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Oracle Investigation Grows
VValdo writes "Department heads resigning, millions of dollars wasted, documents shredded, the government investigating. No, it's not Enron-- as previously reported, the $95 million contract with Oracle is blowing into a full-fledged scandal in California, according to today's LA Times, The article begins, "California Highway Patrol officers moved in Thursday to halt shredding at the state's information technology department, and Gov. Gray Davis suspended the agency's chief amid a widening investigation of the state's multimillion-dollar computer contract with Oracle Corp.""
So, when will this be in the Simpsons then?
Seriously, though, it sounds like the state government there needs a complete overhaul and there don't seem to be any oversights/checks on what really is going on there....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
Who cares about paper... Shouldn't they be burning their backup tapes?
Um, this is my sig.
should get together and form MiracleSoft.
and "miraculously" land national contracts without shredders and scandals getting involved.
They'd be able to just buy everyone.
The guilty will be identified, heads will roll, policies revised...
In the end, nothing will change except it'll be even more difficult for California Departments to buy software than it is now.
Software licensing is really complicated. The typical bureacrat is just not up to it. If State Governments paid what Industry pays for IT executives, especially in California, there might be some chance that this kind of thing could be brought under control.
As it is, they'll just add more people to read over the contracts that none of them understand.
Even if they require contracts over a certain dollar amount to be reviewed by outside experts, the bureacrats will just start letting contracts just under that limit to lower their exposure to review.
Imagine this, even though its far fetched.
Oracle gets driven out of business because of this ordeal. Oracle the database is relicensed under the GPL, and becomes open source. Oh how sweet it would be.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
that if Oracle gets pulled in to this and is indighted in any way and forced out of business, that they sell the DB tech to Sun.
Oracle is to much of a force in the DB market to just let MS have it, and if MS did get their rechid claws on it, we can say goodbye to the server room.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
$25,000 for a $95,000,000 contract? What sort of a deal is that?
No business sense, so of course he should go.
(That's a joke for any defamation lawyers out there).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"California Highway Patrol officers moved in Thursday to halt shredding at the state's information technology department...
You can always count on Ponch and Jon to step in and save the day.
- Mike
Hopefully, with the close media scrutiny that a scandal like this provides, there will be some spillover press onto Oracle's lobbying for a national ID (run on Oracle of course). It would be nice if this raises the public's awareness and provokes their outrage. Articles like this make me especially curious about how much money Oracle has given to Sen. Diane Feinstein's campaigns.
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
I really gotta get one of these shredders. What's with the assumption that Oracle and MS are the only choices for database systems?!
Blar.
Computer Probe Is Widening
By DAN MORAIN and NANCY VOGEL
Times Staff Writers
May 3 2002
SACRAMENTO -- California Highway Patrol officers moved in Thursday to halt shredding at the state's information technology department, and Gov. Gray Davis suspended the agency's chief amid a widening investigation of the state's multimillion-dollar computer contract with Oracle Corp.
As those developments were unfolding in the Capitol, Davis' director of e-government, Arun Baheti, quit.
His resignation came one day after he acknowledged to Davis aides that he had personally accepted a $25,000 Oracle check for the governor's reelection committee, which reported receiving the money two weeks after the state signed the $95-million computer software deal.
Late Thursday, Davis issued a statement saying that he would give "immediate and careful attention" to an offer Oracle has said it made in the past to rescind the entire deal. Oracle said earlier in the day that its offer to undo the contract still stood.
That contract has become the object of scrutiny and criticism. A state audit concluded that the deal, designed to save money, could cost the government $41 million more than if there had been no agreement.
Baheti was the second department head in a week to lose his job as a result of the controversy, and a third, Information Technology Director Elias Cortez, was suspended by Davis on Thursday pending the outcome of the state investigation.
In addition, the Oracle deal has become a political issue for the governor, who is seeking reelection. Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon Jr. suggested that Davis aides engaged in a cover-up, and other Republican leaders called on federal authorities to become involved in the probe.
Davis offered no comment on either Baheti's resignation or his suspension of Cortez, who will continue to receive his $123,255 annual salary during his indefinite leave.
"There was shredding, but we have no idea what it was," Davis Press Secretary Steven Maviglio said, adding that Cortez was not in the building Wednesday when the shredding occurred. "Was there shredding related to the Oracle contract? We have no idea. That's what we want to find out."
While department officials said any shredding was routine, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said in a statement: "Any destruction of documents, e-mail and other materials that may be associated with the Oracle contract could pose the potential for obstruction of justice."
Davis' legal advisor, Barry Goode, said his office received an unsubstantiated report of document shredding at the Department of Information Technology.After calling the department to check on the report, he said, he informed Lockyer's office. Highway Patrol officers were then dispatched to the department headquarters.
