Kind of a strange situation on the press/analyst call after the joint Sun/IBM press conference (see separate post for details)a reporter (or analyst, I’m not saying which or using any names) asked a question. In the background, we could clearly hear a busy street scene and distant sirens. As he (or she) asked his (or her) question (yeah, I’ll knock the him/her stuff off now), we could hear stress in the voice and the sirens growing constantly closer. After the question was finished, we could hear the sirens come alarmingly close even more street sounds.Then the person on the phone said “oh sh*t”and dropped off the line.

There are many simple and innocent explanations for this. I think the most likely is that this person laid down a big bet saying that IBM would not support Open Solaris on their System x servers this calendar year. (You can bet on anything if you have the right connections, I regularly bet on the phases of the moon. You might think this is a sucker bet, but you be surprised at the odds I get.) He might even have parlayed this bet by adding a wager concerning IBM porting Open Solaris to mainframes. Hearing the first part of the press conference, he instantly realized that he had just lost both bets in a big way, and suddenly had a desperate need for some quick cash to pay off his bookies (read: mobsters).

While still on the conference call, he spots a check cashing outlet and figures its opportunity knocking. He uses the old “pretend the Blackberry in my pocket is a gun” ruse and runs out with a few grand

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the check cashing place has seen someone trying to cash a .38 caliber check ; they tripped their silent alarm, thus summoning the heat. Our caller, still listening to the press conference, gets into the question queue, and hopes his turn to talk happens before the law shows up. He would have liked to jump into a building and hide out until things cool down, but he doesn’t want to lose his cell phone connection and thus his chance to ask a question. Kind of a good news/bad news end game.good news: he got his question in and heard at least part of the answer.bad news: the cops arrived at the same time and tackled him like a linebacker taking a free shot at a member of the marching band. We’re not totally sure that this is exactly what happened, but it is our best guess based on the evidence.