If people really don't want to be bothered by cellphones then the airlines could just ban people from using them on the plane and use this as a selling point.
I was on a flight a few years ago when cellphones were still banned. The plane was about to take off on the runway and this dude got a call from his broker and started yapping about stocks and how much to put in this and that and meanwhile they started announcing pointedly over the loudspeaker "please put all cellphones away now, so we can take off".
The guy acted like no one was on the plane with him. People in the seats around him started to snap at him to put his phone away, and a stewardess came over and started pestering him SIR SIR PLEASE PUT THE PHONE AWAY and he wouldn't shut up even as she tugged at his shoulder. This actually kept the plane from taking off for about ten minutes. I was amazed- I would have crumbled under that much social pressure. He obviously didn't give a shit about anyone on the plane and must have figured he wasn't going to see any of us again.
I would have kicked his ass of course, but on the flight out, another guy was on the plane with his girlfriend and was really, really drunk, and loud. They both were but he in particular was really wasted. He wouldn't shut up and they got into a big squabble. That went on for a while too. They were really getting into it to the point where everyone on the plane was looking at each other in amazement, and I actually saw a stewardess on a little phone behind that curtain up front telling someone "we have a problem here..."
Finally the chick sitting in the window seat next to these two decided she'd had enough, and yelled at them to STFU just as the air marshal was coming up the aisle from behind. He ushered all three of them off the plane. Having seen that, I didn't say anything to the guy on his phone.
It's rather snotty to flatly contradict a statement you disagree with, and then claim to have "fixed" it.
I'd mod that -1 Troll if I could... there's a lot of slashdot posters who don't seem to realize how rude it is... and how rudeness often has a legitimate role to play in real discussion.
I don't care if some jackass buys a house he can't afford.
I do care about that. It artificially lifts real estate costs when hundreds of thousands of fake dollars are showered on everyone willing to buy a house. You just couldn't compete with people who were doomed to be foreclosed on, unless you chose to use the fake dollars yourself. And builders went on an orgy of destruction plastering the landscape with the tasteless McMansions demanded by the faux noveau riche with fake money to spare.
What similar things happen with a douchebag Internet company? They can order so many lunches that no one can afford to eat anymore. They can hire so many personal trainers that you can't find one yourself. They can raise the price of strawberries by filling baskets with them. They can cause a run on BBQ sauce. Most importantly, they make douchebag investors less likely to invest. None of these things though, would involve a bank failure (unless they used bank loans instead of venture capital, I guess). So the analogy can be made, but as you point out, it's silly.
The likelihood is that Tubes was simply far too blatant with his shady deals. So blatant that even the masses began to notice.
Well, he had a large energy services company (Veco) lift his house and insert a new first floor under it. (How many large energy services companies have come by to lift MY house and insert a new floor? I can't think of a single one, ever.)
Then then there was the company's CEO pleading guilty to a bribery scheme with Alaska politicians.
My boss had a Windows CE car. It would occasionally turn on at 3 AM to do a bunch of diagnostics. So he would get in the car the next day to drive to work and surprise surprise the battery is almost dead from showing a blue screen all night.
my chemistry professor was trying to stick thallium atoms to a cyclopentadiene molecules for some odd reason.
Usually when they stick goofy metals on organic compounds they intend for the metal to be replaced with some organic moiety. The metal guides the reaction so that the organic replacement attaches to the right carbon atom. Thallium cyclopentadiene is a starting material for prostaglandin synthesis. You add methoxymethyl chloride to it, and the methoxymethyl group replaces the thallium and you get methoxymethylcyclopentadiene plus thallium chloride.
Benzoxymethylchloride works too if you want to start with benzoxymethylcyclopentadiene.
At question is more - can Apple be sued by shareholders for failing to reveal information?
