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Would You Like Some Fries With That Download?
vodkamattvt writes The New York Times is reporting that the Walt Disney Company is hoping to replace happy meal toys with portable media players that could hold Disney movies, music, games, or photos. From the article: "The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game."
The two causes of extreme obesity, finally togeather at last!
And hundreds of geeks start ordering happy meals- not for the meal, but for the WiFi media player, which will soon be hacked to refer to any arbitrary URI, and creative commons content.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Aren't "partial downloads" prior art as far back as, oh, the era of the floppy disk? Back when warez wasn't distributed as ISOs but as dozens or hundreds of 1.44MB fragmented compressed files? I even remember downloading Slackware like that back in 1994/1995. What exactly is "new" about this to warrant a patent?
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
First Times Square...now this!
The smartest man in the whole, wide world really don't know that much. - Mose Allison
Just like all of these devices, from CueCats to disposable DV recorders, will be hacked. Bring 'em on!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Mabey they could earn workout videos as downloads. If they have to visit a fast food joint 20 times to get the video, then they could watch their video to lose the calories they just racked up!
"I'm off to McDonalds to get a bit of Bambi" ....IN A PIE! HAHAHAHAHA!
"Supersize me"
Someone gets Linux on these things and creates the first McBeowulf?
dave.
honestly, this kinda crap makes me ill...after hearing more about the mcdonald's and nintendo wifi deal i was already kinda getting heebie jeebies...but this new idea, fast food as a conduit for media distribution - that really is an affront to mankind (uh, okay, that's kinda extreme)...these kids are already struggling with obesity (read the data folks, our kids are mostly fat), and putting more distractions in front of them during quite possibly the only time in which they might eat and interact directly with their parents and siblings is just wrong, absolutely wrong...and since we know it's gonna be all disney ads and crap trailers and advertaintment, what the hell is the point? why not just let the media companies bid directly with parents on ourkids.ebay.com and let parents sell their kids' attention spans in five minute increments to the highest bidding media and product firms?
enjoy life, and Gmail.pro
I doubt movies will be popular, but games may actually be a good idea.
First it rolls out trendy games (like King Kong or whatever's hot at that time).
Then every week, it rolls out new levels for the game, which can be downloaded and brought home.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
The target audience for the Happy Meal is kids -- it's to give the kids something to play with during the meal and that they can take home.
Something that you can't use until after you get home won't catch on with the kids... but it could work for adults.
This sounds much more in line with the collector's drink cups or those sports-team bobble-heads you can sometimes get at fast food places than the classic kid's meal toy.
Would you like a root kit with your meal?
Bradley Holt
and does the "customer" have to give away their privacy as a result ?
is that special "code" linked to the counter sales transaction (ie. creditcard) ?
maybe if they produced a "quality" product in the first place they wouldnt have to engage in desperate sales promotions target at taking money from small children ?
child abuse doesnt have to be sexual or violence, dont talk to strangers but you can let a bunch of 40yo marketing people do whatver they want to your children
Won't work. Whoever thought of this should be fired.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I bet the inventor of this idea hasn't met a lot of children. It's like putting an MMC card with some stupid commercial into a kinder surprise egg. They replace the fun with some tech mania
Over 99 Billion Megabytes Served http://religiousfreaks.com/
How many visits will it require for me to download a complete copy of Super Size Me to my Happy Meal media player?
Yes, please. This is a fantastic idea. As a 30something hardware geek, er, movie fan who has no... umm, I mean, with three small children, who loves*cough* hates! who hates cooking, this would get me to visit every McDonald's restaurant in my city at least once!
Once you hit 300 kgs you get the entire movie? This could provide a new way to rate restaurants: Frames per calorie.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
If you ask me, we'll never see these, simply because a wifi media/game player costs money. Know how much a DS or PSP costs? I'm sure McDonalds can't afford to give away a $200 gaget with the purchase of a $3 meal.
