Socketside heard Cruise was the buyer of an $18 million mansion in the ritzy Sea Cliff neighborhood. NBC Bay Area soon pointed out that, if that's true, Cruise's neighbors would be Robin Williams, Cheech Marin and the guitarist from Metallica. It's like the Bay Area's very own stunted little fog-swept Beverly Hills. But many locals will remember that the Church of Scientology was on the hunt for "apparent expansion" space starting in 2006, nosing around the once countercultural North Beach neighborhood.

So is Cruise, the alleged inspirer of Scientology beat-downs, spearheading a renewed expansion campaign by the cult to which he belongs? Maybe, or maybe said SF mansion is just being bought by another local tech exec like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, per a SocketSite update:

Another reader quickly notes the mailing address for the purchasing LLC ("Tawaraya") is that of "a high-end accounting firm in Walnut Creek" which happens to advise Larry Ellison (amongst others). And The Real Estalker adds, "Tawaraya is a super posh and searingly expensive, 300-year old ryokan–which is essentially a Japanese bed and breakfast sort of place–located in Kyoto" which is rather Ellison-esque.

Oh great, more Larry Ellison dick waving. Don't we at least deserve some fresh megalomaniac mansion owners, out here?

Larry Ellison's racing yacht is awesome, according to comments from Larry Ellison at a San Francisco party attended by his salespeople and biggest customers. As quoted by Software Development Times' Alex Handy, who writes that Ellison's "behavior in keynotes is getting worse every year:"

He started his talk with a five minute video of [Ellison's] Oracle BMW sailboat ... After the video, Ellison comes on stage with this massively smug look on his face, grinning like he's just bought the last candy bar in front of a herd of little kids at the candy store.

His first words? "It's a great boat, you should get one."

Ha ha ha! Oh, and did he follow up with, "but I guess you're probably pinching pennies, since unemployment is 10 percent, and your colleagues are getting laid off, and your mortgage is probably under water, and Oracle shares have been trading sideways for two years!?" Because that would be hi-larious.

Then Ellison brought out Aerosmith, who were there "because Oracle outbid their other gigs." They led with Eat the Rich, so at least Oracle workers had that.

Attached is a video in which we've spliced Ellison's rant, delivered last week at the Churchill Club and recorded by TechPulse 360, with excerpts from an interview Ellison gave to Charlie Rose in 1996. At the time, Ellison was campaigning for the world to adopt "Network Computers," jargon for Web applications operated from stripped down computer terminals. "Cloud Computing," meanwhile, is the contemporary jargon term for Web applications.

As he told Rose, Ellison was convinced PCs were way too complex for ordinary people, and would eventually be replaced by his "NCs." Of course, things didn't turn out that way; in the ensuing 13 years PCs have spread not only to many more homes but also to many more datacenters, where clusters of cheap boxes with the same hardware guts as home Windows machines have displaced large servers from the likes of Oracle's Sun division. As Ellison alludes to in his more current rant, Google runs on such machines.

Maybe it is precisely because Ellison himself once employed "NC" jargon and hype to predict the imminent decline of certain competitors, Microsoft chief among them, that he can so eloquently rant against people who are trying to do the same thing with "cloud computing" today. Of course, Ellison's newfound distaste for hype also might have something to do with the fact that his company, Oracle, is now the supposedly declining competitor, and ex Oracle executive Marc Benioff's SalesForce.com is the company pumping out the hypey internet jargon.

Oracle's Wall Street Journal ad (above) said its database ran "faster" on Oracle's own Sun hardware —at "XX transactions per minute" — than competitor IBM's database and server combo. Some of our commenters insisted that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison must have had the "XX" numbers to prove his claim but was, as his ad seemed to imply, sitting on them until an Oct. 14 event.

But Ellison, known for commissioning ads about capabilities that don't yet exist, shouldn't have been given the benefit of the doubt. He's just been fined $10,000 by the benchmarking council Oracle belongs to "because Oracle did not have a [benchmarking] result at the time of publication."

Oracle has not submitted any current evidence to the TPC to sustain this claimed result. Oracle has been directed to cease publication of the advertisement in print or online.

