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The Comedy of Scott McNealy
Rob writes "News that Sun co-founder and long-serving CEO, Scott McNealy is stepping aside, heaps a
load of pressure on incoming CEO Jonathan Schwartz - he will have to get working on his
anti-Microsoft gags quick-sharp. Aside from Sun's strategy and his execution of it,
McNealy's tenure as CEO will be remembered for his constant Microsoft sniping. CBR
remembers some of his favourite quotes."
Great article! Definitely a digg!
A selection of the best Scott McNealy quotes: "When Steve Ballmer calls me wacko, I consider that a compliment." "The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it." "Shut down some of the bullshit the government is spending money on and use it to buy all the Microsoft stock. Then put all their intellectual property in the public domain. Free Windows for everyone! Then we could just bronze Gates, turn him into a statue and stick him in front of the Commerce Department." "Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system... I guess I would be nervous if my system was built on their technology too." "It's the good guys versus the bad guys, and the good guys are winning." "W2K (Windows 2000) will be a bigger disaster than Y2K." "A giant hairball." [About Windows NT] "The Evil Empire." [guess who] "The beast from Redmond." [yup] "Anyone heard any good monopolist jokes lately?" "Ballmer and Butthead" [Ballmer and you-know-who] ".Not, .Not Yet and .Nut" [Microsoft's .Net strategy]
While I suspect that Sun will likely make everything run as usual for at least a little while, at least we knew that with Management's full attention on calling Microsoft bad names, it at least insured that they wouldn't get any bright ideas ab't increasing sagging revenue by screwing with Java and/or all versions of OO.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Schwartz replaces McNealy: A tough comedy act to follow?
April 25, 2006
News that Sun co-founder and long-serving CEO, Scott McNealy is stepping aside, heaps a load of pressure on incoming CEO Jonathan Schwartz - he will have to get working on his anti-Microsoft gags quick-sharp.
Aside from Sun's strategy and his execution of it, McNealy's tenure as CEO will be remembered for his constant Microsoft sniping. Anyone who saw him speak knows he always had a quiver of anti-Microsoft jokes up his sleeve. "I don't want my kids growing up in a world of control-alt-delete," was one of my favourites, or, "The bear is pretty strong in the computer business ... but we are outrunning the other hikers."
As we reported in our full coverage of McNealy's decision to hand over to Schwartz here, McNealy said that, "When you start a company, you always wonder who you are going to hand it off to. You can't run it forever."
"I wasn't going to hand it off when we were growing too fast," he continued, "I wasn't going to hand if off after the bubble burst. The time is right to do it now. All the demand indicators are strong. For 22 years, I have been running this joint, and I have had a lot of fun with it." He certainly has.
McNealy has been a constant source of amusement in what might otherwise have been a far less interesting sector. He, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, have taken it upon themselves to poke constant fun at Microsoft, and in so doing have helped in their own ways to ensure that consumers have retained that little bit of cynicism about the world's most powerful software company.
In his capacity as CEO McNealy was bright, witty, straight talking, and often with us hacks, more than a little belligerent. Perhaps that's unsurprising - McNealy once said in an interview with CBR that if he had not ended up running an IT company, he would have chosen instead to pass his time thwacking pucks and heads on an ice rink instead. I hear ice hockey is something of a contact sport. At times McNealy got pretty close to turning being a tech firm CEO into a contact sport, too.
I remember one press roundtable in London a couple of years ago, where a journalist from the Financial Times found himself on the wrong end of McNealy's ire. When the journalist asked a question about comments that Sun's channel had made to him about the soundness of Sun's business model, McNealy retorted sharply: "I'm not going to comment on made-up quotes."
Though the journalist insisted the quotes came straight from Sun's own resellers, McNealy snapped, "Like I say, I will not comment on made-up quotes." As us press began to leave the room McNealy again accosted the FT journalist, saying he was furious with his paper's editor for stories that had apparently said that McNealy's remuneration had been the cause of a board-room argument. "We haven't even discussed that - it's just been made up," McNealy said furiously.
Anyway like I say if you want the low-down on McNealy's departure and his replacement, Jonathan Schwartz, simply visit our coverage of the news here. I chose instead to assemble a few of the best Scott McNealy quotes from over the years. I warn you though - he could never have given up his day job to become a comedian. Ice hockey, perhaps.
A selection of the best Scott McNealy quotes:
"When Steve Ballmer calls me wacko, I consider that a compliment."
"The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it."
