That depends. Just because it let something slide doesn't mean you were okay with such. For instance, one may not feel it is worth the complaint at first. A much more extreme example would be women reporting rape. Often they will not, that doesn't mean it isn't illegal, or that they are okay with it, just that at that time they judge the disadvantages of reporting it to be worse than just trying to deal with it. Obviously this isn't near that extreme, but the point is lack of complaint before does not equate acceptance or that something is okay.
What the school did was give the student the same type of ID that they had the prior year, which was not objectionable the prior year, but is now objectionable. It has nothing to do with rape with is a violent attack expressed sexually. There really is no comparison to be made, either in cause or effect. Again, what the school did to remedy the situation was give the student the same type of ID they had the prior year, which the family did not object to, but now does object to. Obviously, then, something has changed in the parents view of things. The question is what?
Schools probably banned metal lunchboxes as potential dangerous weapons.
If you carry an Altoids tin, they probably assume you're storing contraband drugs (like aspirin) in it.
They make those aluminum wallets and metal business card holders. As for Altoids, they can assume what they want. They would have to prove it is contraband drugs in it. As for lunchboxes, yes, those were banned because they were considered to be possible weapons. We should have seen that coming when they first banned the extended 30 lunch box clip.
You don't have to wear those visibly. It seems the tags in question are to be worn, not just carried around in a wallet or so.
But they didn't make that objection last year when they had to wear the ID badge. It only became an objection once the RFID tag was added to it. The compromise proposed removed the RFID tag, so essentially it is like wearing last year's badge. As such, the visibility doesn't seem to be the issue.
We're saying people shouldn't be tracked like cattle. The whole purpose of this program is to indoctrinate the kids into thinking it's okay to be tracked. Then when they get older, the whole national ID tracking system isn't such a big deal. Get them while they're young as the Germans once proclaimed.
There is no need for this system. It is a solution looking for a problem. It does nothing but infringe on the rights of children and indoctrinate them. It has ZERO upside.
Schools have used student IDs for decades, usually with bar codes. Same with libraries, workplaces, drivers licenses, etc. We are already indoctrinated and have been for generations. What is new here is the use of an RFID chip in the ID and then it is only new because it is in a school, not a college or business.
While I do question the usefulness of doing this, claiming an ulterior motivation or some evil plot by big brother sounds a bit too paranoid. Next thing you know people will think the TV show person of interest isn't fiction but the latest reality tv.
Andrea Hernandez is the student who refused to wear the badge because she believed it was the 'mark of the beast' and offended her religion. This case wasn't just about privacy. It was also about the boundry when a person's religion conflicts with secular regulations.
But the compromise was to give her a badge without the chip and the family is still saying it is not acceptable. So, without the id tag, there is no mark of the beast, but evidently it is still a problem. That would seem to imply that some other issue is the real cause.
I wonder if the parents had her immunized as required by state law to attend school. I only ask, not because of any religious objection to vaccinations, but at the doctor's office, your chart is coded with and id code. Why would the family accept that 'mark of the beast' as acceptable but not this one? Or the mark of the beast imprinted on a drivers license, bank account, social security number, license plate, IP address, postal address, etc.
I am not trying to ridicule this family's religious views. I am trying to understand what makes this ID badge, particularly with the compromise different than all of the other numbers that identify us/them in a modern society?
You can however use it to track location once you know who holds what badge number.
Most slashdotters do not have these active RFID units, we have passive ones with much shorter useful ranges.
The student should just remove the battery at the end of each school day.
Usually, the battery is embeded in the badge and not removable. However, one could just stick it in a metal case as the signal is pretty weak to start with. Then again, there is always the microwave -- just a short burst, not enough to destroy the card, just the electronics.
Every student should refuse to wear the badges. They don't have to destroy the badges or anything like that. Just get together and toss them in a big pile. Problem solved. They're not going to suspend every single student. Of course I come from the tail end of a generation where burning draft cards, holding sit-ins and other acts of civil disobedience were not such a foreign idea.
The compromise proposed was a student id without an RFID chip in it. Are you saying that students shouldn't even have to have student IDs or just RFID enabled ones?
