Queue Bryan Cantrill's (DTrace, Joyent) USENIX talk on Oracle and Larry Ellison:
I remember vividly a town hall with Johnathan Schwartz as the speaker (he was briefly CEO but wasn't at the time).
One of the engineers, after hearing a speech full of buzzwords but no substance asked "Okay, but how does this actually make us money?"
The engineer was politely told to shut up, focus on engineering and leave the "making money" part to the businessmen.
We all know how that worked out.
RIP Sun.
"Wreck havoc" sort of makes sense because something got wrecked and the correct "wreak" is rarely used outside of that phrase.
A "mute point" makes sense because the point is now silent and the correct "moot" is an uncommon word outside legal circles.
People who abuse power need to be "reigned in" because it vaguely sounds like they are acting too much like a king, even though "rein in" is correct and it comes from pulling in the reins of a horse to get it under control.
Just having a reasonable sounding explanation doesn't make it correct.
"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it’s very hard to get used to that idea. It’s like, ‘surely this is more complicated!’ but it’s like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity — that’s it! …Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah… you talk to Oracle, it’s like, ‘no, we don’t fucking make dreams happen — we make money!’ …You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ — lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle."
* Oracle was extremely straightforward about caring about only money. (In contrast to Sun, or even to the claims of investment banks.)
* Oracle was that way because it was the alter-ego of Ellison. (With funny bit about not attempting to anthropomorphize Ellison.)
(What Cantrill didn't mention, when alleging Ellison's simplicity, was Ellison's supposed intense competitiveness with, or hatred of, Bill Gates. I happened to bump into Ellison once, at an event, and seemed to see a hint of that firsthand.)