‘Tech Journalist Hit By Car’ — A number of people are doing send offs of InfoWorld which ends its print edition this week. This is probably one of the better obits and features a Dvorak anecdote that I do not personally recall, although it sounds like something I’d do. It should be noted that I was the editor during this era, not the managing editor who was John Barry. Infoworld will continue as an online publication.
IDG, publisher of the pioneering weekly tech magazine, has announced that April 2 will be the last print edition of the magazine. But it will continue to publish online. Infoworld was one of the first technology publications dating back to its start in 1979.
I really miss BYTE magazine. I remember reading the magazine cover to cover (including the advertisements) every month when I was in high school. My favorite part was Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor column.
Alas, it will be no more.
Thanks John. Fixed the managing editor reference. forgot Maggie was Editor in chief and you were Editor.
But yes, you definitely made the traffic comment. i was fairly new and inexperienced and briefly considered you might be serious :->
I find it mildly amusing that a “toilet” ad often crops up next to this post.
And I think I was serious.
Byte had an interesting history founded as a microcomputing mag with an amateur radio flavor. geared toward toward the techie.
Every so often someone from the past would blow some air into byte to bring it back to life.
One year Alix pournelle,Jerry Pounelle’s son and Daniel Dern handed out pocket protectors with the logo Byte is back.
Some of the brightest minds in the industy worked for both byte and infoworld. as mentioned Jerry Pournelle being one of them.
We’re getting old, guys. I suspect a lot of Dvorak Uncensored patrons never heard of BYTE or Jerry Pournelle or Chaos Manor.
Perhaps computers are finally emerging from the Model ‘A’ and Model ‘T’ days. In a lot of ways, that’s too bad!
[continued violation of posting guidelines]
To many memories…
the Old hacking mags, and hardware mags that Show’d you HOw to make a C64 555 interface…
16 pages of code to make Astro panic, and only 4 errors.
would love to try and get a few of those Old programs running on newer machines…
Byte died because it should have. When MFI brought Byte with others from McGraw-Hill, it was sinking fast. The good stuff had gone. Jerry Pournelle is like various kinds of ethnic foods, you love him or hate him.
InfoWorld, however, was a growing medium for editors and writers and thoughts. Their reviews were honest, if a bit juvenile. They had a great news crew, and matched wits with PCWeek before that publication jumped the shark by renaming itself eWeek. eWeek is still in print, but barely.
Soon, other IDG publications will be gone, like NetworkWorld and ComputerWorld. This is for a plainly simple reason: IDG is slimming down so that it can be sold. You read it here first.
I can *hear* John saying that!! A nice sendoff to an old favorite.
#7 I understand where you are coming from and sure if it was up to most of the old timers osborne and K-pro would rule the planet and we never would have progressed to the next level.
Way back when, config.sys and .bat files where as important as registry files are today.
I can’t honestly shoot an arrow at Jerry.
The man wrote the PC Bible for god sakes. and regarless of how much fun he was at a cocktail party he contributed allot.
The few times I bumped into him I just listened to what he had to say.
Dvorak on the other hand is a blast at parties…
HERE is a picture I took of Alex Pournelle 4 years ago
http://www.tcf.net/fossil_files/image016.jpg
I may have a picture floating around of John Dvorak with his wife back in the 90’s that I took with a film Camera.
Ugh..film cameras. DO NOT POST
They should have re-named it e-Infoworld first, then shut it down.