The family objects to any ID that has a number on it for religious reasons. They were offered a school ID without RFID and they turned it down.
What about drivers license, social security, bank accounts, postal address, ip address, etc. I don't mean to mock their religious beliefs, but I am curious at what level they are willing to compromise their values (if any)?
Unless you can explain how the vaccinating the nurse will keep the flu infected patient from coughing and sneezing, those droplets will keep transmitting the virus.
If the vaccine stops the nurse contracting the flu, then it stops the nurse coughing and sneezing, which reduces the risk of transmission. You're right that there are other modes of transmission than patient->nurse->patient, and vectors other than airborne water droplets, but it makes sense that removing one significant transmission path will have an effect on the rate of transmission, right?
But the CDC has already shown that patient->nurse->patient is not a significant transmission path, so that theory fails. The primary purpose of vaccinating health care workers is incase their is a pandemic there will be health care workers to care for the sick. It is not to prevent the spread of disease. The primary spread of flu in a hospital is from incidental contact like patient->visitor->door knob->janitor->cafeteria tray->etc. That is the same, whether the flu or strep. That is also why hospitals take great pains to sterilize surfaces and have hand sanitizers in all the rooms for the staff (and not the same stuff you get at Walmart).
No, based on the same CDC data you site, even with hand washing at only 40% it is as effective as vaccination. So just think if they would increase the hand washing rate! Check the CDC again. The purpose of vaccinating health care workers is not to minimize the spread of disease, it is to ensure there are health care workers in case of a pandemic.
Actually, I don't think it's true that the religious part of the argument doesn't come in to play. These nurses aren't making an argument from science. They're making an argument from religion, and then (after that turned out to be controversial) trying to find science to provide justification for their religious stance. So, while I do think we should discuss and clarify the science, there is no justification for the nurse's position or action.
The religious part is irrelevant because the scientific part of the argument is unfounded. If the core reason the hospital is saying to do it doesn't exist, then the reason the nurses are saying they don't want to do it doesn't matter.
The important part is the ability to form long, complex chains. Only two elements can do that: Carbon and silicon. Carbon is better at it. Silicon may be good enough.
It's not just the the chain of base atoms, it is the geometry of the entire molecule. Silicon, being a significantly larger atom than carbon puts the atoms attached to it in a different spacial pattern than if they were attached to carbon. Therefore, what is attached to them is also in a different location. It just doesn't work with silicon as the base because the silicon based organic molecules don't allow things to align in a way that is condusive for the processes that would lead to life. The most abundant atom on earth is silicon and yet there is no evidence of self replicating silicon based molecules. The geometry simply doesn't work out.
In the process, Anonymous successfully managed to get the accused released by tainting the evidence. Congratulations, assholes.
Sorry, no.
For the same reason we rant against calling copyright violations "stealing", the fact that anonymous found it first doesn't have any impact on the admissibility of the evidence. The police, now that someone has shown them how to do their jobs, can go to the same "untainted" sources and obtain the same evidence with a clean chain of custody. Happy day!
Evidence cannot be used anonymously in court, so unless whoever in Anonymous obtained the information comes forward and agrees to describe for the jury exactly how they obtained the information, it really cannot be used. It also has to be shown that the evidence was obtained legally. For instance, what if the police could not get a search warrant so they hacked the system to get the evidence and then said Anonymous did it? By not requiring the actual testimony of the person who obtained the evidence, all sorts of abuses could be perpetrated. As much as we may not like it, those rules protect the rest of us, too.
I would honestly rather not pay to keep these scumbags alive.
If your complaint is about the money, then it is definitely cheaper to keep them alive then to pay for the appeal process of a death penalty. Actual incarceration isn't terribly expensive. Besides, in prison, they are much more likely to get a taste of what they did to the poor girl. Prison populations are notoriously hard on rapists and child abusers.
IANAL, but if Anonymous hacked into various computers to obtain the information, are prosecutors allowed to use it? It is my understanding that normally, investigators would obtain search warrants to legally get the information. I would hate to see the outcome of this case jeopardized because evidence was obtain illegally.
