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If I had to explain Oracle to anyone I would only say that their motto is simply "Do all evil."


It's more accurately "take money" — don't anthropomorphize them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246


Heh and adding on to that... "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil"


[flagged]


I thought it was premature optimisation.


No, it’s shared mutable state. The belief there is only one true instance of state, and everything must use it directly.


That's a good one, but I'll appeal to authority here and make the fallacious argument that I'm correct because Donald Knuth said so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_optimization#When_to_o...


Do you truly believe that?

Just asking ...


Nice! I see what you did there.

It took me a while though:

I was wondering if this statement is self-contradictory or not. Eventually, I figured it is not necessarily self-contradictory, but that it declares itself to be an evil belief (since it is a statement of universal truth that declares that the belief of any universal truth is evil).

Of course I think it’s just incorrect.

For my sake, I believe in truth and good, and that if someone finds a good thing, they should tell others about it in a respectful and loving way.


Relativism: There is no absolute truth except the fact that there is no absolute truth.

Nihilism: Nothing matters except for the fact that nothing matters.


Do you?

Seems like it struck a nerve with a lot of people. Not sure what their problem is.


I didn't downvote you, but I believe I understand why folks got upset. It appears that you are taking a passive aggressive dig at all religions because the parent comment referenced a Christian biblical verse (1 Timothy 6:10). While this usually isn't an issue here, the comment appears unrelated to the main conversation and may be seen as trolling.

I could be wrong.


I actually didn’t even know that was a biblical verse, how would I? I’m not particularly religious. I figured it was just some other quote people say. My source was straight from German physicist and mathematician Max Born.


I was facetiously trying to point out the irony in your statement. I should have added a ;) .


I think the emphasis on `you` made it seem as if you were directly attacking the parent.


How does one differentiate between you the OP and you the reader?


Why was that comment flag killed?


I could tell two sentences in that was a Brian C quote.


Ethics is the difference.


Yup and the interpretation of law doesn't need to be ethical. Law and justice are quite different things.


what a treat. thanks for sharing this video.


I expect one day to learn that Larry Ellison bought that Hawaiian island in order to hunt people for sport.

I mean he dresses and grooms himself like the evil alternate universe version of a nice person. And everything I’ve heard is that he’s a horrible manchild.


Not that I'd have a detailed knowledge about him, but there is:

https://givingpledge.org/Pledger.aspx?id=192

Something which only few persons choose to do


With Larry, there's going to be a self interest angle driving it completely. Literally 0 chance of him "doing good".

Feel free to dig into the details though if you want. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out where the rot is. :)


If you have relevant details regarding his giving pledge I'm interested to learn them.

But rot, self interest? Not everybody can't do no evil. If he goes through with his pledge (which I assume) he will have done a lot of good. And he will have done it voluntarily. Doesn't make hime a saint, but...

(..almost ;-) - i'm joking; btw, did/will Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey give away such a substancial part of their wealth?)


One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.


Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=38m28s (quote at 38m28s)


His major contribution to society is some entertaining sailboat racing.


Well, it's not like the AC72 and AC50 rules were a lot more popular to certain groups than Oracle is to developers. The AC75 is both a reaction to and rejection of Ellison's vision.


More than my contribution.


Bryan Cantrill on Oracle: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2044


It does seem they always go for the path that will maximize profits, evil (note not a legal term, but a moral one) and pull everyone down to the bottom with their actions.

I am convinced if there was a crossroads with a payout of x dollars for both choices, but with a pretty nasty outcome for the community for choice y as the distinguishing factor, Oracle would pick y in a heartbeat.

I think a good description for Oracle is "the demon that pulls everyone down to hell with them..."


Manny many years ago, I read a story about Oracle:

In a big budget project, they had implemented a report, like sales per month or something similar. The requirement was to sort the result by month. Any sane person would sort it by the order the months happens in a year, like January, February, March, etc... But not Oracle: April, August, December, February, January, July, June, March, May, November, October, September.

Technically they are sorted... and they requirements only said sort by month. To get it fixed the customer had to pay Oracle more money, since they changed changed the requirements.


At least there's no pretense


At times they do release some cool new software though, e.g. GraalVM.


But "Do all evil." is trademarked by google... :D :D :D




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