Right.. until I make it look like, for example, you are a spammer, by hijacking your box and sending 400 million SPAMs in a few days. Then, when a nice bounty is put on your head, I'll just stop by for some tea.. and BAMO. One bagged spammer for the world, one million bucks for me.
Hey, everyone, listen to this solution: we'll get together and put a DECENT anti-spam law into effect.
Yah!
Ohh.. wait.. flash back to reality. You think Congress tries to pass shitty laws? Or maybe, just maybe, despite what they try to do, shitty laws happen anyways.
No, we can't. It all depends on how you look at the masses. Ask any pollster, not all polls are equal.
Win2k was never sold in retail outlets for "home PCs". It is not an OS for the masses.
Heck, I just recently upgraded my children's computer from '98 to 2k. Why? For admin purposes not because '98 stopped working.
That's fine. Great. Good for you. Doesn't change the fact that XP is installed on the largest base of PCs. It's the #1 MS desktop OS. If you have a PC purchased in the last 4 years, it's been based on XP very most likely.
And personally, I have no plans to ever advance past 2k -- at least at home where I can control everything (work is different and is forced on me). I don't like phone home software, especially OS's.
Great, go right ahead. That's up to you. Just so you know, there is no legitimate truth to the "phone home software" devious nature of XP, but if you want to hold that opinion based on something you heard once, go ahead.
Most people do not upgrade computers
Agreed. They just buy a new one. At 399 or 499 a whack, it's not a huge capital outlay like it was 15 years ago.
Of course, with all the spy/ad-ware, they may be fooled into doing that earlier than they really need to.:-)
I am sure that's happened. Quite a bit.
And not trusting the admin can be handled in software --- e.g. by sudo+friend and no root users at all.
That is in no way a simpler system.
TCPA is the simplest system imaginable. The OS has nothing to do except throw a flag when a binary loads. That's it. Everything else is handled by the Nexus (security co-processor). Literally, it's the simplest possible design.
A TCPA enabled program and other programs can seemlessly co-exisit (though no co-mingle data and memory, like typically is seen now), without modification.
You can argue this all day, up and down the river, but you'll still be wrong. TCPA is good in that it insulates the software developer from worrying about bugs in the operating system or other applications or even firmware. When your data *really* needs to be secure you can't trust MS, or a linux distro or Solaris or even AIX. It's an added expense.
If you rely only on software for your heavy duty security needs you will be disappointed. A bug, a flaw in the software at any point will render the system open to attack. A simple hardware co-processor that transparently encrypts and seperates "marked" binaries and data into seperate virtual "slots" is a very simple design, with a mathematically provable end-point. An operating system with 5-10 million lines of code - like a trimmed down linux box cannot even provide that.
Current keyloggers do not change one bit of software. It would be rather difficult to design a keyboard that would be proof against recording the keystrokes.
TCPA would make it so that protected applications could not be keylogged. The hardware path between the keyboard and rest of the system is encrypted. The OS does not ever see the unencrypted key strokes.
If you physically took photos of the keyboard, that's one thing. However, software keyloggers that are in essense trojans would be defeated.
About your 1, 2 comments, you are also wrong. TCPA does nothing to prevent viruses whatsoever. The only thing it would do is prevent sealed storage from being touched by the OS/other application - like say a virus. Your secure data would stay safe from viruses, but the rest of your system could be hurt in any way it wanted.
As far as average consumers, TCPA isn't all that useful. For some systems it'd be ideal. Sometimes you can't or don't want to trust the system admin of a box/system. In those cases, TCPA is very useful.
so if they put the teachers on powerbooks running OSX this would not happen so easily.
That's security through obscurity. There are plenty of key loggers available for Mac OS X.
The Kids in school have much higher knowlege of the computers than the entire staff put together, It's an arms race that the schools will continue to lose until the boards pull their heads out of their asses and hire competent IT professionals at wage levels that ATTRACT competent IT professionals.
Why should the school district bother with IT? There are many, many, many more worthwhile things to spend money on.
