Slashdot Mirror
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.
While I often found his stories and comments to be far reaching, overstated, overly optimistic & sometimes bordered on religious zealotry, I will miss his contributions and wish his family and friends well. I hope they know that Roland was a man committed to the proliferation of technology and advancements has done great things for both our community & society.
It is also comforting to see a soul survive and prosper in a technological field and end up where they want to live blogging peacefully. I hope my own retirement and passing are similar instead of some of the mindless inane existences I know my ancestors have lived out in nursing homes and/or in front of a TV.
My work here is dung.
I have read some interesting stories from Roland here. Most of them were tagged "ohnoitsroland", the meaning of which I still don't fully understand.
http://slashdot.org/tags/ohnoitsroland
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Seriously, I'm not trying to be a troll, but I actively avoided Roland-submitted articles for many many years. They were not worth the effort.
I'm sad for his passing and feel sorry for his family...but I will NOT miss his Slashdot submissions because that is all I know of him.
...his blog? Or for that matter, his email account?
Roland was really doing Slashdot-type reporting before there was a World Wide Web.
Now, Now... there's no need to insult the guy at this point.
More
...to get more pageviews in heaven.
I heard about it on talk radio.
Well you know what they say... you never know how much you miss something until it's gone. For me, I find that is definitely the case here - I will truly miss the use of ohnoitsroland, boycottroland, and dierolanddie tags!
He will be missed.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
... than all the slashdotcynicalwhining that pervades the board.
He'll definitely be missed by some of us.
I piss off bigots.
You know, over the years I've read Slashdot, I got the impression Roland was one of those stereotypical "needs a life" /. posters from all the people complaining about him. Then this happens and I find out that, well, he had a life, and worked at some interesting companies back in the day.
Best wishes to all Roland's people, and at the same time I'm glad that complaining about him from the other basement dwellers is going to stop before too long.
He didn't say anything about this on his blog...
i'll miss his blog. biotech, computers, physics ... it was slashdot^2 ... to bad he had to close down comments a few years ago due to abuse.
he was thinking ahead of his time. i would like to be that anticipating at that age.
...did he run Linux?
AT&ROFLMAO
Apparently its not just his blog links that resulted in a DEAD END.
Too soon?
I don't know, I had a pretty good greasemonkey script that got rid of his submissions. When I first saw this story, I quickly checked to see if greasemonkey was disabled somehow. My first thought, WTF? How did that get there? Please tell me he has not changed something to get around the filter!
Sorry that he died, don't wish death on anyone... well, not most people anyway. Won't miss the stories either... I haven't been reading them, so not much affect.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
While it is important to speak when you have something useful to say, it is as important to Shut The Fuck Up when you haven't.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've found "frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton"'s stories to be a lot more annoying than Roland's though. I keep tagging his stories ohnoitsbennett but it doesn't seem to have caught on yet.
Articles about him have been deleted over and over again most recently in 2007.
Is he really just "A french blogger known for frequently posting articles to the technical website Slashdot that primarily linked back to his own technica" or "a fellow who makes a lot of money on ads by getting his crappy stories linked constantly on Slashdot" [link] or is he notable enough outside of the blogger/Slashdot community to make an article?
I know it's tempting, but please don't go making an article about him before you read Wikipedia's notability requirements for people.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Coward Wikipedian
I googled around, and there's no mention of this. The summary also reads like the famous old "Stephen King is dead" troll.
I liked his whit, and charming methods of describing things to the readers of this website. He truly embodied what can best be described one of the pioneers of the Slashdot effect. Some people trolled him pretty hard, but he was and will always be remembered as interesting, insightful, funny and underrated.
Roland, may the god(s) of whatever religion you believed in, forever mod you up.
RIP, bro.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
You certainly don't speak for me, Anonymous Coward.
R.I.P. Roland.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
Is there a named cognitive bias (or something similar) for suddenly liking and missing someone who was universally considered a git prior to his passing? Because that's what happening to Slashdot right now, including me a bit.
You just got troll'd!
Isn't it ironic that the Slashdot submission itself has a bunch of links to other websites in it, Roland style? /RIP and all that, click-harvester
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Is breathing a sigh of relief that he escaped Slashdot alive.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Right, ZDNet just goes and makes shit like this up for kicks. You fail.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Maybe the "ohnoitsroland" tag should be retired in his honor?
In clear violation of standard posting practice I think the Slashdot editors should have posted it as if by him.
A certain amount of symmetry.
Oh, woe...woe! The Grim Click-Harvester has claimed yet another life.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
All the advertising I usually see on a /. story is coming up with a "404 - Not Found".
RIP, Roland.
First Steve Jobs, now this..
who knew that was his real name?
They're using their grammar skills there.
R.I.P, Roland. You will be missed, even if I didn't agree with you on everything.
Call me old school, but I'm still waiting for Signal 11 to kick the bucket.
Just confirmed his death by reading more on the web. Calling would be very intrusive. Please mod my comment down.
