CmdrTaco celebrates ten years of bashing Oracle

See here. We're actually sending CmdrTaco aka Rob Malda a big ass fruitcake to help him celebrate Slashdot's tenth birthday. Why not? Taco's given us one helluva ride. All of those "Oracle Sucks Ass" articles were priceless. Too bad it's all coming to an end. Now all I have to do is send out an email message to Oracle's 70,000 employees and ask them to digg this or that. And then, boom! It's up on Digg and we get like 45,000 unique visitors within two hours. Of course, as Taco himself points out in one of those well-duh moments, "Digg is not Slashdot." Of course it's not, Rob. Slashdot is you, dude. That's why it blows goats. And that's also why your Wired interview has that big "Reddit!" button at the bottom of the page and that link to "Digg Just Might Bury Slashdot." Time for a reality check, CmdrTurd. You're not going to float for much longer.

I hate to say it, but this is what happens when you put women in charge

It's true. Women were just never meant to be CEOs. All they do is frig things up and run companies into the ground. Just like Meg Whitman over at good old eBay. Her Skype deal went belly up and now she's looking for somebody to blame. Watch out, gents. The woman named best-dressed dyke for seven consecutive years and the two time Frumpy Woman award-winner is on the warpath. She's out for blood. Next step: Put Skype up on the eBay auction block. She wants to get rid of that thing while she still can, and who can blame her? The captains set sail on a ship named Joost a long time ago. But who would buy Skype? Microsoft? Facebook? Sun? Okay, maybe not Sun. But Facebook would probably be interested in turning it into a Facebook application or something.

UPDATE: Safra just emailed me. I'll post her message here for posterity. "Larry, you sexist chauvinistic pig. I hate your fucking guts. This is it. I mean it. I'm quiting Oracle right after the rest of my options vest next year. Take that, asshole."

A bit of advice, Szulik

I was impressed yesterday, Matt. Seriously. Red Hat's numbers turned out pretty well, and I see some potential for future growth. That's the good news. The bad news is that there's a lot of bad news. First of all, pretty much everybody views Red Hat as the Microsoft of the Linux world. Face it, bro. You went from darling to Darth Vader in like eight years. You lost the marketing war. How did it happen? Well, you started taking things away from people and you stopped being cool. That's the funny thing about people, Szulik. They don't really appreciate it when you take things away from them. Fedora sucks ass, and everybody knows it. Maybe you don't care about that. The problem is that lots of little teenage turd droppers love Ubuntu. They've never even heard about Red Hat, Matt. So you've got a bunch of Slashdot admin types -- the ones who are hopelessly behind the times and still think grep will solve all their problems -- using Red Hat. And the new people are all using Ubuntu. What do you think is going to happen? You're going to get broadsided by Ubuntu. When that happens, Canonical will pick up the enterprise support and you'll be fucked.

And then there's JBoss. Honestly, you never should have bought it. We knew that years ago. You didn't. And it's all working out exactly the way we thought it would. Get rid of it. JBoss will never make money. People can get Tomcat for free and it works better anyway.

Which brings me to the economy. I'm still not even convinced that this subscription thing is going to work. If things take a turn for the worst, all of your star subscribers are going to make their lazy admins get off their fat asses and actually do some work. You think it can't happen, but it can. I've seen it.

To tell you the truth, I don't even know why I'm telling you all this. I know you won't read it. Nobody listens to Larry. Ah, well. After Red Hat kicks the bucket, we'll start doing Red Hat support ourselves. Somebody's got to carry the torch, right? It might as well be Oracle.

Red Hat shareholders head for the hills

Big news today from CNET: Credit Suisse is downgrading Red Hat's stock from Outperform to Neutral. See here. Why? According to Credit Suisse, "Our checks indicate that the organization continues to be in a state of flux as the company works through its transition to a multi-product company." That's a polite way of saying that Red Hat's JBoss integration has failed miserably, its organizational structure is so fucked up that nobody can tell who's supposed to be doing what, and its subscription model could possibly be failing. Minor problems, admittedly. But still enough to shake people's faith in the world's greatest open source software company. Strangely enough, CNET recommends that Red Hat let JBoss do its own thing, "similar to how Oracle has managed its acquisitions, to good effect." Um, yeah. 'Nuff said.

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.

Red Hat tags along; bashes Microsoft

These Red Hat people are a riot. Seriously. I mean, check this out. After spending the entire day watching the rest of the world react positively to Europe's decision to punish Microsoft, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik finally issues a press release commending the decision. Szulik says, "Given Red Hat’s firm belief that competition, not questionable patent and trade secret claims, drives innovation and creates greater consumer value, we were pleased with the overall decision and look forward to examining the decision in greater detail." In other words, Red Hat strongly believes that buggy open source operating systems drive innovation. But only when customers pay Red Hat thousands of dollars per year to support the buggy open source operating systems. That's where the greater consumer value comes in. Get it? You better. Because according to Szulik & Co. Red Hat's pretty much the only enterprise alternative to Microsoft. So good luck, dudes. And remember to use protection. Because honestly, I wouldn't touch that company with a ten foot pole.

Mission Control to CmdrTaco

I had lunch with Eric Schmidt today. Little Larry advice here: Don't ever eat with the guy. Seriously. I mean, the dude eats like a friggin horse. He just devoured everything on the table, including my hot dogs. No joke.