Lesson: Never assume that Larry Frickin' Ellison, of all people, is being coy and modest. Larry Ellison does not do coy or modest. If he has numbers, he will use them. And then some!

[Via All Things D]

Earlier this summer, Siebel was at a Tanzian watering hole with his guides when an elephant broke from an otherwise quiet pack about 200 yards away, the former software executive told the San Jose Mercury News. He charged Siebel's party; a guide's attempt to hit the elephant with a gun missed.

Siebel said he was trampled and gored in the leg, until he just "curled into as tight a ball as I could." The guide suffered broken ribs and other injuries.

Siebel spent 18 days in four hospitals on two continents and is now using a wheelchair. He follows in the rich-guy-accident of the man who acquired his company, Larry Ellison, who is also Siebel's former boss. Ellison swore off yacht racing after a harrowing 1998 storm off the Australian coast bruised him and the crew of his Sayonara. The storm killed six sailors on other boats.

Of course, there are plenty of not-so-rich people in Africa who are hurt by elephants, and plenty of not-so-rich Pacific fishermen who are hurt by storms. But in America, only a select few are willing to leave perfectly comfortable homes and perfectly safe occupations to actively seek out that sort of danger. And they are backstopped by having the only form of health insurance that is really truly reliable in this country: Being a billionaire.

(Elephant pic via jsrcyclist's Flickr.)

This much we know: Jobs is very private, to the point of obsession. Chatting with a group of journalists in 2005, he mentioned that he'd recently bought a bicycle that was "just ... wonderful" — and then refused to disclose the name of the brand. In a peevish letter disclosing some of his health problems, a week before he announced that they were more serious and required a six-month leave of absence, he wrote, "So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this."

Jobs does have a few close friends, though, who are more talkative. Among them: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and former Intuit CEO Bill Campbell, a current Apple board member. No reporter has named them as sources, but they're the most likely candidates to be privy to the details of his health, and to share them.

What is prompting them to talk now? It could be the threat of shareholder lawsuits. Apple's stock has continued to drop since the announcement of Jobs's leave, as investors grow outraged over Jobs's ever-shifting story line about his health. His friends may be as concerned about his legal exposure as the state of his health, prompting them to dribble information out to the press.

What they're saying: Jobs does not have a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer; his visible weight loss is due to digestive problems. Notice the Wall Street Journal's careful positioning of its sources in its story:

A person familiar with the situation said that Mr. Jobs didn't have a recurrence of cancer and that he was taking a leave of absence because the treatment to fix the problem of not being able to absorb proteins was more complex than initially believed....

Mr. Jobs didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Apple board members declined to comment or couldn't immediately be reached. An Apple spokesman declined to provide more details about Mr. Jobs's health.

That rules out Campbell, the Apple board member, but not, say a top Apple executive or a friend like Ellison.

The New York Times is vaguer, citing sources "familiar" with Jobs's health:

Two people who are familiar with Mr. Jobs’s current medical treatment said he was not suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but a condition that was preventing his body from absorbing food. Doctors have also advised him to cut down on stress, which may be making the problem worse, these people said.

An Apple spokesman, Steve Dowling, said the company had no comment beyond Mr. Jobs’s letter

That leaves the field wide open.

The New York Post's story was by far the most detailed on its sourcing:

According to a source who does consulting work for Apple, "People in the company think he's very ill and there's a general sense that he's not getting better."

Sources suggested that Jobs is not being forthcoming about the severity of his condition, with one Disney insider saying that he was too ill to attend a meeting in late December - which would predate the Jan. 5 letter he wrote to his staff.

Added a source who serves on a board with Jobs: "He has a really big problem and he doesn't know how to deal with it."

Jobs only serves on two boards: Apple's and Disney's. But the "Disney insider" and fellow board member appear to be two distinct sources. Campbell again? He's on the Apple board with Jobs, and we hear he's fairly chatty. He might also be the source who spoke to CNBC's Jim Goldman. Jobs will likely be infuriated that anyone's talking about his health; he famously hired Robin Zonic, a former parole officer, to prosecute leaks at Apple. Will he lash out at his friends for blabbing? Unlikely, as long as the papers keep giving them such artfully worded deniability.

(Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

As with Sarah Palin's baby rumors, the scurrilous media forced Jobs's hand. Arik Hesseldahl, a BusinessWeek reporter, noticed a blog post which pointed out Jobs had not yet been confirmed as a speaker for the annual event, which serves as an international showcase for Apple's products, a massive blogosphere buzz builder, and an orgy of media obsession.

As Hesseldahl put it to me, he wasn't thinking of a story as much as whether he should book his flight for the show. He called Apple last Friday, and got no response — typical for Apple's tight-lipped PR operation. But on Monday, he managed to reach Paul Kent, the general manager of Macworld Expo, who told him he had "no reason to believe that plans are not moving ahead," which Hesseldahl took as confirmation that Jobs would show up.

When Hesseldahl published a story on Monday with the headline "Steve Jobs Will Be at Macworld," all hell broke loose. Kent called back, saying he meant that the show would go forward, not that Jobs was a sure thing. Hesseldahl changed "will" to "may" in his headline and updated the story — but Kent's PR firm kept calling to backpedal. The story spread, and the drumbeat of speculation grew ever louder.

Then, late Tuesday, came Apple's announcement that Jobs would not deliver the keynote address at Macworld, a tradition he's maintained since he returned to the company a decade ago. The cover story was plausible enough: Trade shows were an outdated way to sell Macs and iPhones. But Apple investors didn't buy it, sending the stock down in after-hours trading.

What it speaks to is a control freak who's lost control. Are we to believe that Jobs, who's known for minutely orchestrating every aspect of his keynotes, whimsically decided to abandon Macworld three weeks before the event? That defies reason. Apple was apparently stringing Macworld along, delaying and delaying the announcement, and hoping no one would notice.

Put that in the context of Jobs's ghastly gauntness at this summer's launch of the iPhone 3G, and the ongoing speculation about his health. It's generally understood that the surgery to treat his pancreatic cancer rewired his digestive system, giving him difficulty in digesting some foods. (I've heard he can no longer drink his favorite beverage, a nonalcoholic grape juice from California's Navarro vineyards.) And fears persist that his cancer might return. I keep hearing apocryphal rumors that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who is among Jobs's closest friends, once broke down in tears and said, "My best friend is dying."

Amidst that kind of worry, why would Jobs take the stage again? He'd have the fit of his jeans and the flushness of his cheeks debated on blogs in the kind of minute detail that used to be reserved for a new Apple laptop. Showing up in the wrong condition might be as bad for Apple as not showing up at all.

That's why I think there must have been a ferocious debate within Apple about whether he should go on with his keynote, which was brought to a head by the BusinessWeek story. It's the opposite of how Jobs likes to operate — smoothly, in secrecy, with no chinks in the armor of Apple's publicity machine. And it's the clearest sign that something is wrong with Jobs. The ultimate control freak is not himself.

That's because Murdock is the same guy who campaigned for the job of Apple CEO back in 1997, when Steve Jobs was only working as the company's interim chief. He emailed Jobs and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a close friend of Jobs and an Apple board member at the time, to make his pitch. In a prank, Jobs and Ellison told Murdock he had the job. He later had to be told not to show up at Apple's campus.

I don't know if Yahoo should reject him so readily. Here's Murdock's bio:

Hi and welcome to the site. I wanted to take a moment and give you a bit of background on me and why I am here. I am a US NAVY DISABLED VETERAN. I got my start in computers in 1975/1976 and very early on saw the potential for these machines in our lives. It's amazing how far they've come from the days when we carried paper tape and then cassettes for data storage. Now that and more fits on a simple USB stick.

The power of the web like the computer systems amazed me when it was first unleashed to the public. I can remember sitting in my office at Pixar Animation Studios (when we were still named PIXAR) and thinking...this thing called a browser has some potential, one day people will use this like they use a newspaper. In fact, this will probably replace newspapers.

