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Microsoft Settles Six Class-Action Suits

Posted by timothy on from the cost-of-doing-business dept.

Bootsy Collins writes "Microsoft has reached a settlement in class-action lawsuits filed against them by five states and the District of Columbia. Two of the six settlements have already been approved by the relevant courts. The settlements would provide $200 million in vouchers to past purchasers of Microsoft software. The vouchers can be used to purchase hardware, software, or training; suprisingly (given plaintiffs' willingness to roll over on this issue in the past), vouchers used for software need not be used to purchase Microsoft products. More on this story from the Washington Post as well as many other news sources."

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Re:$200 million by GigsVT · · Score: 4, Informative

    36.5 days of interest at 5%

    --
    I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  2. Re:Oh Boy! Vouchers! by Liselle · · Score: 2, Informative

    It does print it on the receipt. Except that Wal-mart doesn't require a receipt for merchandise credit. show up with anything that a CS drone can scan with their little gun, and they will take it, and give you all the money you want on a Gift Card.

    RTFC?

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    Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
  3. Re:Oh Boy! Vouchers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Merchandise credit at a major retailer is nearly as good as cash. Use it at a Super Wal-mart, buy groceries.

  4. As if anyone will actually see them by saberworks · · Score: 2, Informative

    I signed up on the class action suit against MS (in CA) and still have not gotten anything (they were supposed to mail it). Some good winning a lawsuit against these guys does.

  5. MSFreePC.com by vonsneerderhooten · · Score: 4, Informative

    Anyone ever heard of this site? It's run by the same people that make Lindows, and it's been around for a while. They make it nice and easy to (1)determine if you're eligable to recieve any vouchers, (2)redeem said vouchers. Also, it's possible to get an entire pc- probably one of those $199 lindows pc's, but hey it's free. Are you gonna complain?

    -D

  6. Let's start the next suit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    We need to start the next class-action suit and this one is almost guaranteed to bankrupt even Microsoft!

    Every day I examine the logs on my firewall (linux, of course, do you think I'm nuts enough to trust any MS box naked on the net?) and find hundereds of Slammer, Blaster, etc, etc,etc probes looking for vulnerable Windows boxes. I am sure that most of these are compromised Windows boxes looking for more vulnerable Windows machines to infect. The rest are script kiddies looking to start a new round of Windows takeovers.

    Spammers are now advertising that they have large numbers of trojaned machines available for sending spam without anyone being able to trace who actually sent the spam. Does anyone want to wager how many of those are Windows machines?

    Recent articles on slashdot reported that large companies spend as much as 50% of their Web traffic just updating their Windows machines.

    How much Web traffic is due only to Microsoft's poor programming practices? How much faster would the Web be if Windows was written to be secure in the first place? How much productivity is wasted worldwide every day reading spam from compromised Windows machines, patching the latest vulnerability discovered in Windows and repairing those Windows machines that weren't patched fast enough?

    50 billion dollars is only a down payent on the cost of these things. We need to figure out how to start collecting it!