I confess that when the news about Dennis Ritchie was posted, I immediately flashed to the thought, "who's number three?" Thing is, so did a lot of other peopl

I confess that when the news about Dennis Ritchie was posted, I immediately flashed to the thought, "who's number three?" Thing is, so did a lot of other people, and tagging John McCarthy's WP page in this way would be just the sort of prank/hoax that would inspire. So the "deaths come in threes" aphorism makes me more suspicious of this, not less.