Tell me if I'm wrong* but wasn't the whole pizza delivery thing related to one of the Dirk Gently novels?
Or was this a reused joke I didn't pick up on?
IIRC Trillian was picked up by Zaphod at a party in Ealing that Arthur attended.
On another note, I'm sure all you Americans who haven't visited the UK yet, will be pleased to know that pizza delivery is now nearly ubiquitous. In fact, crossing the streets of London without having an incident with a pizza delivery boy on a moped gets you on the evening news on all major channels.
I may have missed the point here (tell me if I have) but as I understood it, it was possible to store and serve the coffee at a lower temperature, with it still being palletable.
The problem McD's had that it would be slightly more expensive to do so.
I'm not in favour of coffee at bathwater temperatures (yes I do like a good coffee 12-17 (twitch twitch shake) times daily).
But I don't understand the reasoning other than greed over small change that says:
The options are as follows: 1. Make coffee at 180 degrees, customer is at some risk for 5-10 minutes until the coffee is drinkable.
2. Make coffee at 140 degrees(guess), customer is at some risk for 1-2 minutes until the coffee is drinkable (save 0.15 cents per cup of coffee over option 1).
Go with option 2, we save money!
I suppose this distinction is not between the extremes of piping hot and stone cold but between too hot for the palette and too cold for it. I'm sure there is a middle ground that is safe or minimally unsafe, without the coffee being awful (I'd just like to point out that McD's coffee is awful anyway regardless of temperature, burnt coffee urgh!).
The crux I suppose, is that McD's did research into just this and decided to go with the higher temperature in the name of profits, knowing that there was additional avoidable risk to the consumer.
And at the end of the day (cliché alert) you still can't drink the coffee until it drops below a safe non-scolding temp anyway.
Have we circumnavigated the globe of "off-topicness" yet?
What was the +1 comment about, can you switch off a karma bonus on your posts or something?
But corportations refine fossil fuels into the petrol that I (and, I suspect, you) put in my car.
That's a damn lie! I have never put petrol in your car! I'll see you in court if you ever say so again.:D
As regards driving unlicensed, in the UK you have to be supervised until you pass your test, to this end you apply for a provisional license and display a learner plate on the vehicle, once you have passed the test you are entitled to a full license and to drive solo, you also get to take of the learner plate and put on a probationer plate for a while, then eventually that comes off too.
I'm not sure how it works in the rest of the world (I suspect in France for example you have to kill your first padestrian before you get a full licence, at least it seemed that way the last time I drove in Paris).
But as regards breaking the law... Sure if you don't follow the statutory rules etc etc... But are there any laws regarding the drinking of hot beverages? (Outside Singapore, which probably has since it has a law for everything else including flushing the toilet and disposing for chewing gum (where the gum is legal in the first place))
BTW The point I was making, was that comparing super-heated coffee and the four items listed is a specious argument.
FWIW I also have moral objections to cost benefit analysis where suffering is one of the costs. Saving money is not a reason for disfiguring someone for life and causing them untold pain.
Call me a right-wing fascist if you must, but I think that taking a few random McD's execs and subjecting them to the same pain/suffering/permenant physical damage, may cause their views on acceptable risk to the clientelle to change in a diametric fashion.
No, I am not advocating this action, I am merely suggestion a bit of empathy mixed with a few moral scruples would go a long way towards restricting profits in the name of product safety.
On a positive note (not) it will never happen.
But it is nice to know I have morals, scruples and the ability to empathise and make the RIGHT decisions.
"Just like the weapons, fossil fuels, car and knife industries!
(Holds head and weeps quietly)
1. Weapons are usually quite harmless to the user. There tends to be a RIGHT end and a WRONG end of a weapon, the danger is when you happen to be on the WRONG side. 2. Fossil fuels are not a corporate product (a). 3. That license thing you get before you get in a car, that's kinda meant to show you have the minimum level of skill/ability to drive a car safely. You'll note that you can't drive a car without the license thingy. 4. Knives - See 1.
I think I see your point, but possibly your facetiousness didn't help:)
Already been done for motorbikes, I'm sure it wouldn't be to much of a hardship to do for cars
I have looked for a URL, but can't find anything.
IIRC, You press a button and the bottom half of the plate folds over the top in under a second, then a minute later if the button is still not being pressed, the plate folds down again.
The idea is that the button is locked down for the duarion of race meets (Where you are not allowed to display a plate, no don't know why).
But of course some people use it to hide their number as they go though a Gatso camera when speeding, so that their plate is obsured and hence thay are not fined.
About 10 years ago, my then boss was at a client site in Oz, when he ran into some config troubles with the software he was setting up.
