Just because you were too stupid to not put a boiling hot cup of coffee between your legs while driving.
That is a gross oversimplification of the case.
Importantly, the fact that the driver bears some of the responsibility does not absolve McDonalds from their share of the liability.
McDonalds knew that they were selling coffee too hot to drink, they knew (or reasonably should have known) that it was hot enough to give third degree burns in less than a second, and they had over 700 previous complaints of burns due to their coffee, some including litigation.
McDonalds knew that the paper cups they were using were flimsy and relied on the lid being on to retain strength. They were providing cream and sugar separately and they knew that the customer had to remove the lid to add them themselves. They were selling coffee at the drive-in where it would be reasonable to assume that drivers would be dealing with the cups of very hot coffee in awkward circumstances and bumpy roads and that some drivers would not have cup holders.
The plaintiff originally only asked for her medical bills (5 figures) to be paid; McDonalds rejected that and decided to go to trial instead.
The jury awarded a much larger amount, but that award was substantially reduced by the courts.
The issue (or one of the issues) seems to be that the copyright is only assigned to Righthaven after the infringement takes place, and the letter of the law does not allow a party to sue for damages unless they had a a copyright interest at the time of the infringement. Also, though the agreement assigns the "copyright", the wording appears to have the LV Journal retain all actual substantial rights except for suing, and gives no actual right to copy, make derivative works, or distribute to Righthaven - that calls into question whether the copyright is actually assigned. Another complicating factor may be that the agreement allows the LV Review Journal to have the copyright reassigned back to them after a time period, and, just about any time they (reasonably) please during that time period - that seems to make it less of an assignment and more of a loan.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
Grammar checker, really? Of the features that arguably are better in Word or missing in Writer you pick a "helpful" feature that has about 20 times more false alarms than useful hints? ( You started the last three sentences with "Contractor shall" ; Well, this is a spec telling the contractor what to do. | "Shall" is considered archaic, consider using will, instead. ; No, "shall" is the most common directive in specifications. | etc. )
The Lack of VB macros in calc is also a killer reason not to use them.,/em>
Can't you just put a bunch of formulas into the cell(s)?
I find a lot of situations where a Basic macro is more appropriate than a bunch of formulas in the cells. For example, a useful calculation to have in a spreadsheet for my work is for the pressure drop in a straight length of pipe or duct. Tha is proportional to f*density*velocity^2, where the friction factor f = -log10( (1/3.7)*e/D + 2.51/(Re*sqr(f)) ), where e/D is the pipe roughness factor, Re is a function of diameter, velocity, density, and viscosity, and the formula for f cannot be solved explicitly, but is very amenable to quick successive approximation methods. This more manageable with macro functions than with formulas in cells.
That said, the lack of VB macros in OO.o Calc doesn't bother me at all, since Calc has equivalent Basic functionality. (the object model is easier to use in Excel than in Calc, though, if you need to use it)
a UK judge eluded to the fact that civil cases against the firm could run into next year at least
I'm pretty sure the word TFS was looking for was "alluded", not "eluded". The difference is pretty significant in context.
Not only that, but allude is not the right word to use in the first place as, according to TFA, the judge directly said that civil cases against the firm could run into next year at least.
I always dreamed of sailing the Pacific, but floating in a schmantzy boat through mile after mile of trash takes a lot of the joy out of it.
If you sailed through it, there's a decent chance you wouldn't notice it, as it is composed of small, widely dispersed particles. Which is just the size for pieces of plastic to cause problems for a lot of hungry sea life.
I've always thought there was some hypochrisy where someone can, on the one hand, say that humans polluting is bad, but on the other say that humans saving a species from extinction is good (unless, of course, it's the human pollution causing the extinction).
I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the recently endangered species got that way because of humans' encroachment, pollution, or other destruction of the ecosystems in which the endagered species lived.
. . . the MOST important question BY FAR is how important is this creature to the ecosystem upon which I depend.
Many times, saving an obscure, unimportant species involves saving the ecosystem in which that creature lives. This should be seen as important, even if that particular species eventually goes extinct, anyway.
I have actually had my vehicle searched by customs officials almost 50 miles from the Mexican Border. (they were looking for illegal immigrants in the back of the minivan) And, no, they did not see me cross the border, since I didn't cross it ever in that car.
What does not make sense to me in that map is that Chicago is considered "on the border" Last time I looked, the Southern tip of Lake Michigan is nowhere near a border.
. . . if Amazon has to collect tax for not just all 50 states but every county in every state where sales tax is variable (and sometimes even on the local level), you've just driven up the cost of business to the point where it is no longer feasible to start an online business in your garage/bedroom/basement because you need very sophisticated software to handle the collection side and an accounting team to handle the payment side . . .
