Microsoft forbids class actions in new Windows licence Microsoft will make it harder for customers to club together with lawyers to file lawsuits against its products. The company is rolling out new End User License Agreements (EULAs) that forbid punters from joining class-action proceedings. Assistant general counsel Tim Fielden announced the tweak here and said the changes will …
Unfortunately Americans believe that their laws apply throughout the world, which is why they have people "rendered" to them from almost every country.
Fortunately there's another, more modern, secure and stable option!
Please note - with the release of "Windows Security Essentials" MS finally admitted that their "operating systems" have no security whatsoever.
>>Please note - with the release of "Windows Security Essentials" MS finally admitted that their "operating systems" have no security whatsoever
ffs, Thats tired old bullshit and you should know it if you know anything about security.
But alright, lets assume that you're correct.
By your logic then, with the inclusion of SELinux in the Linux Kernel as of version 2.6 (in 2003 mind you), the Linux community admitted the very same thing through NSA and the University of Utah forcing them to, and the fact that it has mandatory access control and mandatory integrity control embedded in the Kernel its self seems to suggest there was an even bigger problem with Linux rather than Windows.
You can spin it any way you like, but really, *anything* in computing is vulnerable if its improperly configured or you're fucking stupid about how you use it. The choice of OS has nothing to do with a user being a dumbass.
Correction: The choice of OS has nothing to do with a user WITH ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES being a dumbass.
The whole point of an OS is to isolate programs and data correctly. In the modern ages, everything's abused by most home users being able to execute arbitrary code and to do so with administrator privileges as a matter of course (UAC is pretty weak and full of holes). I agree that an administrator on either system can wreak just as much havoc. But the whole POINT of an OS existing is to stop ordinary users being able to do so, or at worst to do it only to their own files and settings. By and large, that's true on modern OS too, but it's a very different story and one where SELinux totally wipes the floor with anything available on a Microsoft OS.
There's a world of difference between having to trust the users, and spending time setting up a system where the users have (and need) zero trust whatsoever. One is generally a home scenario, one a business/industry/military scenario. There, you end up with a great deal of difference in your assertions. It's POSSIBLE to secure a Linux system so that almost anything (including 99% of all published Linux "exploits") can't actually do anything. It's not really possible on Windows. You can't really control things and isolate program to that finely-detailed level without an awful lot of extraneous, third-party software that can only control what Microsoft choose to expose.
That said, I mostly agree with you. The problem with Windows is political and cultural. Users have been trained to expect to be able to run with privileges, to write to ANY folder, to manage their own PC in the same "mode" as they use to run the web browser, and have little isolation between processes. Hell, you don't even get a "This program is trying to run at startup, do you wish to allow that?" style-dialog for the simplest of actions that a malicious program can perform (and be a pain to undo). Properly secured, bare Linux and Windows are about the same. But SELinux and other solutions are a step above anything Windows offers to the public (and as far as I know, the "military" versions of Windows are still based on an ANCIENT codebase because that's all they could certify).
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@Lee Dowling:
Oh absolutely, for instance I saw some guy bragging about running Fedora 17 as root earlier on another thread and I dont think he was just using it for configuring a regular user account. Im pretty sure he just uses the damned thing as root. Pretty stupid if you ask me. But hey, you cant fix stupid, you just have to try and mitigate it. With user culture being the way it is, especially in the world of Windows, educating people on why having Administrative permissions for everything all the time is a bad idea is always an uphill battle.
Home and Business are indeed different worlds but in the end you can wind up getting hit just as hard if not harder by taking a carefree attitude toward security at home especially if you have anything laying around on one of your computers of a sensitive nature (business email, credit card/banking information, Identity information, passwords being saved in cleartext, etc).
I agree with you myself on your points, to *really* secure Windows you have to run a hell of alot of other programs as well as set Policy configuration, edit permissions til you're blue in the face, attach it to a very secure private network, set very strict firewall rules, etc etc. It sucks, and alot of it is Microsoft's fault for not being as security conscious as they have become during the 1990's and the early part of the 2000's.
In regard to the Security Certified Military versions of Windows that the US uses anyway, Im going avoid going to that level of detail (I do know what they are and its probably the same thing you're speaking of, the certified client is more than 10 years old so yes it is ancient, and the certified server is also nearly ten years old) but as Im not sure its FOUO or above, I wont name versions. I will state though for the record that it takes forever and a day to get an OS certified by DISA, NIST, and NSA/CSS
Then again, I will say that I believe the NIST guidelines for their testing are honestly better than NSA's.
with the release of "Windows Security Essentials" MS finally admitted that their "operating systems" have no security whatsoever.
