California + Oracle = $95 Million Fiasco

bahtama writes: "The Sacramento Bee is reporting that California apparently signed an agreement to purchase 95 million dollars worth of Oracle software that they really didn't need and that will not save them as much money as promised. They apparently purchased 270,000 licenses, which is more than all the state workers, including prison guards and others who would never need it." How do you think Oracle would treat the whole country?

Comments

Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Kohath]

No way. When did this start?

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[zapfie]

Are you saying we should just be complacent about it? Yeah, it happens all the time, but that doesn't mean we should get used to it.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[56ker]

No he's being humourous - as in "ha.. ha.. I haven't laughed this hard in ages."

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Kohath]

And it will keep happening as long as you give them your money. The only way to stop it is to severely curtail the amount of money that your government has to work with.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Tackhead]

Anyone in California knows that Davis is a master fundraiser - he probably spends more time raising campaign money than he does governing the state.

Does anyone know how much Gov. Davis got in campaign contributions from Larry Ellison and/or Oracle employees?

Then again, given Gov. Davis's views on whose money it is, the $95M in wasted funds doesn't surprise me even if Oracle isn't a big campaign donor.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Matey-O]

And then don't complain when your civil services go to hell (police response, road conditions, school quality)

Don't get me wrong, these aren't perfect now, but all reducing the money does is choke off the wrong parts of government.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Neil Watson]

I don't live in the US but from what I see of that country's government (and others) is that people have the power to elect an official. However, it is the lobbiests (read Mega-Corps) that have the power to influence these officials.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Kintanon]

This is where you have to draw the line between Federal and State services, and have itemized public budgets that citizens can always look at. If the Federal government has less money to work with, and decides to cut funding to schools and not mention it, then they may get away with it. But if they have to publicize an itemized budget detailing where all of the money goes then the citizens can DEMAND that they take a billion or so dollars and move them from Defense Spending to Education spending. The states should do the same. In fact, I think there should always be a 30 day period of citizen feedback on the state and federal budgets.

Kintanon

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Arandir]

And then don't complain when your civil services go to hell (police response, road conditions, school quality)

Are you saying the only way to have enough adequate funding for police is to have so much spare cash that Davis will mispend it on Oracle licenses?

I say tax the people only enough to support the essential services, and force Davis to pay for his own team of lawyers.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Matey-O]

I say tax the people only enough to support the essential services,

And I'm saying cutting the money won't ensure that. JUST Cut the money and the GOOD parts of the government are going to suffer as much or more as the BAD parts of government.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Tackhead]

> How did this parent post get mod'd up?

Actually, I agree with you that my post up there probably wasn't worthy of a 4. A 3, tops. I don't generally follow campaign finance - which is why I asked if there was a connection between any Ellison-funded PACs and the Davis campaign. I figured someone would point me in the right direction - thanks for finding the info. As you point out, Oracle/Ellison doesn't show up in the top 25.)

As for bias, sure, I'm biased. I believe that Davis views his time as Governor of California as nothing more than a fundraising venue for an upcoming Presidential bid. I believe that's wrong from the point of view of providing sound management to Californians.

I further believe that when a politician starts to blather about how "the rich" aren't paying "their fair share", that they're looking to jack up taxes on the middle class to spend on their own pet projects.

In 1999 we reached at the point, federally, where the bottom 50% of the income curve pays 4% of the taxes, yet can outvote the top 50% of the income curve footing the other 96% of the bill. I believe that to be a recipe for long-term disaster for prudent fiscal policy - regardless of the party in power.

Finally, I believe that Davis' track record of mismanagement (MTBE will save the environment, bring it in! No, MTBE is bad, take it out! Each time, gouging oil companies for campaign funds with threatened legislation. Big power companies are gouging you! Let's sign long-term contracts that'll bankrupt us! No, that'll bankrupt them! No, let's bail 'em out!) speaks for itself.

I admire and respect Davis' skills as a master fundraiser and shrewd politician. His attacks on Riordan in the Republican primaries have given him a much easier opponent, as he can characterize Simon as "a millionaire", which rings very strongly as "an evil person" with his voting base. I don't for an instant think Simon has a hope in hell of unseating him.

(Of course, I don't think Riordan would have won either. At least the Davis/Simon matchup will be fun to watch this fall. A Davis/Riordan battle would have put me to sleep. So I'm actually looking forward to the this fall, as the campaign promises to be a great old-fashioned slugfest of ideas. I'm stocking up on popcorn and potato chips as I speak :-)

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[bluprint]

That's absurd. Everyone knows that dumping billions and trillions of dollars at a problem is the only way to solve it...

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[HiThere]

Please remember that your money is printed by the government. True, it's not the state governments anymore. Nowadays only the Feds are allowed to.

What gives money it's value? Basically it's value is that the government will accept it as payment for taxes. It doesn't really have any other value. It's true that the corner store will accept it, but they need to pay taxes too, and so do their suppliers. If they didn't ...

Well, habit might carry the value of money for awhile, but not for long. If I didn't need to pay money, would I work? For what payment?

This is why real estate is taxed. So even if a farmer has a couple of horses and a couple of cows, it's impossible for him to exist without selling things for money. (Draw down of savings counts here, but there's also a pretty stiff inheritence tax unless you are pretty rich and/or can finagle your way around it.)

You don't just give them money. They gave it to you in the first place. (Largely via banks, which take a heavy service charge for the business. This tends to be obscured, but it's in the part of the law that says a bank is allowed to loan twice(?) what it has on deposit.) One of the hidden duties of the civil service and of government contractors it to put the money back into circulation. These people usually stick a part of the money into a bank account (see above). And the Feds subsidize this with government grants, which basically consists of freshly printed money. Taxes happen, but they are for a different purpose.

At least that's how it looks to me.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Kintanon]

Look fuckhead (As long as we're going to throw out the personal attacks right off) I'm all for smaller federal government, but it's important that no matter WHAT the size of the government the PEOPLE have the last work in what goes on. So if the people want to throw more money at the pub. ed. system then fine, let them. We are the ones footing the bill for this crap, we should be the ones who choose where the money goes. And there is NO FUCKING REASON to dump more money into the fucking military. There is no substantial MILITARY threat to the US and won't be for the forseeable future. Our biggest threat is from Terrorism and all of the Stealth Bombers and ICBMS in the world won't stop some guy with a hundred lbs of dynamite from blowing himself to pieces in Times Square. I would PREFER that the Federal government do NOTHING beyond regulating Trade between the states and providing for national DEFENSE (Not Offense, Defense, none of this mucking around in Somalia fucking with starving people) while the States regulate everything else. But as of right now it isn't going to happen in one giant leap, you have to take it one step at a time. And increased control over where the government spends its money is a big part of regulating the government as a whole, both federal and state.

Kintanon

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[afidel]

So Enron's CEO and CFO deserve to cash in hundred's of millions in options 6-9 months before the company goes bankrupt, that isn't generating wealth that's outright stealing. Few of the megarich deserve the rediculously large sums of money they have. I don't believe in socialism but I do believe that the huge disparity is wealth in this country is equally unattractive.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[Tackhead]

> as far as I am concerned the only thing that can limit the excesses of the megarich is government.

Body count from corporate excess, last 100 years: Tens of thousands. (Bhopal, etc.)
Body count from government excess, last 100 years: Tens of millions. (Independent of political alignment, whether communist or fascist)

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that can limit the excesses of government are the megarich, and I'd much rather deal with the excesses of the megarich ("Bill Gates has a really big house, and Larry Ellison has a really fast yacht!") than the excesses of state power.

Enron was fraud, plain and simple. Fraud isn't commerce. The government had every right to step into the Enron/accounting mess, kick ass, and take names.

The problem isn't that government taxes you for police, roads, fire departments, armies, and the SEC. The problem is the rest of the stuff that they also tax you for, and that the private sector has a brake (called "bankruptcy") on excessive spending, and the government doesn't.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[fishbowl]

> The only way to stop it is to severely curtail
>the amount of money that your government has to
>work with.

Severely depressed economy should take care of that on its own. Let's go from recession to depression! If they can't spend because they can't tax, does approaching 100% unemployment amount to a revolution?

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[crucini]

I agree, but I think conspicuously rich individuals like Gates are kind of a red herring. The truly rich are corporations, not people. And the people who own the corporations, while often comfortable, are not mega-rich. Whenever we hear of a despicable action by a large corporation, it's not the random caprice of some ultra-rich guy. It's the careful determined choice of professional managers working in the corporation's interest. And behind that, less visible, are vast numbers of middle class people keeping an eye on their investments and ready to sell if the earnings are down or something. They are the "silent majority" who quietly vote for everything that is loudly condemned on slashdot.

Government and corporations are closely linked. Canadian oil company Talisman has been accused of aiding human rights violations. Governments have killed, imprisoned and displaced a lot of people for religious, ideological, racial or simply tactical reasons, and continue to do so. But increasingly they also commit these acts to benefit corporations.

When Sklyarov was imprisoned, his captors were government employees acting on the orders of a publicly traded corporation. This is the template for the near future, and whether one blames "big government" (libertarian view) or "evil greedy corporations" (leftist view) doesn't matter - the decision-makers have less than zero interest in what we think. And that's because the silent majority, who elects the politicians and owns the stocks, wants it that way. They do think that a Russian hacker who broke Adobe's e-book encryption and boasted about it deserves to go to jail. And we have no more chance of changing their view than vegans, solar-power extremists, anti-car activists or the Amish have of propogating their odd ideas to the mainstream.

Re:Governments misspend taxpayer's money?

[multiplexo]

I live in Washington State. Our government decided to spend 500 million dollars to purchase a new baseball stadium for our piece of shit baseball team, the Seattle Mariners, this despite the fact that the voters had voted this down in a referendum. The government said "Whoops, you guys didn't vote the way we wanted, here's your new stadium, fuck you!" and voted the funding for the new stadium into law by using a clause in the state constitition that prohibits voter initiatives on "emergency" measures. I guess the possibility of not having a third-rate baseball team in your town is some kind of emergency. Two years later Paul Allen, he of Microsoft and TicketMaster fame, purchased a state election. He wanted a new stadium for the Seattle Seahawks, which he had just purchased. Allen went to the state legislature and said "Here's the deal, if you put this on the ballot I'll pay for the election". Of course this got put on the ballot and Paul Allen got the taxpayers to buy him a new stadium. Now, while all of this was going on Seattle's streets were falling apart and congestion was increasing. Did the politicians say "we need to fix these things and we have no money for stadiums and even if we did paying for them is not something that government should do?" Fuck no, they handed out taxpayer money to corporate interests while letting basic government services decline.

In Seattle the city council managed to issue councilmanic debt, not requiring voter approval, to pay for a new parking garage for the Nordstrom family's department store and a new downtown concert hall. But when it came to finding money for parks and libraries the city council punted the issue to the voters by putting levies on the ballot. The lesson here? Most elected officials don't care about schools, or libraries, or police or emergency medical service or public health or anything else. They're filth who, if you give them access to your money, will piss it away to buy favor with whatever special interest groups they need to suck up to in order to stay in office. The lesson is that it is amazing that the politicians who found the will to save baseball and football in Seattle, by pumping over a billion taxpayer dollars into paying for their stadiums, and then effectively handing them the deed, can't find the will to make government run efficiently and honestly or to provide basic services. The lesson is that these people cannot be trusted and the only way to deal with them is to make sure that when the government has money it is tightly constrained in what it can do with it. No general funds and sunsets on all taxes. During the boom times of the late 1990s, when state and local governments were collecting money hand over fist, especially in the Seattle area, they pissed it away as fast as they could get it. And when voters, who saw what was going on and wondered why it was that the state could afford to tax them for new stadiums while failing to provide basic services killed off a few taxes, most notably the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, the politicians responded by saying "don't blame us when everything falls apart, you don't want to pay taxes". Of course now that the local economy has tanked the politicians are closing parks (never mind that King County spent 50 million dollars on a computer system that they had to scrap or is spending $250,000 dollars on public art to beautify a garbage transfer station) and blaming the voters.

Now, the voters of King County are a fairly generous lot, school levies usually pass here, when the local public transit agency needed more funding their levy passed, the park and library levies in Seattle passed. The lesson here is that when voters are asked to pay for basic public services and the price is reasonable they will tax themselves to do so, however they are unwilling to give corrupt politicians carte blanche to spend their money.

I live in California

[Da Schmiz]

So that's where my tax dollars are going!

