Roland Piquepaille Dies

overheardinpdx writes "I'm sad to report that longtime HPC technology pundit Roland Piquepaille (rpiquepa) died this past Tuesday. Many of you may know of him through his blog, his submissions to Slashdot, and his many years of software visualization work at SGI and Cray Research. I worked with Roland 20 years ago at Cray, where we both wrote tech stories for the company newsletter. With his focus on how new technologies modify our way of life, Roland was really doing Slashdot-type reporting before there was a World Wide Web. Rest in peace, Roland. You will be missed." The notice of Roland's passing was posted on the Cray Research alumni group on Linked-In by Matthias Fouquet-Lapar. There will be a ceremony on Monday Jan. 12, at 10:30 am Paris time, at Père Lachaise.

Re:Rest in peace

[TheRealMindChild]

All of his submissions (minus one or two) were simply links to his blog to generate traffic/revenue, rather than passing us directly to the news source.

Re:Rest in peace

[Goaway]

Years ago, perhaps. That hasn't been true in a long time, however.

Re:What happens to...

[jamie]

The "Roland Piquepaille" account is a troll.

The actual Roland's account, as mentioned in the story, was "rpiquepa".

Re:Wait a second

[jamie]

Kdawson made the phone calls to confirm this before posting it.

Re:I think I speak for all of us when...

[palegray.net]

Somebody mod parent troll. I didn't always agree with Roland's editorial habits, but I enjoyed many of his stories. The man was quite an accomplished individual, as many would realize if they took the time to learn a bit about his life. There's more to the Web than Slashdot.

Re:Wait a second

[gzipped_tar]

Oh, no, Roland is no more...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=1138 [zdnet.com]

It is with great sadness to tell you that our Emerging Technologies blogger Roland Piquepaille has passed away suddenly. His wife Suzanne just confirmed his passing.

Roland, 62, was one of our most passionate bloggers and his ability to explain complex science well was something to behold. Roland spent most of his career in software, mainly for high performance computing and visualization companies, working for example for Cray Research and Silicon Graphics. He left the corporate world in 2001 after 33 years and jumped into blogging.

Roland passed away Monday in Paris. He was hit with a digestive virus that lead to a high fever and health complications beyond that. Suzanne said that the doctors are still trying to quantify how Roland got the virus and the exact details. We spent the last few hours confirming Roland's passing as word began to spread. It has been a rough year for the ZDNet family.

There will be a ceremony held on Monday. Rest in peace Roland, we'll miss you. Suzanne said that Roland had a few posts in the pipeline and wanted them published. If she is able to pull them from Roland's PC we'll put them on his blog to complete his record.

Re:I will not miss him

[eclectro]

Actually I will. His reporting improved significantly from his early blogging days, so much so that I often did not notice that the story submitted here on Slashdot was from Roland unless the "oh no its Roland" tag appeared. I think this became more of a good natured ribbing rather than slighting him personally. I also subscribed to the nascent "oh yeah it's Roland" tag movement a couple of months back. Now that he is gone, I really do miss him. Rest in peace, friend.

Here is more details about his death [zdnet.com], which appears to be a fast moving gastrointestinal virus.

Re:What happens to...

[Anonymous Coward]

The real rpiquepa was either a sockpuppet or ad revenue kickback contributor anyhow. I'm not entirely convinced there ever was a Roland Piquepaille. I bet the casket is actually full of hot grits.

Re:We'll miss you, you git

[Chris Mattern]

Well, there's always the old Latin saw: De mortuis nisi nil bonum "Of the dead [say] nothing but good"

Re:Rest in Peace, rpiquepa

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Hey rude boy, you might try "Vaya con dios" next time.

You'll still sound like an asshole, but at least like an educated asshole!

Agreed, but for Roland, one should say, "Allez avec Dieu."

Re:Um, how?

[Rycross]

A digestive virus, plus complications. [zdnet.com]

Re:Rest in peace

[Anonymous Coward]

I always enjoyed the irony of Slashdotters accusing him of aggregating multiple articles just to whore his blog :D

He eventually figured it out and started linking directly to articles in his submissions, while including additional information/pictures on his blog.

The whining really should have died out around that point, but ohnoitsroland had already become an institution in and of itself.

adieu

[Nicolas MONNET]

Just one word.

Re:Slashdot

[Bruce Perens]

That should be "where flaunting your moral bankruptcy is in style"

Re:Slashdot

[Follis]

Wait.. So you mean the whole United States?

Re:Slashdot

[jamstar7]

Its slashdot for God's sake. If you can't laugh at someone's death here where can you?

4chan.

Yeah, definitely 4chan.

And of course here [darwinawards.com] where it's expected to laugh yer ass off.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Rest in Peace, rpiquepa

[Mozk]

Thanks for the reminder. I can finally delete the "NoRoland" Greasemonkey script in Firefox.

Not just yet:

Suzanne said that Roland had a few posts in the pipeline and wanted them published. If she is able to pull them from Roland’s PC we’ll put them on his blog to complete his record.