When Casey Liss posted about his switch to DuckDuckGo last month, I switched to it myself and didn’t tell anyone so I could give it an honest try. My principles are only diverging further from Google’s over time, and I feel a bit defeated whenever I turn to them for anything anymore, so I attacked my primary dependence head-on: web search.

In my experience so far, DuckDuckGo’s search is good enough the vast majority of the time. Sometimes, its results are even better than Google’s, and they’re rarely much worse.

The best thing they offer is the !g prefix to direct any given search to Google — but not because Google’s results are better. Being able to quickly try an unhelpful DuckDuckGo search on Google almost always returns equally unhelpful Google results, confirming that the results I got from DuckDuckGo are crappy because web search just sucks these days.

It’s an antidote to grass-is-always-greener syndrome: you immediately see the mediocrity you’re missing and stop doubting your choice.

Every so often, when I am called upon to sign some contract or other, I have a conversation that goes like this:

Me: I can't sign this contract; clause 14(a) gives you the right to chop off my hand.

Them: Oh, the lawyers made us put that in. Don't worry about it; of course we would never exercise that clause.

There is only one response you should make to this line of argument:

Well, my lawyer says I can't agree to that, and since you say that you would never exercise that clause, I'm sure you will have no problem removing it from the contract.

Because if the lawyers made them put in there, that is for a reason. And there is only one possible reason, which is that the lawyers do, in fact, envision that they might one day exercise that clause and chop off your hand.

The other party may proceed further with the same argument: “Look, I have been in this business twenty years, and I swear to you that we have never chopped off anyone's hand.” You must remember the one response, and repeat it:

Great! Since you say that you have never chopped off anyone's hand, then you will have no problem removing that clause from the contract.

You must repeat this over and over until it works. The other party is lazy. They just want the contract signed. They don't want to deal with their lawyers. They may sincerely believe that they would never chop off anyone's hand. They are just looking for the easiest way forward. You must make them understand that there is no easier way forward than to remove the hand-chopping clause.

They will say “The deadline is looming! If we don't get this contract executed soon it will be TOO LATE!” They are trying to blame you for the blown deadline. You should put the blame back where it belongs:

As I've made quite clear, I can't sign this contract with the hand-chopping clause. If you want to get this executed soon, you must strike out that clause before it is TOO LATE.

And if the other party would prefer to walk away from the deal rather than abandon their hand-chopping rights, what does that tell you about the value they put on the hand-chopping clause? They claim that they don't care about it and they have never exercised it, but they would prefer to give up on the whole project, rather than abandon hand-chopping? That is a situation that is well worth walking away from, and you can congratulate yourself on your clean escape.

[ Addendum: Steve Bogart asked asks on Twitter for examples of unacceptable contract demands; dealbreaker clauses. Some I thought of so many that I put them in a separate article. ] immediately include: Any nonspecific non-disclosure agreement with a horizon more than three years off, because after three years you are not going to remember what it was that you were not supposed to disclose. Any contract in which you give up your right to sue the other party if they were to cheat you. Most contracts in which you permanently relinquish your right to disparage or publicly criticize the other party. Any contract that leaves you on the hook for the other party's losses if the project is unsuccessful. ]

RT @charliedemers: "Hope is better than Fear." - Jack Layton
"... the Jihadist monster's tentacles..." - Stephen Harper

— KatieEllen Humphries (@MsKatieEllen) Feb 12, 2:38pm

-teesa-:

9.9.14

"There is this devaluation of women."