and I'd agree with you if he didn't contact support, but if he did I have no sympathy for them.
Your credit card issuer has this little thing called a "Claims Department." This department researches cases of "fraud" and when they determine that there was a fraudulent charge to your card, they can file what is called a "chargeback." These chargebacks will refund you the full amount that you were fraudulently charged in addition to any interest accrued on the purchase, and also charge the merchant a fee of usually $35. So if Mr. Lassoff did contact Microsoft, and they weren't willing to refund him without much trouble, then the proper response to that is to file a claim with his credit card issuer... not file a class-action lawsuit.
i dont get why it matters to you
Sorry, I guess I mistook Slashdot for a discussion forum. Why are these comment posting thingies here?
Will I be able to install Linux on it now? If so, I will buy one.
Don't buy a PS3 simply for the sake of installing Linux on it. The PS3 only has 256MB of system RAM and Linux does not run well at all on it (I know this from personal experience with a PS3-specific Linux flavor). Just build a computer for $500.
The article makes no mention of Mr. Lassoff's experience when he contacted the Xbox Live support line, and I would expect that if it were less than expedient, that would be a major part of this lawsuit. I have a feeling that he didn't contact them at all, and instead is going straight to suing them. Now don't get me wrong... I absolutely despise the points system due to the fact that the point packs are not proportional to item costs, and that IS intentionally misleading... but it is not fraudulent or illegal, and the points system itself is not what the lawsuit is about.
Quoted FTA:
As for Lassoff, he's no stranger to suing big tech companies and other organizations. Records show he sued Google in 2006, claiming the search ads he placed fell victim to click fraud. He also sued Bally's Casino in Atlantic City in 2005, claiming he was attacked by a drunken patron while sitting at a poker table.
Google is known for their strict policies regarding click fraud, and they are very good at detecting it and very good at not charging the victims and not paying the perpetrators when it happens. This man must be afraid of phones or something, because a simple phone call should have resolved that issue as well. And as for the casino incident..... suing the casino because a patron attacked you? Are you fucking kidding me?
If this class action suit isn't thrown right the fuck out of court, what little hope I have left for our nation's judicial system will be lost.
I disagree - you could use the current model with a built in flash drive that only needs to be activated during saves.
I disagree. In order to do that, you would have to
A) Capture activity in real time with a resistive touch mechanism.
or B) Invent a method of detecting the current state of the screen at save time, which would involve a light-sensitive grid (or perhaps some other way that you could detect the presence of the liquid crystal material) covering the entire screen and capable of detecting a resolution that would be useful for storage of hand-drawn images, etc.
Method A would completely negate any of these energy-efficiency claims that, as I said before, are one of the major selling points for the device, and method B would make the device extremely expensive and would probably take a year of R&D to even be feasible.
This thing is designed to be a cheap way of drawing and writing notes in a way that isn't messy and doesn't require you to have spare pens in case one runs out of ink. If you want to store your notes... use a computer?
It looks to me that this is not an electronic device, per se. There's no ability to save because it does not detect the presence of a writing object or the state of the surface. It seems to be just a really crappy, but durable, LCD screen. When you apply pressure, you displace the liquid crystal material. And when you "erase" the board, it applies electricity to redistribute everything. In order to add saving features, the "energy-efficient" part of the device that seems to be one of the major selling points would pretty much have to go down the drain.
This is not meant to be a permanent record, and I don't know why they relate it to a pad of paper... it's more like a monochrome dry erase board.
(I am not affiliated with the makers; I have never seen one of these up close and personal; The above writing is based purely on assumption from looking at pictures and reading what it does)
inducement to break an NDA violates a civil statute
"I'll give you $5000 to tell me stuff about the Apple Tablet" != "I'll give you $5000 to break your NDA and tell me stuff about the Apple Tablet.... anonymously, of course."
The responsible disclosure. The one where only a couple people in the world (if any) know how to exploit it before the patch. Instead of the irresponsible one where every script kiddie knows how to exploit it before the patch. You'd think that would be common sense.
