I work with graphics & AV apps. You don't want to reinstall 4 GB of apps when the latest video drivers cause some problem and you need to reinstall 2000/XP.
Ok, then add 2000/XP to that too then. Come to think of it, I have had 2k require reinstalls. That's totally ridiculous...
I thought XP fixed those kinds of problems.
Question: Do you also use OS X? Is so, how do you think it compares to windows? Just curious, I use Linux and BSD exclusively.
- Install Windows and service packs first, mark files as "windows native". Then install apps. Some OS glitch, you need to reinstall ? Backup all files with directory structure which don't have "windows native" tag alongwith c:\program files and registry. Reinstall windows, restore the backed up files. Voila, no app installations required.
Holy shit, that sounds like a whole lot of infrastructure just to work around shortcomings of windows 9x!;-)
Exactly! I want to be able to have MORE ways of organizing data, not different ways. I want my heirarchy, so I can categorize things by their most obvious manner, but then also add attributes so I can search for things.
For exampe, with music. Music comes on CDs, organized by Artist, then Album, then Track. So I have/music/Tool/Undertow on my filesystem. This works, but it's still somewhat lacking. I would like my Tool albums also categorized into the categories "Metal" and also "Kinda Weird". Obviously, with HFS I can't put Tool into two different categories(I've tried this with symlinks, it's not so fun...).
That way, if I wanted to listen to random metal, or random weird shit, I could enter a query, and could get results for a bunch of good stuff to listen to. OTOH, if I know I want to listen to a particular song, or album, or artist, I would still have my HFS.
In other terms, think of the real world. EVERYTHING in the real world has an actual physical location, so should everything on your computer. That's why, in the real world we have catelogs, indexes, etc. for finding the real physical locations of our stuff.
I think what would be really, really excellent would be if all files on a filesystem could have meta-data. Then file selectors could have an extra query field, then you could go to either your root(/) or your music folder(/music), then enter some queries, and everything under the current folder matching those queries could be displayed in the fileselector.
Don't you mean, "vim/documents/foo/bar/fubar.txt"?
:-)
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Pico is just such a bad, baaad editor. It's sort of become the "editor of the idiot" on Linux. When I used to use pico, I was too embarrassed to admit it, so whenever posting something about editing a file, I would substitute something else for pico;-)
So next time, to save some embarrassment, try substituting nedit, vim, vi, emacs, or better yet, ed;-)
Damn, I know what you mean, I can't stand reading Python!
I haven't done much Python, but the little I have done sure did drive me nuts. I'd rather write 5x more C code to do the same thing than code in Python.
Then again, I do more coding in Perl than anything else, so what do I know?;-)
BTW, IamTheRealMike is correct, the example you used is absolutely horrible, as you can do GTK with much less code than that. OTOH, the Cocoa API is much, much nicer, even without taking the amount of code into consideration.
I can perfectly understand your feelings with regards to the FSF, I used to share them somewhat, and possibly still do just a bit. Of course, Linux, XFree86, KDE, and quite a large amount of Linux related software has nothing to do with the FSF.
That's quite a shame about Firefly, but unsurprising given Fox's record of killing good shows. I don't watch much T.V., but that was a good show. Thanks for giving me the bad news...
By harassing, I mean they are trying to get non-technical employees to audit our fucking network without the permission of the technical staff, the management, etc. They blatantly lie in their form letters about the "dangers" of pirated software, and they attempt to trick people into believing that they are some kind of authority and are authorized to audit whoever they choose whenever they want, even when there is no contract that gives them any rights at all. They show up at businesses and talk employees into letting them in the door, even attempting to fool said employees about who they are. If you do not absolutely hate them; you most likely have not seen their "evil" side, as most persons, organizations, and governments who ever have to deal with them end up despising them. There are numerous stories on/. and other sites regarding dubious behavior from the BSA, why do you choose to ignore it? Because they have caused _you_ no harm?
There have been countless examples of this type of bullshit, but you choose to ignore it. The Gimp is better than Photoshop for _me_, but you choose to ignore that. You are simply an anti-linux biggot; you are no different the the Linux biggots you seem to despise. You seem to believe that everyone who chooses Linux is some type of zealot, but that is patently false. Most companies and persons who switched to Linux do so for entirely pragmatic reasons! IBM, SFX studios, many governments, etc. These organizations are _purely_ pragmatic, yet they chose Linux.