I am computer professional, and I volunteer at a school. When the principle asked what they could do to get more bang for their IT buck, I suggested getting rid of all the computers, all of the computer classes, all of the network/equipment and spending the money on something worthwhile.
She thought I was kidding at first. I told if she did that I'd volunteer to setup a standalone network in a disused classroom and give after hours classes in LOGO or whatnot.
A locked down platform is very useful for some things.
One thing TCPA provides that many alternatives do not is a system of sealed storage. In this scheme, an application run under the TCPA feature set can access storage that is guaranteed by hardware to be only accessible by that one application, and no others. This storage is protected by hardware encryption, and cannot be accessed directly, even by the OS. If the application itself or any component is tampered with the sealed storage is inaccessible, since the Nexus, or hardware security manager, recognizes the binary itself as the key to the sealed storage. If that binary is modified, it can no longer access the sealed storage.
Sealed storage like this is useful in a lot of ways. Combined with a strongly encrypted internet communications a highly secure messaging system could be devised where the encryption was physically end-to-end. Since TCPA provides encryption from the keyboard, to the memory, to the Nexus to the CPU and every point in between, the plain text is only exposed when it is physically being typed - it never exisits in unecrypted digital form.
If you routinely visit the type of site that is bound to get you an attempt at infection, download sketch "shareware" apps, and generally are clueless, yes, I would recommend a much better firewall which really really is dedicated to stopping everything.
If you are "joe user", than the XP SP2 firewall is more than sufficent.
The default, however, is to just allow it once. Which means the user will continue to get that box once a day, or once a session, until they read the box, and decide to block it, investigate it more, or allow it always.
The XP SP2 shows that MS actually cares somewhat about security and usability.
Yeah, well, the problem being that XP has a huge market share of Windows users. Windows 2000 is not an OS for average users, we can agree on that, right?
Windows XP + Win2k = 82% of all PCs browsing the web in this sample. That's not uncommon!
There are a very small number of "average joes" still running 95, 98 or ME. If you are an average joe who has purchased a new computer in the last 4 years, you're running XP with a very high degree of certainity.
That's just simple untrue. Amazingly untrue. Most people leave it on. It is very rare that you get a pop-up - only when you have a *new* app that is trying to access the net. It's not like you get it everytime some little app wants to download an update.
The Windows firewall and XP SP2 in general have very, very good penetration of the market. MS has done a very good job of getting SP2 into the hands of customers.
Just have faith that a windows consultant will probably get the occasional BSOD to balance out your run-ins with unpolished software.
The problem is that up to that point, I was his Windows consultant. It's always been very easy to sell Windows and Windows-based solutions. It's especially bad because I am pretty good Windows admin and only a mediocre Unix admin (as far as Unix admins go).
The normal anti-Windows arguments just don't fly against my installations. I am not a consultant now, but at the time, I was admining a huge number of Windows boxes. Never had a single virus infection, exploit, compromised box, malware installation, or any of that under my watch. No stability or performance problems. No unexplained data loss or other typical Window problems. Good admining goes a long way. My costs were low and I didn't have a big markup on reselling proprietary products. The guy was used to my style of pitching - aka, here is what I would do if it were me in your shoes. The guy trusted me a lot because I'd always done right by his business even when I could have made more money doing only mediocre work.
I guess, looking back, that problem is really that I didnt take enough time to look over every bit of the software I was wanting them to use. Lots of little unpolished edges. Flaky video drivers leaving tiny artifacts, an odd popping from the speakers from time to time, flaky network connections in some cases, sluggishness under heavy heavy load (why more than they are used to with Windows!). These are the types of superficial things that never bothered me but to a skeptical end-user/buyer just saying "well, the source is available, all that will be fixed eventually!" isn't generally enough.
You assuming that OSDL, IBM, and RedHat share the same goals, which I believe, is totally incorrect.
RedHat is campaigining in part to replace big old Unix boxes, many many many of which are AS/400 boxes manufactuered, maintained, serviced and supported by IBM.
In the real world, people DO care about having the source available, they just don't put it that way. It generally comes as some clause in the contract specifying that there must be some sort of contingency plan if the supplier for a certain part goes out of business. Open source is close to optimal solution: if the original supplier goes belly-up, shop around for someone willing to take it over -- there's plenty of small consultancies willing to do it.