While I believe, in this case, Anonymous, was trying to do the right thing, very often, in courts of law, doing the right thing can jeopardize a case because of rules of evidence, rights of victims and accused, etc. Hopefully, all of this will be resolved and justice will be done.
Is Dr. Orient wrong? Is there evidence that immunized workers are less likely to transmit the virus./p>
Yes.
Not according to the CDC. The main benefit to immunizing hospital workers against the flu is that if their is a pandemic, they will be in a position to care for the sick. It has nothing to do with the reduced transmission of the virus by hospital staff.
I have no particular evidence but here is my educated rambling. Yes if you are immunized you don't spread the virus as much as you might if you were not immunized and have the infection. You can be contagious for about 1 day without knowing you have the infection during that time you can spread it. According to the CDC http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm
Vaccinated or not, in a hospital setting, during flu season, the major source of the spread of the virus is from infected patients, not the nursing staff. The vaccine protects the nursing staff, but it doesn't kill the virus in their system immediately, it keeps it from taking hold. Also, the virus can be spread by touch and the vaccine does not work on the surface of the skin, clothing, stethoscopes, thermometers, etc.
I am in favor of the flu vaccine, however, its use is not preventative as in the polio vaccine (unless we want to immunize the entire population). The main benefit to the flu vaccine for hospital staff, is that it keeps the hospital staff healthy. There is no reliable evidence to show that it increases the likelihood that patients will be less likely to come down with the flu.
Is Dr. Orient wrong? Is there evidence that immunized workers are less likely to transmit the virus.
'Flu is transmitted (among other routes) by airborne water droplets. It also causes the sufferer to cough and sneeze (thus spraying such droplets).
It's hardly conclusive, but based on those facts I find it a little hard to believe that the vaccine (which will prevent the coughing and sneezing) has no effect on transmission...
Unless you can explain how the vaccinating the nurse will keep the flu infected patient from coughing and sneezing, those droplets will keep transmitting the virus. The vaccine only protects the person who received it. They can still transmit it, for instance, they pick up the food tray that an infected patient used and take it to the commissary. While there, they see and old friend and shake their hand. Voila, even though vaccinated and protected, they have now spread the virus (assuming the old friend was not).
Ignoring the religious grounds part of the argument as it really doesn't come into play, it should be quite simple to look at the flu rates of those hospitals mandatory flu vaccinations vs those without. What one finds, when doing so, is that flu transmission is not based on whether or not the staff is immunized, but on the viral load of the patients, themselves. What has been found, though, is that flu vaccinations reduces loss work time from staff from contracting the flu (when the vaccines guessed right on what strain to produce). However, studies also show that proper hygiene measures by the staff also have the same effectiveness (ie. latex gloves, sanitizing hands, etc.).
Based on the data, it appears that the mandatory flu vaccine has more to do with the business side of the hospital than with the patient care.
Keep in mind that the Goldilocks zone only applies to the carbon-based life that we're familiar with. The diversity between the different types of life developed within the different types of Goldilock zones is what really intrigues me. Think of the periodic table and try to imagine a life form that could have evolved from each element.
As much as we may want to believe life may be based on other atoms than carbon, one needs to keep in mind the geometry of the molecules involved. Carbon works out quite well for the geometry of the proteins. Silicon, for instance, is quite a bit larger and it is questionable if the equivalent amino acid structures and self replicating molecules could actually form based on it or any other "base" atom. Carbon is pretty unique in that regard.
The burden of proof is on the employer to show that no other mitigating measure can address the risks. Summarily banning child protecting, emergency-aleviating technology, not to mention the tools with which we coordinate the rest of our lives, is truly bad form and will bite the employer more often than they know.
That is just wrong. The employer has no burden of proof to show why you cannot use a personal electronic device (phone or otherwise) while at WORK. It is not some god given right to have/use a smartphone. Can it be useful, sure, but you as the employee have a burden of proof to show why you need to use such a device.
For the list of reasons given in the summary:
This current reality is that people have started to rely on having their smartphones with them at all times for things such as receiving emergency calls from day cares and schools, making personal calls during normal working hours (i.e. to make doctor's appointments), accessing password managers, and scheduling calendar events."