As for myself, I dislike Microsoft because of their business practices, their stranglehold on many separate markets, and their dealings with publicly funded schools and universities that are of dubious legality; I am open and up-front about that. I *love* Mac OSX, because it is a good OS, althought I do dislike the company and the personalities behind the company. But for me, Linux is better, technically, and I have the freedom I need to use it as I wish. I am no zealot, I simply _choose_ Linux, because it has many good uses which are of use to myself and many others. But while it's the best choice for me, OS X was the best choice for my brother, which I let him decide after showing him Windows PCs, Linux, and iMacs. I didn't try to push him to use Linux, because it would not have suited him, and I wanted him to choose for himself. But, I was very pleased that he chose a system that was technically superior to Windows in many ways...
You continue to pretend that you are fair and some type of voice of reason, but you continually show your own biases. You ignore any argument you can't refute, and shift argumentation to minor details that you are comfortable arguing over. You pretend that Linux users are some type of mass blob all with the same agenda, and with the same arguments and same opinions; hence your fucking retarded argument that, "You didn't; this guy did". THAT GUY IS NOT ME!! The Gimp is not an inferior product, it is simply a different product, in _my_ opinion, yet you use someone else's opinion against me, WHAT THE FUCK? It is at least worth looking at for most people who use Photoshop. But you ignore that and simply argue that Linux is inferior, without any real reasoning behind it.
You constantly use stawmen in your argumentation; I noted several in our last discourse, but I gave up arguing with you because you kept shifting the argument to points that you were comfortable arguing, even if they were totally orthogonal!
Ok, whew! I am calming down now;-) I am through with arguing with you for now, but I would like you to note just a few things.
1. I have marked you as a "foe", this is not because I personally dislike you, it is simply because you are a political adversary. I think your politics are extremely dangerous for the future of society, especially in this new-fangled information age.
2. I do not personally dislike you. IRL, I would most likely get along with you fine. I really like your taste in entertainment; particularly, I think Firefly is the best new show in years, and you seemed to be a big fan yourself. While many/.ers were saying the Firefly was "boring" and "slow", you thought it was at least interesting. So I can assume at least that you are not just another MTV-ified A.D.D. moron.
3. So please, do not take anything I say _too_ personally. My ranting and raving is entirely the result of anger and frustration.
Now, dropping this whole argument, I would like to ask you a question. Do you know if Firefly has been cancelled? It appears to be off the air for now, do you know what is up? My wife and I enjoy the show, it's something good to watch when we've got nothing else to do on a Friday night, which has been too often of late.
See, now they don't have to investigate murders any more
I think you hit on a much bigger point! They don't have to get their hands dirty investigating REAL CRIMES like murder and actual theft(carjackings, burglary, etc.), they get to use unreasonable amounts of time and public resources(the police are a public resource!) investigating copyright infringement on behalf of the extremely wealthy.
I guess we now know who the government and police force REALLY work for...
I think you might have missed an important point. If Gimp is an unacceptable substitute for Photoshop 7, why would it be an acceptable substitute for Photoshop 8?
Where the fuck did I say it was "unacceptable"? It's no such thing; it's completely dependent on the person using it, their style, and technique. For me, it's far superior to Photoshop.
Smells like FUD to me. I don't know what you mean by "licensing issues." The BSA is of no concern to companies that actually pay for all of their software.
$#@#$%#%!!! Have you not read anything about the BSA? Have you not seen examples where they have extorted millions upon millions of dollars for extremely simple unintentional infringements?
You sir, are the one full of FUD. The only way to be safe from the BSA is to have full site licenses of all the software used in your organization, because software licensing can become extremely complicated and difficult to administer in practice that it becomes absolutely impossible to handle on a large scale.
Currently the BSA is harrassing the company I work for, even though we have absolutely no software contracts that give them any right to audit us. They keep trying to get non-technical persons in the company to install auditing software on the network!
Seriously, one of the things that coerced me to switch; pretty soon you'll be needing to "upgrade" a lot of that software, which means spending a lot of green.
With Linux, when there's a new version of The Gimp, I go download it, for free. When there's a new version of Blender out, I go download it, for free. When there's a new major kernel version or X Free86 version, I go download it, for free.
