Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Dvorak Adores YouTube

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the and-someday-we'll-have-a-real-business-model dept.

prostoalex writes "MarketWatch columnist John C. Dvorak tells the public to stop fretting about YouTube's business model and just start enjoying the functionality: "Since I like to run videos on my blog this turns out to be a great way to both transcode and save bandwidth since YouTube picks up the tab on the video stream. Would I pay for this service, yes. I have seriously looked at the alternatives to YouTube. With no exceptions they are all flawed.""

2 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Oh Dvorak! by Jboost · · Score: 5, Informative
    Geez, who let Dvorak out of his cage?

    Some sites require endless forms to fill out. Others, such as copycat newcomer Metacafe which cannot even transcode the ubiquitous MOV file, are useless for personal digital cam vids.
    Other sites have weird limitations or do not provide embedding code. It's one thing or another.
    One of the community video sites for "citizen journalists" wants the hapless user to transcode the video themselves before uploading it. Most people don't have a clue how to do that. Even Google can't get it right.
    Youtube: founded February 2005.
    Metacafe: founded July 2003.

    And QuickTime files do not work well with YouTube, most of the time you end up with poor audio/video synchronization.
    Another great article John!
  2. Re:Uh oh by badasscat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Who is Dvorak?

    Ladies and gentlemen, we have a n00b among us. Be gentle.

    John Dvorak is not "just" a columnist, he's probably at least among the original columnists of the computer world. He's been writing for PC Magazine for as long as I can remember, including during its heyday when it was basically the reference of the industry.

    For a few years during that time (and maybe even still), he had a column where he did nothing but throw out one-sentence predictions. Back then, he would have written something like "by next year, Apple will have switched to Intel CPU's" and people would have gone nuts on him. He made a lot of really outlandish predictions, but for a while it seemed like almost all of them were coming true. So people started paying attention. If you wanted to know where the industry was headed, no matter how unlikely it seemed, you read Dvorak. He got a lot of props because he made those true predictions that nobody else would make. Everybody else in the PC industry - even in PC Magazine - was very conservative about where the industry was headed at that time. They thought the industry had matured and was basically immune to further major upheavals. Dvorak knew better.

    Of course, nowadays, he's basically a troll. He still throws out the occasional insight and has the occasional correct prediction, but over time he's morphed into the guy who just says outlandish things to get web site hits. This probably happened because of all the hate mail he used to get about his off-the-wall predictions. Over time, he seemed to grow to like playing the maverick. It wasn't his intent to do so originally, but now he's basically just playing a role. He's intentionally trying to incite.

    So, these days you read him and take what he says with a grain of salt. Or just don't read him at all. But there are good reasons why there are people that pay attention to what he says.