Why is is that every successive generation is forced to re-learn the truth about the way people work? Even before I had any gray hair, I always sought to work on teams with widely mixed ages - as a young guy who thought he knew everything, I at least had a *chance* to short cut some painful and expensive lessons because the older, more experienced guys were usually more than happy to share their wisdom.

As was pointed out above, there is truly nothing new under the sun. (Seriously - even if you have zero inclination towards Judaism or Christanity, you really must read the Book of Proverbs sometime, just to be culturally literate and understand where so many of these phrases and sayings actually came from - it's a book of 31 short chapters, so one a day will knock it out in a month. My guess is you'll want to start over then, but YMMV...)

Today I intentionally build teams with a mix of ages, as it's by far the most important kind of diversity. (Yes, I know that's a very non-PC thing to say. Get over it.)

BTW, if you're looking for a more modern writing dealing with the issue, there is no better book than Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month, which should be required reading for *anyone* working on, with, or around any software project, anywhere, ever.

Russian stuff varied a lot in practice, but some of it was actually brilliantly simple. Like Rutan's brilliant simplification of landing gear for a flying spaceship, some Russian designs wind up being better sinply becasue they *avoid* the problem rather than trying to solve it head-on.

Two examples I saw when working at NASA JSC in the 90's:

1) The Russians used a simple low pressure cooling system for their space stations and the original design of their ISS modules. This allowed them to easily use freeze-proof, but toxic coolants - since they operated below cabin pressure, if there was a leak, it was air into the coolant, not the other way around. The US approach used pressurized coolant, was insanely complicated by comparison, and *still* had the potential to freeze solid.

2) US spacesuit gloves are ridiculously complicated structures with many layers and exotic materials and parts laboriously assembled to make sure that they won't leak, or if they do, they'll self-seal, etc. so that a glove rip (a likely point of damage) won't lead to loss of suit pressure. Maintaining any dexterity in the glove while doing this is an obvious challenge with the many redundant layers. The Russians, on the other hand, use something more like a thick rubber glove (modified to avoid inflation effects), and a simple inflatable cuff that seals off around the astronaut's wrist in case of a leak - turns out that a full vacuum in the glove will blow a bunch of capillaries in your hand, turning it red for a week, but you'll be fine the week after. This gives a glove with more dexterity, at a cost that's only a tiny fraction of a US spacesuit glove...

I can't think of a single good technology that originated at Sun

ZFS, dtrace ?

Yep, those two, and how about network file sharing in general, including the various versions of the NFS protocol, and the YP/NIS/NIS+ systems that provided (for their day, anyway) secure and scalable directory services and access control?

How about bringing the best of both the Berkeley and AT&T System V Unix worlds together, with the guidance of the author of BSD, one of the most brilliant computer guys ever?

How about the first 64-bit hardware and OS that didn't require you to completely rewrite your apps and libraries to take advantage of that great new hardware? How about compilers from a computer manufacturer that actually didn't completely suck?

How about the open source graphical user environment (OpenWindows) that in the early days of Linux, finally gave it a GUI that didn't suck, and arguably transformed it from a schoolboy's neat hack into an alternative OS that could grow to run a fair fraction of the world's computers?

How about the very concept of corporate-sponsored, open source software in the first place? (Not just trivial fluffy stuff, but the actual guts of the system and services that run the computer and the network, including several mentioned above, eventually extending to things like OpenSolaris, Spring, and OpenStep.)

How about supporting networking and networked apps from the very beginning? - How about realizing that "The network *IS* the computer"? How about being one of the very first to adopt and support new high-performance networks? (3Mbps ->10Mbps Ethernet, FDDI, built-in 100 Mbps Ethernet, ATM, FibreChannel, etc.)

How about the first reasonably priced, small, scalable, lighting-fast storage array, with hot-swappable disks and compatible with the expensive industry-standard volume and disk management software, but also usable with free/inexpensive Sun "Solstice" alternatives?

And then, of course, there's Java itself. I'm not a huge Java fan these days, given the rise of things trying to do its job better, but there's no question Java is solid and runs important chunks of the world, and is largely responsible for the widespread adoption of object-oriented programming, which was previously a niche thing for the Smalltalk and LISP guys.

Oh, I almost forgot...

How about mice that required you to not twist their mirrored mousepads? (yeah, I know, SGI used those, too...)
How about the ridiculously goofy and expensive 13W3 video connectors and cables?
How about the rackmount Ultra servers that destroyed the CD tray if you ejected a CD with the door closed?
How about computers that really *were* the size and shape of a Pizza Box, but were strong enough support an 80-lb 24-in HDTV monitor on top?

Like they say about people telling Woodstock stories, you obviously weren't there...

I was at Sun doing market development in the healthcare and petroleum "verticals" when Java came out. I'm telling you, the interest was staggering. I once spoke on Java at a local JUNIOR college weekend CS/Internet interest forum to nearly a THOUSAND people, including top IT staff from NASA and all the major oil companies. I just broke the awesome oceangoing coffee mug they gave me about a year ago.

