To the vegetable lasagna crowd and the anti-corp crowd, McDonald's is the big Satan. The company has a lot of watchdogs actively looking to expose something like this. Taco Bell apparently fell under the radar for a while.
Actually, I'm inclined to agree with you on this and for the same reasons.
As much as I am part of the vegetable lasagna crowd, McD's is heavily scrutinized and if they were doing too much ickyness with their meat, it would have been widely trumpeted by now.
Let's argue it out over a Chic-Fil-A.
Wow, I had to look this one up... never heard of it. A fast food chain promoting Christian values, how quaint.
Why don't people want to believe that McDonald's burgers are all beef?
Partly cynicism, but partly because McDonald's meat has been so heavily mangled, it just doesn't seem like meat.
And, once you've found articles like this which gives us the definition:
The definition of "meat" was amended in December 1994 to include any "meat" product that is produced by advanced meat/bone separation machinery. This meat is comparable in appearance, texture, and composition to meat trimmings and similar meat products derived by hand. This machinery separates meat from bone by scraping, shaving, or pressing the meat from the bone without breaking or grinding the bone. Product produced by advanced meat recovery (AMR) machinery can be labeled using terms associated with hand-deboned product (e.g., "pork trimmings" and "ground pork").
The AMR machinery cannot grind, crush, or pulverize bones to remove edible meat tissue, and bones must emerge essentially intact. The meat produced in this manner can contain no more than 150 milligrams (mg) of calcium per 100 grams product (within a tolerance of 30 mg. of calcium). Products that exceed the calcium content limit must be labeled "mechanically separated pork" in the ingredients statement.
As served, McDonald's isn't anywhere near what you'd like to think is ground beef... it's a slurry of whatever meat they can get off the bones without crushing them; ground up in a paste, spiced, probably has some filler and binders added, and then smooshed back together as a "beef patty", frozen, and then fried. It's nothing like a burger you'd make yourself if you bought ground round/ground chuck from your grocery store.
I believe it's "beef" as defined by a statute someplace, but I don't believe it's been in the sense that a butcher would give it to me -- which is to take a slab of flesh and run it through a grinder, and give me back only the flesh that went in.
This is essentially what is at play here with Taco Bell -- by the time you are being served that, by some definitions, they can't really even call it a "meat" taco -- it's a mechanically processed slurry which started out with cow pieces, but is mostly non-cow components. But, really, only on third of the "hamburger" filling in your taco was ever actually "meat".
In the US, it was from a court case that basically said people had the right to buy a computer without having to pay for a Microsoft OS they're never going to use.
Microsoft had argued that anybody buying it without an OS was going to pirate Windows anyway, so they should get paid.
Basically, it was found to be uncompetitive behavior and harmful to the consumer as it was nearly impossible to NOT end up paying Microsoft around $100 on every new computer sold.
I know death to MS...etc..Now where can I buy an iphone without IOS preinstalled?
Except, Microsoft doesn't sell branded PCs, and as part of the anti-trust settlement they made, they agreed to stop doing that.
You can't buy a Windows 7 phone without an OS on it either -- it's a completely specious argument in this case.
I'm a hobby meteorologist. I don't believe the crap they tell on TV, so I do my own weather forecast. Is that forbidden now?
I suspect it depends on the air-space.
For example, anywhere near a major airport or a military base, I bet you can't do it. Same goes for a large city like New York where the skies are pretty crowded and you could pose a danger.
I'm pretty sure you can't just go popping off "weather balloons" or anything else that flies without some paperwork and the like unless you're in an area cleared for such things.
The FAA doesn't like things that potentially get in the way of other aircraft.
While parts of the government may get violently angry about such a thing, the gov as a whole probably wouldn't be violently angry.
I think if you set off an EMP in a major city, the citizenry would reach a level of anger and fear that would more or less give the government carte-blanche to put you into a deep, dark hole.
Do this in someplace like New York, and you're going to see some long-lasting, wide-spread anger over this. I suspect such a thing would likely cost lives if you were near a hospital or something critical.