Or, if you're lazy like most people, you can buy the latest version of your distro of choice for roughly $50($5 from cheapbytes, free from linuxiso.org) and you can upgrade all your software in one shot.
Compare that to windows or mac os, where you would be spending several thousand dollars for what is essentially incremental upgrades for all the software products you mentioned.
And then there is also licensing issues, the BSA, builtin backdoors, software shipped containing viruses(has happened several times in major proprietary software), etc.
There are downsides though. The Gimp is inferior to Photoshop in some areas(although far fewer than many assume), free *nices lack decent WYSIWYG DTP software(this is getting closer...), etc.
Whatever the pros and cons, there is already plenty of "interesting" software for GNU/Linux/BSD, you just need to educate yourself. There are also quite a few games available for Linux now, and some windows games run flawlessly in wine(x)(all politics aside). 2 years ago I installed win95(2k? forget...) to play some games, but ended up not even needing it at all.
All that said, you seem pretty content with your rig, so I see no reason for you to switch at this point. Myself, I will continue to enjoy my savings and freedom.
There are a number of posts saying essentially, "they gotta make money somehow". Is that a fair statement? Sure! People need to eat!
But apparently, they didn't finish reading the "Ask Slashdot", or they would realize that the author isn't complaining about them charging for support, but that they are charging for support with what amounts to an NDA, saying they can't tell anyone what they learned from the support they purchased.
Personally, I think that's ridiculous; I would never agree to such terms for simple support. However, that is another topic entirely(actually, it IS THE TOPIC AT HAND!).
In short, please understand what the topic is before you go flaming away.
Does anyone else think that if this happened it would be the absolute worst thing that ever happened to the web?
As it is now, flash is a relatively open format, there's just no good OS flash players. But if Microsoft were to acquire them, I think flash would remain an open format for about 30 seconds. Then only Mac OS and Windows users would be able to browse a very significant portion of the web.
Well, you could mirror your servers at both locations until your new DNS information propogates, or somehow redirect traffic from your old addressed to the new ones...
I think you miss the point entirely. I don't think he's so pissed that he got no bonus, but the fact that he got a friggin bobble-head of the CEO is probably kind of a slap in the face.
I agree with you about employment, you should think of yourself as an equal simply bartering your labor for cash. On the other hand, giving your employees a bobble-head of yourself is really not treating them as equals in return...
You are exactly correct. If the top guys at the company were doing their jobs correctly, they'd cut their enormous salaries first. No one needs 65 million a year. A CEO paying himself that much is just tacky and shows very poor judgement and dedication to the company.
If it was my company and I gave the position of CEO to someone else and he did as such, I would fire his/her ass immediately, whether or not he was a close friend or whatnot.
Afterall, employees are usually asked to show a certain amount of dedication to the company, the executives should do the same, otherwise they are poor executives and should be releived.
Dude, I don't think it's about the money, the guy got a friggin bobble-head of the CEO! If that's not evil, I don't know what is!;-)
All joking aside, I'm not getting a bonus this year, and that's fine, money is tight after all. But if I got a bobble-head of the CEO, I'm not sure if I'd think it was funny or if I'd be so offended I'd quit, especially if the CEO was paying himself 65M/year. If he was really doing his job correctly, he'd pay himself a more modest salary and keep the rest in the company. No one needs 65M a year, and taking that much for herself just shows he's not as loyal to the company as she should be to be the CEO.
*snip* - you keep misunderstanding my points about contract law, but it's irrelevent to this discussion anyway...
This is not significant. Most criminal laws make it possible for you to be arrested and jailed for using your property in a manner you see fit. For example, if I throw a brick (my property) at someone else's head (a manner I see fit), I can be arrested, charged, and jailed. The fact that the DMCA makes what was previously not illegal illegal is not a meaningful argument against it.
That is a ridiculous attempt at creating an analogy. Of course you can't hit someone with a brick, that's assault. But you CAN use a brick to break open the lock on your own door.
Uh... huh? Yes, laws exist to restrict freedoms with the threat of force. I really don't understand your point here.
Don't be so dense. My point is that people like yourself are restricting MY freedom, and I believe they have done that without considering the consequences of their actions with regard to the people this will affect. And my question to you is, are you sure you are justified in restricting MY freedom?
You do realize that there are so many laws in this country that it is literally impossible for the layperson to know them well enough to avoid breaking them. This is caused by the fact that people like yourself are far too quick to deal out laws as they see fit.
