Remember that the article claims that the "Brown M&Ms" clause was mixed in with the *technical details*. It's quite possible that a sloppy promoter would hand the list of tech specs (with that in it) derived from the contract to whoever was responsible- and, of course, the tech guys, if they were doing their job correctly, should get back to the promoter saying "Have you seen this clause? That's not our job, but you should get someone to look at it".

As for the show being forfeit, that was (I assume) intentionally draconian, but as the other guy said, better that the show be cancelled than the stage collapse because instructions weren't followed- that clause gives the band a get-out if they have to do that due to the promoter's incompetence.

Same mistake as the previous guy- in an attempt to "summarise" the article you've omitted details that make clear the logic behind the clause, and introduced inaccuracy.

Still misleading; makes it sound like the amperage was needed because the equipment was "heavy". Also, you're extrapolating things that weren't actually mentioned in the article.

If you read the article, the heavy equipment (which could- and did- damage floors that weren't designed to take it) was the *only* specific, detailed example given of a problem that actually happened, and wasn't related to the issue of amperage.

And the latter was only mentioned as a potential clause (" So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . . ." This kind of thing."). They didn't say anything about circuit breakers blowing- that may have happened, but you're still guessing.

Despite the fact I pointed out the problem with the *original* guy's summary of this part, you've repeated his mistake. You haven't explained *why* the clause was effective, i.e. the forfeiture penalty that anyone who'd actually read it would go out of their way to avoid... meaning that anyone who didn't do that clearly *hadn't* read it, or any of the other clauses properly.

The problem is that your summary may work as a reminder to someone who's *already* read the article and understood the points being made. But by definition, that's not what a "tl; dr" is aimed at.

Speaking as someone who's definitely too longwinded, I have great respect for the ability to be concise. Summarising by cutting corners isn't that hard. And burying all the information in a pile of semi (or not at all) relevant waffle isn't either- it's all too easy for geeks like me.

Actually distilling the *important* information into a concise but listenable *and* accurate form? That's harder to do well than most people think. :-/

Just a guess, but I suspect everyone else understands why a "canary" clause (*) inserted to verify that people were paying attention to important technical details *might* be relevant to a case where the contractors had failed to pay attention to the technical information supplied to them.

(*) Which was the purpose of the "No Brown M&Ms" clause. You did understand that... right? Or were you still labouring under the assumption that it was a gratuitous rider requirement despite the fact I explained it wasn't and linked to the article?!

Unfortunately, your summary omits or misrepresents several aspects of the article and in the process dilutes (if not entirely misses) the point, as well as making it less interesting. Honestly, it's only a single-page Snopes article- if you don't know the story already, it's worth spending a minute or two reading.

Anyway:-

(i) The "brown M&Ms" clause *wasn't* at the end of the contract- where it would have been more likely to stand out- it was (presumably intentionally) hidden amongst all the other countless (but important) technical requirements.

(ii) The clause also stated that if it was not followed *the entire show would be forfeit*. That's a rather major penalty, and one anyone who'd actually been paying atention would be almost certain to want to avoid by following it to the letter. Hence its effectiveness as an indicator.

(iii) You also omit *why* it was so essential that the technical requirements were followed closely. (I could summarise that, but I'd probably just end up rewriting paragraphs that are more effective in context anyway; just read the blooming thing! :-) )

Looks like they should have had a "Brown M&Ms" clause in the contract for just that reason.

And if anyone doesn't get the reference (or even more so if you think you do, but don't get what the archetypal ludicrously demanding rock band rider has to do with tunnel boring), read the linked article.

And don't believe that old fallacy that it's the banks that pick up the tab either- as pointed out here, it's the retailer that almost always has to pick up the tab in such cases.

The banks simply yank back any fraudulent transactions and leave the business out of pocket- not them. This is why banks- in the UK at least- do not give a fuck about individual instances of credit card theft and fraud. They're not the ones having to pay for it.

If you're a retailer who knows with near-certainty that a credit card has been stolen and is being used fraudulently, it's virtually impossible to get the information passed on to the legitimate owner of the card. Generally speaking, nothing will be done at this stage, and nothing will happen until the legitimate owner notices fraudulent transactions on their statement, and contacts the credit card company.

Of course, that is usually *long* after the attempted fraud has taken place, along with later (possibly successful) attempts that could have been stopped, but weren't. The fraudsters are long gone, and it's the businesses that are left out of pocket.

The banks will bleat that there are too many cases of credit card theft and fraud to keep track of all these reports, even if the information is handed to them on a plate. Of course, you can bet that they'd manage to do so very quickly (by employing more dedicated staff) if they were having to foot the bill for the fraud themselves- but of course, they're not.

