82-Year-Old Coder Trumps BT's Hyperlink Patent 273
grendelkhan writes: "According to Wired News, 82 year-old programmer, Bob Bemer, claims his creation of escape invalidates British Telecomm's hyperlink patent. He has no intentions on cashing in, he just wants BT to quit suing people and prove, in his own words: 'All this new patent stuff is crazy and counterproductive.'"
Quote from Miguel de Icaza (Score:2, Funny)
Not just a coder... (Score:2, Interesting)
The basis of his case rests on the fact that http:// is actually HTTP. Luckily, neither he nor IBM patented this invention.
I want to meet this guy
Old-Timers strike back (Score:4, Funny)
The Pain will be never ending... Death to Stupid Lawsuits!!!!
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:2, Funny)
That's more than enough...
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:5, Interesting)
sPh
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet the industry is still largely male. Ironic.
I just hope *I'm* still going at 82 like this guy.
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:2, Funny)
I hope that when I'm 82 I spend my days lying on a beach, being served cold drinks by my 18-year-old wife.
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, the women were not ordinary individuals, but were chosen for their mathematical aptitude. History largely ignored them. I read once that there was a big project reunion PR event, and none of them were invited, at least not until someone noticed and made a fuss.
The real question is whether the work was considered secretarial because women could do it, rather than the other way around. My own observation is that quality secretarial work requires an astonishing level of skill. Behind every 5-million-dollar-a-year executive is a 35K/year secretary who actually has most of the responsibility for doing the executive's work. I would argue that the general contempt for secretarial work derives from a general contempt for women and anything they do.
Anybody who has ever been in academia knows that the departments would collapse quickly and entirely without the cadre of highly-skilled and effective departmental secretaries.
Oh, here's a link to a pdf [upenn.edu]. It took more work than I had time for to locate a really complete history of the women on ENIAC. I did however find this slashlink [slashdot.org] to a glowing Jon Katz review of a book that claims to tell the whole ENIAC story.
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:3, Interesting)
When WWII hit many of those women jumped into engineering and science positions to fill in for the missing men and increased demand.
After the war, most of them were sent back to the kitchen, as it were, in favor of men. However, since computing was so new there weren't men to "come back", and many women worked in the field from 1940-1960. For some reason however they were not replaced by the generation of young women who went to school during those years, so from 1960 - 1980 or so the percentage of women in computing fell drastically.
sPh
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:4, Informative)
But...
Mr. Bemer really does have a fascinating background. Read a bit about him here. [bobbemer.com]
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:2, Funny)
sPh
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, they invented the fax machine almost immediately after the telegraph. You wrote the original on some kind of conducting paper and wrapped it on a xmit drum. A needle on the sending machine sent the signal over the telegraph wire to a receiving drum with a pen.
Obviously, though, they didn't use TIFF compression.
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, here is more on Mr. Bemer [bobbemer.com] for others who do not follow the link:
At Lockheed, he devised the first computerized 3-D dynamic perspective,
prelude to today's computer animation.
At IBM, he developed
PRINT I (the first load-and-go computer method),
FORTRANSIT (the first major proof of intercomputer portability,
and the second FORTRAN compiler),
Commercial Translator (a COBOL input), and
XTRAN (an ALGOL predecessor).
In 1957 March he was the first to describe commercial timesharing,
which you now see as the Worldwide Web.
In 1959 his internal IBM memo proposed word processing.
The Identification and Environment Divisions of COBOL are due to him,
as is the Picture Clause, which could have avoided the Year 2000 problem
if used correctly.
He coined the terms "COBOL", "CODASYL", and "Software Factory".
He was the major force in developing ASCII (contributing 6 characters --
ESCape (see that key), FS, GS, RS, US, and the backslash). He invented the
escape sequence and registry concept, and is called the "Father of ASCII".
He wrote the original scope and program of work for international and
national computer standards, and chaired the international committee for
programming language standards for eleven years.