"Shut down some of the bullshit the government is spending money on and use it to buy all the Microsoft stock. Then put all their intellectual property in the public domain. Free Windows for everyone! Then we could just bronze Gates, turn him into a statue and stick him in front of the Commerce Department."
"Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system... I guess I would be nervous if my system
Java
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Or, if you'd like some freshly minted Scott:x it_interview/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/25/mcnealy_e
Among other things, he talks about how he tried to avoid being CEO of Sun in the first place. His first attempt at a replacement (Ed Zander) failed too.
maybe he should have spent less time thinking up of MS jokes and more time running his company, last time I checked, MS is getting bigger and bigger while Sun is heading towards of black hole.
While the constant MS bashing was interesting, I think it worked against Sun, and not for it. It sent the message "Buy Sun if you hate Microsoft." Like it or not, hating MSFT isn't a great way to run a billion dollar business.
Do I get more rich and more happy just because I hate MSFT? No. I get more rich and more happy by making better choices that ingore (or include) MSFT as warrented.
Red Hat gets this. McNealy should have sent the message "Buy Sun to solve problems X and Y and Z. That will put more money in your pocket and make you happier." Unless the Schwartz gets this, Sun will continue it's relative decline.
Dang, if he owned the rights to English, just imagine how much money he could get by suing the people who abuse it daily for damages!
(Sorry, this is probably about as funny as the quotes themselves.)
At the press conference where he wore the penguin suit, Scott took off the head to give his speech, and an aide rushed up to grab it and take it offstage. But Scott insisted that the head be left perched up on top of one of the props behind him. "I kind of like the way it looks up there", he said dreamily, almost as if it were on a pike.
It was pretty clear then that he really hadn't come to terms with Linux yet, almost as awkard as his famous "Mo-Mo-(slap)-Motif" moment years earlier.
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
Realizing this situation, the top executives said, "Screw performance! Let's just put hordes of poorly performing cores on a chip." So, we get Niagara. Next comes Rock.
Unfortunately for Sun, both AMD and Intel have got the new multi-core religion. Which will run faster? A multicore SPARC or a multicore x86-64? The smart money votes for the latter.
Without the SPARC64 by Fujitsu, there would be no future for SPARC in the server market.
Who says that companies need H-1B engineers? Fujitsu, as a matter of company policy, hires only engineers with Japanese citizenship. SPARC64 was built entirely without foreign engineers and, performance-wise, beats the pants off the UltraSPARC IV, which was built with a team of which nearly 80% is engineers who currently hold or formerly held an H-1B visa.
New definition of 'open source', accidental leak, or does the person not have a clue what they are talking about?
Sun that is ... there someone had to say it, sorry
"Server cannot be found"
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
but thankfully, mirrordotted as well:
d 403e46d594c/index.html
http://mirrordot.org/stories/f7bd9bd6bc4fe74eada0
Scott McNealy is a White Dwarf.
--Why did you say that?
Because he was totally burnt out at SUN.
--You cannot B-Sirius!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
it at least insured that they wouldn't get any bright ideas ab't increasing sagging revenue by screwing with Java and/or all versions of OO.
There is no money in Java and not much future in Sun's other technologies. I posted this elseswere yesterday but it bears repeating. My advice to Schwartz is the following. Don't try to beat either Linux or Microsoft at their games. You will lose. I suggest instead that you do something that will take the rest of the industry completely by surprise. Invest your remaining resources and passion into the next big thing, the one thing that will solve the nastiest problem in the computer industry today: unreliability. Put all your money in non-algorithmic, signal-based, synchronous software. It will revolutionize both the hardware and the software industry and usher in the most dramatic change in computing since the days of Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace. Don't say you weren't warned. ahahaha...
Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It:
Wait a minute!
McNealy launched a few more quips at "Wintel space heaters" and made a crack about taking Gates on a Dick Cheney-style hunting trip. "Kaboom!" he said.
The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Fcuknig amzanig eh!
boy are you lucky that i don't have modpoints on my hands right now.
1ghz ultrasparc III is rather fast and didn't get beaten by amd or intel by a mile when it came out. it's pretty close, and for it's platform design along with the cpu, it's pretty ok.
secondly, if you run 128 threads at the same time, amd and intel will be d.e.a.d. while niagara still kicks around. amd's or intel's dual cores on this will still mean 64 context switches per core while for niagara it would be 4 context switches per core.
smart money votes for the cpu that does the job. if you have a machine that has to handle lots and lots of stuff at the same time, niagara will win while intel and amd are still switching contexts.
ps. you seem to be forgetting about the fact that the memory limitation on regular x86_64's that you can "just buy" is still enormously low compared to the regular sun workstations.
you can't throw your lowmemory applications at the systems and say that damn ultrasparc is slow and x86 is fast, if you run linux on x86_64 with highram enabled, it aint that fast either anymore.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
I had the benefit of meeting him at a conference once (within the last few months). When asked what Solaris 10 does that SELinux can't, he said, "What's SELinux?"
