Free Republic

<p>What is it about state institutions and computer systems? Why can't the state that is home to Silicon Valley get one to work on time, on budget and without reeking like a dead rat?</p> <p>The latest state entrant into the information technology hall of mishaps is the California State University system, which this week got hit with a state audit that revealed waste and worse. The audit says CSU's contract with PeopleSoft Inc., a Pleasanton company hired to coordinate a software system to track student, personnel and financial records among the system's headquarters and 23 campuses, has exceeded its original $400 million budget by -- this is not a misprint -- more than $250 million. A quarter-billion-dollar overrun would be bad news any time. This one, coming in the middle of an epic state budget crisis, couldn't possibly be any worse.</p>

Oracle admins are in for a busy time with the publication of no less than six vulnerabilities over the last week. Four of the vulnerabilities are buffer overflow flaws affecting various components of Oracle9i Database Server. Then there's two flaws affecting Oracle9i Application Server, which pose denial of service risks... or worse. Some are potentially very nasty indeed. Oracle describes them as critical and that's not the half of it... The buffer overflows in Database server involve: the ORACLE.EXE binary, the TO_TIMESTAMP_TZ function, the TZ_OFFSET function and DIRECTORY parameter of Oracle9i Database Server. These are explained in greater depth in...

<p>Offering no explanation for the move, Attorney General Bill Lockyer on Tuesday abruptly canceled a grand jury session exploring obstruction of justice allegations against the Davis administration in the Oracle Corp. software contract.</p> <p>State Sen. Dean Florez, who as an assemblyman led legislative hearings into the matter last spring, was scheduled to be the first witness before a Sacramento County grand jury Tuesday, but was told that the session had been canceled and his subpoena rescinded.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - A grand jury will begin taking testimony Tuesday about the state's now-rescinded computer software contract with the Oracle Corp., and a key lawmaker is predicting the probe will result in criminal charges.</p> <p>The contract, a six-year, $95 million deal with an option for a four-year extension, was supposed to save the state more than $100 million through volume purchases and maintenance of database software.</p>

<p>PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - A California state senator has been summoned as a witness in a grand jury investigation into a controversial state contract with Silicon Valley software giant Oracle Corp. , the first public indication of an ongoing criminal investigation into the now-scrapped deal.</p>

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP)— Oracle of San Francisco has won a place in the America's Cup challenger final, coming from behind Monday to beat Seattle's OneWorld Challenge by 1 minute, 4 seconds and clinch their semifinal repechage. The syndicate of software billionaire Larry Ellison will join Alinghi of Switzerland in the final starting Jan. 11 while OneWorld, the US$80 million campaign of mobile phone billionaire Craig McCaw, is eliminated from the regatta. Defeat was made more bitter for OneWorld on Monday because it led across the startline and for more than half of the 18.5-nautical-mile race. It appeared to...

<p>Are the pols, pundits, and pollsters right? On the eve of the midterm elections, is control of the Senate too close to call? Maybe not. More than a half-dozen races are squeakers, but we have consulted with the Neutral Oracle (who delivered a stunning 100% accuracy rate in Election 2000 predictions), and his un-Delphic utterance is: Most of those races will squeak Republican.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - In the wake of the botched Oracle contract, Gov. Gray Davis on Monday approved legislation cracking down on conflicts of interest in state technology purchases.</p> <p>The measure (AB 1467) is designed to close a loophole in California law. Currently, most companies that have a state consulting contract are barred from bidding for services that contract recommends. The new law puts technology contracts under the same restrictions.</p>

HP today announced that HP ProLiant servers have delivered the first Linux TPC-C benchmark results running Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters on the Red Hat Linux Advanced Server operating system. With this benchmark, HP ProLiant servers become the first industry-standard server platform to offer enterprise-class performance for a clustered Oracle database in a Linux environment. Demonstrating the cost and maintenance benefits of running Linux-based hardware and software in enterprise-operating environments, an 8-node cluster of HP ProLiant DL580 servers using Intel® Pentium® III Xeon processors and HP StorageWorks MSA1000 storage system achieved 138,362.03 tpmC (transactions per minute) at a cost of...

