"Plus really, considering that Apple has plans to appoint a new CEO if Jobs dies, they have done all they need to for their shareholders."
Today's Wall Street Journal made the argument that it is in fact more important to hang onto the guy that's been running the shop in Jobs' absence. Tim Cook has now run Apple twice in Jobs' stead, and has impressed both times. Jobs will inevitably retire (or die) sooner rather than later, and there seems to be no doubt that they want to keep the captain's chair for Cook. While he was never given the "interim CEO" title, the Journal notes that he's pretty much done the CEO job this past year, including negotiations with AT&T on iPhone issues. He's already on Nike's board, and again, according to the same story, Motorola and Dell both tried to snatch him a year ago. Right now, he's making a pittance compared to Jobs, and under his watch, Apple's stock has gone up 60% since January. I agree with the Journal here, and I think Apple would be wise to cough up a lot of cash to keep this guy. Pretty much everyone agrees the guy is indispensable.
So what happens then when these untethered balloons are floating up into the jet stream and a Airbus or 747 doesn't pick it up on radar and the damn thing floats right into the jet intake, causing an explosion and bringing down 400 souls to their death?
More than likely? Thousands of customers below will go "Hey, who turned off the f*ckin' Internet?"
"Uhhh.. Most of the illegal stuff was setup by Bush appointed neo-cons who were in government before Nixon got caught being a crook."
If you think electronic surveillance of the population is the result of "Bush's Neo-Cons", or even a recent phenomena, you really need to pick up some history books. Electronic surveillance has been around since there have been electronics. The government has always the ability to listen in on phone conversations, and was given broad authority and easy access to do so fairly early, by our own court system.
And Nixon? He was an amateur compared to some of his predecessors. When FDR ordered J. Edgar Hoover to tap the phones of a cabinet member he suspected was leaking to the press, Hoover refused. When FDR said "But I'm ordering you to!", Hoover replied "No sir, I won't do it. I'll tap the other fellow's phone". FDR simply laughed and said "Mr. Hoover, I'll never tell you your business again".
Government surveillance of electronic communications didn't start in the last eight years... it started as soon as electronic communication did.
I thought we were for copyright reform here... i.e. a return to reasonable copyright periods. When did we decide that we wanted to completely abolish copyright? What about the GNU copyrights? Do we start ignoring them too?
If you just want to completely trash the system and ignore all copyrights, then sorry, I didn't sign up for that revolution.
That's one of the silliest terms I've ever heard. Comparing light at night to smog or dirty water is disingenuous. There are no health hazards to nighttime light. Its simply a marketing term for people that are angry that they have to travel a little bit to get a good view of the stars. Well, too bad. That's the price you pay for civilization. Cities and suburbs are lighted at night for good reasons. Properly used, night lighting deters crime, improves safety, and allows us to use more of the day for productive purposes. Lighting allowed us to do work at night that we formerly couldn't do.
I don't know about you, but I'll take all of those advantages over living in the dark just so I can get an unobstructed view of the stars. And I say that as someone that used to enjoy amateur astronomy quite a bit (getting a new telescope will have to wait until the toddler gets older).
When I was using a telescope, I simply accepted that I was going to have to drive 20 minutes if I wanted a fantastic view of the stars... I even had my favorite spots picked out. Now if you choose to live in a place like New York City, then use your head... you're going to have to accept that you are choosing to live in a heavily lighted environment. It's a tradeoff. Want beautiful, naked-eye views of the night sky? Move to Montana or some remote desert town. Want better economic opportunities and the benefits of a city? Plan your sky-viewing trips out of the city, then.
"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands." - Judge Learned Hand
You mean Gov. Piyush Amrit Jindal? I find it interesting that the man tries so hard to distance himself from his heritage but still retains his Indian name as his legal name.
So what's the criticism here? That's he's too Western or that he's not Western enough? So his legal name is the same as the one he was born with. Wow. How unusual. I mean, nobody does that, right?
