You boil water for pasta and accidentally spill it off all over you. Whom do you sue? The pasta company who requires boiling water to cook the pasta, Mother Nature for having water boil at 100 degres Celsius or...your own stupidity?
Your own stupidity. Reason being that (a) Pasta *normally* requires boiling water to cook anyway, and (b) the person who would have heated the water to boiling point would have been you (or someone you know) and not the company, so you can't claim you didn't know it was boiling hot.
Although (B) would be the main factor in your example, (A) has more relevance to the subject under discussion (McDonalds' extra-hot coffee).
More specifically; coffee can *reasonably* be expected to be hot on serving- possibly a bit *too* hot to drink for some people. But 'hot' is a relative term. The temperature McDonalds served their coffee at was far higher than anyone should reasonably expect 'hot' coffee to be.
Arguably, the woman was careless. Had the coffee been the expected temperature, she might still have been burned (but nowhere near as badly); in that situation, the outcome of the court case should have been in McDonalds' favor. This was not what had happened, however.
Cue lame example; if I buy a portable radio, and ignore the advice to install the AA Duracells the correct way round, would it be acceptable if the radio overheated, threw out blobs of molten plastic and metal, and burned the house down, if the manufacturer knew about this problem? After all, they printed clear advice not to install the batteries backwards.
If someone wants to take a risk, they should accept the consequences; but in the absence of further advice, it is reasonable to assume limits to the consequences of these actions.
These assumptions should be based on social norms and/or past experience.
If McDonalds had put half-inch high warnings on fluorescent labels on every cup of coffee and had the woman sign a waver saying "This coffee is way more hot than normal and will cause severe burns if you spill it on yourself", she would have had fair warning. Alternately, if it had been the norm (for some reason) to serve coffee at stupidly high temperatures, then her case would have been severely weakened (at best).
However, neither of these situations apply in the McDonalds coffee lawsuit.
I don't like lawsuit culture. I don't have any unreasonable dislike for McDonalds (I eat there on average 2-3 times per month). But they were absolutely right to get slapped down in that case.
I clicked a few random things of a p2p network to download, a few years ago.
Had to burn my HD in a holy, cleansing fire on consecrated ground with the blessing of the Goddess. You can't simply delete EVIL.
Here's an evil idea:
Goatse. The Movie.
Find out if there is film of the goatse guy (or someone who could plausibly be the same person) doing his... uh, tricks. Splice them together into a short "movie", keep various copies under inappropriate names (e.g. "Britney Spears My Prerogative video.mpg", "Star Wars episode iii sneak peak.avi").
Then put them up for sharing on your favourite P2P network!
The Regents of the University of California are responsible for permitting Microsoft's use of the BSD networking stack in some older versions of Windows. Does this mean you've lost respect for UC Berkeley?
Very cute... I assume you refer to the BSD licensing.
If that *had been* what I'd meant, then ultimately Byrne would be responsible in any case, since he freely chose to sign a contract that (directly or possibly very indirectly) resulted in Microsoft getting use of his music.
Following your reasoning, we can blame RMS and friends for *anything* done with GNU and other GPLed code.
But we both know that's not what I meant. What I clearly meant was; did Byrne give some degree of co-operation with Microsoft's use of his track in Windows XP?
If he was the one responsible for allowing Microsoft to use his work (I wouldn't automatically assume this), then DRM or not, I wouldn't have that much respect for the guy.
The inclusion of a David Byrne track in this "freely distributable" compilation might seem more interesting when you bear in mind that a song of his ("Like Humans Do") was one of the sample tracks included with..... Windows XP.
So are the forces are good and evil in a battle for his immortal soul... or is he just someone who likes to promote his music as much as possible?
Made it up myself, you see it in the actions of a lot of corporations.
I believe that; although it sounds like one of those things that you should have heard of before.
Speaking personally, I didn't know whether to be pissed off or pleased when I found out that something I'd made up had already been said by Voltaire ("A witty saying proves nothing").
Anyway, to play devil's advocate, I should point out that Japan is (was?) in recession since the early '90s (don't know if it still is); but I still think your point is good.
