Posted by LorenDB 10/25/2024
The oirginal palin txet of tihs msesage was put trhough a porprietary ecnryption aglorithm I cerated, and waht you see hree is the rseulting cpyher txet. It is illegal for you to rveerse my porprietary ecnryption aglorithm.
I wnat tihs on a TS-hirt.
Under no circumstances should we need an exemption from the copyright office just to be able to repair an ice cream machine. It's not even a permanent exemption! The DMCA causes many weird problems.
Now, like I said previously, there are currently issues with copyright, and this can cross into rent seeking if I try to extract money from your own original works of art (see the family of Marvin Gaye), and there are issues with the length of copyright (i.e. I believe there is a fundamental difference in protecting the right of a creator while they're alive, vs. the rights of inheritors in perpetuity). But the whole concept of rent seeking is around using the power of government to extract money from others simply because you were there first, not around allowing unlimited copying of truly original works.
Why should society not have the right for its traditional interactive way of exchanging culture? Extending the duration of copyright was a perverse move, and now blocking the right to repair is another perverse move. DMCA put all publishers at the whim of agencies spamming takedowns with impunity even for no reason at all. Artists more recently would like to copyright abstractions to block generative AI from reusing their ideas.
People need their traditional ways back. We started open source, made Wikipedia, we now have open scientific publication, teachers share prep materials. Clearly there is a sign that copyright is not essential for society. Copyleft or sharing is more important.
A lot of information is generated by taking some financial risk with the hopes of creating something of value and recouping that investment + some profit. Copyright makes that kind of venture possible. It doesn't prevent altruistic souls from putting in the same effort without any expectation of return. We always had this, by default. Copyright framework allows pursuit, generation and dissemination of huge swaths of valuable information that would otherwise not exist.
If I'm a business that can make money on the service contract I can sell the unit at a lower price. Now I'm forced to make the unit cost higher.
I assume it's one of those things where a few corpos just outplayed 99% of the population
-Chomsky
It’s an anti-consumer stance to force copyright to nearly 100 years and allow no format swapping under a hilariously broad set of normal transmission and format-swapping techniques.
I'm pretty sure that the reason that copyright laws are the way they are is because certain industries in the US lobby the government to strong arm other countries into adopting onerous copyright restrictions as part of free trade agreements.
Whatever you feel about the merits of intellectual property laws the idea that they're wrapped up as 'free trade' when they in fact make things that would otherwise be free cost money is downright Orwellian.
Maybe countries that don't really have a film or tv industry don't want to see copyright on those products and why would they? Why would they want to see their citizens paying American countries for something that would otherwise be free?
I think the primary reason the "spirit" of current copyright broke down is because it's been reduced to hoarding over protecting. the idea is that I can license out an idea if I really want to make use of it. So creations flow and the company makes their own cut out of it.
But I can't just walk up to Disney and pay 100 dollars ,1000, maybe even 1 million to grab Mickey Mouse and work with something. Depending on their products, they may not want anyone using Mickey period, even if there is no mickey product cycle. You basically need to be EA or Mattel or Warner Bros. to even begin being considered for such a thing.
That's their right but it spoils the social contract. When everything by default is locked down, there is no creation flowing. Just broken dreams for abandoned franchises everyone else would love to make use of.
Rent seeking limits innovation, needlessly drives up costs, creates barriers where there shouldn't be any, encourages predatory economic behaviors, suppresses competition, and ultimately leads to monopolistic and or oligopolic wealth and power structures.
It's universally bad practice that results in bad outcomes for society and we should move away from enabling and indeed incentivizing that kind of economic behavior.
Repealing the DMCA also wouldn’t make DRM illegal, but DRM would still be exactly as (in)effective as it has already proven to be countless times. DRM has done nothing to restrict piracy, as far as I can tell.
Repealing the DMCA would simply allow people to more freely break DRM in pursuit of lawful purposes, which are currently restricted unfairly, including activities that would fall strictly under Fair Use. I would argue the DMCA is infringing my legal rights for no benefit to society.
Distributing copies of copyrighted content without authorization was unlawful long before the DMCA, outside of Fair Use scenarios.
The ad campaign for resolving this problem writes itself too. It's easily worth it. Worst case scenario, put the second machine where the pizza oven used to be.
Since the reliability of these machines seem very low, even having 2 machines doesn't guarantee that you're always able to serve ice cream.
And if you're able to serve all your customers with one machine, in times when both are functioning, the second machine doesn't really enable more sales. But you do have to power it, have a dedicated space for it, have someone clean it daily, and pay for the maintenance contract.
It's probably more beneficial to dedicate the space for an extra ice-cream machine to storage, frying station or something else that is more useful.
