Oracle Asked To Help Low-Income Residents Evicted For Its New Cloud Campus (cio.com) 202
itwbennett writes: Roughly 100 low-income families were evicted from an apartment complex on the land in Austin, Texas where Oracle plans to build a new 560,000 sq. foot cloud-computing campus. Some of the former tenants of Lakeview Apartments had leases through the end of the year, but were reportedly forced by owner Cypress Real Estate Advisors to move out early. Some have said their security deposits were not returned, and they have had no assistance as they've struggled to find comparably priced housing. Last week, some of those residents gathered near the site of their former home to protest and to appeal to Oracle for assistance.
Golden opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
for Oracle to polish their image which, currently, is pretty bad in the social-and-responsible-enterprise area. Whether they'll really do something - I doubt it.
Re:Golden opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps Oracle will offer free America's Cup tickets to the low income former residents.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Larry Ellison owns a whole Hawaiian island, just for himself. Maybe he could house these poor folks there?
He could give them jobs, working in the sugar cane and pineapple fields.
A win-win solution for everyone, for sure.
Hawaiian option? (Score:2)
Wouldn't he then have to show a preference for native Hawaiians i.e. descendants of Kamehameha?
Re:Golden opportunity (Score:4, Informative)
Let's be honest here:
1) It's not Oracle's fault that the previous owner (e.g. landlord) was/is a dick. Yes, Oracle could do some feel-good PR with it, but it won't make a difference long-term, and the folks involved end up getting their pain prolonged in most cases.
2) How the fuck does this even make it to closing with tenants still on the books? Unless Oracle specifically agrees (agreed?) to take on the role of landlord, the place should have been emptied by the day the title transfer papers get signed.
3) Legally (barring some clause or two that nobody read in their leases), the property seller may be on the hook for paying up any leases that are still live when the property sold (unless, again, Oracle agreed to become a landlord at closing). But, I can only guess at that because I don't know the city/county/state laws that apply.
4) A question - is there any sort of state of federal grant money action or program occurring here? I'm assuming not, else the residents would have gotten at least a year or more of advanced warning, relocation assistance, rental vouchers to help them pay rent elsewhere, etc etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Jesus H Christ how does this pass for news?
Are you kidding? These are exactly the kind of things that people need to hear.
The part that confused me... (Score:3)
Which part of low-income is confusing you?
The part that confused me... is the story has a lady who paid about $720/month in rent at Lakeview Apartments, and Trulia is show a bunch of apartments for rent at or below that price point in Austin, some where there would not even be a change in school district.
I'd definitely say that the property management company (Cypress Real Estate Advisors) is being asses, but that's not Oracle's fault, and neither is it Oracle's fault that the people are incapable of doing a web search. What it's really about is t
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure you are looking at comparable apartments? She may have had a 3 BR, and you are looking at 1 BR, though if you are looking at 3 BR, you are right on the money, it is about greed and nothing else.
Holding the security deposit after early termination of the lease however is extremely sleazy, but they should be looking into a pro bono lawyer to go after Cypress, not protesting Oracle who had nothing to do with it.
Re: (Score:3)
She’s had to cut corners to make ends meet, including securing hand-me-downs to clothe her children given her lack of money to buy new clothes at the store.
Actually this part confused me... What's wrong with "hand me down" cloth??? I was growing up with cloth handed down from my brother. New cloth is nice, but it is not a necessity. With the kind of mentality (must have new cloth) for those who identify themselves as low-income is bothering me...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Somehow, those bad areas seem to be attractive to business due to their low rent. I recall how Ikea made their big Bay Area warehouse in East Palo Alto, which at one time had a reputation of being the murder capital of ________ (don't remember whether it was US/CA/Bay Area...)
Wonder why people would go to shop at such localities? I guess if it's an Ikea, there's hardly any choice
Slave labor (Score:2)
No surprise here (Score:5, Informative)
ORACLE = One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
Re: (Score:2)
Oracle does not give a rats ass. (Score:2)
Honestly Oracle really does not care about them, nor the fact that the property management company is being scum.
