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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hardly B. Solipsist who wrote (14285)	8/24/2000 6:54:09 PM
From: A.L. Reagan	Respond to of 19080

While we're on the topic of executive maturity, check this out: SAP CEO bares all to Ellison August 24, 2000 (Upside) It must be hard being Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison. Between the girlfriends and the dumpster diving, oh, and yeah, running the nation's second largest software company, he's got to be really busy. Nevertheless, he has plenty of time for disputes laden with what the Germans call testosterngesattigt. You know, the manly hormone. Through various German publications, Ellison and Hasso Plattner, CEO of SAP (SAP), a German software company that competes against Oracle, have been arguing, not about business, of course, but about their sailing prowess. In a letter to Der Spiegel that was printed in the magazine's Aug. 6 issue, Ellison claims that Plattner pulled down his pants during a 1997 race in Sardinia and germoont -- a Germanization of the English "mooned" -- Ellison and his yacht Sayonara because Plattner was losing a race to the Americans. That was, according to Ellison. "I am disgusted and outraged," Ellison wrote -- or had someone write -- in German. Ellison insisted that he has never lost to Plattner. Ellison repeated that claim in response to an email asking about the Spiegel letter. "[Plattner's boat] Morning Glory and Sayonara raced together in many regattas, including several world championships. Sayonara won them all," Ellison wrote. But the German magazine Yacht says that Ellison has, in fact, lost races to Plattner. In 1996, in Hawaii -- a contest where Plattner happily and publicly admitted to mooning Sayonara's crew -- Plattner was ahead until Morning Glory's mast broke. Plattner was upset by the behavior of Sayonara's crew who, he said, sailed around his boat, capturing their victory on video tape but refusing to aid the disabled ship or an injured crew member, a breach of good seamanship. Yacht says Plattner would have won that race if his boat had not been damaged. "It's wrong that Sayonara, as Ellison says, won all competitions," the magazine wrote. In Sardinia in 1997 -- where there was no mooning, according to Yacht and the crew of Plattner's boat -- Ellison didn’t sweep either, according to Plattner's allies. "They won the class. We won the regatta," said one of Plattner's crew who is, in a way, agreeing with Ellison who he says is dissembling. "It's twisting the facts. He was entered in the regatta and we beat him," said Plattner's sailor. You can see why Bill Gates plays golf, can't you? There's sure to be more shouting in German, however. A former Oracle employee has won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the company, which, she said, dismissed her because she expressed alarm that Oracle had managed to gain unauthorized access to SAP's software. upside.com