MICROSOFT URGED CUSTOMERS FOR YEARS to use anti-virus software to protect their PCs, but the computer security industry's focus on the addictive update model forced Microsoft's hand. Customers wanted a secure Microsoft operating system, and when Microsoft delivered, computer security firms got uppity.
Does the USA allow one to waive one's legal rights in this way? Or at all?
Also given the nature of lawyers in general and USA lawyers in particular, I wonder if Microsoft won't be facing a class action lawsuit from the legal profession concerning this nefarious attempt to prevent citizens from asserting their legal rights, thereby depriving lawyers of their right to profit thereby? Sooner rather than later?
Not an expert, but I'm pretty sure this is not enforceable in US law. In Europe it varies on a case by case basis. We don't have an EU-wide equivalent to the USA's Class Action at the moment. But several countries such as Germany, France, Spain do. The UK does not, but in some cases, there are ways to pursue the claim in other EU countries.
Regardless of legality, it's unethical to try and put this in a EULA, of course.
I'm not a lawyer but could we not create a class action suit against Microsoft along the lines of: "Microsoft is using its monoply position in operating systems and office productivity suites to force people to accept unfair licencing terms, preventing them from recouping damages in the event of faults" or something simlar?
No, but complaints can be filed with the Federal Trade Commission, who can file an antitrust lawsuit (which is a criminal, not civil case). I would expect that Microsoft will not be happy if they receive thousands of seperate lawsuits in a short timeframe. Likely to have some summary judgments if they don't employ enough lawyers.
All of this is really just US-specific, of course. Though, I would expect complaints in Europe to be handled similiarly by the EC.
Dozens, probably hundreds. Of course not from your average consumer temple a la Best Buy, PC World, Curry's and such, but most big brands (like HP or Dell) sell shitloads of laptops without OS to small and large businesses around the world every day.
And then there are the assemblers who use barebone laptops and stuff it with components, and which often happily sell you a laptop without OS.
If someone says that he can't find a laptop without WIndows then he's just lazy.
You can buy SOME laptops without Windows, but not the ones you actualy want to buy. I had a business account with Dell and had bought several laptops recently with Windows on for work. I then tried to buy the same laptop WITHOUT windows pre-installed as I'm a Linux user at home and don't like Windows. Dell refused point blank. Their rep offered me ONE choice of low spec high cost laptop and said that they would not sell me any other without Windows on. I took it up the management chain and still got no where. I asked them to sell me one without a HDD then - again this was refused. There reason was that I might 'pirate' Windows if I bought a laptop without an O/S preinstalled! Is this really THEIR concern?
In the end, I said either sell me one, or close my account. The account is now closed.
Next I tried HP - exactly the same result.
What kind of corrupt world are we in when a computer MANUFACTURER won't sell you a computer unles you buy a load of pre-installed software that you have no use for and will never use?
I have the records of my emails and online converstaions to back this up.
How many would you like?
I wanted some high spec machines from the Sony Vaio range (as a government purchaser) and they fell over themselves to supply the 500 machines I needed. I asked for bare machines with their driver disc and they asked me why I wouldn't want Windows 7. I explained as politely as I could that Windows 7 is just as fundamentally broken as the rest of the Microsoft product line, and was a waste of money for us. They were happy not only to supply the machines at a substantial discount - a slightly bigger discount than just the deduction of the price of Windows - and asked which Linux distribution we'd be using and would we like them pre-installed?
I've had similar results with Dell (though only for desktop machines), with Lenovo and HP. They ALL want my business!
The only company that refused to accommodate me (so far) was Toshiba, and they're in all sorts of financial trouble now, so we wouldn't buy from them anyway.
> ...to supply the 500 machines I needed ...
That is so different. If you are shopping for hundreds of laptops, sure the manufacturers will accommodate your OS wishes. When shopping for one, they will either offer an overpriced model you don't wan't, or none at all.
People who responded to my post with examples how to get laptops without bundled Windows, if one tries hard enough, miss the point. All but true zealots will take the easier route, so most Linux users will get the one with bundled Windows (far easier and usually cheaper), and will probably also boot it a few times with Windows, if only to check that the hardware is OK. So Microsoft gets the money they don't deserve, and (what is even worse), the notional acceptance of their EULA, establishing more precedent ("billions of users have accepted our EULA so what are you complaining about?").
