We live in a world of high anxiety. We're concerned about the competition,
fearful we'll fall behind the curve, worried that making up lost ground might
prove impossible. So we hastily turn to technology, which obligingly always
seems to have a solution. Well, at least it says so in the marketing
brochure....
But how much are things really changing? Are these advances really so
revolutionary? Or are they simply refinements on a few good ideas?
We measure progress in the technology industry according to speed, price,
weight and ease of use. (Which doesn't explain why, when I go on the road, I
now lug around 20 pounds of batteries and transformers for my myriad devices
and why I have no idea how to get my Palm Pilot to talk via infrared to my
PC.)
Every so often, however,... (more)
Ten years ago this month, Java was 1000 days old. Here we bring an article by
the then Vice President of Marketing for Sun's Software Products and
Platforms, George Paolini. Ten years on, we thought it might make interesting
reading, since even back then Sun's community-focused position was clear:
'The Java platform was grown and evolved by a global community of developers
on the World W... (more)
If you had to conjure an image that best serves as a "sign of the times,"
what might it be?
Perhaps a screen shot of a rare Partridge Family album being auctioned off
for an incredible sum on e-Bay. Or how about a staged photo op of some of
those starched-white-shirt telco and cable guys shaking hands in the latest
billion-dollar megamerger. This might be more likely: hip-looking X-gens ... (more)
When I was a lad, I tell my kids, life was hard. We had to walk everywhere,
for instance. And not only that, we had to carry our own data. On things
called floppies. Back then, we had to manually move information from one
computer to the next. We did all this work by hand.
When modems came along, we were sure we could do away with the floppies. Of
course, the first modems I used transmitt... (more)
I love Web services, for all the things they can't do.
It's not that I'm a pessimist, prone to look at the glass as half empty.
Quite the contrary. Whenever I hear about Web services, I think about all the
promises that won't be kept, and to me that looks like an opportunity to fill
a void.
Web services will undoubtedly create an avalanche of new development
opportunities. By standardizin... (more)