Why? I am being totally serious...why? This is exactly what people wanted. In fact, this is what people demanded! They screamed and ranted about why isn't the government doing more to protect us! Now they are doing more. Given that the job that has been demanded of the government is "protect us at all costs" they would rather have false positives than false negatives.
You seem to be part of the minority with the misguided notion that because you think this is unbelievably stupid, paranoid, ineffective, oppressive, and otherwise Bad Stuff (tm), that everyone should think like you. The reality is, humans in general tend to be very xenophobic and fear driven creatures and that tends to show itself quite frequently in the majority rule situations. Of course, it often shows itself in minority rule situations too since the odds are that the minority ruling class are also paranoid xenophobes.
I suppose you could argue that in order to be classified as a person, or people collectively, that the individuals being grouped must have a little more self awareness and be less fear/instinct driven. However, this would also require the acceptance that those people are the minority and are not the ones in control. It also tends to give way into things like the holocaust when one group decides it is more human than the rest.
In a nutshell, we are fucked. We are fucking ourselves. We are fucking happy that we are doing it. There are a few that don't fucking like it. They are typically told to "fuck off" or called "fucking terrorist supporters" or "fucking traitors". All you can really do is shut the fuck up and color. Most people are happy when they have this much fucking in their lives, why can't you?
So...while ignorance may be bliss, you should be happy that you are aware enough to get the punchline of this joke called human civilization. Enjoy it, most don't get the joke.
What I wish is that I could copyright a year of my work and then be paid for that same work the rest of my life without ever having to perform that work again.
I thought it restricts it. If I sell GPL based stuff I have to make the source available. I don't think I can take Apache, compile it, call it Comanche and sell it while not providing the source. This would still be about enforcing GPL as a license rather than simply copyright. The Cisco/Linksys thing and that train software issue have touched on aspects of these issues.
There is a combination of licensing and contract law that ultimately protects Apple in this case. The EULAs that are total garbage are the ones that display AFTER the sale. The notion is that contract law says all the terms are agreed upon and finalized at the time of sale. You can't add stuff after the transaction. However, Apple makes it very clear *before* the sale that in order to use that product you must be using it on Apple hardware. The hilarious piece here is that people say they aren't allowed to do that, when they absolutely are. Further, they are also allowed to set the price and develop their product how they want. They could start treating their customers like crap with serial keys, activations, hardware checks, and other such to enforce it, but they don't. Even in the face of a bunch of brats with entitlement complexes, they haven't done it yet. That sets them apart from MS in a BIG way. If they want to cut support for Atom, they can, it is their software, the notion that it is somehow illegal or wrong is mindbogglingly stupid. They can also set the price. So if a bunch of fools manage to force Apples hand to support everything they can simply raise the price to unreasonably high levels and make the software upgrades free as part of Apple care that must be registered to specific qualifying hardware. This will also destroy a great deal of stability in the marketplace and producers will simply say "fuck off" and go elsewhere to avoid that kind of irrational treatment. Hope no one wanted jobs to pay for the software...of course...I suspect most of them will just download it and not pay anyways while using even more assinine entitlement justifications like the other responder to my original post.
Are you kidding, that would be perfect. I mean really...watching DHS traumatize a bunch of already frightened travelers. Oh this is going to be awesome! Afraid of flying, afraid of traveling alone, claustrophobic, business travelers afraid of giving the presentation they are being sent to do, every week sees groups of people traveling to military bases to start basic training and I bet most of them are pretty afraid of how it may go. The possibilities are endless! This is going to be so awesome.
Especially when we arrest the arabic man who was just nervous about introducing his girlfriend to his parents.
Ok. Fine, then once you download it you also do nothing with it. However, if you download it and use it, then you are violating the copyright and are depriving the owner of a sale and causing harm. Your justification for taking what you want without paying for it is pathetic.
Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism...
