The Financial Times recently put out a really good read about virtualization that included some VERY interesting public barbs from executives from Oracle and VMware.  Check out this exchange from the article:

As the boss of the hottest company to emerge from the software industry in 2007, Diane Greene has had to deal recently with a familiar rite of passage: the jibes of Larry Ellison.

The Oracle founder likes to take pot shots at new rivals, and so it has been lately with VMware, the “virtualisation” software company Ms Greene and her computer scientist husband founded a decade ago this month.

Mr Ellison has been characteristically dismissive. He recently compared the company to Netscape, and predicted that Microsoft would quickly eclipse it as it did the browser pioneer. For good measure, he added that the base layer of software on which virtualisation depends, called a hypervisor, was so simple that his cat could write it.

Ms Greene’s tart response, delivered during an interview with the Financial Times at VMware’s Silicon Valley headquarters: “If his very smart cat could write it, my very smart tortoise could write his database.”

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Read the entire article from FT.com, here.

One thing is certain, my dog couldn't write either of these programs!  I assume this cat and tortoise came from PetSmart?  What next?  A hamster that can write the operating system?  Where will this madness end?  First outsourcing, now this?