Gawker: valleywag, john dvorak

Why John C. Dvorak got busted for "hotlinking"

Jordan Golson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:45:09 EST

PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak's blog proudly displays an image labeled as "used without permission." Is Dvorak bragging about the copyright violation? Nope. He's just pulled a boneheaded move known in the blogging world as "hotlinking," and the altered image shows that he got caught at it.

There are a number of unwritten rules to blogging. One of the more common — and more grievous — violations is "hotlinking." This is when a blogger uses HTML code to display an image hosted on someone else's website. Though you haven't copied the image, some lawyers say displaying the image on another Web page could still be considered using the image without permission. More annoyingly, the image loads directly from the original server, using their bandwidth, not yours.

Now, in the age of cheap bandwidth and free picture hosting, this isn't as big a deal as it used to be, but it is a bit of a slap in the face to the person whose image is used. In a post about reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, one of Dvorak's editors hotlinked an image from a post by Mike Harding of Montara Energy ventures.

One way to rectify the situation is to email the hotlinker and ask him to stop. However, some people like to take this one step further. Because the photo is being loaded directly from the victim's site, he can easily change the image to something else, generally something offensive and Not Safe For Work ^TM as a punishment. Luckily for Dvorak though, as you can see above, Mike Harding merely put a notice in the image that it was being stolen.

Since then, however, Dvorak's post has changed the image so that it is now being hosted locally, but without any apology or explanation for their screwup. As Harding says in his post on the matter to Dvorak: "You're in the biz, you know better than this."

My favorite hotlinking story involves John McCain's MySpace page. Some intern in the McCain campaign took, without attribution, the MySpace profile design of Newsvine's Mike Davidson, including a hotlinked image from Davidson's account. Davidson replaced the image and suddenly McCain proclaimed his support for gay marriage, "particularly ... between passionate females." Sweet!

"Think of how cool it would be! Think of...

Jordan Golson — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:13:07 EST

"Think of how cool it would be! Think of how many families will get to experience the friendly spam-ridden Information Super Ad-way laced with Nigerian scams, hoaxes, porn, blogs, wikis, spam, urban folklore, misinformation, sites selling junk from China, bomb-making instructions, jihad initiatives, communist propaganda, Nazi propaganda, exhortations, movie clips of cats playing the piano, advertising, advertising, and more advertising. Do you now feel better about the world's problems, knowing that some poor tribesman's child has a laptop? What African kid doesn't want access to Slashdot?" — Professional contrarian John Dvorak on MIT do-gooder Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project. But John, think of the potential new readers for your column! [PC Magazine]

Dvorak on the Googlephone, the 100-word version

Paul Boutin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:46:34 EST

For all you crybabies who complained that we quoted him out of context mwah mwah mwah, here's the long version of the short version of the wit and wisdom of John C. Dvorak. The guy impresses me, to be honest. He's made a career of pretending to have idiotic, badly-written contrarian opinions. He drives irony-challenged tech workers berserk. Their angry clicks turn Johnny the C's publishers a tidy profit. And like skunk-chasing dogs, the geekboys come back for more. After the jump, a Dvorak twofer: He tees off Apple and Google kooks in one post. Which I've edited, so you can get back to work.

The iPhone is being used more as a photo album than a phone, from what I can tell. People need to do Web searches from their phone, so they can, uh, get directions to the restaurant? They can simply use the phone itself to call the restaurant and ask!
There are no Google fanboys. There are no Google addicts. I cannot see that ever changing. People have had eons to program for the Windows smartphones and nothing has come of it. What's so different now?

Bonus video: Dvorak explains his geek-baiting formula. Inside an Apple store.

Dvorak on Googlephone — the 7-word version

Paul Boutin — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:51:48 EST

I I've I I I me I

Fun Fact: Failed airport novelist John C. Dvorak did not invent the Dvorak keyboard.

PodTech escapees have lunch with the VJ

Owen Thomas — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 15:10:26 EDT

San Francisco videographers Irina Slutsky and Eddie Codel have broken ties, we hear, with troubled online-video network PodTech. So what were they doing lunching earlier in the week with PodShow executives Adam Curry, the former MTV video jockey, and John Dvorak, the faux-grouchy tech columnist? The foursome were spotted eating al fresco at a restaurant near AT&T Park. We'd make jokes about the frying pan and the fire, but from the looks of Codel in this photo snapped by a Valleywag informant, he's just happy to be eating a hot meal. Eddie, baby, call us up. Next lunch is on us.

PodTech contemplates "best tech show" — too late

Tim Faulkner — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:52:45 EDT

PodTech founder John Furrier, now that he has dethroned himself as CEO of the troubled Web-show network, has time to finally review the online-video competition. Referring to John Dvorak's CrankyGeeks, Furrier says, "Is this considered the best tech show on the net??? Time to think about doing a new tech show." John, while CrankyGeeks may not be the "best tech show on the net", it is better than PodTech's lineup of more than twenty tech shows. The time to think of a new tech show was a year ago, before you started firing your best tech-show video producers.

Loose wires: Hey, Macarena!

Nick Douglas — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:22:50 EDT

Microsoft's aging founder can bust a move. Pop star Christina Milian says about performing at a recent party, "Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, was dancing to my music and he was probably the only one boogieing." Later, he sang "My Way." I wish I was joking. [Starpulse, photo by Niall Kennedy]
Columnist John Dvorak's new new strategy: Ignore all economic factors of a situation, naysay the rest of the press, and pretend the explosive growth doesn't resemble, like, every company in the first boom. [MarketWatch]
The San Fran Chronicle reviews a book that sees Silicon Valley's "brain drain" as redistributed wealth, teach-a-man-to-fish style. [SF Chronicle]
An old patent for contextual advertising is up for auction among the assets of a dot-com bomb. Should Google and Yahoo be worried, or is this patent only worth the clerk who filed it? [Patent Prospector]
The 2007 SXSW Panel Picker — a place to choose the coolest panels for next year's Austin tech conference, or a great chance to snicker at people's lousy panel suggestions. [SXSW.com]