ShadowRAM

I hear Oracle's Larry Ellison is trying to throw his weight around with city officials in San Jose, Calif.

It seems airport rules make it illegal to fly his $38.7 million private jet there late at night, when nearby homeowners might fancy sleeping. Larry was quoted as saying in the local press, "San Jose has no right to tell me when I can land my airplane. It's like saying people who weigh more than 200 pounds can't go into a store after 6 p.m."

Larry could have a point. He said he only wants to land the plane, not take off. Planes are much quieter when they land.

If you don't think that's crazy, try this. Rick Inatome, CEO of ZapMe, was a little disappointed with the recent IPO for the company, which provides free computer labs and broadband Internet access to middle schools and high schools. Just two weeks after ZapMe went public at $11 per share, the stock was trading at about $10 per share last week, giving it a market cap of about $440 million. The irony is Inacom, the $6 billion computer services and distribution company Inatome chaired until just a few months ago, had a market cap late last week of about $230 million.

3Com has a new ad campaign in the works that the channel loves. VARs got a preview last week of the campaign, which features a young man and a young woman staring longingly at one another through windows as their trains pass in opposite directions. Suddenly, the young woman uses her PalmPilot to beam her phone number to the young man's PalmPilot. High-tech love at its finest.

Meanwhile, Qwest has built some big fiber networks and now is looking to fill them with traffic. One way to do that is to recruit and develop its ASP business. The next-generation carrier is putting together a program to woo ASPs and is targeting any company that wants to be an ASP, including software developers, system integrators and others.

VARs have some questions about Ingram Micro's most recent "best-sellers list." According to the list, the "best-selling" Mac solution under the component heading is 16-Mbyte, 72-pin EDO SIMMS. VARs claim Apple has never spec'd EDO SIMMS, so what gives? And VARs can't fathom why the 8-Mbyte, 72-pin SIMMS made the list either. As one noted, "I'm a memory dealer and haven't sold 8-Mbyte SIMMS for Macs in weeks . . . and 75 percent of my business is Mac memory! Maybe you could refer me to Ingram Micro's purchasing department, and I'll sell them all the 8-Mbytes I'm stuck with."

On a more serious and sad note, our thoughts go out to Xerox employees and their friends and families in light of the shooting in the Honolulu office last week.

Our condolences also go out to the PalmPilot team. Kurt Schwenk, director of business development at Palm Computing, and several of his family members and friends were victims of the EgyptAir Flight 990 crash.

Kurt's boss, Mark Bercow, vice president of strategic alliances and platform development for Palm, said in a prepared statement:

"Those who knew Kurt will remember him as a man of incredible integrity, a remarkable high work ethic and, most importantly, a fine gentleman and good friend. Our hearts and prayers go out to Kurt, and to his family and many friends."

Amen.

Call (800) 521-DIME or E-mail me at shadowram@cmp.com with any tips.

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