A free download for an existing DS/PSP might happen, but since none to many people have such, I dout it.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Mommy! There's a bug in my burger!
... but from what I can remeber from my youth - IF you gave me 1/10th of a game that couldn't be used at all, or had ZERO replay value - then you have given me nothing and I will not be very enthused to pressure my folks to return and get the rest.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
someone said an iPod has a cost of $50 or something. If you throw in some ads, ....
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
...but does it run Linux?
So you reach 300 pounds buy the time you download all of doom
Do they honestly think that they will hold a child's interest long enough to keep the child coming back and downloading more of a movie? I doubt it. Rather if the child is really interested they'll keep nagging the parents and make them go out and buy the whole dvd, if they even do that.
The idea, I assume, is that people will be motivated to come back because their kids want the rest of the movie or game.
This might work, but it could backfire. You want to keep them wanting more; if it takes 10 visits to see a whole cartoon (or whatever), chances are that the kid will lose interest - and it had better be a great cartoon to warrent even a couple of return trips.
What would have worked on me, I think, is if you get a new downloadable game - a whole game, even if it's a little Tetris-type thing - every day that you visit. So you're never frustrated by a half-reward, but you're still curious what the next one will be.
Another thought: what does the hardware cost, is it worth it for the company, and is there a EULA that says you can't hack it for your own purpose?
Now I have another reason not to take my kids out to eat unhealthy junk food: it comes with an extra helping of unhealthy media cartel thuggery.
So, will we be able to sue them over our obesity in several years?
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
...subliminal messages, this will turn out to be a dynamite marketing tool. Just think! You only have to go to McDonald's once and your kids will be indoctrinated in the Mouse Cult by Ronald McDonald! And of course you only get part of the content, forcing you to go back, so the indoctrination can be reinforced.
The British journal New Scientist, which recently reported on the patent application, said that the portable media players could be used as part of a McDonald's promotion and create marketing opportunities for electronics companies. They could also carry advertisements aimed at children and teenagers, the most likely targets of the promotion, and customers could transfer downloaded files to other media devices, potentially sharing their files with other users.Ooooh!!! Transfer files. Now we can infect people who don't even go to McDonald's! "You will go and order a Big Mac! And don't forget to stop at the Disney Store on the way back!"
(A Disney spokeswoman declined comment; McDonald's executives could not be reached.)Of course not! They know we're on to them! [putting on tin hat]
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Doesn't anyone remember when kids would receive Lego's and those funky plastic Slinky-esque connector pipes? Happy Meal boxes were cardboard and created backdrops for imaginary play? How does any of this great technology benefit kids development? Mickey D's not only fattening kids up but giving them more of a reason not to move around and chow more fries.
So , Does thia mean that I can get 28 media players if I order 28 Happy Meals ?
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
I envision people hacking the protocol for challenge & transmission and setting up their own servers to intercept whatever codes are sent and sending subversive material, instead.
"Mommy! They're killing the smurfs!" or
"Mommy! Bambi is a girl! And she has no clothes! And her things are bigger than yours!
And eeeeeewwwwww!
Mommy mommy mommy mommy look!"
Having more "Happy Meal" toys around the house than I can count, I have to wonder who would want a media player that came in a happy meal? The last such "media player" we got required a wind-up before unrecognizable pictures scrolled by.
They're going to be giving away a wifi enabled media player in a Happy Meal? Riiight.
Next they'll be telling me the Big Kid's Meal comes with an HD-TV.
How is anyone going to make money off a $5 happy meal if they are including media players? Surely the distribution and production costs would not fit into the $2 profit made off the meal.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
A thousand chicken nuggets later (and 50lbs heavier), the kid can watch an entire 80 minute disney movie. yay.
Didn't Mc Donnalds want to do something with the Nintendo DS and wifi to let people play games? Is the DS fast enough to play media? Maybe one could buy a Mc Donnalds 'game' cartridge that can stream some video or do a download that only works until you turn off the DS.
