If that can happen because of coffee made in a coffee maker, then I don't really think McDonald's did anything wrong in this case. True...
It'd be interesting to see a statistical summary of how many people are burned by coffee as a whole (requiring medical attention), how many people are burned by McD's coffee, and see if there's a significant difference. Although how you'd make a significant statistical comparison is beyond my idle musing right now....
The focus has been on McD's coffee, but how dangerous is coffee as a whole, usually? It'd put a new light on the whole discussion.
Coffee made at home is lot hotter than 130-140. Thats not even temperature of Latte or Mocha. Right, the operative term is brewing temperature. I have a Chemex coffeemaker (essentially a glorified Erlenmeyer flask), and the instructions tell you to bring water to a boil, and make the coffee right after (about 200 degrees). That's the temp at which the coffee is made. The coffeepot that you describe delivers the brew into the carafe at 180 degrees (right after it is made). The question is, does it *hold* it at 180 degrees? No coffeemaker I've ever had (and I've owned quite a few) has ever done that.
As far as the instant hot water tap, of course you couldn't sue the manufacturer, because you *know* it's providing near-boiling water. No one expects near-boiling water to be served to them in a coffee cup. Just like no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
I never got burned. The coffee was never too hot. I've scalded myself several times on their coffee, even after a generous cooling off time. I don;t buy it anymore because it's too damn hot *shrug* YMMV.
Well, here's a fact that no one seems to know. That McDonald's drive through is at the top of a very steep hill(greater than 45 degrees). Now *that's* interesting. Hmmm...
Everyone with any common sense would know that you don't open hot coffee between your knees when your car is headed down a steep hill. Although I have to wonder, if the hill is *that* steep, why didn't the coffee spill forward? That's steep.
What happened to this woman was completely her own fault. Mostly true, which is why the courts reduced the damages. What it came down to was that McD, according to their policy, keeps their coffee at a temp which can cause serious burns very quickly. Yes, she put the coffee in between her knees. But in most cases, if you spill hot coffee in your lap, it's just gonna be uncomfortable and embarrassing, and not require time in the hospital for skin grafts. It's measures of what you can expect as far as consequences. Most people do not equivocate a cup of coffee with a cup of near-boiling water, because in 99% of cases (i.e. non-McDonalds), it isn't. Keep in mind, the judgement was also because of the other 700 reports of burns.
It's a weird case, at any rate. To repeat, *shrug*
The stunned cow put the soft foam cup between her legs and drove off. Guess what happened when she hit a bump? Absolutely nothing, because she wasn't driving; the car was stopped when it spilled.
"After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward and
stopped momentarily so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her
coffee. (Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often
charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in
motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.)"
The McD coffee is sold at 185F (IIRC?) where it tastes better and stays warm longer. And is also undrinkable. Coffee made at home is 130-140 degrees. Coffee at 185 degrees will cause third degree burns in 2 to 7 seconds.
I'm not promoting either end of the case, really, just an accurate representation of the facts. Check out this link..
The point NYT article was making (it was in Dec 7th Week In Review section) is that Wal-mart maybe the largest retailer, perhaps large enough for the anti-trust laws to kick in, except that Wal-mart has lowest prices on the stuff it sells. I see where you're coming from. You're right; they really do work to provide the lowest possible price, which makes it a positive thing for the consumer. However, Wal-Mart is different from other monopolies (Standard Oil jumps to mind) in that they really don't provide any one commodity that they control: they serve as a conduit for other goods, and the largest and most pervasive one at that. What this monopoly does is put the squeeze on the supply side of things. Whereas a consumer monopoly would say, "you have to buy through us. Pay this price", a retailer monopoly would say "you have to sell through us. Sell it to us for this price." And that's where the damage is coming in; in order to be available at what is the single largest American reseller, they have to meet Wal-Mart's demands. Wal-Mart expects prices to go *down* every year, regardless of inflation/expense increases that their suppliers may have. And if a US supplier can't meet those prices, they'll go overseas. Poof, more jobs gone in the neverending search for low prices.
