• Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Matt
    Matt:
    Jay:
    Seems to me the real question is, What remedies does the contract provide for failure to meet the 99.99% uptime requirement? If it doesn't say that in that case they'll give you a month's free service or whatever, I wonder what, legally, the other party can do. Like if I buy a car that's advertised to get 35 miles per gallon, and I find that in fact I only get 34 miles per gallon, frankly I doubt I'd get anywhere in a lawsuit. Maybe I could demand my money back. I'd be surprised if a judge awarded me big bucks in a lawsuit over such a thing. Of course, judges do some crazy things, like giving people millions of dollars because they burned themselves spilling coffee in their own lap.

    That initial amount was later reduced to a few tens of thousands or a few hundreds of thousands. FYI.

    It's worse than that, she's bankrupt.

    The original judgement for $xMM was used to pay the lawyers upfront, then when it was reduced on appeal, there wasn't anything left. She asked for her money out of the fee, they said "sue us", and she filed BK.

    If only there was a lawyer season.

  • (cs)

    Just noticed the DNS name of StruggleCo is 'struggleco.cx'. Pronounced 'StruggleCocks'. Sounds like a porn that I REALLY don't want to see

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Jon E.
    Jon E.:
    Not even Viagra claims that much uptime.

    Stick to your day job.

  • ben (unregistered)

    What's this? A Nabokov reference on theDailyWTF?

    Infinite foretime and infinite aftertime: above your head they close like giant wings, and you are dead.

  • (cs)

    Same thing happened to us once. One of our Linux servers running CentOS 4 with a software raid 1 managed to zero out its MBR, which caused it to not come back online the next time it rebooted, sometime the following year. Luckily it was just a test server, which wasn't used much. I had to take it off the rack, attach a monitor and keyboard, boot it up with the centos servercd, and reinstall the grub MBR after determining that to be the probem.

  • ReFoVeO (unregistered)

    You'd think the mediums at MediumCo woulda seen that comin'...

  • TK (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    Matt:
    Jay:
    Of course, judges do some crazy things, like giving people millions of dollars because they burned themselves spilling coffee in their own lap.

    That initial amount was later reduced to a few tens of thousands or a few hundreds of thousands. FYI.

    It's worse than that, she's bankrupt.

    The original judgement for $xMM was used to pay the lawyers upfront, then when it was reduced on appeal, there wasn't anything left. She asked for her money out of the fee, they said "sue us", and she filed BK.

    I hadn't heard that part of the story. That's AWESOME!

    Of course, in a perfect world, she'd have had to pay the defendant's legal fees and her lawyers would have lost their license to practice law, but at least there was a happy ending.

  • flo (unregistered)
    He learned one valuable lesson here – to wait until the weekend/non-peak hours to reboot in case there are errors preventing the machine from coming back online quickly.
    This is the real wtf. That this wasn't obvious to him, but that the had to "learn it" on a real client.
  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Seems to me the real question is, What remedies does the contract provide for failure to meet the 99.99% uptime requirement? If it doesn't say that in that case they'll give you a month's free service or whatever, I wonder what, legally, the other party can do. Like if I buy a car that's advertised to get 35 miles per gallon, and I find that in fact I only get 34 miles per gallon, frankly I doubt I'd get anywhere in a lawsuit. Maybe I could demand my money back. I'd be surprised if a judge awarded me big bucks in a lawsuit over such a thing. Of course, judges do some crazy things, like giving people millions of dollars because they burned themselves spilling coffee in their own lap.

    She didn't get millions of dollars for spilling it on herself. She got millions of dollars because it was hot enough to disfigure her vulva.

  • (cs) in reply to flo
    flo:
    He learned one valuable lesson here – to wait until the weekend/non-peak hours to reboot in case there are errors preventing the machine from coming back online quickly.
    This is the real wtf. That this wasn't obvious to him, but that the had to "learn it" on a real client.

