People have no clue how nuclear power plants work. The power that gets generated has to go somewhere, which is the power grid. If the nuclear power plant's connection to the grid gets severed (by bad weather, in this case), the power still has to go somewhere, or else it melts down the connecting infrastructure, and eventually triggers a nuclear meltdown situation. This is readily avoided by shutting down the reactor (before the problem starts) but since it can take a day before the reactor can be put back to operation, its a pain in the ass that management likes to avoid. Its like trying to stop a train in motion; you can't stop it with 30 seconds of advance notice.

The NYPD does this to islamic prayer groups, why wouldn't they do it to teenagers?

"First the came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist..."

Ugh, she nearly got me too. But the commercial so annoys me, its not going to happen.

lol

You're still not getting it. Management only "needs" to answer to shareholders. Shareholders are effectively "the owners". Saying management has a legal responsibility to pay its employees is based on a contract between two parties. It doesn't mean either the employees or the customers have any (legal) "right" to tell management how they should operate the company or how to conduct its policies.

That is not the responsibility of the shareholders; that is the shareholders' prerogative. A shareholder can only try to influence policy within a company, or divest themselves from the company. Should management get involved in criminal activity, that is not the "responsibility" of the shareholder to "prosecute" or "punish" management for it. Shareholders only receive financial loss from such corporate malfeasance.

No, they don't. Its not responsibility, its common sense only to the extent there is a clear understanding between management and employee of policy. What's "good business" is not the same thing as "responsibility". One can make the claim "Trying to hire H1-Bs over a native worker is not treating the native worker with dignity and respect", but that doesn't mean the company has a legal responsibility to hire the native worker over the H1-B.

Another sad aspect of this is the Chick-Fil-A episode with its "attitudes" towards homosexuality. There is no legal requirement that Chick-Fil-A show "respect" to homosexuality towards its customers or employees. When some gay customers, employees, and neither tried to organize a boycott towards Chick-Fil-A, it had the negative result of rewarding Chick-Fil-A's behavior by its customer base, who apparently either semi-actively prefer Chick-Fil-A's behavior towards homosexuality or feel the homosexual community overstepped in imposing their prerogatives (lets call it "respect") upon the company.

Communism or "American Liberal" sense of "decency" has no business in dictating to a company in a capitalist economy.

Management only has legal responsibilities to its shareholders, not "stakeholders". The US economy is capitalist, not socialist, in nature.

Bullshit. You can find all of those in North America, Europe, and basically any place considered "civilized". 99% of the planet's population does not live in Africa, rural China/India, or Oceania.

Its one thing to be a deranged Libertarian asshole, but at least get your facts right. Oh, you depend of FOXNEWS for your information? Never mind.

When Slashdot is polling about TV watching, they're not talking about using a consumer viewing device at a set time determined by a broadcaster's schedule, OTA or over a cable subscription. This is Slashdot, not Meatspace. If you're viewing (scripted) video entertainment produced by an entertainment production company (I was going to insert "mostly Hollywood", but the times keep changing) through DVD/blurays, DVR, torrents, Netflix or Amazon, you're still viewing TV.

So lets cut the crap about never having watched The Wire, Battlestar Galactica (2004), Games of Thrones, Breaking Bad, PBS/Discovery/Sci series, Star Trek (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager or Enterprise), Dr. Who, or Person of Interest. Yes, there's going to be a higher percentage of those people on Slashdot, but its not 60%.

A market for computer repair? Ha. You'll never make it in retail. Computer repair is at the cusp of an obsolete industry. Something doesn't work? Stick in a new card, or buy a better replacement computer for less than $300. Even now, virus cleanings are just a con by local repair stores. Old consumers just don't get that "repair" is an obsolete industry. Everything is disposable now. Repair is only for niche products in the industrial markets, because there isn't enough "customer" demand to design products to be thrown away.

You realize that the Maker movement (as branded) has only been around for 8 years, and can launch new product lines in less than 6 months? There's no freaking way RS could be relevant in that market; at best, they could have only rode its coattails by religiously following the "industry", and stocking only the most common items. Gad, think of the inventory obsolescence...

Little sister? You mean grand aunt.

You also have to realize that most of that is data and wiki text. The encyclopedia part (without the multimedia data) could probably fit on a DVD (compressed).

Oh come on. Brick & mortar stores are dead. There's no way the gadgeteer could support a brick & mortar geek store. Even stores like Best Buy are on the chopping block, and they were closest to being a model that could support brick & mortar stores with a "geek" shelf. The best model for these kind of product lines are my beloved microcenter.com, and I consider Microcenter on the chopping block.

Face it, if you want to be a geek in the future, you'll have to do it by mail order. There aren't enough geeks in the country to sustain the purchase flow needed for a brick & mortar. Its not the end of the world either; it just means you can't use tactile sense to determine whether to purchase something, and that's a marketing thing anyway.

The proper term is ideological fanaticism, not religious.

Losing the factory and designers is a loss to American consumers. Losing a brand name is meaningless.