I think you hit the nail on the head here. For example, in Chicago there are state sales taxes, county sales taxes, city sales taxes, and even special "business district" sales taxes in part of the city (the area around the convention center, downtown, etc. - designed to hit the tourist and business traveller) Certain items, like food or medicine, are expempt from some of the taxes, but not from others; and just what counts as food or medicine can vary, also. Then other items, like soft drinks, may have additional taxes imposed. This is hard to figure out if you have only one or two stores in the area. If you are an out-of-state entity with customers from anywhere, it would be a nightmare.
... that's great. But I just want to read a book...
But who wants to spend all that time learning the alphabet, how words are spelled, what nouns, verbs, pronouns, and all that are, and even grammar and punctuation. That's almost as bad as learning a command line interface, I'd rather watch a movie - it's easier to do without any training, like using a GUI.
But for the vast majority of computer users, GUIs are a God send.
Wait . . you were arguing in favor of using GUIs? Now I'm confused.
. . . editing is something inherently visual and thus ill-suited to the command line.
As a counter-example, CAD drawings are inherently visual and I find the command line interface in AutoCAD an indispensable aid in editing the drawings. In addition, writing and using lisp routines that add/extend commands for the CLI makes it even more productive. Of course, I still use the mouse to pick points in the drawing, scrolling, etc. It's not that one interface is universally better or worse than the other, but use what works best for the task. For common, known commands or repetitive tasks, the command line works best. For tasks attempted before you've learned much, a well-designed GUI gets you off the starting line quickly. Having both lets you learn as you go, and increases the slope of the learning curve without slowing you down too much at the beginning (assuming you're willing to learn the commands and use the command line).
Spreadsheets also have the unfortunate characteristic that the code and data are mixed together, with no clear indicator of which cells are which.
If by code, you mean cell formulas, I have Open Office set up to display formulas, text, and numbers each in a different color. That is a clear indicator of which cells are which, done through a simple checkbox in a configuration dialog.
But I disagree with your point. For one thing, only the "data" is displayed (by default), not the formulas. For another, "output" of one cell is often "input" of another, and seeing all of them at once can be an advantage over sequentially listing all the "data", running a program, and separately listing the "data" put out.
In this case, last I've seen a study based on data from an actual health insurance company, it turned out that smokers and the obese actually cost LESS. ..
. . . Why? Because they die earlier and need less medicine in the long run
But the insurance companies don't really care how much you cost in the long run. Like all good American corporations, they care how much you cost this quarter, and smokers and obese people cost more now. By the insurance company's reckoning, people who die early quit paying premiums, and people who live to be old, and therefore potentially costly, can have their premiums raised to compensate.
When we passed the new health care reform, I knew that jobs and government would go after the smokers and the obese first. (I honestly thought they would take longer to go after the obese but I knew it would come once they squeezed everything they could out of smokers.)
You do realize that this tax-the-obese plan is a state plan from a Republican governer who campaigned loudly against "Obamacare", "death panels", government intereference in private lives, and the like, and is not part of any healthcare bill passed nationally by Congress?
Come on, people! We should all know this already. Just because "Algebra II" is a predictor of success, doesn't mean that it causes the success.
From the parent comment:
Yes, the article makes exactly the claim the OP says it does, and yes, the OP's point is well-made.
You may have passed Algebra II, but you fail reading.
From TFA:
And whether learning Algebra II causes students to fare better in life, or whether it is merely correlated with them doing better — because smart, motivated kids take Algebra II — isn’t clear
I agree, I'm not even sure what Algebra II is supposed to mean. When I was in high school (a long time ago) I had to take a year of Algebra (no I, II, or II) as a Freshman, a year of Geometry as a Sophomore, elected to take College Algebra/Trig as a Junior (which was a semester of each), and stupidly didn't elect to take Calculus as a Senior (and no college credit was available for any of that, AP wasn't a concept in my school then). Which of those would be considered Algebra I, II, or III?
Oh absolutely, I wasn't arguing otherwise, it's just that the private sector is a bit more discreet about it, they try to cover their tracks. In government, a fuckton of money just disappears and everyone whistles and looks away.
In my experience, it's the other way around. Private companies are usually quite open about giving contracts to their preferred contractors; they don't have any obligation to be fair, and long-term relationships tend to breed a desire to do the job well (as long as enough competition remains to keep their prices honest). Government entities produce mounds of red tape in order to "prove" that they are not giving favors to or getting favors from a contractor; their projects are often awarded to a barely competent contractor who submitted a too-low bid, leading to requests for change orders, cost overruns, and corner-cutting.