At least he asked.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
They usually don't let facts come in the way of a well-sounding PR message.
... twisting of truth ... that cost Sun the trust of the free software community in the first place, but I doubt their PR or management gets that.
It's the kind of, uh, let me sugarcoat it
See also Sun PR's overblown claims that they open sourced Java3D (all they actually released were some programming examples under a Sun-specific abomination of the BSD license, called BSD+, that's not open source, even) and JAI (which is under JRL, that meets 2 out of 10 points from the open source definition) from the past years and so on.
Nothing to see here, just another Sun PR mishap.
cheers,
dalibor topic
I'm just curious: Is there some non-obvious reason why people quote the entire text of an article instead of posting a Mirrordot link?
Honestly, I think I'm putting way too much thought into this, but... assuming you did own English, think about marketing it like software!
You could have upgrades for every new generation of people... "Get all the new slang you hear from the young'uns! Only $149.95 with proof of purchase of a previous English Language Pack(tm)! (Upgrading from Olde English does not qualify)"
Or you might have it based on a subscription model. "$49.99 per year entitles you to unlimited upgrades, so you can learn the new technobabble as soon as it leaves Silicon Valley!"
Competitive upgrades! "Migrate from your existing language for the special promotional offer of $169.99! Act now and you'll receive the free Rhymes plug-in!"
Of course it would come in a suite: Comprehension, Speech and Writing as separate (but interoperable) modules. (If MS owned it, each module would come in 7 different 'flavors', which incorporated a highly complex mix of regional dialects and education levels. I fear the Corporate version, to be honest.)
Heh. English On-Demand. Now there's a possibility.
That got bought by Sun awhile ago, I'd hope that he remembers something about innovating. I'd also like to think that he remembers the tech that Sun bought when they bought 'his' company and burried. Probably not too relevant now, but the NeXTStep apps were best of breed at the time, and ran well on 25MHz machines. Perhaps Java could take some direction?
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I am posting this as AC for obvious reasons. At work at Dell at our corporate headquarters. Several months ago, there was a plane circling our buildings all day pulling a banner that was announcing to us that Sun had released new servers. I don't know what it cost to create the banner and then have some guy fly around with it all day, but I'm pretty sure that advertising their product to us was not a good use of capitol. In fact, it felt kind of like a childish "nyah nyah nyah" sort of thing. All in all, I found it very strange, and I found myself glad that I wasn't a Sun shareholder.
Why exactly are we fondly remembering this guy? Everyone seems to be forgetting that one of his more notorious quotes was, "Privacy is dead; get over it." Rather than try to fix privacy problems, McNealy argued that we should just accept it, move on, and embrace the new privacy-less future (especially if it involves systems powered by Sun hardware).
Don't forget that in the wake of September 11th, both him and Ellison were ponying up to offer their company's services in helping to create a national ID. He even calls lining up at airport security an "efficiency tax" that biometric IDs would somehow maaaaagically fix.
I say good riddance.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This totally inevitable thing just happened, something that should have happened a long time ago, but I never fully thought it would actually come to pass... and although it's 100% completely a good thing, I'm oddly sentimental and slightly sad about it, just because it's an end of an era, a shift in the way things always have been. Then, there is that same twinge of excitement and hope for the future.
Weird.
*giggles*
Charles Wyble System Engineer
Whether it is Microsoft or even the Devil himself, spending the majority of your speeches and company focus on fighting another company instead of bolstering your own company and strenghtening your own products is a bad business model.
You don't see Burger King announce a new burger and tell you that it is ok and the best feature it didn't come from McDonalds...
Maybe if he would have had the same obsession for this company that he did Microsoft, Sun might be stronger on the desktop and not losing server marketshare.
So they can tweak passages at random to include anal sex references? =O( Actually, most of them probably just don't know about Mirrordot. It's really a useful thing, though.
You do see a lot of successful religious endeavors spending the bulk of their efforts being against something, homos or drugs or popularly elected south american presidents. I think that they do this because it's easier to get people excited about being unhappy about something than it is to get them excited about being content. and it's hard to sustain being excited about good things without slipping into that contented complacency. That new car buzz never seems to outlast the payments - maybe that's more of a short coming of materialism as a spiritual center.