The thing is... software vendors AREN'T patching their software upon "responsible disclosure." And then they even go so far as to file gag orders when security researchers threaten to disclose the vulnerability at a public forum or what have you. Krebson is fed up with it and they're just going to skip the responsible disclosure part and go straight to the public presentation in hopes that the vendors will get their acts together and actually start patching these holes if they want to keep their customers.
They settled out of court for $2 million (USD) but immediately dropped Adobe from the suite in favor of free software.
Kudos to Adobe for screwing themselves so bad.
I'd hardly call getting a $2,000,000 check "screwing themselves". Especially since, if they hadn't -- as you say -- "screwed themselves" like that, they would have gotten nothing.
This isn't about "I don't like pretzels, I want peanuts", it's about stupid legislation that makes no sense. Why cause the airlines distress by forcing them to make a special seating area for people with peanut allergies? And why make only ONE airline do it? And why is this dumb bitch going to such great lengths to get peanuts banned on all flights when she can just wear a fucking mask?
How about you just don't fly? Or perhaps call reservations and talk to them about your issue and see if they can move you to a different flight if there's a cat on the plane? Same thing for peanuts... I know for a fact that you can tell Southwest that you have a peanut allergy and they will tell the ramp supervisor to stock extra alternate snacks and the flight attendants not to serve peanuts that flight (citation). Other airlines I'm sure have similar policies.
As for my Vertical Overabundance Disorder, perhaps you should take a look at your own signature. Also, thank you AC below for the magnesium tip... I'll look into that.
Actual direct exposure to a lack of leg room has a tendency to cause cramps sometimes lasting several days. Unlike someone with a peanut allergy, though, I must pay extra to tell the airline not to give me that which could cause me harm. I feel this is discriminatory and I demand legislation.
And the whole "PCs and Macs can get viruses" thing is really quite funny.
You write that as though Macs can't get viruses. I have personal experience dealing with viruses on the Macs at work while my boss was refusing to get antivirus because Macs don't need it. We have antivirus now, and now we don't need to reinstall OSX every month because FCP crashes 24/7.
What torques me off, is that MS can get away with being stagnant for 5 years in OS development.
Hardly. Vista was almost completely new code, and while they were developing it, they were still releasing frequent updates to XP. Hell, SP2 almost made XP look like a different OS. Then the problems with Vista were due in very little part to Microsoft themselves. It was more the hardware developers that didn't feel inclined to make and test drivers during the many public betas, and the many more MSDN betas for Vista. The whole stereotype that Vista is bad is about 2 years outdated.
FCP cost lots of money to develop. It was subsidised by expensive Mac h/w sales. Without that system and without others buying Macs, you wouldn't have FCP.
A. Subsidization is bullshit. I shouldn't have to spend more on Windows 7 to make Visual Studio Pro cheaper for the few people who use it... same thing for Macs and FCP.
B. I was surprised to look at the Apple store and see that FCS only costs $1000 now... it used to be $2000. Still, though... the rates for video production are very high, and somebody who does that professionally can afford $2000 for the thing that pays for their dinner every night. It doesn't need to only be $1000, and the price for Macs themselves can be made lower as a result... except that would greatly cut into Apple's profits and there are plenty of drones who like shiny things that are willing to pay out the ass for said shiny things (and still willing to pay more for incremental upgrades and features that should have already been in place), so Apple really has no incentive for lowering prices.
I could have said that too, but that always gets me modded down and flamed no matter how much substance the rest of my post has, so I'm done making that argument.
Most of the designers at Apple are people that are actual professional consumer product designers.
So you're saying that the designers for Sony, Lenovo, Dell, et al, aren't actual professional consumer product designers because you don't have an appreciation for an industrial look? That's just foolish.
