I think the real super-secret tech advancement demonstrated by these products is the Executive Pong set that somehow manages to project the classic BLACK pong background onto a bright white wall.
1. Claim to be finished with lucrative series. Again. 2. Release the SAME MOVIE in new ??? format. 3. Profit!
Any 'creative genius' that man ever possessed was whored out a long time ago in a galaxy not-so-far away. As far as I'm concerned these days the only brilliant idea he really ever had after writing the original trilogy script was to secure the merchandising rights. Look up 'laughing all the way to the bank' in the dictionary and you get a picture of Lucas farting cash while humping a vader mask.... Come to think of it, I have a wiki entry to go make.;P
Summary quip reminds me of another book....
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Juiced
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The writing is workmanlike but not particularly entertaining, none of the stories are more than slightly amusing, and its protagonist projects an unappealing mixture of vanity and whining.
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, anyone?
I don't think I've despised any other main character as much as that sniveling spoiled ass, Pip.
The best back doors and holes are ones that no one sees until you're using them and it is too late.
I think that's what worries me the most about the sizes of the current botnets we're seeing - how big are the ones we can't see yet? There are definitely some crafty hacker orgs out there who are smart enough to realize that a covert and/or latent botnet would be the most devastating kind, especially if it could return to latency after use. Imagine it, one day a quarter million previously 'safe' windows boxes execute their delayed instructions, form a zombie net, perform a devastating DDOS or the like, then quickly go back to sleep. Parts of it could turn on for short periods solely to infect new machines quickly and quietly. Essentially it's the cyber equivalent of terrorist cells, dormant and unseen until exercised, and impossible to estimate or completely stamp out because of their low-lying nature. One of these days something like this is going to rear its ugly head and it will be for some greater and much more devastating purpose than just sending a few million spam about penis pills.
I know, kinda OT talking about the dept tagline, but Serenity is already done. The release date was pushed back by the studios to avoid conflicting with other releases. Sorry I don't have any links to the relevant articles right now, google should provide plenty. From the summary I read it actually sounded liek agood decision,a nd if it means more people are going to see the movie I'm all for it.
Should be from the 'finish-firefly-first-damnit-dept'. Every time I rewatch the series I find more and more unfinished plot lines I want the answers for!
A bit more on-topic, I'm curious as to what the Wonder Woman movie is going to be like after receiving the Joss treatment? He's big on lesbians (as noted elsewhere), can't go wrong wiht that.:) But I also find his work includes a lot of subtle humor mastefully weilded by the main characters. I wouldn't be too surprised if our heroine ends up providing some great superhero one-liners right up there with Batman's "chicks dig the car."
It never ends. How can you come to these conclusions? To start though, here's a better article that reveals a bit more detail like who was driving and where the coffee was, along with all the settlement values.
>McFact No. 1: For years, McDonald's had known they had a problem with the way
they make their coffee - that their coffee was served much hotter (at least 20 degrees more so) than at other restaurants.
Why is that a problem? If other restaurants served coffee at 50 degrees and McDonalds at 70, would that still be a problem?
Are you implying that there is never a cutoff point at which the temperature will be unacceptable? How about this, I routinely serve my ice
20 degrees hotter than everyone else. Why is that a problem? I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader. At some point the temp of a
drink is going to go from 'nice and hot' to 'omg that burns!' which is the case here and 20 degrees is a significant difference in
temp. If it were just 5 or even 10 one might let it slide as a slight variation, but 20? As an experiment turn your thermostat down 20
degrees colder tonight and tell me if you notice anything different. (For reference, all temps are in degrees Farenheit.)
Your second point is sound. Statistically 700 burn incidents over ten years is marginal. But those were incidents that were
settled, how many were not reported by people, or were ignored by the company and not settled but not taken to court either? If 700
cases made it to the point where the company had to settle (for upwards of half a million), then they were aware that there was a potential problem there. One that could
have been mostly fixed by lowering their temp by even 10 degrees, which still would have put them above-avg temp for the industry if that
was something they desired. And frankly, McDonalds coffee is bad at any temp, making it scalding hot doesn't change the flavor, unless you
count not being able to taste it because your mouth is scorched. Somehow Dunkin Donuts/Starbucks/etc manage to run successful coffee
businesses without serving their product at 185 degrees, why is it McDonalds cannot? Mitigating risk is a sound business strategy, and
lowering their temp would have prevented injuries w/o any effect on sales. I'd like to get the numbers on what other kinds of injury suits
they have settled. While 700 burns over 10 years may be small in the large picture, how does it stack up against their other cases? If
they're averaging 70 burn cases a year, what are the other ones like? Are they averaging 70 choking/food poisoning/slipping cases per year
as well, or were the burn incidents dwarfing the other numbers? I do not know. Perhaps they were insignificant when compared to the number
of other suits but since neither you nor I can say one way or the other the point is moot until further evidence is presented.
>McFact
No. 3: The woman involved in this infamous case suffered very serious injuries - third degree burns on her groin, thighs and buttocks that
required skin grafts and a seven-day hospital stay.
Yes? Yes?
