Just because something isn't illegal means that you should do it.

Sure its a morality question, but what does Oracle's actions show?

Larry Ellison has always believed in a "win at all costs" attitude.

I guess the truth is that if you can't compete toe to toe, then its better to cheat than to lose walk away and improve your product.

There's reality and then there's marketing. In Silicon Valley, reality is just a state of mind.

I don't know which is funnier... the fact they had to push the boundaries of ethics to look good on paper, or the fact that they legally got away with bending a truth to a non-profit organization...

Isn't that like fibbing to a member of the clergy, nauseatingly worse, like tongue kissing a second or third cousin?

Or if you really want your face to explode, like kissing a second or third cousin, who IS a member of the clergy... Yes, you know where I'm going with this... There's a very special place in hell, reserved specifically for you...

If, fourteen years later, this is the newsmaker among Oracle's sins, I'm having a hard time finding a more convincing recommendation.

..for showing just how much a farce TPC benchmarks are.

Think about it.. if something like a 'discrete transaction' can perform particularly well against the TPC benchmark, but means jack nothing to real customers in the real world... THEN JUST WTF IS THE USE OF TPC BENCHMARKS IN THE FIRST FRICKEN PLACE!!

Which only goes to show that "legal" and "moral" are only tangentially related. Being reduced to defending immoral cheating as "legal" really is the last refuge of the morally corrupt.

Of course, there's much worse than Oracle out there (that we know of - it's amazing what companies get away with when nobody is looking), but still, it sort of sets the stage for the whole thing doesn't it?

aye, the number of times I have pointed out that tax avoidance is still morally wrong even whilst sometimes being not against the law.

....Don't Sell to Good Friends Worthless Impoverishing Debt as an Increasingly Valuable Asset for IT Creates Wiser Friends who will Ensure that they won't be Fooled AGain in the Game. And they will Simply Change the Game to Purge the Board of its Dedicated Trash Element.

"it's amazing what companies get away with when nobody is looking"

yeah, right,

Those halcyon days are long gone, consigned to the dustbin of history. Now we can peer into every pathetic dark corner to see the cowed and coward hiding from themselves, prisoners in cells of their own making. And boy, do the worms squirm like a nest of vipers in the Bright Light of the Sun and ITs Satellite Sonny SISter Systems.

It is a sobering fact that those who make the Rules never intend to Follow them for they are only there to keep you from thinking about who makes the rules whilst they dream up new ones to follow should everyone start looking.

If you can optimise the performance of your system for a particular test then:

a) The test is deficient and it needs to be corrected

b) The test is real and you have found a valid optimisation

There is nothing immoral about optimising.

You can never "cheat" on tests.

c) an anonymous coward dosn't know what he/she is talking about

It is possible to cheat a test, if you know what is on that test. Then you could revise only those answers. In the case of a database, you only optimise the functions that are going to make the test run faster, but not necessarily optimise the database itself to have any meaningful increase in speed (i.e. the speed increases only benefit the speed test performance and not day to day). Oracle should be ashamed' Larry Ellison likes to take the p**s out of Micro$oft every two minutes when his own house is out of order.... Pot calling the kettle black anyone?

Ahhh, the good old days.

http://halberenson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!4B6955036A0206AA!153.entry

You are really, really annoying.

No-one cares about your mysterious conspiracy drivel.