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Softwar : An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison 308

Posted by timothy from the costs-more-in-california dept.
prostoalex writes "In the high-tech industry few people achieve such glamour and general recognition as Larry Ellison, the chief executive officer of Oracle Corp. Ellison is known for provocative interviews, for being called the industry's 'other billionaire,' for being brutal to the competitors while staying within ethical limits, and for genuine opposition to a Redmond-based software company called Microsoft." Read on for the rest of Alex's review.
Softwar : An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle
author Matthew Symonds, Larry Ellison
pages 528
publisher Simon & Schuster
rating 7/10
reviewer Alex Moskalyuk
ISBN 074322504X
summary Insight of Larry Ellison and his corporate identity known as Oracle Corp.

Matthew Symonds took a leave of absence from The Economist in March 2000 to follow Ellison in his daily routines, his management meetings, his sales calls and his regattas. But he is not the only author of the book. After the manuscript was ready by Symonds' standards, Larry Ellison took over the footnotes. Both co-authors agreed not to change each other's text, but Ellison felt he had to clarify certain points about his life, career, and vision. Softwar is somewhere in the middle between biography and autobiography -- the life of Larry Ellison is retold by another author, although the book is uniquely personal with Ellison's remarks constantly adding to the personal touch of the book. Statements like "It was a big mistake, and it was my mistake. I didn't think that Microsoft Windows would crush IBM OS/2 and all the other desktop systems -- but it did" allow Ellison to showcase his personal viewpoint in a straightforward and succinct manner.

Unlike many biographies, Softwar doesn't start with Ellison's poverty-ridden childhood in a poor Russian-immigrant family, where he was an adopted kid. That story comes much later, but from the Chapter 1 we're involved in Oracle's selling process, with Ellison talking to the Japanese executives, Ellison giving a keynote speech, Ellison talking to his sales reps - it's all about Ellison, and it's all about selling. Rarely in the book will you see a description of the actual coding process or any description of software development practices at Oracle, which by revenue ranks second among the global software corporations. It's all about sales calls, support calls, commissions, discounts and sales numbers in the million and billion dollar range - Ellison is as concentrated on the financial revenues as a CEO could possibly be.

A supporter of open standards, Ellison does not like the cacophony of enterprise-scale products offered to the companies. "If Detroit ran like Silicon Valley, nobody would sell cars -- just parts", he proclaims. "Customers would have to figure out which were the best parts -- a Honda engine, a Ford transmission, a BMW chassis, GM electrical system -- and buy them and try to assemble them into a working car. Good luck. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how companies put together business systems today".

Since Symonds followed Ellison everywhere he went, the readers get to see Ellison's lifestyle, observe his Japanese gardens in Atherton, meet with Oracle vice-presidents and sales people, follow him in regattas, while listening to a heavy dose of why Oracle E-Business Suite is going to revolutionize many businesses around the country.

The author covers Ray Lane's departure from Oracle in great detail, while Ellison is profuse with comments on why Lane needed to be let go. Market moves of Oracle's main competitors -- Siebel, SAP and PeopleSoft -- are also followed closely, with obligatory disparaging remarks coming from Ellison about what's wrong with each competitor's business. Sometimes I felt the book got too much into describing Oracle politics, like departmental and subdivisional re-organizations with pointers on who was managing which operation, but perhaps the book would lose detail without it. If you have been employed at Oracle, or know some of the people personally, perhaps it's interesting; most of the time the descriptions of policy changes in sales force compensation is perhaps too mundane for a biographical book.

For instance, on page 139 Symonds describes Lane's pending departure to become the CEO of Novell. Symonds presents Lane's point of view:

"He said he'd talked to the board and he thought $2.5 million in options was the right number. You deserve it. I thought he'd gone way overboard, so of course I stayed. I didn't find out until I left Oracle that the board was pissed off about this. No one ever told me, and I certainly wasn't holding Oracle up for money."
Lane's quote is followed by an asterisk with a footnote from Ellison: "Not a holdup? He said he was going to Novell because of the money. I offered him more money to stay. It was a classic holdup. He stayed."