ANYWAY, I remember people refering to the use of different text editors as a "holy war". People argue over aspects of this industry being art or science, wholely missing the truth that this is religion.
I think that Sun would have gone the way of Control Data or Harris or Honeywell a long time ago if it wasn't for the religious fevor that the tiger brought to the table. I'm sure he wrestles with his own demons, but all and all I think he's left us with a pretty impressive checked list.
Okay, next time I'll know better.
McNealy's funniest quote is probably the following one from a 1996 Red Herring article. His letter to the editor is even funnier.
NORTHWEST PASSAGE: Microsoft's plans to navigate the Java waters. August 1, 1996
"Microsoft is on the offensive again because its hegemony is threatened by Java's potential to obsolete Windows and Microsoft Office. This is not only financially threatening, but seen as a personal insult. Sun CEO Scott McNealy ceaselessly goads developers to adopt Java and overthrow what he bluntly calls Redmond's mediocre standards of quality--'Windows 95 is just dogshit with whipped cream on top.'"
LETTER TO THE EDITOR. December 1, 1996
McNealy euphemizes
I enjoyed Jonathan Burke's article "Northwest Passage." Mr. Burke did a fine job of laying out the reasons that software developers are pushing for a multiplatform Internet and how this poses a threat to Microsoft.
However, I was shocked, puzzled, and offended when I came to a passage in the story that seriously misquoted me referring to Windows 95 as "[expletive] with whipped cream on top." As chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems, a $7 billion publicly held company, I am very aware that my shareholders and the public take a dim view of crude, unprofessional language from executives. I make it a rule never to curse in public. I don't do it. I would never do it. I didn't do it with Mr. Burke or anyone else. In fact, in a carefully worded and deliberately inoffensive manner, I called Win 95 "whipped cream on a road apple."
Scott G. McNealy
President and CEO
Sun Microsystems
The Herring Responds
Ah, "a road apple"--that's much more genteel.
In my view, Sun is a very dysfunctional company. They make good servers, yes, but so does the competition (primarily IBM and HP). What is the product strategy, the forward thinking, the future of Sun? Where are the reasons people should stick to Sun's offerings, specifically?
I wish Sun the best, I really do. It once was THE company in Silicon Valley. But from what I've seen of Schwartz, I doubt things will move in the right direction any time soon.
The new CEO will have to cut deep and hard into the heart of Sun, and get rid of all the dead-end projects. Once he has thrown out the old crud, he can focus on products. Only superior products can save Sun.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
I guess a comment only modded a lowly "2" is worthy of its own /. entry now... oh how our standards have fallen.
AND YES I AM BITTER.
akad0nric0
This sentence no verb.
Privacy is dead. It was a hack anyway. The real problem is the imbalance of access to information and power to act on it. If everyone had equal access and power, privacy would be a non issue. It's only because some people have more access to information and power to use information to harm others that privacy is necessary. He's just being pragmatic, privacy is dead and we nead to figure out how to address the real issues because the hack isn't working anymore.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I used W2k (and have since, but only as a server platform) as a home PC but stopped when I noticed that my games ran FAR faster on XP.
I had been relatively anti-XP (it was initially rumoured to scan you for WaReZ, and so forth, which didn't make me too happy) but it really did benchmark a 33% increase over XP in most of my games.
Heck, even the original UT. I never really investigated why this was; I just moved on.
Browsing with classic discussion, noscript, at -1 and nested
no hidden comments and I only mod UP
When HP and Compaq merged, he said it was "like watching a head-on collision between two slow moving garbage trucks". I'd like to see Sun succeed just because I like to see more choice in the marketplace. McNealy could b pretty scathing at times.
While working as an intern at Sun, heard this one from the man, regarding the merger between HP and Compaq:
"It's a slow motion collision between two garbage trucks."
And regarding HP's decision to pull out of some market or other (can't quite remember which one, sadly):
"All that's left is us, Big Blue, and the Convicts".
just an analog boy living in a digital age.
heaps a load of pressure on incoming CEO Jonathan Schwartz - he will have to get working on his anti-Microsoft gags quick-sharp.
That's because it worked so well for McNealy, right?
You state that hardware is more reliable than software because hardware is non-algorithmic and synchronous. This does not seem to be correct.
Hardware is typically more reliable than software for the following reasons:
1) Patching hardware is very difficult and expensive, so they get it right the first time. Patching software is cheap and easy, so they don't worry as much.