He was Program Chairman for ACM 70, promoter of National Computer
Year (when the Y2K problem should have been solved), and edited the
proceedings as the book "Computers and Crisis".
Three Pioneer Days have honored him -- SHARE, COBOL, and FORTRAN.
As editor of the Honeywell Computer Journal (the first A4-size publication
[1971] in the U.S.) he innovated fiche-of-the-issue and multimedia publishing.
He has published more than 110 articles in technical journals.
In 1995 he received the Albion College Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In 2000 he was named in the Delta Tau Delta "Rainbow" as one of the "100
Most Influential Delts of the 20th Century".
He is recognized as the first person in the world to publish warnings of the
Year 2000 problem -- first in 1971, and again in 1979.
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:3, Funny)
ESCape (see that key), FS, GS, RS, US, and the backslash)
Backslash? And we're actually praising this guy? If it weren't for him, I might be able to move between UNIX and Windows without getting a throbbing headache.
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:2)
imagine if you will:
C:#WinNT#System32 or
C:aWinNTaSystem32
Considering the alternatives, I think the backslash is pretty cool.
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:3, Funny)
How horrible would it be to have to define a path to a resource by separating the elements with bangs....oh, wait...
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:2)
No kidding, in Japan this is:
C:WinNTSystem32
For those who cannot read the above due to non-us character set, '!' is replaced by 'yen' sign.
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:3, Informative)
Now go and install mozilla
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:2)
Re:Old-Timers strike back (Score:3, Funny)
Good God. If this man can actually duke it out with German bullets, then even I want to hear that story!
He oughta get the patent... (Score:5, Funny)
He *should* get the patent (Score:2, Interesting)
And to succeed, he could try changing the minds of companies that like patents, by charging them a lot of money.
Isn't it so?
questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Programming since the '40s!
Re:questions (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll second that. A thorough interview would also be nice. If this guy successfully crushes BT's suit, as seems very possible, he's definitely going to be making the rounds in the tech media. He might even get some nice words from John C. Dvorak.
Inventor of ASCII (Score:2)
Cool... (Score:2)
If more people were like this think of where the idustry would be today.
Your homework assignment... (Score:5, Interesting)
Find the parallels between this (the BT case) and this patent lawsuit [com.com] that SightSound is bringing against CDNow but potentally all music/video sellers. (SightSound claims they own the common methods of selling music and video over the Internet, and the judge has allowed the case to go to trial).
Re:Your homework assignment... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can picture a company like AOL or Microsoft having the money to sue the PTO for reimbursment of their court costs against SightSound, or some other jerkwater company consisting of a patent and a flock of lawyers.
While I'm sure big companies like IBM have patented their share of obvious gadgets they've also got some real patents and this general weakening of patents (what's a patent worth, every idiot can get one) stands to hurt them a lot.
I'd love to see the government called to the carpet for their failures and the consequences those have had on the populace.
My Grandma (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My Grandma (Score:4, Insightful)
This is infinitely more important than a name.
Maybe she did things like this guy, from who we never heard before. This is truly being geek: doing things because they are cool, not because of fame or money.
Congrats on your grandma.
Re:My Grandma (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, and a marriage proposal on the same day. Love must be in the air. I hope my wife doesn't smell it because she'll want jewelry or something.
Fuck BT... Go after MS.. (Score:3, Funny)
Ctrl-Alt-Esc is the way I usually shut down my MS applications for godsake.
Re:Confusing Mac OS and Windows (Score:2)
Re:Fuck BT... Go after MS.. (Score:2)
Invented the escape key huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Invented the escape key huh? (Score:2, Informative)
And you probably know it's not the 'Esc' key on your keyboard, but the very idea of an escape sequence that he's talking about (which, of course, is could be triggered in some situations by pressing 'Esc').
Can't be said enough (Score:5, Insightful)
This can't be said enough. Read my other post [slashdot.org] here
Good quote (Score:4, Interesting)
"Technology develops through decades of work by many people. That's why I put my work into the public domain whenever possible."
Why can't everybody think more like this old guy??
old school hacker. (Score:4, Interesting)
How things have changed.