    Actually I don't get this. The machine is broken, and he learned that he should wait till weekend/non-peak hours to fix it? WTF? Its broke, fix it NOW.

    I also don't get the "..except for a queue of kernel updates that were downloaded but not installed. ...but it was clear that they were the source of the TCP/IP stack errors." Uhm how is a queue of pending updates the source to TCP/IP stack errors? Is the TCP/IP stack full?

  • aloria (unregistered) in reply to Captain Oblivious
    Captain Oblivious:
    She didn't get millions of dollars for spilling it on herself. She got millions of dollars because it was hot enough to disfigure her vulva.

    Seriously. If someone served me liquid hot enough to melt my junk, you bet your sweet ass I'd sue.

  • (cs) in reply to aloria
    aloria:
    Captain Oblivious:
    She didn't get millions of dollars for spilling it on herself. She got millions of dollars because it was hot enough to disfigure her vulva.

    Seriously. If someone served me liquid hot enough to melt my junk, you bet your sweet ass I'd sue.

    Would you put a cup of liquid hot enough to melt your junk in near proximity to said junk, then attempt to muddle with the container/liquid whilst driving?

    That's always been my issue with this lawsuit. Had she used the cupholder and pulled over to add cream/sugar to the coffee this would never have happened.

  • (cs) in reply to nitehawk
    nitehawk:
    Gumpy Guss:
    There's the old story of when Werner Von Braun's team needed to ensure that the Apollo rockets were safe and the spec was for "five nines" (99.999% success rate). He asked his top engineers if this was possible and he did get five "Neins".

    Except that the rocket was the Saturn V, and that it did indeed have a 100% success rate. I believe it is the only major rocket in history to achieve this.

    The Apollo capsule did have a couple of spectacular failures, however.

    Success is a variable there. There were some quite severe "pogo oscillation" issues on Apollo 6 (unmanned test) that, had they occurred in a manned flight, would have probably led the commander to twist the abort handle. There was alot of fear around Apollo 8 because they hadn't had another test after 6 and had no idea if they'd solved the problem or not. But yes, they never actually lost one.

    The Saturn 1/Saturn 1B series also had flawless records too. It's a shame America just gave up on those rockets.

  • (cs) in reply to lyates
    lyates:
    Tandem NonStop!
    FTFY.
  • (cs) in reply to MrsPost
    MrsPost:
    Would you put a cup of liquid hot enough to melt your junk in near proximity to said junk, then attempt to muddle with the container/liquid whilst driving?

    Of course not. The issue here is that it was not supposed to be that hot. No liquid served to a person should be.

    If I toss you a snowball, and you catch it with your bare hands, you know it will be "cold". Possibly even uncomfortably so for a few moments, but you take that risk, "knowing" it will be within a reasonably safe temperature range.

    Now, when you catch the snowball, and it turns out I threw a ball of nitrogen slush at -210C at you, and letting it touch your fingers instantly resulted in permanent frostbite leading to the loss of half your hand... Who is at fault? You can't blame me, since you knew it would be "cold".

    What I hope to illustrate by this analogy, is that there is a difference in "hot" and "OMG REALLY FUCKING HOT". Maybe the subtle difference between 140 degrees and 180 degrees is lost on you, although it is more than enough to drastically change the safety and handling necessities of the liquid. Would it be more plain to you if they had served her 300 degree coffee? 3000 degrees? When do YOU think that "hot" changes to "too hot" or "unexpectedly hot" or, most importantly, "unacceptably hot"?

  • Wine Snob (unregistered) in reply to MrsPost

    Actually, She wasn't driving, and the car was stopped, when she added it.

    The problem really is more that there was an ongoing history of severe burns, and McDonalds still chose to sell their coffee to hot to drink.

  • (cs) in reply to MrsPost
    MrsPost:
    aloria:
    Captain Oblivious:
    She didn't get millions of dollars for spilling it on herself. She got millions of dollars because it was hot enough to disfigure her vulva.

    Seriously. If someone served me liquid hot enough to melt my junk, you bet your sweet ass I'd sue.

