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Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

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Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#91

Post by evandwight »

thriftwy wrote: post #84
evandwight wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a government fine. It's just an agreement in the contract specifying a payment is due if your card declines.

I'm not sure that is legal either. You can charge for some product or service but, unless you are a licensed bank, you can't lend out money and charge for overdraft, which is basically something they're doing here. And even a bank can only do it against accounts open in that bank.

You may be right. It looks like some states have specific rules for credit cards. For example, in some states businesses can't charge credit card processing fees.

However, many businesses charge late payment fees.

https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/can-merchant-ch...

Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#93

Post by smarx007 »

thriftwy wrote: post #70
smarx007 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had IBM Cloud account for a while. At some point, they started to attach a notice to a monthly $0 bill along the lines: if you card gets declined, we will fine you $25 and if you don't pay in 7 days, we will fine you further $50. Easiest account termination decision I have ever had. I guess the first email from Oracle "we are making routine changes to the T&Cs and our privacy policy" will be the end of my account.

Is this even legal? In most jurisdictions, you have to be a government to fine anybody. Sending frivolous charges may be considered fraud and also lead to chargebacks.

In Europe, we don't use chargebacks in most cases. Unless the payment was truly fraudulent (i.e. you cannot get hold of someone who issued the payment or they are not in business of doing things they charged for), you have to use proper legal means of settling the dispute. As you may imagine, the life is too short for things of such kind, especially with multi-billion corps. Anyway, dug up the email:

Please note that all payments are due in full on the monthly anniversary date. Failure to remit payment for services on the monthly anniversary date will result in a $20 late fee. If full payment has not been received within five (5) consecutive days, including the anniversary date, termination of public access to Customer services and a $50 reconnect fee will be incurred. Failure to remit payment for services within seven (7) consecutive days, including the anniversary date, shall result in termination of access to the service network and all services shall be reclaimed.

And the T&Cs link: https://www.ibm.com/support/customer/csol/terms?id=Z126-6304... To my pleasant surprise, the T&Cs are quite a readable document. As you see, they call them fees, not fines.

The https://www.ibm.com/cloud/pricing page also says they offer loans, leasing, and other kinds of financing.

Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#94

Post by DavidSJ »

dijit wrote: post #34

Be extremely wary of Oracle free tiers. They offered a free tier and forced me to choose a shape. I chose the smallest of the two “shapes” but it was apparently not free. This was not especially clear until I got my first bill (it was extortionate; like 60eur/mo for 1cpu/2g ram) so I stopped/removed the instance. This did not prevent me from being billed the next month, or the next month. They charged me until my car…

Obligatory Bryan Cantrill rant on Oracle: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s

Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#95

Post by amock »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #35
mihcsab wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to manually upgrade your account to get charged.

I bet you don't need to upgrade your account to receive nastygrams from Oracle legal, though.

I've had an account for a couple of years and I might have received a survey email once, but otherwise I have received only things like notifications about infrastructure changes and there haven't been many of those.

Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#96

Post by coldpie »

kaba0 wrote: post #77
hereforphone wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They ruin everything they touch IMO (Java came to them ruined already to be fair)

And they do an excellent job as Java’s language steward. Java was revived and has many excellent research and development going for it. Project Loom, Panama, Valhalla came to mind. They also made a low-latency GC. Oracle is not a homogeneous entity.

Did you miss the part where they tried to burn the entire computing industry to the ground so they could get a few bucks out of Google? I wouldn't touch anything related to Oracle with a fifty foot pole, that shit is radioactive.

Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#97

Post by dijit »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #73
dijit wrote: post #34

Be extremely wary of Oracle free tiers. They offered a free tier and forced me to choose a shape. I chose the smallest of the two “shapes” but it was apparently not free. This was not especially clear until I got my first bill (it was extortionate; like 60eur/mo for 1cpu/2g ram) so I stopped/removed the instance. This did not prevent me from being billed the next month, or the next month. They charged me until my car…

What is shape? Reading the doc doesn't make it clear why it is a paid thing. I just signed up for oracle cloud for free account and how to check if I accidentally bought anything?

Shape just means instance sizing.

I was presented two options:

1: 1vCPU 2GiB ram

2: 2vCPU 8GiB ram

(Or something, my memory is awful and it was a long time ago now. I remember a friend of mine who works at oracle was walking me through.)

Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#98

Post by chrisseaton »

mrguyorama wrote: post #82
kaba0 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they do an excellent job as Java’s language steward. Java was revived and has many excellent research and development going for it. Project Loom, Panama, Valhalla came to mind. They also made a low-latency GC. Oracle is not a homogeneous entity.

Except while building the language into a nicer language, they also took the time and effort to rebuild the licenses around it so that it is harder to feel safe using it

> rebuild the licenses around it

Isn't it all GPL?

Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#99

Post by bserge »

dijit wrote: post #34

Be extremely wary of Oracle free tiers. They offered a free tier and forced me to choose a shape. I chose the smallest of the two “shapes” but it was apparently not free. This was not especially clear until I got my first bill (it was extortionate; like 60eur/mo for 1cpu/2g ram) so I stopped/removed the instance. This did not prevent me from being billed the next month, or the next month. They charged me until my car…

Use a virtual card for everything, block it if you don't like something.

Re: Oracle Giving Away 4-Core 24 GB Memory Ampere Instances

#100

Post by wyager »

kaba0 wrote: post #77
hereforphone wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They ruin everything they touch IMO (Java came to them ruined already to be fair)

And they do an excellent job as Java’s language steward. Java was revived and has many excellent research and development going for it. Project Loom, Panama, Valhalla came to mind. They also made a low-latency GC. Oracle is not a homogeneous entity.

> Java was revived

Java probably should have had a DNR on file.

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