This is the third year in a row that I got a refund from my Federal taxes, but I had to pay out to the state. I guess now I know why.

Re:I live in California

[Darth Maul]

I think it's funny the mindset the gov't has gotten us into. If we get a refund, we think we're getting money from the gov't. If we have to pay, we think it's so unfair we're having to pay the gov't.

Fact of the matter is, you pay both ways. Just in the former case you overpaid (free loan to the gov't), and in the latter case you didn't pay enough (not a free loan though, you may get penalized).

Automatic payroll deduction is one of the nastiest tricks the over-sized government has pulled on us! If we actually had to write out checks each year for the full amount we're *actually* paying, the government realizes there would be a tax revolt that very year. But take out a little each check, and no problem.

What's that example with the frog? ;-)

Re:I live in California

[Binky The Oracle]

I think Larry probably needed the money to pay off all those San Jose Airport Noise Curfew fines he racked up.

Ok, old news... but still pretty funny.

Re:I live in California

[King_TJ]

You just *now* realize why? Shoot, I've never lived in CA and I've known about this problem all along. That's one big reason I have little interest in ever moving there, despite the allure of their "digital economy".

Cali has been blowing money on all sorts of big government spending fiascos since I can remember. (Much of it in the name of environmentalism.)

Out of all 50 states, only CA thinks automobile emissions aren't good enough for them and imposes their own, stricter, rules.
Nevermind the fact that all the pollution control systems on modern automobiles eliminate 99% of the pollutants already. They have to get rid of another .1 to .4% at *any* cost! Also, ask any performance car minded CA resident how they like their gasoline choices out there. State govt. seems to think 91 octane "super" unleaded is plenty good enough. The rest the country can at least get 93, and often 94 at Sunoco stations.

Their bungled attempts at semi de-regulated power sure didn't help anyone out either.

Isn't there a community in CA that has the dubious distinction of being the only one in the U.S. that ran high-speed Internet via fiber to every single home - all paid for by taxes?
I'm sorry, but I'd rather pay my own way for *my* access than pay into a shared pot so everyone, including the unemployed beach bums living off welfare in subsidized housing, gets access.

Re:I live in California

[Da Schmiz]

For the record, I never said that I had some illusion that the money I get refunded is somehow a gift. What I thought was funny (though not terribly unexpected) was that for three years in a row I've had to pay more, proportionally, than the state had thought I would have to.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not complaining about taxes, I was just making a joke. I consider the entire socio-religio-commercial-political-system of this world to be an (un-)necessary evil which I fully expect to be done away with, the sooner the better.

Re:I live in California

[Da Schmiz]

You just *now* realize why?

Uh, no... I was making a joke.

See my other comment above.

Isn't there a community in CA that has the dubious distinction of being the only one in the U.S. that ran high-speed Internet via fiber to every single home - all paid for by taxes?

I think you might be thinking of Muscatine, Iowa.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

If we actually had to write out checks each year for the full amount we're *actually* paying, the government realizes there would be a tax revolt that very year. But take out a little each check, and no problem.

When you fill out your 1040, it's BLATANTLY OBVIOUS how much you've paid.

For example, an MD friend of mine paid over 100,000 US Dollars in federal income taxes this year. Plus about $30,000 in property taxes, state and local income taxes.

I don't know much about his spending habits, but let's say he put $20,000 in the bank, and spent his remaining $150,000 on taxable goods and services. That means he also paid $10,500 in sales tax in his county. (In this case, he has no car or mortgage payments.)

So at the end of the year, he's paid almost a full half of his income to "the government." That is not American, my friends, that sounds like something the damn socialist frenchies and poppycockers overseas would do. (I love you guys, but your taxes suck even worse than ours. But not much.)

So when my wife's co-workers quit their jobs to raise babies (five of them in the past 18 months) and get public assistance in medical benefits, food, income, subsidized housing, etc... they tell us "The Government is taking care of me! It is great!" (My sister has also done this, twice.)

Bullshit. My father and I are paying for you to sit on your ass and watch Oprah and smoke Menthol Lights next to your newborn. And to get medical care. And to buy orange juice with food stamps so you can save your baby shower money for important stuff... like another carton of Menthols. These idiots think the government just "makes" the money... the clue train never bothers making a stop between their ears.

Sorry to be such a 20-something curmudgeon. Obviously not all people on public assistance are like this; just most of them. Get knocked up by your cousin's boyfriend and skate it out from there. No marriage, no commitment, no work, no worries. And they are OK with it, because the government is taking care of them. And you and I are paying for it. Yes we need social services, but we have bred an entire generation or subculture of people who can now live by the hard work of others who make btter decisions and handle the consequences to their actions without whining.

If you're in the US, and haven't had the pleasure of dealing with people like this yet, take a couple trips to WalMart at 2:00pm and see if you can apply this tale to the runny-nosed crotch-fruit being dragged around by some "poor, bedraggled" mommy. She has a vacant look on her face, you know why? She doesn't have to care anymore. About anything.

Except how to afford that next box of Menthols.

Re:I live in California

[electroniceric]

You poor suffering peasant. I hate to fight flame with flame, but y'all are in the wrong industry to be complaining about government handouts, and I'm in too crappy a mood to listen to puerile nerds complain about how hard it is for them when they have to pay some taxes for the plush infrastructure that lets them run servers in the houses on dirt-cheap gummint electricity. (Of course if you pointed out that a self-righteous answer to an ignorant self-righteous rant is somehwere self-defeating, I'd be obliged to concede the wisdom of this, but a little reply-ranting feels good, as we well know here. On with the show).

It's time for some Q&A.Let's start with familiar /. lore.
Q. Who invented the Internet?
A. The US federal gummint (DARPA)
Q. On whose dime?
A. The US taxpayers'
Q. What industry occupies the largest portion of the US federal government's trillions of dollars in expenditures?
A. Defense. 35% in 2001. Welfare and other means-tested entitlments were 6%.
Q. What has the US Dept. of Defense been focusing on since the end of the Cold War? A. Technology - computerized planes, satellites, drones, tanks, etc. Read any Afghanistan story in the Washington Post or New York Times, or any other major newspaper, and you will hear nothing but raves about our high-tech military.
Q. And who does that money employ?
A. Engineers, technologists, programmers.
Q. What do they make on average?
A. A starting salary of $60K, if not more

Q. Wow, Eric, sounds like the geeks get the most welfare of all! Why do you think they complain so much?
A. (stumped)

And don't even dare to complain how hard it is to figure out what the government spends - it took me 6 seconds to find the US budget. Whew!

Re:I live in California

[pmz]

Starting salary of $60K? Right. Starting salaries like that mainly exist in cities, such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, where the cost of living is oppressive. Make sure you put such data into its proper context before interpreting it.

Re:I live in California

[TheConfusedOne]

Well, it certainly looked informative. I found the numbers a bit interesting and followed your link. On page 379 (Table S-3, Budge Summary) of the FY 2001 Budget document from your gpo.gov link I found the following:

(2001 Estimates)
Discretionary: $634
DoD $279
non-DoD $355

Mandatory: $993
Social Security: $355
Medicare and medicaid: $342
Means-tested entitlements: $111
Other: $123

Total: $1,835
(All number in Billions)

So we've got 15% for DoD (355/1835)
and 6% for means-tested (111/1835). So you got half of it right but distorted the other half. Non-DoD and Social Security were more than DoD and Medicare/Medicaid was almost as much.

So, it's an interesting chain you've strung but it doesn't hold together.

Re:I live in California

[andr0meda]

Q. What has the US Dept. of Defense been focusing on since the end of the Cold War? A. Technology - computerized planes, satellites, drones, tanks, etc. Read any Afghanistan story in the Washington Post [washingtpost.com] or New York Times [nytimes.com], or any other major newspaper, and you will hear nothing but raves about our high-tech military.


Ok, So bombing obviously solves your financial problems, but I think you should shut the fuck up because you don't seem to have the slightest respect for people's lives and misery outside the perimeter of your god-damn backyard. Technology is usefull to ENHANCE human welfare, but it should not be created to destroy it. And if you cow-boys really think your rocket missiles are giving Iraki or Afgani people hope and prosperity, think again. Your values, or should I say, your bombs don't interest these people. They have their own culture. It's the US'es overall lack of respect for these cultures that planted the seeds for conflict some 20 years ago. But I guess you don't want to see or hear that do you. I hope I live to see the day that you guy's finally get it. Realy

Re:I live in California

[Latent IT]

A. The geeks actually do work for a living. And a technological military saves lives. So, aside from your massive number crunching mistakes, such as not counting various other types of money sucking social programs, and your total ignorance that private companies and universities have been paying for, and innovating the internet for 30 years, you're still a clueless wonder.

Oh yeah. And I've realized why you don't like to flame. You're terrible!

Re:I live in California

[Cirrocco]

All of this may be so. Hell, I'll even concede, without looking it up myself, that it is so. And it doesn't change a damned thing. Those vacant-stared people at K-Mart at 2 PM don't help anyone. All they do is take. No amount of money that I make, no amount of money that the government spends on other things, no amount of philosophy changes that. Now put that in your pipe and smoke it, chuckle-boy.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

Let me guess, you never had a baby.

Of course I haven't had a baby, you idiot, I'm a MAN.

And I am the oldest of 7 kids, I have "babysat" my sibling, kids of parents' friends, and neices for 13 years. I know what "having a baby" is all about, and it's NOT about WalMart, Food Stamps, and Menthol Lights.

Re:I live in California

[Malcontent]

+5 insightful? On what planet?
Oh yea planet slashdot where any republican rant gets moderated up to 5 no matter how false, insane or devoid of original thought.

Re:I live in California

[crucini]

Leaving aside your miscalculated numbers, which others have addressed, your argument boils down to "you lost some money and you gained some money, so shut up." But this is not the end of the matter. Our current system of massive taxation and wealth transfer means that people are divided into two groups: those who spend more than they get back, and those who get more than they spend. Some public services, like road maintenance, can be assigned a market value because they are performed by private industry in some places. Others, like defence, are nearly impossible to value correctly. But this does not mean all taxes and expenditure should be regarded as an opaque ball of mud that can only be praised or condemned as a whole.

Wow, Eric, sounds like the geeks get the most welfare of all! Why do you think they complain so much?

This idea is wrong in several ways. Welfare is aid given without expectation of return. It was originally an emergency stipend to cushion the impact of disasters until the stricken family could find their feet again. Paying an engineer to develop a defense component is not done to benefit the engineer, but to benefit the payer - ultimately the DOD which hopes to gain a military advantage. It is not welfare.

Defense spending is hardly confined to computer-related fields. I would not take the media's wide-eyed stories about "technology" as factual with regard to spending. Even if we grant for the sake of argument that a dollar spent on defense is more likely to be spent on computer programmers than is a dollar spent in other sectors, computer programmers are not automatically geeks. Many are simply obedient workers who toil for eight hours on a Windows machine and go home to watch football on TV. I suspect that the proportion of geeks in defense industries is lower than outside, because defense contractors are not famous for being flexible, modern and fun places to work.

Of course it could be counterargued that by hiring programmers, any kind of programmers, the defense industry puts upward pressure on the programmer employment market, benefitting programmers outside the industry.

Lastly, ignoring all of the above, the idea that one should be glad of a massively top-heavy and wasteful government because one's particular profession receives disproportionate benefit is a bad, cynical one whose widespread adoption drives the growth and increasing unresponsiveness of the modern state.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

*Ahem* Malcontent,

First of all, Republican is a dirty word. Conservative is more accurate, but also a dirty word. I vote, and I vote for people whose track record and opinions on issues I know; I have voted for Reps, Dems, Libs, and Inds in my short civic career as a taxpayer, er, citizen.

Personally, I'm a Follower of Kant; I embrace logic. And if your dissenting political views tend you to ignore logic, well whee for you. If you fully want to believe that everyone on government assistance is there because of some uncontrollable circumstance that befell them, hey whatever helps you sleep at night my friend. Just get to know some of them some time, and you will find that they are not particularly smart, but what they lack in brains they make up for in laziness. I have never met a person who WANTED to get out of that cycle who didn't accomplish that goal in six months. But those people were motivated, asked for help, learned from others, and used the government for "assistance." which is what it is supposed to be.

And Republicans want to get rid of many many social programs... they would have long ago if they thought that their corporate-funded election war-chests could overcome their voting record of being heartless, greedy bastards.