Not if they can't reveal that information legally without consent of Steve Jobs himself, who not only has a statutory right as a private citizen to protect that information, but also has an obvious conflict of interest as a corporate officer that limits the actions he can make on behalf of his company. He cannot influence Apple's decisions in this matter even if he is the CEO- he has to defer to someone else there. Otherwise he actually puts the company in legal jeopardy. Who knows- he might release the information under protest, quit, and then sue, claiming he was illegally coerced.
The NYT was arguing that Steve is in fact NOT free to keep his personal secrets, that his health is a matter of material concern to the investors in his company, and he is therefore obliged to tell them whatever they want to know.
What the NYT overlooks is that Steve Jobs is not always the same person in the eyes of the law. Steve Jobs #1 the private citizen has a distinct set of rights and obligations than does Steve Jobs #2, the corporate officer, whom is beholden to Apple, with a duty to protect its shareholders. Steve Jobs #2 has an obligation to disclose that information but only if it can be done legally, i.e. with the consent of Steve Jobs #1. Steve Jobs #2 cannot simply order Steve Jobs #1 to release his private health information. Steve Jobs #1 has a right to keep this information confidential no matter what Steve Jobs #2 says.
Now this may be a conflict of interest, but for Steve Jobs #2, who should defer all decisions in this matter to others at Apple- in which case Steve Jobs #1 is clearly free to look out for #1.
If the law says that you must disclose all relevant information to the performance of the company, and Jobs's health has a drastic effect on his performance, one could make the legal case that Jobs must therefore - according to the law - disclose his health.
Even if one makes that case, it would be unlikely to prevail. Apple could be forced to disclose drastically diminished performance, if anything, from the CEO. Not his health. And it wouldn't follow that Apple's fiduciary obligations to investors imply that the CEO is under any personal legal obligation to release his health records.
He doesn't have to; no law forces his hand. But he may still suffer consequences.
Gizmodo's strong rebuttal says that everyone has the right to keep medical records confidential.
While this may be true, it does not naturally follow that exercising a right should have no negative consequences, such as a fall in the price of a security. A "right" in this sense pertains to the force of law, not a public relations disaster within the investment community.
I mean, Steve is free to keep his personal secrets, and I'm free not to buy stock in his company. His business is his business, but my business is my business too, and if I'm investing in his company, our businesses overlap. How could this possibly be redressed? What possible legal remedy could compel me to invest in companies without (rather stupidly) taking possibly unhealthy CEOs into account? Tax breaks?
People don't understand what a right is. It doesn't mean nothing bad is legally allowed to happen if you make a choice you are entitled to make. A right circumscribes the limits of legislation. And no law is forcing Steve Jobs to expose his medical history, nor does any corporation or individual have the power to legally force him to release this information. Apple cannot cite stock price losses as damages. They are also not required to present his health information to any outside entity, in accordance with his legal rights to protect that information. But I don't see where they are. He's reacting to negative articles and political developments both inside and outside his company, and his legal rights have nothing to do with these things.
He does have an informal "right" to be sick without people reacting to his secrecy about it. But this is not a right in a legal sense, because violating it is not a criminal act any more than just being a jerk.
Yes but if we were driving our cars around on Pluto, even a tiny temperature gradient could be made to do far more useful work than the same difference in temperature on Earth. This planet is a little too warm for these gizmos and so you see signs of desperation such as thallium.
We need to build a giant ring in space that orbits the sun and keeps the Earth in perpetual shadow. That would allow a wider selection of designs for engineers trying to use exhaust heat to turn wheels. Of course, that's only if you think that the American people deserve a break with these high gas prices.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced he will not enforce any marijuana laws broken by officials in the Bush administration, citing executive privilege.
You can really get a sense of the staleness and unpopularity of marijuana laws- as opposed to laws dealing with methamphetamine and meth labs for example- by the reactions you see if you scroll down. Google drives past a pot farm taking pictures and everyone starts screaming at them about snitching.