Anyway, in between bites he said Larry, whatever happened to that old tech news site? The one with the black and green color scheme that always had stories about NASA and cold fusion and inflation as it relates to string theory? I asked him if he was talking about Slashdot. He said, yeah, that one. And then we got into it. We decided that CmdrTaco AKA Rob Malda has basically gone insane in the little dream world he's constructed for himself. The dude needs a reality check. Linux isn't going to win, the Matrix isn't the coolest movie anymore, and Digg is just friggin killing Slashdot. And after I got back to the office and scoped out the guy's personal website, I got really worried. I thought he might have overdosed on Visual Basic or Red Hat or something. But then I called Eric and he said, no, Taco was fine. Because he had just run Malda's IP address through all of Google's records and found that he'd been searching for things like "Windows NT" and "Hypercard" and "Microsoft Antitrust suit" and "Britney Spears is sooo fucking hot" within the past week. So no. Rob was fine. Well, maybe not fine. But alive at least.

Rob, if you can read this right now, take a shit and get a shave, bro. Get off the beanbag, put on a shirt, and go buy a Mac. Seriously. They're in vogue these days. And then surf on over to Digg and catch up on the news, okay? A lot has happened while you've been, well, away from us. Then get some help. I mean it, Rob. Otherwise I'm going to call the authorities and have them help you. Because nobody should be forced to use Windows ME for the rest of his life. Not even you.

When it comes to Sun's deal with the devil, the cure really is worse than the disease

Years from now people will look back at Sun Microsystems and say, Larry, what was the one event that fucked that poor little company once and for all? And I'll say, well, it happened on September 12, 2007 when Sun sold its soul to the devil. Captain Jonathan Schwartz was tripping on shrooms and decided to start shipping systems with Windows. He steered his ship into a pirate harbor teeming with lowlifes like the notorious and infamous Shit for Brains. And the rest, as they say, is history. Mermaids peed on the wreckage, etc.

Or, to put it another way, Jonathan Schwartz thinks he can fix Sun's identity crisis by getting a lobotomy. And it's stupid enough to work. At least for a little while, until the doctors come out and say, well, the operation was a success, but the patient died.

Cheerio, chap.

Hellva job, Szulik

This is one shipwreck I don't want to miss. I mean, just look at all the great things Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's CEO, is doing for the company. Their stock has tanked. Their JBoss buyout is starting to look like the pile of dogshit it was all along. And now Novell is beating them at their own game. I can kind of understand buying JBoss, but losing to Novell? Come on.

Listen, if I owned stock in Red Hat, I'd put Szulik out to pasture ASAP. The dude's past his prime and he doesn't know when to quit. Take the guy out, and do it now before all of you are tarred and feathered by the Ubuntu turds.

Kmasba yoyo

No, it's not Japanese. It stands for kiss my ass, baby - you're on your own. It's the text message I sent to Zach Nelson's BlackBerry after reading this interview. Look, I'm going to be honest here. NetSuite was fun for a while. I had some good times with it. The company was kind of like the sandcastle your kids build when they go to the beach. Or the lego spaceship your son puts together on Christmas day. But as fun as it is to create these things, it's even more fun to destroy them. Ask any kid who pretends to be Godzilla. That's me, Zack. Right now I'm Godzilla and you're the little GI Joe in the sandcastle that's about to get crushed. Because the truth is, I don't need you or NetSuite anymore, bro. Oracle's got something that's bigger, better and faster. So go ahead. Take all the potshots you want. Say I'm a bad investor. Say that I compete with you. Just don't blame me when your little IPO goes belly up, okay?

Jonathan Schwartz in analogies

His face is a perfect oval, like a circle that's had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster. His thoughts tumble in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. He speaks with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. He has a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. He grows on Sun like he is a colony of E. Coli, and Sun is room-temperature Canadian beef. He's about to fall 12 stories and hit the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. His mind is like a steel trap, only one that has been left out so long it has rusted shut. He's as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that is actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

And he's about as stupid as the high school students who wrote these dumb analogies. I like our public education system almost as much as I like Sun Microsystems. Schwartz, what the fuck are you thinking? Oh, wait. That's right. You're not. You're like a turd that was accidently dropped into a cup of steaming JAVA. Or something.

If Sun was a ship, it would look a little like this

The best part is that the captains won't even acknowledge the problem. According to them, it's normal for the ship to take on water and lose cargo and start sinking. Full speed ahead, right Schwartz? I mean, you've only made about 3,000 people walk the plank so far, and your CFO Michael Lehman will only say that "we have to continue lowering our cost structure." See here. Listen, Schwartz. Could Michael say "Shit" even if his mouth was full of it? Because if he can't, and he won't, and he wouldn't even consider saying the word, maybe it's time to make him walk the plank. I dunno. Just seems like you'd want to get rid of the people ripping holes in the hull.

Oh, and another thing. While you've been busy trying to bail out the boat, the open source pirates have made off with all your stuff. Open Office, Solaris, everything Java, etc. It's all gone, bro. You gave away the crown jewels. Which actually raises the question: Is it even worth saving the boat at all? I mean, if there's nothing onboard except a bunch of crappy servers with RISC processors, maybe you should just abandon ship. Or did this dude just take the last lifeboat?