Democrats would sit around and come up with ways to raise taxes to a 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% scale, and give back the proceeds of the 75% bracket to the the 0% bracket to "even things up" for the "less fortunate." The fact of the matter is, "less fortunate" is a misnomer; most of the "less fortunate" made their own lack of fortune for themselves. Now they have realized that they don't have to take accountability for their decisions, the government is more than happy to do it.

As human beings, it is hard for us to see someone in pain, or unable to have the same things we have. Some of it is compassion, some of it is "money guilt."

But please don't sit there and call me a Republican because I have a decent tech salary and want to keep more of it so I can afford a GeForce4 at the expense of somebody who is eating at a soup kitchen tonight. That is not the truth, that is an illusion of the truth that some people have made for themselves to explain poverty.

I quit college, moved out at 19, and made my own fortune. Worked my way through four years of minimum wage crap and proved to myself, my peers, and my bosses what I was capable of. Got hired based on my skills, my attitude, and the recommendation of people who thought highly of my work. That is what any of us are capable of if we try. Men and women who are on the path of Welfare-To_Work can do the same thing, but they only see working at McDonalds for minimum wage, get mad, and end up right back where they started... instead of working hard, making it to shift manager, jumping ship to manager of the Burger Kinga corss the street... with salary and benefits. They've been convinced by their lazy peers and their parents that this is all there is... minimum wage and public assistance.

I'm diverging too far and this is turning into a stupid political essay, so I'm going to go now. But I know what I have written is the truth for me. If you choose to read it and soak it in, you are free to accept it into your truth, or dismiss it as you please. Just don't stick your nose up and call me a Republican and attack me just because I'm giving a observant, well-reasoned opinion on something. Think about mine, discuss it with me, and give me your opinion-- I know that I don't know everything, and I'm open to read well-thought opinions of others any time, any place. It's called public discourse, and until I found slashdot, I thought it was *COMPLETELY* dead.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

I am the son

of a self-made man, who was the son

of a self-made man, who was the son

of immigrants to this country,

who had NOTHING when they showed up.

I do not look upon the poor in contempt,

but in compassion. I will give them

assistance in any way they ask of me.

I will give them advice, that if they follow,

they will succeed.

I look upon the LAZY with comtempt.

Those who are LAZY deserve no compassion.

This is MY TRUTH.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

I did not say that the poor live in luxury, I am saying that they make choices which they refuse to answer for when they do not work out.

The majority of the poor are minorities - especially single women with children

What kind of racial stereotyping is this? If you tell me it's because of slavery or something, I'm going to barf.

Your mom only made $7000 income with four kids? Where was your dad? He left? Sounds like your mom didn't make a very good decision in who she hopped into bed with, and/or your dad was a bum and didn't think that his kids were worth supporting. (That is not a man, it's a bum.) Or maybe he died, and didn't have any life insurance. That would suck, but again, we all make decisions. If they don't work out, you stand up and improve the situation. Learn from the mistakes and make better decisions.

How many jobs did you work as a teenager to help support your mom? And your siblings, how did they help? My grandfather worked at a store until he was old enough to join the military, and sent 90% of his check back to the farm in Oklahoma in the 30s. I KNOW that they were not living in luxury. But they were working any way they could to keep alive, and keep their pride intact.

My brother is working a minimum wage job, and having a hard time paying rent. I don't give him money, do you know why? He spends about $30 a week on cigarettes, of his own choice. Yes it's an addiction, but believe me, I have seen lesser men than him quit cold turkey. I didn't say it was EASY, I just said you can do it.

I also tried very hard not to stereotype everyone I know on public assistance as trashy Menthol-addicts, but after you see four or five making the exact same choices and having the exact same reactions to the outcome, it's hard not to get jaded.

Re:I live in California

[TheConfusedOne]

I'd kind of put in this in terms of perspective.

The budget represents ALL money spent by the US Government. This group seems to be saying that they are only accounting for the moneys related to Income Taxes. First, I'd point out that the government has been using the large surplusses from Social Security to fund other portions of the government for years now (putting the lie to "Trust Fund"). Second, I'd draw your attention to some of their reasoning:
""Past military" represents veterans' benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt. Analysts differ on how much of the debt stems from the military; other groups estimate 50% to 60%. We use 80% because we believe if there had been no military spending most (if not all) of the national debt would have been eliminated."

So, they've inflated numbers based on a completly unsupported assumption. Both sides are definitely pushing an agenda, but if you look at military spending as part of the TOTAL US budget then it's around 15%. Granted it's still a giant dollar figure, but it's half what we spend on Social Security.

Re:I live in California

[andr0meda]

You bring on your point well, however instead of telling what the orignal poster didn't say, let me focus us on what he did say. His point is (among other things) that war leads to a thriving tech society, which means wealthy techies. He's argueing that, therefore, techies do not have a right to (or look like hypocrits when they) utter critique on a government that spends money (taxes) on warfare. I personally think that such reasoning is defunct in every possible way, and strongly oppose to that, because it's simply bad influence, and not constructive at all. I'm sorry but, to me, selling war to techie minds like this, is like telling a kid to go rob a candystore. It stinks.

Re:I live in California

[Malcontent]

"yada Yada Yada"

Whatever man I am sure you have a thousand rationalizations about why you think the way you do. That is not my concern nor is it my critisism. I never critised what you said, my point was that your post is not insightful and did not deserve a +5 moderation. I have heard the whole "welfare people are lazy bums and they are taking my money" shpiel from every single right wing commentator, radio host, newspaper and magazine in the country.

You provided no insight, no original ideas, no evidence. You merely parroted the right wind idiology party line and people moderated you up because they agreed with you. Parroting the right wing ideology on slashdot is nothing more then karma whoring becasue you know the denizens of this board are mostly republican.

Prove me wrong. Point out to me one thing in your original post that is actually insightful or original.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

Where the hell did you learn to read dude, the fucking academy of "my fingers are in my ears and I'm screaming 'I can't hear you! I can't hear you!'"

No original ideas? Right wing? Read my other comments in this thread, and elsewhere.

Spend less time fighting and more time educating yourself by listening to other people, absorbing it, finding truth, finding non-truth, and responding in kind.

Trust me, when you turn 23, and put your skateboard in the closet, you may just find that it was a smart decision.

Re:I live in California

[Malcontent]

"No original ideas? Right wing?"

Yes do you disagree that the post I was talking about was completely devoid of original thought and was in fact a right wing rant against the "welfare state"

"Read my other comments in this thread, and elsewhere."

I may have read them but that's irrelevant. I was replying to one post which got modded up to +5 irrationaly.

"Trust me, when you turn 23, and put your skateboard in the closet, you may just find that it was a smart decision."

I bet I am older then you are, I bet I've been to more countries then you have, I bet I have been to more states then you have, I bet I speak more languages then you do, I bet I make more money then you do.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

Yes I disagree that the the post was devoid of original thought. Yes I disagree that it was a right-wing rant.

It must be so easy to pigeon-hole people based on instantly-determined stereotypes, and therefore consider them wrong and "just like everyone else." (Which is basically what you accused me of doing.)

I tend to watch individual behavior (Psychology), societal behavior (Sociology), and patterns of human behavior (Anthropology), and try to make observations that fit the individuals I'm talking about in a larger context. Clearly, I am an amateur at each of these things... but weren't some of the best artists of many trades self-taught? And in this case, I stand by my observations as an anthropologist, not as a politician.

I bet I am older then you are,

Age != Maturity; Age != Wisdom. I know a few men twice my age who have less self awareness than I. I know a few younger who have more than I.

I bet I've been to more countries then you have,

Quite probably, since I've never been in the military, nor the peace corps. If I made observations in another country, I know my rant would be completely invalid. I realize that; I was trying to speak to a subculture of Americans.

I bet I have been to more states then you have,

You might be surprised, since I have lived in at least 7 states, and visited about five or so more. And not all in one time zone, either. :P

I bet I speak more languages then you do,

Peut-etre... porquoi?

I bet I make more money then you do.

You make more money than I do and you still don't think that the United States takes too much of your paycheck for questionable services, both military and social?

I can tell you flat out; I'm 26, the step-son (who was later adopted by) of a military officer who moved around a lot and did not make a "a lot" for being responsible for a wife and 7 kids, I moved to Wyoming when I was 19 and now live in an Eastern timezone state. I work for a financial services company and make $49,000 a year, which for someone with "no education" (post-secondary) is pretty respectable, if you asked me. (Which you did.)

I have a younger sibling with multiple young children who is still partially on governmental assistance, mostly because the man she married is the world's laziest man. (His picture is in the Guiness book, I'm pretty sure.) AND she has not made good choices... so when we give her options (out of compassion, concern, and experience) for how she can improve her situation, she tells us to fuck off, cuz it's "her life."

Well I still say, it's "my paycheck."

Re:I live in California

[Malcontent]

I win the bet.

I am much older then you are, I make almost three times as much money as you do, I have been to almost every state in the union and lived in a bunch of them. I have traveled extensively in europe, middle east and far east (although never south of the equator). On top of all that I am an immigrant and a veteran.

As for taxes I have this to say. I served this country glady even though I disagree with almost all of the foreign policy decisions of the leaders but I did not feel it would be right to critize it without serving it. The same with taxes. I pay an insane amount in taxes but I do it gladly even though I frequently disagree with how it's spent. We in the upper tax brackets have nothing to complain about. The top 5% of this country controls over 90% of the wealth yet pays only 75% of the taxes. A pretty damned good deal if you ask me. I am a few dollars shy of making it into the top 5% and I don't know if I ever will but I don't complain about taxes. I get more out of taxes then I pay in.

People in the upper tax brackets realize something that most people don't. Money flows uphill. Left to it's own devices money will flow from the poor to the rich so that eventually a handful of families will control the entire wealth of a country. Historically countries go through cycles of wealth concentration followed by bloody revolutions where the rich are killed. These days we know better. We put in mechanisms to recycle that money and slow down the concentration of it in the hands of the few. The alternative to paying taxes is to sow the seeds of revolution. This country is not run by idiots and they all realize that. The trick is to give just enough back to keep the poor and the middle content. It turns out that with well designed propaganda you can keep that number much lower then otherwise. By contantly bombarding the middle class with the message that the poor are their enemy and that the reason they don't have enough money is because the poor take it from them (an utterly silly idea if you think about it) we can deflect the focus away from us. It works very well.

Which leads us to your original post. Your post is the party line. "I could have more money if it wasn't for those goddamned lazy stupid poor people". HAH!. If you are like most people you spend every single cent you make (most people are in debt so they spend more then they make). How much of that ended up in the hands of the poor how much ended up int the hands of the rich? Answer honestly now.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

I was trying to make scoial commentary, not fiscal. But I have no disagreement with your assertion that "money flows uphill," and that is because of the same basic phenomenon; in this case, a subculture of greedy corporatists, instead of a subculture of lazy social leeches.

I know full well that the welfare-culture opt-ins are only a small part of the government's appropriation of my check. Other things that it has gone to are things like a few billion dollars to the international AIDS relief coalition. When Mr. Bush gave them a few bills, the response from Africa was, "Well, that's a nice START. We look forward to your FUTURE contributions." You can look at that issue two ways: either you view citizens of third-world african countries as undereducated and impoverished, who need to learn sexual responsibility so that the virus stops streading, or you can go up 50,000 feet and look at the situation from above. Go back to the middle ages, there was a plague that hit and spread rapidly largely because of population density and poor hygeine. It killed off a lot of people, the remaining ones found the cause and stopped it by not doing the things that were killing off the rest of the race. You *could* apply the same to Africa; once 60% of the continent has wiped itself out with HIV, the remaining ones will be the ones smart enough to not engage in risky behavior. They will reproduce and a new generation will come forth, (hopefully) smarter. That is Natural Selection, in the same sense that "living the party line" of Republicans with respect to the poor would be an interesting experiment for social Darwinism.

The problem is that in the meantime, Africa needs and wants to treat AIDS patients, so they're buying a billion dollars of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals to keep alive people who 1) are going to die of their disease, and 2) now have more oppotunities to spread the disease. You can call this heartless, and I am not saying I agree, but it is a scenario to consider.

So, in closing, thank you for your service, and your time discussing this with me.

Re:I live in California

[Malcontent]

You math is all screwed up!. DO your calculations again please. Here let me help you.

The common wisdom says that you have to work till may to pay off all your taxes (local, state, sales, federal etc). If that is true then somewhere around 40% of your money is paid in ALL taxes including local taxes and property taxes. Now if you spend all the money you make you are sending 60% of your money to people who have more money then you (your insurance company, banks, wall mart, Dell, Microsoft etc).

