In the race to play Saruman to Bill Gates' Sauron, Scott McNealy
has just pulled ahead of Larry Ellison by a hair.

Sun has just made available Early Access Release 1 of the
Java (TM) Web Services Developer Pack[1]. The slogan chosen
to inspire the Java faithful: "One Pack to Build Them All".
Complete with nifty LoTRish graphic. Clearly, someone in
marketing hasn't quite thought through all the ramifications
of this claim. Is McNealy the Dark Lord? Is this code
destined to be thrown by Frodo into the Crack of Doom and
Obsolescence? Will the lesser Java developer kits lose their
power once this happens, and fade away? Is Ellison relegated
to the role of one of the Ringwraiths? Or will he instead
choose to play Gollum?

We'll have to wait for Release 2 to hit the theaters to find out...

[1] http://java.sun.com/features/2002/01/wspack.html

--
Curt Hagenlocher
curt@...