ShadowRAM: December 6, 2004

At current value, that amounts to about $6.2 million worth of cabbage. While it's a far cry from the stake Charles Wang or Sanjay Kumar held when they ran the business, it should make Swainson's daily commute on the Long Island Expressway a little easier.

The commute will be a little cheaper for employees of Hyperion, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based maker of business performance software. Hyperion said last week it will reimburse employees up to $5,000 for any new car they buy that gets 45 miles per gallon or better. The company is calling the initiative "Drive Clean to Drive Change." (For five grand, we would skateboard to work.)

Hotel space is running out in Las Vegas for the first week in January, when the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) officially assumes the mantle of the hottest show in high tech. For those planning to get in on the action, remember this: When the show is over, give yourself more than a three-hour window for your flight out of town. We're still hearing horror stories from last year's CES when there were four-hour waits to get through security at McCarron Airport. And the volume will be bigger this year, as a number of vendors that sat out CES last year, or only had an "unofficial presence," will be there in an official capacity next month. Don't say you weren't warned.

Microsoft and Sun engaged in a public lovefest last week that left many wondering what's really going on between the two former archrivals, which put down the ax and ended their longstanding feud last April. Many who joined a phone briefing to hear an update on product interoperability instead got an update about how famously the two are getting along, really. Execs insisted that the companies have more in common than they realized—strong customer-facing cultures with a heavy emphasis on R&D and IP. And don't forget about their common enemy, Red Hat. Listeners were disappointed that the two didn't deliver on the Active Directory-Identity Server interop promised by this fall.

But Sun CTO Greg Papadopolous reminded the audience that bridges between Java/Unix and .Net/Windows will not be built overnight.

In fact, he and two lower-level Microsoft execs kept repeating that they were "surprised" about how well the companies' engineers are taking to each other.

But it's not clear if that's happening at the top level: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates didn't even bother to show up for the call.