http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/stromobit1.html
Two months after TSG discovered pre-prepared obituaries for Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, and other notable figures sitting on an easily accessible CNN web server, we've found another premature death notice online--this time for former U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond. On the web site of South Carolina's largest newspaper, The State, a detailed obituary package appears for the rickety Republican, who retired from the Senate in January, a month after turning 100.
Um, it is standard practice for all news organizations to have obituaries prepared for all famous people, and to periodically revise them to keep them up to date, as there is frequently not time to prepare one from scratch between the time they learn of the person's passing and the deadline for going to press or going on the air. (I wouldn't be surprised if they had one for Dr. Brin that they could pull out and print/air in the event that something happened to him. In fact, I'd be surprised if they didn't, though it might not be quite as extensive as that for Sen. Thurmond.)
The only thing odd about the above story is that the pre-prepared obits were found on an "easily accessible" server, as they would be internal work documents. In reading the above link, my guess would be that at some time when that server was connected to the Internet (perhaps not directly or intentionally), one of Google's web crawlers wandered in and indexed those pages, and then someone found it while searching Google.
-- Ronn! :)
God bless America, Land that I love! Stand beside her, and guide her Thru the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, To the oceans, white with foam� God bless America! My home, sweet home.
-- Irving Berlin (1888-1989)
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