Again, I don't know the solution. But we have a problem is someone can do the same we can at one tenth the cost, and it costs next to nothing to bring the work there. Very true. The problem I have is that Wal-Mart is exacerbating the problem, accelerating the loss of jobs. Many manufacturers have been working with factories in the US, and making sales, but in order to meet prices dictated by Wal-Mart they have had to outsource their labor. That is the real crux of the matter.
If the standard of living and the cost of things was the same all over the world this would not be a problem. Ain'a hey. All the more reason to not support Wal-Mart, which perpetuates much of the sweatshop culture and low wages of Chinese labor. A recent article I read states that approximately one tenth of Chinese manufacturing goes to satisfy needs for Wal-Mart stores. Ten percent of the output of all of China goes to Wal-Mart.
I'm not sure about the solution either, but I think that's part of the problem.
Wal-mart's market penetration is not nearly as big as Microsoft's. They are able to use their market position to leverage their own ends. How big is Wal-Mart's nearest competitor? Wal-Mart sells more than it's next 9 largest competitors combined. They are orders of magnitude larger. I've been reading in the business mags how there are guides, books, magazine articles about how to go about dealing with Wal-Mart, and not get screwed...because you really have no choice in the matter.
Plus Wal-mart is keeping prices low. Aren't monopolies supposed to make prices go higher? "Monopoly: Exclusive ownership or control, as of a certain commodity or business activity." Doesn't say anything about prices. Such a comparison is similar to Darl McBride saying that the primary role of copyright is profit. Wal-Mart's monopoly is not complete, and is in some ways benevolent, but it's ultimately harmful.
Are lower prices bad? When those low prices are (a)artificial due to coercion of suppliers and (b)ultimately to the detriment of our own factories and workers? Yes.
When they throw their economic weight around to get people to re-record songs, or when they alter artwork and lyrics. That's censorship. Exactly. Wal-Mart is the biggest seller of music in the US by far (I wish I had the magazine article in front of me where I got that from, that's a verifiable fact), bigger by several orders of magnitude than their next competitor. Not selling at Wal-Mart means losing a massive audience. So, Wal-Mart gets what they want. Although, now that I think about it, maybe censorship isn't the right word. How about extortion?
Extort:(Eks-tort) To obtain (money, information) by coercion or intimidation.
By keeping their prices low Walmart provides a lot of goods for people who are in the lower income bracket. These people like to eat too. -Wal-Mart, by forcing vendors to sell at lower prices, makes them use offshore labor. -Even more manufacturing jobs go away. -Low income people move into an even lower income bracket when they lose their jobs.
If vendors want to sell to Walmart, they need to keep their prices low. How they do it is up to them, not up to Walmart. Except that not selling thru Wal-Mart isn't really an option. Their marketing reach is just that massive. 7.5% of all money spent *in stores* goes to Wal-Mart.
Even if Walmart has 50% the market (which it doesn't yet) shouldn't competition be able to survive? MS has 90% of the desktops, but somehow Macs and Apple are doing OK. Ironic comparison. You may recall a little antitrust trial that Microsoft just had? MS did the exact same thing that Wal-Mart is doing, except limited to the PC; using their market position to force vendors to their terms.
Because there has really never been a behemoth like Wal-mart before
Not true. Most of the predatory pricing laws on the books today are because of the tactics used by the A&P grocery store chain (remember them?). At their peak, they had about 5,000 stores, almost double what Wal-Mart has. Granted, they were smaller stores... (-:
The parent thread is an anti-capitalist troll. Its so easy to pick on the big bad walmarts of the world.
Duelling trolls! But I'll take a walk over your bridge, just for fun.
The problem is, is that no other retailer is even close to being in the same league with Wal-Mart.From the November issue of Fast Business: 7.5 cents out of every dollar spent in stores goes to Wal-Mart (excluding auto parts). Wal-Mart does more in sales than its next nine competitors combined.
This is a retailer that uses its market posisition as the proverbial big stick. Manufacturers can't afford *not* to sell their wares at Wal-Mart. From the same magazine, Dial soap would have to *double* it's sales at it's next dozen or so buyers to make up for what Wal-Mart sells (don't have the issue right in front of me, don't have the exact number for that right now). Massive distribution isn't a bad thing, but having your seller dictate what you can sell your items at is.