All oracle cares about is next quarter profits. if people have to suffer for those profits, then so be it.
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly Oracle really does not care about them, nor the fact that the property management company is being scum.
Residents they are attempting to force out early before lease end should file a petition with the courts for an emergency injunction....
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:5, Insightful)
If the people need welfare, the government should supply public housing directly.
There are multiple empty houses for every man, woman, and child in America, thanks to the mortgage scam. And thanks to the bailout, the banks can afford to not sell those homes for whatever the market can bear, so they are sitting on them and refusing to sell them in order to keep real estate values high and maintain the value of their "investment" (really an elaborate theft from the taxpayer.) So in fact, the government has funded the deliberate ongoing maintenance of the homelessness of the population.
Re: (Score:3)
Slashdot is becoming more like AboveTopSecret every day...
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is becoming more like AboveTopSecret every day...
It's not my fault that the degree to which the world is more complex than you imagined is now coming to light. If you take exception to some part of what I said, by all means, point it out.
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh more insults from you, this is becoming common.
Just because a bank is holding onto property does not mean its empty, and nor does it mean it would be affordable to rent for these people needing to find cheap accommodation. Unoccupied properties degrade quickly, so banks will gladly rent them out. The people in this story are renters, so the fact that banks wont sell is meaningless to this discussion.
Plus I really dont think there are 640million empty properties right now in the US ("multiple empty houses for every man, woman and child" is what you said, combined with the current estimated population of 322million). A quick googling shows a recent estimate is only 18.6million, and most of those need significant extra work as they are uninhabitable.
Add to that the fact that acting as a landlord for an extra 3.5million zero or low income people (the estimated number of homeless in the US) puts a huge strain on somebody - were you thinking of forcing the banks to bear this cost? Another thing to consider is that the banks *are* donating empty houses to cities for social housing, but most cities dont want them because it eliminates property taxes on those properties and adds them as a burden to the city.
You also realise that the banks are paying for the bailout, right? To date, the US Federal Reserve has actually made a profit of $63.2Billion on loans totalling $618Billion disbursed under the TARPS and Fannie and Freddie.
Of that $618Billion, the Federal Reserve has seen $681Billion flow back, and thats with about $230Billion in loans yet to be repaid. Puts your "elaborate theft from the taxpayer" comment in a new light, now doesnt it...
https://projects.propublica.or... [propublica.org]
http://themindunleashed.org/20... [themindunleashed.org]
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
Why not? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
thanks to the bailout, the banks can afford to not sell those homes for whatever the market can bear, so they are sitting on them and refusing to sell them in order to keep real estate values high
If that's true, then the government should file charges against them for housing market manipulation, and forcibly liquidate the properties on their behalf.
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:4, Informative)
If that's true, then the government should file charges against them for housing market manipulation, and forcibly liquidate the properties on their behalf.
You missed the part where the government gave them the money that they're using to operate on since acquiring that real estate. The government is literally doing the exact opposite of what it should do, enabling this behavior instead of stopping it.
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, not selling property is not market manipulation - its the very right of ownership. Refusing to sell all your stock at once to keep prices high is not market manipulation and there is nothing illegal in it.
No matter what dear Drinkypoo says.
Re: (Score:3)
Right the rights of owners should usually prevail over renters, although some compromises do need to be made. If you have a year long lease I don't think your land lord should be able to tell you "be out by 6am tomorrow" without you having violated your agreement some way. So there probably has to be some regulator compromise. Which generally everywhere I have ever had reason to know anything about it here in the USA there has been. Usually you have at least 30 days.
On thing the government SHOULD NEVER DO i
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:4, Insightful)
The wage gap problem exists because of the expanded social safety net not in spite of it.
Do you have any evidence for this other than your neat just-so stories?
