking jokes about his death, I don't think they are funny at all.

Kindest regards,

Nathaniel G H

Re:Huh? Where?

[Dr. Sp0ng (24354)]

This doesn't ring true. US 95 is in Idaho and other western states.

No, I-95 runs from Maine to Florida. I drive it from Massachusetts to Maryland and vice versa whenever I visit my parents...
--

Moment of Madness

[The OPTiCIAN (8190)]

I'm an hour away from an exam, and listening to Moonlight Sonata, so you'll have to excuse my -deep-and-meaningful-.

As a software engineer, I live to create systems that people will use regularly and marvell. They'll be so good that you'll not think about the story behind them much, but ocasionally you will, just for long enough to think "Wow - the preson who did this really rocks". People like Muuss are pretty important. (what is with the bloody textbox navigaion in mozilla!?!?! Driving me *insane*)

It feels wired to real death notices on slashdot. (Last one I remember was Alec Guiness..) It doesn't matter how nicely put the death of someone you respect like these people is, it alwas feels chilling.

When I'm out of my exam... well.. I'm going to karioke. But when I'm home and my head's in order again I think I'm going to start a website devoted to these reports, and as tributes to those people.

Stay tuned!

Re:Slashdot should not report on deaths

[CaroJohnson (165360)]

Slashdot reports on things important to the internet. Michael Muuss was important to the internet, and therefore it's proper that his death be reported here.

Mike would indeed be laughing at this right now. He had a wry sense of humor, and appreciated the diversity of the inhabitants of the internet, from the geniuses to the morons, the proper to the tactless.

He had a heart of gold.

Re:Honored...

[CaroJohnson (165360)]

His family knows, they were very close. His father, Rolf Muuss, is an educator and textbook author. His mother died earlier this year of cancer. Their family has been hard hit.

In his own words

[tagishsimon (175038)]

I don't feel like a Pioneer, I feel fine. :-) [internet-history.org]

BRL CAD

[by Anonymous Coward]

Mike Muuss was also the author of BRL CAD, one of the most useful 3D modeling programs out there. It has one of the most intense CSG systems out there. I don't know what its licensing is, but I hope someone (with a strong graphics and geometry background) picks this up.

IIRC, he was working on real-time raytracing systems.

Funeral Details

[mp3car (179460)]

MUUSS, Michael J. Tragically on November 20, 2000, MICHAEL J., loving son of Dr. Rolf E.and the late Gertrude L. Muuss; beloved brother of Gretchen E. Frensemeier; dearest nephew of Ernestine Himes. The family will receive friends in the Divinity Lutheran Church, 1220 Providence Rd., Towson, MD 410-823-8293 on Saturday from 6 to 9 P.M. and Sunday from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 P.M. A Funeral Service will be held in church on Monday, November 27 at 11 A.M. Interment Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens. In lieu of flowers contributions may be directed in Mr. Muuss name to the American Red Cross, 4700 Mt. Hope Dr., Balto. MD 21215 or to Nature Conservancy, 5410 Grosvenor La., Suite 100, Bethesda, MD 20814. Inquiries may be directed to Lemmon Funeral Home, 410-252-6000. Originally published Nov 25 2000 Link [sunspot.net]

You're right...

[tswinzig (210999)]

Because bad jokes are not politically correct.

Think about the children!

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Re:Slashdot should not report on deaths

[panic911 (224370)]

I agree that there are a lot of rude and disrespectful people out there, but people should be informed about this.

Re:It is sad

[Zico (14255)]

You actually think that any of those posters made the jokes to help them "cope with loss"? Get real. Do you really think they care? They're just being your typical attention starved kiddies, waving their arms and yelling, "Hey, look how offensive I can be!" You can make all the excuses you want, but I invite you to leave your phone number and address, so that when one of your relatives dies, the rest of us can give you a call to try out our new material.

Cheers,

Ping...

[Munelight (192694)]

Ping timed out...
100% packet loss.

Let his name live on as long as his program.

A song (With apologies to Eric Clapton)

[TrIaX (59440)]

Could you ping my hostname,
if I routed to heaven?
Will it be the same,
if I routed to heaven?
I must hack long, and echo on,
cause I know that there are no
Pings in Heaven.

