Chief executive ponytail-twirler Jonathan Schwartz is annoyingly vague in this San Jose Mercury News interview. Got more details on Sun's layoffs? Please send 'em in. Neither one of us has a job to protect anymore, so we might as well blog the facts. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

Blame Jonathan Schwartz. Sun Microsystems' ponytailed Mission-hipster foodie CEO complained in 2006 that he couldn't post corporate news on his blog. SEC chairman Chris Cox stepped to, initiating a two-year study that has just concluded that yes, posting "non-public material information" on a website might suffice as a means of disclosure. What this will really accomplish:Driving kids away from blogging once and for all. When blogs are safe for announcing corporate earning reports — when Mom and Dad drive an hour each way just to pull down a salary for clicking "Save" in Movable Type — you know they won't touch a blog, even if you paid them. Well, maybe if you paid them.

A tipster writes to tell us that a number of fellow Sun employees have either coincidently decided to quit the Sun Microsystems en masse, or are being given the pink slip in a round of layoffs that's rumored to include anywhere from 30 to 65 percent of the marketing department. Has Sun's ponytailed CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, decided that his blog is all the marketing Sun needs? He must be hoping that once Wall Street catches wind of the cost-cutting, it'll boost the company's stock, which has lost over half its value in the last year. After the jump, a gracious parting letter from an employee who had been with the company for over a decade. Our suggestion is that if the layoffs bump up the company's share price, the departed might want to sell before it sinks any lower.

At the JavaOne keynote this held at the Moscone Center this morning, EVP of software Rich Green took the stage and told the assembled crowd, mostly developers, "Welcome to the revolution. Businesses used to drive technology adoption, but now it's all about consumers." Which suggests the company, known historically as an enterprise hardware and software provider, is changing focus to enable more consumer-focused applications. Not mentioned? Last week's announcement of a $34 million quarterly loss and a stock price that has hardly improved since plummeting 20 percent. But look everybody, Neil Young!

After computer maker Sun Microsystems admitted to a $34 million loss yesterday, investors could hardly wait to start the sell-off, with shares opening down and eventually closing at $12.64 — dipping as low as $12.37, well below half the the 52 week high and twenty percent in less than 24 hours. Prompting an unnamed reporter who covers Sun to let us steal the headline they'd never be allowed to run. While the company does promise to slash 2,500 employees from its payroll, the board may want to look at executive pay as well — CEO Jonathan Schwartz made Forbes' list of the twelve best-paid tech CEOs at $13.5 million.

By 2010, Asians will account for 90 percent of the world's engineers. Americans are increasingly too lazy to bother to get computer-science degrees. Yet the U.S. government refuses to raise the cap on H-1Bs, the visas which allow foreign engineers to work at American companies. "It's moronic," Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz tells a Stanford audience in this clip. "Because you know what happens? You put a limit here? Guess what we do. We go hire in Asia. We're not dumb. We want talent." Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy chimes in: "And by the way we don't just hire there, we build research centers there."

Sun Microsystems reported $89 million in income on $3.2 billion in revenue — a 1 percent increase year-over-year. "What we need to see is if this company can ever grow again, and the jury is still out on that question," noted one analyst. Forget that. With all the growth in online advertising, Sun should ditch the server business and figure out how to monetize CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog. Or maybe launch a social network for Java programmers. [WSJ]

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote a blog post to explain why the server hardware maker has changed its stock ticker from SUNW to JAVA, emphasizing its Java programming language and software suite. Luckily, he left comments enabled on the post, leading to gems like this: "This is a move right out of the Dilbert school of management." [Jonathan's Blog via Fake Steve]

At Fortune's iMeme conference, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz repeats a tired old quote about how he likes to drink wine from a bottle while his predecessor, Scott McNealy, drinks wine out of a box. Quips a News.com reporter: "Maybe they should hire someone who likes to drink wine out of a glass and see where that takes them." [News.com]

Linux creator Linus Torvalds vs. lush-locked Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. "What I'm trying to do here is wake people up who seem to be living in some dream-world where Sun wants to help people." [crn.com]

Sun Microsystems' loitering chairman Scott McNealy, when asked about the dining preferences of Jonathan Scwartz (his successor as Sun CEO):

• "Sorry I haven't posted on my blog..." [the f blog via Boing Boing]

Valleywag readers, congrats on your your reactions to the NY Times photo of Sun's CEO gazing into space! Commenter wagsport, yours was just weird, so you get banned. The rest of you, seek therapy.

The CEO of Sun Microsystems appears in this photo from the New York Times, gazing up at the headline, or trying to tan his forehead with the flourescents, or — what the hell is Jon Schwartz, famous executive blogger and ponytail wearer, doing?

Much as we love to make fun of Jonathan Schwartz (and his role as lame-duck interim CEO of Sun Microsystems), the dude is pretty good at blogging. So it's actually neat that Schwartz faxed the chairman of the SEC last week asking him to acknowledge blogs as a viable place for a company to disclose info like new deals and quarterly earnings.

Didn't notice until today, but blogger Robert Scoble's recent interview of Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz (part of Scoble's new "ScobleShow") is delightfully awkward but revealing.

• MTV, in an effort to prove that the level of discourse in a virtual world can indeed get stupider than World of Warcrafters asking "how i mine for fish," will launch "Virtual Laguna Beach" for boob-tubers who can't be sexy and carefree beach-goers in the real world. [NY Times]

"(I) resigned for more time with family," board member John Doerr said when he announced he's leaving the board of Sun Microsystems. (Translation: "I've made all the money I can.") The prominent venture capitalist pumped up the insolvent company, saying it's in "great shape."

Tech writer David Utter is the latest to draw a common parallel for Sun's future business model:

• The Sun hosts an exclusive Webchat with Marissa Mayer, Google's Director of Consumer Products. Our first question for the lovely Marissa: Google bitching aside, just how miffed is she that we excluded her from our Web 2.0 Hotties Competition? [The Sun Online]