    Would you put a cup of liquid hot enough to melt your junk in near proximity to said junk, then attempt to muddle with the container/liquid whilst driving?

    That's always been my issue with this lawsuit. Had she used the cupholder and pulled over to add cream/sugar to the coffee this would never have happened.

    If you'd read the law article posted earlier (http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm if you missed it) you'd realize that

    A1) She was found to be 20% at fault, which led to a reduction in damages, and

    B2) The punitive damages were awarded because McDonald's had been serving coffee at unsafe temperatures (180-190ºF) as a matter of policy, knowing full well the burn hazard (700 claims between 1982 and 1992) and

    C3) The car was stopped, and the woman who got burned wasn't driving.

    Yes, coffee is hot, and you generally shouldn't carry it in your lap. But it's undrinkable at 180ºF, and serving it at that temperature presents a major safety hazard.

  • Habitus (unregistered) in reply to Gumpy Guss
    Gumpy Guss:
    The only way to prove a 99.999% success rate is to send up 100,000 rockets and get only one failure.

    The Apollo launch record only suggests a 95% or better record. A long way from 99.999%.

    Actually there were a couple serious problems that led to one engine shutdown on an early flight. Just no spectacular explosions.

    Of really you have a 100% chance of dying do you have to try it 100,000 times before you can say you were 100% successful?

  • (cs) in reply to bryan986
    bryan986:
    Six nines is never down!
    What about Seven of Nine?

    np: Gas - Track 1 (Pop)

  • (cs) in reply to Habitus
    Habitus:
    Of really you have a 100% chance of dying do you have to try it 100,000 times before you can say you were 100% successful?

    10000 years ago, life expectancy might be 40 years 1000 years ago, 50 years 100 years ago, 60 years 10 years ago, 70 years ...

    Sadly, the curve is not quite as optimistic as these data points indicate, but I, for one, plan to live to see life expectancy increases exceed one year per year.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Leak
    Leak:
    bryan986:
    Six nines is never down!
    What about Seven of Nine?

    np: Gas - Track 1 (Pop)

    Obligatory "if 7 of 9 went down on me as often as my servers" joke.

  • James (unregistered) in reply to The Stainless Steel Hankie Of Justice
    The Stainless Steel Hankie Of Justice:
    Jay:
    Of course, judges do some crazy things, like giving people millions of dollars because they were hospitalized for eight days with third degree burns for spilling coffee that would cause a full thickness burn to human skin in two to seven seconds in their own lap.

    FTFY

    http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

    P.S. How bad is a third degree burn? Here's a hint: there's no such thing as a fourth degree burn.

    Um... yes there is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn

  • (cs) in reply to James

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants

    She had 1st degree, not 3rd degree burns.

  • Pedro (unregistered) in reply to kastein

    The Windows five-nines uptime guarantee: 9.9999%!

  • FredBob (unregistered) in reply to derobert
    derobert:
    With 13 launches (according to the Wiki), how would you know the difference between a 90% success rate and 100%? Or even 80%, for that matter.

    Easy...If it dies on the 10th launch, it's a 90% success rate. If it dies on the 5th launch, it's 80%....

    (I probably deserve the captha: paratus)

  • Mal (unregistered) in reply to Bappi
    Bappi:
    Space Cowboy:
    One metric that I heard did come from the Apollo program was that every 9 doubled costs.

    Want 90% reliability, it costs X. 99% costs 2x 99.9% 4x etc. And as a first metric I've found that very reasonable when it comes to datacenters and the like.

    What if you want 9% reliability?

    Oh, an Analogue system, that could run into money - the parts are hard to source these days....

  • Guru Bob (unregistered) in reply to Matt S
    Matt S:
    Technically, he's lucky he didn't guarantee 99.(999)% uptime, because that's technically 100%.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999...

    Either you're a troll or....