Yes. What more do you want? She received 3rd degree burns for pete's sake! Have you ever had even a bad 2nd degree burn? Did you
know that 3rd degree burns cause tissue and nerve damage? As well as permanent scarring and can result in chronic pain for years. What part
about an old woman being extremely burned by her friggin coffee means nothing to you? 2nd degree burns I would expect from a hot liquid, 3rd
degree indicates there is a problem! That is the point if you missed it. 3rd degree burns are your formal inviatation saying something is
amiss with your product designed for human consumption.
It's that simple - one knows that it's hot, so you don't put the cup in your lap while fastening a seat belt or something. She
did that and she burned yourself. That's just too fscking bad.
She was not fastening her seatbe
I can never seem to help myself from replying to the worst of the ACs, well here I go again.
Why even bother to make such a long post as AC? Additionally you obviosuly didn't read any of the facts that were linked for you, I mean how easy can I make it. This article provided by wormbin(537051) is especially easy to read, with a nice numbered list. I suggest you go read it since you got the facts you claimed to know incorrect.
Now let's break down your arguments in manner that follows logic and reason rather than off-the-hip emotional analysis as you attempted with my first post.
A) I routinely boil up some water in the kettle, pour it into a cup, [...] and hand it to someone. I expect a sane, mentally competent adult to realize that hot drinks may be hot at first. Somehow, for thousands of years, adults have managed to deal with the concept of hot drinks. The McDonalds incident wasn't even boiling -- it was *colder* than what I'm talking about. Yes, because as we all know, water colder than boiling is incapable of harming people. You're trying to set up a straw man argument; only stupid people ever spill hot drinks on themselves, therefore this woman is stupid and it's her fault. I argue that there is no one alive who has never spilled a drink for any reason. I'd wager even you have spilled some of your delicious hot chocolate. The point here is that drinks will be spilled, and whether the person is aware of it being hot when given to them is irrelevant (also impossible to miss, I'm sure this woman was aware her hot coffee was hot). However since drinks do on occassion spill, it would be prudent for them not to be at an unreasonably dangerously hot temp. Key phrase here is 'unreasonably dangerously' as all hot liquids are to some degree dangerous, but we can mitigate that by keeping the temp a bit lower. In your example the person knew for a fact the cocoa they were given was just at the boiling point, this woman had no idea precisely hot hot her coffee was. I think a consumer given a hot drink can have a reasonable expectation that it is drinkably hot, not barely sub-boiling.
B) There are a ton of people that eat at McDonalds who *didn't* find the coffee "way above what any reasonable person would consider acceptable" -- including this woman, if she'd ever had a McDonald's coffee before. First, I don't understand how this woman having had McD coffee in the past somehow waives her right to ever declare it too hot. And once again you are marginalizing the point here by saying if X people didn't have a problem then X+1 will not have a problem. A fallacy. Just because Joe Citizen likes his coffee a scalding 185, doesn't make that temperature any safer for consumption.
C) They had received numerous complaints about it prior to the incident
They're McDonald's. They're enormous. They have complaints about coffee being too hot, meat not being kosher, coffee being too cold, a lack of Italian buns, and so forth. It would be unusual if they had *nobody* mentioning it. True, this is perhaps your best point, but again here you show your lack of actual facts of the case. It wasn't just that some trivial subset of people had made this complaint, there were in fact over 700 incidents of coffee burns on file. That's just burns, I'm sure the number of 'too hot' complaints are therefore well above 700. I'd say 700 burn cases easily eclipses the other trivial complaint statistics. And by-the-by, no one needed medical treatment for the food being not kosher or no italian buns. Obviously the company cannot please everyone but potential injuries should rank high on the to-fix list.
And if you were familiar with the case and were being honest, you would have mentioned that all the *other* coffees from the *other* fast-food places caused the same burns -- it's just that McDonald's, being the hottest of the temperature range by ten degrees, did so faster. I bolded the being honest bit above because it per
sue large companies for spilling hot coffee on themselves
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume you're referring to some other case involving a hot coffee suit, and not the infamous McDonalds suit. If you actually take the time to read the details of the McD's suit you'll see that the franchise in question was serving coffee at a temperature way way above what any reasonable person would consider acceptable. They had received numerous complaints about it prior to the incident, and the woman who was burned by the coffee received severe 2nd and 3rd degree burns. In other words - the suit was totally warranted. Any coffee at a temperature high enough to cause 3rd degree burns through clothing is unsafe and should not be served.
I provide this info for other readers who may not know the details of the case but love to point to it as an example of a frivolous lawsuit when in fact it is completely justified.
VitalSecurity's report points out that this vulnerability can (only) affect Windows users who use Sun's Java Runtime Environment.
Great, just great. I had to switch from Window's JVM to Sun's to avoid some other exploit that was killing my box running Win98 (don't even remember what problem it was but it was a big one, I think something related to coolwwwsearch).
And now I can't run Sun Java with my Firefox browser? WTF am I supposed to use for Java now? It's all well and good for ppl to say "don't use any java" but that isn't a practical solution for everyone.
So when are we going to start forming cyber squads, either as vigilante groups or legally sanctioned, to go after the asshats that are absolutely ruining the internet. I'm pretty in the know, I keep diverse passwords, I don't run as root and have a firewall, I keep patches up to date, but even I'm appalled at the amount of time I have to spend keeping my computer clean. Joe User - e.g. most of my friends' parents - have zero chance of staying uninfected online w/o someone like me updating their windows boxes constantly.
