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Larry Ellison Lets His Billions Ride on the Internet; Web Sites Target Female Audience; Does PlayStation 2 Beat the Original?

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: Today on CNNdotCOM...

PERRI PELTZ, CO-HOST: Oracle chief Larry Ellison's sink-or-swim strategy -- he's letting his billions ride on the Internet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY ELLISON, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, ORACLE CORPORATION: We're nothing but Net, 100 percent pure Net.

PATRICIA SABGA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What if you're wrong?

ELLISON: We're toast, go out of business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PELTZ: We'll introduce you to the high-flying tech exec who pulls no punches in bashing rival Bill Gates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELLISON: I think what Bill did to Netscape was appalling.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PELTZ: Speaking of punches, does Sony's PlayStation 2 deliver a knockout blow over the original? A closeup look at the action-packed new game console coming to a store near you this fall.

Plus, for women only -- well, you men can watch too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY KATHLEEN FLYNN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We decided to go off the beaten path a bit and take a look at some lesser-known Web sites for women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PELTZ: That and more ahead on CNNdotCOM.

ANNOUNCER: CNNdotCOM, with Perri Peltz and James Hattori.

PELTZ: Welcome to CNNdotCOM. I'm Perri Peltz.

With the remedy hearing in the Microsoft antitrust suit set to open this coming week, there's one person who won't be feeling too sorry for Bill Gates. That's Oracle's CEO, Larry Ellison, who, after all, when the government launched its antitrust case against Microsoft, Ellison treated all 7,000 Oracle employees to a free screening of "Godzilla."

The rivalry goes way back. The two became instant multimillionaires within a day of each other when their companies went public back in 1986, and to this day there is a see-saw battle between them over who is the richest man in the world.

Patricia Sabga looks at one of the most powerful and flamboyant leaders of the wired universe. So let's go to Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores, California.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SABGA (voice-over): Meet the billionaire who's giving Bill Gates a run for his money. Fifty-five-year-old Larry Ellison, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Oracle Corporation, says he didn't build the world's second largest software company by fitting in.

ELLISON: You can't conform in business. You have to be very careful. The only way -- if you adhere to conventional wisdom, if you do everything everyone else does in business, you're going to lose. The only way to get ahead, to really get ahead, is to be different.

SABGA: So different, his personal stake in Oracle is worth some $50 billion. And no billionaire wears his wealth quite like Ellison. His impeccably tailored suits landed him in the pages of "Playboy." So perhaps it's no wonder that this dashing CEO is better known for the clothes on his back than the products that put them there.

ELLISON: Oracle developed software to manage information. We're a database software company.

SABGA: It's a narrow lead, but Oracle is the number one provider of databases, software that manages the vast amounts of information that fuel business. Crucial? You bet, but hardly the kind of sexy consumer product to keep Ellison glued to his executive chair.

A conspicuous consumer, when he's not out racing his yacht or breaking the sound barrier in his fighter jet, Ellison is usually at one of his three authentic Japanese estates.

(on camera): Do you ever find it difficult to tear yourself away from here and drive in to the office?

ELLISON: So difficult that I've actually scheduled my life to spend my mornings here.

SABGA: But these days, he's spending more of those mornings at Oracle headquarters. ELLISON: I have been working more, that's true. And the reason I'm working more is, this is an extraordinary opportunity. My industry, you know, in fact, every industry soon, is going through this tectonic change.

SABGA: He's talking about the explosion of e-commerce, a development that creates major opportunities for Oracle.

ELLISON: This is when it's all going to happen, over the next 18 to 24 months, you know, the winners are going to be chosen and the losers are going to be chosen, and we had better stay focused. Right now, it's not clear who will be the primary provider of software for the Internet. But as of right now, it's us.

SABGA: In fact, Oracle databases power the top e-commerce Web sites.

ELLISON: Ours is based on open standards. Ours is real.

SABGA: But Ellison has an even bigger power play in mind...

ELLISON: Eventually, the world is going to move to the Internet.

SABGA: ... taking down Microsoft, with a weapon he calls Internet computing, the Oracle chief wants to centralize, cut out the operating system, move all the software and information from individual PCs to a big computer called a server. All the end user needs is an Internet browser, a new way of computing that conveniently renders Microsoft's Windows monopoly moot.

ELLISON: The whole idea of putting a floppy disk into a PC and loading software is ridiculous. The whole idea of backing up the data on your PC is ridiculous.