Maybe for the right situation. A small business owner (15 computers) isn't going to hire someone to keep Firefox/Mozilla going and to fix bugs in XUL if Mozilla becomes untrendy and another new FOSS or commerical browser becomes dominant. That'd be a huge expense. He's going to fire me for recommending a solution build on Firefox, and get someone else to port/rewrite on a new platform.
Yes, he did. "Common Desktop Environment is CDE, right? What is this KDE? "
I hemmed and hawed for a minute, then pressed. "K Desktop Environment". I should have told him it originally stood for the "Kool Desktop Environment", but I didn't.
The only time I've ever been embarrased professional is when I was making a pitch to a long-time consulting client about using some fairly standard FOSS packages in their previously pristine Windows and SunOS environment.
Presentation is going well. Price points get a big eyebrow raise. Lead-in time is great. Non-proprietary is great. All good things.
Question and answer period goes all to shit. Made the mistake of referencing "GNU/Linux". My bad. What does the G-N-U stand for? GNU is Not Unix. What's that now? Huh? Ohh.. I see. What's this other acronym? KDE? Is that like CDE, which we use now? Ohh yes, but much better. Sure, let's take a look. Client clicks around on the laptop for a few seconds.. boom boom boom.. hits a panel that reports "Not finished yet. I'm too lazy:(" or some such nonsense. Great. Even better.
What a disaster. I was mortified. He picked apart all kinds of the typical Linux stuff.
In the end he went to another consultant and stuck straight to Windows. It was very embarrasing.
The bottom line is that in the real world, no one cares about having the source available. The investment is very small. If Firefox dies, what, are they going to hire a programmer to keep it alive so they dont have to switch? Lets get real. Trying to pitch anything but a polished product is, well, just asking for a beating.
Water that is 180-190 degrees will remain that hot - or close enough to it - for 2 seconds while the burns are inflicted.
I do not ignore the fact that some are more sensitive than others to hot water/coffee. It does not change the fact that McDonalds sold a defective product.
Given the level of devastation, there was nobody left in Hiroshima to report to "higher command" about the destruction.
That's untrue. Check out the Wikipedia article on Hiroshima bombing. Cental command sent a pilot to Hiroshima within hours. He saw the complete destruction, landed, and radio'd back that the entire city was gone, wiped from earth. It was entirely clear within hours what had happened - not the specifics of what it was - but that America had a new weapon of unheard of power.
Fact" #2 is obviously false. (while immersing your skin in a large tank of 180 degree coffee might do it, merely spilling it on yourself would not)
Well, two experts in thermodynamics - including one professor and McDonalds own expert - concluded at trial that 2 seconds of contact is more than sufficent to cause 3rd degree burns on the contacted skin. 180-190 degrees is clearly sufficent - as proven by the photos jurors were shown - to cause significant burning. 6% of the womans body was burned to 3rd degree level. Are you disputing that the harm was done to the woman by coffee?
Fact" #6 is misleading. They had 700 _complaints_ about burns.... in several billion cups of coffee sold.
No. They settled 700 cases regarding burns in the US, in 10 years. Those are actual people who filed suits and recieved settlements. The number of actual burns stands to be much, much higher.
The one link I provided was probably insufficent. There are many. McDonalds was clearly callous in its actions.
The bottom line is that (1) McDonalds was well aware that they served coffee to hot to consume - you can't drink coffee at that temperature. (2) McDonalds was well aware that people were being burned reguarly and severly by the coffee. (3) McDonalds considered dropping the temperature of the coffee, but decided that it would decrease yield from coffee beans and therefore declined to drop the temperature. (4) Decision in #3 was made at the highest levels of McDonalds management. (5) The woman in question asked only for McDonalds to cover medical expenses including skin grafting. McDonalds offered the cost of the ambulance ride and emergency room visit only, $800.
But when it comes down to it, people deal with similar amounts of even hotter impure water all the time, without routinely getting third degree burns from it.