In the UK, I believe that WAP-enabled phones failed when they came out because they appeared to benefit the people selling them more than the intended buyers (Mmm... pay-per-minute dial-up at mobile rates, deliberately restricted access to WAP sites, and no killer apps offered by the phone companies to offset the phones' inherent crapness- i.e. poor screens, clunky interfaces and no access to the 'real' web; compare this to the DoCoMo phones in Japan around the same time. Failure v Success; enough said. Even though they weren't much more expensive than non-WAP phones, I didn't consider the facility to be worth even UKP 30.00).
Virgin records were sold off to EMI many years ago (early '90s, IIRC).
The Virgin Megastores (or the ones in the UK at least) are a joint operation with other investors.
It obviously makes sense to some people to use the Virgin name; thing is, I'm not sure what it stands for (or rather, what it's *meant* to stand for, since most brand names are about image rather than substance, and are often farmed out anyway).
Does 'Virgin' have an image beyond Richard Branson? The only one they have in my book is a pseudo-company that wants to plaster their name on as many things as possible, and make a big deal about it.
I know the answer, and the answer is fixed functionality, ala something like WebTV.
Good idea; but unless it's very cheap, it's going to be a hard sell against a dirt-cheap PC that's loaded to the gills with gimmicky consumer-crap and a "fast" processor (and insufficient memory, because as we all know, it's better to spend lots of money on that extra 0.1GHz you can impress your friends with than a few pounds/dollars/whatever ensuring it has enough memory to work effectively).
Yeah; you can bet the salesman will entice those people with tales of what they can do with their computer; although they'll never actually bother doing most of it.
In this situation, your "safe" non-expandable box sounds like a poor sell; sad, but true.
If this sort of device takes off, it'll probably be in the market covered by the Amstrad Em@iler; that device is very cheap, because it is subsidised by the compulsory use of the manufacturer's own ISP. And even if such a device would be poor value compared to the PC in the long-run, we all know that a large number of people simply buy on the basis of the initial price tag.
The sort of people that buy the Lexmark printers because they are (marginally) the cheapest, then balk at the price of the replacement carts, so they buy another Lexmark because it comes with free carts anyway(!!!).
Anyway- consider this; the more the replacement ink is overpriced, the more the (perceived) value of the free carts that come with the printer (e.g. if a black and colour cart would together cost $200, Lexmark could claim that you got $200 worth of ink free with the printer). I *have* heard this logic used by someone replacing their Lexmark with another Lexmark, rather than buy new ink.
Canon can't boast such "great" offers, because their ink isn't sold in overpriced, chipped carts. So I must be a mug for buying a Canon (cough).
Heading off-topic... sorry. But the point is that consumers are generally not logical in the sense that you (and I) would like them to be; they will buy on the perceived value of "features" and "gimmicks" far above everything else.
Funny thing, I read that article and a popup for spyware comes up, defying even Firefox's popup blocker. Ironically, the popup said that the computer has spyware installed.
That happened to me too. Ironically, I was running Mozilla (not Firefox, guess I should upgrade...) under Linux, and a dialog popped up informing me I had spyware.
Strange thing is, the pop-up looked *just like* a Windows XP dialog box.
So, I can only come to one conclusion; somehow my Linux box has been infected with the extremely nasty "Windows XP" spyware program. I heard that this one actually sends back lots of unsolicited information to the writers, Microsoft. Is this true?
Question is; what are your aunts and uncles using the computer for? Is it just a glorified email and browsing appliance?
Let me put this another way; could you install Linux on their machines, and have them still do the stuff they wanted to?
Ensure you have decent security set up, use Firefox, and leave them to it.
Sure, they'll get pissed off when they try downloading Windows goodies that don't work, but... you have to balance this against a machine loaded with spyware.
Yeah, I *know* Linux wouldn't be half as safe if it was as popular as Windows; but currently, it's not, and you can cross that bridge when you come to it.
Somebody is reading this and has "hypocrit" ready to go in their paste buffer. And while I deserve the criticism, that individual would be missing the point. Spamming is wrong.
Nice one. You've pre-empted the obvious replies and retained control of the situation by making the criticism yourself; thus retaining control of what was actually said (relatively mild), and what followed.
You repent, and admit that you are a sinner, and will sin again; but you're not really repenting. Why?- like a preacher caught in a compromising position, you use the opportunity to emphasise your human nature, but because you "recognize it as wrong" "unlike most spammers", you still seek to place yourself above the rest of those scum.