It's called capitalism people. And everyone knows that a true capitalist goes after the most profit, regardless of eventual social consequences.
Wal-mart offers cheap things, What Wal-Mart is doing is causing a disconnect between what the perceived price of something should be, and what it costs. The muscle that Wal-Mart applies to its vendors causes a continuing chain of cost-cutting that ends in the elimination of jobs. That's not just rhetoric, I've seen it in my town with Master Lock.
and gets cheap labor. I'm presuming that cheap labor is alright so long as it isn't American cheap labor.
My concern about a view point such as that is that it can create an unstable tower of knowledge. Learning and understanding is built by creating a solid foundation of the underlying principles. Addition and subtraction leads to algebra leads to...you get the idea. If, for example, a calculator is introduced too early into the leaning process, it can weaken the integrity of what is being learned. Sure, you can do the equations...but do you understand them?
That being said, calculators definitely have their place. The example of needing a calculator to do those complex physics equations is a good example. I think it's important to know and understand how to do it on paper....but there's nothing wrong with a calculator to speed things along beyond that point....just like there's nothing wrong with a carpenter using a jointer instead of a plane and a level.
Education spends far too much time on the completion of tasks, and too little time on the process of getting there.
Well, yeah, it's turning off a service, but it's not an easy one to get to, at least by the average AOL user's perspective. Also, consider the average user's Windows experience. I mean, Windows warns you not to look in your system folder, because things may stop working. I can't imagine my dad (who is in his 70s) venturing outside the safety of Control Panels to turn it off. After all, Fear is a feature in using Windows, for a typical user.
That being said, I think that AOL should have been a touch more up-front about it, sent a message to its user explaining the situation, then giving a link to click to turn off the service. Just because it's benevolent doesn't mean it's not creepy and wrong.
What's amusing about a scenario like this is that, when pushed hard enough, or with onerous enough restrictions, consumers will discover that you really don't *have* to catch all those TV shows.It's like any industry - make it too difficult to use your product, and people will stop.
Of course, at that point, broadcasters will merely assume that it's Internet pirates that are causing ratings to drop...
Telemarketers on cell phones bear a lot in common with junk mail faxes, which are illegal. Junkfax.org explains all about that, and why you should be hearing a cash register every time you get an ad for a cheap tropical cruise!
Telemarketer cell phone calls are similar to unsolicited telemarketer faxes in that the recipient of the ad is required to pay to get the message in front of them. It doesn't matter if it's toner and paper or minutes, the cost is there.
but doesn't the seam running down the middle of the dual-head setup really suck?
A dual head with two identical monitors can be a pain, depending on how it is set up, and on what kind of system. The last PC I used that was dual used two 17" screens, and NT 4 treated the two monitors as one space...causing all dialog boxes to pop up in the middle, cleft in twain. Yes, that did suck. (I'm assuming that Windows no longer does that.)
I use dual-head on my Mac which sets up the two monitors as two separate monitors. You can then position them in the OS where you have them in space. (Helps when one monitor is shorter than the other).
Personally, I always use two different sized monitors...it gives you a main place to look. I'm a designer, so my workspace goes on in the large monitor, and palettes/source material/ICQ/Snood goes on the small one.
I'd like to see this study conducted with a constant amount of $ invested in either a 2-head or 1-head rig
The benefits are there no matter what size monitor you use, really; space is space. I've always set it up with another monitor I've scrounged. As far as cost benefits, the nice thing about dual-head is that you can use monitor sizes that are somewhat out of favor. I use a 17" and a 15". The 15 is from Goodwill, and is on the built-in video that I haven't been using since I installed a VooDoo3. It's functionality that can be added for cheap, providing you can find the desk space.
I actually don't have much of a problem with the whole Prebate concept. To me, I liken it to a beer bottle deposit; "If you promise to return these cartridges to us, we won't charge you with a bottle deposit" (i.e. give you a prebate).
What is scary, though, is the judge saying that this is a right because of Patent law. That seems to set a bad precedent of "licensing agreements" at the time of purchase.
