Sorry to burst your bubble, but Obama, and the mainstream Democratic party platform are moderate to slightly right leaning. They have very few positions that could be called "socialist", they are more corporatist.
The Republican party has veered so far right, that it is in serious danger of wrapping the spectrum and becoming far left.
Well it didn't have paragraph spacing, so that wasn't obvious on first read. Though I still think the most reasonable reading strings ideas from 2 separate paragraphs together. It wasn't a topic transition.
What were the prevailing attitudes? It wasn't attitudes about the general level of awareness, or about reporting laws you discussed in that paragraph. The attitudes were about hiding abuse, and not dealing aggressively with the abusers because of the attention it would bring to the child and family, among other reasons.
"Society at the time tended to prosecute 'stranger attacks', not assailants known to the victim - as you note"
I don't believe I did. I said in essence, parents tended to keep both kinds of attacks secret and dispense whatever justice they could regardless of whether it was intra-family, or an acquaintance.
I'm assuming at this point, if it was an unknown person, they probably didn't have the resources to track him/her down to do anything further without going to the police. But I didn't say whether I felt that happened more or less often.
I never said molestation didn't exist, was never reported, or that now it is more frequent. My point was I believe that even then, the Church was out of step with prevailing attitudes. I discussed this in a later post w/ Dr. Manhattan.
I'd say even before mandatory reporting laws, parents were possibly guilty of the generous interpretation of Misprision of a Felony in some states for not reporting clergy child abuse. And the church leaders who were aware of accusations and reassigned accused clergy were almost certainly guilty of the more restrictive definition of Misprision.
Is it bad we have specific mandatory reporting laws for child abuse? No. But I think saying it wasn't illegal before in states where misprision is a crime, is a stretch. If it wasn't prosecuted, I think it is more a case of lazy prosecutors, or thinking discretion was better for the child.
There is a significant difference if I read your comment the way you intended
"...and not dealing aggressively with the abusers....the Church really wasn't out of step with the prevailing attitudes. "
Even in the 70's, and possibly especially before mandatory reporting laws, parents probably felt like it was their responsibility to mete justice to the best of their ability. I imagine dads that were physically strong enough, often beat up or threatened to beat up, relatives or others their children accused of abuse and the parent felt it was true. Families ostracized suspected abusers in them, and may have discretely shared information among nuclear families to keep their kids away from "uncle soandso."
I suspect the attitude of families 30 years ago was generally one of discretion and a community version of justice and threat isolation. This stands in stark contrast to the Catholic Church where abusive clergy were not routinely sent for treatment and assigned to positions with no reasonable expectation of child contact. They were reassigned just to get them away from local concerns and put into other congregations with children in them. Some were apparently not investigated internally because they were "loved" by their church superiors.
Hence, I believe they were out of step, even then, with prevailing attitudes regarding everything but discretion.
"And even then, to be fair, back in the 1970's and before, there weren't mandatory reporting laws for sexual abuse. Society in general has become more aware of the problems; the Church really wasn't out of step with the prevailing attitudes."
What what what?
Do we have to have a law for every little different situation? First I damn well know there were laws against assault and battery then. Second, I'm almost certain there were laws against rape. If a child or parent notified the police or DA back then that someone sexually assaulted his/her kid, I have a hard time believing that person wouldn't have been charged with some felony. A minor can not legally give consent. Charging a 18 year old for sleeping with his 16 year old girlfriend is ignorant, especially when considering the age of majority has been transient over cultures and time. Charging a 40 year old for diddling an 11 year old under his care is a moral imperative.
The bigger problem back then was probably many parents failed to report family or unrelated cases of child sexual assault out of fear it would hurt their kid more to have it publicized, or hurt the family in general. Which is no different than what was happening in the Church. But the Church's doctrine and claim of moral superiority make their actions especially abhorrent.
I was saying the parent post to you, or Miseph, was somewhat inelegantly pointing out that Low Ranked Craig's post didn't make sense.
"if he simply lowered the price in the Amazon store... he would leave money on the table... But that is not the case we are discussing....simultaneous lowering of price and availability in another large marketplace might offset the price reduction..."
First LRC seems to discount his proposition of lowering the price in the Amazon marketplace. In continuing, he doesn't say simultaneous lowering of price in the first marketplace, and availability at the same price in a new marketplace. It is easy to read that sentence as saying "lowering the price of the item in a new marketplace."
