>Here's a rebuttal to that: at urbanlegends.com [urbanlegends.com] and: from a Google search [iastate.edu]
I'm talking about incandscent bulbs, sorry.
Older, manual start fluorescent tubes would probably count though, but the modern style ones are always on (for the heaters) anyways, unless they're used in a home, in which case you'll note the homeowner cursing the often broken ballasts.
Besides, I was also talking about the shortening of the life of the bulb, not necessarialy power consumption increasing (although there is a large consumption spike on an incandescent bulb as it warms up -- if you don't agree with me hook up an ammeter and see for yourself).
Not to mention that incandescent light bulbs have a life on the order of 10x less than fluorescent lights, anyways.
Anyways, most fluorescent lights still have heaters, ie: miniature incandescent bulbs in them. The reason it's best for them to be left "on" is because when a filament is cold and warms up it is more likely to break. Hence incandescent lights virtually always break when they are coming from a cold start (no, I don't mean they always will break the first cold start, I mean that upon the end of their lifetime they will break upon being turned on from a cold start). However, when a fluorescent light is left powered, it doesn't nescessarialy mean it is emitting light. A properly installed fixture (like you see in modern commercial and industrial buildings) can keep the heaters powered at all times (IIRC). It helps serve for an almost instant start.
None of those articles covers these facts, unfortunately. They assume that the "bulb" will always last the rated amount, whereas one can make it last much longer with proper treatment. Witness the fact that people who are insistent on turning lights on and off all the time are often buying bulbs, whereas I've only used 3 new ones in one room (with 8 incandescents total) over the past 3 years.
And, unfortunately, those reviews don't touch on how the wattage rating of a bulb affect its life. 750 hours sounds like what you'd get from a 40 watt bulb (where the heck do they sell 75 watt incadescent bulbs?). I am willing to bet a 100 watt bulb will double the performance.
Oh, and I guess last but not least, there is something that fluorescent require that make them unsuitable for some locations that those pages forgot to remark upon: Standard ballast based fluorescent lights require some sort of extra ground, making them unsuitable replacements for old homes unless the wiring is to be replaced.
And there just ain't no substitute for the IR radiation that an incandescent bulb emits. At least no fluorescent has come close to "natural" light for me.
Anyways, gotta compare apples to apples. And my electricity costs under 5 cents canadian per kwh, so I save a pile of money by not buying fluorescents, even by the equations presented. Who pays 7 cents US per hour? Ack!:-)
I'll find you some more technical explanations for why high wattage incandscents last longer, and why not to turn them on/off all the time, if you'd like.
"If you are calling for personal business, please push 1 now. If you are a telemarketer please push 2 now. If you are calling from a rotary phone, please hold."
Option 1 gets you right away, option 2 takes them to voicemail, option "hold the line" also takes them to voicemail.
Everyone wins.
Although this is still slightly annoying. It all depends on how much you care. Fortunately for me, I'm on a little used exchange, and I'm out in the country. It's actually been a few months (honestly) since a telemarketer called me.
What's actually a gas is all the small computer companies (mostly Mom 'n Pops) that think they can get by without a webpage in this day and age, or, almost as bad, with just a webpage that has their name on it, no directions to the store, and no catalog. It seems even computer companies can't "get it", and it strongly helps explain why there's an 80% new startup business failure rate.
>Apple did it right, starting at about Mac OS 7.5, putting up an alert box to confirm a shutdown.
No, Apple did it lazy. Rather than ensure the apps gracefully shut down and save their work, they decided to annoy the user for another useless reason.
The fact is, there needs be no dialogs like that. If anyone feels not so, then what if the user accidentally hits enter when the dialog comes up? Maybe there needs to be an "Are you sure?" dialog, and just in case, an "Are you sure you're sure?", and you never know, an "Are you absolutely sure that you're sure that you're sure?" dialog.
The power off button itself should simply be placed under a plastic flap. Problem solved with $0.10 of engineering, rather than another infinitely annoying dialog box.
>What is the power consumption of these systems? What a waste of cheap electricity.
And so... what's the problem?
If they have the money, they should leave them on if they want to.
Besides, it's not only cheaper for them to do so (constant wakeup/spindown cycles on mechanical hardware like hard-drives causes failure far earlier, not to mention they don't need extra staff to handle the PCs that are off), it's more environmentally friendly (less spindown/spinup cycles uses less power, not to mention that wasted hard-drives from spinup/spindown cycles that happen too often fill up landfills and waste resources to build).
