It does answer the question -- for now -- but as you say, it will be interesting to see what happens to PLoS and other similar ventures. Will people willingly donate via Paypal or other systems? Will such donations be restricted to just scientists or will the general public take an interest?
There may not be a completely satisfying answer to the question because the answer changes all the time, and what works today may not work next week. But I hope the open-access ventures can be sustained somehow over the long run.
PLoS (Public Library of Science) does it by a system of "author pays" in which most or all of the cost is borne by the submitter. Normally, this is rolled into the grant under which the work is done, but I believe special arrangements can be made for authors whose grants and/or institutions won't cover page charges.
I just assisted in the submission of a paper to J Cell Biol today (in fact, am still working on it -- preparing some stuff that needs to be sent via fedex/USPS) and here's the copyright assignment form the lab PI had to sign:
http://www.jcb.org/misc/copyright.pdf
There are apparently special terms for government employees (see the huge box with special info in it?) but as we're at a private university, that doesn't directly apply to us even though we are mostly funded by a federal agency (NIH).
Ah, thank you for the info on the cameras. However, the reason that plants are green is that they photosynthesize by means of a chemical called chlorophyll, which happens to be.... green.
In the autumn, the chlorophyll breaks down in many plants, causing the natural underlying colors of the leaves -- which were there all along but masked -- to be revealed.
Because you can get far higher resolution from such a camera since all the pixels in the CCD are dedicated to detecting shades of grey instead of one-third for red, another third for blue, another for green. Since the rovers are not looking for anything fast-moving, they can take their time taking each shot.
Some photographers use B&W film for a similar reason (but it doesn't arise the same way; I believe it is simply more finely grained) -- you get much finer detail than you do from even color transparency film.
Yepyep. I'll probably pick one up at some point, though right now I can't afford a new car. It's not really a Golf, but it's an A-platform car (like you say, so are the New Beetle and some of SEAT and Skoda's offerings, and so is the TT.) That means that some parts will fit -- some transmission parts and brakes, for example.
Ha. Surely you jest? Go look at the Phaeton. Low-end? Riiiiiiiiigggggggghhhhhht. Fortunately, the guy who came up with that idiotic idea isn't in charge anymore. If, like you (and the name) say, VW is the "low end", then why are they priced so high? If you're going to start moving the price up, you had better move the option sets up, too. They aren't doing that.
They want one because it's expensive and nobody else has one.
Unless you're building 1:1 scale car in your garage workshop, no matter what you buy, someone somewhere has one too. I guarantee it. People who buy cars for that reason are idiotic and deserve the gas-guzzler tax and insane fuel bills they have to pay.
I think that's why we're seeing interesting option sets on cars from Scion and Hyundai.
While Scion is made by Toyota, and therefore I trust that they will be reliable and rust apart before they quit running, I really don't want a Japanese appliance. I want a car that is fun to drive, that I love owning, that puts a smile on my face, that has a feel to it that isn't "I'm your refrigerator", that doesn't look like every bloody thing out there on the road. My Golf does that. A Hyundai crapbox will not.
Now, there is no real reason why small, inexpensive cars can't have some good stuff on them... except the aforementioned idiots-with-heads-up-asses running around in some corporate high rise somewhere. They are bleeding customers. Why can't they see it? For every person who buys some high-priced boat, there are five more who want a smaller car that isn't just a metal box with four wheels stuck to the corners. I'd be putting a lot more into satisfying all those people than into some far-smaller subset of people. The cars more people buy are what's going to be seen on the road more often, and seeing cars out there on the road is one of the big ways that people learn about interesting vehicles.
And what good is it going to do me if vehicle X has the feature I want (but I literally can't buy vehicle X for some reason) and the same company, which makes vehicle Y, on the same platform (or not) as vehicle X, and is fully capable of putting feature Z on vehicle Y as well as vehicle X, won't do it? I already said I can't buy vehicle X... is that likely to make me buy vehicle X? No, it's going to get me to tell them to add the feature on vehicle Y or lose a sale, future maintenance charges, and future sales... because a competitor out there WILL do it.
That's what's happening to VW. They waited too damn long. Especially now that people KNOW what stuff they aren't being given because some idiot thinks that artificial restrictions are a good idea. That doesn't work in the information age and in a global economy where there are other players in the same game.
Brands are dead. I know I read an article somewhere of how nearly everything is a commodity these days. Maybe there was a time when "status" and "branding" meant something. Not anymore.
