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The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

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Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#131

Post by logdap »

fishtoaster wrote: post #57
logdap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a myth within a myth. The coffee was industry standard temperature, they still serve coffee that hot today (Wikipedia says as much.) The lawsuit was justified though, because the cup design was defective. It shouldn't have collapsed like it did.

That doesn't seem to match what's in wikipedia: > Liebeck's attorneys argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140 °F (60 °C), and that a number of other establishments served coffee at a substantially lower temperature than McDonald's. The attorneys presented evidence that coffee they had tested all over the city was served at a temperature at least 20 °F (11 °C) lower than McDonald's coffee. Reading th…

You stopped reading too soon:

> Since Liebeck, McDonald's has not reduced the service temperature of its coffee. McDonald's current policy is to serve coffee at 176–194 °F (80–90 °C) [...] Similarly, as of 2004, Starbucks sells coffee at 175–185 °F (79–85 °C), and the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America reported that the standard serving temperature is 160–185 °F (71–85 °C).[citation needed]

Any of this coffee can give you life changing injuries. That's why it is important that it be served in sturdy cups with safety warnings.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#132

Post by ergonaught »

Haven't read the story. Have actual, first-hand, real-world experience of US government architects repeatedly putting high end and very expensive faucets/fixtures/etc into housing projects, which where immediately torn out and pawned/re-sold/etc.

Usual explanation, when offered, was the typical "Budget is $X, and if we don't spend at least $X, they reduce the budget next round, so we spend every dollar and request an increase."

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#133

Post by paulddraper »

unreal37 wrote: post #4

The so-called "real" explanation of the $600 hammer doesn't make the story any better. The hammer did indeed cost $435. If the government wanted to buy another one, the contractor would have charged them an extra $435. Just because the extra $420 was "R&D expense" for something else, doesn't make the hammer any cheaper. Even in the most charitable explanation, this makes it impossible to know the real cost of anythin…

20 years ago your friend was making $390k/yr on a DoD contract?

I'm skeptical. Though I'd like to believe your story.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#134

Post by judge2020 »

Alupis wrote: post #65
fishtoaster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem to match what's in wikipedia: > Liebeck's attorneys argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140 °F (60 °C), and that a number of other establishments served coffee at a substantially lower temperature than McDonald's. The attorneys presented evidence that coffee they had tested all over the city was served at a temperature at least 20 °F (11 °C) lower than McDonald's coffee. Reading th…

Of course the plaintiffs attorney argued coffee should be lower temperature - it literally was their case. And no, there is no coffee professional (organization, individual, whatever) brewing coffee at 140*F. Additionally - 140*F water is still going to burn if you spill it all over your clothing. Lastly, the customer removed the lid of the coffee while between her legs, which is how the cup was crushed and coffee ra…

The case was not absurd. Even if you think they should be fine to serve it at such a high temperature, she just wanted them to pay $20,000 for her medical bills, but McDonald's used it as a way to cast absurdity onto supposed tort abuse and it worked with most of the population still saying things like "you can even sue someone if you spill your own coffee".

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#135

Post by wodenokoto »

unreal37 wrote: post #4

The so-called "real" explanation of the $600 hammer doesn't make the story any better. The hammer did indeed cost $435. If the government wanted to buy another one, the contractor would have charged them an extra $435. Just because the extra $420 was "R&D expense" for something else, doesn't make the hammer any cheaper. Even in the most charitable explanation, this makes it impossible to know the real cost of anythin…

> About 20 years ago, a friend of mine worked on a contract for the Department of Defense in IT. He told me that he was making $1500 per day, and for the first few weeks, the government didn't have a computer for him. So he sat at a desk, reading "printed manuals" waiting for a computer to arrive. For weeks. Making $1500 per day.

To be fair it’s the same in private companies.

Last time I was consulting at a big international corporation all it consultants (including those from big 5) on the project was asked (against company policy) to bring our own laptop and use the guest WiFi, since that particular PM didn’t have the patience or budget to wait a week for laptops to be acquired and setup.

In my opinion it’s a bit of a trope.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#136

Post by aaron695 »

unreal37 wrote: post #4

The so-called "real" explanation of the $600 hammer doesn't make the story any better. The hammer did indeed cost $435. If the government wanted to buy another one, the contractor would have charged them an extra $435. Just because the extra $420 was "R&D expense" for something else, doesn't make the hammer any cheaper. Even in the most charitable explanation, this makes it impossible to know the real cost of anythin…

[dead]

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#137

Post by lmm »

mattkrause wrote: post #107
cbsmith wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hammer did indeed cost $435. If the government wanted to buy another one, the contractor would have charged them an extra $435. But the above statement wasn't true.

The article has a nice example of this in the B2 bomber. The first 21 planes cost $2B each. The next one costs $700M. If, for some reason, we were to make a hundred or a thousand of them, the cost per plane would be even lower.

Unfortunately the military has now cottoned onto that trick with the F-35. Every time there's a budget overrun they just order another 100 planes so that "the price hasn't changed".

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#138

Post by kstenerud »

koobock wrote: post #71

What about the $2,043 nut that turns in both popular directions (clockwise AND counterclockwise)? https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Catalog-Ordinary-Products-Ex...

Complete with a 1-star review that sounds oddly familiar:

"Author managed 60 pages of crap with no understanding of the government's accounting methods, which is under ambitious, I think. If you're just making it up, you should be able to get a solid 200-300 pages."

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#139

Post by emodendroket »

harry8 wrote: post #89
steveklabnik wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hot coffee lawsuit is the first thing I think of here. Heck even the name is like… whew.

> The hot coffee lawsuit ... So much lawyers' propaganda. We are engineers here. We are aware that coffee is water that boils at 100 degrees centigrade and gets no hotter than that. Every damn idiot and those more intelligent know full well that writing "Caution: contents hot" in microscopic text does absolutely nothing to make recently boiled water more safe. Sure we should all feel sorry for someone who is badly bu…

If there was nothing wrong and nothing that could be done how come they switched to a different, more rigid cup that was less likely to spill in the same way after they lost the lawsuit?

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#140

Post by lmm »

juhanima wrote: post #50
karaterobot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the total R&D cost for all items is split across every single product equally, there's no way to tell how much of the $435 hammer is R&D for the hammer. It's a really weird way to do accounting, almost like they just didn't keep track of how much R&D they did for each item. And that makes you wonder if the amount they are charging is even real in the first place. In general it lowers confidence and makes you think…

The article is not quite clear why the contractor had to split the intangible goods cost to the tangible ones, but it does give a hint. Federal accounting is meant to prevent possibly corrupted overspending and that's why charging for intangible services is not allowed or made more difficult than charging for something tangible that can be measured and counted afterwards and compared to market prices. So to me it sou…

> Federal accounting is meant to prevent possibly corrupted overspending and that's why charging for intangible services is not allowed or made more difficult than charging for something tangible that can be measured and counted afterwards and compared to market prices.

Right - so if contractors are doing an end run around those requirements by padding the prices of hammers or whatever, that's a problem.

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