How Microsoft Lost In Court Over Windows 10 Upgrades (digitaltrends.com) 121
In June a California woman successfully sued Microsoft for $10,000 over forced Windows 10 upgrades, and she's now written a 58-page ebook about her battle (which she's selling for $9.99). But an anonymous Slashdot reader shares another inspiring story about a Texas IT worker and Linux geek who got Microsoft to pay him $650 for all the time that he lost.
"Worley built a Windows 7 machine for his grandfather, who has Alzheimer's Disease, [customized] to look like Windows XP, an operating system his grandfather still remembered well..." writes Digital Trends. "But thanks to Microsoft's persistent Windows 10 upgrade program, Worley's grandfather unknowingly initiated the Win 10 upgrade by clicking the 'X' to close an upgrade window." After Worley filed a legal "Notice of Dispute," Microsoft quickly agreed to his demand for $650, which he donated to a non-profit focusing on Alzheimer's patients.
But according to the article, that's just the beginning, since Worley now "hopes people impacted by the forced Windows 10 upgrade will write a complaint to Microsoft demanding a settlement for their wasted time and money in repairing the device," and on his web page suggests that if people don't need the money, they should give it to charities fighting Alzheimer's. "If Microsoft isn't going to wake up and realize that lobbing intentionally-tricky updates at people who don't need and can't use them actively damages not only the lives of the Alzheimer's sufferer, but those of their whole family, then let's cure the disease on Microsoft's dime so their tactics and those of companies that will follow their reckless example aren't as damaging."
Worley suggests each Notice of Dispute should demand at least $50 per hour from Microsoft, adding "If recent history holds steady they might just write you a check!"
But according to the article, that's just the beginning, since Worley now "hopes people impacted by the forced Windows 10 upgrade will write a complaint to Microsoft demanding a settlement for their wasted time and money in repairing the device," and on his web page suggests that if people don't need the money, they should give it to charities fighting Alzheimer's. "If Microsoft isn't going to wake up and realize that lobbing intentionally-tricky updates at people who don't need and can't use them actively damages not only the lives of the Alzheimer's sufferer, but those of their whole family, then let's cure the disease on Microsoft's dime so their tactics and those of companies that will follow their reckless example aren't as damaging."
Worley suggests each Notice of Dispute should demand at least $50 per hour from Microsoft, adding "If recent history holds steady they might just write you a check!"
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Well it was done on the guys personal time. It may had made sense to not to try to get too greedy. If he needed to hire an outside contractor to do the work, over $100.00 is not unreasonable. However most companies who have to do the random residential fix, usually tries to cut them some slack and do the work at cost, as to not garner bad reviews.
Re:$50 - an hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the other way around - personal time is worth more than work time (not less).
If our personal time were worth less to us, we'd be working then, wouldn't we?
Everybody's price goes up as they run out of time. Supply and demand.
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Personal time is worth more than work pay, but not billing I'd think.
also, your argument could be flipped, if personal time was worth more, why does anyone work?
clearly there's diminishing returns both ways.
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Flipping the argument is silly. Obviously, personal time is worth more until you run out of money. Not starving > personal time > work time.
Re:$50 - an hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal time is sold at market rates. For the simple reason that I could sell it at market rates at any time. IT security people are sought after and, let's be honest here, we can pretty much demand what we want and it's being paid.
The point is, why should my personal time be any cheaper than my "professional" time? It's not like I'm doing what I really enjoy doing when upgrading an OS, we're not talking about playing my favorite game.
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That depends entirely on what your abilities include. If you're in IT security and if you're good at it, your response to this is usually "Boss, here's my 2 weeks. I found something different. More money, less YOU."
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My personal time is sold at market rates. ... we're not talking about playing my favorite game.
Looks like someone needs a new ranked team and a new twitch account!
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Well it was done on the guys personal time. It may had made sense to not to try to get too greedy.
How ironic when Microsoft would certainly charge more than $50 per hour for wasting my personal time to resolve their fuck-ups.
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You never owned the software. You owned the physical media only. The software was only licensed for you to use.
