Free Republic

On first glance, it could be the ultimate Valentine's Day card -- a gigantic billboard that towers over New York's Times Square, featuring a happy couple with the text: "You are my soulmate forever, Charles & YaVaughnie." But as every scorned lover knows, looks can be deceiving. This billboard -- which also has gone up in Atlanta and San Francisco -- is the ultimate act of revenge -- a very public retaliation by a dumped mistress aimed at a very wealthy, and married, businessman who is an adviser to President Obama. YaVaughnie Wilkins posted the signs after she learned that...

John Kerry, Orrin Hatch and 57 other senators have written to the European Commission accusing it of taking too long to approve Oracle's takeover of Sun in order to deliberately damage US business. In an open letter Senator John Kerry (Mass) said: "The EC is within its sovereign rights to set the rules for operation in its market [thanks John], but with our Department of Justice having made a compelling case that the merger does not pose a threat to competition, it is fair to ask the EC for the basis on which a delay on decision making is warranted...

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison commissioned the fabricators at Kirkham Motorsports to build the ultimate, cost-is-no-object roadster. After years of labor, they've completed the all-billet aluminum Cobra. Click "more" to see them build one of the most spectacular custom cars ever.

In recent quarters Oracle has been taking aim at Salesforce.com, noting that its Siebel On Demand was poaching customers. On Thursday it was Salesforce’s turn to return fire. Following Salesforce’s fiscal second quarter earnings, CEO Marc Benioff, as chatty as ever, took aim at his trash talking nemesis, Oracle chief Larry Ellison. Benioff said on a conference call: I am excited to welcome back Success Factors to the Salesforce.com family. Success Factors dropped Oracle On Demand after the application failed to deliver and sales reps pleaded to return to Salesforce. When sales teams are demanding your application to support their...

Sun Microsystems Inc. on Tuesday updated guidance for what looks to be its final quarter as an independent company and set the date when shareholders will vote on its sale to Oracle Corp. The Santa Clara computer company said it expects to lose between 24 cents and 34 cents in the quarter ended June 30 on revenue of between $2.6 billion and $2.7 billion. In the same quarter last year, Sun reported a loss of 12 cents a share on $3.8 billion in revenue. Adjusting for one-time events, Sun (NASDAQ:JAVA) said it expects a loss of between 6 cents and...

Oracle Corp reported quarterly earnings above expectations as the No. 3 software maker's profit margin hit a record thanks to robust growth in its maintenance business, sending shares up 2.7 percent. The company run by billionaire Larry Ellison also reported a smaller-than-expected drop in new software sales and said it grabbed market share from SAP in certain segments -- signs that Oracle may be weathering the downturn better than rivals. "We've been able to push through the economic situation rather well and I have to tell you that I still see the pipeline growing rather significantly," Oracle President Safra Catz...

Much to the industry’s surprise, Oracle has bought Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion following the breakdown in talks with IBM. Sun’s future appeared to be uncertain and few expected Oracle to be waiting patiently in the wings (although it does explain why Sun was prepared to walk away from IBM’s offer). There are several good reasons why Oracle wanted Sun… * Sun’s hardware and backup solutions could be good for Oracle’s software * the Java programming language * VirtualBox Virtual Machine software * OpenOffice * and MySQL - the world’s most popular open-source database. Whilst MySQL and Oracle are not...

LAST week's audacious $US7.4 billion ($10.2 billion) play by Oracle to acquire Sun Microsystems has drawn comparisons with General Motors' moves in the 1950s to consolidate the US car industry. Oracle has touted the bid as a game changer that will help establish it as the first company to sell software and hardware products end-to-end. Rivals are sceptical of the rhetoric and believe the real motive is to kill off Sun's competing software products, which they say has been a theme of Oracle's buying spree, which has reportedly cost $US34.5 billion since 2005. If approved, Oracle will acquire Sun's global...

While Oracle and Sun Microsystems are hailing Oracle's purchase of Sun [1] as a big boost for Java, others are not so sure, questioning what kind of control Oracle might try to exercise over the popular platform that has driven so many enterprise applications since it was first developed in 1995. Observers also expect Oracle to make a go of trying to make more money off of Java than Sun ever could. Sun has tried to leverage Java as a lead-in to selling services, but without much success. By contrast, Oracle is very disciplined about extracting money from its technologies....

