Be careful; there's mini USB and faux mini-USB. The Motorola RAZR, for example, has a mini USB connector but plugging it into a garden variety USB cable will NOT charge the battery.
I wonder if all of the McManuals that cover all of this McStuff nullify any attempt by McDonalds to patent any of this stuff.
If memory serves, you're speaking of the Restaurant Operations Guide (I think that's what it's called.) As far as I remember, this was company confidential material - i.e., trade secret.
Okay, okay, you can't make a trade secret out of burning a burger, but the idea is that all the different things that Mickey D's does together in an arrangement is what is their 'art' consists of. The temperature of the bun toaster, the amount of carmelization on the crowns, the temperature of the grill (350 degrees for 10:1 meat, 375 degrees for quarter pounder meat.) The amount of onions and ketchup to apply and in what order. All that crap.
You would not believe how detailed they get about this at Hamburger U (the franchisee's training course in Oak Brook.) My sister in law was a GM for a restaurant and later worked as the operations manager for 3 stores.
Nope, I'm not brainwashed. However, I am minded to reply to your comments.
1) The ease of the offense: We're not talking Ctrl-X Ctrl-Y, we're talking about a man taking a digital camcorder into a movie theater, setting himself up in a good vantage point, taking pains to conceal the camera (he used a sock or something, IIRC, to hide the recording indicators) -- are all these easy? Would the average moviegoer do this? You tell me.
2) Commonality. Again, the average person knows how to copy files. The average person does not bring a camcorder into the movie theaters, the last time I checked anyway.
3) The view that the general public has. Again, I haven't polled the general public about this but even given the comments I've seen on this article on/. (duh, serves him right, etc.) I think that it's obvious that the 'general public' would consider copying a file a bit more mundane than actually bringing in equipment to record a movie.
4) The mindset that people have when they do it. I'm not even gonna touch this one. I think we have all formed a pretty good opinion of what his mindset was - and it wasn't to make an archival copy to watch later. Although I will be the first to admit that I don't know this for a fact.
So, in my eyes, your argument that assigning jail time to an action 'as socially innocuous as copying an MP3' appears to beg the question of whether setting up video recording equipment in a movie theater is equally socially innocuous. I would hasten to argue that it is not. These are two separate kinds of actions.
The question of whether it 'protects the now-defunct business model' is moot.
From TFA: he is an unemployed contractor with an aggravating injury that is preventing him from working. It's pretty obvious what he's doing.
I'm not a big fan of either the MPAA or its Canadian cousin, but I don't see this as news. It's not as if they didn't warn you ahead of time that recording a movie within a theater is illegal.
Frankly, the sentence seemed reasonable. FTW, he didn't even get jail time. He should count himself lucky.
I am assuming that it would be quite difficult raising a crop in the U.S. that is best suited for conditions in Central or South America.
Not necessarily. As far as I know, the only licensed grower in the continental US, and it's located in Wilmington, DE. A bit far north of Central America.
I have a RAZR now as well. There were extended batteries that I had -- have -- for the StarTac that rivalled the RAZR battery life, although I do have to say that the StarTac was never known for sipping electrons.
The OEM RAZR battery was a piece of shit. I now have the new one, forget the number; and I don't doubt that I can get a week on standby. Would that I could go a week without placing or receiving a call/message...
I had a StarTac on my Verizon Wireless plan -- a family share plan. It was grandfathered in and life was good.
When I wanted to give someone else a new phone with my New Every Two freebie, I'd move my StarTac to their line, activate my "new" phone on my line, then re-activate my StarTac on my line, and activate the new phone on theirs. I had high wattage output and a phone that I really liked. REALLY liked.
Then once after two years, I forgot. And the StarTac fell off. No amount of pleading with customer service let me reactivate that, even though it was off for literally two minutes.
Now I hate Verizon but unfortunately I hate the other carriers worse. Unless anyone knows of a carrier that will allow me to use my StarTac again...
I don't need Bells and Whistles. My wife wants an iPhone. I want two tin cans and a damp piece of string.
Nice segue into a phrase that sort of tightened my jaw in the DDJ article:
40-year-old Cobol applications are often extremely well debugged (although anyone who was bit by the Y2K date bug, primarily a Cobol problem, might disagree).