We need some groups to write backhacks on the zombie masters. If hundreds of script kiddies and russian mafia types and nigerian scammers can flood the internet with a constant stream of exploits and hacks w/o getting so much as sniffed by the law, why aren't there more whitehat hackers out there forming groups to exploit the exploiters and deal them some damage? (Not just create blacklists/watchgroups, etc - not to disparage those avenues, they are necessary and useful and I salute the folks already doing that sort of thing.) I want an internet call to arms. If we want the net to be free and useful/usable then we've got start forming some possies and running the riffraff out of town. [/Rant]
First off, Wallace and Gromit have come out on top in every adventure they've been in, from picnicking on the moon to battling an automatic-trouser-stealing penguin burglar.
And secondly, they are made of clay. It doesn't get much more dynamic than that.:P
Let's just have all fines go directly to compensating the artists and production engineers, and only them, since they're the ones with the puppy-dog eyes that the music labels are telling us are starvng to death.
I guarantee all lawsuits would stop within a month once the soul-sucking corporations stopped getting their infinite percent cut.
It's a rant people, don't reply like this was a thesis statement, but seriously, when are we going to make them give up the "for the artists (children)" argument? I think if the court is going to rule in their favor it should also require them to publicly announce their true actions. Which are using the legal systems to prop up an outmoded business model and integrate profit margins that they otherwise would never have earned anyway.
The article was extremely brief and didn't mention anything about how this software actually decides it's looking at the real user's face. what happens if I hold up a picture of the correct owner and snap a shot of that? I have a feeling the device will happily log me in unless it has some method of detecting 2D vs 3D.
Pleeeeeease! I love Star Trek as much as the next geek but having watched about a season of Enterprise and the (only 14 episode) season of Firefly, I found Firefly to be much more compelling and realistic than Enterprise.
Where's my donation fund to bring this one back? Perhaps when the movie comes out some clueless TV exec will think it will make a great show and make them an offer? Here's hoping.
From the article (emphasis mine): One top label said it would not raise wholesale prices now because the market was not yet mature enough for an increase.
This statement right here says it all. One might initially read this as a bit of sane thinking from one of the labels re letting the industry grow, however when you think about what it means you see that the greater plan is more stifling prices.
The only current cost increase that the RIAA could justify is annual inflation. Their distribution costs are taken up by the online reseller (iTunes, etc), their printing costs are essentially zero, just convert a master song copy to digital format and deliver to online distributor once. And their advertising costs remain the same since they are not (to my knowledge) producing any advertisements that forward online music buying specifically.
The only explanation for the price increase is that they simply want more for the same or less service. And the wording of the one abstaining record label here says it all: not yet mature enough. i.e. They planned to milk consumers for all they possibly could once it caught on, but most of them have gotten tired waiting for the plan to come to fruition and have jumped the gun. In other words if they had waiting another X years/Y% user increase/[insert marketing threshold here] then everybody would have been on board for this as they'd planned it all along.
Could someone who is a lawyer or has the time to research the appropriate links please explain how the RIAA in doing this is NOT acting as a monopoly or cartel? As I understood it, price fixing by an industry that is not justified by some external cost increase is explicitly illegal, regardless of whether it's a smokey back-room deal or done in the public eye under the guise of an "association".
I always assumed "different" was a predicate adjective modifying the implied subject of the imperative "Think."
It's like saying, "I left the store happy," or, more simply and as an imperative, "leave happy."
The example you gave makes sense for that usage, however in the Apple slogan it makes no sense for 'different' to modify the implied subject 'you' (or any other implied subject I can come up with). Happy is an adjective that can be applied to 'you', but different in this case must modify think. Otherwise what does the phrase "You think different" mean if different is not modifying think? I cannot come up with such a meaning.
More likely 'different' is meant as a concept rather than a modifier. As in "Think pink" or the like. Personally I like to think the Apple marketers originally meant "Think Differently" but the mistake got through editing and then they had to defend it. I base this on no practical fact except that it makes me chuckle.
This post is not meant to provoke, but simply respond to a conversational thread.:)
You are too tied up in traditional ways of getting a message across and overlooking the simple poetry of a two-word marketing campaign. You could stand to take some of their advice. Think Different.
I just like putting in a good ribbing when I can. Most people don't even realize there's a difference, let alone make the distinction and see that one is gramatically incorrect. When I first saw Apple's new slogan years ago I saw it for what it was, but honestly, then and even now I still think they meant 'differently'.
That's just my opinion, and honestly I haven't bothered to ever read up on it but I'm sure their are diatribes on more than a few mac boards/blogs/slashdot on the subject and quite possibly a press release as well.
You must take some of your own advice and realize that not every trollish post to/. is from someone who hasn't played devil's advocate.
Re:One thing the editor left off..
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Apple Updates iPod
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I'm an Applelitist. My slogan is: Think different, swine
I'm a pedantic grammar elitist. Your slogan should be: Think differently, swine.
Seriously though, who let that marketing campaign get through editing?
So they can see how bloody easy it is to increase security by doing something as simple as making a safer setting the default.
