5 ms·

The Sun Has Set. Maybe it will rise again

boundlessdreamz 17y ago
A little sad to see sun.com redirecting to oracle. Edit: Consoling myself that this is a better fate than just dying off like SGI
- rbanffy 17y ago
  That's an understatement.
- troystribling 17y ago
  SGI is still around, http://www.sgi.com/ http://www.sgi.com/. They were recently purchased by Rackable who took the SGI name.
- wavesplash 17y ago
  My 1st job in the valley was working for SGI. Seeing our one-time rival become a forgotten memory makes me a little sad all over again. Some of the best OS Kernel engineers that ever walked, walked the hallways of those two companies.
- kulkarnic 17y ago
  Yes, I got somewhat emotional(?) too. It was a birthplace of so many great ideas-- Java being the least of them. I personally feel "The network is the computer" was one of the most important ideas of the last century (the other being "a computer on every desk"), and one that Google and others are capitalizing on today. It's really sad to see such a company dissolve away.
astine 17y ago
I liked Sun's branding better.
- amvp 17y ago
  I did too. They had one of the cleverest logos I've seen. With this redirect dies one of the oldest sites on the web. Sun.com had the 11th oldest registered domain name (tied with IBM.com) https://www.iwhois.com/oldest/ https://www.iwhois.com/oldest/
  - justin_vanw 17y ago
    I tried to do some rudementary research, but without more work it is hard to know if the current owner is the original owner, or just a corp with the same name. I caught ISC as one of these abandoned domains, there may be more. Oldest Domains: 1. Symbolics.com => Domain Squatter 2. BBN.com => Owned by Raytheon 3. Think.com => Owned by? Oracle 4. MCC.com => Domain Squatter 5. DEC.com => HP.com 6. Northrop.com => Northropgrumman.com 7. Xerox.com 8. SRI.com 9. HP.com 10. Bellcore.com => Telcordia.com 11. IBM.com 11. Sun.com => oracle.com 13. Intel.com 13. TI.com 15. ATT.com 16. GMR.com => Broken? 16. TEK.com 18. FMC.com 18. UB.com => ultimatebet.com 20. Bell-ATL.com => verizon.com 20. GE.com 20. Grebyn.com => broken? 20. ISC.com => Aquired by Kodak who abandoned domain 20. NSC.com 20. Stargate.com => latisys.com
  - luckydude 17y ago
    I liked their logo as well. I used to work there and I was the lead on a long dead product called sparc cluster I. The logo we created for that was a play on the Sun logo and the product itself. Hand written postscript (jesus, I'm old) here: http://bitmover.com/lm/sun-clust.sh http://bitmover.com/lm/sun-clust.sh and the logo here: http://bitmover.com/lm/sun-clust.gif http://bitmover.com/lm/sun-clust.gif A little cheesy but I always liked that logo.
  - cmars232 17y ago
    Remember the Solaris screensaver, how they used to blink around in a Conway game of life simulation? I'll miss those little guys...
  - spolsky 17y ago
    I think these are the oldest .com names, but I'm pretty sure there were plenty of older .edu names.
johnohara 17y ago
What happened to all the online tutorials?
- hga 17y ago
  For the moment I wouldn't worry and would expect them to come back ... although maybe they'll need some prodding for some of the things that fall through the cracks.
- sfk 17y ago
  The Java stuff is still here: http://java.sun.com/new2java/ http://java.sun.com/new2java/
- bmelton 17y ago
  When Oracle acquired BEA, they took them offline for awhile. This sucked, as the BEA products seem to demand frequent trips to the online references, and troubleshooting guides. Actually, it still sucks, because although they have replaced most of the documentation that was available (the most valuable bits were the dev2dev and forum areas) they often link back to BEA, which redirects you to Oracle's front page, or to the front of their BEA documentation section, but absolutely never to anywhere resembling where the link was intending to go.
  - achille 17y ago
    The docs are still up: http://docs.sun.com/ http://docs.sun.com/ The same site, just rebraded.
res0nat0r 17y ago
Maybe they can do something with sunsolve next. That site and the backend has been terrible for at least a year due to the failed backend change they were working on forever. No one on the Sun side knew where my cases were half the time.
- gaius 17y ago
  If you think Sunsolve was bad, wait 'til you try Metalink.
tjr 17y ago
Anyone know what's happening to the Sun research department?
- wmf 17y ago
  Oracle said no one will be laid off and they will dramatically increase R&D spending.
  - wheels 17y ago
    As a general rule, don't trust anything that's said during an acquisition. Those communiqués are designed to assuage shareholder, employee and fan fears and usually get, uhm, reinterpreted within the first year.
    - Jach 17y ago
      Sounds like campaign promises. I'm going to miss Sun.
  - wmf 17y ago
    OK, I take it back: http://blogs.sun.com/kevinschmidt/entry/oracle_and_sun_middleware_resources http://blogs.sun.com/kevinschmidt/entry/oracle_and_sun_middl... http://blogs.sun.com/HPC/entry/watercooler_signing_off_hire_me http://blogs.sun.com/HPC/entry/watercooler_signing_off_hire_... http://blogs.sun.com/chienr/entry/farewell http://blogs.sun.com/chienr/entry/farewell http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog/entry/goodbye_sun_it_s_been http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog/entry/goodbye_sun_it_s_been http://blogs.sun.com/raskin/entry/so_long_farewell_auf_wiedersehen http://blogs.sun.com/raskin/entry/so_long_farewell_auf_wiede... http://blogs.sun.com/jessie/entry/good_bye http://blogs.sun.com/jessie/entry/good_bye Looks like the pink slips have gone out.
- 10ren 17y ago
  Here's something: "But the really eye-opening thing about Wednesday's presentation was just how much Oracle actually had to say about Java. I expected superficial affirmations like Ellison gave at OpenWorld; what I got was almost too much to process." http://infoworld.com/print/111021 http://infoworld.com/print/111021
rg3 17y ago
In addition to being a bit sad, I'm having a technical problem with the website. It redirects me to oracle.mobi, which I guess is the mobile version of the site. Not good for the company image, I guess. Note: my user agent is "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 Slackware Linux".
- rapind 17y ago
  Sounds like slackware hit the end of their switch statement ;)
zandorg 17y ago
Eric Schmidt (former Sun guy) could have bought Sun with his Google money (note: not quite).
hedgehog 17y ago
I guess there is no more "dot" in "dot-com".
sukuriant 17y ago
Java was the first real language that I learned, back in the days of BufferedReader and no generics ... I'm still young in the programming world, but to see my first and favorite programming language's developer being bought out is ... most sad, to me. I suspect it is because I'm in a period of mourning, but ... Java just doesn't feel the same to code in right now... like it's been killed, even though it's still around...
Corrado 17y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again; anyone using MySQL in new projects is living dangerously. PostgreSQL is the future. This makes me happy and a little sad. :/

