I was reading an old history of law book last year and the reason was that lawyers got paid by the word back in the day. Then they were paid by the sentence, paragraph and page.
I was reading old law school book last year and it literally said it’s written the way it is because lawyers were being paid by the word way back when.
I have the same fear of the moments preceding. My anxiety goes through the roof when I think about the environment I am in at 35,000 feet. I keep my mind occupied by mentally removing myself from the environment. I fire up my laptop with headphones and work as if I am in the office. This works for a portion of the flight. Sadly, for the remainder, I typically dose myself with something to put me under until someone taps my shoulder to put my seat up for landing (the worst part). FML
Depends but NO. After running 2 successful companies I was thinking about going back to school and I asked myself the same question but more importantly the staff as me why I would want to go back to school with my real life experienced. They knew of my endeavors. I was applying to get into Boston's most well-known entrepreneurial schools. I sat in on two classes to see what it was all about. I felt like I was in a room with high schoolers. It was total cake. I answered the questions that most couldn't. Felt bad because I had to set the teacher straight a couple of times as you could tell he wasn't doing much outside reading textbooks. At the end of the course, the professor asked if I'd like to give lectures during the semester. I said not right now. But I got the answer to my initial question.
Everyone is quick to bring up President Trump. If you don’t think about the media landscape (big scary picture) and are quick to say this is lawsuit is a political move you are naive and uninformed. If this isn’t blocked overtime you will see companies like Google and FB attempting to gain more power and control in the same way. The DOJ had no other choice. They had to sue to protect the interest of consumers. They see where things are heading and its not good.
These deals are never good for consumers. When a few companies have too much power and control their only goal is to get more at the expense of the consumer. This is dangerous and should not be taken lightly.
everybody is quick to bring up president trump becuase this so so opposite to everything else the administration has done.
I absolutely agree, this merger should be blocked. It's against the interest of the consumers. The DOJ is doing their jobs. But everything else the federal government is doing lately isn't. They've been repealing regulations left and right. Anything to increase corporate freedom is an immediate go, except this merger. If they want to work in the interest of the consumers, how about protecting net neutrality? Instead, they only work in the interest of the consumer when it's also working against the interest of an entity that the president has declared an enemy, which makes it hard to believe that they're doing the right thing for anything other than the pettiest of reasons.
That’s malarkey. That’s not why it’s happening at all. The Trump admin has no problem with consolidation. They are just challenging this merger because it competes against Fox.
Consolidation can be both good and bad for consumers. Consolidation can permit economies of scale which can drive down prices of sufficient competition remains in the market. Amazon, for example, just couldn’t offer the same services at the same price if it were say, 20 different competing companies. Same thing for Wal-Mart, or Google.
Economics of scale in this instance are not applicable. But they do lower the providers cost. They never pass along the savings. Media companies like this do not decrease prices as output increases. If this were true cable boxes would be free in 2017. Looking around my house I pay for 1 Hub, 1 router, 3 boxes and 4 remotes. My provider just did an “upgrade” now all homes use 1 hub and 1 router per house and x number of “child” boxes. This means the provider is benefiting not the consumer. In fact, if my hub goes out, all my child boxes go out by design. I asked for 4 hubs and no “child” boxes and they said this upgrade is to reduce their cost, not mine. I’m not the only one complaining. My monthly fee is higher than before the upgrade. All these companies care about is power, control and profits. While this deal is considered a “vertical acquisition” it is not bc the media landscape is changing and the lines are more blurred than ever.
Amazon, Walmart, and Google were each one, focused company that got to where they were that way. Mergers of companies that scheme on their customers with oligopoly or monopoly tactics have almost always been bad for their customers. Also, if they were so great, they wouldn't be lobbying to block taxpayer-funded alternatives because it's always better when it's the private sector. The municipal versions would be slower, have worse service, cost more, and fall apart due to red tape. Yet, many that occurred despite Comcast et al's bribes to politicians were delivering better and faster service at same price or cheaper.
Better to split them up even further with regulations on things like sharing lines to force them to improve speed and service.
That reasoning makes no sense. Consider the article on the front page today about taxpayer-funded cafeterias in India. Everyone rightly pointed out that these cafeterias could crowd out privately owned restaurants. There is no real “competing” with a government-backed service. (The postal service, for example, is subject to elaborate rules to prevent unfair competition with private carriers. And countries like the UK and Germany have privatized their postal services for good reasons.)