You think frying the electronics of a major city wouldn't do this? I can't see how that would be classified as anything but terrorism. I think you grossly misunderstand just how much of a reaction this would evoke.
it's amazing how good government forensics can get when you've actually annoyed the government.
"Annoyed"? You set off an EMP that fries a couple of blocks or more worth of everything electronic, and you're gonna find yourself classed as an extremely important terrorism target.
Something like that will launch a full-court press of lettered agencies -- I think that's the kind of thing that would send them all ape-shit.
That's like Bond-villain kind of stuff if you do it in a major city.
This feature got very stale very fast, being too overused already after not even two years of existence.
Maybe not in its current incarnation, but 3D for movies been around for decades. I've seen Vincent Price films from the 50s that were in 3D. It has always been a gimmick, and it has always faded back into the "don't care" category. I will never pay to see another 3D film again -- the eye strain isn't worth it.
And, I tend to agree about Matrix 4 and 5... what's left to cover? They were inside of another Matrix and haven't really gotten anywhere yet? Or they're all back at the rave and someone slips Neo a roofie?
Then they reset back to the first position any time new evidence comes out. It seems to me to be mostly hiding their heads in the sand and denying the possibility that humans could affect the environment in any way, all of human history to the contrary.
It's not really about them not believing it... it's about making damned sure that the rest of the world doesn't believe it or is too mired in skepticism to do anything about it.
Do you think Big Tobacco really believed that smoking was healthy? And if not healthy, not harmful... well, maybe just a little harmful. OK, fine, it's outright dangerous. I bet the people who sold DDT or various other things have wanted it to get out that their product was dangerous.
They may actually believe in climate change -- deep down, or at least allow themselves a bit of double-think to get by. But, they need to invest money in making sure their interests are protected. Possibly at the expense of everyone else's interests.
Since when did Google become the keepers of the HTML spec?
I think a randomly changing feature-set sounds like a bad idea. HTML is supposed to be a standard, not something which just changes without any real control behind that.
This is like agile programming run amok -- let's expect the customer to have to upgrade to the latest nightly build. That'll work!
but I highly doubt you'd have any trouble ordering a small coffee
In fairness, it was just the once, but it was confusing as hell. The first time I asked for that she looked at me like I was crazy and repeated back the sizes ("we don't have small") and several other coffee-related adjectives that made no sense to me. I don't know if she was new, or pulling my leg, or what... but she really didn't seem to know what I was asking for.
I also once ordered an iced coffee (not some coffee smoothie, just coffee poured over ice)... it took a full 3 minutes to explain to the girl that, yes, I did in fact mean for her to fill a large cup with ice, and then pour in coffee. I miss places that just kept a pitcher of coffee in the fridge for people like me.
Why do you feel like you need to find where it is on the menu before ordering?
Because, like I said, I check the menu to try to confirm that there is something which is called coffee -- from what I've seen on the menu, there isn't. They look at you like you're a tool if you don't use the right secret code.
Next time I might just ignore the signage and try what you say and just order a small coffee. It has failed in the past.
I'm just playing with some stereotypes (as you have noted). This was all supposed to be in good fun, yet you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about snotty Android users.
*laugh* No, but you did leave them out... I just figured in the interests of fairness they needed a some flavor text for being pretentious as well.
After all, I figure anyone paying for their Starbucks coffee with an app on their smart phone has got to fall into that category.;-)
If there were achievements for Blackberry users, they would probably get a serious, corporate-sounding statement along the lines of "You are now amongst those at the forefront of the digital payment revolution" as opposed to the auto-ironic stuff fit for iPhone-wielding hipsters.
Wow, such wonderful stereotypes in your world... I see corporate people with iPhones and hipsters with Blackberry's. In fact, increasingly, I'm seeing iPhones in the hands of stodgy looking business men who are in their full suit for a 7am breakfast meeting. I've also seen emo kids with Blackberries.
So, what's Android, then? Yo, Dawg, I hear you like to be pretentious, so I installed some pretentious so you can be pretentious while you're being pretentious. I also changed all of your buttons, and installed an Apache server so you can let your friends surf your pretentious at the same time. When PROLOG finished compiling, it'll be wack, 'yo.