Another point is that I don't think not being able to sell ice cream reduces sales that much. Because by the time you find out the machine is broken, you're already in the store or drive through anyway
You see, demand for ice cream is very weather driven and that means nearly everyone wants ice cream at the same time. But each machine has a throughput limit. So, a lot of the time when they say the machine is broken, it's really just that the demand has exceeded the machine's capacity, and it takes awhile for the machine to freeze the ice cream mixture when it is refilled. If you had a second machine, that's when you switch to the second machine and by the time that one's capacity is reached, then the other machine will be ready to go again.
The machines also do what modern refrigerators do and they run a defrost/heating cycle to prevent ice from building up on the cooling equipment inside. If a defrost cycle happens at the same time as a freeze cycle, it extends the downtime because it then takes longer to freeze the ice cream mixture.
> to storage, frying station or something else that is more useful.
Storage and frying capacity is not at problem at most McDonald's. Two things they do really well is frying and just-in-time delivery.
> by the time you find out the machine is broken, you're already in the store or drive through anyway
A lot of people come with a car full of kids just for ice cream, they go to your competitor when you don't have it. If they didn't want the expense of an extra ice cream machine, they could keep ice cream sandwiches in the freezer and offer those as a substitute when the ice cream machine is locked out in a freeze or defrost cycle.
I think your conjecture was correct 20 years ago but not at store with the latest remodels. Counter sales and inside dining are an afterthought.
The ice cream machines (all restaurant equipment, really) is very expensive and you generally don't buy more than you will actually use.
Lots of locations are in the smallest sized location possible that can fit everything they need to serve the menu.
But even if they didn't, it's a cheap way to get people to show up and potentially order other, higher margin items. If your machine is broken, you lose that funnel and your customers go elsewhere.
I’ve even had the app be wrong and let you order an ice cream when it doesn’t exist - then they lose money giving you a more expensive substitute.
Some people go there every day and they tell their friends - that sums up.
We have 1 location in my area. I go maybe once a month hoping for a decent experience, but every single time they are out of key ingredients (no chicken, no beans, no chips, etc).
I really don’t understand how that can even happen at Chipotle where the entire menu consists of a grand total of (maybe) 10-15 core ingredients?
I would go way more often if they simply weren’t out or ingredients 90% of the time I go.
But he’s right about not canceling the order. I think last chipotle visit I subbed black beans for pinto, and tofu instead of chicken. The “sorry no chips today” was icing on the cake at checkout.
Chipotle is one of the very few businesses I have ever left a google review for because the complaint seems extremely simple to fix. Just stock your store and hire enough people to prep the food!
But variable reinforcement works better than fixed one, so ice cream machines working being a gamble might actually increase customer addiction.
They make some money for replacement parts, but that's rarely more than the occasional o-ring.
In context, it doesn’t matter whether Taylor is getting paid or Santa Claus is. The problem is that McDonald’s franchises were not able to fix them due to software locks.
This is like asking if a developer can be trusted with a laptop
This analogy doesn't seem to track with my experience: newer devs don't understand computers and filesystems at all :D
Was that all 'active' time or was there a 'put things in the dishwasher / autoclave and let it sterilize for X minutes?'
Were there a lot of separate parts to wash?
Now I'm curious :)
Not a snark.. it's quite eye opening to see (and actually use) how much food a piece of commercial kitchen equipment processeses in a day and then how much effort it takes to clean them.
An example of cleaning a commercial deep fryer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFR5CN_kuI0
One can also try googling for other more detailed versions showing all the efforts in digging out all the burnt sediments/sludge :)
The McD procedure involves draining the barrel, flushing it with water, then disassembling each barrel assembly and removing every o-ring and gasket.
https://youtu.be/SaYTx7qNJU4?si=Y2ZjWHQJHiKQfAFh
Each part is washed in detergent, rinsed, and sanitized. Rings and gaskets are relubricated with food safe petroleum jelly, then everything is reassembled.
Forget one ring or misalign one gasket and the machine will shoot dairy everywhere when repressurized. Cleanup and rework after that is messy, and probably wasted a lot of other nearby product and disposables. So don't do that.
After reassembly the machine is flushed with sanitizer then clear water then primed with the mix you saved from the beginning. Let's hope you stored it properly in the cooler before it started to spoil. It's expensive. If nothing has exploded it's ready for use after an hour of cooling down.
To do this in 45 minutes with no catastrophic errors is pro-level. And this is why McD went to a self-sanitizing machine.
The machines were reassembled the next morning. So the closers only had to break them down, wash, and sanitize.
Once a week any dairy mix left in the machine was discarded, this "breaks the cycle" of any bacteria in the mix. So on that night, you tried to let the machines run very low to minimize waste.
It's sort of complicated the first few times but it becomes very routine. Like everything at McDonalds, there is a detailed step-by-step written procedure on how to do it.
I'm guessing 24/7 operation changed when and how the cleaning was done, leading to more contamination instead of less.
The new machines came in long after I moved on to other jobs. In ideal situations, they re-pasteurize the mix overnight, leading to a drop in 1-2 person-hours of labor.
(And it’s often skipped, if you ever get soda that tastes off you’ve found someplace that doesn’t deep clean.)
