No. For me it's an artifact from an online community called The Well which didn't allow for blank subject lines or posts. When sad news happened, we'd just put a . as an acknowledgement of hearing the news. I always thought it echoed the tradition of leaving tones at graves and I've kept it in use.
Ah. It's the mark people use in obituary threads on Metafilter as well. Seemingly no one can quite trace it on Metafilter (http://mssv.net/wiki/index.php/Dot), but it may have come from the Well in some roundabout way (except doesn't get standardised on Metafilter until sometime in 2001 or 2002).
I'm 48 years old, and I teach college students, perennially 18-25. I often find myself reflecting how different navigating daily life is now compared to when I was there age, and his death reminds me that he is a huge part of the reason. Even if you don't have Apple products, you have the products that other people made to try to catch up to him.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 09:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 11:13 am (UTC)I've found his death oddly affecting and I think it's because the idea of Steve Jobs looms so large in my brain and ideas don't die, but people do.
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Date: 2011-10-06 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 11:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 07:15 pm (UTC)What surprised me was how quickly he went after he announced his resignation from Apple. Six weeks after that, he was gone.
He must have known that the end was near, and wanted to spend it with his family.