In the software industry, we've all been subject to those lines: "...By using this software, you agree to be bound to the terms and conditions...". I wonder how well this would work for us against a bill collector or other such shady organizations?!
Send them a letter that states: "By opening and reading this document, you agree to be bound to the following terms and conditions: 1. You shall delete all records of my bill, 2. You agree that I owe you nothing currently, or in the future, and 3. You shall hold me, [your name here], not reliable for any expenses, past/present/or in the future that arise from the original contract and 3. You shall never divulge this document to anyone outside of your company."

If you could afford as many lawyers as the sleazeball companies that use these tactics, it might work.

I tried it and it worked! By reading this post you've agreed send me $5 to receive a pamphlet describing how you too can escape your debt by the ingenious, yet simple, 'agree-by-reading' trick!

I've always wondered how they could get those agreements to hold up in court. Simply by reading it you agree to it? That seems like it should be illegal.

You need a gun to enforce laws and a judge thats full of shit.

Software licenses often include something like: "To the extent permitted by law..." In other words, they generally cannot take away your explicit consumer rights.

"By taking any legal -or illegal - actions against me, you agree to..."

The best part is that you've opened the shrink wrap to be able to read this license, and the retailer won't refund your money because you've obviously burned a copy of the software to a DVD of your own. That's why you've opened it and tried to return it, isn't it?

The most interactions I've ever had with Walmart have been due to this policy.

"Hello, I'd like to return this game because it doesn't run on my hardware."

"Well, you can exchange it for another copy."

"But... it doesn't run on my hardware..."

Once, just once, they let me exchange it for another game of equal value. But I bet that woman would have gotten into trouble if her boss knew she'd done it.

I was buying a DVD movie from the $5 bargain bin about once a week. One week I bought a copy of the Doom movie and some NASCAR documentary, but the DOOM movie wouldn't play. Windows said there was no disk in the drive, and Linux said it couldn't read the directory structure. The NASCAR disk played just fine. I'd had problems with unplayable (warped?) disks before, so they let me exchange it for another copy of DOOM. The new copy didn't work either. Eventually I got another computer, tried playing DOOM and it worked perfectly (new features in DVD drive?). I haven't bought a DVD movie in the year and a half since.

In most cases I've come across, you get to read the licence before you can start using the software. And if you decline, you have a right to a full refund in many countries.
Something along the lines of "By opening the package, you agree to the licence terms enclosed therein" certainly won't hold up in court, since you cannot agree to anything you haven't been able to read at that point. It may not be illegal in the sense that whoever pushes a licence in such a way could be punished; it's more likely to just void the licence or replace it with the legally applicable default.
There's a certain gray area with software where you have to agree to the licence after installing; it's hard for you to prove that you haven't agreed to the licence, but then, it's equally hard for the copyright holder to prove that you have. I'm not an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure that you have a legal right to a refund in such a case, but you may have to jump through quite some hoops to get what's yours - to the point that it's probably not worth the 50$ you spent on the software in the first place.

Usually the system requirements are on the outside of the box. I think I remember a post here about declining the windows eula or other component on installation. I remember you had to take a picture of you clicking on the "I decline" option. Is this thread targeted at my signature?

Yeah, but some games, like Fable: TLC, don't want to run even on systems that meet the requirements, because it doesn't like the specific hardware used.

Also, there was a time when I didn't know what all those numbers meant. I didn't know what sort of graphics card my computer had or what speed the processor was. And I'm sure there are a lot of people in that same boat.

@NeilBlack that's why I game on consoles.

I payed $30 for the humble indy bundle just to give pc gaming a try again and although my computer met all the requirements for everything, none of the games, except World of Goo worked.

That's kinda weird. What are your specs?

In the olden days (UK) the law was you had to opt-out of cold selling not opt-in so somebody could mail you an unsolicited post, e.g. to buy a vacuum cleaner, and unless you cancelled it you were liable.

Ummmm... These sleeze ball companies buy lots (bulk amounts, mainly auctions) of unpaid debts from other companies on pennies on the dollar. However most of the time they just have the basic info and not really the account or unpaid bill. So it's legal for them to collect on but their shady business lies in the gray area of the law. If you owe a debt it'll never go away it'll continually be deferred as it's part of your record, however you don't need to take BS from idiot companies neither. You as a consumer have the right to verify the validity of the debt to ensure that whoever is contacting you is collecting fairly. You MUST write a letter of "Verification of Debt" within the first 30 days of being contacted or receiving correspondence from said company. If they cannot verify your debt to them or produce your original bill then by law they must cease and desist, which they will do to avoid legal problems.

Look up "Verification of Debt" and find example letters, generally that's all it takes to clear up the mess. But I recommend once you have the capital to pay your debt off do so. Most reasonable companies will upon verification of your debt, work with you to settle (ie payment plans, lower lump sum amounts, etc) and all it takes is a phone call.

Damn you're sneaky. Send me your CC details, and I'll deposit $5.

Here's my Visa: 4111 1111 1111 1111 Are you going to use PayPal?

Off the top of my head: Windows 7 x64 with all drivers, Radeon HD 3600 2gb of vram... 2.66 ghz core2duo... 4 gb of ram. (edited)

EDIT: IIRC most of it (if not all) is ASUS brand (mobo + other cards).

I wonder if it's Win 7 x64 that's the culprit, as all the Indie Bundle games worked for me with my core2duo and Raedon HD (mine are even lower specs, a Raedon HD 2400 and 2x 1.8Ghz CPU).

Dunno, most of the games seemed to load just fine, just they constantly froze up (Aquaria specifically at the beginning at the same spot every time).

I was about 70% done with pc gaming before, now I'm closer to 90%...

edit: StarCraft 2 (providing it runs) will be the exception.

I have Windows 7 64 bit, and they run fine for me.