[HN Gopher] Mike Mageek is dead
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Mike Mageek is dead
Author : dannyobrien
Score : 325 points
Date : 2024-08-18 21:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fudzilla.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fudzilla.com)
| kevml wrote:
| I've read the register throughout the years but I never thought
| much about the folks behind it. The obituary tells a wild story
| that was heartwarmingly written by a friend. Now I'm waiting for
| the biopic!
| rbanffy wrote:
| Weird, with Daniel Radcliffe playing Weird Al Yankovic, is
| probably the right tone for this one.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The Register is one of the few great iconoclastically cool news
| sites I am truly fond of and respect, in the company of Suck.com,
| FuckedCompany.com, and Morph's Output on the Information
| Superhighway. But unlike those historic news sites of yore, it's
| still somehow managed to say in business, and remains relevant
| and interesting, after all these years.
| godelmachine wrote:
| The Register is one of the few websites on the internet which
| makes tech articles worth reading. They make the reader realize
| the significance of tech, who might otherwise pass it off as
| nuances which only nerds should be aware of.
| RachelF wrote:
| Very true. Their journalists understand the technology they are
| writing about and explain it clearly. They also provide
| background and a bigger picture. One can view them as
| sceptical, perhaps even jaded hacks, but what they write
| generally stands the test of time.
|
| In my opinion, it is the best tech news website.
| nebulous1 wrote:
| Ultimately they drove me away by using too many "cute" names
| for tech companies.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I understand where you are coming from but silly stuff like
| that is one way to encourage what I am now going to call:
| "harmless tribalism".
|
| You may not be familiar with the extensive campaign to find a
| suitable name for Microsoft. The winner was Micros~1. It took
| quite a lot of discussion and once the winner was declared,
| most people hated it but it became the standard. That's the
| nature of proper, decent, discourse. People riffing on all
| sorts of stuff and basically having a laugh. No one was hurt
| and a lot of fruitful chat was had.
|
| Perhaps you are not familiar with this:
| https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-
| conver... That too was the result of a lot of banter and some
| quite scientific and mathematical digressions ensued.
|
| el Reg has changed. It is rather more "professional" these
| days or as we say in the trade "boring". However, it is still
| there and you never know, vestigil thingies can re-grow. It
| is certainly more alive than /. but it is bordering on
| lumbering around with its arms outstretched looking for
| brainzzzz.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| My! Favourite! Is! Still! How! Yahoo! Headlines! Were!
| Written!
|
| This seems to be a thing of the past, perhaps a consequence
| of Yahoo's sale to Verizon:
|
| <https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/03/yahoo_aol_apollo/>
|
| (The most recent occurrence I can find, dating to 2021-5-3.
| Despite the subhead.)
| lproven wrote:
| `MICROS~1` being how 32-bit Windows abbreviated the first
| file or folder named "Microsoft $BLAH" for 16-bit code.
|
| So while (IIRC) Office 95 installed into C:\Program
| Files\MSOffice (in DOS, "C:\PROGRA~1\MSOFFICE"), Office 97
| called its folder "Microsoft Office" which in DOS looked
| like C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1".
|
| The Inquirer's name for Microsoft was "the Vole". The
| British field vole's specific name is _Microtus agrestis._
|
| (Former Inq and current Reg writer here.)
| gerdesj wrote:
| Perhaps my zombie reference was a little harsh. el Reg is
| still close to the top of my bookmarks list and has been
| for over 20 years.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| Might be a British thing (assuming you're not?) in magazines
| with a tongue-in-cheek character. For example Private Eye
| always refer to "the Grauniad" and "Carter-Fuck"
| drbw wrote:
| Yeah, it was definitely inspired by the Eye.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Given the British influence on Iberian Penisula culture in
| computing, and the amount of BBC stuff we consume, I always
| have a special place for that kind of humour.
