We are not in financial struggle

There has been recently some false rumors about our financial performance during this third quarter of our fiscal year and about the perspectives of our fourth quarter (that corresponds with the months of April, May and June). I have to say that this is absolutely false, there is no reason to suspect that our systems sales have dropped in the US on account of the economy (the sub-prime crisis, you know), and our health is undoubtedly strong, as you'll see in our results announce next first of May.

It is true that I have been working myself in the forge of the new servers, but it is because of my profound wisdom and because I really like to do real work myself, not because the board said anything about my huge salary and a shortage of money to pay qualified workers. I just enjoy working in the factory like I used to in the old times.

Oh, by the way, a message from our CFO to our beloved employees: We are thinking in changing our internal travel website (currently Amex), for this one: http://www.cheapflights.com/.
Comments are welcome. Oh, and he also reminds me that hitchhiking is an acceptable option for any company travel from now on until new order (fake Lehman said so).

I'm Back...

...so there is no need to worry about my long absence, as the one of my beloved fellow Fake Jonathan that seems to be eternal (he doesn't want to talk about that). Indeed it is plenty justified, and it is not that I've been on holidays, but I've been working very hard to contribute to the comeback of Sun in this thrilling economy we are suffering nowadays. I had to go back to the Sun laboratories to forge myself the latest version of our Niagara II servers, or to be more precise, the UltraSPARC T2 (yes, like Terminator) plus processor, now in two sockets servers.
¿Fujitsu? Yes, they paid us so we allow them to use the processors and so on, so we pretend this is a joint venture and so on (well, I forged the server myself, I wouldn't lie about this..., would I?).

Writers Strike: We saw that coming!

Yeah, we saw that coming a long, long, long time ago, and we took our measures about it.
The Writers Guild of America just wanted to increase their share in the distribution of films and shows through the Internet, basically.
So, can you tell me what is the difference between a writer and a programmer? A writer just writes a few lines (or all the lines, ok), of a show, and then it is given to a director, who decides if he likes it or not -and always introduces its own changes, just to show who is the boss-, then the producer approves it (or not), and finally the actors play what the director say they have to play, more or less based in what the writers wrote before -it is, sometimes there is no relation between the original script and what is showed in the film-.

What about a programmer? Well, indeed they are much like writers, directors and actors at the same time, as they are the ones _the_only_ones_ that write the code and need to be sure that everything is working fine -believe me, Jonathan doesn't modify a line of the code generated by our programmers-.

What do you think, that we give our programmers a share of every software, of every Solaris we sell? Well, the answer is no. And the same happens in the rest of the industry (name it Apple, Oracle, IBM or whatever you like). Well, some may argue that some of our employees get stock options and all that stuff... peanuts. And we don't give an extra dime to those outsourced employees overseas, of course.
So, now that the Writers of America have managed to win in their demands, what may prevent Programmers of America to go on strike asking for their share in every piece of software sold? I have the answer: OpenSource.
Yeah, I have to admit it. Jonathan had a great, a brilliant idea: if the software is OpenSource, it, indeed doesn't belong to anybody, and so the programmers cannot ask us for a share in the benefits, because I'm selling it, but it's not mine, it's theirs.... Whahahahaha, I like it!

Relevance

Relevance can be everything in our business. In the 90s, IBM lost all relevance and was about to disappear -some think they are irrelevant today-. So they had to reinvent themselves, to recover their relevance in the business. Sun suffered much the same pain, we lost relevance after the dot com crisis, and by betting for the opensource strategy, new processors, R+D, etc., we are coming back, more relevant than ever (and wait until Solaris is the reference OS in the
enterprise level: we'll never loose our relevance again).
I love this Jonathan's picture, that's why I enclosed it here.

Relevance is not everything, there is also transcendence in what we do, in our actions. They have to be transcendent for the future.

