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Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users 354

Posted by CowboyNeal from the everyone's-favorite-gasbag dept.
jalefkowit writes "Tech pundit John Dvorak has long been known for his inflammatory opinions. Many have suspected that these opinions are just a way to drive up traffic to his column. Now, we have it straight from the horse's mouth: Dave Winer has Dvorak on video describing his methodology for trolling the Mac community to pump up his stats." I have to admit I'm also guilty of posting the occasional inflammatory story, but I find it's usually best to suffix the title with a question mark, and let our ever-knowledgeable readers hash out the issue and decide for themselves.
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Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users More

Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users

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  • Thats an almost impossible task - mac users are too smart to take the bait ;)

    • Re:Trolling the Mac community? (Score:4, Funny)

      by mkw87 ( 860289 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:02PM (#15509538)
      Just like they are too smart to operate the elevator at the NYC Store?

    • Re:Trolling the Mac community? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:02PM (#15509539)
      The Mac sites are up in arms, with commentors demanding that PC Magazine pull their columnist because he has no integrity. I don't know why anybody ever takes Dvorak seriously. If you don't, you'll see that he can actually be pretty entertaining.

      Too bad Apple does not include a sense of humor with iLife. Even now when Dvorak's let us all in on the joke, they still don't get it.

      • meta-troll (Score:3, Insightful)

        by weierstrass ( 669421 )
        This is itself a troll. The video [youtube.com] does not show Dvorak saying these things, but has him talking with the audio completely out of sync. From the FTA:

        he started telling a story about how he deliberately pisses Mac users off to get flow for his stories, and I said, hold a minute, I want to record this, and shit if he didn't stop and repeat it for me and my video camera. I guess now I'm an official video blogger

        Think about it, if you were doing well by professional trolling (and I'm not saying he's not) would y

        • Think about it, if you were doing well by professional trolling (and I'm not saying he's not) would you talk about it on video, and lose all that revenue by 'serious' news sites deciding not to link to you anymore?

          Everyone is pretty much on to him at this point, so by admitting it, he can troll the Mac users one last time. In a few years, everyone will have forgotten about it and he can start the cycle by trolling them again. This happened before when he was fired from MacWorld.

          Most of the stuff that Dvorak
          • I hadn't seen any announcement about Itanium macs, but I'd certainly assumed that's what was going to happen. For all of the money that Intel has pissed away on Itanium, I had assumed two things:

            1) They must come out with an interesting version eventually.

            2) A great time to announce that they'd made the things interesting would be with a huge splash announcement like Apple adopting it.

            The roadmap of desktops now, laptops shortly would be pretty consistant with a technology breakthrough.

            Pity it didn't happe
            • I suppose it made some sensational sense, but the real news was that HP was dropping Itanium Workstations, and MS was stopping XP for IA64, making it practically impossible for that a desktop Itaniums for Macs would ever appear. Not that I expect Dvorak to know anything about chip roadmaps.

              But to be fair, the ultimtely correct Apple/Intel rumors were swirling around and he was just trying to spice them up a bit.
      • As far as I'm concerned, the real humor left PC Mag. whenever Penn Jilette quit writing the back page column for them, years ago.

        I don't find Dvorak "funny" ... nor do I take him too seriously. I just find his columns to be full of personal ramblings and random "what if?" type thoughts, tossed out there for the world to read.

      • Re:Trolling the Mac community? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fbg111 ( 529550 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @08:19PM (#15510939)
        If you don't, you'll see that he can actually be pretty entertaining.

        Or you'll realize that time and life are precious, and reading Dvorak is a complete waste of both.
    • mac users are too smart to take the bait

      Are those the same mac users who have in the past done themselves injuries by trying to cram a graphite powermac [wikimedia.org] into their mouth and suck on it, believing it to be a throat lozenge?

  • Torrent download (Score:3, Informative)

    by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday June 10, 2006 @12:59PM (#15509518) Journal
    Direct link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/scripting/dvorak.mov?torre nt [amazonaws.com]

    Of course, Dvorak will just say that it's not true -- he was just trolling on that recording, thus completing the prophecy and dooming mankind.
     