By all means...explain to me how Psystar is using in their own home and not reselling. That is ultimately what drove this decision to start the lockdown process. Also, they are under no obligation to allow Atom processors. It is their product, you can't force them to build it the way you want. By all means...go tell Ford they have to redesign their engines to make sure they all work with Chevy parts.
And "even if you illegally downloaded it" is total and pure horseshit. If you are using it, then you should have bought it, in which case it is a lost sale. So...because I don't want to pay $60 for a book, I can just go in and copy it all down and take it home? I agree that calling each download a lost sale is some pretty stupid accounting, but the notion that you aren't hurting anyone by downloading instead of buying is idiotic at best. That is the mentality of a leech, and not of anyone who will ever actually produce anything for society.
Work hard and demand unreasonably high wages is not the same thing at all. So...I have a glass of water here to sell you...$10 per sip. Now, I assume based on your assertions that you would rather pay me $10/sip of water rather than exploiting low wage earners who maintain the water works. That is basically all you are saying... People who do menial tasks should be able to demand higher wages for no other reason than 'fairness'.
The thing no one likes to talk about is that the amount of manufacturing in the U.S. has steadily been rising. The difference is that we can do more manufacturing with less people.
I swear to god, people like you need to take economics classes. This isn't some callous "get rich" thing. This his how supply and demand works. When people like you start demanding the government step in and enforce half baked "equality" schemes the entire thing collapses and we *all* wind up in the shitter.
I suppose we should raise minimum wage to $10/hr so that burger flippers can make a living flipping burgers. Well..except for the fact that they get paid more so the prices of burgers have to go up to pay them. Oh, and because they had an increase in income prices of other goods goes up to match that. Oh and finally, because the individual burger flipper now costs 2x what it did previously, 1/2 of them lose their jobs. Congratulations...I suppose your next solution is to raise the minimum wage to $20/hr now?
I am totally OK with 99% of the world slipping into poverty if they have that same stupid attitude that they shouldn't have to do anything to stay out of poverty. Fuck them if they don't want to work. I have known folks that really did get a shitty deal, but the VAST majority of people I have been living in shitty situations got their by their own poor decisions.
This kind of idiotic entitlement mentality is fucking things up for everyone. So, those using the GPL have no right to tell me that I can't close their source and resell it like I want. Why is it that people are so happy to violate licenses to get what they want, then scream and bitch when someone else violates licenses to get what they want? It blows my mind that this crap is modded insightful. What you are advocating is just another form of tyranny. "They don't sell what I want them to sell, so I will force them to do it my way!"
Right now Apple doesn't do any of that serial key, activation, or other call home bullshit. Asshat behavior like yours is going to drive them to either doing something irritating along those lines, or simply pricing a standalone copy of OS X at an obscenely high price and then just sell "upgrades" or some other such nonsense to force the tie to a piece of Apple hardware. If you don't like their terms, don't buy it, that simple. It isn't like the standard EULA where they hide terms until post sale, the Apple hardware requirement is put out there up front.
I suppose you are the kind of neighbor that turns the stereo up at 2am in your apartment because you paid for it and no landlord has a right to enforce the conditions?
With sandworms comes spice! With spice comes prescience. Prescience brings the Kwizats Haderach. The Kwizats Haderach makes it rain. The rain kills the sandworms and then plants can grow again... Come on now, don't you know anything?
Then I would suggest making sure you are part of the 10%. For all the other asinine problems running around here, we do have a tremendous amount of upward mobility. There is a huge portion of that 90% that believes that they should be able to whine loud enough and someone else will come fix their problems in some fashion. Government handouts, corporate charity, whatever. Then on the top end, there is a bunch of worthless dead weight always waiting to be replaced. These are the guys with more money than brains. The ones that didn't get there through hard work, ingenuity, etc. They just can't compete. For every guy ready to invest heavily in 'the next big thing' that has a clue how to evaluate that investment, there are probably 10 that want to throw all their money at what someone tells them will be 'the next big thing' without any real evaluation or critical examination.