Simon issued a statement suggesting that Davis or his staff shared responsibility for the shredding. "I'm deeply disturbed that it appears the governor's legal affairs advisor called the Department of Information Technology while documents were being shredded and let DOIT officials know that the attorney general's office was en route. If this is true, it's essentially letting them know they have an hour to shred."
Republican Assembly Leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks called on the U.S. attorney in Sacramento to enter the investigation, alleging that the Davis administration has tried to derail the Legislature's probe.
"The terms of the Oracle contract and any attempts on behalf [of] the Davis administration to silence state-level inquiries into this matter are most troubling," Cox said in a letter to acting U.S. Atty. John K. Vincent.
Cortez had a lead role in pushing for the deal in which Oracle proposed to license software for as many as 277,000 state employees and contended that it would save the state as much as $111 million, according to the state audit.
The audit said officials improperly relied on claims by Oracle and its partner in the venture, Logicon, that their software would save the state money. Further, the audit said, the state evidently was unaware Logicon stood to make more than $28 million on the deal.
A department spokesman said accusations of improper shredding were untrue and unfair to an agency that already has been demoralized by "negative" news reports of its role in the Oracle debacle. "I have been aware of no illicit shredding of any kind," said Communications Director Kevin Terpstra. "In terms of shredding contracts or official records, I do not believe that has occurred and I have no knowledge of that occurring."
The document shredding occurred as Department of Information Technology officials were preparing to testify before a legislative oversight committee Monday. Terpstra said department employees were preparing documents for the committee and "making sure everything was correct."
Terpstra said the department owns 24 shredders that are used to destroy "nonessential" confidential documents it gets from other state agencies that are embarking on computer technology contracts. He said the department has an understanding with those agencies that after reviewing confidential drafts and reports it will shred them.
A department worker, speaking on the condition that she not be identified, said about 10 plainclothes officers with the Justice Department filed into the office on the 21st floor of the downtown high-rise at about noon. Others, including two Sacramento Police Department officers and two state police officers, arrived shortly thereafter. About 1 p.m., the worker said, bosses sent an e-mail telling employees to shut down their computer systems.
She said the contracts office had been working to prepare documents requested by the governor's office and legislative committees. The contracts office was locked at 5 p.m. Wednesday, as it normally is, and the large shredder that sits in the hallway outside the contracts office was not used at all Thursday, she said.
Justice Department investigators took away some documents, she said, but even if anything was shredded Wednesday night, nothing would be lost because the contracts at the Information Technology office are all copies and the originals are kept at the Department of General Services.
"I'm a bureaucrat by profession," said the Information Technology worker. "I understand policy. But this was totally unfounded."
The Davis campaign committee reported receiving the Oracle check in June, two weeks after Oracle won the lucrative state software contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding. A source close to Davis' campaign committee said the check was dated in March, but could not explain why it was received in June.
In his resignation letter to Davis, Baheti made no mention of the campaign donation. Rather, he said, "It is apparent in retrospect that I should have more vociferously raised questions about the details" of the deal with Oracle and Logicon, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman.
"Today," the letter continued, "there are people who would use me as a tool to attack you and the important work of the administration. I refuse to allow my service to you to become a distraction from the real work of government or to detract from your accomplishments. I cannot stay if my effectiveness for you has been compromised; the faith you placed in me deserves nothing less."
Baheti, a lawyer, had been state director of e-government since September 2000.
He also had worked for Davis when the governor was lieutenant governor, and worked on Davis' 1998 election campaign.
Baheti has told aides to Davis that when he took the check, he was not on government property, but was having dinner with a friend who is a lobbyist.
It is illegal to conduct such campaign activity in the Capitol.
Aides to Davis informed Lockyer about the transaction. Lockyer's office is investigating circumstances involving the state contract with Oracle.
"The governor has had a policy of not allowing his state employees to be involved in our fund-raising in any way," said Davis campaign strategist Garry South.
"It is not illegal for them to do, but it is his preference that they not do so," South said.
South said that although the governor's political aides were aware in June that Baheti had violated Davis' policy by taking the check, the campaign decided against returning it.
"I have no way of knowing what Oracle's motivation was," South said of the timing. "The check came from a well-known California company and it didn't violate any law."
Oracle spokesman Jim Finn said he did not know why the check was dated in March. He said the person who gave the $25,000 check to Baheti was Ravi Mehta, a lobbyist hired by Oracle and also a former chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission.
"Political contributions are entirely separate from any sale activities and always have been," Finn said. "California is our home state and we have more than 10,000 employees in the state, so it is natural that we would want to contribute to the governor."
