Posts tagged: MEDIA

BusinessWeek Online has an article today called “Java? It’s So Nineties” which purports to track the fall of Java from enterprise grace.

I’ve posted my own brief notes on that theme and I don’t disagree with the general thrust of the article, but it is distractingly, embarrassingly overflowing with technical bloopers. A sampling:

Java – once the hippest of hip software…

Java certainly had its moments of irrational popularity during the applet mania of the ’90s. But try to imagine somebody saying, “Hey, this Java is really hip!” (I don’t know, though, maybe the Cobol guys did say that.)

Interesting – About.com is moving to WordPress. I also learned from Matt’s blog posting, much to my surprise, that they were using Movable Type before. It feels very significant that the New York Times Company is migrating its $410-million-dollar baby over to an open source content-management platform. The usual open source components further down the stack – Apache, Linux, et al. – don’t have the same implications for feel and functionality that the content management layer does, and therefore this feels like more of a significant endorsement of open source.

Ten years ago today was the public launch of Salon (as salon1999.com, not salon.com). I can’t say that I’m surprised they have lasted, because their work has consistently been excellent.

Through Salon’s connection to the Well I have gotten glimpses of how hard they have worked over the years, and I’m glad that it has continued to pay off in terms of editorial quality and reader respect, if not guaranteed solvency. (I know that predicting the hour of Salon’s demise is a fixation for some – mostly people who read second-hand accounts of SEC filings, as far as I can tell.)

Just a quick followup on the Sony malware situation: they’ve now been spanked by both Microsoft and the Department of Homeland Security. I feel the warm glow of righteousness.

I’m seeing lots of links to this CNN story about the CIA learning to use publicly accessible information sources. I have one comment, not about the news, but about the language:

Mary Margaret Graham, an aide to Negroponte, told reporters better use of open source information should lead to more effective use of clandestine intelligence gathering as well.

(Emphasis mine.)

The term “open source” is being used here – not just by the reporter but, as far as I can tell from the context of the article, by the Federal government – as a synonym for “publicly accessible.” Not the same thing, of course.