There is a difference between VC (Viet Cong) and VC (Venture Capital) but someone scarred by Vietnam is going to have an entirely different plan in mind when someone says "Let's go look for VC"
As far as potential... That plot has holes you could fly a Goa'uld Mothership through! Even ignoring the whole video game garbage and that cheese like that was only ever part of intentionally cheese episodes of previous series...there are more logical inconsistencies than I can count. At first glance it wasn't terrible, but the more I thought about it, the more unbelievably stupid holes there were.
Honestly...this seems to fly in the face of all of their entire user experience driven design policy. It also stands as a tremendous insult and annoyance to most of their target demographic. I find it very difficult to believe that a company that uses 'style' and the whole 'smoothness' factor to sell its products would quite eat a bullet like this. Love or hate their products, they have been very savvy on the marketing front for the most part, this seems like a very backwards move for them to really implement the way it is being described in the article here.
I almost wonder if this is a way to move against all the 'free' iPhone apps that do this kind of crap where it interrupts what you are doing to make you click on an ad to get back to your app. I suspect that may be wishful thinking, but not much else really makes a whole lot of sense.
We heard what you wanted and were sure to avoid those things at all costs. In the event that we could not avoid a given feature we made it practically impossible to use, moved the functionality to a new hidden location, or barrage you with popups and wizards to ensure you really want to use it.
They do have two methods. One is through the app store, and one through the developer program. You can sign up and get a key from Apple for $299 or something that will allow you to develop applications for your own enterprise deployment. Sure, it isn't exactly the best of choices, but the constant claim that it is App Store only is either dishonest or misinformed.
You sound like a dirty foreigner trying to trick us into accepting your evil ways and take over our country and brainwash our kids and... Well, I'm not really sure what those people are really frightened about.
I will have you know that xenophobic behavior is great! When I meet a foreigner and I turn out to not have the xenophobic insanity I get treated as a wonderful novelty thing. "Look, an American that isn't a knuckle dragging fearmonger xenophobe! We should buy him a drink!". Now, while I think the American stereotype is a bit overboard at times, it isn't like we haven't earned it. But getting singled out as the "wow, that isn't what Americans are supposed to be like" isn't a bad thing these days. (This is a little depressing, as I would like to have all the idiot ass clowns being singled out as "most Americans aren't like that", but what can you do?)
However, I will say that the day all you foreigners quit bringing your foods over you are no longer welcome!
Your mowing example is a PERFECT example. In many of the other cases they settled out of court. They said "Yeah, sorry, we should have been more careful, let us pay for that". If you dent your neighbor's car you should say "Yeah, sorry, I should have checked for rocks, let me pay for that". When you try to actively dodge that, and you try to come up with a bunch of nonsense to show how it really isn't your fault, and that they should have parked in their garage instead, and that all of the other times it never hurt their car, and yada yada yada, you kinda fuck yourself. If you dented your neighbors car while mowing, you can bet your ass a court would make you pay for it, and if you walk in trying to tap dance your way out of it they would likely up the fine for you being a dick about the situation. This is exactly what happened, and they ultimately got slapped for being dicks.
I agree to say McDonalds as an organization is 'negligent' for serving hot coffee is a pretty big stretch. However, based on their other behaviors and statements I am sure the largest piece is the profit motivation of squeezing every little cent out of a filter and not serving 'good coffee'. Seriously...have you actually eaten at a McDonalds? The very idea that they have 'Quality Assurance' is fucking hilarious. Based on what happened to the woman I have a REAL hard time believing it wasn't unreasonably hot. They should have said "oops, we fucked up, let us make this right". If NOTHING else, call it karma. When you share in the responsibility in an event (especially one that caused that kind of massive damage...fucking skin grafts?!) you should be a good neighbor and not a douche bag. I see it as a monumental failure of their business in that somewhere some manager in that chain should have said 'Are you fucking stupid? We are going to fight a court battle over this? We are going to be in the news looking like assholes and spending 10x the amount she wanted for medical bills?!' Because that didn't happen, because they had a whole chain of idiot assholes running the show, they got slapped with megafine. Piss poor business and it got them piss poor results. NOW they engage the media to get a bunch of corporatist apologists to come in and whine about how THEY were abused in this situation.