  • I've said it before (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thefirelane ( 586885 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:00PM (#15509522)
    Dvorak is nothing other than the worlds most successful troll. As much as everyone here complains about him, we eat it up and come back for more. We used to be able to pretend it was the editors foisting him upon us... but lo' and behold, democratic Digg comes along, and he still makes the front page! [digg.com]
    • Dvorak is nothing other than the worlds most successful troll.

      I think you meant:

      Dvorak is nothing other than the worlds most successful internet troll.

      (see Stern, Rush, etc etc)

    • Re:I've said it before (Score:5, Interesting)

      by generic-man ( 33649 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:13PM (#15509604) Homepage Journal
      Two words: Ann Coulter [wikipedia.org].

      • Overtonnage Overkillers (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @02:06PM (#15509823) Homepage Journal
        Ann Coulter is the rightwing Anchor Troll in their "Overton Window" [dailykos.com] strategy.

        It's a simple way to force the public debate "spectrum window" to your end of the spectrum by trolling unthinkable statements in public. Successful trolls create only predictable responses, not any further development of the ideas. So the "unthinkable" is now part of the public conversation, without risking rejection by anyone actually thinking about it. Changing the ideas in the public window of the spectrum moves the window closer to the new idea. Now the window includes more of the thinkable ideas that were excluded or marginalized, while the window excludes or marginalizes the ideas previously more in the "center", but further away from the troll.

        The only risk with overtonning the window is that the troll discredits its entire end of the spectrum by association. Which is why it's important that the troll make as extreme, ridiculous comments as possible. And frequently defend their statements with "I was just kidding". The associates who benefit from the troll in their neighborhood must also not even repudiate the troll, as any association (positive or negative) is contagious. The troll must work alone. Though of course they can be paid by the same beneficiaries, or have their "home markets" all subsidized by the same beneficiaries.

        Now Ann Coulter actually makes sense, probably for the first time. As do her fellow trolls like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and most of the rightwing talkradioheads.
    • Yeah, he's been doing this for a long time. And the tech world is full of enough fanatics that you can't help but piss people off. Write an inflammatory article on Apple, Open Source, Linux, Nintendo, or any number of other technosacredcows, and bang! instant traffic. Much easier than saying something intelligent.
      • Yeah, he's been doing this for a long time. And the tech world is full of enough fanatics that you can't help but piss people off. Write an inflammatory article on Apple, Open Source, Linux, Nintendo, or any number of other technosacredcows, and bang! instant traffic. Much easier than saying something intelligent.

        The funny part is, he writes 'inflammatory' articles about every tech company. Hell he wrote one about microsoft a few weeks ago. Some mac users just get pissed off because they define their l

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Ever ask yourself how so many Dvorak posts end of on the front page of Slashdot?

        Slashdot owes it's success to posting trolls on it's front page all day, every day.

        These Dvorak columns got huge comment responses across every Mac-oriented tech site, ZDNet would be really stupid to be paying people to post them. The slashvertisements are for the random hardware products that get posted or the crappy unknown hardware review sites.

    • Re:I've said it before (Score:5, Insightful)

      by telbij ( 465356 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:34PM (#15509702)
      We used to be able to pretend it was the editors foisting him upon us... but lo' and behold, democratic Digg comes along, and he still makes the front page!

      No, this is backwards. The unwashed masses will never be collectively smart enough to distinguish a troll, statistical certainty and all that. This is the purpose of editorial control, to go beyond the bell curve. Dvorak can be kept off /. All that we need is to convince the few editors that he is, in fact, a full-time troll, And that his rantings do not deserve a place on the front page because they are neither news, nor are they 'stuff that matters'. Unfortunately I think a successful troll is just as good for /. as it is for Dvorak's employers, so there's little incentive for them to change. We can always dream though.

    • Re:I've said it before (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:58PM (#15509794)
      Dvorak writes a lot of different stuff, including some real journalism and technology analysis. But his best known work, and that which I am sure earns him his bread-and-butter, is technology gossip. Like every gossip column ever written since the first traveling minstrel appeared on the scene 30,000 years ago, Dvoark's gossip columns consist of a mixture of truth, exaggeration, spin (whether planted by the technology companies or generated by Dvorak himself), trolling, and some totally made-up stuff.