Regardless, if he lowers the product's price in either marketplace, the other will contractually force him to offer it in their marketplace at the same lower price. If the price has been optimized in the Amazon marketplace, he will be forgoing revenue. That is a totally separate issue to whether additional revenue will be gained in a new marketplace to offset losses in the first.
In the parent post to you, or Brandee07, the starting facts he posited in his hypothetical situation was the agent had done the research and optimized his revenue using what is in essence the PEoD model.
Your friend has discovered he is still priced in the inelastic segment of his demand curve. His PEoD is between 0 and -1. Good for him. Keep increasing the price and he will find his product's unitary elastic point. I agree at certain low costs people don't really think about it. But that depends on the person. For me, if it is over $1, it is no longer throw away money.
Did you read the link about price elasticity of demand? As you pointed out in a child post, additional units of a digital good are created for virtually zero cost, so we can assume all revenue is profit for simplicity.
If revenue has been optimized according to the rules of PEoD, then by necessity, and as you pointed out in your second sentence, reducing price reduces revenue. This is because enough more people aren't interested in buying your product at the lower price, to make up for the marginal loss of revenue on a per unit basis, of all the other units sold.
Assuming you will receive the same amount of revenue at $1.99 as at $2.99, and those are your only 2 choices, and you don't expect monetary deflation, it is probably better to price at $2.99 because as inflation slowly erodes the value of a dollar, it will be working your way towards your profit optimized price instead away from it. And in addition, consumers will over time perceive value in the fact you haven't raised your price in a long time.
I believe parent's point is that lowering the price in the Amazon marketplace will necessarily leave money on the table. That is a separate issue to whether higher revenue in another marketplace may make up for the lost revenue in the first.
But it is only because of this "most favored nation" clause in the Apple, and now possibly Amazon sales contract that will necessitate him to forgo revenue he could have otherwise picked up in the Amazon marketplace, because he choses to sell in the Apple marketplace at a lower price.
I believe you deserve a fail also for deeper critical thinking.
In the parent post it says the author did some trials and found out $2.49 was the price where he made the most profit. At a lower price, enough new customers weren't created to offset that lower price. A higher price caused customers to chose not to buy. Profit was optimized. So selling at $1.99 means forgoing revenue, as would selling at $2.99. Now if parent didn't say they had experimented with pricing, either pricing higher or lower could end up creating more revenue.
Well I haven't tried in over a year, but the last time I recall it took a lot of research to figure out which free version had any amount of USB support. Then I had to understand the difference between the player, and installer if I recall, and some other details.
I think I finally got it marginally working, but it was slow enough to be annoying and I think I didn't quickly get USB working, or write access to my native Win partition. I was installing specifically for iTunes support, so I eventually got busy and haven't looked at it since.
It was a similar learning curve to the first time I installed Ubuntu. That may be of necessity. But it seems like we could get to a point where in Ubuntu you can click an icon in the system folder, get a prompt to insert your Win install disk, and it completely automatically installs a Win virtual machine with working USB. Then you click an icon in Applications, and it boots your Win virtual machine.
Does your CPU support Intel VT or AMD-V? I thought a virtualized OS should run anything the native one can (if slower). And that if you had CPU hardware virtualization, that it should run close to native speed.
Because we have higher expectations for open source software. That, and too many people still need a Win partition for a few tasks. If Ubuntu borked their Win install, many people would not install it or swear off future releases. Setting up a Win virtual machine isn't stupid easy yet.
You don't pay the same monthly fee. They're called "Even More Plus" plans, and they are about $10-20/mo cheaper than a similar subsidized plan, with 2 phones included in the price on the family versions. And your 3rd-5th phones are only $5/mo additional each. You save some serious coin each year.
"If I had to buy stock in either, it would be in Apple."
"That is only because Apple is actually Steve Jobs. His successor will have to have the same depth of vision, same drive, same demands and standards."
Given those statements, and the fact SJ isn't getting any older, and has had a significant health scare recently, I wouldn't suggest buying stock in AAPL.
I don't have a big issue with it, and it isn't a philosophical thing with me. I don't game at all so that's not a problem. I know there are probably trade secrets in the code they'd like to keep under wraps.