The woman never asked for that money, she asked for help with the medical bills to cover the fact that the coffee burnt her so bad that she spent a week+ in the hospital and had to have skin grafts. That isn't just "ouch, that burned" hot coffee. The JURY is who slapped them for trying to weasel their way out of that incident.
1. Bullets are dangerous, yet only a tiny fraction of them ever wind up penetrating a human body and causing damage. This constant assertion that the number of burns vs the number of cups sold has anything to do with this is totally irrelevant. So because most bullets never kill anyone, I can go shoot someone and argue in court that what I did wasn't negligent or reckless because most bullets don't kill anyone so I shouldn't have to act as if they are dangerous? That is mindbogglingly stupid and pointless.
2. The page YOU linked said it should be served in a warmed mug. You are now attacking me for using the same source that YOU used to defend McDs? You are starting to sound like an astroturfer.
3. I never once said what percentage of her body, so please take that up with whoever misquoted that. I only referred to the severity of the damage.
4. Some bullets only wound, not all kill, so clearly I shouldn't be held responsible for my actions that caused a bullet to kill. This is still stupid.
5. Police actively enforce the rule that murder is illegal, but it still happens. Some QA manager for McDonald's testifying that they actively enforce that temperature is completely and totally irrelevant to the actual events that happened that day. I suppose you believe all the silly shit politicians say too. Clearly because they said it it must be true in every case every day everywhere! I also suspect that you have never actually worked in a fast food place or you would know exactly how much total horseshit that line was. I bet they have even more strict QA on their food preparation, but I have witnessed a Grimmace pencil topper being melted to slag in the fry vats. I bet they have strict safety standards, yet I have watched people throw a ice cube into the fry vats to make it pop and splatter and sting people for laughs. So...if an employee was blinded because someone threw ice in and it burned there eye your argument would be that their safety guy testified that they don't allow that so it couldn't have happened?
You are entering this based on the assumption that McDonald's should be held innocent based on their behavior as a composite of everything they have done rather than as the actions of that day. So because I have not done anything wrong every other day of my life, except that one day, I should be innocent. Now...I can't really fault you for trying, defense lawyers try that shit all the time, and they try that very same reasoning in murder cases, and it usually falls flat on it face.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
There is no shortage of information out there that shows McDonald's screwed this one up. I think you are being easily swayed by emotion and prejudice. The medical testimony talked about how a reduction of temperature reduced the risk of serious burns exponentially.
No amount of subjective bullshit about "coffee is best at 185+ degrees" compares with the objective assessment of evidence that says "at 185+ degrees it can cause third degree burns in 2-7 seconds". Further, for it to do the damage it did to her there is still a good chance that they served it above that "quality assurance range". As I pointed out, McDonald's, as pretty much every fast food chain, has a very interesting view of "quality assurance". The people that work at McDonald's aren't typically the high performers, and even when dealing with the younger spectrum of that is the job available at that age, you still are forced to faced with the average maturity level. If this was some fine dining establishment with gourmet coffe then I could maybe accept your arguments about the temperature of coffee. That isn't the case, this is a fast food joint with coffee that is going to taste like ass at any temperature, being served in flimsy cups with cheap lids, to people who are more than likely mobile.
So...why didn't they follow the advice that it should be served in a warmed mug too? I mean...heated liquid in styrofoam cups...mmm mmm good stuff there.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? I am being totally serious...why? This is exactly what people wanted. In fact, this is what people demanded! They screamed and ranted about why isn't the government doing more to protect us! Now they are doing more. Given that the job that has been demanded of the government is "protect us at all costs" they would rather have false positives than false negatives.
