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The Comedy of Scott McNealy

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Apr 26, 2006 11:27 AM
from the stuff-to-laugh-at dept.
Sun Microsystems IT
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."
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[+] Developers: McNealy Created Millions of Jobs? 363 comments
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?"
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  • The Quotes (Score:5, Funny)

    by neonprimetime (528653) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:31AM (#15205562)
    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]
    • "Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system... I guess I would be nervous if my system was built on their technology too."

      and now it will ship with half of it's firewall turned off ...

      i have to agree, windows makes me nervous, that's why i keep away from it (and don't waste half of the working day fighting viruses like my colleagues do).
        • nope, they are just up to date (too bad it's as "up to date with new viruses" and not "up to date with antivirus libraries").

          they use antivirus scanners, they use the firewall and they use malware removers, but you can't cure the cancer (chuck norris still isn't producing tears).

    • Re:The Quotes (Score:5, Funny)

      by dlawson (209945) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @12:10PM (#15205876)
      Best quote from Scott.

            I was a sales support engineer for a pretty big distributor. When they decided to get into Unix, we got a relationship with Sun to sell the Sun Connect line (mostly into the Fed.)

            Scott's best comment came out when MS got ready to ship Win 3.11 -
                  "Putting Windows on top of DOS is like putting whipped cream on a road apple." ... (road apples are horse poop, in case you didn't get the connection.)

      For years my .sig was "Scott McNealy was right."

      davel
      • Actually, Win2K is probably the best release of Windows that MS has ever put out.
        • I disagree - I think Windows XP is better. Now granted, they've put all this genuine advantage crap all over it, even on the corporate version, but it really does have more features and many of the old features are improved, if no other way than by the revamping of the configuration GUI. Meanwhile, it is possible to slim XP down to the point where it's really not using more resources than 2k - but I don't even want to. I upgraded 2k to XP on my laptop so I could get cleartype, which is definitely a feature
          • More stable? 2K never crashed on me. XP crashes whenever I game on it. If 2K had decent support for SATA drives, I'd still have it on my gaming rig.

            • Well, I humbly submit that you were not exercising Windows 2000, because I have crashed it in so many ways it doesn't even bear repeating, except perhaps for the sake of humor like in cryptonomicon (yes I am a nerd kthx) where they're talking about poking what's her name, as in I have crashed it in the highlands and the lowlands, at home and abroad, et cetera.

              I've run both 2k and XP on all kinds of sketchy and non-sketchy hardware both, and crashed 2k more per time unit than xp, by far, even when using

          • Xp loses because of activation and distinct versions that aren't compatible.

            Windows 2000 was Windows 2000 wether it was a server flavor or Professional.

            XP is a cluster F*K of marketing crap. Home, Pro, MCE, N series, started edition, and they're acknowledging the Pirated edition with the recent nagware.

            Yes, there is software that won't run on MCE that will on Home and Pro.
        • indeed. i refused to switch to xp until late 2004 because i was that fond of my win2k installation. vista seems to be on the exact same path (no matter where it started) as xp was to win2k--shiney, new, ooooooooooh; please.

  • So, now that he's gone... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Penguinisto (415985) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:32AM (#15205570) Journal
    ...what will happen to OpenOffice and, oh, Java?

    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.

    /P

    • Re:So, now that he's gone... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by oscartheduck (866357) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:38AM (#15205623)
      A high up Sun representative was interviewed on LugRadio a few months back (I'm pretty sure it's this episode [lugradio.org] but I'm not one hundred percent certain) in which he categorically stated that everything Sun owns software-wise will be open sourced eventually, including Java.

    • No Future in Java and Sun's Technology (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MOBE2001 (263700) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @12:08PM (#15205864) Homepage Journal
      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:
      • I've seen your posts before and skimmed over the well prepared documents on your COSA project. However I don't get the sense that even a tiny bit has been put into practice? Is there somewhere one could see anything implemented in this system you describe? If not, why not?

        Cheers.
        • Of course it hasn't been put into practice. If it had, been he might have realized by now that it's all BS. The entire idea is based on an unsound premise.

          It is every bit as easy to write buggy hardware as it is to write buggy software. We don't notice it as much because hardware companies do a better job of testing their products before shipping because (a) it is a lot harder to fix them after the fact and (b) it is far easier to return faulty hardware to the store than buggy software, so they are more

      • Re:No Future in Java and Sun's Technology (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sfjoe (470510) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @01:37PM (#15206600)


        Your points are valid and would carry a lot more weight if you didn't start out with a stupendously dumb statement like, "There is no money in Java".

