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Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

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Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#141

Post by dspillett »

poolpool wrote: post #73
JonnieCache wrote: post #3

This seems like a good opportunity to post RMS' rider again: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer... Fabulous stuff. I wonder how often he has/gets to hang out with random parrots since this document became widely known. In my mind he is surrounded constantly by sandal-wearing acolytes wielding exotic birds of every variety.

The RMS rider is full of lecturing and childish demands. I'm amazed people are applauding him for it.

> The RMS rider is full of lecturing and childish demands.

They are no more demands than a request for him to speak somewhere is a demand.

Someone asks if he is willing to travel and speak to their audience, he says "yes though only if these conditions are met", and the someone then has a free choice of whether to continue or not.

A childish demand would be "we can't agree to X, but we expect you to come and talk anyway".

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#142

Post by sokoloff »

judk wrote: post #123
dvanduzer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about rigorous statistics, it's about human nature. In the sixth grade, my math teacher offered a test at the beginning of the year that included quite a lot of complicated instructions. The last instruction told students to ignore all the previous instructions, and just write their name at the top of the paper and turn it in. Guess how well the typical top scorers in the class did on this one.

That prank is horrible because the document is self-contradictory yet assumes a single correct interpretation, unless the document is very carefully written and formatted using an agreed semantics. A well-written document would be a great illustration of Haskell-style lazy evaluation, though

I actually got that test in middle school. (I presume my teacher read about it and thought it was a cool idea.)

The one I got was very explicit: Read the entire test first, and only after you've read all the questions and instructions are you to begin work.

Let's just say that I failed and I was pissed about it, without any particularly good basis or justification, other than being 12-ish years old.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#143

Post by rhizome »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #105
poolpool wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RMS rider is full of lecturing and childish demands. I'm amazed people are applauding him for it.

I think it's more brutal honesty, than anything. As an engineer and a disliker-of-politicians, I appreciate it, even though I agree it can easily be seen as egotistical or eccentric. When I have hosted guests, I have really wished I had such a clear "opeating manual" (as others in this thread have called it) for them, so I know how I can make them feel comfortable and make their trip most effective.

It's not even brutal.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#144

Post by salehenrahman »

I'm stealing this tactic when interviewing a QA guy, if I ever do end up looking to hire QA guys, that is.

Me: "So here are a set of instructions are programmers were asked to follow. Can you see anything wrong"

QA candidate: "Why yes. They forgot to remove the brown M&M's"

Me: "You start tomorrow."

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#145

Post by ctdonath »

I've read thru a bunch of other nit-picky riders. Strikes me that an under-discussed factor is that these high-value stars (contracts running into the $millions) are under extreme pressure, which is severely aggravated by so much change on a daily/hourly basis; something as "trivial" as wrong-temperature or brand drinks (I dislike Poland Spring water, and prefer Mt Dew in cans not bottles), uncomfortable seats, or even brown M&Ms (hey, everyone has a pet peeve) can be an unnerving "last straw". Having a few "perfect" arrangements everywhere gives them something to center on for mental stability.

ETA: I realize this is a tangent. Methinks it's relevant.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#147

Post by salehenrahman »

ctdonath wrote: post #145

I've read thru a bunch of other nit-picky riders. Strikes me that an under-discussed factor is that these high-value stars (contracts running into the $millions) are under extreme pressure, which is severely aggravated by so much change on a daily/hourly basis; something as "trivial" as wrong-temperature or brand drinks (I dislike Poland Spring water, and prefer Mt Dew in cans not bottles), uncomfortable seats, or ev…

I'm curious; have you read the linked article?

Because unlike what you stated, the removal of brown M&Ms doesn't have much to do with comforting the high-value stars, but more like a "flag" that Van Halen looks for in order to determine whether or not the stage crew has read the contract properly. If they did read the contract, the crew would have removed the brown M&Ms. If not, then there is a high likelihood that they have not read the contract, and not only did they not remove then brown M&Ms, but they also probably omitted crucial elements in the set-up, possibly to a point it can be life threatening if omitted.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#149

Post by mystral »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #137
zimpenfish wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar problem with distinguishing speech from background noise - makes pubs / clubs / places with background music a nightmare for having conversations (and hence I tend towards the solitary these days since people tend towards those places for meeting.)

This happens to me as well. I've wondered for years if there is actually something wrong, or if I'm somehow just worse than most people at picking one stream of words from high background noise environments. FWIW, my hearing is excellent, and I have a headphone hobby. I definitely notice small details in music. I almost always wear earplugs at clubs / loud environments, and in general loud sounds seem to bother me a…

I have the same problem. My hearing is also excellent. I have worked out what the problem is, though. The truth is, nobody can hear everything in a place like that. But other people can fill in gaps in speech, possibly from other signals like watching the face, but I think mainly from a conversation model in their brain. For some reason I either lack the model, or it's just not trained properly (more likely tbh), so I have to hear everything to understand.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#150

Post by mystral »

qq66 wrote: post #36
JonnieCache wrote: post #3

This seems like a good opportunity to post RMS' rider again: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer... Fabulous stuff. I wonder how often he has/gets to hang out with random parrots since this document became widely known. In my mind he is surrounded constantly by sandal-wearing acolytes wielding exotic birds of every variety.

Well, you know that the admonition about buying a parrot is in there because it happened at least once. Nobody thinks up that case in advance. Overall the rider seems pretty reasonable for someone who travels so much and asks so little for doing so.

Either that or he had just recently learnt about parrots and felt strongly enough to put it in.
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