What's that sound coming from Facebook?

BusinessWeek thinks it's the cha-ching sound coming from the cash register as developers sell their Facebook applications and head for the door. But in reality it's just the sound of thousands of ambitious geeks trying to suck from Mark Zuckerberg's teat. Seriously. Sex-deprived brainiacs beware. This Facebook App stuff has pyramid scheme written all over it. Better to become an Oracle DBA and do serious work that can change the world and make you a bundle of money.

But let me tell you about this one app called Make a Baby. I really think it has potential. Check it out. You hop on Facebook and look at people's pictures until you get a hard-on or the female equivalent. Then you hook up and make a little virtual baby that looks like the two of you. Easy, right? The best part is that you don't even need to virtually procreate with a member of the opposite sex. Man oh man. Just think of the possible combos here. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Steve Ballmer and Jonathan Schwartz. (Sorry. Bad image. Talk about some fugly offspring.) Peter Burrows and Dan Lyons. Marten Mickos and Zack Urlocker. Or maybe even Jason Maynard and Rick Sherlund. Yes. Friends, I can see the positive energy flowing as I write this. More on these couples as they develop.

Henning Kagermann has his ass handed to him

Today's articles were so negative that it really pained me to read them. And that's saying a lot coming from me. This article from MarketWatch says that SAP just destroyed its relationship with Microsoft. And this article from Forbes says that we're smiling over here at Oracle. Believe me, we are smiling. But put yourself in Kagermann's shoes for a minute. You're sitting there watching Oracle buy all of these companies and get further and further ahead. We're literally leapfrogging over your pathetic products. You look at SAP's numbers and then you look at Oracle's numbers and then you get all panicked and shit. Beads of sweat pop out on your forehead. You know you have to do something. But what? Your old tricks don't work anymore. The engineers are working as fast as they can and your R&D department is light years behind the competition. So you think, okay, if you can't beat them you'll join them. You'll take Oracle's consolidation strategy and apply it to SAP.

And that's the heart of the problem. Our consolidation strategy isn't going to work for SAP. They're just not that kind of company. And anyway, they're too late. They purchased a company that was being shopped around and they overpaid by a couple billion. Now Microsoft is going to turn against them. And guess who's going to benefit from that? We will, of course, but also MySQL and to a lesser extent Red Hat. After us, MySQL AB probably has the most to gain, because SAP will probably develop closer ties with them after they fall out of grace with Microsoft. Changes are coming, bros.

BusinessWeek : Screech can learn a lot from MySpace

See here. For those too lazy to read, the article says that Facebook isn't doing all it can do to keep kids safe from sexual predators. The article cites a bunch of reputable off-duty police officers hanging out in strip clubs. Don't ask me where BusinessWeek finds these people, okay? I have no friggin idea. But anyway, according to the police officers, MySpace has some Perl script that flags profiles with words like "kill," "rape," "shoot," "gang," "Mark Zuckerberg," and "facebook." They take all the profiles that contain those words and they delete them. Facebook doesn't do that, so it's not as safe.

I know the article sounds stupid, but it's really not. And next month BusinessWeek is going to run another article about how Facebook needs to adopt MySpace's 1995-style colors and website design. The new article will also talk about how Facebook needs to let companies pose as people, let spammers create bogus profiles, and put advertisements for strip clubs at the top of every page. Then, according to the article, Facebook will be worth over $200 billion.

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.

SAP thinks it's ready to rumble

Woo boy. Euro-hippie Henning Kagermann is really strutting his stuff today after writing a $6.8 billion check for Business Objects. See here. I didn't think the dude had it in him, honestly. I didn't think Kagermann could actually spend that much money. I also didn't think he was stupid enough to fall for our jack-the-price-up strategy. But he was, and he did. It all worked beautifully. Safra was actually thinking about pushing the price up into the $8 billion dollar ballpark, but I said, no way, let's not push our luck on this one. Because here's the thing. If we made the price for Business Objects too high, we could have ultimately pushed SAP into bankruptcy, and we can't have that. We don't want to completely screw our competition. We need to keep some of our weakest competitors around so the feds think we're competing with somebody. It's the illusion of competition. That's it. I mean, you don't think SAP is actually going to be able to make this Business Objects thing work, do you? Ha! Henning Kagermann, bastard of bloat, we salute you.

What sort of twisted fuck does something like this?

Much love to dear reader John who sent in this snapshot of my defaced Wikipedia page (above). Look, people. I know some of you dislike my products. Maybe your Oracle database isn't working correctly. Maybe you don't understand our tech support personnel in Hong Kong or Nairobi or wherever. But that's not my fault. Oracle makes the best databases in the world and all of our tech support personnel take a rigorous course in speaking English. And anyway, nothing gives you a license to call me a Jew right in the subtitle of my Wikipedia page. It's antisemitism. It's hatred. So knock it off, will you? If you want to pick on somebody you should log onto Facebook and virtually knee your friends in the nuts.

"You're not going to believe this, but we're giving away servers now too."

