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Microsoft Will Pay If Its Bugs Damage Your Data
RMX writes "CNet is reporting on
a new Microsoft policy where
they will pay if their software damages your data
. There's a pretty low limit on what they will cover and "it also applies even if Microsoft knew or should have known about the possibility of the damages" but at least it's nice that they're specifying exactly to what length they'll go to cover their customers. Is this the "support" from proprietary vendors that corporations like so much?"
"Microsoft will reimburse direct damages up to $5 for problems associated with the new downloadable tool that wards off spyware, adware and any other "potentially unwanted software."
That is a very low price for data.
I don't think that corporations would care about this.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Five whole dollars???
Why would anyone migrate away from Microsoft products now?
P.S. On a serious note, doesn't this potentially open them up to being sued for damages? I know they're claiming otherwise in the EULA, but once the door is open...
I swear, if i had a buck for each time a Microsoft product damaged my dat...
Oh... wait...
Dammit .. I was hopeing that this would mean I could sue them every time installig one of their brain-dead OS's into an empty partition destroyed the data in the MBR, thus making the system unusbale , and a PITA to fix.
.. oh well.
Then I remembered I've never even attempted to run it on my machines for five years+
See, *this* is the kind of added value that could make commercial software
really worth the money, at least potentially. (I'm assuming here that the
blurb accurately reflects what's actually being done... which is probably
assuming too much, but there's always that, isn't there?) This is the sort
of thing Microsoft should be talking about when they talk about the value
they can provide. Assuming they're willing to actually do it.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
How do I make a claim? I should be getting 76 of these checks.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
"Microsoft offers $5 windfall for errant software"
Did anyone else find it extremely funny to see such flagrant sarcasm in this news.com.com headline?
I'm a big tall mofo.
$5 is nothing, probably doesn't even cover cost of applying for it. so why bother?
advertising scam about "financially backing" their software as opposed to OSS?
tax scam?
stock scam?
come on, it's got to be some sort of scam.
even if Microsoft knew or should have known about the possibility of the damage
This is the part that covers them for deleteing gigs worth of MP3s because the MP3s didn't have Windows Media(WMA) Digital Rights Management(DRM) signatures.
Oops. Our bad.
Have a nice day.
This seems like a weak, thinly veiled stab at open source.
E.g., Microsoft: "You run Debian? Great! But who'll pay if your data gets damaged?"
To which the obvious reply is: well, gee, my operating system hasn't ever really damaged my data -- as a matter of fact, last time my hard drive went bad, I was able to recover most of my data. Thanks anyway, though!
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
Anyways by that time I will also have restored the data from a backup. You DO have a backup strategy ... don't you?!?! ...
I thought step four was "Fire Rick Berman out of a cannon" ?
From memory...
Azh nazg durbataluk, azh nazg gimbatul, Azh nazg thrakataluk agh burzum ishi krimpatul! This sig blocked by Slashdot.
I believe that commercial software is, and should be treated as, an engineering discipline. Similarly, I think we need to accumulate some "best practices" that require commercial software to meet standards of robustness, stability, and functionality. We then need to crush, kill, and destroy anyone who fails to meet those standards.
Software's not a game teenagers play in their basements anymore; it's used on airliners, in cars, in hospitals, and all sorts of other places where a system crash is Not Acceptable. While you can find rare examples of folks who are willing to stick their companies on the line when it comes to the stability of their software, this is the exception, not the rule. Accepting financial liability for bugs in software is a good start. It's also, interestingly, something that only a commercial entity can do.
Acius the unfamous
Please send in your request along with $4.99 for shipping/handling...
I always understood the standart "if something bad happens to your PC while using our software it will always be your fault and not ours" clauses.
The companies honestly didn't care about you. Go call their support hotline, if they can help you, fine, if not, tough luck.
But Microsoft's 5$ offer kinda gives me the feeling they are mocking us.
"Sorry our tool mis-identifed your tax data as spyware and deleted it. Here are 5 bucks. Enough to drown you in 2 bottles of cheap booze till IRS arrives."
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Really, the only way any software could damage data would be a) if it deleted it, b) if it took a data file, mangled it, and wrote over the original, or c) did something wacky to the hardware to cause drive/media damage. I truly cannot recall having data ever mangled by a bad piece of software. MS stuff is also pretty good about making backup copies of whatever, prompting the user for saving, deleting, etc.
I think this is a pretty safe bet on their part. So much so that they'd probably be safe upping the ante to like $50 or $100 or more.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Well, technically you didn't lose the data...it just won't come back on command. You installed the update, you broke the computer. I don't think you're going to get anything.
Do we need a drm liscence to spend it?
Your skill in reading has increased by one point!
They offer a ridiculously small amount of cash for a narrowly defined kind of damage where no one will ever see the offer. Then they can turn around and say "Who will pay if Linux damages your data? No one, that's who!"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Multiply $5 by several thousand unsatisfied customers and you get $10,000, which is hardly enough to pain Bill Gates.
