The Weekly Round-Up: 28.04.06

Sun Microsystems founder and Round-Up favourite Scott McNealy stepped down as CEO this week bringing to an end one of the longest executive tenures in the mainstream technology industry.

After heading up Sun for more than 22 years, quite an achievement in this industry, McNealy announced he was handing over the reins of the company he helped set up to president Jonathan Schwartz.

McNealy steered Sun from inception and recently through the boom and bust of the dot-com years. Indeed, Sun suffered from the downturn perhaps worse than any other established tech vendor, with sudden, rapid expansion followed by sudden, rapid rationalisation.

It's impossible to pay tribute to the glorious, though often troubled, reign of McNealy without running back through the veritable cornucopia of sound-bytes he donated to the IT canon during his tenure.

McNealy was a champion of the networked computer and was so dedicated to the paradigm that he called his gigantic dog Network. Indeed, as he once suggested cryptically: "The network is the dog." The Round-Up's still trying to work that one out.

After alleging that Dell's business would falter after being 'disintermediated' by Intel, he claimed in 2002: "Ten years from now, you'll know whether I was on drugs or not."

A sales pitch at the launch of Sun's general purpose Linux server in 2001 saw him implore the gathered throng: "Go buy one, please. Support my kids. They need new shoes."

However, it was for arch-rival Microsoft and the twin figureheads of Gates and Ballmer that McNealy saved his best and most acerbic swipes.

He famously suggested that Gates was "probably the most dangerous and powerful industrialist of our age".

Referring to Microsoft as "the beast from Redmond" or the "Evil Empire" and its CEO and chairman/chief software architect combo as "Ballmer and Butt-head", McNealy was scathing over what he perceived as the lack of innovation and quality in the Redmond company's products.

He described Windows NT as "a giant hairball", Windows ME as "Windows More Errors", Outlook as "Look Out" and called Internet Information Server (IIS) the "Corvair of web servers - unsafe at any speed".

Addressing potential developers considering a switch to the company's .NET platform, he warned: "You can take the offer from the dark side. The first hit of heroin is free."

And the Round-Up's own favourite: "Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system. I guess I would be nervous if my system was built on their technology, too."

McNealy stays on at Sun as chairman. Let's hope that his new role will afford him a little more time to craft a few more well-worked one-liners. Goodness knows, the industry would be poorer without them...

Steve Ballmer was in London this week for a gig at the Royal Albert Hall. Headlining at the Institute of Director's annual bash, the Microsoft CEO took the opportunity to defend the company's history of innovation.

With the Seattle giant (Microsoft, not Ballmer) going head-to-head with the European Commission over an antitrust ruling about the way the company sells its software, Ballmer insisted that Microsoft's market dominance is not based on any abuse of its market position but purely on producing compelling products that consumers and businesses want to buy.

Pausing briefly for some polite, nervous applause and considerable chortling from the back, he added: "Why is Microsoft a big company? Microsoft is not successful because we are big. We did something that people really like. People wanted it and they bought it."

He whispered: "I do see convergence of email, web browsing, phone, music, entertainment all on a single device. That will happen to all of us in the next few years," causing many delegates who had been driven to distraction with their BlackBerrys and smart phones to gasp in collective astonishment.

The visionary CEO then demonstrated an integrated handheld Microsoft device, which failed to connect to the net on the first go, then contracted a number of viruses as soon as it did, exploded and fell to the hallowed stage in tiny, burning pieces (possibly, it was difficult to tell from the gods). Don't believe it?

Well Ballmer did predict that these integrated devices will be a reality for most of us over the next few years for just over £100. Or possibly "several hundred dollars". Certainly less than £1,000. Possibly.

Finally, the sports-mad CEO flatly ruled out plans spend some of his spare cash on a Premiership football team, emulating billionaire-club owners Roman Abramovich and Malcolm Glazer.

He boomed: "No chance! I would have to learn where a midfielder stands."

It's not too difficult, Steve. There's a clue in the name.

On the other hand, it would have been nice to see Aston Villa or Everton rebranded as the Microsoft SQL Server All Stars.

