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Dave Winer Is An Idiot

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As you might have guessed from the title of this post, I started off writing a big tirade about this. After thinking about it a bit, I decided I'd rather say this:

I have been lucky enough to meet many of the "big names" in our particular corner of the industry. I will admit to being slightly taken aback when my DevelopMentor interview/audition was with Don Box, Chris Sells, Keith Brown, Ted Pattison, and Brent Rector. "I've read these guys' books! I've seen them speak at conferences!"

Having been lucky enough to associate with these sorts of people for the last few years, I've come to realize that they're just people. Duh, of course, but it's one thing to know something, and another to Know it. Anyway, I can tell you right now that they make mistakes. They have lapses in judgement. They take erroneous stances on certain points. At the end of the day, it comes down to this: what is the quality of their work? Not "How famous are they?"

I'm not going to speak to Mr. Winer's overall quality of work - opinions on that are well documented elsewhere. But I will say this: I've disliked Radio almost from the moment I installed it. I strongly suspect that it was responsible for the recent deletion of my entire website. It's low-quality software. So I'm going to make an effort to switch this blog to something that Dave didn't have a hand in. I don't know if I'll get to it this week, but I hope so.

Posted Apr 20 2003, 01:51 PM by craig-andera

Comments

Alex wrote re:
on 04-20-2003 1:16 PM
here is a 3d engine in the .net framework that uses the CsGL

Craig Andera wrote re:
on 04-20-2003 1:30 PM
Interesting. You probably mean to respond to the OpenGL post, but we'll just blame Radio. ;)
Anonymous wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 5:01 AM
I've switched from Radio to Blogger Pro with fairly good results, and a much lower frustration level.
Craig Andera wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 5:54 AM
I'll add it to the list of things to look at. Thanks for the tip!
David Stone wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 6:33 AM
If staff.develop.com is running ASP.NET, you could use BlogX.
Mark Morgan wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 6:34 AM
Craig--since you already own a copy of Radio, you might consider using Conversant. I am not an employee of the company, just a very happy user.

Craig Andera wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 6:49 AM
We are indeed running ASP.NET - some of the other guys are using BlogX. It's one of the things I'm going to check out.

Craig Andera wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 6:53 AM
Hmm. Near as I can tell the free Conversant stuff gives them the right to censor me. And doesn't host on staff.develop.com. Both of those make it a non-starter.

Mark Morgan wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 9:13 AM
I can understand your reluctance, but I wouldn't be the self-appointed Conversant Evangelist if I didn't give it a shot, now, would I? I've never been censored by Macrobyte, but then you only have my word on that.

Mark Morgan wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 9:13 AM
I can understand your reluctance, but I wouldn't be the self-appointed Conversant Evangelist if I didn't give it a shot, now, would I? I've never been censored by Macrobyte, but then you only have my word on that.

Mark Morgan wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 9:14 AM
Note to self: submit != clickagainandagainimpatiently.
Craig Andera wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 9:24 AM
:)

Mark Morgan wrote re:
on 04-21-2003 12:24 PM
You can use Radio to connect to Conversant through an XML-RPC interface. http://xmlrpc.free-conversant.com/ As a non-programmer I find it funny that you can use Radio to both run Conversant, and as an offline editing tool. (There is also a tool called Sid--http://sid.redmonk.net/--made by long time Frontier programmer Steve Ivy. I know absolutely nothing else about it.)

Craig Andera wrote re:
on 04-22-2003 2:59 AM
Re: Conversant. It's too expensive for what I want, I think. Sounds like a fantastic product, though! And offline editing via Radio would sort of defeat the purpose. :)

Mark Morgan wrote re:
on 04-22-2003 3:37 AM
There's no relationship between Userland and Macrobyte save MR and other Conversant users paying for a bunch of Radio and Frontier licenses. I have found in the past that I have to explain to people that Conversant is not "Manila++"--hence that long post at Becoming Conversant about how's it's a platform and groupware and other such content-free jargon. I have also found that people mistakenly assume, since Conversant runs overtop of Radio or Frontier that they have traded any personality problems they have with the latter for the same problems with the former, 'sall.

Craig Andera wrote re:
on 04-22-2003 4:45 AM
Cool. I appreciate the education - thanks.
Bill Kearney wrote re:
on 04-22-2003 5:46 AM
This is the same conundrum that consumes people regarding microsoft. While they might want to use a product, it's underlying use of a certain vendor's product is an unacceptable requirement. They won't use it because it requires purchase of something from a vendor that they despise.
Mark Morgan wrote re:
on 04-22-2003 6:50 AM
Bill, again: I've never had any contact with Dave Winer in the course of my use of Conversant, and as far as I know nobody with their own Conversant installation (as opposed to hosting) ever has.

Andrew Grumet wrote re:
on 04-22-2003 6:58 AM
I'm surprised no one has brought up Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/). Perhaps that's totally obvious given the context of this post. In any case MT is worth looking at if only to learn more about the possible set of features and user interfaces. I chose MT because of its maturity and because it's hackable and written in a language that I already know (Perl). People say that Radio is source-available, but as far as I can tell (perhaps Dave can correct me), you need to buy Frontier (USD $899) if you want to hack it. On the down side, I find MT's server-based authoring a bit clunky -- Radio is much more responsive. In theory this can be remedied by using a desktop-based tool and hooking into MT's XML-RPC interface, but I haven't gotten around to making that work.

Vince Williams wrote re: Dave Winer Is An Idiot
on 09-11-2005 7:40 AM
Dave Winer has cynically dumped his vaunted principles before, so it doesn't surprise me that he might issue buggy software.

Dave really was a pioneer in software, and it's wrongheaded to denigrate his actual accomplishments.

Somewhere along the way, the Founding Father became the Juvenile Delinquent of the Internet, upsetting the community with his abusive outbursts. He seems to have no shame.
Umberto Llama's wife said," Dave is a smart guy, but he has a social IQ of 0".

And his Google karma is really funny. I wonder if there's a relationship between his social IQ and his page rankings? I'm working on an equation.



Vince Williams wrote re: Dave Winer Is An Idiot
on 09-11-2005 7:54 AM
Postscript to my last comment:

If you'd like more information about Dave Winer's underground activities, start by Googling "The GreatVavaVoom". Mr.Voom, aka Ken Kiesler, was Dave Winer's uncle ,and an interesting character in his own right.
Vince Williams wrote Dave Winer's Uncles
on 10-06-2005 6:55 PM
Dave Winer followed the patriarchal template
to create his persona:

the nerdish hipster.

It's spoiled by his penchant for abusive outbursts, followed by a revisionist calm.

Give Winer a fat cigar and some coke,
and you have a reasonable facsimile of
Sigmund Freud,
minus the human insight.

Now, if Dave wants to do some really serious
myth creation, a la Mark Twain,
he needs to write his autobiography.

Just stuff it as full of bullshit as possible,
like a hot sausage into its casing,
till it's near bursting...
and be sure to throw in a few statuesque "babes", Dave.

Who knows?

Maybe you can even work Joan Baez into it, somehow.

Will you put Leonardo di Caprio in it,
for me, please?

Say thank you, Dave Winer, to your
uncles VavaVoom and Arno.



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