For normal people, it’s like being the last husky on a dog sled – all you see are assholes in front of you.

interviewed at his vanity startup, Pillar Data Systems.

He is smart ( not just lucky like so many tech billionaires ). But my impression is that he is a huge asshole. Not as bad as Altman, Musk, Theil, etc. but still as ass.

i wonder what he thinks now.
he presented at java 1. he wrote a garbage collection program that was patented. his name is on it, but it belongs to cboe, who he used to work for. larry gave him a big pat on the back.

As much of a Reichwing asshat as he is, this blows. I’ve despised him for a long time, and when Oracle bought Cerner (a for-profit, software company that makes the self-titled electronic medical record, Cerner, which is a MAJOR piece of shit, by the way), I had hoped that Oracle would take a beating over it. After all, on a NO-BID contract awarded by Jar-Jar(ed Kushner), for Cerner to provide their EMR to the VA, they HOSED up royally at several facilities and had the project put on hold. Part of their problem is that as a publicly owned company - geared for maximizing shareholder value 🙄, their sales people would over promise. The engineers would then either under-deliver, or never be able to deliver what the sales clowns said they could do.

Cerner has also faced numerous lawsuits in the past related to botched rollouts and lost data. LOST health record data! A gigantic, no-no, NEVER-should-happen event.

The software is also POS on the front end. I won’t ever go to work for any facility that uses it. That’s how much I detest it.

Screw Cerner and Oracle/Larry Ellison.

if patients die, they die. That's the price of freedom. American health care is exceptional that way.

I worked briefly with VA around the time they selected Cerner. I saw the ridiculous and dangerous risks in that EHR integration and looked for a one way ticket as far away as I could. Phew. VA still has tons of turnover and trouble recruiting qualified people even in today's economy. So even during COVID, if anyone I knew was desperate for a job, VA would hire them until they found something better.

Who happens to be an Army vet, just moved over to the local VA hospital. Took them a full YEAR to get him on board after he interviewed and was offered/accepted the job. That’s insane. Especially for an RN position. What kind of Super Secret Squirrel information is he going to be looking at that requires a 6 month (or longer) background check by the FBI?

No wonder they were understaffed even BEFORE Caligula’s pandemic in Caligula v1.0. Far, far worse now that Cantaloupe Caligula the Corpulent let Eloon and his Doge (I pronounce it as “dodgy,” and use in the same sense as the British: shady/suspect) tech bros illegally fire VA staff.

But hey, tell me again how the Rabid Reichwingers are the pro-military/vet political party…🤦‍♂️

Only as far a investing news hype, maybe. But they have been plugging along with their overpriced database and server products fueled by their onerous contracts, high paid sales reps and vicious legal team.

Yes because at one time, "everyone" had to be an "Oracle DBA" (and yup, exhorbitant prices for the software license and service agreements, even with GSA pricing - the federal government used their software like my agency - at least in the past).

Then the "in thing" (particularly for all the spammers DU gets) was "SEO".

Now the "in thing" is "AI".

I'm disappointed in his politics & relationship with trump, but at least Ellison's not aligned with Putin.

From DeepMind AI:

Oracle itself provides crucial, highly-secure cloud services that function as a foundation for advanced military command and control operations. So while it doesn't staff or run the Pentagon's physical command centers, its secure, high-performance cloud technology is a fundamental enabler of modern military planning and decision-making.

Cloud provider:
Oracle has been one of four major cloud providers—along with Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft—awarded a contract for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) program. The JWCC has been a multi-billion dollar contract that gives the Department of Defense (DoD) access to secure cloud computing for warfighting missions at all classification levels.

Classified regions:
Oracle provides "air-gapped" cloud regions, called Oracle National Security Regions (ONSRs), that are isolated from the public internet and designed to support Secret and Top Secret-level missions. These secure, dedicated networks enable DoD and Intelligence Community personnel to manage and analyze classified data.

Tactical operations:
Oracle's cloud services extend to the "tactical edge," providing ruggedized, portable computing and storage devices for warfighters operating in disconnected or austere battlefield environments. This allows for data processing closer to the source, giving combat units faster access to critical intelligence.

Virtual war room:
Instead of a single physical location, the Pentagon's warfighting capability is built on a distributed, "all-domain" digital infrastructure. This cloud-based system serves as a modern, high-tech version of a war room, allowing commanders to analyze data, run simulations, and direct forces from anywhere in the world.

we had some Oracle databases at my agency.

But there was a period when "open source" and *nix-based products suddenly became "a thing" and people were moving to ( "free as in beer" ) open source SQL-based databases (because Oracle was getting more and more expensive, although their databases could usually handle huge loads).

And regarding "cloud" - well AWS (Amazon Web Services) basically blew the others out of the water including Oracle's, IBM's, and M$'s, in terms of getting customers.

Much of the Oracle in the government is for legacy systems.

with their stock "soaring" and whatnot.

They have been in kind of a "sleepy" / "mature tech" mode for some time now but it seems they found a way to get into the AI thing.

PLUS, supposedly Ellison and Oracle "are involved" (behind the scenes) with possibly taking over, or at least having a significant role with TikTok (since they already provide the back end services for it).

keep TikTok more secure, and there's win-win value in that.

project stuff isn't confidence inspiring at all. Securing the codes? With ByteDance endorsing Oracle? And republicans owning shares of ByteDance? pfffft

So far it seems clear to me, 6 months past this article, that nothing these rw oligarchs and their tools do that's new or "news" is to be trusted to secure this country.

A good article. Thanks.

they might have had the right security folks in place who had a sense of what the environment was out there so they could come up with a "partnership" between Oracle and the government gurus, in order to help secure it. But...

do these days. https://krebsonsecurity.com

How can any company gain $101,000,000,000 in a heartbeat ?

When people are starving, etc. I don't care WHO it is.

when people are starving.

Plus both of these guys are probably paying taxes under 5% if they pay any taxes at all.