      For example, Dvorak has been trying to force the monitor companies to bring new technologies to market for at least the last 20 years. That is why he hypes-Hypes-HYPES any rumour of a new display technoloy (seen that 300 dpi Texas Instruments display he reported "almost ready for production" in 1995 yet?). 40% truth, 40% exaggeration, 20% Dvorak-generated spin.

      But as I said, that is how gossip columns of any kind work. Don't like it, don't read it.

      sPh

  • Disgraceful (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:00PM (#15509527) Homepage
    Next you will be telling me that Ann Coulter only accuses the 9/11 widows of enjoying the death of their spouses to get attention.

  • Who hasn't (Score:3, Interesting)

    by packetmon ( 977047 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:03PM (#15509546) Homepage
    ? Well? Anyone? Who hasn't trolled up an issue to some extent to get a fix on a certain group of individuals. Military does it, businesses do it, news agencies do it, and the list goes on and on...

    There's No Such Thing as Overconfidence

    The best in every business are likely to strike most people as irrationally confident, but that's how they got to the top.

    Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Michael Dell -- they first believed in themselves, utterly, and let their belief be their guide. Sure they experienced numerous obstacles and setbacks and failures. Confidence allowed them to keep getting up and looking for ways to move forward.

    Most importantly, leaders like Branson and Gates prioritized believing in the people around them. Confidence is also not arrogance, and unless your employees think that they're better human beings in general than everyone else, let them believe that they're good enough to do exceptional things.

    Legends Never Say They're Sorry

    Having a long or frequent memory for mistakes and a short or infrequent memory for successes is a guaranteed way to develop fear of failure. High achievers dwell on what they do well -- and spend very little time evaluating themselves and their performances.

    Learn from your mistakes? Of course. The road to success is full of adversity from which we can gain significant insight. The key, however, is to set aside specific, deliberate times for evaluation. Process setbacks, errors, and your performance in general only at times when you have planned to.

    The alternative is to get caught up in second-guessing, doubt, and worry whenever things look a bit gray. You excel during the tough moments by having a positive blueprint to look at -- and to have a positive blueprint, you have to spend a lot of time looking at the image of success.

    ... REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY FOR SUCCESS [thewinningattitude.net]
  • Cowboy Neal in Slashdot troll shocker! Read all about it for only $19.99 at all good book stores

  • Trolling? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:06PM (#15509561) Journal
    The thing is though one has to understand that the Mac community is a tiered structure. At the top there are we Mac users who are experienced computer users, who understand what we are doing and how computers and operating systems work and accept the existence of things such as 'bugs' and 'vulnerabilities' etc.

    Unfortunately the thing that gives us all a bad name are the very vocal ignorant users that for example simply flat out refuse to accept any criticism of Apple or it's products whatsoever - in fact I'd go as far to say it becomes a religious issue as no matter how much evidence they are confronted with, they either are not capable of comprehending what is being presented to them or if they are, refuse to even consider it as this could mean Apple *might* be wrong and as they know, this cannot possibly happen as they consider Apple infallible.

    Very, very odd behaviour and quite annoying as for example, should I attempt to get someone to consider a Mac, all it takes is someone they know who has 'heard about those Mac zealots' to put them off.

    Consider also that any comment on apple.slashdot that however truthful, might mention a bug or vulnerability or other otherwise is perceived as a criticism gets modded as troll or flamebait (like this comment for example), tells a lot about the community.

    • Re:Trolling? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:35PM (#15509706) Journal
      The thing is though one has to understand that the Mac community is a tiered structure. At the top ...

      Interesting post. If you look at the Mac Community 10 years ago, the "Top technical elite" had almost entirely bailed off the platform.

      It was the "very vocal ignorant" zealot-type users that pulled Apple through their dark days. They felt that Apple was getting a bad rap in the press (although it was deserved IMO), and formed this "Evangilista" group which involved flooding the airwaves with denials and counter-arguments to any bit of news which might be perceived as a negative to Apple. The fact that Apple rebounded just validated this behavior and mandated that it must continue.

      So, when the technical users returned for the nice UI and Unix-underpinnings of OS X, they're probably scratching their heads over why every silly little Apple lawsuit is worthy of essays worth of Brand-Loyalist attention, or even makes the papers at all. But at this point everyone in the computing press (not just Dvorak) understands that riling up Mac users = Page Hits and Attention. That is why ever little bit of minor Mac news becomes a major trade story.