Now give me my damn Navstar display on my damn radio, VW!;)
And then you'll have tons of people begging for access to accounts, and then you have to deal with proof that they're dead, etc. etc.
And then there's the fact that the guy AGREED to an agreement that says that once you die, no one else has any rights to the data.
Seems to me if you're that worried about your data after you die, put a copy of the account password in a safe deposit box that your family can access via the terms of your will.
That's caused by cars that have improperly aimed headlights or don't have an automatic leveling system (or a manual one that is improperly set). Because the lights are brighter than halogens, cars are supposed to have systems that will point them down again if for some reason the front of the car tilts up (on a hill, or if there are heavy items in the trunk/hatch area.)
Sadly, a lot of people install retrofit kits into US -DOT standard headlamps that were designed for halogen (incandescent filament) bulbs, not gas-discharge systems. Do it right and you don't get the glare.
If you want HIDs on your car, do it right. Don't cause inconvenience to everyone else on the road!
That would hold a lot more water if it weren't true that you can buy Audis in Europe, just like you can here. Sure enough, the Audis have the goodies... but the VWs do, too.
And even if that weren't true, I don't WANT a huge barge like an A6. I want a nice little Golf that scoots around peppily and happily and fits in tiny little parking spaces and doesn't use a ton of gas and is a heck of a lot more fun to drive than the aforementioned (relative) barge.
But I still want my goodies. And, faced by the fact that people are defecting to small-car-makers that WILL provide said goodies for people whose needs are similar to mine, VW is learning the hard way that it HAS to change its head-up-its-rear policies of shortchanging people this way.
VW's dealer network as a whole needs improvement here in the USA, but that's another argument entirely. Fortunately, my dealer has been good to me on the times when I've had to get something fixed I couldn't do myself.
I'm a VW enthusiast and I can rattle off a rather long list of great options that are available to European buyers of VW cars that those of us in the enthusiast community would love to be able to utilize but can't because for whatever reason VW doesn't think those of us in the US are worthy of getting the new geek toys. Such as:
- HID/xenon headlamps (better visibility) - Headlight washers (same as above) - Rear fog light (see cars ahead in heavy fog) - Front fog lights (see ahead in heavy fog) - In-car navigation (turn by turn routing) - Parking distance sensors (avoid hitting things) - Better seats (improved comfort) - Upgraded instrument clusters (electronic display) - Better diesel engines (less emissions & cost) - All-wheel-drive (safety in bad conditions) - More color choices (aesthetics) - "Smart" service intervals (fewer failures) - Handsfree phone kits (less distraction) - Radios that can receive traffic information... etc. etc. etc.
If these things appear on US-market cars, they're dumbed down, cheapened, or otherwise made useless, but more likely we don't get these things at all. Enthusiasts like me have to pay a premium (often twice what the options cost at purchase time) to get the same things that SHOULD be available, but aren't. We get no dealer support, we get no vendor support, dealers will void warranties FOR INSTALLING GENUINE VW PARTS that we WERE NOT OFFERED WHEN WE BOUGHT THE CAR BUT SHOULD HAVE BEEN, etc. etc., even if the dealer does the install when you pay them to (some will, some won't).
In short, VW doesn't really care about the US market, so don't expect to see the benefits of this any time soon if you live here in the US. They are FINALLY starting to notice that people are demanding these options, now that the competition is providing them (the Mazda 3, for example, has HIDs now, where the new Golf -- which has been on sale in Europe for THREE YEARS and we still don't get it, and won't, til next year -- will PROBABLY, but not definitely, finally offer them to US buyers). VW views us as an afterthought and is only finally giving in to the enthusiast community (and the public at large, which also wants convenience and comfort and safety, but doesn't know what shops to go to that can import stuff for you) now that people are defecting and going to other brands who DO listen.
(in case you're wondering... yes, I have reactivated some of these "missing" parts on my car, and believe that they should have been there from day one instead of my having to spend multiple hours reversing the end effects of a carmaker's determination to decontent their product and still charge us more every year.)
Indeed so. It's starting to change, though. This project supports encryption if you have a compatible client (Trebuchet (Win/Mac/*nix), Tinyfugue (*nix/Mac OS X), and BeipMU (Win) are all free of charge (the latter two are open source and the third might be; I'm not sure) and alsu support encryption.