| nebulous1 wrote:
| Private Eye is a satirical magazine though. It's not a
| primary news source in the same way that The Register wants
| to be for tech news. At one point The Register would have
| been one of my primary news sources, with multiple visits
| daily. They definitely* ramped up their absurdist side some
| time in the 2010s. It's not that I'm specifically against
| satire, but for me they just overused it to the point where
| visiting their site was annoying.
|
| I guess that I should note that I haven't really looked at
| the site other than the odd linked article in probably
| close to a decade.
|
| * okay, not definitely, but that was my impression
| ccppurcell wrote:
| Do you read private eye? the satirical pieces are
| confined to a few pages in the middle, definitely not
| more than a third (maybe the purely humourous sections
| count as a third if you include cartoons). They're
| primarily investigative journalism if you ask me,
| admittedly the news pieces are often sarcastic and witty.
| Look up their role in the post office scandal, or the
| Paul Foot awards.
| volkadav wrote:
| For what it's worth, at least as I understand it, the
| Guardian got monikers like that due to their (for a time)
| extreme propensity to publish typos.
|
| (Given the number of "fix typo" commits across all the
| projects I work on, I'd be the very last soul to pick up a
| rock to toss on that front, haha!)
| mrweasel wrote:
| Personally I love that they insist on calling Google "The
| Chocolate Factory", but I can certainly understand you
| perspective. It easily gets to much if you have the feeling
| that their are trying to hard to come up with "cute" names.
| ilikepi wrote:
| They also enjoyed slagging on corporate rebranding. When
| PriceWaterhouse Cooper spun out their consulting arm in 2002,
| they became a target for a minute[1][2]. I still have a "We
| like donkeys la la la" t-shirt and mug as a pair of weird and
| obscure artifacts from that stage of my IT career. I am
| heartened to see that archive.org provides a way to
| experience the silly Flash animation[3] they created just for
| that second article.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.theregister.com/2002/06/18/tell_me_why_i_dont/
|
| [2]: https://www.theregister.com/2002/06/20/monday_gets_that_
| mond...
|
| [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20021127100055/https://www.i
| ntro...
|
| EDIT: fix formatting
| toyg wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree, but it should be noted that,
| after a few years, Magee very publicly disagreed with the
| direction taken by The Register, and started its own separate
| thing (the Inquirer).
| randombits0 wrote:
| It lost the bite that bit the hands that feed IT. The Buzzard
| is bummed.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Some folks apparently need to familarise themselves with El
| Reg's slogan.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Shortly after that happened, I found myself at a tech-
| conferance-adjacent soire (financed by, in El Reg's parlance,
| Chipzilla, open bar natch) with several Reg hacks and Magee
| hisself. Despite the parting of ways, all seemed to be
| getting along famously.
|
| Mike handed me his business card, with the _Inquirer_
| imprint. I examined it carefully, looked at him gravely, and
| intoned "but you've misspelled 'Register'".
|
| He looked back at me quite chagrined.
|
| Great guy, and an amazing history. Godspeed Mad Mike!
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| Pretty familiar with The Register but never heard of this guy
| before. Sounds like an utter boss
| ekianjo wrote:
| > In December 2000, Magee suffered a heart attack and died on the
| operating table only to revive and being told that he would have
| to do the same operation in ten years (he didn't). When he
| returned to work, he stated publicly that he disagreed with the
| editorial direction of The Register.
|
| thats what you call "a change of heart"
| chx wrote:
| https://www.theregister.com/2007/04/20/cf-y5_toughbook/ this
| review of the Panasonic CF-Y5 is one of the highlights of the
| genre (I had the good luck to own one):
|
| > The exterior design of the machine's casing is reminiscent of a
| Sherman tank cross-bred with a 1970s sports saloon, while the lid
| opens with the grace of a bank vault door. Yet the designers have
| managed to make the machine look attractive all the same, the
| overall effect being what you'd expect from GI Jane in a glittery
| ball gown.