    The ... in the wikipedia article refer to an infinite sequence of 9s ie 99.999... != 99.999 ie 99.999... == 1 BUT 99.999 != 1

    we need the infinite number of decimal places for them to equal the same thing, at which point it is reasonably easy to verify....

    What is 1/9? What is 9 time this value? (or 1/3 & 3 times...) let x = 0.999.... then 10x = 9.999.... then 10x-x = 9.999... - 0.999.... = 9 ie 9x = 9 => x = 1

    etc.....

    short story: 99.999 is not the same as 99.999.... ie 99.999% is not 100%

    (My apologies if your brackets were meant to imply infinite exrension - I only notice them now)

  • MathMan (unregistered) in reply to bryan986
    bryan986:
    Six nines is never down!

    9x9 + 9+9 + 9/9 = 100

    Yes it is, it's always down.... 9x9 - 9x9 x 9/9

  • John (unregistered) in reply to MrsPost
    MrsPost:
    aloria:
    Captain Oblivious:
    She didn't get millions of dollars for spilling it on herself. She got millions of dollars because it was hot enough to disfigure her vulva.

    Seriously. If someone served me liquid hot enough to melt my junk, you bet your sweet ass I'd sue.

    Would you put a cup of liquid hot enough to melt your junk in near proximity to said junk, then attempt to muddle with the container/liquid whilst driving?

    That's always been my issue with this lawsuit. Had she used the cupholder and pulled over to add cream/sugar to the coffee this would never have happened.

    Perhaps you should read the link someone else posted...(http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm) she WAS NOT driving at the time (in fact she was not even in the driver's seat!!)

    It's all beaut and fine to blindly listen to rumours and urban legends, but sometimes it helps to at least try to get some of the facts before making statements based on your assumptions....

  • SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Sparr
    Sparr:
    MrsPost:
    Would you put a cup of liquid hot enough to melt your junk in near proximity to said junk, then attempt to muddle with the container/liquid whilst driving?

    Of course not. The issue here is that it was not supposed to be that hot. No liquid served to a person should be.

    If I toss you a snowball, and you catch it with your bare hands, you know it will be "cold". Possibly even uncomfortably so for a few moments, but you take that risk, "knowing" it will be within a reasonably safe temperature range.

    Now, when you catch the snowball, and it turns out I threw a ball of nitrogen slush at -210C at you, and letting it touch your fingers instantly resulted in permanent frostbite leading to the loss of half your hand... Who is at fault? You can't blame me, since you knew it would be "cold".

    What I hope to illustrate by this analogy, is that there is a difference in "hot" and "OMG REALLY FUCKING HOT". Maybe the subtle difference between 140 degrees and 180 degrees is lost on you, although it is more than enough to drastically change the safety and handling necessities of the liquid. Would it be more plain to you if they had served her 300 degree coffee? 3000 degrees? When do YOU think that "hot" changes to "too hot" or "unexpectedly hot" or, most importantly, "unacceptably hot"?

    Most home coffee makers as well as Burger King, Starbucks, etc. brew coffee at 180-200 degrees for optimal taste. If this is "unacceptably" hot then why does pretty much everyone do it?

    I definitely feel sorry for that poor woman but I don't believe this was negligence by McDonalds (as much as I hate McDonalds).

    See: http://overlawyered.com/2006/10/latest-hot-coffee-lawsuit-data-points/ http://www.bunn.com/retail/bunn_difference.html http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=7th&navby=docket&no=974131

  • jojo (unregistered) in reply to Habitus
    Habitus:
    Of really you have a 100% chance of dying do you have to try it 100,000 times before you can say you were 100% successful?

    Obviously if you try it N times and it succeeds N times, you have a 100% success rate. However, that is very different from a statistical estimate of the actual failure rate of the system, which is really what you want. There are well established methods of estimating those rates, subject to various assumptions about the failure process statistics.

    A simplistic way to think about it is to figure out how many failures out of N trials you'd expect for a given rate R. Say N=13 and you have a success rate of R=5%. You'd expect (100%-R)*N=0.65 failures. If you saw one failure or zero failures, you wouldn't be too surprised.