No. If they're not published, they're not copyrighted.
Yes, I know this, I was just being sarcastic...
Wrong again. Skylarov and Elcomsoft are considered innocent until proven guilty. That's the whole point of having a trial.
How can anyone take your opinions on the legal system seriously when you don't know the first thing about it?
No, you are the one who is wrong. There are provisions in the DMCA that push further burden on those accused of DMCA violations than normally found in other bodies of law. Have you not followed all discussion regarding the DMCA? Have you not read it yourself?
Yes, but it's lossy compression. There's a reason WHY the actual act is "pages upon pages of legalese" -- because it HAS to be.
That is absurd. Legal texts tend to be many many times the length they need to be to made completely clear in proper english.
Why I am I not surprised that you know what shit taste [sic] like.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, then add 2000/XP to that too then. Come to think of it, I have had 2k require reinstalls. That's totally ridiculous...
I thought XP fixed those kinds of problems.
Question: Do you also use OS X? Is so, how do you think it compares to windows? Just curious, I use Linux and BSD exclusively.
been there done that ;-)
Holy shit, that sounds like a whole lot of infrastructure just to work around shortcomings of windows 9x! ;-)
For exampe, with music. Music comes on CDs, organized by Artist, then Album, then Track. So I have /music/Tool/Undertow on my filesystem. This works, but it's still somewhat lacking. I would like my Tool albums also categorized into the categories "Metal" and also "Kinda Weird". Obviously, with HFS I can't put Tool into two different categories(I've tried this with symlinks, it's not so fun...).
That way, if I wanted to listen to random metal, or random weird shit, I could enter a query, and could get results for a bunch of good stuff to listen to. OTOH, if I know I want to listen to a particular song, or album, or artist, I would still have my HFS.
In other terms, think of the real world. EVERYTHING in the real world has an actual physical location, so should everything on your computer. That's why, in the real world we have catelogs, indexes, etc. for finding the real physical locations of our stuff.
I think what would be really, really excellent would be if all files on a filesystem could have meta-data. Then file selectors could have an extra query field, then you could go to either your root(/) or your music folder(/music), then enter some queries, and everything under the current folder matching those queries could be displayed in the fileselector.
That, IMO, is the optimal way of doing things.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Pico is just such a bad, baaad editor. It's sort of become the "editor of the idiot" on Linux. When I used to use pico, I was too embarrassed to admit it, so whenever posting something about editing a file, I would substitute something else for pico ;-)
So next time, to save some embarrassment, try substituting nedit, vim, vi, emacs, or better yet, ed ;-)
Scoop on Freshmeat
I haven't done much Python, but the little I have done sure did drive me nuts. I'd rather write 5x more C code to do the same thing than code in Python.
Then again, I do more coding in Perl than anything else, so what do I know? ;-)
BTW, IamTheRealMike is correct, the example you used is absolutely horrible, as you can do GTK with much less code than that. OTOH, the Cocoa API is much, much nicer, even without taking the amount of code into consideration.
That's quite a shame about Firefly, but unsurprising given Fox's record of killing good shows. I don't watch much T.V., but that was a good show. Thanks for giving me the bad news...
By harassing, I mean they are trying to get non-technical employees to audit our fucking network without the permission of the technical staff, the management, etc. They blatantly lie in their form letters about the "dangers" of pirated software, and they attempt to trick people into believing that they are some kind of authority and are authorized to audit whoever they choose whenever they want, even when there is no contract that gives them any rights at all. They show up at businesses and talk employees into letting them in the door, even attempting to fool said employees about who they are. If you do not absolutely hate them; you most likely have not seen their "evil" side, as most persons, organizations, and governments who ever have to deal with them end up despising them. There are numerous stories on /. and other sites regarding dubious behavior from the BSA, why do you choose to ignore it? Because they have caused _you_ no harm?
There have been countless examples of this type of bullshit, but you choose to ignore it. The Gimp is better than Photoshop for _me_, but you choose to ignore that. You are simply an anti-linux biggot; you are no different the the Linux biggots you seem to despise. You seem to believe that everyone who chooses Linux is some type of zealot, but that is patently false. Most companies and persons who switched to Linux do so for entirely pragmatic reasons! IBM, SFX studios, many governments, etc. These organizations are _purely_ pragmatic, yet they chose Linux.