As evidence against, I give you history where lack of a social safety net led not to a capitalistic utopia but grinding poverty, and appalling conditions for workers as poverty meant they could not afford to risk a payment by seeking work elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Evidence, no not really unfortunately like most economics questions we don't have a good control. So its a hypothesis we can test if we implement my policy suggestion but that is all.
I am not sure I agree with your evidence against. I can argue by some measures the wealth gap is larger than it has ever been. Its also true that poor (speaking about USA here) are largely better off than they have been in the past.
Social safety net programs evidently do not cure the wealth gap problem. They have existed fo
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not sure I agree with your evidence against. I can argue by some measures the wealth gap is larger than it has ever been.
Over the past 30 years when the wealth gap has exploded, social safety net programs and union power was reduced, not strengthened. If you want to see what wealth inequality looks like under strong social programs, look at the 1960s. In 1963, the top 1% had 35x more wealth than the median family. [pbs.org] This is what the social programs after the Great Depression gave us. This disparity grew to 40x by 1983, when our social safety nets started deteriorating. Fast forward to 2013, and the top 1% has 97x more wealth than the median family.
Its really even worse than this, because almost all of the wealth gap has been caused by the top 0.01%. If you look at wealth growth of the top .01%-1%, the growth is pretty flat [blogspot.com]. It is only the top 0.01%, or about 10,000 families, that are seeing all of this growth.
The great society programs enacted in '64-'65 allowed the US economy to keeping growing after the post-WW2 prosperity faded, and kept inequality from growing significantly for 20 years. Once Reagan started to lower taxes and defeat the unions (without enacting other worker protections) the rise in inequality was inevitable.
We have plenty of evidence that strong social programs help the poor. Just look at Scandinavian countries. All we have evidence of in the US is that social programs can be run poorly. That is a reason to improve and strengthen them, not scuttle them.
Re: (Score:2)
I am not sure I agree with your evidence against. I can argue by some measures the wealth gap is larger than it has ever been.
Can you? By what measure would that be?
As best I can tell, Victorian England had a gini coefficient of around 0.6, compared to now (with a comparatively strong welfare state) of 0.34. It seems that the time at which the gini coefficient was lowest was a bit in the past when the welfare state was stronger than it is now.
Re: (Score:2)
So public housing is like Obamneycare which is corporate welfare since people are forced to hand over their money to a private company whether they want to or not. Got it.
Though I do agree with your assessment of forced liquidation. I said the same thing about J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, et al. Instead of them being given $700 billion of taxpayer money to pay out their bon
Re: (Score:3)
There are multiple empty houses for every man, woman, and child in America
No, there aren't. The house vacancy rate in the US is currently under 2 percent (and falling), which translates to about 1.4 million vacant homes. http://www.census.gov/housing/... [census.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
It was an admitted typo [slashdot.org]: the user meant every homeless man, woman, and child. How does this sub-2 percent vacancy rate compare to the homelessness rate [truthdig.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's an easy fix for the problem of land banking: increase real estate taxes, especially on unimproved land. Then use that revenue to lower other taxes, perhaps taxes that are more regressive such as the sales tax. (Austin's is 8.25%--they truly despise the poor, and their sales tax shows it.)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is when the tax on the property doesn't cover the property's burden on the city.
Re: (Score:2)
dunno where you live, but out here you can buy a house for less than a mid level car
Re: (Score:2)
There are a few homes for sale in the town I am in (Baker City, Oregon). 40K or thereabouts will get you something decent place to live. And there is really no bad part of town here. There were a couple nice houses half way down the block from mine that were for sale until recently. One was around $33K. The other was around $40K.
The key to finding deals here is to not go through any of the agencies, and look for private sales instead. Now, if you want some acres to go with a house, that is where it ge
Re: (Score:2)
There are multiple empty houses for every man, woman, and child in America, thanks to the mortgage scam.
I'd love to see a citation for that. The United States population on July 4, 2015 was 321,442,019. According to this source [globalresearch.ca], 5 million homes had been repossessed as of April, 2015, with an additional 3 million forecast for the next three years or so.