The evidence seems to contradict your findings. If you could provide evidence of someone not being burned seriously by direct contact with 190 degree coffee or impure water for 2 seconds, then I'll happily retract.
I was the parent, and I was not incorrect. At trial expert witnesses testified conclusively that brewing coffee at 185 degrees allowed a significant increase in the amount of coffee per pound of bean. Two key memos were introduced into evidence which showed that not only was this true, but that McDonalds knew about it, and weighed the costs against the injuries they knew were happening.
We (rightly) put down rebellions within our borders(cf. the Civil War). They are terrorism. It doesn't matter how political they are; actually, being especially political means you are committing treason and not just causing destruction.
The civil war was 150 years ago. Today, when there are protestors, we let them have at it, and mostly just watch until the destruction is over. If the police overstep their roles or break the law they put on trial, fined, or fired.
We execute lots of people. Why is it so important that they use cheap bullets rather than expensive injections?
We execute a relative few. In the whole country somewhere between 200 and 300 people per year. The average stay on death row is between 5 and 10 years. The average death row inmate has had between 3 and 5 lawyers. The average death row inmmate has been in court and in front of a judge at least 6 times. None of these things is true about China. It has nothing to do with the cost of the bullet. It has everything to do with the process. China hems and haws about even disclosing how many people it executes. There is no presumption of innocence. There is no right to appeal. No right to seek a pardon.
You can't joke about killing the President
You can in fact joke about killing the President. You cannot enter into a conspiracy to kill the President (or anyone). You cannot solicit people to kill the the President (or anyone). You cannot ask that another person should kill a person. If you do make statemnets amount about the President and killing him you likely will get investigated by the Secret Service to determine if you have entered into a plot to kill the President. If you haven't then nothing happens. You can say anything about Scientology. You cannot republish copyright protected documents without permission. If you do, you may be sued and/or receive a letter from an attorney
We dropped two nukes on two cities, something nobody else has done, to keep the rest of the WORLD in line; and have waged war since.
No, we dropped two nukes for the explict purpose of defeating Japan. Even after the first they did not surrender. Hence the second. We showed restrainant when others would have shown known. After World War II we had the most powerful military in the history of the world. We had the most power economy in the history of the world. Our economic engine was producing war time goods at a rate that all the nations of the world combined could not match our power. We could have dominated the world, and who would have opposed us? The peasantry of China? The ruins that once were great nations in Europe? The decimated demoralized Soviets? In 1945 we could have rolled over the world, dominating and taking anything we wanted. There were no limits to the power we could project. Europe, Africa, Asia - even China would be fall to their knees in realization of American power. Yet we did not puruse that course. We rebuilt Germany. We brought democracy to Japan. We liberated and left France. We helped our sworn enemies. We established a home land in the middle east for the Jews out of compassion and remorse for a crime we did not commit.
I love America. And I've spent my life loving America. I'll never deny our collective mistakes but I will certainly not equate them to the routine barbary that is found so often and with such foulness across the world. America has its many problems. America is flawed, and growing more so. But it will be a cold day in hell when you can equte America with communist China.
The fact remains that the Bill of Rights - even in its decaying form - offers more protection, more glorious freedom, more liberty than most people of the world dare to aspire to obtain.
Slashdot Mirror
Right.. until I make it look like, for example, you are a spammer, by hijacking your box and sending 400 million SPAMs in a few days. Then, when a nice bounty is put on your head, I'll just stop by for some tea.. and BAMO. One bagged spammer for the world, one million bucks for me.
Problem solved, right?
You know, that's a great idea!
Hey, everyone, listen to this solution: we'll get together and put a DECENT anti-spam law into effect.
Yah!
Ohh.. wait.. flash back to reality. You think Congress tries to pass shitty laws? Or maybe, just maybe, despite what they try to do, shitty laws happen anyways.
No, we can't. It all depends on how you look at the masses. Ask any pollster, not all polls are equal.
:-)
Win2k was never sold in retail outlets for "home PCs". It is not an OS for the masses.
Heck, I just recently upgraded my children's computer from '98 to 2k. Why? For admin purposes not because '98 stopped working.