That's the most likely tactic, although at least with Fuzzball MUCK (a server commonly used for more social-oriented games) the logging is optional, and as of v6.0, the server supports encrypted connections. Furthermore, even if logging IS turned on, many server operators don't keep them past 3-5 days, and given the (relatively) glacial speed at which lawyers operate, by the time the request is made the logs will be gone. (This is similar to what happened to the distribution site for nmap, if I remember rightly.)
So they can't monitor the connections because they're encrypted (if the user is smart) and they can't get the logs because no logs were kept. They're out of luck, in that case. (It's also incredibly easy to set up a MUCK server, as the software is available for Windows, Macs, and Unices, and it's open-source and you can review the code before compilation to avoid any backdoors. The clients are correspondingly multiplatform and free ones that support encryption are available for Win/Mac/*nix.
Established servers out there that also support encryption are still relatively rare but I would expect their numbers to rise as more admins install the new software.
Ugh. Fake escrow site? I'm buying an aftermarket car part, which is relatively expensive, through escrow. I checked ebay to see what site they recommended, as blindly letting someone suggest a no-name escrow site is a bad idea -- I suggested to the seller that we use escrow.com, since ebay directly recommended them, which he could verify himself by searching on ebay.com -- and we are doing so. So far, so good (item is in transit now). I have seen the warnings of fake escrow sites, and it's pathetic that even trying to buy and sell things the right way, by using escrow (recommended for anything worth $500 or more) can STILL result in your getting cheated.
Sadly, I think even the "use escrow" lesson hasn't penetrated to a lot of net buyers and sellers because I keep seeing a lot of reports of people on the same enthusiast site I bought this item through in which they've been defrauded by dishonest sellers.
At least you can feel a little better knowing you tried to do it the right way.
However, the presence of a clause which indicates that you can return your purchase for a refund indicates that the contract is not being offered to you without complete validity -- meaning that if the clauses about your not being able to do (X) with the software are going to be enforced, why isn't the ability to return it if you don't want it being enforced? You can't selectively pick and choose what you're going to enforce unless you want people to rightly argue that they are being wronged or that you have then voided your terms by refusing to stand behind them, so who are you to complain when the purchaser doesn't follow them to the letter either?
In other words, these people set terms without bothering to see that they were followed from THEIR side as well. They were called on it. I'm sure they didn't like it, but hey, they wrote the terms... now THEY have to take what comes as a result.
I'm not exactly sympathetic, given how frequently they've abused peoples' expectation of being able to return defective merchandise, and I know they KNOW they ship with unfixed bugs in the software.
If they had been more reasonable in the beginning and done more to fix problems before shipping and not been so heavy-handed and one-sided in their licenses ("we take, you give" and little else) maybe they wouldn't be in this fix.
They might have wound up in a nasty corner, or may be on their way there, but they crawled every inch of the way by themselves.
Do something stupid, and expect to pay for it now or later.
Actually, no it's not. I was once screwed by Best Buy (which I've since refused to shop at, and it's been years) on these grounds where I legitimately bought a game, it had a bug and would not work on my system, and the stupid pimpleface teen boy running the service desk refused to refund my money even after I explained the research I'd done, and explained that a replacement copy would have the same issue.
I informed him I wouldn't be back, and promptly left.
If that had happened today, you'd better believe it I'd be contacting my credit card issuer to dispute the charges on the grounds that retailer refused to accept return of defective product.
The problem here is that the EULA you're so gleefully supporting also says to return the item to the retailer for a refund. Seeing that the retailers refused (I had this happen to me when trying to return defective, as in buggy, software -- and have refused to shop at Best Buy since because the guy kept blindly not understanding the concept of IT DOES NOT WORK, a replacement of the same thing IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, I WANT A REFUND... shoulda chargedback the idiots) in violation of the agreement for software they were selling, this lawsuit was way long overdue.
I think 2b. should be "customers", not "companies". The point here is that the companies have TOO MANY 'rights' (term used loosely here) and that the reasonably-expected-to-exist ability of consumers to return unsatisfactory merchandise to retailers has been unfairly trod on for far too long.
If they whine, tough shit. They've screwed the public that keeps them in business for far too long.
Slashdot Mirror
It does answer the question -- for now -- but as you say, it will be interesting to see what happens to PLoS and other similar ventures. Will people willingly donate via Paypal or other systems? Will such donations be restricted to just scientists or will the general public take an interest?
There may not be a completely satisfying answer to the question because the answer changes all the time, and what works today may not work next week. But I hope the open-access ventures can be sustained somehow over the long run.