The achievement for Blackberry users would be phrased differently, with more of an EVE Online flavor, as opposed to the tongue-in-cheek WoW way of doing it.
Wow, I know what most of those words are, but I have no idea WTF you're talking about.
I think the universal translator must be offline again.;-)
In addition to starbucks-speak, they speak english at starbucks too, so just order a small coffee, and you will get exactly what you mean
I actually tried that once, and I got back a stream of adjectives which may have been a question, so I just nodded and said yes.:-P
The problem, is even if the servers can serve you coffee in English (which I'm sure they can) you still have to try to decipher the menu -- I can never find anything that says "small coffee", so I'm staring in bewilderment at this thing trying to see WTF I need to be ordering.
Generally, I just save myself the embarrassment (and the cost) and drink the free coffee in the office. I actually find it tastes better than Starbucks anyway.:-P
Well, I don't think anybody who can't afford to upgrade their phone could actually afford to buy a coffee at Starbucks.;-)
Those people just scavenge empty cups from the garbage and pour the coffee from their thermos into it. You know, like putting rims on your rusted out car.
TFS also mentions Blackberry now and Android coming soon, so fear not!
and hope no one has a camera phone pointed in your direction at the time?
What the hell would that have to do with anything?
You phone scans the barcode, and then presumably does some form of exchange with the server, which then causes the register to beep and indicate you've paid. If I take a picture while it's decrypting something, it's not like I can get the cipher key from that.
I'm betting the bar code for the same beverage looks the same over and over.
My Canadian fiends rave at the quality of Tim Horton's coffee, but I don't get it.
And a lot of Canadians don't get Starbucks, though it's definitely increasing in popularity. To me, they burned it when they roasted it, and then brewed it at too high of a temperature to finish ruining it. It tastes like bad diner coffee that has been sitting on the warmer for 3 hours.
Tim's tastes more like what the coffee that comes out of my coffee maker tastes like, which is what I want, not some designer beverage.
And, the few times I have no option but Starbucks... I find myself in line trying to figure out how the fsck to order a coffee... just WTF is a tall venti grande skinny double half-caf machiatto with sea foam and acai berries and cinamon??
I want a coffee with cream and sugar, why can't I find that? WTF is wrong with "small, medium, and large?" And why is this coffee five bucks?
This'll never work. How are people going to annoyingly talk on their phones while ordering?
With a blue tooth earpiece, and multi-tasking on the phone?
Give it time, and they'll just text their order, pay, and collect their beverage all while talking on their phone and checking that important email that just arrived.
Of course, I'm glad to see an increasing number of stores with signs up that say "we will be happy to serve you when you are done your phone conversation"... there's nothing worse than seeing the guy in front of you standing there on a conversation too busy to actually place his order or interact with the cashier.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I'm inclined to agree with you on this and for the same reasons.
As much as I am part of the vegetable lasagna crowd, McD's is heavily scrutinized and if they were doing too much ickyness with their meat, it would have been widely trumpeted by now.
Wow, I had to look this one up ... never heard of it. A fast food chain promoting Christian values, how quaint.
Partly cynicism, but partly because McDonald's meat has been so heavily mangled, it just doesn't seem like meat.
And, once you've found articles like this which gives us the definition:
As served, McDonald's isn't anywhere near what you'd like to think is ground beef ... it's a slurry of whatever meat they can get off the bones without crushing them; ground up in a paste, spiced, probably has some filler and binders added, and then smooshed back together as a "beef patty", frozen, and then fried. It's nothing like a burger you'd make yourself if you bought ground round/ground chuck from your grocery store.
I believe it's "beef" as defined by a statute someplace, but I don't believe it's been in the sense that a butcher would give it to me -- which is to take a slab of flesh and run it through a grinder, and give me back only the flesh that went in.
This is essentially what is at play here with Taco Bell -- by the time you are being served that, by some definitions, they can't really even call it a "meat" taco -- it's a mechanically processed slurry which started out with cow pieces, but is mostly non-cow components. But, really, only on third of the "hamburger" filling in your taco was ever actually "meat".