You seem to be part of the minority with the misguided notion that because you think this is unbelievably stupid, paranoid, ineffective, oppressive, and otherwise Bad Stuff (tm), that everyone should think like you. The reality is, humans in general tend to be very xenophobic and fear driven creatures and that tends to show itself quite frequently in the majority rule situations. Of course, it often shows itself in minority rule situations too since the odds are that the minority ruling class are also paranoid xenophobes.
I suppose you could argue that in order to be classified as a person, or people collectively, that the individuals being grouped must have a little more self awareness and be less fear/instinct driven. However, this would also require the acceptance that those people are the minority and are not the ones in control. It also tends to give way into things like the holocaust when one group decides it is more human than the rest.
In a nutshell, we are fucked. We are fucking ourselves. We are fucking happy that we are doing it. There are a few that don't fucking like it. They are typically told to "fuck off" or called "fucking terrorist supporters" or "fucking traitors". All you can really do is shut the fuck up and color. Most people are happy when they have this much fucking in their lives, why can't you?
So...while ignorance may be bliss, you should be happy that you are aware enough to get the punchline of this joke called human civilization. Enjoy it, most don't get the joke.
What I wish is that I could copyright a year of my work and then be paid for that same work the rest of my life without ever having to perform that work again.
I thought it restricts it. If I sell GPL based stuff I have to make the source available. I don't think I can take Apache, compile it, call it Comanche and sell it while not providing the source. This would still be about enforcing GPL as a license rather than simply copyright. The Cisco/Linksys thing and that train software issue have touched on aspects of these issues.
There is a combination of licensing and contract law that ultimately protects Apple in this case. The EULAs that are total garbage are the ones that display AFTER the sale. The notion is that contract law says all the terms are agreed upon and finalized at the time of sale. You can't add stuff after the transaction. However, Apple makes it very clear *before* the sale that in order to use that product you must be using it on Apple hardware. The hilarious piece here is that people say they aren't allowed to do that, when they absolutely are. Further, they are also allowed to set the price and develop their product how they want. They could start treating their customers like crap with serial keys, activations, hardware checks, and other such to enforce it, but they don't. Even in the face of a bunch of brats with entitlement complexes, they haven't done it yet. That sets them apart from MS in a BIG way. If they want to cut support for Atom, they can, it is their software, the notion that it is somehow illegal or wrong is mindbogglingly stupid. They can also set the price. So if a bunch of fools manage to force Apples hand to support everything they can simply raise the price to unreasonably high levels and make the software upgrades free as part of Apple care that must be registered to specific qualifying hardware. This will also destroy a great deal of stability in the marketplace and producers will simply say "fuck off" and go elsewhere to avoid that kind of irrational treatment. Hope no one wanted jobs to pay for the software...of course...I suspect most of them will just download it and not pay anyways while using even more assinine entitlement justifications like the other responder to my original post.
Are you kidding, that would be perfect. I mean really...watching DHS traumatize a bunch of already frightened travelers. Oh this is going to be awesome! Afraid of flying, afraid of traveling alone, claustrophobic, business travelers afraid of giving the presentation they are being sent to do, every week sees groups of people traveling to military bases to start basic training and I bet most of them are pretty afraid of how it may go. The possibilities are endless! This is going to be so awesome.
Especially when we arrest the arabic man who was just nervous about introducing his girlfriend to his parents.
Ok. Fine, then once you download it you also do nothing with it. However, if you download it and use it, then you are violating the copyright and are depriving the owner of a sale and causing harm. Your justification for taking what you want without paying for it is pathetic.
Easy...tell them it is a socialist agenda. They will all be teabagging in the streets!
The irony is too good...
Flagging this as "Troll" for being critical of how Linux distros don't get the same levels of QA testing isn't exactly demonstrating great professionalism...
By all means...explain to me how Psystar is using in their own home and not reselling. That is ultimately what drove this decision to start the lockdown process. Also, they are under no obligation to allow Atom processors. It is their product, you can't force them to build it the way you want. By all means...go tell Ford they have to redesign their engines to make sure they all work with Chevy parts.