BTW, Bill if you're listening, thank you sooo much for allowing any source to install browser helper objects by default. I mean how could it go wrong, right guys? CWS variants pretty much destroyed my parents' PC's usability/trustworthiness.
You make an excellent point, and I agree completely that the idea that every click (or at least a majority) should lead to a sale is as ludicrous as the RIAA's stance that every pirated mp3 is a lost sale.
In addition to your points I think the advertisers also need to take into account the nature of users in this medium. Most of the time when I'm on the web I have a specific goal - reading slashdot, finding pictures of something, etc, etc. So when there's a keyword ad in the middle of the articel I'm reading, even if I'm interested I'm probably not going to suspend what I'm doing right that minute to buy some new RAM or whatever it is they're selling. Personally I keep a set of folders for items I'm looking for, and as I find good dealers in my travels through the web I bookmark them for later. Point is, I shop when I'm on the web to shop, and if I'm already doing something else then nothing short of an outrageous clearance of some sort is going to make me buy the product immediately after discovering an ad.
Choice quote: Truth be told, the bloodiest day in America's Army Game account history is still ahead of us and we got most of the information leading to that day from the bad guys themselves!
Throughout the article this guy keeps saying "bad guys" like he was fighting for something tangible and sacred. Get some perspective man, you're booting cheaters from a game server, not saving babies in 'Nam.
How about: Tampering with software and servers owned or used by the Army is cyber crime.
Oooooh, oh no! I'm not fully clear on what people are doing that's got General McNads' panties in a bunch, but I'm assuming it's a bit more annoying than just using a wall hack, perhaps people are trying to crash servers and the like, but that happens to every game/website/store on the web! But because it's happened to the army's game, now they're really serious and pissed. Hello, US Gub'ment, this is the sort of "cybercrime" that goes on daily and is ignored or completely fumbled by current law bodies. Now you know what Joe Developer has to deal with daily when he wakes up and his web-store has been hacked to shit. Did you care then? Nope, but apparently now that it's personal it matters. The guy writing this sounds almost surprised by the affront of the "bad guys": 'How dare they hack us! I mean we're the army for crissake!'
And the bit at the end saying "We're coming for you." Honestly, I think this guy actually believes someone's going to have their house stormed and shot up. At best they'll be sending a lawyer, there will be due process in court, and life will continue as usual. Someone, please, get this over-inflated self-important bastard away from his keyboard and someplace where his gung-ho attitude might actually affect change at the scale he hallucinates. It's a friggin game.
"My god Er, I can't believe we are standing in the presence of THE Moon Master!"
Choice quote: Truth be told, the bloodiest day in America's Army Game account history is still ahead of us and we got most of the information leading to that day from the bad guys themselves!
Throughout the article this guy keeps saying "bad guys" like he was fighting for something tangible and sacred. Get some perspective man, you're booting cheaters from a game server, not saving babies in 'Nam.
How about: Tampering with software and servers owned or used by the Army is cyber crime Oooooh, oh no! I'm not fully clear on what people are doing that's got General McNads' panties in a bunch, but I'm assuming it's a bit more annoying than just using a wall hack, perhaps people are trying to crash servers and the like, but that happens to every game/website/store on the web! But because it's happened to the army's game, now they're really serious and pissed. Hello, US Gub'ment, this is the sort of "cybercrime" that goes on daily and is ignored or completely fumbled by current law bodies. Now you know what Joe Developer has to deal with daily when he wakes up and his web-store has been hacked to shit. Did you care then? Nope, but apparently now that it's personal it matters. The guy writing this sounds almost surprised by the affront of the "bad guys": 'How dare they hack us! I mean we're the army for crissake!'
And the bit at the end saying "We're coming for you." Honestly, I think this guy actually believes someone's going to have their house stormed and shot up. At best they'll be sending a lawyer, there will be due process in court, and life will continue as usual. Someone, please, get this over-inflated self-important bastard away from his keyboard and someplace where his gung-ho attitude might actually affect change at the scale he hallucinates. It's a friggin game.
My god Er, I can't believe we are standing in the presence of THE Moon Master!"
Wow, are these guys full of themselves. I write complex automation code for a living, in an environment that demands rigorous QA practices and documentation, but guess what? We still create bugs, find latent bugs that have gone undiscovered for many builds, and even get some real DUH! headslappers from time to time. Fact of the matter is, when you've got a couple hundred thousand lines of code there are going to be errors and unintended consequences, mostly arising out of missed checks, such as this gmail problem (assuming they're right about the end tag check being the cause).
For these people to find a single issue in such a system, then say it's a shortcoming of gmail's QA process, and in the same breath ask for work - implying they've got the skills to even handle such a job - is insulting. Please, just because you're smart enough to expose a flaw once you stumbled onto it in no way means you are qualified to correct that or any other issue. Sometimes our QA team finds a flaw and even digs in the logs enough to pinpoint the problem but it can still take the developer who designed the code days to correct.
In other words, noticing that you're bleeding does not qualify you as a surgeon. Instead of publishing their finidings in a detailed how-to, these asshats should have forwarded the info to gmail and let them deal with it, and that's assuming that the gmail team didn't already have it in their list of bugs. I just don't understand why people feel the need to not only describe a security problem, but give every hacker on the net a roadmap as to just exactly how to use it and what illicit activity it might be good for.
