<p>The denizens of Silicon Valley, joined by a peanut gallery from Wall Street and elsewhere, have long held two divergent views of the man who runs Oracle Corp. Call them Larry the Bad and Larry the Good.</p>
<p>Larry the Bad runs a pirate ship masquerading as the world's second-largest software company. When he's not zooming around in his Marchetti S211 jet fighter -- spoilsports in Washington turned down his request for a personal MiG-29 -- he's trash-talking the "morons" who run most corporate IT shops and the "monopolist" (guess who?) who peddles them "old garbage." His salesmen push half-baked goods and train on "Sopranos" reruns; his accountants moonlight at Cordon Bleu. He is the only person in history who has lost a billion dollars a week for a year. As long as Stanford keeps turning out good-looking 22-year-old blondes, he will date them. And he has never met a new technology he didn't like.</p>