I hope more companies feel comfortable creating closed source software on Linux, and that they believe if it is a good product, people will buy it. But a graphics card driver isn't just a piece of non-critical software that can have minor bugs. It is a critical piece of the computer subsystem required to be very high quality for a good user experience.
I appreciate Nvidia is putting some effort into supplying half decent Linux drivers. And by far Nvidia offers the best performance on Linux. But the quality of the drivers isn't up to the quality of the Windows drivers for the same card. There are bugs, I've been bit by them. Sometimes features in the Windows drivers don't make it to Linux, or they are delayed by 1 to 2 years, an example is VDPAU. I've been needing that on my Myth box for a long time. I just got that on my last dist upgrade.
Some people have said they'd like to try fixing the bugs or adding features. I know it is beyond my skills, but I would appreciate it if those people had access to the source and tools to try.
Fair (in a rigorous sense) and immoral are too close to the same thing to be worth arguing over. Apple is in the business to make money. In Western culture we have become entirely too permissive of the ends justify the means. If enough people refused to do business with companies that don't display corporate ethics compatible with human ethics, then the drive to make money would be synonymous with the need to display those ethos and the world would be a better place.
I happen to work for a Fortune 500 company that is internationally known for the way it treats its employees, customers, and vendors. I could make more money working for many other companies, but I stay with this company because its philosophy is compatible with the way I think we should treat others, and how we should expect companies to treat people.
You are right, I don't do business with many companies, and I also know there are many things that go on in companies, including very occasionally in my company that I think are wrong or don't agree with. But I make it a point to read business press and make determinations on whether a company continues to be worthy of my wallet. But the inevitable incompleteness of my efforts will not dissuade me from making a college try. As the Dali Lama has said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
Since none of us work for Apple, or we are very stupid for talking publicly if we are, we are all making assumptions. As I said before, I think my assumption is reasonable given the disguise, and the fact that the phone was accessible to a relatively lowly and new baseband engineer without having effective and rigorous asset controls, and the lack of dissuading attributes like having it in a large and ugly case, rather than a production ready case.
Yes again assuming the device was authorized to be off campus and in use, then while he did lose a prototype that one could reasonably expect Apple would be keen to keep secret because of their history, it also isn't reasonable for Apple to expect such perfection from an employee in the use of a commonly lost consumer device. And their corporate security department was either negligent in authorizing the use of the device off campus with the current protections, or they were negligent in not having better precautions for keeping secret prototypes on campus.
A company that would have a laptop with secret or protected enough information to fire an employee for losing said laptop, would also be negligent for not having the laptop hard drive encrypted to the point there would be no reasonable expectation that a private person could retrieve the information. In fact this is demonstrated in PCI and federal regulations that don't require the disclosure of a customer data loss if the device lost was encrypted to the required standard.
In the end we are arguing in circles. I don't find your justification particularly moving, and I can tell the feeling is mutual. I think we should agree to disagree about the standards we should hold companies to, along with the standards a company should hold employees to.
People make mistakes all the time, it is part of the human condition and is a requirement for our learning process.
People should get fired for serious errors in judgment that a reasonable person wouldn't make, or that they were previously advised against, or obviously deceitful acts. I wouldn't do business with any company I know that as a policy fires employees that make occasional and foreseeable mistakes that aren't associated with defects of character, or just treats people (including vendors) inconsiderately.
I am assuming (I think reasonably given the device was in a well manufactured disguise) that this engineer was authorized (and probably encouraged) to use the device as a normal customer would, including taking it off-campus and operating it in public. That would include taking it to a bar.
I see no evidence that he got unreasonably inebriated, or that his inebriation lead to the loss. I not infrequently leave things on restaurant tables that I have to return to get. Though I usually get no further than my car.
Yes the employee chose to accept a prototype offered by his employer. But the employer (who offers a service like mobile me and remote wipe) should know that loss of a cellphone happens frequently. If they want employees to use the prototypes off campus, the company must be willing to accept the occasional loss (and some interesting press attention) of a prototype, or they should provide better camouflage that can't be distinguished from the current version in any way, or they should forbid their employees from taking prototypes off campus.
To offer prototypes for user testing to employees off campus, and then dole out serious consequences when they are lost is not reasonable or acceptable in my opinion.