-Restil
Re:old school hacker. (Score:2)
Then they will learn a hard lesson. A bank learnt it hard way when my friend accidentally issued 'DD SYSDUMP' 'SHUTDOWN' from a small JCL module for a system handling multi-million transactions for a bank.
Somehow I think the system manager should be fired instead of firing my friend, who should be promoted for finding loopholes...but reality is reality.
Re:old school hacker. (Score:2)
-Paul Komarek
Re:old school hacker. (Score:5, Funny)
What OS?
The ITS at MIT. (lameness filter cram cram stuff adding more words so taco won't get pissed at me and ruin his engagement high)
How was it interpreted?
It crashed the system. (crash crash boom click whirrrrr...)
Where did you type it?
On the command line, where else? (lameness filter cram stuff wodge spank spank WHUMP!) (byt the way, the lameness filter really bites.
KILL SYSTEM Re:old school hacker. (Score:2, Funny)
IBM your friend (Score:3, Informative)
This gentlemen is obviously coming from the good old IBM school which taught that it is only ethical to rip your customer's arms and legs off if he decided to do such outragous things such as buying a used IBM computer - of course without licence for the operating system because that was not transferable.
Such dirty deeds were thoroughly punished with selling the naughty guy a new licence at a price which would make him regret not to have bought a new machine in the first place.
I guess the past seems to be quite romantic when you are 82.
Smiley Face Creator Had A Similar Sentiment (Score:3, Interesting)
Harvey Ball, the creator of the smiley face image, (not the ascii [:-)] ) died not too long ago [freeipx.org]! He never trademarked his creation, however, but he did form a corporation to make smiley greeting cards and sell them with profits going to charity.
However, some French Dude registered the trademark [cnn.com] in a bunch of countries, and Ball considered going after him to keep the smiley free.
This story reminds us why something like the GPL is so important: It ensures that information that is free stays free! Public Domain resources (even smileys!) can be snatched up and made into commodities!
Even more absurd (Score:3, Interesting)
These sorts of concepts which are being pressed at the patent office may be new to some people, but they are not new. In particular, this idea of escapes would have been completely obvious to anybody with a little mathematical training, in 1950 or 1900 or even 100BC.
You could argue that the application of the idea is novel, but differentiating an abstract notion from its collection of concrete instances is a tricky thing, and properly the subject of philosophy and metamathematics, not the patent office's incompetent review staff.
You all have it wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
If I read it right, he invented the escape sequence. Like in a shell when you type
rm Stupid\ File\ that\ a\ window\$ lu\$er created.mp3
Those kinds of escapes, the ones that are used to within normal text to denote something to be handled non-literally. In other words, he is actually claiming that HTML uses escape sequences < and > to denote special handling of hyperlinks, same with the ampersand escaped characters, like I just used.
The escape key has nothing to do with this.
Re:You all have it wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
is actually claiming that HTML uses escape sequences
Which is total bunk, just like the case itself. HTML doesn't have escapes (well, except &), it has syntax
Re:You all have it wrong (Score:2)
Without the syntax, nothing knows it's an escape.
English has escapes so you can talk about the period at the end of this sentence.
HTML has escapes, otherwise scripts and comments would show up as text.
Shifted a is A, but both are the letter 'A'. Greek Alpha would be a shifted 'A' if you had a Greek shift. Shifted 6 is ^. Looks like an escape that everybody is accustomed to. Probably called an escape because it escapes from the corner the designer had painted himself into.
Re:You all have it wrong (Score:2, Informative)
rm Stupid\ File\ that\ a\ window\$ lu\$er created.mp3
That is not an escape. That is a "literal next". The ASCII escape character does not mean "use the next character literally", it says "I'm starting some sort of command using the next one or more characters".
That's nothing like the '/' in a URL, and it's not HTTP. This "prior art" is nonsense, but it's nonsense fighting nonsense.