Now look at the remaining 40%. Of that less then half is paid in federal taxes most are in sales, and property taxes which go to your state. Even if you take your entire 40% which percent of that goes towards helping other countries or helping the poor? Do you have a guess? Here let me tell you foreign aid is less then one percent welfare is a little more then one percent. That's right of the 40% you pay in taxes about two percent of that amount goes to welfare of foreign aid. Both of these are dwarfed by other portions of the discretionary spending budget which goes roughly.

Social Security : 22%, Medicare 10% (that's right over thirty percent spent on old people!).
Medicaid : 6%, AFDC (welfare) 1% (7% spent on helping the poor). More get's spent by the states but I don't have tohose figures let's say it's 10% total.
Interest payments on the debt: 15% WOW!!!!. About as much as medicare and medicaid combined.
Defense about 18% (soon to rise dramatically)

Where does the rest of your money go? Well certainly a huge chunk goes towards roads, schools, parks, farm subsidies etc but most of the rest goes towards pork barrel. According to the cato institute 65 billion go towards corporate welfare alone!

Once again most of the money you make goes to rich people (your income after taxes). Most of the rest (your taxes) goes to you or your parents (middle class). Your schools, your roads, your cops, your parks, your Army, your Navy, your farm subsidies etc. A tiny little miniscule portion goes to actually help the poor.

But you and millions like you have chosen to put your blinders on. You have chosen to concentrate on the 1% going to welfare and the 1% going to foreign aid and somehow deluded yourself that if that expenditure went away you'd have more money. The numbers tell another story. Get rid of social security, defense, corporate welfare, medicare, farm subsidies, roads, schools or the national debt and then maybe you'd see a reduction in your taxes. Of course all of those cuts would have repercussion s too. If you cut off welfare more people would take to crime, if you cut off Social security you'd have to support your own parents, if you cut off farm subsidies the farmers would fold (and without welfare or medical care they too might take to crime).

The absolute best thing we can do is to pay off the debt. That's 15% (and growing) of our budget and we get nothing in return.

Please go educate yourself about how your tax dollars are spent all this information is vailable with just a few click on google.

Re:I live in California

[Geek In Training]

OK.

Hmmmmm

[thedbp]

Sounds to me as if the Oracle brass have been having lunch with the guys at Lockheed-Martin.....

Re:Hmmmmm

[sharkey]

Not to mention the manufacturers of Pentagon Brand toilet tissue.

Where is the suprise ?

[MosesJones]

How do you think Oracle et al make these huge amounts of cash. Is it via technical excellence or flogging to muppets on the golf course.

Actually apologies to Kermit he wouldn't be stupid enough. Barnum applies and these guys are just applying that law. Stupid people get fleeced, they should quit on grounds of low intellect.

Re:Where is the suprise ?

[rnturn]

``try georgia tech's CS4420, "Database System Implementation". a semester of group work, and what do you have to show for it at the end? an integer-only database which can only run poorly-optimized extremely limited SELECT statements. it lends a whole new perspective of companies that sell databases. you almost start to understand why oracle charges $60,000 per processor.''

Sorry but just how this is a valid excuse for charging so damned much for an Oracle license? Were you expecting that a classroom full of college students were going to reinvent Oracle RDBMS over the course of a single semester? I had to write a circuit analysis program for a half-semester course. I doubt that anyone was expecting that a competitor to ECAP, LINCAD, or SPICE was going to result from that assignment. Geez.

Re:Where is the suprise ?

[Jason Earl]

The state of California just bought over a quarter of a million Oracle seats. How many of those databases are probably storing cookie recipes? I don't mind paying Oracle for those things that require Oracle software, but it is ridiculous to think that you need Oracle for everything.

Re:Where is the suprise ?

[fishbowl]

If the university continued development every
time around, letting students extend the software instead of starting from scratch, you might end up with something very good in a very short time.

I believe the McGill University VMS clone was something similar to this.

Re:Where is the suprise ?

[crucini]

So, who's more "technically excellent" than oracle?

I like Oracle's relational database product, and work with it a lot. However, I'm not sure what proportion of Oracle's income comes from this solid and useful product, and how much from various things like "Oracle financials" and "Oracle Web Adapter". Oracle seems to have hit on a clever trick. They make a product which geeks respect - the RDBMS. Then they put up flashy and confusing ads claiming to be "UNBREAKABLE" and give the average idiot an extremely vague idea of what they sell. Then they pounce on a decision-making idiot and load him up with their less-useful software. The idiot knows that "9/10 e-businesses run on Oracle" but doesn't know that the statistic refers to the RDBMS and only the RDBMS.

So technical excellence is part of the equation, but confusion is a big part also. I suspect that when Oracle makes a huge sale, they are selling piles of licenses for non-RDBMS software that will never be implemented by the customer.

So?

[Have Blue]

California did sign the agreement. Oracle expects them to abide by the contract. California should have thought a bit more before signing, perhaps, but there is no wrongdoing here. If they signed a contract to purchase 270,000 useless copies of Red Hat, no one would be complaining.

Re:So?

[r_j_prahad]

If they signed a contract to purchase 270,000 useless copies of Red Hat, no one would be complaining.

That's right, they wouldn't be complaining, because how much would 270,000 installs of RedHat cost? $89.95, that's how much.

Re:So?

[don_carnage]

Didn't California also do the same thing with locking electricity rates at insane prices for 5 years?

Re:So?

[The Cat]

Why not just download it and save the other $90?

/sarcasm

I think it is pushing things just a bit to do a quarter-million installs with the same CD. If the software is valuable enough to run 270,000 systems, compensate the company fairly.

And people wonder why nobody can get a job as a programmer any more...

Re:So?

[JimBobJoe]

California did sign the agreement. Oracle expects them to abide by the contract.

The situation is not exactly clear yet, but the article leads me to believe that the state will claim that Oracle and this Logicon company thinger may have misrepresented themselves during the contract negotiation process. Misrepresentation is definitely something that can cause contract to get nullified:

"The disparity "raises the question that Logicon may have misled the state," the audit says. "The fact that Logicon appears to benefit by as much as $28.5 million from its role ... makes these disparities even more troubling."

We shall see what happens in court.

Re:So?

[throx]

[i]That's right, they wouldn't be complaining, because how much would 270,000 installs of RedHat cost? $89.95, that's how much.[/i]

Assuming they didn't want support for any install but one. Of course, if you don't want support at all why not just download it?

Wake up a little. If you are installing 270,000 copies of *anything* you go to the company and arrance some sort of support deal that is independant of the retail price.

Re:So?

[garett_spencley]

If you're running 270000 copies of Linux, it would be more ethical to donate some sizeable amount to a nonprofit foundation that contributed / is contributing a lot, like the FSF - as well as paying the distributor.

Um... don't forget that this is the government we're talking about. I mean, "ethics", is that some kind of joke?

--
Garett

Re:So?

[FattMattP]

That's right, they wouldn't be complaining, because how much would 270,000 installs of RedHat cost? $89.95, that's how much.

Wrong. The original poster said "to purchase 270,000" copies of Red Hat. Red Hat Linux 7.2 costs $59.95 on their online store. That's $16,186,500 to purchase 270,000 copies. Of course, they could use just one copy, but that's not what the poster was talking about.

Re:So?

[Have Blue]

Most of you are completely missing the point. Two parties, a provider and a consumer, enter into a legally binding contract in which the provider gives the consumer a product and the consumer gives the provider a quantity of money. Whether the consumer is an idiot or the provider is not popular in the Slashdot community is completely irrelevant. The Red Hat example has nothing to do with the cost of Red Hat itself, if it's a useless copy of Red Hat (not meaning the product is bad, just that the purchaser has no plan, ability, or desire to actually use it) then it is $89.95 wasted. Does that deserve a story on Slashdot and a hefty round of RH bashing?

I didn't want to go this far, but you leave me no choice:

This Is Not News For Nerds Or Stuff That Matters!

Thank you.

Re:So?

[Qrlx]

No wrongdoing?

When grandma goes to Circuit City to buy a computer so she can get email from the grandkids, and comes home with a $3500 Pentium IV 512 MB RAM GeForve IV and Printer Scanner DVD-RW, you don't think that's wrongdoing?

No *respectable* business will sell you something you don't need, or the wrong product to suit your needs.

Both parties behaved improperly. California entered into an agreement without knowing what they were getting, and Oracle led them down the primrose path (or should I say they maximized value for shareholders.) In the real business world, the company would just say, look, we know we signed but we're not paying anyway, here's your software back. Sue us if you have the time and money. Since it the State of California, Oracle will probably get their bucks since Cali. has to follow the letter of the law.

(I worked for a dot-com that simply didn't pay and returned the software to another dot-com, after management realized we didn't need a $70,000 email auto-response system. On the other hand, no-one realized we didn't need $30,000 of routers to connect two offices with less than 20 people each. Ah, those were the days.)

Re:So?

[pmz]

...this Logicon company thinger...

FYI. Logicon, now known as Northrop Grumman Information Technology, is a sector of Northrop Grumman Corporation. Northrop Grumman Information Technology is the second-largest supplier of information technology products to the federal government.

Re:So?

[piecewise]

Yes. Cynicism and complacence will get us all very far in our American democracy.

Re:So?

[garett_spencley]

Yes. Cynicism and complacence will get us all very far in our American democracy.

Democracy? Since when?

Also I hope that you didn't get the impression that I'm complacent. It's quite the opposite. I'm very sick of government and I jump at every opportunity to change things. I just don't think anything's going to change as long as the current system is intact.

Part of changing the system is realizing that we're all lied to on a regular basis. It's not a democracy. It's a corporate republic. Until your vote (and not your billions of dollars that you don't have) actually makes the slightest bit of difference then stop hiding it's real identity and please stop believing all the lies that your government and media spoon feed you every second.

--
Garett

Re:So?

[jedidiah]

If so, then this is probably a stupid way to licence oracle. You don't have to license it per-user "CALS-style" if you don't want to. You can just pay based on the size of the server. If your individual databases have many users, it will end up being much cheaper that way.

This all just looks like some PHB got snookered by a slick salesman. BS like this happens in corporations too. The bigwigs negotiate a big contract and don't bother to get a single engineer's input. So, the scope of work has huge loopholes or they end up with 3x more oracle licenses than they really needed.

"A salesman fleeces the stupid."

Re:So?

[Tackhead]

> This all just looks like some PHB got snookered by a slick salesman. BS like this happens in corporations too.

PHBs in corporations who spend more than their companies earn either get fired, or lose their jobs when their employers go bankrupt.

PHBs in government get promoted or transferred to other departments.

There's an incentive in the private sector not to waste shareholder money. There's no such incentive in government.

Wow!!

[Rams�s Morales]

Where did Oracle trained their salesmen?? I need that kind of sales talent on my company. Do you think they would be interested in switching companies?

State ID cards

[Mad Man]

Maybe everybody issued a national ID card, or scanned by facial recognition technology, will require a license from Oracle before they can be tracked?

Larry was just doing his patriotic duty

[gambit3]

... to make up for all those millions and millions the BSA claims are lost to piracy. He was just buying licenses for them.

Re:Larry was just doing his patriotic duty

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Poor Oracle. They have to lower thsemselves to stuff like this, because of all those warez kiddies running Oracle 9i Enterprise on their 64 cpu Sun boxen.

Why don't they just use Firebird?

[smagruder]

Firebird is open source (read: free). It's based on the the well-known InterBase. It probably even outperforms Oracle, while simultaneously being a lot less complicated and buggy. California taxpayers may now commence screaming.

NYT Magazine article last weekend

[crumbz]

I dunno. Based on Ellison's attitude in a privacy article in last weeks NYT Sunday magazine, I wouldn't doubt that the guy would do anything to boost sales and get Oracle's share price back up to 50-60 bucks a share. What an ego on this guy. This California fiasco makes Microsoft seem benign in comaprison.

My 2 cents....

Re:NYT Magazine article last weekend

[tigris]

Yeah, I saw that article (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/magazine/14TECH NO.html). Scary stuff.

I have to agree with your assessment of Ellison - he comes across as incredibly pompous and arrogant individual, afflicted with the same overly-inflated sense of "I am right and you are wrong"-ness common to religious fanatics.

The best (worst) quote in that article is from him:

'I had one last question for Larry Ellison. ''In 20 years, do you think the global database is going to exist, and will it be run by Oracle?'' I asked.