Baheti is the second official to resign as a result of the Oracle deal. On Friday, Barry Keene quit as director of the state Department of General Services.
Slashdot, come for the goatse, stay for the trolls.
They kept the money in state instead of sending it to that state further north!!!
there are thousands of ENRONS waiting to happen...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-050302oracle. story
Oracle is serving their own bad press!
The Davis campaign committee reported receiving the Oracle check in June, two weeks after Oracle won the lucrative state software contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding.
Without competitive bidding... And a check received from a company boasting its software is unbreakable.
No, this is not quite on a par with the W. Bush dealings with Enron. But it's getting close.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
They probably overbought licenses to avoid the posssiblity of a BSA audit.....ever. At least that's the excuse i'd use to cover my ass.
-ted
Hope they burn you. Perhaps you can rethink your idea of a national database, behind bars.
Well it seems that despite all of the rumors, predictions, and assertations that Microsoft would become the victim of criminal liabilities - that Oracle has appeared to reach this milestone first.
Larry Ellison, Founder and CEO of Oracle Corp was quoted as saying, "Oracle has raised the bar once again. We have heightened competition to a point where Microsoft can no longer compete." Summarily William Gates, Founder and CEO of Microsoft Corp was quoted as responding, "It looks like Ellison is going to get a headstart on the excon IT market. Looks like he finally beat me in something."
Yes the above was meant to be humorous. Yes its a joke. Yes I find it extremely amusing that for all of their proproganda on the subject, Oracle may be subject to stiffer criminal liabilities than MS ever has been as a result of this scandal.
Who knows how many state or federal officials they have attempted to bribe? This could really blow up in their faces.... well at least we still have IBM DB/2 to compete against the monster that is Microsoft.
Good Work Ellison...
J
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
Would this be a story on here if it was, say, GE lightbulbs, instead of Oracle?
I am glad to see our tax dollars at work, helping to stimulate the jet fuel industry. That industry has really been hurting lately, and now Mr. Larry Ellison wanting to give back to the community, will be able to purchase even more fuel for his late night jet plane trips!
Not trying to troll, just confused.
Ok, maybe I missed something, but what are the highway patrol doing stopping people shredding stuff? Perhaps they were in a mobile shredder van driving down the interstate whilst throwing paper out of the back?
I would have thought this would have been a job for investigators (not sure of a designation - in the UK it would be CID) rather than beat cops. Are the californian police so under-funded they had to get members of a completely unrelated department to assist?
Maran
And this is a Good Thing. I've got nothing against relational databases where they have their uses; but in the past ten years every application has been converted to requiring a relational database. I personally know of several cases where the data - which used to be managed on an old PDP-11 or the original IBM PC in under a megabyte of disk space - has been migrated to Oracle, at enormous cost and expense. Things that used to be simple (e.g. a list of a few hundred customers) now require a team of Oracle database experts and extensive optimization just to keep up with the same performance that was achieved on twenty-year-old hardware without Oracle.
There's even an official designation for a misused and missaplied technology like this: Golden Hammer.
Looks like Larry's gonna get the "Criminal" bit set in his entry in the National Big Brother database.
So how much are 270,000 MySQL licenses?
Governor Reagan would never have let that happen. Hell, if the state was hurting for money, he'd probably just sell some guns and stuff to the Nicaraguans again.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
People and businesses are so apathetic these days that this nonsense will not spell one bad omen for Oracle.
Usually you'd think that Oracle would get a bad rap for nonsense like this. For one, offering a ridiculous price tag on its software. Second, they provided the "goods", so to speak. Oracle are as mired in this mess as the state gov't in California. So will they get any trouble for it? Of course not. They are, I presume, going to laugh all the way to the bank with the added bonus of not even being required to provide whatever goods and services were purchased. Unless this is being reversed, and assuming all the money has been paid. Usually the gov't can't just say "we made a stupid, give us our money back." Not as if they can make threats either... look how weak they are against Microsoft.
Basically I am trying to point out that Oracle had a hand in this. They are clearly shifty and underhanded. But nonetheless, businesses everywehre will still look to them and place their trust in Oracle to provide a database solution. They will not realize that these huge software companies are unusually corrupt as far as businesses go. They will not say, "let's switch our departments to MySQL instead."
Just the same as with Microsoft. No matter how many incidents creep up that show they are not to be trusted. No matter how many laws they break, everyone remains willing to shovel their money into MS in exchange for shitty software.
We've all asked this question, but I can't help it. HOW is it that these companies have become so powerful that they are legally allowed to do anything? Perhaps the movie "AntiTrust" was closer to the mark any of us might think. Will corporations next make mafia-esque killings? Will they have purchased so many judges and politicians that they can get anything pulled?