I don't see how the playing field could be leveled other than by law that forces every general purpose computer to be available also without an OS. Or so that any bundled OS must supplied as a separate item, which the user can install or return for a refund with no questions asked. This would hardly be a big inconvenience for customers: my experience with new Windows 7 laptops is that the setting-up and updating that even the "pre-installed" OS does on the first few boots actually takes about as long as a full OS install would...
Or is that Social Notworking here please.
You have more chance of getting hold of the Jedi bible to wear your oath upon in court than this carrying any weight with contract law and fair use.
False advertising by microsoft et all is still false advertising and if you want one court case or to be stung once by a skilled lawyer that will then act as a land mark case for the umpteen others is actualy going to make Microsofts life alot worse.
Do I have to sign a contract to install the OS you sell to consumers in a shop - nope, as such why are Microsoft wasting there time or are they upset there not seen as bad as Facebook and are missing the bad-press limelight!
English is my second language, so I believe I have some idea of what I am talking about - but I admit I am not expert in the field...
I think in English 99% of the time, but in other languages "their", "there", "they're" will be different from each other. Because of that, they are three distinct concepts ( not sure it's the right word for that, but I am sure it somehow explains it ) in my head. So it's very unlikely I will ever get it wrong. Same with "wear", "where", "your", "you're", "it's", "its", "waist", "waste".
Somebody who was born in an English speaking country, will most likely start to speak English, then associate it to a spelling later on in life. So the confusion can come from here.
In my experience, it's more likely you get a native speaker misspelling things like "your" and "you're", and non native speakers choosing the wrong word to say something... No matter how many times I look it up, I have no idea when to use "may" and when to use "might" for example. I also got "sex" and "gender" wrong on a post on here, and somebody was kind enough to explain the difference to me. I blinked, and it went :)
Having said that, it is depressing that English teachers do not manage to teach children how to spell, but still keep their jobs!
IANAET but:
"Just as could is the past tense of can, might is the past tense of may: We thought we might win the tournament. But might can also be used as a substitute for may to show diminished possibility. Thus, saying We might go to the movies means that the likelihood of going is somewhat less than if you say We may go to the movies. When used to express permission, might has a higher degree of politeness than may. Thus, Might I express my opinion conveys less insistence than May I express my opinion."
This may/might have been copied and pasted.
It is a shameful fact that myriads of native English speakers have received instruction in English grammar and spelling that has ranged from poor to abysmal, (I rate my own instruction in English as only just acceptable, and I do not consider my own writing to be any better than just passable).
Of course, there are many exceptions to the rule and those who have been well trained do write exceptionally well, nevertheless, all up, the numbers are far too few. A major reason for the problem is that so many English are not trained in or speak a second language (I was and I hate to think how much worse my English would be without the benefit of a smattering of foreign grammar). It's sheer utter arrogance of the English-speaking world for not further encouraging its citizens to speak multiple languages. With English being almost a lingua franca, and with the legacy of a colonial past being still present and with us, it's still very much an attitude of "if the natives don't understand, then shout a little louder".
Many problems in English come from sheer sloppiness and the widespread use of contractions ('it's' used for 'it is' etc.), which we slur as if we were drunk. These days, rarely are enunciation, pronunciation and the spelling of words and their contractions taken seriously by teachers; thus when words sound the same many use any word that 'fits'.
It is easy to see how this happens: for instance, take the foreign imported word 'tsunami'--almost without exception, native speakers of English pronounce the word without the 't'. In English, saying that 'tsunami' becomes 'sunami' is too kind; rather it is much more likely to be pronounced a slurred 'soonami'. Even though we have import the Japanese word into English with its punctuation intact, not the slightest effort goes into pronouncing the snake-hissing 'ts' sound. Blatantly, we've thrown away the perfectly good English expression 'tidal wave' and screwed up a word in another language and nobody cares a damn.
Another example where the don't-give-a-damn attitude prevails utterly supreme is the use of the poor beleaguered apostrophe. Yes, there are a few cases where the apostrophe could be considered confusing or where typos are common ('it's' and 'its' etc.), but the biggest problem is in its use to indicate the possessive. Nothing could be more trivial and basic than the apostrophe rule, which simply asks 'who owns it?'. Answer with a noun immediately followed by and apostrophe: 'who/what owns the tail?', A: 'a single dog', thus 'dog's tail'; 'who owns the bat?; A: 'eleven boys', thus 'boys' bat'. Q.E.D! Yet, in the whole of English, nothing comes vaguely close as the misuse of the apostrophe to indicate to the world how abysmal the training of native speakers of English has become; it is nothing less than a towering beacon indicative of a widespread systemic failure in education.