Of course, I've tried to explain this to people who turn lights on and off every time they leave a room, putting maybe 20 or 30 turn on cycles a day on a lightbulb and ruining it in record time, but they always seem to think more about their electric bill (which is low in comparison). The same thing applies to people who sub a 36-watt bulb for a 60-watt bulb. Lower wattages burn out faster!
It's on TNN in 35 minutes. I've seen it on many various stations for a long time. I don't know how anyone could have missed it, unless they either have no TV, or they just don't care.;-)
I like this utility. It's pretty handy, although probably not as effective as this database, unless you're running slackware, or another popular, but undatabased distro.:-)
>However, what other purpose does an AK-47 or an Uzi serve than to kill people?
Opening beers and turning on the TV, of course!
[Let's not forget protecting yourself by making everyone's life horrible through the striking of the fear of God into them, wether or not they're actually guilty! Woohoo!]
Wow, it's been a while since I've been to a site where the author was so paranoid about his pictures being copied. Right-click blockers, and multiple paragraphs telling you his stuff is copyrighted (even to the point of him suggesting he's got more copyright than he does!). I guess it's just a sign of what's to come.:-(
>There's no admin who is competent enough to understand how to configure a terminal server enough to let you connect, but threshold it enough to drop you randomly but shortly afterwards, who is working for a dialup ISP. They're all working in house for Fortune 5 companies:D
:-) But seriously, management is always looking for a way for users to get disco'ed. I've heard of some much, much, much more terrible ways that ISPs disconnect users, and this is one of the 'nicer' methods.
>Sure, if the ISP's admins don't know what they're doing, something may be misconfigured, but at most larger ISPs, the admins are quite competent.
True. The problem is that most ISPs larger than a handful of customers rely on telco equipment (or at least they do in Ontario, Canada). The telco configures the dialup boxes, and getting things changed on them is like pulling teeth. I'm told the defaults on a Cisco dialup box tend to be rather conservative in what they will accept in line noise.
>You would be amazed at what kinds of things can disrupt a dialup connection. Did you know that many people get different connection rates depending on the weather?
Yes. I actually live in an area that varies between 19.2k and 31.2k depending on your luck of the draw. However, the fact remains that v.32 connections are supposed to be able to retrain to another speed upon line noise. All the ISPs I've tried in my area simply drop the connection flat. I can get a stable connection at 14.4k, though, which goes to show it's very much a factor of their boxes refusing to renegotiate the connection (or at least that's the best explanation I've ever seen). I've tried about 10 different modems, varying from cheap-ass SM56s to expensive external USRs. All the same.
>I've seen connections improve by replacing the phone jack in the wall. Moisture builds up and the contacts become corroded. It's not some lame excuse tech support made up to get you off the phone - it might not be the answer to your problem, but it's a known issue that can't be ruled out yet.
Been there, done that. Here we have a demarc jack at the point the line enters the house. Same results when connected to that.
>How do you explain it when a thousand other customers can all connect just fine, and you're the only one having problems, but you're connecting to the exact same equipment as everyone else is? Is that the ISP's fault?
The other thousand customers don't stay on the net for an hour long? Your logs should show that... Of course, the logs are already tainted with errors resulting from purposely misconfigured dialup boxes (which, BTW, shows the admins are competent -- these boxes don't misconfigure themselves -- so don't feel I think people at ISPs are stupid).
>You can dial your friend's ISP and get better speeds, so you assume your ISP is to blame. Take your computer to a friend's house, and plug into his phone line. Your connection speed vastly improves. Whose fault is it now?
Been there, done that, for over a decade. In a "good" area that gets a decent connection, no drops. In a "bad" area (like mine) I have to manually force the modems to connect at a lower rate to keep a stable connection.
This is proof that there's a problem with the ISPs boxes. And, as I've said, I've used more than a few ISPs around here.
>And then there's 56k. First of all, did you know it's impossible to make a 56k connection if there's more than one conversion between analog and digital anywhere on the connection? Your analog line is converted to a digital signal at your phone company's central office - that's one conversion. If it converts back to analog at the other end, 56k is impossible.
Yup. That's why I don't get 56k. Not because of the digital problem, though, it's because of the other fact you sort of missed -- cheap telcos strip the high-bit of the connection, giving them 12.5% more through the same line.