"Good thing its not a defense contract, and just a next generation piece of consumer electronic gadgetry."
As I said in another thread, assuming he was authorized to have the unit off-campus and publicly use, your comparison is invalid. A defense company would specifically prohibit taking hardware out of a secured area. So if a unit was lost, all people who might find it are also authorized to see it and would probably return it to the correct person. Apple must accept the risks of allowing use of prototypes in the wild, and not punish him any more than they would for accidentally losing any other piece of company equipment with a similar retail value
I'll be less likely than I already am to buy future Apple products.
Of course they are within their rights to fire him. But assuming he was authorized to have a prototype off-campus and in public use, Apple had to accept the obvious and common risk that the device might be lost. People lose their keys, wallets, purses, and cellphones all the time.
No it wouldn't be illegal to fire him, but I would consider it immoral as they put an employee in an obviously compromising position without reasonable protection. And I won't do business with companies that treat their employees as wantonly as that.
Not ablative in the traditional sense of that is how the TPS works. Bad choice of words on my part. It is foreign particulates dislodging from the body of the shuttle and unintended flaking of the heat shield, combined with impurities in the atmosphere being heated up, that helps make the smoke contrail.
I've seen reentry across Austin (and not the time it broke up smarty pants). Have you ever seen the ISS or a satellite crossing the sky? It looked kinda like that. The shuttle was a bright dot streaking across the horizon very fast, a good 3 times faster than a commercial plane, and left a contrail that hung in the air for a while. Contrail is a misnomer since it stands for condensation trail. What it really is leaving is a trail of ionized gas and ablated material off the orbiter. A minute later I heard a faint sonic double boom.
At the distance you are at, it will be lower, meaning you will have less range you can see it over, so I'd imagine it will still appear to be going very fast (and it will be fast). I think it should be just above supersonic, so you should hear the boom. I doubt it will still be leaving a contrail. I don't think you'll be able to miss it.
Slashdot Mirror
but if you look at the page source, it's there.
Because of course I do that with every comment I read on slashdot.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Obama, and the mainstream Democratic party platform are moderate to slightly right leaning. They have very few positions that could be called "socialist", they are more corporatist.
The Republican party has veered so far right, that it is in serious danger of wrapping the spectrum and becoming far left.
Shoot, read almost any GV translation for a good laugh. Though strangely every once in a while it gets almost every word right.
Well it didn't have paragraph spacing, so that wasn't obvious on first read. Though I still think the most reasonable reading strings ideas from 2 separate paragraphs together. It wasn't a topic transition.
What were the prevailing attitudes? It wasn't attitudes about the general level of awareness, or about reporting laws you discussed in that paragraph. The attitudes were about hiding abuse, and not dealing aggressively with the abusers because of the attention it would bring to the child and family, among other reasons.
"Society at the time tended to prosecute 'stranger attacks', not assailants known to the victim - as you note"
I don't believe I did. I said in essence, parents tended to keep both kinds of attacks secret and dispense whatever justice they could regardless of whether it was intra-family, or an acquaintance.
I'm assuming at this point, if it was an unknown person, they probably didn't have the resources to track him/her down to do anything further without going to the police. But I didn't say whether I felt that happened more or less often.
I never said molestation didn't exist, was never reported, or that now it is more frequent. My point was I believe that even then, the Church was out of step with prevailing attitudes. I discussed this in a later post w/ Dr. Manhattan.
I'd say even before mandatory reporting laws, parents were possibly guilty of the generous interpretation of Misprision of a Felony in some states for not reporting clergy child abuse. And the church leaders who were aware of accusations and reassigned accused clergy were almost certainly guilty of the more restrictive definition of Misprision.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/search/display.html?terms=misprision&url=/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00000004----000-.html
Is it bad we have specific mandatory reporting laws for child abuse? No. But I think saying it wasn't illegal before in states where misprision is a crime, is a stretch. If it wasn't prosecuted, I think it is more a case of lazy prosecutors, or thinking discretion was better for the child.
There is a significant difference if I read your comment the way you intended
...the Church really wasn't out of step with the prevailing attitudes. "
"...and not dealing aggressively with the abusers.