This book being a recent publication, it covers a lot of Oracle products in detail, supplemented by Ellison's viewpoints on how this or that product is going to change a certain business or industry. While Oracle is hardly a household name outside the IT field, the author makes a great effort to explain Oracle server product family in simple terms, without going too basic. Competition (and general resentment) with Microsoft runs throughout the company, and Ellison is not afraid to accentuate it. Mark Jarvis, a senior marketing official, supplied an interesting quote about Microsoft's practices and current Linux outlook: "Linux is the first thing that customers ask about. They love it." And as for Microsoft, "When they felt threatened by Netscape, it was just another company with a known HQ that could go out and bomb. But that won't work with Linux, just as it didn't work with Apache. Apache creamed them, and so will Linux. Microsoft has lost the server war."

Softwar provides an interesting insight into one of the largest software corporations, its business practices and famous personality of its chief executive officer. While this book prefers not to discuss the burned-up Ferraris on Highway 101 and personal jet fighters, we see Ellison as a serious and dedicated businessman. Ellison shares his experience from the past mistakes, talks about the current practices, and what he sees best for the company, emphasizes the idea of network computer as still useful and applicable to desktops, envisions Linux taking over the world (with Oracle supplying a lot of backend databases) and provides his insight into the future of technology. The book is a great read for those willing to find out more about Oracle or Ellison personally, as well as a primer on technology development and its future (from Oracle standpoint).

You can purchase Softwar from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Softwar : An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison More

Softwar : An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison

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  • oracle (Score:5, Funny)

    by laurent420 ( 711504 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:04PM (#7493744)
    as for Microsoft, "When they felt threatened by Netscape, it was just another company with a known HQ that could go out and bomb. But that won't work with Linux, just as it didn't work with Apache. Apache creamed them, and so will Linux. Microsoft has lost the server war."

    once again, the oracle has only told me what i needed to hear. ;>
    • for being brutal to the competitors while staying within ethical limits

      Does this include dumpster diving for trade secrets?
      • > Does this include dumpster diving for trade secrets?

        If it was a secret, it should not have been discarded to be removed not by you but by the city, to go to a place that is not secure what so ever.

        A company will spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for a building with locks on the doors to keep whats inside secret. $50 for a paper shreader is not an unreasonable expense to provide for.

        • A company will spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for a building with locks on the doors to keep whats inside secret. $50 for a paper shreader is not an unreasonable expense to provide for.
          You obviously never had to deal with a accountants before.

    • Larry Ellison doesn't often mention... (Score:5, Informative)

      by emil ( 695 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @01:07PM (#7494367)
      1. That Craig Conway, CEO of Peoplesoft (ERP), was once an Oracle VP.
      2. That Tom Siebel, CEO of Siebel Systems (CRM), was once an Oracle VP.

      Oracle has chased multi-million dollar businesses right out of its management structure - and then spent millions trying to duplicate this competing software to (re)capture market share.

      I would be really interested to hear Larry's take on Oracle's mistakes. I'd also like to hear how he plans to compete with a free product from SAP-MySQL that begins to implement the equivalent features of his database.

  • I know it sounds crazy, but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:05PM (#7493750)
    Customers would have to figure out which were the best parts -- a Honda engine, a Ford transmission, a BMW chassis, GM electrical system -- and buy them and try to assemble them into a working car. Good luck. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how companies put together business systems today".

    So whats wrong with that? Sounds like a fun project if you ask me. How about a Mini Cooper / Unicycle hybrid?
    • Sounds like you should try out for coming on an episode of "Monster Garage."

      Gosh but I can't get enough of that stupid little show.
      • Or better yet, lets take the popular "Monster Garage" and "Trading Spaces" shows and create a hybrid then real men can get into.

        I'm sure that would get ratings like no tomorrow.

        feel the sarcasm.
        • It's called Monster House.

          The retro-future [discovery.com] house made me drool.
          • I don't know. I like the concept, but I never got into it because I was under the impression that the head guy from Monster House was an annoying, loud-mouthed prick.

