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Blame Your Mistakes on Technology
Techdirt has an quick look at how it is becoming much more common for people to blame their mistakes on technology. "There are people driving off cliffs and through flooded roads and taking detours that span half of England, apparently at the behest of their navigation units. Things got so bad in one place that authorities even had to put up "ignore your sat nav" signs. Now, a woman's car got hit by a train, and for some reason, she's blaming a GPS navigation unit."
If your GPS unit told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?
it's much easier to blame someone/something else than take personal responsibility for your actions. Is this really a surprise to anyone?
~/.sig: No such file or directory
... if you don't know how to drive, get the fuck off the road.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Technology is a supplement, it is not meant to replace common sense.
I got a message with a series of points criticizing Americans for blaming companies and institutions rather than themselves. I partly agree with the underlying message that people should take charge and solve problems, rather than just cast blame on others. However, the points go too far--they whitewash companies and institutions that really did something wrong. Let's see if I understand how America works lately . . . If a woman burns her thighs on the hot coffee she was holding in her lap while driving, she blames the restaurant. Ordinarily, when you spill coffee on yourself, it hurts but doesn't really injure you. MacDonalds was serving coffee too hot, and as a result, a woman who spilled her coffee was seriously burned. It turns out MacDonalds had been warned about this before--they knew they were doing something dangerous. That's why she won that lawsuit. If your teen-age son kills himself, you blame the rock 'n' roll music or musician he liked. Actually, we don't. A few people tried to blame the musicians, but they did not win those cases. If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer, your family blames the tobacco company. If the tobacco company got you addicted when you were a child, because they lied and said smoking was safe when they already knew it was dangerous, it has a lot to answer for. If your daughter gets pregnant by the football captain you blame the school for poor sex education. A responsible teacher would have taught her effective birth control techniques as well as pleasurable sex techniques. If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, you blame the bartender. Bartenders are not supposed to serve alcohol to people who are intoxicated, but they face the temptation to do so anyway in order to sell more booze. If your cousin gets AIDS because the needle he used to shoot up with heroin was dirty, you blame the government for not providing clean ones. Actually other people tried to provide clean needles, specifically to prevent the spread of AIDS, and we blame the government for stopping them. If your grandchildren are brats without manners, you blame television. I suspect the real culprit is the economic system that is set up so that parents can't spend much time with their children--so they use TV to keep the kids distracted. However, some present evidence that the introduction of TV in a society has an effect on the way children generally behave. If your friend is shot by a deranged madman, you blame the gun manufacturer. This goes too far, but there is a core of good sense in it. Nowadays there are things gun maufacturers can do to make it hard for anyone other than the owner to use the gun. And if a crazed person breaks into the cockpit and tries to kill the pilots at 35,000 feet, and the passengers kill him instead, the mother of the deceased blames the airline. This, if it happened, is the only one I won't try to defend. I must have lived too long to understand the world as it is. So if I die while my old, wrinkled ^*%#$* is parked in front of this computer, I want you to blame Bill Gates, OK?
I'm guilty of placing my trust in my HP Travel Companion perhaps a bit too much. It hasn't actually led me anywhere bad, but I do find myself paying attention to it instead of road signs. Now, I have gone on incorrect routes because I trust it to warn me of things ahead of time, but when the turn comes, I'm in the wrong lane (freeway splits, for example).
That being said, I still won't ever get directions the old way ever again (unless they build a new city somewhere or something and I don't have the maps for it).
Must be technologies way of thinning the herd.
This is sometimes common with programming also. I know people who fail to deliver, or deliver software which constantly fails, and they blaim library X or technology Z.
Douglas Adams had talked a lot about technology guiding our life. His posthumous book Salmon of Doubt talks about the intermediate phase between the current world of dumb electronics and the time when we have truly intelligent machines. The brief period when the machines are dumber than the average human, yet the human has too much confidence in the machine to trust his/her own judgment will be really bad.
I'm afraid that is the world of Today. We trust our inanimate companions over humans because they are bereft of intent (and malice). But I suspect people are less likely to change than machines are likely to become more reliable. So ... ++CARRIER ERROR
I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Mr AndersonQuidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I work for a company that makes software that is used for navigation, and there are a good amount of tech support calls complaining about how the "program sent us down an unmarked dirt road!" They don't seem to realize that they drove themselves down the dirt road, on the suggestion of a computer. I think we've all seen our GPS's be off by a bit, some people are missing the fact that nothing is perfect, especially not a box with a tiny screen.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that we have an innate ability to shift blame. No "technology" is required. (Or rather, maybe blame shifting is a technology.)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Yeah... It's the e-mail that's stupid, not you, huh?
that you expect that people will be honest. They won't. period.
No matter what the laws are, people will attempt to circumvent them, litigate for whatever they can get. This is how it works. The woman that won against McD's won because the court sided with her. The rest of us know that hot coffee is hot coffee. The real problem is that the law will allow such unless specifically forbidden to do so. This not only allows for absurd law suits, it allows for freedom of speech and the other liberties that we in the US enjoy. The judge should have ignored her and thrown it out, but that is another story.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The woman's car got crunched because the rail crossing was so poorly lit and poorly marked that she didn't know she was on train tracks. I do think she's overreacting by swearing of navigation systems, but then I'm sitting at a desk and she nearly got hit by a train. Let some time go by and her head (and others) will clear and that problem with the crossing will be addressed.
I have a friend whose partner was driving down a motorway (equivalent to a freeway) in Britain. Unlike California where lanes are de-facto equivalent, in the UK it's customary to have faster lanes towards the "outside" (more to the right) of the road; she was driving in the fast lane at ~100 mph, as was typical for the road.
Her BMW had an "intelligent" system on-board as well as the GPS, and out of nowhere, it told her to "stop the car". So she did. Quickly. In the fast-lane, on the motorway. Chaos ensued.
She's not unintelligent (though, being blonde, she did get a certain amount of follicle-related humour directed at her), but she did as she was told, in a pressure-situation. She's one of those people who don't interact well with machines or computers. She didn't think it through, she just reacted. In fact there *was* something seriously wrong with the engine, but nothing that would prevent her from pulling onto the hard-shoulder (the emergency lane).
There seems to be a tech-friendly "gene" (though whether it's nature or nurture is up for debate) whereby people either abrogate all responsibilty to the machine, or they treat it as an advisory adjunct to their daily lives. Perhaps it's just the growing pains of a society in the midst of rapid change. Perhaps in a couple of decades, when the holistic neural interface(TM) is commonplace, it'll be us "techno-savvy" yesterday's-(wo)men that people will be laughing and pointing fingers at, Nelson-like. I wonder what it'll feel like, when the boot is on the other foot...