Peter "you don't always have to be right" Burrows over at Business Week has hit another grand slam with his newest article about Jonathan Schwartz and Sun Microsystems. The best quote actually comes at the end of the article when Jim Zemlin at the Linux Foundation talks about Sun's recent moves: "It's like back in high school, when I'd throw these big parties and I'd think I was so cool, only no one would come." Which actually says a lot about both Jonathan and Jim when you think about it. Anyway, my question for Schwartz is this: How the fuck are you supposed to make money when you just give everything away? Peter Burrows seems to think that we're living in some new kind of economy where you don't really have to sell anything to make any money. In other words, if you keep throwing free software to the crowd and jumping and dancing around shiny servers long enough, good things are bound to happen. Um, yeah.

Pete, I want you to do something for me, bro. Just humor me, okay? Surf on over to Google and search for "google servers." Then take a good look at those pictures. See how Google is duck-taping hard drives onto motherboards? See how they're using velcro to strap the motherboards to the racks? Those are Google's servers, dude. Those are what power the world's biggest search engine. Google does that to save money and make components hot-swappable. I'm not sure, but it might have something to do with their stock price these days. So, yeah. Not sure where that leaves Sun, especially when you consider that hundreds of companies are now building servers Google-style.

Shit for Brains is splashing into SaaS

See here. Yes, I know this is old news. What makes it interesting now is that Microsoft is competing with a growing number of companies in this market, including SAP, Salesforce, and NetSuite. Don't laugh at the Microturds yet, though. When the tough get going, the going gets tough. I know SFB is just another butthead fighting over the SaaS table scraps, but Silverlight is actually pretty good. It's nothing to sneeze at anyway.

And I'll tell you this. The only thing worse than Google-envy is Salesforce.com-envy. Don't worry: Stevie B. will want Salesforce.com. When he starts making his little mating call and doing that thing with his tongue, we'll start dropping the hints that we're looking into buying Salesforce. It's our jack-the-price up strategy. We don't really want Salesforce, but we do want to fuck Microsoft. So we'll pretend to want them and plant a bunch of articles in the press and drop some outrageous figure like $10 billion. Then SFB will get all huffy and try to outbid us. It works every time. Just like it did with Red Hat and JBoss. And just like JBoss, Salesforce.com would drag Microsoft down. It would be a terrible buy for Microsoft. But that's Shit for Brains for you. I swear the dude's exactly like the teenage girls I see shopping at the mall. He's always buying a bunch of shit he doesn't really want or need.

Revenge of the Nerds coming to Xbox

Doesn't it seem like Microsoft takes a hit every time Red Hat releases their numbers? It sure seems that way to me. Red Hat announces record profits and Microsoft's stock goes down. Red Hat announces that they've gained market share and Microsoft fires a couple of their vice presidents. Don't ask me why it's like that. When you really look at the numbers you realize Microsoft has nothing to fear. But they're still afraid. It's like the elephant jumping out of its skin every time it sees the mouse. This last time Microsoft tried something new. Shit for Brains said, well, look. If we release Halo 3 on the same week Red Hat announces quarterly earnings, we'll probably be okay. And they were. In fact, Halo 3 actually did much better than they thought it would. Which is kind of surprising when you consider that the game sucks ass.

So the new plan is to release an Xbox game every time Red Hat announces quarterly earnings. That way, according to Shit for Brains, Microsoft can weather the storm. So SFB has directed Bungie to start working on a new game. This one is going to be a lot like the Revenge of the Nerds movie, except it's going to star younger Silicon Valley greats. Gates and Jobs are in there, of course. So am I. Larry made it in, people. Microsoft sent a couple developers down here to look at pictures of me when I was younger (above and to right) so they could get me just right. The evil frat boys are going to be the gentlemen from the SEC.

And you probably won't believe this, but Shit for Brains actually has hair in the game. I tripped out the first time I saw his character. I didn't even recognize the dude. Seriously. But here's the best part. I bribed the Microsoft guys to put in this cheat code that makes Shit for Brains go postal. Once they put it in the game, all you'll have to do is just punch in the code and Stevie B. will start throwing chairs and shit. Priceless.

These Alinghi guys are toast

I think Swiss drug lord Ernesto Bertarelli has finally figured out that he picked on the wrong dude. He’s used to fucking with poor people who sail toy boats in places like Dubai and Kennebunkport. He’s won so many times over the years that it probably never occurred to him that he shouldn’t challenge a guy like Larry Ellison. He thought I was just going to roll over when he proposed new rules that would completely destroy the America’s Cup. Um, yeah. Fat chance, crack head. We're going to shut you down. You can cry and kick and scream and shoot up all you want, but it's not going to make any difference. We've already won. You know how I know? Because articles like this one keep appearing and they're making you look real bad. Check out this one quote: "Making American billionaire Larry Ellison 'look like the good guy is hard to do,' yet Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli has accomplished that, said Gary Jobson." You can say that again, Gary. Listen, Ernie. If you raise the white flag and give up now I'll let you sail in the America's Cup in 2009. Seriously. This isn't a joke, dude. Because everybody knows that I don't just win. I make everybody else lose. It's a little philosophy of mine. Just saying. You can do you whatever you want, Ernie. Okay? I just wanted you to know before we go to court.