            Jesse James, however, is one of the best parts of Monster Garage imho.
            • wow, i seriously didnt know this hybrid show i speak of existed. I'll have to add that to my nightly lineup of MXC and Trek.
            • He is kind of a loudmouth, but more in a construction-worker sort of way than in an asshole sort of way. I don't know how to explain it any better than that - he doesn't seem to spout off about stuff he doesn't know, and a lot of the time he steps back and lets the guys get their jobs done. I have much more tolerance for someone who knows what they're doing and spouts off than someone who doesn't know what they're doing and spouts off.

              It's fun to watch as long as you don't take him seriously - and I get
    • Isn't this how house construction works? If I want to build a house (or even a building) I can choose the different parts separately, wall coverings, light fixtures, plumming, etc. Then hire a contractor to put it all together. To be fair, I can also buy a townhouse with more limited choices.

      I think housing is a better analogy than cars. Cars provide a single function (more like a PVR or gaming console), houses provide the shell and the instruments to perform a variety of functions just like computers.

      • I think the above post is dead on.

        There are choices in buying software systems as there are with buying a house or building.

        Want something out of the box/cookie-cutter, done.
        Want something wild and customed made to you, done.
        Want something that looks/functions like this other thing, done.

        What the customer wants, he gets.
      • Yes but those contractors building your house all speak the same language (ok maybe not the mexican landscapers but thats not the point). They all have a common set of tools, hammers, nails, drills, screws, etc... The same cannot be said for software and I believe that is what Oracle brings to the table, no matter what everyone would have you believe.

        I am a prime example of a "contractor who only has a hammer". I speak PHP while some others in my company speak ASP (Yuck!), so while they gently screw in t
        • When you refer to hammer, which of the following do you mean?

          Ball Peen Finish Hammer
          Ball Peen Sheet Metal Hammer
          Bal Peen Tack Hammer
          Claw Finish Hammer (10 oz, 12 oz, 16 oz, or custom weight?)
          Claw Roofing Hammer
          Sledge Hammer (Short or long grip, what weight, what material head)
          Shingle Hammer (with or without Shingle lifter)
          Tack Hammer
          Rubber Bodywork Hammer (Flat, round, ball, point heads)

          And the screws yo refer to? What thread? Metric or SAE, or custom size reference? UK or US pitch formula? What length? P
        • In housing, the contractor is the one who puts it all together. Sounds like you're more of a subcontractor, e.g. a brick-layer. And a brick-layer uses a different set of tools compared to a painter or a plumber. Brick-layers, plumbers, roofers, painters have little interaction with each other and they constantly complain about how the shoddy job of one trade is stopping them from doing a good job themselves.

          My point is, you can't compare a general-purpose computer accompanied by assorted software to a car.
      • Isn't this how house construction works?

        Yes, and it's flawed. Apartments are starting to be pre-constructed in factories. They're cheaper, and have much lower defect rates.

        Personally, bring it on.

        Dave
    • The point he is making, though, is that the average customer buys the whole car (if the point is to be able to go from point A to point B; the business process). But nobody takes care of the 20,000 foot view of their business needs in one step. Instead, they seem to work on "projects", buying different parts, and hope that they can get them all to work together seamlessly. Could this be a big reason why Microsoft will lose the server war? They try to offer a suite of enterprise-ish components that are
    • It may sound fun for those of us who like to keep ourselves occupied, but for someone doing it for a living and needs performance *now*, it's not ideal. For the vast majority of folks, turn-key solutions are needed.

      Heck, I'm surprised no one's bothered creating some "tailored" Linux distributions for common server tasks. Think a nice LAMP distribution that's geared for doing web-serving. Just Linux + Apache + MySQL (or PostGRE) + PHP (PERL, Python, or RUBY), no annoying X or oddball packages. Just inst

  • takeover (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zymano ( 581466 )
    So is the reason for the Peoplesoft acquisition because they want to put a competitor out of business or take it over because they want peoplesoft's software maintanance ?

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Ellison, maniac! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by leerpm ( 570963 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:18PM (#7493874)
      Yeah, this guy is worse than Scott McNealy. He rants on Microsoft destroying innovation in the technology industry. But when's the last time Oracle actually came out with a new innovative product? The most forward thinking thing they have done was port Oracle to run on Linux early on.