As for myself, I dislike Microsoft because of their business practices, their stranglehold on many separate markets, and their dealings with publicly funded schools and universities that are of dubious legality; I am open and up-front about that. I *love* Mac OSX, because it is a good OS, althought I do dislike the company and the personalities behind the company. But for me, Linux is better, technically, and I have the freedom I need to use it as I wish. I am no zealot, I simply _choose_ Linux, because it has many good uses which are of use to myself and many others. But while it's the best choice for me, OS X was the best choice for my brother, which I let him decide after showing him Windows PCs, Linux, and iMacs. I didn't try to push him to use Linux, because it would not have suited him, and I wanted him to choose for himself. But, I was very pleased that he chose a system that was technically superior to Windows in many ways...
You continue to pretend that you are fair and some type of voice of reason, but you continually show your own biases. You ignore any argument you can't refute, and shift argumentation to minor details that you are comfortable arguing over. You pretend that Linux users are some type of mass blob all with the same agenda, and with the same arguments and same opinions; hence your fucking retarded argument that, "You didn't; this guy did". THAT GUY IS NOT ME!! The Gimp is not an inferior product, it is simply a different product, in _my_ opinion, yet you use someone else's opinion against me, WHAT THE FUCK? It is at least worth looking at for most people who use Photoshop. But you ignore that and simply argue that Linux is inferior, without any real reasoning behind it.
You constantly use stawmen in your argumentation; I noted several in our last discourse, but I gave up arguing with you because you kept shifting the argument to points that you were comfortable arguing, even if they were totally orthogonal!
Ok, whew! I am calming down now ;-) I am through with arguing with you for now, but I would like you to note just a few things.
1. I have marked you as a "foe", this is not because I personally dislike you, it is simply because you are a political adversary. I think your politics are extremely dangerous for the future of society, especially in this new-fangled information age.
2. I do not personally dislike you. IRL, I would most likely get along with you fine. I really like your taste in entertainment; particularly, I think Firefly is the best new show in years, and you seemed to be a big fan yourself. While many /.ers were saying the Firefly was "boring" and "slow", you thought it was at least interesting. So I can assume at least that you are not just another MTV-ified A.D.D. moron.
3. So please, do not take anything I say _too_ personally. My ranting and raving is entirely the result of anger and frustration.
Now, dropping this whole argument, I would like to ask you a question. Do you know if Firefly has been cancelled? It appears to be off the air for now, do you know what is up? My wife and I enjoy the show, it's something good to watch when we've got nothing else to do on a Friday night, which has been too often of late.
Cheers.
I think you hit on a much bigger point! They don't have to get their hands dirty investigating REAL CRIMES like murder and actual theft(carjackings, burglary, etc.), they get to use unreasonable amounts of time and public resources(the police are a public resource!) investigating copyright infringement on behalf of the extremely wealthy.
I guess we now know who the government and police force REALLY work for...
Where the fuck did I say it was "unacceptable"? It's no such thing; it's completely dependent on the person using it, their style, and technique. For me, it's far superior to Photoshop.
Smells like FUD to me. I don't know what you mean by "licensing issues." The BSA is of no concern to companies that actually pay for all of their software.
$#@#$%#%!!! Have you not read anything about the BSA? Have you not seen examples where they have extorted millions upon millions of dollars for extremely simple unintentional infringements?
You sir, are the one full of FUD. The only way to be safe from the BSA is to have full site licenses of all the software used in your organization, because software licensing can become extremely complicated and difficult to administer in practice that it becomes absolutely impossible to handle on a large scale.
Currently the BSA is harrassing the company I work for, even though we have absolutely no software contracts that give them any right to audit us. They keep trying to get non-technical persons in the company to install auditing software on the network!
It's nice to think we all have your approval.
You're intentionally misconstruing my words to appear condescending. I was in no way giving "approval"; that's fucking ridiculous...
With Linux, when there's a new version of The Gimp, I go download it, for free. When there's a new version of Blender out, I go download it, for free. When there's a new major kernel version or X Free86 version, I go download it, for free.
Or, if you're lazy like most people, you can buy the latest version of your distro of choice for roughly $50($5 from cheapbytes, free from linuxiso.org) and you can upgrade all your software in one shot.
Compare that to windows or mac os, where you would be spending several thousand dollars for what is essentially incremental upgrades for all the software products you mentioned.
