I’m from the UK and I use “Macky D’s”; I’ve never heard it called “Macca’s”.
Did anyone notice psychotropic replying to herself above?
No, she was quoting me but without using quotes, I think.
And no, I don’t think Macca’s derives from Sir Paul. I think it just derives from McDonalds.
I can certainly say that YOU have lost the plot. The Pit is the best place for getting grumpy. If you feel your original question has been answered, I suggest you take the rest of the discussion there.
Egad, a mini meltdown within 11 posts! That’s gotta be a new record.
FWIW, psychotropic, no one’s picking on you cuz you’re new or female or Australian. You simply made a statement in your OP that didn’t ring true even though it wasn’t part of your question. This board is all about fighting ignorance, usually with some good natured ribbing thrown in. If you make a statement that you know isn’t true, you should mark it in some way, usually with a smiley :).
I actually have something to add to the debate on monopolies and anti-trusts. So since Coke is the market leader in carbonated beverages, Pepsi can go to McD’s and tell them they’ll give them all the free Pepsi syrup they can handle and not have to worry about legalities? What about a smaller company like Shasta (or whoever makes it)? Didn’t Micro$loth get into some flak over giving away their Internet Explorer browser for free in an attempt to oust Netscape? If Linux becomes the dominant desktop OS somehow, will Linus Torvalds have to start charging for it whether he wants to or not?
I’m not sure what you mean here. What legalities? Either such a deal is going to decrease competition or it’s not, we’ve discussed whether that would be the case in respect of the cola drink market, the answer I think (for either coke or pepsi) is no, but I don’t really know enough about the facts to do anything much more than speculuate.
I’m not sure what you mean here. If you mean could Shasta (or whoever) enter into an exclusivity/free syrup deal with Macca’s, then, well, if you accept that coke or pepsi could do so, a smaller company certainly could, because there is even less chance that such a deal would hurt competitors (coke and pepsi)
If you mean what about the market effect that a coke/pepsi exclusivity/free syrup deal might have on a small cola company, and could that make such a deal unlawful, well, maybe. But I doubt it, because (free or not) there is no way that a huge outfit like Macca’s is going to enter into a deal with Shasta’s anyway. So what difference does it make to Shasta’s?
No. The allegation was that MS were leveraging their dominance in the OS market to gain dominance in the browser market. They were allegedly doing that not by giving away IE (all browsers were being given away, including Netscape) but by forcing IE onto the desktop as part of the OS.
“Macca” is a pretty standard nickname in Australia for anyone whose family name begins with “Mac” or “Mc” - applying it to MacDonald’s is just an extension of the way Aussies corrupt any name they can. 
Yes, that’s correct I was quoting you but I stuffed something up. Oops! Sorry! I think Macca’s is just a good example of how Aussies shorten words eg. Lauren: Lozza, Barry: Bazza, Chadstone: Chaddy, we “nickname” everything. Another ace part of our beautiful culture. Proud 2 b an Aussie!!!
Sorry about being unclear there, Princhester. By legalities I meant being considered unfair competitive practices. Let me elaborate on the Coke/Pepsi scenario: say Coke has 40% of market share and Pepsi has 35%; can Pepsi use the tactic of giving it’s product away or at a huge discount in order to “catch up” to Coke while the Coca-Cola company is forbidden to do such a thing to stomp out its competition? Shasta was just thrown in as an extreme example.
As I understood it, Micro$not was being taken to task at first by Netscape for bundling it’s browser for free but I thought that eventually ballooned into an investigation of it’s practice of giving huge discounts to preferred vendors like Compaq and Dell IF they didn’t put links to certain services (AOL) on the desktop (this coming after digging through mountains of email and memos), while making it harder for smaller PC manufacturers to keep up by charging them full Windows license fees.
I’d still like some input on the Linux question I asked if anyone has something to say: if a software product becomes dominant not by virtue of marketing strategy but by being a superior product and by being free (more or less), would it be considered unfair competitive practice to not charge for it since all of its other competitors do?
Actually the taco bell kfc pizza hut and formerly burger king deal was a sweetheart deal for pepsico
Why ?
They owed them all at the time! It was total profit basically for them
Now i know they sold burger king to a english outfit… and spun off the other 3 into i think its called tricom…
How does that work are they owned by pepsi still or partly owned ?
In Australia KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are operated by Tricon International - which AFAIK is still owned by Pepsico.
Seeing everyone has gone off on a million tangents, so will I damn it! I’ve done some research: “real” Coke comprises 15 ingredients including sugar, carbonated water, caramel, fruit flavours, various spices, phosphoric acid, coca leaves, cola nuts, caffeine & the mysterious “7x” ingredient that only 2-3 people in the whole world know at any given time.
I don’t know this to be FACT though so I guess to make everybody happy, I better put a “smiley”. :rolleyes:
Pepsi lowering its prices is not anti-competitive (quite the opposite). However, there is such a thing as predatory pricing, where one sets prices below cost, knowing that your market dominance and your greater resources will allow you to withstand the pain until all your competitors have gone under. The circumstances you describe probably do not fit that description, because Coke is as powerful etc as Pepsi, and could match their pricing. But I’m not really sure.
I doubt it very much. Linux could hardly be accused of using monopolistic practices or predatory pricing, if it keeps the same pricing structure from the time it is a nobody till the time it is a market leader.
But look rather than keep going over this topic, in this rather obscure little OP, why don’t you ask your question as a fresh topic in GQ? I think your Linux question may be quite interesting. You may get one of our resident lawyers who actually knows something about this stuff instead of me, who is currently giving answers waaay beyond my real areas of knowledge, and is in extreme danger of getting clobbered for some stoopid answer I give.
Only when someone steps on my tail. Otherwise I’ll purr 4 u all nite long baby, maybe even scratch those claws down your back …
P.S. For those of you who don’t know, a psychotropic is any drug that affects mood eg. sedatives, anti-depressants, stimulants, tranquillizers … I am one very mixed up lady and have to take all of these, hence my somewhat zany view of life & these message boards.
Peace my fellow “polydrug” users. ;j Lurve these smilies!!
Thanks for your input, Princhester. Not that I was hinging any big business decisions on your answers. You’re right about straying off topic, I was trying to think of an analogy or two that might apply and being the comp geek I am I naturally turned to the PC industry. Operating systems are probably not very good comparisons as products to carbonated beverages. Perhaps I will start up a new thread.
A little anecdote to add: I work for a casino (owned by a company that has a whole string of casnios across the US) that deals exclusively with Coca-Cola. We give away all non-alcoholic beverages for free. While we pay for the syrup (don’t know the cost and even if I did I don’t know how it compares to prices paid by other companies), I’ve found out that we get Coke “points” for each Coca-Cola cup (which we get by the pallet load for free) that we give away. I guess these cups could be considered miniature advertisements. The points can be redeemed to get Coke promotional products to give away to our customers (which we’ve done from time to time). This turns out to be a sweet deal for us as there are some frighteninly fanatic Coke merchandise collectors out there who will go to great lengths to get every Coke Beanie Baby there is.
Tis not limited to places of business even, it happens even at schools.
It is disturbing to be driving through town and then spot a school sign that has a giant soda company logo on it. And of course depending on the logo you know what brands of soda the soda machines inside the school serve.
Microsoft has been giving away Internet Explorer for some years now just with the intention of driving Netscape out of business which they have pretty much done. Millions of lawyer-hours later they still can’t quite nail MS which just goes to show you you can do anything if you’ve got good enough lawyers.