      Then he rants about IBM's software and hardware business dying and them only selling services. Guess what Larry, the hardware and software businesses for 20-year old concepts like operating systems and relational databases is dying. And Linux is leading that trend, by commoditizing the software, and creating value in the support and services sector. People are willing to pay IBM for building new systems for them, but they don't want to continue spending ridiculous amounts of money on licenses ever year for your database software.
      • Whoa, whoa, whoa - Oracle not innovative? Oracle is, in fact, doing a huge amount of work to drive their database and application server forward. Here's a list of some of the things they're doing that I have seen working in test environments:

        -Volume management - that's right, the database with an integrated volume manager. Self-tuning, self-healing, online migration and mirroring - what other database has that?

        -distributed clustering over high-performance interconnects - okay, db2 has this, but does it
      • I'll agree with that. Personal impressions of Ellison aside, Oracle is the innovator in the relational database world. There are a lot of things you can do in Oracle that you can't in other DBs.

        Personally, I wonder if Oracle has done any research and development into the Object Oriented database field?
        • I wonder if Oracle has done any research and development into the Object Oriented database field?

          As a matter of fact, they have. Oracle 9i is specifically geared to be an object-oriented system.

  • if detroit was built like silicon valley (Score:5, Funny)

    by proj_2501 ( 78149 ) <mkb@ele.uri.edu> on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:08PM (#7493773) Journal
    sure they'd only sell parts, but you'd be able to get car parts, truck parts, tank parts, plane parts, train parts, crane parts, snowplower parts, tires, tracks, helicopter rotors, blueprints, jet fuel, nitrous oxide, spoilers, giant robotic arms, spray paint for the exterior, radar systems, chassis extensions, ROCKET LAUNCHERS, and reconfigurable engines.

    ANALOGIES SUCK.

  • Bouwahahahah (Score:4, Insightful)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowar ... m ['oo.' in gap]> on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:10PM (#7493791) Journal
    few people achieve such glamour and general recognition...

    Few people outside communist dictatorships have invested so much money and time in such a powerful personality cult...

  • Does it detail his support of H1B/Lower Pay? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DAldredge ( 2353 ) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:12PM (#7493810) Journal
    Does it detail his support of the H1B/L1 visa programs or his desire to drive US programmers wages down to the levels of Indian programmers?

    What about the use of H1B/L1 visa 'labor' to replace higher paid US labor at there offies in the US?

    Is any of that covered?

    As to those who say that H1B's have to be paid the same wages as Americans, please check. That was tied to the higher number of allowed visas and I do not think it applies any more.
    • Face it, for what most H1B/L1 types do... paying an American 3x as much just doesn't make economic sense when you are trying to keep your company making a profit! If the tool is available, use it. By not using it, you make yourself less capable to compete. Certain big, profitable, companies know this. The rest piss and moan about how unfair it is... as they lost money hand over fist.

      If $10 comes in, and $12 goes out...
      • And when that strategy bankrupts and destroys the american middle class, who exactly will be left to buy the company's products? How will businesses that depend on those consumers continue to be successful, thus requiring software/hardware/other services?

        You fail to understand that when the American middle class takes a hit, America takes a hit, period. Indian programmers making 1/3 of an American worker does not buy Xboxes, SUVs, or HDTVs.

        Perhaps some companies should take a long-term view of the situati
    • IMHO, on average, a group of IT people from India / China / Taiwan produces better talents than same number of Americans.
      Larry and Oracle recognized this fact early and cashed on it.
      • That's funny, seeing as how I remember a recent story about how Americans are generally the most overworked and definitely the most productive in the western world.

        There is a reason that Ford is bringing Focus production back into the USA from Mexico, unions and all. And there is also a reason that many companies find that once they have outsourced everything to India they really don't save that much money compared to hiring US workers.

        The difference is that those middle-class US workers bought the compan
        • >>the most overworked and definitely the most productive in the western world.
          Definitely true.
          My original post was to be taken literally - due to better education there are more talent to be found in equivalent groups of Indian / Chinese than Americans.
          As far as the buying power, most of the foreign born IT workers in US actually contribute more to the economy than Americans simply because they arrive in the country with just their clothes on their backs and start changing cars / houses etc as th
    • As an L1 worker in Oracle, I can only say that I earn the same as my american coworkers and not less. Since this is /., I can not expect people to actually know what they are talking about.

