"And if those criminals didn't have access to guns, there'd be no problem. You don't think those guns magically appeared in the criminals' christmas stockings, did you? They didn't - they were once legal guns. Take away the legal guns, and the illegal guns disappear too."
Yes, just like making marijuana illegal stopped it from showing up in the hands of criminals. (I don't want to get into a debate about if pot should or should not be illegal, I'm just going with current US law here.)
Granted, it would *help* the problem, especially (like another poster pointed out) when you realize that if a cop saw someone with a gun they'd know immediately they weren't supposed to have it. However, there would still be plenty of people around with guns. Whether the overall violent crime deaths would increase or decrease, who knows.
"anding it to the driver to hold for a moment while she added sugar/milk.
placing it between her LEGS, nestled steady in her crotch, instead of precariously balanced between her knees."
Those would have both been good options, yes.
"the floor"
The floor isn't very accessable... at least when I ride in the passenger seat, I would probably have to slide the seat back.
"the dash."
The dash? I don't know that I've ever, at least in quite some time, seen a car with a level or even flat enough dash that I'd put coffee on... I'd rank that as even more careless than what she did.
"So, you agree it was her fault."
I agree that it was partially her fault, yes. Had I been on the jury, I probably would have pushed for a 50/50 split.
"What part? To serve room-temperature coffee, lest someone act carelessly and burn themselves? Should they also not put ketchup in their burgers, lest someone dribble some on their shirt, and sue for $$$$$$$$$$$?"
How 'bout serving coffee at a reasonable temperature? The other places seem to get along quite fine with 140 degree coffee; I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "I buy all my coffee at McDonald's because it's much better there". Or at the very least, put a warning on it saying that it's significantly hotter than most everwhere else.
I addressed that! Read what I said... cupholders can be almost inaccessable in some cars (our old Honda Accord had one that you couldn't use if anything was plugged into the cigarette lighter), and in all cars are less accessable than directly in front of you. Having to twist in her seat, even just the little bit required to access the cupholders in most cars, probably would have increased her chance of spilling significantly, though it would have vastly decreased the consequences.
Was it the best decision? No. Does it absolve McDonald's of their part? Still no.
"Simply put Mrs. Liebeck was able to receive an award based on the unfamiliarity of the jurors regarding serving temperatures for coffee"
Is there reason to believe that the jurors selected for this case were less informed than the standard population? By McDonald's own testamony, the general consumer was unaware of the danger for severe burns that coffee poses, and the jurors' own experiences seem to bear this out. McDonald's was aware, and didn't pass on the warning. This, to me, certainly seems like gross negligence. Is really that difficult or costly to put a warning about severe burns on the cup or menu?
The $2.9million originally awarded is a "bit" excessive in my opinion, but McDonald's should have paid medical bills right up front and avoided this whole mess.
"The fact that other restraunts serve their coffee at lower temperatures is irrelavent in determining whether the McDonalds coffee was too hot."
But very much could have had an effect in determining whether McDonald's should have warned about their temperature. If I get in a car and start driving down the road and get in an accident because when I turn the steering wheel clockwise the car turns left and when I turn it counterclockwise the car turns right, even though making such a car is probably not illegal (if it is replace the example with a similar violation of conventions that isn't) I'd probably have a case against the manufacturer of the car, especially if the owner's manual doesn't say anything about the reversed direction. Similarily, if convention dictates that coffee is served around 140 degrees or something, then McDonald's serves it at 180 and doesn't say something like "our coffee is served extremely hot to better preserve flavor and deliver you a richer flavor" (see? it's even possible to turn the warning notice into a positive advertisement, and I spent a whole 5 seconds thinking about it) then they should be held responsible.
'I think putting a hot cup of coffee between your legs, where it can easily spill and burn you is "unintelligent", or at least "careless".'
Where else was she supposed to put it? I've been in cars where cup holders are almost inaccessable, and in no car would it have been as convienient as right in front of you. I would bet that if someone would follow you through a typical day, you'd do many things that are at least as dangerous. Furthermore, I bet tons of people *still* do the exact same thing she did without incident.