| martinpw wrote:
| This is one of my favorite articles in terms of writing style -
| nothing else like this in those days (to put it mildly):
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2008/07/28/sun_dziuba_tm/
| thedailymail wrote:
| "This brought him into contact with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy
| Page. Despite his fame, his accountant did not allow Page to have
| much money, so he approached Magee for a loan to buy an esoteric
| bookstore. The loan was never repaid."
|
| I hope to have one paragraph in my obit as cool as that.
| tomcam wrote:
| Get hoodwinked by Jimmy Page doesn't cover anyone with glory
| lovich wrote:
| Don't know why you got flagged other than fans of the man
| being upset.
|
| Based on the story laid out in these two comments, he was
| approached for a loan by an already wealthy man who never
| paid him back. T
|
| That's just dumb, like contributing money to fundraisers run
| by companies pulling in billions of dollars a year in profit,
| so they can do the tax write off or earn money off the float
| of your contribution.
|
| Don't be so starstruck you let stars grift you.
|
| Or do, this is a hacker news comment, not a cop
| kimixa wrote:
| From the (lack of) context we don't really know the intent or
| opinions of those involved.
|
| I've seen things that are technically "loans", but
| realistically gifts as there was never any expectation of
| being paid back.
|
| Or it might not. I certainly can't tell from the article, and
| a quick google doesn't seem to suggest it's well documented.
| tomcam wrote:
| Reason can tell us something about the intent of those
| involved.
|
| > Despite his fame, his accountant did not allow Page to
| have much money
|
| No one got in Jimmy Page's way ever. There's not a chance
| in hell that he didn't have the PS10,000 or whatever an
| obscure bookshop would cost in the early 70s. He's also a
| smart guy with an obviously good memory. Even now, despite
| decades of drug abuse, he sounds like an archetypal English
| gentleman. Zero loss of mental acuity at an age when many
| are ravaged by dementia.
|
| Mageek was ripped off by Jimmy Page. Shameful for both
| parties.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| This sounds like an early spin on the advance-fee scam."Hi, you
| know me, I'm Jimmy Page, I have tons of money, but I just don't
| have access to it right now. If you were to give me some money
| now, it would help me buy this bookstore that's only on the
| market this week. I'll repay you two fold in a few weeks when
| my accountant is back from vacation. I'm famous, you know I'm
| good for it."
| groby_b wrote:
| Is it a scam, though? You'd have to ask Mageek.
|
| Sometimes, your friends ask you for money, you _know_ you won
| 't see it again, and you still give it to them. Granted, for
| most of us that amounts to buying them a drink or three, not
| a bookstore, but ... it was the 70s. Based on the surrounding
| stories in the articles, I'd say their frame of understanding
| was a bit different from the average person today ;)
|
| Maybe we shouldn't be so fast to cast aspersions on people we
| don't know, in circumstances we don't understand.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| We'll probably never know. It wouldn't surprise me if they
| both forgot about it, and then like a year later he's
| looking at his bank receipts and like "woh, what's that big
| check?" And maybe never even asked for the money back.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Well, he was very, very indirectly a managing director over BOFH.
| It was just a matter of time.
|
| Cheekiness aside, I love what he did for IT and the Internet. I'm
| sorry to see him go.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "The Rodgister used the slogan "Biting the Hand That Feeds IT" to
| reflect its"
|
| The Rodgister. Is this the fucking Grauniad or el Reg?
| gerdesj wrote:
| ... anyway, Lester will be waiting, with a glint in his eye.
| gumby wrote:
| The fate of journals wax and wane, and for me the apex of el Reg
| was in the era of Andrew Orlowski and (RIP) Lester Haines (they
| overlapped). Orlowski knows his computing history and writes
| really well. Haines wrote not just knowledgeably but with a
| carefree humour that made you feel like he was smiling with you
| as you read his work. His loss was a real blow.