I can tell you that although we all realized Java was a good implementation of some great ideas, we were pretty much taken aback with the Java frenzy that ensued, and quickly moved to leverage it for all it was worth. (With a couple of decades in the rearview mirror, it's easy to forget how revolutionary Java really was at the time, and how hungry the world was for what it offered - namely the most open cross-platform platform and programming environment anyone had ever seen. It didn't hurt that the Java wave lined up really nicely with the 64-bit UltraSPARC architecture's amazing price/performance.)

It worked - Java was HUGE for both reestablishing Sun as a power player in technical and scientific computing, but also breaking into other lucrative markets we'd been frozen out of, including finance and healthcare - Before Java, Data General had far better name recognition than Sun - I literally met with a BIG heatlhcare CTO who's first question was, "So you're with Sun OIL?" He didn't even know there was a computer company called Sun. Shortly after, he was leading a transition to Sun hardware and software across his entire company. We got him hooked up with the right talent to integrate several critical Java-based products and he saved millions the first year, even after all the switching costs.

Trust me, we could have sold Java seats, no problem, although being free certainly helped its popularity and stood out from other "enterprise-capable" languages. The big mistake was when the programmers took over and turned a great system focused on cross-platform results and networked computing into something that tried in vain to check every box on the academic CS geeks' wet dream list, and the simple but vital stuff (like say, nailing down a single place where one could expect to FIND a JVM/JRE of a particular version on any given OS platform, to name one example of thousands) fell by the wayside.

Sadly, Java's never really recovered from the bloat it acquired in trying to be everything to everyone, but it did blaze the pathway for others, including what we called "Java with semicolons": the JavaScript that rules the web now and for the foreseeable future...

Sun was an amazing company with amazing people doing amazingly innovative things (NFS, YP/NIS/NIS+, Java, same binary desktop-to-supercomputer with transparent 64-bit support (compare Sun's 64-bit transition to IBM/HP/DEC's 64-bit cluster foxtrots - Sun's thinking here continues to fuel the current ARM revolution). There were some stinkers, but overall , we'd all be better off with Sun's innovation still pushing things forward. In a lot of ways, Sun was a better Apple than Apple when it came to "doing it right", especially back in the Java days, when we passed on actually buying Apple...

This is the really scary aspect of this decision, and it seems to be lost on most of the commenters here -

In order for Google (or any other provider of information services) to even putatively be *able* to delete all information they have regarding you, they first have to have all information about and relating to you tagged with your identity.

This effectively means they must (by law) keep an auditable log of everything you ever do on the net.

What could possibly go wrong with that? I'm telling you, Hitler and Stalin only dreamed of the power that big governments and big corporations will have to monitor, control, and even "disappear" us in the very near future...

BTW, all Amazon would have to do to get me onto their phone platform would be to build a modern WebOS phone (or something that works like it.) We still desperately need a platform that is really web-centric (web apps were first-class under WebOS - all of the "native" apps, including the dialer, were just web apps themselves that happened to be pre-loaded on the phone or tablet.)

That, and it really ticks me off to have brain damage on the iPhone that was elegantly fixed 20 years ago in PalmOS. (Including really easy stuff like week views for calendars and easy datetime stamping of notes entries...)

In several conversations recently among various tech, marketing, and entrepreneurial/business types here in Austin, there has been near universal agreement on the following really interesting points of perception:

1) Google used to be trusted, but definitely is not trusted anymore. They have blown their trust and probably can never earn it back. A surprising number of people who were comfortable "running their company" on Google until recently are now actively looking for other alternatives, as they are too dependent on Google, and now see a need to begin to move away at least partly, if not entirely. Not a single person in these discussions trusted Google to "not be evil" and misuse or sell their information if it's to Google's benefit to do so. Even here in Austin, where many of us would love the speed of Google Fiber, many were hesitant, fearing that this would give Google too much control and access. Android and Chrome are also impacted by their being fully in the Google fold.

2) Although Amazon actually has *more* (and more accurate/valid) data on each of us, they have not (to date, anyway) abused that in any substantial way. Everyone agrees that Amazon "could be really scary", but isn't, since they are only using our personal data on our own behalf, and that data (at least the personal data we care about) stays within Amazon's walls. Amazon has also proven to be a trustworthy partner on the AWS side of the fence, too, which has earned them the trust of the tech guys. The general opinion of Amazon is that "they 'get' making things easy". Amazon's customers are wary, but trusting, so far. The fact that they do trust Amazon made several of them wish for an Amazon alternative to iOS and Android on both phone and tablets. Although they would like to see it, there is little expectation that Amazon will do general-purpose phones or tablets well enough to be viable competition.

3) Microsoft is now more trusted than Google. This is staggering. At the same time, I have only have slight qualms about putting information into OneNote that I absolutely would not want or trust Google to have. The CEOs of two marketing firms that had been on the road to being Chromebook shops are in the now hedging with a transition to Microsoft Surface instead.