Regarding the percentage of burns, yes, it's a small percentage, and this is the biggest argument McDonalds had it my opinion. But look at the number of Firestone tires that were sold vs. how many caused accidents in the incident a couple years ago. Probably the percentage wasn't much higher. Does this mean Firestone wasn't responsible for their defective tires.
(This isn't a fair comparison at all really because you should just look at the one model and not all tires. On the other hand, if what other posters have said is true, the specific McDonalds was knowingly violating health standards and court orders by keeping the temperature that high, so that makes up for that bit. That's not listed on the site i cited, so can't confirm. I *have* seen elsewhere though that most places serve coffee significantly cooler (yes, violating the coffee association guidelines). Furthermore, whenever people are arguing this case in favor of McDonalds, it seems that they assume that it's common knowledge that coffee would be able to cause burns that severe. The testamony McDonalds presented says otherwise, that the general consumer was unaware of the danger of severe burns posed by the coffee.)
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I hit "reply" to a post by Nutria that read "Or 'I didn't know McDonalds coffee was hot and that if I drive with a cup between my legs and hit a bump in the road, that I'll get scalded'."
"More desireable to be more hot? How hot? 130 degrees? 160 degrees? 190 degrees? 220 degrees?"
In all due fairness, the national coffee association (yes, it exists) reccomends coffee be brewed at 195-205 degrees, and either served immediately or maintained at 180-185 degrees.
I do not know how standard these temperatures are in practice with other stores.
McDonalds was selling food that they knew, by testamony, was unfit for consumption. That is, even if used properly, the coffee would cause severe burns.
Furthermore, please explain exactly what it was that was stupid that she did. Careless, I can see. A no-fault accident, I could see. But her doing something stupid, the same thing that probably thousands of other people do daily, I can't see.
That's why I said there are legitimate disagreements with the ruling, but spouting off I didn't know if "I drive with a cup between my legs and hit a bump in the road, that I'll get scalded" is pure ignorance.
The Real Stella Awards (named after this case) gives a good summary of the arguments for and against the ruling.
There are many, many, many more cases where the verdict was much more clearly wrong than in this case.
Most universities have explicit policies regarding this. For instance, at PSU you have to obtain permission from the instructor to reuse work. It's not just a matter of the university saying don't plagiarise any more than law is a list of things you can't do: "No murdering, no kidnapping, no murdering." What is and is not allowed is spelled out at least somewhat explicitly.
"This is like a murderer saying they should have warned me earlier that I will kill a person and go to jail?"
It sounds more to me like a serial murder that killed 4 or 5 people over three years suing the police departments who investigated the case for not catching him after the first one thus stopping him from serving time for and additional 3 or 4 people.
God damn it... read about the case before you go and think you know enough to judge.
1. She wasn't driving. 2. The car wasn't even moving when she spilled it. 3. She only sued after McDonalds offered her $800 to reimburse her for her $20,000 legal bills. 4. She didn't even end up with the $2.9 million or whatever everyone thinks, it was reduced on appeal to $480,000, then settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Now, you still may disagree with the ruling, and that's okay, but it is *not* a clear cut case and you can't just spout out about someone being stupid enough to put the cup between her legs while driving. There are good arguments for why McDonalds shouldn't have to pay, but you brought up a whole... ZERO of them.
"away with those 30 second clips some cheap digital cameras offer"
The limiting factor there really isn't the size of the CF card, it's the write speed of the CF card and the size of the camera's buffer. For instance, I have an old Olympus camera with an 8 MB card, enough to hold ~60 secords of video. However, I can only record in 15 second clips because it takes so long to transfer that to the card that the buffer fills.
"So the guy skipped a step... you take the CF compatible drive and install it into a CF card. Not a big deal."
No, actually the difference is larger than that. The single 12 GB card is flash media; it's a solid state device. The three 4 GB microdrives are very small hard drives. There's the difference. The flash media would probably be more reliable as there are no moving parts to wear out/break, should read and write at a higher speed, and should consume less power.
