Happy birthday to the worst idea of all time.

redditismyhomeboy · 1 month

It's a little more interesting than that and wasn't quite as bad of an idea as it seems in retrospect (though still a bad idea):

"In 1985, Coca-Cola got the bright idea to change the formula of their staple product that people had been enjoying for nearly a century. This may sound idiotic in retrospect, but at the time it wasn’t quite so stupid. Coke had steadily been losing ground to Pepsi and by the early 1980s taste tests showed that most people tested preferred Pepsi over Coke. Further, if not for Coke’s exclusive contracts with many restaurants and vending machine vendors, Pepsi would have been drastically outselling Coke, as it was in supermarkets and other locations where people had a choice.

Coca-Cola, thus, set about changing their formula to come up with something people would prefer over the original Coke and Pepsi. Specifically, they created New Coke based on their Diet Coke formula, which was extremely popular since its debut, even though it was a new flavor and not a drink flavor based on regular Coke, as the name seems to imply. Taste tests showed that many people preferred the taste of Diet Coke to regular Coke, so they decided to primarily just take out the artificial sweeteners in Diet Coke and substituted in high fructose corn syrup. With a few more minor modifications, they succeeded in creating a new drink more popular than the old, at least, as far as blind taste tests go.

They ran numerous tests which showed the vast majority of people preferred the new formulation over the old and over Pepsi. What went wrong was they failed to consider the “nostalgia” factor and that they’d spent nearly a century marketing their product as something you can’t live without. People had apparently taken this to heart. While every taste test they ran showed people liked New Coke better (when they didn’t know whether it was New Coke or Old), they never asked the question in any of their tests “Would you care if we switched in this new formulation of Coke and got rid of the old?” They didn’t do this because they didn’t want people to know they were developing a new formulation at all, so they couldn’t ask questions like this.

Had they asked it, they would have found the answer to that question was most ardently “YES, we would care!” Many who had never even tried New Coke decided they hated it before even tasting it primarily because they were upset at the fact that the original Coke was no longer available. This forced Coca-Cola to release the old formula under the name “Coca-Cola Classic” just three months after New Coke was introduced.

So why did they get rid of Coca-Cola classic in the first place, rather than just introducing New Coke as a separate drink right off the bat? Mainly because the market for cola drinks at the time was shrinking fast and by introducing another Coke substitute (having introduced Diet Coke in 1982), they feared (rightly so, because it’s what happened) it would split the market for their product with many people who would have drank Coca-Cola Classic now drinking New Coke. This would allow Pepsi to take the top spot by a good margin, allowing them to not only claim taste tests showed people preferred Pepsi, but also to boast about how Pepsi was the most popular soft drink in the world. Coca-Cola was unwilling to give this marketing advantage to Pepsi, so decided to get rid of the original Coke, in favor of New Coke, which a slew of blind taste tests showed people preferred to the original Coke anyways.

Surprisingly, despite these tests showing people preferred New Coke over old Coke and Pepsi and that people preferred Pepsi over Coca-Cola Classic, after this fiasco, Coca-Cola Classic began to steadily take back market share over both Pepsi and New Coke. The apparently superior tasting New Coke ended up never being very popular, despite people liking it better than both Pepsi and Coca-Cola Classic, when they didn’t know which drink was which. So while the whole thing was a fiasco that nearly sunk the company initially, it ultimately was a huge part of why Coca-Cola was able to reestablish itself as the most popular cola in the world. Sometimes doing something stupid can pay off.

Contrary to popular belief, Coca-Cola did not swindle people into accepting high fructose corn syrup over sugar in their drink by pulling the above New Coke stunt. They’d allowed bottlers to use high fructose corn syrup in Coke for about five years before they introduced New Coke (before they even thought up the idea to make a New Coke). Further, about 6 months before the introduction of New Coke, pretty much every bottler was using 100% high fructose corn syrup, rather than sugar or a mixture of the two. So those who claimed they could taste a difference because of the high fructose corn syrup actually had already been drinking it with high fructose corn syrup before New Coke." source

Daaaaaaaay-o · 1 month

one of his ex-girlfriends really did this

Cartei · 1 month

I too have one for the exact same reason. Rocky or really hard soil is drastically easier to dig after a few swings of a picaxe.

--Heisenberg-- · 1 month

Also on that note, support tickets that are more than a few sentences, ones that actually give needed detail, are often either ignored or given generic responses that clearly show the support person didn't read it. There are very few companies I've dealt with where that isn't true.

GigantePotatoHead · 1 month

Or you know, charity.

r-howtonotgiveafuck · 1 month

In truth though, Association Football (aka soccer or just football) was called "soccer" commonly in England until the last few decades. In fact, it was called just "soccer" before the first record of it being called just "football" by about 18 years.

Basically, pretty much any sport that was played on foot was X football (distinguishing it from sports played on horseback and other football sports). In this case, it was "Association Football", similarly there was "Rugby Football" and many others.