Who are these 5,013 douchebags still buying Hummers? =P
You're making a joke, but many people would take that question seriously, as if it's some crime. People should be able to drive whatever they damn well please, if they can meet the expenses.
I've never liked the Hummer personally, and think it's a bit ridiculous. But I also think the hatred for it is as silly and vapid as the adoration for the Prius. Both share one overwhelming trait; their greatest value in the eyes of those that drive them is that of being a status symbol, literally a way to telling other drivers "I'm better than you".
So ironically, the eco-weenies that criticize Hummer drivers have much more in common with them than they'd ever like to admit.
I don't think a person from the 1930s would be disappointed by 2009.
No, but a person from the 50's would. And maybe even the 40's. Look at the 39-40 World's Fair. Much of it actually came true in function... interstate highways, every home with a washer and dryer, etc... but humans are kind of funny when it comes to wanting things. Once we get them, we're bored. "Been there, done that" is human nature. But even more than that, we reached the future, and even though we got much of what was predicted, we didn't get it in nearly the kind of beautiful forms we imagined. Our buildings don't look majestic like the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building. Now they're either plain, steel and glass boxes, or twisted grotesques like Frank Gehry's works.
We reached the future, and it was ugly and soulless and boring.
And the people of the 50's? Where are our moon bases? Where are our ships patrolling Saturn? The answer is, we got to the moon, and then said "been there, done that".
Humanity has a tendency to imagine either wonderful, Utopian futures, or horrible, hellish futures. And usually, neither are correct. We live somewhere in the boring middle, because that's what reality is.
Taxes, health care, and education are socialist ideals.
No, those things are not inherently socialist. They can be applied in a socialist manner, but taxes, medical care, and education were around long before Karl Marx. Taxes are used in every economic system in some form. So is health care. So is education. It's how you implement those things.
You could possibly make an argument that American public schools are used in a semi-socialist model... and I wouldn't argue with you too much about that. But a government service implemented for "the general welfare", as the Constitution puts it, isn't socialist by definition. See the postal service.
"NASA, in those days, was something of a heroic world where the best and brightest grouped to find ways to get men to the moon and return them safely to Earth."
That's because they were doing something we've never done before. Once we went to the moon, Americans (and humanity in general) were bored with the whole thing... been there, done that. During the Apollo 13 mission, networks cut over to Batman. Higher ratings, you know. Not even going to Mars will have the excitement that the Apollo program first had. Once you've been through that door, the rest of the doors look the same. You wont see the same kind of excitement that Apollo had until the first teleportation machine is built.
"But now, NASA is just a sad shadow of what it used to be. The agency is hamstrung by lack of funding"
NASA is a shadow of what it was because it has matured into a useful, mature agency; one that services satellites with reusable craft, and explores extra-terrestrial bodies via robots. Boring, but very much useful. Mature is neccessary, but mature isn't exciting.
"educational standards have dropped to such an extent that even if we were to increase funding to reasonable levels, that we'd need to bring in foreign contractors just to make up the intelligence gap."
This is mostly hype, and mostly wrong. As an old rock star said, the good 'ole days weren't always good. Schools did used to be more effective, but only because curriculums had a more practical focus (practical maths, job skills, trade skills). On paper, requirements have only gone up, unreasonably so in many cases. We're sending our kids to school earlier, graduating them later, and keeping them in classrooms more hours per day and more weeks per year. Now we're talking about mandating pre-K for all kids. Educational standards aren't the problem, because we're fast coming to a point where we'll put kids in schools as soon as they're physically able. And it's all foolishness.
Corporations are simply large businesses, structured that way for better profit and efficiency. While they can be powerful, they're no more an "enemy of democracy" than other large entities, including our own elected government. Furthermore, I'd like to see you live without corporate products for awhile. Come back and tell me what life is like for you when you can no longer buy cars from Toyota, computers from Apple, burgers from McDonalds, fly on planes from Boeing, or take antibiotics from Merck. You get back to us on what it was like to try and build your own cars, grow all your own food, and make your own clothing.
