Along the same lines, my parents - immigrants into the US in the late-80s - would always tell me that food in the US is cheap. Granted, this was more true for restaurant/fast-food prior to a few years ago. But the point still holds for grocery store items if you know how to cook/shop.
I still don't see why this is a point against Adobe. When you select a plan, they very clearly give you 3 options. Monthly, Annual billed monthly, and Annual prepaid. The Annual billed monthly is just flat-out better for end users over prepaid. Why do people want to get rid of it? Because some people FAFO when trying to get an annual price while still being able to cancel any time?
I do not like Adobe in the slightest, but it's not because of their billing practices.
Interestingly, just fyi, they do a reasonable-person test when trying these cases. That means they literally pull 100 people off the street and ask each one to go through the funnel and then give them a quiz with questions like "How much am I going to be billed?"
So if people are confused, it's basically on you, regardless of whether you think you were being clear about the terms.
That's fair - I don't know what their sales page looked like prior to the FCC investigation. However in its current state, I see no issues with the way the information's presented. If a majority of the 100 people can't figure it out, I'm not sure what else they can do other than remove the option which is better for the consumer. I wouldn't be surprised it that's where it'll end up
Well, you would be surprised how many issues in financial education would 100 random people off the street have.
But the contract plan is not aimed at them, but at literate computer users most of them working as freelancers (so with at least some financial knowledge).
The same way a Pilot Operating Handbook cannot be judged by the understanding of random 100 people off the street.
Signing a contract where, even if you stop using the company's service or having anything to do with the company, you still have to keep paying them nevertheless... sounds like one of those types of deals† that we invented the concept of "inalienable rights" to prevent companies from offering.
† I.e. the type of deal where the individual is being asked to trade away something they cannot reasonably evaluate the net present value of (their own future optionality in a future they can't predict) — which will inevitably be presented by the company offering the deal, in a way that minimizes/obscures this loss of optionality. In other words, it's a deal that, in being able to make it, has the same inherent flaws as indentured servitude does — just with money instead of labor.
I just cancelled my house insurance plan as we're moving out. Actually my partner did it, and she told me that there was a ~AU$50 cancellation fee.
My natural instinct was to be ropable. But then I realised that I had actually been paying an annual insurance policy, monthly. I wasn't paying a monthly insurance policy.
Presumably when we signed up, there was a monthly option. Presumably it cost more. And so I can hardly be annoyed that they're essentially making up that difference now that I've chosen to terminate that contract early.
You're not buying a monthly plan for their Annual billed Monthly option. You're literally buying a year's worth, but paying it off in 12 installments over time. If someone were to buy the monthly plan, cancel it, and still get billed for it, yes you would have a point.
You're not buying "a year's worth." Adobe can't roll a truck up with all your future project rendering hours on it and dump them on your lawn, such that they would have a valid legal argument of "you can't cancel, we already gave you the whole thing." What Adobe are giving you, each month — each second, even — is the DRM licensing functionality built into Photoshop continuing to spit out a "valid" signal. Because that activation is a continuous online process, you receive that service on a second-by-second basis (or maybe at most on an online-activation-check-granularity basis.)
That being said, maybe we're talking past one-another here.
Where I come from (Canada), even if you prepay for a service that charges annually (no "annual charged monthly" language needed), as long as that service can be common-sense-construed as delivering value on a finer granularity (by the month, by the second, etc), then if you only use that service for some fraction of the plan length, and then cancel it — you are then legally obligated to a pro-rated refund of the remaining plan length. So if you cancel an annual-billed service after a month? You get 11/12ths of your payment back. If you subscribe to a monthly-billed service on January 1 and cancel on January 2? You get 30/31ths of your payment back. Etc.
Under such a legal doctrine, there is no difference in the total amount owed between "billed monthly" when subscribed for one month, vs "billed annually" when subscribed for one month and then cancelled, vs "annual, billed monthly" when subscribed for one month and then cancelled.
If you're curious about the set of countries where this doctrine applies, here's a page from the Microsoft Store support outlining the set of countries where they will give out pro-rated refunds for subscriptions: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/countrie...
(And if it isn't sickening to you that in general, corporations will write logic into their billing systems to support this, and then only activate that logic for countries where they're legally obligated to do so, while — now with intentionality — continuing to squeeze everyone else for services they've knowingly already cut off... then I don't know what to tell you.)