In the US, it was from a court case that basically said people had the right to buy a computer without having to pay for a Microsoft OS they're never going to use.
Microsoft had argued that anybody buying it without an OS was going to pirate Windows anyway, so they should get paid.
Basically, it was found to be uncompetitive behavior and harmful to the consumer as it was nearly impossible to NOT end up paying Microsoft around $100 on every new computer sold.
Except, Microsoft doesn't sell branded PCs, and as part of the anti-trust settlement they made, they agreed to stop doing that.
You can't buy a Windows 7 phone without an OS on it either -- it's a completely specious argument in this case.
LOL ... wow, did I ever ... that was completely unintentional, my fingers just typed that on their own apparently.
I did, of course, mean McDonald's. :-P
Still, my point stands ... only 36% "meat"? The mind reels.
Is this like the mythical "100% all beef product" that Microsoft makes their hamburgers from.
What, exactly, is "taco meat filling"? 36% actual meat is kinda gross sounding.
Or, ignore it and use it as one more piece of data about you.
They're more likely to disregard it than to fight it.
I suspect it depends on the air-space.
For example, anywhere near a major airport or a military base, I bet you can't do it. Same goes for a large city like New York where the skies are pretty crowded and you could pose a danger.
I'm pretty sure you can't just go popping off "weather balloons" or anything else that flies without some paperwork and the like unless you're in an area cleared for such things.
The FAA doesn't like things that potentially get in the way of other aircraft.
Possibly ... it just seemed somewhat you might have been downplaying the magnitude of the response such a thing would garner.
Not yet, I hope. Though it gets worse every year. ;-)
Cheers
I think if you set off an EMP in a major city, the citizenry would reach a level of anger and fear that would more or less give the government carte-blanche to put you into a deep, dark hole.
Do this in someplace like New York, and you're going to see some long-lasting, wide-spread anger over this. I suspect such a thing would likely cost lives if you were near a hospital or something critical.
You think frying the electronics of a major city wouldn't do this? I can't see how that would be classified as anything but terrorism. I think you grossly misunderstand just how much of a reaction this would evoke.
"Annoyed"? You set off an EMP that fries a couple of blocks or more worth of everything electronic, and you're gonna find yourself classed as an extremely important terrorism target.
Something like that will launch a full-court press of lettered agencies -- I think that's the kind of thing that would send them all ape-shit.
That's like Bond-villain kind of stuff if you do it in a major city.
Maybe not in its current incarnation, but 3D for movies been around for decades. I've seen Vincent Price films from the 50s that were in 3D. It has always been a gimmick, and it has always faded back into the "don't care" category. I will never pay to see another 3D film again -- the eye strain isn't worth it.
And, I tend to agree about Matrix 4 and 5 ... what's left to cover? They were inside of another Matrix and haven't really gotten anywhere yet? Or they're all back at the rave and someone slips Neo a roofie?
It's not really about them not believing it ... it's about making damned sure that the rest of the world doesn't believe it or is too mired in skepticism to do anything about it.
Do you think Big Tobacco really believed that smoking was healthy? And if not healthy, not harmful ... well, maybe just a little harmful. OK, fine, it's outright dangerous. I bet the people who sold DDT or various other things have wanted it to get out that their product was dangerous.
They may actually believe in climate change -- deep down, or at least allow themselves a bit of double-think to get by. But, they need to invest money in making sure their interests are protected. Possibly at the expense of everyone else's interests.
My apologies, sir. Upon re-reading the description of this, the bar code is on the phone.
You raise a valid point, please disregard my previous post. I am apparently having a stupid day. :-P
Since when did Google become the keepers of the HTML spec?
I think a randomly changing feature-set sounds like a bad idea. HTML is supposed to be a standard, not something which just changes without any real control behind that.
This is like agile programming run amok -- let's expect the customer to have to upgrade to the latest nightly build. That'll work!
In fairness, it was just the once, but it was confusing as hell. The first time I asked for that she looked at me like I was crazy and repeated back the sizes ("we don't have small") and several other coffee-related adjectives that made no sense to me. I don't know if she was new, or pulling my leg, or what ... but she really didn't seem to know what I was asking for.
