Borland has appointed a mid-1990s first-person perspective shoot-'em-up hero as its new CTO.

According to the software company, it has appointed Blake Stone to the position of CTO. In his new role, Stone will "help to further the Borland vision for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), helping organisations to align business needs with software development by tightly integrating the design, development, testing and deployment phases of the application lifecycle".

Stand-up fights are surely better than bug hunts.

Stone rose to fame in 1993 through his exploits defeating the Aliens of Gold plot. He returned the following year to deal with the Planet Strike incident. Both adventures were revealed to Earthpeople through the work of games developer Apogee, now better known as 3D Realms.

In 1997, however, Stone demanded a change of scene, and joined Borland as a systems architect. Having rid the galaxy of the scum of the space-lanes, Stone turned his attention to Borland's JBuilder, helping deliver the product line as a 100 per cent Java implementation (it says here).

"Blake Stone has made incredible technological contributions to Borland, helping our customers to maximise the value of software to their business and reduce the costs of new services," said Dale L Fuller, president and CEO of Borland, today.

"I'm pleased," said Doctor Goldfire, speaking from his secret lair. "The boy done good. When the peoples of the universe were in dire peril, Stone was there for them in their hour of need. And now he's there for Borland."

"I couldn't be more excited," said Stone of his new role.

What next we wonder? B J Blazkowtiz to spearhead Oracle's collaboration software development? Linus Torvalds to invade Pluto? ®