Even in the 70's, and possibly especially before mandatory reporting laws, parents probably felt like it was their responsibility to mete justice to the best of their ability. I imagine dads that were physically strong enough, often beat up or threatened to beat up, relatives or others their children accused of abuse and the parent felt it was true. Families ostracized suspected abusers in them, and may have discretely shared information among nuclear families to keep their kids away from "uncle soandso."
I suspect the attitude of families 30 years ago was generally one of discretion and a community version of justice and threat isolation. This stands in stark contrast to the Catholic Church where abusive clergy were not routinely sent for treatment and assigned to positions with no reasonable expectation of child contact. They were reassigned just to get them away from local concerns and put into other congregations with children in them. Some were apparently not investigated internally because they were "loved" by their church superiors.
Hence, I believe they were out of step, even then, with prevailing attitudes regarding everything but discretion.
"And even then, to be fair, back in the 1970's and before, there weren't mandatory reporting laws for sexual abuse. Society in general has become more aware of the problems; the Church really wasn't out of step with the prevailing attitudes."
What what what?
Do we have to have a law for every little different situation? First I damn well know there were laws against assault and battery then. Second, I'm almost certain there were laws against rape. If a child or parent notified the police or DA back then that someone sexually assaulted his/her kid, I have a hard time believing that person wouldn't have been charged with some felony. A minor can not legally give consent. Charging a 18 year old for sleeping with his 16 year old girlfriend is ignorant, especially when considering the age of majority has been transient over cultures and time. Charging a 40 year old for diddling an 11 year old under his care is a moral imperative.
The bigger problem back then was probably many parents failed to report family or unrelated cases of child sexual assault out of fear it would hurt their kid more to have it publicized, or hurt the family in general. Which is no different than what was happening in the Church. But the Church's doctrine and claim of moral superiority make their actions especially abhorrent.
I was saying the parent post to you, or Miseph, was somewhat inelegantly pointing out that Low Ranked Craig's post didn't make sense.
"if he simply lowered the price in the Amazon store... he would leave money on the table... But that is not the case we are discussing....simultaneous lowering of price and availability in another large marketplace might offset the price reduction..."
First LRC seems to discount his proposition of lowering the price in the Amazon marketplace. In continuing, he doesn't say simultaneous lowering of price in the first marketplace, and availability at the same price in a new marketplace. It is easy to read that sentence as saying "lowering the price of the item in a new marketplace."
Regardless, if he lowers the product's price in either marketplace, the other will contractually force him to offer it in their marketplace at the same lower price. If the price has been optimized in the Amazon marketplace, he will be forgoing revenue. That is a totally separate issue to whether additional revenue will be gained in a new marketplace to offset losses in the first.
In the parent post to you, or Brandee07, the starting facts he posited in his hypothetical situation was the agent had done the research and optimized his revenue using what is in essence the PEoD model.
Your friend has discovered he is still priced in the inelastic segment of his demand curve. His PEoD is between 0 and -1. Good for him. Keep increasing the price and he will find his product's unitary elastic point. I agree at certain low costs people don't really think about it. But that depends on the person. For me, if it is over $1, it is no longer throw away money.
No.
Did you read the link about price elasticity of demand? As you pointed out in a child post, additional units of a digital good are created for virtually zero cost, so we can assume all revenue is profit for simplicity.
If revenue has been optimized according to the rules of PEoD, then by necessity, and as you pointed out in your second sentence, reducing price reduces revenue. This is because enough more people aren't interested in buying your product at the lower price, to make up for the marginal loss of revenue on a per unit basis, of all the other units sold.
Assuming you will receive the same amount of revenue at $1.99 as at $2.99, and those are your only 2 choices, and you don't expect monetary deflation, it is probably better to price at $2.99 because as inflation slowly erodes the value of a dollar, it will be working your way towards your profit optimized price instead away from it. And in addition, consumers will over time perceive value in the fact you haven't raised your price in a long time.
I believe parent's point is that lowering the price in the Amazon marketplace will necessarily leave money on the table. That is a separate issue to whether higher revenue in another marketplace may make up for the lost revenue in the first.
But it is only because of this "most favored nation" clause in the Apple, and now possibly Amazon sales contract that will necessitate him to forgo revenue he could have otherwise picked up in the Amazon marketplace, because he choses to sell in the Apple marketplace at a lower price.
