CRYPTOCHAOS

In a world of junk food and harried families, we saw the rise of the fast-food nation and the high price paid for its convenience. From that frustration was born the Slow Food movement, which promotes a healthy relationship with food. The Slow IT movement applauds that sentiment and seeks to apply it to technology management.

Interesting, funny and again interesting...

IDG News Service - Sun Microsystems' JRuby team is leaving the company to work for application hosting company Engine Yard, citing the uncertainty surrounding Sun's planned acquisition by Oracle.

With rumors piling up about a forthcoming Apple tablet, it appears more and more likely that such a device will emerge soon.

In my experience Sun has been a leader in providing outstanding value in the Unix Server market with a combination of quality hardware and the Solaris OS... But they've always been seen as a more leading edge provider and therefore were pulled along in the wake of aggressive businesses like financial services.

I know... I remember back in the late 80's on Wall Street and the 90's in the web start up community, we couldn't buy the boxes fast enough. When those industries took a hit, Sun was pulled down with them like a swimmer wrapped in a boat anchor.

"...more important, the hardware represents a buy-in by customers that doesn't exist in the commodity world; you don't change vendors in the high-end Unix server world because another vendor is offering a better promotion..."

Conservative customers perceive blood in the water and are voting with their dollars for the second tier Unix Server producers like IBM and HP. Too bad... Sun has given so much back in the form of quality software in the market. James Gosling has only half joked in the past that "Sun issues Hardware as a receipt for software"

This Forbes brief also highlights the severity of the matter

"Chubb turned into an outstanding quarter in every respect, despite the recessionary conditions in the US and around the world. We had terrific underwriting results and our investment portfolio performed extremely well...

...CCI’s performance in a difficult economic environment is a tribute, we think, to the franchise value of our brand, which is holding up nicely in a competitive market...

...The real story in CCI is its determined and consistent drive to secure rate increases as reflected in its overall 2.0 US renewal rate increase which improved a point over the first quarter and continued a trend of improving rates in each of the last four quarters..."