Put down the crack pipe and let the fumes disperse.

Sun changes stock ticker (and primary branding) to JAVA. Wow, of all the crazy, bone-headed things to come out of Sun’s marketing department, this one really takes the cake.

The “Java” name around Sun’s products has been an industry joke for years, with nearly every product outside of the JDK containing the word Java in the name being completely free of Java code.

Schwartz tells a funny story about the validity of this decision, adding more cackles to the brigade of anti-Sun commenters here. A quick straw poll of the sysadmins, DBAs and developers around here associates Java with:

• Staring at an orange logo wondering if something will happen
• Waiting around for nothing to happen
• Wasting 2Gb of RAM so nothing can happen
• Nothing happening slowly.

It’s a poor joke, Jonathan. Sun was a powerful brand, a respected brand. Java is a language, and one with a somewhat dubious reputation. Oh, and while teenagers might recognise the Java brand, they don’t buy Solaris support or Sun Fire servers or Sun’s software. Go on, sell a Sun Ray solution to a 12 year old girl and prove me wrong.

Followup: at least someone likes the idea.