McNealy Created Millions of Jobs?

cahiha writes "In his blog, Jonathan Schwartz argues that Scott McNealy is single-handedly responsible for making network computing a reality. His timeline is something like that in 1992, the industry was focused on 'Chicago' (Windows 95), while McNealy bravely went his own way-- 'the network is the computer.' He goes on to claim that 'There is no single individual who has created more jobs around the world than [Scott McNealy]. [...] I'm not talking hundreds or thousands of jobs, I'm talking millions.' I have trouble following his argument: client/server computing and distributed computing were already widely available and widely used in the early 1990s. The defining applications of the emerging Internet were, not Java, but Apache, Netscape, and Perl. Sun's biggest response to Chicago was to attempt to establish Java as the predominant desktop application delivery platform, something they have not succeeded at so far. So, what do you think: is Schwartz right in giving credit to McNealy for creating 'millions' of jobs? Or has Sun been a company on the decline since the mid-1990s, only temporarily buoyed by the Internet bubble?"

Comments

Millions Of Jobs

[Richard Dick Head]

Millions of Jobs

Sweet! Maybe I'll move to India to get one! :)

I think he's probably right.

[Anonymous Coward]

See, with an intel machine, you just need one guy to run it.

With Sun machines, you need an SC specialist, a OBP specialist, a Solaris specialist, and three guys just to install the damn thing.

I'd say they're creating a hell of a lot of jobs. :-)

Re:Credit for millions of jobs??

[Bombula]

What about Edison? He rolled out electrical power at least, even if he didn't invent it. Does that mean he 'created' every job in the modern world? Or what about the fellow in Mesopotamia 8,000 years ago who invented the wheel? How many jobs did he create?

Seems largely retarded to take credit for jobs created indirectly, since there's no logical place to draw boundaries in either space or time.

Re:Credit for millions of jobs??

[sootman]

So, if someone has a vision, and does very little to make it happen (relatively speaking), but it just so happens that their vision was the correct one, they get credit for all the good that ocurred? Even though they did little but stand in the corner with their vision?

I'd say, in recent history, that Sir Tim Berners-Lee did the world a great favor by making HTML so easy to use and forgiving (i.e., not closing a tag doesn't cause the page to crash, unlike syntax errors in 'real' programming languages), then NCSA gets credit for making a great browser, then Marc and Jim deserve credit for stealing all that NCSA talent (and possibly some code) to make a really cool browser, and oh yeah, before I get too far, let's not forget Bob's Ethernet, and whoever made TCP/IP, and I guess we need to include K&R and everyone else who made UNIX, because that's what the Internet has mostly run on through its history. And as great as the network is, it's prety useless without nodes, and Bill Gates' *ahem* methods of popularizing DOS and then Windows has put ten times more nodes out there than all other contributors combined.

But some guy in the corner with a "vision" that just happens to align with what eventually occurred? Fuck him. If anything, that honor should go to Vannevar Bush, who, in 1945, had a pretty damn accurate vision of what computing would be like in the 1990s. Considering that he wrote this a year before ENIAC was unveiled, I think we can give him a pass on not predicting network storage.

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry.

(On page 4, look for 'memex.')

Re:Not really SELF-aggrandizing...

[VENONA]

"Applications are all still hosted on the local machine with the exception of webmail clients."

What an amazing statement. I take it you don't do any remote banking, your workplace doesn't use one of the Web based CRM or system management apps, etc.

Re:Keeping Java Closed

[$1uck]

It would be nice if it were open source,

Why? This seems to be a popular opinion on Slashdot, and I'm curious why people need it to be any more open than it is? I mean afaik, the only thing that isn't "open" about it is the spec. If you want to create your own implementation of a JVM you're allowed but it must conform to the spec. This is a very *good* thing IMO. It would really suck if MS had been able to complete its "embrace and extend" manuever on Java (which is what MS has done with the open web standards and browsers) and it would suck even more if there were 5 different JVM's out there and you had to tailor your code to run on each one. You would completely lose the WORA (or you'd have to do all sorts of gimmicky crap to figure out what jvm you were running on -thats a lot of fun with browsers and html, I think it would be even more annoying with code). So I ask again, not rhetorically, but honestly: why open source it? Am I missing something?