A little sad to see sun.com redirecting to oracle. Edit: Consoling myself that this is a better fate than just dying off like SGI

rbanffy 17y ago
That's an understatement.
troystribling 17y ago
SGI is still around, http://www.sgi.com/ http://www.sgi.com/. They were recently purchased by Rackable who took the SGI name.
wavesplash 17y ago
My 1st job in the valley was working for SGI. Seeing our one-time rival become a forgotten memory makes me a little sad all over again. Some of the best OS Kernel engineers that ever walked, walked the hallways of those two companies.
kulkarnic 17y ago
Yes, I got somewhat emotional(?) too. It was a birthplace of so many great ideas-- Java being the least of them. I personally feel "The network is the computer" was one of the most important ideas of the last century (the other being "a computer on every desk"), and one that Google and others are capitalizing on today. It's really sad to see such a company dissolve away.

astine 17y ago

I liked Sun's branding better.

amvp 17y ago
I did too. They had one of the cleverest logos I've seen. With this redirect dies one of the oldest sites on the web. Sun.com had the 11th oldest registered domain name (tied with IBM.com) https://www.iwhois.com/oldest/ https://www.iwhois.com/oldest/
- justin_vanw 17y ago
  I tried to do some rudementary research, but without more work it is hard to know if the current owner is the original owner, or just a corp with the same name. I caught ISC as one of these abandoned domains, there may be more. Oldest Domains: 1. Symbolics.com => Domain Squatter 2. BBN.com => Owned by Raytheon 3. Think.com => Owned by? Oracle 4. MCC.com => Domain Squatter 5. DEC.com => HP.com 6. Northrop.com => Northropgrumman.com 7. Xerox.com 8. SRI.com 9. HP.com 10. Bellcore.com => Telcordia.com 11. IBM.com 11. Sun.com => oracle.com 13. Intel.com 13. TI.com 15. ATT.com 16. GMR.com => Broken? 16. TEK.com 18. FMC.com 18. UB.com => ultimatebet.com 20. Bell-ATL.com => verizon.com 20. GE.com 20. Grebyn.com => broken? 20. ISC.com => Aquired by Kodak who abandoned domain 20. NSC.com 20. Stargate.com => latisys.com
- luckydude 17y ago
  I liked their logo as well. I used to work there and I was the lead on a long dead product called sparc cluster I. The logo we created for that was a play on the Sun logo and the product itself. Hand written postscript (jesus, I'm old) here: http://bitmover.com/lm/sun-clust.sh http://bitmover.com/lm/sun-clust.sh and the logo here: http://bitmover.com/lm/sun-clust.gif http://bitmover.com/lm/sun-clust.gif A little cheesy but I always liked that logo.
- cmars232 17y ago
  Remember the Solaris screensaver, how they used to blink around in a Conway game of life simulation? I'll miss those little guys...
- spolsky 17y ago
  I think these are the oldest .com names, but I'm pretty sure there were plenty of older .edu names.