If it is a true emergency or sick child, most employers understand that and allow those calls to come in on a regular work phone line. Making personal calls during normal working hours, sorry, most employers expect that to occur on your time, not their time, so it doesn't matter what phone you use. Accessing password managers, you don't mean to tell your employer that if somebody stole your cell phone that they would have access to everything on the company computers that you have access, do you? Scheduling and calendar events, that would be the only legitimate work related use in the list that is work related, but would be strongly tied to the nature of one's job - if you are expected to be at your desk 9 to 5, then having your schedule on your phone is not a real advantage. OTOH, if you travel a lot for your job, then it is. Another related work use, although not mentioned, would be that it allows your boss or clients and customers to get in touch with you on site or off site. Another, might be that it enables you to use job related apps when out of the office that feed back to work done in the office, etc (for instance an insurance adjuster might fill out claims reports with pictures on a smartphone or tablet instead of by paper).
Of course, if you are successful in convincing your employer that having a smartphone would enhance your work performance, you should also be prepared for possibility that you end up with an employer provided smartphone that can only be used for work related tasks and you still cannot use your personal one at work.
Just because we live in an age where we have all of these devices that can do all of these different things doesn't change the basic dynamic that employers set the rules for employees. The employee's recourse, if they don't like the rules, is to find a different employer. Plain and simple.
I work in a large company where we have a different GUI team that designs our screens. Increasingly over the past few years they have been building screens with more and more JavaScript requirements. Users seem to want to see everything dynamically loaded...page replaces are somehow evil and ugly...give me a fucking break already...if they had any idea how much more it costs them to build the screens they design they wouldn't be doing it.
That's the problem with trying to use a thin client where the the user really needs a fat client. But today, everbody thinks that everything has to be in the browser, even if it isn't the correct solution for the problem at hand and we are forced to hack together something to give the user what they want.
Slashdot Mirror
That depends. Just because it let something slide doesn't mean you were okay with such. For instance, one may not feel it is worth the complaint at first. A much more extreme example would be women reporting rape. Often they will not, that doesn't mean it isn't illegal, or that they are okay with it, just that at that time they judge the disadvantages of reporting it to be worse than just trying to deal with it. Obviously this isn't near that extreme, but the point is lack of complaint before does not equate acceptance or that something is okay.
What the school did was give the student the same type of ID that they had the prior year, which was not objectionable the prior year, but is now objectionable. It has nothing to do with rape with is a violent attack expressed sexually. There really is no comparison to be made, either in cause or effect. Again, what the school did to remedy the situation was give the student the same type of ID they had the prior year, which the family did not object to, but now does object to. Obviously, then, something has changed in the parents view of things. The question is what?
Schools probably banned metal lunchboxes as potential dangerous weapons.
If you carry an Altoids tin, they probably assume you're storing contraband drugs (like aspirin) in it.
They make those aluminum wallets and metal business card holders. As for Altoids, they can assume what they want. They would have to prove it is contraband drugs in it. As for lunchboxes, yes, those were banned because they were considered to be possible weapons. We should have seen that coming when they first banned the extended 30 lunch box clip.
You don't have to wear those visibly. It seems the tags in question are to be worn, not just carried around in a wallet or so.
But they didn't make that objection last year when they had to wear the ID badge. It only became an objection once the RFID tag was added to it. The compromise proposed removed the RFID tag, so essentially it is like wearing last year's badge. As such, the visibility doesn't seem to be the issue.
We're saying people shouldn't be tracked like cattle. The whole purpose of this program is to indoctrinate the kids into thinking it's okay to be tracked. Then when they get older, the whole national ID tracking system isn't such a big deal. Get them while they're young as the Germans once proclaimed.
There is no need for this system. It is a solution looking for a problem. It does nothing but infringe on the rights of children and indoctrinate them. It has ZERO upside.
Schools have used student IDs for decades, usually with bar codes. Same with libraries, workplaces, drivers licenses, etc. We are already indoctrinated and have been for generations. What is new here is the use of an RFID chip in the ID and then it is only new because it is in a school, not a college or business.