That's a lot of repossessed homes, but 8 million is not a multiple of 321 million, unless by "multiple" you mean "0.025".
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:5, Insightful)
so many people scream for special rights to *renters* as if they are owners
There is no fundamental right to exclusive control of land, not even in a capitalist society. If the property owner decides to build housing, and rent out housing, then their customer's lives depend on this relationship, which is in danger of becoming tyrannical or unfairly exploitative, so the property owner automatically cedes certain rights, Even rights that might not be in their best financial interest to lose, and even rights they do not willingly give up.
Actually.... the deedholder or claimholder is just a renter too. The ultimate owner of land is the state government, and in most places, they even charge the current deedholder a rent called property tax to maintain any privileges, and their usage of the land has to be compliant with the law and in the interest of the public (E.g. You cannot just dump hazardous wastes on your land, however you like).
It makes perfect sense, that a government respecting the interest of the public would have reasonable regulation of the government deedholders' subleasing arrangements with members of the public, where people secure their housing / apartment living spaces, or even, where people secure housing for other vital purchases: such as the usage to host the main office of a small business.
Re: (Score:2)
The ultimate owner of land is the state government, and in most places, they even charge the current deedholder a rent called property tax to maintain any privileges
Is this a 'rent'? It's definitely a fee/tax, but my understanding is that if you don't pay your property tax, all the state can do is attach a lien to your property. And while someone can evict you for not paying rent, I thought they couldn't evict you for unpaid property taxes. Maybe that's a state-to-state thing.
Re: (Score:3)
If you actually own the property (don't have a mortgage)...
It's funny that you don't consider property taxes as an indicator of the state owning your property but you do consider a mortgage as an indicator of a bank owning your property.
Even if you have a mortgage, you are still the actual owner of your property. The bank's only claim to your property is as collateral to secure the loan in the event of your failure to pay it back (plus any other contractually established claims such as your continued maintenance of the property to prevent the devaluation of the sec
Re: (Score:2)
It's not news that contract law just doesn't work as smoothly when the parties involved are of vastly different power; and resolving matters through a civil proceeding can be problematic when there is particularly urgent time pressure. In situations involving people who rent their sole residence; both of these
Re: (Score:2)
Go away, read this [theoatmeal.com], and come back.
Preferably in that order.
What world do you live in? (Score:2)
You're making a fundamental mistake about public housing in America. "Section 8" as it's callled is a subsidy for land lords to rent out property that nobody else will rent (
Even a proper state would have done (Score:3)
Austin may seem like a liberal bastion compared to the rest of Texas, but it's actually still enormously conservative compared to say California.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Austin may seem like a liberal bastion compared to the rest of Texas, but it's actually still enormously conservative compared to say California.
Texas state law is that cities can set the terms up to certain limits. Austin has decided not to set many limits.
Yes, that is my point. It's up to Austin, and they choose to be dicks.
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, Oracle is not to blame.
The landlord is to blame if they used illegal means to evict the renters.
If the eviction was legal, well, you do have a problem with the local laws then, wouldn't you say?
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:5, Insightful)
Bollocks. Knowingly benefitting from an immoral act is immoral.
Re: (Score:2)
Shouldn't that hold only if the beneficiary is causing or allowing by inaction the immoral act?
If I learn that my employer is buying a few thousand pieces of expensive but useless junk off a a company that happens to also be owned by the CEO as part of a 'tax efficient' optimisation, does it add anything new to the wrongness for me to then appropriate some of the junk that is heading off for disposal and put it on eBay for myself? As a low-level employee, I wouldn't have any way to stop the immoral act: It'
Re: (Score:2)
Oracle management is too busy picking which employees to lay off this quarter to keep the others living in fear to give a shit about a few poor people.
Oh dear lord (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Blame" is not the same thing as legal culpability.
At least until someone figures out how to make being a dick illegal, acting like a dick won't be a crime.