There was a story on Digg about 200 pounds of marijuana that went to the wrong address, and the recipient immediately called the police. Everyone there was incredulous. Someone remarked that the only phone call they'd make would be to Pizza Hut.
If this trend keeps up it will be only a matter of time before restaurants start handing you a joint with your menu.
Also the "Flag" feature exists so you can flag blogs for offensive/spam content but I am not sure if that makes a difference.
Some idiot recently created a blogger account (with intentions to make free money from the sponsored links, I guess) and for content he joined a subscription-only mailing list for epilepsy and set it up to autopost from there. Now you search for anyone's name who's ever written to that list in the past few months and you see bits of their personal medical information sprayed all over the Google results. Lots of people have been flagging the blog and trying to contact someone at Blogspot or Google but it's like talking to a wall; in the meantime everyone is leaving that list in a hurry.
To be charitable, I suspect blogs get flagged left and right all the time, so the flags that they'd want to find are just lost in all the bullshit. Flagging is a low-grade source of this type of information. All it takes to flag a blog is one click.
Its Schwarzchild radius would be a few cm. Although it would exert a force of 1 g if you were one Earth radius away (6000 km) but if we manage to make an Earth-weight black hole it will be a triumph of miniaturization. We will have succeeded in finally making a black hole small enough to fit in your pocket.
You can scatter those things outside; they're just starch. Something will eat them. Maybe birds? If I don't have too many to deal with I just flush them.
Don't do any of that if they're styrofoam. Those have to be thrown out or reused. Although if you have even a little acetone you can have fun with the styrofoam ones. They vanish right into it, way better than the starch ones do in water. One prank people used to pull in the labs where I went to college (I only heard about this) was to hand the new guy a styrofoam cup and tell him to go downstairs and get some acetone.
Slashdot Mirror
If people really don't want to be bothered by cellphones then the airlines could just ban people from using them on the plane and use this as a selling point.
I was on a flight a few years ago when cellphones were still banned. The plane was about to take off on the runway and this dude got a call from his broker and started yapping about stocks and how much to put in this and that and meanwhile they started announcing pointedly over the loudspeaker "please put all cellphones away now, so we can take off".
The guy acted like no one was on the plane with him. People in the seats around him started to snap at him to put his phone away, and a stewardess came over and started pestering him SIR SIR PLEASE PUT THE PHONE AWAY and he wouldn't shut up even as she tugged at his shoulder. This actually kept the plane from taking off for about ten minutes. I was amazed- I would have crumbled under that much social pressure. He obviously didn't give a shit about anyone on the plane and must have figured he wasn't going to see any of us again.
I would have kicked his ass of course, but on the flight out, another guy was on the plane with his girlfriend and was really, really drunk, and loud. They both were but he in particular was really wasted. He wouldn't shut up and they got into a big squabble. That went on for a while too. They were really getting into it to the point where everyone on the plane was looking at each other in amazement, and I actually saw a stewardess on a little phone behind that curtain up front telling someone "we have a problem here..."
Finally the chick sitting in the window seat next to these two decided she'd had enough, and yelled at them to STFU just as the air marshal was coming up the aisle from behind. He ushered all three of them off the plane. Having seen that, I didn't say anything to the guy on his phone.
And call it "A cure for marijuana".
Yeah, as if you're going to even bother entering stuff into this thing once you're high.
"Note- must buy more chips"
There, fixed that for you.
I don't care if some jackass buys a house he can't afford.
I do care about that. It artificially lifts real estate costs when hundreds of thousands of fake dollars are showered on everyone willing to buy a house. You just couldn't compete with people who were doomed to be foreclosed on, unless you chose to use the fake dollars yourself. And builders went on an orgy of destruction plastering the landscape with the tasteless McMansions demanded by the faux noveau riche with fake money to spare.
