Day: October 23, 2000

According to the Orlando Sentinel, real-estate agent Christopher Langdon recently took several Florida bars to court. His complaint? He was denied free drinks at a bar during a Ladies Night promotion based entirely on his sex — based only on the fact that he was a man, he was not given free drinks.

He’s suing in federal court asking for $100,000 and a ban on ladies night-style promotions. Sound bizarre? A bit, but (a) at some point Langdon or some other man is going to succeed in such a lawsuit, and (b) Ladies Nights promotions are almost certainly going to be a thing of the past.

In the name of gender equality, several states have already passed laws which courts have interpreted as outright banning sex-based promotions at bars and restaurants. As Langdon himself rhetorically asks, “If you allow this type of discrimination [Ladies Night], then why wouldn’t you have, for example, a white businessman’s lunch?”

At least one of the bars came up with a novel legal theory, but it will be shot down eventually. Lawyers for Mark NeJame, who owned the Zuma Beach Club in Florida, argue that since men pay the same price for drinks on Ladies Night as they do any other night of the week, there is no price discrimination — rather there is a special break for women, in return for which men get the benefit of additional women at the bar (and lets face it, the reason drinks are given free or cheap to women is largely to draw in more men as well).

That won’t fly since, as Langdon points out, even under this theory the action constitutes sexual discrimination against married men (who presumably just want a drink not an intangible opportunity to score with a single woman).

“This is what it boils down to,” Langdon told the Orlando Sentinel, “Men have to pay millions of dollars more for drinks and entertainment than women. I just don’t think it’s fair that men should pay for food or entertainment or beverages than women — I don’t think the converse is fair either.”

And there’s the rub. Courts have begun to show a willingness to take on cases where women claim that they are charged different prices than men for the same service. Some of these claims border on the absurd — such as women who argue that men and women’s hair styling price should be the same, even where a woman’s requested styling is far more complex and time consuming — but courts have shown a willingness to consider the possibility that price discrimination based on sex violates nondiscrimination laws. They can’t take up those sorts of cases, however, without implicitly legitimizing exactly the sort of thing that Langdon is arguing for — protecting men from cases where they come out on the short end of the stick, such as Ladies Night.

Whether for better or worse, get used to this sort of thing, because believe me, we’ve only seen the beginning of lawsuits like Langdon’s.

Source:

Man makes his move on ladies night. Tyler Gray. The Orlando Sentinel, October 10, 2000.

ArsTechnica slams the ZDNet report I mentioned yesterday about Microsoft giving free PocketPCs to people who write about Palm handhelds.

Have a Pocket PC. Have two.
Posted 10/22/2000 – 6:13pm EDT
In light of Caesar’s recent iPaq review, reader Michael Holst sent in a link to this ZDNet story about Microsoft’s recent “Pocket PC Wireless and Beyond” product demo where the invitees (all apparently Palm-based product fans) were given an iPaq, an HP PDA, and assorted other accessories. This gift is described in the article as a “bribe”. Now, for the record, Caesar’s review item was bought from a local retail store at full price, but I’ve got to say that the ZDNet article is spun in a pretty ridiculous direction. Sure, Microsoft gave out a bunch of stuff all at once, but the fact is that people won’t be able to review products that they don’t have. Products designated as review units help make this review industry world work. How many of you out there think that Ziff-Davis paid full price for every printer, computer, monitor, etc., that they reviewed? No way, buddy. The fact is, $1,400 is not that much of an expenditure on review products, when you think about the fact that high-end workstations and laptops get sent out for review all the time. Obviously, Microsoft hoped to convert these people, but to call this sort of product donation “bribery” is out of line. [Update: Michael wants the world to know that he wasn’t attempting to dis Caesar by sending in this link. :-)]

The only thing this article does is make me question ArsTechnica’s integrity. Typically, I assume that if I am reading a review of a hardware product, a review unit was loaned out to the reviewer and then returned. In fact most PC magazines that I’m familiar with typically have policies making it a severe “no no” to accept review units as permanent gifts (and I doubt that hardware companies could long afford to give every potential reviewer such a gift).

Given how cheap it is to reproduce, I wouldn’t be surprise if software is just sent for review without the understanding it will be returned (in a related venue, record companies send out promotional copies to record reviewers), but even there it would be suspicious if acompany like Electronic Arts invited reviewers to a retreat and then gave them $1,500 worth of free games each.

Diamond Mind, Inc., recently announced that version 8 of Diamond Mind Baseball should begin shipping at the end of November.

For those of you who have never heard of the game, Diamond Mind is a hardcore baseball simulation that is simply without peer. If you want to practice hitting pretty looking baseballs with your D-pad, this game is definitely not for you. On the other hand, if you want the most statistically accurate simulation of baseball on the planet, Diamond Mind Baseball is it (the game gets down to such minutae as taking into account infrequent calls such as catcher inteference).

The big change for Version 8 is the game is finally ported to Windows (it used to run exclusively under DOS), and has a bunch of new options, including my most requested feature for any games — outputting of reports to HTML.