He called me in the UK, and asked me to photocopy the whole manual (he needed about 4 pages! (yes, my boss was an arse)) and fax it to the hotel he was staying at.
Unfortunately, the manual was A6 and the paper was A4, so even copying two pages at a time, only half the page had text on it.
As I'm lazy (to say the least) I couldn't be bothered to close the photocopier between each photocopy (I'm a software engineer, not a photcopy boy). The end result was that half of the paper was pitch black, the other half had two small pages of text, with a lovely thick black border.
So with my 100 or so pages of paper, I set off to the fax machine, dialed the number for the hotel in Oz and started feeding in the pages one by one (back in the days before page feeders:)).
About 3/4 of the way through, the line was dropped and I couldn't get another connection. So I tried calling the reception desk at the hotel and there was no answer. I got bored trying and went home for the night.
The next day, I called the hotel and got my boss on the phone to see if he needed the rest of the manual.
Apparently, the reason for the line being dropped, was that the fax machine in Oz had burst into flames (remmember all those black borders & boxes?) due to it being a thermal printer and doing lots of black bits.
And the reason that I couldn't get through to the night porter on the reception desk at the hotel?
Well that would have been because the entire hotel was evacuated at 5AM.
Oh how I laughed.
I felt that it was poetic justice at all the photocopying and faxing done, when only 4 pages where required.
Apologies to any others staing at the hotel at the time:)
I have found over the years, that this is basic human nature.
No matter how good things are today compared to yesterday/last week/last month/last year/etc, human nature dictates that people bitch about now.
It does not matter what you give people, they want more, they want it now and they want to spend less for it.
I have spent years trying to give historical perspective to others and got nowhere.
No matter what the current situation, a human being can find something to be unhappy about.
Take the middle classes here in the UK. They get upset about house prices. I try to maintain the perspective that there are people starving in the world and places where reaching the age of 5 requires lots of luck! I don't care about house proces too much. I'm happy to have food, shelter, clothing and medical attention when I need it.
As someone who has been credit black listed in the UK (for the offence of letting a mobile phone company know that someone was using my address to sucker them, i.e. I was being the good guy).
And then having to fire fight the unholy amount of shit that Experian et al caused me, over a period of months I have to wonder, what their definition of a bad guy is.
As businesses go, these guys are really (, really, really) one sided, they sell information electronically about me for sod all to all and sundry (in the blink of an eye), but when they get it wrong, I can only contact them by snail mail, they take an age to fix the problem, and the problem is expected to "percolate" to their customers as they get their monthly/quarterly/half-goddam-yearly updates. They keep no record of who has the latest version of your information and see no obligation upon themselves to supply corrections to those that have bad data.
In effect they wipe their hands of all responsibility, for propagating a lie about you!
"To my knowledge there's no way that a computer hacker could get into our systems," says Hill.
Is it just me, or is it not surprising, that an ex-cop with no technical skills, knows of no way to hack into his ex-employer's network?
If on the other hand, they had purchased some white hat experience for a week or two and the hat said the same thing, I might just think the same statement carried some weight.
I wonder, if his car has never been stolen, does he belive that his car is un-stealable?
I for one, have never cut my legs off, but I still do believe that it is possible.
Bear in mind that up to the point of the release of the original Star Wars firm, films came in one of two flavours:
1. Films aimed at adults. (I'm not talking pr0n here!) 2. Films aimed at kids.
Star Wars was one of the first films that worked on more than one intellectual level, both kids and adults could go and watch the film, without the boredom that an adult would usually experience watching a kids film.
That may not have been what made the film so big, but it certainly contibuted.
The point you make about growing up and not loving the film, just shows that, whilst the kids level of the film worked for you, the adult level did not.
I heard a rummour, that DA had missed his deadlines for release on Mostly Harmless several times. His agent and the publisher were applying the pressure, and basically he just decided that it was not worth it, consequently he killed of all the characters, with no comeback, so that he wouldn't ever be in the same position again.
Slashdot Mirror
Woot, I've found someone as obsessive as me about DA's stuff :)
Tell me if I'm wrong* but wasn't the whole pizza delivery thing related to one of the Dirk Gently novels?
:)
Or was this a reused joke I didn't pick up on?
IIRC Trillian was picked up by Zaphod at a party in Ealing that Arthur attended.
On another note, I'm sure all you Americans who haven't visited the UK yet, will be pleased to know that pizza delivery is now nearly ubiquitous. In fact, crossing the streets of London without having an incident with a pizza delivery boy on a moped gets you on the evening news on all major channels.
* Nah don't bother
1,000 to 1 against. And falling :)
Reality will be resored momentarily
No the effects where not even slightly cutting edge at the time. I believe the reason for this was "Budgetary constraints".