    Now suppose you know you had 13 successful trials out of 13 tries. How can you constrain the rate? Well, again being crude with the details, you might estimate the rate to "probably" be more than R=12/13=92%, since any lower than that and you would expect > 1 failure. Sure, it might be that the success rate is MUCH higher than that -- you are, as you point out, consistent with 100% success. But you don't actually have any evidence to support that strong a claim.

    So the guy who suggested ~95% was right on track.

  • jojo (unregistered) in reply to jojo
    A simplistic way to think about it is to figure out how many failures out of N trials you'd expect for a given rate R. Say N=13 and you have a success rate of R=5%. You'd expect (100%-R)*N=0.65 failures. If you saw one failure or zero failures, you wouldn't be too surprised.
    oops, I meant "success rate of R=95%"
  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Of course, judges do some crazy things, like giving people millions of dollars because they burned themselves spilling coffee in their own lap.
    Sigh. This one is often trotted out by dipshits who've never read the case. (Yea verily, I too was one such dipshit once upon a time.) For your information:

    Spilling coffee is one thing -- a dumb mistake, a "butterfingers" incident.

    But spilling negligently superheated coffee in your lap is quite another, and deserving of a lawsuit. It's absolutely right that the person in question won the lawsuit. The elderly lady was in hospital for eight days for skin grafts, and two years of treatment followed.

    The court decided she was 20% responsible (I presume that means she shouldn't have bought coffee from McDonald's, of all places). She attempted to settle for $20k, to cover medical costs (which amounted to $11k), but McDonald's only offered $800. The jury decided to award her $200k in compensation, plus two days' worth coffee revenue ($2.7M) in punitive damages. The judge reduced the compensation by 20% (in accord with responsibility), and damages to three times the compensation, total $640k. Both parties appealed, but settled for less than $600k.

    The evidence, the circumstances, and the decision don't sound at all frivolous.

    McDonald's claimed it serves coffee that hot because people intend to drive a few miles before consuming it, which is contrary to their own findings that people intend to consume it straight away.

  • (cs) in reply to MrsPost
    MrsPost:
    Would you put a cup of liquid hot enough to melt your junk in near proximity to said junk, then attempt to muddle with the container/liquid whilst driving?

    That's always been my issue with this lawsuit. Had she used the cupholder and pulled over to add cream/sugar to the coffee this would never have happened.

    If you really have a problem with this lawsuit, then you'd know she was the passenger, you idiot.

  • (cs) in reply to samanddeanus
    samanddeanus:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants

    She had 1st degree, not 3rd degree burns.

    Worse than failure are you on?

    The article you linked to but didn't bother reading:
    Liebeck was taken to the hospital, where it was determined that she had suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent. She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. Two years of treatment followed.
    wonkypedia Burn article:
    Third-degree burns result in scarring and victims will also exhibit the loss of hair shafts and keratin. These burns may require grafting.
  • Buell (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    This does remind me of a former employer who signed a contract with a big customer to sell them one of our software packages, with a clause in the contract saying that we would make any change to the software that they requested, at any time, for no additional charge.

    I pointed out to the boss that this was rather open-ended. They could demand changes that would require thousands of hours of programmer time. He replied that we were getting several hundred thousand dollars for this contract, so it was worth it. I said that if we got $300,000 but had to do $400,000 worth of work, we weren't going to make money. He looked at me like I was an idiot and asked if I REALLY thought that we should pass up a several-hundred-thousand-dollar contract. We circled around on this a few times until we both walked away convinced the other person was nuts.

    That company is bankrupt now. I can't imagine why.

    Hmmm... By that story I could have sworn I knew you. However, there is not a thick Chinese accent evident in your writing so it must not be. Apparently salesman fall for this more than just at my previous company.

  • Pingmaster (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    This does remind me of a former employer who signed a contract with a big customer to sell them one of our software packages, with a clause in the contract saying that we would make any change to the software that they requested, at any time, for no additional charge.

