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.
http://slashdot.org/tags/ohnoitsroland
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
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
There was a period when it was common to see 1/3 to 1/2 of the stories on the front page from Roland, and the stories linking to brief summaries on his own blog rather than to the original article. I can only assume it was a comment on that period.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
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.
Originally, most of the posts attributed to him provided links directly to his blog rather than to the original source. Once there, you were greeted by a summary that bordered very closely on, what many people considered, outright plagiarism. This, along with the sheer number of times the slashdot editors posted his submissions, caused a lot of slashdot readers to conclude that he was "stealing" stories to generate hits so he could profit from advertising. There was also question of whether there was some kind of improper favoritism going on between Roland and the Slashdot editors.
Personally, I doubt there was any overt quid-pro-quo between Roland and Slashdot. I think he was just a conveniently consistent source of new stories for the editors. As far as the supposed stealing of stories went, he responded relatively quickly by not linking to his own blog most of the time and by providing the summaries in more of his own words. This resolved any potential I, personally, might have had.
However, since then, there has always been a decent amount of eye rolling every time a story was posted with Roland as the source. This is why you see the "ohnoitsroland" meta tag. I think it's probably in jest, though maybe not the most tactful joke.
I would also like to join the people offering condolences to Roland's friends and family for his loss. Regardless of what some people may have thought of his posting style, it's a tragedy when a loved one is lost and my sympathy is with them.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Years ago, perhaps. That hasn't been true in a long time, however.
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.
The "Roland Piquepaille" account is a troll.
The actual Roland's account, as mentioned in the story, was "rpiquepa".
Kdawson made the phone calls to confirm this before posting it.
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!
True, I believe. It seems he learned from the criticism. That alone put him in the top 10% of humanity.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Ok now THAT makes me doubt this is real.
When you see death walking up the path to your door, start typing fast.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You got that right!
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.
4chan.
Yeah, definitely 4chan.
And of course here where it's expected to laugh yer ass off.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
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.
Moral bankruptcy was so 2008 - fiscal bankruptcy is all the rage in 2009!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I checked his grave, and there was just a link to a different grave with someone else's corpse.
rewriting history since 2109