In other words, sure, people do stupid things, but this is an opportunity to educate, not to mock.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
1. Regarding at the poor schmucks who drove through deep water, I can't help feeling that a relatively small road obstruction (even a sign placed in the middle of the road) would have solved the whole problem. Yes, people shouldn't drive into water if they don't know how deep it is, but c'mon, after the first or second time it happened you'd think the town would have gotten on top of it.
2. If you're in the middle of nowhere and your GPS tells you to take a particular road, you're probably going to trust it. If a few minutes later it turns out to be a crappy road that goes up the side of a mountain, that's just bad luck. The article makes it sound like these people were blindly driving off of cliffs.
3. Ok, I have no excuse for the girl who drove onto the train tracks. But she's pretty cute.
Cause I can't tell when a page is done loading anymore... or what should I do?
The article makes it sound as if people are suspending their (previously) impeccable judgment when turning on their GPS unit... Certainly that's not the reality. The only thing new here is people blaming the GPS, instead of any other little thing that came to mind, like street lighting, road signs, other cars/pedestrians/animals, etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"Attention: This machine has no brain, use your own!"
-hps
...whatever you do, don't put the blame on you.
It's actually quite common, and I think it has to do with the way many people are brought up. And it translates into our everyday life and actually corporate life.
In many companies, it does not matter when anything goes wrong, as long as you got someone else to blame. It's funny. Should you happen to work in a large company and something goes wrong, take a close look around you. The only person or people who get(s) very nervous, no matter how trivial or bancrupcy-threatening it is, is the one who can't find anything or anyone to blame but himself.
That's how our education and business system works. It starts with the homework-eating dog and doesn't even end at the report-shredding Xerox. It's never you. It's someone else or, and that's more comfortable, something. Something is better than someone, because something rarely objects.
And technology is better than pets. First of all, the pet excuse gets old. And second, and that's more important, many people don't have the foggiest idea just what computers or gadgets can do. They will readily believe you. Not to mention that some things might have even happened to themselves already. Your report's not ready in time? Sorry, boss, computer BSODed on me, JUST before I could save.
He'll understand. Take my word for it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
once tripped onto a chair (she was around 3 years old) and hurt her knee.
After crying a lot... she yelled: "TUPID CHAIR!" and kicked the chair.
Somehow by reading the article summary this scene came to my mind.
These are the same people who used to blame peons. Technology eliminated the peons, so what is left? (Mark Twain wrote a book about the earlier phenom, by the way: Prince and the Pauper)
For what it's worth, this "the UK is the CCTV capital of the world" meme is massively overstated. The vast majority (at least 90-odd percent) of the cameras they're talking about are in private hands - they're the CCTV cameras in shops, bars, outside businesses like banks, in ATM's, in tube-tunnels etc. etc.
The rest are mainly traffic cameras, mounted on junctions - I'm not sure if speed-cameras (automated, but only snapshots, not video) are counted in there as well.
There are *some* (I know of some on Oxford St. in London) people-monitoring cameras, and I think the ones on Oxford St. were put in at the behest of the shops along Oxford St. All those shops work closely with the police to prevent theft - it's the only street I know where police literally line the border between the pavement (sidewalk) and the road at xmas-time to keep pedestrians on the pavement. It's a very very busy shopping area.
As a counterpoint, I work in California. Perhaps it's because I'm more aware of cameras than most, but there seem to be just as many traffic-cameras mounted on poles at junctions; there are video cameras on trains and busses; there are video cameras in petrol-stations; also around the offices I work, and even within the corridors at junction points; there are video cameras in tunnels I drive through, and outside buildings like banks; there are video-cameras in ATMs I use; there are video-cameras in bars I go to at night, and in every police-car I've seen.
It doesn't seem so different to me, speaking as someone who lived in London for 15 years and moved to CA.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
How could I?
Let's not forget that something is usually made by someone. And this something must have been obviously broken, because you, of course, didn't do anything out of the ordinary. And since companies usually have some money, people get the big dollar-signs into their eyes and sue for some insane amount of money.
Fortunately our courts started to see the difference between faulty products and pure stupidity. And, people, some of the accidents that happen, even gadget-related, ARE purely based on user stupidity. Following a navi system blindly IS pure stupidity. I dunno about driving laws in the US, but here you have to drive "on sight". I.e. no faster than how far you see and could stop your car before the end of your visual range. If you have to expect someone coming your way on your side (for example in a narrow road), you have to drive on "halve sight", i.e. you gotta be able to stop your car in only halve the visual range.
You can't? You drive off a cliff and are dead? Ok, you're guilty. Not your navigation system. Don't go through court, don't cash in fat stacks of cash, but thanks for playing and removing yourself from the gene pool, hopefully before you could propagate.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
People are getting themselves killed because of the gaps in the accuracy of the maps or in other human interface elements in in the units, that sounds like a pretty serious software/hardware glitch to me.
On a technical standpoint, the GPS makers need to fix their bugs regardless of the legal blame game (in the long run it will result in a better system for all). Whether it tells people to "look up and make sure not to sit on any nearby railroad tracks" or something else I think it is an issue that needs to be resolved. No matter how much warnings you write in the manual or on the system there is a big percentage of people that don't read manuals or just click "ok" without reading the warning screen.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
This GPS technology must be one part of Skynet! First the robots are going to exterminate the stupid people, then they're going to make the smart ones sit at the terminal all day long and program them! MUWAHAHAHAHAH!!!
There are people driving off cliffs and through flooded roads and taking detours that span half of England, apparently at the behest of their navigation units. Things got so bad in one place that authorities even had to put up "ignore your sat nav" signs. Now, a woman's car got hit by a train, and for some reason, she's blaming a GPS navigation unit.
Apparently working with a plethora of devices in your car isn't the best way to concentrate on what's right on front of you on the road.
Here's your proof that people shouldn't phone/text/play/drink/eat while driving. And should watch the road and not just the GPS.
GPL manufacturers should be safe, unless they advertised that they help make stupid drivers smarter.
Unlike technology we've been creating for the rest of history, technology since the invention of computers augment our thinking and decision making. Sometimes, it replaces our role as the thinker and decision maker, even when it wasn't intended or designed to be. Then when something goes wrong, it is easy for the person to blame the device instead of taking responsibility for himself. True the GPS unit told you go into the canal but it was you, the driver, who made the decision to let it be the primary decision maker. It's really easy now to ridicule these people but as our devices become smarter and we hand over more and more of our decision making over, there will come a day when it is not so obvious who's fault it is. There will come or we're already at a point when the ability of the computer exceeds our own abilities and we have to let it make most of the decisions. I remember reading about the navy trying out neural networks for recognizing threats in sonar data and it was able to do it better than even humans. In that case, if the computer makes a mistake, who's to blame for that?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I don't know how to work this damn thing!
Its voice is very dark, sadistic and naughty in nature; Your unit is possessed!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
but the answer is yes! The cart track there is right on top of the cliff and not at all suitable for a car - although it makes a good walk.
Repairman: [pointing to a Good/Evil switch on the back of the doll] Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to ``Evil''.
/simpsons
FairTax baby!
Strangely enough the military tries to demote this attitude by issuing those in training with the phrase "no excuse. {sir/ma'am/sergeant/etc}"
If you reply otherwise, you may often find yourself in a lot more trouble than just accepting the blame for the situation - even if there IS a good reason.
I think one of the reasons that crazy behavior like this happens is that people hold these things--satellite navigation systems (I refuse to call them "GPSes" as I find that term highly inaccurate)--to be inerrant and smarter than people.
I was driving around in Cleveland, an unfamiliar town to me, and I had been for a couple of days. I was relatively comfortable with the area around where I was staying; I knew how to get to nearby stores and how to get on the road home. I ask one of the relatives I'm staying with how to get somewhere, and his directions are real casual, but simple enough. I'm halfway to the destination, when my passenger insists on me pulling over, calling my relatives, asking for the exact address of the location, and typing it into the navigation system for directions. I knew damn well where I was going, and sure enough the relative's directions would've gotten me there sooner and with less hassle.
My point is just that people, especially those who drive with the navigation systems normally (and I don't), become dependent on them to move along any route they haven't completely traveled before. So much so that they'll waste time and gas to do whatever the devices say, and go to the ends of the Earth--so long as the device says they're going in the right direction.
Smart cars (that drive themselves) would depend on sat nav equipment to some extent. At least we don't have to wait for implementation of the vehicle control system to know that the sat nav data needs a few bug fixes...
The best mechanism is just not to have a gun.
But even if I ignore the GPS altogether and just drive around, having it is a stress-releiver because I know it can get me home. Maybe not by the simplest or shortest route, but better than I could do without it.
Once my wife had a job doing late-night waitressing on the other side of the city. It's a large European city and perfectly safe at night, so no problem getting back by public transport. The public transport authority has an online routing system which is usually pretty good. However, my wife's finishing time was in the hour or so the network was transitioning from the day-time to the night network, and it came up with all kinds of crazy routes which anyone who knew the system would never even think of to try, typically involving three or four changes and a visit out to the 'burbs.
I put my thinking cap on and told the system to find a route via the one I'd intuitively take - changing trains at a particular station, and - hey presto - this time it came up with a sane routing option involving exactly one change.
This is why I keep telling people to take anything a computer tells them with a pinch of salt.
I didn't have money to spend on tech, so I just blame Canada.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Oh crap! Slashdot made me miss my flight! I'll never read /. again and I'd like to warn everyone out there: Slashdot is dangerous! It makes you miss your flight!
Technology doesn't make you stupid, it just gives those already stupid the opportunity to make a whole range of new stupid mistakes.
These people would be just as stupid without their sat-navs, it's just we'd never hear of them (unless they got saucepans stuck on their heads, or something)
Naw. People blame being wrong (or STUPID) on *anything*. Technology is just handy. Take it away, and they'll blame it on something else.
Take one dude I know. He started accusing people of hiding his smokes because he couldn't find them. When everyone told him "Nobody hid your smokes, man.", he got pissed, through a tantrum, and said "Well, I guess that God must not want me to smoke, because HE must have hid my cigarettes!"
That was while he was sober. You should have seen him on the sauce.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
The coffee as-poured by McDonalds is ~82 degrees C. I boil a kettle, immediately pour the water into the cup, add creamer and server. It's likely to be far hotter (close to 100 degrees C) than the coffee at McDonalds. I drink (well, sip) it pretty much straight-away as well. So does everyone I know.
THIRD DEGREE BURNS oughtn't be the issue. Did you know that if you put your hand into a fully-operational blender, your hands will turn into LIQUIDISED FLESH. It's such an unbelievably stupid act that no-one would have much sympathy for you though. As no-one has much sympathy for the woman who puts not-even-boiling-hot coffee between her thighs and (get this!) does so while she's driving.
- From an earlier post on Digg -
I'm sorry, I guess I'm just sick of this "defence" of stupidity, in the case of the McDonald's coffee case.
Coffee is *made* with boiling-hot water. It is *supposed* to be scalding-hot. I don't care whether it's plus or minus a few degrees of the average scalding-hot water that coffee is usually made with - that shouldn't be the issue, it'll still hurt like hell. The issue ought to be "did the defendent do something unbelievably stupid or was the company negligent". The answer is that *yes*, she did something stupid; she put a frail paper-cup of scalding-hot water between her thighs and then (presumably involuntarily) squeezed her legs together.
Yes, she was hurt, badly. Yes, McDonalds could have made the coffee at a lower temperature, and they were making it hotter for commercial reasons. Both of those are true and neither ought to be relevant. The decision ought to have been based on whether what she did was a reasonable thing to do with *any* fresh cup of coffee - basically whether she should have expected to have been able to pour said cup of coffee over her without injury. I invite anyone defending her to make *themselves* a cup of coffee and pour it over their thighs (at your own risk, of course) - it'll scald you just as badly.
That is in fact what the McDonalds lawyer ought to have done. Simply made a fresh cup of coffee in the court, and asked for volunteers (judge, jury if it was a jury trial ?) to have scalding-hot coffee poured over them. Anyone defending her case would presumably consider *normal* scalding-hot coffee to be non-injurious to human skin.
McDonalds only have a "reasonable" burden of care - if the coffee-cup had dissolved and the contents scalded her, I think we'd all be behind her, but it didn't. People have too little sense of personal responsibility these days, it's easier to sue and "donate" the blame to someone else. It's a sad day for society in general when gross stupidity is defended against common sense.
None of this means I don't feel sorry for her, by the way - I do. I just also think it was her fault, and given that she's become the poster-child for incongruous lawsuits, I think a lot of other people feel the same way. I also think it's a travesty when the courts are overflowing with cases, and innocent people rot in jail awaiting their trial while stupid things like this waste court time; I think there'd be a lot less cases like this if the loser-pays-costs model was adopted, as in the UK, but that's another issue.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
" ...Now, a woman's car got hit by a train, and for some reason, she's blaming a GPS navigation unit" The reason is, she's an effing idiot!
Please note the following and make the necessary adjustments to the original post: "Now, a woman's car got hit by a train, and for some reason, she's blaming a GPS navigation unit." This statement is inaccurate per the original article: "I can't completely blame the sat nav because up until there, it did get me where I needed to go," she added. "If maybe I had been more aware of the situation, I wouldn't have had the accident."
But a manual gate around a train crossing? That's just asking for trouble.
I leave in the middle of nowhere and a taxi driver friend was showing me how Sat Nav would find my place. First time, it wanted to go out a parallel road, not the correct one. Second time, when asked after crossing the railway bridge it wanted to turn left to go to the parallel road. If he followed its advice he would be regarded as an idiot(Not having a medical degree!)
Technology is there to help no to be blindly followed.
May I suggest an "oldnews" tag for this?
I'm sure people have been blaming technology for their mistakes for as long as technology has existed.
Is that perhaps not the point, though? Some people think computers are as smart as human brains--even more so; infallible. Those of us more familiar with tech recognize it can be incredibly stupid. I would be inclined to react quickly if my passenger yelled, "Stop the car!"; less so if my on-board computer did.
I should buy some cement.
As a board-trained draftsman since the late seventies I've noticed this more and more. Not once were our pencils ever "upgraded" causing confusion or work shutdown. When the pencil lead broke, you'd just re-sharpen it and keep on working. Nowadays, producing a technical document is much more complicated, and while I enjoy the power of 3D CAD I do wonder about the latest generations who are often helpless without a computer and hopeless with a pencil.
You should all have a look at this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
THIS is how it gonna end.
--
Arkan
Now you can blame electricity, computers, and needing to meet deadlines for international customers. You can roll out a new excuse every day and never get to the end.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You'll have someone from the side pulling in front of you because you've left room. You'll have idiots behind you honking away because you are "a jackass! get off the road!".
The other road idiots make you tend toward a more dangerous form of driving if only to reduce the constant pain these 'tards heap on you.
Even on clear roads, leave the recommended stopping distance between you and the car in front and someone WILL drop in front of you, making you slow to get the distance back when someone will cut in front again...
I think the real question here is why people believe that blame has any significance. It is irrelevant who's fault any given event is. However, it is relevant to look at the data of the event, determine whether it had a bad effect and, most importantly, learn how to prevent it from happening again if it did have a bad effect.
In some cases, it may indeed be prevented from occurring again due a being sued (the person or persons would then take more care about not causing it to occur again as it causes financial damage). But it certainly isn't true in all cases.
The person which the event caused damage should NOT depend on suing the person. Instead, insurance should have been taken. Insurance should pay for the damage done. If one didn't take insurance, one shouldn't expect to receive any money for the event.
It is only a human irrationality which makes people think "Person X did damage, therefore person X should pay for that damage!" - there really is no logic behind it. Open your eyes.
There was a report of a village in Britain which put up signs advising drivers to "ignore their sat navs".
The problem is actually not the sat nav, it is lorry drivers who are too cheap or too ignorant to buy the right sat nav for their vehicle. What you and I buy in the shop gives you instructions based on the assumption that you are driving a car. My satnav will without hesitation lead me onto roads that are too narrow for a lorry, or closed for anyone above five tons of weight. You can buy a satnav for a bit more money that knows these things, and that will lead a 30 ton truck safely through roads that are suitable for 30 ton trucks.
The article is not about technology in general, but about GPS. And it is hardly new. A year ago I saw an epizode of some American crime drama describing blaming GPS maps for victim's or perpertrator's mistake.
People blame other technology as well for their mistakes, but the article (short blog entry) does not same anything about it.
As for the subject, GPS navigation systems I had experienced are as irritatingly pushy as the Microsoft "Office Assistant". Pushiness is bad, bad, bad, especially when the map has errors.
Maps should be downloaded in timely manner or at least one (1) bit of information that this particular area of the map is outdated and the same nice voice that tells you "Turn to the left" (where the cliff is) should tell instead "As far as I know, you might want to turn to the left".
Authorities that change our urbane landscapes quite often need to update directly the GPS systems with new maps in a timely manner.
Technology is rightfully blamed and we should thank those beta users that fell off the cliff for the pressure to improve it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The aviation industry has long been aware of the reliability issues associated with GPS positioning and, as a consequence, most aviation authorities don't allow pilots to navigate soley by GPS. Just last year, Australia's aviation authority, CASA, opened the way for airlines to navigate soley by the use of highly accurate GPS systems - GPS coupled with RAIM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAIM) and augmented by WAAS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentati on_System). Even with all that, there must also be alternative nav aids available as a backup.
"McDonalds only have a "reasonable" burden of care - if the coffee-cup had dissolved and the contents scalded her, I think we'd all be behind her, but it didn't."
It's pretty common that people add cream and sugar to their coffee, yet the structural integrity of the cup depends on a firmly attached lid. So even though the product was served to a person in a car, it wasn't designed to be safe in that situation. I wouldn't blame it on stupidity. At least not completely. The product was badly designed too. That said, I would have opened the cup on a table.
People generally seek satisfaction and like to be commanded what to do. It's a blessing for the authorities, to which many have a complete trust. Driving a car is mentally demanding, and on the other hand it feels quite natural because the controls mimic the way of using your body. Eventually driving may become one of the automated actions of the body, especially when you drive the same route often enough. Many people don't remember driving a familiar route, but sort of wake up when they arrive. I personally like a lot the meditative state which the driving initiates, and like to listen ambient music while I drive. It feels like you are flying a few feet above the road.
So, it's no wonder people tend to drive wherever a gentle voice or trustworthy indicator tells them to go, because their mind is often in a more suggestible state. This idea led me to ponder, that the frustration people feel when a machine or some outside influence leads them astray is in the end frustration about themselves, the felt inadequacy of the human mind. It's easy to project this frustration to the outside world, even though in the end you would just complicate the situation further, as the perceived world is an image constructed by your own mind, and you are blaming the part of yourself for your actions. Acceptance and forgiveness might help.
With a good map you can navigate to wherever in the world, but many are glad to subject themselves, and have only themselves to blame when they surrender their common sense and observations to a machine, which hardly represents the ultimate pinnacle of reason and invention.
Braindead Motorised W*nker
"None of this means I don't feel sorry for her, by the way - I do."
I don't. I long ago got tired of having to feel sympathy for idiots. Now I just laugh.
Our area had a 'cold coffee' day after this - All the restraunts turned down the temperature of all the coffee down to a 'safe' level as described by the court settlement. The protest was universal to turn it back up.
I don't read AC A human right
Why don't they sue the football player? They'd be lucky to get 300k, maybe garnishment of wages. Garnishment isn't guarenteed, the guy could turn out to be a bum, or become one in protest of the ruling. I figure 100k or so of family personal liability, 200k for other assets.
In the case of random scumbag shootings, they generally have no assets and even if they do have insurance it doesn't cover deliberate criminal acts such as muggings, forced home entry, murder, etc...
So why sue the school/gun manufacturer? They have assets/insurance capable of covering millions. Much more worth the lawyer's time.
I don't read AC A human right
TBH, I don't think the military has any choice in the matter.
In a warzone, who do you want to place your trust in? The person who's been trained to take responsibility for their actions or the person who's not that bothered because they can always push the blame elsewhere?
She was a passenger in the car that her grandson was driving. He had stopped the vehicle specifically so she could remove the lid for adding cream and sugar.
Let me repeat myself. Stella Liebeck was sitting in a motionless car when she spilled coffee that was so hot that she required skin grafts.
Stop making assertions about how stupid people are based on made-up "facts".
But then again, I could be wrong.
Stella Liebeck was not driving. She was a passenger in a vehicle stopped specifically so she could safely remove the lid.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Because I have missed those 3 dozen or so critical messages that were sent and yet I never saw.Hmm well good to know it's MY fault.
While I whole heartedly agree that it is unwise to put nearly boiling liguids between one's legs and the lawsuit was frivolous, it did have a positive, much better coffee cups. You can pratically drop a full one and that lid isn't comming off. Now if someone would just sue the Taco Bell over their soda cups...
I think a lot of other people feel the same way. I also think it's a travesty when the courts are overflowing with cases, and innocent people rot in jail awaiting their trial while stupid things like this waste court time; I think there'd be a lot less cases like this if the loser-pays-costs model was adopted, as in the UK, but that's another issue.
Thank God we don't adopt UK methods for dealing with things. I've been living in the UK for the past year and all I can say is WOW! Do you know you people have been driving on the wrong side of the road all this time? I can't imagine what your court system is like. ;)
If you can't blindly trust your word processor's spelling checker, how on Earth could you think you could blindly trust a GPS system?
Aikon-
You'd think she would have learned something from that week she spent stuck in the shower :)
Question:
I am the only one who thinks that ingesting "a liquid that causes 3rd degree burns when applied to the skin (much less sensitive and prone to recovery than, let's say, internal stuff)" is not something smart to do ?
I HATE hot coffee. I HATE hot liquids. To me , warm (40ish) coffee is the way to go.
how long until
I believe something similar happened quite a few years ago. This was when the maps for GPS units were supplied on a CD. Now the company that released the CDs released a new version and asked all it's customers to update. An old couple decided not to update and blindly followed instructions from the GPS unit, and drove over a broken bridge that was not reflected in the old CD, right into the river. Luckily they were rescued, and sued... but lost the case, since the company had already announced the release of the new CD.
Looking at the original story two questions arise:
1. Why was she using her satnav to find her boyfriend's house? I presume she's been there before, because it was *his* satnav.
2. Why have the British Transport Police accepted the story that it was the satnav's fault? She drove onto a railway line in the path of an oncoming train causing thousands of pounds worth of damage and putting at risk people's lives. How is a mapping system responsible in any way for this?
Actually, I think I know what happened here. She didn't engage her brain. Mind you if she hasn't got the wit to apply fake tan to her hands as well as her face to avoid looking stupid it's probably to be expected.
I'm not sure of a way to make coffee using just a kettle of boiling water (although I guess you could approximate a drip percolator mechanism if you went slowly), so I'll assume you're making tea.
I love tea. It's great stuff. It is nowhere near boiling if done correctly.
First off, most actual guides to tea recommend that you make it at about 88C/190F. At the boiling point of water, certain bitter compounds are released from the tea leaves that aren't released at temperatures below about 92C. The stated strategy is either to boil the water and wait a few minutes before pouring or (if you drink a lot of tea), figure out the time it takes a given amount of water in your kettle on your stove to hit that temp, then set a timer.
I'll also assume that you're steeping your tea, because I want to drink tea, not water that once came in contact with a leaf. I go for three minutes steep time, although if you're doing the whole "move-the-bag-up-and-down" bit you can get away with a little less. Guess what? The water is cooling off!
Even then, that water is ridiculously hot. Seriously, if you want to drink water at 75C, go ahead. I'd like to taste my tea (and my meals for the next couple of days), not peel a layer of skin off the inside of my mouth.
Coffee is very similar. While boiling (or close to it) water is percolated through the filter, it is not boiling once it's in the pot. There is certainly a warming plate there, but it's to keep things warm over the long term, not get the coffee back to boiling. God help you if you're actually, truly drinking the coffee the minute there's enough in the pot, because you must have simply destroyed the inside of your mouth. Liquids over 60C/140F will burn your mouth. You can sit there and blow on it, and sip tiny amounts in the hope that the small enough amount will lose heat before burning you, but you can't really drink it like you would any other drink until it hits 60C. For a restaurant that keeps a pot of coffee, that is a temperature (or one very close) that makes sense. McDonald's might have had a better argument with tea, since it does need to start steeping at a higher temperature, but coffee in the 85C range is stupid.
Doesn't matter... even Technology can't fix stupid.
I like GPS... but I use it AS A GUIDE. It's not infallible, it's not all-knowing and it has no idea what's going on around or in your car. The only thing it knows is physically where you are. So long as you realize that (and most sensible and intelligent people do realize that) then you'll be just fine using GPS.
Here's a clue for those that don't get it; if you spend all your time when driving staring at the LCD in/on your dash then you're going to hit something. Lift your head, look outside a little... it's really quite startling to realize the world is OUT THERE.
It was freshly brewed and she was wearing sweatpants, which held the liquid in generous volumes close to her skin.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
That could explain it.
Maybe people at google are trying to include a possibility to display genuine actual means to cross bodies of water. Like using ferries. (Notice how at both points between the "swim across the ocean" joke, you are in docks).
But for now, they haven't introduced all possible providers for such crossing means.
They somewhat decided or needed (for test purpose) to keep the function, but maybe to avoid being sued because they favor some cargo operators above others, they decided to turn it as joke until the system could actually provide a list of possible company that could carry them over the ocean.
Meanwhile it's fun, and although it only works between Europe and North America, it works in all languages that I've been able to try.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
For years IT folks have been blaming their issues on Microsoft's technology. Somehow their putting into production a machine that wasn't tested and blue screens on a regular basis or machines in their workplace catching viruses is MS' fault.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
This is not really a joke. Here in Oregon USA we have large tracts of land that are, politely said, undeveloped. In southern Oregon, in the area north of the California border and south of Eugene, there is one superhighway and three major roads that go the rough 150 kilometers between the superhighway and the coast. Off those major roads there are many very rough dirt roads used mainly by special trucks to haul out logged trees. These roads are not maintained or paved or used after the logging is finished.
However they are listed on GPS maps as 'roads'. They're also listed in the big DeLorme map books as roads. So your map may show a hundred roads covering an area of a thousand square kilometers, but they are all overgrown and washed-out dirt paths that may not have had any vehicle activity on them in thirty years.
Occasionally someone in an SUV with a GPS will get the notion that they are going to take a short-cut between the superhighway I-5 and the coast on one of these roads listed on the GPS and confirmed by the big DeLorme map book. They will start driving on a dirt road that gets rougher every mile. If they're smart, they'll stop and back-up when they start scraping the bottom of their SUV on the 'road'. If they're not smart, they'll put on their headphones, slip the latest Norah Jones into the CD player, continue on and ignore the fact that the tree branches are scraping the side mirrors. If they're luckly, they'll get stuck in a rut and have to walk back no more than ten kilometers to get a tow. If they're not lucky, they'll be doing this in the winter, take side roads and blind turns into unknown directions and get lost in deep woods. Or they'll marvel at the ability of their $30000 SUV to climb thousands of feet on snow covered paths, get lost, get stuck and immobile in the snow, and realize that (1) they're completly lost, (2) the car is hopelessly stuck, (3) they're low on gas, (4) it's rather cold outside, (5) they're wearing Los Angeles clothes with no coats, (6) they didn't tell anyone that they were going to be taking this 'shortcut to the beach', and finally (7) the cell phone doesn't work.
Now the local people know that the stupid tourists can get into a jam like this and will try to warn people with out-of-state license plates driving in the deep woods. But if your GPS says that you're on a major road, but your on a rutted dirt path and tree branches have been scraping your windows for the past ten minutes and you still drive on, well there isn't much that they can do for you.
Eventually someone will find your vehicle and body, probably next summer after the mud dries and people start exploring the woods in their mini-monster trucks again.
This exact thing happened last winter. The family lucked out when the people that they were going to visit reported them missing and credit card records showed them to have bought gas at a station near the roadless areas. The authorities called out a major search-and-rescue and was able to save most of the people in the SUV after five days of being stuck in the snow. The next people may not be so lucky
So trust your instincts. Don't trust the GPS. Pay attention to reality.
WARNING:
The prudent marines will not rely solely on any single aid to navigation, particularly on floating aids. See paragraph No. 1 of Notice to Mariners No. 1 or Sailing Directions Planning Guides for information relative to DMA Charts.
There are indications of precision on the charts too. The chart I took this quotation from was based on surveys from the US Navy in 1965 with addition form British and USS Dolphin surveys between 1835 and 1896...
Most errors with GPS-navigation are made by assuming that the Lat/Lon coordinates match with the overlaying chart. With the current DGPS that has an accuracy of a few meters it is possible to navigate precise enough. Add a radar with collision avoidance and hook up your steering system and you could 'virtually' sail around the world.
The weak point is the data of the charts.
As with everything in life, do not rely on one source only.
I remember a story my dad told me (Air Force Sargent) - An Air Force meteorologist was briefing his new asssitant fresh out of school: "So after you finish looking at all the meteorlogical data and weather maps ... I want you to walk over and look outside before you issue the forecast"
...
Technology is your aide - not you master. Then again - maybe all these GPS "accidents" is a form of Skynet for dumb people
Its not the years, its the mileage
there isn't a universally agreed-upon set of rules for humans and calculators/computers.
The Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction order has worked for me in all situations - I'm curious which situations it fails in.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I was talking about instant coffee - I'm not much of a coffee drinker, so I don't have a percolater. Basically you drop a teaspoon of ready-to-go coffee granules into a cup, pour boiling water on top, then add creamer and serve. There's no wait, and the coffee is very very hot (as it ought to be).
Regarding peeling your skin off - that's the point you see, it doesn't do that. You sip a small amount of coffee and the larger amount of water in your mouth mixes with it and lowers the temperature.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I boil a kettle, immediately pour the water into the cup, add creamer and server. It's likely to be far hotter (close to 100 degrees C) than the coffee at McDonalds. I drink (well, sip) it pretty much straight-away as well. So does everyone I know.
You're a fucking imbecile if you think you're putting 95C or whatever water in your mouth. I'm sorry, but you need to learn this now, before someone hands you a cup of water that hot and you actually put in in your mouth. (Or, hell, hold it in your hands if it's a non-insulated cup.)
No human being can drink anything above 80C, or they at least can't take two sips of it because they're screaming. 70C will cause scalding within a second on your skin, and while it's possible to drink something that hot very quickly without causing physical burns, it's not a very clever idea. Thank goodness people's stomachs are full of liquids which immediately cool it down.
60C liquids will scald you within 5 seconds, and somewhere around there is about the hottest coffee is ever consumed on purpose, although it's usually handed out about 70C, which is still somewhat dangerous, although nowhere as dangerous as handing people a thin cup full of 80C liquid because it will cool quickly and some people are taking it for a thirty minute drive.
And for all you people using Fahrenheit, be sure to to recall that 10 degree C is about 18 degrees Fahrenheit. There's a pretty large difference between 60C and 70C and 80C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
In a article about people's irrational dependancy on technology, you write that you cannot make coffee without an coffee maker?
How deliciously ironic...
Anyways, coffee has been used for over a thounsand years. Coffee makers and electricity have not.
If this has been overused that it's only a phrase anymore, then it has actually turned around its meaning. When people are conditioned to use this phrase to avoid (further) punishment, as odd as it may sound, this phrase is an excuse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're a fucking imbecile if you think you're putting 95C or whatever water in your mouth. To be fair, he did say he adds creamer and a server. I assume this server must run on Intel which requires one hell of a cooling unit. The cooling unit cools the coffee down enough to drink.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Well, the entertainment value diminishes with exposure. Today, I just wonder why they had to survive.
Don't get me wrong, I don't wish for anyone's death. But with some people, you get the impression that they're essentially a waste of precious oxygen. And you don't even have to read the darwin awards to get the impression that with some people it's been a blessing for humanity that they succeeded.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And that changes WHAT exactly? Except that I wonder just why she had to do the stupid thing, not needing her hands to steer the car? There wasn't even a halfway good reason to be stupid. If anything, it actually removes one excuse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Watching the coffee cool down and blowing it is actually a vital part of my daily coffee ritual. Yes, I insist in HOT coffee. I certainly won't DRINK it while it's still boiling, but I want to SMELL it. And you smell a lot more flavor when it is very hot.
Then again, the coffee culture is a completely different one here. Coffee is not a fast food item. Coffee is culture here. You sit down and order your coffee from a waiter in a fine suit, then you get your newspaper. You read the paper while the waiter brings you your coffee, together with a glass of cold, clear water. You add a little sugar if so inclined, and pour the milk, watch the milk mingle with the coffee, stir a little, read your paper. You enjoy the flavor that starts to engulf you, the world around you vanishes, it's just you and your paper for a few precious minutes, with the quietness that rivals a library around you. Then you start sipping. It has to be still hot! I want to be able to finish at the very least the news part of a paper before my coffee is cold.
But, well, that's not Starbucks. Of course.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Moderation -1
100% Offtopic
"FBI Blames Broken DB for FBI Breaking Laws" is "Offtopic" to "Blame Your Mistakes on Technology". Only in the infinitely subdivided mind of the TrollMod, where "politics" is not connected to anything else, even when it's exactly the same as everything else.
--
make install -not war
For third-degree burns to come from Coffee?
This isn't like she had a couple of blisters. This means her lower pelvic area was BLACK with burns. That's a little bit more traumatic than your typical coffee spill on the lap.
Karma: Non-Heinous
If the offending member is removed from the gene pool.
Sadly technology has made it so that these people can live on and sue the technology manufacturers for something that's their own damn fault.
Karma: Non-Heinous
When you have sat-nav, or point-to-point directions, you're SOL if you make a mistake or things aren't clear. If you have a MAP and some basic skills you can always know "i'm here, and i need to be there, so I need to generally be going X direction."
There are some areas of the country where the "I need to generally be going X direction" does not work. Let's take Pittsburgh, for example. There are many areas in and around Pittsburgh that you can only get to if you take the correct roads. Not if you go the correct way--but take the right roads. Otherwise, you will be passing over, or under, or parallel to where you need to be, but you can't get there.
The old saying "You can't get there from here" is used a lot in this area. It doesn't mean you can't get there at all, just that you have to do some finagling to do so.
The geography of the area with its 3 rivers (and a bunch of other tributaries) and a ton of hills did strange things to the travel patterns. Most people I know who moved here (me included) have stories about trying to navigate by "I'm here and need to be there, so I go this way" which at some point include them turning around on dirt road dead ends or watching the road they need go above them, then under them, then away from them... but never TO them.
So your best bet in Pittsburgh is to get directions, learn to read a map, take the map with you, and be open for stopping and asking someone how to get somewhere. Hopefully they'll give you some landmarks that still exist (rather than "turn right where the old ice cream place used to be" or some such...)
Sat navs are pretty cool here, since they give exact routes, but they're not going to be much help if roads are flooded (did I mention the rivers? how about rockslides?). Like any good tool, they should merely be your accessory. They're certainly not going to help you avoid trains. *boggles*
That said... if you get turned off the road you want in Pittsburgh, stop and check your map for another way to where you're going.
Live not leave. That is all Opera's fault which in this case did not work.
Apologies for not spotting this.
... someone was just trying to do the world a favor by buying her one the "Darwin" models.
Blame yourself and pay the costs of fixing the bad thing you did wrong, or blame someone or something else, sue them and if successful get that money you spent fixing the bad thing back and perhaps more. Common Sense DOES indicate the latter, unfortunally.
The coffee as-poured by McDonalds is ~82 degrees C.
. html8 50.html
I get 190F = 87C from the source below.
so while she's driving.
She wasn't driving. You know nothing.
The basic summary of the case is this:
"in the ten years prior to Stella's accident, over 700 men, women, and children had been burned by the unsafe McDonald's coffee. For years, McDonald's sold coffee that was "unfit for human consumption", and made $1.3 million dollars a day in profit doing so. Information such as this wasn't really reported by the media. What was reported was the $2.6 million dollar jury verdict.
The jury arrived at that figure by calculating the profit of two-days worth of coffee sales, and "fining" McDonald's that amount to get their attention and make them fix the problem.
It worked. The day after the verdict, McDonald's lowered the coffee temperature to a safe-but-hot 158 degrees. (70C)"
Links:
http://www.corpreform.com/2003/11/more_about_mcdo
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Yes, getting robbed by attackers at your own house while you're there is nasty and scary; I've had it happen to me. But I find that people who think they're going to come out ahead if thery have a gun and use it to defend themselves are living out a fantasy that makes them feel safer, when it is not at all clear that it does.
Are you adequate?
Same in the California Bay Area. At least in San Mateo Country.
Are you adequate?
"Anyway, the moral of the story is that we have an innate ability to shift blame. No "technology" is required. (Or rather, maybe blame shifting is a technology.)"
I blame the RIAA/MPAA/Government/Book publishers/Steam/etc, etc.
The Brits are morons. Yes, I worked with many.
I'm seriously extremely interested in the asbestos-lined lips you're sporting. While I despise coffee, I do drink instant hot chocolate using the same mechanism, and I do pour boiling water from the kettle on it.
If you are legitimately telling me that you are drinking coffee made from boiling water within one minute of making it and you aren't adding a large portion of chilled creamer, then I believe you are insane (or living at a very high altitude). It is literally impossible for me to sip even the smallest amount of boiling hot chocolate within three minutes without burning myself. Yeah, it mixes with the saliva in your mouth and yeah, that cools it off. The mixture still needs to get down into the 120F range to keep from burning you. That's really not possible with a liquid that is 200F and saliva that's 98.6F.
I think you're forgetting the key ingredient: wait two or three minutes while your non-styrofoam insulated, open-topped cup allows the liquid to drop down to the reasonable range. Of course, the point with the McDonald's argument is that the liquid isn't going to do that - it's going to take a bit longer. On top of that, it's being handed over to someone in a flimsier container inside a moving vehicle. Even though there's no way in hell I'm bringing normal temperature cofee near my crotch, I still think that woman has a pretty reasonable argument.
No, I write that you can't make coffee with just a kettle of boiling water; as far as I know, it's not possible to make proper coffee (instant excluded) using JUST a kettle of boiling water and beans or grounds. You need a percolator or some similar mechanism, which produces the same effect - allowing the liquid to cool down a bit before entering your cup.
People really don't know to what they extent they can pin things on the good old GPS. Every time things like running out of coffee or forgetting the milk happen just look to your friend the GPS he will take the fall and still love you in the morning.
[GR0B]
The crossing in question
I think that just the sheer number of signs should have told the woman that something was up, even if she didn't know that the sign with the gate thingy means "Level crossing with barrier or gate ahead" (according to the Highway Code, which she's supposed to know if she passed her test).
Two signs say, "Drivers of long low vehicles phone before crossing" - even if you realise that the sign doesn't apply to your little toy car, surely you'd ask, "Crossing what?"
Not to mention that there's a complete set of instructions for using the crossing, directly underneath the lights, including the instruction to "open both gates" then cross.
Yes, there are lots of signs, and they could be confusing. That's a pretty good reason to look at them properly, wouldn't you think? I can't say I have much sympathy.
... it's a feature!
No, really. Don't believe me, check step 24.
("Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3,462 mi)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I make coffee with one of those cheap little reusable tea baskets. Works fine, if you don't mind a little grit in the bottom of your cup.
SRSLY.
I also think some of y'all forget that not-so-long-ago, many vehicles didn't have cupholders standard. I remember stores like 7/11, gas stations, etc. selling plastic cupholders that hook into the door windows, but sometimes they too spill (turn a corner too sharply, your hand turning the steering wheel accidently hitting it, etc.).
So it wasn't all that uncommon to place drinks between your legs a few years ago. Ask your parents if you were too young... If you had a car without a cup holder, and you didn't have a plastic cupholder mounted on the door (or on the floor), where would you place your cup to mitigate the possibility of spilling?
Is that really the case where you live? Where I live it's _always_ the fault of the driver unable to stop. You rear-end someone, you were following too close and it's your fault. Never, ever would it be the fault of the driver stopped. As a driver, you have the responsibility to drive at such a speed and distance to other traffic that you can safely avoid any (sudden) obstacles.
... of course, B's probably dead in that situation, so small consolation).
Well, in the U.S. I think it varies by state, but as a general rule you'd be correct -- if you rear-end someone, you're probably at fault. However, there are a bunch of exceptions that sometimes come into play. Basically, it can be the fault of the driver in front of you if they swerved out in front of you in such a way that there wasn't any possible way for you to stop.
This is easier to imagine on a secondary road; if you're moving along and someone pulls out from a side street right in front of you, even if you're driving at a safe speed they could pull out in the "kill zone" right in front of your vehicle, the area in which even if you mash down on the brake immediately, there's no stopping the car. That would be their fault, for pulling into traffic when they didn't have a sufficient opening to get in the lane and up to speed. However -- it could still be the colliding driver's fault if they were speeding (e.g. if Driver A is coming up at 70MPH on a 45MPH road and hits Driver B who was pulling out, Driver B might not be at fault because they would have been OK had Driver A not been speeding
In general, judges tend to find fault with whoever was being the biggest jackass in any particular situation. Usually this means that if you rear-end someone, it's on you for driving too fast or following too closely. But every once in a while, if the driver who got rear-ended was doing something really egregious, then they might seem like the bigger jackass, and be found at some degree of fault (generally it's illegal to stop in a lane of traffic without some sort of reason, so they have a legal basis to find fault).
Also, it's generally not your fault if you rear-end someone because you're pushed by the driver behind you; an important consideration in multiple-vehicle pileups. This seems obvious, but it's another situation where blanket "you hit it, it's your fault" rule wouldn't produce a very just outcome.
But anyway, in the absence of extenuating circumstances, you're right in that it's almost always the fault of the driver whose car hits another car from the rear, for not being in control of their vehicle; the law basically requires you to always drive as if there's a stopped car / fallen tree / parked ambulance right behind the next hill, and if you're driving so fast that you can't stop in time, then the result's on you. However, there are always exceptions, which is why I didn't state it as an absolute.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Coffee is *made* with boiling-hot water. It is *supposed* to be scalding-hot.
Hmm... I have two coffee makers, I've owned about four, I've drank coffee from at least a dozen different places and I have never had a cup of coffee that was boiling hot or even close. I've had plenty of cuppas that were too hot, but they were from places like McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts that aren't generally considered good coffee.
I boil a kettle, immediately pour the water into the cup, add creamer and server.
I hate to break it to you, but that's not coffee you're making. That's "instant." Maybe instant is supposed to be scalding hot, but then you have to be a masochist to drink it so a little more pain isn't going to bother you.
People do seem to have varying resistance to heat - I can pick food off a frying pan with my bare fingers and eat it directly with no injuries or pain. I've held food flat onto a frying pan with my hands when it's started curling up and haven't had a utensil within reach.
Yeah, I've also taken the skin off my mouth when I've overestimated my limits (or underestimated the temperature), but it's rare.
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / xenogamous.com / transference.org / quantam sufficit ]
Experienced GPS navigators telling us to make U-turns in the middle of freeways, to turn right where there's no sign of any road on the right hand side and so on?
One thing is that people are stupid enough to follow such directions, another is that the map technology clearly isn't up to par. Imagine a car with 'auto-drive' that blindly follows directions just like people do, but without the little bit of sanity that made those ambulance drivers stop after 200 miles and realize that they were a bit off course... A computerized driver would just have kept on going, possibly attempting to reach the goal going 'the other way', i.e. around the globe, which includes a fair amount of undersea driving...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
HOW-TO: make coffee in a kettle of boiling water.
1: Find coffee beans
2: Grind them, use rocks to crush them if you don't have anything else handy
3: Boil water
4: Pour in the ground beans
5: Boil
6: Let it sink for a while
7: Pour coffee into mug
8: Do not drink the last of the coffee. The ground coffee is heavier than water, and thus remains in the bottom of the kettle and/or cup.
That's how people have been making coffee for ages. Since the introduction of coffee a thousand years ago, up until my grandparents. Or me, when I'm out camping, and have to use *gasp* open fire.
As such, it will give driving directions to any western European country from any Continential state.
The wierd part is, it will not give directions to get to Brazil from New York, even though it IS driveable
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
When I'm backpacking and don't want to bring my percolator I make "cowboy coffee." I just boil water in my metal cup over the fire, throw in some grounds (coarse works best for this) trickle a bit of cold water in to help settle the grounds and drink it. I have to spit out a few grounds, but most of them end up sinking to the bottom. I avoid the last bit of coffee unless I want a crunchy treat.
Some people throw eggshells in and claim that it absorbs bitter oils and makes the grounds sink. That is repulsive.
Man, you really need that seminar!
We as techies know how much to trust in the machines, but many people don't understand how they work, and TFM should be easy for them. But they must read it ;)
Many people think the GPS satellites see the roads from the high, and see your car. If they can see your car, How they can't see a train comming? Why they don't see that a road is closed? Maybe the manuals should exaplain with more care that the GPS satellites don't know where you are nor how the roads and streets are. They should tell you that is your GPS receiver the one supossed to calculate your position and read a stored old map to try to guide you.
Coffee enthusiasts will also tell you that any brew temperature under 200 F/93 C is unacceptable for the same reasons you outlined for tea, although you should never consume coffee (or any other hot beverage, for that matter) at a temperature above 140 F/60 C.
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
You left out getting rid of the berry flesh and roasting the beans in your foraging process, but I'll assume it was part of the fun smarminess. Also, percolators have been around for a hell of a lot longer than your grandparents, at least in the western world.
Finally, having once tasted "coffee" made in that manner, I stand by my assertion - you can't make coffee using just a kettle (and I'm not a coffee snob at all; I'll usually just tolerate the stuff).
To close a two-day discussion on coffee, I'll wrap around to my original point: coffee is not intended to be served at 185 degrees, period. There is absolutely no logical reason to serve it at that temperature unless you just made it yourself and are running out the door with it in a travel cup. The GP doesn't understand why McDonald's got busted for it, and even defended serving 185F liquid in a flimsy-ass styrofoam cup. Simply put: Coffee is intended to be consumed somewhere around 140 degrees. Styrofoam is a good insulator, and will prevent that coffee from cooling effectively. Most of the mechanisms involved in *sigh* MODERN coffee production are designed to allow the boiling water that produces the flavor to cool before reaching your mouth. The case has been hashed out all over the internet and the vast majority completely agree with me: McDonald's had no business giving her coffee at that temperature, even if she was foolish enough to rest it in her crotch.