Valleywag hasn't gone downhill, News has

Christopher Smith — Wed, 07 May 2008 08:30:00 +0000

I can’t believe anyone in the tech community is still covering the events at JavaOne, but sure enough, ~~we-troll-for-hits~~ValleyWag was there to capture Neil Young’s appearance yesterday. Now, I remember when Douglas Adams showed up for the Keynote on the last day of the conference, and that made sense. It was the last day of the conference and everyone was fried –if they hadn’t left town already. Douglas, true to form, provided some great entertainment and geek cred to start off the last day push. But Neil Young is to Java as the Smurfs are to the Iraq War. Could Sun make a more profound statement about how JavaOne jumped the shark long ago than to have an aging rocker whose seminal moments occurred before Java was ever invented keynote on the second day of the event? Best quote from the whole experience goes to Dan Farber’s blog entry, where after carefully promoting BluRay, Java, the PS3, and most importantly his Archive project, we read: “…As an artist I try to remove myself from the business,” Young said. “I steer myself away from that…”.

The previous article captures how Mark Kirk has skillfully managed to create controversy in order to get media attention during an election year. “Online porn” doesn’t quite drag voters attention away from all the other election year theatrics, and “online child predator” is so yesterday’s news, but “rape rooms” is a sure fire hit. Is there any trick from Hussein’s regime that politicians won’t copy and/or trivialize?

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Valleywag hasn't gone downhill, News has