QUOTE(feflicker @ Jan 21 2008, 01:12 PM)
@Devedander,
- I work in IT, and most of my friends do too. MS$ most assuredly has a strategic plan in place for Xbox Live growth. They have some of the worlds best IT people. I would bet everything I own on them pulling no punches and showing everything they have done with Xbox Live infrastructure to ensure QoS from day one of launch should this ever go to trial (which I highly doubt it will). Do you really think MS$ knew there was going to be a problem, chose to do nothing pre-emptive to prevent it, and relied on a strategy to scramble at the last minute to fix it after it broke?
I work in IT also, have for a long time. We regularly roll up pre emptive upgrades in anticipation of increased need. We also regularly get people in charge of decisions they shouldn't be... we recently had a multi million dollar project scheduled to go live in a few months go through a final analysis meeting... turns out the guy in charge has no tech knowledge and decided to save $10k by not buying the redundant server and wants to have just one server for a mission critical part of all our branches. Why? It' saves $10k.
I am not saying they didn't have plans, but that doesn't mean they weren't negligently poor plans.
I don't doubt MS has some of the best and the brightest, but in every great company there are spattered just enough idiots who don't desserve to be where they are somehow to screw things up on a semi regular basis.
I honestly doubt you and your IT friends don't get together over some brews every now and then to recount the idiot managers and project leads that royally screwed things up and had it not been for you or one of yours the project would have totally been hosed... sometimes no one saves those bad decisions in time. Right around the holidays during major management rollover announcements are likely times...
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- In respect to gross vs. profit, the reason I turned the attention to profit was because you were insinuating MS$ can afford to just make payouts every time there is an interruption of service because they "make" $500 million a year off it, when this is FALSE. If they did this then the division would not be profitable. Does anyone here want Live to not be profitable? I sure don't. I'd like for the service to stick ]around...
Where did I say that failing should be a profitable option? Maybe MS can't afford it... maybe failing should be an unaffordable route... because if it is then maybe companies will try to avoid it more adamently.
Would you rather use the terms "take in" and "pay out for failure"? Does that make it sound better to you? Symantecs aside, 10 million users at $50 a year (that's not factoring in monthly users who pay a higher rate) is $50 milllion a year that people pay, and those who are arguing the most we should ask for is our money back don't seem to realize that $5 million is not getting our money back (I am not factoring in taxes and lawyers fees etc, just the basic theory of it).
And I say it again, taking back only the profit is not really and kind of punishment... it's the equivalent of taking back the stolen goods from a robber, but then doing nothing else to make his actions unappealing to repeat in the future.
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- As to the frivolous lawsuit topic: Lawsuits are not the only way to voice concern to a company you feel is not meeting expectations for a service you subscribe to. How about sending a letter in to management? How about organizing a coalition of customers to file a complaint? How about starting a website where other customers can organize and get attention this way? Filing a lawsuit is not the only way to get visibility! What is the real goal here? To coerce MS$ to improve Xbox Live's service offering, or to get paid? Or better yet, if you don't feel you are getting your $'s worth from the service, CANCEL IT.
This reminds me so much of being in elimentary school and having the principal tell me "If there is a fight, both people get in trouble, it doesn't matter who started it. If someone picks on you or hits you, you should just walk away and tell a teacher".
Did anyone else hear that in school? Did anyone else think "That is the stupidest, works on paper, no friggin way in real life thing ever"?
Yes, you can write letters to managers, you can file complaints and you can set up web pages. And you know what? I have brought all those up before and why they don't work, there are two simple reasons:
1: They require a action and sometimes loss on the consumers part to send an easily ignored or insignficant message.
2: They require volume to be effective.
The flaw being that I think you would agree stealing $1 from every person on the streeth, thus becomming a multi billionair would hardly be acceptable and should be punished... but who would really take the time from their day to file a police report over $1?
The problem is that big companies interact with us on scales so large that they can effective damage us so minutely it's not worth our individual time to follow due process. However what they have done is still wrong and needs to be addressed.
