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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale J. who wrote (11827)	11/19/1998 5:00:00 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Respond to of 64865

Article in Internet Week re Microsoft compliance plans internetwk.com Thursday, November 19, 1998, 11:00 a.m. ET. Microsoft Tools Team to Sun: No Problem By RICHARD KARPINSKI Calling this week's preliminary injunction much narrower than expected, a Microsoft developer tools manager today said the vendor would tweak its Java tools to meet the order but leave in all the platform technologies it believes Windows developers want. "Our initial concerns about this ruling were a bit exaggerated," said Tom Button, Microsoft's director of product management, developer tool. "The ruling is relatively narrow, and the changes the judge is requiring of us are relatively narrow." While Button officially represents Microsoft's tools group, he said the company also planned to support the changes requested by the judge to Internet Explorer and the Windows OS. While the statements are no doubt designed at least in part to downplay Sun Microsystems' major court victory, they nonetheless offer the first word from Microsoft officials that they plan to meet the demands of Sun. Following the court ruling, speculation has run rampant that Microsoft could be considering other solutions, such as using its own so-called "clean-room" implementation of Java, or dropping Java altogether. While Button would not comment on such speculation, he did say that "at this point it is so premature for anyone to think that was merited. As long as we have the ability to innovate and add value, we've heard nothing new to change our business or product strategies" in regard to Java. "We have no plans to ship an alternate framework," he continued, adding that "at this point, we're not ready to many any announcements not required in the order." Specifically, Button said the vendor would alter Visual J++ to enable several of its extension to the language--including Windows platform-specific keywords and compiler directives--as an option rather than a default within the tool. Developers would have to "flick a switch" to enable these non-Java-compatible elements, and, as per the court order, first see a dialog box warning them that they were entering a mode that would create Windows-specific Java code, Button said. He said Microsoft had no problem alerting users to that fact. Indeed, it was the message they had been stressing all along regarding Java. "We believe developers using Visual J++ use it primarily to build Windows software," he said. Button said Microsoft would also, per the court order, include Sun's Java Native Interface (JNI) in its runtime environments, as well as offer support for building code based on JNI in its Java tools. Up to now, Microsoft has only included is own native interfaces to the Windows platform, including Raw Native Interface (RNI) and J/Direct. That caused cross-platform problems for Java developers, because Microsoft's Virtual Machine is the only one to support those interfaces to Windows-native code. Every other VM relies on JNI.

To: Dale J. who wrote (11827)	11/19/1998 5:09:00 PM
From: treetopflier	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

<If you really had confidence in SUNW you wouldn't be annoyed at my opinion that it is overbought.> Hmmm, let's see. 500+ Starfires sold to date at an average selling price of >$5M... And it is at the very early edge of the adoption curve. I don't know of ANY Sun shops on the planet that wouldn't LOVE to get one of these boxes in their shop to consolidate some of their servers. 64 bit competition disappearing. Huge DASD sales as companies continue to gobble up storage. Services revenue at all time highs. Great low end offerings. Java helping Sun gain mindshare everywhere. An operating system that runs on everything but Waring blenders and you wonder why we are annoyed with you??? An AMAT short I can understand, as well as CPQ while they figure out their channel strategy and how to integrate their acquisitions, but SUNW (and ORCL for that matter) may be timed poorly. Greenspan has one more rate cut in him yet this year and it will be timed to get us off and running into the Q1 boom. I expect him to continue to cut rates all of next year as well. Up until 45 days ago I'd have been shorting these with you. With the Fed playing the market and demonstrating they'll do so through the millennium you are at risk with key players like SUNW. Lots of HW/SW still to be sold and installed for Y2K as well. Best of luck Dale. ttf

To: Dale J. who wrote (11827)	11/19/1998 8:15:00 PM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

What HE said... Best of luck Dale. ttf I agree Dale. I'm ambivalent about your 'trade' position either way (I'm a long-term long), but you're standing on the tracks. Haven't you seen those public 'railway safety' spots on television? :) Sun's aflame. JCJ