So, as I said; good work defusing the criticism and turning it to your advantage.
If the world leaders so desired, all life on the plant could be wiped out by next weekend.
I very much doubt that. In fact, I very much doubt they could eradicate very single human being by that time, although they could certainly set the events in motion that would lead to human extinction.
[Grandparent Message]: "Morality" has always been an important aspect of Chinese culture
[Parent Message]: Wow, what a fat lot you know about China and the CCP. I think what you say is mostly bullshit. Morality is actually important to most Chinese
Can I point out the bleeding obvious, which is that this is what he actually said?
Anyway, in response to the rest of your message: I didn't see Autopr0n extol the virtues of Christianity in his post.
In addition, I should point out that most fanatical (relatively speaking) Christians would support the censorship and supression of porn (whilst probably jerking off to it in private); you seem to have made the mistake of assuming Autopr0n shared the views of all fellow Americans, and (to some extent) that all Americans shared his views.
(*) IIRC Autopr0n *seemed* to be American, but I wouldn't bet my life on this.
it took her longer to decide not to go out with me than to process the mail...
Wow! So you said...
"Hey, uh, groovy chick. What say we, uh... check out Star Wars Episode II and maybe we can... have sex?"
And in the split second it took her to reply
"Stay away from me, you Slashdot reading geek-fiend!"
and run out of the building, she was able to prepare the mailing?
I am impressed.
On a side-note, the grandparent mentions delivering letters by hand. Well, I sometimes get charity junk-mail (through my front door) that says stuff like
"Delivered by hand to save money".
Really? That's impressive. My mail is normally delivered by hi-tech robots with penis-shaped tentacles that use suction to hold the letters in place while they deliver them.
Absolutely true; I get nostalgic for the days when the postman used to put them through my letterbox using his hands, but the Post Office prefer to waste money with the latest "Hentai-anime Delivery Bots". Disgraceful.
(you can get fortune! just tell the judge how many laptops he has;) )
Judge smells a rat and awards wife all those "expensive" laptops as her part of the settlement; scheming wife gets a pile of useless junk, guy gets to keep the stuff that is actually worth something.
Have an old black and white television? Well, just use it to watch black and white movies, you won't notice the difference!
If you thought that was funny, you'll probably enjoy
Viz's "Top Tips". ('Top Tips' appears in the menu bar).
Typical example: "BUSY executives. Don't buy a Dachshund. Their amusing sausage shape means they take 50% longer to stroke than other dogs, and time is money."
The thing about countries like this is they can build ONE (1) awesome facility as good as anything anywhere, if they like.
One site; one target.
If I was the United States, I wouldn't bomb the place; there would be no quicker way to start a war.
However, what if there was an unfortunate outbreak of a particularly nasty disease at the facility? Possibly one where, once it had been spotted, it was already too late, and spread throughout the area...?
Who did this? Could they prove it was deliberate? Not on the basis of one outbreak.
Yes; this would be a very unpleasant means of dealing with the problem. Yes; the people working there would not have been given a fair choice. Unfortunately, given the danger that North Korea poses to the world, and the fact that these people would be working to support such a regime, this pales into insignificance.
Let's not delude ourselves; the only reason North Korea hasn't been invaded before now is (a) Because they have nukes, (b) They pose an immediate threat to the South, and (c) We do *not* want to get into a war with China.
Put simply, this is why we could not bomb the facility; however, a centralised training ground would remain vulnerable, for the reasons described.
Am I being amoral myself here? Possibly. But given the larger picture, I'm not sure we could afford to consider such things.
Slashdot Mirror
You boil water for pasta and accidentally spill it off all over you. Whom do you sue? The pasta company who requires boiling water to cook the pasta, Mother Nature for having water boil at 100 degres Celsius or...your own stupidity?
Your own stupidity. Reason being that (a) Pasta *normally* requires boiling water to cook anyway, and (b) the person who would have heated the water to boiling point would have been you (or someone you know) and not the company, so you can't claim you didn't know it was boiling hot.
Although (B) would be the main factor in your example, (A) has more relevance to the subject under discussion (McDonalds' extra-hot coffee).
More specifically; coffee can *reasonably* be expected to be hot on serving- possibly a bit *too* hot to drink for some people. But 'hot' is a relative term. The temperature McDonalds served their coffee at was far higher than anyone should reasonably expect 'hot' coffee to be.