I disagree with that statement. COBOL was the prevalent language of the time so it was mostly manifested on COBOL compiled programs. However, I maintain that any contemporary language that was in as wide a use as COBOL at the time would have been bitten.
Yes, my wife works. And she makes considerably more than I do, and is much more highly placed. A diminution or loss of her salary would be nearly catastrophic at this point in our lives.
The roots we have are family; we're all based within an hour's drive of family and we're very close; and one of my children is an athlete and the school that he's in is highly ranked for that sport. To name but a couple of other examples.
Absent the social/familial/work roots, I have no doubt my family would support me and I am certain I could find work in a large metro area anywhere. My skillset is sufficiently unique that weathered the layoff with pretty much no break in compensation (I got my new job offer the day I went off payroll at the old company.)
I'm also taking a vehicle and converting it to a plug-in electric vehicle, so the gas expenditure will, within about 12 months, hopefully become moot.:)
"Live closer to their workplaces." "Ride bikes to work."
Of course; the holy grail of all of us who work outside the house for a living. Except that:
1) The cost of living near where we work is dramatically higher, which cuts into our net income. 2) We drive a considerable distance, which makes riding a bicycle an unrealistic option.
I worked 12 miles from my house about 7 years ago. Got laid off. Nothing else in the area. Now my commute is 60 miles. I have three children in school and roots in this town for 20 years. I guess I should just tear everything up and move to property that's 12 miles from where I currently work, even though my taxes and food and other necessities will go up, I'll make less money, and generally cause chaos in my family.
I would've liked to have been on a Robobus back in July. An idiot driver in an SUV cut our bus off, and the driver firewalled the brake to avoid hitting him. My 3 year old daughter planted her face in the fiberglass seat ahead of us, I was in a side-facing seat and almost went through the windshield and my wife got thrown into a stairwell.
My guess is that Robobus would've kept going right into the SUV. Would've served him right.
(No, he didn't stop and we didn't get the plate number. He took off into the night.)
Hey SUV driver; if you cut a bus off at 100th St. in Ocean City, MD on August 2nd, you're a bastard.
At the risk of getting the hook set in my mouth, I am going to dive in and take the big risk that you know that "Freedom of Speech" only refers to the law that Congress can't abridge it.
I'm sure you realize that it doesn't at all stop private people or entities from abridging "freedom of speech" (sometimes called 'freedom of speach') all they want?
Amen. +5 insightful (where the fuck are my mod points??)
The thing to debate - in this particular instance - is not the relative 'goodness' or 'badness' of the 16 year old rule, although I do agree with it on a personal level. The fact is that the IOC has the rule, China knew they had the rule going in, they broke the rule, they need to get slapped upside the head.
The girls did a great job and all, but you don't argue the merits of a traffic law while you're driving down the interstate - you go in front of a lawmaker/makers and debate it.
Sure, that did so well for the EV1 crowd. Except for the ones who were arrested for the heinous crime of trying to buy an EV1 instead of watching them get crushed.
Me, I have a RAV4 with a blown engine in my driveway. My timeline is about 12 months before it has an electric motor and 144V battery pack in it. I'm taking the extra time because I want to sell kits to help others to convert their vehicles to do the same.
Individual right holders value their contribution to the overall project as a significant fraction of the project value
Let me translate.
People are greedy.
Making a profit is good. Making a fair profit is better.
Of course, this article points out what the problem is without tendering a solution. No, I don't have a solution, either. Is this just human nature?
I recall reading in "A Brief History of Nearly Everything" how an anthropologist was paying a local tribe a bounty for every bone or fragment recovered from a fossil field. He soon discovered that the bounty hunters were smashing the large bones into tiny fragments in order to maximize their profit.
In this case, of course, it's an ill-thought-out bounty - whereas I don't know the answer for the IP question from the article. However, it points out the same conclusion: People will tend to maximize their profit whenever they see a way to do it that doesn't involve extra work on their part.
Slashdot Mirror
Where the hell are my mod points? +1 Insightful.
Be careful; there's mini USB and faux mini-USB. The Motorola RAZR, for example, has a mini USB connector but plugging it into a garden variety USB cable will NOT charge the battery.
