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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

#41

Post by masklinn »

collint wrote: post #34
bjourne wrote: post #28

Maybe a mathematician can explain whether this "trick" works or not? Intuitively, I can't see that knowing whether the M&M demand was filled makes it more probable that the other demands are filled. Say you have a pile with five black or white marbles. You want them all to be black. So you check that the first marble in the pile is black (ie no brown m&m:s). Is it now more probable that the other four marbles also ar…

Because it's not like marbles. It's not a math thing. It's more like a canary in the coal mine. If the canary dies, you should check on the air quality. If they went through the trouble of removing the brown m&ms you have a fairly strong indicator they actually read the document in the first place. And a strong indicator they have a good attention to detail.

Exactly, a concept also known as a "litmus test", if you pass the test you may still fail the actual, but if you fail the litmus test there's more or less no way you'll pass.

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

#42

Post by mcv »

netcan wrote: post #35
netcan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fantastic read! If you have previously done streaming using some streaming service and you can't immediately name the format it uses, chances are it is unacceptable and I won't let you use it for my speech. ..This might seem unfair--if a ticket is lost, it could be my fault. But my income is not large, and I cannot afford to assume this risk myself if the event offers me no income. The frustration I feel wh…

I just realized what this is. He wrote a manual for operating himself.

Proper documentation is so often neglected. Good to see it done right.

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

#43

Post by mcv »

davedx wrote: post #29
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.

"A supply of tea with milk and sugar would be nice. If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar. With milk and sugar, any kind of tea is fine. I always bring tea bags with me, so if we use my tea bags, I will certainly like that tea without milk or sugar. If I am quite sleepy, I would like two cans or small bottles of non-diet Pepsi. (I dislike the taste of coke, and of all diet soda; also, there is…

So you have to buy him pepsi but might be stuck with some undrunk pepsi afterward. Also, does he really want cans or small bottles over the more economical large bottle and a glass?

(Yes, I'm currently imagining wat it'd be like to have him over. I think we'd get along fine on the tea thing, but I hate unnecessary waste.)

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

#44

Post by gnyman »

There are quite a few applications that do something similar, they leave a "disabled=1" or similar in the config to make sure people look at the config before trying to run the software. I remember the eggdrop IRC bot doing it (http://cvs.eggheads.org/viewvc/eggdrop1.6/eggdrop.conf?view=... , look for the lines starting with die) this and I'm sure there are more.

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

#45

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

Cyph0n wrote: post #40
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.

Wow. He goes into so much detail - nothing is left to chance. I wish I was as good at him at covering every possible scenario.

I suspect it comes from experience. He wouldn't have mentioned many of these things had he not had trouble with them, I bet.

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

#46

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

davedx wrote: post #29
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.

"A supply of tea with milk and sugar would be nice. If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar. With milk and sugar, any kind of tea is fine. I always bring tea bags with me, so if we use my tea bags, I will certainly like that tea without milk or sugar. If I am quite sleepy, I would like two cans or small bottles of non-diet Pepsi. (I dislike the taste of coke, and of all diet soda; also, there is…

This isn't eccentric, it's poor communications though.

It could basically be summarised as:

"Please provide tea making facilities: tea bags, milk, sugar and hot water. If possible a couple of cans of Pepsi (not diet or other brands please) would be appreciated."

Really, the person organising the speech doesn't really care how someone takes their tea or why they don't like Pepsi or what the conditions (which are totally out of their hands) are which will mean you do or don't choose to drink one drink over another. Given that he says he carries his own tea bags (and if he's using them he wouldn't want milk or sugar) the request could be: "Hot water and a cup for making tea - don't worry about providing tea bags, milk or sugar."

It's all quite sweet but really, the excess guff and explanations make it more likely someone will miss something.

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

#47

Post by rmc »

arrrg wrote: post #30
netcan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fantastic read! If you have previously done streaming using some streaming service and you can't immediately name the format it uses, chances are it is unacceptable and I won't let you use it for my speech. ..This might seem unfair--if a ticket is lost, it could be my fault. But my income is not large, and I cannot afford to assume this risk myself if the event offers me no income. The frustration I feel wh…

You know, I just read this again. I first read it in a ridiculing context (“Parrots? Really?”) and didn’t think much to put it out of that context, but looking at it now I have to say my view on it has changed. I think it’s pretty alright, actually. Some of his demands have to do with his strong ethical views on software, and while I don’t agree completely with him on this, I certainly can respect him for being uncom…

Some of his demands have to do with his strong ethical views on software, and while I don’t agree completely with him on this, I certainly can respect him for being uncompromising on that.

If you're going to host a talk from RMS, I'd presume you'd be aware that he has strong ethical views. I mean, that's one of the main reasons to get him to talk!

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

#48

Post by tragic »

peteretep wrote: post #32
Nanzikambe wrote: post #2

A contract "poison pill" or litmus test. Pretty ingenious, is that sort of thing common practice in contracts?

I heard a rumour of technical specification including some of the jokier RFCs to check that people were really reading them... http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt

Don't laugh too quickly. Given a slow enough connection and a big enough file, the pigeon (with flash drive strapped to leg) will win.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#Other_av...

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

#49

Post by lmm »

Roonerelli wrote: post #23

I’ve heard similar stories regarding developers and IT Services Where the devs weren’t allowed access to the Production environment so would have to leave written instructions on how to deploy the software they’ve written. And convinced that IT Services weren’t reading their instructions they would write something really offensive in there and see if they complained Possibly just a myth, but amusing all the same

Link for the interested: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-Symbolic-Install...

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

#50

Post by rmc »

peteretep wrote: post #32
Nanzikambe wrote: post #2

A contract "poison pill" or litmus test. Pretty ingenious, is that sort of thing common practice in contracts?

I heard a rumour of technical specification including some of the jokier RFCs to check that people were really reading them... http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt

That was published on 1st of April. It's an april fool's joke. There are loads of April Fool's RFCs. It's not a litmus test for reading, it's a community having fun.

BTW: A group tried the IP over Avian Carrier: http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/ The ping times were unimpressive.

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