Arguably, the woman was careless. Had the coffee been the expected temperature, she might still have been burned (but nowhere near as badly); in that situation, the outcome of the court case should have been in McDonalds' favor. This was not what had happened, however.
Cue lame example; if I buy a portable radio, and ignore the advice to install the AA Duracells the correct way round, would it be acceptable if the radio overheated, threw out blobs of molten plastic and metal, and burned the house down, if the manufacturer knew about this problem? After all, they printed clear advice not to install the batteries backwards.
If someone wants to take a risk, they should accept the consequences; but in the absence of further advice, it is reasonable to assume limits to the consequences of these actions. These assumptions should be based on social norms and/or past experience.
If McDonalds had put half-inch high warnings on fluorescent labels on every cup of coffee and had the woman sign a waver saying "This coffee is way more hot than normal and will cause severe burns if you spill it on yourself", she would have had fair warning. Alternately, if it had been the norm (for some reason) to serve coffee at stupidly high temperatures, then her case would have been severely weakened (at best).
However, neither of these situations apply in the McDonalds coffee lawsuit.
I don't like lawsuit culture. I don't have any unreasonable dislike for McDonalds (I eat there on average 2-3 times per month). But they were absolutely right to get slapped down in that case.
Unfortunately goatse the movie exists.
Damn.... perhaps I could buy the rights to make "TubGirl: The Motion Picture" (*) instead.
TubGirl was always in a different league to the (relatively) innocuous goatse anyway. I still haven't seen worse than that...
(*) I'm not even going to comment on the use of the word "Motion" in relation to Tubgirl.
I clicked a few random things of a p2p network to download, a few years ago. Had to burn my HD in a holy, cleansing fire on consecrated ground with the blessing of the Goddess. You can't simply delete EVIL.
Here's an evil idea:
Goatse. The Movie.
Find out if there is film of the goatse guy (or someone who could plausibly be the same person) doing his... uh, tricks. Splice them together into a short "movie", keep various copies under inappropriate names (e.g. "Britney Spears My Prerogative video.mpg", "Star Wars episode iii sneak peak.avi").
Then put them up for sharing on your favourite P2P network!
The Regents of the University of California are responsible for permitting Microsoft's use of the BSD networking stack in some older versions of Windows. Does this mean you've lost respect for UC Berkeley?
Very cute... I assume you refer to the BSD licensing.
If that *had been* what I'd meant, then ultimately Byrne would be responsible in any case, since he freely chose to sign a contract that (directly or possibly very indirectly) resulted in Microsoft getting use of his music.
Following your reasoning, we can blame RMS and friends for *anything* done with GNU and other GPLed code.
But we both know that's not what I meant. What I clearly meant was; did Byrne give some degree of co-operation with Microsoft's use of his track in Windows XP?
For a moment there, I read SnatchCam.
Naah... didn't X10 go bankrupt a while back?
If he was the one responsible for allowing Microsoft to use his work (I wouldn't automatically assume this), then DRM or not, I wouldn't have that much respect for the guy.
The inclusion of a David Byrne track in this "freely distributable" compilation might seem more interesting when you bear in mind that a song of his ("Like Humans Do") was one of the sample tracks included with..... Windows XP.
So are the forces are good and evil in a battle for his immortal soul... or is he just someone who likes to promote his music as much as possible?
Made it up myself, you see it in the actions of a lot of corporations.
I believe that; although it sounds like one of those things that you should have heard of before.
Speaking personally, I didn't know whether to be pissed off or pleased when I found out that something I'd made up had already been said by Voltaire ("A witty saying proves nothing").
Anyway, to play devil's advocate, I should point out that Japan is (was?) in recession since the early '90s (don't know if it still is); but I still think your point is good.
In the UK, I believe that WAP-enabled phones failed when they came out because they appeared to benefit the people selling them more than the intended buyers (Mmm... pay-per-minute dial-up at mobile rates, deliberately restricted access to WAP sites, and no killer apps offered by the phone companies to offset the phones' inherent crapness- i.e. poor screens, clunky interfaces and no access to the 'real' web; compare this to the DoCoMo phones in Japan around the same time. Failure v Success; enough said. Even though they weren't much more expensive than non-WAP phones, I didn't consider the facility to be worth even UKP 30.00).