<p>SACRAMENTO - A special team of investigators has found that poor oversight of state contracts contributed to abuse in the system and called Monday for revamping the process that came under severe scrutiny during this year's Oracle scandal.</p> <p>After three months of review, a draft report prepared for a special governor's task force called for new oversight of computer projects and red flagging high-risk contracts for special scrutiny. But it did not embrace elimination of the disputed no-bid system that allows billions of state dollars to be spent with little oversight.</p>

<p>Given that the state has a long record of messing up on technology purchases, predating the Davis administration, you've got to wonder if the gang in Sacramento ever will figure it out. If that doesn't rankle enough, consider that the mess happened in a state that regards itself as the world's cradle of high technology.</p>

The state of California has officially canceled a sprawling six-year deal that united scores of its contracts with software maker Oracle under one mega-contract, state officials said Tuesday. "We are pleased with Oracle and Northrop Grumman's assistance in unwinding this contract," Clothilde Hewlett, interim director of the Department of General Services, said in a statement. "Their efforts to return the state to the conditions that existed prior to the (enterprise license agreement) made it possible to avoid any additional financial burden to the state." Northrop Grumman is the parent company of Logicon, Oracle's reseller in the deal. The $95 million...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - California has canceled its $95 million computer contract with Oracle Corp., state officials announced Tuesday.</p> <p>Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the Department of General Services and the Department of Finance have been trying to negotiate a way out of the deal since May. The announcement means the state is relieved of further financial obligations, including all interest and fees.</p>

Code redRussell Flannery, 07.22.02 China remains a refuge from software sluggishness. To hear critics tell it, China teems with software thieves. But the actions of some of the world's largest code producers tell another story. Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, in Beijing last month announced $750 million of planned investments in China for the next three years. Only two weeks earlier, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, told a publicity-drenched conference of 6,000 people in Beijing that his company would open its second development center in China. Sun Microsystems is also gearing up to expand its Beijing research center....

China remains a refuge from software sluggishness. To hear critics tell it, China teems with software thieves. But the actions of some of the world's largest code producers tell another story. Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, in Beijing last month announced $750 million of planned investments in China for the next three years. Only two weeks earlier, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, told a publicity-drenched conference of 6,000 people in Beijing that his company would open its second development center in China. Sun Microsystems is also gearing up to expand its Beijing research center. Even as growth in...

SACRAMENTO -- What makes Dean Florez run? Why does the assemblyman from Shafter alienate so many people, especially members of his own Democratic Party, by sticking stubbornly to an independent course of action? Elected to a legislative position in which success usually depends on building coalitions and alliances to help push your agenda, would it hurt him so much to go along a little more to get along a little more? Those are questions a whole lot of people in Sacramento and Bakersfield are asking these days after Florez was publicly chastised by Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, ostensibly for...

<p>SACRAMENTO -- Once upon a time, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee was as obscure a body as could be found in the Capitol. The audits it ordered - crafted by a harried staff at the Bureau of State Audits - sometimes grabbed headlines. But the committee itself was largely ministerial, meeting perfunctorily once a month to do little more than authorize audits of state institutions and schedule their release.</p>

The Oracle Training Conundrum for Database Professionals It is arguable that I have more experience in the database system FoxPro than anybody who has ever used it. I beta tested the very first version back around 1981. I have used it ever since, and have made a six figure income off of it until 9/11/01. The problem I am having is that not very many firms use FoxPro anymore (for numerous reasons), and after implementing dozens of major applications over the years (for example, I practically run the financial system for a major Court System) I find myself with...

<p>Reforms are proposed for purchases of high-tech systems, but one key critic says they fall short.</p> <p>Gov. Gray Davis, in the wake of the Oracle Corp. software scandal, issued an executive order Wednesday intended as a first step toward reforming the state's handling of high-tech contracts.</p>

<p>Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson on Tuesday stripped the committee chairmanship from the crusading legislator who probed the Davis administration's computer software deal with Oracle Corp. -- just as his audit panel was about to investigate Davis' handling of veterans affairs.</p>