      It's not about money, but knowledge. Since they can't find people with the required knwoledge in the US, they have to find it somewhere else.
    • Sounds like you need to check. 'I do not think' doesn't seem to qualify as a fact in my book.

  • "Ethical" limits? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:19PM (#7493878)
    for being brutal to the competitors while staying within ethical limits

    I think you are mistaking the difference between "ethical" limits and "legal" limits. There's a wide gap.

    Ever hear of PeopleSoft?

  • Am I the only one... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ultramk ( 470198 ) <ultramk@pacbel l . net> on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:21PM (#7493895)
    Am I the only one who read the title and thought, Ewwwww ?

    m-

  • Old joke (Score:3, Funny)

    by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:22PM (#7493906)
    But a good one

    What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God? God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison...

    Boom, boom.

    • Ellison's raging ego (Score:5, Interesting)

      by McSpew ( 316871 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:40PM (#7494072)

      I know the old joke about God not thinking he's Larry Ellison seems like an exaggeration, but Ellison's ego is uncontainable. I'd never seen him speak until I saw the segment about him on Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds [pbs.org] PBS series. I was immediately repulsed by him. The man is obsessed with not only winning, but showing up his competitors. That's the difference between Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. Gates doesn't (publicly, at least) give a shit about Ellison. Ellison's obsessed with beating Gates.

      There are a lot of huge egos in the computer industry, but none are larger than Larry Ellison's.

    • you do know what ORACLE stands for, right ?

      "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison"
  • Does the book ever mention that Larry Ellison has been extremely effective at providing token resistance to Microsoft? I, personally, wonder where his paychecks are really coming from...

  • Postgres? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So, there is no mention of Oracle's technical
    strengths (like MVCC?) And, isn't Oracle to
    Postgres as Windows to Linux? Sounds like a
    crappy book!

    • And, isn't Oracle to Postgres as Windows to Linux?

      Not really; Oracle is actually a viable alternative to Postgres. I certainly don't find Windows to be a viable alternative to Linux (though I know 95% of users disagree with me on that).

      The Microsoft jab aside, Oracle's products in my experience are up to the level that the best-of-breed open-source competitors are at, and in some cases beyond. They're marketed towards a more sophisticated userbase so I assume they have to be. While they aren't the dynam

  • C'Mon... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by archaic0 ( 412379 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:38PM (#7494061) Homepage
    ...While this book prefers not to discuss the burned-up Ferraris on Highway 101 and personal jet fighters...

    I don't know about you guys, but those sound like good parts.

    He tried to buy a Russian MiG jet fighter, but US customs wouldn't allow it and he blatantly upset San Jose-area officials by landing his private jet after the 11pm curfew imposed in the area. When you have $50 billion in the bank, a $10,000 fine seems like pocket change. Any guy who likes to defy convention and authorities, and flies fighter jets for fun, has to be cool. It's part of the definition

    I want more of those kinds of stories. For those of of un in the technology sector (most of the slashdot readership, I'm sure) we've seen most of Larry's career develop I think. Sure, a biography like this will have some stuff we all missed, but juicy tidbits like the jet fighter can't be left out.

  • Free databases (Score:5, Interesting)

    by doodleboy ( 263186 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:50PM (#7494173)
    Ok, so Apache kills IIS and Linux kills Windows in the server space. How is it that MySQL, postgreSQL, et al don't kill Oracle? Why is Oracle spared when the rest of the proprietary software industry falls victim to commoditization?

    Just wondering.
    • Because Oracle has sales people?

      Think about it. Who's going to tell people about the virtues of MySQL? Do you think executive will rather listen to developers (who usually hate anything sale-related), or highly trains and motivated sales people?
      • Our company is currently looking for alternative DB's to migrate most of the company onto, trying to bring the company onto just a couple different DB vendors. When they were discussing MS SQL, and IBM's udb, I pitched up the notion of looking at free alternatives, including PostgreSQL... Talk about being laughed out of a meeting...