It's also worth noting that (again, in the UK), it's *very* difficult to get the police to do anything about even bleeding obvious cases of mail order credit card fraud, i.e. ones where the fraudulent delivery address has to be openly given. Even when details including the exact address- typically in London- are passed on to the police, nothing well be done. Same excuse, and same outcome- by the time anything happens, the fraudsters are long gone and not worth chasing up. Makes it quite easy to commit fraud; simply rent an address for a relatively short period, have the goods openly and directly delivered there safe in the knowledge that, even though the police will likely be notified, they'll be long gone before anything is done.

The customers mostly still believe- as shown here- that the banks cover the cost, so probably aren't upset as (if they think about it at all) they believe that the banks are having to foot the bill for their own incompetence. Not the case.

Personally, I'm in favour of publicising cases like this one and pointing out that the banks' nonchalance regarding people's credit cards (and by extension, personal details and- to some extent- identity theft) could have serious repercussions for them beyond the money that customers will have refunded. And pointing out that- regardless of their hypocritical (and often nickel-and-diming) identity protection schemes, it's the banks- with their self-serving laziness and disregard for credit card misuse- who are to blame for putting them at risk like this.

I hope they're not going to have to evacuate the *whole* of North Dakota- the congestion caused by three or four busloads of people would be awful.

Besides which, the South Dakota village hall doesn't have enough space to hold them all.

Plus ca change...

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Taking the highlighted section above at face value, logically that would mean that they were legally able to claim "We have never had any involvement with the NSA" when the complete opposite was the case.

While this may come across as smartassery in other situations, I've no doubt that in this case some weasel of a lawyer could- and would- use this in defending a company caught in flagrante with the NSA. This renders *any* company that *might* plausibly be involved with the NSA (including virtually all American ones) as suspicious.

Near enough... he was saving mental energy by settling for the approximately correct answer.

"Yo Dawg".

I remember at the time (mid-2000s?) *before* the original Core line came out, at least one article in Personal Computer World magazine extolled the virtues of the Pentium M. They quite seriously suggested it was worth considering for use in a desktop system. (IIRC, there were desktop motherboards that supported the Pentium M, the only issue was that you had to take more care with the heatsink and cooling than you would with a Pentium 4- or something like that).

Thought I'd point out that technically, AmigaOS is still around- in fact, last time I heard it's being "actively" developed (*) and sold, albeit as a very niche product targeted at diehard hobbyists. (**) As I commented, though even several years back:-

Also, the rights to the various Amiga and Commodore IPs (names, hardware and software all separate) have been split up, passed around like a bad game of pass the parcel, sublicensed and disputed; I won't go into the details because (a) I can't be bothered and (b) I'm not sure myself! :-)

But... yeah. Technically, last time I heard you can still buy a "modern" AmigaOne and run the new versions of AmigaOS on it.

(*) Though that may be for values of "active" comparable to the rate of flow of glass in medieval windows. And yes, I know that's possibly a myth. :-)
(**) To be fair, this is mentioned on Slashdot at regular intervals, so it's possible that many of you are aware of this anyway. The rights to the Amiga name, to manufacture the hardware and to the OS http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2710941&cid=39268663

HAM was around almost two years before VGA debuted (with the PS/2 in April 1987)! (*)

The downside was that it was hard to use for animated graphics, since the colour of most pixels were modified shades of the one to their left, meaning one had to take into account surrounding pixels when moving an object to avoid miscoloured streaking. Few action games used it, though I'm still convinced more games could have exploited HAM if the problem had been analysed methodically and restrictions on the use of base colours and general shading worked out to minimise artifacts and keep calculations workable.

Possibly this wasn't really considered because in Europe (where the Amiga was popular), most 16-bit games were also written for the Atari ST (***) and this would have made them harder to adapt. Hence most used the regular 32-colours-from-4096 or occasionally, the sort-of-64-colour "halfbrite" modes.

(*) AFAICT the best widespread PC adaptor around when the Amiga launched was EGA (i.e. 16 colours from 64). IBM *did* apparently have a graphics adaptor comparable to VGA in 1984, but the card alone was four times the price the Amiga cost when it launched the following year(!)

(**) HAM gave 12-bit colour using only 6 bits per pixel. One could either choose from 16 "base colours" (chosen from a palette of 4096 RGB colours) or choose to modify the red, green or blue component of the pixel to its immediate left, meaning that it could take up to 3 pixel positions to get an exact value; this led to fringing, which could be minimsed by choosing the base colours wisely (and by dynamically changing the base colours on every line with software assistance).

(***) Apparently there was a program for the Atari ST that gave it a software-assisted 512 colour display, but I don't know how restricted *that* was; apparently there were timing issues.