      Another issue is that Apple themselves thrives off these super-loyalists. A key element of their product strategy is based on the fact that there's a large group of wealthy Appleites that will buy anything they put out for a maximum premium. I saw these stats [omnigroup.com] recently that showed that over 40% of Omni users are already running on Intel Macs. Omni is a small developer favored by the super-loyalists, but that's an astounding level of uptake even among that crowd. So, tossing the zealots an occasional pile of red meat really only helps Apple.

      I suspect, but can't prove, that the "Evangilista" still exists (formally or infomally, sponsord by Apple or not). There's several Slashot users that one can count on only seeing when there's some bad Apple news to spin.
      • In all fairness, the new intel macs represent a MASSIVE leap forward in terms of speed and flexibility of a system. The laptops were stagnant as hell, with Apple trying to squeeze years of extra life out of the G4, a processor that should have died a long time ago. I had a G4 ibook, and upgraded to a 13" macbook the week it came out - even with the stock 512 megs of Ram, and the shitty intel integrated graphics, my macbook is faster than my ibook...

        and the macbook is running two OSes at once via parallels
        • Oh, I agree that the Intel Macs are sweet machines -- and the G4 PowerBook upgrade curve was so bleh that there was probably massive pent up demand for fast laptops.

          But even in the PowerPC dark days I observed this behavior among certain users. There's several people I know who continually rotate through multiple Macs and iPods, just because that's a convienent way to spend their (inherited) savings. I don't care what the resale value is, selling a PB 1.3Ghz and buying a 1.5Ghz, or buying a G4 Mini "because
          • Actually, there is financial sense to rotating thru gadgets. My brother-in-law, who is not a Mac head, does this with his gadgets and always has the latest and greatest. He sells a gadget every six months to a year on ebay and buys a new one, taking an average of 20% loss (guessing here). He puts about $500 into new gadgets every year, beyond what he recoups on ebay.
      • I suspect, but can't prove, that the "Evangilista" still exists (formally or infomally, sponsord by Apple or not). There's several Slashot users that one can count on only seeing when there's some bad Apple news to spin.


        Hey, I post at other times too! :)
      • If you look at the Mac Community 10 years ago, the "Top technical elite" had almost entirely bailed off the platform.

        There's some truth to this, but only some truth..

        Of the senior people I work with who were on Macs 10 years ago, at least 50% are still there, and recently some that moved on to Windows are seriously considering moving back. And I'm talking about people like chief engineers, tech directors, etc; not just "old farts" who were unwilling to learn new technologies. Where I used to work, on a "p

        • Yup, as you admit, you are a "super-loyalist". MacOS was a complete shitfest in the late 90s ... even regular users were getting fed-up, the techies were long gone. I do find it kind of humorus that your types are still desperately trying to rewrite the history of MacOS8 vs WinNT, but I don't think you'll get very far outside of the Evangalistas.

          Anyway, thank you for providing an object example to my point about Applenuts that will post essays to counter the slightest infraction.

          Mac Users list had an avera
          • MacOS was a complete shitfest in the late 90s ... even regular users were getting fed-up, the techies were long gone. I do find it kind of humorus that your types are still desperately trying to rewrite the history of MacOS8 vs WinNT, but I don't think you'll get very far outside of the Evangalistas.

            This is a little simplistic. Even in the Mac OS 8/9 era (before OS X became usable for mainstream purposes with Jaguar), which is when Mac OS was technically most embarrassing, there were legitimate uses for i

      • Re:Trolling? (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If you look at the Mac Community 10 years ago, the "Top technical elite" had almost entirely bailed off the platform.

        Yep. We were all on NeXTSTEP.

      • Re:Trolling? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by FangVT ( 144970 )
        There's several Slashot [sic] users that one can count on only seeing when there's some bad Apple news to spin.

        I agree with most all of your post, but on this point I'd like to make it clear that there are Slashdot users that can be counted on both pro and con. Every story brings out the apologists, the attackers and the defenders, as well as both the informed and the uniformed.