That's fine. Great. Good for you. Doesn't change the fact that XP is installed on the largest base of PCs. It's the #1 MS desktop OS. If you have a PC purchased in the last 4 years, it's been based on XP very most likely.
And personally, I have no plans to ever advance past 2k -- at least at home where I can control everything (work is different and is forced on me). I don't like phone home software, especially OS's.
Great, go right ahead. That's up to you. Just so you know, there is no legitimate truth to the "phone home software" devious nature of XP, but if you want to hold that opinion based on something you heard once, go ahead.
Most people do not upgrade computers
Agreed. They just buy a new one. At 399 or 499 a whack, it's not a huge capital outlay like it was 15 years ago.
Of course, with all the spy/ad-ware, they may be fooled into doing that earlier than they really need to.
I am sure that's happened. Quite a bit.
And not trusting the admin can be handled in software --- e.g. by sudo+friend and no root users at all.
That is in no way a simpler system.
TCPA is the simplest system imaginable. The OS has nothing to do except throw a flag when a binary loads. That's it. Everything else is handled by the Nexus (security co-processor). Literally, it's the simplest possible design.
A TCPA enabled program and other programs can seemlessly co-exisit (though no co-mingle data and memory, like typically is seen now), without modification.
You can argue this all day, up and down the river, but you'll still be wrong. TCPA is good in that it insulates the software developer from worrying about bugs in the operating system or other applications or even firmware. When your data *really* needs to be secure you can't trust MS, or a linux distro or Solaris or even AIX. It's an added expense.
If you rely only on software for your heavy duty security needs you will be disappointed. A bug, a flaw in the software at any point will render the system open to attack. A simple hardware co-processor that transparently encrypts and seperates "marked" binaries and data into seperate virtual "slots" is a very simple design, with a mathematically provable end-point. An operating system with 5-10 million lines of code - like a trimmed down linux box cannot even provide that.
Current keyloggers do not change one bit of software. It would be rather difficult to design a keyboard that would be proof against recording the keystrokes.
TCPA would make it so that protected applications could not be keylogged. The hardware path between the keyboard and rest of the system is encrypted. The OS does not ever see the unencrypted key strokes.
If you physically took photos of the keyboard, that's one thing. However, software keyloggers that are in essense trojans would be defeated.
About your 1, 2 comments, you are also wrong. TCPA does nothing to prevent viruses whatsoever. The only thing it would do is prevent sealed storage from being touched by the OS/other application - like say a virus. Your secure data would stay safe from viruses, but the rest of your system could be hurt in any way it wanted.
As far as average consumers, TCPA isn't all that useful. For some systems it'd be ideal. Sometimes you can't or don't want to trust the system admin of a box/system. In those cases, TCPA is very useful.
so if they put the teachers on powerbooks running OSX this would not happen so easily.
That's security through obscurity. There are plenty of key loggers available for Mac OS X.
The Kids in school have much higher knowlege of the computers than the entire staff put together, It's an arms race that the schools will continue to lose until the boards pull their heads out of their asses and hire competent IT professionals at wage levels that ATTRACT competent IT professionals.
Why should the school district bother with IT? There are many, many, many more worthwhile things to spend money on.
I am computer professional, and I volunteer at a school. When the principle asked what they could do to get more bang for their IT buck, I suggested getting rid of all the computers, all of the computer classes, all of the network/equipment and spending the money on something worthwhile.
She thought I was kidding at first. I told if she did that I'd volunteer to setup a standalone network in a disused classroom and give after hours classes in LOGO or whatnot.
A locked down platform is very useful for some things.
One thing TCPA provides that many alternatives do not is a system of sealed storage. In this scheme, an application run under the TCPA feature set can access storage that is guaranteed by hardware to be only accessible by that one application, and no others. This storage is protected by hardware encryption, and cannot be accessed directly, even by the OS. If the application itself or any component is tampered with the sealed storage is inaccessible, since the Nexus, or hardware security manager, recognizes the binary itself as the key to the sealed storage. If that binary is modified, it can no longer access the sealed storage.