  • /.'ed. Text of article is . . . (Score:3, Informative)

    by mmell (832646) <mike@the-mells.com> on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:35AM (#15205594) Homepage
    CBR Editor's Weblog

    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

    • "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."

      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.)

      • 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 tech

    • May the Schwartz be with them ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by taniwha (70410) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:57AM (#15205763) Homepage Journal
      Sun that is ... there someone had to say it, sorry
      • 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.

  • Interview at The Register (Score:5, Informative)

    by ChrisRijk (1818) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:38AM (#15205619)
    Or, if you'd like some freshly minted Scott:
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/25/mcnealy_ex it_interview/ [theregister.co.uk]

    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.

  • It worked against him, not for him. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hhr (909621) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:44AM (#15205656)
    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.

    • Re:It worked against him, not for him. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by menace3society (768451) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @12:18PM (#15205941)
      While it probably didn't help his case much, I don't it hurt him as much as you suggest. After all, people in charge of plenty of tech companies say bad things about or make fun of their competition (Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Steve Ballmer). I think the real problem is that this seemed to be Sun's business strategy for the last 8 years or so. Instead of working on ways to make Java a better platform for users (instead of developers), it languished. The much-ballyhooed Java Desktop System hasn't materialized into anything special, and right now it looks like Looking Glass is ending up the same way. Until they released the Niagara, they were falling way behind in the computational power race. And unlike other computer manufacturers, they haven't branched out in any tangible way to supplement their revenue streams (like hp and Dell do with printers, cameras, etc). I guess they haven't had any real solutions to X, Y, or Z that couldn't be duplicated on cheaper hardware with a different OS.
    • "Red Hat gets this."

      IBM get it too, to a certain extent.

      HP and SGI instead got screwed in the opposite direction (possibly due to R. Belluzzo).

      Bottom line, let your competition define you and you become predictable and easily manipulated.

      "Unless the Schwartz gets this"

      Judging from Schwartz' various diatribes (whose lack of contact with reality sometimes leaves one embarrased on Sun's behalf), that, unfortunately, seems unlikely.

  • The real meaning of the penguin suit (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nooface (526234) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:48AM (#15205697) Homepage
    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.

  • Open sourcing of Java (somewhat OT) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SirTalon42 (751509) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @11:56AM (#15205756)
    http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2006-04/sunf lash.20060424.2.xml [sun.com]

    Sun's vision is more relevant today than ever before and is embodied in the product and service breakthroughs it has recently brought to market - from the 'pay-per-view' utility computing Sun Grid and the eco-friendly 32-processor-on-a-chip Coolthreads system, to Sun's innovative software pricing model for the Java Enterprise System and the open sourcing of Java[tm], the Solaris[tm] Operating System and the UltraSPARC T1 chip.


    New definition of 'open source', accidental leak, or does the person not have a clue what they are talking about?
  • but thankfully, mirrordotted as well:

    http://mirrordot.org/stories/f7bd9bd6bc4fe74eada0d 403e46d594c/index.html [mirrordot.org]

  • Scott McNealy is a White Dwarf (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitaldc (879047) * on Wednesday April 26 2006, @12:06PM (#15205849)
    Scott McNealy is a White Dwarf. [wikipedia.org]

    --Why did you say that?

    Because he was totally burnt out at SUN.

    --You cannot B-Sirius!
  • 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.
  • 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?

  • I have to question some of Sun's spending (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 al
  • 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.

  • Good Business? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheNetAvenger (624455) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @01:14PM (#15206421)
    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.

  • His funniest quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by QuantGuy (654249) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @01:45PM (#15206647)

    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.

  • I guess a comment only modded a lowly "2" [slashdot.org] is worthy of its own /. entry now... oh how our standards have fallen.

    AND YES I AM BITTER.
  • 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".
  • 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?
    • I just checked [yahoo.com] It it seems both have been flat for a while altough Sun seemed to be more in the bubble then MS was.
    • Hear, hear!

      I always thought Sun spent way too much time bitching about microsoft instead of actually doing anything about it. McNealy's jokes always came across as a "we don't like them, but we don't have the balls or ideas to compete with them."

      So instead they've spend the last five years shedding money and employees, without coming up with any decent new ideas.

    • Speaking of bad priorities... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Valdrax (32670) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @12:50PM (#15206229)
      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.
      • 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.

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