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To honor the 40th anniversary of the Beatles first trip to the United States, Spence tacked up his cherished but tattered poster of the Fab Four on the fading wallpaper of his apartment, as he pondered the pandemonium caused by the Liverpudlians cool coifs. Ah, yesterday.
Hair length is still a hot topic—at least for Sun execs at the companys quarterly Network Computing event in San Francisco last week. The trademark ponytail of Suns executive VP of software, Jonathan Schwartz, stirred a mop-top mania among managers. Sure, Sun plans to revamp its UltraSPARC server lineup and is buying a server-savvy startup called Kealia, but an obsession with the ponytail seemed to pop up here, there and everywhere at a commentary session with company honchos.
The Furball fidgeted in his collarless suit and pointy-toed boots as Clark Masters, Suns executive VP of enterprise system products, started the magilla by claiming that to be in software, you must be cool, like Schwartz with his ponytail. Masters conceded that he was an old fuddy-duddy but was quite comfortable with his corporate cut. Schwartz chuckled amid the follicle folderol, but His Hirsuteness almost coughed up a hairball when Neil Knox, Suns executive VP of volume systems, punctuated the patter by pointing out that his balding pate may not be cool but would eventually save him money on hair-care fees. Wishing they had just let it be with the barbershop banter, the Hairball was happy to get back home.
There, a Tabby tattler noted that the Kitty may have been on to something when he wrote in his Dec. 15 column that hed heard that application security company Sanctum had been unsuccessfully seeking a buyer. The tattler claimed Big Blues name has been bandied about recently as a suitor with an interest in acquiring part or all of Sanctum for its application firewall technology. The rumor has some security folks scratching their heads, claimed the tattler, as IBMs Tivoli division never seemed to long, long, long for firewall technology. Spence was savoring a Savoy truffle when he fielded a call from a Katt crony who said Oracle and Dell have come together to offer Dell servers preinstalled with Oracle software via Dells Web site. This should please, please users who have had to face the long and winding road of traditional sales channels.
The pal also told Spence that SCO chief Darl McBrides recent talk at Harvard had some MIT folks seeing crimson. Rather than carry out a typical MIT prank that could have left Darls car atop MITs Great Dome, Linux lovers handed out homemade Knoppix CDs at the confab. “A gentler action than, say, inflating a 6-foot weather balloon by remote control under McBrides podium,” goo goo ga joobed the Grimalkin.