It's easy for all you Linux admins who cost so much to scoff at 5 bucks, but for the average windows professional, it's a lot of money!
I'm not sure about any other states, but here in Texas if you agree to any settlement then you cannot go back and sue regarding the same issue. For example, lets say you request the 5 dollars and find out later it costed you 5 million in damages. Too bad sucka, you settled for the orignal 5 bucks.
Very sneaky of MS. I gotta hand it to them for that.
Life is not for the lazy.
According to the AntiSpyware Beta end-user license agreement (EULA), Microsoft will reimburse direct damages up to $5 for problems associated with the new downloadable tool that wards off spyware, adware and any other "potentially unwanted software."
/. post seems to make it look like it's MS software in general. Sorry, you only get money if the Anit-Spyware program screws up your stuff.
They are talking only about the Beta for the MS Anti-Spyware. Everything in this
Rather than Microsoft Will Pay If Its Bugs Damage Your Data, the headline should have read Microsoft Says Your Data Is Only Worth $5 .
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I've seen that $5 liability limit before in other Microsoft EULAs. It's nothing new -- been there for years. I wonder why CNet is only now mentioning it???
I think this is more to cover Microsoft's own rear-end than it is to make us feel warm and fuzzy.
I just went through helping a company incorporate as a Limited Liability organizationin the UK last fall, and included in the articles of incorporation is a section that states that each member is only liable for 1 UK Pound. I think This is similar, If Microsoft states that they WILL cover up to $5 for data loss, they can't be sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars instead.
Of course, to claim your 5 dollars, you'll probably have to call MS's support line which will charge you 35 dollars per incident unless you have some sort of support contract (which you probably paid too much for in the first place).
Before I file a claim, i just want to know how much money my data is worth. I mean, 200gb drives full of she-male pr0n dosen't grow on trees you know...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Don't worry - it's been moderated correctly. First of all, all the links all go to www.getfirefox.com, a Firefox advocacy website with no details of 'security holes' supposedly rife.
"Installing Firefox requires downloading an unsigned binary from a random web server" - unsigned binary, true, but you can check MD5 hashes if you want confirmation that you've downloaded the right file. The 'random web servers' are all known mirrors.
"Installing unsigned extensions is the default action in the Extensions dialog" - Let's try installing a random extension from Mozilla Update. If this site wasn't explicitly whitelisted, I wouldn't be able to download an extension at all - and despite being whitelisted, I still get a warning dialogue popped up - with "Install Now" unselectable for three seconds, and warnings that this is an unsigned extension.
"There is no way to check the signature on downloaded program files" - Internet Explorer certainly doesn't, either.
"There is no obvious way to turn off plug-ins once they are installed" - Go to Tools, Extensions. You can remove them from here, or alter preferences if there are any to be changed.
"There is an easy way to bypass the "This might be a virus" dialog" - This requires the user to have actually downloaded an executable, tried to run it, been warned, and explicitly asked not to be told again.
"Firefox has also killed Linux" - Linux goes from strength to strength. A good, open-source web browser is one thing, but is no substitute for running the same browser on a better operating system - be that Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, or whatever else constitutes 'better', even Windows.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
"$5 should be enough for anybody."
Or was that 640k? I can't remember.
FLR
XP only has to corrupt my disk 40 times before it pays for itself!
My guess is that this is Microsoft's way of saying they don't think your data is worth anything.
$5? That doesn't pay for a case of soft drinks these days.
They seem to be saying that even if everything is wiped out, they only owe you $5. What's more now that you know this, you legally acknowledge this is all the liability MS has.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Will Linux distros pay if bugs cause you to lose your data?
Well, this only applies to data loss caused by the beta version of MicroSoft's anti-spyware. Guess how hard it's going to be to prove which element of the system actually caused the data loss, then estimate how many rebates they'll pay...I predict none. This is simply more weasle-work from the PR hacks.
OH WAIT it's open source so there's no accountability!
As it stands, nobody is truly accountable for anything, and look at the quality work that's inspired in so far Redmond. But, IMO, if Red Hat (for example) sells you a distro with known flaws, then they should be accountable because they're the one offering you a product not of merchantable quality but taking your money (the fact they didn't write the software is irrelevant; consumers shouldn't pay for mistakes that aren't their fault). But if you aren't paying, the merchant/customer contractual relationship isn't invoked; there is no implicit obligation on the part of the supplier to provide anything for free, let alone anything that works.
Nice FUD...now if you can just explain to me what kind of data loss I can suffer that would only represent $5 worth of time and why I should consider this offer anything more than an insult, I'll switch to Windows.
Blank until
Do they specify the amount of data loss? Maybe one could beat them in the legalese department and charge them $5 for each byte lost...
Id love to see that.