However, as Steve knows from painful, personal experience, no amount of money can help plug the holes in some defences...

Google has not been without its critics this year but an attack from the estate of a dead surrealist painter was probably not high on its multi-coloured corporate risk register.

The search giant is famous for swapping the main logo on its minimalist front page to reflect world events or to pay tribute to individuals on their birthdays.

It's a highly effective way of keeping the Google brand fresh as well as raising awareness of pioneers and innovators in the spheres of science and art.

It was a graphical celebration of the latter which incurred the wrath of the family of Catalan painter Joan Miró this week.

Google incorporated elements of Miró's painting style into a logo to celebrate the 113th anniversary of his birth. It had swirly bits and was most fetching.

Unfortunately, the painter's family was not amused and asked the Artists Rights Society (ARS) - a bit like the RIAA for disgruntled painters and their families - to instruct Google to remove the logo.

According to reports, Theodore Feder, president of (complete and utter) ARS, said "there are underlying copyrights to the works of Miró and they are putting it up without having the rights".

The search engine dutifully complied with the request. Boo!

This is a rather humourless and narrow-minded bit of nit-picking by the painter's estate. After all, free advertising on Google's homepage affords the service's users the chance to learn more about the work of artists, scientists and humanitarians.

It's a sentiment shared by silicon.com readers too, with many commenting that they were driven to learn more about the artist and his work after seeing the logo.

The Google Holiday Logo has become a great web institution and allows the company to highlight the fact that it doesn't take its corporate identity too seriously - a welcome change for anyone involved in web or graphic design who has had to deal with the tedious to-ing and fro-ing with corporate marketing teams over logo usage.

Likewise, its logos celebrating world events come in handy. On one occasion, a logo honouring Mother's Day allowed the Round-Up to make a swift, frenetic call to a florist before anyone was any the wiser.

Interestingly, it's not Google's first brush with the disgruntled relatives of deceased surrealists. The company was also told to pull a logo celebrating the birthday of grand, moustachioed loon Salvador Dali in 2002.

The company would be wise to stay clear of the birthdays of Giacometti, Magritte and Ernst.

As one of silicon.com's editors commented earlier this week, the message is quite clear: "Ceci n'est pas un logo..."

On a related subject, the Round-Up isn't in the habit of taking photographs of condom vending machines in the dingy toilets of Reading pubs but this Tuesday was an exception.

After completing its 'business', the Round-Up turned to dutifully wash its hands only to notice a rather colourful vending machine next to the hand dryers, which sported a distinctive design.

A closer inspection suggested to the Round-Up that the design - a naughty little red devil holding a pitchfork (remember: if you have sex, you will surely go to hell, kids) - might have been inspired by the logo of an open source operating system.

Consider if you will exhibit A: 'Chuck' the FreeBSD Daemon.

A cute little fella, the Round-Up's sure you'll agree, and a worthy OS to boot, so to speak.

Now consider, exhibit B, snapped on the wall of the aforementioned pub toilet on the Round-Up's ageing Nokia:

The resemblance is quite striking. Although a closer inspection of the image reveals the little creature has been given a Billy Ray Cyrus-style mullet - final proof that Hell's minions are afforded no grain of dignity or self-respect.

A cursory review of the logo usage rights on FreeBSD's website revealed that the graphic can be "displayed on personal or commercial homepages served by FreeBSD machines".

Nope, nothing there about condoms.

Except, it wasn't just prophylactics that the devil was serving up. It also offered inflatable sheep and cylindrical devices to allow ladies (and gentlemen, one should suppose) to receive personal pleasure. One with a vibrating option.

Nothing on the FreeBSD logo usage notes about that inflatable sheep either. The Round-Up checked. Twice.

So has the FreeBSD logo been 'hijacked' by an inflatable sheep and condom vendor or is it a complete and staggering coincidence?

Either way, what poor Chuck now appears to be advertising isn't so much FreeBSD as STD-free.

Somebody, anybody, save him from perdition...

Until next week, enjoy the headlines of the week and let us know if you've spotted any diabolical condom machines in your local.

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• Londoners biggest spenders on comms