4) Apple is not trusted all that much, either, but convenience and superior product design and usability seem to be overriding those concerns. There is a small (but much larger than I expected) portion of iOS device users that do not use iTunes and/or the AppStore except when they have to. iCloud, in particular, seems to be very untrusted, except by Mac users, who again seem to have a arrangement of convenience.

You can argue about whether or not these perceptions are valid or justified, but one thing is clear - this is a seismic shift in the perceived trustability of the largest Internet players.

I'm not going to address their pay scale, although all evidence points to them being paid far more than they should be, given the the shoddy quality of the "science" they produce.

One things for sure though: It's DEFINITELY NOT a 97% consensus. According to an actual survey (which was not the source of the bogus 97% claim) conducted by the American Meteorological Society, the real number is no more than 52%.

AGW is BS, and certainly NOT settled science.

And remember that both Wind Turbines and Solar Panels are short-term energy investments, in spite of their already higher cost. A coal or gas-fired plant can easily run for 50-100 years with a little maintenance.

Wind farms need economically infeasible turbine/generator replacements inside a 30-year timeframe.

Solar is even worse: most of the energy production is gone by the time you reach 20 years, and it's literally not economically viable to continue to let the plant operate beyond about 30 years, as the meager operating cost exceed the value of the energy produced. And that economic calculus is based on quality solar panels such as those produced in Germany, which have a life of 25-30 years - many of the current, cheap Chinese panels going in to the field today claim that life but are already beginning to show catastrophic failures of the backing laminates and sealing systems in less than SEVEN years. There is NO WAY you can ever break even on solar in that circumstance, even with the richest subsidies available.

Oh, and once the laminating systems and seals are broached, they leak toxic heavy metals directly into their environment - it's these same materials that make recycling them even more expensive than buying them.

Don't get me wrong - solar has its place, and some real advantages in certain circumstances, but it's certainly no panacea, and in reality, it's a really expensive energy source, both economically and environmentally.

Complete and utter bullshit. I was in the solar industry, and even while Solyndra was raising money, we all stood back agape as the scene unfolded becasue it was glaringly obvious to the casual observer that the entire company was a huge scam that could *never* succeed. From a "revolutionary technology" that was grossly inefficient, to a manufacturing process with gold-plated factories and overhead structures that had the company *projecting* a $7/Watt cost at a time when the market was already at $4/W and falling fast, there was NO reason anyone doing actual due diligence would have *ever* invested in this company. The whole deal was as corrupt as they come, and really *far* worse than Enron, since at least Enron didn't (much) coopt and corrupt the government to carry out its scams.

Like I said, I've worked in the solar industry for several years, and although there are bright spots, most of it is a cesspool of corruption, with heavily subsidized companies happily doing the will of blatantly corrupt government officials siphoning off millions to billions of taxpayer dollars to fund their takeover of the government.

You do if you're really trying to launder of transfer a pile of government money to your cronies!

How about eliminating both big government and enforcing antitrust laws to prevent big corporations? Once upon a time, about a hundred years ago, and for a too-brief time, we beat back monopolies and trusts, recognizing the corrupting influence they have. These days, our corrupt government seeks to create and assist the big companies (Comcast/Time Warner or AT&T/T-Mobile, anyone?) and rich people (how about George Soros, who unlike the Kochs, is effectively driving government policy, having previously collapsed one of the largest currencies on the planet) that will line their pockets with corrupt money.

Big corporations can be evil, and so it's not wise to permit them to form. (Splitting them up should only be done as a last resort, but can create a far more vibrant marketplace.)

Big government is *always* evil, for the simple reason that there's never any good/peaceful way to get rid of it - once corrupt, there is no way to change or reform it.

And don't forget, we're not talking about the ordinary level of control or enticements to corruption here - we're talking about the bloody INTERNET - the single human invention that (replacing mail, telephone, radio, TV, the press, etc.), is perhaps the most important, most powerful, and most susceptible to abuse of all inventions in human history.

If you think that shiny prize won't be abused by those in government, then you haven't been paying much attention to the flagrant and increasingly unconstitutional breaches of public trust perpetrated at the hands of our governments lately...

The best, and perhaps *ONLY* way to have an Internet we can trust is to have a vibrant and competitive market, with many viable choices.

And public ownership of natural monopolies is an even bigger threat to the security of us all - Since what that really means is that the public owner can now monitor, record, sell, loot and pillage at will, all while we have no recourse whatsoever. Only private competition can produce trustworthy actors in this important space, and that's what we need...

Actually, here in Austin, we're seeing that after a few years of operation, it appears that our municipal utility is now both more expensive and less reliable (due to both gross mismanagement, no accountability to voters, and ridiculously "PC" policies) than that available to citizens of most other Texas cites, who have the right to choose their power supplier based on price, service, reliability, environmental concerns, etc. From where I sit, I'd far rather see a private company taking some of my money for profit than see that money wasted in ways that inevitably lead to corruption and higher prices.

Power competition is *WORKING* in Texas. We just need to eliminate the carve-out exemptions for city-owned utilities.

Internet competition could work, too, if the corrupt city governments would ever let it happen...