Re:Move to a proper country (Score:5, Informative)
This left some people who had leases until December and a few that just stuck around. The ones with the leases until December are in a court lawsuit currently over the level of inaction the management company provided in not fixes issues and with removal of services.
So what additional protection should they have? I live in Germany and three months is what I can expect for notification.
You live in Germany (Score:3)
I had a rough patch in li
Re: (Score:2)
The issue here is rent is skyrocketing in America (Score:2)
When you're poor you don't move very often (unless it's because you're homeless now). That's because moving is _expensive_ to the poor. For one thing base rent at a new apartment tends to be a lot higher than what your paying how. Rent goes up every year, but the rate is a little lower than a new apartment to encoura
Re: (Score:2)
you have a _lot_ more social welfare programs than Americans do.
I agree with your sentiment but ultimately this has little to do with the case or the GP's comments about rights of renters. Renters shouldn't have any more rights than they have. If the problem is homelessness then that's a problem for social welfare, not for rights of renters. It's not the duty of landlords to solve this problem.
Nobody gets their deposit back (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
where tenants actually have proper rights and legal representation.
Why not have a J1 visa exchange program w/ Cuba? We'll send all our poor and jobless there, while the Cubans who prefer freedom to their current lot can move here instead.
the truth of the matter (Score:3)
Oracle Corp. and Cypress Real Estate Advisors officials did not respond to requests for comment.
because they don't care about "other people's problems," even if they caused them. what they do care about is their money.
Ellison can offer them jobs (Score:2)
A bunch of poor people won't add anything to his bottom line, so they might as die serving to maintain his luxury lifestyle. It's not like they're citizens with "inalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" or any such commie nonsense.
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck with that.... (Score:2)
Was there no other location in all of Austin ...? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
There would have been plenty of other places, but the question is not so much about empty land but rather one of available services.
We will give you unlimted EBT at walmart (Score:2)
http://www.ksla.com/story/2367... [ksla.com]
Cloud Campus needs living space? (Score:2)
I thought the cloud was everywhere. Why does a Cloud Campus needs physical space in one location?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (Score:3)
Oracle? Helping someone who hasn't been forced into a multi-million dollar support contract?
Go on, pull the other leg too!
Re:Fascism (Score:5, Funny)
mod parent up, or a kitten gets it!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Fascism (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, in many states the lessee has many rights, such as the right to continued used of the property throughout the duration of the lease, the lease holder can not step foot onto their property without proper prior notice, and many other bundled rights... which include, the quick return of security deposits held in a special interest bearing account, or a written and judge signed decree of why the money was not returned.
In this case, unless the residents agreed to something in return for the termination of their leases... such as a relocation amount, even a pittance of one, then they should have read the agreement better, they got all they are going to get.
Here is some Michigan precedence (some context IANAPL, that is a non-practicing lawyer, but went to law school, passed bar, patent bar, etc, but don't practice), when General Motors which had land near an airport, gave up said land for the expansion of the airport, the tenants of the land, and the owners were given money in return for their quick and timely removal from the land. The agreement for the lessees was 6500 dollars if they rented another property, and more if they bought another property. Granted, this was a move by General motors and the county, and the municipal government, and the owners of the airport. General motors owned the land, and rented houses on the land to their employees for ridiculous low rates... think 3 bedroom brick, ranch houses on 2 acre lots, for 250 dollars a month.
This was about 20 years ago, I know it firsthand, because my family worked for GM and at least 2 uncles, and my family were forced to move... we took the buy route, and even though we did not have much money, the relocation fund, and the first time buyers bonus, and other federal assistance, made moving into a newly built and financed house easier and cheaper than renting a new house or apartment. Big difference than living off of Uncle GM and their gracious cheap family housing, but the 12 grand, plus other assistance made the move easier.