That is why John Edwards should endorse Hillary R. Clinton now. If he does it now, this movement may be of great importance, as Hillary seems to be half defeated by Obama, and Edwards' endorsement would give her the impulse she needs to win the nomination, so he would be in a position where he could influence in the Clinton administration, if she wins the General Election later.
If Edwards waits too much, either candidate could assure its nomination, and thus Edwards' endorsement would be of no relevance at all.
On the other hand, Edwards could give support to Obama hoping that he would later support some of his politics in the future, but, as important as it may be, as Obama is seen now like the front-runner, Edwards would not be in a position to provide such an influence in Obama's administration as he would in a Clinton's.





By the way, I spent the weekend with Jonathan, I guess that's the reason why I am writing very much in his style...

Mobile World Congress

Well, my mission is clear here: not to buy a new iPhone (Can you guess which is the _only _ non-Java-enabled mobile maker not present at the fair?), but to sell Java to all those frig... I mean, those marvelous mobile makers of all over the world that now are joining in Barcelona to show their latest inventions.

If they don't already know, they will: JavaFX, Java in general, is what they need for their platforms, so they can build the games, the applications, the interfaces just once, and use them in any device they may build today or tomorrow (and pay Sun for each of them they build... it's a great deal for both parties).


I know, you are wondering why there is a picture of Robert Redford in this blog entry. It is simple: he is 'headlining' at the conference, and it seems he is going to talk about "...the potential of mobile - the ‘4th screen’ - as a medium for independent filmmakers to reach new audiences on a global basis..."

Hmmm, well, now I'm supposed to say something intelligent about this... but, er, well, what the heck, I don't really mind as long as the mobile has Java embedded and the broadcasting or the mobile operator is running Solaris and Sparc. That's why I like Robert, because he named his filmaking festival and the institute after our great company: Sun dance. Thank you Robert!

Sun is infected with the Oracle Buying Voracity: Now Innotek

I'm this week in a place called Barcelona (I think they became famous because of the bullfighting and because the Olimpic Games, but I'll ask Ashok to search for details later), attending the Mobile World Congress. So, it seems that Germany is nearby, because I told James (he is the pilot of our company jet) to stop by in Stuttgart to sign the contract to buy another company for Sun: Innotek.

I know, I didn't include it in the las survey of Sun's purchase, but if I had done that the SEC would have warned me, and besides that, I'm interested in knowing which company should we buy, not what we are going to buy, I already know it!!

Well, talking about Innotek people, they are very nice, they already included in their home page a link to the press release we added in our corporate web announcing the purchase, so I guess they already feel in the family.
I really like those people, so civilized, we signed the contract and then got me to eat some strudel and Sauerkraut, you know, all the typical stuff -Memo: Tell James to refill the Alka-Seltzers of the jet ASAP-. Maybe they are even too civilized: in order to prevent global warming they didn't drove me back to the airport, the left me at the Endersbach station and instructed me on how to use the orange vending machines to buy the ticket (in the train it costs a little more...).
Well, it is the least one can expect from someone who has received a check of $-sorry, undiscosed ammount-.
Why did we bought this company? Well, it is crystal clear, at least for Jonathan, as indeed it was all his idea to make this deal, and he told me while I was flying over the UK to make that little detour to sign the contract before attending the congress (well, he told James to tell me...).

The truth is that I'm trying to reach him to get some word about the real reasons why are we buying those OpenSource, non-profit organizations instead of well established and recognized manufacturers. I don't want him to come again with the "community" explanation, that we are investing in the "community" and giving back what we got in the past, and all that hippie stuff about the karma and getting back what we seed in the past, and so on. I expect him to tell me where the real bucks are in this deal. I'll tell you as soon as I know.

Sun Shopping: New Poll

Well, although we all know how reliable polls are, just have a look at California, I'm modifying the poll to take ideas on which software company should Sun buy. I don't know the names of the companies, nor what they do, or why should we buy them (I'd rather buying Dell or Mittal, real steel companies), but someone from the board advised me to run this poll, and I left it all in the hands of Ashok (so, he is the one to blame).
Your votes will be adequately processed and taken into account in the next board meeting (if Jonathan tells me when and where it is...).