DAN*tastik, compared with many native speakers, your English is excellent. Want a job as an English teacher?
BTW, DrDr's 'may/might' explanation is about as goods as it gets.
When it comes to odd spelling, blame the so called scholars from the middle ages who decided that the old english and old french words should have a spelling that reflected their latin roots.
Hence the OE/OF word "dette", to owe money, gets a 'b' from it's latin root "debitum" (or is it debitia???).
Not that this idiotic practice has stopped, don't split infinites, why? because in latin infinitives are not split, they're one word (that’s one theory). As for ending a sentence preposition, that is one rule up which I will not put.
Oh! One more thing, the correct spelling is "colour".
Actually, the reason the state of grammar teaching is so woefully inadequate in the UK is that hardliners like yourself give a very bad impression of what good grammar really is.
Contractions are sloppiness -- they're part of the language and have always been. They are entirely necessary and inevitable in a stress-timed language, and English is a stress-timed language. A sentence such as "I wouldn't've been in the house" gets two natural stresses, and if you try to enunciate every word fully as "I would not have been in the house", you just won't be able to fit it to the natural rhythm and you will end up stressing something that you didn't intend to.
I never hear your sort complaining about French, which has codified the contracted forms as the one and only correct form -- "J'ai" but never "Je ai"; "je n'en ai (pas)" and never "je ne en ai pas" etc. In fact, this may be one of the contributing factors to the failure of English grammar teaching -- the "contracted form" is in reality the base form, and the so-called "full form" is really the *emphatic* form. By trying to claim that the emphatic form is the unmarked form, you fail to connect with the student's internal model, and cause them to reject everything that you're trying to teach them.
With regards to "tsunami", there's several things I could say. The consonant cluster /ts/ only occurs in syllable codas in English -- it is not available in syllable onsets. Consider the word "garage", which is also a borrowing. Do you say "GARage" or "garAGE"? If you compare the two, the -GE ending sounds different in them. How so? Because the the French-like GE of garAGE is only possible in the coda of stressed syllables in English. When the stress shifted to the first syllable (to better match the underlying patterns of English) it naturally resulted in a change of consonant quality. Either way, I bet you don't pronounce it with a French R. Similar, I bet you don't enunciate the first O in the borrowings "potato" and "tomato". And finally, can you tell me the stressed mora in the Japanese word "tsunami" (or even if it has one at all) and do you pronounce it with the correct pitch accent when you say it? I doubt it.
The whole 's/s' thing is another pointless mess, arising from a failure to look at the nature of the genitive in modern English. The "plural possessive" doesn't actually match the internal model of the native speaker, where the possessive suffix/clitic 's is appended to a genitive, and as we all know (or would if we studied grammar properly), the English genitive (aka the "classifier noun") is always singular. For example "bread knife" and "toothbrush". Your "greenhouse" is full of greenS, plural. This is the reason that we only pronounce one S in plural possessive -- because there is only one S: the possessive S, not the plural. The orthographic distinction between s' and 's has no analogue in the native grammar.
It's you sort that convinces people that grammar is valueless, so why not leave the matter to people who actually understand the matter?
(And for the record, I'm a native speaker and I got first class honours in English Language at uni.)
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Hardliner, surely not? If my English teacher read your comments she'd laugh in amazement then probably throw a copy of Fowler's 'The King's English' at you. I'm in engineering, and as a group we're often known for our inability to be able to string two words together. Having been to university, you'd have a damn good idea about what arts faculties think of engineers.
I don't know when you were educated but most of my schooling was in the 1960s. Standards have changed so dramatically since then it'd be no exaggeration whatsoever to say that my teachers would be horrified if they read the posts and editorials in El Reg pages. Back then; grammar was a serious business from which no one could escape.
