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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.""
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.
$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.
there are thousands of ENRONS waiting to happen...
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
Would this be a story on here if it was, say, GE lightbulbs, instead of Oracle?
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?
It just so happens that their core responsibilities are on the highways. Even so, why not the Sacremento PD? CBI?
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
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.
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.
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.
Better yet, why is the State of California policing itself? Would that not be a conflict of interest? Or is it just amazing that a government entity is shredding documents to cover its ass.... no wait, that part is not news anymore...
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
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
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 ---
I'm not expert either.. This is simply an observation.
Different groups of law enforcement report to or get thier funding from different agencies. He who provides funding can direct the troups. I'm sure there our times when you would not want to step on others toes by flexing your muscles but it happens. They are lucky the SWAT team was not sent in.
In my county in VA, the county sheriffs office and the county police are always nitpicking with each other over who is responsible for what, they have even sued each other in the past for various things. This does not seem to be a very productive way of spending my tax dollars. Of course neither is over spending on a contract.
Moderators, yes this is off-topic, but it is a reply to another comment that you may not see because you are browsing at >=1.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I think Ellison's pandering to the Democratic Party is coming home to roost, to use the old cliché.
You wonder just how much under the table money did Ellison pay to the Clinton Administration to expedite the US v. Microsoft case, too.
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.
While we're at it, I'd like a pony!!
********************
I object to Intellect without Discipline.
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.
This is actually a good question since CHiP is a misleading acronym.
A recent example of what they do in times of need is the not-too-distant rioting that occured in Cincinnati. The governor sent in about 60+/- units to set things back in order. They also served as a signal that the nation was taking notice of Cincinnati's problems between local police and populace.
Their legal powers are also somewhat broader than those of local police (this may be different now with the USA Patriot act...). So if the governor orders them to stop the tampering of evidence they can do it as long as it is within the state and they are following an executive order.
They are police somewhat analogous to the relationship of the Army to the State National Guard.
The real question:
How to the democrats blame this on Bush?
You wonder just how much under the table money did Ellison pay to the Clinton Administration to expedite the US v. Microsoft case, too.
I also wonder how much under the table money Gates paid to the Bush Administration to bury the US v. Microsoft case.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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
"Oh how sweet it would be."
How, exactly, would it be "sweet"? Many large companies depend on Oracle to provide a concise, up to data database product and support. Taking such a highly advanced product and making it GPL would only lead to chaos. There would be no single source for support and updates. Just as Linux suffers from an enormous multitude of incompatible versions, so would the Oracle database be bastardized and split up into different competing products by various companies and fringe groups.
Open source may be fine for system utilities and web browsers, but not for something as complex and crucial as Oracle.
All the other replies are correct, I would just add that part-and-parcel of being the state police is that the head of the CHP works for the govenor, therefore it's would be the only law enforcement agency that the govenor could order to do something.
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"?
Slashdot 101
Its not at the root. That is exactly why I had an include there stating it was reply. Not that I want to feed you but this happens all the time. People post a reply to an AK or a post that is modded at 0 or below.
If you are browsing 1+, ignoring AK's etc. You will not see the original and think that my reply is at the root or I get modded down for being off-topic or I am crazy and writing a reply to no one.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.