Sneak has long been a fan of Oracle big cheese Larry Ellison and his entertaining rants about the evils of Microsoft, but could his days as the billionaire best at baiting Steve Ballmer be numbered? Step forward Dr Jim Goodnight, mild-mannered CEO of business intelligence vendor SAS. Asked recently if he had any concerns about Microsoft’s entry into the BI market he responded, waspishly, "If their BI has as many bugs as the rest of their software it won't be very good, will it?" Ouch.

Just to make sure Sneak hadn't missed this not-so-subtle jab, Goodnight then hammered it home by expressing his amazement that any company could produce "such garbage" and get away with it, before rounding off by claiming that Microsoft has been arguably the least innovative company in the world, has appropriated all its ideas from others, and that the only thing it has ever been any good at is sales and marketing - and that it isn’t even very good at that any more.

Glorious stuff, particularly given that Sneak only asked about BI. Now come on Larry, surely you can top that...