> This time, the FTC and DOJ even weighed in to support our petition.
See also:
https://www.ifixit.com/News/92942/the-ftc-and-doj-call-for-i...
Elections matter.
Why were the results different?
DOJ composition running up through 2018 was pretty strongly influenced by a decade of liberal-leaning but cross-partisan staffing, and this was a legal theory that obviously emerged from within staff rather than coming down from the top.
And psychology of liberal or conservative but principled lawyers is likely to be conscientious enough when it comes to their legal theorizing that except where it serves particular organized power plays, you'll see some principled arguments come out, like this one, because obviously the DMCA exists to protect copyright rather than stymie repair.
Also, right-to-repair has an appeal that crosses partisan boundaries very well, especially among voters themselves. Sure, businesses and social influencers who'd sacrifice right-to-repair for pro-capital / power-play positions are probably highly represented and influential in the right-wing party, what with the investment in social philosophies oriented around hierarchies of status. But going against right-to-repair is still unpopular enough and likely to piss off conservative-identifying libertarians that there was bound to be some discomfort, even with the usual Republican enthusiasm for being a pro-capital / pro-business capture party.
And finally, while it's obvious that the 2018 POTUS is only capable seeing the issue in terms of friends/opportunities and enemies/liabilites rather than principled legal or social theories, it's also obvious that right-to-repair is one of the things that benefited from his shall we say limited range/depth of interest when it comes to policy. Inattention can allow any number of things to thrive. At least until someone offers to buy right-to-repair off of him. Elections matter.
I just get tired of the idea that the president/executive completely colors every single government action. Let’s stop pretending that every election will completely rewrite the MO and agendas for every agency.
The comment I replied to was based on exactly those kinds of assumptions (“couldn’t possibly imagine this happening under Trump”) and was wrong. Now you’re just doing a no-true-Scotsman (“oh, it only happened because he wasn’t paying attention”).
I’ve personally seen no evidence that right-to-repair is a partisan issue in the way you’ve suggested, and I’ve seen plenty of evidence that the cronyism charges you’re levying are also not limited to a single party. You can hate the guy for lots of reasons, but the idea that Trump is uniquely capable of being bought on this issue seems very strange to me.
Huh? Did you mean DJT?
I have my interests. Some are satisfied by the Democrats. Some are satisfied by the Republicans. Some are satisfied by both. Some are satisfied by neither. My vote goes to the person who best satisfies my most important interests at the time. Sometimes I have to eat shit in doing so, but that's politics for you.
It’s also true. Call it arrogant all you want but it remains fact that people vote against their interests when persuaded to do so. If the retort is that it’s somehow rude to say this… so be it.
It's not that someone is dumb if they sometimes don't know their own interests. It's that it's a hard problem that even smart people can fail at. Maybe especially smart people who don't appreciate that it's a hard problem and perhaps even are prone to confuse failure with stupidity.
Those who appreciate the complexity of the various problem domains for social policy or even of the information environment wouldn't be the least surprised if they personally accidentally voted against their own interest.
And it's far from controversial that many people are much more likely to vote by connecting their values to impressions/symbols invoked by campaigns and parties than to dig in even at the policy white paper level and arrive at a carefully calculated cost/benefit analysis for each candidate.
Maybe you're an exception. Probably not, but maybe. What about most people? Well, if it's true in a 2024 presidential race "about their policies, Harris would win handily... because voters — whether they know it or not — overwhelmingly prefer the vice president’s agenda to the former president’s"[0] but also true that the race is a coin flip, that suggests some significant margin of people who are doing something else other than policy-interest calculations.
Meanwhile, back at the specific topic, almost nobody is campaigning on right to repair, so even among people who happen to be detailed interest calculators (whoever that may be), it'd be little surprise if as an issue it didn't figure strongly into how they considered their interests and cast their vote.
If this issue matters to you, consider that right-to-repair friendly interpretations of the law are where the civil servant / professional administrative / "deep state" has arrived at under the direction and staffing priorities of prevailing liberal order. Which, is, uh, not really the energy/vibe of one of the current candidates (and it's fairer to speak of energy/vibes than policies when it comes to him given how obvious it is that this is a guy who doesn't do homework and knows little policy other than personal advantage).
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/tru...
I looked at that article. Distinctly missing from the methodology is "and how much do you actually care about this issue?". I might agree with Candidate A on dogs, mom's apple pie, and a thousand other issues, but Candidate B only on Hot Button Issue A and Hot Button Issue B - but if my concern is about Hot Button Issues A and B, then agreeing with a greater number of positions from Candidate A is really beside the point.
Also the leader of the Republican Party happens to be a loyal McDonald's customer. I mean, the guy bought the Clemson Tigers McDonald's instead of using the White House's in-house catering.
Clickbait of the weirdest kind - the totally unnecessary one. They could have gone with more truthful "We're now allowed to" with the same amount of impact... right?