Sealed storage like this is useful in a lot of ways. Combined with a strongly encrypted internet communications a highly secure messaging system could be devised where the encryption was physically end-to-end. Since TCPA provides encryption from the keyboard, to the memory, to the Nexus to the CPU and every point in between, the plain text is only exposed when it is physically being typed - it never exisits in unecrypted digital form.
How do you know?
Actually, no.
If you routinely visit the type of site that is bound to get you an attempt at infection, download sketch "shareware" apps, and generally are clueless, yes, I would recommend a much better firewall which really really is dedicated to stopping everything.
If you are "joe user", than the XP SP2 firewall is more than sufficent.
The default, however, is to just allow it once. Which means the user will continue to get that box once a day, or once a session, until they read the box, and decide to block it, investigate it more, or allow it always.
The XP SP2 shows that MS actually cares somewhat about security and usability.
Yeah, well, the problem being that XP has a huge market share of Windows users. Windows 2000 is not an OS for average users, we can agree on that, right?
a sp
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
Windows XP + Win2k = 82% of all PCs browsing the web in this sample. That's not uncommon!
There are a very small number of "average joes" still running 95, 98 or ME. If you are an average joe who has purchased a new computer in the last 4 years, you're running XP with a very high degree of certainity.
MSN != Windows
That's just simple untrue. Amazingly untrue. Most people leave it on. It is very rare that you get a pop-up - only when you have a *new* app that is trying to access the net. It's not like you get it everytime some little app wants to download an update.
The Windows firewall and XP SP2 in general have very, very good penetration of the market. MS has done a very good job of getting SP2 into the hands of customers.
Just have faith that a windows consultant will probably get the occasional BSOD to balance out your run-ins with unpolished software.
The problem is that up to that point, I was his Windows consultant. It's always been very easy to sell Windows and Windows-based solutions. It's especially bad because I am pretty good Windows admin and only a mediocre Unix admin (as far as Unix admins go).
The normal anti-Windows arguments just don't fly against my installations. I am not a consultant now, but at the time, I was admining a huge number of Windows boxes. Never had a single virus infection, exploit, compromised box, malware installation, or any of that under my watch. No stability or performance problems. No unexplained data loss or other typical Window problems. Good admining goes a long way. My costs were low and I didn't have a big markup on reselling proprietary products. The guy was used to my style of pitching - aka, here is what I would do if it were me in your shoes. The guy trusted me a lot because I'd always done right by his business even when I could have made more money doing only mediocre work.
I guess, looking back, that problem is really that I didnt take enough time to look over every bit of the software I was wanting them to use. Lots of little unpolished edges. Flaky video drivers leaving tiny artifacts, an odd popping from the speakers from time to time, flaky network connections in some cases, sluggishness under heavy heavy load (why more than they are used to with Windows!). These are the types of superficial things that never bothered me but to a skeptical end-user/buyer just saying "well, the source is available, all that will be fixed eventually!" isn't generally enough.
You assuming that OSDL, IBM, and RedHat share the same goals, which I believe, is totally incorrect.
RedHat is campaigining in part to replace big old Unix boxes, many many many of which are AS/400 boxes manufactuered, maintained, serviced and supported by IBM.
Lobbiny is bad! Corrupt corruption! Evil money is influicing politics.
This is wrong. Where is the department of justice? Lobbying is not even taintamount to bribery, it is bribery!
What? Ohh... sorry.. thought this was an article about Microsoft, SCO, or Sun... my bad.
Go RedHat!
In the real world, people DO care about having the source available, they just don't put it that way. It generally comes as some clause in the contract specifying that there must be some sort of contingency plan if the supplier for a certain part goes out of business. Open source is close to optimal solution: if the original supplier goes belly-up, shop around for someone willing to take it over -- there's plenty of small consultancies willing to do it.
Maybe for the right situation. A small business owner (15 computers) isn't going to hire someone to keep Firefox/Mozilla going and to fix bugs in XUL if Mozilla becomes untrendy and another new FOSS or commerical browser becomes dominant. That'd be a huge expense. He's going to fire me for recommending a solution build on Firefox, and get someone else to port/rewrite on a new platform.