    I pointed out to the boss that this was rather open-ended. They could demand changes that would require thousands of hours of programmer time. He replied that we were getting several hundred thousand dollars for this contract, so it was worth it. I said that if we got $300,000 but had to do $400,000 worth of work, we weren't going to make money. He looked at me like I was an idiot and asked if I REALLY thought that we should pass up a several-hundred-thousand-dollar contract. We circled around on this a few times until we both walked away convinced the other person was nuts.

    That company is bankrupt now. I can't imagine why.

    Wow, of course they are. If a company offered me a contract like that, i'd spec outthe cheapest, most bare-bones version of the software possible for the v1.0, then mod-in all the features i really wanted after the fact, for free :)

  • (cs) in reply to SomeCoder
    SomeCoder:
    Most home coffee makers as well as Burger King, Starbucks, etc. brew coffee at 180-200 degrees for optimal taste. If this is "unacceptably" hot then why does pretty much everyone do it?

    Brewing and serving are different things. You can't put something at 190F in your mouth, without your mouth peeling on the inside. By the time a french press or your coffee pot is done brewing, the water is around 175F, which is still too hot to drink, but good enough to handle safely. McDonalds was REHEATING the coffee to 190F.

    I can see where McDonald's was coming from. They want all their coffee to have that fresh, just from the pot feeling. They don't want complaints from customers over cold coffee, if they miss their optimal drinking temperature window. And so on.

  • Spingo (unregistered)

    In regards to Mrs McDonald's coffee, I'm amazed that she managed to be served something hot from McDonalds...

    But n a more serious note, there is currently a major Australian Federal Government tender request that my work place is applying for. They are requesting a 99.999% SLA on the provided solution. No, that's not 99.999% over the course of a year; it's over the course of a day.

    That would allow anyone a grand total of 0.864 seconds of downtime in order to adhere to SLA. Which to me, raises two questions.

    1. Do they actually have monitoring systems in place that can measure system uptime to that level of precision?
    2. Why didn't they just say 100% uptime, seeing as 0.864 seconds is completely unpractical?
  • (cs)

    I submitted a critical comment about this article right before Alex's "blue-highlight sweep" and it got deleted.

    Seriously? WTF?

    That's pretty low.

  • WTFiswithWTFreaders (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    It's worse than that, she's bankrupt.

    The original judgement for $xMM was used to pay the lawyers upfront, then when it was reduced on appeal, there wasn't anything left. She asked for her money out of the fee, they said "sue us", and she filed BK.

    Cite?

    Franz Kafka:
    If only there was a lawyer season.

    There is, unfortunately it seems to be breeding season.

  • Lies, damnd lies and Stats (unregistered) in reply to jojo
    jojo:
    Habitus:
    Of really you have a 100% chance of dying do you have to try it 100,000 times before you can say you were 100% successful?

    Obviously if you try it N times and it succeeds N times, you have a 100% success rate. However, that is very different from a statistical estimate of the actual failure rate of the system, which is really what you want. There are well established methods of estimating those rates, subject to various assumptions about the failure process statistics. .... So the guy who suggested ~95% was right on track.

    I used to do modelling of wireless communications systems. We often wanted to demonstrate a residual error rate from a new error correcting technique of less then 10 exp -6. Some times if was even 10 exp -9. Rule of thumb was to have at least 50, ideally 100 residual errors seen, to have a statistically significant result. Well that means you need at least 100 times 10 exp 9 tests. When our error correcting system performed even better than expected (not including the maths or stats here) all we could say was 'better then 10 E-9' and a confidence interval. The confidence interval improved the more errors you had seen (eg say you had 5 errors), but you shouldn't change the residual error rate on that basis.