While I do question the usefulness of doing this, claiming an ulterior motivation or some evil plot by big brother sounds a bit too paranoid. Next thing you know people will think the TV show person of interest isn't fiction but the latest reality tv.
Andrea Hernandez is the student who refused to wear the badge because she believed it was the 'mark of the beast' and offended her religion. This case wasn't just about privacy. It was also about the boundry when a person's religion conflicts with secular regulations.
But the compromise was to give her a badge without the chip and the family is still saying it is not acceptable. So, without the id tag, there is no mark of the beast, but evidently it is still a problem. That would seem to imply that some other issue is the real cause.
I wonder if the parents had her immunized as required by state law to attend school. I only ask, not because of any religious objection to vaccinations, but at the doctor's office, your chart is coded with and id code. Why would the family accept that 'mark of the beast' as acceptable but not this one? Or the mark of the beast imprinted on a drivers license, bank account, social security number, license plate, IP address, postal address, etc.
I am not trying to ridicule this family's religious views. I am trying to understand what makes this ID badge, particularly with the compromise different than all of the other numbers that identify us/them in a modern society?
You can however use it to track location once you know who holds what badge number.
Most slashdotters do not have these active RFID units, we have passive ones with much shorter useful ranges.
The student should just remove the battery at the end of each school day.
Usually, the battery is embeded in the badge and not removable. However, one could just stick it in a metal case as the signal is pretty weak to start with. Then again, there is always the microwave -- just a short burst, not enough to destroy the card, just the electronics.
Every student should refuse to wear the badges. They don't have to destroy the badges or anything like that. Just get together and toss them in a big pile. Problem solved. They're not going to suspend every single student. Of course I come from the tail end of a generation where burning draft cards, holding sit-ins and other acts of civil disobedience were not such a foreign idea.
The compromise proposed was a student id without an RFID chip in it. Are you saying that students shouldn't even have to have student IDs or just RFID enabled ones?
The family objects to any ID that has a number on it for religious reasons. They were offered a school ID without RFID and they turned it down.
What about drivers license, social security, bank accounts, postal address, ip address, etc. I don't mean to mock their religious beliefs, but I am curious at what level they are willing to compromise their values (if any)?
Unless you can explain how the vaccinating the nurse will keep the flu infected patient from coughing and sneezing, those droplets will keep transmitting the virus.
If the vaccine stops the nurse contracting the flu, then it stops the nurse coughing and sneezing, which reduces the risk of transmission. You're right that there are other modes of transmission than patient->nurse->patient, and vectors other than airborne water droplets, but it makes sense that removing one significant transmission path will have an effect on the rate of transmission, right?
But the CDC has already shown that patient->nurse->patient is not a significant transmission path, so that theory fails. The primary purpose of vaccinating health care workers is incase their is a pandemic there will be health care workers to care for the sick. It is not to prevent the spread of disease. The primary spread of flu in a hospital is from incidental contact like patient->visitor->door knob->janitor->cafeteria tray->etc. That is the same, whether the flu or strep. That is also why hospitals take great pains to sterilize surfaces and have hand sanitizers in all the rooms for the staff (and not the same stuff you get at Walmart).
No, based on the same CDC data you site, even with hand washing at only 40% it is as effective as vaccination. So just think if they would increase the hand washing rate! Check the CDC again. The purpose of vaccinating health care workers is not to minimize the spread of disease, it is to ensure there are health care workers in case of a pandemic.
Actually, I don't think it's true that the religious part of the argument doesn't come in to play. These nurses aren't making an argument from science. They're making an argument from religion, and then (after that turned out to be controversial) trying to find science to provide justification for their religious stance. So, while I do think we should discuss and clarify the science, there is no justification for the nurse's position or action.
The religious part is irrelevant because the scientific part of the argument is unfounded. If the core reason the hospital is saying to do it doesn't exist, then the reason the nurses are saying they don't want to do it doesn't matter.
The important part is the ability to form long, complex chains. Only two elements can do that: Carbon and silicon. Carbon is better at it. Silicon may be good enough.
