Author: John

Thoughts on the impending demise of Sun Microsystems: part one: the Death Coffee Brick

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News Item: IBM withdraws offer to buy Sun Microsystems; Sun’s fate unknown.

When I joined the “East Coast Division” of Sun Microsystems in January, 1986, Sun was a swaggering three-year-old enfant terrible based in Mountain View (Silicon Valley) California, and the East Coast Division, located in Lexington, Massachusetts had about fifteen people in it. Within two years Sun was a worldwide powerhouse with a new subsidiary company opening once a week (or so it seemed), and the East Coast division had about 250 people, 30 of whom reported to me. We moved to a larger facility in Billerica, MA, were we designed and manufactured a whole new line of Sun computers. We were like a mini-startup within Sun itself, with a classic start-up feel–hardcore geek shit.

Starting about 1988 or so, we had a coffee club in Billerica. Sun provided free coffee, which sucked, but some coffee lovers got together and provided alternative good stuff at $.25/cup or so.

Mostly this was Peets coffee, which Martin Hardee, a guy in my group, brought back from the west coast on his occasional forays. This was back in the old days, when finding anything better than Dunkin Donuts coffee on the east coast was a real challenge.

One day some poor fellow who was not a caffeine junky drank the Peets when he thought he was drinking the Sun-provided crap and got palpitations.

So, Martin got a brick, a regular old red brick, and got out his acrylic paint set and decorated it with the words

WARNING!
DEATH COFFEE

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Internet killed the newspaper star, Internet killed the newspaper star (or not)

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A lot of talk lately about the future of journimalism, especially of the newspaper variety. In The Nation, John Nichols and Robert McChesney say that newspapers & journalism are vital to democracy, so newsgathering organizations should be supported by taxpayers. Their article doesn’t strike me as totally idiotic; only somewhat Quixotic. David Sirota, in SFGate says that newspapers’ wounds are self-inflicted, because they insisted on giving us stupid crap instead of journalism–and television & internet are just inherently better media for delivering stupid crap. As captured & discussed at Crooks & Liars, CNN had an interesting discussion (also featuring Sirota) about newspapers in decline. If newspaper-style reporting is to continue (and we’re fucked if it isn’t, they say), local reporting has to be the core. Over on First Draft, Athenae has been posting some good stuff about how greedy scumbags, not the internet, killed journalism. (Athenae has lots of cool postings on this topic.)

Meanwhile supercool meta-ironic emerging-intelligence socio-observer & collective wisdom trendspotter Cory Doctorow Clay Shirky (seriously, who can tell those two guys apart?) sayz, like dig it, cats, this Internet thing is so far out that none of you squares can begin to grok its significance, but the newspaper is dead, man, so be cool & get hep to what’s happenin’, OK?

Exercise (Obama as Delilah)

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Here’s an exercise in spiritual development and self control for yz.

Step one: Watch the movie Stolen Childhoods, from Galen Films, about child (i.e. slave) labor around the world. If you can’t watch the film you can just look at some still photos from it.

Step two: Watch the movie Rescuing Emmanuel (also from Galen Films) about the world’s one hundred million “street children”. (See stills & trailer at the site.)

Step three: Read The Big Takeover in Rolling Stone, about the (Bush/Obama facilitated) complete handover of wealth and power in the USA to the plutocrats.

Step four: Practice trying to not go insane with impotent rage.

If you dont’ burst an artery or go mad, you may reach some kind of satori. (I don’t know, myself. I’m still kind of dealing with the unenlightened insane fury.)

Below the fold: Ragtime guitarist, genius songwriter, zen master the (late) Reverend Gary Davis (whom I once saw perform in a tiny chapel just a few months before he died, thank you Jesus) lays out in song our predicament.

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Barack Obama, chump

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Josh Marshall lays it all out beautifully.

AIG’s Liddy, as spokesman for the entire financial industry, has told Mr. Obama (and by extension, all the rest of us), “Shut up, bitch(es), and give us our money. And don’t be slow or we’ll fuck you up the ass like nobody’s business.”

On Mr. Obama’s staff, messers Geitner, Summers, Axelrod et al have responded by saying, “They’re right, Mr. Obama, they are going to fuck you up the ass. Although you are president of the United States of America, you are powerless to stop them. All you can do is give them more and more and more money. But we can advise you on the best way to self-administer K-Y jelly.”

Josh Marshall’s exposition is not so crude as my own summary of it, and I encourage you to go read it.

This will probably be the big test in Obama’s presidency, in the sense that if he fails it, he’ll have so far alienated his core constituency that any subsequent policy initiatives may be moot. People just won’t care or trust him. And so far, from me, at least, he’s getting a great big fat “F”.

Newsom/Christie: Images to Sounds: Hear to There

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Over on his other, “real” blog, neutrino/hadron-class Wetmachiner David Newsom tells this charming story about how his book of photographs, SKIP, inspired somebody he’d never met to write a song cycle:


So, a little while back, I got an inquiry from a woman named Holly Christie about one of my pieces, “Blue Truck”. Turns out she’d been looking over Perceval Press’ web site, and she’d come across my book SKIP.

Anyway, she liked it, bought it, and we struck up a dialogue. As fate would have it, Ms. Christie is a singer/songwriter. One year later, thanks to the seemingly infinite generosity of the folks at Perceval Press, Ms. Christie has released a small collection of beautifully produced songs, inspired by SKIP, titled, “To Hear From There”.

It’s kind of amazing. Most times, we put these things out there and they’re met with silence, sometimes a nod. But, man, when they inspire others to take the painstaking journey that, say, producing an EP requires, well, you’ve gotta feel good.

Definitely worth a look. And follow the links to Christie’s site to hear the songs. Definitely worth a listen.

Suomi go Brágh! again

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That special time of year, when St. Urhu’s day elides into the name-day of St. Patric, is again upon us. Here at Wetmachine we have a special place in our hearts for this great Finno-Irish-American festival.

Truly, the world is full of marvels. I know this is small potatoes when compared to the news of Harold Feld’s new gig, but as Mrs. Lohman so rightly observed, attention must be paid. Yes, attention must be paid.

Attention E-Tech Infidels!

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A linkfest for people at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (and anybody else considering buying my books) to do some due diligence.

People Saying nice things about my books
Grumpy Old Bookman, Salon, Kuro5hin (Acts of the Apostles), Slashdot Acts and CCD, Geek.com, BioInformatics.org, Jeffrey Zeldman, Danny Yee, and Kuro5hin (Cheap Complex Devices).

Stuff I wrote for Salon
Editor’s Choice Best of Salon 2003 lists 4 articles by me (4 out of 32 — not bad!). And How I Destroyed the New Economy explains how I caused our current economic predicament by helping to desecrate and ancient Native American burial ground.