What about those of us who may eat fast food (yeah, I admit it :-) but never actually go inside?
When we're away from home, or pressed for time, I sometimes take my son to Burger King/McDonalds (BTW: Culver's has *much* better food, but they're only here in the midwest), but I couldn't tell you the last time I set foot in one of those places. It's always order food from the squawkbox, then drive to window 1 then to window 2.
After all, if I had time to go inside, I'd go to a real restaurant where a plastic toy isn't the highlight of the meal.
Better be one really fast download to complete while I'm at the drive through window.
i hear you, but i mean fast food is the physical conduit - device received on site - so in this scenario, the channel is the brick and mortar retailer (initially), unless or until the site offers enhanced content (either the fast food place or disney)...at some point, the brands need to think about the roles they play in the lives of their customers, and where they are relevant, they've got to be considerate of the real consumers for children (read: separating their parents from money)....offend the people in the pew, and you're gonna find nobody to use those computers downstairs at sunday school...
enjoy life, and Gmail.pro
After looking again, I'm thinking the writer of TFA is a little off. I can see a URL to a page to download a software media player and enter the code to download part of a movie. This business of giving away media players just doesn't make sense to me.
What an interesting idea. back when books first became readily available one of the ways in which people could afford them was to buy them bit by bit, rather than all at once. Authors such as dickens took advantage of this to become the first successful authors to market their work and commodify it. on a side note this is where the modern library sprung forth from, not being a place to lend books but rather to sell them. Dickens realized that he could make a lot out of serializing books and indeed did. On a regular basis a new episode in one of his books would be published and people would literally jump on it, so excited were they by this new medium. Now of course the serial would be a reward for purchasing something else, so it's role is slightly changed, but I can certainly see the rise of the serial again. Just imagine independently commisioning artists/animators to do content on a regular basis, it would be an amazing way to publish without the middleman. Obviously now I'm not just thinking of walt disney, i can imagine a lot of cool places wanting to jump on the bandwagon.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
McDocuments
...
McFavorites
McVideos
McMusic
??
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
That's the beauty of cross-promotion and how easily parents give in to their kids. There are literally millions of people in the US who will do whatever it takes to get their kids to shut up. That's why McD's sells so many million happy meals each year.
And it's not just about McDisney(tm) trying to grow the market, they are each also trying to keep/extend their share of the market. If Parent X is going to take the kids to a fast food joint, then the war is half won -- the second half is making sure they come to your fast food joint.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
When I was a young boy, I awoke every morning to the delicious smell of pancakes. My mother, and father's dojo contained within it a hot griddle perfect for making pancakes, waffles, and a multitude of other pancake-like breakfast pastries. I remember them well -- The pleasant, care-free days of my childhood in the dojo were often spent peering into the kitchen with eager anticipation as my mother prepared pancakes my family.
.. the ultimate pancake. My journey took me to the many islands of my homeland, many days away from my dojo. My hunger for pancakes became my teacher, and foolishly I let it control the path that I walked upon. My feet, sore from travel, ached as my heart and stomach did, until I came to a realization. My duty was clear. I needed to take a stand and accept my love for the art of the ninja AND my love for pancakes. It was not wrong for me to love both. I love one as a dear friend, and one as a lover. Yes--My mission was clear--I must become a ninja, a secret assassin hired by the imperial family BUT I MUST ALSO ENJOY THE OCCASIONAL PANCAKE.
As I grew older, and began my journey to spiritual enlightenment, the memories of my pancake-eating youth filled my heart and dreams with warm, fluffy goodness....Ahhh, yes..the sweet, sweet memories... The day I ate 10 pancakes... The day I placed a warm pancake between my fleshy loins and performed the forbidden dance... The day pressed a pancake to my buttocks and encouraged my dog to come eat.. Indeed, much of my childhood was spent in pure innocence -- An innocence only pancakes can provide. It was heaven. A heaven, filled with pancakes, where I sat at the throne of God, with my hand-maidens Aunt Jemimah and Mrs. Butterworth seated beside me. An indestructible triumvirate made of flour, eggs, sugar, milk, water, and love.