>Secondly, there are four protocols for 56k: X2, k56flex, v.90, and v.92. v.92 is pretty new and not widely supported...
I don't get any connections anywhere near that speed. Doesn't matter what equipment I use, or what flash the ROMs have. Same steaming crappy internet everywhere. And it isn't just limited to my town... I've seen the same problem anywhere where the lines aren't 100%.
>(and the particular init string required to do this is different for each manufacturer, and they're usually cryptic, like "+MS=11,1")
I _love_ modems like this! Try the ones where you have to set the S registers... Ugggggghhhhh...
>I don't do dialup support anymore, so I can't say how much of this is still an issue. I would imagine most of these kinds of incompatibilities have been resolved, now that v.90 has had a few years to mature. Still, don't assume the ISP is always responsible for your problems.
I didn't. I just suspected it until I did a little prodding of people who I know as sysadmins...
I'm sure your ISP is decent if you've checked it and they don't do this sort of crap. If you have service in the Ontario, Canada area let me know and I'll direct customers there.:-)
>I had alot of calls that people complained about disconnections and slow connection rates. SO I would recommened them to buy a USR hardware based modem
Not that this is a bad idea or anything, but after living in the country, I can tell you the majority of those calls are, in fact, the ISP's/Telco's fault. Most all dial-up boxes are purposely misconfigured by the ISP to ensure they drop the connection at the sound of a pin drop. I've been told so by the person at said ISP who has had an opportunity to view the config of these boxes.
Oh well. It's cheaper to drop dial-up customers than to keep them, for a lot of ISPs. I wish I could find an ISP that costs twice as much but actually puts some effort in.:-(
You know, until I experienced a Triden 8900, I never knew that a videocard could be a bottleneck for 80x25 text... It makes reading log files FUN!
"Scotty, we need to scroll more than 1 screen per second" "Captain, I'm giving her all she's got. Any more and she'll start to get warm!" "Sulu, set the phasers to freeze!"
>Yet somehow you fear them attacking you here, halfway around the world.
Not really, but somebody does if they put these things in subways.
Note I did say "Not that I think all this is a particularly good idea anyways, but hey, if that's what they're all worried about..." I think all of this "protection" is a load of bunk, IMHO. But hey, who am I to say?:-)
>Just hold the detector close to the thyroid to verify the guy's story.
Dumb question: How long does it take to die without a thyroid? How big is a thyroid anyways... I'm willing to guess you could fit a few ounces of radioactive material there.
Remember, Taliban members would be more than willing to die if it means they could bring in some of that stuff.
Not that I think all this is a particularly good idea anyways, but hey, if that's what they're all worried about...
>Here's one more reason for you: in an independent survey paid for by the woman's lawfirm, they found that McDonald's coffee, on average, was nearly 50 degrees F hotter than other fast food places.
Yup, that's nothing new to me...
>The much hotter than expected liquid was the other. A few years before that case, a local girl was burned badly when a glass coffee pot shattered from the heat.
Bummer. She deserved to sue, assuming she was using the pot properly.
>The manufacturer said that it was never intended to be kept at as high a temperature as McDonald's used. Even the equipment wasn't safe at those temperatures.
Well, then people who get hurt using the equipment properly should sue.
The fact is this coffee was improperly used, and when you decide to use something in an improper manner, IMHO, anything goes.
Imagine if that was a butter knife she put there. Normally it would never cut through skin, but this manufacturer messed up and made it a little sharper, and it cuts through her. Whose fault is that? Certainly not the knife makers, IMHO. Now, if that person were hurt while using the product properly (cutting butter, or actually drinking the coffee and having their mouth-lips fused shut with the heat) then they could sue. But until then... well... I guess I'll sue my case manufacturer because my computer case is less than solidly manufactuered and when I used it as a seat it crushed and cut me.
At least if the cup folds without any effort, I feel safe saying that the cup wasn't safe.
Slashdot Mirror
>Here's a rebuttal to that: at urbanlegends.com [urbanlegends.com] and: from a Google search [iastate.edu]
:-)
I'm talking about incandscent bulbs, sorry.
Older, manual start fluorescent tubes would probably count though, but the modern style ones are always on (for the heaters) anyways, unless they're used in a home, in which case you'll note the homeowner cursing the often broken ballasts.
Besides, I was also talking about the shortening of the life of the bulb, not necessarialy power consumption increasing (although there is a large consumption spike on an incandescent bulb as it warms up -- if you don't agree with me hook up an ammeter and see for yourself).
