Harcey's Identity: Derrick Harcey's Weblog

One Ring to rule them all


Of course the java ring is a bit of a novelty, but when it was first released, it was a very cool technology demonstration. I'm of course referring to the Java Ring from Dallas Semiconductor

I used the ring at custom demonstrations as a give away many years back. People would register at the event and get a free java ring. Then it would be used to associate their identity securely with a door prize giveaway during the event. After a random drawing, the winner would come up and 'insert' the java ring into a reader and a java app would validate that they are the winner. They would then get the real prize, like the coveted leather Java Jacket. For a picture of this and other java memorabilia
I still have several left over java rings and keep one on my desk. The picture above is me fidgeting with my ring, which I find myself subconsiouly doing from time to time as a stress reliever (ever since my squishy stress relief sphere burst).

My prized Java T-shirt

I'm not sure there is a market for this sort of thing on eBay (especially for a tattered specimen after years of use, even if there was, I could not part with it), but I was an contestant in the first Java Cup International and even though I had a lame submission (a psuedo 3D java maze game applet), I recieved a t-shirt (as did all other entrants).

You might ask (and rightly so) why are you posting such old stuff? The reason is I was reading the tech news and I ran across something that did not make sense to me: SAP "Moving Faster Than Java Was 10 Years Ago," Says Agassi

Talk about "apples to oranges", or as a Sun colleague of mine recently quoted "apples to eggplants" (for a different topic). But I would have to ask, If they think they have anywhere near the momentum tha Java had 10 years ago, do they have anything like:

• The Java Cup International
• A mascot like Duke
• Java Rings

I started using Java 10 years ago and a few years later, I was so impressed that I joined Sun. I certainly agree that SAP has some great products and is a strong Sun partner. But needless to say, I don't plan to join SAP in the near future. So on a personal note, for me, they don't have the momentum Java had 10 years ago.