There are some real people in the world, and some who are pretend.

Me

Me
(a long time ago)

Saturday, July 11, 2009

A Hopeful Sign in Oakland CA


Imagine it raining in July, that has never happened for as long as I have lived here. At least we saw a nice rainbow.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Reflections on a setting Sun


It became a custom for a while for people, when they got let go by Sun, to send an e-mail to "All Sun", to say goodbye, prefaced by the words "please delete if you don't know me". Happily, the "all Sun" alias is a lot more controlled now, as with the amount of people leaving now, we would not be doing anything else than reading peoples last thoughts about Sun.

There are still a few alias that can reach a lot of people though and the mail below was sent by a finance guy in Asia. Normally these last mails are not worth reading, but this one is really beautiful. It sums up a lot of what was great about Sun and why the IT industry, and maybe the world, will be a poorer place without us.

I wouldn't normally "reprint" stuff like this, but this got a very wide distribution in Sun anyway, and it is so well written, it could maybe be Sun's epitaph:


I joined Sun in its infancy some 20 years ago. I stood at times wide
eyed during my first decade at Sun, and at other times, mesmerized as
Sun took off like a blazing comet to Jupiter and Mars, taking the world
to the era of "The Network is the
Computer" and Java.

Alas, the dot com fizzle and thefinancial services industry meltdown in
the second decade vaporized the soft landing of our descent back to
planet earth.

I wish I could say that the "sun will rise again tomorrow" but the sky
has darkened without this one brief shining moment that was Sun.

Yet, I know with certainty that those brilliant contrarian minds
with their creative spirit and effervescent energy, that created Java
and the disruptive technologies, will go onto other companies and infuse
them with their dynamism and innovation and fashion the next wave of
computing.

Their mark will be left indeliby on not just billions but trillions of
devices in the years to come and the spirit of Sun will light up the world again.

If our paths should cross again, we wont have to say a word..... for
that special twinkle in our eyes would
have said it all.





Tom's blog about life in America as a Scottish person, appreciating and making music, politics, travel, my own philosophy and other stuff not easy to categorise.


About Me

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Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom
I'm a 40 something Scottish person who lives in the USA. I'm also an aspiring part time musician and songwriter.