SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
An outrageous, insightful, and sadly accurate commentary on programming. I found this an extremely entertaining read and agree with most of it. It doesn't offer solutions, but certainly highlights a lot of the problems.
"Double you tee eff?" you say, and start hunting for the problem. You discover that one day, some idiot decided that since another idiot decided that 1/0 should equal infinity, they could just use that as a shorthand for "Infinity" when simplifying their code. Then a non-idiot rightly decided that this was idiotic, which is what the original idiot should have decided, but since he didn't, the non-idiot decided to be a dick and make this a failing error in his new compiler. Then he decided he wasn't going to tell anyone that this was an error, because he's a dick, and now all your snowflakes are urine and you can't even find the cat.
Personally, I think things will only get better (including salaries) when software development is treated like other engineering disciplines.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday May 01 2014, @03:41PM
That it exists at all means that there exists at least one jurisdiction where such clauses are enforceable, and since many EULAs also include a declaration of venue (which is common in contracts of all sorts), they can simply pick a jurisdiction that allows those clauses.
EULAs are one of the many places in which companies fleece consumers who don't have expensive lawyers. And even some with expensive lawyers: Now-senator Elizabeth Warren once described one of her regular exercises in her contract law courses as going through ordinary consumer contracts for cell phone plans and bank loans and credit cards and the like, and discovering that neither her, her students, nor her colleagues at Harvard Law could really figure out what they actually meant.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 02 2014, @03:26AM
"That it exists at all means that there exists at least one jurisdiction where such clauses are enforceable"
Not necessarily. Perhaps the person putting in there put it in there in case there is a jurisdiction where such a clause is enforceable. Also, laws change with time so perhaps the clause is in there to anticipate possible changes in future laws. Perhaps one clause is valid in one location and not another. Sometimes it may depend on the court and the specific judge even.
It's much easier to just put a catch all document than to try and figure out what each jurisdiction allows and work from there.