"The only solution is to take all private money out of the election process."
Bull. We need more private money in elections. We should be able to give whatever amount we damn well please to candidates and causes as long as a donor's list is publicly available. This is one thing I absolutely hated about John McCain, this stupid naive notion that government limitations on campaigns would make campaigns cleaner. All he and Feingold did was muck up the works and insure that new dodges and work-arounds would be created.
When you limit what people can give in a campaign, you limit their voice, because everything in a campaign... travel, TV commercials, everything costs money. What you're arguing for is government enforced limits of political speech. Screw that. McCain and Feingold were wrong about this, and so are you.
Seems the BBC revealed the "secret" location long before Biden. Yet another Fox news lets make a story out of nothing event.
You indicate that this is some kind of conspiracy from Fox News, and yet all of the traditional networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, as well as major papers like the Washington Post and Boston Globe are reporting the same thing.
"You are a liar. Bush's "re-election" (his first actual election) was won primarily because they snuck so many anti-equality laws on the ballots. The bigoted wingnuts came out of the woodwork and voted for Bush while they were there."
That wasn't hard, considering around 70 percent of Americans agree with him on that issue.One of the most liberal states in the country just eliminated the right for homosexuals to marry. Barrack Obama doesn't support homosexuals marrying either. Do you give him a pass for that? Or is he a wingnut too?
"Yes, I am absolutely certain that Obama, in 100 days, managed to triple the deficit, compared to 8 years of Bush spending like a drunken frat boy.
I totally believe that, because, apparently, I am an idiot."
I don't think you're an idiot as much as you're politically fanatical as any of the people you attack, just less honest about it. I think you're actually starting to believe that "reality has a liberal bias" line you love so much.
"Because I have a soul, and the idea of shoving flashlights up little kid's asses [salon.com] in front of the kid's mother is abhorrent to me."
Good for you (though the soul thing is going to cost you some Karma on Slashdot). You seem to be making the mistake of thinking your ideological foes somehow support that, though. And while doing that to an innocent child is shocking, its still a straw man in the context that you used it: enemy combatants do not have the same Geneva Convention protections that a uniformed army does, and for good reasons.
"Liar"
Why don't you just call them "Hitler!" while you're at it? If you keep throwing "liar" around so often, it's going to lose its punch.
"and, oh yeah, has been confirmed to write his own speeches."
Obama doesn't write all, or even most of his own speeches, nor is he the only President that's done so. Reagan wrote some of his own, especially before he was elected, and so did Carter and Nixon and Ike. Obama isn't by any means extraordinary in this regard.
Didn't the people that did vote for demotion do it in a way that locked out a majority of the voters? I seem to recall that the vote was set up in a rather shady way, when many of the participants weren't present, basically guaranteeing the result they hoped for, and when the rest of the membership found out, they hit the roof.
"Well I think you chose a poor example there in Apple... Steve Jobs is not the best example for someone arguing CEO's shouldn't be young. You do realize he was 21 when starting Apple? Heck... some of the most successful CEO's of our time were kids when they conquered their respective worlds. Microsoft, Google, Apple."
I think you've proven our point, rather than refuted it. Jobs was a visionary kid, but not experienced. Recall that he was fired from Apple the first time because his leadership and management skills at the time were absolutely nill. The Mac was a commercial failure its first few years, and that, combined with the crappy way Jobs was handling his responsibilities, got him fired.
It was only after he went out on his own, and failed with his own money at NeXT did Steve Jobs become the Uber-CEO that he is today, and he got to that point because of bitter experience. When he ran NeXT, reality kicked him in the nuts... hard. He learned about the real world. He learned why you value real business principles. He learned that you can't burn money down a hole and expect to survive.
So, in the end, Steve Jobs later became a great CEO because of... there's that word again... experience. There's no substitute for it, and you have to earn it. No one, no matter how talented, is born with it. That's why you don't stick a talented youngster in the captain's chair and go "OK, it's all yours". Lives are depending on the competence of the commanding officer, let alone mission success.