Re:You all have it wrong (Score:2)
rm: cannot remove `lu$er': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `created.mp3': No such file or directory
sorry, couldn't resist
Re:You all have it wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Is that any more ludricrous than these stupid "submarine patents" (as they are called in IP circles)?
I think it's totally broken that patents can lie dormant, and even be amended, in hope that eventually someone will make a lot of money doing something similar to the patent. Patents have even lie dormant for up to 30 years while the holder quietly waited for someone to make money doing something similar to what the patent said, before finalizing the process and actually getting the patent.
This guy is just trying to get attention. Like the article noted, his claim is not likely to have much effect on the actual case. He is just using his position to bring attention to the matter, and hopefully provoke rational debate about how the patent system is broken as it applies to software.
Father of.... lots! :) (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.bobbemer.com/a-plate1.JPG [bobbemer.com]
The Main Page - http://www.bobbemer.com [bobbemer.com]
Kind of ironic.. (Score:2)
better than ESC: vannevar bush (Score:2, Interesting)
Author is wildly confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
He mentions then term 'escape sequence' and then somehow binds that to the escape key. The only relation between an 'escape sequence' and an escape key is that the begining on the traditional ansi escape sequence starts with the same code the escape key generates.
An 'escape sequence' according to Webopedia is:
The fact is that the escape sequence in a traditional hyperlink is the information encoded after the filename (that's encoded with URL-encoding). It's all those neat %20 characters.
Check out this quote:
Escape's powers are huge but at its most basic level, it is a command that tells a computer to make a shift in its processing - allowing a user to move up, down or sideways through files, programs or networks. For example, every press of a phone key that allows a user to move through an automated information service is an invocation of Berner's escape principle.
This is just absurd. Escape sequences special sequences encoded other data. A telephone navigation system is merely a command driven system. Nothing is escaped. By this logic, every time anyone tells anything to do anything they are invocating Berner's escape principle.
I understand the guy's position, but Wired really blew it on this story. I'm suprised this made it past the technical editors...
BTW: The article mentions the '/' character as being an escape sequence, but this is not true. If they are referring to the href of a URL, then since the protocol preceeds the '/', this would not be an example of an escape sequence. I think the real issue is the escape sequences preceeded by '%' signs.
Re:Author is wildly confused... (Score:2, Interesting)
An interrupt "tells a computer to make a shift in its processing". At the hardware level it's an indication to give the CPU to a handler to deal with whatever event just happened. At the software level, it tells the application to stop what it's doing and maybe process a new command.
So are interrupts an invocation of the "escape principle" or is the "escape principle" a type of interrupt.
Hmm.. wonder who owns the patent on interrupts?
Re:Author is wildly confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
Go back and read your own escape sequence definition that you got from Webopedia, as long as it is a "sequence of special characters" that send a command to a device or program it is an escape sequence. Then you have to get into the argument of "pressing 4 on the telephone dial is not a special character". What is a special character by the way? Would pressing #4 while interrupting phone message recording (to take you back to the main menu) be considered as a "sequence of special characters"? IOW, fighting over definitions does not make sense.
What is rightly an issue, is that the BT patent on hyperlinks was not an invention when it was approved. And, one of the examples of similar practices is dated from way long ago, and you can call it escape sequence, or call it something else if you like.
URL, then since the protocol preceeds the '/', this would not be an example of an escape sequence. I think the real issue is the escape sequences preceeded by '%' signs.
All those can be escape sequences, including an HTML tag on a web page since it modifies the meaning of a regular text and, instead, sends a "command" to the browser ("device or program") to interpret the included text otherwise.
Re:Author is wildly confused... (Score:2)
Mod this guy up and/or mod the parent down! This guy is right, HTML sequences are essentially escape sequences in that the browser stops outputting the text and instead internally processes the escaped data.
maru
This guy is amazing. (Score:5, Interesting)
He put the backslash in ASCII code (without it, where would DOS be now.... oh, I mean.. nevermind)
He Texas Plates are "ASCII". That just rocks in itself.
