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SEC, meet the blogosphere

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise Processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science. Credentials
  • Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
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Stephen Shankland

Removing the last shreds of doubt that blogs have become a corporate phenomenon, Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz included regulatory disclaimers in a Monday posting about his company's planned acquisition of StorageTek for a net sum of about $3.1 billion.

He included in his blog the standard "safe harbor" disclaimer. "I was going to be frustrated at the requirement, until it occurred to me we'd just set a bit of corporate communications history--blogs are now an official communications vehicle at Sun. We should tell the SEC to update the regs," he said of the move, referring to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The disclaimer itself begins, "Jonathan's blog contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties," then descends into the typical disclosure litany.

Schwartz uses his blog to try to inject his company into conversations about the computing industry. And in Sunday's blog, Schwartz made a new attempt to do just that, suggesting Apple build its new x86 version of Mac OS X atop a foundation of Solaris. Apple today uses a combination of the Mach kernel and FreeBSD Unix for its operating system foundation.