What matters is being understood and understanding what other people have written. Today this is a problem but it was much less so back then. In short, that's comprehension and it used to be a large part of the English curriculum. In a few generations, things have gotten so bad that it's a regular occurrence in my profession to find that we can no longer make sense of manufacturer's engineering manuals and often we have to rewrite them before they're put into service. What makes it so bad is that both writer and reader suffer the same English comprehension problems. The matter is so serious that we'd be liable under occupational and health and safety if the manuals weren't rewritten in a clear, understandable and succinct form. It's not that manuals contain excessive jargon, rather the language and sentence structure used simply doesn't make sense. I should add these manuals aren't from Asia and in Ginglish but are written in English and are sourced from English-speaking countries. Similarly, I find myself regularly correcting reports others have written, and I'm forever correcting misused apostrophes that randomly appear almost anywhere in formal correspondence written by secretarial staff--they're supposed to be correcting my grammar, not vice versa! 30 years ago, this role reversal would have been unthinkable.
It may be of surprise but I am somewhat familiar with French contractions. I've French relatives and I recall that once in Arles I found myself dealing with a hotel receptionist only to find that his contractions combined with the local vernacular brought the conversation to a halt. It was at this point he reached under the counter, produced two English-French dictionaries and handed one to me. We then burst out laughing. The French may have codified the contracted forms but as I've discovered that doesn't help in many parts of the country. Then again, France has the Académie française to formalise its language but as we know, such regulation would never work in English. Nevertheless, perhaps having no academy in English is part of our problem.
Re 'tsunami', having worked in Japan for a while, and here in Australia where I reside, I'm often in contact with Japanese people but that doesn't make me expert in Japanese. Anyway, as you've asked, here's my take on it. The constant 'ts' is pronounced similarly as in 'cats' except it's at the beginning of the word unlike in English where it's only used at the end. 'tso' (with short vowel) may be a better pronunciation of 'ts' when used alone. The Japanese consonant 'tsu' (the small hiragana 'っ' or katakana 'ッ' sokuon symbol) is just one mora and the word 'tsunami' is both regular and short (almost abrupt). With only one mora in its name, the Japanese town of Tsu (loosely meaning port) claims the shortest sounding name in the world.
However, all that is away from what I was driving at, which is that English has appropriated 'tsunami' for no other reason other than it's fashionable then screwed up its pronunciation in the process as the word requires a modicum of effort to say properly in English. Moreover, doing so it's killed off the perfectly good English term 'tidal wave'. Furthermore, there's no process in English to correct bad or stupid usage. I used this example not because I wanted to take on the role of a grammar cop but because written English in many areas is getting so bad that entropy has set--people can no longer understand what's been written. The apostrophe just serves as a trivial example; do away with it and entropy is increased, information is lost as there'll be instances when the possessive becomes ambiguous.
In spite of all its logical inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies, one keeps the apostrophe in English because there's nothing better. Grammarians like yourself might hate its grammatical inconsistencies but hundreds of years of convention (wherein editors and master printers have formalised its use) have led to a consensus, a result that was useful enough for everyone to use and easy enough for schoolkids to learn if taught the simple rules.
You say "the whole 's/s' thing is another pointless mess" and I'd be one of the first to agree with you. However, you grammarians have done nothing to rectify the problem except completely pull the fragile edifice down, now we've nothing but a 'guaranteed' mess. A glance at Fowler from the viewpoint of formal logic and it looks like a mess (at least it does to me), but nevertheless those rules worked, English written within the bounds of these rules was comprehensible and often a pleasure to read. Now it seems everybody's given up.
In the bookshelf directly within reach of me is my copy of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002 ed)--all 1800+ pages of the damn thing. How the average human being is supposed to get his or her head around its contents is beyond me. This huge edifice is clearly a remarkable and scholarly insight into the workings of the English language but it's contents have not distilled out or trickled down into the schools or infused into the curriculum thus resulting in students having better English skills than those of 50 years earlier. To the contrary, there's widespread and irrefutable evidence that English as is taught today is leaving people much less skilled in the language. For years now, both universities and industry have been crying out over the fact, some universities have even offered remedial English courses to new entrants to compensate for the failure of the education system.
"It's you sort that convinces people that grammar is valueless, so why not leave the matter to people who actually understand the matter?"
So how do my sort convince people that grammar is valueless? I've never said that, and from what I've written here and elsewhere, it ought to be very clear that my view is quite the contrary. I've never sought the limelight in this debate and it's a tragedy that I've found it necessary for me to have to speak out. Literacy has fallen to such a low level that I'm feeling the repercussions directly in technical and engineering work. When technical and scientific industries start speaking out about the language and increasing illiteracy then clearly something's very wrong.