SABGA: But it's the way most business is done today, lots of PCs with lots of Microsoft operating systems running even more Microsoft software.

ELLISON: There's only one program that's really important on your PC, and that's an Internet browser. Once you have access to the Internet, you have almost everything computing has to offer.

SABGA: If the idea behind Internet computing sounds familiar, it could be because not so long ago, Ellison was peddling a similar vision under a different name, the Network Computer.

MIKE WILSON, "THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOD AND LARRY ELLISON: GOD DOESN'T THINK HE'S LARRY ELLISON": Larry predicted that the whole world would one day do its computing on very simple computer boxes without hard drives and without other gadgets on them, and these things would sell for $200, $300, $400.

SABGA: Investigative journalist Mike Wilson authored an unofficial biography about Ellison and the rise of Oracle.

WILSON: The reason it didn't happen was that the price of a real computer, a Windows-based computer, fell so sharply that you could get a lot more than -- you could get a lot more for your $500 than what you could get from Larry's NC.

ELLISON: What I never expected was that the PC would mutate into a network computer. What's breathtaking is that the primary reason people buy PCs today is to access the Internet, and PCs are quickly on their way to $500. The vision is absolutely coming true.

OK, it's going to be kind of strange having cameras around here, but seriously, just ignore them.

SABGA: Ellison is not only preaching Internet computing, he's making it standard practice at Oracle, reorganizing entire departments over the Web.

ELLISON: I'm going to force all of our sales reps to demonstrate the product over the Internet.

SABGA: And all of Oracle's products are tied to the Web.

ELLISON: We're nothing but net, 100 percent pure Internet.

SABGA (on camera): What if you're wrong?

ELLISON: We're toast, go out of business.

SABGA (voice-over): A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but one of Ellison's most effective weapons is pure theater, like his high- profile barbs at Bill Gates.

ELLISON: Here's another Bill Gates quote, that Bill said, "Gee, you know, it's getting harder and harder to find things on my PC. Maybe everything should be in a database." The man is brilliant.

SABGA (on camera): Is there some part of you that maybe just admires or likes Bill Gates just a little bit?

ELLISON: Well, Bill and I used to be friends a long time ago. That's before he turned mean and ran Netscape out of business. So I think what Bill did to Netscape was appalling. So I don't talk to Bill any more.

WILSON: I think that he gets a kick out of Bill Gates and that he loves having this person to have a rivalry with. There's no ill feeling between Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. That's completely manufactured for the press.

SABGA (voice-over): Bill-bashing aside, Ellison also grabs headlines with his thrill-seeking hobbies.

ELLISON: I like putting myself in demanding, challenging situations, but not to the point where my life is really at risk.

SABGA: But that wasn't the case two years ago during the Sidney Hobart Regatta, sailing's toughest open-sea race. Officials had forecast a storm. Ellison, at the helm of his yacht, "Sayonara," got something far worse.

ELLISON: We didn't know until I went down below, went down to the nav station and looked at the satellite photographs coming in, and we saw that we had just sailed right into the eye of the hurricane.

SABGA: Six sailors on other boats died in the treacherous waters. Others were fished out by rescue teams. But "Sayonara" weathered the storm and won the race. The race landed Ellison back in the headlines, this time as a poster child for reckless CEOs.

(on camera): Do you think it's a responsible way to behave, as the head of this major corporation, to be putting yourself in danger?

ELLISON: Well, I have to give my -- the best I can possibly do as head of Oracle, and I work very hard at being a good CEO for Oracle. But at the same time, I can't stop living my life. Life is a miracle, and I don't want to spend it just doing Oracle.

SABGA (voice-over): So why is this billionaire still at the helm of Oracle?

ELLISON: Because the most -- more exciting and a bigger race, and more exciting race, is the one that Oracle is in, more exciting than the Sidney Hobart, more exciting than anything I've ever done is this race towards Internet computing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PELTZ: In keeping with his nothing-but-net strategy, Ellison took the wraps off a new e-business product Tuesday that lets people store information on the Internet instead of their personal computers. And true to form, Ellison took a swipe at Microsoft as he introduced the new product. He called the company's Windows operating system "crummy."