He helped invent COBOL. I learned to program on COBOL. I can't even imagine the fortitude trying to make an entire programming language. The old programmers had it really tough. Imagine wanting to program in a high level, so you have to design and implement a high level language yourself.
The whole reason this got out is simply because he is fed up with all of these outrageous patents. Hyperlinking... bah, One click purchasing.
He is one of us (albiet probably the oldest)
Slashdot would do good for itself to do an interview with him, maybe even make him the honorary "grandpa" of slashdot.
Re:This guy is amazing. (Score:2)
Would that make his user id -1?
Re:This guy is amazing. (Score:2)
The Role of Government (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a post on here which expressed optimism that Mr. Bemer seemed like a responsible enough person to grant the patent. What patent? Why should this be patented to begin with? The system should be rigged such that philanthrophic caretakers should not have to appear; what happens next time when BT decides to patent the power button?
The system is failing the consumer/citizen here. I think deeper introspection is required of the legal system and the IP code.
Re: (Score:2)
2 Words... (Score:2)
'bout time a pattentholder isn't lookin to cash in...
So he was the one that invented 'the escape' (Score:3, Funny)
Wasn't Bemer portrayed by Steve McQueen. Those damned Nazis. If it wasn't for the 'escape' we never would have witnessed one of the finest war movies of all time.
I dunno what it is but it's funny to think of an 82 yr old programmer throwing a baseball back forth against his cubicle wall.
:)
The patent would have long since run out (Score:3, Insightful)
Had Bemer or IBM, his employer at the time, patented the escape concept, he or they could own a sizable chunk of the world's technology right now.
If he had indeed patented this in 1960, the patent would have expired by now. Even if it took a few years for him to get the patent, the 17 years would be long over.
Unless he purposely dragged on the application process for years to make the patent last longer, like The Patent King. [business2.com]
Now, there is a 20 year limit from the year of filing.
IANAL, BIWOWALF3Y.
yo.
Re:The patent would have long since run out (Score:2)
If he had indeed patented this in 1960, the patent would have expired by now. Even if it took a few years for him to get the patent, the 17 years would be long over.
Very true, but since the concept is so useful and pervasive, there would have been a monopoly that would have been very difficult to break. Others might have started comming in in the 80's, but it would have taken almost until now for there to be any sizable dent in their share.
old school open-source (Score:3, Insightful)
Ted Nelson: Non-British Non-scientist Yes-Genius! (Score:5, Informative)
"Other examples of hyperlinks also predate BT's patent, including a 1965 book by British scientist Ted Nelson..."
How do I know? Because I co-implemented the first working hypertext and hypermedia on personal computers, for Ted, and demo'd it at the world's first personal computer conference, in Philadelphia, in -- was it 1976?
That was before Radio Shack, IBM, or Apple even made personal computers...
Ted Nelson is merely a grandfather of the World Wide Web. Remind me -- what exactly did BT do except shove electrons through wires?
Wired and BT are BOTH wrong.
I say: fly Ted Nelson by Concorde to the trial and treat him as the VIP he is, pay hom $1,000 and hour as an epert witness, and then give him a share of the winnings in court!
I don't support BT but... (Score:2)
Re:How is this relevant to BT's patent? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How is this relevant to BT's patent? (Score:5, Interesting)
Today it's more abstract, http:// is an escape sequence indicating that the following characters are to be interpreted as a hostname followed by a path name, which make up a hyperlink aka URL.
Re:How is this relevant to BT's patent? (Score:2, Informative)
Before ASCII and ANSI, the character now known as "escape" was commonly called "alt-mode" after the key on the teletype machine. So the only way to end a command string in TECO was "altmode" "altmode". Also before character standardization ^ was up-arrow and _ was back-arrow. Add to that numerous EBCDIC encodings - no there isn't just *one* of them, and you had alphabet soup. Bemer had a principal role in standardizing the character set.
Before the year 2000 problem hit, Bemer proposed a temporary solution for IBM mainframes involving zoned decimals which seems to have disappered along with the Y2K hype.