Yes, he did. "Common Desktop Environment is CDE, right? What is this KDE? " I hemmed and hawed for a minute, then pressed. "K Desktop Environment". I should have told him it originally stood for the "Kool Desktop Environment", but I didn't.
The only time I've ever been embarrased professional is when I was making a pitch to a long-time consulting client about using some fairly standard FOSS packages in their previously pristine Windows and SunOS environment.
:(" or some such nonsense. Great. Even better.
Presentation is going well. Price points get a big eyebrow raise. Lead-in time is great. Non-proprietary is great. All good things.
Question and answer period goes all to shit. Made the mistake of referencing "GNU/Linux". My bad. What does the G-N-U stand for? GNU is Not Unix. What's that now? Huh? Ohh.. I see. What's this other acronym? KDE? Is that like CDE, which we use now? Ohh yes, but much better. Sure, let's take a look. Client clicks around on the laptop for a few seconds.. boom boom boom.. hits a panel that reports "Not finished yet. I'm too lazy
What a disaster. I was mortified. He picked apart all kinds of the typical Linux stuff.
In the end he went to another consultant and stuck straight to Windows. It was very embarrasing.
The bottom line is that in the real world, no one cares about having the source available. The investment is very small. If Firefox dies, what, are they going to hire a programmer to keep it alive so they dont have to switch? Lets get real. Trying to pitch anything but a polished product is, well, just asking for a beating.
Water that is 180-190 degrees will remain that hot - or close enough to it - for 2 seconds while the burns are inflicted.
I do not ignore the fact that some are more sensitive than others to hot water/coffee. It does not change the fact that McDonalds sold a defective product.
Given the level of devastation, there was nobody left in Hiroshima to report to "higher command" about the destruction.
That's untrue. Check out the Wikipedia article on Hiroshima bombing. Cental command sent a pilot to Hiroshima within hours. He saw the complete destruction, landed, and radio'd back that the entire city was gone, wiped from earth. It was entirely clear within hours what had happened - not the specifics of what it was - but that America had a new weapon of unheard of power.
Fact" #2 is obviously false. (while immersing your skin in a large tank of 180 degree coffee might do it, merely spilling it on yourself would not)
c ache:www.law4business.com/justice-lawyer-lawsuit-f aq.htm
http://www.vamedmal.com/mainpages/FAQ.htm
http://www.omnology.com/mcds.html
http://quellerfisher.ljextra.com/liebeck.html
http://web.langston.com/Fun_People/1997/1997BCY.ht ml
http://www.bhm.tis.net/jury/corner/dec09b.html
http://insuranceattorney.com/McDonaldsCoffeeSpill. htm
http://www.andrewprince.com/SOMECOLDarticle3.html
Well, two experts in thermodynamics - including one professor and McDonalds own expert - concluded at trial that 2 seconds of contact is more than sufficent to cause 3rd degree burns on the contacted skin. 180-190 degrees is clearly sufficent - as proven by the photos jurors were shown - to cause significant burning. 6% of the womans body was burned to 3rd degree level. Are you disputing that the harm was done to the woman by coffee?
Fact" #6 is misleading. They had 700 _complaints_ about burns.... in several billion cups of coffee sold.
No. They settled 700 cases regarding burns in the US, in 10 years. Those are actual people who filed suits and recieved settlements. The number of actual burns stands to be much, much higher.
The one link I provided was probably insufficent. There are many. McDonalds was clearly callous in its actions.
http://www.accidentline.com/McDonalds.htm http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:30657179&dq=
The bottom line is that (1) McDonalds was well aware that they served coffee to hot to consume - you can't drink coffee at that temperature. (2) McDonalds was well aware that people were being burned reguarly and severly by the coffee. (3) McDonalds considered dropping the temperature of the coffee, but decided that it would decrease yield from coffee beans and therefore declined to drop the temperature. (4) Decision in #3 was made at the highest levels of McDonalds management. (5) The woman in question asked only for McDonalds to cover medical expenses including skin grafting. McDonalds offered the cost of the ambulance ride and emergency room visit only, $800.
