Eulas

It seems that every program you install on your computer requires you, first, to stop and accept or reject a mysterious and erstwhile legal agreement called a "Eula."  You are also quite earnestly asked to read the thing before you tell your machine to accept or reject it.   To hit "reject," however, means that the installation of the program stops then and there.   What's the purpose, then, of putting that choice in there when by the mere act of starting the installation, it means that the user intends to use the program regardless, and he's always going to hit "accept," even at the risk of never learning one word of what he's forbidden to do, as  stated in all those stipulations that huge teams of lawyers have  inexplicably put togther and that more likely than not is pages slong.

At some indefinable risk whose dangers are not clear to me, I confess.   I never read the Eulas, and I have the strong  feeling that, for once, I am far from alone in that.  I just hit "accept" and thereby accept the loss of a split-second of my valuable time, though not without feeling vaguely, VERY vaguely, like some computer miscreant.   (While in New York City I scrupulously obey the pedestrian Walk and Not Walk traffic lights.   But I am not as practised as most New Yorkers are in the agilities of criminal ways.)

Well, that's not strictly true.  Every once in a great while I do let my attention run a honest scan through a Eula, but I do that so rarely that you might as well say that  for all intents and purposes actually it's true, and I never do read them, though in fact I wouldn't be a bit surprised if, by deigning nevertheless to run my eye over one, I am in reality quite a heavy reader of Eulas, compared to most people.

(If the  preceding sentence reads a bit confused and  awkward to you, that was my intent.  To admit to not reading Eulas places one on hazardous ground.  It has to.)

Whenever I do read a Eula, I do it for only one purpose: to see if, as yet, anybody has put anything in there that makes them worth reading.   But so far ...nothing.

A lady once told me it was prudent to read the Eulas nevertheless, or at least to scroll through them as if you are,   because a program might have a means to detect that you haven't bothered, and then bad things could happen. 

But Eulas must not be for an ordinary user like me, who is going to use the program for its intended purpose and that's all.  Instead the Eulas must be directed solely at people who have dark activities in mind, such as those of the Asian pirates.   

Or it's to justify the employment of lawyers.

Still, I can't help thinking that,  all in all, because of the way they induce us to use all our powers to ignore, Eulas are just another of civilization's enduring little absurdities,  and worse.