Free Republic

SUN MICROSYSTEMS HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF THE GREAT Silicon Valley sagas. Founded in 1982 by a trio of Valley legends -- Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim and Scott McNealy -- the company (ticker: JAVA) has been the launching pad for a variety of trend-setting technologies, including SPARC microprocessors, the Solaris operating system and the now-ubiquitous Java programming language, among many others. (JAVA: 12.64, -3.69, -22.6%) has gone through some tumultuous years over the past decade, including an astounding run-up in its stock during the bubble years, which was followed by an equally momentous collapse. Two years ago, McNealy stepped down...

San Jose will save millions of dollars, getting a substantially more robust computer network at a lower cost after city leaders were forced to fairly bid a contract that had improperly favored Cisco Systems in the new City Hall. The city council in August was forced to rip up and start over with the $8 million contract after a Mercury News investigation exposed apparent favoritism toward the company and a subsequent city audit revealed San Jose had gone so far as to let the company write the list of 18,000 Cisco parts the city would buy. The new low bidder,...