I didn't RTFA this time around, but as a few others have pointed out it sounds like many of the questions have been asked before. A more philosphical treatment of human/robot issues - specifically how the concept of 'human' is/will change with the continuing merger of man and machine - can be found in both GITS films.
Setting aside for a moment criticism or praise for the films themselves, the issues they raise are definitely going to affect humanity sooner rather than later. Man has taken science, biology, and chemistry to the convergent points of genetics and nanotechnology, where we see that at the molecular level all things are just machines, the only difference is if you build with Si atoms or proteins. We have for some time been traveling down the path of treating humans as (albeit, complex) machines that can be parted out. Replace what is broken, tinker with the timing to make it better, stronger, more versatile and longer lasting. How long until we achieve the GITS tech of being able to transplant memory and even to some degree conciousness? And when that happens, and a person is only pieces of brain manipulating a prothetic shell, how do we view the soul? Is this person still human?
More than anything else I think the Ghost in the Shell films do an excellent job of forcing the spotlight back upon oneself to consider what it is that makes them uniquely different from a thinking machine, if there is a difference at all. And even within that there is the revelation that although you may posess a singular conciousness, when viewed within the structure of society, you are merely another gene in the vast mechanism that is human knowledge and creation.
We are complex self-sustaining chemical reactions that bring about ordered change in the universe, if for no other grander purpose than data storage. It is humbling, but there is something else there that hints at a purpose that secretly drives us. In any case, I think those two films in particular are an excellent starting point for such a discussion, as they really cut to the heart of the issue in the human vs machine debate.
Slashdot Mirror
Simply amazing! I must own one!
;P
2. Release the SAME MOVIE in new ??? format.
3. Profit!
Any 'creative genius' that man ever possessed was whored out a long time ago in a galaxy not-so-far away. As far as I'm concerned these days the only brilliant idea he really ever had after writing the original trilogy script was to secure the merchandising rights. Look up 'laughing all the way to the bank' in the dictionary and you get a picture of Lucas farting cash while humping a vader mask.... Come to think of it, I have a wiki entry to go make. ;P
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, anyone?
I don't think I've despised any other main character as much as that sniveling spoiled ass, Pip.
I think that's what worries me the most about the sizes of the current botnets we're seeing - how big are the ones we can't see yet? There are definitely some crafty hacker orgs out there who are smart enough to realize that a covert and/or latent botnet would be the most devastating kind, especially if it could return to latency after use. Imagine it, one day a quarter million previously 'safe' windows boxes execute their delayed instructions, form a zombie net, perform a devastating DDOS or the like, then quickly go back to sleep. Parts of it could turn on for short periods solely to infect new machines quickly and quietly. Essentially it's the cyber equivalent of terrorist cells, dormant and unseen until exercised, and impossible to estimate or completely stamp out because of their low-lying nature. One of these days something like this is going to rear its ugly head and it will be for some greater and much more devastating purpose than just sending a few million spam about penis pills.
Should be from the 'finish-firefly-first-damnit-dept'. Every time I rewatch the series I find more and more unfinished plot lines I want the answers for!
A bit more on-topic, I'm curious as to what the Wonder Woman movie is going to be like after receiving the Joss treatment? He's big on lesbians (as noted elsewhere), can't go wrong wiht that. :) But I also find his work includes a lot of subtle humor mastefully weilded by the main characters. I wouldn't be too surprised if our heroine ends up providing some great superhero one-liners right up there with Batman's "chicks dig the car."
>McFact No. 1: For years, McDonald's had known they had a problem with the way they make their coffee - that their coffee was served much hotter (at least 20 degrees more so) than at other restaurants.
Why is that a problem? If other restaurants served coffee at 50 degrees and McDonalds at 70, would that still be a problem?
Are you implying that there is never a cutoff point at which the temperature will be unacceptable? How about this, I routinely serve my ice 20 degrees hotter than everyone else. Why is that a problem? I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader. At some point the temp of a drink is going to go from 'nice and hot' to 'omg that burns!' which is the case here and 20 degrees is a significant difference in temp. If it were just 5 or even 10 one might let it slide as a slight variation, but 20? As an experiment turn your thermostat down 20 degrees colder tonight and tell me if you notice anything different. (For reference, all temps are in degrees Farenheit.)
Your second point is sound. Statistically 700 burn incidents over ten years is marginal. But those were incidents that were settled, how many were not reported by people, or were ignored by the company and not settled but not taken to court either? If 700 cases made it to the point where the company had to settle (for upwards of half a million), then they were aware that there was a potential problem there. One that could have been mostly fixed by lowering their temp by even 10 degrees, which still would have put them above-avg temp for the industry if that was something they desired. And frankly, McDonalds coffee is bad at any temp, making it scalding hot doesn't change the flavor, unless you count not being able to taste it because your mouth is scorched. Somehow Dunkin Donuts/Starbucks/etc manage to run successful coffee businesses without serving their product at 185 degrees, why is it McDonalds cannot? Mitigating risk is a sound business strategy, and lowering their temp would have prevented injuries w/o any effect on sales. I'd like to get the numbers on what other kinds of injury suits they have settled. While 700 burns over 10 years may be small in the large picture, how does it stack up against their other cases? If they're averaging 70 burn cases a year, what are the other ones like? Are they averaging 70 choking/food poisoning/slipping cases per year as well, or were the burn incidents dwarfing the other numbers? I do not know. Perhaps they were insignificant when compared to the number of other suits but since neither you nor I can say one way or the other the point is moot until further evidence is presented.