Point is this, no one that leases property has the right to remove you from the property, you have secured property rights through the signing of a lease, it is in fact your leased property, within the limits of the lease. You have the right to quiet enjoyment, and the right to do whatever you want while you are there within the constraints of your agreement. As my law professor stated, property is a bundle of sticks, and a lease contains quite a few sticks (rights) to the property.
I would not be surprised if the property owner pulled a fast one, and got them to sign over, or paid them very little, and now they find themselves in a bind. I also presume that many of these people are not fully educated on the matter and the law, and that someone should have explained it to them better, as to what rights they do have, and do not have. And lastly, I presume, that some are old and infirm, and living on fixed incomes, and have no way to move easily, and may even have medical devices in place (oxygen generators, tub and shower handles, special phones or alert systems), which if this is the case, have an even harder time to move.
So, what we need, is an advocate for the lease holders, and Oracle could provide at a minimum that for goodwill and public perception, and may be able to help these people without handing out a single dime of their own money, just the cost of some local attorneys, who also probably want to do something to get their name out their in a positive way... it could be a win / win for everyone, if they start blaming the right people and accepting the responsibility of the right or wrong that has happened, that is a big if, but an easy fix.
I just believe a lot has been lost in translation, and a lot as been lost through the telling and retelling from many different points of view, and flavored by media bias (big company boot poor out of home), just tell oracle and the county, state, and local government to do their job and help the displaced understand what is available to them. Simple and easy.
Fascism, not, Socialism, not, Media piece during holidays that pulls the right heart strings, yes.
Corporate citizenship - or lack of it (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
In Texas, this is the specific code which applies:
http://www.statutes.legis.stat... [state.tx.us]
However, you should note that a lot of those provisions sunset on 1 Jan 2016. They also have up to 30 days from the lease termination date to refund security deposits, if that's going to happen at all (i.e. there's no claim of damages which would result in a hold-back).
It's also the law that a sale of the property is a qualifying event for terminating the lease in 72 hours, if they chose to do that.
Whether Oracle is on the h
Re:Fascism (Score:4, Insightful)
The property owner has no duty to help these people, or to continue offering them housing at low cost rates.
Maybe it's just because I live in a Glorious Republic of the People (i.e. a northeast state), but isn't an agreement to continue offering housing at a stated rate exactly what a signed lease is?
Re: (Score:2)
Why yes... yes it is.
Re: (Score:3)
isn't an agreement to continue offering housing at a stated rate exactly what a signed lease is?
It is quite common for a lease to include a clause detailing how many days notice the landlord must provide the tenant in the event of an eviction involving the sale of the home. 60-day notice is the most common, mostly because this time frame is mandated by the rent control ordinances of many states. Considering how business friendly Texas is, I assume landlords have no problems legally evicting tenants when the property is sold as long as sufficient notice is given.
Re: (Score:2)
isn't an agreement to continue offering housing at a stated rate exactly what a signed lease is?
It is quite common for a lease to include a clause detailing how many days notice the landlord must provide the tenant in the event of an eviction involving the sale of the home. 60-day notice is the most common, mostly because this time frame is mandated by the rent control ordinances of many states. Considering how business friendly Texas is, I assume landlords have no problems legally evicting tenants when the property is sold as long as sufficient notice is given.
A contract that any party can terminate at any time at his sole discretion is not a contract.
Contracts are regulated and limited by laws. In New York City, we have pretty strong laws to protect tenants. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07... [nytimes.com]
In most circumstances, a landlord must renew a New York City residential lease. If they want to end the lease, they have to buy the tenants out. What's a reasonable buyout? A housing lawyer told me: Enough for the tenant to be able to afford to move to a similar apartment els
Re: (Score:2)
A contract that any party can terminate at any time at his sole discretion is not a contract.
Not necessarily. A contract I have with a retailer that allows me to return their product at any time at my sole discretion within 30 day is still a contract.
And in this case, the landlord cannot terminate the lease at any time. They have to provide notice, just like the landlord in this story did. The tenants were given months to find new rental units.