See? Total visionary. Under Yang, Yahoo has been busy making deals with newspapers rather than predicting their doom. Murdock might be a better CEO than Yang, at the least — and that, sadly, is no joke.

A video from Murdock on Yang's departure:

Thanks in part to Larry Ellison's hard work and rapacious libido, databases are to be found everywhere. They lie at the bottom of most web applications and in nearly every bit of business software. We're all using databases all the time.

But that's about to change. Chips with two and four processor cores are common and Intel hints that we'll eventually see hundreds of cores per chip, which brings us right back into the 1970s and '80s and the world of parallel computing. That's where databases start to screw up. More than just slow reads and writes, relational databases also create false dependencies between pieces of data. If one chunk of data (A) is dependent on another chunk of data (B), then no work can be done on A until all work on B is complete.

While the database guys are busy figuring out how to add more and more concurrency internally, in reality when you take a few steps back and think of a large set of commodity boxes all executing a single data munching app, then no matter how sophisticated we get, the relational database will still effectively be a single thread to that app.

To scale the Google search service, Google first had to free itself of the false dependencies. So they created MapReduce — a set of operations and a way to store the data for those operations while preserving the natural independence that is inherent in each problem, building the whole mess atop the Google File System.

Google led the way but many other companies have followed suit, opening doors to a wide range of new ways of thinking about large-scale data manipulation. Suddenly there are different ways to store the data, new ways to write applications, and new places (thousands of cheap boxes) to run such applications.

Quelle horreur: Both Barnett and Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for cupcake-recipe spreadsheets, wore the same blue Oscar de la Renta dress with a green-leaf pattern along the hem! Also, it seems that arm-candy real-estate manager Zack Bogue is trying to tear Valleywag editor Owen Thomas's affections away from stubblicious Flickr developer Cal Henderson by sporting some ursine facial fur. Though my guess is he was just too lazy to shave — that the top button and not the middle button is buttoned on his pinstriped jacket says "sloppy."

(Photos by Drew Altizer)

Romance novelist Melanie Craft has been Mrs. Larry Ellison since December 2003.

Wendi Deng (that's 邓文迪 to you) isn't just Mrs. Rupert Murdoch. She's chief strategist for MySpace China.

(Photos by Patrick McMullen, WENN, Daniel Deme/WENN)

Ellison goes through this like a Ron Popeil pitch but with less enthusiasm and a stiffer delivery. The audience responds with silence when Ellison issues his applause lines, and can someone get the man a remote control so he doesn't have to terrorize a minion with requests to change the slides? We know the topic doesn't lend itself to the crazed consumer fervor of something like the iPhone, but seriously, I can see attendees muttering "More like Bore-acle OpenWorld" under their breath as they step into the Market Street Cinema.

Young Steve Jobs, Apple cofounder:

Jobs, older and thinner:

Young Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO:

Old Bill Gates, philanthropist:

Young Eric Schmidt, before he was Google's CEO:

Old Eric Schmidt:

Young Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO:

Old Larry Ellison:

Young Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen:

Not quite as young Ning cofounder Marc Andreessen:

Only one man has escaped the effects of time. That is, of course, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

"Not a lot new really," tweeted a conference-goer. "Beehive demo isn't that great — hard to follow the screens" an Oracle employee helpfully typed.

Oracle's bigger-than-Larry-Ellison's-yacht PR machine wants me to blog that "customers and partners are buzzing about Beehive." It's a phony press-release story, for which they've helpfully provided a Google News-friendly headline and a geekbait mention of the European Space Agency. In reality, the online silence about Beehive has been conspicuous. I'm serious: Larry, get your buddy Steve Jobs to help with your next launch. (Photo by AP/Ben Margot)

Illston, who won fans among copyright wonks for ruling in favor of fair-use DRM hacks, is pretty clear that she doesn't see the lost evidence as an accident: "It is appropriate to infer," she wrote, "that the emails and software materials would demonstrate Ellison's knowledge of, among other things, problems with Suite 11i, the effects of the economy on Oracle's business and problems with defendants' forecasting model." Oracle spokespeople are keeping a tight lip on the situation.