It became "soccer" because British school boys of the day liked to nickname everything. They also liked to add the ending “er” to these nicknames. Thus Rugby was, at that time, popularly called “Rugger”. Association Football was then much better known as “Assoccer”, which quickly just became “Soccer” and sometimes “Soccer Football”. source and more info

ilamont · 1 month

I'm not so much worried about the warranty as what the first person was doing with it, particularly people who're going to be getting rid of it withing the first 10K-30K miles. The first couple thousand miles on an engine are extremely important in terms of affecting how long that engine will last.

Given I keep my cars as long as it's frugally smart to do so (which usually ends up being in the 15-20 year mark and the 400K-500K miles range), I'm not too worried about paying extra for the brand new one. When you project it out over that span that extra isn't so bad, particularly if the person treated the engine like crap in the beginning, maintenance on those upper areas starts to get a lot more expensive and cuts the car's projected mileage down quite a bit.

Also, pro-tip, rather than replacing a whole car, it's often better to just replace the engine. Depends on the car (as there are a lot of other expensive things that can go wrong with one). But, for instance, I have an 88 Tercel I bought when I was 14 and the timing belt broke and was going to be about $400 to fix at the time. I looked it up and found I could buy a used Japanese import engine with guaranteed under 30K miles on it for $200 (apparently they have much stricter emission laws and the 88 Tercel engine around 30K miles stops being able to pass, at least that's what I was told). I tested the used engine thoroughly before buying it (compression tests, etc.) and it looked good. My old engine was still good with only 200K miles on it, but it was so cheap to do the replace, it motivated me to do it, instead of the timing belt fix.

Granted, now I was the one having to do the work to keep it super frugal (which I normally don't like, as I always value time far more than money), so the timing belt replace would have been much cheaper, but swapping out an engine is actually pretty straightforward, even if you don't know much about car maintenance (just take pictures of everything you disconnect and write down the order, then pull the engine and do everything in reverse when putting it back in). Only took me about 15 hours for the Tercel engine (obviously that's super slow, but I didn't really know what I was doing, so I took my time and documented everything. ;-)

Worked like a charm when put back in and that car's still going strong because of it. The one time I didn't mind getting a used engine :-)

Rosco7 · 2 months

How do you read, let alone look at a computer screen with a migraine? When I have a migraine even with dark sunglasses and my monitor on it's lowest setting the screen's light attacks my eyes with the power of a thousand suns. Even after the migraine has been gone a few days, I still have to wear sunglasses around any light source. Beyond that, being able to do anything outside of laying there in the pitch black is near impossible for me when I have a migraine. Even maintaining a sitting position is difficult.

LordBarrington0 · 2 months

The essence of all humor is pain and timing.

manikfox · 2 months

Considering Pinterest is seemingly mostly female users, I welcome this joining... ;-)

baconmuffins · 2 months

Also, it's mild exercise and a chance to get outside. As a person who works from home and who only has one or two times a month I actually need to leave the house, I try to find things like this. Though I still dislike these sorts of repetitive, monotonous tasks, there's something nice about remembering there's an outside.

Browsing_From_Work · 2 months

You are the average of the five people you interact with most... stupid reddit...

twolf1 · 2 months

I would say he probably hit the mark he was aiming for. If he primarily appealed to adults, many of the kids who watch it wouldn't have enjoyed them that much (they're used to awesome special effects and similar sci-fi plots these days). So there wouldn't be nearly as many kids who'll have the nostalgia factor when they grow up, which ultimately makes a lot more money because you've got a lifelong slightly obsessive fan who thinks the movies are a lot better than they are because of the nostalgia. You also make more money off kids in toy sales and the like.

My nephew, who wasn't even born when the first of the new Star Wars came out loves the new ones and I think only watches the originals occasionally because they're a continuation of the new ones. He watches the new ones all the time though (literally alternates between one of the Harry Potters and one of those on a daily basis). He's a little obsessive about them wanting tons of Star Wars toys, Star Wars party themes, etc. Basically, he's now hooked for life. Even when he's older and he consciously realizes the newer ones suck, he'll still love them.

Similarly, if I'm being truly objective, the originals weren't all that great either in terms of plot and dialogue and aside from Harrison Ford and James Earl Jones' amazing voice, the acting wasn't really that great either. They still I think were more suited for a young adult audience, though they had the crazy awesome special effects (for the day) going for them to get adults to look past all that.

Lucas just took that a step further and instead of trying to rope in just young adults, he went for kids too. Now, though, he has this legion of fans who're all grown up and used to awesome special effects, so we wanted something more suited for our age.

Hopefully at some point someone (not Lucas) will make the Heir to the Empire trilogy and will buck the trend and target adults. That story line is awesome and would be amazing to see done in film, with the right script and actors.