But when it comes down to it, people deal with similar amounts of even hotter impure water all the time, without routinely getting third degree burns from it.
The evidence seems to contradict your findings. If you could provide evidence of someone not being burned seriously by direct contact with 190 degree coffee or impure water for 2 seconds, then I'll happily retract.
I was the parent, and I was not incorrect. At trial expert witnesses testified conclusively that brewing coffee at 185 degrees allowed a significant increase in the amount of coffee per pound of bean. Two key memos were introduced into evidence which showed that not only was this true, but that McDonalds knew about it, and weighed the costs against the injuries they knew were happening.
We (rightly) put down rebellions within our borders(cf. the Civil War). They are terrorism. It doesn't matter how political they are; actually, being especially political means you are committing treason and not just causing destruction.
The civil war was 150 years ago. Today, when there are protestors, we let them have at it, and mostly just watch until the destruction is over. If the police overstep their roles or break the law they put on trial, fined, or fired.
We execute lots of people. Why is it so important that they use cheap bullets rather than expensive injections?
We execute a relative few. In the whole country somewhere between 200 and 300 people per year. The average stay on death row is between 5 and 10 years. The average death row inmate has had between 3 and 5 lawyers. The average death row inmmate has been in court and in front of a judge at least 6 times. None of these things is true about China. It has nothing to do with the cost of the bullet. It has everything to do with the process. China hems and haws about even disclosing how many people it executes. There is no presumption of innocence. There is no right to appeal. No right to seek a pardon.
You can't joke about killing the President
You can in fact joke about killing the President. You cannot enter into a conspiracy to kill the President (or anyone). You cannot solicit people to kill the the President (or anyone). You cannot ask that another person should kill a person. If you do make statemnets amount about the President and killing him you likely will get investigated by the Secret Service to determine if you have entered into a plot to kill the President. If you haven't then nothing happens. You can say anything about Scientology. You cannot republish copyright protected documents without permission. If you do, you may be sued and/or receive a letter from an attorney
We dropped two nukes on two cities, something nobody else has done, to keep the rest of the WORLD in line; and have waged war since.
No, we dropped two nukes for the explict purpose of defeating Japan. Even after the first they did not surrender. Hence the second. We showed restrainant when others would have shown known. After World War II we had the most powerful military in the history of the world. We had the most power economy in the history of the world. Our economic engine was producing war time goods at a rate that all the nations of the world combined could not match our power. We could have dominated the world, and who would have opposed us? The peasantry of China? The ruins that once were great nations in Europe? The decimated demoralized Soviets? In 1945 we could have rolled over the world, dominating and taking anything we wanted. There were no limits to the power we could project. Europe, Africa, Asia - even China would be fall to their knees in realization of American power. Yet we did not puruse that course. We rebuilt Germany. We brought democracy to Japan. We liberated and left France. We helped our sworn enemies. We established a home land in the middle east for the Jews out of compassion and remorse for a crime we did not commit.
I love America. And I've spent my life loving America. I'll never deny our collective mistakes but I will certainly not equate them to the routine barbary that is found so often and with such foulness across the world. America has its many problems. America is flawed, and growing more so. But it will be a cold day in hell when you can equte America with communist China.
The fact remains that the Bill of Rights - even in its decaying form - offers more protection, more glorious freedom, more liberty than most people of the world dare to aspire to obtain.
You know, I hear that claptrap about the hot coffee and McDonalds business, and it's mind numbing.
There may or may not be a situation with tort problems in the US. But, just so you know some facts about the coffee case:
1. McDonalds was aware before the incident in question that it's coffee was beyond drinkabily hot.
2. McDonalds actively choose to brew it's coffee as hot as it did because you can get more coffee per pound of beans.
3. McDonalds sold its coffee at about 40 to 45 degrees hotter than most other competitors.
4. McDonalds knew of the problem: they'd be made aware of 700 cases of burining in the previous 10 years.
5. McDonalds admitted during trial that the coffee was too hot for consumption.
For more information:
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