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Sun Claims MS Steals Vision
Dan Reiland sent us linkage
to an interesting little ditty on Sun's web page that
mocks Microsoft for stealing their Vision. I'm actually amused by this
on 2 levels: First, its amusing that Microsoft (Already legendary in this industry for their innovation and originality) has actually been caught "borrowing" something.) but more amusing is the fact that Sun thinks people actually care about (or for that matter read) vision statements.
The term "Network Computer," or NC, seems to pop into my mind now... a computer that would have no hard drive and boot its OS from rom (or the network, even) and get all apps and stuff from the network. I didn't know they wanted everybody to pay for every byte though.
rooooar
There's nothing wrong with vision. Vision is great. Unfortunately, vision statements seldom have any noticable relationship to actual vision. They're usually the result of a bunch of marketroids with delusions of gender^Ograndeur sitting around a conference table with their ties choking off the flow of blood to their brains (if any) and stringing together a bunch of meaningless, polysyllabic words of the sort usually seen only on motivational posters and high-school graduation speeches.
"We will achieve greatness through enhancing the pulchritude of the dominant paradigm of customer-product interaction."
Not surprised with the similarity at all. They were both made with the Mission Statement generator
(we could argue about Mission vs Vision but that would be petty)
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Good gosh, she was his best partner. Certainly he was the bigger star, but his movies after Ginger became incerasingly silly, pairing him with some young spring chicken. Whereas her movies after Fred showed class. No one was as good as Fred Astaire, and no one was as good as Ginger Rogers. To compare her to Microsoft shows no respect.
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Infuriate left and right
Of course it is even funnier that sun posted something like this on the site, I mean how weird is that? It seems Sun might be spending a wee bit too much time thinking about ol' billg. (Note that this is very different from thinking about or complulsivly reloading /. , which I would of course never do)
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems.
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Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Wasn't Sun the company that came up with the rent-an-app model a few years ago, the one that Ballmer said MS was looking in to earlier this week? If so, just another case of MS trying to seem like innovators when they've really just stolen somebody else's idea.
See also: Windows (regardless of whether you think they stole it from Apple or Xerox).
rooooar
I'm in no way defending Microsoft, but if companies have similar goals (actually, I didn't know Sun was going for global domination too, but that's besides the point), then they'll probably have similar 'mission' or 'vision' statements. There aren't many ways someone can say that they want their software to run anywhere, anytime, and on any computer.
Ever since Sun got a coherent vision statement ("the network is the computer" may have been interesting, but did any PHBs really get it?), they and Microsoft and everyone else in this industry have all been racing towards the same set of targets; at least now some of them are admitting it.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
Apply a little logic: If a server was brought to its knees by slashdotting, wouldn't the name resolution to it have to work first?
Your DNS is messed. Or more likely netscape glitched and blamed DNS like it always does. Hit shift-reload a few times.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
This sort of thing may not matter to technical folks, but it does matter to investors, lawyers, and politicians. As long as those people consider Microsoft an innovative company and Gates a technical wizard, Microsoft will outcompete other companies for investments, and lawyers and politicians will take a hands-off approach to Microsoft.
sun seems really unprofessionally bitter on this press release (or whatever it is). the future of computing is very obviously going to have a lot of wireless, "instant internet" appliances. there's no reason sun should have a monopoly to that "vision", even if they were the first company to concentrate their efforts on this.
of course, they're involved with the doj case, complaining about microsoft and has been angry with them for hijacking java. but simply attacking microsoft at every turn is not a good way to act. so, microsoft wants to compete in the market for the future internet appliances. that's a good thing. we don't have to have a sun monopoly, do we? i would think that if this came from any other company but microsoft, they wouldn't have said anything publically. and, in fact, i'm sure other companies have said things like this. this "vision" is almost a fact. this should've been left as an in-office joke memo.
yes, microsoft is bad and evil and do everything wrong, but sun's constant "official" whining about their monopoly makes me respect them less. is there anything like this on red hat's website? i would be surprised if there is. "we did it first!" is not a good argument to get customers. "we did it better!" is. sun should've simply taken the imitation as a compliment and continued their effort to create products that are better than microsoft's, not just think up buzz words.