[mythtv-users] Fwd: Further Notice of Seagate Hard Drive Class Action and Proposed Settlement

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 12 March 2010 10:40:03 am Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 03/12/2010 12:16 PM, Brian Wood wrote:
> > On Friday 12 March 2010 09:56:04 am Travis Tabbal wrote:
> >> On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Brian Wood wrote:
> >>> Just in case anyone missed this.
> >>>
> >>> WOW! Free backup and recovery software. Be still my heart :-)
> >>
> >> And again the lawyers get loads of money while customers get nothing of
> >> worth. I shouldn't be surprised. At least with the Deathstars I got $100
> >>   out of it, so they bought me a new drive. They should at least be
> >> required to swap out the defective drives with new ones or something
> >> like that.
> >
> > Not only does the software cost them nothing (they probably get paid for
> > including it with drives in a "teaser" version, IOW "CrapWare"), but it's
> > probably some sort of service that requires monthly payments, thus
> > generating additional revenue. What sort of a "punishment" is that? This
> > will only encourage others to produce "defective" products that will
> > generate additional revenue.
> >
> > The cash offering is ridiculously small.
> >
> > Sort of like the giant settlement announced today for the WTC workers,
> > the lawyers will get 33% of the total, the doctors and hospitals about
> > 60%, so that leaves pennies for the actual victims.
> 
> It's almost like Seagate did nothing at all wrong--you know when they
> told us they sold us a 500GB hard drive and they sold us a 500GB hard
> drive!  (The nerve!)
> 
> Then Microsoft told some clueless lawyers that the drive only had 466GiB
> of space available, but /also/ used the abbreviation for gigabytes (GB),
> /not/ gibibytes (GiB), so they thought that someone lied (and, we all
> know MS would never lie or get anything wrong, so it /must/ be the HDD
> vendor).  IMHO, MS should foot the bill for this one.
> 
> http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Info/Units/binary.html
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
> 
> Besides, it's how hard drives have /always/ been sold.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Hard_disk_drives
> 
> Another option would be to disbar all the lawyers involved in suing.
> 
> IMHO, none of us deserve the software, even.  (I bought plenty of
> Seagate hard drives during the period, but I'm not participating in the
> class action suit.  I just wish the postcards had an option besides, "I
> want to participate" and "I don't want to participate so I can sue them
> myself"--one like, "I believe this lawsuit is frivolous and wrong and
> should not make class action and the lawyers proposing the suit should
> foot the bill for all the costs so far.")
> 
> But that's just my opinion.

I agree they did nothing wrong, they are being punished because most consumers 
are stupid.

But, since our warped system has decided that they *did* do something wrong, 
it then goes forward to do nothing except reward some lawyers and an outfit 
that sells dubious software.

What a country.