And your rights to that physical media were probably limited as well. I once tried to sell a full copy not an upgrade of Office 1997 on eBay. It was legit, and I wasn't using it anymore. Microsoft got eBay to drop the listing. They used to do that frequently.
Re: Too bad we can't own software anymore. (Score:1)
They need to be nutted by the first sale doctrine
Re:Too bad we can't own software anymore. (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit. The Uniform Commercial Code and the doctrine of first sale says I own the (copy of the) software. The only thing that says I don't is a fictional, unenforceable, worthless alleged-document that isn't a valid contract because (a) it's a contract of adhesion presented after the sale is complete and (b) offers me no consideration since I already have the right to do everything it's offering me by virtue of having already bought the software.
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Nope, you don't own the copyright.
You own a copy of it.
You can even copy this copy as much as you want.
You can even modify it as much as you want, and you can sell it as much as you want.
But you don't hold the copyright.
California, the rebel state (Score:2, Funny)
California, where everybody is a stinking communist. A woman has no right for legal representation, her man has to do it in stead of her.
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The judge just saw that Microsoft is a company from outside of california and thought he should punish them for not living in commie country.
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Uh, WA i.e. Seattle is as Leftist as CA is. The reason it's called the Left Coast is San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle. They are probably more Leftist than Havana, Caracas, Managua or Pyongyang
Heh. While there are some leftists like you describe, the vast majority are quite willing to take advantage of the capitalist system and get rich. The difference it that they are ok with paying taxes and the things they buy because they figure that's how they buy civilization and believe their is a net gain even for themselves.
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I visited there once, and the tour guide told us how locals hate Microsoft. Which, regardless of the /. opinion of that company, would be strange for Seattle since it was Microsoft, who along w/ Boeing and later Starbucks, put them on the map
He was probably a Mac guy.
Seriously, I haven't seen much hatred for Microsoft. Paul Allen certainly used to make his presence known and was annoying for some a decade or two ago, mostly by spending his own money to build things in the Seattle area. Still I can see locals disliking Microsoft because it along with the .com boom and Amazon have caused the doubling in population Seattle has seen in the last 20 years, forcing them out of the city as others move in. I would hazard to say that most of the people i
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California, where everybody is a stinking communist. A woman has no right for legal representation, her man has to do it in stead of her.
Where in CA laws does it say that?
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They are already ahead of you. www.yescalifornia.org #calexit
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I never saw stinking communists. even on California.
Communists wash more often than you think.
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Yeah, say what you like about Moscow but the place sure smells better than New York.
death by a million little cuts (Score:1)
A million claims in small claims court against Microsoft.
Don't see it won't happen. That's what they said about Trump.
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Holy Shit! I'd LOVE to see that.. A million small-claims actions against MS and its "turd_in_the_punchbowl"... Soooooo damn glad I don't do windows anymore....
Now someone do it to Google. (Score:1)
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Could we finish off MS first?
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Satya Nadella is sitting in his office weeping.
"But... but... I said I love you ! I told them all Microsoft Loves Linux. Why won't they believe me ? Why are they still fighting us ? My poor broken heart. Linux does not love me back"
Maybe, I should sue KDE? (Score:2, Troll)
A FreeBSD-user since early 90-ies, I can only chuckle at the problems in the Microsoft world... But this:
got me thinking about t
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> No, we weren't tricked into upgrading the way some MS-users were. But that's a rather thin defense for any software-maker, which simply discontinues older versions — forcing users to upgrade or remain open to security and other bugs.
Yes, we should be forced to support code and use-cases we were concerned with 10 years ago for the rest of our lives.
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No, not the rest of your lives — merely until you get to implementing an upgrade process, that would reliably transfer/translate the earlier version's settings into the new. That's how real software is written and maintained — including decent Open Source projects.
Re:Maybe, I should sue KDE? (Score:5, Funny)
A FreeBSD-user since early 90-ies, I can only chuckle at the problems in the Microsoft world...
Heeey I was tricked into typing
freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.0-RELEASE
And guess what? instead of updating my X-windows it changed my FreeBSD version!!!
