"What remains to be seen is if he's got the ability to establish and promote a vision at the same level that Jobs did."

Yes, remains to be seen. However, we are already seeing indications that Tim Cook does NOT have the ability.

"Our products are the best in aiding the blind" isn't about Apple products?

What is important is not what Tim Cook says. What is important is the result of what he says. Will talking about severely limited people cause customers to pay $550 for another (unlocked) iPhone, or pay a hidden increase of $550 for a new cell phone contract that includes a new iPhone? Will creating a distracting controversy cause customers to pay another $550? No.

We are witnessing the collapse of Apple. I once paid $1,500 for a laptop PC. Now far better laptops cost $500. Eventually people will decide that the smart phone they already have is enough.

Tim Cook is merely distracting people from thinking about the value a new iPhone has on the quality of their lives. The distractions do nothing about the collapse.

I actually sorted a large stack of numbered papers using quicksort. I chose it because it seemed to work well in the case of slow to move/compare paper.

You pick the pivot, initially at random but with re-selections based on the knowledge of the total set. After that, you can step through the whole stack in a fairly automatic way, paper by paper, easily putting papers into the left/right stacks by just shifting them left and right. No slow paper by paper insertions or other checks. Just a paper by paper step through to divide the pile (hopefully) into two; lower-lower-greater-lower-greater-etc-etc

I repeated the operation on the sub-stacks until they were at about ~5-10 papers. At this point I'd like to say I insertion sorted, but really I just shuffled them into position. And at the end, once all substacks are sorted, you just place them on top of one another and you're done.

The biggest problem I had was moving the substacks around and finding space for them once their numbers started getting larger. I would consider this the biggest bottleneck in the method.

Overall the operation seemed to work well considering the additional difficulty of actually physically moving the paper around by hand. But if someone reckons there was a better method I for one would be interested in hearing it.

The comment below tells more of what is likely to be the underlying motivation.

Basically, Tim Cook is wanting to feel superior.

In my opinion, that misses the point. Instead of selling the best qualities of Apple, Apple CEO Tim Cook made himself the object of controversy. That shows that he is not competent and should be demoted immediately. It also shows, in my opinion, that Apple is on the way down much faster than I would have guessed.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs drew attention to himself, but did it in a way that also drew attention to Apple products.

In my opinion, Steve Jobs was socially manipulative and self-destructive, but he had positive qualities, also. Tim Cook is merely self-destructive.

If you don't like Apple's energy policy, buy majority shares.

And/or recruit other shareholders to your opinion.

Which is what he tried to do. It's a testiment to the Apple shareholders that it didn't work. B-)

Surely energy policies are about creating a feel-good aspect to the brand. Plus if you learn something along the way by trying perhaps you can commercialize it and it takes you off on another wild ride, like the iPhone did.

Directors and officers of a corporation have a fiduciary duty to the stockholders to run the company in their interest.

This USUALLY means trying to maximize return on investment. But the sotckholders may want other things, in addition to or in place of, financial gain. When this is the case, the duty requires them to set their own target appropriately.

This is not uncommon: Think "green energy company" or "church" for two examples. The Bell Telephone company, started by Alexander G. out of his research into hearing aids, has always done work on assisting the hearing impaired. Hershey's, at the direction of its founder, is owned by a trust and 30% of its profits go to support a school for orphans.

One typical strategy is to "satisfice", rather than maximize, financial gain, while pursuing other interests. This produces a sound financial base for pursuing those interests. (i.e. Hershey's, churches, "green companies"...) Another is to do things that are win-win with respect to the business (i.e. Bell Telephone, doing things like designing phones to work well with hearing aids, make ringing sounds that are auddible to the partially deaf and light-flashing ringer devices, and otherwise making the phone system accessable to hearing impaired.)

As you point out, these approaches may also lead to financial benefits that typical businesses and business-school graduate executives miss in their pursuit of the short-term bottom line. Good will, new inventions, synergies, etc.

Another example: Hershey's, not constrained or incentivized by short-term bottom-line, doesn't use typical industrial-food ingredients such as corn syrup, or follow other food-processing fads. It sticks with basic, high quality, time-proven, ingredients and recipies. This produces a consistent product (which also forms the base for consumer recipies) and a loyal customer base. (No "New Coke" debacle or gradual deterioration of product quality over decades with this company.)

When I was working in retail about 5 years ago competitors of ours did the same. Our store name, their phone number.

That reminds me of why dial phones were invented.

Early telephone exchanges used an operator to connect all calls. You picked up the phone and this lit a lamp and sounded a buzzer at an operator's console in the central office. The operator pulgged a cable into a jac and talked to you, found out who you wanted to talk to, and plugged another cable into the other customer's jack (or a trunk to another operator) to hook you up. Similarly when you hung up, or (if the call needed some other modification and you "flashed" by flicking the hook switch).

Some businesses bribed unscrupulous operators to redirect their competitor's calls to them, stealiing some of their buiness (especially in high customer turnover businesses, where a large fraction of the calls were initial contacts.) There was much flap over this, of course.

One such customer - an undertaker - decided to attack this problem at its root. He also happened to be what we'd now call a hacker (in the "exceptionally competent technologist" sense). He developed the earliest version of a dial telephone system, and got one of the telephone companies serving his area to install it. Electromechanical stepper switches were not susceptable to bribery, problem solved.

Of course electromechanical stepper switches are also cheaper than even low-wage people. So dial systems caught on very quickly. You still needed operators for non-simple stuff, but a company handling the bulk of the calls mechanically needed far less of them, and when such service was available businesses switched over en masse.

Is this cell site actually intended to be connected back to the grid, or is it only for communication between phones connected to this one site?

Back to the grid. According to TFA:

Backhaul to Vodafone is through the Cobham Explorer 500 Broadband Global Area Network, with communications being encrypted through IPsec.

That's a satellite modem that sells for about three grand. A bit over 0.4 mbps of encrypted data plus voice.

I agree. And this is stupid.

From the summary:

So, why do many of us perceive Whole Foods and the Creation Museum so differently?

Maybe it is because the stuff the author finds objectionable is just a segment of the stuff available there? But the Creation Museum is 100% about creationism.