ShadowRAM: February 5, 2007

The big difference between the companies efforts? Microsoft's biggest guns Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer showed up for their gig. But there was nary a Larry in sight for Oracle. Company co-president Charles Phillips and apps kingpin John Wookey did their best, but note to Oracle: If you wanna run with the biggest dogs, you better get your biggest dog to the track. Oracle bigwigs didn't even seem to know where Larry Ellison was, noting that the CEO is not fitted with a GPS chip. Maybe he was off in Germany prepping his bid for ERP rival SAP? Kidding! Or maybe not.

Microsoft delivered its coup de grace for the week with Gates' stint on Jon Stewart's Daily Show (above). He did well, except for his premature exit, which Stewart seemed to enjoy immensely and subsequently milked for more laughs, inserting an error message over tape of Gates' departure.

Running Circles Around Lotusphere
Orlando is OK, but maybe it's time for IBM to find another venue for Lotusphere. En route to the Avis rental lot Sunday night, one attendee's first sight was a supremely large rat. And we're not talking about Minnie or Mickey.

So Lotusphere was Lotusphere, yada yada, yada, but in addition to developers and IBMers, one attendee ran into famed marathoner Bill Rodgers (left) running circles around the show. Literally. Rodgers was unbadged, so it wasn't clear whether he also ran circles inside the event. Best quip? Mike Rhodin likening nuking spam to playing Tetris: "You kill off four, and you get 10 more."

Seen And Heard
• They're dropping like flies at IBM. Irving Wadlawsky-Berger (left) is retiring. Yes, the Chief Thinking Officer (seriously?) is leaving in June after 36 years with Big Blue.

Already gone is IBM Fellow Don Ferguson, who defected to Microsoft. There is some mystery there as Microsoft posted, then de-posted, Don's bio. And IBM nuked, then reinstated, his DeveloperWorks blog. Don's now got his own blog going at donff2.spaces.live.com. A very Microsoftian domain.

• Snappy answers to stupid questions, or is that vice versa? A reporter wanted to know how Oracle can afford to continue active development on five existing product lines as well as build the super-duper-¼ber "Fusion" converged line. Quipped apps guru John Wookey: "We don't pay our people very much." Added Charles Phillips: "We're doubling our prices." Oh, snap!

This Fusion Shangri-la, by the way, is still due in 2008, Oracle says.

• Trivia correction: An eagle-eyed reader corrects our artistic rendering of the venerable Route 128 highway sign. As we clearly should have known, 128 is a state highway. It's rapidly disappearing signs are black-on-white squares, not the shield shapes we depicted on this page a few weeks back. Mea culpa!