With respect, the literacy establishment's let the ball drop and we techies have only picked it up with great reluctance, it's been an act of desperation on our part. You grammarians--custodians of the English language--have a lot to answer. For the last half-century or so, you've let established rules slip but failed to replace them with equal or better ones. The consequential effects have been that over several generations, many students have graduated whilst still teetering on the border of illiteracy. The consequential effects on our society have been enormous.
We disagree but thank you for an enlightened discussion.
Actually with English being my second (or third) language they're/their/there are significantly less likely to be misspelled than what I've seen by native speakers. (the same holds true to than/then, lose/loose. your/you're).
Usually non-natives first learn to write and then talk properly, so the fact the words sound the same doesn't matter that much.
Actually, that's a mistake only English speakers make.
Foreigners like me have had to learn the hard way each word and we don't confuse them just because they sound alike. English speakers have an appalling grasp of their language's grammar.
The worst imho: I should of done. How in hell can you mistake words with such different meanings?
"Should of" is the result of refusing to accept the correct form -- "should've" -- in writing. "Should've" is the act of the conditional perfect moving to a more synthetic form. No-one ever says "I of been" for "I have been", so it is clearly now a different thing in the native speaker's internal model.
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They're certainly not the first big corporation to do this, and anyone else dealing with US consumers will no doubt follow suit in short order. It is clearly in their advantage to do so, if they can... MS aren't being any more evil than the next giant corporation here.
Exactly which court is guilty of this particular act of screwing of the little guy? There must have been some sort of fairly recent precedent.
Its spelled Dred by the way. And while its fucked up, I dont think it compares to declaring an entire population to be property that isnt protected by the constitution.
The name of the case was AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion.
The majority opinion was backed by ALL of the Right-wing members of the Court, as well as Kennedy, who switches sides at his own leisure.
Not an issue if the quality of your writing is sufficient that it contributes to the overall meaning. For example, Shakespeare is quite fond of starting sentences with 'and' or 'but'.
For most people though, it is indeed a sin - and therefore a good general rule.
Here are a few spares for the next time you get antsy: ''''''''''''''
It's hard enough to keep uninstalling those online spellcheckers every *ç%& idiot developer insists on inserting in operating systems and applications so I can retain the muscle memory that allows me to type "the" without needing that crap to then start worrying about apostrophes as well. Not that I don't care (I do, and I'm pretty good at their use unless I want to annoy grammar nazis), but I think that sort of complaint gets in the way of communication instead of enhancing it.
Just my two cents or whatever currency you use.
While I agree there are a lot of things wrong with this, the amount you can be awarded in compensation is not one them.
The most expensive XBox 360 or version of Windows is less than half the maximum award you can get in small claims. So if you are unhappy that Windows came with Media Player, you XBox overheats or you're still banging on about how IE should be removed because it killed Netscape.. then getting a grand seems more than fair. provided the store you bought it from won't give you your money back.
The things that are wrong with it also don't include not being able to get $5 from a class action lawsuit.. oh you think you'll get more than that? Guess again, the money from class action suits goes to ambulance chasing lawyers, not the people affected. You'll probably get a free mamogram or teeth cleaning, thrown in, but you won't get cold, hard cash.
The real thing wrong with it is that Microsoft will have some sort of control over the retribution.. I mean compensation..
The real victims of Microsoft are not users. It's what they do to other software companies that matters and they won't be using class action suits.
"Guess again, the money from class action suits goes to ambulance chasing lawyers, not the people affected."
You're missing the point (and for all you pedants out there, the apostrophe is in the right place). The point isn't necessarily how much money the plaintiff gets, It's about how much money the defendant pays. A couple-a 5 grand findings here or there (to quote the Jefferson Starship) "doesn't mean shit to a tree". However, a several tens of millions dollar finding (or two) tends to modify behavior a bit (or, at least, makes shareholders antsy). Yes, most of the money goes to the lawyers, and that is fucked up. However, if lining the pockets of a few lawyers is what it takes to alter bad behavior, I'm all for it. (Besides, once the class action suit has been settled, if you really want to try to get a big payday, decline membership in the class, and file you're own suit. The fact that the previous suit was found in your favor (or at least settled) will go a long way toward helping you win yours.)
Think about it for a second or two...if class action suits are such a bad thing for the filers, why is Corporate America™ trying so hard to limit them?
"You're missing the point (... the apostrophe is in the right place)"
In that case, yes it is. I don't see how anybody could argue that the apostrophe would be placed anywhere else.
