Michael Dell, history buff

The dude's a genius. Seriously. Where Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, and the Swedish Empire have failed, Mr. Dell will win. That's why he's invading Russia this winter and opening a new Dell store in Moscow next month. See here. Gist of the story is this: Since Russia has 28 million Internet users, Dell can sell a lot of boxes there. Probably loaded with Ubuntu and bootleg copies of Windows XP. Believe it or not, Ubuntu is very popular in Russia. So Dell's a perfect fit. I mean, when you put a cheap operating system on a cheap computer and sell it in a country where people make like $9 per month, you're guaranteed to make bank, right? Bloodly brilliant, I tell you. Next up on the Dell Retail Store rollout list are Afghanistan and Kenya. Those countries don't have millions of Internet users, but they do have a lot of mules. So people may not be able to get online, but at least they'll be able to get their fancy new Dells home. I know what you're thinking. Yes, it's crazy. Yes, Michael Dell has taken one too many hits on the Ubuntu crack pipe. But the strategy is bound to work at least as well as the Wal-Mart thing, right? Eh. Okay, maybe not.

Listen, if somebody asked me what I'd do if I was the CEO of Dell, I'd tell them I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders. Seriously. Because this Russia thing is not looking good for those poor shareholders. Give it six, maybe eight months. Dell will be out of Russia after winter. Just wait and see.

That's how we roll

The financial flakes said we couldn't do it. They said buying into applications was a mistake that would never pay off. And man were they were wrong. It just goes to show that analysts know very little of anything. Suckers. We blew out our numbers and blew their business socks off. I mean, check out the stats. Profit up twenty five percent. $4.53 billion in revenue. And applications and Middleware sales through the roof. What else could you possibly want? What's that? A BEA Systems buyout, an IBM knockout, and another kickass quarter? It'll happen, bros. Patience. All of it except the BEA Systems buyout. I really hate that little turd of a company.

It's go time

This is it, bros. Time to announce the quarterly results. And you know what's going to happen, don't you? Of course you do. I'm going to bring home the bacon. I'm going to get this party started and raise the fucking roof. Maybe. Or maybe not. No forward-looking statements, friends. Yes, I know it sucks, but it's the law. I will tell you this one thing though. After partying the night before a big conference call, you really need to kick back, close your eyes, picture lonelygirl15 in her underwear, and sip a cup of Starbucks with some aspirin and a polish hot dog from Costco. The hangover will melt away, the ecstasy trip will end, and you'll be ready to kick ass. Let's do this thing, boys.

We're rocking the boat early this week

You probably know that Oracle is releasing its quarterly results tomorrow. And believe me, I really want to tell you how we did this quarter. But I can't. At least not yet. What I can tell you is that we're already throwing a bunch of big ass parties on my boats. You probably won't believe this, but right now I'm totally being crowd surfed up to the top deck of the Rising Sun, Macbook Pro and all. Most of Oracle's employees are out here, and have been for most of the day. See video footage taken earlier in the day above. But, anyway. This rock the Oracle boat thing is kind of an annual event. In good years we party hard and have a lot of fun. In bad years we make the losers among us walk the plank. But this year we have something really special. I had a bunch of custom pinatas made. They're really incredible. Some look like Marten Mickos, some look like red hats, and a few even look like Shit for Brains. Everybody gets to take a whack. So party hardy, friends. Let's do this thing.

"Business ByDesign is like, uh, you know. One of those thingamajigs. Kinda like the one Salesforce.com has."

So this is it. After months of wondering and waiting and reading articles that claimed A1S would fly us to the moon and back, Henning gives us this. Yet another complicated, one-size-fits-all, subscription-based package for small and medium-size businesses. What a downer. Jesus. SAP might as well called its announcement "Nap Time" or something. The reporters were nodding off, and you know it's bad when that happens. Even the valley girls over at Business Week knew what to make of it. According to them, "SAP's approach could present opportunities for competitors, including Oracle." Um, yeah. You think? Listen, SAP is like one of those oil tankers that takes 3 miles to turn a tiny bit to the right. If they make a wrong move or turn too late in the game, they're fucked. And that's what happened today. They just screwed themselves over, big time.

Microsoft is getting dirty

Special thanks to the reader who sent in this breaking news story from Mary Jo "I love Microsoft" Foley. According to the article, "Microsoft execs also announced that, starting today, customers who migrate from Oracle to SQL Server will get a 50 percent discount on the price of SQL Server Enterprise Edition or 25 percent off the price of Standard Edition." In other words, Shit for Brains wants to mud wrestle with me. Like the fat kid in elementary school who gets picked on one too many times, SFB has stripped down to his tighty whities, waded into the muck, and called me out. He wants to prove himself, and he's out for blood. Thing is, I don't need to fight the guy. Oracle has better shit that runs on every operating system, not just Windows. So go fight somebody your own size, Steve. Maybe, um, Sybase. Yeah. They'll probably take the bait.

I visited Gizmodo this afternoon

Didn't see much in the way of news, but I did stumble upon this advertisement. I think it could function as a metaphor for the entire website. What do you think? Anyway, I just bought a couple of these Washlet things for my house. You never know when you'll need to wash your buttcheeks, right? And to tell you the truth I'm getting a little tired of buying that special toilet paper with the Microsoft logo printed on every square.

The Mark Zuckerberg flowchart

What can I say? It's been a slow day at the office. It took Safra and I like half an hour to finish up everything for the conference call tomorrow. After that I just kind of bummed around and surfed the web for a while. But then I got this great idea. Like, I had this vision, I guess. I saw Mark Zuckerberg's life flash before my eyes, and I needed to write it down in a flow chart. So I did. Just click that little image to the right and you'll see the whole thing. Enjoy.