It was, actually, at least according to the article I read, which may or may not be the same one linked in this story. President said there should be some kind of lock on an accidental launch, but the military brass were worried that'd delay the launch too long so they made it something that took no time to enter.
"isn't 512MB RAM without swap better than 256 of each?"
Yes, it is. Essentially always. I can think of no exceptions.
However, let's take this from a practical standpoint. The reason you'le likely to upgrade is because RAM prices are dropping and you've had your computer for a little bit. However, at the same time, memory usage of applications is growing. So while 512 MB of ram may have been enough when you had only 256 MB of ram, maybe now it isn't.
Besides, the question you're asking is a bit of a red herring. It doesn't really matter if 256/256 is slower than 512/0, because you might see an increase in performance if you switch to 512/512 or something else. Maybe not. But the leeway would then be there. Hard drive space is cheap enough--much, much, much cheaper than ram--I see little reason to not add swap in as security against the occasional time you happen to have two X servers running at once, Mozilla on one, Firefox on the other, OpenOffice on both, then you go and start compiling and oops, now the kernel has killed OpenOffice because it ran out of RAM and you lost an hour of unsaved work.;-)
AIM 5.5.3415 is at 14MB now... (this is with middle_man addin though, so if there are memory leaks it may not be AIM's fault)
Re:Swap space not needed....
on
Is Swap Necessary?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I doubt it was even that much a lack of vision. You *have* to make a limit somewhere, you can't make, for instance, addresses an infinite number of bits. Now, maybe they were too shortsighted in picking 640K (which actually doesn't make sense to me as it's not a power of 2, but I guess I don't know enough about the reasoning), that's something to pick. But eventually, yes, people would turn around and laugh at it.
Slashdot Mirror
"And if those criminals didn't have access to guns, there'd be no problem. You don't think those guns magically appeared in the criminals' christmas stockings, did you? They didn't - they were once legal guns. Take away the legal guns, and the illegal guns disappear too."
Yes, just like making marijuana illegal stopped it from showing up in the hands of criminals. (I don't want to get into a debate about if pot should or should not be illegal, I'm just going with current US law here.)
Granted, it would *help* the problem, especially (like another poster pointed out) when you realize that if a cop saw someone with a gun they'd know immediately they weren't supposed to have it. However, there would still be plenty of people around with guns. Whether the overall violent crime deaths would increase or decrease, who knows.
How the hell are replicas illegal but the actual gun isn't?
(This is a real question)
If no one ever got hurt or killed while being mugged, I'd agree with you.
"anding it to the driver to hold for a moment while she added sugar/milk.
placing it between her LEGS, nestled steady in her crotch, instead of precariously balanced between her knees."
Those would have both been good options, yes.
"the floor"
The floor isn't very accessable... at least when I ride in the passenger seat, I would probably have to slide the seat back.
"the dash."
The dash? I don't know that I've ever, at least in quite some time, seen a car with a level or even flat enough dash that I'd put coffee on... I'd rank that as even more careless than what she did.
"So, you agree it was her fault."
I agree that it was partially her fault, yes. Had I been on the jury, I probably would have pushed for a 50/50 split.
"What part? To serve room-temperature coffee, lest someone act carelessly and burn themselves? Should they also not put ketchup in their burgers, lest someone dribble some on their shirt, and sue for $$$$$$$$$$$?"
How 'bout serving coffee at a reasonable temperature? The other places seem to get along quite fine with 140 degree coffee; I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "I buy all my coffee at McDonald's because it's much better there". Or at the very least, put a warning on it saying that it's significantly hotter than most everwhere else.
"...and questioned the FCC's assertion that there's space available elsewhere on the Seattle-area radio dial"
If there's space elsewhere on the radio dial, why doesn't the other station take it?
I addressed that! Read what I said... cupholders can be almost inaccessable in some cars (our old Honda Accord had one that you couldn't use if anything was plugged into the cigarette lighter), and in all cars are less accessable than directly in front of you. Having to twist in her seat, even just the little bit required to access the cupholders in most cars, probably would have increased her chance of spilling significantly, though it would have vastly decreased the consequences.