    • I ran into this on the macrumors forums just yesterday. There was an article about that DRM protest, and these rabid fanbois were FOAMING AT THE MOUTH defending DRM. It was unreal to see a bunch of people who so strongly supported DRM. In fact, outside of someone who PROFITS from DRM, these idiots were the only people I've EVER seen defend that bullshit. It was really mind-blowing.

      A lot of my friends accuse me of being a mac fanboy, or even a zealot, because I strongly believe the platform is superior a

      • Re:Trolling? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @02:08PM (#15509834) Journal
        There is some rational basis for Mac users defending iTunes DRM -- it runs on Macs while the others don't. After a decade of seeing Macs being cut out of one market or another, having an Apple technology ontop in one segement is small victory. I'm not saying that justifies the extermism, but it does explain it.

    • Re:Trolling? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Handover Phist ( 932667 )
      Thank god us Linux users dont have to put up with that sort of thing!

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:06PM (#15509565)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I see your point, but one thing glossed over by your analogy is the fact that Ted Rall (whom I think is almost never funny, and is relatively unknown) doesn't show up regularly on television, spewing his ill-informed hatred of his perceived political enemies. Coulter does. I guess my point is that the idea that people can become popular by being outrageous is not really accurate; they can do that if and only if they are aided and abetted by the owners of the media outlet they rely on.

  • So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eagl ( 86459 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:07PM (#15509569) Journal
    In other news, slashdot posters guilty of posting comments intended to spark debate and foster discussion of interesting topics!

    It's sort of like accusing a congressman of creating and passing good legislation because he has a secret desire to get re-elected, or accusing someone of going to work to get paid. Imagine the nerve of some people!

  • advertising, not "stats" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:09PM (#15509581)

    [SNIP]Dave Winer has Dvorak on video describing his methodology for trolling the Mac community to pump up his stats." [SNIP] I have to admit I'm also guilty of posting the occasional inflammatory story, but I find it's usually best to suffix the title with a question mark, and let our ever-knowledgeable readers hash out the issue and decide for themselves.

    You do it for the same reason Dvorak did it. Not to boost "stats"- to boost advertising revenue by increasign page hits. A 300-post thread is thrilling advertising-wise compared to a 30-comment thread. It's always about increasing advertising revenues.

    The evil "main stream media" has a term for it: sensationalism. You should attract readers via the quality of your content, not its controversialism. These days I see the average tech story on the homepage of my city's newspaper 1, 2, 3 days before it hits slashdot- and half the time, it's an AP wire story! Gone are the days when the media outlets didn't have contacts in the tech industry or didn't "understand" it. Slashdot's become a real bore, and the quality of commentary both on the part of editors and readers has gone straight downhill.

  • Slashdotted, see it on YouTube (Score:4, Informative)

    by tdvaughan ( 582870 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:10PM (#15509591) Homepage
    Link to the video [youtube.com]. The sound was out of sync for me, but he basically comes across as a smug arse.
    • this is standard procedure for dvorak --- if you don't believe me, listen to the "this week in tech" (aka twit) podcast. as far as i'm concerned, he gets filed together with used car sales people and 97% of politicians under "people i may or may not swerve to avoid on the street"

  • The question mark (Score:3, Insightful)

    by trifish ( 826353 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:10PM (#15509592)
    but I find it's usually best to suffix the title with a question mark, and let our ever-knowledgeable readers hash out the issue and decide for themselves.

    Which is, unfortunately, the case with many Slashdot (and most Digg) stories. As soon as I see a sensationalistic title ending with a question mark, I automatically skip to the next story.
    • As soon as I see a sensationalistic title ending with a question mark, I automatically skip to the next story.

      He fooled you this time by leaving off the question mark.

      KFG

  • Question Mark ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:11PM (#15509594)

    I have to admit I'm also guilty of posting the occasional inflammatory story, but I find it's usually best to suffix the title with a question mark, and let our ever-knowledgeable readers hash out the issue and decide for themselves.
    Ohwait, make that : Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users ?

    :D

  • Brace yourselves (Score:5, Funny)

    by BMonger ( 68213 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:14PM (#15509610)
    Dvorak admits to trolling Mac users and Rosen admits the RIAA is wrong... apparently they know the second coming is happening soon and want to get some things off their chest.