Would you know my addr,
if I routed to heaven?
Would you scan my ports,
if I routed to heaven?
I know I'll code my way, through night and day
Cause I know that there are no
Pings in Heaven.

ECHO can show you around,
ECHO can help you see,
ECHO can clog your pipe,
And have you screaming at script kiddies,
Script kiddies...

(flashing routing lights...)

K, it's early, and I have no coffee in me yet, I'll probably look back on this later and shoot myself.. :)

Although his body died

[isorox (205688)]

His spirit will live on in the form of ping. There can be no greater legacy then to leave behind a tool that is used by millions every day.

Re:A song (With apologies to Eric Clapton)

[by Anonymous Coward]

*bang*

Re:Ugh...

[UnknownSoldier (67820)]

> you really should learn to respect the dead.

I think the world first needs to learn to respect the living.

I knew him

[Mr. Protocol (73424)]

I knew Mike professionally for about twenty years. I visited him at BRL several times, and chatted with him at some of the early UNIX meetings. He and Doug Kingston (now at Morgan Stanley Peat Marwick or whatever they're named this week) made a teriffic team in the days when keeping a national TCP/IP net running took the cooperation of everyone involved. When the main routers were LSI-11s, you needed to know the tricks, and Mike knew them all.

He went the extra mile to help people all over, though it was no part of his job to do so. BRL didn't treat him as a sinecure and let him have his head. He put in a full day doing BRL stuff and then helped other folks around the country on his own time.

He was just an all-around great guy. One of the First has died.

More info

[locutus074 (137331)]

Check out the article in his local newspaper [mdnewsnet.com] for more information.

--

Shame

[nightfire-unique (253895)]

Isn't it ironic that he died in traffic? Guess he exceeded his TTL.

I'm sorry... that was awful. :)

We'll all end up there eventually.

--
All men are great
before declaring war

The best way to celebrate the deceased...

[Gendou (234091)]

Don't mourn the deceased. That only insults them. Instead, sit around, have a few laughs, talking about what they did or accomplished. Everyone here is making jokes about Muuss because, well, they feel connected to him in someway.

I'm sure that if Muuss was reading /. right now, he'd be laughing at these jokes as much as any of us.

Let me tell you why humor exists... we have humor so that we can cope with the tragic events that populate our lives. It's a way of coping with loss... and a pretty damn good one too. Besides, I can barely think of any better ways to respect the dead than by calling attention to their accomplishments through humor.

Although, I must apologize for contributing to the excessive "destination unreachable" jokes. *sob* I didn't read everyone's posts before I cracked that one.

Sticks and stones

[Pseudonymus Bosch (3479)]

Let's not strip the poor guy of his dignity by letting asocial jerks run riot.

Do you think that his dignity depends on the sayings of Slashdot trolls?

__

Webpages of the dead

[Pseudonymus Bosch (3479)]

What happens to dead's homepage ? Do someone close them ? Or do they stand, like a simulacrum of eternity?

For a while, Afterdeath [afterdearh.org] was formed by volonteers that would maintain pages of dead people. But it seems that the project is also dead.

Then, given the low cost of diskspace and unused bandwidth and the high cost of webmaster attention, probably they join the number of the Ghostsites [disobey.com].
__

Re:Memorial

[Bill Currie (487)]

While I very much agree with your sentiment, I dicided a 21 ping salute was more appropriate (though I should have used a delay of 3 seconds, that way I could get the minute:/

Rest in peace.

Bill - aka taniwha
--

Muuss invented the default gateway and TTCP too.

[Joseph_ShawII (257564)]

He didn't just write ping. He was also responsible for implementing raw ICMP sockets in the 4.2b BSD source, which not only allows ping to work, but traceroute as well. Muuss also wrote TTCP, as well as invented the concept of the default gateway. He was also one of the first people advocating widespread use of TCP/IP and UNIX among government entities that were outside DARPA. Without guys like Postel, Stevens, and now Muuss, it's very likely that UNIX, TCP/IP and the modern Internet as we know it wouldn't be the same. Check here for his achievements in his own words at Internet-history.org [internet-history.org].