Apple's Mac vs PC ads play on very old stereotypes that are no longer meaningful. Crashes, slowness, viruses, etc. My PC hasn't had a kernel panic since I was running Win 7 build 6959 (before public beta) and I installed beta drivers for my graphics card... went back to Vista drivers (until nVidia fixed their 7 drivers) and haven't had a blue screen since. My PC has no problems with slowness even with a bunch of shit running in the background on boot. Without proper antivirus or firewall, both PCs and Macs can get viruses... and WITH proper antivirus/firewall, it is very unlikely that anybody would have problems... I sure don't.
But that's all that Macs have on PCs, and people gobble it up as fact. Microsoft could go on an anti-Mac offensive, but -- knowing the Internet -- that would probably cause more bad press than good, and everything else they can come up with doesn't have much effect or is extremely shit (Songsmith, anybody?).
Don't get me wrong... I don't think Macs are bad. I actually love OSX, but I don't want to spend the money on a Mac when I could be tinkering with and progressively upgrading my hardware for my gaming while not worrying about whether things will be compatible with OSX. I am a professional in the television broadcast industry, and I refuse to use anything besides Final Cut Pro for video editing. That leaves me to wonder, though, how Apple gets away with almost a 50% share in the professional video editing market... while making FCP only for their own operating system... when Microsoft gets shit for including a basic feature that all OSes include while they don't in any way interfere with the use of an alternative for the software they include (I'm talking about IE -- for the idiots out there).
they aren't the leader in innovation in the PC market
You're right, they aren't. Apple tends to take other peoples' ideas and make them look nice. That, in conjunction with the best marketing department on the planet, allows them to overprice their 18-month-obsolete hardware and get the gotta-have-the-latest-and-greatest Apple fanboys to wait in line to buy something with minor hardware upgrades.
Slashdot Mirror
and I'd agree with you if he didn't contact support, but if he did I have no sympathy for them.
Your credit card issuer has this little thing called a "Claims Department." This department researches cases of "fraud" and when they determine that there was a fraudulent charge to your card, they can file what is called a "chargeback." These chargebacks will refund you the full amount that you were fraudulently charged in addition to any interest accrued on the purchase, and also charge the merchant a fee of usually $35. So if Mr. Lassoff did contact Microsoft, and they weren't willing to refund him without much trouble, then the proper response to that is to file a claim with his credit card issuer... not file a class-action lawsuit.
i dont get why it matters to you
Sorry, I guess I mistook Slashdot for a discussion forum. Why are these comment posting thingies here?
256MB of XDR has enough bandwidth to match 2GB DDR.
Wrong. It doesn't matter how fast your RAM is if you don't have enough... and 256MB isn't enough to do a whole lot.
Will I be able to install Linux on it now? If so, I will buy one.
Don't buy a PS3 simply for the sake of installing Linux on it. The PS3 only has 256MB of system RAM and Linux does not run well at all on it (I know this from personal experience with a PS3-specific Linux flavor). Just build a computer for $500.
Let's just SUE 'EM!
The article makes no mention of Mr. Lassoff's experience when he contacted the Xbox Live support line, and I would expect that if it were less than expedient, that would be a major part of this lawsuit. I have a feeling that he didn't contact them at all, and instead is going straight to suing them. Now don't get me wrong... I absolutely despise the points system due to the fact that the point packs are not proportional to item costs, and that IS intentionally misleading... but it is not fraudulent or illegal, and the points system itself is not what the lawsuit is about.
Quoted FTA:
As for Lassoff, he's no stranger to suing big tech companies and other organizations. Records show he sued Google in 2006, claiming the search ads he placed fell victim to click fraud. He also sued Bally's Casino in Atlantic City in 2005, claiming he was attacked by a drunken patron while sitting at a poker table.
Google is known for their strict policies regarding click fraud, and they are very good at detecting it and very good at not charging the victims and not paying the perpetrators when it happens. This man must be afraid of phones or something, because a simple phone call should have resolved that issue as well. And as for the casino incident..... suing the casino because a patron attacked you? Are you fucking kidding me?
If this class action suit isn't thrown right the fuck out of court, what little hope I have left for our nation's judicial system will be lost.
I disagree - you could use the current model with a built in flash drive that only needs to be activated during saves.