Ah yes, fish counters. The ones they mentioned had it easy. The real fun comes in when you're drag-netting a lake, and have to jump in to get the net out of the water. This lake had a lot of leeches. Remember that scene in African Queen? I bet you never really considered that if you had leeches all over you, they'd end up on your unit, too.
Been there. But my coworker had it worse...he stumbled into what must have been a hatch of them, and ended up with about 40 tiny leeches on his Triangle of Death.
It really was a lot of fun. For that one summer. I'm in IT now (-:
No, it's very true, you can be die from *anything*. And yes, you can get "water intoxication", although you'd need to drink about three quarts all at once for that to happen. Needless to say, it doesn't happen very often, but it is possible.
There was a phrase we often used in my Aquatic Toxicology class..."everything is a poison, it just depends on the dose."
Well, of course they'll be true for the company funding them. We don't expect blatant falsehoods from studies like these, just massaged numbers. They're like processor benchmarks; numbers that are correct for that certain test, under certain conditions. Take 'em for what they're worth.
To paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli... there are three kinds of falsehoods: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The seemingly low percentage of people who noticed anything doesn't really bother me...it makes quite a lot of sense (at least to me) that people would have varying sensitivity to something like this. After all, not everyone has the same reaction to a supposedly "haunted" house.
What would be *really* interesting would be to take the 22% who said they felt something, and then rerun the same test in two groups; use one as a control (no infrasound), and the other as a group with infrasound. That would give a pretty good idea as to effectiveness, based on people who could possibly feel it in the first place. It could also give a good idea as to the number of false positives from the first test.
Slashdot Mirror
If that can happen because of coffee made in a coffee maker, then I don't really think McDonald's did anything wrong in this case.
True...
It'd be interesting to see a statistical summary of how many people are burned by coffee as a whole (requiring medical attention), how many people are burned by McD's coffee, and see if there's a significant difference. Although how you'd make a significant statistical comparison is beyond my idle musing right now....
The focus has been on McD's coffee, but how dangerous is coffee as a whole, usually? It'd put a new light on the whole discussion.
Coffee made at home is lot hotter than 130-140. Thats not even temperature of Latte or Mocha.
Right, the operative term is brewing temperature. I have a Chemex coffeemaker (essentially a glorified Erlenmeyer flask), and the instructions tell you to bring water to a boil, and make the coffee right after (about 200 degrees). That's the temp at which the coffee is made. The coffeepot that you describe delivers the brew into the carafe at 180 degrees (right after it is made). The question is, does it *hold* it at 180 degrees? No coffeemaker I've ever had (and I've owned quite a few) has ever done that.
As far as the instant hot water tap, of course you couldn't sue the manufacturer, because you *know* it's providing near-boiling water. No one expects near-boiling water to be served to them in a coffee cup. Just like no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
I never got burned. The coffee was never too hot.
I've scalded myself several times on their coffee, even after a generous cooling off time. I don;t buy it anymore because it's too damn hot *shrug* YMMV.
Well, here's a fact that no one seems to know. That McDonald's drive through is at the top of a very steep hill(greater than 45 degrees).
Now *that's* interesting. Hmmm...
Everyone with any common sense would know that you don't open hot coffee between your knees when your car is headed down a steep hill.
Although I have to wonder, if the hill is *that* steep, why didn't the coffee spill forward? That's steep.
What happened to this woman was completely her own fault.
Mostly true, which is why the courts reduced the damages. What it came down to was that McD, according to their policy, keeps their coffee at a temp which can cause serious burns very quickly. Yes, she put the coffee in between her knees. But in most cases, if you spill hot coffee in your lap, it's just gonna be uncomfortable and embarrassing, and not require time in the hospital for skin grafts. It's measures of what you can expect as far as consequences. Most people do not equivocate a cup of coffee with a cup of near-boiling water, because in 99% of cases (i.e. non-McDonalds), it isn't. Keep in mind, the judgement was also because of the other 700 reports of burns.
It's a weird case, at any rate. To repeat, *shrug*
The stunned cow put the soft foam cup between her legs and drove off. Guess what happened when she hit a bump?
