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California Microsoft Settlement
Lord Prox writes "From news.com.com: A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows.
More Townsend and Townsend and Crew is info from the law firm here. Also note... you get vouchers in settlement good for buying computer related items, not just Microsoft products and/or can be traded and converted to cash!"
That's good and all, i'm glad to see they are trying to do something about it...but..why couldn't the price been just a little more? $5 to $29 is not going to make up for the companies who have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on microsoft products through the last 10 years or so. It's ridiculous.
fp?
your sins into me, oh my beautiful one.
what about compound interest on that for the period during the case and incured costs?
I wish i didn't live in a sucky country which wimped out of nailing Microsoft to a target and announcing open season. Is it too late to organise a class action do you think? They must have commited another antitrust violation today or something, or do they take the weekends off?
Here's hoping that exactly none of this money is used to buy upgrades to Windows XP.
Beep beep.
A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows.
Isn't it great when you're so rich you can break the law, then simply reimburse the people you scammed when, sometimes, they notice and react ? How many people got ripped off and never got their money back because they didn't have the time or energy to fight back big bad Microsoft ?
Did the hordes of people who wanted to buy bare computers but couldn't find any, and had a Windows license forced down their throats, get their money back yet ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So Microsoft admits that they overcharged for the price of Windows--does this mean that the price of Windows will now go down?
Don't forget, California has a $30-40 billion dollar shortfall this year. They're stuggling to find any source of cash they can... I'm sure they settled because they need an infusion of cash NOW...
Remember... when you can't walk away from the deal, there's no negotiation.
MS Dos is included but not Windows 3.x.
I love it. Part of the settlement administration website, managed by Rust consulting Inc., "... a class act in claims administration", located at http://microsoftcalsettlement.com/ is run on Microsoft IIS 5.0. I havn't seen the exact language of the settlement yet (does it cover Microsoft OSs more recent than Win05/98?) so it's hard to tell whether Rust Consulting Inc. will be filling out their own forms on their own website to claim their settlement coupons for their overpayment fot the OS running their website (or notifying their histing provider to do so).
-- CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
1. Overcharge by $40/copy.
2. Agree to refund $5 to $29/copy.
3. Profit!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Two-thirds of the unclaimed money will go to California public schools in a mix of donated Microsoft software and cash grants. Although the maximum value of the settlement is $1.1 billion, Microsoft could end up paying as little as $367 in cash, which is what it would owe to California public schools if no vouchers are claimed. If all vouchers are claimed, Microsoft would be required to pay the maximum, but schools would then get nothing.
.net developers tools. Wheres linux or bsd in the mix?
Long paste, but I have 2 concerns.
1. Are the software calculated at RETAIL. Very bad if they get to use these prices. Here in Redmond, if you have a buddy who works for m$ you can get stuff for dirt cheap, 15 bux for keyboard cheap.
2. This would just give all the schools Microsoft windows to run on all its desktops, with a copy of office and maybe even
Somehow, I suspect lawyers, or someone other than the alleged abused, are getting real money out of this deal and not silly coupons.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
From the article:
Microsoft isn't the first technology company ordered to pay large sums after finding itself a class-action defendant. In 1999, Toshiba settled a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit that arose from claims that the company had sold notebooks with defective floppy drives. Immediately after the settlement, the same lawyers that pursued Toshiba sued Compaq Computer, Emachines, Hewlett-Packard, NEC and Packard Bell NEC.
Anyone notice a pattern here? Some time ago I received a notice in the mail informing me that I was entitled to $10-$20 dollar discount on a future monitor purchase. (Remember that lawsuit about display area?) In order to get the voucher, however, I had to fill out some paperwork which would have required that I spend more time than the voucher was worth. The notice also stated that the law firm received $5 million in fees. Pathetic. Wonder what the legal fees were for the law firm in this case. Bet they aren't taking vouchers.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Windows 95 has fallen out of support and besides that, most people have gotten a new PC since then with ME or XP handcuffed to it. 98 is falling (has fallen?) out of support and even that has been largely replaced by newer versions (like it or not). How many people still hang on to their old licenses after the software is trash? There's gonna be like 10 claims from geeks swiping the license from granny's computer. Everyone else has trashed 'em or just don't give a crap about 16 bucks.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Many years ago Bank of America lost a class action lawsuit for some dubious practices. For example, make a deposit and write a check the same day. Odds are, the check will bounce and incur a hefty overdraft fee. After BoA settled I received a letter stating I could claim my portion by filling out the enclosed form, etc. etc., and I would receive vouchers good for banking services at BoA. Excuse me? What makes you think I would ever again trust them with my money?
I'll bet some lawyers made some serious money in the case, though.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I don't know about that. Windows has had the same basic user interface since 1995 (windows 95). While the core technologies have changed (9x codebase to NT), the look and feel haven't changed that much. As far as the end-user is concerned, I don't think the GUI will change that much in the near future. Maybe when Longhorn is finally finished it'll have a new codebase and some different methods of searching for files on the PC, but I bet someone who has only used Windows 95 will have little trouble learning to use it because of the similarities in the GUI. In essence, technology changes rapidly, yes. But, interfaces change slowly. We're still using the same basic I/O's we have for decades... keyboard and mouse. The GUI of operating systems will likely change very little in the near future as well b/c people like what they have now and don't want any radical changes. I hear all this talk about AI agents, voice communication with a PC, etc. etc... but, I don't see it happening for another decade or two at least -- maybe longer. It's still faster to type than to talk for most PC users. Perhaps we'll have a few more buttons on our keyboards and mice for "hot key" functions and maybe a few voice commands. Maybe Windows will put a few interesting things in their OS like virtual folders and stacking folders since with a database filesystem files can be in more than one folder at the same time... or a few new things here and there to the OS... I wouldn't be surprised if almost ALL software 10 years from now looks almost identical to today's except with more menus, options, and prettier colors. Word hasn't changed so much that it's unrecognizable from its first release. Neither have packages such as AutoCAD or the internet service provider AOL. (I had AOL instant messaging way back in 1995 and it's not that much different now in 2003)
When I started high school the district bought a roomful of PC's networked with Novel Netware. Anyone else remember the big leap (around 11th grade) from DOS based Word Processors to Windows based? Hell I still remember the vulcan-neckpinch commands needed to operate WordPerfect. At this point I was writing device drivers in C for DOS. (Gasp, I still have the reference manual for all of the interrupt handlers for DOS 5 and 6.)
In college I had to buy a Macintosh. Claris Works was my friend. My junior year they suddenly switched to PC's. I was on Coop an had to navigate MS Office. And just when people started to get good with NT, Linux came out. I moved on to scripting languages and SQL.
What have I learned from all this? Basically how to learn. Everything else is just details.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This is totally off topic, but look at the report at CAFR.
In short it says: "The State of California at the State-level has approximately $63.39 billion of the taxpayer's money it is not using, i. e. surpluses equal to $1,790 for every man, woman and child in California or $7,158 for a family of 4. This does not include all the additional surpluses that exist in the school districts, cities, or counties in California."
This is not made up - the information comes from the California State Controller's Office. Read the report and then get mad as Hell. They are struggling alright; struggling to get more of your money! Bunch of damned crooks - Democrats and Republicans alike.
Perhaps I'm being suspicious, but doesn't this claim process give the state of California the option of finding out those computer users who bought computers (eg. Dell, Gateway, PDA's) out of state, but didn't pay their local state tax? Claimants have to provide: proof of purchase, home address, and the software licenses purchased ....