OT: Microsoft Settlement, Class Action Options

[d7n7master]

Hi All (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/wavey.gif)
If you haven't heard, us Cal folks have some microsoft money coming our way.
Wouldn't want any of us 2 miss-out. Hurry quick. 1/8/05 is the last postmark accepted.
Quick!!! Go to:
www.microsoftcalsettlement.com (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/beerchug.gif)

[soloracer]

Scott,

I have another one for you. A guy buys a new Winnebago and drives down the road from the dealership. Once on the freeway he sets his cruise control and gets out of the seat to go make a pot of coffee. The Winnebago goes off the highway and has the wreck of wrecks. The man survives and sues Winnebago for not detailing in their owners manual that you could not get out of the seat when the cruise control was on (Duh! It's not AUTOPILOT). He wins and gets a $2,000,000 settlement....and a new Winebago. (Sorry just saw this was mentioned eariler. Slightly different but the same none the less)

Or how about the women that goes and buys a spermicidal jelly from her local drug store. She takes it and ends up getting pregnant. So she sues her drug store saying it's their fault she got pregnant. Why? Because she took the product ORALY instead of following the directions on the container. She says she assumed that because it was a jelly and because it was being sold close to where they also sold food items that it must be taken orally. She wins.

However, these examples and the ones you gave were examples of STUPIDITY being justified in the court system. (Protecting of the Stupid). As far as I know Microsoft has not been sued for the "STUPID" actions of it's users. It has been sued for the manner in which it has tried to limit competition in one area by using it's monopolistic status in another. For example, if a PC manufacturer expressed interest in selling or providing a product that was a competitor of one of Microsofts products they would get a call saying that doing so would mean that Microsoft would price their Windows software to them so high that they would no longer be competitive. In such a case Microsoft is leveraging their monopoly status to limit the growth of another brand.

Another method of doing the same thing is bundling a product in their Windows software. For example, you can say that the Internet bundle was "free" but that the price increase on the product was due to improvements in the Windows environment (file access, etc.)

They could also make certain technologies more difficult to use within the Windows environment. For example, program A is designed to integrate with Windows. Microsoft comes out with a new Windows that is packaged with all new PC's and guess what? Program A no longer is able to integrate with it. Worse yet, Microsoft won't divulge what it did to make program A not work properly any more citing "confidential information" guidelines. Even worse would be if Microsoft had a free "update" that people would install that did one thing but also affected something else that was important for the use of program A. Now program A doesn't work anymore and people are either forced to live without the update or buy the microsoft version of program A.

Microsoft being sued for these things have nothing to do with the STUPIDITY of the end users. I think everyone would agree that there are way too many stupid lawsuits out there and that nobody would condone them.