Absolutely nothing, because she wasn't driving; the car was stopped when it spilled.
"After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward and stopped momentarily so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her coffee. (Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.)"
The McD coffee is sold at 185F (IIRC?) where it tastes better and stays warm longer.
And is also undrinkable. Coffee made at home is 130-140 degrees. Coffee at 185 degrees will cause third degree burns in 2 to 7 seconds.
I'm not promoting either end of the case, really, just an accurate representation of the facts. Check out this link..
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
The point NYT article was making (it was in Dec 7th Week In Review section) is that Wal-mart maybe the largest retailer, perhaps large enough for the anti-trust laws to kick in, except that Wal-mart has lowest prices on the stuff it sells.
I see where you're coming from. You're right; they really do work to provide the lowest possible price, which makes it a positive thing for the consumer. However, Wal-Mart is different from other monopolies (Standard Oil jumps to mind) in that they really don't provide any one commodity that they control: they serve as a conduit for other goods, and the largest and most pervasive one at that. What this monopoly does is put the squeeze on the supply side of things. Whereas a consumer monopoly would say, "you have to buy through us. Pay this price", a retailer monopoly would say "you have to sell through us. Sell it to us for this price." And that's where the damage is coming in; in order to be available at what is the single largest American reseller, they have to meet Wal-Mart's demands. Wal-Mart expects prices to go *down* every year, regardless of inflation/expense increases that their suppliers may have. And if a US supplier can't meet those prices, they'll go overseas. Poof, more jobs gone in the neverending search for low prices.
Again, I don't know the solution. But we have a problem is someone can do the same we can at one tenth the cost, and it costs next to nothing to bring the work there.
Very true. The problem I have is that Wal-Mart is exacerbating the problem, accelerating the loss of jobs. Many manufacturers have been working with factories in the US, and making sales, but in order to meet prices dictated by Wal-Mart they have had to outsource their labor. That is the real crux of the matter.
If the standard of living and the cost of things was the same all over the world this would not be a problem.
Ain'a hey. All the more reason to not support Wal-Mart, which perpetuates much of the sweatshop culture and low wages of Chinese labor. A recent article I read states that approximately one tenth of Chinese manufacturing goes to satisfy needs for Wal-Mart stores. Ten percent of the output of all of China goes to Wal-Mart.
I'm not sure about the solution either, but I think that's part of the problem.
Wal-mart's market penetration is not nearly as big as Microsoft's.
They are able to use their market position to leverage their own ends. How big is Wal-Mart's nearest competitor? Wal-Mart sells more than it's next 9 largest competitors combined. They are orders of magnitude larger. I've been reading in the business mags how there are guides, books, magazine articles about how to go about dealing with Wal-Mart, and not get screwed...because you really have no choice in the matter.
Plus Wal-mart is keeping prices low. Aren't monopolies supposed to make prices go higher?
"Monopoly: Exclusive ownership or control, as of a certain commodity or business activity." Doesn't say anything about prices. Such a comparison is similar to Darl McBride saying that the primary role of copyright is profit. Wal-Mart's monopoly is not complete, and is in some ways benevolent, but it's ultimately harmful.
Are lower prices bad?
When those low prices are (a)artificial due to coercion of suppliers and (b)ultimately to the detriment of our own factories and workers? Yes.
When they throw their economic weight around to get people to re-record songs, or when they alter artwork and lyrics. That's censorship.
Exactly. Wal-Mart is the biggest seller of music in the US by far (I wish I had the magazine article in front of me where I got that from, that's a verifiable fact), bigger by several orders of magnitude than their next competitor. Not selling at Wal-Mart means losing a massive audience. So, Wal-Mart gets what they want. Although, now that I think about it, maybe censorship isn't the right word. How about extortion?
Extort:(Eks-tort) To obtain (money, information) by coercion or intimidation.
Sounds right to me.
By keeping their prices low Walmart provides a lot of goods for people who are in the lower income bracket. These people like to eat too.
-Wal-Mart, by forcing vendors to sell at lower prices, makes them use offshore labor.
