Ellison Stirs Some Bad News Into His Color CommentaryEllison Stirs Some Bad News Into His Color Commentary

Larry Ellison delivered an unexpectedly glum report for Oracle (ORCL--Nasdaq) investors at a press conference last week during Comdex. Earnings for the second quarter ending Nov. 30 will come in at 9 or 10 cents per share, short of last year's 11 cents per share, he said. Aside from that news, though, Ellison was his usual entertaining self, sharing opinions on a range of topics: the Microsoft antitrust settlement (it got off scot-free); mandatory national ID cards (he opposes them); and the latest 9i Application Server (companies should connect Microsoft Outlook E-mail clients to it so they can store mail messages in its Oracle9i data-base instead of in Microsoft Exchange).