"and file you're own suit"
There, however, you really have shot yourself in the foot as no apostrophe is required at all. You should have written 'your'.
If you're going to mention correct grammar or spelling or punctuation in your post then please do try to make sure you get it right.
It now takes one person to be able to afford a long, expensive case with not a certainty of winning and be able to pay for a lawyer through appeals for years.
If they looked like losing they could also then settle out of court with a gagging clause and every person following would have to risk another full blown trial.
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Over here in the UK we have the "Sale of Goods Act" which states that a product must be "of merchantable quality". No Microsoft product has EVER achieved that status, so everyone who's ever suffered the indignities of trying to deal with MS products should have their purchase price refunded in full....
Up to a point. It's also worth noting that if you *do* use MS's arbitration, then you don't have a subsequent appeal to the courts. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/22/nominet_rules_mean_abusive_domain_name_registrations_finding_cannot_be_reheard_says_high_court/
Disclaimer -- no doubt I've missed a boat load of specifics out, edge cases, things that are or aren't included in that judgement that apply here...
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"It's not MS who decided it, it is the court. Read the article."
I did. It says the courts made anti class action clauses possible after AT&T first did it without approval. The clause is still optional so Microsoft are not obliged to take them up on it, but they did elect to take them up on it. So I stand by my original question even though, thankfully, the situation doesn't affect me. Which is good because I will not set aside my options to hold a company to account for the convenience of being allowed to use their product.
They are one of the companies that bought and paid for the government of the United States of America. Gee whiz, that should be pretty obvious since the US edited its constitution to read: We the corporate interests in order to form a more profitable market...
There is nothing that I found that says potential class action claimants couldn't collude to introduce small claims in hundreds of jurisdictions on the same day instead of pursuing a class action. That virtually guarantees MS will not have enough coverage lawyer-wise (unless they contract out at going rates - $) to handle the deluge.
Bonus is that the individual winners will actually get the money, vs the typical class-action lawsuit.
Our local laws allow for reasonable compensation for time lost, costs, etc.
Now, I don't agree with the SC's assertion that a standard form should allow companies to get out of class action status, however the ambulance chasers have brought this on us by their very actions.
"There is nothing that I found that says potential class action claimants couldn't collude to introduce small claims in hundreds of jurisdictions on the same day instead of pursuing a class action."
Except that it's easy for a large company to file motions to delay small-claims courts. "Sorry, your honor, our lawyers are all busy; we lack the ability to have adequate representation that Tuesday. We would like to petition the court to have the date moved to six weeks from next Thursday."
This happened to me when I tried to sue United Parcel Service in small-claims court when they smashed up a computer of mine and then refused to pay the insurance. They kept coming in on the appointed day and petitioning for a delay, over and over again, every one of which the judge granted without hesitation. By the time all was said and done, it didn't matter if I won or lost; the amount it had cost me to take the time off work to show up in court each time, over a period of *months*, was greater than the amount of the damage.
So your lawyer asks for costs, which includes time taken off work.
Your lawyer should also have been pointing out that the repeated delays were unreasonable and could only be a deliberate stalling tactic aimed at increasing said costs, which should therefore be punitive.
Or did you have a useless lawyer?
There do seem to be a lot of those.
You are assuming the lawyer gets paid to help you, which is not how many lawyers see it. They get paid so they get richer. As the lawsuit is delayed, they charge more. The same holds for the lawyers of UPS. What incentive do they have to get things over with quickly if they get paid by the hour?
Me, cynical?
Doesn't work. There is a principle in English law, that a claimant must mitigate losses to the plaintiff. So you are expected to use a holiday from work to attend court. If you choose not to, and take an unpaid leave of absence - that's your problem, not the plaintiffs.
The bottom line, is the only people whose time is paid for in court is the lawyers.
This only works if Microsoft have got their sums right. Part of the reasoning behind a class action suit was that by pooling resources, it costs less for both sides because the evidence only needs to be presented once, rather than multiple times.
However, my impression is that the lawyers pocket most of the money, having taken years to conclude a case, and the claimants get very little in comparison, so perhaps the net benefit may be that most claimants get more, it costs Microsoft less and the lawyers lose out.
The way to get around the non-disclosure agreement issue is to make sure that a third party knows the details as the case progresses so that you can sign at the end with a clear conscience because you are not, as of that time, going to disclose anything.