Now all my drivers, erm, just work and my UI looks just the same!
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That's the point. It is not — FreeBSD ports team follows the upstream somewhat slavishly. When KDE discontinued KDE3, FreeBSD ports of same were removed about 12 months later. I don't blame FreeBSD. I do blame KDE-team — who aren't even apologetic about it [slashdot.org].
Re:Maybe, I should sue KDE? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tricking old people is a very popular business model these days. Amazon for instance has "click here for FREE shipping!" and then if you click you get a trial Amazon Prime account, and if you don't notice you get charged at the end of the month. Cancelling this trial can be tricky, I tried to cancel my mother's prime account but it had not verified the credit card on file yet (which was also outdated) so there was no option to cancel. Instead I removed all cards from the account (almost mandatory because a cat walking across the keyboard could cost you a lot of one-click purchases). The next day the trial account was bitching and whining that there was no valid card on file and to PLEASE add a new one. It still has not given up and is whining about an invalid card a week later. Unsurprisingly you can find a lot of people online also complaining that their elderly parents were paying for Prime who don't remember signing up for it.
My mother was getting the Windows 10 update, but we cancelled it before it was done. She had very very slow internet so it was taking several days for it to download.
I have noticed that Adobe Flash is no longer doing the "install MacAffee" checkbox that's pre-checked, maybe they got enough complaints that someone with a conscience finally removed it. Meanwhile Avast still tries to trick people into installing Chrome when they upgrade their antivirus.
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NYT pulls a similar trick with one month trial and then instead of offering to continue, it will merrily continue to charge you. I don't mind paying for reporting, I do mind being tricked into it.
Macy's tried a similar gambit awhile back on me with their silly credit card. Somehow signing a purchase using my normal credit card got me a new Macy's credit card. I cut it up and mailed back the pieces explaining why I didn't want their sad little card. They sent me coupons for x % percent off and cash back. I c
comcast had some like that with premiums where (Score:2)
Comcast had some like that with premiums where you just needed to go the channel and it got auto added.
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>I have noticed that Adobe Flash is no longer doing the "install MacAffee" checkbox that's pre-checked, maybe they got enough complaints that someone with a conscience finally removed it
More likely McCaffee used to pay them to do it, and have stopped doing so - presumably flash's reduced popularity has made them rethink it as a good way to force yourself onto as many machines as possible. I never did think their guerilla marketing approach of pushing the demo on everybody was particularly ethical - but
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Does it?
It seems to me similarly as different as Windows 7 and 10 to me.
Yes, the dock is still there, like the taskbar and start button in windows, but otherwise?
The look is different, the functioning is different (hit f11 in different version for a quick difference), aside from Windows 8, I'd say WIndows 95-10 is pretty consistent though.
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Not the same thing. First of all, there's hardly a distro that normal users pay for, aside from maybe DVD costs of $5. Then again, while installing, people have a choice of DE w/ most distros, which again emphasizes the point that you only use KDE b'cos you want to, not b'cos you have to.
I'm actually pissed about something else: that there is no way for me to upgrade/migrate from PC-BSD 10.2 to TrueOS 11. They shut down the PC-BSD server that was used to update things. Again, I paid nothing for the or
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>No, we weren't tricked into upgrading the way some MS-users were. But that's a rather thin defense for any software-maker, which simply discontinues older versions — forcing users to upgrade or remain open to security and other bugs.
Honestly - there are some problems with this story.
Firstly it was needed, KDE3's tech had reached a dead-end, there was no way forward there, to keep building a new base was needed. KDE4 had to happen, and it was in fact not significantly more different or incompatible
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> KDE3's tech had reached a dead-end, there was no way forward there, to keep building a new base was needed. KDE4 had to happen,
WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menu, Pointer) has been around since 1980 [wikipedia.org] .. yeah, the 80's -- over 30 years.
Design and Implementation a GUI isn't rocket science -- WTF are people doing that they are constantly hacking SO much SHIT into it that they need to throw the whole thing away and start again from scratch?!?!