Was it the best decision? No. Does it absolve McDonald's of their part? Still no.
"Simply put Mrs. Liebeck was able to receive an award based on the unfamiliarity of the jurors regarding serving temperatures for coffee"
Is there reason to believe that the jurors selected for this case were less informed than the standard population? By McDonald's own testamony, the general consumer was unaware of the danger for severe burns that coffee poses, and the jurors' own experiences seem to bear this out. McDonald's was aware, and didn't pass on the warning. This, to me, certainly seems like gross negligence. Is really that difficult or costly to put a warning about severe burns on the cup or menu?
The $2.9million originally awarded is a "bit" excessive in my opinion, but McDonald's should have paid medical bills right up front and avoided this whole mess.
"The fact that other restraunts serve their coffee at lower temperatures is irrelavent in determining whether the McDonalds coffee was too hot."
But very much could have had an effect in determining whether McDonald's should have warned about their temperature. If I get in a car and start driving down the road and get in an accident because when I turn the steering wheel clockwise the car turns left and when I turn it counterclockwise the car turns right, even though making such a car is probably not illegal (if it is replace the example with a similar violation of conventions that isn't) I'd probably have a case against the manufacturer of the car, especially if the owner's manual doesn't say anything about the reversed direction. Similarily, if convention dictates that coffee is served around 140 degrees or something, then McDonald's serves it at 180 and doesn't say something like "our coffee is served extremely hot to better preserve flavor and deliver you a richer flavor" (see? it's even possible to turn the warning notice into a positive advertisement, and I spent a whole 5 seconds thinking about it) then they should be held responsible.
'I think putting a hot cup of coffee between your legs, where it can easily spill and burn you is "unintelligent", or at least "careless".'
Where else was she supposed to put it? I've been in cars where cup holders are almost inaccessable, and in no car would it have been as convienient as right in front of you. I would bet that if someone would follow you through a typical day, you'd do many things that are at least as dangerous. Furthermore, I bet tons of people *still* do the exact same thing she did without incident.
Regarding the percentage of burns, yes, it's a small percentage, and this is the biggest argument McDonalds had it my opinion. But look at the number of Firestone tires that were sold vs. how many caused accidents in the incident a couple years ago. Probably the percentage wasn't much higher. Does this mean Firestone wasn't responsible for their defective tires.
(This isn't a fair comparison at all really because you should just look at the one model and not all tires. On the other hand, if what other posters have said is true, the specific McDonalds was knowingly violating health standards and court orders by keeping the temperature that high, so that makes up for that bit. That's not listed on the site i cited, so can't confirm. I *have* seen elsewhere though that most places serve coffee significantly cooler (yes, violating the coffee association guidelines). Furthermore, whenever people are arguing this case in favor of McDonalds, it seems that they assume that it's common knowledge that coffee would be able to cause burns that severe. The testamony McDonalds presented says otherwise, that the general consumer was unaware of the danger of severe burns posed by the coffee.)
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I hit "reply" to a post by Nutria that read "Or 'I didn't know McDonalds coffee was hot and that if I drive with a cup between my legs and hit a bump in the road, that I'll get scalded'."
"More desireable to be more hot? How hot? 130 degrees? 160 degrees? 190 degrees? 220 degrees?"
In all due fairness, the national coffee association (yes, it exists) reccomends coffee be brewed at 195-205 degrees, and either served immediately or maintained at 180-185 degrees.
I do not know how standard these temperatures are in practice with other stores.
McDonalds was selling food that they knew, by testamony, was unfit for consumption. That is, even if used properly, the coffee would cause severe burns.
Furthermore, please explain exactly what it was that was stupid that she did. Careless, I can see. A no-fault accident, I could see. But her doing something stupid, the same thing that probably thousands of other people do daily, I can't see.
That's why I said there are legitimate disagreements with the ruling, but spouting off I didn't know if "I drive with a cup between my legs and hit a bump in the road, that I'll get scalded" is pure ignorance.