I can see admitting stuff you've done wrong in the past, but this is the epitomy of self-immolation!
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Hhmmm... seems well-informed and intelligent. Different from most posts that get modded down. What is this post doing here? Why is a journalist using slashdot to write about European politics? Can't get a voice elsewhere?
Does anyone remember a few months ago when Larry Ellison cashed all of his stock options? It was something like $700m. I wonder what his intensions were and why he did it?
http://www.askthevoid.com
So far:
Oracle has offered to cancel the contract.
Davis forced the guy bribed with a $25k check to resign.
Davis suspended the guy in charge of IT, the bribe recipient's boss.
Davis ordered a halt to all shredding and ordered the CHP to investigate.
It just looks like a coupla people in IT were massaging it on a big contract and got caught.
The next conspiracy movie: Silicon Valley sends email bomb to Hollywood, which retaliates by showing the Valley what silicon is all about - front-line commandos, all with enhanced busts... wait, maybe this has already been done...
Politicians have been screwing over constituents for years. The Illinois License for Bribe scandal is boiling down now just in time for another scandal to emmerge to the front burner: our State's Attorney is soon going to have her Bar Association membership revoked.
Bottom line: this has been going on forever, however, it finally seems that people are wising up to it. Don't expect this to be the first or the last.
heyitsme
More details on the emerging Oracle scandal, including a chronology of events for those just hearing about the story, can be found in George Skelton's Capitol Journal column, which ran in today's LA Times under the title "No Defense Tactic Can Hide This Ugly Scandal."
Skelton's column is definitely worth the read--this is more than just a colossal sales job, and more than just a $25,000 campaign contribution to the governor oh-so-coincidentally two weeks after the deal. There are state legislators with family ties to this, and a startling lack of California employees (or departments) with any interest in using it.
Given the jitters many people have about the securities business today, the most ominous comment might well be a brief mention at the bottom of Skelton's column:
CA was famous for years for doing all sorts of stuff to "make the numbers" at the end of each quarter. You can only do it for so long--once everybody figures out that Sears is always running sales, nobody is willing to buy at anything other than the sale price. Writ large, the same thing happens to companies that are motivated by this quarter's presentation to the securities analysts: eventually customers learn to wait for the last week of the quarter, when you can name your price.
Oracle, in the go-go 90s, made money by the barrel--at one point a colleague observed that their margins were probably higher than the Medellin Cartel. If they have to resort to this kind of shenanigans to make the quarter's numbers, Oracle has bigger problems than a $25,000 payoff to the governor of California.
Another company sucummb to the pressure of M$..when will they ever learn..:)
Than a second-rate governor sparring with a Bill Gates wannabee. Like terrorism, mideast wars, 47 of peole in L.A. lack health insurance, etc.
What a great setup for a new CHiPS episode!
Whoa! The ads in the LA Times page are as obnoxious as I've seen. Did anybody else get the ads with Little Mermaid characters flying across the page? Ugly ugly.
Miko O'Sullivan
Nice Headline!
I've been doing a simple analysis about switching us from Oracle to PostgreSQL. I came to the conclusion that, except for some of our GIS apps and data, we could recoup the cost of our licenses within 2 years. The cost involved with PostgreSQL would be training and re-writing vertical apps. Not paying license fees to Oracle *should* cover that additional cost and pain of migrating and re-writing. The whole reason I'm thinking about this is because of the California scandal. Those guys should really be tied to a post and whipped (not by expensive hookers either). Anyway, I'm actually going to do a more formal analysis of this starting today. Has anybody out there had any experience doing a migratin of this sort, for a enterprise of about 3500 PCs?
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Looks like congress + business needs to ban shredders along with my TiVo and porn.
...But many people quit. A company I am *intimately* familiar with just spent $3 million to implement an ERP that replaced a $50K application (which the vendor customized upon request, on short notice, at no additional charge, as part of their annual license fee). Funny thing is, this company can't afford to customize the ERP to produce the same output the users need (not want, NEED) without blowing the budget. So they won't. This ERP has now made the workprocess completely inefficient. The key problem (and the point) - this company moved from an Informix database that ran on a 3-year old PC to Oracle, running on a rack-mounted monster, because the consultants sold the company on a bigger, better database being the best solution for their shiny new ERP. The project manager just got a promotion, despite the fact that turnover in the field has gone through the roof as the users figure out how much *worse* the new system works. Sometimes, tried and true is best...
They only did it to save money. Perhaps they got the software at 50% off?
>Cortez had a lead role in pushing for the deal in which Oracle proposed to license software for asmany as 277,000 state employees and contended that it would save the state as much as $111 million, according to the state audit.