I disagree. In order to do that, you would have to
A) Capture activity in real time with a resistive touch mechanism.
or B) Invent a method of detecting the current state of the screen at save time, which would involve a light-sensitive grid (or perhaps some other way that you could detect the presence of the liquid crystal material) covering the entire screen and capable of detecting a resolution that would be useful for storage of hand-drawn images, etc.
Method A would completely negate any of these energy-efficiency claims that, as I said before, are one of the major selling points for the device, and method B would make the device extremely expensive and would probably take a year of R&D to even be feasible.
This thing is designed to be a cheap way of drawing and writing notes in a way that isn't messy and doesn't require you to have spare pens in case one runs out of ink. If you want to store your notes... use a computer?
The ones I've heard of that do that require special paper. They have a sensor on the pen facing down that reads some pattern printed on the paper.
It looks to me that this is not an electronic device, per se. There's no ability to save because it does not detect the presence of a writing object or the state of the surface. It seems to be just a really crappy, but durable, LCD screen. When you apply pressure, you displace the liquid crystal material. And when you "erase" the board, it applies electricity to redistribute everything. In order to add saving features, the "energy-efficient" part of the device that seems to be one of the major selling points would pretty much have to go down the drain.
This is not meant to be a permanent record, and I don't know why they relate it to a pad of paper... it's more like a monochrome dry erase board.
(I am not affiliated with the makers; I have never seen one of these up close and personal; The above writing is based purely on assumption from looking at pictures and reading what it does)
inducement to break an NDA violates a civil statute
"I'll give you $5000 to tell me stuff about the Apple Tablet" != "I'll give you $5000 to break your NDA and tell me stuff about the Apple Tablet.... anonymously, of course."
The responsible disclosure. The one where only a couple people in the world (if any) know how to exploit it before the patch. Instead of the irresponsible one where every script kiddie knows how to exploit it before the patch. You'd think that would be common sense.
The thing is... software vendors AREN'T patching their software upon "responsible disclosure." And then they even go so far as to file gag orders when security researchers threaten to disclose the vulnerability at a public forum or what have you. Krebson is fed up with it and they're just going to skip the responsible disclosure part and go straight to the public presentation in hopes that the vendors will get their acts together and actually start patching these holes if they want to keep their customers.
Or perhaps their government is just less corrupt than ours is.
I lol'd heartily.
If that country won't take responsibility for the poisons they export to us, why are we dealing with them?
Because it's cheap.
Autism vaccine is linked to flu in children. News at 11.
They settled out of court for $2 million (USD) but immediately dropped Adobe from the suite in favor of free software.
Kudos to Adobe for screwing themselves so bad.
I'd hardly call getting a $2,000,000 check "screwing themselves". Especially since, if they hadn't -- as you say -- "screwed themselves" like that, they would have gotten nothing.
This isn't about "I don't like pretzels, I want peanuts", it's about stupid legislation that makes no sense. Why cause the airlines distress by forcing them to make a special seating area for people with peanut allergies? And why make only ONE airline do it? And why is this dumb bitch going to such great lengths to get peanuts banned on all flights when she can just wear a fucking mask?
How about you just don't fly? Or perhaps call reservations and talk to them about your issue and see if they can move you to a different flight if there's a cat on the plane? Same thing for peanuts... I know for a fact that you can tell Southwest that you have a peanut allergy and they will tell the ramp supervisor to stock extra alternate snacks and the flight attendants not to serve peanuts that flight (citation). Other airlines I'm sure have similar policies.
As for my Vertical Overabundance Disorder, perhaps you should take a look at your own signature. Also, thank you AC below for the magnesium tip... I'll look into that.
Actual direct exposure to a lack of leg room has a tendency to cause cramps sometimes lasting several days. Unlike someone with a peanut allergy, though, I must pay extra to tell the airline not to give me that which could cause me harm. I feel this is discriminatory and I demand legislation.
Can I please have a special government-enforced seating zone that has an extra 6" of leg room, at no extra charge?