''I do think it will exist, and I think it is going to be an Oracle database,'' he replied. ''And we're going to track everything.'''

Makes Bill seem all soft and fluffy in comparison.

Tig

i see this as a possible scenario...

[Atilla]

...if you get pulled over in california:

"May I see your driver's license, proof of insurance, and your Oracle seat license please"

Does anybody remember that Futurama...

[jeremy f]

..Where Amy went car shopping at that "Malfunctioning Eddies" or wherever; and upon being sold a car (after haggling for it at a HIGHER price), the owner-robot exploded?

Why do I get the impression that there's quite a few Oracle employees who just exploded; and that California is going to be mightily pissed when they find that their new Oracle Software isn't going to come with quite as much Eagle as the salesmen promised...

Oracle cheating? not quite...

[japhmi]

If the poster would actually read the article, they'd see that the company Logicon sold the Oracle software to the state, not Oracle themselves.

Re:Oracle cheating? not quite...

[Quixote]

If the poster would actually read the article, they'd see that the company Logicon sold the Oracle software to the state, not Oracle themselves.

Now I know where the "con" in "Logicon" comes from...

Re:Oracle cheating? not quite...

[hal200]

Perhaps you should have kept reading...and I block quoth (emphasis mine):

In a written statement attached to the audit, Gage wrote, "In hindsight, it may have been more prudent to delay execution of the agreement" until the savings claims could be evaluated.

A lawyer for the Department of General Services, meanwhile, was given only a few hours to review the contract.

The breakneck timeline was imposed by Oracle, the audit says.

"There was obviously a crushing need to hurry to get this thing done" to boost Oracle's reported earnings at the end of its fiscal year, Bowen said. "The state shouldn't be in the business of propping up any company's balance sheet, period."

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Oracle's involvement in this particular clusterfuck...If they hadn't been so intent on proping up their 4th quarter numbers, the contract would most likely have gotten the review, and probably the subsequent shrieking gales of laughter it deserved.

Of course, a large helping of shame goes to the Gov't of Calif for letting Oracle/Logicon railroad them like that. This is the sort of thing 'due process' is meant to avoid.

Re:Oracle cheating? not quite...

[flatrock]

You don't just buy 270000 licenses from a vendor. When you're dealing with high volumes, the vendor is brokering the deal between the manufacturer and the customer. Oracle was also the one who was pushing for the quick sale to get their quarterly profits up be fore they had to announce them to their stockholders. There's plenty of blame for Oracle to share with Logicon.

Re:Oracle cheating? not quite...

[jedidiah]

The basics here are actually pretty simple. Contract review should not have taken too horribly long. Oracle might have been a little pushy about timing; however, that's hardly a compelling excuse coming from the government of the world's 5th largest economy.

The lawyer should have had the balls that any lawyer should have and told Oracle to back the f*ck off and let a proper audit proceed.

Blame Oracle?

[The Slashdolt]

If you read the article, it wasn't Oracle who should be blamed for this. It was the sales people from Logicon Inc who scammed them.

Re:Blame Oracle?

[patmfitz]

And of the $28 million that Logicon scammed, how much of that went to a kickback for the people who signed the contract?

Re:Blame Oracle?

[Shagg]

It was the sales people from Logicon Inc who scammed them

Or the government official who signed off on the purchase of more seat licenses than they have employees in the whole state. I don't think Logicon is solely responsible for this, you have to pin it on the California officials who agreed to the rediculous deal as well. Logicon might have given them a highly inflated (even grossly inaccurate) sales pitch, but they didn't force anybody to buy it.

Re:Lesser of Two Evils?

[TheAwfulTruth]

Begining? Sun and Oracle have ALWAYS acted this way. In fact most large computing machine and software companies have acted this way for the last 40 years. Why do you think this is something brand new? MS has actually been a kitten when you compare them to the big iron companies. They jusy do it to consumers where consumers never see what the other companies do to each other and the government.

DOIT

[GigsVT]

After reading the article, I get the scary feeling that the voices in my head that tell me to do things are getting into my computer too.

"DOIT was set up to try to steer the state clear of contracting disasters,"

"DOIT ignored these signs," the audit says.

A spokesman for Elias Cortez, the state's chief information officer and the head of DOIT,

FNORD

Irony

[blankmange]

The irony of it all: a story lambasting Oracle for its unethical business practices and at the top of the page is an ad for Oracle 9i....

Let me get this straight...

[smack_attack]

We're in a recession and companies are STILL laying people off, yet California has the gall to blow $95M on too many licenses and software they don't need?

Sadly, fiscal responsibility in the government still seems to be generations away. If I still lived in Cali I'd try and get a proposition on the ballot that new expenditures over $(n)M have to be approved by the voter. Ditto for raises for elected officials, we should be able to fire these idiots as easily as we elect them.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[jmu1]

Whoah there fella... you are making far too much sense here. Why would anyone become a politician if they couldn't make money! lol Really, you should probably watch your back for a few years now that you have said something as 'terroristic' as that against the empire, er, government. ;)

Re:Let me get this straight...

[garcia]

did they really look? Did they do this on purpose (someone wanting to make a lot of money)?

Who knows how it happened. Shit like this has been going on in U.S. government for over 150 years. People wanting to make profits elsewhere, buy a shitload of near worthless merchandise that has already been tested and rejected elsewhere but some moron feels the need to do it on the other side of the country.

We are supposed to learn from history, not let it constantly repeat. I thought politicians were smart.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[dmccarty]

If I still lived in Cali I'd try and get a proposition on the ballot that new expenditures over $(n)M have to be approved by the voter.

Do that and you'll never accomplish anything. Rarely does a community vote for referendums that will tax them more, even when things like schools, libraries and public works are desperately needed.

Ditto for raises for elected officials, we should be able to fire these idiots as easily as we elect them.

You obviously know little about democracy. If we did what you proposed we'd be no better than the ancient Athenians who let their "democracy" succumb to mob rule, where no one really ruled and the fate of any ruler was decided by the whim of a mob. And that's worse than wasting $95 million, recession or none.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[liquidsin]

I thought politicians were smart.

You're new to the planet, aren't you?

Re:Let me get this straight...

[denzo]

No state agency has started using the Oracle software under the licensing agreement, signed almost a year ago. But the tab by June is expected to be $17 million. (emphasis mine)

How does the current recession and layoffs have any bearing towards a contract that has already been signed for, back when both the State of California and the Federal government were posting significant budget surpluses? Do you expect California to break its agreement just because it's now in a deficit? (that would fit with your 'fiscal responsibility,' huh? I'm sure that'll help out all the employees at Oracle and any related industries.)

Now let's do some math here: The 6-year contract costs the state $95M. Break that up into yearly payments, and that's ~$15.8M/year. The contract is said to cost $41M more than what the State currently has been paying for database software, so that's the real cost of the contract. Divide that yearly, and the true additional cost to each year's budget is $6.8M/year. While it's not insignificant, it isn't nearly the catastrophe that you're implying it is, requiring the "idiots" to be fired "as easily as we elect them." (I won't even touch that silly proposition--for the Republic of California--with a 10-foot pole...).

Re:Let me get this straight...

[dmccarty]

This is getting off-topic, but let me reply...

I don't see how moving the democratic process back into the hands of THE PEOPLE could be considered mob rule!

The democratic process in this country doesn't entitle the populace to make every major decision. Rather, it allows you to pick your leader, who will then make those decision for an appointed period of time. If you don't like those decisions, either don't vote for him in the first place or don't vote to re-elect him.

If major decisions were made by the majority of the United States we probably would've nuked several Arab countries shortly after Sept. 11 and immediately sent in ground troops, then pulled them back as soon as someone died, effectively accomplishing nothing. If major decisions were made by a simple majority what would stop 51% of Serbs from killing 49% of Croats?

That doesn't sound democratic to me.

A pure democracy is a dangerous thing. The US isn't a democracy, it's a republic. Two quotes come to mind:
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner." --Anon
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter" --Winston Churchill

Mr. Talking head in a suit making $250K/yr does NOT represent the majority.

Then why does the majority elect him? If you feel that you better represent the majority of voters then you should run for office and logically win! If not, get behind the candidate who most closely represents your views and vote for him or her. But instead of lamenting about the problems, use our democratic process for its advantages!

Re:Let me get this straight...

[sql*kitten]

Do that and you'll never accomplish anything. Rarely does a community vote for referendums that will tax them more, even when things like schools, libraries and public works are desperately needed.

The people who "need" them (i.e. want them) will vote for them, of course. The people who don't need or want them will vote against it, why should they pay for something they neither need nor want? If those people are in a minority, they will lose the vote. What's your point?

Good

[Henry V .009]

Now California should start providing their extra copies of Oracle for free to whomever asks. First come, first serve. How do you like that Elison?

Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[nakhla]

What I'd really like to see happen is California take some initiative and put this software to good use! Yes, they've got WAY more licenses than they need. But, that's based on their CURRENT need. California has the chance now to do some really big things with information management.

My dad works for the State of Maryland. I can't even imagine how many millions (billions?) of dollars MD could save if they just restructured the way they maintain information. Welfare records are still being maintained using PAPER spreadsheets. Auditing this information takes months. The savings in this area alone could justify such a purchase. Auditing time could be cut drastically. Code could be written to locate discrepancies in the data. This doesn't even take into account things like payroll systems which could be automated. Doing that would allow the state to eliminate the positions of the hundreds of people with little-to-no education they have working in their payroll department.

Bill Gates (love him or hate him) really hit the nail on the head in his book Business @ The Speed of Thought. It really outlines how technology can be used to increase the flow of information, while at the same time reducing the cost associated with acting on that information.

Maybe someone in the California government will take charge and turn this bad situation into a golden opportunity!

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[cpeterso]

What I'd really like to see happen is California take some initiative and put this software to good use! Yes, they've got WAY more licenses than they need.

What if California resold their many unused Oracle licenses, thus undercutting future Oracle sales? California won't lose any money because the licenses have already been paid for (or at least allocated budget for).

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[Tackhead]

> [MD state .gov does all its stuff on paper.] Auditing this information takes months. The savings in this area alone could justify such a purchase. Auditing time could be cut drastically. Code could be written to locate discrepancies in the data. This doesn't even take into account things like payroll systems which could be automated. Doing that would allow the state to eliminate the positions of the hundreds of people with little-to-no education they have working in their payroll department.
>
> Bill Gates (love him or hate him) really hit the nail on the head in his book Business @ The Speed of Thought. It really outlines how technology can be used to increase the flow of information, while at the same time reducing the cost associated with acting on that information.
>
>Maybe someone in the California government will take charge and turn this bad situation into a golden opportunity!

Why would they do that?

If a private sector employer did all its work on paper, having to hire thousands of unskilled workers and pay them benefits, it would have to raise prices (making competing products cheaper, driving its own customers away), or go bankrupt due to the higher expenses.

The government can't go bankrupt -- nor can its customers purchase their services from a competing government. It's a monpoly - not in the Gatesian sense, but in the guys-with-guns sense. You can always dump Windows for Linux, but try explaining that "Joe's Auto Licensing Inc" does a better job than your state DMV the next time you get pulled over and asked to show your driver's license!

The more folks a department in .gov hires, the more important the people who run that department become. The department's inefficient, slow, and costs too much to run? No problem! That just means we need more money! Who cares about the costs, we can always raise taxes, the taxpayer's good for the money.

And besides, what are the taxpayers gonna do, buy their schools, roads, and police and fire departments from someone else? That's illegal! (Whew, good thing we make the laws that control that part, or we'd be fucked! OK, you can buy your schools from someone else if you really wanna, but you still gotta pay for ours :-)

And the other stuff .govs do? Taxpayers buying their diversity training programs and social security and sensitivity classes and unemployment insurance and welfare from someone else? Hey, most people wouldn't buy those things at all. (Gee, also a good thing we can pass laws to make buying those things from us mandatory! :-)

Governments will modernize and eliminate waste when they have an incentive to eliminate that waste. The only incentive that's been shown to motivate such cost reductions is the profit incentive. (Kinda a tautology, no? Only people who care about making money care about not spending it.) The government - by defintion - has no profit incentive. The private sector - again by definition - is all about profit incentive.

So no, nobody in any government will "see this as a golden opportunity", because it's not an opportunity, because doing business at the speed of anything faster than a sloth on valium isn't what governments are about.