And "even if you illegally downloaded it" is total and pure horseshit. If you are using it, then you should have bought it, in which case it is a lost sale. So...because I don't want to pay $60 for a book, I can just go in and copy it all down and take it home? I agree that calling each download a lost sale is some pretty stupid accounting, but the notion that you aren't hurting anyone by downloading instead of buying is idiotic at best. That is the mentality of a leech, and not of anyone who will ever actually produce anything for society.
Work hard and demand unreasonably high wages is not the same thing at all. So...I have a glass of water here to sell you...$10 per sip. Now, I assume based on your assertions that you would rather pay me $10/sip of water rather than exploiting low wage earners who maintain the water works. That is basically all you are saying... People who do menial tasks should be able to demand higher wages for no other reason than 'fairness'.
The thing no one likes to talk about is that the amount of manufacturing in the U.S. has steadily been rising. The difference is that we can do more manufacturing with less people.
I swear to god, people like you need to take economics classes. This isn't some callous "get rich" thing. This his how supply and demand works. When people like you start demanding the government step in and enforce half baked "equality" schemes the entire thing collapses and we *all* wind up in the shitter.
I suppose we should raise minimum wage to $10/hr so that burger flippers can make a living flipping burgers. Well..except for the fact that they get paid more so the prices of burgers have to go up to pay them. Oh, and because they had an increase in income prices of other goods goes up to match that. Oh and finally, because the individual burger flipper now costs 2x what it did previously, 1/2 of them lose their jobs. Congratulations...I suppose your next solution is to raise the minimum wage to $20/hr now?
Thank you...
I am totally OK with 99% of the world slipping into poverty if they have that same stupid attitude that they shouldn't have to do anything to stay out of poverty. Fuck them if they don't want to work. I have known folks that really did get a shitty deal, but the VAST majority of people I have been living in shitty situations got their by their own poor decisions.
This kind of idiotic entitlement mentality is fucking things up for everyone. So, those using the GPL have no right to tell me that I can't close their source and resell it like I want. Why is it that people are so happy to violate licenses to get what they want, then scream and bitch when someone else violates licenses to get what they want? It blows my mind that this crap is modded insightful. What you are advocating is just another form of tyranny. "They don't sell what I want them to sell, so I will force them to do it my way!"
Right now Apple doesn't do any of that serial key, activation, or other call home bullshit. Asshat behavior like yours is going to drive them to either doing something irritating along those lines, or simply pricing a standalone copy of OS X at an obscenely high price and then just sell "upgrades" or some other such nonsense to force the tie to a piece of Apple hardware. If you don't like their terms, don't buy it, that simple. It isn't like the standard EULA where they hide terms until post sale, the Apple hardware requirement is put out there up front.
I suppose you are the kind of neighbor that turns the stereo up at 2am in your apartment because you paid for it and no landlord has a right to enforce the conditions?
With sandworms comes spice! With spice comes prescience. Prescience brings the Kwizats Haderach. The Kwizats Haderach makes it rain. The rain kills the sandworms and then plants can grow again... Come on now, don't you know anything?
Then I would suggest making sure you are part of the 10%. For all the other asinine problems running around here, we do have a tremendous amount of upward mobility. There is a huge portion of that 90% that believes that they should be able to whine loud enough and someone else will come fix their problems in some fashion. Government handouts, corporate charity, whatever. Then on the top end, there is a bunch of worthless dead weight always waiting to be replaced. These are the guys with more money than brains. The ones that didn't get there through hard work, ingenuity, etc. They just can't compete. For every guy ready to invest heavily in 'the next big thing' that has a clue how to evaluate that investment, there are probably 10 that want to throw all their money at what someone tells them will be 'the next big thing' without any real evaluation or critical examination.