ANNOUNCER: Later on THE DOT, women, tune up your search engines.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FLYNN: One that struck our fancy was Womenautohelp.com.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Some helpful sites that cater to women, coming up on CNNdotCOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JAMES HATTORI, CO-HOST: Nothing puts high technology in the showcase better than The Tech here in Silicon Valley. But some things change just too quickly for any museum. So we'll bring you up to date in this edition of NewsFiles.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Bugged again. Must be the digital flu season. A new strain of computer virus similar to the Love Bug began spreading Thursday, hitting thousands of computers. This virus's bite is even worse than the Love Bug's. It can destroy most of the files on a hard drive.

The new strain spreads when a user opens an attachment in Microsoft Outlook e-mail. The subject line starts with FW before (ph) and has an attachment ending in .vbs. That stands for Visual Basic Script, the same programming language as the Love Bug.

This week, Microsoft began offering a security patch for its e- mail users that would prevent them from opening the .vbs attachment that carries the viruses. The downside, it prevents you from downloading a lot of other types of attachments as well.

Cybersleuths, the latest outbreaks gave new urgency to a summit in Paris this week on Internet crime, a meeting called long before the viruses hit. Government and business leaders from the Group of 8 industrial nations met with detective and security experts during the three-day summit. The U.S. is calling for the creation of an international cyberpolice force. Sounds like the plot of a new "RoboCop" movie.

Valley girls. We told you last week about the lack of women in Silicon Valley's high-tech jobs. Well, according to a recently released government report, the few women who do work in IT get paid less than their male colleagues. According to the Council of Economic Advisers, 18 percent of high-tech male workers make $70,000 or more, but only 8 percent of female workers earn that much.

The report found few women get jobs in the highest-paying categories, only one out of every 10 engineers is female. Watch out for that Silicon glass ceiling.

Overexposed? One of the biggest Internet events ever is back, with even more exposure this year. The live fashion show by Victoria's Secret returns for a second cybercast. Last year's unveiling, advertised during the Super Bowl, brought an online stampede of 1.5 million viewers looking for their favorite supermodels. But because of the deluge, instead of a bevy of beauties, most viewers got only an eyeful of error messages.

This year's show, broadcast from the Cannes Film Festival in France, promised to handle 10 times the traffic as last year. It didn't disappoint, leaving many Web viewers saying, Ooh, la-la la-la.

And that's this week's NewsFiles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Up next, IDG's NerdWord, "bluetooth." Chew on that till we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PELTZ: Now NerdWord. Today's byte-sized definition, "bluetooth." No, it's not the creature lurking in the deep just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. And if you guessed Bluebeard the Pirate's snaggle-toothed cousin, close, but no cigar.

Bluetooth refers to new short-range wireless technology that simplifies communications between mobile phones, personal digital assistants, computers, and net devices. The technology was named for Harold Bluetooth, 10th century Viking king who unified all of Scandinavia. Well, the name is something of metaphor for the technology which unifies all your computer devices to be able to talk to each other.

We're going to have much more on bluetooth and what it means for you in an upcoming cover story.

Back in moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PELTZ: Five years ago, the total number of men online far outnumbered women. But the latest figures from the Internet research firm Jupiter Communications show women are catching up. The number of male and female Internet users in the U.S. will be almost even by the end of this year. As a result, more and more Web sites are targeting female audience.

Mary Kathleen Flynn has some Tools for surfing to some of the best sites for women.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FLYNN: By now, there are several very well-known Web sites aimed at women. You've probably already heard of iVillage.com and Women.com. But these are very general interest. They remind me of women's magazines, only they're online.

We decided to go off the beaten path a bit and take look at some lesser-known Web sites for women and some ones that are a little bit more tightly focused.

Anyone who's new to the World Wide Web may appreciate SheClicks.com, although it's specifically designed with women in mind. But what's nice about it is that it offers very easy-to-understand instructions about how to use the computer and the Internet.

One of the things I like best about this Web site is that it focuses on specific topics. Right now, they're focusing on spring cleaning -- that's what they call it -- and they give you lots of advice and practical tips about how to keep your hard drive clean and organized, how to load antivirus software, how to defragment your hard disk, all kinds of things that you want to know to develop and keep good habits on the computer.

Now that you've mastered the Web, you're ready to go explore all the Web sites out there that are aimed at women. A lot of them involve women's health. Now, one of the ones that we thought was the most useful was Onhealth.com. This uses a lot of information culled from the "Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide," and one of the things that you can do on this Web site is to look up your symptoms. Let's say you're not feeling well, and you want to find out whether it's something that you should worry about. They'll ask you some questions on the Web site, you answer them, and eventually you'll get a little advice. Often it's "Go see your doctor."