>McFact No. 3: The woman involved in this infamous case suffered very serious injuries - third degree burns on her groin, thighs and buttocks that required skin grafts and a seven-day hospital stay. Yes? Yes?
Yes. What more do you want? She received 3rd degree burns for pete's sake! Have you ever had even a bad 2nd degree burn? Did you know that 3rd degree burns cause tissue and nerve damage? As well as permanent scarring and can result in chronic pain for years. What part about an old woman being extremely burned by her friggin coffee means nothing to you? 2nd degree burns I would expect from a hot liquid, 3rd degree indicates there is a problem! That is the point if you missed it. 3rd degree burns are your formal inviatation saying something is amiss with your product designed for human consumption.
It's that simple - one knows that it's hot, so you don't put the cup in your lap while fastening a seat belt or something. She did that and she burned yourself. That's just too fscking bad.
She was not fastening her seatbe
Why even bother to make such a long post as AC? Additionally you obviosuly didn't read any of the facts that were linked for you, I mean how easy can I make it. This article provided by wormbin(537051) is especially easy to read, with a nice numbered list. I suggest you go read it since you got the facts you claimed to know incorrect.
Now let's break down your arguments in manner that follows logic and reason rather than off-the-hip emotional analysis as you attempted with my first post.
A) I routinely boil up some water in the kettle, pour it into a cup, [...] and hand it to someone. I expect a sane, mentally competent adult to realize that hot drinks may be hot at first. Somehow, for thousands of years, adults have managed to deal with the concept of hot drinks. The McDonalds incident wasn't even boiling -- it was *colder* than what I'm talking about.
Yes, because as we all know, water colder than boiling is incapable of harming people. You're trying to set up a straw man argument; only stupid people ever spill hot drinks on themselves, therefore this woman is stupid and it's her fault. I argue that there is no one alive who has never spilled a drink for any reason. I'd wager even you have spilled some of your delicious hot chocolate. The point here is that drinks will be spilled, and whether the person is aware of it being hot when given to them is irrelevant (also impossible to miss, I'm sure this woman was aware her hot coffee was hot). However since drinks do on occassion spill, it would be prudent for them not to be at an unreasonably dangerously hot temp. Key phrase here is 'unreasonably dangerously' as all hot liquids are to some degree dangerous, but we can mitigate that by keeping the temp a bit lower. In your example the person knew for a fact the cocoa they were given was just at the boiling point, this woman had no idea precisely hot hot her coffee was. I think a consumer given a hot drink can have a reasonable expectation that it is drinkably hot, not barely sub-boiling.
B) There are a ton of people that eat at McDonalds who *didn't* find the coffee "way above what any reasonable person would consider acceptable" -- including this woman, if she'd ever had a McDonald's coffee before.
First, I don't understand how this woman having had McD coffee in the past somehow waives her right to ever declare it too hot. And once again you are marginalizing the point here by saying if X people didn't have a problem then X+1 will not have a problem. A fallacy. Just because Joe Citizen likes his coffee a scalding 185, doesn't make that temperature any safer for consumption.
C) They had received numerous complaints about it prior to the incident
They're McDonald's. They're enormous. They have complaints about coffee being too hot, meat not being kosher, coffee being too cold, a lack of Italian buns, and so forth. It would be unusual if they had *nobody* mentioning it.
True, this is perhaps your best point, but again here you show your lack of actual facts of the case. It wasn't just that some trivial subset of people had made this complaint, there were in fact over 700 incidents of coffee burns on file. That's just burns, I'm sure the number of 'too hot' complaints are therefore well above 700. I'd say 700 burn cases easily eclipses the other trivial complaint statistics. And by-the-by, no one needed medical treatment for the food being not kosher or no italian buns. Obviously the company cannot please everyone but potential injuries should rank high on the to-fix list.
And if you were familiar with the case and were being honest, you would have mentioned that all the *other* coffees from the *other* fast-food places caused the same burns -- it's just that McDonald's, being the hottest of the temperature range by ten degrees, did so faster.
I bolded the being honest bit above because it per
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume you're referring to some other case involving a hot coffee suit, and not the infamous McDonalds suit. If you actually take the time to read the details of the McD's suit you'll see that the franchise in question was serving coffee at a temperature way way above what any reasonable person would consider acceptable. They had received numerous complaints about it prior to the incident, and the woman who was burned by the coffee received severe 2nd and 3rd degree burns. In other words - the suit was totally warranted. Any coffee at a temperature high enough to cause 3rd degree burns through clothing is unsafe and should not be served.
I provide this info for other readers who may not know the details of the case but love to point to it as an example of a frivolous lawsuit when in fact it is completely justified.
Relevant Links:
reference article
google search on topic
Great, just great. I had to switch from Window's JVM to Sun's to avoid some other exploit that was killing my box running Win98 (don't even remember what problem it was but it was a big one, I think something related to coolwwwsearch). And now I can't run Sun Java with my Firefox browser? WTF am I supposed to use for Java now? It's all well and good for ppl to say "don't use any java" but that isn't a practical solution for everyone.
