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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

#141

Post by thriftwy »

jfrunyon wrote: post #140
thriftwy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If someone has contractually agreed to pay a certain amount if an event happens, and that event happens, then yes, that person has to pay that amount if that event happens.

It does not work that way when selling services or goods to a person. In most jurisdictions, anyway.

It is highly regulated and it should be so.

You can only charge for things that you have delivered and only the ones which were requested/consumed.

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

#142

Post by smarx007 »

thriftwy wrote: post #109
smarx007 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I always thought that chargeback was the rule of Visa and MasterCard networks, so if you used that for the transaction, you are eligible for it. I wonder what's the extent of my confusion here. It is also a proper legal procedure.

You are right, even the consumer protection agency says as much: https://www.hallakonsument.se/en/articles/card-complaints/

However, I think now I have a better idea why: debit cards have a major share in Europe and the page above says "When you pay with a debit card, you have no right by law to turn to the bank to demand a refund."

But thanks for a reminder, and I will think about using a credit card for online purchases in some cases rather than a debit.

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

#143

Post by jfrunyon »

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.

There's no lending of money involved? If your card gets declined, they add a fee to your bill. You can either choose to not pay it (and stop receiving any services from that company, and possibly have your account sent to collections or even be sued since you agreed to pay something and then didn't pay it), or you can pay it.

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

#144

Post by jfrunyon »

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.

> You can only charge for things that you have delivered and only the ones which were requested/consumed.

This was requested. By you requesting a product or service which included this as its terms. Same for delivered and consumed.

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

#145

Post by AtlasBarfed »

chaoticmass wrote: post #135
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…

This is SOP for Oracle. Company I work for got stung by them to the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars over a similar deal with Oracle DB licensing. I wouldn't enter into any kind of contract or license with Oracle at all, and if I had to, I'd hire a specialized consultant and a lawyer to go through everything with a fine tooth comb first.

Won't work, they have 5x the lawyers to sue you even if the contract is ironclad.

I wonder where they rank in the "largest staff of lawyers" in the fortune 500.

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

#147

Post by anonymousiam »

papreclip wrote: post #85
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…

I had the same experience with AWS ec2 free tier that ran out after a year and started billing me. They bill me $17/mo now even though the machine was shut down and AWS account was closed 2 months ago

Was the machine shut down, or was the instance deleted?

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

#148

Post by chrisseaton »

tsimionescu wrote: post #106
chrisseaton wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rebuild the licenses around it Isn't it all GPL?

The code is GPL, but the official Oracle binaries are not (since Oracle owns the copyright, they are free to release under multiple different licenses) and they use Oracle's predatory "free" licensing - you când download and run for free for 6 months, but you owe them money if you keep running those binaries after the moment the new version is released. There is no explicit enforcement mechanism - it's up to you to b…

So build it yourself or get someone else to build it for you.

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

#149

Post by worik »

laurent92 wrote: post #110
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.

Sorry, Java is outdated, young people aren’t even interested in learning Java anymore. It’s the “old language”. Try React. Angular. Anything NPM is sexy. Leave Java for the generation Y.

NPM has less reason to exist than Java

React and Angular are out of date already, surely, being JS frameworks?

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

papreclip wrote: post #85
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…

I had the same experience with AWS ec2 free tier that ran out after a year and started billing me. They bill me $17/mo now even though the machine was shut down and AWS account was closed 2 months ago

[deleted]
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