By the age of 15, the path of my life became unclear and confusing. Torn between my duty my village and my love for pancakes, I foolishly left home in search of karaguchi ah-nowakadesu
My adoration for breakfast cakes has placed me within an awkward position. Many ninja refuse to recognize me as their brother. I defend my father's land, but I am looked upon as weak and undisciplined. I tell them, "But, brothers! Listen to my plea! The pancakes do not weaken me, nor do they make me disobey the rule of my sword. They fill me with love." But alas, they do not understand...For the mind of a ninja is complex.
My only earthly desire is to be accepted for who I am. Yes, I am a NINJA--But I also enjoy pancakes. Will you accept me? If you were approached by a ninja who requested a pancake, would you submit to his will?
How is this fundamentally different from, say, stamp cards which allow me a free sandwich/coffe/coke/whatever after I've collected a few stamps?
Fundamentally, this is a "method of providing customer reward for ongoing purchases" (coupled with a "mechanism to ensure repeat business by children").
Big deal, so it's a digital method. They've taken the concept of reward cards, thrown in Wifi, and are claiming to have done something patentable. This is just silly.
God I hope this patent is rejected.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It didn't taste different from the rest of the meal, but my tummy doesn't feel so good now. ***groan***
These corporations will not rest until they have drained the last ounce of humanity out of us and turned us into robotic consumer drones ready to be fleezed at every possible moment in our lifes. Some of you might think that I am over-reacting, but as an indie film maker I am actually on the producing side of such possible content (although I'm sure McD would stick with the blockbusters). What ever happened to simply sitting down for a meal and enjoying a stimulating conversation? We are all like the proverbial boiling frogs - and we're simply tolerating more and more crap like this until the day we've given up any individualistic thought and completely capitulated to those corporations running our lifes.
This is really sick....
... just like gambling... very addictive!
I'm just talking about the food mind you.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
This sounds notoriously similar to drug dealing to me.
You buy the happy meal and get the device and a small for free.
Then to get the whole thing (or more) you have to pay.
*in evil sounding voice* The first one's for free! *evil laugh*
This way they get conditioned to get frustrated by not being able to complete a movie when they are eating hamburgers. Some people eat more when they are frustrated. Voila a great business plan. Why would anyone be so masochistic to watch 10 minutes of a movie, especially if they are so easily downloaded these days?
According to "TFA", it takes 30 months for patents to be approved, and they havent even started looking at it yet. Right now it sounds like this is all "just in case we want to do this some day in the far future". Not Stuff that Matters.
Sounds good, but I don't know how well the partial download would go over. I doubt that many kids would have been happy only getting cetain body parts of their favorite action figure that they could eventually piece together and make a toy that you could actually play with. Why would you only want spiderman's arm and leg? Would that encourage return customers, or actually not be a good enough incentive to make the purchase in the first place?
I just got done going to Burger King incessantly so my son could get all of the Star Wars toys, now my kids are going to want to go to McDonalds over and over again to get movies!
Its a great idea, and I don't like it one bit.
Embedded signature? How do they match that to a... receipt?
Sealed? How about reuse?
Please mod down the prior art troll. ty
...but habituating kids to stop/go DRM restrictions while they get their fat/glucose fix seems a rather low level to stoop in order to gain consumer acceptance.
What's next? They push some must-have movie or game to get kids to scream until their parents let them install a Sony rootkit??
