Questionable consequences

I recently bought a toaster oven and immediately took it apart. It is now a surface mount reflow soldering oven, but that's been covered in detail elsewhere.

As I was cleaning stuff up in the garage, I ran across the instruction manual for it.

So what?

This little snippet caught my eye and made me chortle:

LOL. Or what, exactly?

I kind of get where they're coming from. The surfeit of ambulance chasers we've grown in this country during the 20th century has made CYA an all too familiar manta anymore. And that's kind of a shame. But when I took the first screw out of the back of that oven, I knew right then that I was abrogating the manufacturers warranty and taking complete responsibility on my own.

I thought that the demise of Heathkit and the move in the electronics industry to surface mount spelled the end of the electronics hobbyist. But the hackers adapted and overcame, and now anyone with a very modest investment can create things virtually indistinguishable from commercial products, thanks to the likes of Eagle,  OSHPark and the Arduino project.