Why John C. Dvorak should just quit and leave us all alone

[Raswan]

I find something incredibly amusing about the title of the thread. "Leave us all alone"? Who's forcing you or anyone else to read.. much less take seriously.. anything he writes?

I was under the assumption that he had a large following, but apparently from the posts here I have nothing to worry about. Glad to know he's irrelevant.

Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything, but that has absolutely no bearing on my right to call him a tool bag and ask him to quit polluting the tech space.

 

[hal2kilo]

Before the net got big, John C. Dvorak in PC mag was as good as it got. I used to open the mag directly to his column, first thing. Haven't read anything from him in years and years, though, so he could just be mailing it in these days . . . but he truly used to be the man.

Remember the HUMONGOUS Computer Shopper with like 700 large format pages each month, just crammed to the gills with every vendor -- large and especially small -- every odd lot jobber in the known fucking universe?

Those were the days! I tell 'ya, we walked 10 miles through the snow to school each day, and it was uphill both ways!

Those were heady days. I remember when I thought an ST-225 would be the answer to all my storage problems.
I did not know that PC Mag was still in existence. Pretty sure Computer Shopper is long gone.

 

[zsdersw]

I was under the assumption that he had a large following, but apparently from the posts here I have nothing to worry about. Glad to know he's irrelevant.

Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything, but that has absolutely no bearing on my right to call him a tool bag and ask him to quit polluting the tech space.

I'm not talking about rights, I'm talking about the poor choice of wording in the thread title. The implication when you say "leave us all alone" is that he is not doing so... which suggests that he's pestering us and is somehow unavoidable. That's clearly not the case.

 

[Raswan]

I'm not talking about rights, I'm talking about the poor choice of wording in the thread title. The implication when you say "leave us all alone" is that he is not doing so... which suggests that he's pestering us and is somehow unavoidable. That's clearly not the case.

1: I don't want to hear, read, smell, or see John Dvorak.

2: Dvorak writes for pcmag, hosts the weekly TV video podcast CrankyGeeks, Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, Barrons, MacUser, PC/Computing, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon Spin for four years doing 1000 live and live-to-tape TV shows. Also was on public radio for 8 years. Written over 4000 articles and columns as well as authoring or co-authoring 14 books. 2004 Award winner of the American Business Editors Association's national gold award for best online column of 2003. That was followed up by an unprecedented second national gold award from the ABEA in 2005, again for the best online column (for 2004). Won the Silver National Award for best magazine column in 2006.

3: The plethora of # 2 suggests that Dvorak is pestering us.

4: I said I would quit reading pcmag because of him, thereby avoiding him.

5: You are an idiot. Go away.

 

[zsdersw]

1: I don't want to hear, read, smell, or see John Dvorak.

You never had to.

2: Dvorak writes for pcmag, hosts the weekly TV video podcast CrankyGeeks, Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, Barrons, MacUser, PC/Computing, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon Spin for four years doing 1000 live and live-to-tape TV shows. Also was on public radio for 8 years. Written over 4000 articles and columns as well as authoring or co-authoring 14 books. 2004 Award winner of the American Business Editors Association's national gold award for best online column of 2003. That was followed up by an unprecedented second national gold award from the ABEA in 2005, again for the best online column (for 2004). Won the Silver National Award for best magazine column in 2006.

3: The plethora of # 2 suggests that Dvorak is pestering us.

None of which means you or anyone else had to pay him any attention. Knowing that he's still active in the forms of media you desire, you have no one to blame but yourself for anything of his that you read/watch/listen to.

The plethora of #2 would only be pestering if any of those things were at all compulsory. They're not... and they're also very easy to avoid.

4: I said I would quit reading pcmag because of him, thereby avoiding him.

Good, you're solving your own problem.

5: You are an idiot. Go away.

Post reported.

 

[Steeplerot]

Before the net got big, John C. Dvorak in PC mag was as good as it got. I used to open the mag directly to his column, first thing. Haven't read anything from him in years and years, though, so he could just be mailing it in these days . . . but he truly used to be the man.