I believe you deserve a fail also for deeper critical thinking.
In the parent post it says the author did some trials and found out $2.49 was the price where he made the most profit. At a lower price, enough new customers weren't created to offset that lower price. A higher price caused customers to chose not to buy. Profit was optimized. So selling at $1.99 means forgoing revenue, as would selling at $2.99. Now if parent didn't say they had experimented with pricing, either pricing higher or lower could end up creating more revenue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
Well I haven't tried in over a year, but the last time I recall it took a lot of research to figure out which free version had any amount of USB support. Then I had to understand the difference between the player, and installer if I recall, and some other details.
I think I finally got it marginally working, but it was slow enough to be annoying and I think I didn't quickly get USB working, or write access to my native Win partition. I was installing specifically for iTunes support, so I eventually got busy and haven't looked at it since.
It was a similar learning curve to the first time I installed Ubuntu. That may be of necessity. But it seems like we could get to a point where in Ubuntu you can click an icon in the system folder, get a prompt to insert your Win install disk, and it completely automatically installs a Win virtual machine with working USB. Then you click an icon in Applications, and it boots your Win virtual machine.
Does your CPU support Intel VT or AMD-V? I thought a virtualized OS should run anything the native one can (if slower). And that if you had CPU hardware virtualization, that it should run close to native speed.
Because we have higher expectations for open source software. That, and too many people still need a Win partition for a few tasks. If Ubuntu borked their Win install, many people would not install it or swear off future releases. Setting up a Win virtual machine isn't stupid easy yet.
You don't pay the same monthly fee. They're called "Even More Plus" plans, and they are about $10-20/mo cheaper than a similar subsidized plan, with 2 phones included in the price on the family versions. And your 3rd-5th phones are only $5/mo additional each. You save some serious coin each year.
"If I had to buy stock in either, it would be in Apple."
"That is only because Apple is actually Steve Jobs. His successor will have to have the same depth of vision, same drive, same demands and standards."
Given those statements, and the fact SJ isn't getting any older, and has had a significant health scare recently, I wouldn't suggest buying stock in AAPL.
I don't have a big issue with it, and it isn't a philosophical thing with me. I don't game at all so that's not a problem. I know there are probably trade secrets in the code they'd like to keep under wraps.
I hope more companies feel comfortable creating closed source software on Linux, and that they believe if it is a good product, people will buy it. But a graphics card driver isn't just a piece of non-critical software that can have minor bugs. It is a critical piece of the computer subsystem required to be very high quality for a good user experience.
I appreciate Nvidia is putting some effort into supplying half decent Linux drivers. And by far Nvidia offers the best performance on Linux. But the quality of the drivers isn't up to the quality of the Windows drivers for the same card. There are bugs, I've been bit by them. Sometimes features in the Windows drivers don't make it to Linux, or they are delayed by 1 to 2 years, an example is VDPAU. I've been needing that on my Myth box for a long time. I just got that on my last dist upgrade.
Some people have said they'd like to try fixing the bugs or adding features. I know it is beyond my skills, but I would appreciate it if those people had access to the source and tools to try.
Linux users that want decent graphics performance. Unfortunately right now closed source Nvidia drivers set the standard for Linux performance.
Fair (in a rigorous sense) and immoral are too close to the same thing to be worth arguing over. Apple is in the business to make money. In Western culture we have become entirely too permissive of the ends justify the means. If enough people refused to do business with companies that don't display corporate ethics compatible with human ethics, then the drive to make money would be synonymous with the need to display those ethos and the world would be a better place.
I happen to work for a Fortune 500 company that is internationally known for the way it treats its employees, customers, and vendors. I could make more money working for many other companies, but I stay with this company because its philosophy is compatible with the way I think we should treat others, and how we should expect companies to treat people.
You are right, I don't do business with many companies, and I also know there are many things that go on in companies, including very occasionally in my company that I think are wrong or don't agree with. But I make it a point to read business press and make determinations on whether a company continues to be worthy of my wallet. But the inevitable incompleteness of my efforts will not dissuade me from making a college try. As the Dali Lama has said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
Since none of us work for Apple, or we are very stupid for talking publicly if we are, we are all making assumptions. As I said before, I think my assumption is reasonable given the disguise, and the fact that the phone was accessible to a relatively lowly and new baseband engineer without having effective and rigorous asset controls, and the lack of dissuading attributes like having it in a large and ugly case, rather than a production ready case.