The more you buy the more you save. Had they bought it for every citizen of CA instead of just for state workers they would have saved WAY more money....
Wasn't it Hitler who said something like, "Lie to people long enough and they think it's the truth."
Kevin
Listen up people! This guy figured out that corruption is a daily occurance, and I thought that corruption only happened when the news reported it.
Apparently, There's nothing we can do, so we should stop ranting and just get used to it like an impotent 3rd world child worker who has no options.
So let's break it up. There's nothing to see here...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I don't claim to be an RDBMS guru, but I have worked with Oracle8i and I nearly freaked at the pricing (and it wasn't even going to be my or my employer's money!) - not just how much but their ridiculous "clock-speed-multiplier" scheme.
Even though I think it stinks, Oracle has every right to price stuff that way if that's what they want to do. However, I really have to ask, did anyone even evaluate whether or not a PostGreSQL solution would have met the fundamental requirement (I'm not talking about a kind of bogus trumped-up requirement that, in essence, says "product must behave just like Oracle[add appellation du jour here]")?
If I were making their decisions for them (and I probably should be!), I would make every effort to use an Open Source solution unless my requirement is just so specialized and so out-there that Oracle was the only thing that could do it.
Government is in the pocket of big business. Elected officials waste tax dollars and sodomize constituents. Video footage at eleven.
Not that I think we should just let this slide because it happens all the time, but...well...it does. We're more likely to sit up and take notice because it's in the tech industry, but everyone here is acting like this is the first time government officials have wasted tax dollars. It's been going on for centuries. Sitting here and typing away about how this *could* be fixed isn't really solving anything. I don't have any answers, and I don't want to sound like a parrot, but it's not just the tech industry that's fucked up - it's every industry. Everyone buys politicians. This will take sweeping reforms to fix, and those with the power to fix it are far too taken with getting rich off the system to care. You can vote for 'the other guy' but he's probably corrupt too. They've got us all by the balls now...
do not read this line twice.
Stated this in a previous thread but worth stating again. Having worked for the bucket-head-known-as Eli Cortez who was appointed the State CIO and got them in this mess, the governor and California are getting what they deserve. This man has a history of screwing everything up on a grand and global scale like some sort of nuclear picnic. Just shows how powerful the unqualified and criminially negligient can be if you place them in key positions. Having destroyed a county and now a state, I'm sure Eli Cortez is being recruited to run the federal government as we speak. Call it "destiny."
+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm quite sure it's hard to pronounce."
- Govt. software requisitioner: "Hey, I don't need your product, at least I'm not sure if I do, but I'd like to buy $95 million worth of it anyway"
- Oracle exec: "Well, even though I have a fiduciary duty to my shareholders to maximize profits, and -- as a private citizen not elected to any office -- no duty to the taxpayers to ensure that the government is efficient in its spending practices, I feel uncomfortable taking your money. Please call IBM."
In the absence of proof of any wrongdoing on the part of Oracle (so far about the worst you can say is that they inflated the estimated cost savings -- which is nothing more than typical "lies, damn lies, and statistics" that all businesses use to convice you that you need their product-you-don't-need).And read the article, Oracle offered to terminate the deal, and is apparently standing by the offer; this is something that they're certainly not obligated to do legally (they may be obligated to do if from a PR standpoint, to deal with people like you who assume they've done something wrong before they're even done it).
Come on people, I'm as critical of big business as anyone (probably more so), but this is in fact just a case of Big Business as usual. It's like drunken sex with a stranger you don't like. It may make you feel icky, it may even be bad for you, but it's not illegal.
The real question:
How to the democrats blame this on Bush?
First off, I am just getting around to trying this myself so I'm only posting this as a try it yourself
Check out SapDB.org. Dell has a benchmark test posted. Note that this was v6.2 of SapDb and it is now v7.3.
The documentation is exhaustive. Oh GPL'd also. It has something called the Oracle 7 compatibility mode whatever that is, personally I don't care about that.
I have scoured google and can't find much about if from other users. I even have tried Ask Slashdot but they won't put up my post for some reason. I really wish they would.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
In the end, nothing will change except it'll be even more difficult for California Departments to buy software than it is now.
And so it should be. They should be required to use open source software first and foremost and must present a valid case to prove need for any commercial software only when such need cannot be met by open source. Govts should also be required to have their own programmers on staff to write what they need instead of buying some shrinkwrapped product that forces them to re-invent their business models to fit what the software does and instead should write their software to fit their business model.
You people complain that they don't pay government workers enough and then complain they pay them too much all in one thread.
$123K is not a lot of money to pay for people with serious experience at this level. In fact, that is c-h-e-a-p.
