
Why Van Halen's contract calls for the removal of all brown M&Ms - chaostheory
http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp
======
dkokelley
Using the brown M&M's as a test to check if the contract was read thoroughly
counts as a clever hack in my book.

~~~
tyvkiuiyi
Pure genius!

I had a lecturer (a Brit) who would insert the phrase 'Rule Britannia' into
lecture notes to see if anyone ever read them.

There is also an urban myth about some entrance exam for Police/Army/Pilots
etc where the instructions say read all the questions first. And the last
question says, do not answer any questions just 'do some arbitrary thing' - to
check wether you follow instructions properly.

~~~
hieronymusN
Not an urban myth - that little joke was pulled more than once in US grammar
schools in the 70/80's

~~~
snprbob86
I've had several teachers pull that crummy joke when I was in grammar school
in the 90s too. This is more or less the test:
[http://echochamber.me/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24333&star...](http://echochamber.me/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24333&start=0)

Personally, I don't think there is a lesson to be learned here. It amounts to
nothing more than a lame practical joke.

~~~
boredguy8
The lesson is: some people really like hierarchy and bureaucracy. Probably
appropriate for pre-flight checks. Probably not appropriate for children in
school.

~~~
neoclassical
It's a cheap shot, but it does cut down on obliviously repeating the process
you've been taught. We want people to read directions for any new process, no?

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sriramk
In previous teams I worked on, I've often had to send out long emails or
documents because someone got on my back over an artificial deadline. I would
send it and make sure that an important link in the document was broken. If
they didn't notice it, they didn't need the document/email urgently and
usually get to hear a lecture from me later on arbitrary deadlines.

~~~
benmathes
The behavior behind the need for your checks is something that irks me.
Because you _can_ send one-off thoughts via email many people assume that all
emails are just one-offs.

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philwelch
Kansas's rider specifies that the venue is not allowed to bill any other band
as "the original Kansas", which is something of a reaction against Proto-Kaw,
a band composed of the original members of Kansas (since Kansas itself has
faced numerous personnel changes). Something of a Theseus' ship paradox. They
also require prune juice!
([http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/kansas/kansas1.ht...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/kansas/kansas1.html))

According to the documentary on disc 2 on their latest live DVD, Dream
Theater's rider specifies that their drummer, Mike Portnoy, be supplied with a
jersey from the local basketball or soccer team. He has a sizable collection.

Meat Loaf is a superstar. Don't believe me? His rider specifies (and I quote):

"Purchaser acknowledges that it is promoting a worldwide "superstar" artist
and that each and every element of such promotion, production, and other
arrangements shall be absolutely first-class in nature and commensurate with
the stature of a "superstar" in the entertainment industry".
([http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/meatloaf/meatloaf...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/meatloaf/meatloaf2.html))

~~~
tyvkiuiyi
That sounds like a standard 'negotiable' clause - you can argue that pretty
much anything should/shouldn't have been done for a world class superstar.

The M+M one is cleverer because it is a no-arguements, you did it or did not.
You don't have lawyers arguing about the meaning of "arrangements commensurate
with"

------
sh1mmer
To summarise the brown M&Ms were a "canary" to indicate if all the details of
the contract had been attended too. If there were brown M&Ms then the rest of
the contractual points would be examined with more stringency.

It's interesting that they used this as a careful "get out clause" or an
indicator of other more serious ones.

~~~
JabavuAdams
A canary is a kind of bird. The parent poster is alluding to the phrase
"canary in a coal mine". Coal miners supposedly carried caged birds down the
shafts as fore-warning of suffocating conditions or gases, as the small bird
would be affected before the humans. The generic idea here is to use a cheap
sensor to check for impending failure in a system.

~~~
absconditus
Let's not bring the reddit memes to HN.

~~~
sachinag
Wait, what? For people not in the US (or perhaps Newcastle in the UK), there's
no way they'd know the "canary in a coal mine" idiom. This is a very, very,
very America-centric idiom.

/I teach English, SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, and other tests to native and non-
native English speakers on the side.

~~~
basugasubaku
A canary is also a random value placed on the stack so the program can detect
a buffer overflow. If the canary has been overwritten the program can
terminate before malicious code is executed. I suspect a significant portion
of Hacker News users is familiar with this terminology regardless of where
they learned English.

~~~
Steve0
Bit off-topic, but the Rsync project als has a canary for when things go
wrong: <http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt>

------
tumult
Most performing artists I meet are very professional, friendly guys. Show them
respect and take it seriously, and you'll get it in return.

