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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 5 declined, 0 accepted (5 total, 0.00% accepted)

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Communications

Submission + - AT&T Phone Service EULA

Trevin writes: "I recently received a new Residential Service Agreement for my AT&T phone service, and on reading through it noticed a couple of peculiarities. I'm wondering if there are any other readers out there who have noticed the same thing (for those of you who actually read these legal documents) in either your local AT&T or other company's phone service, and if there are any people who know whether these terms would actually hold up in court (or if I'm just reading them wrong).

First, section 6 reads more like a software disclaimer than a utility agreement. The full section (converted from all upper-case):

6. Disclaimer of Warranties
The services are provided by AT&T on as "as is","as available" bases without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of title or implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or otherwise, other than those warranties (if any) that are implied by and incapable of exclusion, restriction, or modification under the laws applicable to this agreement, all such warranties being expressly disclaimed. AT&T does not authorize anyone, including but not limited to AT&T employees, agents, or representatives, to make a warranty of any kind on AT&T's behalf, and you agree that you will not rely on any such statement. AT&T does not warrant that any services will be uninterrupted or error free.

I don't expect completely uninterrupted service — murphy's law assures that things will sometimes break down — but in my mind a warranty means that when their service breaks down, they will fix it. This section however seems to indicate that they are waiving any responsibility to fix problems that arise.

The next section which looks suspicious relates to the recent congressional debates about telecom immunity in unauthorized wiretapping. From section 9. Dispute Resolution by Binding Arbitration:

Notwithstanding the foregoing, either party may bring an individual action in small claims court, or make a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission or a state public utilities commission if the claim is within the court's or agency's juristiction. You agree that, by entering into this agreement, you and AT&T are each waiving the right to a trial by jury and to participate in a class action.

Sorry I don't have a link to the full text of the agreement on the Web; I can't seem to find it on AT&T's web site. I just have the printed notice. The latest notice on AT&T web site (as of January 1) has similar wording to the above. Is this standard operating procedure for telcoms?"

Graphics

Submission + - ATI vs. nVidia Hardware Technical Support (xmission.com)

Trevin Beattie writes: "Last week after rebooting my computer I noticed random red and blue dots blinking on the screen during POST. I sent a support request to ATI asking if they had any utilities to test my video RAM and whether this sounded like a problem that could be fixed. Their response: they don't support Linux video drivers!

I went back and forth with them three times on this, I even sent them photos of my screen during boot, and got the same response the second time and a boilerplate message the third time which stated, among other things: check the knowledge base (I had; the only article that mentions my problem is a broken link), upgrade your latest video drivers (irrelevant), then submit a support request (which was what I was doing).

I'm appalled at how obtuse their support people are. I suspect they aren't even really people; I feel like I'm talking to a machine with pre-programmed responses. I'm considering switching over to nVidia, but before I do, I want to know whether their technical support will be any better if I have hardware problems?

So what are your experiences with ATI and nVidia, for either gaming or workstation video cards? Please limit the discussion to actual hardware failures, not software/driver problems."

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