Over the past 13 years, Sun Microsystems' Java language has become one of the computer industry's best known brands—and underappreciated assets. The tension wasn't lost on Sun's new owner, Oracle, which on Apr. 20 said it will purchase Silicon Valley pioneer Sun for $7.4 billion in cash. If Oracle has its way, Java will emerge not only as a strong revenue source but also a key component of plans to keep customers loyal for years to come. During a conference call with analysts Apr. 20, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison called Java "the single most important software asset we have ever...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/beyond_the_echo_chamber/ Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm Advice from "beyond the echo chamber" We just learned the economy lost another 600,000 jobs last month. It's a staggering number, and it underscores just how deep this crisis is – and, as the President pointed out this morning, it’s accelerating. That's why he created the Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- to solicit ideas from "beyond the echo chamber of Washington, DC." "I’m not interested in groupthink, which is why the Board reflects a broad cross-section of experience, expertise, and ideology," he said. "We’ve recruited...

Okay, I'll start: 1) Blagojevich walks scott free 2) My salary continues to remain stagnate 3) The bailout results in a massive debt to taxpayers with zero benefit to them 4) Iran aquires nuclear weapons and we (including Bush) failed to do anything about it 5) Jamie Gertz continue's to become even more attractive as she ages

Happy New Year's Eve to all at Free Republic!!! Make your predictions for 2008. Good Luck!!!

Oracle Corp. executives have finally revealed the names of 26 enterprise-class customers that have gone with that company for their Red Hat Linux support needs. However, the number of customers in that list doing wholesale migrations to Oracle's brand of Linux is much smaller. Only the International House of Pancakes is on the record saying Oracle Enterprise Linux completely replaced Red Hat in its data center. In a statement, IHOP CTO Patrick Piccininno said the switch from Red Hat to Oracle Enterprise Linux "couldn't have been easier." Yahoo was previously on the Red Hat-to-Oracle Linux migration list, but that migration...

Oracle Corp accused its German rival SAP AG of hacking into its computers to heist secret product information in a lawsuit that highlights the escalating tensions between two of the world's largest business software makers. "This isn't really about protecting intellectual property," said Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang. "This is all about the art of war." The complaint, filed on Thursday in the San Francisco federal court, alleges that SAP resorted to high-tech skullduggery in a desperate attempt to maintain its leadership in business applications software -- programs that help companies manage a wide range of administrative tasks. Long the...

Oracle announced a deal today to acquire Hyperion Solutions, which makes software that allows corporations to analyze and track their performance, for about $3.3 billion. The deal is the latest trophy in a long string of acquisitions by Oracle, the database software giant that has been struggling to grow from within. In December, Oracle posted strong earnings growth for its second fiscal quarter, but its growth in license sales disappointed investors. The company said at the time that it had failed to close some crucial licensing deals during the quarter. License sales rose 28 percent in the quarter, but that...

Red Hat dismisses threat posed by Oracle and Microsoft 11th December 2006 By Matthew Aslett Red Hat Inc's executive vice president of worldwide sales, Alex Pinchev, has dismissed the impact that Oracle Corp's entry into the Linux support business could have on Red Hat, insisting Oracle does not really know what it is doing. Pinchev also described Microsoft Corp's recent interoperability and patent peace deal with Novell Inc as a "non-event" and dismissed the suggestion that Linux users are at risk of a patent infringement lawsuit from Redmond. Advertisement "They rolled out something that they don't understand," Pinchev told ComputerWire...

Security researchers irked at Oracle's tardiness at releasing patches for security bugs plan to name a different vulnerability in Oracle's enterprise software every day for a week in December. Oracle's quarterly security bulletins typically produce scores of bugs but yet more known bugs lay dormant and unfixed, according to Cesar Cerrudo, founder and chief exec of the Argeniss Security Research Team. Argeniss plans to release a bug a day involving Oracle databases next month in what's been dubbed "The Week of Oracle Database Bugs"(WoODB). Cerrudo said the effort, styled after Metasploit developer H. D. Moore's Month of Browser Bugs project...

Linux leader Red Hat’s stock price recovered slightly Friday, but its market value has still dropped 30% since Oracle announced on Wednesday that it will offer lower-cost support of its applications running on Red Hat.

While it wasn't quite the Linux announcement that had been expected, Oracle Corp.'s latest move will definitely see the company butt heads with the leading distributor of the open-source operating system Red Hat Inc. Oracle will offer "full support" for Red Hat's Linux distribution to both Oracle and non-Oracle customers, Larry Ellison, chief executive officer of Oracle Corp., said Wednesday. He was giving the closing keynote at his company's OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. Ellison was widely expected to announce an Oracle-branded version of Linux. He kicked off the rumor mill about such a development back in April when he...