I realize to a code monkey making $50K this sounds like a lot of money, but good, experienced technical people who understand the business really are hard to find.
How much health care could you buy with $95M?
This is important because its a zero sum game. If I piss away $95M to Oracle, it means I can't spend $95M educating children, or feeding the poor, or housing the homeless.
Don't try to minimize this because you want to support the current administration.
You're the worst kind of politico there is.
We could use the money up here in Oregon!
I'll settle for Larry Ellison.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Is there any who is so naive that they don't know that the Democrats are historically the party of corruption? Heck, just look at the historical rigging of elections. Even if you happen to like their policies, an honest person has to admit the PARTY itself is completely corrupt. Just look at Daschle. Is their no lie that man won't tell?
The Republicans are the party of Watergate and Iran/Contra. Serious crimes. Not to mention massive deficits from tax breaks for the rich.
After investigating Democrats for the last 8 years, the worst they came up with was a blow job!!
Daschle a liar? Can you come up with even ONE example of Daschle lying?
And talk about rigging elections - this Republican president LOST THE ELECTION!
So give us a break, please.
...Bill Gates is laughing uproariously at Ellison because of this.
Who will they send next, Smokey the Bear?
Or better yet, they could create a new character -
Sharky the Auditor
"Only you can stop audit evasion techniques"
The Republicans are the party of Watergate and Iran/Contra.
Iran/Contra was not a crime. And once again, the Democrat brings up something from a quarter of a century ago.
Not to mention massive deficits from tax breaks for the rich.
You mean the tax breaks that eliminated taxes on the poor? You mean the tax breaks that eliminated tax shelters? You mean the tax breaks that doubled the revenues to the government during the 80s? You mean the massive deficits that were caused by the DEMOCRATS who were in power in congress at the time? Yes, congress creates the budgets.
After investigating Democrats for the last 8 years, the worst they came up with was a blow job!!
No one ever said Clinton wasn't smart. Of course, only Democrats believe that it's OK for the President of the United States to abuse his power to take advantage of interns.
Not to mention that he was found guilt of lying under oath. But hey, who cares if the guy whose in charge of enforcing the laws lies in court?
Daschle a liar? Can you come up with even ONE example of Daschle lying?
Oh, how about Daschle blaming the recession on Bush when it began before Bush was in office? He knows he's lying, but it sounds good. If you need more evidence, feel free to do a search on Google for "daschle lies". Lots of people document them.
And talk about rigging elections - this Republican president LOST THE ELECTION!
Uh, no, he didn't. He only loses the election if you shred the constitution and ignore the law. But hey -- Democracts have never minded ignoring the law, have they?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It would take a case as huge as this, involving a customer and money as huge as this, to take to court the question of whether or not software can be "returned."
I, for one, would love the ability to return (or even "transfer ownership of") software without taking the whole damn software industry to the Supreme Court.
This scandel will only HELP Big_O in California cause any kinda publicity in that flake-off state is better than none ! Ask any actor/actress.
RDBMS's are incredibly complicated pieces of software -- more complicated in many respects than an operating system. A true enterprise-class database has to be totally, completely, unquestionably consistant and reliable. While Postgress is an impressive product, it's still not in the same league as DB2, Sybase, or even MS-SQL.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
It's not on the FUCKING ROOT.
Dumbass
Oracle also donated $25K on 6/20/01 and another $25K on 12/27/2000 to the campaign of Bill Lockyer, the current California Attorney General who's leading the investigation into this mess.
What this doesn't even take into account is that, while Oracle can be OK as a high-end database if you give it a dedicated DBA, it is absolutely awful as a quick-and-dirty databse. I doubt that there are 270000 Oracle licenses in the world that represent properly installed and maintained Oracle systems. Many users of databases would be served much better with something that's easier to intall and maintain than Oracle, even if that databse is less capable or less full-featured in some sense. In different words, if you take into account the high cost of installing and running an Oracle database properly, this contract is even more costly than it seems on paper.
You mean the tax breaks that doubled the revenues to the government during the 80s?
After Reagan's tax cuts, revenue FELL. Then there was the "Deficit Reduction Act" - the largest tax increase in history - and the huge increase in Social Security taxes on working people. Only THEN did revenue start to climb.
You accidentally left that out.
No one ever said Clinton wasn't smart.
I know, the lack of any evidence of wrongdoing is proof of a massive cover-up. The standard Clinton-hater line.
The problem isn't that there is too much database technology that people don't understand, it's that there is not enough people who understand database technology.