In hindsight their emergency diesel generators should not have been at such a low level.
It does not take hindsight to know that. For example, the Chicago building codes do not allow you to put emergency generators in the basement, even if you take all precautions against flooding and provide sump pumps powered by emergency power. The tsunami walls protecting the power plant were known to be lower than the largest predicted tsunamis, but was considered an acceptable risk because the frequency of such occurrences was figured to be low enough to get away with. (That sort of reasoning assumes that you are doing a one-time calculation, ignoring that the rare occurrence will eventually happen, and discounts the cost of a failure in favor of the probabilities.)
If the reactors kept running, they would have had no trouble keeping themselves cool just as they were before the Quake.
It is highly doubtful that you could keep a large generating plant like that on-line with the only load being that for running the plant itself. You would need to find a way to dissipate the excess power being generated.
Slashdot Mirror
That is a gross oversimplification of the case.
Importantly, the fact that the driver bears some of the responsibility does not absolve McDonalds from their share of the liability.
McDonalds knew that they were selling coffee too hot to drink, they knew (or reasonably should have known) that it was hot enough to give third degree burns in less than a second, and they had over 700 previous complaints of burns due to their coffee, some including litigation.
McDonalds knew that the paper cups they were using were flimsy and relied on the lid being on to retain strength. They were providing cream and sugar separately and they knew that the customer had to remove the lid to add them themselves. They were selling coffee at the drive-in where it would be reasonable to assume that drivers would be dealing with the cups of very hot coffee in awkward circumstances and bumpy roads and that some drivers would not have cup holders.
The plaintiff originally only asked for her medical bills (5 figures) to be paid; McDonalds rejected that and decided to go to trial instead.
The jury awarded a much larger amount, but that award was substantially reduced by the courts.
The issue (or one of the issues) seems to be that the copyright is only assigned to Righthaven after the infringement takes place, and the letter of the law does not allow a party to sue for damages unless they had a a copyright interest at the time of the infringement. Also, though the agreement assigns the "copyright", the wording appears to have the LV Journal retain all actual substantial rights except for suing, and gives no actual right to copy, make derivative works, or distribute to Righthaven - that calls into question whether the copyright is actually assigned. Another complicating factor may be that the agreement allows the LV Review Journal to have the copyright reassigned back to them after a time period, and, just about any time they (reasonably) please during that time period - that seems to make it less of an assignment and more of a loan.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
Grammar checker, really? Of the features that arguably are better in Word or missing in Writer you pick a "helpful" feature that has about 20 times more false alarms than useful hints? ( You started the last three sentences with "Contractor shall" ; Well, this is a spec telling the contractor what to do. | "Shall" is considered archaic, consider using will, instead. ; No, "shall" is the most common directive in specifications. | etc. )
I find a lot of situations where a Basic macro is more appropriate than a bunch of formulas in the cells. For example, a useful calculation to have in a spreadsheet for my work is for the pressure drop in a straight length of pipe or duct. Tha is proportional to f*density*velocity^2, where the friction factor f = -log10( (1/3.7)*e/D + 2.51/(Re*sqr(f)) ), where e/D is the pipe roughness factor, Re is a function of diameter, velocity, density, and viscosity, and the formula for f cannot be solved explicitly, but is very amenable to quick successive approximation methods. This more manageable with macro functions than with formulas in cells.
That said, the lack of VB macros in OO.o Calc doesn't bother me at all, since Calc has equivalent Basic functionality. (the object model is easier to use in Excel than in Calc, though, if you need to use it)
I'm pretty sure the word TFS was looking for was "alluded", not "eluded". The difference is pretty significant in context.
Not only that, but allude is not the right word to use in the first place as, according to TFA, the judge directly said that civil cases against the firm could run into next year at least.
For one, obviously, the former (or present) attorney has no obligation to keep confidential the narrative of the plea bargain.
If you sailed through it, there's a decent chance you wouldn't notice it, as it is composed of small, widely dispersed particles. Which is just the size for pieces of plastic to cause problems for a lot of hungry sea life.
Because humans can succeed at using up all the resources.
I'd be willing to bet that 90% of the recently endangered species got that way because of humans' encroachment, pollution, or other destruction of the ecosystems in which the endagered species lived.
Many times, saving an obscure, unimportant species involves saving the ecosystem in which that creature lives. This should be seen as important, even if that particular species eventually goes extinct, anyway.
Custom officials working at the border* have never had to get a warrant.
