91–100 of 340 posts
Literally never even heard of him or this show he apparently ran so I'm confused why this is so upvoted.
That tiny 1"x1.5" thumbnail[1] of John C. Dvorak in PC Magazine was the essence of Gravitas for me as a kid. [1] https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1999-12-14/page/88/mode/2...
I used to transcribe his articles to a text file and post them to Usenet. Fond memories of that time.
Thank you for your service.
People like you were how people in other countries learned about technology and of other cultures in the days before the internet.
Some person (people?) would post scripts from Red Dwarf on one of the networks years before the show became available televisually in the United States. I used to devour those and laughed and laughed and laughed. That kind of British humor comes through well as text.
Even in the fast cycle of PCs in the 90s, you could learn something reading yesterdays newspaper from his columns. RIP
For those like me wondering if he's also the creator of the Dvorak keyboard, no but close! > He is a nephew of sociologist August Dvorak, creator of the Dvorak keyboard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_keyboard_layout
This is sad. I grew up watching his show on Tech TV and reading his columns in PC Magazine. He used to butt heads with Leo Laporte and it was great: https://youtu.be/C96YG7qzN80?t=142
Credit to him, he always had a bold take. One of the funniest things he used to do was write draft reviews of software simply by looking at the back of the box. He said you could get it like 90% right just doing that, I was a different era. I also remember Leo Laporte constantly trying to take his phone back of him as John was trying to guess his passcode or unlock pattern based on the screen smudges. Didn't agree wi…
> by looking at the back of the box. He said you could get it Well that is definitely something different about today's software websites. How many times have you looked at a company's website for a product/service and still left wondering what it did?
I first become aware of John C. Dvorak in Byte magazine, ( back in the 80s?) to me he was a respected insigtful interesting content wrighter. The post link above says he was 74, THe wikipedia page says 80. I gues one will be corrected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak RIP
Dvorak hated that for decades wikipedia had the wrong birth year and refused to let him change it. He wrote at length about how wikipedia is the antithesis of the entire conception of a wiki. He was 80, born in 1946.
I had many lovely dinners with John back in the 90s (he loved Chez Panisse). While his public persona could occasionally be curmudgeonly, in person he was a warm-hearted, passionate computing enthusiast.