Lemonwizard · 2 months

Is it possible that there is actually no graviton and gravity is rather actually just a byproduct of some unknown behavior of electromagnetics at the atomic level?

isawwhatyoudid · 2 months

I don't know, South Park's got some funny holocaust jokes. For instance, when Kyle's stereotypical Jewish cousin has trouble concentrating and Cartman says something to the effect of: Maybe he needs to go to a concentration camp....

trinosan · 2 months

Tell Jim he's a thief. Everyone knows leragecomics created them... it's in the domain.

nweasel · 2 months

Heck, my wife and I just bought our first home with was built in 2008, only lived in for one year when we bought it, and is amazingly high quality build and energy efficient. Around 2K square feet + three car garage, 2.5 bath, three bedroom, with two living areas, and a large kitchen with near new stainless steal appliances on a fully fenced 1/2 acre lot with a breathtaking view of the mountains, sold for $300K in 2008, we got it for $175K in 2011. Everything in it was in mint condition.

Obviously this is around double the Ikea model, but such a better deal and not really an aberration. There are loads of similar houses around where we live going for about the same and tons of older ones on smaller lots for significantly less. Also around just 40 minutes from Bellevue/Renton/Everett/etc., so plenty close to cities for working (there are closer towns, but obviously much smaller). Further, it should be noted that half acre lots around us, without a house, are going for around $70K-$90K.

This Ikea DIY house would have gone over much better 5 or 6 years ago. Now it's just not that great of deal in the current housing market. I also wonder if there are any difficult permits to get and other such expenses that go along with the IKEA home?

Dovienya · 2 months

I had a similar event. I was writing a device driver for this custom hardware for a master's class and had three weeks to do it. So I get started and get all the barebones part of the driver written and for some reason it freezes the computer and I have to restart, modify, re-build the kernel, try again. Same problem, over and over again.

So over the next week nobody, including my professor, can figure out what's wrong with my code, using every debug method any of us know (which is saying something as my professor was one who very actively helps maintain the particular OS we're working on, NetBSD, and even he couldn't figure it out). So I alternate between writing more of the code and trying to figure out the bug.

This project was about 30% of my grade and this particularly professor basically has a 0% rule if it doesn't at least load up (after that, the grade is based on how much it works and things like that). So basically, I fail this class if I can't get it to at least load without freezing the computer. That further means I have to wait two years to graduate as that's the next time this required class is offered. Also, I would then be on probation and if I ever got below a B in any class from there on, I get kicked out of the master's program.

Thus, the last two weeks I did nothing but stay in the lab banging my head against this thing, visiting my professor as we go over it line by line, and continuing to write the guts of the code, just so when I figure out what's wrong, I am at least close to being done (after working out the bugs.)

I get only a couple hours of sleep per 24 hour period, on the computer lab couch. Barely eat during the time. Finally, about two hours before it's due, a friend of mine walks into the lab and glances at my screen for not 5 seconds as he walks by... pauses... and says "oh, you've got a typo, you've got idh there where you meant ibh...." (note: there were two variables named such, so it compiled fine with that typo, one was the bus handle, the other I can't remember, handle to something else; it was basically on near the first line of executed code and before one could get any debug data out of it and the system crash dumps were not helpful).

Anyways, so that was a great feeling, but then the kicker. With only two hours left and near no hope of having time to debug the rest, I just want to get it so it loads, so I can at least pass the class if I do well on the final and other assignments. I recompile the driver and kernel, restart and BAM. Every part of the driver worked, from there, no matter how I manipulated the custom hardware.

It should be noted that this was not only my first device driver, but also my first foray into NetBSD and it wasn't a trivial driver either, being in a master's class and being such a huge percentage of the grade.

The swing in feeling from having nothing working to finally having the one bug fixed to having it miraculously work right at the deadline, saving me from having to wait two years to be able to take that class again to complete my master's was indescribable.

We later wrote the same driver for windows, instead of NetBSD and because I'd basically memorized every data sheet and the like, took me only about 4 hours to figure out the modifications for windows (even though it was my first driver for windows also), while the rest of my classmates tended to take the more standard 20-30 hours to do their modifications. So that was kind of a bonus.

tl;dr: device driver that nearly caused me to be put on probation and fail my master's class and have to wait two years to retake the class instead suddenly miraculously works with a couple thousand lines of very complex, untested code working flawlessly right at the deadline after two weeks of hell.

EMFK · 2 months

How do they plan to get around the smell problem that plagues the current space station? All those farts and, with this club, sexual smells aren't going anywhere. This club will quickly begin to smell like sweaty balls...

liljohn433 · 2 months

My brother used to work at a U.S. shipyard and while officially you work 5 days/40 hours a week, in actuality if you aren't there pretty much 7 days a week, your foreman isn't going to like you and you'll eventually get let go.

Now, to be fair, most people don't complain because while the normal pay for a grunt worker is OK there (and better than most other places such a person could work, which is why there's such pressure to do whatever the foreman wants, as there are literally thousands lined up to take your job), overtime pays amazingly well and saturday/sunday overtime gets an additional boost over normal overtime. Further, weekend shifts usually end around 2pm-ish (something like a 4-6 hours shift), but they pay you for the full eight at the super-overtime rate.

However, you basically never get days off, ever. Also the working conditions there are amazingly hazardous. That's basically when you get your vacation for the year, whenever you get seriously injured such that you're unable to work for at least a week or two. Paid vacation though. ;-)

hiskeyd

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