And then there is also licensing issues, the BSA, builtin backdoors, software shipped containing viruses(has happened several times in major proprietary software), etc.
There are downsides though. The Gimp is inferior to Photoshop in some areas(although far fewer than many assume), free *nices lack decent WYSIWYG DTP software(this is getting closer...), etc.
Whatever the pros and cons, there is already plenty of "interesting" software for GNU/Linux/BSD, you just need to educate yourself. There are also quite a few games available for Linux now, and some windows games run flawlessly in wine(x)(all politics aside). 2 years ago I installed win95(2k? forget...) to play some games, but ended up not even needing it at all.
All that said, you seem pretty content with your rig, so I see no reason for you to switch at this point. Myself, I will continue to enjoy my savings and freedom.
Cheers.
There are a number of posts saying essentially, "they gotta make money somehow". Is that a fair statement? Sure! People need to eat!
But apparently, they didn't finish reading the "Ask Slashdot", or they would realize that the author isn't complaining about them charging for support, but that they are charging for support with what amounts to an NDA, saying they can't tell anyone what they learned from the support they purchased.
Personally, I think that's ridiculous; I would never agree to such terms for simple support. However, that is another topic entirely(actually, it IS THE TOPIC AT HAND!).
In short, please understand what the topic is before you go flaming away.
All of the essays in his latest book are freely downloadable.
As it is now, flash is a relatively open format, there's just no good OS flash players. But if Microsoft were to acquire them, I think flash would remain an open format for about 30 seconds. Then only Mac OS and Windows users would be able to browse a very significant portion of the web.
Arguing with you is like arguing with a fuckin' wall, no good can come of it.
I agree with you about employment, you should think of yourself as an equal simply bartering your labor for cash. On the other hand, giving your employees a bobble-head of yourself is really not treating them as equals in return...
If it was my company and I gave the position of CEO to someone else and he did as such, I would fire his/her ass immediately, whether or not he was a close friend or whatnot.
Afterall, employees are usually asked to show a certain amount of dedication to the company, the executives should do the same, otherwise they are poor executives and should be releived.
All joking aside, I'm not getting a bonus this year, and that's fine, money is tight after all. But if I got a bobble-head of the CEO, I'm not sure if I'd think it was funny or if I'd be so offended I'd quit, especially if the CEO was paying himself 65M/year. If he was really doing his job correctly, he'd pay himself a more modest salary and keep the rest in the company. No one needs 65M a year, and taking that much for herself just shows he's not as loyal to the company as she should be to be the CEO.
IMO, YMMV, YHBT, etc.
This is not significant. Most criminal laws make it possible for you to be arrested and jailed for using your property in a manner you see fit. For example, if I throw a brick (my property) at someone else's head (a manner I see fit), I can be arrested, charged, and jailed. The fact that the DMCA makes what was previously not illegal illegal is not a meaningful argument against it.
That is a ridiculous attempt at creating an analogy. Of course you can't hit someone with a brick, that's assault. But you CAN use a brick to break open the lock on your own door.
Uh... huh? Yes, laws exist to restrict freedoms with the threat of force. I really don't understand your point here.
Don't be so dense. My point is that people like yourself are restricting MY freedom, and I believe they have done that without considering the consequences of their actions with regard to the people this will affect. And my question to you is, are you sure you are justified in restricting MY freedom?
You do realize that there are so many laws in this country that it is literally impossible for the layperson to know them well enough to avoid breaking them. This is caused by the fact that people like yourself are far too quick to deal out laws as they see fit.
Good day.
Yes, I know this, I was just being sarcastic...
Wrong again. Skylarov and Elcomsoft are considered innocent until proven guilty. That's the whole point of having a trial.
How can anyone take your opinions on the legal system seriously when you don't know the first thing about it?
No, you are the one who is wrong. There are provisions in the DMCA that push further burden on those accused of DMCA violations than normally found in other bodies of law. Have you not followed all discussion regarding the DMCA? Have you not read it yourself?
Yes, but it's lossy compression. There's a reason WHY the actual act is "pages upon pages of legalese" -- because it HAS to be.
That is absurd. Legal texts tend to be many many times the length they need to be to made completely clear in proper english.
Why I am I not surprised that you know what shit taste [sic] like.
Wow, you're an asshole...