Not to mention that incandescent light bulbs have a life on the order of 10x less than fluorescent lights, anyways.
Anyways, most fluorescent lights still have heaters, ie: miniature incandescent bulbs in them. The reason it's best for them to be left "on" is because when a filament is cold and warms up it is more likely to break. Hence incandescent lights virtually always break when they are coming from a cold start (no, I don't mean they always will break the first cold start, I mean that upon the end of their lifetime they will break upon being turned on from a cold start). However, when a fluorescent light is left powered, it doesn't nescessarialy mean it is emitting light. A properly installed fixture (like you see in modern commercial and industrial buildings) can keep the heaters powered at all times (IIRC). It helps serve for an almost instant start.
None of those articles covers these facts, unfortunately. They assume that the "bulb" will always last the rated amount, whereas one can make it last much longer with proper treatment. Witness the fact that people who are insistent on turning lights on and off all the time are often buying bulbs, whereas I've only used 3 new ones in one room (with 8 incandescents total) over the past 3 years.
And, unfortunately, those reviews don't touch on how the wattage rating of a bulb affect its life. 750 hours sounds like what you'd get from a 40 watt bulb (where the heck do they sell 75 watt incadescent bulbs?). I am willing to bet a 100 watt bulb will double the performance.
Oh, and I guess last but not least, there is something that fluorescent require that make them unsuitable for some locations that those pages forgot to remark upon: Standard ballast based fluorescent lights require some sort of extra ground, making them unsuitable replacements for old homes unless the wiring is to be replaced.
And there just ain't no substitute for the IR radiation that an incandescent bulb emits. At least no fluorescent has come close to "natural" light for me.
Anyways, gotta compare apples to apples. And my electricity costs under 5 cents canadian per kwh, so I save a pile of money by not buying fluorescents, even by the equations presented. Who pays 7 cents US per hour? Ack!
I'll find you some more technical explanations for why high wattage incandscents last longer, and why not to turn them on/off all the time, if you'd like.
Simple solution:
"If you are calling for personal business, please push 1 now. If you are a telemarketer please push 2 now. If you are calling from a rotary phone, please hold."
Option 1 gets you right away, option 2 takes them to voicemail, option "hold the line" also takes them to voicemail.
Everyone wins.
Although this is still slightly annoying. It all depends on how much you care. Fortunately for me, I'm on a little used exchange, and I'm out in the country. It's actually been a few months (honestly) since a telemarketer called me.
Funny you should mention corporate websites being used for advertising.
I not so long ago sent off a complaint to Bell Canada about how their pop-up advertising made their site completely unusable.
You can read more about it in my journal, if you care. Their response was actually quite humorous, in a Masochistic sort of way.
What's actually a gas is all the small computer companies (mostly Mom 'n Pops) that think they can get by without a webpage in this day and age, or, almost as bad, with just a webpage that has their name on it, no directions to the store, and no catalog. It seems even computer companies can't "get it", and it strongly helps explain why there's an 80% new startup business failure rate.
>Apple did it right, starting at about Mac OS 7.5, putting up an alert box to confirm a shutdown.
No, Apple did it lazy. Rather than ensure the apps gracefully shut down and save their work, they decided to annoy the user for another useless reason.
The fact is, there needs be no dialogs like that. If anyone feels not so, then what if the user accidentally hits enter when the dialog comes up? Maybe there needs to be an "Are you sure?" dialog, and just in case, an "Are you sure you're sure?", and you never know, an "Are you absolutely sure that you're sure that you're sure?" dialog.
The power off button itself should simply be placed under a plastic flap. Problem solved with $0.10 of engineering, rather than another infinitely annoying dialog box.
It's just another UI disaster on a Mac.
>What is the power consumption of these systems? What a waste of cheap electricity.
And so... what's the problem?
If they have the money, they should leave them on if they want to.
Besides, it's not only cheaper for them to do so (constant wakeup/spindown cycles on mechanical hardware like hard-drives causes failure far earlier, not to mention they don't need extra staff to handle the PCs that are off), it's more environmentally friendly (less spindown/spinup cycles uses less power, not to mention that wasted hard-drives from spinup/spindown cycles that happen too often fill up landfills and waste resources to build).
Of course, I've tried to explain this to people who turn lights on and off every time they leave a room, putting maybe 20 or 30 turn on cycles a day on a lightbulb and ruining it in record time, but they always seem to think more about their electric bill (which is low in comparison). The same thing applies to people who sub a 36-watt bulb for a 60-watt bulb. Lower wattages burn out faster!