What similar things happen with a douchebag Internet company? They can order so many lunches that no one can afford to eat anymore. They can hire so many personal trainers that you can't find one yourself. They can raise the price of strawberries by filling baskets with them. They can cause a run on BBQ sauce. Most importantly, they make douchebag investors less likely to invest. None of these things though, would involve a bank failure (unless they used bank loans instead of venture capital, I guess). So the analogy can be made, but as you point out, it's silly.
The likelihood is that Tubes was simply far too blatant with his shady deals. So blatant that even the masses began to notice.
Well, he had a large energy services company (Veco) lift his house and insert a new first floor under it. (How many large energy services companies have come by to lift MY house and insert a new floor? I can't think of a single one, ever.)
Then then there was the company's CEO pleading guilty to a bribery scheme with Alaska politicians.
My boss had a Windows CE car. It would occasionally turn on at 3 AM to do a bunch of diagnostics. So he would get in the car the next day to drive to work and surprise surprise the battery is almost dead from showing a blue screen all night.
I was thinking windshield wipers... is the rest of the car really necessary?
my chemistry professor was trying to stick thallium atoms to a cyclopentadiene molecules for some odd reason.
Usually when they stick goofy metals on organic compounds they intend for the metal to be replaced with some organic moiety. The metal guides the reaction so that the organic replacement attaches to the right carbon atom. Thallium cyclopentadiene is a starting material for prostaglandin synthesis. You add methoxymethyl chloride to it, and the methoxymethyl group replaces the thallium and you get methoxymethylcyclopentadiene plus thallium chloride.
Benzoxymethylchloride works too if you want to start with benzoxymethylcyclopentadiene.
At question is more - can Apple be sued by shareholders for failing to reveal information?
Not if they can't reveal that information legally without consent of Steve Jobs himself, who not only has a statutory right as a private citizen to protect that information, but also has an obvious conflict of interest as a corporate officer that limits the actions he can make on behalf of his company. He cannot influence Apple's decisions in this matter even if he is the CEO- he has to defer to someone else there. Otherwise he actually puts the company in legal jeopardy. Who knows- he might release the information under protest, quit, and then sue, claiming he was illegally coerced.
The NYT was arguing that Steve is in fact NOT free to keep his personal secrets, that his health is a matter of material concern to the investors in his company, and he is therefore obliged to tell them whatever they want to know.
What the NYT overlooks is that Steve Jobs is not always the same person in the eyes of the law. Steve Jobs #1 the private citizen has a distinct set of rights and obligations than does Steve Jobs #2, the corporate officer, whom is beholden to Apple, with a duty to protect its shareholders. Steve Jobs #2 has an obligation to disclose that information but only if it can be done legally, i.e. with the consent of Steve Jobs #1. Steve Jobs #2 cannot simply order Steve Jobs #1 to release his private health information. Steve Jobs #1 has a right to keep this information confidential no matter what Steve Jobs #2 says.
Now this may be a conflict of interest, but for Steve Jobs #2, who should defer all decisions in this matter to others at Apple- in which case Steve Jobs #1 is clearly free to look out for #1.
If the law says that you must disclose all relevant information to the performance of the company, and Jobs's health has a drastic effect on his performance, one could make the legal case that Jobs must therefore - according to the law - disclose his health.
Even if one makes that case, it would be unlikely to prevail. Apple could be forced to disclose drastically diminished performance, if anything, from the CEO. Not his health. And it wouldn't follow that Apple's fiduciary obligations to investors imply that the CEO is under any personal legal obligation to release his health records.
He doesn't have to; no law forces his hand. But he may still suffer consequences.
Gizmodo's strong rebuttal says that everyone has the right to keep medical records confidential.
While this may be true, it does not naturally follow that exercising a right should have no negative consequences, such as a fall in the price of a security. A "right" in this sense pertains to the force of law, not a public relations disaster within the investment community.
I mean, Steve is free to keep his personal secrets, and I'm free not to buy stock in his company. His business is his business, but my business is my business too, and if I'm investing in his company, our businesses overlap. How could this possibly be redressed? What possible legal remedy could compel me to invest in companies without (rather stupidly) taking possibly unhealthy CEOs into account? Tax breaks?