    Then there were the times when we actually wanted to quantify a 10E-10 or 10 E-11 residual error rate. We would set up banks of workstations at the nearby University and run then for weeks during off-term times. :) In short - you need good mathematical stats to Actually show that level of performance - otherwise you'll simplify it and be rather wrong (& too easy). The good thing though is the accountants don't know good stats so you can fool them with simplistic uptime estimates like those in most comments here :)

  • konee (unregistered) in reply to The Stainless Steel Hankie Of Justice
    The Stainless Steel Hankie Of Justice:
    Jay:
    Of course, judges do some crazy things, like giving people millions of dollars because they were hospitalized for eight days with third degree burns for spilling coffee that would cause a full thickness burn to human skin in two to seven seconds in their own lap.

    FTFY

    http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm

    P.S. How bad is a third degree burn? Here's a hint: there's no such thing as a fourth degree burn.

    Low cost solution - "HEY STUPID, DON'T POUR COFFEE ON YOUR LAP!" - any wonder the US is such a fucked place to do business?

  • Georgem (unregistered) in reply to konee
    konee:
    Low cost solution - "HEY STUPID, DON'T POUR COFFEE ON YOUR LAP!" - any wonder the US is such a fucked place to do business?

    What if she hadn't spilt it on her lap? She'd probably have drunk it. I wonder if the mouth is susceptible to burns....

  • bonchibuji (unregistered)

    I think we should give Gary Mike Arrington's number....He will surely get some legal advice....:)

  • twatter (unregistered) in reply to uzytkownik
    1. In recent version of kernel not every kernel update needs restart (but OK - they've might used old stable release). Still probably kernel updates were needed as such machines tends to have a security updates only (or am I wrong it this case?). 2. Why reboot the machine. I'm not a wizard but I'd restart automatic updates. It's not hard to find out which process it is. 3. I'd like to know a distro - to avoid it. 4. Well - why to update grub at all? Provided it does not have security issues it should be left intact. In such case if you have problems with new kernel you fallback to old one. It's not so hard. I'm doing it on my non-production computer.
    1. Kernel updates need reboots. Modules are not released independantly and if you want to prevent module incompatibilities you'll need to reboot. ('kexec' is still a reboot but without the need to load a bootloader or cycle the bios, but still everything gets shut down and restarted).
    2. Disable automatic updates altogether and schedule manual updates, since automatic replacement of core components is an unpredictable factor and COULD go wrong. As far as I can understand from the text, upgrades without reboots caused the system to become incompatible (new libraries that tried to chat with an old kernel).
    3. Even grub has shared components.
  • fnord (unregistered) in reply to rfsmit
    rfsmit:
    Spilling coffee is one thing -- a dumb mistake, a "butterfingers" incident.

    But spilling negligently superheated coffee in your lap is quite another, and deserving of a lawsuit. It's absolutely right that the person in question won the lawsuit. The elderly lady was in hospital for eight days for skin grafts, and two years of treatment followed.

    A superheated liquid would be above boiling point; selling superheated coffee would indeed be a good reason for a lawsuit. But every child should know that 1. coffee is prepared with (almost) boiling water, and 2. boiling water will give you severe burns. In almost every other country, the plaintiff would have been laughed out of court. But for some reason, american judges seem to think american customers are plain stupid and have to be warned off all obvious dangers (Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, anyone?)
  • NoXzema (unregistered)

    Apparently I'm missing something. If you have a host that's given you 100% uptime for over a year, and they fuck up once, why would they be upset? That's a little over the hill yeah?

  • (cs) in reply to fnord

    Do you now have warnings on other hot foodstuffs and/or food preparation apparatus?

    Do your ovens come with a "caution, after being used to heat things up, this oven may be hot" warning label on them?

    Frankly, I'd be far to embarrassed to do anything about it if I burned my todger on some coffee...I have enough trouble dealing with my stupidity on a private level, never mind showing the whole world what an idiot I can be at times...

    :)

  • way2trivial (unregistered) in reply to Space Cowboy

    the concorde prior to the crash, it had a perfect no crash survival rate

    after one loss, it had one of the WORST crash/flight/planetype rates...

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