571–580 of 603 posts
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AOL pioneered this. And became extremely wealthy for it. Unfortunately it works
what are AOL doing these days?
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There are a few details with that: Does the sticker have to show all taxes or just the sales tax/GST/VAT? I know that pretty much every country in the world has an alcohol tax that is applied to things like wine. So should the sticker also include that? In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more compli…
> In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view. Which political affi…
One name that popped up after a quick search inside a long article was Grover Norquist. From his Wikipedia entry he is part of a political association which wants to prevent any rise in taxes. From another article I read long ago it was mentioned that this includes preventing automatic filing since the government could introduce new taxes without people knowing.
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> In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view. Which political affi…
There's been a few articles here on HN relating to free filing and automatic returns and how the tax filing industry is fighting it. One name that popped up after a quick search inside a long article was Grover Norquist. From his Wikipedia entry he is part of a political association which wants to prevent any rise in taxes. From another article I read long ago it was mentioned that this includes preventing automatic…
> In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view.
It's actually this:
> since the government could introduce new taxes without people knowing
Along with increasing gov size, increasing gov expense, and destroying another industry.
I'm all for increased competition in tax filing software, and you're starting to see open source competition here as well. But spreading opinion as fact, and in this case in particularly, is called "misinformation" or "fake news"
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It's illegal to put on the price the customer is actually going to pay? My search attempt failed ("illegal to put price with VAT" neither g nor ddg liked it), please tell me more!
In the US, sales tax rates vary by state, county and even city. Some states have no sales tax. It would be impossible to advertise a price for a product when it would be so many different numbers depending on where you are. For example, if a big grocery store chain wants to advertise the price of a 6-pack of Coke, do they list 20 different prices or do they eat the difference in taxes and make the end price the same?
Yes, same packet of potato chips costs R20 at capital R25 at hill stations (but its MRP shows R25).
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I don't want my employer to know jack and shit about what I do outside of work hours. Personal info does not belong on corp resources. That includes personal calendar data on corp Outlook/Goog's/etc. That means not using corp network to surf personal social media, shopping on amazon, etc. I would very much encourage you to really look into this unwise practice. It's not a matter of if, but when, this will come to hau…
It always amazes me how much info people are willing to turn over to other entities that have no business with it. My favorite are co-workers who allow mobile device management profiles on their personal phones so they don't have to carry around a separate work phone. No way in hell would I ever agree to that! Stupidity for convenience :p
MDM may be as light as a single app with its own policies, or something as heavy as device configuration (for VPN, remote wipe, etc). Containerised app groups seem to be a good balance.
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I don't mind mind paying for good tools/software when you are making good use of it. I guess my problem is with these subscription models where your software evaporates when you stop paying. That's rough. As a simple example, I couldn't imagine being on that kind of a model with Excel. We have tools built on Excel covering disciplines from electrical, mechanical, software, optical and acoustics engineering dating bac…
We'd be happy paying per project, but if course The Mathworks knows that would bring less revenue. We've actually had a large effort to move towards python which has been successful in preventing unnecessary MATLAB. Holding the cancer at bay. Re Excel, they are making offline installs increasingly difficult and expensive, and yet their online version can't do many things (like, Solver doesn't exist, you have to licen…
Yes. I had an ugly experience with a customer who insisted on using the Excel online version. It was a mess.
We are trying to avoid creating tools using Excel any more. Same as you with MATLAB, we are shifting as much as possible to Python. We are using an internal Django site to collect all the tools as apps when it makes sense. In some cases it's stuff that connects to laboratory equipment to take measurements, etc. and it might not make sense to tie it to Django.
That said, you'd be surprised the kinds of things we've contorted Django into doing. We built a robotic test and manufacturing system that runs from Django. It was very interesting to figure out how to use the database for journaling and to maintain state. The last thing you want on a system like that is for the machine to lose state for whatever reason. It worked really well. Not sure I'd recommend it. I wanted to see if we could standardize on Django for the UI and data management on custom automation solutions. No verdict yet.
I contacted customer support and asked to upgrade to a more expensive SMB plan for a different but related product (Adobe Sign). I also demanded the first 14 days free, as that product advertizes a 14 day trial.
As I suspected, they could not make this complex change with their internal tools, so they offered to cancel Acrobat DC for me so I could sign up directly for the trial of the more expensive product.
As it happens, I changed my mind after the cancellation was completed. ;-)
If they had been able to do what I asked, I might have requested a change in billing country into or out of the EU or US - this is often complex for tax reasons. If their tools are capable of everything I could think of, I might still change my mind around the final confirmation stage.
Here is the pricing page: - https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/pricing.html?promoid...
It does mention "Requires annual commitment.", but in a vastly less noticeable style than "Best value".
(Legal theorizing, IANAL and all that)
Contract law requires a "meeting of the minds". Ordinarily, a written contract is evidence of where exactly the minds met - but there are exceptions. For instance, website ToS are not really enforceable. ("By using this website, you agree to sell me your house for $1?".)
I would argue that for most people buying Adobe products with an easily missed cancellation fee, there is no meeting of the minds and the contract should not be valid.
A good test for this might be to ask 100 randomly selected customers about the terms of the contract. If a majority aren't aware, it is reasonable to conclude that this information isn't conveyed adequately and that part of the contract should not be enforceable. I've never heard of anything like this happening in practice, though.
I got hit with this a few years back. I signed up for Ps CC for a month (I thought) to create an anniversary gift for my wife. I used it ONCE. Tried to cancel and they told me I had in fact signed up for a year, and that if I didn't cancel now, they'd give me two months free. I didn't want it at all! Anyway, I sucked it up, got on with the remainder of the year, because they wouldn't let me put the cancellation in ea…
Sounds like Adobe hired some executives from the cable TV or satellite TV industry, where the fine print on some packages locks you into 24 or 36 month contract terms. They know exactly how to do it with the minimum legal amount of notice to the customer when signing up, and how to write the terms of service for acceptance to make it ironclad. Same with 2-3 year terms on cellular carriers with a "free $0!" new samsun…
If you sign a 2-3 year contract and want to break it before it ends, there will always be some kind of penalty.
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I dunno, if someone presents me with two options: - Annual plan, paid monthly: $50 / month - Monthly plan: $75 / month Then of course there is going to be a catch to the first one. I cannot imagine anyone being so naive they’d just assume both plans are the same aside from the price...
This comment is so tone deaf. Tons of people will be so naive as to either not read closely, or just not know that the cheaper one comes with a catch.
I got hit with this a few years back. I signed up for Ps CC for a month (I thought) to create an anniversary gift for my wife. I used it ONCE. Tried to cancel and they told me I had in fact signed up for a year, and that if I didn't cancel now, they'd give me two months free. I didn't want it at all! Anyway, I sucked it up, got on with the remainder of the year, because they wouldn't let me put the cancellation in ea…