Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Adobe has reversed itself on a curious decision that would have denied refunds to customers in Venezuela whose accounts are being canceled through no fault of their own.
Adobe announced Monday that it is deactivating all user accounts in Venezuela in order to comply with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump. Adobe interpreted the executive order much more broadly than other companies, claiming that it was "unable to issue refunds" because the order required cessation of all business activity.
[...] Adobe reversed the no-refund part of its decision in an update to the support document yesterday. "If you purchased directly from Adobe, we will refund you by the end of the month for any paid, but unused services. We are working with our partners on the same," Adobe said in the update.
Adobe also reversed itself on one other portion of the mass account deletion. Adobe originally said it would have to stop providing both fee-based and free services to people in Venezuela. But now, Adobe says its free Behance social media platform will continue to be available in Venezuela after the cutoff date for other services.
"In order to remain compliant, Adobe will be deactivating all accounts in Venezuela, with the exception of Behance, on October 29, 2019," Adobe said.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13 2019, @10:50PM
ever refund me for the accumulated time Windows was unusable?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 13 2019, @11:08PM
They stand for nothing but profit.
I guess that is what they are supposed to do, so I can't call it cowardice, right?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday October 13 2019, @11:09PM (11 children)
So one guy says "I don't like those people" and nobody is allowed to sell them anything?
That is just stupid.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13 2019, @11:44PM (9 children)
An old guy we elected. You don't even have a choice close to that. You have a PM elected by MPs, who then takes his orders from the US president.
Anyway, returning money to sanctioned countries is legal?
(Score: 4, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Monday October 14 2019, @12:36AM (8 children)
For a start, you didn't elect him, because you can't be trusted, so you have an "electoral college" which is what your ruling class uses to prevent you ever getting your hands on the levers of power.
Our Prime Minister however doesn't get to act unilaterally because if she did, she wouldn't be Prime Minister for long.
Separation of powers baby! You should get some.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @01:24AM
These refunds are in human dollars, which will collapse within the next 2 years.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @03:14AM (6 children)
The prime function of the electoral college today is to boost the influence of rural states, so that LA and Frisco can't steamroll over the rest of the country. It is an ad-hoc body without persisting political interests like parliament, and many states are mandating that their electoral college delegation vote according to the people.
The framers of our constitution have decided, after being familiar with England's organization, that the executive power ought to be separated from the legislative. Therefore, we do not have a government where the president is dependent on congress' placet. The branches work independently and are often in conflict, but the limits of their powers are described in the constitution.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @10:01AM (2 children)
Instead, it's the swing states doing the steamrolling. And it's not like all states have the same number of electors anyway, which seems strange if that's the goal.
But if we're going to have an electoral college at all, we should distribute the electors proportionately, at the very least. This winner-take-all nonsense is catastrophically bad for democracy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @06:53PM
There is an effort to do so, many states have signed an agreement that, if the combined electoral power of the signatories ever reaches enough to swing the election, they will all vote for whomever won the popular vote.
The trouble is, that by switching your own state to a proportional vote system, you make it not worth anyone's time to court your state. Why would you put effort into getting one more elector out of a state if the next one over could give you 10?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday October 14 2019, @08:48PM
Quite right, but that is only a a problem if the goal is have a democracy.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday October 14 2019, @08:58PM (2 children)
That is a shitty function, and a good argument to do away with the electoral college. Why should rural votes be worth more than urban ones?
And as has become apparent of the last 40 years or so, that means nothing if presidents can continue to act illegally with complete impunity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @10:57PM (1 child)
You raise an interesting point, and one that was well considered in the federalist papers. I'm assuming that you didn't read them and won't, so I'll summarise:
One of the problems with a straightforward direct democracy is what is broadly called the tyranny of the majority.
Another problem is that you tend to get common concerns among people with common circumstances, which means that you tend to get a regionalism problem compounding your factionalism problems.
Combining these two facts means that some units (in the case of the USA, the states) have a problem of being outvoted as well as disregarded, leaving them with little reason to continue in the union. To a certain extent, this is a reflection of what happened in the civil war. (Yes, I know, slavery, monstrosities, genocide, dark pacts with unspeakable horrors .... but a lot of it came down, once you rubbed the serial numbers off, to the southern states not getting the backrubs that they wanted, and having no prospect of getting those within the democratic process. A lot of it actually had to do with economic factors outside their control - the fact that the response was to simply wreck the economy of the erstwhile confederacy and carpetbag rape what was left actually lends some credibility to their concerns.) This means that the concern for the cohesion and continuity of the union was nontrivial - and well-founded.
So what was the solution?
Originally, the states produced senators for a senate that was explicitly not weighted by population. We still have the senators, but now they're directly elected by their states' populations. The idea was that the states as entities would have representation in a forum where the fact that New York contains a hugely larger number of people than Wyoming would not matter.
A related measure was that each state would get as many electors as there were congressional seats (house + senate), thereby modestly tweaking the presidential influence of each state while not completely ignoring relative populations.
So what would happen without this?
The populous states would dictate to the rest of the nation at the presidential level, because the other states would be laughably irrelevant.
