Peter G. Neumann, RIP

The New York Times has an obituary of Peter G. Neumann online, though not yet, I think, in print. Neumann worked for many years as editor of the Association for Computing Machinery Risks in Computing news group. The Times says that he started this in 1985. The last comp.risks digest in my inbox is from April 12 this year: Neumann edited it, at the age of 93.Neumann also played a considerable role in the development of the Multics operating system. Multics was never as widely adopted as its developers hoped, but it had a considerable influence on later operating systems, notably the minicomputer operating systems of the 1970s and 1980, for example Data General's AOS/VS. It also had an influence, on UNIX. Those interested can read about it on the Multicians website.The Times describes Neumann's annotations of the comp.risks summaries as including "wry comments and the occasional pun". I remember the puns as more than occasional; but I looked forward to them. Those interested in informed…