    REPENT I SAY!

  • Breaking News! You won't believe it! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:18PM (#15509631) Homepage Journal
    Actually, this does remind me of one of those stories where someone does a scientific study to find out something that "everyone already knows."

    Except, of course, we didn't all know it before, we suspected it, and assumed it was true. Every once in a while you find out that something "everyone knows" isn't true after all [snopes.com], so getting confirmation does have value.

  • Has CowboyNeal stopped beating his wife? (Score:5, Funny)

    by identity0 ( 77976 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:18PM (#15509635) Journal
    We Slashdot users, of course, will never stoop to such measures just to get modded up :)
  • Two things...

    First, do we have a confirmed source for this? The YoutTube video is INCREDIBLY out of sync. Can anybody confirm that it is indeed him speaking and not someone doing a voice-over?

    My second question is, now that Cowboy Neal himself has commented on this, does that mean Slashdot editors will stop posting his stories finally? Something inside tells me it won't change a damn thing because much like Dvorak, Slashdot also gets large amounts of revenue from posting his trolling stories.

  • This video is a troll on the Mac community.

    -ch

  • Trolling Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PhreakinPenguin ( 454482 ) * on Saturday June 10, 2006 @01:54PM (#15509776) Homepage Journal
    Trolling is nothing new especially when you look right here on Slashdot every day. What gets Slashdot the most pageviews? Stories about Microsoft. The anti MS people comment like crazy while the pro MS people do the same. I swear there could be a story about finding a cure for cancer above a story about Microsoft and the Microsoft story would have more comments.

    • Re:Trolling Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joe 155 ( 937621 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @02:35PM (#15509937) Journal
      in all fairness there is very little to say about a cure for cancer if it turns out to be true other than "good. glad we figured this one out" - it hardly makes for interesting comments. Now a good ol' troll on MS can lead to thousands of opinions and is really the basis of pretty much all tech discussions... which is why we find it so easy to talk about

  • Dave Winer has Dvorak on video

    Calculating hatred ratio, Winer:Dvorak...

    Warning: overflow
    Warning: overflow
    Warning: overflow
    Warning: overflow
    DOES NOT COMPUTE! ERRORRR!!@@
  • Nothing gets people reading like a controversial opinion. When ad services pay per view, writing something that goes against popular opinion and getting it posted endlessly on "I can't believe this guy" theads on forums. Who cares if you have to write something that isn't inline with your own views if it can earn you a quick buck?

  • Horse's mouth? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dorsai65 ( 804760 ) <dkmerriman@@@gmail...com> on Saturday June 10, 2006 @02:36PM (#15509941) Homepage Journal
    Or was that the other end of the horse?
  • After this story how many more reasons does Slashdot need to stop posting stories by or about Dvorak?

    Just stop. There is plenty of tech news from legitimate sources.

  • Dvorak Screws PC Advertisers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sakusha ( 441986 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @02:43PM (#15509965)
    I said it before and I'll say it again: Dvorak is deliberately screwing the advertisers that pay for his web hits.

    Dvorak publishes on PC-centric websites, but he trolls Mac users for hits. The PC advertisers are getting screwed, they pay for advertising to PC buyers, Mac users aren't the target audience. The trolling articles draw a massive influx of Mac users, the PC advertisers pay for all those hits from people that will never buy their products.

    The only way Dvorak is going to stop trolling is if the PC advertisers wake up and realize their money is being wasted by a maniac that values his own ego more than he provides value for advertisers.
    • "I said it before and I'll say it again: Dvorak is deliberately screwing the advertisers that pay for his web hits."

      OK everyone, let's shed a tear for the poor advertisers.

      Hey, where did everyone go?!?

      Advertisers aren't innocents. If they get hurt, they went in with their eyes open.....
  • I like Dvorak. He's a smart & funny guy.

  • If Dvorak was smart, he'd get a patent for that word quickly, then sell the rights to Steve Jobs for use in his next MacWorld keynote. You know, the one where Apple is going to announce they are purchasing the country of China, and setting up a new Mac store on Europa?

  • What's the right course of action (Score:4, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @03:05PM (#15510047)
    Reporters are not supposed to troll, they are supposed to at least believe what they say is correct (even if it's not).