I couldn't understand why Shatner wanted to bring back STNG.
Yeah; he did some okay stuff in The Police, but most of his solo work is really boring.
Virgin records were sold off to EMI many years ago (early '90s, IIRC).
The Virgin Megastores (or the ones in the UK at least) are a joint operation with other investors.
It obviously makes sense to some people to use the Virgin name; thing is, I'm not sure what it stands for (or rather, what it's *meant* to stand for, since most brand names are about image rather than substance, and are often farmed out anyway).
Does 'Virgin' have an image beyond Richard Branson? The only one they have in my book is a pseudo-company that wants to plaster their name on as many things as possible, and make a big deal about it.
I always say: "They're too greedy to make money".
Nice quote.... did you make that up yourself, or are you quoting/paraphrasing someone else?
I know the answer, and the answer is fixed functionality, ala something like WebTV.
Good idea; but unless it's very cheap, it's going to be a hard sell against a dirt-cheap PC that's loaded to the gills with gimmicky consumer-crap and a "fast" processor (and insufficient memory, because as we all know, it's better to spend lots of money on that extra 0.1GHz you can impress your friends with than a few pounds/dollars/whatever ensuring it has enough memory to work effectively).
Yeah; you can bet the salesman will entice those people with tales of what they can do with their computer; although they'll never actually bother doing most of it.
In this situation, your "safe" non-expandable box sounds like a poor sell; sad, but true.
If this sort of device takes off, it'll probably be in the market covered by the Amstrad Em@iler; that device is very cheap, because it is subsidised by the compulsory use of the manufacturer's own ISP. And even if such a device would be poor value compared to the PC in the long-run, we all know that a large number of people simply buy on the basis of the initial price tag.
The sort of people that buy the Lexmark printers because they are (marginally) the cheapest, then balk at the price of the replacement carts, so they buy another Lexmark because it comes with free carts anyway(!!!).
Anyway- consider this; the more the replacement ink is overpriced, the more the (perceived) value of the free carts that come with the printer (e.g. if a black and colour cart would together cost $200, Lexmark could claim that you got $200 worth of ink free with the printer). I *have* heard this logic used by someone replacing their Lexmark with another Lexmark, rather than buy new ink.
Canon can't boast such "great" offers, because their ink isn't sold in overpriced, chipped carts. So I must be a mug for buying a Canon (cough).
Heading off-topic... sorry. But the point is that consumers are generally not logical in the sense that you (and I) would like them to be; they will buy on the perceived value of "features" and "gimmicks" far above everything else.
Funny thing, I read that article and a popup for spyware comes up, defying even Firefox's popup blocker. Ironically, the popup said that the computer has spyware installed.
That happened to me too. Ironically, I was running Mozilla (not Firefox, guess I should upgrade...) under Linux, and a dialog popped up informing me I had spyware.
Strange thing is, the pop-up looked *just like* a Windows XP dialog box.
So, I can only come to one conclusion; somehow my Linux box has been infected with the extremely nasty "Windows XP" spyware program. I heard that this one actually sends back lots of unsolicited information to the writers, Microsoft. Is this true?
Question is; what are your aunts and uncles using the computer for? Is it just a glorified email and browsing appliance?
Let me put this another way; could you install Linux on their machines, and have them still do the stuff they wanted to?
Ensure you have decent security set up, use Firefox, and leave them to it.
Sure, they'll get pissed off when they try downloading Windows goodies that don't work, but... you have to balance this against a machine loaded with spyware.
Yeah, I *know* Linux wouldn't be half as safe if it was as popular as Windows; but currently, it's not, and you can cross that bridge when you come to it.
They'd better make hunting kids legal again or next winter there may be thousands of them starving to death and running into traffic, just like deers.
Sounds uncannily like the plot of a film I once saw; cutting things a bit fine to get the plan ready for Halloween this year, unfortunately.
"14 more days till Haloween..."
Somebody is reading this and has "hypocrit" ready to go in their paste buffer. And while I deserve the criticism, that individual would be missing the point. Spamming is wrong.
Nice one. You've pre-empted the obvious replies and retained control of the situation by making the criticism yourself; thus retaining control of what was actually said (relatively mild), and what followed.
