Richard Williams Quotations

Where the heck is the good news?. So far, there have not been concrete signs of a recovery.

We're from the ghetto. Venus is a ghetto Cinderella. People from the ghetto don't get nervous.

We want them to have a real-world experience, which means working with people from other schools and cultures, which gives them an experience of diversity. Some students never would have considered a career in international business and exportation without this kind of exposure.

The reality is that an Oracle deal would cost PeopleSoft customers. They have a vested interest in keeping PeopleSoft independent,

This program is a blessing. If I didn't have this program, I would probably be dead by now. When I got here, I was slowly dying. They provided me with a doctor, and everything turned around.

My father was a doctor and I was born in our home, where he had his practice,

Now the question is 'What is the right price for the shares?'.

I would be a liar if I said my desire to get back into the ring had never waned,

I have had friends and family ask why we cannot get something done about this.

I'd like for her to be able to take the very first shot and put pressure on her opponent. I think she's attacking too much. I don't think you should do all that attacking. When you're attacking that much, no one can consistently hit the ball that hard, unless they're making a bunch of errors. So just attack the first ball.

IBM still has to grow the top line. They have been cutting costs, but they have to do something more.

If Oracle continues to fight, this stops being an economic decision for the company and looks more and more like an emotional decision.

From our point of view, anything that forces a shutdown will speed up a settlement, which we view as a positive event.

Greg is a good fit for Oracle since he's a high-powered CFO type. And I don't think it will herald any huge change in strategy for Oracle. He'll continue to try and buy companies on the cheap,

There is a huge disconnect between the magnitude of what is likely to happen with earnings and what stocks have already discounted,

With Microsoft taking the bottom out of the market's pricing structure, we are going to see that business slow down even more precipitously.

I think it makes some sense; it's just consolidation like anything else. You take two weaker players and combine them for strength.

It has always been the focal point of the development.

Lawyers involved in NTP and other patent cases think a deal will come before year-end, or even pre-Christmas, and be valued between $750 million and $1.25 billion. The stock could rally sharply on a deal.

I went and cashed in all my pennies to come here. It's cheap entertainment. We spent, what, maybe $40 tonight? Cheaper than going to the movies.

My only expectation of him is that he will prove that everyone who had great confidence in him was right.

That's what is behind Microsoft's interest in AOL. They are looking at combining MSN and AOL, two underperforming assets, cut the costs, and come up with a single productive asset. Both MSN IM and Yahoo IM are on the outs. AOL dominates that market. So this deal has the same idea behind it as MSN/AOL.

Microsoft has realized that PCs are not the center of the world. E-business or online services to enterprises could become the next big area of growth for the company.

Microsoft has a long-term e-business goal that involves MSN. They've got to keep MSN alive and relevant enough within the marketplace until they have their e-business web channel ready.

Microsoft is the dominant player if it chooses to be which would mean there would be significant market share losses for Symantec.

We played as well as we've played all year long defensively for one half, but it's my fault that after being evenly matched in the first half we didn't get it done,

We're blessed with a little bit of speed. The skill people, if they find a crack, they can take it to the house.

The problem is the lawsuit is holding them up from answering the competitive threat.

There is a very real risk to Oracle. All of the enterprise software companies are making a major push down market.

This strikes me as a trial balloon, ... Management may be getting tired of the harping on the dividend so if they give investors a quarter of the cash to shut people up, then the company can get back to business.

The fact that the EU is showing its teeth is very significant. Microsoft kind of got away with things in the U.S.

We didn't give our best effort. We started growing up tonight. With the results, it's evident. This was a critical first step.

To buy (Siebel) and combine them along with other smaller acquisitions into Oracle in a very short time is an unprecedented task in terms of difficulty. It's not easy by any stretch, and that is a lot of risk to try to do that in a short time with a bunch of different technologies.

We see tremendous market acceptance when Microsoft's next big enterprise software product comes out. And when you look at the sheer numbers, it's arguably as big a market as the original Windows market,

This year, our line is not as big. We don't have as many players at the skill positions and we're not as deep as last year or the year before.

We see cannibalism as the only way to survive right now for the big players. There are a lot of software companies out there that can't grow.

This news is more than anything a warning shot to the rest of software that everybody is going to be involved in a feeding frenzy. You are going to see a lot of smaller players go away.

Even though these numbers on an absolute basis look cheap, we view it as not being as cheap as it looks,

As there'll be some rotation among some members, there's a need for some others to serve for a longer period.

At the very best, this hints at a muted recovery, and that's a long way from what tech bulls are expecting. The numbers have to go beyond seasonal strength,

Crouch has the stature to lead the line, his very existence sets an unusual problem for defenders, and the combination of his spidery limbs, surprisingly delicate control and patient approach allow him to hold the ball up quite effectively

And this is what we came up with -- a private, Christian school.