That is not to say that municipal alternatives don’t have a place. My view is that state and local governments should get rid of build out requirements that restrict the development of competition while building municipal service to areas left unserved by the market. That’s a traditional government function: serving as the safety net. But that’s not what’s usually proposed.
Increased profits come from somewhere. Nothing is ultimately good for consumers, they are just misled to believe it is.
Increased jobs, in the case of walmart, come at the price of workers having to apply for foodstamps to live. Cheaper prices come at the cost of driving local stores out of business. Google and amazon are shitty companies too, no matter how much they pay for good PR.
Everyone is quick to bring up President Trump. If you don’t think about the media landscape (big scary picture) and are quick to say this is lawsuit is a political move you are naive and uninformed.
Throwing out ad hominems before you've explained any reasoning is protesting a bit too much.
People are quick to bring up donald because his incompetence will almost certainly result in the lawsuit failing and this merger being allowed to go through. That's sad.
"These days they have streamlined online applications for writing to them, but I suggest that you only send them paper letters. This is a really weird thing for a technologist to suggest, but when you send paper letters, you can establish and own a “paper trail.” When you type words into their godawful web applications and hit submit, you will likely fail to retain a copy of those words and fail to retain records about what they told you (exactly) and when. This will complicate your resolution with them. Communicate with them only over postal mail. Keep a log of every mail you send (including what you said) and when it was sent; keep a copy of every letter they send to you and when it was sent. You don’t need physical copies; digital is fine. I like organizing all of mine on a per-incident basis in Dropbox."
YOU SHOULD ALWAYS SEND LETTERS WITH 'USPS RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED.' (It's the green card you get at the post office and once the recipient receives your letter, you will get a green card in the mail serving as proof of delivery and acceptance.) This is the lowest costing form of legal proof for a paper trail. Well worth it. I use it all the time and I learned this from my dad who has spent his life practicing law.
> YOU SHOULD ALWAYS SEND LETTERS WITH 'USPS RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED.' (It's the green card you get at the post office and once the recipient receives your letter, you will get a green card in the mail serving as proof of delivery and acceptance.)
Also: 1) Get the actual green-card form beforehand; 2) type the green-card serial number above the inside address of the letter; and 3) keep a photocopy. Otherwise the recipient could claim that the signed green card, confirming receipt of the mailing, was for some other letter, not the one you sent. As a baby lawyer filling in for a more-senior associate at a court hearing, I had an opposing counsel make just such a claim to a judge; the judge gave the opposing counsel the benefit of the doubt. (The opposing counsel was later disbarred for unrelated reasons.)
Example of such an inside address:
--begin--
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL NO. 123456789
Evil Corporation
9876 Main Street
Anytown, Anystate 54321-9876
Attention: Department of Fobbing People Off
To whom it may concern:
[etc.]
Is the date that the green card was bought recorded by USPS? Basically, how exactly does writing the tracking number within the letter prove that the letter was mailed with that envelope?
Under civil law in the United States, the legal burden is not "irrefutable proof", but "preponderance of evidence".
If you produce copies of a letter with a given return receipt number indicated on it, the return receipt stub, and the received receipt, and the opposing party claims that "this could have been faked", then, unless your credibility is otherwise impeached, you have established a preponderance of evidence for your claim.
It sounds like several of you know more than I do about this, so I'm curious... I'm in the habit of using Priority Mail for things like this, because I can print out a mailing label at home and get a tracking number with delivery information.
Assuming I put the tracking number in the letter as you suggest, is there still an advantage to using certified mail and a green return receipt instead? Or is Priority Mail equally good?
Yep, for important written communications (e.g. CRAs, the IRS, debt collectors, etc.) I always use certified mail and request a return receipt. For any clueless millennials such as myself who are unfamiliar with the post office, this is a good video that shows exactly how to fill out the forms:
Yep ( http://federalevidence.com/node/784 ) ; mail properly addressed is assumed to be delivered. For related reasons, any mail sent to a business is assumed to have been read. This is a rebuttable presumption.
