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Rest in peace Roland Piquepaille

By | January 9, 2009, 11:11am PST

Summary: 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 [...]

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.pngRoland, 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 enterococcal bacteria that led to a high fever and health complications beyond that. Suzanne said that the doctors are still trying to quantify how Roland got the bacteria 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.

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A terrible loss
adarrow 13th Jan 2009
I'm not a scientist, but I play one on my computer. Part of my job is to post items of interest to pique the curiosity and enthusiasm of young scientists (not online -- in my office window!), and Roland's posts were a great source of fascinating, wide-ranging, and authoritative material. That he linked to the original articles was a huge plus for the students. M. Piquepaille will be missed. So sorry for his family's loss.
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Farewell...
Just J 9th Jan 2009
I enjoyed reading your blogs, even if I didn't understand them sometimes(!)

They always made fascinating reading & I'll miss them.

Rest in Peace, Roland.
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It's a sad day
georgeou 9th Jan 2009
I personally enjoyed Roland's work. I never met got
to meet the man, but I'm sure he would have been very
interesting to talk to.

I wish the best for his family and may Roland rest in
peace.
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That hit me hard. Roland wrote a post about a software project that I had been working on in 2006. This resulted in a flood of interest from media outlets both in the US and Canada, where I'm from.

I discovered that Roland was a great filter of technology news with influential sophisticated readers all over the world. In fact, many of his readers were print journalists looking to stay on top of the best tech stories.

When I started blogging, I used his work as an example of great workmanship.

He will be missed.

- Nick -
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Thanks for your insight ...
Ludovit 9th Jan 2009
You will be missed ....

Ludo
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RE: Rest in peace Roland Piquepaille
Linux User 147560 9th Jan 2009
Too bad, his posts were always the best! Peace to his family. devil
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RE: Rest in peace Roland Piquepaille
karlin@... 9th Jan 2009
Roland and I crossposted and would email back and forth
way back when he had a Salon.com-based blog and I was
using Radio and the blogosphere was just developing. He
was always one of my favourites; I loved how he could
encapsulate the idea of a quite long and technical article in
an often whimsical way. I am so sorry to hear of his death.
My condolences to his wife and family.

Karlin Lillington
Irish TImes
www.techno-culture.com blog
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RE: Rest in peace Roland Piquepaille
dfollis@... 9th Jan 2009
Always informative. A loss of a great mind and person.
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RE: Rest in peace Roland Piquepaille
mhandelman@... 9th Jan 2009
Condolences to Mr. Piquepaille's family, friends and co-workers. His good work will be missed by us.
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M. Piquepaille, you will be missed.
seanferd 10th Jan 2009
An excellent writer, the man brought many interesting things in the world of science to my attention, many of which I would never have known, if not for him. By all accounts, a rater remarkable individual.

I wish to extend my deepest sympathies to his family.
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I always enjoyed Roland's posts. A couple of things that made his blog stand out were:

1. He viewed the tech world with a wide-angle lens. He posted articles on some technologies that I didn't even know existed.

2. No overlap. When everyone else would cover the "hot topic of the day", Roland usually didn't.

I'm sure he's already signed up to write "Heavenly Emerging Tech". happy

Thanks for keeping us informed, Roland.
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Roland, you will be missed by slashdotters the World over. It is no coincidence that his name appeared against most of the stuff that interested me.

Condolences to Roland's wife and famiy.

Siv
Martley, Near Worcester, UK
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RE: Rest in peace Roland Piquepaille
laing1208 11th Jan 2009
Dear Roland,
Thank you for reviewing my scientific article (Leishmania) on
your blog in December 2008. I could not believe that you are
no longer with us, my prayers go to your family, and may you
rest in peace.

Laiguan
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RE: Rest in peace Roland Piquepaille
warthog2k 12th Jan 2009
sad

This has been one of the most consistently interesting blogs I've read. I've really enjoyed it and will miss the great articles that were gathered (and explained) here.

Thanks for everything Roland, you will be missed.

Rest in Peace.
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A terrible loss
adarrow 13th Jan 2009
I'm not a scientist, but I play one on my computer. Part of my job is to post items of interest to pique the curiosity and enthusiasm of young scientists (not online -- in my office window!), and Roland's posts were a great source of fascinating, wide-ranging, and authoritative material. That he linked to the original articles was a huge plus for the students. M. Piquepaille will be missed. So sorry for his family's loss.

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