181–190 of 340 posts
Been listening to No Agenda since episode 1. Cranky Geeks and Silicon Spin before that. And the occasional appearance on Computer Chronicles long ago. I always loved your passion for technology and your take on the world. You will surely be missed.
I'll always appreciate his love for Costco wines.
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…
Most of what I know him for was coming on TWiT, driving Leo Laporte nuts, and making claims that ended up not coming true. He was a hilarious curmudgeon. He will be missed.
He pulled one apart and couldnt put it back together for the rest of the episode :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curmudgeon is the perfect term to describe. He was a great part of TWIT. I liked his obscure software references (lotus Jazz was one I think). He also found this new thing is like that old thing. His non positive takes were a great addition to the show.
When Leo banned him is actually when I stopped listening to TWiT. Apparently he came back a few years later, but I never did.
https://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=d0e55f319709994434570865...
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
I like that his Wikipedia page really sells that he was a Kentucky Colonel. That was one of the easier titles I've gotten.
I know there's people like Sir David Attenborough who have three alphabets worth of letters after their name, but I hadn't considered the idea of gaming the system to get superfluous titles.
I’ll always remember him from Twit. He always made the show entertaining. I wonder if he and Leo were ever able to reconcile their differences.
Sadly, I don't think so. I remember Leo saying some not-so-nice things about John on the pre-show to TWIT a few months ago. I never understood how Leo couldn't forgive John for whatever he did, but Leo has had long-lasting feuds with a lot of people over the years. All that wasted time fighting between those two when we could have had them doing great shows together over the past few years and giving us great content…
https://youtu.be/ur296s3wIv4 ITM, RIP
First it was Jerry Pournelle and now it's John Dvorak. I read those columns religiously back in the day. I just realized I no longer read anyone religiously, listen to podcasts for any length of time - there's something about the buzz of 80s computing that has been totally lost. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think it just means the industry has matured. But boy oh boy! The immature industry was a lot of fun!
Pournelle was good as a kind of (relatively) non-technical user in the early days (70s, early 80s) who just wanted to use computers to write books. Dvorak was quite good, but for me much too oriented towards the Wintel world. And then there was another guy who was sooo consistently bad I referred to him as Less Than Thorough. I'm not sure now whether he was also the MIT economist who died in 2016. Robert X. Cringely…