If one person steals $1 from each person, it would be annoying, but if he sets a precident and people get used to having $1 stolen, what happens when everyone you konw and do business with starts stealing $1 from you every day?
The slope gets slippery in so many directions and so fast....
That is why class actions exist. It's so one or few can represent many making the investment to result ratio for people acceptable.
I have personally written letters to management over issues before only to be given canned responses and completely blown off, you know why? I am insignificant to their large business. Sure people say the custommer is always right and they are the companies biggest asset... you know what though? It's cost effective to ignore the outliers and concentrate on the mass... the often lazy, abuse accepting masses...
Have you ever been to www.bestbuysux.org? They hosted THOUSDANS of stories of customers being blatently ripped off by Best Buy... not just poorly treated, often straight lied to and ripped off in ways that I wouldn't have believed had I not worked there myself for some time and seen plenty of these stories unfold with my own eyes... you know what happened to that site? It's now a big add site for Best Buy... I don't know exactly what happened but I know Best Buy never let the pressure up on the site owner and after years of hosting very detailed and numerous complaints, the end result was... Best Buy still wins.
Sure I can cancel my service... and that is the least likely to happen because again, MS has damaged me little enough that it's not worth troubling myself by cutting my live off completely to retaliate. They need to be sent a message but not at my cost...
I keep seeing flawed arguments as to how bad this could be, at least live works most of the time, it could have been months or years without service or some such... People seem to think if it's not he most catastrophic or at least very heinous act, that it somehow doesn't desserve attention... I don't know when that became the accepted though path, but it's pretty sad.
If sending the message means I have to damage myself more than I will damage them it doesn't make sense to partake in it.
All these and more are the very reasons class actions exist and why they do serve a valuable purpose.
I said it before, they can and will continue to be tools that are abused, but it's not as simple as saying that they are bad and only hurt us. It seems that people are so eager to sound like they know something insider or something philysophical they look at an issue one step further than the surface and proclaim some great discovery without looking any deeper.
Yes on the surface class actions look like they should help us (little guy stands up to the big guy)
Yes one step deeper they are often abused tools that stuff the pockets of lawyers.
But if you look yet another step further, analyze what the alternatives are and realize that nothing is a black and white good solution, you realize that quite often they are the lesser of the evils available.
But many people stop at the first revalation and like to walk alway.
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- Speaking on the "high horse" comment, that was directed at a lot of the people posting, not just you. The point is that it is easy to sit back on an internet forum and call people "childish" and "uneducated" every time they do not agree with you or the "points" you are trying to make. I choose not to do that, because I have NO IDEA how intelligent any of these people are on this board. You certainly can't divine that just from forum posts either, as so many people would like to think you can. I'll rest easy tonight, and so will my "image" lol...
Well in a post where you quote me, address 4/5ths of your post directly to me then finish up with
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Another thing, it's real easy to sit on a high horse and dismiss everyone elses views and call them "uneducated" and "childish" because they don't have the same viewpoint. In my experience, the person who claims this educated highground is alwasy the biggest uneducated fool of them all.
I don't see a lot of room for ambiguity as to where it's pointed. But I will give the benefit of the doubt that somehow you didn't really say what you meant or vice versa...
But to be clear, I know I come across as sitting on a high horse a lot... and there is no way to say this without souding conceded so I will just say it and anyone can think what they like...
In a world where many do wrongly sit on a high horse proclaiming there own righteousness while chastising others baselessly, there are some who do legitimately sit high on their horses and are actually right.
In order to try not to be the former, I strive to be the latter when I express and opionion.
I back up my statements as best I can and research what I say. In the same way those who make fools of themselves are annoying, it's annoying to be grouped in with them by the lynch mob who is more interested crucifying someone than beinng educated.
This post has been edited by Devedander: Jan 22 2008, 09:30 AM
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Topic: Lawyer Speaks Out on Xbox LIVE Lawsuit (Read 1198 times)