:)
:(
This was the way the BBC did things back then, let the quality of the plot/dialog/etc come though rather than throwing megabucks at the effects team.
Think "Dr. Who" and you have an idea of the technical levels involved
Its sad really that Hollywood seems to think a good plot gets in the way of a good film these days
You've been talking to that nice Agent Smith again haven't you... :)
Am I to take it, that you think the Earth is not flat?
Someone find some wood for the pyre, we have a heretic to burn!
Look everyone he has fire in his eyes!
Surely you use round covers, because it is impossible to drop the cover down the hole?
:D
The cover is bigger than the hole, no matter what angle you throw the cover at the hole...
Or am I missing something?
Wasn't it the distinction between miles and nautical mies or was that another cock-up?
IIRC 1 Nautical Mile = 1.1 Miles
I may have missed the point here (tell me if I have) but as I understood it, it was possible to store and serve the coffee at a lower temperature, with it still being palletable.
The problem McD's had that it would be slightly more expensive to do so.
I'm not in favour of coffee at bathwater temperatures (yes I do like a good coffee 12-17 (twitch twitch shake) times daily).
But I don't understand the reasoning other than greed over small change that says:
The options are as follows:
1. Make coffee at 180 degrees, customer is at some risk for 5-10 minutes until the coffee is drinkable.
2. Make coffee at 140 degrees(guess), customer is at some risk for 1-2 minutes until the coffee is drinkable (save 0.15 cents per cup of coffee over option 1).
Go with option 2, we save money!
I suppose this distinction is not between the extremes of piping hot and stone cold but between too hot for the palette and too cold for it. I'm sure there is a middle ground that is safe or minimally unsafe, without the coffee being awful (I'd just like to point out that McD's coffee is awful anyway regardless of temperature, burnt coffee urgh!).
The crux I suppose, is that McD's did research into just this and decided to go with the higher temperature in the name of profits, knowing that there was additional avoidable risk to the consumer.
And at the end of the day (cliché alert) you still can't drink the coffee until it drops below a safe non-scolding temp anyway.
Have we circumnavigated the globe of "off-topicness" yet?
What was the +1 comment about, can you switch off a karma bonus on your posts or something?
As regards driving unlicensed, in the UK you have to be supervised until you pass your test, to this end you apply for a provisional license and display a learner plate on the vehicle, once you have passed the test you are entitled to a full license and to drive solo, you also get to take of the learner plate and put on a probationer plate for a while, then eventually that comes off too.
I'm not sure how it works in the rest of the world (I suspect in France for example you have to kill your first padestrian before you get a full licence, at least it seemed that way the last time I drove in Paris).
But as regards breaking the law...
Sure if you don't follow the statutory rules etc etc...
But are there any laws regarding the drinking of hot beverages? (Outside Singapore, which probably has since it has a law for everything else including flushing the toilet and disposing for chewing gum (where the gum is legal in the first place))
BTW The point I was making, was that comparing super-heated coffee and the four items listed is a specious argument.
FWIW I also have moral objections to cost benefit analysis where suffering is one of the costs. Saving money is not a reason for disfiguring someone for life and causing them untold pain.
Call me a right-wing fascist if you must, but I think that taking a few random McD's execs and subjecting them to the same pain/suffering/permenant physical damage, may cause their views on acceptable risk to the clientelle to change in a diametric fashion.
No, I am not advocating this action, I am merely suggestion a bit of empathy mixed with a few moral scruples would go a long way towards restricting profits in the name of product safety.
On a positive note (not) it will never happen.
But it is nice to know I have morals, scruples and the ability to empathise and make the RIGHT decisions.
1. Weapons are usually quite harmless to the user. There tends to be a RIGHT end and a WRONG end of a weapon, the danger is when you happen to be on the WRONG side.
2. Fossil fuels are not a corporate product (a).
3. That license thing you get before you get in a car, that's kinda meant to show you have the minimum level of skill/ability to drive a car safely. You'll note that you can't drive a car without the license thingy.
4. Knives - See 1.
I think I see your point, but possibly your facetiousness didn't help
HTH, HAND.
(a) Take this up with your local resident deity
Already been done for motorbikes, I'm sure it wouldn't be to much of a hardship to do for cars
I have looked for a URL, but can't find anything.
IIRC, You press a button and the bottom half of the plate folds over the top in under a second, then a minute later if the button is still not being pressed, the plate folds down again.
The idea is that the button is locked down for the duarion of race meets (Where you are not allowed to display a plate, no don't know why).
But of course some people use it to hide their number as they go though a Gatso camera when speeding, so that their plate is obsured and hence thay are not fined.