PLoS (Public Library of Science) does it by a system of "author pays" in which most or all of the cost is borne by the submitter. Normally, this is rolled into the grant under which the work is done, but I believe special arrangements can be made for authors whose grants and/or institutions won't cover page charges.
I just assisted in the submission of a paper to J Cell Biol today (in fact, am still working on it -- preparing some stuff that needs to be sent via fedex/USPS) and here's the copyright assignment form the lab PI had to sign:
http://www.jcb.org/misc/copyright.pdf
There are apparently special terms for government employees (see the huge box with special info in it?) but as we're at a private university, that doesn't directly apply to us even though we are mostly funded by a federal agency (NIH).
Ah, thank you for the info on the cameras. However, the reason that plants are green is that they photosynthesize by means of a chemical called chlorophyll, which happens to be .... green.
In the autumn, the chlorophyll breaks down in many plants, causing the natural underlying colors of the leaves -- which were there all along but masked -- to be revealed.
Because you can get far higher resolution from such a camera since all the pixels in the CCD are dedicated to detecting shades of grey instead of one-third for red, another third for blue, another for green. Since the rovers are not looking for anything fast-moving, they can take their time taking each shot.
Some photographers use B&W film for a similar reason (but it doesn't arise the same way; I believe it is simply more finely grained) -- you get much finer detail than you do from even color transparency film.
Sadly, I only know
;)
- some French
- only a few words of Spanish
- a few words of Russian
and the Spanish version sounded cool.
I'm not even religious!
Vaya con dios.
I'm sorry, sir, we don't accept ouija boards as valid proof of death. ;)
Creative. Took me a few seconds to figure out!
Yepyep. I'll probably pick one up at some point, though right now I can't afford a new car. It's not really a Golf, but it's an A-platform car (like you say, so are the New Beetle and some of SEAT and Skoda's offerings, and so is the TT.) That means that some parts will fit -- some transmission parts and brakes, for example.
They want the VW to be the low end car here.
... except the aforementioned idiots-with-heads-up-asses running around in some corporate high rise somewhere. They are bleeding customers. Why can't they see it? For every person who buys some high-priced boat, there are five more who want a smaller car that isn't just a metal box with four wheels stuck to the corners. I'd be putting a lot more into satisfying all those people than into some far-smaller subset of people. The cars more people buy are what's going to be seen on the road more often, and seeing cars out there on the road is one of the big ways that people learn about interesting vehicles.
;)
Ha. Surely you jest? Go look at the Phaeton. Low-end? Riiiiiiiiigggggggghhhhhht. Fortunately, the guy who came up with that idiotic idea isn't in charge anymore. If, like you (and the name) say, VW is the "low end", then why are they priced so high? If you're going to start moving the price up, you had better move the option sets up, too. They aren't doing that.
They want one because it's expensive and nobody else has one.
Unless you're building 1:1 scale car in your garage workshop, no matter what you buy, someone somewhere has one too. I guarantee it. People who buy cars for that reason are idiotic and deserve the gas-guzzler tax and insane fuel bills they have to pay.
I think that's why we're seeing interesting option sets on cars from Scion and Hyundai.
While Scion is made by Toyota, and therefore I trust that they will be reliable and rust apart before they quit running, I really don't want a Japanese appliance. I want a car that is fun to drive, that I love owning, that puts a smile on my face, that has a feel to it that isn't "I'm your refrigerator", that doesn't look like every bloody thing out there on the road. My Golf does that. A Hyundai crapbox will not.
Now, there is no real reason why small, inexpensive cars can't have some good stuff on them
And what good is it going to do me if vehicle X has the feature I want (but I literally can't buy vehicle X for some reason) and the same company, which makes vehicle Y, on the same platform (or not) as vehicle X, and is fully capable of putting feature Z on vehicle Y as well as vehicle X, won't do it? I already said I can't buy vehicle X... is that likely to make me buy vehicle X? No, it's going to get me to tell them to add the feature on vehicle Y or lose a sale, future maintenance charges, and future sales... because a competitor out there WILL do it.
That's what's happening to VW. They waited too damn long. Especially now that people KNOW what stuff they aren't being given because some idiot thinks that artificial restrictions are a good idea. That doesn't work in the information age and in a global economy where there are other players in the same game.
Brands are dead. I know I read an article somewhere of how nearly everything is a commodity these days. Maybe there was a time when "status" and "branding" meant something. Not anymore.
