Re: Open letter to Linux kernel developers (was Re: Binary Drivers)

[Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>]

On Tuesday January 2, tao@acc.umu.se wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 08:22:21AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > 
> > > I can very easily believe it.  The US patent system and "justice"
> > > system in the US is completely and totally insane, and companies
> > > often feel they have to act accordingly.  Remember this is the
> > > country that has issued multi-million dollar awards to people who
> > > spill hot coffee in their lap ...
> > 
> > MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC:  can we please stop using this "hot coffee in
> > lap" story as an example of the idiocy of the justice system?  i'm
> > guessing there's more to this story than most folks are aware of, and
> > you're welcome to read the details here:
> > 
> >   http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
> > 
> > as you can see, there are two salient points that change the
> > complexion of this story thoroughly:
> > 
> > 1) mcdonald's was not merely serving their coffee "hot," but
> > *scalding* hot (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that
> > will produce third-degree burns almost immediately, and
> 
> That's less than 90°C.  Water boils at 100°C.  How the hell do 
> people expect coffee to be made without boiling water?  Magic?

We have a coffee chain down here (.au) called "92degrees".  They claim this
is the optimal temperature for pumping the water through the ground
coffee beans to get ideal coffee.  So it doesn't need to be boiling.

Of course if people would just put milk in their coffee, we would have
this problem :-)

[We now return you to our regular program of filesystem corruption
and flame wars].

NeilBrown