In the US our Small Claims Court is different in every state. In New York State, you can sue for up to treble damages. If you can prove you were harmed the $1,000 could become $3,000.
Who knows what a local small town judge might award you! He/She might even have a hard on for Micro$haft.
Filing fee is only $25. Oh and you CANNOT bring a lawyer.
Time for us to create a "Consumer Purchase Agreement", whose terms override any manufacturer's EULA. The way to make it enforceable is to tie it to credit card payments. In other words "By accepting payment from this card, you agree to these terms". This can apply to *every* payment, not just to Microsoft. If lots of people use this method it will even the tables with sellers. "Accept these even-handed terms, or we won't buy your stuff."
Upvoted it, but don't think it can be workable. I'm not a lawyer, but think such things as checks for partial payment marked "paid in full" fail, and this sounds a bit like that. However there are credit cards that provide some additional warranty that might help.
The out I like best is to refuse the license agreement, try to get a refund if you want, and install your favorite Gnu/Linux (mine's Debian)
If what MS is saying is true - that someone could get the money quicker through a smaller court, and then be done with it, probably meant to save them money from having to do a large case, and potentially pay up to loads of people - does that mean, that one such small case could act as precedent?
In the days of the internet, I must admit I have a hard time seeing this as a clever strategy.
Sure, you might not get everyone who was affected by some issue, but if something is big enough, it'll get around. Tons of people will simply go to a court and point to the precedent set previously.
MS will likely have to be represented at each individual case, costing them a lot in lawyer fees? Plus will have to pay up individual payments - costing them administration fees in addition to the actually cost of the damages.
Unless of course, they are just meaning to postpone the cases for ever, as was suggested earlier...
The Feds tried to break up Microsoft on account of their obvious monopoly. Microsoft just shrugged it off and won on appeal (won a slap on wrist). Their current contract structure, CALs, prevents competition from entering their arena because your license cost will largely remain unchanged even if you drop a certain portion of their products. If you are signed up with Microsoft, you take what they give you and like it. There are finally alternative options in Ubuntu, Lotus, Gmail (if you are brave), and Open/Libre. If you want to do something about it, drop Microsoft, but don't think that you are ever going to win a lawsuit against them.
I'm hardly surprised, anything Windows 8 related is a complete mess:
* The new GUI is nonsense for a non-tablet
* The application restrictions are absurd and probably violate anti-trust legislation
* The new version of the free development tools have been crippled, so even old OS's are not adequately supported; so the free software eco-system will ebb away and Computer students can no longer be tempted into proper Windows application development, so the MS ecosystem slowly dies.
I have progressively less reason to support these morons, and the BSD/Linux could actually become more attractive than Windows despite it's flaws, even for current Windows power users!
Ballmer should be kicked out and the board revamped, otherwise Microsoft will gradually die.
just because MS say this is the case does not actually have any effect on the law
just like el Reg having a bar a the bottom sating (re cookies) "we'll assume you're happy to accept the cookies anyway." does not actually mean anything when the user happens to not be happy (as they haven't provided an "I'm not fine with this" button
jus sayin' - you can't simply declare law and think that it suddenly exists :)
Back in the days of real software, I used to do business with companies that would warrant that their products would behave as described in the product description.
More recently, as far as I know, the likes of MS have always tried to reject any warranty responsibilities other than manufacturing defects, ie if they sell you a PoS (oddly, there is already an OS called Windows PoS Ready [1]) then it's your fault not theirs.
Has the legality of such attempted rejection of their legal obligations to provide EU consumers with product that is of merchantable quality ever been tested in the courts?
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/evaluate/windows-embedded-pos-ready-2009.aspx
Apparently Redmond learned the wrong thing about Windows Vista and Windows XP.
1. [Windows Vista] Using Market share to throw crap on the wall for your customers to sort out is not good business. People don't pay to conduct Beta Testing for companies.
2. [Windows XP] The market determines the value of your products. If you replace an effective tool with a less effective one, they will pass on it and stick with what works for them.
Ending the ability of customers to seek redress through effective litigation is a counter-productive tactic. Microsoft sues their competitors and other infringers of IP continuously (just like all big business in the US). They then whine about "frivilous lawsuits" by consumers.
I wasn't considering "upgrading" to Windows 8 anyway, but this nails it. I would rather go Open Source then hang with a Fortune 500 who wants my cake, icing, plate, wallet, in addition to attempting to gag and bind me. That's not a good business model for consumers.
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