It's not just the the chain of base atoms, it is the geometry of the entire molecule. Silicon, being a significantly larger atom than carbon puts the atoms attached to it in a different spacial pattern than if they were attached to carbon. Therefore, what is attached to them is also in a different location. It just doesn't work with silicon as the base because the silicon based organic molecules don't allow things to align in a way that is condusive for the processes that would lead to life. The most abundant atom on earth is silicon and yet there is no evidence of self replicating silicon based molecules. The geometry simply doesn't work out.
In the process, Anonymous successfully managed to get the accused released by tainting the evidence. Congratulations, assholes.
Sorry, no.
For the same reason we rant against calling copyright violations "stealing", the fact that anonymous found it first doesn't have any impact on the admissibility of the evidence. The police, now that someone has shown them how to do their jobs, can go to the same "untainted" sources and obtain the same evidence with a clean chain of custody. Happy day!
Evidence cannot be used anonymously in court, so unless whoever in Anonymous obtained the information comes forward and agrees to describe for the jury exactly how they obtained the information, it really cannot be used. It also has to be shown that the evidence was obtained legally. For instance, what if the police could not get a search warrant so they hacked the system to get the evidence and then said Anonymous did it? By not requiring the actual testimony of the person who obtained the evidence, all sorts of abuses could be perpetrated. As much as we may not like it, those rules protect the rest of us, too.
I would honestly rather not pay to keep these scumbags alive.
If your complaint is about the money, then it is definitely cheaper to keep them alive then to pay for the appeal process of a death penalty. Actual incarceration isn't terribly expensive. Besides, in prison, they are much more likely to get a taste of what they did to the poor girl. Prison populations are notoriously hard on rapists and child abusers.
IANAL, but if Anonymous hacked into various computers to obtain the information, are prosecutors allowed to use it? It is my understanding that normally, investigators would obtain search warrants to legally get the information. I would hate to see the outcome of this case jeopardized because evidence was obtain illegally.
While I believe, in this case, Anonymous, was trying to do the right thing, very often, in courts of law, doing the right thing can jeopardize a case because of rules of evidence, rights of victims and accused, etc. Hopefully, all of this will be resolved and justice will be done.
Is Dr. Orient wrong? Is there evidence that immunized workers are less likely to transmit the virus./p>
Yes.
Not according to the CDC. The main benefit to immunizing hospital workers against the flu is that if their is a pandemic, they will be in a position to care for the sick. It has nothing to do with the reduced transmission of the virus by hospital staff.
I have no particular evidence but here is my educated rambling. Yes if you are immunized you don't spread the virus as much as you might if you were not immunized and have the infection. You can be contagious for about 1 day without knowing you have the infection during that time you can spread it. According to the CDC http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm
Vaccinated or not, in a hospital setting, during flu season, the major source of the spread of the virus is from infected patients, not the nursing staff. The vaccine protects the nursing staff, but it doesn't kill the virus in their system immediately, it keeps it from taking hold. Also, the virus can be spread by touch and the vaccine does not work on the surface of the skin, clothing, stethoscopes, thermometers, etc.
I am in favor of the flu vaccine, however, its use is not preventative as in the polio vaccine (unless we want to immunize the entire population). The main benefit to the flu vaccine for hospital staff, is that it keeps the hospital staff healthy. There is no reliable evidence to show that it increases the likelihood that patients will be less likely to come down with the flu.
Is Dr. Orient wrong? Is there evidence that immunized workers are less likely to transmit the virus.
'Flu is transmitted (among other routes) by airborne water droplets. It also causes the sufferer to cough and sneeze (thus spraying such droplets).
It's hardly conclusive, but based on those facts I find it a little hard to believe that the vaccine (which will prevent the coughing and sneezing) has no effect on transmission...
Unless you can explain how the vaccinating the nurse will keep the flu infected patient from coughing and sneezing, those droplets will keep transmitting the virus. The vaccine only protects the person who received it. They can still transmit it, for instance, they pick up the food tray that an infected patient used and take it to the commissary. While there, they see and old friend and shake their hand. Voila, even though vaccinated and protected, they have now spread the virus (assuming the old friend was not).
