Randy Pausch, the computer science professor from Carnegie Mellon University whose “Last Lecture” caught the public imagination, has died of pancreatic cancer. Thanks partly to a Wall Street Journal article written last September, the public discovered the remarkably upbeat and uplifting lecture Pausch gave soon after getting diagnosed. Titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” (see video below, or download on iTunes here), the lecture became a media sensation and went viral across the web. And it served as the basis for Pausch’s bestelling book, The Last Lecture. If you haven’t seen the video, give it your time. It will teach you something more valuable than anything else we serve up here.
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God rest his soul.
And thanks to OC for introducing me to the Lecture a number of weeks ago.
-JAK
Very sad to see someone with such passion for life to die of a slow degenerative disease like Cancer.
Without the web I would probably never had the chance to listen and learn from him. He will certainly live in my memory and many others.
Also, It will probably need the web of interconnected individuals/computers to defeat such a complex and multiform disease.
Few links for people interested to contribute their idle computer time:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22552.wss
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38076/113/
http://folding.stanford.edu/
Thanks
Francois
France