The populous states would dictate (and this is arguably more significant) to the rest of the nation at the legislative level, because sheer numbers would flood Congress. We can see how this would end up in microcosms of the states where this is happening. California, anyone? But honestly, another fine example is Illinois. Rural folks get to suck a Chicago-flavoured dick nice and gentle, long and slow, and it has reached the point that more and more rural law enforcement officers are simply not enforcing city-driven laws that are highly unpopular, and arguably inappropriate for their areas. This isn't a good thing for a number of reasons, but then in the Washingon/Oregon/Idaho area you have a growing movement of rural counties wanting to simply ditch the influence of places like Portland, Seattle and Tacoma, and go their own way. Northern California is rife with this sentiment as well.
On a nationwide level, it's an effort to keep Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming and the Dakotas from telling California and New York where to shove it. So far, besides the civil war, it has mostly, largely worked. There are tensions, but they are in check.
But sure, let's ditch it. What's the worst that could happen?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday October 14 2019, @11:48PM
You're right, I have never read through the Federalist Papers, mostly because they are completely irrelevant to my life, but I am aware of them.
The title is actually
"The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, as Agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787"
which tells you that they are written as an argument to persuade people to accept the Constitution as written, so of course they are in favour of the constitution.
They are also well over two hundred years old, and most countries reform their political systems much more regularly than that.
Montana, Nebraska and the rest cannot tell New York and California to shove anything, because they need the money that props them up, and that comes from the coasts.
The rest of your anecdote about policemen in country areas refusing to uphold the law tells me all I need to know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @05:30AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ograbme.jpg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13 2019, @11:21PM
Giving free access to Beyonce doesn't make a difference.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13 2019, @11:26PM (4 children)
I suspect that what happened was that Adobe attempted malicious compliance; trying to make Trump look as bad as possible because their higher-ups hate him.
Then it ended up with them looking like dicks. Ooops. Oh well, we didn't mean it like THAT. Sorry!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13 2019, @11:44PM
Two can play.
Venezuela could just claim it's a copyright and patent free manufacturing zone, similar to how other countries set themselves up to pander to tax evaders.
(Score: 3, Informative) by system32 on Sunday October 13 2019, @11:47PM (1 child)
Adobe could just decide not to Cloudify everything and sell product keys through resellers, and they would not be in this situation... once the keys are sold or in the inventory of their distributors it wouldn't be Adobe's problem anymore.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Monday October 14 2019, @01:12AM
Adobe have long since decided that selling software is for chumps. You only get to monetise once, and you can't force obsolescence as easily.
The Cloud is where it's at - not only can you force changes on your user base at will, you get to charge them every month to boot! The next logical step will be to force Cloud-only saving of your content, with no means to download a local copy. Customers for life!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @12:40AM
They were just trying to make off with the money. They just tried to shift the blame to Trump.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Sunday October 13 2019, @11:53PM (6 children)
A refund? That really makes up for the fact that they CAN'T USE THEIR DAMN SOFTWARE ANY MORE.
Well, perhaps they can use some of that money to license (or donate to, if it is open source) some competing NON-"CLOUD" software for which no one can pull the plug.
Cloud software... what a fucking joke.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday October 14 2019, @12:30AM (5 children)
The old Photoshop 7.0 still works, and it's easy to find.
So, what's up with Microsoft? When do they pull the plug, and revoke activation keys? And Netflix?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 14 2019, @04:29PM (4 children)
One of these things, isn't like the other . . .
Netflix doesn't sell software or a software license. It's more like having a movie theater in your home. I got a decent cheap projector and have been enjoying the occasional move night. (Something like this, not this one exactly.) https://www.amazon.com/Projector-APEMAN-Supported-Portable-Speakers/dp/B07RFS71XQ [amazon.com] Sure, it's a cheap piece of junk, but it has a decent picture. The sound quality is horrible, the setup is a bit of a pain, but the image is decent and the price was right.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 14 2019, @05:09PM (3 children)
Whether they're selling software or movie tickets (that is what Netflix essentially sells), it's about doing business with the "enemy".
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 14 2019, @07:17PM (2 children)
How is Netflix the "enemy"? Sure, they killed off blockbuster, but all I can say is it's about time. Someone needed to kill off the predatory movie rental business. At least with Netflix, you don't end up with a $$$ overdue charge. Also, by comparison to what was before it, it's a utopia of choice, with decent prices. Or am I missing something? "It is available worldwide except in mainland China (due to local restrictions), Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Crimea (due to US sanctions). The company also has offices in the Netherlands, Brazil, India, Japan, and South Korea.[10]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix [wikipedia.org] Seems to be all good to me.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 14 2019, @07:50PM (1 child)
Whoa! What?
Or am I missing something?
To be polite, yes. The "enemy" being Venezuela. If Adobe has to pull out, doesn't everybody?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 14 2019, @08:19PM
Ahh..., yes. That would be the general idea. Adobe seemed pretty eager to jump on this, though. Not that Adobe has ever seemed to be customer friendly in my opinion. They have proven themselves to be somewhat incompetent, though. https://www.techspot.com/news/51316-adobe-offering-creative-suite-2-for-free-but-they-didnt-mean-to.html [techspot.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @12:26AM
at least gimp isn't ephemeral subscribe-abandon-ware
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @10:47AM
There's more "from macau" listings in ebay than ever.