It's nice to see one of the old guys sticking a knife into the patent monster with a good solid claim of "prior art".
Sure (Score:2)
A hyperlink, after all, is only a button without the IMG tag, and a button is really an esc key without the white silk screened text and membrane-spring tactile mechanism...
No, Out of Band / Metadata is the concept (Score:5, Informative)
In both cases, the escaped / embedded metadata is not visible on the screen, yet has important information about the page. It is not far fetched at all to consider escaped data as a link. I don't know if it has ever been done, but it could be.
Re:No, Out of Band / Metadata is the concept (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not far fetched at all to consider escaped data as a link.
This is wrong on two counts:
1) The concept of hyperlink is what was patented, not the encoding of a hyperlink. A hyperlink can be implemented without any concept of an escape.
2) Escaped data might be a link, but that's an interpretation of the data. An escape is an encoding, nothing more.
Re:No, Out of Band / Metadata is the concept (Score:2)
Re:No, Out of Band / Metadata is the concept (Score:2)
Ever used an index? It's usually at the back of the book.
[n] references to a bibliography?
Re:Nonsense - the *point* of ESC is that it's INba (Score:2)
All that is true. But what does any of that have to do with hyperlinks -- the CONCEPT of hyperlinks, not the implementation. Hyperlinks have nothing to do with in-band data, or out-of-band data. That's all implementation detail.
Re:Nonsense - the *point* of ESC is that it's INba (Score:2)
is NOT a hyperlink.
To be a hyperlink it would need the proper escape sequences.
Do you mean the CONCEPT of something that takes you somewhere and occupies zero space to do it? Or upper case is text and lower case is hyperlink? Or tagged text as in tntotrtmtatlt tttetxtt or hhhyhphehrhlhihnhk?
Re:What the hell? (Score:2)
Oops, that should be "separate from the text". Preview is my friend.
If nothing else... (Score:2, Insightful)
The hell you say! (Score:2)
Re:What the hell? (Score:4, Insightful)
His discussion about prior art is talking about the use of escape sequences to link term A on computer A to data B on computer B.
The talking of escape sequence is just a premise of what it is. It's a vague abstracted concept that basically equates to user-defined interrupt calls that can happen at any time, inserted by the end user or the program.
Hyperlinks as a concept, are innovations build upon actual escape sequences as used previously. I'm wondering when we are going to start seeing classes coming up that deal with Computer History were people can learn about Berner, Hooper, Lovelace and the rest of the bunch.
In a nutshell: Everything we have done since 1957 is based upon the work they did before.
Re:What the hell? (Score:2)
Hyperlinks as a concept, are innovations build upon actual escape sequences as used previously.
Inspiration is not the same as prior art. Velcro was inspired by thistles in nature, but so what? Velcro was a brilliant invention.
The concept of the hyperlink is irrelevent to the implementation of a hyperlink. They can be implemented totally without any sort of embedded escapes.
Everything we have done since 1957 is based upon the work they did before.
While I believe that there isn't much original in CS since the 60s (and have posted this before), "everything" is an exaggeration. Trivial example: video compression (MPEG4). Sheesh, even Hoare's Quicksort paper was early sixties, I believe. The mouse came in the late sixties.
More recently, there are a slew of "real world" graphics rendering theories that have been done in the last 10 years, particularly in the area of light diffusion.
Re:What the hell? (Score:2)
The concept of the hyperlink is irrelevent to the implementation of a hyperlink. They can be implemented totally without any sort of embedded escapes.
Your velcro analogy would be more correct if it was natures way of causing two seeds to stick together and that was it's function.
His used escape sequences to a pointer and documents from two different hosts. That is a 'hyperlink' in a general sense of the word. It's not HTML formatted, but it is a link.
Re:What the hell? (Score:2)
I wonder the same thing myself. I know for certain I only became truly interested in the formal part of computing after getting some perspective from the history (the whole Turing/Bletchley Park story, Von Neumann, birth of high-level languages, etc).
But practically none of that was part of my formal coursework, and then it was mostly the evolution of OSes.