Wow, that's some heavy paper. That's three ounces avoirdupois per cheque, roughly.
Yes, I have no life.
If memory serves, you're speaking of the Restaurant Operations Guide (I think that's what it's called.) As far as I remember, this was company confidential material - i.e., trade secret.
Okay, okay, you can't make a trade secret out of burning a burger, but the idea is that all the different things that Mickey D's does together in an arrangement is what is their 'art' consists of. The temperature of the bun toaster, the amount of carmelization on the crowns, the temperature of the grill (350 degrees for 10:1 meat, 375 degrees for quarter pounder meat.) The amount of onions and ketchup to apply and in what order. All that crap.
You would not believe how detailed they get about this at Hamburger U (the franchisee's training course in Oak Brook.) My sister in law was a GM for a restaurant and later worked as the operations manager for 3 stores.
preen preen
Nope, I'm not brainwashed. However, I am minded to reply to your comments.
1) The ease of the offense: We're not talking Ctrl-X Ctrl-Y, we're talking about a man taking a digital camcorder into a movie theater, setting himself up in a good vantage point, taking pains to conceal the camera (he used a sock or something, IIRC, to hide the recording indicators) -- are all these easy? Would the average moviegoer do this? You tell me.
2) Commonality. Again, the average person knows how to copy files. The average person does not bring a camcorder into the movie theaters, the last time I checked anyway.
3) The view that the general public has. Again, I haven't polled the general public about this but even given the comments I've seen on this article on /. (duh, serves him right, etc.) I think that it's obvious that the 'general public' would consider copying a file a bit more mundane than actually bringing in equipment to record a movie.
4) The mindset that people have when they do it. I'm not even gonna touch this one. I think we have all formed a pretty good opinion of what his mindset was - and it wasn't to make an archival copy to watch later. Although I will be the first to admit that I don't know this for a fact.
So, in my eyes, your argument that assigning jail time to an action 'as socially innocuous as copying an MP3' appears to beg the question of whether setting up video recording equipment in a movie theater is equally socially innocuous. I would hasten to argue that it is not. These are two separate kinds of actions.
The question of whether it 'protects the now-defunct business model' is moot.
From TFA: he is an unemployed contractor with an aggravating injury that is preventing him from working. It's pretty obvious what he's doing.
I'm not a big fan of either the MPAA or its Canadian cousin, but I don't see this as news. It's not as if they didn't warn you ahead of time that recording a movie within a theater is illegal.
Frankly, the sentence seemed reasonable. FTW, he didn't even get jail time. He should count himself lucky.
Not necessarily. As far as I know, the only licensed grower in the continental US, and it's located in Wilmington, DE. A bit far north of Central America.
I have a RAZR now as well. There were extended batteries that I had -- have -- for the StarTac that rivalled the RAZR battery life, although I do have to say that the StarTac was never known for sipping electrons.
The OEM RAZR battery was a piece of shit. I now have the new one, forget the number; and I don't doubt that I can get a week on standby. Would that I could go a week without placing or receiving a call/message...
I had a StarTac on my Verizon Wireless plan -- a family share plan. It was grandfathered in and life was good.
When I wanted to give someone else a new phone with my New Every Two freebie, I'd move my StarTac to their line, activate my "new" phone on my line, then re-activate my StarTac on my line, and activate the new phone on theirs. I had high wattage output and a phone that I really liked. REALLY liked.
Then once after two years, I forgot. And the StarTac fell off. No amount of pleading with customer service let me reactivate that, even though it was off for literally two minutes.
Now I hate Verizon but unfortunately I hate the other carriers worse. Unless anyone knows of a carrier that will allow me to use my StarTac again...
I don't need Bells and Whistles. My wife wants an iPhone. I want two tin cans and a damp piece of string.
Nice segue into a phrase that sort of tightened my jaw in the DDJ article:
I disagree with that statement. COBOL was the prevalent language of the time so it was mostly manifested on COBOL compiled programs. However, I maintain that any contemporary language that was in as wide a use as COBOL at the time would have been bitten.
Yes, my wife works. And she makes considerably more than I do, and is much more highly placed. A diminution or loss of her salary would be nearly catastrophic at this point in our lives.