I see this time and time again: organizations that have Access databases that multiply like rabbits. People have tons of "reports" that not really reports but data carrying instruments from one special purpose system to another, where they are rekeyed in and manually processed etc. The whole process, and many staff positions required by it, are essentially overhead; they are required for coordination but produce no value in themselves. People are satisfied, because they don't perceive all this as an expense, but part of the job description. Then there is a challenge that requires organizational change. They have to produce a piece of information that they didn't before; perhaps it is a new government regulation, or perhaps it is a new business venture. Several outcomes are possible: complete failure to respond, response in a way that is superficially adequate but involves inaccuracies or problems of timeliness, and finall and/or the accretion of another level of organizational cruft.
Of course databases are not a panacea; they don't solve this problem. But they are a critical parts of the solution. The purpose of database technology is to enable the re-use of information. If you have an independent business process with only a small number of well defined interfaces, that is supported by mature software, I agree there is little reason to reimplement using database technology. But a priori this is a bad, or at least a dangerous assumption. Starting from scratch the best solution when long term record keeping is needed is a relational database.
And database technology is not that complicated from a application developer's perspective. It dramatically simplifies most software problems that involve anything more than the most basic record keeping. It takes care of data integrity and optimization and many security and administrative tasks. Speaking as somebody who remembers the days when you commonly created your own on disk data structures with pointers, indices and whatnot, I know that 99% of the time I'm better of not reinventing the on-disk data structure wheel. How many novice written binary search routines do you want to debug in your life? How many pointer rebuilding routines do you want to have to code? How many times do you want to tear into live production code because of deadlock problems that didn't come up in testing? How many times should customers have to send data sets to their vendors to have the file structures rebuilt due to crashes or bugs?
Finally, with respect to Oracle, it is not the safest product in the world to let an idiot loose administering, but it's not friggin' rocket science either, unless your project requirements dictate complex DBA setups. In these cases not only is a solution like Oracle far better than what you could come up on your own, it decouples solving these problems from application logic, reducing development risks. For simple cases, Oracle scales down nicely if you don't get overeager about tinkering under the hood. If you have the licenses already (big proviso), there is practically no reason not to use Oracle for any application, no matter how small.
Of course if you have to use a server that is admin'd by somebody else who doesn't care if your project shrivels up and blows away, well YMMV. But that is hardly Oracle's fault.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Iran/Contra was not a crime. And once again, the Democrat brings up something from a quarter of a century ago.
If it wasn't a crime, then why did President Bush have to pardon a slew of white house officials facing(or about to face) criminal charges just before he left office?
It was on Christmas Day, 1992 so you may have not noticed it. And unlike the heavily criticized Clinton pardons, these were done primarily to protect Bush himself from criminal charges. Pardon all the witnesses and they can't turn state's evidence on you, as Casper Weinberger, IIRC, was preparing to do.
BTW, the Iran Contra hearings were 15 years ago, not 25.
Can you imagine what would happen if it was Microsoft. The whole media will show nothing but this. That at least shows how biased people are against Microsoft?
> I'm still waiting for the:
> Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.
> to be documented as being wrong. =)
there must be a whole slew of people who were fired for buying Microsoft... anyone want to speak out?
My version of calc.exe at work said "Error: Positive infinity".
MS must want people to think MySQL is REALLY expensive...
this jerks, a copy of postgress...
There is something amazingly and glaringly obvious about your post that is in the hearts of a lot of Americans that makes me sad and makes me sick. That there is some kind of crooked conspiracy here and that you have to tell everybody everything you do in order to be deemed a "good person". You have to ask the right people the right questions and you have to bend over and kiss the right ass in order to have any support.
Ronald Reagan was a hero. You may or may not have supported him or all of his ideas and actions, but this one thing will forever go down in history as a man who fought for his countryman against all odds. Those were American POW's in Iran. There was no apparent way of getting them back alive. Reagan begged Congress to help. The answer "No". Reagan begged other countries to help. The answer "No". He couldn't get support from Congress, from the Senate, from foreign leaders, so he did what 99.9999% of Americans would never do today...He became a true leader, a true man, he grew a spine, and he did what needed to be done to bring our boys home...fuck Congress, fuck the rules, fuck foreign leaders, fuck everyone and everything. The POW's needed our help and Reagan brought them home. So, to get that done he had to sell black market arms to the Contra's in Iran. Big fucking deal.
What they should have done was given the man a medal and called him a true American. But, instead, all of the whiny, spineless fucks in the US tried to bring charges down upon him and the administration for doing what a leader is born to do. To lead and to do what is right, even if everybody else tells you that you are wrong.
And THESE are the people Ellison expects us to trust with a national ID card program...?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
First, I don't recall that Bush was never shown to have any involvement whatsoever in Iran/Contra. There was the ridiculous rumor that he flew via SR-71 to Iran to negotiate the release of the hostages which set the stage for later administration involvement in Iran/Contra, but that was shown to be a fatuous lie with no substance whatsoever.