Just my 2 cents.
If I deny the license twice does it give me a secret option to choose another license the third time?
I can't even make an old-skool PCB at home properly yet! Argh... technology always seems to outpace me. :-)
It's on TNN in 35 minutes. I've seen it on many various stations for a long time. I don't know how anyone could have missed it, unless they either have no TV, or they just don't care. ;-)
I like this utility. It's pretty handy, although probably not as effective as this database, unless you're running slackware, or another popular, but undatabased distro. :-)
>Where do you live?
:-)
That's an unusual question (for slashdot).
Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada area...
The one linked to in the article... ie: This one.
HTH.
>However, what other purpose does an AK-47 or an Uzi serve than to kill people?
Opening beers and turning on the TV, of course!
[Let's not forget protecting yourself by making everyone's life horrible through the striking of the fear of God into them, wether or not they're actually guilty! Woohoo!]
>What about the visual equivalent of plugging an analogue cable into the headphone socket - take screenshots of each page and then save as JPEGs?
Why not go all the way and change the font to be a barcode? It would be simple to re-encode it non-encrypted after that...
...that the warez community isn't as dumb as the corporations always assume they are.
Wow, it's been a while since I've been to a site where the author was so paranoid about his pictures being copied. Right-click blockers, and multiple paragraphs telling you his stuff is copyrighted (even to the point of him suggesting he's got more copyright than he does!). I guess it's just a sign of what's to come. :-(
Otherwise, a good site.
>There's no admin who is competent enough to understand how to configure a terminal server enough to let you connect, but threshold it enough to drop you randomly but shortly afterwards, who is working for a dialup ISP. They're all working in house for Fortune 5 companies :D
:-) But seriously, management is always looking for a way for users to get disco'ed. I've heard of some much, much, much more terrible ways that ISPs disconnect users, and this is one of the 'nicer' methods.
>Sure, if the ISP's admins don't know what they're doing, something may be misconfigured, but at most larger ISPs, the admins are quite competent.
:-)
True. The problem is that most ISPs larger than a handful of customers rely on telco equipment (or at least they do in Ontario, Canada). The telco configures the dialup boxes, and getting things changed on them is like pulling teeth. I'm told the defaults on a Cisco dialup box tend to be rather conservative in what they will accept in line noise.
>You would be amazed at what kinds of things can disrupt a dialup connection. Did you know that many people get different connection rates depending on the weather?
Yes. I actually live in an area that varies between 19.2k and 31.2k depending on your luck of the draw. However, the fact remains that v.32 connections are supposed to be able to retrain to another speed upon line noise. All the ISPs I've tried in my area simply drop the connection flat. I can get a stable connection at 14.4k, though, which goes to show it's very much a factor of their boxes refusing to renegotiate the connection (or at least that's the best explanation I've ever seen). I've tried about 10 different modems, varying from cheap-ass SM56s to expensive external USRs. All the same.
>I've seen connections improve by replacing the phone jack in the wall. Moisture builds up and the contacts become corroded. It's not some lame excuse tech support made up to get you off the phone - it might not be the answer to your problem, but it's a known issue that can't be ruled out yet.
Been there, done that. Here we have a demarc jack at the point the line enters the house. Same results when connected to that.
>How do you explain it when a thousand other customers can all connect just fine, and you're the only one having problems, but you're connecting to the exact same equipment as everyone else is? Is that the ISP's fault?
The other thousand customers don't stay on the net for an hour long? Your logs should show that... Of course, the logs are already tainted with errors resulting from purposely misconfigured dialup boxes (which, BTW, shows the admins are competent -- these boxes don't misconfigure themselves -- so don't feel I think people at ISPs are stupid).
>You can dial your friend's ISP and get better speeds, so you assume your ISP is to blame. Take your computer to a friend's house, and plug into his phone line. Your connection speed vastly improves. Whose fault is it now?
Been there, done that, for over a decade. In a "good" area that gets a decent connection, no drops. In a "bad" area (like mine) I have to manually force the modems to connect at a lower rate to keep a stable connection.
This is proof that there's a problem with the ISPs boxes. And, as I've said, I've used more than a few ISPs around here.