    When John Dvorak writes his typical troll stories, potentially millions of people not familiar with the phenomenon John Dvorak take the article at face value and form opinion of people and products that affect their purchase choice and they also share the misinformation with other people.

    Tell a lie enough times, and it stops being a lie in people's minds.

    So are "Mac zealots" to be mocked about reacting strongly to lies spread in the media, or should the liears not exist in first place?

    It's not so funny that media use misinformation just to drive ad impressions up. That's really low of them.

  • Mac Users Admit To Ignoring Dvorak (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DaddyBird ( 629784 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @03:16PM (#15510080)
    editing: "Tech pundit John Dvorak has long been known for his lame and baseless opinions."
    ... and generating traffic from Mac and PC users as vacuous as he is.

    If Slashdot didn't occasionally regurgitate his vapor I wouldn't know that he was still around.

  • Transcript of the video (Score:4, Informative)

    by InakaBoyJoe ( 687694 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @03:47PM (#15510183)
    Here's the transcript of the video. Note that the audio is out of sync on the BitTorrent version too.

    ---------
    (Dvorak): ... there's a formula for pissing off Macintosh users and getting a lot of links or attention. And this has been deconstructed, but never accurately. I'm going to give you the deconstruction.

    First, I write something that would be semi-innocuous, with just enough insulting stuff to get a lot of attention from the Macintosh community. So then they would write in -- and by the way, it would always be done in such a way that I had outs -- in other words, I would write in kind of a leisurely way. That would get me one column with a lot of numbers.

    Then I'd get a lot of hate mail, and all kinds of weird Macintosh reaction. And then, I would react to it as though I was flabbergasted that everybody misterpreted me, and that they hated it, and I don't get it, and what's wrong with these people ... which would piss them off even more.

    So I'd get like huge hits ...

    (Interviewer): So what was the point of all this?

    (Dvorak): Now wait a minute. For numbers!

    (Interviewer): Which numbers -- exactly, what numbers are you looking for?

    (Dvorak): I get them. Believe me. Lots of numbers.

    Now, then I let it simmer down for a while, and then whatever position I took originally, I would change the position exactly the opposite, and tell the Macintosh people I was completely wrong, and they were write all along, and the numbers would go through the ceiling!! Haha!

  • The speed of news reporting on /. is amazing... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wkcole ( 644783 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @04:06PM (#15510253)

    It was only about 20 years ago that Z-D tasked Dvorak with trolling Mac users as the inside back cover columnist for the old MacUser, where he openly admitted to writing things to inflame Mac users enough that they'd have to buy the magazine just to have reference for their 10-page crayon screeds to the editors against him. And if ancient history and paper is too hard, he has said what he said to Winer oon at least a half-dozen TWiT podcasts over the past year. This is not news, it is Dvorak stating an obvious truth for the umpteenth time. He is apparently still getting a chuckle from the fact that some people who take everything too seriously (e.g. Dave Winer) still don't get the joke after having it explained to them repeatedly over decades. If Winer really thinks this is some great revelation of sin, he's got his head further inserted than ever.

    It is the job of anyone who writes for ad-supported media to attract eyeballs, and Dvorak has never been ashamed of doing that job. Being scandalized by his honesty says a lot more about the intelligence (or maybe integrity) of those who are scandalized than it says about Dvorak.

  • And the Nobel price for egoism goes to... DVORAK!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lactoso ( 853587 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @04:09PM (#15510255) Homepage
    My favorite part about this video is how even in his 'coming clean', he's really only correcting the people who have incorrectly 'deconstructed' his trolling methodology before.

    He mentions that in the first five seconds of the vid.

    If Dvorak was a serial killer, he'd be the one that's caught because he's just so damn proud of his body of work and smug enough to want to get caught so that he could explain to the great unwashed masses how brilliant he really is (not that it would help, because there's only so much the great unwashed can comprehend...).

  • I wonder how many hits his site will get as people visit just to complain about the movie?

  • So this is why... (Score:3, Funny)

    by chemindefer ( 707238 ) on Saturday June 10, 2006 @11:51PM (#15511534)
    Macs don't come with Dvorak keyboards.

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