So when are we going to start forming cyber squads, either as vigilante groups or legally sanctioned, to go after the asshats that are absolutely ruining the internet. I'm pretty in the know, I keep diverse passwords, I don't run as root and have a firewall, I keep patches up to date, but even I'm appalled at the amount of time I have to spend keeping my computer clean. Joe User - e.g. most of my friends' parents - have zero chance of staying uninfected online w/o someone like me updating their windows boxes constantly.
We need some groups to write backhacks on the zombie masters. If hundreds of script kiddies and russian mafia types and nigerian scammers can flood the internet with a constant stream of exploits and hacks w/o getting so much as sniffed by the law, why aren't there more whitehat hackers out there forming groups to exploit the exploiters and deal them some damage? (Not just create blacklists/watchgroups, etc - not to disparage those avenues, they are necessary and useful and I salute the folks already doing that sort of thing.) I want an internet call to arms. If we want the net to be free and useful/usable then we've got start forming some possies and running the riffraff out of town. [/Rant]
And secondly, they are made of clay. It doesn't get much more dynamic than that. :P
I guarantee all lawsuits would stop within a month once the soul-sucking corporations stopped getting their infinite percent cut.
It's a rant people, don't reply like this was a thesis statement, but seriously, when are we going to make them give up the "for the artists (children)" argument? I think if the court is going to rule in their favor it should also require them to publicly announce their true actions. Which are using the legal systems to prop up an outmoded business model and integrate profit margins that they otherwise would never have earned anyway.
The article was extremely brief and didn't mention anything about how this software actually decides it's looking at the real user's face. what happens if I hold up a picture of the correct owner and snap a shot of that? I have a feeling the device will happily log me in unless it has some method of detecting 2D vs 3D.
Where's my donation fund to bring this one back? Perhaps when the movie comes out some clueless TV exec will think it will make a great show and make them an offer? Here's hoping.
This statement right here says it all. One might initially read this as a bit of sane thinking from one of the labels re letting the industry grow, however when you think about what it means you see that the greater plan is more stifling prices.
The only current cost increase that the RIAA could justify is annual inflation. Their distribution costs are taken up by the online reseller (iTunes, etc), their printing costs are essentially zero, just convert a master song copy to digital format and deliver to online distributor once. And their advertising costs remain the same since they are not (to my knowledge) producing any advertisements that forward online music buying specifically.
The only explanation for the price increase is that they simply want more for the same or less service. And the wording of the one abstaining record label here says it all: not yet mature enough. i.e. They planned to milk consumers for all they possibly could once it caught on, but most of them have gotten tired waiting for the plan to come to fruition and have jumped the gun. In other words if they had waiting another X years/Y% user increase/[insert marketing threshold here] then everybody would have been on board for this as they'd planned it all along.
Could someone who is a lawyer or has the time to research the appropriate links please explain how the RIAA in doing this is NOT acting as a monopoly or cartel? As I understood it, price fixing by an industry that is not justified by some external cost increase is explicitly illegal, regardless of whether it's a smokey back-room deal or done in the public eye under the guise of an "association".
The example you gave makes sense for that usage, however in the Apple slogan it makes no sense for 'different' to modify the implied subject 'you' (or any other implied subject I can come up with). Happy is an adjective that can be applied to 'you', but different in this case must modify think. Otherwise what does the phrase "You think different" mean if different is not modifying think? I cannot come up with such a meaning.
More likely 'different' is meant as a concept rather than a modifier. As in "Think pink" or the like.
Personally I like to think the Apple marketers originally meant "Think Differently" but the mistake got through editing and then they had to defend it. I base this on no practical fact except that it makes me chuckle.
This post is not meant to provoke, but simply respond to a conversational thread. :)
I just like putting in a good ribbing when I can. Most people don't even realize there's a difference, let alone make the distinction and see that one is gramatically incorrect. When I first saw Apple's new slogan years ago I saw it for what it was, but honestly, then and even now I still think they meant 'differently'.
That's just my opinion, and honestly I haven't bothered to ever read up on it but I'm sure their are diatribes on more than a few mac boards/blogs/slashdot on the subject and quite possibly a press release as well.
You must take some of your own advice and realize that not every trollish post to /. is from someone who hasn't played devil's advocate.
I'm a pedantic grammar elitist. Your slogan should be: Think differently, swine.
Seriously though, who let that marketing campaign get through editing?
BTW, Bill if you're listening, thank you sooo much for allowing any source to install browser helper objects by default. I mean how could it go wrong, right guys? CWS variants pretty much destroyed my parents' PC's usability/trustworthiness.
You still need to know enough about money laundering and electronic transactions to not get caught!
In addition to your points I think the advertisers also need to take into account the nature of users in this medium. Most of the time when I'm on the web I have a specific goal - reading slashdot, finding pictures of something, etc, etc. So when there's a keyword ad in the middle of the articel I'm reading, even if I'm interested I'm probably not going to suspend what I'm doing right that minute to buy some new RAM or whatever it is they're selling. Personally I keep a set of folders for items I'm looking for, and as I find good dealers in my travels through the web I bookmark them for later. Point is, I shop when I'm on the web to shop, and if I'm already doing something else then nothing short of an outrageous clearance of some sort is going to make me buy the product immediately after discovering an ad.