There's a fair bit of seasonality for software companies. The fourth quarter and second quarter are the biggest; the third quarter stinks because Europe is on vacation.

There's a fair bit of seasonality for software companies, ... The fourth quarter and second quarter are the biggest; the third quarter stinks because Europe is on vacation.

These software stocks are all overvalued on the fundamentals that we see today.

These settlements and collaborations are clearing the table. It is a preamble to a larger strategic move, ... Microsoft is trying to keep MSN relevant.

The stock reaction is muted considering how big these problems appear to be.

Pricing pressures are definitely an issue for software companies. This strikes me as a clear sign that things are still not getting better,

People power saves PeopleSoft. Customer loyalty is such a powerful force and it was underestimated,

On the whole this is modestly positive news.

Normally, big viruses are good news for the anti-virus companies. The scarier, the better, since that's what motivates people to buy patches in the first place.

Novell and Red Hat are very expensive stocks, even with their strong growth.

This is a shockwave. Bulls are going to have to sit back and ask if they have baked in too much good news,

This could totally backfire. Virus writers are very much driven by the same motivation that makes people climb mountains. To put a bounty on their heads will just increase their notoriety and increase their ego.

This appears to be about a clash of titanic egos and, at Oracle, there is only one ego that ultimately matters.

Also, they're halfway through their quarter. In the software business, usually the last month represents 70 to 80 percent of their business and the last week it's sometimes 50 percent of that. So, six weeks in, unless you're having a total disaster, it's unlikely that this is the issue.

There will be a period of indigestion but it wouldn't surprise me to see Oracle back in late 2005 buying somebody else.

There were so many situations where in the past our kids could have put their chins down, but the entire coaching staff did a super job, ... And our kids kept their heads up, and without a doubt the difference was the second half when we controlled the offensive and defensive lines of scrimmage.

This looks like a good quarter. It's a huge beat.

This is traditionally a weak quarter but software right now has just flat-lined. Expectations are pretty low.

At best it will be another year of sluggish growth for Microsoft,

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All my life I've been waiting for this, and now it can happen. A Williams is going to win.

It's a big challenge for new management to have to come in and handle the crisis. They now have 28 days to certify all the data. It's not clear they can get everything done that they have to get done.

For many companies we're not talking about a lot of organic growth. If currency strengthens, as I expect it will, it brings into question whether companies can make their second-quarter numbers.

For a variety of reasons, we believe that's unlikely,

It's going to be a feeding frenzy, ... Anyone with a low stock price and poor results is vulnerable.

It's premature to be able to gauge what's really happening with corporate demand. Long-term investors need to wait and get more data before making any decisions about these stocks.

It's not an elegant solution and it's not even clear if it's a viable solution.

The biggest risk for IBM is not the restatement of revenues and growth, it's more the potential for a crisis of confidence.

The bet that computer vendors are making as they build up inventory is that fourth quarter sales will see a big surge. If we don't get that it will be trouble for software, ... Everything comes down to the fourth quarter.

The biggest lesson we've learned from this is just how serious Oracle is to find another revenue source, ... It's painfully obvious that their own business is not doing well enough that they are pursuing this with such ferocity.

The average retail investor can't be as nimble as institutions. If you buy right now, you might be sitting on a loss for months.

Symantec cannot grow as rapidly as it has done in the past.

That's as good a defense as we've seen on film all season and thought we'd have problems with them, but we were one block away a few times in the first half from tying the game up.

I know that our decision was not based on athletics.

I'm meant to do something good here. You watch.

If unearned revenue keeps sliding, it suggests the growth story for Microsoft has gotten long in the tooth and that would raise more worries about the valuation.

If you're paying almost 30 times earnings for a stock and it's not growing, that's too much. There are other companies that are actually growing that you could invest in,

I really don't have a reason. I've told everyone that I support and respect those who did. That's a very personal choice and there is no right or wrong. I just did not feel, for me, that was something that I needed to do.

If everything works out, I want to graduate in three years, ... Then in the fourth year, I'll go to graduate school.

I don't think things have changed. I just think they're more camouflaged and covered up. If things had changed, when I was walking down those steps that guy wouldn't have called me nigger.

I believe I am a good fighter and I believe I have never fulfilled my potential, that is one of the most frustrating things,

This is a glaring, embarrassing problem that Microsoft has to fix.

The growth rate is not very impressive, ... Why pay such an exorbitant multiple on earnings?

All of a sudden we're getting really material misses that are coming right in the middle of regular earnings. It catches you completely off-guard.

The economy is not in a position to sustain the kind of upside that bulls require to justify their stance. Stocks are tremendously overvalued, based on what I can see, and it's hard to get too excited about upside potential.

The fraud is ugly, the perpetrators are gone, and this is an embarrassment in a huge way. Now the issue is one of the new leadership -- can they keep everyone focused, can they keep the wheels on the wagon?

And I don't think anybody's out to deliberately hurt someone. You've got to report what you've got to report.