-Even more manufacturing jobs go away.
-Low income people move into an even lower income bracket when they lose their jobs.
If vendors want to sell to Walmart, they need to keep their prices low. How they do it is up to them, not up to Walmart.
Except that not selling thru Wal-Mart isn't really an option. Their marketing reach is just that massive. 7.5% of all money spent *in stores* goes to Wal-Mart.
Even if Walmart has 50% the market (which it doesn't yet) shouldn't competition be able to survive? MS has 90% of the desktops, but somehow Macs and Apple are doing OK.
Ironic comparison. You may recall a little antitrust trial that Microsoft just had? MS did the exact same thing that Wal-Mart is doing, except limited to the PC; using their market position to force vendors to their terms.
Because there has really never been a behemoth like Wal-mart before
Not true. Most of the predatory pricing laws on the books today are because of the tactics used by the A&P grocery store chain (remember them?). At their peak, they had about 5,000 stores, almost double what Wal-Mart has. Granted, they were smaller stores... (-:
The parent thread is an anti-capitalist troll. Its so easy to pick on the big bad walmarts of the world.
Duelling trolls! But I'll take a walk over your bridge, just for fun.
The problem is, is that no other retailer is even close to being in the same league with Wal-Mart.From the November issue of Fast Business:
7.5 cents out of every dollar spent in stores goes to Wal-Mart (excluding auto parts).
Wal-Mart does more in sales than its next nine competitors combined.
This is a retailer that uses its market posisition as the proverbial big stick. Manufacturers can't afford *not* to sell their wares at Wal-Mart. From the same magazine, Dial soap would have to *double* it's sales at it's next dozen or so buyers to make up for what Wal-Mart sells (don't have the issue right in front of me, don't have the exact number for that right now). Massive distribution isn't a bad thing, but having your seller dictate what you can sell your items at is.
It's called capitalism people.
And everyone knows that a true capitalist goes after the most profit, regardless of eventual social consequences.
Wal-mart offers cheap things,
What Wal-Mart is doing is causing a disconnect between what the perceived price of something should be, and what it costs. The muscle that Wal-Mart applies to its vendors causes a continuing chain of cost-cutting that ends in the elimination of jobs. That's not just rhetoric, I've seen it in my town with Master Lock.
and gets cheap labor.
I'm presuming that cheap labor is alright so long as it isn't American cheap labor.
Yep, been there, done that. Back in the day when Hero was at level 50... ***THWACK***! (-;
My concern about a view point such as that is that it can create an unstable tower of knowledge. Learning and understanding is built by creating a solid foundation of the underlying principles. Addition and subtraction leads to algebra leads to...you get the idea. If, for example, a calculator is introduced too early into the leaning process, it can weaken the integrity of what is being learned. Sure, you can do the equations...but do you understand them?
That being said, calculators definitely have their place. The example of needing a calculator to do those complex physics equations is a good example. I think it's important to know and understand how to do it on paper....but there's nothing wrong with a calculator to speed things along beyond that point....just like there's nothing wrong with a carpenter using a jointer instead of a plane and a level.
Education spends far too much time on the completion of tasks, and too little time on the process of getting there.
"building apps that are as smart as Outlook.
Too.....many.....jokes!
Mixed feelings on this:
Well, yeah, it's turning off a service, but it's not an easy one to get to, at least by the average AOL user's perspective. Also, consider the average user's Windows experience. I mean, Windows warns you not to look in your system folder, because things may stop working. I can't imagine my dad (who is in his 70s) venturing outside the safety of Control Panels to turn it off. After all, Fear is a feature in using Windows, for a typical user.
That being said, I think that AOL should have been a touch more up-front about it, sent a message to its user explaining the situation, then giving a link to click to turn off the service. Just because it's benevolent doesn't mean it's not creepy and wrong.
What's amusing about a scenario like this is that, when pushed hard enough, or with onerous enough restrictions, consumers will discover that you really don't *have* to catch all those TV shows.It's like any industry - make it too difficult to use your product, and people will stop.
Of course, at that point, broadcasters will merely assume that it's Internet pirates that are causing ratings to drop...