>And then there's 56k. First of all, did you know it's impossible to make a 56k connection if there's more than one conversion between analog and digital anywhere on the connection? Your analog line is converted to a digital signal at your phone company's central office - that's one conversion. If it converts back to analog at the other end, 56k is impossible.
Yup. That's why I don't get 56k. Not because of the digital problem, though, it's because of the other fact you sort of missed -- cheap telcos strip the high-bit of the connection, giving them 12.5% more through the same line.
>Secondly, there are four protocols for 56k: X2, k56flex, v.90, and v.92. v.92 is pretty new and not widely supported...
I don't get any connections anywhere near that speed. Doesn't matter what equipment I use, or what flash the ROMs have. Same steaming crappy internet everywhere. And it isn't just limited to my town... I've seen the same problem anywhere where the lines aren't 100%.
>(and the particular init string required to do this is different for each manufacturer, and they're usually cryptic, like "+MS=11,1")
I _love_ modems like this! Try the ones where you have to set the S registers... Ugggggghhhhh...
>I don't do dialup support anymore, so I can't say how much of this is still an issue. I would imagine most of these kinds of incompatibilities have been resolved, now that v.90 has had a few years to mature. Still, don't assume the ISP is always responsible for your problems.
I didn't. I just suspected it until I did a little prodding of people who I know as sysadmins...
I'm sure your ISP is decent if you've checked it and they don't do this sort of crap. If you have service in the Ontario, Canada area let me know and I'll direct customers there.
There's another reason this will be popular.
Security. I can't see locking this thing down being very hard at all...
>I had alot of calls that people complained about disconnections and slow connection rates. SO I would recommened them to buy a USR hardware based modem
:-(
Not that this is a bad idea or anything, but after living in the country, I can tell you the majority of those calls are, in fact, the ISP's/Telco's fault. Most all dial-up boxes are purposely misconfigured by the ISP to ensure they drop the connection at the sound of a pin drop. I've been told so by the person at said ISP who has had an opportunity to view the config of these boxes.
Oh well. It's cheaper to drop dial-up customers than to keep them, for a lot of ISPs. I wish I could find an ISP that costs twice as much but actually puts some effort in.
You know, until I experienced a Triden 8900, I never knew that a videocard could be a bottleneck for 80x25 text... It makes reading log files FUN!
"Scotty, we need to scroll more than 1 screen per second"
"Captain, I'm giving her all she's got. Any more and she'll start to get warm!"
"Sulu, set the phasers to freeze!"
>Yet somehow you fear them attacking you here, halfway around the world.
:-)
Not really, but somebody does if they put these things in subways.
Note I did say "Not that I think all this is a particularly good idea anyways, but hey, if that's what they're all worried about..." I think all of this "protection" is a load of bunk, IMHO. But hey, who am I to say?
>Just hold the detector close to the thyroid to verify the guy's story.
Dumb question: How long does it take to die without a thyroid? How big is a thyroid anyways... I'm willing to guess you could fit a few ounces of radioactive material there.
Remember, Taliban members would be more than willing to die if it means they could bring in some of that stuff.
Not that I think all this is a particularly good idea anyways, but hey, if that's what they're all worried about...
I think I'll buy an unmarked box of Fire Detectors and leave them in the subway... Fun...
>Here's one more reason for you: in an independent survey paid for by the woman's lawfirm, they found that McDonald's coffee, on average, was nearly 50 degrees F hotter than other fast food places.
Yup, that's nothing new to me...
>The much hotter than expected liquid was the other. A few years before that case, a local girl was burned badly when a glass coffee pot shattered from the heat.
Bummer. She deserved to sue, assuming she was using the pot properly.
>The manufacturer said that it was never intended to be kept at as high a temperature as McDonald's used. Even the equipment wasn't safe at those temperatures.
Well, then people who get hurt using the equipment properly should sue.
The fact is this coffee was improperly used, and when you decide to use something in an improper manner, IMHO, anything goes.
Imagine if that was a butter knife she put there. Normally it would never cut through skin, but this manufacturer messed up and made it a little sharper, and it cuts through her. Whose fault is that? Certainly not the knife makers, IMHO. Now, if that person were hurt while using the product properly (cutting butter, or actually drinking the coffee and having their mouth-lips fused shut with the heat) then they could sue. But until then... well... I guess I'll sue my case manufacturer because my computer case is less than solidly manufactuered and when I used it as a seat it crushed and cut me.
At least if the cup folds without any effort, I feel safe saying that the cup wasn't safe.