John C. Dvorak

dvorak.org · Personal blog · on HN since 2008

John C. Dvorak, a longtime tech columnist and podcaster, writes about computing history, the tech industry, and security news.

What HN saysHN links it for his computing history pieces, such as on Burroughs machines, and for his posts on Chinese cyber operations.
26HN people shared it
9linked it in comments
17stories submitted
645story points
8 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026

Most-shared posts

  1. 1
    What ever happened to Wordstar?
    2 people · 235 points · first shared 2016 · 169 comments on HN
  2. 2
    IBM and the Seven Dwarfs
    2 people · 19 points · first shared 2010 · 4 comments on HN
  3. 3
    Blog
    2 people · first shared 2018
  4. 4
    Is US Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra a Phony?
    1 people · 157 points · first shared 2009 · 89 comments on HN
  5. 5
    Spam Filtering Service Had Access to Clinton Emails
    1 people · 71 points · first shared 2015 · 17 comments on HN
  6. 6
    Whatever Happened to MSX Computers?
    1 people · 58 points · first shared 2014 · 56 comments on HN
  7. 7
  8. 8
    The Cost Of A Long Life
    1 people · 23 points · first shared 2011 · 9 comments on HN
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  10. 10
    TSA Employee Caught Lifting iPads from Luggage
    1 people · 9 points · first shared 2012 · 3 comments on HN
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  15. 15
    The Philosophy of Star Trek
    1 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN

What HN people wrote when they linked it

profquail · 2010-01-19
Yep, here you go: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/01/13/chinas-sophistcated-hacker-army-… The FBI report estimates that since 2003, the Chinese Army has specifically developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese military cyberspies, plus more than 150,000 private-sector computer experts, whose mission is to steal American military and technological secrets and cause mischief in government and financial services.
dredmorbius · 2016-08-05
Jon, I've been looking into a lot of elements of information goods, and there are a few bits I'm coming to realise, slowly (it's only been 30 years I've been studying this). 1. Information is a public good. Nonrivalrous, only very difficultly excludable. Strong positive externalities. Hal Varian's got a good piece on this. Doesn't mean you cannot sell it, but it means that doing exclusively has serious negative effects. 2. Free-sample giveaways are almost always an excellent idea. John Dvorak's recent "Whatever Happened to Wordstar" had an excellent illustration of this: Worse, in 1985, the company produced Wordstar2000, a copy protected program that was nothing like the older lovable Wordstar and which contained annoying copy-protection features that scared most users away. While many pundits including Esther Dyson predicted great things for Wordstar2000, users rejected it. The product was big and slow and expensive. And despite complaints by the company and others, people wanted software they could copy and use on more than one machine. During this era piracy sold software and created market share. People would use a bootleg copy of Wordstar and eventually buy a copy. Wordstar may have been the most pirated software in the world, which in many ways accounted for its success. (Software companies don’t like to admit to this as a possibility.) Books for Wordstar sold like hot cakes and the authors knew they were selling documentation for pirated copies of Wordstar.…
Cullinet · 2022-02-04
John Dvorak has a interesting piece on Burroughs here : "The [ElectroData derived Burroughs 205] drum had two sections. The high speed access section which had each piece of data duplicated 10 times and offset on various bands on the drum to increase the access time by 10. Here the average data access time was .85 milliseconds." my mom performed her bank clerk job on Burroughs Adding Machines, in the early 50s. IBM famously was required to sign the 50 year Consent Decree for hobbling the 7 Dwarves by developing new machines using sales and supply contract deposit payments for vapor ware https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/ibm_and_the_1956_consent_decree http://www.dvorak.org/blog/ibm-and-the-seven-dwarfs-dwarf-one-burrough… edit : Dvorak auto correct on phone sorry
_mdpn · 2018-10-01
If you didn't know, he has a blog (http://www.dvorak.org/blog/) and is a co-host of the No Agenda Show Podcast (http://www.noagendashow.com/) and DHUnplugged (https://www.dhunplugged.com/)
luckyfish · 2011-03-27
mean revenue is ~$3000 per year, median is $682. [1] [1] http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/06/24/so-you-want-to-develop-iphone-ap…
jerf · 2010-12-13
Original opinion, since hardly anyone sees fit to link people to it: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/121310virginiahcrulin… (Personally, seeing as how the Commerce Clause already allows Congress to regulate a simple act of commerce between me and my literal neighbor with things like the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2008/12/24/new-overreaching-toy-testing-law… ) which has criminalized most garage sales, if the Commerce Act also empowers them to force me to engage in commerce with some entity, I'd like the Supreme Court, if it rules in favor of the government on this, to kindly provide some citations of things Congress is actually not allowed to do on account of the Commerce Clause, because I'm no longer able to come up with anything.)

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