Jonathan Schwartz has been doing great things for Sun. he seems to know the market well, and he has done some very bold things with our IP that have been paying off.

Once in a while, though, you have to scratch your head in wonder. There have been a fair number of responses to the stock symbol name change, both pro and con, and I've been thinking about it too.

Many of the reactions remind me of similar reactions to relabeling Pluto as a "dwarf planet". Those reactions also varied from positive to negative. Those against the change were saying that they grew up having learnt that Pluto was a planet and nothing was going to change their minds about it. Those for it felt that Pluto just didn't fit in with the other eight somehow.

This isn't the first time the CEO has done something in an attempt to use a popular item in order to increase awareness - consider the time he tried to use the iPod to sell storage racks. So now he's trying to use the more well-known technology, Java, to sell the Sun brand.

Some might dislike giving up 'SUNW', to which I respond 'eh, it's just a sequence of letters'. Some might consider the move an unreasonable one to make. After all, we're not renaming the company. My response is to wait and see. It didn't cost a lot of money (relatively speaking) to implement the stock symbol change. If it does nothing, we haven't lost much. If it works, well then. We'll have gained much for almost nothing.

If you still think it unreasonable, consider again that well-worn saying about unreasonable people.