Talk:Larry Ellison

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Contents

[edit] Additional Information

I think there are many pieces of information that could be added to this page. For a good comaprison look at the article for Warren Buffett. For example there is no mention of Larry dropping out of university. In fact quite a few on the billionare list did just that. An intersting point methinks ;) --Inexplicable 13:37, July 22, 2005 (UTC)


[edit] How Did a College Dropout Avoid Being Drafted?

The pressure of the draft was enormous. Almost 3 million men, many of them draftees, served in Vietnam. A guy who dropped out of college was under added conscription pressure. So no bio of any person who came of age during the Vietnam era is complete without some explanation of how this was handled. Ignoring this issue is akin to ignoring the very biggest issue of an entire era.


[edit] Images

Comment to "Jawed" "added photo of Larry Ellison", not very flattering picture. - Jerryseinfeld 23:59, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I can't believe that's the best picture of the guy we can find. - Matthew.Townsend 12:10, 30 Dec 2004 (EST)

It is the best picture of him in existence. Jawed 08:23, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a hilarious photo and burst out laughing when I saw it, but I think leaving it in the article must be a violation of -something-. --NeuronExMachina 10:10, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's a funny picture to be sure, but it wouldn't be very flattering to use that photograph in an encyclopedia. We can use a different picture without adding any sort of bias, so I think we should. - furrykef (Talk at me) 20:53, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Larry would like the baseball pic. He regularly eats competitors for lunch.

[edit] Bastard

Is it really important to say "Ellison was born out of wedlock to a 19-year-old girl"? I don't think his bastard status is relevant or NPOV. In fact I know it's not neutral because it put me off wanting to read the rest of the article. I'm going to be bold and remove it; someone can put it back if it's really that important. --Vik Reykja ♬ 10:35, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that the unwed mother comment should be too off-putting. It shows how he started with some disadvantages. The article doesn't say that he grew-up poor, but I suspect he did. This might account for some of the appearences of his personality (at least sort of seems to be the case to me) - needing to have the biggest houses, needing to feel safe from earthquakes, buying -up Malibu, etc. I would be interested to find out more about his early years.

24.206.125.213 22:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)BMIKESCI


I think the idea is important but the presentation put me off too. I changed the words around a bit.
Cheers, H. Hall

[edit] Improve

This article is quite confusing. How did Ellison become a billionaire? What does Oracle do?Anthony717 04:35, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First Paragraph

Quoting the Article: "At South Shore High School, he was a bright but inattentive student. At 15, he began a long-term relationship that lasted for five years and ended sorely—depending on who is asked, he unsuccessfully proposed marriage either once or twice."

What? The paragraph starts with him being in school, then jumps to him "starting a long term relationship" and "proposing marriage"... where did this come from? Then nothing else is said about the relationship in the rest of the paragraph....

[edit] famous Japanese feudal style home's coordinates

As noted in Ellison's article, his Woodside, CA estate is quite famous. Needless to say, being as large as it is I was able to easily find it on Google Earth. I'm adding the coordinates next to the reference. Since there is no article on the home (which has an interesting story, as I recall), I assume it would be okay to place here. --Bobak 00:42, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I thought the house was $40 million. I have a book that describes the house, it can probably be cited from. Tuxide 02:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Contradictory marriage dates

The 'Personal Life' section say "Since December 18, 1983, he has been married to romance novelist and Oberlin grad Melanie Craft.". However, the 'Career' section says "On 18 December 2003, Ellison married Melanie Craft, a romance novelist, at his Woodside estate. His friend, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, was the official photographer.". So was he married to Melaine Craft in 1983 or 2003? Also, the bit about the marriage/wedding shouldn't be in the career section anyway. --Darksun 20:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Richest Man (Currently)

Currently Larry Ellison is the richest man in the world. Ha.. Not Bill Gates.

  • Very rich but not placed in the number 1 position by any of the compilers of 'wealth league tables' Boatman 17:06, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A perspective of the early RDBMS wars

The following is a perspective from someone that was involved with selecting and using relational database management systems (RDBMSs) in the late '80s and early 90's.

In the late 80's, DB2 ran on mainframes and PC's that ran IBM's OS2 operating system and later System 38's, etc. Unlike DB2, Oracle ran on mini computers including the most popular mini which was the VAX made by Digital Equipment Corp. Mini-computers was therefore Oracle's niche during the 80's and Oracle was viewed as a reliable product.

It should also be noted that Oracle offered their first UNIX version of Oracle in 1984. This is important, because as PCs became more powerful in the early 90's, and companies such as SCO (the original Santa Clara Organization) began providing UNIX for PC's, Oracle had a reliable Unix version of its product available. And Oracle had already made inroads into large corporations with its VAX product. Thus as client-server applications using PC database servers began to take hold in IT shops in the early 90's, Oracle had the patina that large corporations looked for. One of the most important selection considerations at the time was the fact that in the early 90's, Oracle looked like the only UNIX RDBMS that might be around for a while.


Cheers, H. Hall


[edit] Can we have more on the insider trading charge

If a politician skims 100k from public funds its all over the NY Times but if a gozillionaire is even questioned about a million dollar insider deal, its buried in the back pages of the financial times. I am sure we can find a couple of articles and an SEC press release somewhere. C'mon people! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.149.231.102 (talk) 20:32, 31 January 2008 (UTC)