Ignoring the religious grounds part of the argument as it really doesn't come into play, it should be quite simple to look at the flu rates of those hospitals mandatory flu vaccinations vs those without. What one finds, when doing so, is that flu transmission is not based on whether or not the staff is immunized, but on the viral load of the patients, themselves. What has been found, though, is that flu vaccinations reduces loss work time from staff from contracting the flu (when the vaccines guessed right on what strain to produce). However, studies also show that proper hygiene measures by the staff also have the same effectiveness (ie. latex gloves, sanitizing hands, etc.).
Based on the data, it appears that the mandatory flu vaccine has more to do with the business side of the hospital than with the patient care.
Keep in mind that the Goldilocks zone only applies to the carbon-based life that we're familiar with. The diversity between the different types of life developed within the different types of Goldilock zones is what really intrigues me. Think of the periodic table and try to imagine a life form that could have evolved from each element.
As much as we may want to believe life may be based on other atoms than carbon, one needs to keep in mind the geometry of the molecules involved. Carbon works out quite well for the geometry of the proteins. Silicon, for instance, is quite a bit larger and it is questionable if the equivalent amino acid structures and self replicating molecules could actually form based on it or any other "base" atom. Carbon is pretty unique in that regard.
By your sig, are you bragging or just wishful thinking?
The burden of proof is on the employer to show that no other mitigating measure can address the risks. Summarily banning child protecting, emergency-aleviating technology, not to mention the tools with which we coordinate the rest of our lives, is truly bad form and will bite the employer more often than they know.
That is just wrong. The employer has no burden of proof to show why you cannot use a personal electronic device (phone or otherwise) while at WORK. It is not some god given right to have/use a smartphone. Can it be useful, sure, but you as the employee have a burden of proof to show why you need to use such a device.
For the list of reasons given in the summary:
This current reality is that people have started to rely on having their smartphones with them at all times for things such as receiving emergency calls from day cares and schools, making personal calls during normal working hours (i.e. to make doctor's appointments), accessing password managers, and scheduling calendar events."
If it is a true emergency or sick child, most employers understand that and allow those calls to come in on a regular work phone line. Making personal calls during normal working hours, sorry, most employers expect that to occur on your time, not their time, so it doesn't matter what phone you use. Accessing password managers, you don't mean to tell your employer that if somebody stole your cell phone that they would have access to everything on the company computers that you have access, do you? Scheduling and calendar events, that would be the only legitimate work related use in the list that is work related, but would be strongly tied to the nature of one's job - if you are expected to be at your desk 9 to 5, then having your schedule on your phone is not a real advantage. OTOH, if you travel a lot for your job, then it is. Another related work use, although not mentioned, would be that it allows your boss or clients and customers to get in touch with you on site or off site. Another, might be that it enables you to use job related apps when out of the office that feed back to work done in the office, etc (for instance an insurance adjuster might fill out claims reports with pictures on a smartphone or tablet instead of by paper).
Of course, if you are successful in convincing your employer that having a smartphone would enhance your work performance, you should also be prepared for possibility that you end up with an employer provided smartphone that can only be used for work related tasks and you still cannot use your personal one at work.
Just because we live in an age where we have all of these devices that can do all of these different things doesn't change the basic dynamic that employers set the rules for employees. The employee's recourse, if they don't like the rules, is to find a different employer. Plain and simple.
I work in a large company where we have a different GUI team that designs our screens. Increasingly over the past few years they have been building screens with more and more JavaScript requirements. Users seem to want to see everything dynamically loaded...page replaces are somehow evil and ugly...give me a fucking break already...if they had any idea how much more it costs them to build the screens they design they wouldn't be doing it.
That's the problem with trying to use a thin client where the the user really needs a fat client. But today, everbody thinks that everything has to be in the browser, even if it isn't the correct solution for the problem at hand and we are forced to hack together something to give the user what they want.
Well, there is $617M in pentagon cuts if cognress can't get its act together regarding the fiscal cliff.
If it is artificically introduced, then by definition, it isn't an evolutionary tradeoff.