Re:Death in the digital age

[uksv29 (167362)]

I had a similar experience earlier this year when Craphead (he posted a few times on Slashdot) died before the Linux Beer Hike. His site was eventually pulled by his ISP in Norway and I wish I had mirrored it first.

Your point about sites being pulled when the domain expires is a good one. The problem is that there is no 'standard' way of archiving them into cold storage where they can later be retrieved. At least with the older media (newspapers/mags etc) someone would usually keep a copy somwhere so it could be looked at by suceeding generations but not with a website.

This bitrot really needs addressing lest our decendants ask us what people posted and read in the exciting and dynamic days on the early Internet. Once the rm -rf has done its work nothing remains.

I am also a little saddened by this death, I never knew who was the creator of ping but use it everyday. I guess he, like Jon Postel, has left a little of himself on everyones computer and thereby improved the world a little for all those of us who are left behind.

Mike Muuss, thank you.

Best Ping Story (quoted from his site)

[R-2-RO (766)]

For those of you that haven't read the ping page on his site.

"The best ping story I've ever heard was told to me at a USENIX conference, where a network administrator with an intermittent Ethernet had linked the ping program to his vocoder program, in essence writing:

ping goodhost | sed -e 's/.*/ping/' | vocoder

He wired the vocoder's output into his office stereo and turned up the volume as loud as he could stand. The computer sat there shouting "Ping, ping, ping..." once a second, and he wandered through the building wiggling Ethernet connectors until the sound stopped. And that's how he found the intermittent failure."

Haha.. Gotta love it.

Peace.

moment of silence

[selectspec (74651)]

ping mike.muuss
Pinging mike.muuss [102.11.20.11] with 64 bytes of data:

Request timedout
Request timedout
Request timedout

Re:Memorial for Mike

[dattaway (3088)]

I had a moment of silence and commenced a 21 ping salute in honor of his life's contributions to this world. The heavens acknowledged the pings. Its good to know Mike was there in spirit to hear our appreciation.

May your pings always be answered.

Haiku

[575 (195442)]

Pioneer of ping
From mike.muuss: Destination
Host Unreachable

Slashdot should not report on deaths

[mwillis (21215)]

Why does slash run death stories? Does no-one remember why moderation was implemented?

Since it is clear that Slashdot trolls cannot behave themselves, it is simply inappropriate for Slashdot to cover deaths. At the very least, ban AC's (like this I guess) from commenting on death notices. Let's not strip the poor guy of his dignity by letting asocial jerks run riot.

Re:Although his body died

[dattaway (3088)]

But sadly, ping (ipv4) will die soon too. Did he write ping for ipv6 also ?

May his IPV6 children live long and have fruitful productive lives.

May all your pings be answered.

More info - News article

[Wedman (58748)]

You can find a more info (other than a newsgroup message :) at The Register [theregister.co.uk].

It is sad

[jjr (6873)]

To see all the bad taste of some the post that are put up here. I wish his family well may he find peace.

Would this be appropriate?

[Glowing Fish (155236)]

ping -c21 jhu.edu
A 21 Ping salute?

Cars and death and ping

[smoondog (85133)]

It is too bad that he has died. We all use ping regularly. I find it rather unbelievable that we get so upset about some things (plane crashes, devestating but rare diseases, etc) and we completely ignore the danger that cars pose to us everyday. Hopefully people will drive safely this thanksgiving.

-Moondog

the ping is dead

[techmuse (160085)]

The ping is dead. Long live the ping!

The king of ping is dead.

[AFCArchvile (221494)]

Long live the ping!

100% Packet Loss

[SubtleNuance (184325)]

Like most people here I use Ping daily. Like most people here I had never heard of Mike Muuss.

But from what Ive read of his writing on his homepage (linked from above [army.mil]) and his letter to the InterNet Historical Society (linked from above [internet-history.org]) it seems Mike would have had a wry sense of humour.

Mike seems to have been a massive influence on great area's of computing (Internet, TCPIP, UNIX) and that should be celebrated and tech people should be Thankful for his efforts, and due honour paid now that he has passed.