Now give me my damn Navstar display on my damn radio, VW!
And then you'll have tons of people begging for access to accounts, and then you have to deal with proof that they're dead, etc. etc.
... right?
And then there's the fact that the guy AGREED to an agreement that says that once you die, no one else has any rights to the data.
Seems to me if you're that worried about your data after you die, put a copy of the account password in a safe deposit box that your family can access via the terms of your will.
You do have a will
That's caused by cars that have improperly aimed headlights or don't have an automatic leveling system (or a manual one that is improperly set). Because the lights are brighter than halogens, cars are supposed to have systems that will point them down again if for some reason the front of the car tilts up (on a hill, or if there are heavy items in the trunk/hatch area.)
Sadly, a lot of people install retrofit kits into US -DOT standard headlamps that were designed for halogen (incandescent filament) bulbs, not gas-discharge systems. Do it right and you don't get the glare.
If you want HIDs on your car, do it right. Don't cause inconvenience to everyone else on the road!
That would hold a lot more water if it weren't true that you can buy Audis in Europe, just like you can here. Sure enough, the Audis have the goodies ... but the VWs do, too.
And even if that weren't true, I don't WANT a huge barge like an A6. I want a nice little Golf that scoots around peppily and happily and fits in tiny little parking spaces and doesn't use a ton of gas and is a heck of a lot more fun to drive than the aforementioned (relative) barge.
But I still want my goodies. And, faced by the fact that people are defecting to small-car-makers that WILL provide said goodies for people whose needs are similar to mine, VW is learning the hard way that it HAS to change its head-up-its-rear policies of shortchanging people this way.
VW's dealer network as a whole needs improvement here in the USA, but that's another argument entirely. Fortunately, my dealer has been good to me on the times when I've had to get something fixed I couldn't do myself.
I'm a VW enthusiast and I can rattle off a rather long list of great options that are available to European buyers of VW cars that those of us in the enthusiast community would love to be able to utilize but can't because for whatever reason VW doesn't think those of us in the US are worthy of getting the new geek toys. Such as:
... etc. etc. etc.
... yes, I have reactivated some of these "missing" parts on my car, and believe that they should have been there from day one instead of my having to spend multiple hours reversing the end effects of a carmaker's determination to decontent their product and still charge us more every year.)
- HID/xenon headlamps (better visibility)
- Headlight washers (same as above)
- Rear fog light (see cars ahead in heavy fog)
- Front fog lights (see ahead in heavy fog)
- In-car navigation (turn by turn routing)
- Parking distance sensors (avoid hitting things)
- Better seats (improved comfort)
- Upgraded instrument clusters (electronic display)
- Better diesel engines (less emissions & cost)
- All-wheel-drive (safety in bad conditions)
- More color choices (aesthetics)
- "Smart" service intervals (fewer failures)
- Handsfree phone kits (less distraction)
- Radios that can receive traffic information
If these things appear on US-market cars, they're dumbed down, cheapened, or otherwise made useless, but more likely we don't get these things at all. Enthusiasts like me have to pay a premium (often twice what the options cost at purchase time) to get the same things that SHOULD be available, but aren't. We get no dealer support, we get no vendor support, dealers will void warranties FOR INSTALLING GENUINE VW PARTS that we WERE NOT OFFERED WHEN WE BOUGHT THE CAR BUT SHOULD HAVE BEEN, etc. etc., even if the dealer does the install when you pay them to (some will, some won't).
In short, VW doesn't really care about the US market, so don't expect to see the benefits of this any time soon if you live here in the US. They are FINALLY starting to notice that people are demanding these options, now that the competition is providing them (the Mazda 3, for example, has HIDs now, where the new Golf -- which has been on sale in Europe for THREE YEARS and we still don't get it, and won't, til next year -- will PROBABLY, but not definitely, finally offer them to US buyers). VW views us as an afterthought and is only finally giving in to the enthusiast community (and the public at large, which also wants convenience and comfort and safety, but doesn't know what shops to go to that can import stuff for you) now that people are defecting and going to other brands who DO listen.
(in case you're wondering
Indeed so. It's starting to change, though. This project supports encryption if you have a compatible client (Trebuchet (Win/Mac/*nix), Tinyfugue (*nix/Mac OS X), and BeipMU (Win) are all free of charge (the latter two are open source and the third might be; I'm not sure) and alsu support encryption.