Not once in the summary or in any of the comments did it mention what he died from. Cancer? Heart attack? Eaten by a grue? OD huffing kittens?
How did the man die, anyway?
Free Martian Whores!
"Captain, I have studied more than a little bit of human culture. Nowhere have I found brightly colored, conical hats and inflatable noisemakers to be appropriate funeral attire."
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Sorry to disappoint you, but -- inb4 "He Bought it on Ebay."
I first visited Slashdot when UIDs were in the low 1000's, so I have a lot of time invested in this website. I've read plenty of Rolly's posts and while I didn't agree with all of them, I always enjoyed his perspective.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
On the contrary, he very rarely seemed to understand what he was reporting about, making overly optimistic and far reaching speculations about trivial matters.
I was surprised just now to learn that he was actually so technically inclined.
Bot Assisted Blogging
But pretty much everyone here hated his linkjacking ass, even threatening to boycott the site. I can remember threads calling him the worst of the worst, and for a time, he was. To steal others content and pass it off as your own is real intellectual property theft. Especially when you make advertising money from it!! To see everyone get all two faced and misty eyed now that he has died is pretty unreal. Its like everyone feels guilty somewhat. He linkjacked all his content, and everybody dies. I really dont see what saying RIP does for anyone except the person that says it. My guess is that people are trying to say "im sorry".
Whats next, jon katz found dead and we build him a monument?
Hopefully I dont get bitchslapped for insulting a slashdot "celebrity", but someone has to tell it like it was
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
"there for"? Maybe you should let long words alone for a few years...
What he posted as long as it pointed to interesting enough stories and stimulated the response of the /. massive. You could always just ignore him if you didn't like it, no one is ever forced to click on a link. R.I.P.
There were submissions from Roland that I thought pointless and absurd, but he also submitted some fascinating stuff.
It occurs to me now that Roland was "in love" ( in a manner of speaking) with science. And this is probably why he behaved as he did. He wanted to share that which he loved with the rest of us.
Whether the guy is dead or not, it's hard to hold someone's essentially harmless passion against them. If anything, the world would be a better place if there were more curious and passionate people.
Finally, I remain utterly amazed that he could manage to assimilate and pass on so much information, and if he really did do it all by himself ( I used to suspect he had a few interns or something ) then he must have been quite a guy.
I take back all the bitter things I said to you, didn't know it would end like this...
My last sig was ridiculed
He'll be missed.
But honestly, his death should have been reported via a link to his blog that would THEN link to the page discussing his death.
Only a fitting tribute.
-Styopa
by lowering reader's estimation of how much Slashdot editors can be trusted.
Story submitters can't do that. It is the editors' jobs to separate the wheat from the chaff. Failure to do so is what reflects badly on the editors.
...how to pronounce his name.
sad days.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
It occurs to me now that Roland was "in love" ( in a manner of speaking) with science. And this is probably why he behaved as he did.
My entire teenage life just flashed before my eyes, upon reading your sentences. (Yes, I'm socially inept.)
You may not realize it, but I think you've just described some of us geeks.
Wow! I thought that Pére Lachaise was for important people of the past. Is it easy to be buried there?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Just one word.
Fetch the holy water and call an exorcist! This time, he's going to stay dead.
Come on mods, what's the deal? He's responding to a question that someone asked about Roland/Roland's submissions. How much more on-topic can it be?
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
The tag always bugged me until I started to wonder if he found it funny... I hope he did.
I wonder how many people have mean spiritedly used it in the past who are today white-washing their internet mob mentality history so they don't have to feel insensetive
"Roland Piquepaille lives in Paris, France"
Might wanna update that...
This sig is false.
I don't have them, and I'm not looking at this story again, because I'm grossed out by some of the folks here.
Bruce Perens.
I checked to see who submitted and it wasn't Roland. I would think that this being Slashdot he would have set up a dead-man-switch to make that submission himself.
It would be only fitting.
RIP Roland.
Rest in Peace
Buy yourself a plot and you can rest alongside Jim Morrison, Jacques Louis David, Oscar Wilde, and loads of other interesting folks. They may be pricey, though -- the place is jammed. No rolling lawns or flower beds -- the graves are so close together that worm action is probably mixing up the bones underground.
I piss off bigots.
This one, Einstein?
"let long words alone"? What kind of fucking grammar is that?!
You spoke too soon..
Years ago while working on the cray, Roland uploaded a copy of his entire self onto the cray.
And hes pissed off...
Its Roland 2.0 - judgment day
Perhaps that was right, but Roland has earned a place in the slashdot community.
I had a good time tagging all of Roland's articles as "ohnoitsroland". It made my days more bearable, and everytime I saw his stories tagged already, I chuckled.
Roland was a traditional part of Slashdot (for good or bad), and even if only in the form of a meme, I will miss him.
