Still kicking yourself because you didn't buy Apple stock at $13 a share last year? After all, even after the market turbulence lately, it's still up over $36 now-- an investment of $1000 would have raised more than enough money for an iMac and some peripherals. Well, cheer up-- it could be worse. You could be kicking yourself because you didn't buy the whole company at $13 a share. In a CNET article, Larry Ellison-- Oracle CEO, Apple boardmember, and Steve Jobs' best friend-- sounds a little regretful as he explains why he didn't make the move.

Longtime Applewatchers may remember Larry's "trial balloon" way back in March of last year, when he set up an email address asking people whether they thought Apple could benefit from new management. Nothing came of those public takeover rumblings, though we never heard why. Now Larry's explained the rationale for his decision: his lawyers told him that he "knew too much;" due to his friendship with Steve Jobs, the Justice Department would be all over him for insider trading reasons. Like most relatively sane men, Larry decided that few things in life are really worth pursuing when they involve massive and lengthy legal entanglements-- especially with government lawyers.

Not that things worked out poorly for Larry; after Steve Jobs pulled off his little boardroom coup, he made sure that Larry was a member of the new board of directors. And since he claims that Jobs isn't planning on leaving his interim CEO position anytime soon, Larry can be involved in Apple's direction for a long time to come. But Larry, where oh where are those Oracle Mac applications you promised us?

Oh, this is rich... "Redmond Justice" is heating up again, as Microsoft fashions its latest defense strategy in the face of the impending trial. Apparently the tactic du jour is to show-- get this-- that other companies have banded together to engage in anticompetitive practices against them. This strategy is reportedly known in legal circles as the "But They Did It First" maneuver, or, alternatively, "The Big Hand Wave." The Washington Post has the whole story.

Whether or not Microsoft actually expects anyone to believe that Oracle, IBM, Sun, Apple, etc. really colluded to prevent Microsoft from competing fairly is open for debate. More than likely, it's all a ploy by Microsoft to have their trial date postponed again. After all, Microsoft has previously stated that they'd like an additional six months to prepare for the trial; what better way to force a delay than by subpoenaing literally thousands of documents from the seven "anticompetitive" companies last Friday (and only giving a week's time in which to pull all the data together)?

So the big orange sign on the road to the trial currently says "EXPECT DELAYS." And once this whole subpoena issue is cleared up, don't be surprised if Microsoft stalls for more time claiming to have a broken shoelace or something like that. Microsoft isn't stupid; technology moves so fast, the best legal move often seems to be to stall until the technology in question is irrelevant.

And in further Microsoft news, Digital Equipment Corporation is the latest to get in line to say that the Redmond Giant squelched a potentially competing product. Five DEC execs are claiming that Bill Gates personally strongarmed their company into cancelling a promising Internet product, by threatening to cancel Microsoft's development of Windows NT for DEC's processors. Sordid details are available in the New York Times, but be warned-- you may feel icky after reading them.

The Internet product that DEC was working on was codenamed "Shark," and it was developed jointly by DEC and Oracle, based on Oracle's Network Computer standard. The Network Computer is, along with Java, one of those nagging little technologies that keeps Microsoft execs awake at night, because they have some potential to break the Windows stranglehold on the desktop computer market. Reportedly, Gates himself called Robert Palmer, the CEO of DEC, and said, "You have to decide if you're Larry [Ellison]'s friend or my friend." (Ewww... thinly veiled threats always make us want to take a shower...) Given the potential revenue loss tied to a parting of ways with Microsoft, DEC had no choice but to kill the "Shark."

When Palmer called Ellison to tell him that "Shark" was being canceled, he wouldn't say why. He did, however, say that he'll "tell the truth" if he's subpoenaed. (Subpoena him! Subpoena him!) Chalk up one more promising technology ground to dust under Bill's big heel.