Yeah...I've started wondering, am I not a trekkie any more? I didn't really watch the last TV series, I can't even tell you what it was called. I went to see the movie this past weekend and was underwhelmed. Spock was great but on the whole, there was nothing particularly interesting about it. A lot of kids running the Enterprise? Yawn. Time travel? So overdone, and not particularly well done this time. There were none of the interesting, weird, thought-provoking ideas that I'm used to seeing from the first two series. Maybe I'm just old and grumpy, but I felt the movie was deliberately dumbed down to try and get greater mass appeal.
You raise a great point, and I think we're in the same boat. I think JJ Abrams just managed to put a stake in whatever loyalty I had to the franchise. Rick Berman has been screwing it up for years with his silly time travel stories, so much that he's really mucked the franchise to death. And what does Abrams do? A time travel story.
I didn't even watch Enterprise on TV. That was just too much retconning. Maybe Abrams did me a favor by ensuring that I'd completely lose interest now.
Why not? Alexander was King at age 20, and that was real reality, not some sci-fi movie.
Oh good Lord. Alexander was a King. He could do whatever he wanted. He was an absolute ruler. The Federation is supposedly a democratic society, with a military that has a chain of command, where you have to move up in the ranks.
Stop trying to defend the cadet-to-captain malarky from the movie. Whatever else you can say about the flick, promoting a boy over many, many more qualified senior officers in Starfleet is a plot hole too big to overlook. That's just too much suspension of disbelief.
Slashdot Mirror
"Plus really, considering that Apple has plans to appoint a new CEO if Jobs dies, they have done all they need to for their shareholders."
Today's Wall Street Journal made the argument that it is in fact more important to hang onto the guy that's been running the shop in Jobs' absence. Tim Cook has now run Apple twice in Jobs' stead, and has impressed both times. Jobs will inevitably retire (or die) sooner rather than later, and there seems to be no doubt that they want to keep the captain's chair for Cook. While he was never given the "interim CEO" title, the Journal notes that he's pretty much done the CEO job this past year, including negotiations with AT&T on iPhone issues. He's already on Nike's board, and again, according to the same story, Motorola and Dell both tried to snatch him a year ago. Right now, he's making a pittance compared to Jobs, and under his watch, Apple's stock has gone up 60% since January. I agree with the Journal here, and I think Apple would be wise to cough up a lot of cash to keep this guy. Pretty much everyone agrees the guy is indispensable.
WSJ: Stand-In shines at Apple
...the worst cities are those with no jobs. The best cities are the ones with jobs. If you want to pay your bills, you go where the jobs are.
So what happens then when these untethered balloons are floating up into the jet stream and a Airbus or 747 doesn't pick it up on radar and the damn thing floats right into the jet intake, causing an explosion and bringing down 400 souls to their death?
More than likely? Thousands of customers below will go "Hey, who turned off the f*ckin' Internet?"
"The President is apparently not completely "down with" executive powers, since he has voluntarily given up a lot of power already."
Name one power President Obama has "willingly given up".
"Uhhh.. Most of the illegal stuff was setup by Bush appointed neo-cons who were in government before Nixon got caught being a crook."
If you think electronic surveillance of the population is the result of "Bush's Neo-Cons", or even a recent phenomena, you really need to pick up some history books. Electronic surveillance has been around since there have been electronics. The government has always the ability to listen in on phone conversations, and was given broad authority and easy access to do so fairly early, by our own court system.
And Nixon? He was an amateur compared to some of his predecessors. When FDR ordered J. Edgar Hoover to tap the phones of a cabinet member he suspected was leaking to the press, Hoover refused. When FDR said "But I'm ordering you to!", Hoover replied "No sir, I won't do it. I'll tap the other fellow's phone". FDR simply laughed and said "Mr. Hoover, I'll never tell you your business again".
Government surveillance of electronic communications didn't start in the last eight years... it started as soon as electronic communication did.
Conte, what's the story on that sig?
