Palantir: an operating system for data analysis

Please, please stop overloading well-known terms like 'operating system'. This is simply an application platform, much more akin to something like the JVM than an operating system. The implementation details are sparse, but at the lowest level this could be a VM+language, and at the highest level simply a set of libraries. Calling it a "data analysis operating system" is akin to calling Ruby on Rails a "web application operating system."

I have great respect for the Palantir team, they are bringing an interesting approach to the space, but this post is nonsense full of buzzwords (Operating System, Ontology, Abstraction, and then polishes us off with chit chat about the information age and a non-sequitur graph of the internet from 2003) abused so badly that they ultimately mean nothing in the end. It may as well say "Palantir: a new kind of <i>physics</i> for data analysis" or "a new kind of <i>medicine</i> for data analysis"

Company co-founder - <a href="http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/6717" rel="nofollow">http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/6717</a><p>To see the interview, it seems you'll have to go to the front page, charlierose.com, click the 'archive' tab on the flash interface and scroll down to 08/11/09.<p>-- To charlierose.com site devs, linkable content - good.