The roots we have are family; we're all based within an hour's drive of family and we're very close; and one of my children is an athlete and the school that he's in is highly ranked for that sport. To name but a couple of other examples.
Absent the social/familial/work roots, I have no doubt my family would support me and I am certain I could find work in a large metro area anywhere. My skillset is sufficiently unique that weathered the layoff with pretty much no break in compensation (I got my new job offer the day I went off payroll at the old company.)
I'm also taking a vehicle and converting it to a plug-in electric vehicle, so the gas expenditure will, within about 12 months, hopefully become moot. :)
"Live closer to their workplaces."
"Ride bikes to work."
Of course; the holy grail of all of us who work outside the house for a living. Except that:
1) The cost of living near where we work is dramatically higher, which cuts into our net income.
2) We drive a considerable distance, which makes riding a bicycle an unrealistic option.
I worked 12 miles from my house about 7 years ago. Got laid off. Nothing else in the area. Now my commute is 60 miles. I have three children in school and roots in this town for 20 years. I guess I should just tear everything up and move to property that's 12 miles from where I currently work, even though my taxes and food and other necessities will go up, I'll make less money, and generally cause chaos in my family.
It's not always so simple.
I would've liked to have been on a Robobus back in July. An idiot driver in an SUV cut our bus off, and the driver firewalled the brake to avoid hitting him. My 3 year old daughter planted her face in the fiberglass seat ahead of us, I was in a side-facing seat and almost went through the windshield and my wife got thrown into a stairwell.
My guess is that Robobus would've kept going right into the SUV. Would've served him right.
(No, he didn't stop and we didn't get the plate number. He took off into the night.)
Hey SUV driver; if you cut a bus off at 100th St. in Ocean City, MD on August 2nd, you're a bastard.
For the love of God, Montressor!
At the risk of getting the hook set in my mouth, I am going to dive in and take the big risk that you know that "Freedom of Speech" only refers to the law that Congress can't abridge it.
I'm sure you realize that it doesn't at all stop private people or entities from abridging "freedom of speech" (sometimes called 'freedom of speach') all they want?
I don't think I've ever thought "aw, shit" with more feeling than when I saw that scene. Poor bastard.
Why was this modded Troll? He's at least speaking his mind here.
Yes.
Aah, he's just jealous of the GP's four digit UID.
Amen. +5 insightful (where the fuck are my mod points??)
The thing to debate - in this particular instance - is not the relative 'goodness' or 'badness' of the 16 year old rule, although I do agree with it on a personal level. The fact is that the IOC has the rule, China knew they had the rule going in, they broke the rule, they need to get slapped upside the head.
The girls did a great job and all, but you don't argue the merits of a traffic law while you're driving down the interstate - you go in front of a lawmaker/makers and debate it.
So why the fuck haven't I had mod points? This might be one of the most interesting things I've read on /. in a long time. If ever.
Yeah, so sue me. I don't get out much.
Sure, that did so well for the EV1 crowd. Except for the ones who were arrested for the heinous crime of trying to buy an EV1 instead of watching them get crushed.
Me, I have a RAV4 with a blown engine in my driveway. My timeline is about 12 months before it has an electric motor and 144V battery pack in it. I'm taking the extra time because I want to sell kits to help others to convert their vehicles to do the same.
I have heard of EVs charged a higher registration fee to at least partially compensate for the fact that they do not consume taxed petroleum fuel.
I don't have citations, but there are 50 different possible ways this is being implemented, so check with your DMV if you are curious (as am I.)
Let me translate.
People are greedy.
Making a profit is good. Making a fair profit is better.
Of course, this article points out what the problem is without tendering a solution. No, I don't have a solution, either. Is this just human nature?
I recall reading in "A Brief History of Nearly Everything" how an anthropologist was paying a local tribe a bounty for every bone or fragment recovered from a fossil field. He soon discovered that the bounty hunters were smashing the large bones into tiny fragments in order to maximize their profit.
In this case, of course, it's an ill-thought-out bounty - whereas I don't know the answer for the IP question from the article. However, it points out the same conclusion: People will tend to maximize their profit whenever they see a way to do it that doesn't involve extra work on their part.