Telemarketers on cell phones bear a lot in common with junk mail faxes, which are illegal. Junkfax.org explains all about that, and why you should be hearing a cash register every time you get an ad for a cheap tropical cruise!
Telemarketer cell phone calls are similar to unsolicited telemarketer faxes in that the recipient of the ad is required to pay to get the message in front of them. It doesn't matter if it's toner and paper or minutes, the cost is there.
but doesn't the seam running down the middle of the dual-head setup really suck?
A dual head with two identical monitors can be a pain, depending on how it is set up, and on what kind of system. The last PC I used that was dual used two 17" screens, and NT 4 treated the two monitors as one space...causing all dialog boxes to pop up in the middle, cleft in twain. Yes, that did suck. (I'm assuming that Windows no longer does that.)
I use dual-head on my Mac which sets up the two monitors as two separate monitors. You can then position them in the OS where you have them in space. (Helps when one monitor is shorter than the other).
Personally, I always use two different sized monitors...it gives you a main place to look. I'm a designer, so my workspace goes on in the large monitor, and palettes/source material/ICQ/Snood goes on the small one.
I'd like to see this study conducted with a constant amount of $ invested in either a 2-head or 1-head rig
The benefits are there no matter what size monitor you use, really; space is space. I've always set it up with another monitor I've scrounged. As far as cost benefits, the nice thing about dual-head is that you can use monitor sizes that are somewhat out of favor. I use a 17" and a 15". The 15 is from Goodwill, and is on the built-in video that I haven't been using since I installed a VooDoo3. It's functionality that can be added for cheap, providing you can find the desk space.
I actually don't have much of a problem with the whole Prebate concept. To me, I liken it to a beer bottle deposit; "If you promise to return these cartridges to us, we won't charge you with a bottle deposit" (i.e. give you a prebate).
What is scary, though, is the judge saying that this is a right because of Patent law. That seems to set a bad precedent of "licensing agreements" at the time of purchase.
Ah yes, fish counters. The ones they mentioned had it easy. The real fun comes in when you're drag-netting a lake, and have to jump in to get the net out of the water. This lake had a lot of leeches. Remember that scene in African Queen? I bet you never really considered that if you had leeches all over you, they'd end up on your unit, too.
Been there. But my coworker had it worse...he stumbled into what must have been a hatch of them, and ended up with about 40 tiny leeches on his Triangle of Death.
It really was a lot of fun. For that one summer. I'm in IT now (-:
Obnoxious, expensive, time consuming modifications to a small car with dubious gains in performance. = Ricing out a car
Obnoxious, inexpensive, quick modifications to a car with dubious gains in performance. = Minute Ricing(R) out a car.
I think the three quarts need to be chugged, at least according to this source (where I got the amount from).
8 2. htm
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/42/1671_512
However, I think that I'd be in more discomfort from the sheer volume of water before that point. (-:
No, it's very true, you can be die from *anything*. And yes, you can get "water intoxication", although you'd need to drink about three quarts all at once for that to happen. Needless to say, it doesn't happen very often, but it is possible.
There was a phrase we often used in my Aquatic Toxicology class..."everything is a poison, it just depends on the dose."
And to properly fix the post, you should tell him to go take the Chatanooga Choo-Choo. (-;
Yes, I've been drinking too many Moonlight Cocktails....
Well, of course they'll be true for the company funding them. We don't expect blatant falsehoods from studies like these, just massaged numbers. They're like processor benchmarks; numbers that are correct for that certain test, under certain conditions. Take 'em for what they're worth.
To paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli... there are three kinds of falsehoods: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The seemingly low percentage of people who noticed anything doesn't really bother me...it makes quite a lot of sense (at least to me) that people would have varying sensitivity to something like this. After all, not everyone has the same reaction to a supposedly "haunted" house.
What would be *really* interesting would be to take the 22% who said they felt something, and then rerun the same test in two groups; use one as a control (no infrasound), and the other as a group with infrasound. That would give a pretty good idea as to effectiveness, based on people who could possibly feel it in the first place. It could also give a good idea as to the number of false positives from the first test.