For twenty-three years he has been Sun's CEO. And he doesn't have any plans to move sideways.

That, anyway, is what Scott McNealy told USA TODAY reporter Michelle Kessler at the weekend, in an interview.

"Sun President Jonathan Schwartz is increasingly becoming the public face of the company," Kessler began. "Are you stepping back?"

The answer was vintage McNealy (though he didn't, notice, refute her premise about Schwartz):

"I've been asked that for 23 years. I've got the same job, the same big mouth."

Even though Intel's CEO Craig Barrett, for example, is known to be retiring next year in May, it would seem that McNealy has no plans to join him. Anyone who doubts McNealy's continuing appetite for technology and for business would do well to read back to some of his comments at the beginning of the year, when JDJ asked him what he felt 2004 held in store for the industry.

In that interview, McNealy revealed an enthusiasm for RFID ("With new technologies like radio frequency identification, many tedious, time-consuming tasks will disappear from our daily routine. Instead of waiting in line 30 minutes to check out at the supermarket, we'll just push the cart past a scanner and out the door, and we'll get a bill for the groceries at the end of the month") and for innovative software licensing ("Software licensing and deployment models will be radically simplified. 2003 was the year we saw a bunch of companies finally get the service provider model right. Companies like Salesforce.com, eBay, and Google are in the software business, but they don't sell their software, they let you use it or rent it. You're going to see a lot more activity in this space in 2004.")

And of the year in prospect, he was brutally realistic:

"The world is still going to keep a tight hold on its purse strings, and every dollar will be hard earned. There's no magic pill that's going to bring about an economic recovery. For the tech sector, it's going to take a complete rethinking of IT investments in terms of competitive advantage, operating and maintenance costs, and total cost of ownership."

Against this background, McNealy is of course doubly pleased that Sun has posted its second quarter of revenue growth in a row.

"I think we had a pretty rough time in the post-bubble. Then all of a sudden we've had two (revenue jumps) in a row," he told USA Today on Sunday, enthusiastically. "We've not only survived, we're thriving. We're executing well, and some of our competitors aren't."

Asked whether the Sun uptick was just the result of an overall industry upturn, McNealy replied that he didn't think so. "I think Sun's doing better rather than a change in the industry," he said.

"We have $7.4 billion of cash in the bank. That's better than IBM," he added.

Jonathan Schwartz may have to wait a while yet it seems. Or will McNealy one day all of a sudden quit - while he's ahead?