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[Lumpy]

So maryland shoud waste money like california? What's the problem with hiring a good IS Team of 6 people (1 mgr 5 techs) for less than $800K a year and WRITE the app using Open and proven SQL databases? (PosgreSQL can do anything Oracle can) that way they aren't tied by the balls to a vendor, forced to take whatever solution the vendor just threw together and can modify it AT ANY TIME FOR NO ADDITIONAL COST.

it won't happen because #1 government is stupid and hires stupid people.. (we elect stupid people, why should it change inside?)

The first Federal/State/Local laws that should be passed is that a Open/in-house solution must be researched first and left on the table along side all the other bidders.. and THEN it has to be voted on. (Let's see make this salesperson rich, or give 7 people good paying jobs and have complete control of the project... let's make dave here rich....)

it wont happen.. Just like how many corperations wont use open/free solutions (but the Techs do anyways... to hell with the CTO he dont know crap) until they see that they have been all along because of their employees did it silently.

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[Ioldanach]

What I'd really like to see happen is California take some initiative and put this software to good use! Yes, they've got WAY more licenses than they need. But, that's based on their CURRENT need. California has the chance now to do some really big things with information management.

Yes, but they're seat licenses. They have the ability to sit 270,000 state workers down at computers and all of them can use the database at once. Problem is, the state of california, once you discount the nontechnical workers, has far less than 270,000 employees. So they could've purchased far fewer licenses and still been able to perform the tasks you suggest. I'd cite some numbers, but I can't seem to find any numbers that nail down how many people do what for the state of California.

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[Suppafly]

first they'd have to pass a law saying they didn't have to follow the eula that came with the software.. but since its a state and millions of dollars im sure that won't take too long..

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[R@Bastard]

Bill Gates (love him or hate him) really hit the nail on the head in his book Business @ The Speed of Thought. It really outlines how technology can be used to increase the flow of information, while at the same time reducing the cost associated with acting on that information.

I believe that lots of research has in fact proved this to be false. I don't have any urls, so this is a pretty weak point, but let me try and illustrate a simple example.

In the old days, there was a typing pool. There were young ladies (yes, this was sexist) who typed. That's all they did. They had little gizmos in their ears that told them what to type. They were basically cyborgs.

The typewriters had one font. One size. One color. No graphics. None of that stuff. They did one thing, reliably, and simply. The ladies typed up the report, probably on carbon paper, and that was it.

Now, we've got Word. Computers make things easier and more efficient, right? Wrong. Now, we change the font 6 times, re-do the headings, jimmy with the margins, send it around for collaborative revisions, have a meeting on it, and all this while, we print it out 10 or more times.

The artifact of the work: the document - the physical manifestation of information in the real world has now taken lots more work, lots more electricity, and lots more angst than it used to.

This ties into the ideas that we had in the 60's that in the near future, things would be so much more efficient that we would all be working 20 hour weeks instead of 40 hour weeks. Well, wrong, we're all working 50-80 hour weeks, and that's the white collar jobs, not the blue collar.

Somehow, all this efficiency has bred greater work.

Food for thought.

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[krmt]

I think this depends on what you're looking at. Sure, when typing up a simple memo, this can take a lot more work, depending on what the person producing it wants or needs. However, take a look at the other side. Simple, or even very complex, documents can be created with relative ease thanks to modern tools. I'm not just talking about Word, but TeX, PowerPoint, Arcview, Excel, and the whole host of other programs. The types of documents made by these programs are generally more complex, and time is saved overall in making them. If it takes the same amount of time to create the thing, then often more work is put in to the content itself or the appearance. Granted, they are often overkill for something simple, but the options are there to manage complexity.

It is, by the way, complexity that the parent post is talking about. Being able to increase the flow of information by putting information in a figure as well as text, or automatically generating a reference in LyX, or adding an easy scatter plot for your data with Excel. You simply can't do these things with a typewriter. Modern technology allows us to stream more information at people than ever before, and while this does have its obvious and many downsides, I don't think that the fact can be ignored.

And while you're right about the increased work hours, I don't feel that you can blame technology for it. After all, if we really wanted to work less, we would. But we don't, and we can't. The overall psyche of the nation is tooled in such a way that we have to work 60, 70, and 80 hour workweeks on average, no matter the consequences. This isn't because of technology, it's the modern mindset that is the cause of this, which runs far deeper.

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[sheldon]

I always love when you have someone complaining about the stupid people the government hires, who then goes on the state unequivocally that "PosgreSQL[sic] can do anything Oracle can."

Kind of makes you wonder...

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[G-funk]

PosgreSQL can do anything Oracle can

Ah. Everytime I hear "X can do everything Oracle can" it makes me smile.

You know why oracle charges so much money? You know why oracle's the second biggest software company? Sure it's partly marketing, but mainly Oracle markets itself. Oracle is the most powerful, scalable, and generally rock-steady-makes-toast-cuts-potatoes-in-3-styles database in the world by a long shot bar none.

Comparing postgressql to oracle is like comparing the JET engine and a .mdb file to SQL Server 2000. It's a joke and makes you look like an idiot to people who know anything about databases.

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[nathanh]

PosgreSQL can do anything Oracle can

No, it can't. There's a good reason why you need a trained professional and $1000s to use Oracle but only a trained monkey and $0 to use PostgreSQL. They're not even in the same country, let alone the same ballpark.

You're almost as bad as people who try and claim MS SQL Server is on par with Oracle.

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[fferreres]

Hey, mod this up to +5 he deserves it. And it's proven that he's right. Right where i live (Argentina) this has already happened and has been happening since 1960.

They govs just do and reason EXACTLY as this guy describes but to the point where nobody in the private sector can:

Earn a profit (if they earn it, they just TAX IT AWAY)

Get a loan, because they just ate all the nations credits (even taxing private sector interest expenses at 15% and even regulate mutual funds so that they can invest in whatever, as long as 60% is on national debt.)

No more credit??No way to finance deficit? No problem!! They'll print money and fuck everyone's salaries with the inflation tax.

Need more money still...then break everyone's contracts in the private sector so that wherever it sais "dolar" will now have to say "pesos".

All this happens because they CAN'T CUT IT'S SPENDING. They are already doing a GREAT EFFORT. They haven't fired even 1 guy from the goverment yet 25% of the population CAN'T FIND A JOB (not even a temporary one).......

USA guys, you do well not allowing the goverment to eat your countries life. I envy you!

Re:Golden opportunity for the Golden state

[fferreres]

"The overall psyche of the nation is tooled in such a way that we have to work 60, 70, and 80 hour workweeks on average, no matter the consequences."

Over here, it more like:

The overall psyche of the nation is tooled in such a way that we can't even work 5, 10, and 15 hour workweeks on average, no matter the consequences. :(

Attention California

[The Slashdolt]

For Sale
Fully licensed copies of Linux. Guaranteed uptime. The next generation of operating systems. Normally priced at $4k, yours today for the low low price of $2k per copy. Hurry and order now, supplies are limited. Order within the next 10 minutes and get a free mousepad with your order.
CALL NOW!

Oh come on, honestly...

[Wee]

If they signed a contract to purchase 270,000 useless copies of Red Hat, no one would be complaining.

There's a slight difference here. What an obvious troll... At least nobody seems to be complaining about Mexico City's software purchases.

-B

Re:Oh come on, honestly...

[dewke]

No, there is no difference.

Oracle and California signed a contract, California was really REALLY stupid. I seriously doubt that Larry Ellison made California "an offer they couldn't refuse". Oracle is sure as hell not going to refuse the deal. They are a for profit company that sells software...

It is not the companies responsibility to police its customers. If someone comes to my company and offers us 3x what we normally charge for our services we will happily take the extra cash, so will every other company on the planet.

Caveat emptor...

dewke

Re:Oh come on, honestly...

[Paradise Pete]

If someone comes to my company and offers us 3x what we normally charge for our services we will happily take the extra cash, so will every other company on the planet.

Except maybe Bill Gates, who would rock back and forth and explain why they should actually pay 6x.

Re:Oh come on, honestly...

[10Ghz]

If your company went out of its way to fraudulently misrepresent those services, that customer could sue your company, and that customer could win.

In this case California should sue Logicon, the company that helped the state to make the deal. They claimed that huge savings could be had with Oracle software. Oracle itself didn't seem to influence the decision. Only thing that Oracle did was to sell the state 270.000 licenses of the software, at the request of the state. Nothing wrong there.

I want my US Citizen's ID card...

[ConceptJunkie]

How do you think Oracle would treat the whole country?

That they would take advantage of people stupid enough to let them? Am I missing something here?

Are we now supposed to support more legislation to protect people from their own stupidity?

Moot Point

[plinko_chip]

All of this is meaningless, since within a years time California won't have any electricity!

Re:Moot Point

[Multiple Sanchez]

> All of this is meaningless, since within a years time California won't have any electricity!

They'll have plenty of electricity, but it won't be safe to use under all that water.

This is sad...

[DickPhallus]

No state agency has started using the Oracle software under the licensing agreement, signed almost a year ago. But the tab by June is expected to be $17 million.

I thought this was kind of sad, I mean they are basically screwed, so they might as well use some of the software.

But I guess they are just playing it safe in case the contract is nullified or something, which I highly doubt

It seems there are a lot of companies out there whose only business it seems is to fleece governments. There seems to be a serious lack of reading agreements before they sign them in the various governments.

Same thing in Toronto, ON

[porterhouse]

The exact same story surfaced here in Toronto about 3 or 4 months ago. The city purchased far more licenses than were required (I can't remember the value of the extra licenses, but it was definitely into the millions of dollars). Two incidents are hardly damning, but you have to wonder if there is any misrepresentation going on.

Re:Same thing in Toronto, ON

[mfarver]

Oracle's licensing agreements have gotten far weirder in the last few years. Previously the license was based primarily on the platform you were running Oracle on, and the number of concurrent users. Easy to manage, regulate and understand.

Then came the web. Now several thousand people might be connecting to the web server, but the web server only has one connection to the DB.

Oracle tried per CPU licensing.. but that was too expensive and customer's got pissed. A customer running one accountant on a payroll app got charged the same as a multinational company running their entire HR system on the same size box.

Now Oracle is moving back to a per seat licensing system, but their latest contracts include weird provisions that try to count how many end users are actually using the system. Two hundred people using the web server or another piece of middleware require 200 seats of Oracle, regardless of the actual number of connections to the db that are made by the middleware layer. A good idea, except.. once again.. its expensive.. just harder to figure out how expensive. (It gets really convoluted for companies that have middleware that talks to many databases, since each database has to have seats for every person using the middleware, even if some of then never query one of the databases.)

The end result.... Oracle is expensive, and slowly more companies are realizing that they really don't need all the nifty features that come with Oracle. Maybe they'll consider running Postgres.. but then, nobody gets fired for buying Oracle.

What's ironic here...

[s390]

is that the CA Dept. of Information Technology (DoIT) that committed this colossal blunder was established just a few years ago precisedly to eliminate IT mismanagement and waste in State Agencies. I'm surprised Cortez (DoIT Director) still has a job, but that might not be true much longer. The legislature is considering abolishing the DoIT.

What is the problem?

[roguerez]

Do you realize that this software has to track every move you make as a citizen? It has to track every step you make, everything you buy, your religion, sexual life actions, etc, etc, etc.

Governments need this kind of database power to be able to track every molecule of your body and every thought in your mind.

Do you want them to put it in a simple text file? Come on, let them do it professionally!

no big deal

[WildBeast]

Governments have a history of wasting our taxes, if they didn't waste that money on Oracle licenses they would've wasted it on other stupid things.

Re:no big deal

[Moonshadow]

True. It was either this, or another $17,000,000 toilet seat.

Screw competing, I'm going to find something completely useless to sell to the government for millions.

What is sad...

[Jagasian]

I realize that you were joking, but what is sad is that most businessmen actually do put a high value on such unethical behaviour.

Re:State wages

[Tackhead]

> Pay typical state wages to those making decisions and get poor decisions in return. When the state becomes wage-competitive with other industries, you'll get higher quality people in state jobs and less sloppy decisions.

Huh? How would raising taxes to pay higher civil service salaries encourage civil servants to spend said money more wisely?

Most .gov bureaucrats would say "Wow, we have more money coming in. Better spend it!"

How about "when the state has to compete like a private industry by providing services in exchange for dollars (instead of just saying "all your tax dollars are belong to us" with the stroke of a pen), you'll get higher-quality decisions."