About a dozen years ago Mcdonald's did a campaign with video tapes, something like buy a meal and get a movie for $2.99 (I watched The Adam's Family about 1000 times as a result). I wonder if they ever tried the same concept with DVD's? It seem's a heck of a lot easier for the consumer, and you'd still have people returning to the store to get another DVD.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
put up by http://www.davidsaccess.com/ this site http://www.confusingwords.com/ tracks them all! but you gotta remember, when people are cranking out commentary on slashdot, they're going fast...never stop to think much about 'effect/affect' and so on...
enjoy life, and Gmail.pro
This idea won't work unless they find a way to make the downloads into choking hazards. The public won't accept them as authentic Happy Meal toys until the customary nationwide safety recall has been issued.
Disney & Mickey Dee's, rotting the mind and the body together.
I have to come in multiple times to get a full prize? This never would have flown with what an impatient child I was (and still am). I would have been so pissed during Lego or Popoid promotions (anyone else even remember Popoids?). Yay, I come in for a Happy Meal and get... A single Lego brick. It's like those Star Trek chess sets where you get one piece every three months, so you should be ready to sit down and play some chess by 2154.
I saw some toys the other day that were like that. You bought an action figure, and it came with an arm or a leg of another action figure.
Of course, transformers-style toys have done that forever, but this was just an arm roughly the size of the action figure's leg, nothing "rideable".
Of course, unless they're complete idiots, they wont really be selling peices of movies, they'll be selling episodes of crappy somethingorother that will be trendy for three months.
Of course, they could over-DRM this and entirely forget the benefit of collectable/tradeable stories in bubble gum or trading card packs. ("They're supposed to BUY the new chapters, not buy some of them and trade some with their friends!")
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Scary times we live in...
Can you imagine?:
"Mommy where's the movie?"
"It's still downloading honey"
"Mommy where's the movie?"
"It's still downloading honey"
"Mommy where's the movie?"
"It's still downloading honey"
"Mommy where's the movie?"
Begin crying, screaming tantrum here.
A big fat Pocahontas was the first thing that popped into my mind when I read "Disney, McDonalds and Happy Meal"
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
gosh, that just screams hack me. And to think, I've got a two year old to buy happy meals for...
Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game."
That's it. Civilization is over. We had a nice run.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
will be the opening credits. You have to keep them coming back for more.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
"Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound."
http://www.vidman.ca/funstuff/mc_effort_and_crew-s kimpys.rm
Some noise for the French Fry! Come selecta!
putting more distractions in front of them during quite possibly the only time in which they might eat and interact directly with their parents and siblings is just wrong, absolutely wrong.
You assume that families that eat at McDonalds actually give a rats ass about spending time with each other. The people I know who force-feed this crap on their kids do it to spend less time on or with their children.
You think that McDonalds is to blame? Should they share some burden?
No - they didn't fuck your husband/wife/babby daddy/whatever.
The only thing making it hard on parents who want to raise their children right are the parents themselves.
these kids are already struggling with obesity
Media isn't going to make kids fat. The kids are fat because their parents don't love them and don't feed them right.
Again, none of this has to do with any major corporations. I hate Disney, for the most part I also hate McDonalds (for other reasons) but to blame them for decades of bad parenting and general social decline is wrong. Don't sue McDonalds because you are fat, sue your mom and dad that didn't love you enough to tell you when and why you should quit overeating (and/or to eat healthy).
Notice: I seem to be taking this out on you, I'm sorry. Not intended.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Little Kids can't drive themselves to McDonald's. The truth is that when I was small child we went to McDonald's maybe once or twice a MONTH. We got Pizza maybe once or twice a month. Parents need to quite blaming McDonald's for their kids eating habits. Cooking at home is the key to better health. It isn't just fast food. If you eat out every night at TGI Fridays, Ruby Tuesday, Olive Garden, Longhorn, or even a good high quality restaurant unless you you have a LOT of self control and order a salad you are going to get fat!
Restaurants are supposed to be treats. They have become a way of life.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The patent is on getting a partial file for every purchase or something like that. Anywa, I am sure there is prior art for even that (getting a coupon stamped at subway until u get the whole sub, collect oyrs from cereal box till u have the whole set) etc.
