Roland Piquepaille was a technology writer, both for ZDNet

ZDNet

ZDNet is a business technology news website published by CBS Interactive, along with TechRepublic and SmartPlanet. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991 as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication owned by CNET...

  and for his own blog, Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends, and a former software engineer at Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...

 and Cray

Cray

Cray Inc. is an American supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. , was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation , in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995,...

 Research. Piquepaille was also a frequent contributor to Slashdot

Slashdot

Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...

, and well known for his focus on how new technologies modify life. He died in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 on January 6, 2009, of complications related to an enterococcal bacteria

Bacteria

Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...

infection.