It was by my own personal interest (and probably pure chance) that I got Enigma and Codebreakers, and I was hooked. Not only did it increase my enthusiasm in subjects I had considered dry and unrelated to what I thought CS was about, it helped me understand them much better by providing perspective on where these ideas came from and why they are significant.
The same applies to many other subjects in science. I would have found modern physics a more compelling and understandable subject from the beginning if I had known of the history behind it, instead of patching up my educational gaps later when I found out what the point was.
I'm sure including courses in History of X Science as part of the requirements/electives of scientific majors would benefit many students.
Re:What the hell? (Score:2)
Lovelace? Dude, he's not *THAT* old. Unless you are talking about those terrible rumours about he and that geek groupie Linda.
Re:What the hell? (Score:2)
Thank you.
Re:What the hell? (Score:2)
Credit the mothers and fathers of science and learn about them, not profit off their work. Actually, it's highly probably that a lack of Franklin's influence would be a lot less substantial than Tessla's work.
And please use preview.
Re:wow (Score:2)
True. My mother is 81, and has been a pretty obsessive computer user for nigh on 20 years now. She regularly upgrades her system, helps out other old folks with their computers at the place where she lives, and is on the net damn near as much as any 20 year old cyberphile. I've even run across the occasional thing in her url history list that I had to do an immediate mental CTRL-ALT-DELETE about.
Re:Sick and Tired... (Score:2)
Well, actually there are three. Too cold, OK, and too hot. In the McDonalds' case it was too hot - McDonalds served coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees (home coffee is about 135 degrees)* which is too hot for human consumption. Over 700 incidents had been reported to McDonalds relating to burns from coffee that was too hot.
The award of $2.7 million punitive damages was not because she burnt herself (she got $160,000 damages for that) but because McDonalds were knowingly indulging in a dangerous business practice. They has since rectified their practices.
The whole thing would not have happened if the company had agreed to pay the woman's medical bills ($20,000) in the first place (they rejected this out-of-hand).
* 180 degree coffee will cause a third degree burn in between two and seven seconds. In contrast you would have to pour 135 degree coffee over a skin for at least 60 seconds before doing the same damage.
Re:Sick and Tired... (Score:2)
You ain't seen nothing yet.
okay, so i did comp sci and not chemistry and uni,
My commiserations.
but doesnt water evaporate after hitting the magical 100 degree mark?
Before trying to be a smart arse I'd strongly advise getting your technical terms correct (otherwise you look like a prat) - water evaporates before 100 degrees, boils at 100 degrees, and only exists as vapour after 100 degrees. And all this is only true at atmospheric pressure.
It is possible, of course, that you are ignorant of the Fahrenheit scale of temperature (which is widely used in the US). You have my best wishes for a speedy rehabilitation from such a blinkered and bleak existance.
It depends on the shape of the cup, the material the cup was made of, the ambient temperature, whether the lid was on, the material the lid was made off, the amount of coffee, etc etc....
However, the answer is about 30 minutes.
i suppose there is a third option, the 'too-hot-coffee-in-the-hands-of-a-non-retard' option
The coffee spilled when she was trying to open the lid. She was also 81 years old at the time of the incident.
blow on it
Erm - you want to blow on it before opening the lid? Why?
Re:OT: Re:Sick and Tired... (Score:2)
Who said anything about the temperature you make it at? It is the temperature you serve it at that is important.
Out of how many billion cups of coffee served at thousands of locations over 50-odd years?
The 700 reported incidents was in the ten year period 1982 to 1992. These were the incidents where they paid out. As it was brought up at the trial I would have thought you'd have known this...
I should really learn to stop responding to people who think that they and only they have all the facts on the case.
Maybe you should learn the facts instead - there are plenty of references.
Re:OT: Re:Sick and Tired... (Score:2)
As it happens McDonalds have decreased the temperature of the coffee, so you probably haven't even noticed that you have been deprived of choice.
Re:OT: Re:Sick and Tired... (Score:2)