Why I'm Libertarian

[garver]

I'm libertarian because I have no confidence in politicians, and this is a great example of why. Logicron screwed California. Why? As the saying goes, "A fool and his money are easily parted." Unless the fool is a government entity, because they can always raise taxes.

When a company makes a stupid purchase, the company suffers and may go under. Oh, well. A smarter company takes their place.

When a government makes the stupid purchase, taxpayers suffer and the politicians get a couple years to spin their way out of it before facing the next re-election. By then, voters are likely to have forgotten or given up.

The government is run by politicians and politicians are, well, political. Political does not imply any sort of managerial or financial sense.

Re:Why I'm Libertarian

[garver]

Shouldn't you be outside playing with your guns?

Or drinking or smoking what I want, buying what I want, selling what I want, believing what I want, or whatever else as long as I don't infringe on someone else. Until it affects you, why the fuck should you care? And if you do care, what makes you so important that you can tell me what to do?

Guns shouldn't be illegal. Would you, personally, know the difference if I owned a gun or not? How does my simply owning a gun affect you? Now if that gun was used for murder, theft, or assult, then we have something illegal. Until then, stay out of my business.

Meanwhile....!!!!

[mikosullivan]

... City of Largo, FL obtains more Linux licenses than it needs!!!! Mistake costs them.... um, nothing.

I work for the California govt...

[JanusFury]

They recently also spent a lot of money making a switch from Novell GroupWise, to Lotus Notes. Why? Nobody really knows, though it's suspected that it's because someone was looking at a supervisor's mail and he wanted an encrypting mail system. (Of course, GroupWise is encrypting, but they went with Notes anyway.)

They've spent hundreds of millions of dollars making the switch, and are spending more every day trying to keep it up to date and running.

California knows how to waste money.

Re:at least the government waste

[Tackhead]

> [at least the wasted money] went back to the private sector... after how much the US has stolen in taxes over these many years, call it a one time tax cut...

Well, half of it did. Oracle pays taxes on its profits, don't forget.

Lessee. Taxpayers earn $200M. Governments loot $100M. Government spends $100M on Oracle warez. Oracle makes $100M more profit (hey, how much does it cost 'em to stamp 1000 CDs?) Governments loot $50M of Oracle's $100M.

Net result: Taxpayers produce $200M of wealth. Taxpayer-to-Oracle subsidy of $50M. Taxpayer-to-Government subsidy of $50M.

OK, I suppose you're right - that's better than a Taxpayer-to-Government subsidy of $100M. At least...

> I would rather the money be in private hands than in public hands (so do a lot of other people, its called the stock market).

...taxpayers can get some of their $100M back by investing in ORCL :-)

As you say, though, if the net effect is that the government keeps $50M of taxpayer dollars, I'd still much rather the government merely content itself to loot only $50M of taxpayer money to begin with, and let me decide where to put the other $50M.

Hah!

[PHAEDRU5]

Let me tell you about our electric power...

Oh really?

[jhines0042]

He added, "This is a mess. And it's not one we need to sweep under the rug."

And what kinds of messes DO we sweep under the rug?

California's Wasting a Lot of Money These Days

[Greyfox]

First the government signs on for decade-long fixed price energy prices at the height of the energy shortage (And are whining about it now that prices are a tenth what they locked in at) and now this.

I'd be pretty pisssed off if I lived in the state...

Re:Larry really is a good guy...

[phyxeld]

At $95 million they're practically giving that software away... ;)

The worst part is that they aren't even selling software so much as licenses. The "sell organizations a bunch of numbers that enable them to use software they already have" business model isn't illegal, of course, but it is morally reprehensible. I'm not just talking about oracle, I'm talking about the whole concept of license-based profit models. *glares north toward the evil empire of redmond*

They have 'CON' in their name

[mgkimsal2]

The company's name was LOGICON. "CON" is part of their strategy. :)

And in offtopic news

[t0qer]

My wife works for an arm of the .gov. She told me M$ has been auditing the .gov for license compliance on every level as a form of retaliation against the recent trials.

It's sort of a funny paradox, now the .gov is wanting to say buh bye M$, but the problem is a logistical one, how do you move and train all those employee's who were brought up on M$ over to *nix.

Just a side note to the story I wanted to add, allmost ontopic.

Somebody on the inside . . .

[raresilk]

had to be in cahoots with Logicon. There is no way that Logicon was off approx. 95% on its estimate of CA's computer costs, and nobody in the govt offices realized it. Someone likely got a fat kickback to look the other way, probably a mole staffer who was installed by Logicon precisely for this purpose. The bozos who run for office can be pretty dumb (with a few exceptions, most are talented only at reciting speeches written by others, to drum up campaign contributions), but the back room politicos who pull the strings certainly are not. Hope there is a big investigation a la Enron (I live and pay taxes in CA so it's my $$$.)

Maybe CA isn't so innocent.

[ehanneken]

Why is everyone so sure that California was conned? Shouldn't we consider the possibility that Larry Ellison and Gray Davis made a pact? Perhaps Davis agreed to give Oracle millions of taxpayer-supplied dollars, in return for large campaign contributions from Ellison in the future. It's worth looking into, especially since the article reports that the purchase was not made after competitive bidding.

Re:Maybe CA isn't so innocent.

[catfood]

Uh, if that's what happened, California was conned.

Who was the auditor?

[Captain Pooh]

It was probably a audit done by Arthur Anderson.

Re:at least the government waste

[Tackhead]

> Oracle pays very little in taxes, thanks to our wonderful loop-hole ridden tax system.

Bullshit.

1Q01: $903M income before tax, $320M income tax expense.
2Q01: $1.32B income before tax, $470M income tax expense.
3Q01: $785M income before tax, $275M income tax expense.
4Q01: $845M income before tax, $295M income tax expense.

Your political bias is showing. (OK, so's mine. Guilty as charged. ;-) But corporations pay assloads of tax too.

Gartner Recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a recent release by the Gartner Group that "Gartner believes that Oracle sales staff has inappropriately imposed extra licensing fees on some database customers." I guess this just furthers their case.

Re:at least the government waste

[NMerriam]

went back to the private sector... after how much the US has stolen in taxes over these many years, call it a one time tax cut... I would rather the money be in private hands than in public hands

Where do you think tax dollars usually go? Rocketed into the sun, never to be seen again?

The government always spends money on private goods and salaries, and then the private companies pay the salaries of employees, from which taxes are paid. Round and round it goes -- its not like government removes money from the cycle.

the question..

[Suppafly]

In one case, the audit found that Logicon's $3.6 million estimate of how much the state spent in one year on software maintenance was overstated by $3.2 million. This figure and others were used to bolster claims of the state's potential savings.

The disparity "raises the question that Logicon may have misled the state," the audit says.


Raises the question?? I think it pretty much answers the question with a resounding yes..

Re:tax withholding

[cnoocy]

You know, perhaps it's a good thing that we have a government that provides services and doesn't have to levy troops to put down a freaking tax revolt every April. Go ahead and complain about how high taxes are, but do you think you'd be reading /. right now if ARPA had never existed? The government does use our money in worthwile ways that would never occur to us individually.

Maine: Use Free SAP-DB, Sybase, PG, or MySQL.

[emil]

There's too many free db engines out there to ignore, plus Oracle may hinder license transfer.

Re:I live in California (OT as hell!)

[Kintanon]

You post on the RANT board don't you!!!?
>:)
I know you must at least READ the Rant board to pick up the term Crotch-fruit.
Glad to see there are other CFers on Slashdot that are tired of the way breeding assholes leech our hard earned money away.

Kintanon

studies

[mshurpik]

Forget the per-seat cost of an oracle license and read between the lines here. Exactly why did California officials decide to go with Oracle in the first place?

The only justification in the article is "claims of savings." In other words, Logicon handed California a balance sheet that said, "You can save $150m (or whatever) by using Oracle, therefore $95m is a deal." And California said, "Oh gee, the math works, sign us up!"

Nobody ever asked real-world questions like, what exactly do we need Oracle for? Who is going to install it? How difficult/costly will the changeover be? What alternatives are there?

Sounds to me like California believed the old hype that software is magic and that savings are automatic. This is what happens when you base too many of your decisions on "studies" and not enough on cold, hard logic.

How do you enumerate "savings" from installing a piece of software anyway? Is the existing system too slow? Are developers expensive? Is there too much red tape? It's such sketchy math.

If the existing system works, then it's probably not all that expensive. New systems should be based on a need for a faster, cleaner implementation, not on illusory "savings."

Don't blame the seller.

[nobodyman]

Think about it. This audit claims that Logicon vastly inflated claims of savings, and also inflated the number of licenses the state would need. I can't think of ONE salesperson or company that wouldn't do the same thing. It's common for companies like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft to give kickbacks to their busniess partners when they broker a deal. Hence, the business partner is going to try to make the deal as big as possible.

Logicon probably gave a crazy, high-ball figure with the expectaction that the state would counter with a lower number. When the state instead countered with "Okay, that sounds great", what would you expect Logicon to do (besides snicker)?

Re:tax withholding

[Suppafly]

Go ahead and complain about how high taxes are, but do you think you'd be reading /. right now if ARPA had never existed?

yes.. if it wasn't the military it would have been more the universitys

Re:State wages

[Tackhead]

> So where in his post did he say "raise taxes"?

He said it by implication - just as you point out yourself.

> If you think about it, a GOOD professional at a higher wage can do the work of 2 lackeys at a lower wage. This may SAVE money.

Exactly, and in the private sector, you'd do just that - hire one smart guy at $50000 to do the work of two $30000 lackeys, fire the lackeys, and save yourself $10 grand.

But in the public sector...

> The problem with government is that every time spending is increased, it is never decreased. Departments only have to justify NEW spending, not the old. Now you end up with bloated useless government full of people doing useless jobs that nobody cares about just because funding was given 30 years ago for a long since depreciated need.

...the poster's proposal would merely mean the hiring of one guy at $50000, and the retention of the two $30000 drones, for a net cost of $110,000.

You then either run a $50000 deficit (i.e. issue $50000 worth of bonds and get the money back, plus interest, from the taxpayers when the bonds mature), or you raise taxes by $50000. Either way, the practical effect is that the taxpayer foots the bill.

They should have talked to me first.

[dinotrac]

I'd have been happy to set them up with PostgreSQL for $45 million.

Oh, what the heck. I'm bigger than that.

Guys --- if you manage to get yourself out of that Oracle boondoggle, I'll still be glad to get you PostgreSQL for $45 million.

I am such an old softie.

Re:They should have talked to me first.

[sharkey]

PostgreSQL for $45 million.

Hell, I'll go one better, benefitting California taxpayers and the world at large: PostgreSQL for $22.5 million, and California arranges for a protected "meeting" between myself and N'Stync and the Backdoor Boyz at the La Brea tarpits.

Re:They should have talked to me first.

[dinotrac]

>protected "meeting" between myself and N'Stync and the Backdoor Boyz at the La Brea tarpits.

I've got to admit, you have the community service angle covered.

Re:This is not news

[the eric conspiracy]

California could of spent zero by going with MySQL.

MySQL is a great small database, but it really isn't up to running a state with tens of millions of citizens. Clearly something on the order of Oracle is required.

Re:tax withholding

[cnoocy]

Where do you think the universities get their money? A lot of it comes from the government in one form or another. The anti-tax argument only holds if you can make a case that 1950s and 60s corporations would have paid for the internet themselves and allowed the kind of freedom that has given birth to sites like slashdot.

How would he treat the US?

[Chuqmystr]

"How do you think Oracle would treat the whole country?"

Krazy Larry? Why, he wants to make the U.S. his bitch! Not that I'm any fan of Billy and his gang of thieves but I'd be much more worried about ol' Krazy Larry and what he's up to. His push for a national ID system is just plain scary.

Not too surprising

[Skim123]

Oracle says to California, Oracle says: "Oracle employs x thousand Californians and pays $y tax to California each year. What the fuck are you gonna do for us?"

And then California gives them $95 million.

Re:Primary keys

[HiThere]

Did he work for CalTrans?

What kind of Oracle licenses?

[jgerry]

I've been an Oracle developer and DBA for 8 years. And let me tell you, I STILL don't understand Oracle's licensing. It makes no sense, and I think that they keep it that way on purpose to confuse buyers.