.. so someone can get a patent (if someone hasn't already) on it hoping it'll eventually get cheap. It's not creative, just hasn been done yet cause of economics and other reasons (OLED displays arent reliable with all colors etc)
The point is it is expensive to give out media players at this time. But hey are patenting it cause nobody's given out media players with partial files or whatever. If media players were dirt cheap, this is a pretty obvious marketing thing. When it becomes economical to implement they will be holding the patents. You dont need to actually implement it to get a patent.
An example is OLED based skins for cell phones, home appliances, TV's, xbox, media players etc. Like today OLED based flexible displays are expensive
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93366&cid=8019 630
Trying to document when I actually thought it up so there is some prior art.
Where do you get *your* entropy?
I figure that maybe some Disney afficionado might be lurking here and can answer my question. I know this is totally off topic but does anyone know the name of the movie that features Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy getting locked in a haunted house?
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Charles Dickens popularized the Serial Novel. This amounts to a re-incarnation of the serial Novel. Come back again to get the next episode. Recently Steven king produced a serial novel distributed over the internet as each segment was written.
The only major difference seems to be the distribution format.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
it could also have expandability capabilitys because of BT in the uk implementing free wireless AP's in mcdonalds in the uk. the scheme is called BT Openzone
portfolio
I have a better idea.
Disney's version: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player...
My version: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving good food.
Isn't that better?
Just what our children need - more and more of being spoon-fed somebody else's ideas as entertainment. At least with a toy their imaginations get some exercise. Now they'll just be sitting there vapidly absorbing yet more prepackaged entertainment as a passive consumer rather than playing as an active participant and creator. Which, no doubt, is exactly what DisneyCorp et. al. want...
Bah. {waves paw}
My first idea was /pizza service :(
My UID is prime... is yours?
What seems a bit bigger of an obstacle is how do you get a device cheap enough that can actually handle playing a movie.
The cheapest device at the moment must be the GBA micro and that still is 100 dollars. Of course you could deduct Nintendo's and the retailers profit from it but how low could you possibly get?
Current happy toys are cheap chinese made plastic toys costing less then a dollar for the most ambitious campaigns.
Surely they know that any free tech device of any capacity is going to be hacked?
As for kids remembering to bring their player with them. A bit hopefull. Lending the device out temporarily would also be prone to cheating and asking for a deposit would effectively double the cues at the till for people wanting to give the device back after eating.
Nice idea but wouldn't it be simpler to put the media player in the table? That techonology can be readily bought from airline seats supliers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The "restaurant as a treat" has changed, as people are shortchanged of more and more of their free time. Take my own situation for example. I'm a divorced dad who has a 3 year old that lives with me full time. I'm expected to drive her to daycare in the morning before I go to work (about a 25-30 minute drive with traffic), work an 8 hour day or more, run back to daycare to pick her up, and head home again. She doesn't get fed dinner at daycare because I pick her up by 6PM, so she's complaining about being hungry from the time we get in the car.
Where do you propose I come up with the time and energy to rush home and prepare a home-cooked meal for both of us, while still finding time to clean the house, wash the dishes, do the laundry, go shopping once in a while, and everything else that needs to be done?
Our meals are usually microwaved dinners, veggies out of a can, or something quick like a sandwich or hot-dog. Most likely not any more healthy than running by Subway and grabbing a sandwich and chips, really.
Lots of people find themselves in similar situations, except sometimes with more than just 1 kid. So sure, I can see why fast food is a "way of life".
I didn't see "browsing slashdot".
If you want to mess up a McCounterworker.
Instead of asking for a Coke say:
"I'd like a medium soft drink"
The look is always priceless. 9 out of 10 have no idea what that is. 3 out of 10 will attempt to give you fries. Some will just glare at you. Others look like they want to cry.
Wonderful!