But when a person dies, absolute reverence does not exclude comments of some brevity.

I am SURE, as I would have, foreseen the 100% Packet Loss jokes coming when I was dead - and I would have found the idea very amusing and quite complementary... Ill assume Mike Muss dosnt mind*...

*I know this sounds presumptuous but I think I you would see my point... Apologies to those who find it so nonetheless.

Re:Memorial

[ctj2 (113870)]

His work site will remain up because it has so much information that is off interest to the world. There is no need for it to ever go off line.

His personal server is still up and will remain up for as long as I can keep it running.

Re:OLD!

[Frédéric (3788)]

it happens to me also, check on thegeek the post about spock's ear to be sold at christies for example, it has been rejected here, and accepted at the geek
--

Re:Memorial

[Admiral Burrito (11807)]

Please all have one minute of ping in his honor: ping -c 60 ftp.arl.mil

Looks like they are now filtering pings (forgive them, they probably had no choice). Also, the web page times out when I try to access it.

Slashdotted.

Re:thankful? (Slightly OT)

[dattaway (3088)]

[Bill Gates] should be thanked...

And the mafia should be thanked for their contributions to local communities. No thanks.

Re:BRL CAD

[ctj2 (113870)]

Mike has a working real time raytracier. The real time raytracer is handling >5000 solids at this time, rendering at ARL and then transmitting the results via ATM to other research labs.

The last major milestone for the BRL-CAD was raytracing a scene with over 3,000,000,000 solids. Yes, that is 3 billion.

The license agreement is not "Free" as in beer or "Free" as in "Freedom." You need to sign a simple license and fax it to ARL. They send back the license agreement with a password. Download the program and have fun.

Re:It is sad

[KarmaChameleon (237260)]

Most of the comments are in pretty poor taste. The /. editors should know by now that posting obituaries just brings out the weirdos because it happens every time. Actually to be honest the weirdos are always here. Examples can be found here [slashdot.org], here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org].

kc.

Re:thankful?

[DrQu+xum (218745)]

Seems to me that a more appropriate time to thank someone is while they are still alive to hear it.

I agree in principle, but it'd be a bit difficult...but I'll try....

• Thanks, Ken.
• Thanks, DMR.
• Thanks, BWK.
• Thanks, Linus.
• Thanks, Alan.
• Thanks, RMS.
• Thanks, Kirk.
• Thanks, JKH.
• Thanks, Eric, all of you :)
• Thanks, CmdrTaco.
  [snip]
• Thanks, Bill Joy.
• No thanks, Bill Gates.

Thus sprach DrQu+xum, SID=218745.

Reported on The Register too

[James_G (71902)]

Saw this last night. There's a little more information in their article which can be found here [theregister.co.uk].

From their article:

The accident happened at 9.30pm (New York time) on route 95 as a result of a previous accident. Mike hit a car stuck in the middle of the road and was pushed into the path of an oncoming tractor.

R.I.P.

[jd (1658)]

Coded on Earth, run in Real Life mode, but made in Heaven.

(Why does God get all the best coders?)

Re:The best way to celebrate the deceased...

[laborit (90558)]

I thank you for your post and agree with you to the extent that somber reverence is certainly not the only appropriate way to respond to death. I feel the proper response is one that commemorates and investigates the life of the deceased -- and equally importantly, one that helps the memorializers to stay between the poles of denial and morbid depression. There is time for mourning and there is time for vivacious rememberance. Humor that is not directly insulting to the survivors is certainly proper if it helps us to see the goodness or importance of the person we lost. In this case, the jokes certainly help point out the ubiquity of Muuss' work, and in that sense they are very fitting.

- Michael

-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!

Memorial

[GeZ117 (162744)]

Please all have one minute of ping in his honor:
ping -c 60 ftp.arl.mil
That's so strange to look at http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ [arl.mil] and thinks this guy talking to you, and giving you a mailto: link is dead. It's like if there was a ghost speaking to you.

What happens to dead's homepage ? Do someone close them ? Or do they stand, like a simulacrum of eternity ?

Internet is something too young to be accustomed to death

It's a sad news.