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

snopes.com

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

#51

Post by netcan »

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…

The eccentricity or outlandishness is not in the actual content of the requests. He doesn't request anything expensive or difficult.

It's in expecting everyone involved to thoroughly read the 10,000 man page and make sure they follow everything. So, instead of calling up the hotel you always use, Lucy from event planning is presumably expected to test SSH on the hotel network and question the staff about air conditioning systems.

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

#52

Post by icholboy »

arethuza wrote: post #25
stan_rogers wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The .asp extension actually tells you nothing other than that the .asp extension was used. On the balance of probabilities, it's likely the case that the site runs on ASP classic on a Windows server, but it could as easily have been moved to, say, the LAMP stack configured (using httpd.conf or .htaccess) to invoke PHP when files bearing the .asp extension are requested. It's not a common thing to do, but it can be th…

According to the headers it returns it seems to be IIS 5 - which is quite impressively old (Windows 2000 era). Of course, they could be faking that - but not sure why anyone would try.

Security through obscurity?

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

#53

Post by grrowl »

mcv wrote: post #43
davedx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.)

Less economical — paying $2 for a small pepsi fully drunk is better value than paying $3 for one twice the size, if half is left undrunk (wasted). I like it almost as much as, "anyone who wants to offer a spare couch, I would much rather stay there than in a hotel" — keep it simple, don't waste, operate efficiently and without friction.

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

#54

Post by mehwoot »

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…

You assume independence between the color of the marbles. This is highly unlikely. Promoters probably don't read the terms randomly and completely randomly fulfill them. Likely whether one of the marbles is black or white tells you a lot about whether the other ones are black or white, especially if it's a marble that you selected before hand in a way that will often change depending on how the marbles are colored.

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

#55

Post by brc »

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

I remember having to do this. And if you left out one single instruction, the whole thing had to be done again from scratch. The power-trippers would say 'it doesn't say here to click on the 'finish' button. You must re-do the entire document and go through QA again.

Ugh. Thankfully we live in a world where multiple deployments per day is considered OK.

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

#56

Post by brc »

stan_rogers wrote: post #22
Yuioup wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The website is running on ASP Classic (.asp)

The .asp extension actually tells you nothing other than that the .asp extension was used. On the balance of probabilities, it's likely the case that the site runs on ASP classic on a Windows server, but it could as easily have been moved to, say, the LAMP stack configured (using httpd.conf or .htaccess) to invoke PHP when files bearing the .asp extension are requested. It's not a common thing to do, but it can be th…

The snopes site is quite old. If they did move to a newer technology, it would be better for them to stick with their .asp extension so that they didn't have to change the URLs with redirects. They are well ranked across a lot of keywords - there is no upside for them to change their URL.

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

#57

Post by markild »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #46
davedx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 total…

Agreed.

Interesting to see that it doesn't work the same the other way.

> When you need to tell me about a problem in a plan, please do not start with a long apology. That is unbearably boring

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

#58

Post by lifeisstillgood »

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…

Its not that they expect to see a bowl of brown M+Ms - its that they expect to see someone come back to them during negotiations with - "M+M's - seriously?"

If no-one comes back they know they need to give that venue more attention.

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

#59

Post by yitchelle »

netcan wrote: post #20
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.

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…

It would be interesting to read the stories or incidents that caused all these clauses to be added. Imagine the parrot clause, what tripped this off to be added?

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

#60

Post by ronaldx »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #46
davedx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 total…

I would wager that you'd end up being handed a can of Coke at good proportion of the time.

"Oh sorry, they don't serve Pepsi here."

Richard Stallman's way makes it clear that he does not want to support Coke. He does not want you to hand him a Coke by mistake. Since I assume that is his goal, he communicated it well.

His story helps you to notice, and remember, this seemingly trivial detail.

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