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And yes, if you're wondering, there are a few exceptions to this pro-rated refund doctrine.
One is real-estate leasing — because chancery courts are weird and make their own rules; but also because a lot of the "work" of being a landlord is up-front/annual. (Though, admittedly, we also have laws here that force real-estate annual leasing contracts to revert to month-to-month after a low set number of years — usually 1 or 2 — with the month-to-month lease rate carried over from the "annual, paid monthly" rate.)
The other is for commercial leasing of assets like vehicles, construction equipment, servers, etc. This is because corporations have much more predictable optionality, sure — but it's also because corporations don't "deserve" protections in the same way individuals do. (Same reason investment banks don't get the protections of savings banks.)
This is useful and informative. But also, no I don't expect companies to keep track of everything that is illegal anywhere in the world, and then not offer it anywhere. Otherwise we'd have no alcohol or chewing gum or pet cats.
The point is that they already have to be aware of and have logic to deal with this if they do business in the relevant countries. So they've already implemented it and are intentionally choosing to withhold it in countries that do not legally require them to provide it.
People in general simply do not read warnings like that. It’s a form of autopilot that everyone utilizes to function/cope in an age where they’re being bombarded with too much information
When I say warning, I'm talking about a prompt after attempting to delete that asks if they are sure and clearly states that the action is permanent. This would display on every attempt to delete a record.
Pain indeed. I tried an ortho layout a few weeks ago on a split Corne and developed really bad wrist pain. No idea why, but it went away after reverting to a stagger and giving that hand a break
I’m personally not convinced by the theory of ortho.
It seems to stem from the idea that stagger is a hangover from the typewriter, in which it was required to make room for the mechanics, and that if we didn’t need to make them like that, we wouldn’t have.
Hence the keys should be lined up so your fingers just move up and down.
However I think this has 2 problems.
1) Most ortho keyboards have 5 columns for 4 fingers.
2) In stagger I use different fingers to strike the same letter dependent on what the preceding letter was, so that I almost never use the same finger twice in a row. You can’t do this in ortho if the 2 letters are in the same column, leading to more repeated strikes from the same finger.
Which I would expect is both slower and more straining.
But maybe my technique is weird, or haven’t given the ortho enough time.
(if you like ortho, good for you, not trying to spoil your fun, just musing)
Vertical stagger is where it's at. Shifting key height per column put keeping columns straight.
The comfortable level of stagger is individual. I just can't with ortho but I guess it's a good fit for some folks' hands. For most of us, middle finger rests comfortably in a higher spot than pinky does. Just look at your hand. You won't really know until you try yourself.
What theory of ortho? It's merely a rejection of stagger. Stagger represents our unwillingness to try new things even if the old thing makes no sense whatsoever.
OK, attitude aside now: for me it's partly about the ability to find keys by feel. With stagger you can learn touch typing one row above the home row and one row below the home row, no problem. But when you start trying to learn touch typing for the number row the difficulty jumps up significantly, because the nonsensical stagger makes it difficult to feel your way up the column.
So the benefits of ortho, according to me:
- It's easier to touch type once you eliminate the stagger, especially when deviating more than one row.
- Being better able to feel your way around helps with gaming, as does removing the stagger from WASD.
- Being straightened out allows you to map a numpad over the keys, to be invoked with a function key. I tried this with stagger and it was awful.
- I just dig the way it looks. It's like a lazy cartoon drawing of a keyboard.
> ... seek immediate UN Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine ... if they should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used
This seems like the passage which would cover it. The UN is able to authorize use of force by member states against the aggressor. Though it looks like it hasn't done that - probably because of Russia's permanent position on the UN Security Council which would veto any such measures.
I've seen different polls, in which disapproval is slightly higher than approval, but anyways, we're still supposed to be in the honey moon period. And even your polls show a dip. We'll see.
Not one person ever expected American blood to be spilled in Ukraine. Framing the opposing side with having these thoughts is arguing in bad faith. And what peace is there in letting a bully get away with the spoils? What's going to stop them from doing it again?
And yea the US didn't technically start the war, but if Ukraine didn't give up their nukes because of assurances by the US, then they wouldn't have been in this situation.
14.5m eligible voters[0] - but your point still stands there. Though I'm of the opinion that non-voters implicitly voted for whoever won. So 11.35m hypothetical people voted for DeSantis in my mind.
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