|
| I still read it regularly, but some of the spirit has gone. But
| you never know -- someone new could show up and revive that _joi
| deivivre je ne sais quoi_. Haines definitely did that when he
| joined.
| ggm wrote:
| A very idiosyncratic house style. Both of headline and flow text.
| Not always clear. Perhaps as clear as mud. If you don't like puns
| (I love 'em) it must be a bit of a nightmare.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > If you don't like puns (I love 'em) it must be a bit of a
| nightmare.
|
| Mike Magee's last logoff doesn't register.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Magee_(journalist)
| kinlan wrote:
| The obit seemed mostly lifted from this.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Lesson learned: Never loan Jimmy Page money.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| On the contrary, recognize that you're buying a killer story
| under the guise of a loan.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That was like Picasso allegedly doodling on the backs of
| checks he wrote, as they were often not cashed.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| That was Dali as far as I know.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| J.S.G. Boggs elevated paying for goods and services with
| a drawing of money into a form of performance art.
|
| >Boggs became famous for drawing incredibly realistic
| banknotes by hand and then using these "Boggs Bills" to
| pay for goods and services. The twist was that the
| merchants who accepted the bills often recognized them as
| art and would give him change as if they were real money.
| The merchants would then sell the "Boggs Bill" to
| collectors for significantly more than its face value.
|
| >Boggs' work attracted the attention of the U.S. Secret
| Service, which was concerned with the legality of his
| art, given its resemblance to counterfeit currency. He
| was investigated multiple times but was never convicted
| of any crime because he never attempted to pass his work
| as real currency. Instead, he always made it clear that
| the bills were his own artistic creations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs
|
| >Boggs viewed his "transactions" as a type of performance
| art, but the authorities often viewed them with
| suspicion. Boggs aimed to have his audience question and
| investigate just what it is that makes "money" valuable
| in the first place. He steadfastly denied being a
| counterfeiter or forger, rather maintaining that a good-
| faith transaction between informed parties is certainly
| not fraud, even if the item transacted happens to
| resemble negotiable currency.
|
| >Boggs was first arrested for counterfeiting in England
| in 1986,[20] and was successfully defended by the human
| rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC & Mark Stephens and
| acquitted.[21] As detailed in Geoffrey Robertson's book
| The Justice Game, all Bank of England notes now carry a
| copyright message on the face as a direct result of
| Boggs' activities, the idea being that if they cannot
| secure a counterfeiting charge, then they can at least
| secure a copyright violation.[22] In 1989, one of the
| original PS5 "bank notes" from the trial was included in
| the British Museum exhibition Fake? The Art of
| Deception;[23] this item was added to the British
| Museum's permanent collection the following year, via
| donation by the artist himself. In 2022, this drawing
| went on public display in the British Museum's room 68
| (the "Money Gallery") alongside one of Banksy's "Di-faced
| tenner"[24] PS10 notes.[25]
|
| >He was arrested for a second time in Australia in 1989,
| acquitted and awarded the equivalent of US$20,000 in
| damages by the presiding judge.[2][26]
|
| >Boggs' home was raided three times between 1990 and 1992
| by the United States Secret Service on suspicion of
| counterfeiting.[27] In the raids 1300 items were
| confiscated, although no legal case was brought against
| him.[28][29]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Actually, that makes more sense. More in line with the
| personality.
|
| I like the Boggs, story, below.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I love El Reg, and have really appreciated that it has aged
| gracefully, unlike most of its contemporaries. The staff are
| _really_ knowledgable, and that isn 't always apparent, from
| their casual approach. I learn a lot from that redtop.
|
| His story is pretty much classic.
|
| _The Inquirer_ was also quite enjoyable.
|
| I like that Simon Travaglia is still penning his BOFH series. I
| have followed him since the 1980s.
| guardiangod wrote:
| I've been reading his drivels (in a good way) since the 90s. God
| speed "Mad" Mike Magee.