There is a difference between VC (Viet Cong) and VC (Venture Capital) but someone scarred by Vietnam is going to have an entirely different plan in mind when someone says "Let's go look for VC"
As far as potential... That plot has holes you could fly a Goa'uld Mothership through! Even ignoring the whole video game garbage and that cheese like that was only ever part of intentionally cheese episodes of previous series...there are more logical inconsistencies than I can count. At first glance it wasn't terrible, but the more I thought about it, the more unbelievably stupid holes there were.
I wonder how much Windex would be required to encourage ethical behavior on Capitol Hill...
I wonder if that much Windex is hazardous to be around...
I wonder how many people care if it is dangerous to the congress critters...
Stargate story. Stargate world. Stargate creation. You can call it anything you want other than Stargate Universe. That show is TERRIBLE.
Honestly...this seems to fly in the face of all of their entire user experience driven design policy. It also stands as a tremendous insult and annoyance to most of their target demographic. I find it very difficult to believe that a company that uses 'style' and the whole 'smoothness' factor to sell its products would quite eat a bullet like this. Love or hate their products, they have been very savvy on the marketing front for the most part, this seems like a very backwards move for them to really implement the way it is being described in the article here.
I almost wonder if this is a way to move against all the 'free' iPhone apps that do this kind of crap where it interrupts what you are doing to make you click on an ad to get back to your app. I suspect that may be wishful thinking, but not much else really makes a whole lot of sense.
But do you get the fancy gear if you do that?
We heard what you wanted and were sure to avoid those things at all costs. In the event that we could not avoid a given feature we made it practically impossible to use, moved the functionality to a new hidden location, or barrage you with popups and wizards to ensure you really want to use it.
They do have two methods. One is through the app store, and one through the developer program. You can sign up and get a key from Apple for $299 or something that will allow you to develop applications for your own enterprise deployment. Sure, it isn't exactly the best of choices, but the constant claim that it is App Store only is either dishonest or misinformed.
You sound like a dirty foreigner trying to trick us into accepting your evil ways and take over our country and brainwash our kids and... Well, I'm not really sure what those people are really frightened about.
I will have you know that xenophobic behavior is great! When I meet a foreigner and I turn out to not have the xenophobic insanity I get treated as a wonderful novelty thing. "Look, an American that isn't a knuckle dragging fearmonger xenophobe! We should buy him a drink!". Now, while I think the American stereotype is a bit overboard at times, it isn't like we haven't earned it. But getting singled out as the "wow, that isn't what Americans are supposed to be like" isn't a bad thing these days. (This is a little depressing, as I would like to have all the idiot ass clowns being singled out as "most Americans aren't like that", but what can you do?)
However, I will say that the day all you foreigners quit bringing your foods over you are no longer welcome!
Your mowing example is a PERFECT example. In many of the other cases they settled out of court. They said "Yeah, sorry, we should have been more careful, let us pay for that". If you dent your neighbor's car you should say "Yeah, sorry, I should have checked for rocks, let me pay for that". When you try to actively dodge that, and you try to come up with a bunch of nonsense to show how it really isn't your fault, and that they should have parked in their garage instead, and that all of the other times it never hurt their car, and yada yada yada, you kinda fuck yourself. If you dented your neighbors car while mowing, you can bet your ass a court would make you pay for it, and if you walk in trying to tap dance your way out of it they would likely up the fine for you being a dick about the situation. This is exactly what happened, and they ultimately got slapped for being dicks.
I agree to say McDonalds as an organization is 'negligent' for serving hot coffee is a pretty big stretch. However, based on their other behaviors and statements I am sure the largest piece is the profit motivation of squeezing every little cent out of a filter and not serving 'good coffee'. Seriously...have you actually eaten at a McDonalds? The very idea that they have 'Quality Assurance' is fucking hilarious. Based on what happened to the woman I have a REAL hard time believing it wasn't unreasonably hot. They should have said "oops, we fucked up, let us make this right". If NOTHING else, call it karma. When you share in the responsibility in an event (especially one that caused that kind of massive damage...fucking skin grafts?!) you should be a good neighbor and not a douche bag. I see it as a monumental failure of their business in that somewhere some manager in that chain should have said 'Are you fucking stupid? We are going to fight a court battle over this? We are going to be in the news looking like assholes and spending 10x the amount she wanted for medical bills?!' Because that didn't happen, because they had a whole chain of idiot assholes running the show, they got slapped with megafine. Piss poor business and it got them piss poor results. NOW they engage the media to get a bunch of corporatist apologists to come in and whine about how THEY were abused in this situation.