The companion encryption-capable server:
SourceForge.net: Project Info - Fuzzball MUCK
That's the most likely tactic, although at least with Fuzzball MUCK (a server commonly used for more social-oriented games) the logging is optional, and as of v6.0, the server supports encrypted connections. Furthermore, even if logging IS turned on, many server operators don't keep them past 3-5 days, and given the (relatively) glacial speed at which lawyers operate, by the time the request is made the logs will be gone. (This is similar to what happened to the distribution site for nmap, if I remember rightly.)
So they can't monitor the connections because they're encrypted (if the user is smart) and they can't get the logs because no logs were kept. They're out of luck, in that case. (It's also incredibly easy to set up a MUCK server, as the software is available for Windows, Macs, and Unices, and it's open-source and you can review the code before compilation to avoid any backdoors. The clients are correspondingly multiplatform and free ones that support encryption are available for Win/Mac/*nix.
Established servers out there that also support encryption are still relatively rare but I would expect their numbers to rise as more admins install the new software.
Ugh. Fake escrow site? I'm buying an aftermarket car part, which is relatively expensive, through escrow. I checked ebay to see what site they recommended, as blindly letting someone suggest a no-name escrow site is a bad idea -- I suggested to the seller that we use escrow.com, since ebay directly recommended them, which he could verify himself by searching on ebay.com -- and we are doing so. So far, so good (item is in transit now). I have seen the warnings of fake escrow sites, and it's pathetic that even trying to buy and sell things the right way, by using escrow (recommended for anything worth $500 or more) can STILL result in your getting cheated.
Sadly, I think even the "use escrow" lesson hasn't penetrated to a lot of net buyers and sellers because I keep seeing a lot of reports of people on the same enthusiast site I bought this item through in which they've been defrauded by dishonest sellers.
At least you can feel a little better knowing you tried to do it the right way.
However, the presence of a clause which indicates that you can return your purchase for a refund indicates that the contract is not being offered to you without complete validity -- meaning that if the clauses about your not being able to do (X) with the software are going to be enforced, why isn't the ability to return it if you don't want it being enforced? You can't selectively pick and choose what you're going to enforce unless you want people to rightly argue that they are being wronged or that you have then voided your terms by refusing to stand behind them, so who are you to complain when the purchaser doesn't follow them to the letter either?
... now THEY have to take what comes as a result.
In other words, these people set terms without bothering to see that they were followed from THEIR side as well. They were called on it. I'm sure they didn't like it, but hey, they wrote the terms
It has one, in prefs -- Advanced section in my copy, which is a recent one.
I should have, yeah. :p
I'm not exactly sympathetic, given how frequently they've abused peoples' expectation of being able to return defective merchandise, and I know they KNOW they ship with unfixed bugs in the software.
If they had been more reasonable in the beginning and done more to fix problems before shipping and not been so heavy-handed and one-sided in their licenses ("we take, you give" and little else) maybe they wouldn't be in this fix.
They might have wound up in a nasty corner, or may be on their way there, but they crawled every inch of the way by themselves.
Do something stupid, and expect to pay for it now or later.
Actually, no it's not. I was once screwed by Best Buy (which I've since refused to shop at, and it's been years) on these grounds where I legitimately bought a game, it had a bug and would not work on my system, and the stupid pimpleface teen boy running the service desk refused to refund my money even after I explained the research I'd done, and explained that a replacement copy would have the same issue.
I informed him I wouldn't be back, and promptly left.
If that had happened today, you'd better believe it I'd be contacting my credit card issuer to dispute the charges on the grounds that retailer refused to accept return of defective product.
Just because one court ruled a particlar way doesn't mean it's necessarily the 'right' ruling. This is why we have courts of appeals.
The problem here is that the EULA you're so gleefully supporting also says to return the item to the retailer for a refund. Seeing that the retailers refused (I had this happen to me when trying to return defective, as in buggy, software -- and have refused to shop at Best Buy since because the guy kept blindly not understanding the concept of IT DOES NOT WORK, a replacement of the same thing IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, I WANT A REFUND ... shoulda chargedback the idiots) in violation of the agreement for software they were selling, this lawsuit was way long overdue.
I think 2b. should be "customers", not "companies". The point here is that the companies have TOO MANY 'rights' (term used loosely here) and that the reasonably-expected-to-exist ability of consumers to return unsatisfactory merchandise to retailers has been unfairly trod on for far too long.
If they whine, tough shit. They've screwed the public that keeps them in business for far too long.