|
| Supposingly he was friend with the current CEO of Intel, Pat
| Gelsinger. In the 90s during a meeting with Intel staff, Magee
| asked a very uncomfortable question and Gelsinger, then an
| engineer at Intel, kicked him under the table to stop him.
|
| Since then whenever Mike reported news on Gelsinger he would
| write his name as "Kicking" Pat Gelsinger.
|
| Magee also started Charlie Demerjian's career by hiring him as a
| freelancer at The Inquirer. Demerjian then made a name for
| himself by being a very accurate pain in the ass for Intel and
| Nvidia for years to come.
| wslh wrote:
| I just look at Charlie posts and (re)discovered this "AMD's Zen
| 5 is a missed opportunity in messaging" [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41290792
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I remember meeting Charlie in 2009 at Nvidias GPU conference in
| downtown San Jose when I was working for NV at the time. It was
| me, Jensen and Charlie. I remember Jensen putting his arm
| around Charlie and pointing at him and making some jokes about
| what a pain in the ass he was. Thats all I remember,
| unfortunately. I quit drinking since then. At the time, Charlie
| was the celebrity not Jensen. I grew up reading the inquirer
| and saw Charlie's name attached to everything I read. Mike
| Magee created something that launched my entire career
| trajectory and gave a voice to a subject that I was so
| passionate about with no one around me to share it with. RIP
| rbanffy wrote:
| Someone must tell Mr Magee this was definitely not funny.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Up voted and thanks for covering my horror story of being invited
| to meet Google while along side MIT student's meeting the same
| R&D team at Google. If they or any tech company invites you to
| demo demand money upfront or don't go if you are solo inventor
| (if you are bro(ed) up in Silicon Valley then you might be fine
| yet the MIT student had connections and...).
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/30/google_stole_my_paten...
| hinkley wrote:
| Old title made a lot more sense.
| n1b0m wrote:
| The entire article seems to be copy and pasted from Mike Mageek's
| Wikipedia entry
| casenmgreen wrote:
| I had a slightly poor experience with El Reg.
|
| I had a bit of a story about AWS. I contacted them. There was
| some interest. I finished the write up (I was investigating an
| AWS service) and emailed it to the journalist. We'd had a fair
| bit of email exchange up to that point.
|
| Never heard back - at all. Not a peep. I waited two weeks, just
| for him to reply, then gave up on it and published.
|
| I later emailed an editor at El Reg about this, no reply also.
|
| Obviously, what El Reg publish or do not publish is completely up
| to them and I have no issues whatsoever with whether they are
| interested or not - the only issue here is the silent treatment.
|
| Not a big deal at all, but let a faintly bad taste in my mouth. I
| kinda stopped reading in the end after that. A friend pointed out
| El Reg run paid infomercial articles from AWS about the very
| service I investigated, but I have no idea what actually
| happened.
| mapt wrote:
| The man who learned basically everything about the technology
| industry that they didn't want us to know yet in bars outside of
| tech conventions, and then shared it with us in the very best
| traditions of tabloid media (which has mostly awful traditions).
| Spawned his own successor to the Register at The Inquirer and
| trained writers for an entire genre of spinoff platforms like
| Fuad Abazovic (Fudzilla) and Charlie Demerjian (SemiAccurate).
|
| Dr Thomas Stewart Von Drashek will be organizing the funeral.
| wyck wrote:
| The shop didn't last long and only published 2 book, it's now an
| dentists shop. More info here about the shop and other Page
| strangeness, including the shop's logo.
| https://ledzepnews.com/2024/02/21/the-history-of-jimmy-pages...
| zeristor wrote:
| Was his name Mike Magee, or Mike Mageek?
|
| I wasn't confused before, but I am now.
| leashless wrote:
| I knew him a little in his capacity as a mad Hindu cultist. He
| was mad, Hindu, and a cultist.
|
| https://shivashakti.com is where you can find that aspect of his
| work.
| byyoung3 wrote:
| at first i thought this was logan paul's friend
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