As I understand it, if Oracle loses, they might set a precedent which allow others companies to sue Oracle.

Article makes it sound like this is some silly squabble among nerds. Like an argument over a StarTrek episode.

I suspect a lot of non-nerd people may be surprised about the far-reaching implications of this decision.

EPA Study Says Fracking Pollutes Drinking Water

June 4, 2015

> “Despite industry’s obstruction, EPA found that fracking pollutes water in a number of ways,” said Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel. “That’s why industry didn’t cooperate. They know fracking is an inherently risky, dirty process that doesn’t bear close, independent examination.”

> The report also pointed out the declining amount of water that could be available for drinking purposes due to extended drought, saying, “The future availability of drinking water sources that are considered fresh in the U.S. will be affected by changes in climate and water use. Declines in surface water resources have already led to increased withdrawals and cumulative net depletions of ground water in some areas.”

> And, while saying it didn’t find evidence of widespread impacts on drinking water to date, the U.S. EPA report did conclude, “The colocation of hydraulic fracturing activities with drinking water resources increases the potential for these activities to affect the quality and quantity of current and future drinking water resources. While close proximity of hydraulically fractured wells to drinking water resources does not necessarily indicate that an impact has or will occur, information about the relative location of wells and water supplies is an initial step in understanding where impacts might occur.”

http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/04/epa-fracking-pollutes-drinking-water/

This is significant.

> "We did not find evidence that these mechanisms [of potentially affecting water] have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States," the report said.

Note that it did not say that the gahzillions of gallons of fresh water that are used for fracking could ever be recovered.

Also, what is "widespread?" A lot of fracking goes on in sparsely populated states, like Wyoming. So maybe only one million people will be poisoned. Not really widespread, right?

People want Linux for servers.

But it has never caught on for desktop.

Just as it was making progress, Red Hat screwed up everything with systemd.

Install Firefox, or Chrome, and use whatever search engine you like.

> "While 90 percent of residential indoor water use is reused because it is processed by a wastewater treatment facility, water used for fracking is too polluted to be recycled for indoor use."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fracking_and_water_consumption

As I understand it, it's an awful lot of water.

Might be worth remembering while California cries about their drought.

The last update to yahoo mail was horrid. I am far from the only person who thought so.

I stopped using yahoo maps a long time ago when they screwed that up.

Forget about "raising public awareness" public only cares about issues that affect them directly.

Forget about voting the problem away: about 99% of politicians favor more guest workers.

We need to organize.

Consider the following situations:

1)
Management: train your h1b replacement before we fire you, or you do not get a severance, or a good reference.
Worker: I guess resistance is futile.

2)
Management: train your h1b replacement before we fire you, or you do not get a severance, or a good reference.
Everybody at the company: you try to pull that bullshit and we all walk out right now.
Management: okay, never mind.

> Now unless I misunderstand the law. H1-B is supposed to be for jobs Americans can't do.

You misunderstand the law. There is absolutely no requirement that an American cannot do the job. Hiring H1Bs to replace US workers is perfectly legal, and acceptable.

> Oh, don't think "union" like other professional groups. IT skills are not anything that can be unionized

Why not?

Other professions, like medical doctors, are organized, and it works for them. It works like all hell.

Ask yourself why the US has not flooded the market with foreign physicians? Ask yourself why the wages for physicians have not been crushed?

The reason is: doctors have organized, raised money, and lobbied congress. They have become a protected group.

Tech workers could do the same. But they won't. US tech workers would rather, pointlessly, send links to articles to one another; and then gripe that nothing ever changes.

> Yes, but it's a blatant violation of the program to use people you employ to train the h1-b applicants.

It happens all the time. It has been happening for years, maybe decades.

How is Disney worse? I think Disney only fired about 130 Americans.

US tech companies hire tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of guest workers. Often making American workers train their H1B replacements. At best displacing US workers.

In 2009 Bill Gates sat before the US congress, and explained that the tech industry was suffering from huge shortages, and desperately needed more foreign guest workers. At the same time, Microsoft was laying off thousands of US workers.