The woman never asked for that money, she asked for help with the medical bills to cover the fact that the coffee burnt her so bad that she spent a week+ in the hospital and had to have skin grafts. That isn't just "ouch, that burned" hot coffee. The JURY is who slapped them for trying to weasel their way out of that incident.
*their eye. Not sure how I missed that.
1. Bullets are dangerous, yet only a tiny fraction of them ever wind up penetrating a human body and causing damage. This constant assertion that the number of burns vs the number of cups sold has anything to do with this is totally irrelevant. So because most bullets never kill anyone, I can go shoot someone and argue in court that what I did wasn't negligent or reckless because most bullets don't kill anyone so I shouldn't have to act as if they are dangerous? That is mindbogglingly stupid and pointless.
2. The page YOU linked said it should be served in a warmed mug. You are now attacking me for using the same source that YOU used to defend McDs? You are starting to sound like an astroturfer.
3. I never once said what percentage of her body, so please take that up with whoever misquoted that. I only referred to the severity of the damage.
4. Some bullets only wound, not all kill, so clearly I shouldn't be held responsible for my actions that caused a bullet to kill. This is still stupid.
5. Police actively enforce the rule that murder is illegal, but it still happens. Some QA manager for McDonald's testifying that they actively enforce that temperature is completely and totally irrelevant to the actual events that happened that day. I suppose you believe all the silly shit politicians say too. Clearly because they said it it must be true in every case every day everywhere! I also suspect that you have never actually worked in a fast food place or you would know exactly how much total horseshit that line was. I bet they have even more strict QA on their food preparation, but I have witnessed a Grimmace pencil topper being melted to slag in the fry vats. I bet they have strict safety standards, yet I have watched people throw a ice cube into the fry vats to make it pop and splatter and sting people for laughs. So...if an employee was blinded because someone threw ice in and it burned there eye your argument would be that their safety guy testified that they don't allow that so it couldn't have happened?
You are entering this based on the assumption that McDonald's should be held innocent based on their behavior as a composite of everything they have done rather than as the actions of that day. So because I have not done anything wrong every other day of my life, except that one day, I should be innocent. Now...I can't really fault you for trying, defense lawyers try that shit all the time, and they try that very same reasoning in murder cases, and it usually falls flat on it face.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
There is no shortage of information out there that shows McDonald's screwed this one up. I think you are being easily swayed by emotion and prejudice. The medical testimony talked about how a reduction of temperature reduced the risk of serious burns exponentially.
No amount of subjective bullshit about "coffee is best at 185+ degrees" compares with the objective assessment of evidence that says "at 185+ degrees it can cause third degree burns in 2-7 seconds". Further, for it to do the damage it did to her there is still a good chance that they served it above that "quality assurance range". As I pointed out, McDonald's, as pretty much every fast food chain, has a very interesting view of "quality assurance". The people that work at McDonald's aren't typically the high performers, and even when dealing with the younger spectrum of that is the job available at that age, you still are forced to faced with the average maturity level. If this was some fine dining establishment with gourmet coffe then I could maybe accept your arguments about the temperature of coffee. That isn't the case, this is a fast food joint with coffee that is going to taste like ass at any temperature, being served in flimsy cups with cheap lids, to people who are more than likely mobile.
So...why didn't they follow the advice that it should be served in a warmed mug too? I mean...heated liquid in styrofoam cups...mmm mmm good stuff there.