Remember the HUMONGOUS Computer Shopper with like 700 large format pages each month, just crammed to the gills with every vendor -- large and especially small -- every odd lot jobber in the known fucking universe?

Those were the days! I tell 'ya, we walked 10 miles through the snow to school each day, and it was uphill both ways!

Nothing like browsing through a Library of Alexandria tome sized book for those old 32 MB hard drives the size of sherman tanks while on the john. Good times!

 

[Svnla]

People, PCMagazine is no longer in print for a while, only in digital form. PcComputing had been gone for years. Computer Shopper is not in print format for a few years.

I am suprised that PCWorld is still in print format, not sure for how long.

 

[werepossum]

> I get the sense he still gets jobs because of his undeserved celebrity from decades past, which I can't stand either.

You're apparently too young to remember when he earned his celebrity, and perhaps too lazy to look it up.

Back in the late '80s - early '90s his columns were worth reading. I haven't read a PC Mag in a decade so I can't comment on most of his work since then, but the Twitter column you linked to doesn't match your description of "worthless."

You're entitled to your opinion, but you've failed to convince me to share it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

This, exactly, and extra points for pith and humor. Some of us remember his excellent work on PC communications when it was more black art than plug-n-play, not to mention his short, insightful, sometimes prescient articles. Can't say I've read him in a decade or so, but he was always one of my favorite tech writers back when.

 

[JimKiler]

2: Dvorak writes for pcmag, hosts the weekly TV video podcast CrankyGeeks, Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, Barrons, MacUser, PC/Computing, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon Spin for four years doing 1000 live and live-to-tape TV shows. Also was on public radio for 8 years. Written over 4000 articles and columns as well as authoring or co-authoring 14 books. 2004 Award winner of the American Business Editors Association's national gold award for best online column of 2003. That was followed up by an unprecedented second national gold award from the ABEA in 2005, again for the best online column (for 2004). Won the Silver National Award for best magazine column in 2006.

You forgot his other podcast, No Agenda with Adam Curry, which is very political but yet also entertaining if you do not take it too seriously. But i prefer him when he is on This Week in Tech. it is on This Week in Tech where he talked about getting vendors or some other companies to write for him and then he would change it it up and call it an article in the paper. Also i believe he has a popular video on youtube that Leo Leporte makes references to but I have never seen.

But I agree with him on his Itanium article and how Intel hyped it up so much it created a vacuum of workers which AMD exploited and was able to make really great processors for a while.

 

[Raswan]

You forgot his other podcast, No Agenda with Adam Curry, which is very political but yet also entertaining if you do not take it too seriously. But i prefer him when he is on This Week in Tech. it is on This Week in Tech where he talked about getting vendors or some other companies to write for him and then he would change it it up and call it an article in the paper. Also i believe he has a popular video on youtube that Leo Leporte makes references to but I have never seen.

But I agree with him on his Itanium article and how Intel hyped it up so much it created a vacuum of workers which AMD exploited and was able to make really great processors for a while.

He occasionally has a gem tucked away, and I appreciate the fact that he actually has a distinct writing style, even if I don't particularly enjoy it. Too many journalists these days have taken the "unbiased" ethos to mean "completely devoid of voice," which is too bad.

 

[Raswan]

Post reported.

I'm sure the mods appreciate your bothering them every time someone points out your inability to swallow the word vomit that derails threads in P&N and OT.

Perhaps a better word than idiot would have been nincompoop, an old medical diagnosis for "a simpleton, a foolish person" according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

 

[zsdersw]

Perhaps a better word than idiot would have been nincompoop, an old medical diagnosis for "a simpleton, a foolish person" according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

They're both wrong, so choose whichever one you like.

 

[Yongsta]

Why do you care so much? There's a lot of writers out there that I think are garbage... I just choose to ignore them instead of looking up their articles and ranting.