Yes again assuming the device was authorized to be off campus and in use, then while he did lose a prototype that one could reasonably expect Apple would be keen to keep secret because of their history, it also isn't reasonable for Apple to expect such perfection from an employee in the use of a commonly lost consumer device. And their corporate security department was either negligent in authorizing the use of the device off campus with the current protections, or they were negligent in not having better precautions for keeping secret prototypes on campus.
A company that would have a laptop with secret or protected enough information to fire an employee for losing said laptop, would also be negligent for not having the laptop hard drive encrypted to the point there would be no reasonable expectation that a private person could retrieve the information. In fact this is demonstrated in PCI and federal regulations that don't require the disclosure of a customer data loss if the device lost was encrypted to the required standard.
In the end we are arguing in circles. I don't find your justification particularly moving, and I can tell the feeling is mutual. I think we should agree to disagree about the standards we should hold companies to, along with the standards a company should hold employees to.
People make mistakes all the time, it is part of the human condition and is a requirement for our learning process.
People should get fired for serious errors in judgment that a reasonable person wouldn't make, or that they were previously advised against, or obviously deceitful acts. I wouldn't do business with any company I know that as a policy fires employees that make occasional and foreseeable mistakes that aren't associated with defects of character, or just treats people (including vendors) inconsiderately.
I am assuming (I think reasonably given the device was in a well manufactured disguise) that this engineer was authorized (and probably encouraged) to use the device as a normal customer would, including taking it off-campus and operating it in public. That would include taking it to a bar.
I see no evidence that he got unreasonably inebriated, or that his inebriation lead to the loss. I not infrequently leave things on restaurant tables that I have to return to get. Though I usually get no further than my car.
Yes the employee chose to accept a prototype offered by his employer. But the employer (who offers a service like mobile me and remote wipe) should know that loss of a cellphone happens frequently. If they want employees to use the prototypes off campus, the company must be willing to accept the occasional loss (and some interesting press attention) of a prototype, or they should provide better camouflage that can't be distinguished from the current version in any way, or they should forbid their employees from taking prototypes off campus.
To offer prototypes for user testing to employees off campus, and then dole out serious consequences when they are lost is not reasonable or acceptable in my opinion.
"Good thing its not a defense contract, and just a next generation piece of consumer electronic gadgetry."
As I said in another thread, assuming he was authorized to have the unit off-campus and publicly use, your comparison is invalid. A defense company would specifically prohibit taking hardware out of a secured area. So if a unit was lost, all people who might find it are also authorized to see it and would probably return it to the correct person. Apple must accept the risks of allowing use of prototypes in the wild, and not punish him any more than they would for accidentally losing any other piece of company equipment with a similar retail value
I'll be less likely than I already am to buy future Apple products.
Of course they are within their rights to fire him. But assuming he was authorized to have a prototype off-campus and in public use, Apple had to accept the obvious and common risk that the device might be lost. People lose their keys, wallets, purses, and cellphones all the time.
No it wouldn't be illegal to fire him, but I would consider it immoral as they put an employee in an obviously compromising position without reasonable protection. And I won't do business with companies that treat their employees as wantonly as that.
Not ablative in the traditional sense of that is how the TPS works. Bad choice of words on my part. It is foreign particulates dislodging from the body of the shuttle and unintended flaking of the heat shield, combined with impurities in the atmosphere being heated up, that helps make the smoke contrail.
I've seen reentry across Austin (and not the time it broke up smarty pants). Have you ever seen the ISS or a satellite crossing the sky? It looked kinda like that. The shuttle was a bright dot streaking across the horizon very fast, a good 3 times faster than a commercial plane, and left a contrail that hung in the air for a while. Contrail is a misnomer since it stands for condensation trail. What it really is leaving is a trail of ionized gas and ablated material off the orbiter. A minute later I heard a faint sonic double boom.
At the distance you are at, it will be lower, meaning you will have less range you can see it over, so I'd imagine it will still appear to be going very fast (and it will be fast). I think it should be just above supersonic, so you should hear the boom. I doubt it will still be leaving a contrail. I don't think you'll be able to miss it.