Jason Stamper's Blog: March 2009 Archives

James Gosling warns of ‘culture clash’ if IBM buys Sun
March 23, 2009

James Gosling, Sun Microsystems vice president, said in an exclusive interview with Computer Business Review (CBR) that there would, “Definitely be a culture clash,” between staff if IBM were to acquire Sun, as has been rumoured by The Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that IBM is on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, the software, systems and services vendor, for $6.5bn...[click continue reading for more]...

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 04:33 PM | Comments (1)

Google Chrome, Firefox incognito mode privacy flaw

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Google Chrome’s incognito mode is meant to keep any sites that you visit during a browsing session – when using Chrome’s incognito mode -- private. Google says incognito mode could be useful if you are looking for presents for the wife, for example, and don’t want her to see which online stores you have visited.

Users of incognito mode would hope that Chrome’s history is kept clear of any site visits they would prefer to keep private – whether shopping for the wife or indeed visiting sites that she or the rest of the family might not approve of.

But it turns out there’s a big flaw with the incognito mode, that effects both Chrome and Firefox. When using Chrome or Firefox to stream media files, it is not uncommon for them to use Windows Media to act as the streaming player – files with extensions such as .avi and .wmv. Only trouble is, Internet Explorer keeps a copy of these file names in the IE history, regardless of whether incognito mode was turned on in Chrome or not.

Users are noting that IE is storing these file type names in its history even when they didn’t realise they were using IE – they were using Chrome or Firefox as their browser of choice but they happened to use IE’s Windows Media capabilities for file streaming.

So I guess for now the advice is either not to stream any media that you would prefer to remain incognito, or if you do, you’re going to have to open IE at the end of your browser session and delete its history.

Thanks to Polybore for bringing this to my attention by posting a comment on one of my previous blog entries – he also found this mention of the problem on Google’s support pages.

I've already blogged about the fact that Chrome incognito mode is not without its problems, even before the streaming media issue was brought to light.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 10:12 AM | Comments (1)

IBM near to Jonathan Schwartz blog acquisition?
March 19, 2009

Speculation is rife that IBM is closing in on a $6.5bn deal to acquire Jonathan Schwartz’s blog. If it happens it will become the largest acquisition in the blogosphere to date, and lend weight to the argument that Sun Microsystems’ CEO was right to spend so much of his time blogging since he was appointed in April 2006 – rather than tinkering about with ‘the details’ like the operational excellence of one of the largest IT companies in the world.

Insiders say that if IBM does indeed close the deal, the package will include not just Jonathan Schwartz’s blog – and all associated branding including the rights to use the term ‘Jonathan’s Blog’ -- but also an ancilliary hardware, systems and software business that IBM is believed to think “could come in handy if the ass falls out of the blogging market”.

In its latest quarter Sun announced sales down 11%, gross margin as a percentage of revenue down 6.6% and a net loss of $209m. Schwartz said of the results: “It's great to see customers so aggressively embracing open source software, from Solaris to MySQL, alongside Sun's new open source storage platforms as a means of radical cost reduction.”

But while the company was having a tough quarter Schwartz’s blogging prowess suffered no such setbacks. He put a picture of a pair of sneakers next to a blog about major retailers for those not familiar with the concept; he embedded a video of Steve Ballmer’s now infamous “Developers, Developers, Developers!” speech into a blog about, you guessed it, developers.

But perhaps the piece de resistance, he blogged the line: “The storage industry bears a remarkable resemblance to the proprietary server industry [companies like Sun -- Ed.] at the bursting of the internet bubble - closed, highly profitable, frustrating customers with exorbitant charges. Plump, and ripe for change. Like a plum.”

Let's put aside for a moment the fact that Schwartz has just described Sun's server business at the bursting of the Internet bubble as having "frustrated customers with exorbitant charges".

Because, as anyone will tell you, plums too are ‘ripe for change’. You can’t walk past a plum orchard without hearing the little fellas talking about how they want to get out, do something different: change. Plum crumble, plum cake, plum jam – anything but staying a plum! Simply remaining a plum is so, well, plum 1.0.

Of course for anyone who wasn’t aware of The Nature of Plums (i.e. they’re like rolling stones, always moving from place to place, never settling down) or indeed doesn’t know what a plum looks like, Schwartz helpfully included a picture of a plum on his blog entry.

This seminal entry led one IBM insider close to the Jonathan’s Blog acquisition to note sagely: “This isn’t just any blogger. This is a guy who can read the mind of a plum. The $6.5bn valuation obviously needed to take that into account. People will of course say we are paying too much. But do you know of another blogger who knows as much about plums? I didn’t think so.”

A plum.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Red Alert: Has Red Hat's Whitehurst got what it takes?

Part 2 [Part 1 is here.]

Red Hat’s CEO Jim Whitehurst wants to get Red Hat to the $1bn revenue mark by 2011. So has the ex-airline industry executive got what it takes? Jason Stamper reports.

If incoming CEO Whitehurst lacked open source credentials he was not lacking in credibility: he took the COO role at Delta Airlines just weeks before it was forced into declaring bankruptcy, and he was credited with helping get the company back on track – or at least to get back in the skies.

Whitehurst: the right man for the job? Image (c) CBR 2009; Do Not Copy.

So why did the board want someone like Whitehurst? “The company is at an interesting size,” Whitehurst told CBR on a recent trip to London. “We’re growing very rapidly, doing over $500m in our last fiscal. The board recognised the need for someone who comes from a large company to drive Red Hat forward, and who will put in management reports, processes and so on. We’ve produced the first strategic plan the company has ever done."

Click continue reading for The 451 group analyst Matthew Aslett's view of Whitehurst's strategy, and how CBR sums up Whitehurst's progress so far.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

What's the deal with clustered storage?
March 13, 2009

Sujal Patel is founder and CEO of clustered storage vendor Isilon Systems, which is back under his leadership after some accounting irregularities were uncovered by a self-imposed financial audit back in 2007. I caught up with him in London last month to get the latest on that turnaround and why he believes clustered storage is the future...[click continue reading for more]...

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 10:31 AM | Comments (0)