Roland might have been short on netiquette when he first started submitting stories to /., but once the community started to speak out against his copy-and-paste blog entries and use of other people's content to earn ad revenue, he stopped doing all that. all of his submissions of late have linked directly to the source article.
if anything, Roland has contributed greatly to the /. community by submitting a ton of excellent stories--even after he stopped earning ad revenue from submissions--and starting many interesting discussions. so he clearly cared more about /. as a thriving community with a rich online culture than just another business to be monetized. and if you're more worried about Slashdot's value as a business than its usefulness to its users (which is primarily from the discussions that follow each submission), then you clearly don't understand /. as well as Roland did.
your blatant hyperboles and baseless accusations are more dishonest than Roland has ever been. and i doubt you will ever make as great of a contribution to the /. community as he has.
Funny, you write the basic truth while his corpse is still warm and are modded Troll.
Wait a few weeks after they plant him and you'd be modded Insightful
Trolling is a art,
I didn't mind his articles. Nor am I outraged by him linking to his blog (mainly because I don't RTFA). However, I am pissed at the idiots who turned the discussion on his submissions into rants against Roland, taking away from the usual interesting debate. Guess this is the end of it.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
mod decedent up!
Liberty uber alles.
It's always sad when one of us goes, independently of our personal opinion of his posts. Thanks for everything, even the not so good things. bye.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
Seconded. I suspect we'll find we didn't realise what we had. I never read his blog and had no idea who he was IRL; it's interesting to see he had real actual accomplishments and genuine achievements beyond getting some stories posted on Slashdot, something I doubt any of the trolls here will ever be able to say. RIP. And I hope some explains the phenomena of the "no gutter too low" subset of Slashdot trolls so in evidence here, and on other obituary stories, to the family before they see them.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
The old guy in your local bar. You'd be in there regularly, and there he'd be, holding forth at anybody who'd give him the time of day. You'd make for the other side of the bar, grateful that he'd collared some wet-behind-the-ears Johnny-come-lately rather than yourself, because you'd been there enough times before. He'd be chuntering on in the background and you'd pay him little heed.
And then one day you come into the bar and he isn't there, and you hear he'd passed away, and you realise that you'd miss the old bastard. Because people like that add colour to the world, and what is this life without characters to enrich it, whether you actually like them or not?
That was Roland for me - I'd come here and I'd see an article submitted by him and there'd be some generally good-natured muttering about his modus operandi. Some people clearly didn't like him, but the truth is I couldn't tell you who any of those people are. But if you asked me to name five people who post on Slashdot, he'd be one of them.
So by that measure alone, I for one will miss him, and I think Slashdot will be the poorer for his passing.
Here's to Roland, and to making a difference in any way you can.
...and now this. Coincidence?
"Its slashdot for God's sake. If you can't laugh at someone's death here where can you?"
I wonder if your mourners would mind if I laugh all the way through your eulogy?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Roland was a well intentioned soul and will be sorely missed. I found most who mocked him did so in a jovial spirit, he sparked vigorous debate even from detractors and he encouraged a focus on fringe topics that keep this site unique and interesting. We all have our quirks, and his were more entertaining than frustrating. He will live on in all our hearts as more than just a meme, but as a kindred spirit, as one of us.
I always wondered about the following question:
Why is it we only show up for peoples' weddings and funerals? Do they have to hook up psuedo-permanently with a gal/guy or be in a casket before we'll take the time out of our busy lives to see them?
So, for all those who miss him in requiem - treat the living, give them as much charity, forgive their trespasses, and appreciate their good qualities while they are still around to hear it.
R.I.P. anyway.
I might not be the smartest fucker out here, nor the dimmest bulb, but shed a fucking tear now and then for your true friends!! I know all you idiots that got nuked by lilo didn't like him, but I did. He stuck up for me when it really mattered. In the same light Roland taught many. NOW your fucking stuck with assholes like me who will tell you to fucking visualize your fucking mathematics. SEE what a 20MHz wave looks like, SEE how it bounces, SEE how it is absorbed, and SEE how it travels forever--like ROLAND...
Don't be a hater.
I didn't know him, I really didn't have any emotional investment in his submissions, but it's generally a bummer when people go and die, so a R.I.P. is in order.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment.
http://i42.tinypic.com/wrdn40.png
(damn those bad HTML habits, posting again)
Errr... perfectly correct English grammar? I believe more common modern usage in most of the English speaking world is to use "leave" instead of "let" (as in "leave it alone" rather than "let it alone") but "let" is still perfectly correct even if a little archaic sounding.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Because there is something called "respect"... nobody will force you to speak beauty of a man you didn't like, but it'd be "respectful" not to throw shit in a post dedicated to his death... Peace. Drx
-- Counting backwards since 1984!
Yes, well, as someone with a userid of over 800,000 you're clearly entitled to appoint yourself Official Slashdot Historian.
Picklepail was no better than any spammer, just out to leverage the Internet for monetary gain while contributing nothing.
if only he'd been running a better viruschecker.
Rest in peace, you were one of us and we will miss you.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines