College Threatens Students Over Email Addresses

superdave98 writes "As a sign that a CIO has way too much time on his hands, Santa Rosa Junior College is sending emails threatening lawsuits to staff and students who have the letters 'SRJC' in their private email addresses. They contend that people could be confused and think these are official email addresses. Sure, I suppose people who fall for 419 scams probably could be fooled, but not any reasonable humans. I can't believe they found a lawyer who thought this was a good idea."

Comments

Greed is Good

[Drakkenmensch]

For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, if coffee is too hot to be poor over your crotch then how the hell wouldn't it ALSO be too hot to be drank?

And I don't care if you're a testosterone-driven moron who thinks he's a hot stud because he can drink boiling hot coffee. Normal people can't and restaurants keep making fucking boiling hot coffee, that's just insane.

Re:Greed is Good

[Bentov]

Actually, she sued(not that I agree with it) because the lid was not on when the coffee was handed to her and it spilled. She went back inside to see if she could have another cup of coffee. She was denied, so then she sued. Penny wise, pound foolish I say.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Hot is one thing. Hot enough to cause immediate 3rd degree burns is another thing entirely.

Re:Greed is Good

[couchslug]

"For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch."

For free, any number of internet denizens will propagate distortions and urban legends.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0122-11.htm

"Third Degree Burns

Here's what the talk show pundits and columnists neglected to mention about the McDonalds coffee burn case:

79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn. McDonalds knew it had a problem. There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. McDonalds had settled many claim before but refused Liebeck's request for $20,000 compensation, forcing the case into court. Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees. Doctors testified that it only takes 2-7 seconds to cause a third degree burn at 190 degrees. McDonalds knew its coffee was exceptionally hot but testified that they had never consulted with burn specialist. The Shriner Burn Institute had previously warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees. And so the jury came back with a decision- $160,000 for compensatory damages. But because McDonalds was guilty of "willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct" punitive damages were also applied. The jury set the award at $2.7 million. The judge then reduced the fine to less than half a million. Ms. Liebeck then settled with McDonalds for a sum reported to be much less than a half million dollars. McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants. "

Re:Greed is Good

[nicolas.kassis]

And they have a policy to do this. They keep the coffee at extreme temperatures on those burners for some reason. I can't drink a McDs coffee unless I let it cool 5 minutes. I can drink a Starbucks coffee when they serve it to me.

Re:Greed is Good

[just_another_sean]

Actually, she sued(not that I agree with it) because the lid was not on when the coffee was handed to her and it spilled. She went back inside to see if she could have another cup of coffee. She was denied, so then she sued. Penny wise, pound foolish I say.

[citation needed]

Re:Greed is Good

[debrain]

For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.

Lawyers have an obligation to advise their clients of the good and bad of the client's case. In addition to duties under their respective governing society and regulations, the practical reason is rather simple: Where a lawyer is negligent in failing to properly advise their client of the risks in a litigation, that lawyer could be liable to their client in negligence.

Re:Greed is Good

[ImNotAtWork]

The thing about the hot coffee lawsuit is that she was not the 1st person to complain about it. There was 700 people who filed complaints in a ten year period burn by the high temp coffee (some with 3rd degree burns. Yet McDonalds knowingly (documenting itself too) kept the temperature way too hot. This showed negligence on their part.

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Others have pointed out why her case was justified. I'll simply point out that for 150 dollars an hour, her lawyer gave her good advice, financially speaking. She won, didn't she?

Your point may be valid, but next time pick an example where the plaintiff didn't win. SCO, for example.

Re:Greed is Good

[ifdef]

Why don't you read about what happened before you guess about it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants seems to be a good summary of the case. Basically, a 79-year-old woman suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent. She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. Two years of treatment followed. The issue was that McDonald's required franchises to serve coffee at 180-190 F, which (it was claimed) is much hotter than coffee from other places.

Not that I can understand why anybody would want to drink McDonald's coffee anyway -- it's HORRIBLE! But that's just my opinion.

Re:Greed is Good

[infaustus]

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/beverages/coffee-tea/coffee-taste-test-3-07/overview/0307_coffee_ov_1.htm Your are apparently in the minority. CR's taste test found McDonald's coffee was the best.

Re:Greed is Good

[inviolet]

79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn. McDonalds knew it had a problem. There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. McDonalds had settled many claim before but refused Liebeck's request for $20,000 compensation, forcing the case into court. Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees.

You know that coffee is brewed with water that is on the verge of boiling, right? Ditto for hot tea, at least if you follow worldwide British/Indian custom. So if your coffee is served fresh, as Starbucks does serve it, then it will be about 190 degrees. There would be a storm of "ZOMG my five-dollar coffee isn't fresh!!1!" complaints if they didn't.

So I'd like to know the definition of "other restaurants" that plaintiff claims are serving cooler coffee. It is very telling that they do not cite any coffee- or restaurant-industry standard for coffee serve temperature.

For added enlightenment, next time you brew a pot of coffee, let it sit in the carafe for a while with the coffeemaker still on to keep it warm, and then check the temperature with a cooking thermometer. Then come back and tell us whether plaintiff was justified in claiming that McDonalds' procedure was somehow out-of-the-ordinary.

Re:Greed is Good

[sexconker]

Actually
Go eat a nice hot pizza.
Now get some of that hot cheese on your thigh.

Easy to eat, yet it can still burn.
AMAZING!

Re:Greed is Good

[Old97]

How can you get 3rd degree burns from a water-based liquid heated to only 180-190 degrees? Second degree yes, and it certainly would be painful, but I understand 3rd degree burns result in charred flesh. Also, the coffee would have cooled a bit while being transported to her and then much more once it was spilled.

I've had coffee at that temperature spilled on me (an entire cup) when I was a kid and I got blisters, not 3rd degree burns. In my case the coffee was made with boiling water that was poured directly into a cup. It spilled on me less than 30 seconds from being poured. I was only wearing a t-shirt on the area where it was spilled - my chest and stomach.

Can anyone explain how what is being claimed here is possible?

Re:Greed is Good

[david.emery]

> For 150 dollars an hour...

That's a really cheap lawyer these days! For a legal situation I was in recently in corporate law, we were paying more like $550/hr.

Re:Greed is Good

[futuresheep]

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/beverages/coffee-tea/coffee-taste-test-3-07/overview/0307_coffee_ov_1.htm Your are apparently in the minority. CR's taste test found McDonald's coffee was the best.

I trust Consumer Reports to rate food about as much as I trust Cook's Illustrated to rate chainsaws.

Re:Greed is Good

[inviolet]

The thing about the hot coffee lawsuit is that she was not the 1st person to complain about it. There was 700 people who filed complaints in a ten year period burn by the high temp coffee (some with 3rd degree burns. Yet McDonalds knowingly (documenting itself too) kept the temperature way too hot. This showed negligence on their part.

Turn in your geek card immediately, for failing to differentiate between gross and per capita rates.

700 coffee incidents is what percent of McDonalds' total coffee sales? Answer: about 1 in 24 million. And you call that 'negligent'?!

Re:Greed is Good

[wisnoskij]

I agree i have to wait for 40 minutes before i can drink any restaurants coffee.

Re:Greed is Good

[N3Roaster]

Actually, that brewing temperature (I'm going to assume your figure is for a serving temperature and that the extraction temperature was really a little bit higher) is based on good research into solids extraction and taste preference. For a drip preparation, brewing coffee at cooler temperatures tastes under-extracted. It is possible to compensate for this somewhat by increasing the depth of the grounds bed or using a finer particle size. Both of these increase water resistance, causing the extraction time to increase, and this also introduces defects in the flavor. (Espresso, of course, can get away with the lower extraction temperature due to the higher pressure, so a reasonable compromise would be to just serve caffe americano prepared at whatever temperature by a robot.) In other words, McD was actually brewing the coffee correctly, as the then-president of the Specialty Coffee Association of America testified at the time.

That's not to say that there wasn't a problem here. That 2-7 seconds for third degree burns at 190 degrees is a real problem and one that can be addressed. Once coffee is served, it cools off fairly quickly. Once spilled, it cools off even faster assuming that it doesn't have the opportunity to pool. The fact is, good coffee is not safe to serve in a drive-through environment. Had she spilled the coffee in the store where there was some freedom of motion (rather than strapped into a seat in a small space), the burn would never have happened. So the choice is this: either serve lousy tasting coffee that wasn't brewed or stored correctly or stop serving coffee from the drive-through window.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because I am sure everyone who burned themselves wanted to spill their coffee. Had you been there to tell them not to spill their coffee I am sure they would have resisted the temptation to burn themselves and not spill their coffee. There are plenty of scenarios on why it is dangerous to serve the damn coffee so hot. One would be what if you weren't the on who spilled it, what if someone bumped into you and spilled that coffee all over you. What if the lid wasn't fastened when given to you and it spilled all over you hand. Many places have a tendency not to make room when serving you a cup of coffee. Also maybe the fact that 700 people previous actually settled with McDonalds is an indicator? We should also cut the defendant some slack, she was a 79 year old lady just getting the McDonalds senior coffee special. I'd like to see you have steady hands at that age but your blanket statement is just stupid.

I do get where you're coming from with having to consult burn specialists etc, but in any industry when you're handling something that might hurt someone you have to protect yourself. You want to be able to cover your asses at all angles to prevent any sort of litigation from happening. This isn't about society all having to wear safety helmets to protect the world from them, it's about common fucking sense and decreasing the chance of burning someone's skin off over serving coffee that is abnormally hot.

Re:Greed is Good

[lefiz]

And she did not want to sue McDonalds for punitive damages, only to have them pay for the costs of her medical treatments. McD's refused to pay her medical bills (they offered $800), and so she was left with the choice of suing or being on the hook for the costs. Moreover, there were something like 700 previous cases of serious burns relating to McD's coffee, and McD's was aware of the safety issues. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Nov/1/129862.html

Re:Greed is Good

[FredFredrickson]

Everybody on this site needs to read that link couchslug just provided. That is some real ammo against some of the crap you hear on fox and such. Really, very enlightening. Thanks.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting fact: The temperature the coffee would need to be at to cause lesser burning would have been so cold most people would not have accepted it as a hot cup of coffee.

Burning associated with water is not linear with temperature, rather it is exponential.

Once you go above 140 F burning happens faster than the reaction time of "slower" individuals. Above 160 F and there are no humans at all that can react fast enough to prevent serious burns.

The reason you don't burn your mouth is you don't gulp large amounts of hot coffee down, you sip small amounts which reduces your exposure. However, in this case, the lady spilled an entire coffee in her lap and let it sit there for over 10 seconds (can't remember the exact number).

For that amount and duration, anything over 160 F would have been extremely damaging. Anything over 140 F would have resulted in serious burns. In fact, the coffee would need to be served below about 130 F, maybe even 120 F to prevent scalding.

Of course, science was not considered at all in this case. Only the fact that McDonald's coffee is served hotter. The fact that the damage does not seriously increase past the temperature it is served at elsewhere didn't come into play at all. I suppose that's justice. Right?

Re:Greed is Good

[lmpeters]

I heard she was wearing sweatpants at the time, which absorbed significantly more liquid than a t-shirt would, and held it in-place against her body long enough to cause third-degree burns.

Think of it this way: if you pour boiling water on yourself, you'll get burns, but the water will mostly run off of your body before doing too much damage. If you soak a sponge in boiling water and hold it against your skin, that's going to transfer a lot more thermal energy (since it can remain in contact for much longer) and thus cause a more severe burn.

Re:Greed is Good

[argiedot]

It's in the Wikipedia article. She was wearing cotton sweatpants which soaked up the hot coffee. In your case, you had the T-shirt on, and if you try to remember you'd probably see that you sort of pulled the shirt away from your skin when this happened (I know this is what I'd do). This person was old, and the coffee also spilt all over her sweatpants, therefore it would be harder to perform an equivalent action. In any case, the fact of the matter is that she did indeed get third-degree burns over 6% of her skin.

That doesn't make the case any less absurd, though.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The wikipedia article explains it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants#Background

Basically, it soaked into her clothing and continued to scald her. I think I read somewhere that they used maggots on the wounds to clean out the dead tissue. Mmmm.

Lotta frivolous lawsuits in the universe, but it's odd this has become the standard bearer. I mean, she ultimately won. Also? McDonalds doesn't need anyone to be outraged on their behalf. They're doing ok.

Re:Greed is Good

[ifdef]

I make my own coffee, I get it from the coffee machine at work, I really like Tim Horton's coffee, I drink coffee from Coffee Time or Starbucks or whatever -- these are all palatable. Pretty much every time I've bought McDonald's coffee, I've had to pour out most of the cup because it was totally undrinkable.

Why, you ask, would I have bought it more than once in such a case? It's because people were telling me that "McDonald's is making GOOD coffee now, you should try it again." I did, and they aren't.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

read the wikipedia account. it is fairly accurate.

Re:Greed is Good

[Lord_Frederick]

The degree of a burn refers to how deep the burn is. If the burns affected the full thickness of the dermis and underlying tissue, then they would be considered third degree despite the lack of charring.

Re:Greed is Good

[Duradin]

No one ever mentions the fact she was holding the cup of coffee between her knees.

Hot coffee + flimsy cup + holding with your legs = bad idea.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You're less likely to be in a car when you get that cup at Starbucks. After the drive through, commuting to work, I rather you have both hands on the wheel rather than a piping cup of joe. At least the McD's coffee will be nice and warm when you arrive at work.

Re:Greed is Good

[SolarCanine]

Normally, when purchasing coffee "to go" from a restaurant, I'm actually looking to drink it 20-30 minutes later. Boiling hot coffee remains drinkably hot a half-hour later, which suits me just fine. And I don't care if you're a testosterone-lacking intellectual who thinks a nanny state is required to protect its members from something as simple as "hot things can burn." Smart people learn this at a pretty young age, and Darwin can and should take care of reinforcing the lesson as necessary.

Re:Greed is Good

[MaskedSlacker]

I call it an exemplary safety record! If only my doctor made so few mistakes I--I--I--I wouldn't have this terrible stu--st---stutter.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

that brewing temperature [...] is based on good research into solids extraction and taste preference.

I agree that the brewing temperature needs to be hot as it passes through the grinds. But once brewed and in the storage or serving vessel, the coffee does NOT need to be stored at any particular temperature to retain its full flavor.

And in any case, no temperature variations can possibly improve the taste of McDonald's coffee. It sucks at any temperature.

Re:Greed is Good

[maxume]

You need to do some correcting for all the people that don't order coffee. I mean, I never ordered a coffee with my happy meal, so I'm pretty sure that some customers get other drinks.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Despite having Newman's own, McDonald's coffee still tastes like crap.

I drink coffee black with no sugar. Perhaps McDonald's coffee has some weird chemical reaction with sugar and cream that make it taste better than other coffees... but I doubt it.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

coffee should be on the berge of boiling! if you can't handle a cup of hot, then get a soda or a oj. you should expect your coffee to be almost boiling.

Re:Greed is Good

[Hijacked Public]

I'd like to see the guy with the bowtie run a chainsaw.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

What cheap ass lawyers are you referring to for $150/hour? I've never hired a lawyer for less than $250/hour. Many of them charge $400 or more per hour.

Re:Greed is Good

[Amouth]

the reason they do that is because,

Starbucks - you want a refill? buy another

McD's - you want a refill? its free, to you, but to them if you get 1 refill it 2x their cost to offer coffee.

in the law suite that was brought up.. that even though they knew of people who where being burned the company made a decision to keep the temp high to prevent people from getting refills before they left to save money - while knowing it was a saftey hazard.

that is why she won so much.. everyone likes to use that case as an example of how stupid lawsuits get.. i feel obligated to stop people and infrome them of what it really was.. and then point out SCO and the RIAA as the stupid lawsuites.. man they have some dumb ones

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

More interesting is, how on earth did the collage have a list of *private* email addresses of all students and staff ??

Re:Greed is Good

[Ephemeriis]

Can anyone explain how what is being claimed here is possible?

I believe that a good chunk of the problem was not only that McDonalds normally served their coffee hotter than other restaurants, but that this particular McDonalds was heating their coffee beyond what they were supposed to.

Of course there's plenty of debate here... I guess the lawyers convinced everyone that 180 F was too hot, and that coffee at that temperature couldn't even be consumed safely. And they claim that most other places server their coffee colder than that. But there are counter-claims that you need to brew your coffee at about 200 F for optimal flavor... And that people want their coffee to be served hot, even though that means it may be unsafe to drink it immediately - that folks typically understand this and wait for it to cool to the appropriate temperature.

There have been similar lawsuits against other restaurants... And similar lawsuits outside the US... But I don't think any of them really went anywhere. The consensus generally seems to be that people buying coffee ought to understand that it is hot enough to burn you right out of the pot, and that caution should be exercised until it has cooled enough to drink. I'm not really sure what made this case special... Maybe this particular restaurant really was heating its coffee to insane temperatures. Or maybe the lady was just sympathetic enough to swing things in her direction. Or maybe someone's lawyers just did a really good/bad job.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Google?
She was burnt and required surgery. She was not the first one injured this way.
Coffee is served that hot assuming you will drink it later and still want it hot.

Re:Greed is Good

[Ephemeriis]

The thing is, if coffee is too hot to be poor over your crotch then how the hell wouldn't it ALSO be too hot to be drank?

Dunno... Maybe not.

I drink my coffee hot. It tastes good that way. It doesn't hurt my mouth/tongue. But I've spilled it on myself and it hurt like hell. Maybe your mouth is less sensitive to heat? Maybe saliva acts as some kind of insulation? Maybe it's because you're typically taking small sips of coffee, and not dumping the entire cup down your throat?

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous!!

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but you get that kind of damage from McDonald's coffee even when it's cold...

Re:Greed is Good

[kingturkey]

Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. I don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps you should specify a system of measurement.

Re:Greed is Good

[jlf278]

It may not hurt your mouth or tongue, but drinking hot beverages regularly greatly increase your risk of oesophogeal cancer. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7965380.stm

Re:Greed is Good

[FMZ]

Alton Brown, is that you?

Re:Greed is Good

[Arivia]

Tim's spoils Canadians in general. Americans have no idea of what they're missing out on.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

All the starbucks near me have drive-throughs, FYI.

Re:Greed is Good

[amck]

Water out of a kettle is around 190 F (sometimes lower: try it, most kettles turn off just as the water starts to boil, not when its mostly
boiling), but cools rapidly in the first minute or so as you add coffee, sugar and milk.

McDonalds were deliberately making the coffee + water in the heater to avoid this, before placing the coffee in an insulated
polystyrene cup: this is how it was hotter than other restaurants.

This was, it was claimed, so the coffee was still hot when the driver at the drive-in got home. But it meant if you spilt it in the
car, you hadn't a hope of getting it away from your skin inside 2-7 seconds (think: older driver, wearing a seatbelt, jeans,
taking a drink at the drive-in so they can't quickly open the door: the worst case scenario for keeping the hot liquid next
to skin and causing burns).

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

lies, the British have been drinking hot tea every day for over 200 years.

Re:Greed is Good

[debrain]

That's really interesting.

Incidentally, I can say from direct first-hand knowledge (i.e. reading the insurance policies) that insurers often (if not always, nowadays) dictate the maximum temperature permitted for coffee and tea at the time it is sold in restaurants.

That's not to say anything about the brewing temperature-- just the temperature at the time of serving.

Re:Greed is Good

[Koiu Lpoi]

So I'd like to know the definition of "other restaurants" that plaintiff claims are serving cooler coffee. It is very telling that they do not cite any coffee- or restaurant-industry standard for coffee serve temperature.

So, to use your logic just a bit further, it would be OK for McDonalds to serve coffee far too hot to be safe, if only it was an industry standard?

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

None of that matters. If you spill coffee on yourself, it's your own fucking fault.

Re:Greed is Good

[FatAlb3rt]

And:
  - wiki links to every word that might not be common knowledge
  - specify any voice inflection that must be read into the comment so no one will miss jokes or sarcasm
  - translate your comments into multiple languages for the non-English speakers
  - please mow my grass because I'm kinda tired today

[/completely, totally, absolutely serious]

Re:Greed is Good

[Ragzouken]

Darwin should take care of reinforcing this lesson? You're seriously saying that people should learn that hot things burn by survival vs. death?

Re:Greed is Good

[Amouth]

if you sold a product and have over 700 reported injuries with the same cause/result. and it was obvious that it was being caused by something you intentional where doing..

yea..

Re:Greed is Good

[Gilmoure]

For making coffee with a Chemex, water temperature of 197.3Â F is ideal.

Re:Greed is Good

[inviolet]

So, to use your logic just a bit further, it would be OK for McDonalds to serve coffee far too hot to be safe, if only it was an industry standard?

Yes, because if it that was for some reason the standard, then we'd have the processes in place (mentally and commercially) to deal with it. Plaintiff's whole argument was that McDonald's was doing something unusual. (Though at a coffee complaint rate of 1 in 24 million, this is a very very hard claim to advance.)

That said, your objection is silly because such a thing could never become the standard in a retail industry.

Re:Greed is Good

[SolarCanine]

If that's the only way they'll learn what a three-year-old can learn otherwise, then yes, that's what I'm seriously saying. Hot coffee is hot. This shouldn't be something that requires any further explanation, disclaimers, cautionary tales, or legal proceedings. Not in any sane situation, anyway. But it seems that my post was flamebait, so whatever. I guess I'm just a cranky bastard that thinks that common sense is a valuable commodity that happens to be scarce lately.

Re:Greed is Good

[eth1]

Coffee should be brewed at about 175F. Pretty much ANY coffee, if made properly, will be too hot to drink at first, let alone dumped on more sensitive skin.

Re:Greed is Good

[Teancum]

Darwin should take care of reinforcing this lesson? You're seriously saying that people should learn that hot things burn by survival vs. death?

Yup!

I can name several people I am at least somewhat acquainted with that have had bad things happen to them, and I have learned from their experiences... including related deaths.

There is this thing called a brain we have... which unfortunately not nearly used as often as it could be. And far too often people to pay the ultimate price for their ignorance.

Re:Greed is Good

[Tanktalus]

And look at how many of those Brits, especially the early ones, are DEAD, and not just pining for the fjords.

Re:Greed is Good

[Vu1turEMaN]

It blows. Out of all of the fast food places, I'd say that Wendy's has the best coffee by far.

The had a secret promotion a while back where they handed out 25 free coffee mugs that would get you 25 cent coffee for a year....still using mine. They passed them out during their secret wednesday morning promos.

25cent coffee for a year beats anything besides brewing it on my own.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is, good coffee is not safe to serve in a drive-through environment.

Things must be very different in the states. In the UK no-one would ever expect 'good' coffee from a drive-through, let alone a bloody McDonalds drive-through!

You know fine well it will taste of dirty dish water strained through a cigarette filter and, for what can only be some sadomasochistic reason, you buy it and drink it anyway.

Re:Greed is Good

[Khyber]

"it's HORRIBLE! But that's just my opinion."

I guess you're a "burned starbucks coffee" lover.

The source for McD's coffee is *MUCH* better than Starbucks. The only reason the McD's might taste like utter crap is because they've not done proper maintenance on the coffee machine and not pre-filtered the water used for brewing (or they fucked up and gave you decaf instead of your regular coffee.)

I can actually stand to eat McD's coffee RAW out of the bag. Starbucks coffee tastes like ass, it's too bitter.

And I have grown coffee before, I know what it's supposed to taste like. Starbucks has it wrong.

Re:Greed is Good

[Khyber]

Thermodynamics. That's what happened to make third degree burns. 180 degrees on your skin for a couple of seconds will turn you crab red, keep it there much longer and you de-nature the proteins around that area and third degree burns start forming.

Past 200 degrees and you start getting charring plus damage to muscle, tendon and ligament, which is the realm of 4th degree burns

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see:
McDonald's is an American company.
Stella Liebeck, the woman who got burned, is American.
The incident happened in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
The court case was held in the United States.

You figure out which temperature scale he was using, you dumb motherfucker.

Re:Greed is Good

[sjames]

That's the part where I find the suit against McD's excessive. I can only imagine that it was a combination of poor circulation and not jumping up and getting the soaked cloth away from her skin in a reasonable time (because she was attempting this while operating a car).

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if you don't make the coffee boiling hot it tastes like you got it from 7/11. They don't do it as a joke. It is required to get the maximum flavour from the coffee. Of course you wouldn't know that because you probably fill your coffee full of that artificial flavoured creamer crap and cant even taste the coffee anyway.

Re:Greed is Good

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Alton brown? He'd probably just end up making a big rack of ribs.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit! If it is too fucking hot for my leg, it's going to burn the shit out of my mouth!

Also, the facts of the McDonald's Hot Coffee case are that McDonald's required their franchisees to keep their coffee at 180F-190F. In addition, the coffee manufacturer has stated that such a high temperature is not ideal for the coffee's taste. It was simply a matter of time before someone got seriously injured.

Re:Greed is Good

[khellendros1984]

And you have to wait over an hour to be able to pour it on your crotch....such a tragedy!

Re:Greed is Good

[_KiTA_]

For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.

Urban myth.

1. McDonalds had been warned, repeatedly, that their cups were faulty, especially when being used to contain coffee of the temperature they were serving. Specifically, the plastic lids were melting due to the heat.
2. They had been cited, repeatedly, for said coffee's temperature, as it was unsafe for human consumption at that temperature.
3. The grandmother who got said third degree burns that required skin grafts over a rather large portion of her lower body only sued after McDonalds offered her an absurdly, insultingly low settlement that would not pay for her medical bills.

Please do not fall for the FUD on behalf of the Corporationists. Some companies deserve to be sued.

Re:Greed is Good

[Wisconsingod]

It's in the Wikipedia article.

Wow, thanks for emphasizing the absolute proof of that fact... if Wikipedia says it, then it MUST be true!!!

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to point out that pouring boiling water on yourself can cause an amazing amount of burn damage in an extremely short time even without fabric to hold it against your skin for a longer time, so please don't try this experiment at home. Skin is your friend.

Re:Greed is Good

[Khyber]

"That doesn't make the case any less absurd, though."

You just proved you don't even know the facts of the case with that statement. Any reasonable person would see the facts and could NEVER come to that conclusion. So to help you out, I point you to this slashdotter's comment for correction and re-education.

Re:Greed is Good

[nitehawk214]

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/food/beverages/coffee-tea/coffee-taste-test-3-07/overview/0307_coffee_ov_1.htm

Your are apparently in the minority. CR's taste test found McDonald's coffee was the best.

And most Americans like Budweiser too.

Re:Greed is Good

[Amouth]

that arguement only works if truely you are sticking your mouth under the drip. there yes it is near boiling.

as it falls it loses heat and goes into a pot/vat where there the actual tempature is maintaned by a burner.. if it is set to a lower temp then heat will be disapated - and it does this quite quickly

Re:Greed is Good

[idontgno]

Well, to use the current Darwin Award rules, death is not required. Inability to reproduce is. Specifically, sterilization is a viable alternative. So, given sufficient quantities of sufficiently hot coffee dumped into a crotch (which, by normal human physiology, is necessary to reproduction), non-lethal hot coffee burns may qualify.

Re:Greed is Good

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I am lactose intolerant you insensitive clod.

Re:Greed is Good

[Runaway1956]

I don't know about you, but I drink my coffee at 170 to 180 degrees. I run my bath water at about 105 t0 119 degrees. I have certain sesitive parts that don't tolerate hot water as well as other less sensitive parts.

Are we to assume that you don't possess these sensitive little bits of anatomy?

Re:Greed is Good

[Rary]

...people want their coffee to be served hot...

The issue is how hot is "hot". If everyone in the world has decided that "hot" means x degrees, but you decide to serve your coffee at x + y, where y is enough to make the coffee significantly more dangerous, you'd better warn people — not warn them that coffee is hot, but warn them that your coffee is exceptionally hot.

There have been similar lawsuits against other restaurants...

And even against this particular restaurant. McDonald's had settled hundreds of similar lawsuits out of court before this one even occurred. The only reason we ever heard about this one is that it was the first to actually go to trial.

The consensus generally seems to be that people buying coffee ought to understand that it is hot enough to burn you right out of the pot, and that caution should be exercised until it has cooled enough to drink.

But how much caution you exercise is proportional to how much danger you perceive to exist. If you're not properly informed of the danger, you will not exercise the appropriate level of caution. I've spilt coffee on myself before, but I didn't require skin grafts (I also don't live in a country where such surgery would cost me tens of thousands of dollars). Clearly my situation was not as dangerous as that of the defendant.

Re:Greed is Good

[Runaway1956]

I don't know about you, but I drink my coffee at 170 to 180 degrees. I run my bath water at about 105 t0 119 degrees. I have certain sesitive parts that don't tolerate hot water as well as other less sensitive parts.

Are we to assume that you don't possess these sensitive little bits of anatomy?

error in above post - my bath water runs 105 to 110 - stupid fingers!!

Re:Greed is Good

[Lemmy Caution]

If inability to reproduce qualifies one for the Darwin Awards, I think 90% of the Linux user-base can make it to the finals.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh fer crying out loud. Do yourself a favor and go read up on the case. It wasn't just because the hotter-than-normal coffee was spilled on sensitive skin - it was because the coffee was SO hot the lady needed skin grafting and two years worth of treatment to treat third degree burns. On her crotch.

Read it again: *third degree burns*. Google it to see what 3rd degree burns look like, and then come back to me and tell me whether or not that lady had a valid case on her hands. Or crotch, as it were.

Re:Greed is Good

[Runaway1956]

Actually - they've changed brands a couple times. For a short period of time, I think about 1999, they actually made decent coffee. Another well known coffee vendor, (in the southern US) is 7-11. They made HORRID coffee for years, then switched brands. Very good cup of java, if it hadn't been sitting for hours. Then they switched again to Fa-Ellen. It doesn't suck quite as bad as the original blend of trash, but I don't drink it.

Re:Greed is Good

[DrLang21]

Do insurers require process control on this? If you do not require process control, then no one really knows what temperature the coffee is being served at. If the restaurant can't prove that they had control over the process, even if they were serving it at 100 F, if someone is burned by it and sues, they are going to win. High safety risk industry like avionics and medical devices knows this fact very well. As an insurer, dictating a maximum serving temperature on coffee guards you from nothing if you don't require validated control.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The court case specifically included comparisons to the temperature at numerous other places that serve coffee. Obviously the result of that comparison did not come up favorably for McDonalds.

Brewing and serving are not the same thing, and should not be done at the same temperature.

Re:Greed is Good

[lastchance_000]

Actually it should be hotter, about 195F-205F, according to the National Coffee Association of the USA.

Re:Greed is Good

[lastchance_000]

Alton Brown usually wears bowling shirts. Maybe GP meant Orville Redenbacher?

Re:Greed is Good

[lastchance_000]

I should add, however that it shouldn't be held or served at that temperature.

Re:Greed is Good

[Runaway1956]

One of the first things a healthy individual with any intelligence does when burnt, is to REMOVE THE BURNING MATERIAL from the body. It's a reflex. You snatch your hand away, or you jump, or pull your shirt off. I once spilled hot liquid on myself at work, and promptly pulled my pants off, along with the oil soaking my thigh.

An elderly woman, sitting in a car, perhaps with limited mobility, and perfectly unwilling to undress herself in public just MIGHT have suffered a 3rd degree burn.

"Charring" is a characteristic of a dry burn, and being in contact with a point of combustion. On the other hand, "3rd degree burn" signifies that the layers of skin were all killed, and that the heat destroyed underlying tissue - most usually muscle.

So, yeah - I can imagine that she might have suffered 3rd degree burns. Hard to imagine, but imaginable. Not to mention that a good lawyer can blur the lines between 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

Re:Greed is Good

[interkin3tic]

For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.

Considering she got a settlement out of it (as opposed to just a burned lap) to cover her medical expenses, not really a bad idea, is it? You might feel it's undeserved, but the case itself wasn't a bad idea.

Re:Greed is Good

[TwilightXaos]

I hate to be pedantic, but my therapist says I should accept myself for who i am.

He did say

700 coffee incidents is what percent of McDonalds' total coffee sales?

Emphasis mine

Re:Greed is Good

[plague3106]

Except that you're in the minority. McDs own research showed that 1) the majority of thier customers wanted to drink the coffee immdediately and 2) the temp. they served it at would cause 3rd degree burns and 3) didn't care. That's why they lost the lawsuit.. that the woman shouldn't have had an open cup of coffee between her legs to begin with was why the award was halved.

Re:Greed is Good

[smidget2k4]

Actually she only sorta won. McDonalds settled on an appeal for an undisclosed amount of money no where near to what had been the original punitive penalty. It should also be noted that the penalty was punitive because McDonalds had continuously ignored warnings from the FDA about the temperature of their coffee. The lady was only suing for the funds to cover her medical expenses.

Re:Greed is Good

[smidget2k4]

She was not operating the car. It was parked and she was in the passenger seat.

Re:Greed is Good

[Dragonslicer]

if you sold a product and have over 700 reported injuries with the same cause/result.

700 injuries out of how many non-injuries? Nothing is perfectly safe, and there's a huge difference between 700 injuries in 7,000 sales and 700 injuries in 7,000,000,000 sales.

Re:Greed is Good

[fugue]

I think you'll find that slurping is key.

Of course, coffee brewed at 100C tends to be bitter, but humans scald quickly around 55C, and most decent coffee is brewed somewhere between 80 and 94 degrees. The trick is knowing that some food is prepared too hot to consume. Duh.

For example, I'd laugh if McD's started serving pork that had never been brought above 55 degrees.

Re:Greed is Good

[YetAnotherProgrammer]

Nah, just soaking your testicles in boiling coffee should keep you from reproducing.

Re:Greed is Good

[rts008]

...warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees.

I would raise hell about being served lukewarm coffee due to some idiot's inability to handle a cup of coffee that was at 'fresh-brewed' temperature.

Also, see the National Coffee Association's website:

Your brewer should maintain a water temperature between 195 - 205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction. Colder water will result in flat, underextracted coffee while water that is too hot will also cause a loss of quality in the taste of the coffee. If you are brewing the coffee manually, let the water come to a full boil, but do not overboil. Turn off the heat source and allow the water to rest a minute before pouring it over the grounds.[...]

Brewed coffee should be enjoyed immediately!

Pour it into a warmed mug or coffee cup so that it will maintain its temperature as long as possible. Brewed coffee begins to lose its optimal taste moments after brewing so only brew as much coffee as will be consumed immediately. If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit. It should never be left on an electric burner for longer than 15 minutes because it will begin to develop a burned taste. If the coffee is not to be served immediately after brewing, it should be poured into a warmed, insulated thermos and used within the next 45 minutes

[my emphasis]

So, as far as I am concerned, you can use your lukewarm, insipid liquid for a colonic...as in you know where you can put it!

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

So now we're telling people how they should have their coffee. I guess we are in the era of the customer is always wrong. If people don't want their coffee that hot and there are that many complaints I would lower it. There is also a big different between taking a coffee to go on your morning commute and sitting down in a nice slow cafe that serves an ideal brew in a porcelain cup. My point still stands about a 79 year old, cut her some slack.

Re:Greed is Good

[jimicus]

This is the US we're talking about here.

As a brit who occasionally has to travel abroad, it is damn-near impossible to get a good cup of tea in the US because tea really needs to be made with boiling water. Boiling. Not "very hot". Boiling.

Seriously, has concept of a kettle (meaning a jug which holds about 3 pints of water and has a heating element built in which will boil the water and cut-out when there's sufficient steam to operate a cutout switch) not made it over there?

Re:Greed is Good

[BradleyAndersen]

Where on earth do you find one of these lawyers "for 150 dollars an hour"? Do they live in the same community as the jackalope, or do we have to wonder over to yeti territory?

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is that, the restaurants are at fault because they make coffee with boiling hot water... yet it's my understanding that boiling hot water is the key stone to making coffee... maybe I missed some space aged cold water coffee technique? :)

Re:Greed is Good

[plague3106]

Yes, it is negligent. The fact that more people weren't burned doesn't change the fact that they were taking an unjustifable risk.

Just because nobody is hurt doesn't mean you aren't being negligent; it means you're getting lucky.

Re:Greed is Good

[PitaBred]

The problem is that it's not "abnormally hot".

We should also put foam rubber on all sidewalks, because someone could trip and fall and break an arm! That's just negligent, having hard things on the ground! And keep cars from going faster than 5mph. They might actually cause some damage. Seriously... there's an acceptable risk to everything. Hot coffee is understood to be hot by most reasonable people. That's why you have to be careful with it. Sure, someone COULD bump into you, but someone could also run over your toe if you don't watch where you're walking. I'm tired of this "It's not my fault!" bullshit in our society. If you screw up, take responsibility. Even if you didn't MEAN to do it, it's something you SHOULD have watched out for, a risk that should have been accepted.

Re:Greed is Good

[PitaBred]

How many people injured themselves walking into a door at McDonald's? How many by tripping over the sidewalk? Do they get to sue McDonald's for not padding every part of every building where people might get hurt? They say the fucking coffee was hot. Everybody knows what "hot" is. You can feel it through the styrofoam. If you are so stupid to put the coffee in a place where it could EASILY spill and hurt you, you deserve what you get. Just like you shouldn't have a lawsuit against someone if you run across the highway and get hit.

Re:Greed is Good

[whoever57]

Seriously, has concept of a kettle (meaning a jug which holds about 3 pints of water and has a heating element built in which will boil the water and cut-out when there's sufficient steam to operate a cutout switch) not made it over there?

Such devices have recently become widely available. They were difficult to find only a few years ago.

Re:Greed is Good

[QuantumFlux]

He's talking about Christopher Kimball, not Alton Brown...

Re:Greed is Good

[PitaBred]

So... how is it McDonald's fault that she was wearing sweatpants and spilled coffee on them? I mean, it's not like you can't tell that that shit is hot. It'll radiate even through thick styrofoam.

Re:Greed is Good

[PitaBred]

Just because she only wanted medical bills covered does not make it right. Is the city responsible for my medical bills if I trip and break my arm on a public street?

Re:Greed is Good

[conlaw]

Not that I can understand why anybody would want to drink McDonald's coffee anyway -- it's HORRIBLE! But that's just my opinion.

I used to think that the reason they were serving it so hot was to numb your throat so you didn't notice how horrible it was. So, IMHO, that was the best part of the fallout from the lawsuit; McDonald's now serves some fairly good coffee at a decent temperature.

Re:Greed is Good

[rts008]

This showed negligence on their part.

No, it just shows how 'nanny state' mentality comes about, and that there are at least 700 people too incompetent to handle coffee in that area and time period.

From your link:

McDonalds also argued that consumers know coffee is hot and that its
customers want it that way.

And they are correct.
Having worked in several restaurants, I can assure you that coffee served at 130-140 deg. F. will get you far more complaints about the coffee being 'too cold' than complaints about it being too hot at 180-195 deg. F.

All of you whining about McD's 'hot coffee' sound like Jack Thompson wannabe gits.

Re:Greed is Good

[Pandare]

In a car without cupholders. Where else was she supposed to keep it?

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess Sarah Rebecca Jones-Cutler @ gmail.com is SOL unless she can produce a birth certificate proving her initials predate Santa Rosa Junior College.

Re:Greed is Good

[ikono]

Holy hell, people! I've forgotten what the article was about! The circle was 10000 pixels back ^^^ thataways...

Re:Greed is Good

[Tweenk]

You know that coffee is brewed with water that is on the verge of boiling, right? Ditto for hot tea, at least if you follow worldwide British/Indian custom.

Sorry bu it won't be anywhere near boiling. "Boiling" water from a teapot is about 90*C, when you pour it into a glass/porcelain cup (not a plastic one) the temperature drops by about 10*C more so it's about 80-85*C when the tea is brewing, and about 75*C when it's done brewing. To get 90*C tea or coffee you basically have to brew it inside a pre-tempered vacuum flask, and then it tastes awfully.

Re:Greed is Good

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Boiling hot coffee is having the flavor cooked out of it. Coffee is best when brewed at 180-190 degrees F, and served at 120.

Re:Greed is Good

[omeomi]

For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.

To be fair, that lady initially just wanted McDonalds to pay her medical bills. Had McDonalds just done the nice thing and quietly paid her the few hundred or few thousand dollars rather than forcing her to file a lawsuit, they would have saved themselves millions of dollars.

Re:Greed is Good

[Amouth]

your skipping over the other part..

where i mentioned that the cause/result is your own doing and something that is easy to prevent.

Re:Greed is Good

[SolarCanine]

The range I've always heard is 195-205 degrees F for the brewing temp of the filtered water, so I agree with you on that one (although I'd posit that at 205 degrees F, unless you have an extremely thorough and even source of heat, some of that water is indeed "boiling", but IANAC (I Am Not A Chemist)). And I'd bet that my 195 degree coffee, after 20-30 minutes, is indeed around 120 degrees F as well, so as long as "served" == "when I start drinking it" I guess I'm in the acceptable range.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Never seen temperatures measured in Angstroms before. How quaint.

Re:Greed is Good

[LandDolphin]

I really wish people would stop bringing this up. McDonalds was sued, and lost, not because of a single incident but because they had known that their coffee was too hot and could result in severe burns and had chosen to ignore the problem till this lady was burned. Had it been coffee at a regular temperature, the law suit would have been dropped or lost.

Re:Greed is Good

[Gilmoure]

Stoopid slash code/browser stuff not representing my shift+opt+8 Mac character.

  Â
  p /3 eyed monster

Re:Greed is Good

[lmpeters]

That wasn't McDonald's fault. That's why the damages she received were significantly less than what she had sued them for.

Re:Greed is Good

[Duradin]

Hold on to it with one hand?

Hand it to the kid sitting in the driver's seat since the car is parked?

Have the kid in the driver's sear get the sugar since the car is parked?

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The coffee's taste and it being too hot to drink are two different subjects. Why are you mixing them up? Too much cold coffee?

Your mouth is a whole lot less sensitive to heat than your balls. My balls are quite water-resistent (though they might change size depending on the heat), my mouth is not.
In case you haven't notices, they are all used for different purposes.

Your crotch is NOT the place to dump coffee (dumping it ON, rather than IN your head has the same effect) and you bloody well know it's hot!
darned american retards who can't think for themselves.

Do you jump off buildings too? Then if you'd live, sue the builder because they didn't warn that the vertical distance in combination with gravity could potentially harm you?

Re:Greed is Good

[Dishevel]

Thing is. If you don't like your coffee as hot as they serve it a a certain restaurant you are free to buy coffee from another place.

Re:Greed is Good

[Dishevel]

Darwin should take care of reinforcing this lesson? You're seriously saying that people should learn that hot things burn by survival vs. death?

if you haven't learned this by the time you reach an age where you are ordering your own coffee from McDonald's then sadly .... Yes. Darwin should kill that dumb fuck before they breed.

Re:Greed is Good

[CarpetShark]

Some things take time, and should be savored. If people don't have enough time to drink a coffee properly, they need to negotiate better work hours or take up a less insane lifestyle. Drinking tea used to be a beautiful ceremony ffs, and now we can't even handle having it made FOR us? Encouraging people to do everything at light speed -- especially when it means inferior heated-then-chilled or not-heated-enough coffee, is solving entirely the wrong problem.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't trust Consumer Reports much (their electronics and computer ratings have sucked forever) but if they say that McDonald's coffee is good, they are right, although apparently by accident. I don't know of a decent cup of coffee outside speciality places except at McDonald's. Their getting 1 cup of coffee at Starbucks that wasn't good isn't surprising, but overall Starbucks is much better, and you can get a variety, so they screwed that up.

Go to a local diner. The coffee sucks. Well, maybe not if you live in Seattle, but for most people. Go to any fast food place, or a mid-level sit down restaurant. The coffee sucks. Now try Mickey D's. The coffee is actually decent. It was even better before they changed it a few years back.

Sure you can find a hip place that can make a decent cap. or latte, and their coffee might be OK, but no big chain's will be, outside the specialty places (Starbuck's, etc).

Well, at least in the US. So are you wrong? No, they screwed up. But I'm just saying, you can get a decent cup at McDonalds.

Hugs & Kisses

srjc@slashdot.org

Re:Greed is Good

[penguinchris]

I'm from Buffalo, one of a few US border towns (as far as I know) with a deluge of Tim Horton's, and I've spent a lot of time in Canada (I've even been to the Tim Horton museum in Cochrane....)

While their stuff is preferable to any fast food place, surely, I don't think it's really all that great. And as the other replier noted, there are often large lines, quality is not always great depending on the location and the people working, and they chase out locally owned competition.

Anyway, my point is - I'm from the US but still know all about Tim Horton's, and while I appreciate many of the things they offer, I don't think the US is missing out *that* much.

Then again, I don't really drink coffee and don't frequent the US chains, either, but I have been to most of them. I *would* say that Tim Horton's has the best donuts, though :)

Re:Greed is Good

[drew30319]

Just because she only wanted medical bills covered does not make it right. Is the city responsible for my medical bills if I trip and break my arm on a public street?

Sure, the city would likely be responsible if they took actions that a reasonable person could foresee as resulting in broken arms.

That's what happened here. McDonald's had received reports of 700+ people suffering burns from coffee that was literally too hot to drink. Testimony revealed that they maintained this high temperature in order to keep the coffee sufficiently hot for the 30-minute average drive to the office in the morning. Ms. Liebeck was unlucky enough to spill the coffee on herself (and despite what is commonly believed, she was a passenger in the car and the driver actually *parked* so that she could add cream and sugar - very reasonable and foreseeable actions). McDonald's knew that people would likely be injured but made the business decision to not change their processes.

It's a shame that it sometimes takes lawsuits to get big business to make consumer-friendly decisions. Trust me there are frivolous lawsuits out there - this just isn't one of them.

Re:Greed is Good

[jimicus]

I wasn't joking.

My employer's office in the US doesn't have a kettle - only a coffee machine - and when I asked about it I was asked "what's a kettle?"

Re:Greed is Good

[The_mad_linguist]

Nobody else mentions that the car wasn't in motion at the time.

Re:Greed is Good

[FlickieStrife]

I see your point, but the facts of the case prove that McDs were SUPERHEATING the coffee in question, it wasnt that the coffee was hot, it was that the coffee was lethal to the balls hot.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only "easy to eat" because you've already desensitized your mouth to the heat. Every time I bite into hot pizza, the tomato sauce burns my gums enough that they peel.

On the other hand, I've slowly increased my tolerance of "hot" chile to nigh-invulnerable levels.

Hot is relative to experience.

Re:Greed is Good

[russler]

"The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law for the use of its brains and its time." - Wilkie Collins

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm of the belief that my food should not cause me great harm. I don't eat Bob's Atomically Singed Anus Hot Sauce, because I don't enjoy the pain of shitting spicy food.

This is the same reason when I prepare meals for guests, I don't take the pot-roast right out of the 350ÂF oven and put it right on their plates.

If you know something can cause people serious injury (3rd degree burns are of the most serious type), you are responsible for any harm that comes to the people you distribute it to.

There is really no difference if I make a small toy, neglect to put child choking warnings on the packaging, and then sell it. I can't expect to not be sued if my product kills a small child, because I did not provide adequate warning.

Re:Greed is Good

[whoever57]

I wasn't joking.

Neither was I. The first electric kettle that we were able to buy in the USA was from Webvan, however, in the last couple of years, we have found electric kettles at Target. Before Webvan, we had not found anywhere to buy these handy devices.

There is a problem however. In the UK, electric kettles are 240V/13A. In the USA they are 110V and probably only about 15A, so they take twice as long to boil water.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Tim's is not that good, it's just popular. I find they frequently have a burnt flavour. I prefer country style coffee it's much better and stronger tasting.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, let's have 1 in a million people gets stabbed in the eye when they go into McD's then - after all, that's totally acceptable by your standards.

See how fucking stupid you are yet or shall I draw you a picture in crayon?

Re:Greed is Good

[coolsnowmen]

There is a problem however. In the UK, electric kettles are 240V/13A. In the USA they are 110V and probably only about 15A, so they take twice as long to boil water.

I'ld like to see data on that. If my you can't boil a pot of water quickly with 1650W then you have a poorly designed kettle.

Then again, I don't ever time my boiling water, 'cause I just put mine on the stove and it whistles when it is ready.

Re:Greed is Good

[inviolet]

Yes, it is negligent. The fact that more people weren't burned doesn't change the fact that they were taking an unjustifable risk.

When 23,999,999 average idiots are able to successfully handle your retail procedure, it is hard to justify incurring other problems in order to make safe that final idiot. The 190-degree serving temperature is not accidental or arbitrary; abandoning it has costs too.

You can define 'negligent' any way you wish. Under your current definition where 'negligent' means "creating a risk above 0.0000001", you are negligent in countless ways by the time you've made it to the office in the morning. I suppose you can run with this idea if you like, but it's not useful. A useful definition of negligent will single out those actions which create risks that are cost-effective to eliminate.

Re:Greed is Good

[SolarCanine]

"That many complaints"?

So you, as the head of a multinational conglomerate that up until recently counted their unit sales in billions with a b on their signs, would modify how you sell your product based on 700 substantiated complaints?

Good day, sir.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Well except that McD's case, the plaintiff proved that knew the temp was too high, and did not care because the higher temp yielded more cups per batch. So that was a business decision based on greed. And, I believe the plaintiff also actually purchased the coffee at the drive thru window.

Re:Greed is Good

[the_fat_kid]

"you kids get off of my lawn!!"

Re:Greed is Good

[pipingguy]

(which, by normal human physiology, is necessary to reproduction)

This is Slashdot. Parent-child conditions, spawning and replication happens all the time here without ever having to bump uglies.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. I've always drunk coffee straight after it's made - never burnt my tongue - never spilt it on myself either. Neither does/has anyone I know. You should go fuck yourself.

Re:Greed is Good

[CarpetShark]

No. More like "don't walk on the concrete and bitch about the hard ground, when all you have to do is step over and enjoy the lawn."

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember correctly, the McDonalds hot coffee suit revealed that their coffee wasn't just too hot, but that they knew it was too hot and were brewing it that way anyways for financial reasons. As an attorney you'd be a fool NOT to take that case.

Re:Greed is Good

[teknosapien]

They were not sued for serving coffee that was too hot. They were sued for failing to take responsibility of the medical bills after the woman was scalded do to the lid not being properly placed on the cup(get your facts straight!)

Re:Greed is Good

[petermgreen]

In the UK, electric kettles are 240V/13A
While you get the odd fast boil kettle that draws a full 13A most of the kettles i've seen have been lower, sometimes quite a bit lower.

Still they are usually higher than the max current that can be drawn through an american socket.

Re:Greed is Good

[unl0rd]

3120W would still boil water faster than 1650W, whatever the design of the kettle.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Normal people can't and restaurants keep making fucking boiling hot coffee, that's just insane.

Brother, I don't know how you manage to make coffee, but the rest of us near sea level have to brew our coffee with water that's 93 degrees Celsius. That's well above scalding, and you would be well advised never to pour it on your crotch.

Re:Greed is Good

[Scarletdown]

Well, I am doing what I can to convince my fellow Americans that Bud is just beer flavored water. It's not easy to convert the typical beer drinker, but I have turned several on to Alaskan Amber over the years. :)

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking stupid piece of shit. It's pussy bitches like you that cause my fucking coffee to come lukewarm and end up cold when I put the milk in it. Fuck you!

Re:Greed is Good

[Thinboy00]

You have to be stupid to get a Darwin Award. Now, Windows fanbois, they're another story...

Re:Greed is Good

[longhairedgnome]

Umm, you know this is about McDonalds coffee, right?

Re:Greed is Good

[Rubinstien]

McDonald's coffee, besides tasting like crap, was always INSANELY hot. I once HAD IT MELT THE GLUE holding in the base of the paper cup it was served to me in. I was driving in Chicago, had left McDonald's only a few minutes before, and picked up the cup from the console cup holder for my first sip. The bottom of the cup fell out just as I was bringing the rim of the cup to my lips, and dumped the entire, scalding, contents onto my crotch. I crossed four lanes of traffic in as many seconds, screaming the entire way, so that I could get out of the hot pool of coffee puddled in my vinyl seat. This was years before the now famous coffee lawsuit. I have much sympathy, and evidently not enough greed.

Yes, my skin peeled.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

All of you guys keep claiming that 190 degrees cause burns, but I don't get burned even from a full rotation

Re:Greed is Good

[Krieghund]

Regarding the McDonalds example: How is winning a lawsuit against one of the largest companies in the world a bad idea? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

McD's refused to pay her medical bills (they offered $800), ....

Not surprising from corporate fucks.

I recently read an account by an off-duty EMT. He was in Starfux when an elderly man was about to get his coffee off the counter. The clerk bumped it and it spilled down his shirt and pants. The bitchista immediately whipped out an accident report form and started asking him questions as she filled out the form.

The EMT intervened, grabbed the old guy, ran him into the bathroom and started flushing the guy off with cold water.

When reporters tried to follow up, *fux wouldn't comment. In response to requests for a copy of the corporate policy on accidents involving patrons, they declared that information to be "proprietary".

Motherfuckers -- all they know how to do is hide their shameless asses behind a phalanx of lawyers and legalistic horseshit.

When they get to hell, I'm sure the devil will be waiting for all those pricks, holding a big funnel and a vat of *fux coffee, under a sign reading, "Drop trou, bend over and spread 'em, sweethearts".

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

that the woman shouldn't have had an open cup of coffee between her legs to begin with was why the award was halved.

But that's the only part that the media covered...that she dropped coffee on herself. But that wasn't the point of the lawsuit - it was because she got third degree burns, down to the bone. And as you say, the company knew that most of their customers wanted to drink it right away.

So what's been bandied about as the epitome of frivolous lawsuit is actually an example of a GOOD lawsuit. Because spills will happen (your fault), but you shouldn't be at the risk of 3rd degree burns requiring skin grafts (McDonald's fault).

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

No, the point of the lawsuit was that spills will happen, and that you shouldn't have to worry about the product causing massive 3rd degree burns. You should be able to get a cup of coffee without having to think about avoiding skin grafts.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

No, it just shows how 'nanny state' mentality comes about, and that there are at least 700 people too incompetent to handle coffee in that area and time period.

No, this shows how asinine Libertarian fucktards are. Of course it was the lady's fault that she spilled coffee on herself. That was never in question. The obvious point which you obviously ignored is that spills will happen with beverages. All the time. Hence they shouldn't be served at a temperature hot enough to melt the skin off your legs, requiring skin grafts and years of treatments.

McDonalds also argued that consumers know coffee is hot and that its
customers want it that way.

And they are correct.

You're an idiot. Try working on that reading comprehension thing:

McDonalds asserted that customers buy coffee on their way to work or
home, intending to consume it there. However, the companys own research
showed that customers intend to consume the coffee immediately while
driving.

McDonalds also argued that consumers know coffee is hot and that its
customers want it that way. The company admitted its customers were
unaware that they could suffer thirddegree burns from the coffee and
that a statement on the side of the cup was not a "warning" but a
"reminder" since the location of the writing would not warn customers of
the hazard.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

I would raise hell about being served lukewarm coffee due to some idiot's inability to handle a cup of coffee that was at 'fresh-brewed' temperature.

McDonalds own research showed their customers would drink the coffee right away and that they were serving it at too hot a temperature.

Also, see the National Coffee Association's website:

That reading comprehension thing again. That's brewing temperature. Not serving temperature.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

No one ever mentions the fact she was holding the cup of coffee between her knees.

Because that was 1) never in question and 2) irrelevant to the case. She didn't sue because the coffee was spilled, she sued because McDonalds was serving a hazardous product that caused severe burns requiring skin grafts.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

You know that coffee is brewed with water that is on the verge of boiling, right?

You do know there is a difference between brewing temperature and serving temperature, right?

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

The problem is that it's not "abnormally hot".

Yeah, it is actually. As McDonalds own research showed.

We should also put foam rubber on all sidewalks, because someone could trip and fall and break an arm! That's just negligent, having hard things on the ground! And keep cars from going faster than 5mph.

I suppose you were one of the idiot executives at Ford who thought it was no big ideal that the Pinto's gas tank could explode in 10 mph collisions? Because that's an appropriate analogy, as opposed your blathering BS about rubber sidewalks.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

Those were 700 injuries, not just complaints. And McDonalds own research showed that they knew serving the coffee that hot was a problem, but they did it anyway to save a few bucks.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

How many people injured themselves walking into a door at McDonald's? How many by tripping over the sidewalk? Do they get to sue McDonald's for not padding every part of every building where people might get hurt?

If merely bumping the door results in shattering your perfectly healthy spine? Then it's your fault that you bumped the door, and McDonald's fault for having a hazardous door when they know people will bump into it.

They say the fucking coffee was hot. Everybody knows what "hot" is. You can feel it through the styrofoam. If you are so stupid to put the coffee in a place where it could EASILY spill and hurt you, you deserve what you get. Just like you shouldn't have a lawsuit against someone if you run across the highway and get hit.

Oh Lord deliver us from Libtards. You should be asking what McDonalds was thinking in serving a beverage, meant to be drunk immediately, that was so hot it would cause third degree burns.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

She didn't sue for damages, she sued to get McDonalds to pay her medical expenses because they blew her off.

Re:Greed is Good

[bhiestand]

Not responding to your sorry troll ass, but leaving a reply for all the people who may actually agree with you. In addition to being too hot for your crotch, 180-190F is too hot for your mouth and will produce third degree burns nearly instantly. 150-160F would be a fairly reasonable temperature for HOT coffee.

The addition of "the coffee manufacturer has stated that such a high temperature is not ideal for the coffee's taste" is meant to pre-empt the argument that it's kept this hot for flavor/taste. There is no legitimate reason to keep coffee this hot, and that's why the court sided with the lady with serious third degree burns on her crotch, multiple skin grafts, and permanent disfigurement.

Re:Greed is Good

[maxume]

Oops. I didn't read closely enough and assumed he was getting the 24 million from the number of total visitors. It isn't clear where he got it from though.

Re:Greed is Good

[rts008]

No, this shows how asinine Libertarian fucktards are.[...]You're an idiot. Try working on that reading comprehension thing:

Heh!Heh!
I seem to have struck a nerve.
What do your so called 'Libertarian fucktards' have to do with the common sense you are lacking?

I, and many others want our coffee served HOT!
If you and your nanny-state proles want hand-held through life, that is your choice...not mine.

Look, buckwheat..my 'reading comprehension thing' is beyond what you can achieve in your limited lifetime apparently.

As far as I am concerned...you, the white mule you rode in on, and your nanny state can all be shoved up your own ass.
When I purchase a cup of coffee, I expect it to be hot. If it is not, I will complain. Period. And I will not be alone.

McDonalds is still in the right as far as I am concerned, and anyone too stupid to handle hot coffee gets no sympathy from me.

Think of it as an impromptu 'Darwin Award' for you, and your 'Libertarian fucktards', whatever that is supposed to mean.

You can be as insulting as you can achieve, but you will not change my mind about 'common sense' playing an important role in our lives.

I'll bet that she does not place her hot coffee between her legs and try to open it when she's driving since then.
That's a plus for the rest of us having to share the roads with her.

Re:Greed is Good

[$0.02]

" that the woman shouldn't have had an open cup of coffee between her legs"

some like it hot

Re:Greed is Good

[toddestan]

The biggest flaw to me is that only tried the coffee at two locations for each restaurant. My experience with restaurant chains is that the quality can vary greatly between different locations. To get a good feel for who's the best, I would expect that they would have to visit more locations, preferably over a large geographic area, and even visit each location more than once. Then you may have a good feel for who is better - and even then that doesn't mean that the location closest to you is not an exception to the trend.

Re:Greed is Good

[coolsnowmen]

Not if the 3120W boiler is ~53% less efficient than the 3120W one.

Re:Greed is Good

[ScrewMaster]

If inability to reproduce qualifies one for the Darwin Awards, I think 90% of the Linux user-base can make it to the finals.

I don't believe a psychological aberration qualifies. You have to have basically destroyed your reproductive system.

Re:Greed is Good

[gregorio]

I crossed four lanes of traffic in as many seconds, screaming the entire way, so that I could get out of the hot pool of coffee puddled in my vinyl seat.

You drink hot cofee while driving? You should be banned from the streets.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants.

Maybe at McDonalds. I was in a Starfux last month and had an accurate thermometer with me. 170 Degrees. And I was not one of the fools who add "extra hot" to the end of their order.

Re:Greed is Good

[unl0rd]

Not if the 3120W boiler is ~53% less efficient than the 3120W one.

Hmm.. I think I need this one explained to me as a car analogy... Anyway, that's quite an inefficient boiler.. do they still make them?

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

onoe, offense was taken.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that it's not "abnormally hot".

The jury (whose opinion actually matters) disagrees.

Re:Greed is Good

[sumdumass]

Unfortunately, the McDonald's hot coffee wasn't really about being to hot to drink. It was too hot for the container used and it melted the top of the cup where the lid fits on causing it to separate and then spill all over the person in question.

The suit happened after 12 other people were injured and made claims against to the store's insurance for the same cause and McDonald's sent a memo out suggesting they lower the temp but the store manager refused to pay the technician to come in and adjust the machines. McDonald's apparently offered the lady in question something like $700 for the incident when the medical bills were well past that and rising because her treatment wasn't finished.

The hot coffee suit was more like buying a car which was known to have total break failure but someone decided not to recall it or fix the problem because it cost too much.

Re:Greed is Good

[sumdumass]

Isn't the reason the coffee was dropped/spilled in the first place because the coffee was kept at a temperature too hot for the container it was served in which caused melting, weakening and the eventual collapse or tearing of the cup near where the lid goes onto it?

I specifically remember something about the coffee cup being rated for 175 degrees or so and with that knowledge, the management of the store kept the coffee 15 degree or more hotter and about 20 degrees hotter then the other stores in the same town.

I used to know a link to a site that listed all the points that the jury found to support the decision. I could find it with a quick google search so it might be gone now. If I remember correctly, the spill would have actually been McDonald's fault too and it was an example of a "good" and just lawsuit. (BTW, the jury increased the award to the large number based around all the facts presented. The original lawsuit was looking for medical bills and lost work to be covered. The large award was created by the jury because of how strong of a case for the placing the public in danger was made).

Re:Greed is Good

[coolsnowmen]

Wow that clearly was supposed to say,
"Not if the 3120W boiler is ~53% less efficient than the 1620W one." But I was clearly distracted.

Re:Greed is Good

[coolsnowmen]

I have no idea, but coincidently, it is really easy to find the total efficiency of a water heater.

Re:Greed is Good

[Firehed]

They're reproducing in record numbers, so are also ineligible.

Re:Greed is Good

[argiedot]

Because it's not like the article is properly cited or anything, right? Look at the Wikipedia article as a list of citations with a description of each. You must be one of those people who repeats the latest talking point without the least amount of thought.

Re:Greed is Good

[argiedot]

I don't claim to be a lawyer, but I have noticed that another case was thrown out despite the temperature being 179 F and that the Cambridge News reports that McDonald's serves hot coffee today at 85 C (185 F) in the UK and other places in the US serve coffee at up to 195 ÂF. Surely if the temperature itself is too high, then these establishments should be forced to drop their temperatures or shut down. What is the point in litigating after something happens? Isn't it better to just shut them down before there is harm?

Perhaps I should have said, "That doesn't make it sound any less absurd." because it doesn't. It still sounds bizarre to punish someone for doing something and then let them and other people continue to do it.

Does slashdot not do the  (degree) symbol or something?

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

If I remember correctly, the spill would have actually been McDonald's fault too and it was an example of a "good" and just lawsuit.

*Reads sentence, sees user ID, blinks*

Man, I gotta find sum's email address so I can warn him his Slashdot account has been hacked into by some DFH. :)

Re:Greed is Good

[plague3106]

Get your head out of your ass, and off your pedistal. Some people don't think coffee or tea is some religous experience.. it's just something that tastes good and kickstarts their morning.

Re:Greed is Good

[plague3106]

When 23,999,999 average idiots are able to successfully handle your retail procedure, it is hard to justify incurring other problems in order to make safe that final idiot.

Hers was not the only case of sever burns due to their coffee. There are over 700 other known cases. There may be many more not known, because people were treated but didn't go back to McDs at all to help cover their expenses.

If I leave a sharp stake in the ground pointing up near my sidewalk, the fact that most walk by it fine doesn't mean I'm not doing anything wrong. It's creating a danger, and that's what McDs was doing.

The 190-degree serving temperature is not accidental or arbitrary; abandoning it has costs too.

No, there are no costs with lowering the temperature. This statement is just stupid.

You can define 'negligent' any way you wish. Under your current definition where 'negligent' means "creating a risk above 0.0000001", you are negligent in countless ways by the time you've made it to the office in the morning. I suppose you can run with this idea if you like, but it's not useful. A useful definition of negligent will single out those actions which create risks that are cost-effective to eliminate.

Stop making up numbers to build a strawman arguement. The fact that there were over 700 OTHER KNOWN CASES shows it wasn't just this one woman, and that your odds are wrong.

The risk is unacceptable given the circumstances (people expect to drink the coffee immediately, as it was it was too hot, AND THEY KNEW IT), and the solution is exteremly cost effective; turning a dial to a lower setting. Can't get much fucking simplier than that.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

I seem to have struck a nerve.

Nah, I just have an allergic reaction to persistent idiots who don't know wtf they're talking about.

I, and many others want our coffee served HOT!

It is served hot: 140 degrees is hot. If you want it hot enough to put in in danger of hospitalization and multiple surgeries, that puts you in the same category as those who like driving Ford Pintos with faulty gas tanks: nobody gives a shit about you.

As far as I am concerned...you, the white mule you rode in on, and your nanny state can all be shoved up your own ass.

You should try Denmark. Socialistic as fuck, yet it's the world's happiest place and it has a per capita GDP $16,000 higher than that of the U.S.

Look, buckwheat..my 'reading comprehension thing' is beyond what you can achieve in your limited lifetime apparently.

What a surprise, you have the bum eyes.

You can be as insulting as you can achieve, but you will not change my mind about 'facts' playing an important role in the Libertarian faith-based storyline.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Greed is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Batshit irrelevant. My imaginary sister will NOT be sharing a sexual fantasy with you today. Tomorrow, yes.

Re:Greed is Good

[Uberbah]

Translation: you lost the argument and all your lame points just got shut down.

Won't someone think of the...

[0100010001010011]

Shelter Rock Jewish Center or Serangoon Junior College or

Samuel Robert James Colbert?

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[hansamurai]

Yeah, someone should tell the school that Shelter Rock Jewish Center is domain squatting on srjc.org

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[adam613]

That would actually be very amusing, given the number of well-paid lawyers that probably go to Shelter Rock Jewish Center...

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[cayenne8]

Won't someone stand up, and tell the fscking business world that the internet was not created just for them?!?!

Seriously, it wasn't built for businesses to make money, sell things or what-have-you. Sure, you can do it, but, that was not (and hopefully will not) be its primary purpose.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[JWSmythe]

    I had a look at their .com site. santarosajunioncollege.com. I guess they run a link farm too. Oh, they're just being annoying, picking worthless battles with the people that pay their bills.

   

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[Jurily]

That would actually be very amusing, given the number of well-paid lawyers that probably go to Shelter Rock Jewish Center...

Back in my day, they only went there once.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[sexconker]

junioN?

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[Ironica]

Won't someone stand up, and tell the fscking business world that the internet was not created just for them?!?!

Seriously, it wasn't built for businesses to make money, sell things or what-have-you. Sure, you can do it, but, that was not (and hopefully will not) be its primary purpose.

What on earth are you talking about? They're threatening people with a valid affiliation with the college, not random Joe Blow who put "srjc" in his e-mail address because he wanted it to say "Señor Jesus" or whatever. The issue is that people who *do* have an affiliation with the college might be confusing people as to the officialness of a particular email channel, which definitely could cause problems.

Of course, the *real* issue here is that people create yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc. accounts with their employer or school name in the username if they CAN'T USE THEIR OFFICIAL EMAIL ADDRESS. That is usually due to draconian spam filtering, poor support for email reading software, excessive downtime, small inboxes, or other technical or procedural issues that fall under the (you guessed it) CIO's purvey.

It is a real problem when people use free personal email boxes to conduct official business; see Sarah Palin's Yahoo account. But it's up to the technical leadership of the organization to make their own email domain useful enough that people have no good reason to do this.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[sexconker]

Won't someone stand up, and tell the fucking young people that the internet was not created just for them?!?!

I simply don't see how you can be so indignant about the actions of businesses in what is essentially a public medium. Businesses will sue your ass if you take their name or likeness or something close enough to it in real life, so why not on the internet?

The claim in this case is bullshit, and any court should decide so without delay.

Do you have some ideal you hold the internet to?
It, like many awesome things, is military in origin.
Other cool things of military origin include duct tape, super glue, and gps.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[cayenne8]

"n't see how you can be so indignant about the actions of businesses in what is essentially a public medium. Businesses will sue your ass if you take their name or likeness or something close enough to it in real life, so why not on the internet?"

I don't see them having jurisdiction or basis to bring a case that the contents of something as innocuous as an email address (the username mind you ,not the domain part after @ sign) are.

Frankly, I'd personally go further than that on domain names. I think it should be first come first serve really. I don't favor having things in favor of companies and celebrities that have fame and deep pockets to push the everyman from their domains they first register...ESPECIALLY when they have a very good reason to have it, like a company name or personal name or reasons. But, that part may be more debatable as to merit, but, for something small like a username part of an email address...no, they should have no basis for that.

I don't think that stringing together some alpha-numeric text for use as a username or even a URL should constitute infringement on images or company trademarks, etc.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[JWSmythe]

    junior. I typed it right in whois and the browser, I just mistyped it in the posting. But, I'm sure you've already figured that out.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[Anonymous Coward]

Schools use .edu, not .com. You had the sense to run a whois but not enough to assume that the domain-squatters weren't SRJC? hahaha

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[corbettw]

I don't see them having jurisdiction or basis to bring a case that the contents of something as innocuous as an email address (the username mind you ,not the domain part after @ sign) are.

Really? So you don't see a problem with someone sending out emails from "bankofamerica@gmail.com" asking people to log into their online banking? You don't see how that's not just fraud, but deliberately infringing on the rights of the company in question to protect their good name?

Let's bring it closer to home: what if I got the email address "cayenne8@gmail.com" and started sending out emails claiming to be you? Depending on the content of those emails, you probably wouldn't like it very much. How is this any different?

The CIO here isn't just protecting his employer's good name, he's also (indirectly) protecting innocent third parties who might get suckered into a phishing scam.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[Anonymous Coward]

rnistyped?
(Obviously I am bored.)

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[flyingsquid]

I think this policy is racist policy. Is discrimination against Balkan people and people of Serbia ancestry! Am lodging complaint with your government.

with most sincerity,

Serbian Ambassador to the United States,

Mr. Srjc Osrjce Srjcvic

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[cayenne8]

"Really? So you don't see a problem with someone sending out emails from "bankofamerica@gmail.com" asking people to log into their online banking? You don't see how that's not just fraud, but deliberately infringing on the rights of the company in question to protect their good name?

Let's bring it closer to home: what if I got the email address "cayenne8@gmail.com" and started sending out emails claiming to be you? Depending on the content of those emails, you probably wouldn't like it very much. How is this any different?"

In short...NOPE.

with bankofamerica@gmail.com, it is just a username at gmail.com being the domain. I KNOW that isn't from BoA, a real company would have their own domain.

As for the cayenne8...again, no problem. I'm only cayenne8 because cayenne, cayenne1, cayenne2, cayenne3, cayenne4, cayenne5, cayenne6, and cayenne7 were taken. I happen to like chile peppers, so do lots of other people. And it isn't like I'm wanting to identify myself hence the pseudonym (while they're still legal). I'm sure there are cayenne8's out there all over the internet, I just happen to be one of them.

Again no....if I want to interract with a business, I'll go to their website directly, or better yet, call or go in person if it is of a serious nature, like something fraudlent. That's what was done before the internet, it still is the best way of knowing who your are dealing with.

If someone is too stupid or lazy...then that's their problem. This *is* the internet after all....it wasn't designed with precise identification in mind, but, it did have anonymity as a very good possibility.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[thgintaetal]

Their site is santarosa.edu.

Re:Won't someone think of the...

[JWSmythe]

    Well.....

    In an ideal (and RFC compliant) world, schools use .EDU. Government agencies use .GOV. National institutions use their country code.

    Now lets look at how it really works. I arbitrarily picked Florida.

    Many government services are handled through myflorida.com . Florida State University has both fsu.edu and fsu.com.

    It's much harder to squat on a .edu or .gov than it is to squat on a .com, .net, or .org.

   

Of course they did...

[rodrigoandrade]

A lawyer will take any case he can make a buck on.

Re:Of course they did...

[chris098]

You're absolutely right most of the time, but there is the odd lawyer out there with morals. One that may actually recommend something that is in your own best interest, instead of theirs. If you can manage to find one of those, you've found a resource for life!

Re:Of course they did...

[M-RES]

A lawyer will take any case he can make a buck on.

A lawyer will take any case he or she can make a buck on.

There, corrected that for you - we do live in equal opportunity times you know ;)

Re:Of course they did...

[SatanicPuppy]

It's not their job to make moral judgments on their clients. Their client has a grievance, their client is paying them to pursue that grievance. They may choose not to pursue it, but really, this is hardly a situation where you're going to excuse yourself for moral reasons.

Re:Of course they did...

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Indeed. Even when that case is obviously unjust, or illegal.

Lawyers, like journalists, like to proclaim themselves as pillars and protectors of democratic and free society. In reality, they are often the people at the very forefront of that societies destruction. It makes you wonder why they are granted the powers and privileges that they enjoy.

Re:Of course they did...

[Duradin]

Unless "he" is both a male and gender neutral pronoun...

Re:Of course they did...

[sexconker]

I don't know what bugs me more.
The insistence on shit like:
(s)he
s/he
he/she
him/her
latin@
etc.

Or the counter movement where authors intentionally choose the female pronoun, or alternate between the two, use words like "womyn", etc.

Either way, I do my part by using "they/their" for some singulars ("If your friend touches you where you don't want them to, they are not your friend."), and in this case, I would have said:

A lawyer will take any case it can make a buck on.

Hell, I think I'll be using "it" in place of he/she/him/her/etc. from now on.

Re:Of course they did...

[mundanetechnomancer]

especially when it comes to lawyers

Re:Of course they did...

[AK Marc]

"He" is gender neutral if one can not know the gender. If you are talking about someone you do not know, then you are supposed to use the "male" form, but that does not mean that you are setting the expectation of gender. It's just what is supposed to be used when you don't know. Technically, even if highly probably female, you should use "he" anyway. "An unknown member of the WNBA was seen talking to his agent." But that has given way to using the pronoun of greatest probability if not equal, and concern over using the correct "he" because it is said to be exclusionary.

Re:Of course they did...

[porcorosso]

It makes you wonder why they are granted the powers and privileges that they enjoy.

Well, just try to get a lawyer to fight it or a journalist to report on it ... you don't piss in your own well, you know?

Re:Of course they did...

[Altus]

the one I hate most is: hir

Re:Of course they did...

[nausea_malvarma]

Yeah he can be used as a gender neutral pronoun, but "they" is much more common now a days.

A lawyer will take any case they can make a buck on.

Re:Of course they did...

[sjames]

They are, however, officers of the court with a duty to not clog it up with merit-less drivel and/or extortion rackets disguised as lawsuits.

Not that that gets enforced NEARLY often enough...

Re:Of course they did...

[sexconker]

What about herstory?

Re:Of course they did...

[eXFeLoN]

it's puts on the lotion or it gets the hose.

Re:Of course they did...

[Kozz]

Why not? Makes as much sense as Freedom Fries.

Re:Of course they did...

[Anonymous Coward]

Use che and shim in place of it.

Re:Of course they did...

[PCM2]

Disclaimer: IAAE (I Am An Editor)

Often, the best option is to re-cast the sentence such that the pronoun is not necessary:

"A friend who touches you where you don't want to be touched is not your friend."

I would only use "he or she" in unusual circumstances. I would never use (s)he, s/he, he/she, or anything else that adds punctuation to a sentence. I would not use "she" as the sole pronoun because that's never been the custom in the English language, though I know some writers who use it. I WOULD use "he" as the sole pronoun because that was how it was always done for most of my life, but usually there are copy editors who catch that type of thing and want you to fix it.

Personally, I think it's all a little silly. Europe, for example, has no such hang-ups -- and not because they have different attitudes toward women, but because their languages regularly use arbitrary genders for nouns of all kinds. In French, a computer is a male but a table is a female. In German they even specify a third gender (neuter). None of it means anything.

Re:Of course they did...

[sexconker]

Yeah, the whole gendered nouns bullshit in more latiny languages (like Spanish/Italian) never made sense to me.

Yup, I know of German's neuter gender.

I can understand people being miffed at the fact that the male pronoun is considered the "default" and is used when something is arbitrary or not specified.

But the backlash against it is ridiculous and petty, and so is stuff like "womyn", "herstory", and complaints about the usage of "man" or "mankind" in reference to the species/society.

Related, I think it's interesting that, while we don't have gendered nouns, we often assign a "default" gender to animals (in the US at least). Cats (the domestic pet kind) are typically referred to as female, while dogs have a slight leaning toward male.

"I got a cat last week."
"How old is she?"

"I got a dog last week."
"What breed is he?"

Spiders are generally referred to as female, and smaller mammals are generally referred to as males. I want to say the spider bias is due to the size difference between males and females (and thus the size of / lack of webs), but people are dumb and ignorant, so I'd just as soon place it on Charlotte's Web. Raccoons / rodents will often get the "That damn raccoon got into our garbage can again last night! I'm gonna kill him!".

hopes dashed

[n3tcat]

They just put the fear of god into srjc_p1mp69.

Re:hopes dashed

[just_another_sean]

They just put the fear of god into srjc_p1mp69.

I think srjcSuxors is going to have a hard time too...

Re:hopes dashed

[Narnie]

While at the same time, srjc_lawyers are quite pleased by the recent announcement.

Re:hopes dashed

[scottj31]

just about spit tuna salad onto my keyboard

Re:hopes dashed

[Anonymous Coward]

My password is srjcispants. I hope I don't get sued.

Re:hopes dashed

[Ragzouken]

Look again, your password is noitsnot.

Hahaha

[mc1138]

Really? I mean seriously? I could maybe maybe understand if it was the whole name of the college, but just the acronym? Plus was this ever in their acceptable use policy? Do they even have a remote leg to stand on here?

Doubly Strange

[hedronist]

This is more than a bit surreal since SRJC has a long history of being on the net.

For example, Santa Rosa Junior College is one of the very few non-4-year colleges to have a .EDU domain name. In the early 90's they had two junior admins, Dane Jasper and Scott Doty, who went on to become the founders of a Mom-and-Pop Internet company that actually succeeded. It started as Sonoma Interconnect, but is now known as Sonic.net.

It's a shame to add this squirrely episode to that history.

Re:Doubly Strange

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, Santa Rosa Junior College is one of the very few non-4-year colleges to have a .EDU domain name.

I'm not sure if you are referring to the 90s or now, but most community colleges in California have a .EDU domain name.

Re:Doubly Strange

[whitehatnetizen]

srjc.admin@gmail.com bite me lawyers - I'm not even in the same country.

Re:Doubly Strange

[Anonymous Coward]

srjc.admin@gmail.com

bite me lawyers - I'm not even in the same country.

ken.fiori.srjc@gmail.com

Re:Doubly Strange

[hedronist]

You know what? You're right! I just looked at a list of CA Community Colleges and they almost all have .EDU's. I know that today you have to be a 4-year school, but I guess that didn't used to be true. Huh, you learn (or unlearn) something every day.

I will note that santarosa.edu shows an activation date of 19-Oct-1989, so that goes back a way.

Re:Doubly Strange

[i.r.id10t]

Backwards. Educause used to require that you were a 4 year accredited school, now any school can get a .edu domain

Re:Doubly Strange

[courtjester801]

"... sending emails threatening lawsuits to staff and students who have the letters 'SRJC' in their private email addresses ..."

Re:Doubly Strange

[AndrewNeo]

Ssh, just let him have his fun.

Re:Doubly Strange

[sexconker]

Then you're not who they're after, dipshit.
They're going after students and staff.

Re:Doubly Strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't trying to be pedantic or whatnot, just wanted to point that out. Only reason I know that is because I work in the system. Most of the CCs in California have registered their domains since the early 2000s, some of them even in the 1990s. For some silly reason though there are a few who prefer to use cc.ca.us, .org, or .com domains. I guess they don't like conforming to the standards :)

Re:Doubly Strange

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, Santa Rosa Junior College is one of the very few non-4-year colleges to have a .EDU domain name.

That is not correct. I urge you to go to google and type in "Junior College" and see how many of them come up with .edu addresses. And, worse, non-traditional college without accreditation is also getting .edu names (sanford-brown, ranken are just a few in my area).

Er, Lawyers?

[Ian Alexander]

"I can't believe they found a lawyer who thought this was a good idea."

Anything that makes paid work for him/her is a good idea to a lawyer.

Re:Er, Lawyers?

[multisync]

Anything that makes paid work for him/her is a good idea to a lawyer.

Yeah, personally I hate anything that brings business to my company. I stand out front with a big sign that reads "Don't bring your business here. We don't want it."

Thank goodness we're not like those greedy lawyers who just want to make money off their trade.

Re:Er, Lawyers?

[butlerdi]

Just like the programmers who work in Langley and elsewhere writing code to do nasties to their fellow humans. I find it funny how all on this list attack others when we as a profession are doing so much to provide guv's with all the tech they need to screw us.

Re:Er, Lawyers?

[MaskedSlacker]

Shakespeared never called for killing programmers did he?

Re:Er, Lawyers?

[Ian Alexander]

Monetizing law like that sounds kind of evil to me. Yes, yes, lawyers have to eat and I have no problem with them making a good living from their job- I know some lawyers and it's a tough job, not just to get but to keep. But some of the shit that comes out of legal departments these days is just saddening. Getting mired in a lawsuit can really fuck you up badly, even if you win. That's a lot of time and work and money down the drain because some lawyer decided there was money to be made convincing a trier of fact that your e-mail address might possibly have misled someone with an IQ in the double-digits.

Re:Er, Lawyers?

[butlerdi]

Nope, however there was nobody in those days capable of doin the harm that we can do. We as a profession are giving the thugs tools that were never imagined by anyone in history for the control and desecration of human life. I am just glad to sit here in Vanuatu and watch you all fuck yourselves. Lawvers are just a symtom like doctors of a sick society -- Plato The Republic.

Pretty normal for a government agency

[Marxist Hacker 42]

This was one of the complaints I got fired for. Nevermind that nobody on slashdot or technocrat at the time was stupid enough to think that an employee of ODOT was speaking for ODOT (especially since, in the article that got me in trouble, I only identified myself as being in a certain building not actually an employee).

It's a time-honored tradition!

[Anonymous Coward]

Suing students works for the MAFIAA... obviously, these kids are loaded with extra money, and the college clearly isn't already taking enough from some of them.

It's low-hanging fruit, you know; these kids can't protect themselves and their parents will roll right over and hand out the extra cash.

(Wow, I didn't know my tongue could go that far into my cheek!)

Nothing better to do...

[geekmux]

"I can't believe they found a lawyer who thought this was a good idea."

What, you think they just came up with the titles "Ambulance Chaser" and "Blood Sucking" just for shits and giggles? Some lia, er I mean lawyers earned these unofficial titles.

And the REAL issue isn't the lawyer would came up with this bullshit, but the judge who allowed it anywhere past his or her bailiff in a courtroom. See my sig for futher info...

Work on real problems.

[JorgeFierro]

Well, whatever study drove them to conclude that people may be confused to think that those emails containing "SRJC" are official is the root of the problem.
I mean, anyone with 9 dollars a month can set up their own my@domain.com email, let alone universities, that also get an .edu.

Re:Work on real problems.

[Yvan256]

9 dollars a month? You're not doing it right.

www.iweb.com
www.powweb.com

Note: I don't work for any of those, but I did get many years of excellent service from both so far.

Re:Work on real problems.

[SatanicPuppy]

I run a domain of mine through Google's free domain/email hosting. It's a hell of a lot better (so far) than the paid email hosting you get through Network Solutions, or similar.

Re:Work on real problems.

[Firehed]

Google Apps is free (or has a free edition, though you have to hunt for it a bit now since they're pushing the paid version), so you're only out ten bucks for the domain.

Also, as a former Powweb user... damn their hosting got really slow. Way oversold, like all other $5/mo shared hosts. MySQL especially was a major bottleneck (I'm inclined to blame Wordpress, since that's probably what half their customers are running).

How lawyers learn

[DriedClexler]

I can't believe they found a lawyer who thought this was a good idea."

Well, we recently learned how lawyers feel obligated not to read anything that could give them a clue how the world works...

What if my initials are...

[ganjadude]

SRJC Sam Robert Jacob Christinson? Can I sue the college for using my initals in their offical email? Someone may confuse me with them

Re:What if my initials are...

[Nerdfest]

on behalf of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center, I'd like to inform you that you'll be hearing from our lawyers.

Re:What if my initials are...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

No, they will sue you to change your name. SRJC was founded in 1918. If you are posting on Slashdot, they have prior art and right to the initials.

If you are posting from the afterlife, you might have a case to sue them: "Santa Rosa Junior College vs. the late Sam Robert Jacob Christinson."

"Greta can you comment on that?"

Re:What if my initials are...

[jellomizer]

Sam Robert Jacob Christinson
His name is my name too.
When ever we go out
the people always shout
her come s Sam Robert Jacob
fa la la la la...

Re:What if my initials are...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Sam Robert Jacob Christinson XI you insensitive clod.

Re:What if my initials are...

[angrytuna]

Sam Robert Jacob Christinson...Someone may confuse me with them

Sam Robert Jacob Christinson,
His name is my name too.
Whenever we go out
The people always shout,
"There goes Sam Robert Jacob Christinson."

Re:What if my initials are...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a staff or student of SRJC? Then they won't care about you, and you don't have to care about them.

Now if they went around and acted in a way that was confusing, then you might have something, but that's unlikely to happen.

Re:What if my initials are...

[Anonymous Coward]

SRJC Sam Robert Jacob Christinson? Can I sue the college for using my initals in their offical email? Someone may confuse me with them

This was so funny I had to comment (I'm going to register right after this comment)

But my last name ends with C I think I'm naming my Son that or something using those initials (wife is expecting!)

Then I will creat 100+ gmail emails with those initials, Its the initials of my son's name! lets see them sue me.

That's MY damn email address!

[Yvan256]

Seriously, if you're a company/whatever, then the email address to contact me is YOUR damn company/whatever name @mydomain.com

So if I get a single godamn piece of spam at that address, I know you're the ones responsible for selling/giving that address to the spammers.

Re:That's MY damn email address!

[Anonymous Coward]

say what?

Re:That's MY damn email address!

[Yvan256]

ex: say your company asks me for my email address. Your company is called "Very Powerful Tools, inc.". Then I will give you "verypowerfultools@mydomain.com" as my email address. So if I ever get spam in my verypowerfultools@mydomain.com account then I know that your company is selling/giving the email addresses they get.

My ISP has an option to send all unknown email addresses of my domain to a single address, a "catch-all" if you will.

Re:That's MY damn email address!

[dotancohen]

Seriously, if you're a company/whatever, then the email address to contact me is YOUR damn company/whatever name @mydomain.com

So if I get a single godamn piece of spam at that address, I know you're the ones responsible for selling/giving that address to the spammers.

I do this too. You might want to comment on these two Kmail bugs, which will make this method easier:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72926
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159251

Which email client are you currently using?

Re:That's MY damn email address!

[roguetrick]

He makes an separate email account for each organization he corresponds with.

Re:That's MY damn email address!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a really clever idea (for those who have our own domains).

Re:That's MY damn email address!

[Yvan256]

I'm on a Mac, so I'm using "Mail", the one that comes with Mac OS X.

Re:That's MY damn email address!

[dotancohen]

I see. How well does Mail support this type of setup? I have not found anything that works well other than the Thunderbird extension.

Academic egos are like the Hindenberg

[wsanders]

Big, inflated, highly flammable, and a whiff of fascism.

Re:Academic egos are like the Hindenberg

[wjousts]

Oh the humanity!

Re:Academic egos are like the Hindenberg

[Critical Facilities]

Agreed. Take this shining example FTA:

"Let's say I'm a student named Mary Kay Rudolph and I have a Yahoo account", said Mary Kay Rudolph, vice president of academic affairs. "But, instead of asking to be mkrudolph@yahoo.com I am mksrjc@yahoo.com. Or, I am santarosajuniorcollege2@yahoo.com. Those are both illegal".

What an utter moron. Must be a lot of fun to work for this woman. I think our nationwide unemployment rate is about to go up by 1.

Oh Noez

[Renraku]

Anyone is well within their rights to put these letters into their email address. Just like Yahoo can't stop people from putting Yahoo in their non-Yahoo email addresses.

The college is well within their rights to threaten to sue, as you can pretty much sue for any reason, but the court will decide if it needs to be shot down or actually go to trial. Scare tactics.

Re:Oh Noez

[nicolas.kassis]

I'll laugh when yahoo and google laugh at them for even asking for this information.

email me at BobAtStupidRejectJrCollege@srjc.com

[rimcrazy]

what a bunch of asshats

Steven Ray Justin Curtis

[Narnie]

I, Steven Ray Justin Curtis, take great offense to this. My initials are SRJC you insensitive clods!!

Re:Steven Ray Justin Curtis

[EkriirkE]

You now face legal action every time you fill documents with "initial here" boxes.

What utter fucktards...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not saying I'm surprised; because idiocy is hardly surprising; but this move shows both legal asshattery and truly incredible ignorance of the technically mediated mores that exist on the internet.

With an email address, everybody knows that the local-part (before the @) is arbitrary and the domain corresponds, of course, to a domain. Using the local-part as an organizational identifier, except in flaky ad-hoc setups for small sub organizations(student_club@school.edu style), just isn't done. The domain is always where you look for organizational information.

This seems to be a case where somebody(who should know better, since he is part of their tech department) is treating all parts of the email address as being equally salient. If somebody had grabbed santarosa.com or santarosacollege.com (as opposed to the school's santarosa.edu) and was using email addresses in that domain for misleading purposes, I could sympathize with the case. Trying to dictate the form of email address local-parts from other domains is just bullshit, though.

Re:What utter fucktards...

[Chazerizer]

With an email address, everybody knows that the local-part (before the @) is arbitrary and the domain corresponds, of course, to a domain. Using the local-part as an organizational identifier, except in flaky ad-hoc setups for small sub organizations(student_club@school.edu style), just isn't done. The domain is always where you look for organizational information.

Actually, the sad part is, everybody doesn't know this crucial piece of information. It's why Nigerian schemes and other e-mail junk-shit works occasionally. Because people are clearly stupid. All that said, what a way to waste a reputation for a place. The concept that you can claim all uses of an abbreviation are absurd. Just to check it out, a quick Google search also turned up Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Nassau, NY and Serangoon Junior College in Singapore.

Re:What utter fucktards...

[horatio]

Furthermore

"Let's say I'm a student named Mary Kay Rudolph and I have a Yahoo account" said Mary Kay Rudolph, vice president of academic affairs. "But, instead of asking to be mkrudolph@yahoo.com I am mksrjc@yahoo.com. Or, I am santarosajuniorcollege2@yahoo.com. Those are both illegal."

These dumbasses really think that because they decree a policy, that somehow it automatically becomes codified law - and therefore illegal? Go back and take gov't 101, the elected legislature decides what is legal or not.

The summary makes it sound like it was just one asshat lawyer, but TFA indicates that the rest of the administration stands behind it. With these kind of morons running it, no wonder our education system is in the toilet.

Re:What utter fucktards...

[Velex]

With an email address, everybody knows that the local-part (before the @) is arbitrary and the domain corresponds, of course, to a domain. Using the local-part as an organizational identifier, except in flaky ad-hoc setups for small sub organizations(student_club@school.edu style), just isn't done.

I know you're right, but try telling that to all my clients who have email addresses @yahoo.com or @gmail.com instead of @their.domain. Apparently this is a common thing for people to do, registering a domain then having their email with a free provider.

Re:What utter fucktards...

[MaskedSlacker]

I am not responsible for the stupidity of others. I'm keeping srjcocks@gmail.com, regardless of what their lawyers say.

Re:What utter fucktards...

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not be fooled by people who use other domains, but wait...here's the thing, others may not be as smart as you.

Besides, the problem here is the people affiliated with SJRC using addresses to indicate their affiliation. If you let that happen, then people can't rely on the domain.

Also, both of the domain names you gave seem to be parked domains, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of that problem as well.

Publicity

[Translation Error]

I have never heard of Santa Rosa Junior College and if they hadn't gotten themselves on Slashdot, I never would have. Even if they don't get a single email address changed, they've gotten something out of this move.

Re:Publicity

[AndrewNeo]

Yeah, a bunch of people that know they shouldn't go to the school.

Re:Publicity

[lmpeters]

I went to Santa Rosa Junior College. It's actually one of the best junior colleges in California, if not the entire U.S. And I'm sure that at most of the faculty there can recognize (or easily be made to understand) how stupid a move this is by the administration.

The real problem is that these sorts of technical decisions are being made by people with no understanding of the technology. And there are countless institutions besides SRJC that have that exact same problem.

Re:Publicity

[Bob The Cowboy]

Sorry friend, but I highly doubt that anyone on /. is going to say to themselves "Wow, I really need to get over to Santa Rosa Junior College and take some IT classes, it sounds like they have a great program."

I know they say that any publicity is good publicity, but frankly you'd be a moron to associate yourself with some lawyer happy JC if you didn't have to. If you lived in the area and heard about this story (having never heard of the place before!) would you really be inclined to start taking classes there *now*?

Re:Publicity

[Locke2005]

they've gotten something out of this move. Most likely what they've gotten out of this move is a flood of harassing email from newly created "SRJC_xxx@yahoo.com" accounts, most of it addressed to kfiori@santarosa.edu & mrudolph@santarosa.edu . Not sure if I would count that as a big "win" in the publicity department!

Re:Publicity

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, gotten something. They just got a few hundred more people who will never consider attending their school.

Good work.

Re:Publicity

[PitaBred]

A bunch of technically proficient individuals knowing that idiots run the school? There are such things as bad publicity, when you piss off people in positions of trust in the community. Anyone here who's asked "Should I got to SRJC?" will have a bad opinion about the school. I mean, if they'll threaten people over email addresses, what other stupid things will they cause people grief over?

Oblig. Mencken

[greenguy]

Sure, I suppose people who fall for 419 scams probably could be fooled, but not any reasonable humans.

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Confused me

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read they were suing students with SRJC in the name I thought, "what the fuck is SRJC?" Oh, it's the school. Good for them. I know when I see an email addy with SRJC I think of that school whatever its name is.

Legal Eagles

[Quiet_Desperation]

I can't believe they found a lawyer who thought this was a good idea.

I can't believe they only found one.

Re:Legal Eagles

[John Hasler]

I see no evidence they found any.

Bad Press

[RancidPickle]

Considering they're trying to get more students in the door, this is a terrible public relations nightmare. What student would want to attend a college that threatens to sue over something as trivial as an email adress -- and a private one at that? Very unfortunate for the students and faculty, and a black eye for the administration.

No problem dude

[bobdotorg]

"Unless they have been given permission to use that, we are asking them not to use it," said Ken Fiori, director of computing services at the college.

No problem dude, I'll just change my email to FU_KenFiori@gmail.com .

Re:No problem dude

[Nihixul]

No problem dude, I'll just change my email to FU_KenFiori@gmail.com .

Florida University would like to have a word with you....

Re:No problem dude

[Anonymous Coward]

fine: KenFiori_loves_rabid_anal_fucking_by_robotic_donkey_machine@gmail.com

Re:No problem dude

[gnapster]

Sorry, there are UF, FSU, FAU, and FIU, as well as universities of Central, North, West, and South Florida. But no FU. GP is safe wrt Floridian institutions.

Please play again.

Facts on the McDonalds coffee case

[Etrias]

Why is it when people get indignant about law, they bring up the McDonald's coffee case? Here, read about it.

For those of you that are "tl:dr", here's the case in a nutshell. McDonald's knew it had a problem with coffee temperature, thought that it would be cheaper to settle potential cases rather than fix the problem. The jury awarded punitive damages (which the plaintiff did not ask for) which amounts to the total of two days worth of profit McDonald's makes on their coffee sales. The plaintiff, who suffered third degree burns, would have not filed suit if McDonald's would have compensated for her medical issues which included skin grafts to her groin, thighs and buttocks and her stay in the hospital.

Being indignant is so much easier when you are ignorant about the facts.

Re:Facts on the McDonalds coffee case

[Etrias]

Wow...I'm enjoying my comment bounce up and down between Off-topic and Informative. I've started a betting pool at work and have people shouting for certain outcomes, just as if a large pile of money rides on it being red or black!

My cut is 10%. Thank you, indecisive moderators!

Single Female Lawyer

[camperdave]

Single Female Lawyer -
fighting For Her Clients,
wearing Sexy Mini Skirts,
and Being Self-Reliant.

Re:Single Female Lawyer

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Yet the show revolves around said female lawyers earnest attempts to "find a man" amid a highly sexualised work environment. I imagine actual women working in law weren't particularly impressed.

Re:Single Female Lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Ally McBeal, is that you?

Re:Single Female Lawyer

[Arthur Grumbine]

The degree to which you fail at either: 1) Comprehending satire, or 2) Having a sense of humor, or 3) Both of the above, literally boggles the mind. I'd have come up with something better than this to say but my mind is a little too thoroughly boggled. Ye gods!

Re:Single Female Lawyer

[JoshuaZ]

The song is the theme song from a Futurama parody of Allie McBeal. In the Futurama epsiode, the end of the final episode of Single Female Lawyer was never broadcast. As a result, aliens who found the show very amusing get angry that the broadcast is cut off (due to the speed of light issue, they don't notice this until the year 3000 when Futurama is set). The aliens then ravage Earth and will destroy it unless they get the last episode. The various Futurama characters then need to make their own version of the last episode since no one has a copy of the original available.

Re:Single Female Lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautiful. I just watched that episode last night.

Re:Single Female Lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

AWESOME!!!!

I double dog dare you...

[Jerrry]

I just created a new Gmail account with SRJC in the name. Let's see if I get a nastygram from one of the college's shy^H^H^H lawyers.

Re:I double dog dare you...

[Ironica]

I just created a new Gmail account with SRJC in the name. Let's see if I get a nastygram from one of the college's shy^H^H^H lawyers.

Are you enrolled there? Because they're only going after students and employees/faculty. (I know, I know... RTFS is too hard.)

Re:I double dog dare you...

[maxume]

Are you staff or a student? They are doing something dumb, but they are only insane to the second degree, so they are only suing people associated with the school.

Sure would be a shame...

[Morphine007]

The two people mentioned in the article as being behind the policy are:

MK Rudolph - mrudolph@santarosa.edu and

K Fiori - kfiori@santarosa.edu

The latter created the policy (director of computing services) and the former has her weight behind it (VP Academic Affairs). Just figured it'd be useful information to have. I'm in no way suggesting that all of slashdot go out and register variants of hotGritzIn_SJRC@gmail.com and youSuck_SJRC@yahoo.com or anything like that. And using hundreds of those emails to spam the everliving bejeezus out of their mailboxes would be nearly as morally questionable as suing your own students for making similar addresses. So I'd never suggest that either.

Re:Sure would be a shame...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just registered "srjc_sucks@hotmail.com" and sent emails to these 2 addresses. (Surprisingly, it was still available. So is "sjrc_sucks@live.com".) Let's see if I can get a response!

Re:Sure would be a shame...

[Anonymous Coward]

would be nearly as morally questionable as suing your own students for making similar addresses

I believe it's called "stooping to their level". Generally, this practice should be avoided.

Re:Sure would be a shame...

[jabelli]

You owe me a new sarcasm detector!

Re:Sure would be a shame...

[brentonboy]

Even better. Someone should set up a PHP script sending out emails which appear to come from kfiori@santarosa.edu or mrudolph@santarosa.edu. Just brute force to all of the santarosa.edu domain, with an email "clarifying" the previous emails: what they had meant to do was *encourage* the use of SRJC in emails, to avoid confusion.

Re:Sure would be a shame...

[Just Some Guy]

Good idea!

Signed, kirk+sjrc@strauser.com.

My new email address...

[QuietLagoon]

I was having trouble thinking of a new email address to use. Now I know it will definitely contain the letters SRJC.

Number of comments?!

[x78]

Is it me or has the number of comments of an article been taken off the beta index?!
I for one am not happy with this!
Going back to the original, hmph.
To keep on topic, yeah it's a little silly :)

Shouldn't they worry more...

[wjousts]

Shouldn't they worry more about people outside the university trying to look like they are from the college rather than students and staff who actually are?

CIO + Lawyer

[david.emery]

Can anyone think of a more hellish combination?

Sue me... santa.rosa.junior.college.edu@gmail.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone should set up their own free email accounts with SRJC in the name and post them in the comments on this story. Send the court summons to santa.rosa.junior.college.edu@gmail.com I'll be there with bells on. :)

Dubious Understanding of Law

[pete-classic]

"Let's say I'm a student named Mary Kay Rudolph and I have a Yahoo account," said Mary Kay Rudolph, vice president of academic affairs. "But, instead of asking to be mkrudolph@yahoo.com I am mksrjc@yahoo.com. Or, I am santarosajuniorcollege2@yahoo.com. Those are both illegal."

I'm very anxious to hear Mary Kay's legal theory that makes a four letter string in an email address "illegal".

"I could see how misuse of the SRJC name might be used ... to misrepresent the college or worse yet solicit funds, fees, or money," he said in an e-mail Thursday.

Yes, that's called fraud. It's a crime. (Also, what on Earth could be the distinction between "funds, fees, or money"?)

But you can't dictate other people's behavior simply because you can imagine a scenario where they might commit fraud.

-Peter

Re:Dubious Understanding of Law

[pete-classic]

Please send any information or complaints relating to this message to SRJCAdmissionsAndRecords@hutnick.com.

I'm not kidding.

-Peter

This happens all the time

[Ohio Calvinist]

I worked for the California Community College system. A lot of these schools are running on old exchange installations on aging hardware with tiny quotas, that tend to have poor uptimes. (My school was 60MB for faculty due to Exchange 5.5's 16GB information store limit). Many professors within the college simply told their students to mail them at prof_name.(college_initals)@gmail.com because of higher quotas for massive amounts of students sending poorly optimized attachments as part of their assignment, that was web/client accessible in a better interface than 5.5 had, and had much better uptime. As an institution we advised them to use their college-provided account so IT could view the logs and say "yes or no" this student did/did not attempt to submit their paper ontime.

If anything, this helps students and faculty make sure they are communicating with the right "John Smith, Professor" out there.

Every single student whom crosses the door of SRJC is making a statement that "I feel qualified to be a college-level student." Part of being a student is understanding the tools you use to get the job done. Not taking minimal effort to verify an e-mail address for validity, particularly given most students are forced to use an Online Courseware system that is at something.mycollege.edu, so they know that "this address does not match this address", is no excuse for acting foolishly.

One of the biggest merits of going to any college is that after 18 years of hand-holding in the home and public education spheres, the college is not going to baby sit you, beg you to pay your fees on time, order you to attend lecture (though sadly some professors attempt to to artifically give merit to their poor instruction in the form of attendance-grades), or anything else for that matter. You are there because you want to learn, and almost no career has zero computer interaction, so you should learn to use the computer, just like you learned to read even though you didn't plan on being grammar or literature teacher. I am shocked and disappointed how many people flatly refuse to properly learn to use a tool that can make their job easier. I've never met anyone who "regretted" spending the necessary time to use a computer effectively.

Re:This happens all the time

[ickpoo]

And this shows why it is so crazy. It is perfectly reasonable to separate email identities by using a naming scheme - ickpoo.srjc@eatmorefish.com is the email address I hand out for school related communications (skipping the school provided email because it is crap). Doing this allows me all sorts of nice things; simple sorting of correspondence, separation identities, and, at a glance I know what the use of the email address is. I'm not even trying to do fraud here.

Re:This happens all the time

[maxume]

So you are saying that dealing with seemingly arbitrary limitations from IT and then having them explain to you that it is for your own good is a valuable life skill?

(Notice that I did insert "seemingly" in there; the limitation isn't arbitrary, but it is arbitrary from the point of view of the users, who could give a shit about IT's problems obtaining adequate resources)

Re:This happens all the time

[Belial6]

You are there because you want to learn,

I live 10 blocks from the Santa Rosa Jr. College. Thus, I have met, known, and still know many people who have attended this college. Your statement is definitely not accurate. More common is that people are there because it means that mom and dad will keep supporting them. Whether that is letting them continue living at home, or even renting them their own apartment and giving them a healthy allowance, or it is just that "going to college" is "what your supposed to do".

Re:This happens all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single student whom crosses the door of SRJC is making a statement that "I feel qualified to be a college-level student." Part of being a student is understanding the tools you use to get the job done. Not taking minimal effort to verify an e-mail address for validity, particularly given most students are forced to use an Online Courseware system that is at something.mycollege.edu, so they know that "this address does not match this address", is no excuse for acting foolishly.

I know a coupe people who also work for the CCC system... and from what they tell me, this is definitely not a good assumption for all of their students.

Re:This happens all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the biggest merits of going to any college is that after 18 years of hand-holding in the home and public education spheres, the college is not going to baby sit you, beg you to pay your fees on time, order you to attend lecture (though sadly some professors attempt to to artifically give merit to their poor instruction in the form of attendance-grades), or anything else for that matter. You are there because you want to learn,

Funniest thing I've read on slashdot for a while. I work in a university and none of these things are true.

Re:This happens all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

...lots of hot air...

So what the fuck does any of that have to do with the current lawsuit?

Re:This happens all the time

[PCM2]

One of the biggest merits of going to any college is that after 18 years of hand-holding in the home and public education spheres, the college is not going to baby sit you, beg you to pay your fees on time, order you to attend lecture (though sadly some professors attempt to to artifically give merit to their poor instruction in the form of attendance-grades)

Actually, when I was attending the California community college system (last year), instructors were required to take attendance. A lot of them spent considerable time in the early days of class telling students over and over that it really didn't matter, they didn't care if you showed up or not, they were going to grade you on your work, showing up was your responsibility but if you didn't want to it was no skin off their nose ... but that they would get in trouble with the school if they didn't turn in attendance reports. So we spent the first five minutes of a 50-minute class reading roll call.

Re:This happens all the time

[penguinchris]

If they are as proficient as you say they should be, it should never be necessary for IT to check the logs to see if they submitted their assignment on time.

I'm not sure what you're even getting at there - it seems to contradict your statement about the students validating the email address they use. If the professor provides an alternate address, the student should be proficient enough to validate that they entered it correctly when submitting, right?

I assume you're saying that if they put in the wrong address, you could check the log and see that an email was sent through the system but the address was wrong. But this should not be necessary if these students are qualified to be a college level student, by your definition (and by the way, in my experience as a TA at a CSU, many students are *not* qualified!)

And - the professors presumably are using gmail accounts because they are reliable, while the school accounts aren't (for a technical reason, as you described). It seems to me that there would be less issues with emailed assignments not making it through email if they use their gmail accounts instead of their limited school accounts.

Finally - if the student can't figure out how to make something small enough for the outdated school email system to handle, there are two possibilities. First, the student is an idiot and isn't qualified to be a college student. Second, the system is woefully outdated considering modern, common computer use and information exchange, exemplified by gmail's excellent handling of such things.

The idea that young people are tech-savvy is fairly un-true. Sure, they can text like crazy, but in general they don't understand how to use computers enough to even be qualified for a low-end computer job such as a secretary, and most won't be able to figure out how to compress their large project files (though this is a contrived example as most large projects aren't going to be submitted through email...)

Re:This happens all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single student whom crosses the door

It's "who", not "whom". Please don't just s/who/whom/g.

Using the college's name

[Jason Levine]

administrators said using the college's name in e-mail addresses could potentially confuse people.

The administrators seem to be trying to keep people from using the college's name in their private e-mail addresses. So why are they going after abbreviations? I guess I could see it if someone registered SantaRosaJuniorCollege@yahoo.com and started spamming people, but attempting to claim ownership on SRJC? That's simply ridiculous.

Re:Using the college's name

[gsmalleus]

What would this do to students who try to filter their gmail with johndoe+srjc@gmail.com? Now I can't use myemail+srjc@gmail.com for my college correspondence?

This is so insanely stupid...

I just checked the USPTO

[kimvette]

I just search TESS on uspto.gov for a trademark ( SRJC ) and got this result:

No TESS records were found to match the criteria of your query.
Click on the New User Form BACK button in your browser to return to the previous TESS screen

Seems to me they need a better lawyer. On what legal basis are they threatening staff and students?

Re:I just checked the USPTO

[John Hasler]

One can, under some circumstances, enforce an unregistered trademark. This is not one of them, though. They would have no case even if SRJC was their registered trademark.

Waiting for a cease-and-desist...

[a-zarkon!]

I think I'm going to spend 10 minutes and set up a couple of new free-email accounts on Yahoo, MSN, Gmail with SRJC in the name just to see if they contact me. Maybe even use one to send an inquiry about how one goes about enrolling in their school to their admissions department. They must be doing something really right if they are able to hassle tuition-paying students in these tough economic times over something so ridiculous.

People are not that bright or they are dicks

[mzs]

I used to sign my emails:

"mzs"

At one point I had to add a signature like this to the end of my emails:

"mzs - place of employment"

The reason, a vendor I contacted for a quote complained that he was unsure if I was really from where I was from. I guess the From: line was not enough.

Then I had to add under that:

"The ideas and opinions expressed ... are mine and not those of my employer"

This was after I emailed an the assistant principal at my son's school and instead of addressing my concern about the teacher he got into a tizzy that I emailed him from work and were these things the opinion of my employer.

Then I just went back to mzs and used my personal email when he kept being a jerk. He never did address my concerns, just kept looking for ways to avoid the issue. The school year is almost over, so water under the bridge.

I think some people just are sort of clueless about email and others like to cause trouble. I am not sure about the fellow in this article but certainly one of those are the explanation.

Re:People are not that bright or they are dicks

[Locke2005]

Three things I've learned from dealing with school officials:

1) Anytime you make a complaint about a specific action of a teacher, their immediate response will be "I have no recollection of that event." It is as if the teacher's union trains them all to say this. If you persist and present evidence, later they may suddenly "remember" what actually happened. 2) Any school or district staff absolutely will not admit they made a mistake or apologize. Ever. I believe their reasoning is "If we apologized, that would be an admission of guilt, and would be used against us in a lawsuit." Their reasoning is flawed, in that their "never back down" attitude in fact makes it much MORE likely that they will be sued.

3) You can get them to back down by threatening a lawsuit or to bring the matter up in an open meeting of the school board, but only if you guarantee them that nobody else will ever find out that they backed down! Their reasoning for this makes sense -- "If we give in to you, then we will have to give in to every parent that makes the same complaint." You need to give them an out to save face, an alternative explanation for their action other than "the kid's son requested this".

If you are willing to pursue it, every school board has public meeting in which you can sign up to talk for a limited amount of time. The school board members are not part of the district staff, they are elected private citizens. Most of them ran for school board in the first place because the school pissed them off at some point, and thus they are much more likely to be sympathetic to valid concerns of a parent than the people that make their living ignoring parent's complaints. And, if you get upset enough at the school, you will start contemplating running for the school yourself. It is a huge time and energy sink, but if you can make room for it in your schedule, I say go for it!

Re:People are not that bright or they are dicks

[mzs]

Nice idea about #3, but past that sadly.

In my situation, the school board pres is not only my neighbor and coworker, he is also the manager of one of the projects I work on so I report to him. Also the two prior presidents burned-out from dealing with admin/teacher/parent/student crap. There sort of was a coup of getting admin friendly people elected. I don't know my neighbor well enough yet to say what interests he really is concerned with, so it just is not worth the potential grief it could cause at work and in the neighborhood.

Yeah sometimes this stuff gets complicated and frankly not worth it in the long run.

by their logic...

[EkriirkE]

If My email was jesus@, i would have many christian slaves to do my bidding because they assume I'm the 3rd come.

Re:by their logic...

[MaskedSlacker]

I would mod you up just for your sig. Also, 2nd coming.

Re:by their logic...

[__aaclcg7560]

Uh, no. I had a boss who told me during a job interview that he was Christian, I was Christian, and quoted the scripture on how a Christian slave should work harder for a Christian master. He didn't like it when I told him I wasn't his slave. I left that job about three months later. If I was less of a Christian and more of an American, I should've threaten to file a civil rights complaint against him.

Re:by their logic...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, they would just expect you were an illegal immigrant or something like that.

Re:by their logic...

[plague3106]

Ah yes, the Christian belief that God wants you to be trampled on.

What about suffixes, student+srjc@gmail.com??

[NevarMore]

So they're going to cripple a useful filtering feature too.

Most of my mail gets filtered by the senders domain, but I'm starting to use the "+string" format to do the "who's sharing my address" thing. Its rather handy.

As an aside, does anyone know if "suffix" is the right term for that? I skimmed a few RFC's and it didn't jump out at me.

Re:What about suffixes, student+srjc@gmail.com??

[Thuktun]

IIRC, that's not an RFC-specified feature, that's an implementation feature of Sendmail that may have been carried over into other *nix SMTP servers because of its usefulness.

Re:What about suffixes, student+srjc@gmail.com??

[NevarMore]

I was curious enough that I had to look. It looks like its referenced in RFC3696:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3696#page-5

Re:What about suffixes, student+srjc@gmail.com??

[Thuktun]

It's mentioned as an example of a valid address form, it doesn't express that it must or should be supported, nor how it should be interpreted.

What if their initials _are_ SJRC?

[Firefalcon]

...would they sue the parents?!? :-p

I mean, if there was a student called Simon James Richard Clarke who used his initials for his private email address, what case would the school have against him?

Great layoff prospect here.

[Animats]

The State of California is doing some massive budget cuts. Santa Rosa is cutting so deep that they're turning off street lights in the middle of blocks to save money. Looks like we found some people who don't have much to do and can be laid off.

Re:Great layoff prospect here.

[mcostas]

Couldn't we say the same about anyone reading / commenting on slashdot this morning?

I call dibs on the email address!!!

[nomel]

Woot! I grabbed JohnDoe_SRJC@yahoo.com!

1. Check slashdot
2. Grab example email address from news article
3. ???
4. Profit!

I'm sitting here watching the yahoo inbox, just waiting for the bucket loads of money to start pouring in...hahaha...SUCKERS!

Re:I call dibs on the email address!!!

[gsmalleus]

1. Check slashdot
2. Grab example email address from news article
3. ???
4. Get Sued For Using Some Company's Name In Your Email Address

Fixed That For You

Don't do this

[Subgenius]

Thank Jebus that this story didn't hit Fark. Could you imagine the number of email accounts, starting TODAY, that would contain the letters SRJC?

Not that anyone from slashdot.org would ever hop over to gmail and start creating such things. That would not be nice.

say.no.to.srjc@gmail.com

School Website

[Firefalcon]

http://www.santarosa.edu/

Not that I'm suggesting that several thousand geeks all pay it a visit at once and "stress test" their webserver... Not at all, this is Slashdot after all... :-)

What no one has said yet is that,

[r2rknot]

all they threatened were the faculty and students. They don't NEED to so. Just fire, and release those that do not comply. One semester left on your degree, too bad son, should have complied. I do think they are going out on a limb attacking their customer base like this.

Re:What no one has said yet is that,

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because firing staff or expelling students is not attacking your customer base.

Streisand efffect

[Anonymous Coward]

I just registered "srjc_sucks@hotmail.com" Lets see if I can get a response from "ken_fiori@santarose.edu"!

This is stupid, but for different reasons.

[Ironica]

Ok, I know that not everyone reads the summary before posting, but seriously, did ANYONE read it?

They're only going after students and employees, not the general public. And there probably is another dimension to this: there probably ARE people in those groups using free email addresses for school-related activities.

I'm guessing what's happening is this: they have issues with their school email system. Maybe it's too hard for students to get an address. Maybe the maximum message size is too low. Maybe the webmail is poor or absent. Maybe the tech support for email software setup is crappy or lacking.

For whatever reason, they probably have a large number of faculty, staff, and students who are working around these issues by using gmail or yahoo accounts to submit or accept assignments, to plan study groups, notify about classes, or otherwise do things that ARE legitimate school activities. And this is a bad thing. See what happened to Sarah Palin's Yahoo account last year. You shouldn't use email services outside of the organization's control to conduct official business. There is also a greater risk that people will be duped, if the process is rampant; for example, if your professor has the email address Prof_Murgle_SRJC@gmail.com, and you get an email from Prof_Murgle_SRJC@yahoo.com, it's entirely possible you'll fail to notice the domain and will think the email is from your professor. You might then divulge information to an unknown party that could damage you or someone else.

But... when people are doing that, it's almost always for one or more of the reasons I suggested above, or some other usability issue that is properly addressed by the CIO's organization. Instead, he's threatening lawsuits to get people to stop.

So, yes, there's a problem with the tactic, but it's not the problem everyone seems to think it is.

Re:This is stupid, but for different reasons.

[Ken D]

Perhaps you would be more enlightened if you read the linked to article and didn't just TRUST the summary.

It says that IF the addresses don't stop being used THEN they might try to find out who owns these google and yahoo accounts.

The implication is certainly that they have NO IDEA who they just sent threatening letters to.

Re:This is stupid, but for different reasons.

[Philosinfinity]

... and the first sentence of the article reads

Santa Rosa Junior College is threatening to sue several hundred students and faculty members who have created private e-mail addresses that use the collegeâ(TM)s name without permission.

Now, it sounds to me like the cease and desist was sent to students and staff, not to the actual offending email addresses. In fact, this is supported a few paragraphs down...

The college offered little explanation when it announced the crackdown in e-mail messages sent to all faculty Tuesday and people it had identified as violators of its new policy.

In summary, you are wrong. Have a nice day.

Re:This is stupid, but for different reasons.

[Ironica]

Thank you. Yes, I did in fact read the article too, to make sure it wasn't just a bad summary.

Re:This is stupid, but for different reasons.

[Ken D]

Read further:

"The computing services department generated a list of several hundred e-mail addresses that used the college's name inappropriately, and sent warning letters to those accounts, Fiori said.

If the recipients do not comply, the college might try to learn their identity from Yahoo or Google, or it might search through its archives of faculty and student e-mails to locate information that could identify the e-mail users, Fiori said."

Thus the faculty and "other people" remark. They have no idea who they threatened.

Re:This is stupid, but for different reasons.

[penguinchris]

I replied to someone else with a similar argument already, but I appreciate your argument more than theirs. You make a good point.

However - the proper action by the school is not to sue students and faculty, or whatever they're doing. The proper response is to figure out why people aren't using their school email addresses (it probably is a crappy system as you suggest), and fix it so that they do!

Re:This is stupid, but for different reasons.

[Ironica]

Isn't that what I said? ;-) That's what I was trying to say.

DDOS

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be absolutely hilarious when the email addresses of the morons pushing this through get hit with tons of crap email when the hacker communities become aware of this.

prostitutes

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyers are like prostitutes: they do everything when you pay them.

social experiement

[MickyTheIdiot]

Slashdotters should register gmail mail addresses using SJRC in every imaginable way and start sending this guy messages.

People like this are why 2000s sucked so bad in the US.

We deal with this too

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a college and we have a lot of problems with faculty using their own personal email address for college business. Technically the policy is that all college business must be conducted on school email accounts. This is true for a whole host of reasons (not the least being that in lawsuits we need to show a realistic email retention policy).

We also refuse to use personal email addresses for our students. We ask them all to use their school generated email account and all official business must go through that account (they can forward the emails to their school account wherever they like).

Having said that--these are policies and not laws we need to follow. However, something in the article DID catch my eye:

To enforce the policy, administrators cited an obscure educational code they said makes it âoeillegalâ for students and faculty to use the schoolâ(TM)s acronym without permission.

I'd love to know what that law is and if it is local, state or federal.

Why only staff and students?

[MrNougat]

Why would only staff and students be under this order? Why not everyone in the entire world who has SRJC in their email address?

No Greed Involved.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad,

The lawyer is not getting paid $150/hour. The lawyer is on staff, which means they get a salary.

Hence, they have no financial incentive to do more work.

Small minds in bright places...

[__aaclcg7560]

The district board members for junior colleges that hire these lawyers tend to have small minds. The junior college in my neighborhood is rebuilding the campus, and there was supposed to be a neighborhood meeting to make everyone aware of the changes. The board decided to hold the meeting at the district office on the other side of town. I don't know if they realized that no one was going to attend or someone threaten to sue them, but the meeting is being rescheduled to be held at the junior college in the neighborhood.

Re:Small minds in bright places...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is no surprise given the leadership history at SRJC. Years ago the college president spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $5K (taxpayer dollars)to hire a detective to find out who was writing letters critical of his administration.There was a story in the Press Democrat on it. The college board got fed up with his shenanigans and made him go teach algebra for a while to get back "in touch" with what the college is about.

Results 1 - 10 of about 43,400 for srjc -santa.

[John Hasler]

They've got a lot more emails to send.

The fact is that quite a number of organizations use the initials "SRJC". It's even a registered domain name (and not by Santa Rosa Junior College).

I Guess

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont have to be that eduacted to run an institution of Education.

Alternative

[Midnight Thunder]

Sounds like the college could have offered an alternative: offer to provide addresses in the college domain in exchange for not using the external one. Anyone who is not associated with the college, would not be able to be offered this.

If you aren't going to offer your students and staff e-mail accounts, for use related to the college, then expect them to go and create accounts elsewhere.

I can't beleive...

[Locke2005]

I can't believe they found a lawyer who thought this was a good idea.

Ask an engineer, "How much is 2 + 2", and they will reply, "4."
Ask an english major, and they will reply, "Uh... 5?"
Ask a lawer, and they will draw the curtains, then lean in close and whisper, "How much would you like it to be?"

There's a little more to the story ...

[kry10]

Hi, everyone. I work for SRJC, and I have a bit more knowledge about what's going on here than was posted. Yeah, this whole thing sounds stupid, but there's another side that wasn't posted in the Press Demo article:

On the surface, this sounds like a slam-dunk case of big-government run amok. "Sue anyone who uses 'srjc' in their email address? Preposterous! Water-cooler-bureaucrats thinking they can control the internet! What a waste of my tax-payer's dollars!" Etc.

Unfortunately the truth isn't nealy as exciting.

First off, the college has had, and continues to have, isolated incidents of people trying to use the campus identity for their own personal needs, be it political, commercial, or otherwise. Yes, it's easy to make fun of people who don't understand how email addresses work ("srjc@whatever.com isn't from the school? I don't get it. And yes, I'll email you my bank login and password ..."), but the reality is that there are still people who just don't get the difference.

So, if it's your school/company/etc. that this is happening to, what do you do? I'd hope you'd first try to be reasonable and try to get the offending party to stop doing it, which in fact it what the college tried to do. After all, legal is messy, legal is expensive, and 99% of the time it's just a misunderstanding that's easily corrected. But what if even that doesn't work?

Well, before going nuts and trying to take someone to court, how about giving a Cease and Desist letter a chance? It doesn't mean that you're going to sue someone, but it does show that you're serious about an infraction. Great idea, right?

One big problem, though (besides it getting posted to Slashdot and getting blown out of proportion) - you can't just arbitrarily single someone out. If you're going to try to use enforcing some code to get someone to stop doing what they're doing, it has to apply equally to everyone. In for a penny, in for a pound ...

That's what happened here. About a hundred or so people (not several hundred as the article states - I know, I helped compile the list) received a letter asking them to stop using "SRJC" in their email address. There was no favortism in who received this letter - I got one for my email address as well.

Yeah, it stinks. Yeah, I get how people can be upset about this. But is it really worth the hubub? I don't think any reasonable person would think that, if they knew all of the facts.

Re:There's a little more to the story ...

[mizzouxc]

Hi, everyone. I work for SRJC

I'm sorry! Starting your post like this lost you all credibility. People who are stupid enough to get scammed deserve to get scammed. Semper Darwin.

Re:There's a little more to the story ...

[r2rknot]

Except that that whole, threatening legal action against your student and Staff, sure I understand. But your reason "People might use our acronym to confuse someone else in a bad way" does not mean you have power, precedence, or reason to make that sort of demand. Yes it stinks but your administration has saw fit to use a shotgun to kill a fly. Sure you might get the fly, but the collateral damage will be more costly to repair. JC's around the country already have well a established reputation of being the home of the less educated staff and students. That prejudice sound or not, it is there, and this even has added fuel to the fire. Beside all that, this entire effort will do nothing to prevent the use of the acronym in scandalous acts. You simply attacked your students and staff that refused the first time with C&D orders.

Re:There's a little more to the story ...

[MickyTheIdiot]

>> Yes, it's easy to make fun of people who don't understand how email addresses work ("srjc@whatever.com isn't from the school? I don't get it. And yes, I'll email you my bank login and password ..."), but the reality is that there are still people who just don't get the difference.

Yes, and they're the ones who are wrong in this situation. They're the one who want to use the Internet but can't be bothered to learn what the (in this case very simple) rules and conventions are.

If there are people that are actually doing this as a fraud then I'm fine with going after them... however no matter what number of people you sent this letter to the VAST MAJORITY are doing nothing wrong at all.

You've decided to cause trouble for a large number of people because your institution is being slightly troubled. Sorry... it doesn't seem right to me.

Re:There's a little more to the story ...

[grahamsaa]

It's still an incredibly stupid idea.

If someone misrepresents him or herself and breaks the law as a result, you have some recourse. If someone signs up for an e-mail address containing a certain sequence of letters, you do not. If people are fooled into thinking that an e-mail from sjrc6969@yahoo.com is official, they're idiots, and no regulations or safeguards will protect them. You shouldn't even ask students to give up e-mail addresses. You have no legal authority, and it makes you look foolish.

Let's look at it from another angle. I often wear white shirts. Because someone might mistake you for me, or because you might be able to pose as me, I insist that you stop wearing white shirts immediately. The people who are unable to distinguish between the two of us must be protected!

Also, sjrc.us, sjrc.tel, and a number of other sjrc domains are available. If you're really that paranoid about misrepresentation, wouldn't it make sense to register those domain names as well?

Dumb.

Re:There's a little more to the story ...

[SecurityGuy]

The problem is that you chose to take on someone else's problem--that they can't figure out *sjrc*@otherdomain.tld is not you. You're not obliged to solve that, which is handy, since you can't.

I also have to point out that your involvement in this debacle makes your .sig a work of art. Well done. :)

Re:There's a little more to the story ...

[H0p313ss]

How could this possibly qualify as a troll? Mods on crack?

Re:There's a little more to the story ...

[Locke2005]

First off, the college has had, and continues to have, isolated incidents of people trying to use the campus identity for their own personal needs, be it political, commercial, or otherwise. So some people with "srjc" in their email address are committing fraud, which is a crime, and the IT director expects asking only the students he knows about that have "srjc" in their address to stop doing it will actually STOP this fraud??? Sounds like the epitome of ego-centric pinheadedness to me. If he really believes criminals will change their behavior because he tells them to, why not just tell them to stop committing fraud instead?

Not sure what the legal validity of an emailed cease-and-desist letter is, but I suspect if it wasn't received via certified mail, then you can simply ignore it. Before they can take you to court for violating the C&D, they first have to prove you received it.

Honeypot up and running ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

I just created SRJC.SRJC.SRJC@gmail.com

Waiting for the message LOL!

Not so fast!

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know the damage that may have already been done by people pretending to be affiliated with the college AND until there is an actual lawsuit, you're blowing smoke.

BTW: as for lawyers saying any idea of yours is a good one, as long as you pay them hourly, many legal cases are taken on consignment AND the woman who sued McD over the hot coffee won big-time. Was it a bad idea for her to sue or are you just jealous?

This is an educational institution?

[grahamsaa]

It's amazing to me that this kind of threat comes from an institution that charges money to educate people. Seems to me like the value of a degree from Santa Rosa Junior College just dropped dramatically.

Then again, I doubt it would have been worth much to begin with.

If anyone needs to reach me

[Grimbleton]

my new e-mail address is ricksrjc@gmail.com

Get it now!

[Anonymous Coward]

frivolous.srjc@gmail.com is still available!

While we're at it...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

McDonalds (like some other chain restaurants) also designs their drive-through lanes so the driver is trapped in the car and can't get out and strip off the scalding clothing, mitigating the injury, in case of this foreseeable class of accident.

The judge was wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The judge in that case should have ordered contempt of court charges and fines for the woman and here lawyers for bringing a BS case before him!! The fault was NOT Mcdonalds for surveing hot coffee. Anyone with a brain knows that coffee is served hot. And anyone with a brain should realize that putting something hot next to your crotch is not a good idea!!!!!

Never mind. (Should have RTFAed.)

[Ungrounded Lightning]

McDonalds (like some other chain restaurants) also designs their drive-through lanes so the driver is trapped in the car and can't get out and strip off the scalding clothing, mitigating the injury, in case of this foreseeable class of accident.

Oops. Should have looked into it more before posting.

In this case the car was already out of the lane and into a parking place when the mishap occurred.

The value of an SRJC degree is now lower.

[Kartoffel]

Now that SRJC has destroyed their credibility as an institute of higher education, perhaps they'll be lowering tuition.

Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I got an email with charges against me from fbi@hotmail.com

Logical fallacy?

[BForrester]

Can we strike down the assumption that in order for
a particular substance to be agreeable to your palate then it must also be judged crotch-friendly?

I like vinegar on my fries. I don't feel the need to test the viability of this combination by pouring dilute acid on my wang. I like hot peppers. I don't need to do quality control on these by first rubbing them on my groin. (I do it because I can.)

Re:Logical fallacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you don't have sex much then easier, if you don't like dilute acid on your wang... vaginas are dangerous!

Re:Logical fallacy?

[Convector]

Yes, I learned the hard way that after chopping chile peppers, you need to wash your hands BEFORE you go to the toilet.

Re:Logical fallacy?

[sumdumass]

As for the vinegar, that's basically what a douche is made of. Even the newer brands use the same concept. The woman's vagina is slightly acidic anyways which is why vinegar and water douches were originally useful. The PH inside the vagina is something like 3.8-4.5 compared with the rest of the body which is usually around 7.4 or so.

As for the hot pepper juice, I know a guy who use to sprinkle a light amount of powdered cayenne pepper dust (the cooking kind) on the passenger car seat before taking a date out. Supposedly it would heat up her private parts after a night of dancing and hopping around from place to place. He claimed it would get any girl horny and almost guarantee sex. Then he got one girl with sensitive skin who suffered chemical burns and went to the hospital instead of his bedroom that night with blisters on the surface of her pussy lips. This is actually how we found out about it because she told everyone she could about the ordeal to foil his attempts into manipulating anyone else. But the reason I'm telling you this is so that if somehow you end up burning your pecker or some woman gets into contact with the heat of the pepper, vegetable oil will dilute it and allow it to be cleaned off quickly. You must then take the vegetable oil off before it does any damage but it should help in removing the heat which is probably the fist and most important issue at hand.

omfg

[a_friend_of_p]

Sigh. SRJC is actually a fine institution for the most part, with many amazing classes, professors, and students. Those running computing services are f-ing retarded.

Why is it that lawyers seem to be ...

[Skapare]

... the most commonly confused people in the world?

On topic

[m509272]

It's nice to see yet another "high-level" employee of an institution of "higher" learning being a complete and utter dolt.

No Lawyers Involved

[John Hasler]

As far as I can tell from reading the linked article the adminstrators who formulated this policy did not consult any lawyers about it. The only attorney mentioned is one in private parctice who opined that the college has no legal basis for doing this.

What about http://www.srjc.org?

[emeyer]

I'm sure the people who operate this site have SRJC in their email addresses. Are they going to be sued too?

-Eric

I'd love to see legal action over this...

[ieatcookies]

I'd love to see them try legal action for some @yahoo.com or @gmail.com account. I can see the headlines now: School hit in the face by the Google pie when it tries to enforce address names on gmail accounts.

The students need not do a thing, they can let their email provided (yahoo, google, hotmail, whatever) take charge for some asshat trying to enforce business rules on their operations.

Shelter Rock Jewish Center

[IgnacioB]

Confuse SRJC with a college? Meh. I see Santa Rosa confusing their ill-gotten acronym with the real SRJC at Shelter Rock Jewish Center. They're domain is even srjc.org! Maybe they need to weigh in. Bonus question: If for example, somebody at the Center sent the an e-mail from NotSantaRosaJuniorColleg@srjc.org.....would Santa Rosa still press charges because the acronym is in their legally valid domain? SRJC needs to chill out and at least take a 1990's pill.

Wrapman!!

[freeweed]

Standing in line 20-deep at every remaining shop in the country because Tim's chased out all the competition by means of incredibly heavily advertising a sub-par product?

Americans already have something like that, it's called Wal-Mart. Quality about the same, too.

Missing the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of these cases is to make products safer for consumers. So why is coffee today still allowed to be served at these 'dangerous' temperatures? Starbucks for example, brews at 195. Doesn't this alone point out that this case was absurd?

What about shirts, license plates, bumper stickers

[GinRummy33]

Don't have a SRJC bumper sticker or license plate either so people don't think your car is an official staff vehicle. Or wear a SRJC t-shirt or sweater so there is no confusion over whether you are part of the administration. Idiots. Logic of this type would pretty much kill any merchandising that the school sells.

I went to this junior college for 3 years

[destraht]

I went to this school for three years. Its a very good school with tons of hot foreign girls from rich families. The problem is the faculty. For a supposedly liberal area the faculty is very constricting. I had a friend in the school senate and the things I saw disgusted me. Additionally, the city itself is run by some of the oldest and prudish people of any city anywhere. I would go to the Mexican part of town to eat at night and hang out because people would hang out outside at least a little bit. When the Thursday night city market was switched to Wednesday there was a huge lock down. 'Cruising' was prohibited with tickets to match and young people were not allowed to hang out *anywhere*. Cops on horseback would intimidate people away. Additionally there are now many rangers sent out to the remote coast one hour a way to chase people off. They throw out excuses like 'the local habitat is being destroyed', 'hot coals could create liability for the state', and 'someone was hurt here a few years ago'. I think that its fair to say that the bastards running the place have failed to keep the housing prices high, by any means necessary. They have been willing to repress people on any front and the unspoken end all goal has been keeping housing prices high. Well they failed and housing prices have declined as much as 42% in some parts. I hope the leadership of that town chokes on their now worthless houses, because they deserve it. On the upside, perhaps the young people will start being able to hang out in the parks and social places again. Oh yeah, thats been bad for tourism. So as tourism shrank quicker than the norm they kept paying for surveys to figure out why people didn't want to go to the bars there to buy drinks and hang out after they did everything that they could to make the place undesirable. Bastards I say. I'm really glad to not be living there anymore. This is California ridiculousness to the extreme. Fuck them.

Re:I went to this junior college for 3 years

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your diatribe to be an interesting contrast with the King of the Hill episode I just saw the other day.

Peggy starts selling houses to young people, they end up ruining the neighborhood with behavior strangely similar to yours...

Re:I went to this junior college for 3 years

[Achromatic1978]

I went to this school for three years. Its a very good school with tons of hot foreign girls from rich families.

Wow. Just wow. "I went to a college for three years and the first thing I can think of to say about it is 'hot girls go here omg'."

dining@temple.edu

[timothy]

I had the address "dining@temple.edu" for a year or two (temple.edu = Temple University, where I went to grad school, in Philadelphia, PA).

Like many other schools (and ISPs, too), Temple allowed email users to designate aliases, so long as they weren't already being used by others. I was surprised to find that I could get "dining@" -- I found out it was unoccupied when I tried to send a suggestion to the dining hall people (don't remember what it was) and it bounced as invalid.

And since I was already organizing some dinners involving my classmates, I selected it as one of my aliases, and it felt very official, out little dining club ;)

timothy

Everyone should create....

[alejandro1983]

Everyone should go to Gmail or Yahoo and create a email address that uses SRJC in their email.... I'm sure the school would see how ridiculous their policy is once a million random people are using their initials.

I'm sorely tempted

[DigitalSorceress]

I'm sorely tempted to set up an email address with SRJC in it and then email them asking to be sued.

Mary Kay Rudolph appears (in my own humble opinion) to be an idiot of the first order.

Oh, and Mary? Please cease and desist from using the name Mary Kay as it may be confused with the fine (choke) cosmetics manufacturer/distributor. Thank you very much, have a nice day, and go die in a fire.

Lack of common sense...

[Carl.E.Pierre]

And that there is the point of the further explanation, disclaimers, cautionary tales, or legal proceedings. People are stupid, and while a nanny state is a stupid extreme, measures are needed to cover one's ass in the case that yet another member of our society has conveniently misplaced their common sense(every time you touch yourself, another person dons the dunce cap). Though i suppose that the whole moral hazard issue comes into play, but that is why we(unfortunately not the government), have brains, to determine when it is good to risk it.

Do more research.

[Neanderthal Ninny]

The director of computing at Santa Rosa Junior College need to do some more research on this. Malware writers and spammers have use fake emails to send mail to us and the acronym "srjc" or any other acronym for that matter as part of the email address does in the From:, Reply-to:, or Return-path: doesn't necessary mean that someone at the college was using that to send mail from other domains. Spammers have taken legitimate email addresses and stuck random characters in the name part the email address in a attempt to pass through mail filters. Work for a small biological research organization and we plenty of spam with the acronym of our organization in the those fields to attempt to pass though the mail filters.
Attempting to stop the use of the acronym in order to thwart spam and other junk is not going to work and preventing good people from doing good work at the school.

Facts are Good

[bhiestand]

Normally, when purchasing coffee "to go" from a restaurant, I'm actually looking to drink it 20-30 minutes later. Boiling hot coffee remains drinkably hot a half-hour later, which suits me just fine.

It's called a thermos. If you want it to still be hot 30 minutes later, slow down its cooling instead of making it so scalding hot that contact instantly causes third degree burns. This should be common sense.

Additionally, McDonald's own research showed that most customers drink their coffee immediately.

While I agree that our society has too many warning labels and required safety measures, you guys are picking the wrong case to rally around. The McDonald's hot coffee suit is one of the most clear-cut personal injury suits I've seen.

Aww... come on!

[jonaskoelker]

If inability to reproduce qualifies one for the Darwin Awards, I think 90% of the Linux user-base can make it to the finals.

Aww, come on! We have sex every time our machines crash.

What makes a problem wrong?

[jonaskoelker]

If people don't have enough time to drink a coffee properly, they need to negotiate better work hours or take up a less insane lifestyle. [...] solving entirely the wrong problem.

What makes a problem wrong? I contend that the right problems are those people want solved. Economy seems to be based on this idea ("Subjective theory of value").

Is it a bad thing that people want to solve "Drink coffee in a stressed-out lifestyle" rather than "have a not-so-stressed-out lifestyle"? Probably. Feel free to consult the literature to find out the detrimental health effects of stress; my guess is that they are plentiful.

That's an objective measure of how wrong the problem people want solved is. Your measure ("it gives me bad coffee") is subjective.

I'm not saying it's wrong (after all, didn't I just say that subjective desires define what's right?); just pointing it out...

Re:What makes a problem wrong?

[CarpetShark]

Yeah, I am aware it's subjective. However, I'm quite comfortable being subjective about subjective things, such as life :)

Antisocial medicine vs Jackpot Justice, $ equality

[jonaskoelker]

And she did not want to sue McDonalds for punitive damages, only to have them pay for the costs of her medical treatments.

This'll probably get me modded troll, but here goes...

I've heard this term, "Ambulance chaser". And there's this Liebeck vs. McHotCoffe case.

The concept of an ambulance chaser is very foreign to me. Why would you need a lawyer when you're taking a hospital cab ride?

But then again, my taxes pay my medical bills, so I don't have to worry about financial ruin whenever I break a leg or have severe sunburn from crossing the street (this being /.) or whatever.

Might US lawyers have a little less business if you had tax-paid medicine? I know, it's socialism, and socialism is bad because it's socialism, but consider this: "health is less good in societies where income differences are bigger" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16226363).

If you can't take the heat

[mark0978]

Stay out of the coffee pot. How stupid are you anyway?

If alcohol and nicotine are legal, what makes you think they are going to outlaw coffee because it is too hot for your little mouth.