And the whole "PCs and Macs can get viruses" thing is really quite funny.
You write that as though Macs can't get viruses. I have personal experience dealing with viruses on the Macs at work while my boss was refusing to get antivirus because Macs don't need it. We have antivirus now, and now we don't need to reinstall OSX every month because FCP crashes 24/7.
What torques me off, is that MS can get away with being stagnant for 5 years in OS development.
Hardly. Vista was almost completely new code, and while they were developing it, they were still releasing frequent updates to XP. Hell, SP2 almost made XP look like a different OS. Then the problems with Vista were due in very little part to Microsoft themselves. It was more the hardware developers that didn't feel inclined to make and test drivers during the many public betas, and the many more MSDN betas for Vista. The whole stereotype that Vista is bad is about 2 years outdated.
FCP cost lots of money to develop. It was subsidised by expensive Mac h/w sales. Without that system and without others buying Macs, you wouldn't have FCP.
A. Subsidization is bullshit. I shouldn't have to spend more on Windows 7 to make Visual Studio Pro cheaper for the few people who use it... same thing for Macs and FCP.
B. I was surprised to look at the Apple store and see that FCS only costs $1000 now... it used to be $2000. Still, though... the rates for video production are very high, and somebody who does that professionally can afford $2000 for the thing that pays for their dinner every night. It doesn't need to only be $1000, and the price for Macs themselves can be made lower as a result... except that would greatly cut into Apple's profits and there are plenty of drones who like shiny things that are willing to pay out the ass for said shiny things (and still willing to pay more for incremental upgrades and features that should have already been in place), so Apple really has no incentive for lowering prices.
They are not in the PC market
I could have said that too, but that always gets me modded down and flamed no matter how much substance the rest of my post has, so I'm done making that argument.
Most of the designers at Apple are people that are actual professional consumer product designers.
So you're saying that the designers for Sony, Lenovo, Dell, et al, aren't actual professional consumer product designers because you don't have an appreciation for an industrial look? That's just foolish.
Apple's Mac vs PC ads play on very old stereotypes that are no longer meaningful. Crashes, slowness, viruses, etc. My PC hasn't had a kernel panic since I was running Win 7 build 6959 (before public beta) and I installed beta drivers for my graphics card... went back to Vista drivers (until nVidia fixed their 7 drivers) and haven't had a blue screen since. My PC has no problems with slowness even with a bunch of shit running in the background on boot. Without proper antivirus or firewall, both PCs and Macs can get viruses... and WITH proper antivirus/firewall, it is very unlikely that anybody would have problems... I sure don't.
But that's all that Macs have on PCs, and people gobble it up as fact. Microsoft could go on an anti-Mac offensive, but -- knowing the Internet -- that would probably cause more bad press than good, and everything else they can come up with doesn't have much effect or is extremely shit (Songsmith, anybody?).
Don't get me wrong... I don't think Macs are bad. I actually love OSX, but I don't want to spend the money on a Mac when I could be tinkering with and progressively upgrading my hardware for my gaming while not worrying about whether things will be compatible with OSX. I am a professional in the television broadcast industry, and I refuse to use anything besides Final Cut Pro for video editing. That leaves me to wonder, though, how Apple gets away with almost a 50% share in the professional video editing market... while making FCP only for their own operating system... when Microsoft gets shit for including a basic feature that all OSes include while they don't in any way interfere with the use of an alternative for the software they include (I'm talking about IE -- for the idiots out there).
blah blah look & feel patents aren't valid etc
I didn't say "Look & Feel" patents. I said patents.
How is it that even after Apple comes out with its products that its competitors' ripoff copies often look so second-rate by comparison?
Patents.
they aren't the leader in innovation in the PC market
You're right, they aren't. Apple tends to take other peoples' ideas and make them look nice. That, in conjunction with the best marketing department on the planet, allows them to overprice their 18-month-obsolete hardware and get the gotta-have-the-latest-and-greatest Apple fanboys to wait in line to buy something with minor hardware upgrades.