I thought we were for copyright reform here... i.e. a return to reasonable copyright periods. When did we decide that we wanted to completely abolish copyright? What about the GNU copyrights? Do we start ignoring them too?
If you just want to completely trash the system and ignore all copyrights, then sorry, I didn't sign up for that revolution.
That's one of the silliest terms I've ever heard. Comparing light at night to smog or dirty water is disingenuous. There are no health hazards to nighttime light. Its simply a marketing term for people that are angry that they have to travel a little bit to get a good view of the stars. Well, too bad. That's the price you pay for civilization. Cities and suburbs are lighted at night for good reasons. Properly used, night lighting deters crime, improves safety, and allows us to use more of the day for productive purposes. Lighting allowed us to do work at night that we formerly couldn't do.
I don't know about you, but I'll take all of those advantages over living in the dark just so I can get an unobstructed view of the stars. And I say that as someone that used to enjoy amateur astronomy quite a bit (getting a new telescope will have to wait until the toddler gets older).
When I was using a telescope, I simply accepted that I was going to have to drive 20 minutes if I wanted a fantastic view of the stars... I even had my favorite spots picked out. Now if you choose to live in a place like New York City, then use your head... you're going to have to accept that you are choosing to live in a heavily lighted environment. It's a tradeoff. Want beautiful, naked-eye views of the night sky? Move to Montana or some remote desert town. Want better economic opportunities and the benefits of a city? Plan your sky-viewing trips out of the city, then.
A highly regarded judge agrees with you...
"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as
possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the
treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.
Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister
in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone
does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any
public duty to pay more than the law demands." - Judge Learned Hand
You mean Gov. Piyush Amrit Jindal? I find it interesting that the man tries so hard to distance himself from his heritage but still retains his Indian name as his legal name.
So what's the criticism here? That's he's too Western or that he's not Western enough? So his legal name is the same as the one he was born with. Wow. How unusual. I mean, nobody does that, right?
Who are these 5,013 douchebags still buying Hummers? =P
You're making a joke, but many people would take that question seriously, as if it's some crime. People should be able to drive whatever they damn well please, if they can meet the expenses.
I've never liked the Hummer personally, and think it's a bit ridiculous. But I also think the hatred for it is as silly and vapid as the adoration for the Prius. Both share one overwhelming trait; their greatest value in the eyes of those that drive them is that of being a status symbol, literally a way to telling other drivers "I'm better than you".
So ironically, the eco-weenies that criticize Hummer drivers have much more in common with them than they'd ever like to admit.
I don't think a person from the 1930s would be disappointed by 2009.
No, but a person from the 50's would. And maybe even the 40's. Look at the 39-40 World's Fair. Much of it actually came true in function... interstate highways, every home with a washer and dryer, etc... but humans are kind of funny when it comes to wanting things. Once we get them, we're bored. "Been there, done that" is human nature. But even more than that, we reached the future, and even though we got much of what was predicted, we didn't get it in nearly the kind of beautiful forms we imagined. Our buildings don't look majestic like the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building. Now they're either plain, steel and glass boxes, or twisted grotesques like Frank Gehry's works.
We reached the future, and it was ugly and soulless and boring.
And the people of the 50's? Where are our moon bases? Where are our ships patrolling Saturn? The answer is, we got to the moon, and then said "been there, done that".
Humanity has a tendency to imagine either wonderful, Utopian futures, or horrible, hellish futures. And usually, neither are correct. We live somewhere in the boring middle, because that's what reality is.
... how many of these did he steal from Woz?
Taxes, health care, and education are socialist ideals.
No, those things are not inherently socialist. They can be applied in a socialist manner, but taxes, medical care, and education were around long before Karl Marx. Taxes are used in every economic system in some form. So is health care. So is education. It's how you implement those things.
You could possibly make an argument that American public schools are used in a semi-socialist model... and I wouldn't argue with you too much about that. But a government service implemented for "the general welfare", as the Constitution puts it, isn't socialist by definition. See the postal service.