Are you aware that you can prepare a meal yourself the night before and reheat it when you get home? I do it all the time. It takes a little forethought, but gets the job done pretty well. Sometimes I'll make enough for 2 or 3 meals, and have it for lunch the next day, or freeze the leftovers and eat them the following week.
It doens't matter why people eat at fast food places. The choice of doing it is the issue. Being a single parrent is hard. But the fast food resturants are not the actual problem. I don't know what your specific situation is but cooking at home is going to be better than eating out as well as cheaper. You may have to cook the meal the night before. You may cook on the weekends and freeze it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Why give away an expensive gadget (which would also require tech support) when you can simply project the feature on a big screen in the restaurant itself. The price of admission: each viewer must place an order of some kind.
If you are going to stress about every source of trash polluting the earth, you are in for a short, extremely stressful life.
The world is gonners, sit back and enjoy the ride.
You get divorced, and the only way you know how to feed your 3-year-old girl is by feeding her fast food.
Moral: Don't get divorced ;-)
One problem I see with this is if there are say 5 or 6 movies and two or three games at one time. Do you need level 3 of the game to be able to play any/all levels after level 3? And if there are 5 or 6 movies at once, and ten pieces to a movie, what are your chances you will get all pieces of the movie you want? And how will you feel when you get three meals in a row and you aren't getting the pieces you want, or dupes of existing pieces.
Most likely, the kid will just go home, and go visit www.mcdonaldskeys.com, and get all the codes at once. It's just the high-tech way of sharing pieces/codes with your friends. But MickeyDs could make you open an account when you first start using the system, then they can decide which pieces to give you for each code, and the code expires immediately after use. There goes sharing. Bonus to them if you at least get to pick the movie it's from. And I'll just bet the order of pieces for a 6 part movie is:1 3 4 5 6 2. D'oh!
That'll be 50 dollars - and you get this free player as well!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
...throw me your McMedia Player and I'll get you the next instalment!
Optimist: The thumb drive is half empty! Pessimist: The thumb drive is half full...
Guess this warning will apply to all the items in a happy meal then
...are all about delayed gratification.
this is just serialized promotional material. When I was a kid, grocery stores had kitchenware and table settings that you received incrementally after getting a card punched or similar validation. This would have been in the early sixties. That would qualify as prior art, right?
http://www.freshpatents.com/Cheese-and-methods-of- making-such-cheese-dt20051110ptan20050249854.php
Get a pressure cooker. Seriously, go to the department store and pick one out, there are sales galore right now, or shop online. They come with recipe books and instructions. Very *nice* tool. You can do any number of healthy good meals FAST at home. Dig it, FAST. Then there's crock pots, or slow cookers, equally nice, cooks while you are at work. Get good knives and other kitchen utensils and organize and practice. You can get down to 15 minutes or so tops prep time for most dinners that are perfectly fine. Heck, I can go out to the garden and harvest what I need and be back and prepped and the stuff cooking that fast, it's just not that hard. Cooking is a great geek skill (same as the gardening and kids love gardening:hint), spend some time at it and you'll find you can do it fast and efficiently, same as learning a new game or whatever.
There were 4 available at any given time, but they had a couple rounds of them. In the first set, "Weekend at Bernie's" was available. It was the best movie of any of the rounds, and IMHO, was actually worth having.
Drop Dead Fred was in the 2nd round. I got that too, but I wanted a different one, they gave it to me by mistake. None of the 4 in the 2nd round was worth having, IMHO. I refused to accept any of the DVDs in the 3rd round they were so bad.