        They honestly are only looking at companies that are going to rape them in yearly fees, though one of the big hopes is to get one that will rape them less violently, they still
    • Because the best of them, Postgres, today is roughly equivalent to Oracle v6 (popular about 10 years ago), maybe 7.1 in some areas, and Oracle is at version 10 now - 7 major releases ahead.
      • Because the best of them, Postgres, today is roughly equivalent to Oracle v6 (popular about 10 years ago), maybe 7.1 in some areas, and Oracle is at version 10 now - 7 major

        I'll second that! PosgreSQL is great, I use it a lot, but your assement of it being like Oravle v6 is spot on.

        however PostgreSQL does kick the crap out of MS SQL, and it's pace of improvment is very impressive - I don't think it will take them 10 years to catch up to Oracle 10.

    • Two reasons. Oracle has never been the default monopoly, installed on every computer. They've had to fight, quality and marketing, for where they are. This probably means they've got a higher quality product than Windows.

      Second, everyone needs an OS. IBM needs it to sell computers, Oracle needs it to run their DB, id Software needs it to play their games, Yahoo needs it to run their web services on, etc. Everyone wants an OS that just works, but it's not their business so they'd rather just fix up whatever

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:56PM (#7494230)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The irrelevance of Silicon Valley to Larry Ellison (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @01:05PM (#7494343) Homepage
    The funny thing about Larry Ellison in Silicon Valley is that he's mostly ignored here. He has the database business, but nobody else in the Valley does much in that area. His ventures into new technologies like thin clients, video streaming, and supercomputers have all been duds. Oracle is viewed as a large but boring enterprise applications company like Computer Associates, SAP, or Automatic Data Processing.
  • Think I saw that [levity.com] somewhere else...

  • Oracle=Better Design (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rohar ( 253766 )
    Oracle is staying ahead because multiversioning reads are a better database design for 24/7 hybrid (OLTP/OLAP) systems (i.e. ecommerce and just about everything else).

    PostgreSQL is the only other product out there (including MS-SQL Server, DB2, Postgress, Informix, Sybase and MySQL(unpatched)) in which reads don't block writes and vice-versa.

    The row level locking is also an original design in Oracle, where SQL Server and DB2 it is an add-on and both of them will eventually run out of row level locking res

  • Ellison, the Self-Made Man (Score:4, Insightful)

    by llywrch ( 9023 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @01:45PM (#7494730) Homepage Journal
    > Unlike many biographies, Softwar doesn't start with Ellison's poverty-ridden childhood in a
    > poor Russian-immigrant family, where he was an adopted kid.

    I'm not sure if the reviewer was being tongue-in-check when he wrote that, or was honestly bamboozled by Ellison's PR machine. I am sure that when I read that, I remembered the comment his older step-sister once made on Ellison & his background: ``Every time I read about my adopted brother, the old neighborhood seemed to drop another notch on the socioeconomic scale."

    According to Gary Rivlin, who wrote in his _The Plot to Get Bill Gates_, Ellison ``had grown up in a tidy community, home to its share of judges, doctors, and univeristy professors. His stepfather had known failure, but by the time his nephew came along, the senior Ellison was working respectably if dully as a bean counter for the local public housing agency. Their two-bedroom apartment was small and money may have been tight, but it was hardly the fough-and-tumble world that Ellison conjured up later in life."

    Geoff
    • In this we have a classical example of someone trying to elevate their success by stretching the distance they had to climb. Dickens perfectly treated the development of this type of character as Josiah Bounderby in "Hard Times":

      'I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I was to do it or not, ma'am, I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Those a
  • Why am I visualizing something from the goatsecx website ? Ugh.

  • Whoracle (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lexor ( 724874 )
    I worked for Oracle, we actually called it "Whoracle". It was one of the worst experiences of my working life.

    As for analogies, if I could have a car with a Honda engine, American styling, etc. then I'd be a happy person. Oracle certainly doesn't do everything right, they have a good database and that's about it. It's incredible overkill for most mid-sized business though, yet they cram it down the throat of everyone they can.

    Ellison is no genius, his core business was actually built on the infin

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