You do realize that in the War on Terror it isn't necessary to charge people with crimes, don't you?
We're not at war anymore. We're now in 'Overseas Contingency Operations.'
"NASA, in those days, was something of a heroic world where the best and brightest grouped to find ways to get men to the moon and return them safely to Earth."
That's because they were doing something we've never done before. Once we went to the moon, Americans (and humanity in general) were bored with the whole thing... been there, done that. During the Apollo 13 mission, networks cut over to Batman. Higher ratings, you know. Not even going to Mars will have the excitement that the Apollo program first had. Once you've been through that door, the rest of the doors look the same. You wont see the same kind of excitement that Apollo had until the first teleportation machine is built.
"But now, NASA is just a sad shadow of what it used to be. The agency is hamstrung by lack of funding"
NASA is a shadow of what it was because it has matured into a useful, mature agency; one that services satellites with reusable craft, and explores extra-terrestrial bodies via robots. Boring, but very much useful. Mature is neccessary, but mature isn't exciting.
"educational standards have dropped to such an extent that even if we were to increase funding to reasonable levels, that we'd need to bring in foreign contractors just to make up the intelligence gap."
This is mostly hype, and mostly wrong. As an old rock star said, the good 'ole days weren't always good. Schools did used to be more effective, but only because curriculums had a more practical focus (practical maths, job skills, trade skills). On paper, requirements have only gone up, unreasonably so in many cases. We're sending our kids to school earlier, graduating them later, and keeping them in classrooms more hours per day and more weeks per year. Now we're talking about mandating pre-K for all kids. Educational standards aren't the problem, because we're fast coming to a point where we'll put kids in schools as soon as they're physically able. And it's all foolishness.
"Corporations are the enemy of Democracy"
Corporations are simply large businesses, structured that way for better profit and efficiency. While they can be powerful, they're no more an "enemy of democracy" than other large entities, including our own elected government. Furthermore, I'd like to see you live without corporate products for awhile. Come back and tell me what life is like for you when you can no longer buy cars from Toyota, computers from Apple, burgers from McDonalds, fly on planes from Boeing, or take antibiotics from Merck. You get back to us on what it was like to try and build your own cars, grow all your own food, and make your own clothing.
"The only solution is to take all private money out of the election process."
Bull. We need more private money in elections. We should be able to give whatever amount we damn well please to candidates and causes as long as a donor's list is publicly available. This is one thing I absolutely hated about John McCain, this stupid naive notion that government limitations on campaigns would make campaigns cleaner. All he and Feingold did was muck up the works and insure that new dodges and work-arounds would be created.
When you limit what people can give in a campaign, you limit their voice, because everything in a campaign... travel, TV commercials, everything costs money. What you're arguing for is government enforced limits of political speech. Screw that. McCain and Feingold were wrong about this, and so are you.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2559617.stm
Seems the BBC revealed the "secret" location long before Biden. Yet another Fox news lets make a story out of nothing event.
You indicate that this is some kind of conspiracy from Fox News, and yet all of the traditional networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, as well as major papers like the Washington Post and Boston Globe are reporting the same thing.
"Yeah, I posted a mea culpa and you are right."
Good on you, Load. That's all too rare around here.
"You are a liar. Bush's "re-election" (his first actual election) was won primarily because they snuck so many anti-equality laws on the ballots. The bigoted wingnuts came out of the woodwork and voted for Bush while they were there."
That wasn't hard, considering around 70 percent of Americans agree with him on that issue.One of the most liberal states in the country just eliminated the right for homosexuals to marry. Barrack Obama doesn't support homosexuals marrying either. Do you give him a pass for that? Or is he a wingnut too?
"Yes, I am absolutely certain that Obama, in 100 days, managed to triple the deficit, compared to 8 years of Bush spending like a drunken frat boy.
I totally believe that, because, apparently, I am an idiot."
100 days is the least of it. He's certainly poised to smash all spending records: From 2010 to 2019, Obama projects annual deficits totaling $7.1 trillion; that's atop the $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009.
