How To Take a Big Vendor To Small Claims and Win 171
snydeq writes "Gripe Line's Christina Tynan-Wood offers good news for those harboring grievances about faulty software or unfair licensing practices: it is in fact possible to take a big vendor to small claims court and win. But, as one woman's fight against Adobe demonstrates, detailed evidence and a deep understanding of the laws in question are essential to obtaining justice against big vendor lawyers. 'Evidence is the key factor,' explains one legal expert. 'Often the evidence people present does not show what they think it does. And they fail to make themselves aware of the rules of evidence so they can introduce any evidence they do have in court. These companies will have attorneys and those attorneys will use the rules of civil procedure to take advantage of your lack of knowledge.' Moreover, they will spare little expense no matter the magnitude of claims brought against them. 'The lawyer for Adobe tried an "end-user is stupid" argument,' explains the woman who took on Adobe over a software license she never had the privilege of agreeing to. 'But he gave that up when he learned I wasn't a lame-brain home computer user. I have a software engineering background and worked for Sun Microsystems and Fidelity Investments tech group.'"
Yay Poster! (Score:5, Funny)
It's a print link. Yay poster!
Qualifications (Score:5, Funny)
Good to know all you need is a 4 year bachelors in software design and 10 years in the industry to win a $1500 lawsuit! Keep up the good work.
Re:Yay Poster! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What product and OS? (Score:1, Funny)
Unfortunately many programmers are problems because they seem to think that since they can program, that means they are good with computers in every way.
Dead right. Your statement reminded me of a tech writer on a newsgroup I used to follow.
His sig file read:
Tell a carpenter he's not an architect and he's OK with it. Tell a programmer he's not a GUI designer and he goes out of his skull.
Re:What product and OS? (Score:0, Funny)
I don't know what world you live in buddy. But software engineers, and programmers especially, that don't know how to "administer a windows pc" are a very very tiny minority. You should get out of your little "windows administration" bubble and meet some actual programmers.
Unfortunately many programmers are problems because they seem to think that since they can program, that means they are good with computers in every way. After all, they write the software, how hard can the rest be?
Actually, the rest is pretty darn easy, buddy... Lol. We're only limited by the body of our knowledge, which is probably the effect that you observed. We are programmers, that doesn't mean we can administer medium-large scale "windows administration things". Stuff like Active Directory and [insert proprietary software here]. I'm sure you know all about that stuff, being a sysadmin. You seem to be grouping this learned/acquired knowledge with normal PC administration, which we are pretty adept at doing.
Basically, you're a failed programmer, as you mention in your post. And so you want to make yourself feel better about being a "successful" sys admin, and not a programmer. Code-envy? All this by "putting down" programmers, at least to your level. We have a word for people like you. Bully. And it is precisely that mindset that kept you from becoming a programmer.