They don't get hacked for the rest of the year :)
I think there is enough streaching in that particular image with out needing to add more!
About 10 years ago, my then boss was at a client site in Oz, when he ran into some config troubles with the software he was setting up.
He called me in the UK, and asked me to photocopy the whole manual (he needed about 4 pages! (yes, my boss was an arse)) and fax it to the hotel he was staying at.
Unfortunately, the manual was A6 and the paper was A4, so even copying two pages at a time, only half the page had text on it.
As I'm lazy (to say the least) I couldn't be bothered to close the photocopier between each photocopy (I'm a software engineer, not a photcopy boy). The end result was that half of the paper was pitch black, the other half had two small pages of text, with a lovely thick black border.
So with my 100 or so pages of paper, I set off to the fax machine, dialed the number for the hotel in Oz and started feeding in the pages one by one (back in the days before page feeders :)).
About 3/4 of the way through, the line was dropped and I couldn't get another connection. So I tried calling the reception desk at the hotel and there was no answer. I got bored trying and went home for the night.
The next day, I called the hotel and got my boss on the phone to see if he needed the rest of the manual.
Apparently, the reason for the line being dropped, was that the fax machine in Oz had burst into flames (remmember all those black borders & boxes?) due to it being a thermal printer and doing lots of black bits.
And the reason that I couldn't get through to the night porter on the reception desk at the hotel?
Well that would have been because the entire hotel was evacuated at 5AM.
Oh how I laughed.
I felt that it was poetic justice at all the photocopying and faxing done, when only 4 pages where required.
Apologies to any others staing at the hotel at the time :)
I have found over the years, that this is basic human nature.
:)
No matter how good things are today compared to yesterday/last week/last month/last year/etc, human nature dictates that people bitch about now.
It does not matter what you give people, they want more, they want it now and they want to spend less for it.
I have spent years trying to give historical perspective to others and got nowhere.
No matter what the current situation, a human being can find something to be unhappy about.
Take the middle classes here in the UK. They get upset about house prices. I try to maintain the perspective that there are people starving in the world and places where reaching the age of 5 requires lots of luck! I don't care about house proces too much. I'm happy to have food, shelter, clothing and medical attention when I need it.
Right, time to stop being morose now
anything to be of service:
:)
As seen on screen
No I'm not affiliated
As a born pedant, when asked the question "What's the time?"
:D
My typical response is:
"An abstract system that allows one to distinguish sequences of events"
I then laugh till I puke
Start Wars Enterprise Edition?
As someone who has been credit black listed in the UK (for the offence of letting a mobile phone company know that someone was using my address to sucker them, i.e. I was being the good guy).
:)
And then having to fire fight the unholy amount of shit that Experian et al caused me, over a period of months I have to wonder, what their definition of a bad guy is.
As businesses go, these guys are really (, really, really) one sided, they sell information electronically about me for sod all to all and sundry (in the blink of an eye), but when they get it wrong, I can only contact them by snail mail, they take an age to fix the problem, and the problem is expected to "percolate" to their customers as they get their monthly/quarterly/half-goddam-yearly updates. They keep no record of who has the latest version of your information and see no obligation upon themselves to supply corrections to those that have bad data.
In effect they wipe their hands of all responsibility, for propagating a lie about you!
Sorry, rant over
Does my anger come through here?
Is it just me, or is it not surprising, that an ex-cop with no technical skills, knows of no way to hack into his ex-employer's network?
If on the other hand, they had purchased some white hat experience for a week or two and the hat said the same thing, I might just think the same statement carried some weight.
I wonder, if his car has never been stolen, does he belive that his car is un-stealable?
I for one, have never cut my legs off, but I still do believe that it is possible.
Bear in mind that up to the point of the release of the original Star Wars firm, films came in one of two flavours:
1. Films aimed at adults. (I'm not talking pr0n here!)
2. Films aimed at kids.
Star Wars was one of the first films that worked on more than one intellectual level, both kids and adults could go and watch the film, without the boredom that an adult would usually experience watching a kids film.
That may not have been what made the film so big, but it certainly contibuted.
The point you make about growing up and not loving the film, just shows that, whilst the kids level of the film worked for you, the adult level did not.
I know this is true, my dad told me so!
Why should he make it bigger? Didn't lawyers invent "small-print"? A certain phrase about heat-kitchens-out springs to mind :)
I heard a rummour, that DA had missed his deadlines for release on Mostly Harmless several times. His agent and the publisher were applying the pressure, and basically he just decided that it was not worth it, consequently he killed of all the characters, with no comeback, so that he wouldn't ever be in the same position again.
Just goes to show how right he was!