The Real Stella Awards (named after this case) gives a good summary of the arguments for and against the ruling.
There are many, many, many more cases where the verdict was much more clearly wrong than in this case.
D'oh...
MEDICAL bills. Sorry...
Most universities have explicit policies regarding this. For instance, at PSU you have to obtain permission from the instructor to reuse work. It's not just a matter of the university saying don't plagiarise any more than law is a list of things you can't do: "No murdering, no kidnapping, no murdering." What is and is not allowed is spelled out at least somewhat explicitly.
"This is like a murderer saying they should have warned me earlier that I will kill a person and go to jail?"
It sounds more to me like a serial murder that killed 4 or 5 people over three years suing the police departments who investigated the case for not catching him after the first one thus stopping him from serving time for and additional 3 or 4 people.
God damn it... read about the case before you go and think you know enough to judge.
1. She wasn't driving.
2. The car wasn't even moving when she spilled it.
3. She only sued after McDonalds offered her $800 to reimburse her for her $20,000 legal bills.
4. She didn't even end up with the $2.9 million or whatever everyone thinks, it was reduced on appeal to $480,000, then settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Now, you still may disagree with the ruling, and that's okay, but it is *not* a clear cut case and you can't just spout out about someone being stupid enough to put the cup between her legs while driving. There are good arguments for why McDonalds shouldn't have to pay, but you brought up a whole... ZERO of them.
Another poster said that the drives still work in IDE mode.
More.
/. story about people buying them and taking them apart for the drive because it was cheaper...
There was a
"away with those 30 second clips some cheap digital cameras offer"
The limiting factor there really isn't the size of the CF card, it's the write speed of the CF card and the size of the camera's buffer. For instance, I have an old Olympus camera with an 8 MB card, enough to hold ~60 secords of video. However, I can only record in 15 second clips because it takes so long to transfer that to the card that the buffer fills.
"So the guy skipped a step... you take the CF compatible drive and install it into a CF card. Not a big deal."
No, actually the difference is larger than that. The single 12 GB card is flash media; it's a solid state device. The three 4 GB microdrives are very small hard drives. There's the difference. The flash media would probably be more reliable as there are no moving parts to wear out/break, should read and write at a higher speed, and should consume less power.
Oh, I always used 123-1234567.
No wait... no I didn't...
It was, actually, at least according to the article I read, which may or may not be the same one linked in this story. President said there should be some kind of lock on an accidental launch, but the military brass were worried that'd delay the launch too long so they made it something that took no time to enter.
"isn't 512MB RAM without swap better than 256 of each?"
;-)
Yes, it is. Essentially always. I can think of no exceptions.
However, let's take this from a practical standpoint. The reason you'le likely to upgrade is because RAM prices are dropping and you've had your computer for a little bit. However, at the same time, memory usage of applications is growing. So while 512 MB of ram may have been enough when you had only 256 MB of ram, maybe now it isn't.
Besides, the question you're asking is a bit of a red herring. It doesn't really matter if 256/256 is slower than 512/0, because you might see an increase in performance if you switch to 512/512 or something else. Maybe not. But the leeway would then be there. Hard drive space is cheap enough--much, much, much cheaper than ram--I see little reason to not add swap in as security against the occasional time you happen to have two X servers running at once, Mozilla on one, Firefox on the other, OpenOffice on both, then you go and start compiling and oops, now the kernel has killed OpenOffice because it ran out of RAM and you lost an hour of unsaved work.
Okay, I thought that seemed a bit high. Is takeoff 12-14?
AIM 5.5.3415 is at 14MB now... (this is with middle_man addin though, so if there are memory leaks it may not be AIM's fault)
I doubt it was even that much a lack of vision. You *have* to make a limit somewhere, you can't make, for instance, addresses an infinite number of bits. Now, maybe they were too shortsighted in picking 640K (which actually doesn't make sense to me as it's not a power of 2, but I guess I don't know enough about the reasoning), that's something to pick. But eventually, yes, people would turn around and laugh at it.