I don't think you're an idiot as much as you're politically fanatical as any of the people you attack, just less honest about it. I think you're actually starting to believe that "reality has a liberal bias" line you love so much.
"Because I have a soul, and the idea of shoving flashlights up little kid's asses [salon.com] in front of the kid's mother is abhorrent to me."
Good for you (though the soul thing is going to cost you some Karma on Slashdot). You seem to be making the mistake of thinking your ideological foes somehow support that, though. And while doing that to an innocent child is shocking, its still a straw man in the context that you used it: enemy combatants do not have the same Geneva Convention protections that a uniformed army does, and for good reasons.
"Liar"
Why don't you just call them "Hitler!" while you're at it? If you keep throwing "liar" around so often, it's going to lose its punch.
"and, oh yeah, has been confirmed to write his own speeches."
Obama doesn't write all, or even most of his own speeches, nor is he the only President that's done so. Reagan wrote some of his own, especially before he was elected, and so did Carter and Nixon and Ike. Obama isn't by any means extraordinary in this regard.
Didn't the people that did vote for demotion do it in a way that locked out a majority of the voters? I seem to recall that the vote was set up in a rather shady way, when many of the participants weren't present, basically guaranteeing the result they hoped for, and when the rest of the membership found out, they hit the roof.
"Well I think you chose a poor example there in Apple... Steve Jobs is not the best example for someone arguing CEO's shouldn't be young. You do realize he was 21 when starting Apple? Heck... some of the most successful CEO's of our time were kids when they conquered their respective worlds. Microsoft, Google, Apple."
I think you've proven our point, rather than refuted it. Jobs was a visionary kid, but not experienced. Recall that he was fired from Apple the first time because his leadership and management skills at the time were absolutely nill. The Mac was a commercial failure its first few years, and that, combined with the crappy way Jobs was handling his responsibilities, got him fired.
It was only after he went out on his own, and failed with his own money at NeXT did Steve Jobs become the Uber-CEO that he is today, and he got to that point because of bitter experience. When he ran NeXT, reality kicked him in the nuts... hard. He learned about the real world. He learned why you value real business principles. He learned that you can't burn money down a hole and expect to survive.
So, in the end, Steve Jobs later became a great CEO because of... there's that word again... experience. There's no substitute for it, and you have to earn it. No one, no matter how talented, is born with it. That's why you don't stick a talented youngster in the captain's chair and go "OK, it's all yours". Lives are depending on the competence of the commanding officer, let alone mission success.
Yeah...I've started wondering, am I not a trekkie any more? I didn't really watch the last TV series, I can't even tell you what it was called. I went to see the movie this past weekend and was underwhelmed. Spock was great but on the whole, there was nothing particularly interesting about it. A lot of kids running the Enterprise? Yawn. Time travel? So overdone, and not particularly well done this time. There were none of the interesting, weird, thought-provoking ideas that I'm used to seeing from the first two series. Maybe I'm just old and grumpy, but I felt the movie was deliberately dumbed down to try and get greater mass appeal.
You raise a great point, and I think we're in the same boat. I think JJ Abrams just managed to put a stake in whatever loyalty I had to the franchise. Rick Berman has been screwing it up for years with his silly time travel stories, so much that he's really mucked the franchise to death. And what does Abrams do? A time travel story.
I didn't even watch Enterprise on TV. That was just too much retconning. Maybe Abrams did me a favor by ensuring that I'd completely lose interest now.
Why not? Alexander was King at age 20, and that was real reality, not some sci-fi movie.
Oh good Lord. Alexander was a King. He could do whatever he wanted. He was an absolute ruler. The Federation is supposedly a democratic society, with a military that has a chain of command, where you have to move up in the ranks.
Stop trying to defend the cadet-to-captain malarky from the movie. Whatever else you can say about the flick, promoting a boy over many, many more qualified senior officers in Starfleet is a plot hole too big to overlook. That's just too much suspension of disbelief.