Throughout the article this guy keeps saying "bad guys" like he was fighting for something tangible and sacred. Get some perspective man, you're booting cheaters from a game server, not saving babies in 'Nam.
How about: Tampering with software and servers owned or used by the Army is cyber crime.
Oooooh, oh no! I'm not fully clear on what people are doing that's got General McNads' panties in a bunch, but I'm assuming it's a bit more annoying than just using a wall hack, perhaps people are trying to crash servers and the like, but that happens to every game/website/store on the web! But because it's happened to the army's game, now they're really serious and pissed. Hello, US Gub'ment, this is the sort of "cybercrime" that goes on daily and is ignored or completely fumbled by current law bodies. Now you know what Joe Developer has to deal with daily when he wakes up and his web-store has been hacked to shit. Did you care then? Nope, but apparently now that it's personal it matters. The guy writing this sounds almost surprised by the affront of the "bad guys": 'How dare they hack us! I mean we're the army for crissake!'
And the bit at the end saying "We're coming for you." Honestly, I think this guy actually believes someone's going to have their house stormed and shot up. At best they'll be sending a lawyer, there will be due process in court, and life will continue as usual. Someone, please, get this over-inflated self-important bastard away from his keyboard and someplace where his gung-ho attitude might actually affect change at the scale he hallucinates. It's a friggin game.
"My god Er, I can't believe we are standing in the presence of THE Moon Master!"
Aw crap, I have no idea how this got posted under the wrong topic. Appologies all! I'd retract it if I could. Hooray /. for not allowing editing!
Throughout the article this guy keeps saying "bad guys" like he was fighting for something tangible and sacred. Get some perspective man, you're booting cheaters from a game server, not saving babies in 'Nam.
How about: Tampering with software and servers owned or used by the Army is cyber crime
Oooooh, oh no! I'm not fully clear on what people are doing that's got General McNads' panties in a bunch, but I'm assuming it's a bit more annoying than just using a wall hack, perhaps people are trying to crash servers and the like, but that happens to every game/website/store on the web! But because it's happened to the army's game, now they're really serious and pissed. Hello, US Gub'ment, this is the sort of "cybercrime" that goes on daily and is ignored or completely fumbled by current law bodies. Now you know what Joe Developer has to deal with daily when he wakes up and his web-store has been hacked to shit. Did you care then? Nope, but apparently now that it's personal it matters. The guy writing this sounds almost surprised by the affront of the "bad guys": 'How dare they hack us! I mean we're the army for crissake!'
And the bit at the end saying "We're coming for you." Honestly, I think this guy actually believes someone's going to have their house stormed and shot up. At best they'll be sending a lawyer, there will be due process in court, and life will continue as usual. Someone, please, get this over-inflated self-important bastard away from his keyboard and someplace where his gung-ho attitude might actually affect change at the scale he hallucinates. It's a friggin game.
My god Er, I can't believe we are standing in the presence of THE Moon Master!"
For these people to find a single issue in such a system, then say it's a shortcoming of gmail's QA process, and in the same breath ask for work - implying they've got the skills to even handle such a job - is insulting. Please, just because you're smart enough to expose a flaw once you stumbled onto it in no way means you are qualified to correct that or any other issue. Sometimes our QA team finds a flaw and even digs in the logs enough to pinpoint the problem but it can still take the developer who designed the code days to correct.
In other words, noticing that you're bleeding does not qualify you as a surgeon. Instead of publishing their finidings in a detailed how-to, these asshats should have forwarded the info to gmail and let them deal with it, and that's assuming that the gmail team didn't already have it in their list of bugs. I just don't understand why people feel the need to not only describe a security problem, but give every hacker on the net a roadmap as to just exactly how to use it and what illicit activity it might be good for.
Setting aside for a moment criticism or praise for the films themselves, the issues they raise are definitely going to affect humanity sooner rather than later. Man has taken science, biology, and chemistry to the convergent points of genetics and nanotechnology, where we see that at the molecular level all things are just machines, the only difference is if you build with Si atoms or proteins. We have for some time been traveling down the path of treating humans as (albeit, complex) machines that can be parted out. Replace what is broken, tinker with the timing to make it better, stronger, more versatile and longer lasting. How long until we achieve the GITS tech of being able to transplant memory and even to some degree conciousness? And when that happens, and a person is only pieces of brain manipulating a prothetic shell, how do we view the soul? Is this person still human?
More than anything else I think the Ghost in the Shell films do an excellent job of forcing the spotlight back upon oneself to consider what it is that makes them uniquely different from a thinking machine, if there is a difference at all. And even within that there is the revelation that although you may posess a singular conciousness, when viewed within the structure of society, you are merely another gene in the vast mechanism that is human knowledge and creation.
We are complex self-sustaining chemical reactions that bring about ordered change in the universe, if for no other grander purpose than data storage. It is humbling, but there is something else there that hints at a purpose that secretly drives us. In any case, I think those two films in particular are an excellent starting point for such a discussion, as they really cut to the heart of the issue in the human vs machine debate.