Whatever happened to BEA Systems?

So, hypothetical situation: You're sitting with Safra, talking about tomorrow's conference call with Oracle investors. What company names are you going to drop? Who are you going to make sound like shit? Who are you going to buy out in the next few months? And you come up with a couple names. Red Hat. MySQL. Salesforce.com. SAP. Microsoft. Sun Microsystems. Okay, maybe not Sun. And then you realize, whoa. Holy smokes. BEA Systems isn't on your list. And why is that?

They were doing so well, and they still kind of are, but they've lost something. Yes. They've lost their virginity and the light has gone out of their eyes and they're just not fun anymore. They've burned out and washed up. And you just don't care about them. You really don't. You don't want to buy them or talk about them or even hear about them anymore. And you also know that you can't make any forward-looking statements, so you just talk about all of this hypothetically and keep it to yourself.

Safra says that companies are like flowers: they bloom only once. She says there are a lot of one-hit wonders out there who do one thing and then never do anything else. And she says BEA Systems is one of those companies.

Food for thought, bros.

Okay, I get the picture, Ubuntu

You turds have made it very clear that you're incapable of thinking rational, logical thoughts. All you people think about is sex, compilers, and beer. In that order. But please stop sending me these pictures. They're disturbing.

"Force.com is like HyperCard only 1,000 times better. Now let's see a show of hands. Who's going to buy it?"

More brilliance this week from Marc "You can't always be first" Benioff. It's two days and two new product lines into Dreamforce 2007, and we've been wowed. The wow is now, as they say at Microsoft. I mean, seriously. I can't believe some of these products. They're amazing. Oh, wait. No. I'm thinking of SAP's A1S that's coming out tomorrow. But still. I think this whole Force.com thing has potential. I really do. I mean, once these guys can turn Salesforce Content into something more than an Alfresco demo, that'll be a cool product. And Salesforce Ideas sounds like a Facebook application, right? Just think of the possibilities there. Post employee pics and turn it into the company Hot or Not site. Or maybe vote on the type of Starbucks coffee the office should buy. Or something. I don't know. Anyway, I'm impressed. Seriously. I mean it.

Salesforce.com scores another branding victory

See here. And actually I lied. This isn’t a branding victory at all -- it’s a branding disaster that students at Harvard are going to read about in a couple years. See, Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff decided it wasn’t enough to have a .com suffix affixed to his company’s name. So he renamed his developer platform Force.com. Again. It’s one of those "in with the new boss same as the old boss" type things. Brilliant, Marc. And I need to congratulate you on some of those quotes you fed people at Dreamforce. Like this one: "I did it under duress of the employees. Today I think we really got that." You sure did, bro. People don’t know whether you’re coming or going.

This dame is so right about FreeBSD

See here. She talks all about how FreeBSD rocks her world and Linux blows goats. Best quote: "Linux is more like a barrel of monkeys — loud, messy, chaotic and very busy." Then she goes on to say that "FreeBSD users sometimes gaze quizzically at Linux users and wonder why they do everything the hard way," something I can definitely relate to. Ahem. I'm looking at you, Ubuntu turds. Listen, I'm not kidding when I say that I'd love to make every Oracle customer run FreeBSD. It's just a better operating system. I mean, why do you think Apple uses it? And check out those FreeBSD Devilettes. Not too shabby, eh?

Facebook's marketing goldmine may be crock of shite

And before the Facebook freaks get all huffy and put a bounty on my head, I'll have you know that the title is actually the Register's. See here. The story goes like this: Since Facebook's 40 million users enter a bunch of bogus numbers for things like age, height, etc., all of the trends and factoids gleaned from Facebook's data are probably bunk. Or they're just common sense things, like college students drink beer on the weekends, and Microsoft employees pick their noses at work. That sort of thing. It doesn't do anybody any good. It's kind of like how we know Oracle users are unmarried nerds who eat dinner alone and watch The Simpsons before going to bed at 11. Despite what you might think, that kind of information doesn't help us. Well, okay. It does a little bit. I mean, we know that we should use sexy women in our advertising and sponsor speed dating events. But that's it.

So what's next for Mark Zuckerberg? Why, more investments, of course. While announcing the new fbFund last night, Zuckerberg said that Facebook is "just looking for innovative and disruptive things." Which makes perfect sense, when you think about it. When the demographic numbers don't add up, just go and virtually knee your friends in the nuts. Sounds like fun. You know, I hope somebody goes and creates a virtual nose-picking application that lets you flick boogers on your friends. The Microsoft people would have a field day with that.

AOL moving headquarters to tent made out of recycled AOL CDs

Jesus. I can't believe this is really happening to Ted Turner's nemesis. I really can't. Even I used to use AOL back in the day. Anyway, here's an excerpt of something I found on the Internet.

"In what appears to be a stunning sign of the times, and in perhaps the largest gesture of corporate goodwill this month, Web 2.0 victim AOL said today that it will direct its remaining 73 employees to assemble a new tent headquarters structure in New York City. Ron Grant, AOL's president and CEO, said that he's excited by the news. 'I just have so many AOL CDs that I need to get rid of,' Grant said while walking from Dulles to New York. 'It's great. I'm happy I can give something back to the company.' When asked how he planned to return his company to profitability, Grant said the company would sell advertising on its tent and 'make money off the Internet.' Grant said AOL was also planning to construct pit latrines in Central Park and then charge vagrants to use them."

See full article here.

UPDATE: I just called Ron on his cell phone and asked him about sending in AOL CDs. He said yes, people can send their personal AOL CD collections, but they’re only taking back 5 CDs per person. You can, however, send another 5 CDs if you also send something of value that AOL can auction off. Ron used the example of heirloom diamond earrings. Anyway. Just a FYI for you AOL fans.