If you ever went in to get your pizza, you'd have noticed they kept the DVDs locked up! They were free to you, but they kept them more secure than other items in there like the 2-liter bottles of pop that cost $2 or something. I never understood that.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Take to the streets my brothers and sisters. Revolt, we have waited too long. First the prizes in cereal boxes got more and more shitty as time went by, and now this. This is too much, they are taking away our happy meal toys, the last place to find solace in a toy/food combination. What will I play with whilst I gorge myself on barely edible food substances. Enough is enough, get the guns and take it to the streets, I will be there shortly.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
I'm glad that McDonalds is back doing what they do best: selling not-so-healthy fast food. It's great that they have these salads now but hey: didn't we all come there for their great burgers?
-- Cheers!
You are aware the problem here was time.
While it is possible to utilize the hours between midnight and dawn to prepare dinner for a few days, do the dishes, walk the dog, feed the hungry, most people not working night will probably prefer to use the said hours to get some shut eye, grab som Z's, have some donwtime for psychological maintainance, sleep.
The Thunderbirds Movie vehicles were like that. You got a single piece of Thunderbird 5 with each of Thunderbirds 1, 2, 3 and 4.
This masterful marketing move was, however, countered at source by making the movie suck so badly no-one wanted to buy them. Instead it just rekindled the interest in the classic Thunderbirds TV series.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
No, Mc* is not a restaurant. It's a snack bar. In a restaurant, eating takes time. It's a place where the quality of the meal and the social context of eating is at the center. And i am not talking about expensive restaurants, it also holds true for simple small-alley striplightning el cheapo restaurants and anarchistic veganistic-food-against-capitalism-squats. I've been in many restaurants that were cheaper than any fast food halls. (probably not in /Kj, soit) In a restaurant you might not learn how to cook, but at least you learn a meal is something that deserves care and special attention.
No, Mc* is seriously targetting kids to push their parents into the corner. All their friends at school have this gadget or have been at the mc this weekend, and their kids not, blablabla. We all know how these things work. In Holland, the big Mcdonalds-signs along the speedway are sometimes called 'screaming post', because kids start screaming immediately when they see one.
No, the real problem is not so much in the fast food, as it is in the driving. With healthy homecooking (or eating in a vegan-fuck-capitalism-dreadlock-restaurant) one can still get weight problems, simply by lack of body motion. So, get your kids (and yourself) out of that car, and on a bicycle. Cycling is a key to stay healthy when busy: one gets excercise during dayly transportation. 15km commuting a day by bicycle generally doesn't take more time than by car or public transport. And kids really should go to school by bicycle. (the biggest threat to children during their trip to school is the car of parents driving their kids to school). The trick is, excercise invokes healthy eating, your body simply asks for healthy food to keep the machine running. Improving the food whithout excercise is futile.
But, i completely agree, one should cook at home as frequently as possible.
Trust me, I work for the government.
You mean their lower intestines will end up protruding several inches from their butts???? We must legislate against this immediately!!!
No sig today...
unless you you have a LOT of self control and order a salad you are going to get fat!
Unless, of course, you are in a country where they supersize salads.
This is just Disney.
After all, we now see that Bank of America is on its way toward patenting the ceiling function. See at the bottom? Patent pending.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
"Ree-jeck-tedd"? Whaa--?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I'd mod you up. I feel your pain. My problem is not just time, it's skill, or lack thereof.
My "best" dish is EasyMac, sm. can of green peas, 1/2 can tuna mixed up. My daughter loves it. She goes on & on about how great it is. Then someone asks if it's really good. "Oh, yeah.... for him...."
At 9 she's old enough to be disdainful of my cooking. Joy.
-------
Don't marry crazy women! Don't get divorced! Don't be a single parent! Don't do what I haven't yet done so I can feel superior until it happens to me and I see what it's like!
Those guys have no clue.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
...a double feature:
Supersize Me
McLibel
...at least one (economically/mentally poor) person will go on a water ride with their new electronic device in hand, and get electrocuted(hopefully), or shocked. They will then proceed to sue Disney for an out-of-court settlement. They will then use that settlement to sue Michael Jackson for another out-of-court settlement. In the end they will file for bankruptcy after spening all of their money on attorney's fees.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!