People don't understand what a right is. It doesn't mean nothing bad is legally allowed to happen if you make a choice you are entitled to make. A right circumscribes the limits of legislation. And no law is forcing Steve Jobs to expose his medical history, nor does any corporation or individual have the power to legally force him to release this information. Apple cannot cite stock price losses as damages. They are also not required to present his health information to any outside entity, in accordance with his legal rights to protect that information. But I don't see where they are. He's reacting to negative articles and political developments both inside and outside his company, and his legal rights have nothing to do with these things.
He does have an informal "right" to be sick without people reacting to his secrecy about it. But this is not a right in a legal sense, because violating it is not a criminal act any more than just being a jerk.
Yes but if we were driving our cars around on Pluto, even a tiny temperature gradient could be made to do far more useful work than the same difference in temperature on Earth. This planet is a little too warm for these gizmos and so you see signs of desperation such as thallium.
We need to build a giant ring in space that orbits the sun and keeps the Earth in perpetual shadow. That would allow a wider selection of designs for engineers trying to use exhaust heat to turn wheels. Of course, that's only if you think that the American people deserve a break with these high gas prices.
Thallium accumulates in your testicles. I remember hearing stories about labs handling thallium where only women were allowed.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced he will not enforce any marijuana laws broken by officials in the Bush administration, citing executive privilege.
You can really get a sense of the staleness and unpopularity of marijuana laws- as opposed to laws dealing with methamphetamine and meth labs for example- by the reactions you see if you scroll down. Google drives past a pot farm taking pictures and everyone starts screaming at them about snitching.
There was a story on Digg about 200 pounds of marijuana that went to the wrong address, and the recipient immediately called the police. Everyone there was incredulous. Someone remarked that the only phone call they'd make would be to Pizza Hut.
If this trend keeps up it will be only a matter of time before restaurants start handing you a joint with your menu.
Where is the Google link then?
I need "directions to this location".
And how many times have YOU been in space? This guy has BEEN there. He knows the facts on the ground.
Also the "Flag" feature exists so you can flag blogs for offensive/spam content but I am not sure if that makes a difference.
Some idiot recently created a blogger account (with intentions to make free money from the sponsored links, I guess) and for content he joined a subscription-only mailing list for epilepsy and set it up to autopost from there. Now you search for anyone's name who's ever written to that list in the past few months and you see bits of their personal medical information sprayed all over the Google results. Lots of people have been flagging the blog and trying to contact someone at Blogspot or Google but it's like talking to a wall; in the meantime everyone is leaving that list in a hurry.
To be charitable, I suspect blogs get flagged left and right all the time, so the flags that they'd want to find are just lost in all the bullshit. Flagging is a low-grade source of this type of information. All it takes to flag a blog is one click.
Its Schwarzchild radius would be a few cm. Although it would exert a force of 1 g if you were one Earth radius away (6000 km) but if we manage to make an Earth-weight black hole it will be a triumph of miniaturization. We will have succeeded in finally making a black hole small enough to fit in your pocket.
I used to work for Agilent and I can believe that. I suspect they probably bought more of those ramps than they will ever know what to do with.
You can scatter those things outside; they're just starch. Something will eat them. Maybe birds? If I don't have too many to deal with I just flush them.
Don't do any of that if they're styrofoam. Those have to be thrown out or reused. Although if you have even a little acetone you can have fun with the styrofoam ones. They vanish right into it, way better than the starch ones do in water. One prank people used to pull in the labs where I went to college (I only heard about this) was to hand the new guy a styrofoam cup and tell him to go downstairs and get some acetone.
Its good to see you're not getting all your news from this site anymore.
Well it would effectively put an end to the vast majority of our problems, replacing them with a single massive problem.
When I was growing up, we had to get by on a few millikelvins, and we were grateful for every last one of them!