2) Harwdare does have errors, have you ever looked at the errata sheets for CPU's?
3) Hardware typically has a more limited set of functions than software, software combines those limited functions into increasingly large sequences resulting in a much larger state space, which in turn requires more testing.
You state that the brain is reliable because it is signal based and synchronous. This is not the reason the brain is reliable (the brain is asynchronous, not synchronous). The brain is reliable because it employs a mathematical model that matches input to closest previous match from experience. It will always choose an output, although the output will only be as good as experience and training.
It was difficult on that page to see a concrete argument showing how a UBM improves reliability, other than the stated analogies. If I have missed a key point as to why a UBM has advantages, I would be interested in knowing what those reasons are.
The context of the GP's statement is what could Sun do to make money. Therefore, the meaning of that clause grokked by those without mental impairment from fanboyism is "There is no money in Java [for Sun]...".
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
Sunx86Flyoversmall.jpg
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
you can't throw your lowmemory applications at the systems and say that damn ultrasparc is slow and x86 is fast
Sure you can, and for real-world desktop/workstation price/performance both AMD and Intel smoke Niagara.
The ONLY reason to buy them is if you have a datacenter with many web servers and space/heat problems and want to pay a little extra up front. But you got to admit, at even 2x the cost of AMD boxes it would take many years to make your money back. Its an investment that must be weighed carefully.
i call BS. While sun has done some amazingly stupid things as far as the Java fiasco goes. Their bread and butter (hardware) is still kicking. Look their Niagra is nice, they have a 500 dollar spark that has, though it's closer to 1k after some 'nescosary' upgrades: Lets see dual core-check 128 bit adressing-check, 1g ram-check and a some sort of graphics card-free shiping and 4 year-warenty+ a liftime garuntee fo 1000.50. So far not even chip merchant comes close. Oh and let us also ask who whas one of the first "big three" to push a Major lawsuit against Microsoft, force it as high as the US supreme courte and encour the wrath of the DOJ? ----Thank you I'll take your AmD wank fest
This is the blog of the EDITOR of the Computer Business Review, who is presumably paid? The blog should be corrected:
The only thing I wish is that they'd outsource rather than pulling in all those developers, Developers, DEVELOPERS since once Microsoft implodes under their weight they'll still run around doing to other companies what they've done to HP, Sun and now MS.
In any case McNealy's comedic impact is nothing compared to Balmer's schtick. There should be a late night TV PSA: This is your CEO on H-1b visas.
Seastead this.
The best way to force better software is to remove the training wheels and enforce minimum consumer warranties on all software. It should be "suitable for purpose" and free from glaring defects. One simple law on the books would severely restrict future code bloat, useless eye candy and hidden gotchas tremendously, once these companies realised they would lose a lot by shipping perpetual beta ware. It would force massive code review and auditing and make marketing sit down and shut up as the lawyers would tell them it will collapse the company if they fail to code well before offering it on the market. It works for all other industries. We still have defects-but it's gotten to an acceptable level in society. Software is the last industry to still be run by the pure snake-oil caveat emptor rules from the past. The first few years of such a law might be rough, but demand for software is still huge, those companies and coders that "get it" on issuing quality products would succeed, those that don't...too bad.
Anyway, there is movement to institute software lemon laws, at least at the state level. It would be a good first step. It's time that industry got a good swift kick to the bank account. Smugness is not a virtue, whining that you "can't" do this or that with your product is not very encouraging to the ultimate end users, the customers. They have had decades now to voluntarily get their act together, the billions have been made all over, even at base leves it is a very well rewarded profession, and it only goes up sharply from that point, so now it is time to treat them like responsible adults in the business world.
I don't have enough memory to support english 2003.
Apogi Esperanto!
My new sig will be...
"dave lawson is a fucking dweeb."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just check on how DEC and Sun have evolved. There are enough parallels among them.
1. Both started out with major presence in educational and R&D segments. The early adopters of their systems were in these segments. Both benefited from a large pool of "shared" software that were developed on their systems within these segments.
2. DEC stuck closely with VMS (earlier RSX-11) even though the "geek" had Unix on VAXes and PDP-11s.
Sun did the same with Solaris.
3. Both decided to move to more lucrative banking, insurance kind of companies and ignored the education/R&D segment.
4. Both had a strong reputation of "solid" systems that just kept working. The systems continued working for years and years.
5. Both ignored the changing preferences of their "mother" segment of education/R&D.
6. We know where DEC is today. Sun seems to be following the exact path that DEC took.
More insights on the above are welcome.
-- Raj