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Did KDE popup an update warning that went ahead and updated to a drastically new version when you clicked the close button?
That seems unlikely in a few ways (1 I'd expect FreeBSD to pop up the window if anywone, 2 I'd expect closing the window by clicking the X to not upgrade (the crux of this case I'd think).
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I already acknowledged, that no such trickery took place.
But I also stated, that it is of little comfort — the users of old version were left with unsupported software. Their bug-reports summarily closed, what security-holes there were — staying open. They were all told to upgrade to KDE4, except KDE4 was not, according to KDE's very authors, an "upgrade" — it was a "
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KDE3 was forked and became Trinity Desktop TDE https://www.trinitydesktop.org... [trinitydesktop.org]
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So what? Trinity was not an effort by the KDE-project. They either ignored it completely, or sneered — the official line of the project is for users to "upgrade" to KDE4. That all settings will be lost in any such upgrade is a bug, they aren't going to fix.
Not a unique situation (Score:5, Interesting)
I just found out my sister-in-law bought a new laptop because the old one was "broken". Why? Because the formerly functional old laptop ran Windows 7 and whatever Windows 10 did to it broke the drivers and it won't boot, despite her trying to prevent Windows from doing the update for months. She took it to a local computer store and they said they would fix it for $100. At that point she decided to buy a new one. Months later I found out what happened :-(
It's easy to blame the user, but there must be thousands of people out there who have machines that were effectively turned into non-functional doorstops from their perspective because of Microsoft's forced upgrade policy. Granted, these machines are fixable, but that's still a repair beyond many user's ability, and it would cost them money to have someone else do it for them. They're in this spot because of the underhanded tricks that Microsoft used (like the "install anyway" close button on the upgrade window).
I'll reinstall the OS for her and maybe she can recover some money by reselling the old laptop, but really there should be a class action lawsuit against Microsoft for what they've done. Instead they've probably reaped many unnecessary sales of new machines. It's appalling.
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I was round with my sister this afternoon, her scanner no longer works - it stopped with the forced/unwanted upgrade. Do you think that she could get MS to buy her a new scanner ? (BTW: we live in England).
Will people also be able to sue when their machine, already running MS Win 10, suddenly starts running an update and they cannot work for 2 hours ? I meet many people who complain about this - who then look enviously at me when I start an update on my Linux Mint laptop, done in a few minutes while I conti
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Last I heard, the updates ranged around 4 GB.
That would be locking me out of doing anything online for over a day each time thanks to craptastic net.
On one hand I'm glad I dodged that bullet, but on the other I'm contemplating yelling at my ISP with those numbers to back it up and demand they do something smart like get this area into the 21st century already.
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Do you think that she could get MS to buy her a new scanner ?
Probably. Write to them, include an invoice for a new scanner or the cost of rolling back to a compatible OS. Don't forget to include the OS licence cost if your key is now bonded to Windows 10. Give them 30 days to pay. State that failure to pay will result in a claim being filed.
If that doesn't work, file a claim in Small Claims Court. No lawyer needed, it's always at your local court. Last time I checked the fee was £30, but of course that just gets added to your claim and paid when Microsoft
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If they lost tens of thousands of work hours, they should have the Enterprise version, which doesn't have forced updates. Last I looked, anyway.
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I bought a PC a while back which the family stopped using because they forgot their password and couldn't get in and it didn't come with media so they could recover it, obviously they never made recovery media but I'm sure lots of people don't — and of those who do, probably very many of them lose it anyway. I recovered the Admin password and ran the recovery on the hidden partition and bingo, back to factory state.
There's a shitload of people buying PCs for no good reason all the time.
re: class action suit (Score:2)
Yeah... The disappointing part is, I know with near certainty that if this becomes a class action, the settlement amount will be puny compared to the actual time and trouble it caused people who were affected by it. Most likely, Microsoft will wind up having to pay a settlement class consisting of just about anyone who owned Windows 7 and can show their system now runs Win 10 thanks to the online upgrade. (How would you realistically be able to prove whether or not you clicked the "upgrade" button by accid
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What I want to know is, how do I get Microsoft to compensate me for the time and effort of successfully preventing the upgrade, and my increased risk due to the fact that I've had to disable security updates to do so?