I also once ordered an iced coffee (not some coffee smoothie, just coffee poured over ice) ... it took a full 3 minutes to explain to the girl that, yes, I did in fact mean for her to fill a large cup with ice, and then pour in coffee. I miss places that just kept a pitcher of coffee in the fridge for people like me.
Because, like I said, I check the menu to try to confirm that there is something which is called coffee -- from what I've seen on the menu, there isn't. They look at you like you're a tool if you don't use the right secret code.
Next time I might just ignore the signage and try what you say and just order a small coffee. It has failed in the past.
*laugh* No, but you did leave them out ... I just figured in the interests of fairness they needed a some flavor text for being pretentious as well.
After all, I figure anyone paying for their Starbucks coffee with an app on their smart phone has got to fall into that category. ;-)
Wow, such wonderful stereotypes in your world ... I see corporate people with iPhones and hipsters with Blackberry's. In fact, increasingly, I'm seeing iPhones in the hands of stodgy looking business men who are in their full suit for a 7am breakfast meeting. I've also seen emo kids with Blackberries.
So, what's Android, then? Yo, Dawg, I hear you like to be pretentious, so I installed some pretentious so you can be pretentious while you're being pretentious. I also changed all of your buttons, and installed an Apache server so you can let your friends surf your pretentious at the same time. When PROLOG finished compiling, it'll be wack, 'yo.
Actually, Visa has the effect of making everybody pay more.
Since the merchants can't directly pass on the Visa costs, they embed it in the cost everyone else, including those who pay cash.
Visa's merchant rules basically mean everybody pays a couple of percentage points more for everything.
Wow, I know what most of those words are, but I have no idea WTF you're talking about.
I think the universal translator must be offline again. ;-)
I actually tried that once, and I got back a stream of adjectives which may have been a question, so I just nodded and said yes. :-P
The problem, is even if the servers can serve you coffee in English (which I'm sure they can) you still have to try to decipher the menu -- I can never find anything that says "small coffee", so I'm staring in bewilderment at this thing trying to see WTF I need to be ordering.
Generally, I just save myself the embarrassment (and the cost) and drink the free coffee in the office. I actually find it tastes better than Starbucks anyway. :-P
Well, I don't think anybody who can't afford to upgrade their phone could actually afford to buy a coffee at Starbucks. ;-)
Those people just scavenge empty cups from the garbage and pour the coffee from their thermos into it. You know, like putting rims on your rusted out car.
TFS also mentions Blackberry now and Android coming soon, so fear not!
This has bar codes ... and smart phones.
A bank card is just passee -- the chav's and WAGs will never go for it. ;-)
What the hell would that have to do with anything?
You phone scans the barcode, and then presumably does some form of exchange with the server, which then causes the register to beep and indicate you've paid. If I take a picture while it's decrypting something, it's not like I can get the cipher key from that.
I'm betting the bar code for the same beverage looks the same over and over.
And a lot of Canadians don't get Starbucks, though it's definitely increasing in popularity. To me, they burned it when they roasted it, and then brewed it at too high of a temperature to finish ruining it. It tastes like bad diner coffee that has been sitting on the warmer for 3 hours.
Tim's tastes more like what the coffee that comes out of my coffee maker tastes like, which is what I want, not some designer beverage.
And, the few times I have no option but Starbucks ... I find myself in line trying to figure out how the fsck to order a coffee ... just WTF is a tall venti grande skinny double half-caf machiatto with sea foam and acai berries and cinamon??
I want a coffee with cream and sugar, why can't I find that? WTF is wrong with "small, medium, and large?" And why is this coffee five bucks?
With a blue tooth earpiece, and multi-tasking on the phone?
Give it time, and they'll just text their order, pay, and collect their beverage all while talking on their phone and checking that important email that just arrived.
Of course, I'm glad to see an increasing number of stores with signs up that say "we will be happy to serve you when you are done your phone conversation" ... there's nothing worse than seeing the guy in front of you standing there on a conversation too busy to actually place his order or interact with the cashier.