You repent, and admit that you are a sinner, and will sin again; but you're not really repenting. Why?- like a preacher caught in a compromising position, you use the opportunity to emphasise your human nature, but because you "recognize it as wrong" "unlike most spammers", you still seek to place yourself above the rest of those scum.
So, as I said; good work defusing the criticism and turning it to your advantage.
If the world leaders so desired, all life on the plant could be wiped out by next weekend.
I very much doubt that. In fact, I very much doubt they could eradicate very single human being by that time, although they could certainly set the events in motion that would lead to human extinction.
But all life on the planet in one weekend? No.
[Grandparent Message]: "Morality" has always been an important aspect of Chinese culture
[Parent Message]: Wow, what a fat lot you know about China and the CCP. I think what you say is mostly bullshit. Morality is actually important to most Chinese
Can I point out the bleeding obvious, which is that this is what he actually said?
Anyway, in response to the rest of your message: I didn't see Autopr0n extol the virtues of Christianity in his post.
In addition, I should point out that most fanatical (relatively speaking) Christians would support the censorship and supression of porn (whilst probably jerking off to it in private); you seem to have made the mistake of assuming Autopr0n shared the views of all fellow Americans, and (to some extent) that all Americans shared his views.
(*) IIRC Autopr0n *seemed* to be American, but I wouldn't bet my life on this.
But the machine is fast and has enough moving parts to be interesting.
Rather like the Hentai-anime Delivery Bots, then?
it took her longer to decide not to go out with me than to process the mail...
Wow! So you said...
"Hey, uh, groovy chick. What say we, uh... check out Star Wars Episode II and maybe we can... have sex?"
And in the split second it took her to reply
"Stay away from me, you Slashdot reading geek-fiend!"
and run out of the building, she was able to prepare the mailing?
I am impressed.
On a side-note, the grandparent mentions delivering letters by hand. Well, I sometimes get charity junk-mail (through my front door) that says stuff like
"Delivered by hand to save money".
Really? That's impressive. My mail is normally delivered by hi-tech robots with penis-shaped tentacles that use suction to hold the letters in place while they deliver them.
Absolutely true; I get nostalgic for the days when the postman used to put them through my letterbox using his hands, but the Post Office prefer to waste money with the latest "Hentai-anime Delivery Bots". Disgraceful.
(you can get fortune! just tell the judge how many laptops he has ;) )
Judge smells a rat and awards wife all those "expensive" laptops as her part of the settlement; scheming wife gets a pile of useless junk, guy gets to keep the stuff that is actually worth something.
Have an old black and white television? Well, just use it to watch black and white movies, you won't notice the difference!
If you thought that was funny, you'll probably enjoy Viz's "Top Tips". ('Top Tips' appears in the menu bar).
Typical example: "BUSY executives. Don't buy a Dachshund. Their amusing sausage shape means they take 50% longer to stroke than other dogs, and time is money."
Hang on, I replied to this already (tacky...), but "galactic"? Seriously?
Isn't that like saying "International" for a taxi service that takes you 30m to the nearest newsagent's to collect your morning paper?
"Virgin Galactic"... How cool is that?
Sounds like your average Star Trek fan to me.
The thing about countries like this is they can build ONE (1) awesome facility as good as anything anywhere, if they like.
One site; one target.
If I was the United States, I wouldn't bomb the place; there would be no quicker way to start a war.
However, what if there was an unfortunate outbreak of a particularly nasty disease at the facility? Possibly one where, once it had been spotted, it was already too late, and spread throughout the area...?
Who did this? Could they prove it was deliberate? Not on the basis of one outbreak.
Yes; this would be a very unpleasant means of dealing with the problem. Yes; the people working there would not have been given a fair choice. Unfortunately, given the danger that North Korea poses to the world, and the fact that these people would be working to support such a regime, this pales into insignificance.
Let's not delude ourselves; the only reason North Korea hasn't been invaded before now is (a) Because they have nukes, (b) They pose an immediate threat to the South, and (c) We do *not* want to get into a war with China.
Put simply, this is why we could not bomb the facility; however, a centralised training ground would remain vulnerable, for the reasons described.
Am I being amoral myself here? Possibly. But given the larger picture, I'm not sure we could afford to consider such things.