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Shut up. You got a coupon worth $5 for any Microsoft product*. Be happy.
*Or, alternately, $0.89.
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I used to manage a Mac Mini that dual booted osx and Winders 7.0. Then it decided it wanted to upgrade. Borked the machine, I borked the Winders partition and decided we could do without it.
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Someone at work was looking to buy a Chromebook because Windows 10 upgrade "broke" their laptop... I told them not to throw it away as it could be repaired.
Works good for Microsoft. They get the claim the number of upgrades as if they are willing users, and they get to claim the replacement PC sales as new users.
Any engineers at Microsoft reading this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you proud of the work you've done here, making life suck for Alzheimers' patients and countless other customers who lack the capacity, the autonomy, or the technical background needed to circumvent your bosses' intentions?
If you work for Microsoft, then the world is a worse place because you went to work today. Re-evaluate your career options.
Remember, you're engineers. As a group you are capable, experienced professionals in a strong labor market. You have those options, unlike a lot of other people.
And as engineers, you also have ethical obligations, even if they're unwritten ones. Honor those obligations by working somewhere else besides Microsoft.
Re:Any engineers at Microsoft reading this? (Score:4, Funny)
sudo mod this up!
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User sjames is not in the sudoers file.
This incident will be reported.
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You might reach more of them if you posted this in some India tech website.
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And as engineers, you also have ethical obligations
Screw ethics, I've got a mortgage to pay and kids to feed. I'm not a politically favored minority either so nobody, besides my family, gives a damn about what happens to me if I fail. It's a dog eat dog world out there in case you hadn't noticed and we cannot afford to be weak.
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Screw ethics, I've got a mortgage to pay and kids to feed. I'm not a politically favored minority either so nobody, besides my family, gives a damn about what happens to me if I fail. It's a dog eat dog world out there in case you hadn't noticed and we cannot afford to be weak.
Not sure if satirical or an honest post from a typical person these days.
Regardless, your way of thinking is self-perpetuating.
Good job.
Not.
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That's just a derivative of Poe's Law [wikipedia.org] at work.
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Apple - $108
MSFT - $59
I think he cares....
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Comparing the arbitrary numbers of different companies just shows how little you know of the stock market. MSFT has been on a steady upwards trend for 5 years now. GOOG has flattened and AAPL is close to being back at 2012 levels.
If you're trying to compare market cap, compare market cap. If you want to compare what people care about then look at trends against a market. If you're just trying to look clueless, quote the value for a single stock.
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This is true of government bureaucracy too, as Kafka pointed out.
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Maybe he couldn't get drivers to work on XP, or the computer came with 7 and he didn't want to pay for an XP license, or it was due to some software that wouldn't run on XP.
The problem wasn't just that the guy only remembered XP, but that it forced an unwanted upgrade that effectively broke his computer for him.
9.99? (Score:2)
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See Trump for a counter-example...errr...forgetting the bankruptcies.
How much can I sue for? (Score:3)
For the countless hours of finding and reading the fine print on MS's "security" updates to make sure I don't catch Windows 10?
Windoze 10 degrade (Score:1)
Alzheimers (Score:2)
Considering the confusion each change Microsoft have brought when "upgrading" their OS you don't even need Alzheimer to get a severe headache.
Re:More crap from Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
extort: obtain (something) by force, threats, or other unfair means.
how is asking for a fair amount owed to you by a company, that does you direct harm by forcing an upgrade on you that make a fully functional computer become an expensive brick, equal extortion?
you sir have a funny way at looking at justice. do you work for microsoft?
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When they started doing it, probably.
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in windows 7 you can put any file or shortcut you want into the launcher bar or start menu, in windows 10 you can't, you can "pin" multiple folders if you want, but they all go under the right click menu for file explorer, same with multiple text files, they all go under notepad.exe, so specific files cannot be accessed with one click anymore.