If you love insane/awesome riders, here's my favorite, Iggy Pop's:
[http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/iggypop/iggypop1....](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/iggypop/iggypop1.html)

~~~
oldgregg
Very professional but often very narcissistic and demanding. I had a friend
who was tour managing for a major artist-- the amount of logistics he had to
juggle was mind-numbing-- only to be fired a couple months ago because he
forgot to order a pizza for the artist after the show. :-/

~~~
DrJokepu
While this is a great anecdote I can't help but think that mayb this wasn't
the real reason your friend was let go, it was more like an excuse or a last
straw. Obviously I don't know anything about the circumstances but that's what
Occam's Razor dictates.

~~~
joe_the_user
Actually, the main article is a good argument that it can be _both_.

Yes, the organization method mandates that a person be fired for merely
forgetting the pizza because ... this, arguably, makes it less likely that
anyone will be fired for something more serious.

But at that point, the organization method itself kind-of ... sucks.

------
pchristensen
This American Life covered this as well:
<http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1308>

(not much more on Van Halen than the Snopes page but the episode was pretty
good)

------
JimmyL
From observation, this is often done in job postings for startups - several
that I've encountered will contain an innocuous line something like "include
an Italian sonnet in your cover letter to guarantee that your application will
be forwarded to the development manager", presumably as a way to make sure
that applicants read the entire posting and associated administrivia.

~~~
tptacek
Wow, what a great way to arbitrarily lower the quality of the applicant pool
you end up with.

~~~
cdr
How is screening out people who don't read the listing going to _lower_ the
quality?

~~~
cool-RR
Why should the job applicant waste his time reading the job description of
every one of the hundreds of jobs he will try to apply to? I think the best
thing to do is to just send the resume, and if they'll want you they'll
contact you.

~~~
JimmyL
I think an explicit purpose of this strategy is to avoid people who are
resume-bombing to hundreds of jobs.

In all cases that I've seen, the companies are small (5-15 current employees)
startups where hiring a candidate with the right personality and attention to
detail is just as important as having the right skills on paper. These
companies seem to want people who have spent some time looking at the posting
to make sure they want to be part of the startup experience, as opposed to
people who will take anything.

It's a way to start to filter out people who want _a_ job from people who want
_this_ job, which is something the hiring company wants to do.

~~~
cool-RR
The fact that a job applicant doesn't read through the entire job posting
doesn't mean he doesn't have attention to detail - it can mean he decided that
reading it thoroughly is just not worth the time.

Just because someone sends his resume without reading the ad doesn't mean
he'll take the job. He may just want to know whether the company finds him
interesting before he will think whether this job is what he wants.

~~~
nostrademons
If reading the job posting thoroughly is not worth his time, why should the
company believe he'll think _doing the job_ is worth his time?

~~~
Goladus
The idea is to hire someone that's best for the job, not someone who is best
at getting the job.

Granted, not reading the posting thoroughly is not a good indicator, but it
really is an extremely minor one. If the candidate is poor there will be
plenty of other reasons to disqualify, and if it's an otherwise good candidate
it's really not worth getting too worked up over.

------
Mz
I'm reminded of the testing scene in Men in Black. When another candidate
spouts a meaningless repeat of how they want "the best of the best of the
best", Will Smith's character pokes fun at the idea that he doesn't even
really know why they are there yet he is all jazzed. Will Smith's character is
the only one who pulls the table up to his awkward, round chair to help him
fill out paperwork. While everyone is going nuts killing aliens at the
shooting range, Will Smith's character shoots the 8 year old girl carrying
quantum physics books (or some such). And has to answer for it and explain
himself. But he gets the job and everyone else gets their memory erased.

------
calvin
RTF contract, apparently. Always a good idea.

------
bemmu
When posting on RentACoder I once required that the reply has to contain a
certain sentence, so I can easily ignore the plentiful form replies.

------
Goose90053
It's a lot like putting an assert() in your code. assert(m&m != brown);

------
danbmil99
The driving school test I just passed (with flying colors I'll have you know)
had this in the middle of it:

"A frog is a term used to describe train car couplings."

Then, in the test section, right after something about how far behind another
car you should stop at an intersection, would be "What is another term for a
train coupling?"

I assume this was to make sure you read the test. I just cut & pasted the
stuff into a text editor, so I could search for these odd duck questions when
they came up.

------
BearOfNH
FTA (David Lee Roth): _I went into full Shakespearean "What is this before
me?" . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . ._

"What is this before me?" is from Macbeth ("dagger of the mind"). The "skull
in one hand" is from Hamlet, in the "alas, poor Yorick" scene. Good scenes
each, but they don't fit together.

I bet Roth knows that and just uses that sentence to see if anyone is paying
attention ...

