Speaking of installing programs, It seems that just about everything you install these days has some sort of an end-user license agreement attached to it somewhere.... It was once said that if you look at something and immediately don't understand it, it was probably written by a lawyer. These license agreements tend to fit into the category of not only immediately not understood, but would require a team of lawyers to interpet it (at a ridiculous cost, of course.)
Since an increasing percentage of the total computer-using population shouldn't be using computers in the first place and can't tell RAM from a long-horned wooly mammal, there are very few of these lusers out there who have ever been inclined to read one of these license agreements, which probably explains why it is such a challenge to get the lusers to just RTFM every once in a while. Of course, there is currently clinical trials (at least here in Sledgehammer Labs) for using the reading of license agreements as an insomnia cure. This exciting breakthrough is leading to other research projects. In preliminary trials, our results seem to indicate that in the same vein, the reading of manuals to lusers is showing to have possible uses for a safe, humane method of euthanasia, provided that no other lusers are in the room at the time... But one caon only imagine the human tragedy it would be if someone started reading manuals to the audience at a heavy metal or rap concert...
Still, the thing that makes these license agreements so horrendously unreadable by anyone who hasn't spent a fortune in law school could also provide some interesting results... One of the common phrases in a license agreement says that if our stuff hoses your computer and leaves you sitting in a dumpster somewhere, that it's not our fault, even if our software is buggy and you were held at gunpoint by one of our sales reps forcing you to buy it and install it. This is frequently used to tell people that they were the ones who bought the buggy thing in the first place and that your puny attempts to sue us are really quite futile. It becomes fairly obvious to any software company with half a brain after a while that nobody reads these license agreements in the first place. Let's just hope that these guys don't start sneaking things into the agreements. How would you like to wake up one morning and be informed that you agreed that you must buy the $795 upgrade to the $49 software you bought last week? One of these days, we're going to start seeing some pretty nasty license agreements on the software we buy. For an example of what one of these may look like, I offer the Sledgehammer license agreement. Since you already opened this column up, and are already reading this, well... It appears you have already agreed to this stuff, so I can be as mean as I want...
If you are reading this license agreement, it appears that you have already agreed to it. If you don't think that you agreed to anything here, and in fact disagree with this, you happen to be quite wrong, which means that you have to go stand on the roof of your house wearing a bunny suit and sing Barney songs. If you never wanted to agree to any lunatic Web author's psychotic license agreement inthe first place, go ask mommy to let you play with your Duplo blocks.
The Managment at Sledgehammer Enterprises will not be held responsible for anything that this column may tell you to do. If you actually do any of these things, either you need to take a nice slow drive to the funny farm and find a nice little vacant room to lock yourself up in, or you are really monumentally stupid. If this is the case, then there are more appropriate web sites out there that you can find like-minded people. And if this is the case, remember that this license agreement requires you to acknowledge the fact that you are a drug-crazed alien spy.
For those of you who actually have half a brain and realize that the local and state authorities discourage many of the activities condoned by this column (especially those state and local authorities who happen to be standing under the lunatics who are engaged in these activities) you are still required to name your firstborn "Hilda" regardless of gender, required to attend weekly lynch mobs at the corporate headquarters of a different technology company every week, and are also requird to tie yourself to the flagpole on top of the Empire State Building and stuff live frogs down your pants (which we realize is not very nice to the frogs, but hey, it's my license agreement, and I can do whatever I dang well please with it!
In addition, you also agree that the writer of this column is your supreme ruler, and that anything I say, you will do immediately. Therefore, each of you has to locate the nearest Macintosh, and reduce the so-called computer to a smoldering pile of rubble. If there is a user associated with this Macintosh, then they are required to follow the procedures outlined in the paragraph above.
If you have any questions about this license agreement, you must first send your e-mail address to every known spam domain on the planet, then read each and every resulting message, and you must also buy each and every product, no matter how fraudulent or ridiculous said purchase would be. After doing that, you must let your pet dog give you a fleabath and build a model of the Eiffel Tower out of Belgian Waffles (with whipped cream, strawberries and other appropriate toppings, of course. If this procedure is not followed, then aliens will be sent to perform slightly unethical brain transfer experiments on you and a rutabaga, then beam you directly onto the set of the Oprah Winfrey Show afterward.
And when the software companies begin to realize that nobody ever reads the things, every program we buy will have a similar license agreement. Eventually, all of us will be having to act on every ridiculous whim of whatever software company we were stupid enough to tempt by buying one of their products. Finally, I include what may be the closest real-life example of a license agreement yet to what I describe, which was included with a product called EasyFlow:
This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go, explaining that EasyFlow is a copyrighted package, sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.
We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around pirating copies of EasyFlow; this is just as well with us since we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of making anything out of all the hard work. For your convenience EasyFlow Is distributed on a non copy-protected diskette and you are free to do what you want with it (make backups, move from machine to machine, etc.) provided that it is never in use by more than one person at a time.
If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go around pirating copies of software, you probably aren't going to pay much attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
Honest Disclaimer
We don't claim EasyFlow is good for anything - if you think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. if you lose a million because EasyFlow messes up, It's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer, tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing.
This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software package but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.
We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the attack shark (see license agreement above) at which point we relented.
DON'T LOSE THE MANUAL
That's right; don't lose this manual. Especially don't lose it before you have read this page. Why are we telling you this? Isn't it obvious that you shouldn't lose the manual?
That's what we thought. Then we started getting all these calls from people saying "Hi! I'm Joe Blow and you've never heard of me, but I bought a copy of EasyFlow from FlyByNite Software and now I can't find the manual... will you send me a new one free?".
At first we were nice guys and went along with this. Then we started getting a bit more hard nosed about it; after all it is trivial to copy the disk but the manual involves somewhat more work. Now we had to agonize over each request and try to distinguish between the genuine unfortunate ("the dog chewed it up") and the merely unscrupulous looking for free software.
So what does everybody else do? We phoned the local Chevy dealer and told them we had misplaced the engine out of our new Camaro; that call didn't get us much useful information. Well ... cars aren't software. We called Borland and gave them a song and dance about losing our Turbo Pascal manual; they said to mail a letter to their "Lost Manual Review Committee". Wow! What a good idea. So we immediately rushed out and set up our Lost Manual Review Committee. The Committee meets once a month. They don't send out many replacement manuals, but they seem to do a lot of howling, rolling around on the floor and saying things like, "Oh wow - listen to this one".
Don't lose the manual.
Replacement manuals are available without going through the Committee for US$147.95 each.