Much love, Mercury News talking heads

Remember a couple weeks ago when Jack Davis at the Mercury News said I couldn't figure out what makes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tick? Well, today Chris O'Brien partially redeemed his partner in crime by linking to my blog and actually acknowledging that I wouldn't provide any comment on the crisis over at BEA Systems. The thing is, if he'd really taken the time to read my blog, he would have seen that I don't care about BEA Systems anymore. But that's a journalist for you. Chris may be a technology guy, but he's still a reporter at heart and he's steeped in journalist ethics and standards. Which basically just means that he's a closet Walter Lippmann reader who believes what he wants. But thanks for getting the story straight this time, Chris. Call me, girlfriend. We can talk about reinstating my subscriptions.

I have no idea how this happened

Check out this Oracle employee’s blog where he says that the people in his three-member team have the following titles: "Product Strategy Director," "Director, Applications Strategy," and "Senior Director, Product Strategy." At first I thought this was some kind of a joke. I really couldn’t believe it. Even Safra thought I was getting punked by some Salesforce.com employee. Because nobody working for Oracle could have titles like these -- especially not people working in the same team. I mean, come on. It sounds more like a Red Hat problem, right? They’re the ones with the organizational issues, not us. But then I checked in the database. Turns out this guy is right. There really are three people working in a three-member team with those titles.

So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do here. Right after I post this blog entry, I’m going to call Safra and tell her to assemble an independent committee to decide what to do next. Now I don’t know exactly what the committee will do, but chances are pretty good that they’ll want to hire an outside auditing firm to take care of the dirty work. The auditing firm will come in here and think, gee, we don’t want to touch this mess. So then they’ll probably subcontract with some other company. Those people will come in here and take a look around and tell us that it was a PeopleSoft mistake and it was like that before we purchased PeopleSoft. Which is actually what I believed all along, but we have to verify it. We need accountability, people. The individual who did this needs to be held responsible for his or her actions. We’ll find the person, don’t worry.

Just got back from Google this morning

The Google turds are hanging in there and going about their usual business despite all of the recent flak over this DoubleClick deal. I've got to tell you though, Eric and the founders are up in arms over articles like this one. They just don't understand why people are so hostile and resentful now. They know everybody use to love Google and its pretty campus complex and its wonderful employees and its food and its logo and its search engine. But now the tide has turned, and they're mad about that. But the thing Eric and the founders are most upset about is the Google blogs. They just aren't working. They aren't swaying public opinion like they used to. The Google blogosphere hasn't been the same since it called Michael Moore a big fat liar.

So they have a new strategy. They're going to fire up the Google jet and tour the world giving "Google Truthout Sessions." Dr. Eric will be talking all about how Google really is a good corporation. He'll also be handing out lots and lots of Google paraphernalia and giving kids free rides on the Google jet. And the Truthout Sessions will be sponsored by advertisers, of course. That's why I went to see the guys in the first place. Oracle is sponsoring the first ten sessions, and it will probably sponsor ten more depending on the attendance. We'll see how it turns out.

Report: Red Hat to gain more market share than OS/2 Warp

Let's hear it for these Red Hat guys. They think they're going to capture half of the server market by 2015. See here. They won't make it, of course, but I do appreciate the effort. And I'll tell you that this is really great news for us here at Oracle, because we're all about Linux. Seriously. Why do you think we released 11g for Linux first? We hate the Microturds even more than we hate the turds working on JBoss.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret here: Linus Torvalds is my homie. I take the dude and his little toy penguin up in the MiG sometimes. We buzz the Microsoft campus and talk about that movie called March of the Penguins and how he really wanted to be an extra but didn't get the part. And believe me when I say that Linus hates MySQL more than I do. He really does. And we're both mixed on Red Hat. He's leaning towards Ubuntu now and I'm about to jump ship for FreeBSD. But we're friends. Partners in arms, as we say on my boat.

Caption contest

Okay, so first I've got to tell you that my lawyers actually advised me against holding this contest. They said something about how traffic to my blog isn't high enough yet and people never leave comments or whatever. But you know how I listen to my lawyers. And anyway, I have faith in you people. I know you're going to come through for Larry and actually leave some captions in the comments. Believe me, you're going to have a field day with this one.

So here we have Bill Gates and J Allard at the Zune 2 launch ceremony today. In the Times article Gates said, "We are very pleased with the satisfaction we got. The satisfaction for the device was superhigh." Um, yeah. Not too sure about that, but I do have to admit that I'm a little disappointed they discontinued the brown Zune. Guess the "Like a Turd" jokes have to stop now, eh? Anyway, have at it, bros. Free fake Oracle 12g Database Alpha edition goes to the winners.