Second, Clinton pardoned a number of people who might have later turned against him, like Susan McDougal and Webster Hubbell. Or rather, it was probably the case that they didn't turn against him earlier because of a promise of a pardon later. Either way, the clear appearance is that he pardoned these people to protect himself from prosecution.
Thanks.
Now maybe he can get a job for Oracle writing for their internal newsletter, or shredding papers, or sucking off Larry Elison.
File this under "It Sounded Like a Good Idea at the Time".
-Don
California Builds a Useful Government Website
With a transaction engine and sophisticated Web technology, the state of California gets serious about the Web.
By Dylan Tweney, January 11, 2001
[...]
The site was developed under Arun Baheti, director of eGovernment for the state -- a position created by Governor Gray Davis last year. Incredibly, Baheti built the site in just 110 days, with a budget of $2 million, in time for this week's launch.
Rather than take a typical public-sector approach -- award the site construction contract to a single vendor, then let that vendor own the project from the ground up -- the governor instructed Baheti to pick a few best-of-breed technologies, then hire a consultant to help put the pieces together. That's standard practice in the private sector, but it counts as a significant innovation in the halls of the state capitol.
The result is a melange of technologies stitched together to create a strong site with an array of functionality. The site uses BroadVision for online transactions and personalization, Interwoven for content management, Verity for searching, and Broadbase for online marketing and visitor traffic analysis. Deloitte Consulting handled the integration and project management. The site is hosted on hardware at the state's high-capacity Teale Data Center.
To organize the site's information architecture, Baheti brought in a team of state librarians to come up with a meaningful information classification system and to develop the site's FAQ (frequently asked question) files. Baheti's team also took pains to ensure that the site is accessible to people with physical disabilities.
The result is a site that is remarkably effective at bringing together a host of government services and information. Carlo Grifone, a principal in the Sacramento, Calif., office of Deloitte Consulting, says that a guiding theme was the idea of "one government, one customer." In other words, visitors to the site don't particularly care which department or state agency is responsible for issuing fishing licenses -- they just want to go fishing. The site aims to help visitors find what they need without having to navigate a virtual version of the government bureaucracy.
The current site offers direct access to about a dozen state services, but many additional state departments and agencies are developing applications for the site. As these are ready, they will be plugged in to the current site infrastructure, eventually making my.ca.gov a true, single-stop California government portal.
While portals, personalization, and online transactions are old hat for commercial sites, this is the cutting edge for e-government. Let's hope other governments follow California's lead.
====
Uuuh, how about: let's hope other governments cover up their pay-offs and bribes better than California's.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
California should be split in two.
It's in the works
Ronald Regan sucks cocks. He's an insane monkey.
Fuck you conservative asswipes.
Fascinating. But tell me this: what, exactly, does the North-South split offer as a preventive for corruption?
The problem here is that a major company gulled CA into buying more licenses than it has employees, remember? The impact of LA on nearby cities is irrelevant in this case, because what we have here is a case of simple, pure, quintessential dishonesty. It's a lack of ethics in government, not a case study for a political scientist in an ivory tower.
Yes, you can reorganize governments, add new levels of government, make things either simpler or more complex if you want--but realize that NONE of that changes what's in people's hearts. If people are greedy, dishonest, corrupt and conniving rascals, that's what they are, and no structural changes will prevent them from doing their dirty work. Geographic redrawing of political boundaries? Might as well try voodoo as a fix.
What is needed is a process of oversight and transparency that works to militate against corruption. That means honest people looking at what goes on, with full disclosure required. That can be put into place in any governmental structure, no matter how large.
Yes, finding honest people and keeping them honest is not easy. But it's easier if the entire system is totally transparent, with so many people aware of what is going on that keeping secrets is extremely difficult.
Like mosquito abatement and doing the laundry, keeping government honest is a task that never ends. It requires continual work. The is no use whining about that fact of life!
Davis and company need to be handed their walking papers, and new laws need to be enacted to open up the process that lies behind the awarding of contracts.
CA is not too big. It's too dishonest.
Larry's Stock is bogus his stock was illegally sold back to in 1995 his entire fortune is Matt Williams of Atlanta GA the guy is only 22.
Thank larry for tanking the Software Company
Sign
THE PROGRAMMER
However, the fewer there are to be governed, the more apt government is going to be transparent. For instance, at the ultimate form of local government, imho, (the true New England town meeting) every dealing that the town has made is up for scrutiny of the citizens. There are instances of corruption, but it is generally detected quickly and recified before much damage can be done. Admittedly, this is an extreme example.