Tag: corporate

The Fallacy of Airplane Mode Disabling the Global Positioning System Tracking of Smartphones

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Even when Airplane Mode is activated, the Apple iPhone still receives signals from the global positioning system because this apparatus is a passive, receive only system which does not rely upon a cellular connection, WiFi connection, and/or Bluetooth connection to function. The iPhone scans and listens for satellites orbiting the Earth and calculates its relative position based upon this timing data, which means the iPhone can still determine a users location even without an internet connection, however if this is not desirable by the end user, Location Services can be disabled which theoretically turns this function off. This information is true for most modern smartphones including Android, however not all (e.g. smartphones manufactured prior to 2010, minimalistic/budget conscious smartphone designs, smartphones with custom firmware and/or enterprise restrictions like those managed by corporate information technology teams or running custom read only memory etc.)

The Mythology of Betty Crocker

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Betty Crocker is not a real person, rather she, or perhaps it, is a corporate name. The name Betty was thought to be sweet, kind, and gentle, and the last name Crocker was taken from an executive of the General Mills company. Betty Crocker was created as an advertising campaign but was promoted as a real woman. General Mills hired hoards of women to answer telephone calls posing as Betty Crocker and even had the same group of executives sign her name to ensure the signature remained consistent. The first product Betty Crocker released was a soup mix in 1941, 4 years prior to the iconic Betty Crocker cake mix which made the brand so recognizable

Steve Jobs’ Back Dated Stock Options Scandal

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Steve Jobs was accused of back dated options trading, in which stocks could be purchased from Apple at previous price points which had since passed (e.g. purchasing 100 shares of stock for $100 at the January 2010 price point, when those same stocks were worth $200 because the actual date was July 2010). Jobs did this to give his key people stock options which were so enormous in value that these employees would never even consider taking their talents and skillsets elsewhere. Back dating is legal, if properly reported within official corporate records. After the backdated stock options scandal was exposed by various media outlets, 200 U.S. companies came under investigation for doing the exact same thing. Jobs escaped any wrongdoing by effectively throwing Apple’s CFO Fred Anderson under the bus, a person who was instrumental in the hard fought come back of Apple. Anderson was forced to resign and pay back restitution to the sum of $3,600,000 ($3.6 million) in penalties. In reality, Anderson explained this process to Jobs, and Jobs fully understood the implications, yet chose to place blame squarely upon the Anderson with the rationale that a CFO must oversee all practices related to accounting within a corporation. It was estimated at the time that had Jobs gone to prison for back dating, Apple would have dropped in value by $22,000,000,000 ($22 billion)