I obviously do not know the details here, and the landlord could certainly have broken the law. But nothing in the story gives any reason to believe laws hav
hear hear, harumph! (Score:3)
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- some asshole Frenchie
Re: (Score:2)
The property owner has a duty to honor the leases and return deposits.
Re: (Score:3)
This sounds well and good, but I see a similar issue around where I live - lots of farmland being converted into subdivisions and shopping centers. What good is the Cloud when there is no food left to eat?
Why is this a problem, you ask? One thing strikes me as interesting - the more farmland we lose, the more our farming becomes concentrated in fewer geographic areas. This means farming is much more susceptible to drought, flooding, etc. This is notably a Bad Thing.
We really should be more involved with
Re: (Score:2)
The US does not lack for farmland, so food security is not a great issue there. The amount of farmland is great enough to support production of large amounts of non-staple luxury foods and feed for livestock. You could wipe out half the farmland in the US and people still wouldn't starve. It's still an issue for some other countries though - the UK, for example, with our much higher population density. Following the need to introduce rationing following WW2 our government invested a lot of resources into mo
Re: (Score:2)
Note I didn't say anything about "how much" farmland - I mentioned the distribution of that farmland and how the distribution affects supply shocks due to geographic affects like weather or disease.
It's like colocation for IT - you don't put all your IT basket in one location, why would you concentrate your food basket?
Re: (Score:2)
What's really needed is more vertical container gardening in cities, but if you use aeroponics you can just do that on roofs so destruction of farmland isn't a problem. This sort of gardening uses the least resources and minimizes transportation.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is not the amount of land for food raising it is getting the people who want to do the work.
Re: (Score:2)
Citation, please. I have a couple hundred bucks burning a hole in my change jar.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Who in their right fucking mind would want to put their business in Oracle's hands?
Remember when they totally botched the nation's new health care system?
Re: (Score:2)
Who in their right fucking mind would want to put their business in Oracle's hands?
Remember when they totally botched the nation's new health care system?
I remember when we went Oracle . A 6 month job that turned out to be a permanent, never ending curse.
Re: (Score:3)
Dude, Oracle botched the State of Oregon's healthcare website (Cover Oregon, and to the tune of $300m)... no idea if they did anything on the federal one.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, under Gov Grey(out) Davis, CA too had Oracle do it's government IT, and it turned out that thee were probes of impropriety into that.
The main story - Larry is one of them limo libs. It's funny how they act this way while maintaining that sanctimonious air w/ the rest of us peasants
Re: (Score:3)
Uh, that story you linked to is about the devs who implemented poorly; any database would have crappy performance. As I recall it wasn't Oracle's consulting branch that set up healthcare.gov but some third party. In all fairness how do you blame Oracle?
Re: (Score:3)
Sure it can. A business is like a golem. It's animated by means of the laws written to establish what it is (notably laws of incorporation, otherwise there would be no business and the boss would be personally liable for everything)
So, write different runes in its head and it will do different things, unfailingly. If it acts like a raging asshole with the power of a million people, it's because you WANT it to act like a raging asshole for some reason, or because someone who wants that wrote the laws.
Persona
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the golem figured out that it could make the rune-writers make the runes say what it wanted them to say, and even get them to pretend the golem was a real boy, even a real boy with super powers, and could send them to the corn field if the golem became angry.
Re: (Score:2)
What money does Oracle stand to make out of doing anything here? none. Will it impress business clients or get them new deals by helping these people? nope
Oracle has no social conscience.
But then again, Oracle is a business, not a person, and a business can't have a social conscience any more than a rock can.
Nor should it. Seriously. If the corporation doesn't do everything it can to increase value for it's shareholders it is arguably in breach of it's duty to said shareholders. That goal is the single definition of "do the right thing" to a corporation. If we have a different definition of "the right thing", and most of us do, then it is our responsibility to petition the government that makes the laws regulating corporations to regulate said corporations such that their behavior might be better aligned with o
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ones who don't belong to a posse anymore, I presume?