Go to http://oraclestore.oracle.com/ and try to buy a database. You'll see "Named User" licenses and "Processor" licenses. And you need a minimum of 10 named user licenses for each processor that the database runs on. Think of it as "connections" to the database. Most Oracle licenses require far more "named user" licenses than 10 -- on an 8-processor Sun machine, you need to purchase licenses for no less than 80 named users. It's confusing, but no where in the article does it actually say that the licenses are "per seat". That's implied in the editorial content at the top of the Slashdot posting.

Also, it wouldn't only be state workers that were connecting to and using the databases. What if the DMV set up Oracle databases with an external web interface that all the citizens of California could use to register motor vehicles?

Oracle is not meant to be used on a per-seat basis anyway. It's meant to be used as the third or fourth tier (back-end data repository) in an n-tier application environment, not installed on a PC on every worker's desk.

Not so much Govt's fault...

[ackthpt]

A company I worked for bought a financial system from Oracle, only later to find the number of licenses (1,000) was insanely more than we actually needed. Trying to weasel back out of the contract was murder, as Oracle sales, screw goodwill, wouldn't release us from the obligation for the excess licenses. The question really was, between the spec and the signed contract, where'd all the extra come from. It pays, literally, to read a contact before putting pen to it. I'm not accusing anyone of slight of hand, but it sure looked like it.

Re:I live in California (OT as hell!)

[Kintanon]

>:) My Wife is also a frequent Ranter, I posted a couple, but usually don't care. We never plan on having kids, just plain don't want them. I spent too much of my life raising my younger cousins to want any more. I'm not as militant as some of the people on the Rant board who are definately wound way too tight, I just want everyone to THINK about their decisions before they make them. So many people just get married and get pregnat (not necessarily in that order) because the don't know of any other choices, and then they raise their kids poorly and the cycle repeats. Uggh... That kind of breeding just doesn't help anyone.

Kintanon

Emissions laws?

[tgd]

For what its worth, the whole northeast follows the exact same laws.

Re:State wages

[sdo1]

Huh? How would raising taxes to pay higher civil service salaries encourage civil servants to spend said money more wisely?

Because you'd have better people in those jobs. I'm not saying just give eveyone a raise and things will be better. I'm saying increase the pay scales and you'll get better people. As it is now, the states mostly (and I assume CA is no differnet) pay fairly low salaries to state workers. That means that people working for the state are there because they couldn't get a job working somewhere else (yes yes, before you state workers jump down my throat, I know there's exceptions).

I think teachers are THE prime example of this. I'm not saying public school teachers are bad... many of them are amazing individuals... but in general you'd get much better teachers if the pay was competitive with the private sector.

Same is true for state workers... pay them well for doing a good job (which includes stopping wasteful state spending), get good/qualified people in positions, and I'm pretty sure things like this wouldn't happen.

-S

Re:$400K a year in software support?

[5KVGhost]

Read it again. It's "software maintenance", not systems maintenance or IT support. I suspect that what they're talking about is the cost for paid upgrades and vendor support contracts on the software, not staffing costs. Salaries likely come out of a completely different pile of money.

Re:tax withholding

[Suppafly]

I was just replying to the parent post, not speculating who actually paid for the internet.

They may have a way out

[fobbman]

I highly doubt that they've gone ahead and opened all 270,000 shrinkwrapped boxes already, so those that they haven't opened they can just take back to CompUSA, right?

Wow, awesome!

[gnovos]

I guess this means that the state could give "licenses" (i.e. by "hiring" employees for a penny or something) to startups to help them out and thust stimulate the economy like never before. This would rock!

Government IS guys are clueless

[Sloppy]

The game is already stacked against the taxpayers before these contracts ever even get written. Lately I've been working on some responses to some RFPs for the state of New Mexico and one of the really sad things is that all kinds of expensive proprietary stuff is specified before the "offerers" even get a look at it.

One of the really amusing things I saw was wording that was that they wanted a "...standard databases such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. Proprietary databases will not be accepted." No matter how many times I read it, I couldn't figure out if Oracle and MS SQL Server were acceptable choices or not. So I ask the boss (he's got more common sense than me) what he thinks they mean, and he just chuckled. In real life, "proprietary" has a very different meaning than what computer guys would guess. "Not Proprietary" stuff is what is for sale at places like CDW, and "proprietary" stuff is what isn't. So I guess a PostgreSQL server running on FreeBSD won't do. We'll probably end up bidding Win2k and MS SQL, just to make sure that the desired level of waste and corruption is maintained. Another satisfied Microsoft customer.

If the people only knew...

On the plus side, I also looked at a RFP that specified a web app where it was explicitly stated that it had to run on Microsoft IIS. Then on the same day (this was about a week ago, I think) that the latest batch of IIS holes was reported, there was also an ammended version of the same RFP published, with the wording changed to "Microsoft IIS or comparable." So maybe I can use Apache and modify it a little to add some backdoors to it, to make it "comparable." ;-)

Oh, another thing I've noticed: some Adobe salesman has totally cleaned up and pulled the wool over everyone's eyes. A lot of these RFPs are written with the conviction that information should be stored in PDFs, because there's no way that a PDF can be altered after it has been created.(!!) They even use PDFs for storing simple bitmap pictures, instead of standard image formats like JPG, PNG, etc. Any idea how much more expensive and complicated that makes some types of software -- and in exchange for nothing? It's like flushing money down a toilet.

That CA, a filthy rich state compared to my lil' NM, would flush a few million bucks doesn't surprise me a bit.

Spending $95 million

[Alsee]

95 million dollars worth of Oracle software

I think Open Source is great but I've never been a crusader. I can't help noticing that this is an excellent case for it though.

$95 million can buy quite a bit of programming. What if they took the best available open source project and hired programmers? How much would it cost to build an equivilant system? And if $95 million isn't enough, other government agencies can join in and split the cost.

-

Re:Spending $95 million

[fishbowl]

>$95 million can buy quite a bit of programming.

I don't think it'll buy you enough programming
that you end up with something to replace Oracle.

Even if you pull it off, you risk of reimplementing patented software.

Re:Spending $95 million

[Alsee]

I don't think it'll buy you enough programming

California alone just blew $95 million. If it's not enough you get others involved and split the costs.

Even if you pull it off, you risk of reimplementing patented software.

If you can't write a database without violating a patent then there's something wrong with patents.

-

Re:No symapthy.

[Tackhead]

> If a non-governmental entity made this mistake do you think the state of California would come to their rescue?

Of course not, nor should they!

> Those of you who are hammering government for wasteful spending should remember how many dot com companies with stupid ideas have died over the last two years, largely because of their inability to understand that money doesn't grow on trees...

But the dot-coms are dead - an excellent object lesson in capitalism - if you spend dollars on stuff to make things that nobody wants to trade dollars for, eventually you run out of dollars, and the problem of stupid spending decisions is self-limiting.

But the dot-govs aren't dead - they continue to take more money - because, for them, the money does grow on trees. You work for it, you earn it, they spend it on crap they don't need, and then, when they realize they screwed up with it, they know they can always take more of it next year to make up for what they wasted this year.

Re:at least the government waste

[Tackhead]

> Rob the common man to give to the Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham. Where is Robin Hood when you need him?

Robin Hood isn't the cure, he's the disease. He robs from the rich to give to the poor. To each according to his need, from each according to his ability.

And who better to do the robbing than the Sherriff Davis of Nottingham himself, dressed in green tights, pretending that he and he alone - knows who hasn't paid his "fair share"?

Nice way to attribute blame

[osgeek]

So, it's Oracle's fault, not the company the consultant who actually sold those licenses to California.

Heaven forbid you blame the idiots in the CA government who are too stupid to figure out the $95 million dollar bill for themselves.

No, the *evil* corporation must always be at fault.

So they bought a surplus of licenses.

[fishbowl]

California bought more licenses than they need.
Maybe someone very smart has anticipated growth.

Is this one of those $700.00 hammer stories?

Re:at least the government waste

[ckimyt]

1Q01: $903M income before tax, $320M income tax expense.
2Q01: $1.32B income before tax, $470M income tax expense.
3Q01: $785M income before tax, $275M income tax expense.
4Q01: $845M income before tax, $295M income tax expense.

Your political bias is showing. (OK, so's mine. Guilty as charged. ;-) But corporations pay assloads of tax too.

Um, Bullshit on you. Look at gross proceeds:

4Q01: 2.357 BILLION
3Q01: 2.242 BILLION
2Q01: 3.263 BILLION
1Q01: 2.674 BILLION

That's an average tax rate of 12.9% on gross income.

When's the last time anyone who isn't on WIC paid only 12.9% federal tax on their gross income after deductions?

Re:I live in California (OT as hell!)

[fishbowl]

>That kind of breeding just doesn't help anyone.

Guess we've been at peace too long.

Don't you understand why governments tend to encourage and reward breeding?

Where do you think soldiers come from?

Re:at least the government waste

[fishbowl]

>And who better to do the robbing than the
>Sherriff Davis of Nottingham himself.

You're making me wonder something.

Did I totally miss the irony of the
Robin Hood story? That the Sheriff
and Robin are one in the same?

Re:at least the government waste

[NMerriam]

The money does not get rocketed into the sun, instead it sits in a billion different projects where it is no longer part of the economy. /I.

How is it no longer a part of the economy? A billion different projects is a lot of jobs, a lot of desks, a lot of trucks, a lot of phone lines and all sorts of other goods and services that are provided by private corporations.

The money is spent like any other money, it goes onto corporate profit statements as surely as money from any private citizen does.

Konichiwa

[flacco]

Methinks Larry wants a new goldfish pond.

Re:tax withholding

[crucini]

Slashdot could replicate its community onto AOL in a heartbeat (well assuming that AOL can run perl....)

AOL can run anything they want, including Perl, on their computers. They will not let a subscriber run anything, including Perl on their computers, however. I'm not sure in what sense you think "Slashdot could replicate its community onto AOL". Not without AOL's permission, which would not be granted.

A universal network was probably inevitable. The exact kind of network we got was mostly luck, and could have turned out much worse. It is a content-neutral network with the intelligence at the endpoints, and it is a peer-to-peer network in which all hosts are basically the same, including routers. Neither of these decisions was inevitable, and neither one would be made by AOL or Microsoft or anyone else trying to build an empire of passive consumers.

I don't take this as a strong argument for increased government spending, however. I think we are simply very lucky to have the internet as it is.

Re:I live in California (OT as hell!)

[maxpublic]

Uggh... That kind of breeding just doesn't help anyone.

I've often said the same thing about zealots of any stripe - extreme liberals, extreme conservatives, religious whackos, people who claim that the poor are poor because they're too lazy to be rich, etc. If only these morons would just stop breeding the genetic pool wouldn't be so damned yellow all the time.

Max

Re:at least the government waste

[crucini]

But it's not as simple as private sector vs. public sector. Each dollar a corporation earns carries news about the market and shifts the company's focus. Maybe it is more effective for an Oracle salesman to spend his time schmoozing government bureaucrats, looking for the "weakest link" who is easily confused, than to contact hundreds of small business and propose Oracle-based solutions for their IT needs. But such actions have an effect on the larger economy. Every dollar spent by government has the incremental effect of refocusing industry from consumer/industry needs to government needs.

Re:at least the government waste

[crucini]

That's an average tax rate of 12.9% on gross income. When's the last time anyone who isn't on WIC paid only 12.9% federal tax on their gross income after deductions?

They aren't paying 12.9% on income after deductions. They are paying roughly 35% on income after deductions. There is no difference between an individual and a corporation in this respect - business expenses are deducted from income before computing tax liability. Far from a loophole, this is one of the most basic ideas of tax law.

Re:I live in California (OT as hell!)

[Geek In Training]

Fishbowl, that is an insightful remark. I prefer to think "more taxpayers" in lieu of "more soldiers."

Why do you think that the Mormon Church (and to a lesser degree, Catholic Church) encourage us to "be fruitful and multiply?" 10% times eight more wage-earners = shiny new glass temple downtown!!

Re:I live in California (OT as hell!)

[Geek In Training]

It was not necessarily a slam, as I am a recovering catholic; I'm just drawing an imaginary line between two teachings: Make sure you have lots of kids, and make sure everyone gives x% of the income for church works. I have a very close mormon friend who husband quit the church. True, MUCH of the money goes towards good deeds that the Mormon Church does for its community members... but the dark underbelly is the political side that has a giant beaurocracy and heirarchy of people who are paid handsomely for their service.

And look at the Catholic church! They had me tithing out of my allowance; how much of that money has gone to pay 1) defense funds for clergy accused of pedophilia, and 2) hush money to pay off victims of said pedophilia?