Another aspect of this Web site that we liked was the ability to look up medicines and find out how they might interact together. So let's say you are suffering from a strep throat, and you're taking some penicillin, and you're already on birth control pills, and you want to take a little Tylenol. Well, you plug all that in, and you find out whether or not there'll be any adverse reactions.

Womensautohelp.com has lots of information, lots of articles, written explaining many different things about cars, aimed primarily at women, who sometimes don't feel that they know all that they would like to about cars. For example here, they've got lots of articles about safety.

One of the things that we liked about this Web site is that women can e-mail in all kinds of questions, say, for example, if they're going to buy a car, they can e-mail questions about the particular model and make they're considering, and a whole panel of advisers will answer it, all of whom are women.

And then there's my personal favorite. At five-foot-one, I really appreciated the article about a gentler airbag for petite women.

Those of us who need to balance work and family life -- and I'd say that's just about everybody -- there's a great Web site out there called Momsrefuge.com. It's especially aimed at working mothers. One of the things that's great about it is that it provides a forum for women to share all different kinds of strategies about juggling. There are a lot of women writing in with questions, and a lot of other women coming up with answers.

Now, I must warn you that sometimes the advice on this Web site's a little bit simplistic. In the Art of Juggling section, for example, often the advice boils down to, "Make your husband do it."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Up next, the PlayStation's the thing -- PlayStation 2, that is. We'll take you inside the action of Sony's new game console and show you just how it outscores the original.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PELTZ: The Microsoft antitrust case has been dragging on for a decade. We wanted to know how much longer can it go on? So we asked CNN's "BURDEN OF PROOF" Roger Cossack just one question.

What lies ahead in the Microsoft antitrust case?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ROGER COSSACK, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: The government wants the remedy in place, whether it be breakup or whether it be a penalty or whether it require Microsoft to give up its code.

Microsoft, on the other hand, also wants the remedy in place, but they want to appeal, because they feel that by appealing, they can put this -- put off this remedy for perhaps a year to two years, and with the speed of the Internet being the way it is, that by the time they do get their penalty, it'll be like penalizing the horse when the gate has already been shut.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PELTZ: On a different Microsoft note, the software giant hopes to be a major force in video games when its new X-Fox (ph) game console comes out late next year. Sony's got a head start. Its new game console, PlayStation 2, debuted in Japan in March, and the new and improved game system kicks off in the U.S., Canada, and Europe this fall.

Rick Lockridge has a preview in this week's TechnoFile.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICK LOCKRIDGE, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: You know, when it comes to movie sequels, they often fail to live up to the original. But when it comes to the hardware you play your video games on, well, a sequel is always better than the original.

(voice-over): And the PlayStation 2 by Sony is no exception. Building on the phenomenal success of the original 64-bit PlayStation, the new 128-bit machine is coming to the U.S. on October 26, right in time for the holiday season. Priced at $299, the PlayStation 2 features a chip called the Emotion Engine that's faster than those found in many supercomputers. And you'll see that in the dazzling graphics this console kicks out.

Whether you're going pedal to the metal, deep downfield to catch a pass, (inaudible), or looking to score a knockout, the PS2 will have you feeling like you're part of the action, almost. PlayStation 2 also has something for you nongamers, it doubles as a DVD player, and it has an expansion bay for future add-ons, including broadband Internet.

But don't look to play games against your far-flung buddies just yet. Sony says that day is still a ways off.

One of the PS2's nicest features is its backwards compatibility, meaning you'll be able to play the 800 or so original PlayStation games on this machine, in addition to the 50 or so new PS2 titles that'll be available by this Christmas. Yes, you spent a lot on those old games. You don't want to see them become glorified coasters.

Japanese gamers swooned over the PS2, but will Americans and Europeans do the same? After all, Sega's Dreamcast is a formidable competitor., and Sega is giving it away free to those who sign up for its new Internet service.

Meanwhile, Nintendo and Microsoft also have new consoles in the works for 2001.

(on camera): The future is bright for gamers with all these choices. But the real question is, which is the sure bet? Well, if you can't make up your mind, you can always wait for the sequel.

That's TechnoFile.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PELTZ: For the latest on video games, click onto IDG.net/games. And for the latest in tech news, surf over to cnn.com/tech.

That's it for this week. Thanks so much for watching. For all of us here at THE DOT, I'm Perri Peltz. We hope to see you again next week.

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