Dvorak Adores YouTube

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.""

Oh Dvorak!

[Jboost]

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!

blip.tv

[Anonymous Coward]

all the alternatives are bad and flawed??? You must be kidding or have never heard of blip.tv. they are a great service and are helpful beyond belief. heck... even cnn uses them for video transcoding and uploading.

Give Dvorak articles a category, please!

[jesterzog]

How long until Slashdot can get a category for articles by Dvorak? I'd really like the opportunity to be able to filter his stories from my front page.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Your Perspective Is Stupid

[monoqlith]

To crystallize: the response that I made to *your* comment was arguing against *you*, and as far as I know you are not the top poster. Refer to my original reply, the one marked "Your Perspective is Stupid." Moreover, the top poster seemed to imply an entailment between bullet 3. and 4. meaning he can't watch YouTube videos, so therefore he doesn't want to, and then followed it up by saying "Why should I upload videos to YouTube?" as if it was YouTube's duty to accomodate his decision to not install Flash or convince him to use YouTube. The answer seemed self-evident: you shouldn't upload videos to YouTube if you don't want to.

Again, my reply was "If you don't want to install Flash, fine." That's your choice. So this whole argument is built on a straw man - basically framing the argument as if I said that you shouldn't be refusing and that you should download Flash to download YouTube videos. All I said was YouTube doesn't have to cater to you personally.

The word "coerce" has a connotation of forcing someone into an unfair agreement. More weakly, it has the connotation of compelling someone to enter into an agreement. In that sense all agreements are coercions. If YouTube forced you to download an open source, free player to enjoy its content, that would be a coercion too.

Users are being "coerced" in the sense that they are being offered something by YouTube - namely free content - at the same time as being compelled to agree to download the free Flash player to enjoy this content. The Flash player runs on all three major operating systems - Linux, Mac, and Windows. Are you unhappy about this "coercion?" Who is losing anything in that transaction, besides the people whose choice it is not to install Flash? It's not really YouTube's failing if they would rather guarantee cross-browser compatibility by choosing a standard interface that is guaranteed to play inside 99% of browsers, stably, and well, and by choosing how their content is delivered - that is, via a reliable, quick, cross-platform, easy-to-use streaming Flash application. That would be one of the great draws of YouTube, after all. Its flash player.

You have to decide what you're arguing against. Are you suggesting that YouTube should switch away from Flash to accomodate your decision not to use Flash? Fine, then you also have to convince the 99% of people who are willing to download Flash that using Flash is not good for them. If you are just saying that you refuse to install Flash, good for you. It's not YouTube's responsibility to accomodate you.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of August Dvorak [wikipedia.org]- same namesake, wrong person.

Re:Uh oh

[badasscat]

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.