*(the actual border, not the 50 or 100 miles inland in the discussions above)
I have actually had my vehicle searched by customs officials almost 50 miles from the Mexican Border. (they were looking for illegal immigrants in the back of the minivan) And, no, they did not see me cross the border, since I didn't cross it ever in that car.
What does not make sense to me in that map is that Chicago is considered "on the border" Last time I looked, the Southern tip of Lake Michigan is nowhere near a border.
I think you hit the nail on the head here.
For example, in Chicago there are state sales taxes, county sales taxes, city sales taxes, and even special "business district" sales taxes in part of the city (the area around the convention center, downtown, etc. - designed to hit the tourist and business traveller) Certain items, like food or medicine, are expempt from some of the taxes, but not from others; and just what counts as food or medicine can vary, also. Then other items, like soft drinks, may have additional taxes imposed. This is hard to figure out if you have only one or two stores in the area. If you are an out-of-state entity with customers from anywhere, it would be a nightmare.
It's the new "fell off the back of the truck"
But who wants to spend all that time learning the alphabet, how words are spelled, what nouns, verbs, pronouns, and all that are, and even grammar and punctuation. That's almost as bad as learning a command line interface, I'd rather watch a movie - it's easier to do without any training, like using a GUI.
Wait . . you were arguing in favor of using GUIs? Now I'm confused.
As a counter-example, CAD drawings are inherently visual and I find the command line interface in AutoCAD an indispensable aid in editing the drawings. In addition, writing and using lisp routines that add/extend commands for the CLI makes it even more productive. Of course, I still use the mouse to pick points in the drawing, scrolling, etc. It's not that one interface is universally better or worse than the other, but use what works best for the task. For common, known commands or repetitive tasks, the command line works best. For tasks attempted before you've learned much, a well-designed GUI gets you off the starting line quickly. Having both lets you learn as you go, and increases the slope of the learning curve without slowing you down too much at the beginning (assuming you're willing to learn the commands and use the command line).
If by code, you mean cell formulas, I have Open Office set up to display formulas, text, and numbers each in a different color. That is a clear indicator of which cells are which, done through a simple checkbox in a configuration dialog.
But I disagree with your point. For one thing, only the "data" is displayed (by default), not the formulas. For another, "output" of one cell is often "input" of another, and seeing all of them at once can be an advantage over sequentially listing all the "data", running a program, and separately listing the "data" put out.
But the insurance companies don't really care how much you cost in the long run. Like all good American corporations, they care how much you cost this quarter, and smokers and obese people cost more now. By the insurance company's reckoning, people who die early quit paying premiums, and people who live to be old, and therefore potentially costly, can have their premiums raised to compensate.
You do realize that this tax-the-obese plan is a state plan from a Republican governer who campaigned loudly against "Obamacare", "death panels", government intereference in private lives, and the like, and is not part of any healthcare bill passed nationally by Congress?
From the parent comment:
You may have passed Algebra II, but you fail reading.
From TFA:
OK, are we talking semesters I, II, & III or years I, II, & III?
I agree, I'm not even sure what Algebra II is supposed to mean. When I was in high school (a long time ago) I had to take a year of Algebra (no I, II, or II) as a Freshman, a year of Geometry as a Sophomore, elected to take College Algebra/Trig as a Junior (which was a semester of each), and stupidly didn't elect to take Calculus as a Senior (and no college credit was available for any of that, AP wasn't a concept in my school then). Which of those would be considered Algebra I, II, or III?
In my experience, it's the other way around. Private companies are usually quite open about giving contracts to their preferred contractors; they don't have any obligation to be fair, and long-term relationships tend to breed a desire to do the job well (as long as enough competition remains to keep their prices honest). Government entities produce mounds of red tape in order to "prove" that they are not giving favors to or getting favors from a contractor; their projects are often awarded to a barely competent contractor who submitted a too-low bid, leading to requests for change orders, cost overruns, and corner-cutting.
It does not take hindsight to know that. For example, the Chicago building codes do not allow you to put emergency generators in the basement, even if you take all precautions against flooding and provide sump pumps powered by emergency power.
The tsunami walls protecting the power plant were known to be lower than the largest predicted tsunamis, but was considered an acceptable risk because the frequency of such occurrences was figured to be low enough to get away with. (That sort of reasoning assumes that you are doing a one-time calculation, ignoring that the rare occurrence will eventually happen, and discounts the cost of a failure in favor of the probabilities.)
It is highly doubtful that you could keep a large generating plant like that on-line with the only load being that for running the plant itself. You would need to find a way to dissipate the excess power being generated.