And the message is...

How many guest speakers from how many big companies do we get? A lot of what's been exciting in the past were talks from companies we've never heard of doing things we've never thought of. This year, at least today, we've been treated to speakers (yes, sometimes fun) only from Sun's major corporate partners. Can we at least spread this out a bit?

Yet the message is fun. It's great that Sun starts bringing together the notion of a single platform. There are incompatibilities between the platforms that need to be smoothed, including some that never needed to be there. It will be nice to pull them together. These incompatibilities have been a thumbtack on the floor for network things like Jini all along: What can downloaded code rely upon?

Still, I confess to be baffled by why we need a single network. One of the things that Jini has proved is that you don't need that: You need one platform so I can give you code that knows how to talk to me, and then the network becomes an implementation detail.

Already today, there are people using Jini to build networks that simultaneously and seamlessly run across Bluetooth, ethernet, LonWorks, and X10. Why one network?

In effect, Jini is the object layer on the network stack. We agree in advance on a Java API, instead of agreeing in advance on network protocols. The implementation gets filled in as appropriate for the local network environment.

"Everyone, Everything, Everywhere, Everytime." So why "One Network"? How about using that One Platform to build on "Every Net"?