johnohara 17y ago

What happened to all the online tutorials?

hga 17y ago
For the moment I wouldn't worry and would expect them to come back ... although maybe they'll need some prodding for some of the things that fall through the cracks.
sfk 17y ago
The Java stuff is still here: http://java.sun.com/new2java/ http://java.sun.com/new2java/
bmelton 17y ago
When Oracle acquired BEA, they took them offline for awhile. This sucked, as the BEA products seem to demand frequent trips to the online references, and troubleshooting guides. Actually, it still sucks, because although they have replaced most of the documentation that was available (the most valuable bits were the dev2dev and forum areas) they often link back to BEA, which redirects you to Oracle's front page, or to the front of their BEA documentation section, but absolutely never to anywhere resembling where the link was intending to go.
- achille 17y ago
  The docs are still up: http://docs.sun.com/ http://docs.sun.com/ The same site, just rebraded.

res0nat0r 17y ago

Maybe they can do something with sunsolve next. That site and the backend has been terrible for at least a year due to the failed backend change they were working on forever. No one on the Sun side knew where my cases were half the time.

gaius 17y ago
If you think Sunsolve was bad, wait 'til you try Metalink.

tjr 17y ago

Anyone know what's happening to the Sun research department?

wmf 17y ago
Oracle said no one will be laid off and they will dramatically increase R&D spending.
- wheels 17y ago
  As a general rule, don't trust anything that's said during an acquisition. Those communiqués are designed to assuage shareholder, employee and fan fears and usually get, uhm, reinterpreted within the first year.
  - Jach 17y ago
    Sounds like campaign promises. I'm going to miss Sun.
- wmf 17y ago
  OK, I take it back: http://blogs.sun.com/kevinschmidt/entry/oracle_and_sun_middleware_resources http://blogs.sun.com/kevinschmidt/entry/oracle_and_sun_middl... http://blogs.sun.com/HPC/entry/watercooler_signing_off_hire_me http://blogs.sun.com/HPC/entry/watercooler_signing_off_hire_... http://blogs.sun.com/chienr/entry/farewell http://blogs.sun.com/chienr/entry/farewell http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog/entry/goodbye_sun_it_s_been http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog/entry/goodbye_sun_it_s_been http://blogs.sun.com/raskin/entry/so_long_farewell_auf_wiedersehen http://blogs.sun.com/raskin/entry/so_long_farewell_auf_wiede... http://blogs.sun.com/jessie/entry/good_bye http://blogs.sun.com/jessie/entry/good_bye Looks like the pink slips have gone out.
10ren 17y ago
Here's something: "But the really eye-opening thing about Wednesday's presentation was just how much Oracle actually had to say about Java. I expected superficial affirmations like Ellison gave at OpenWorld; what I got was almost too much to process." http://infoworld.com/print/111021 http://infoworld.com/print/111021

rg3 17y ago

In addition to being a bit sad, I'm having a technical problem with the website. It redirects me to oracle.mobi, which I guess is the mobile version of the site. Not good for the company image, I guess. Note: my user agent is "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 Slackware Linux".

rapind 17y ago
Sounds like slackware hit the end of their switch statement ;)

zandorg 17y ago

Eric Schmidt (former Sun guy) could have bought Sun with his Google money (note: not quite).

hedgehog 17y ago

I guess there is no more "dot" in "dot-com".

sukuriant 17y ago

Java was the first real language that I learned, back in the days of BufferedReader and no generics ... I'm still young in the programming world, but to see my first and favorite programming language's developer being bought out is ... most sad, to me. I suspect it is because I'm in a period of mourning, but ... Java just doesn't feel the same to code in right now... like it's been killed, even though it's still around...

Corrado 17y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again; anyone using MySQL in new projects is living dangerously. PostgreSQL is the future. This makes me happy and a little sad. :/