Even knowing this, many lawyers (and other savvy people) send certified mail with a return receipt. It strengthens your case in the event that the other party tries to disavow receipt of the mail, and it says (rather loudly) that there is a folder on your desk labeled Evidence and that every additional action the other party takes will join that folder.
You don't sign the letter because signatures have a way of magically[0] teleporting themselves onto documents that you've never seen.
0 - Using such fancy Merlin's wands of "Photoshop" or "scanning and then MS Paint copy/paste" or just "photocopy, cut with scissors, paste with tape, photocopy again."
That is highly illegal. The FCRA and related laws are enforced by the FTC, CFPB, and debtors' lawyers. However, forgery is a felony in all 50 states. If they forge your signature and mail it to you from another state, it becomes a federal crime. A creditor would have to be really stupid to try something like that.
FB buys a shitload of data to 'connect the world' but they don't have to disclose sources unless related to serving ads. They obviously use data sources to make both personal connections and targeted advertising work. While I agree that FB shouldn't tell this user how they figured her family secrets out, they really should let users opt out of all data sources with a button. Currently, in order to opt out you need to go to the sources but nobody will ever know all the sources. This person didn't do much research. Perhaps, rather than contact FB she should have spent time creating her recommended list for a while then opted out from the data providers discussed https://www.facebook.com/help/494750870625830 then she could have done a comparison. Opting out takes a lot of time and I assume it takes a while for these systems to update the opt out information.
I strongly believe that when online companies have a lot of personal information like FB they should not assume users will have a better overall user experience if the service uses offline data that the user doesn't explicitly authorize to be used in conjunction with their online account/profile.
I believe NYT has a bookstore list for reporting orders. This is how the best selling books make it on this list. The buyer (someone tied to the book) probably knew the store was on the NYT list and made a massive order. The NYT will need to tweak things going forward. Any store telling people they are on the NYT Best Seller reporting list should be removed from the list.
The story specifically mentions that there were suspicious calls asking if a store was a NYT reporting store, followed by bulk orders with no delivery date.
I was scratching my head because I didn't recall reading this. After dinner, I grabbed a glass of wine and I went back and read beyond the first 5 paragraphs plus the embedded tweets.You gotta do what you good do but don't get caught.
From the OP: "Buying your way onto the bestseller list is not technically illegal, nor is it that hard if you know how."
It's a pretty awesome ploy, with one caveat: to make real money, somewhere, someone should produce something of value. Even if they offline kickstart this book into "#1 bestseller", at least the movie should be good enough for YA.
Allowance for doing nothing works pretty well. When you go to stores make sure they bring their money. They ask for less if they are holding their money. When you tell them they can buy anything they want with their money. Suddenly the crap items that said they wanted are long forgotten. The moral of the story is always go shopping with them but make sure they have their allowance on them. This helps them learn the value of a dollar. They become really cheap.
Coming from a background in real estate as an active broker who has worked with Redfin agents, I'd like to point out a few things. Redfin's biggest asset is their website. It's a good user experience and grabs them a lot of leads. However, Redfin agents tend to be subpar agents when representing sellers and or buyers. Most wouldn't survive in a regular brokerage setting. If I am hiring an agent, I want a hungry service oriented agents, not someone who is fine with receiving a salary. Discounts are enticing to consumers, but from what I have noticed these discounts come at a cost to their clients. Rather than list a bunch of examples, from what I have witnessed, Redfin agents are not all that skilled in negotiating. They are actually horrible. Redfin needs to train better but training is a multi-faceted issue. They need experienced brokers who have been beaten up and have seen it all. I was lucky to have a mentor who played a significant role in redefining the industry back in 2001. Let's just say, nobody knew what the concept of Exclusive Buyer Agency was during the late 90s. Anyway, in order to have great agents, they need to learn from smarter battle tested agents in the office. An agent needs good instincts to represent clients well. This takes time - 10,000 hours easy and they need to see a lot of deal flow. You learn from the ugly deals, not the smooth ones. Fortunately, for Redfin most Redfin buyers/sellers won't realize how good their agent is until they have something to compare it to. Redfin does not have top agents nor can the attract high-quality agents. In order for them to succeed in the public market, they will need to increase fees because the cost of maintaining and attracting talent isn't cheap. Discounting gives companies a good chance to obtain market share. But market share will go down once they raise fees. Historically speaking, discount real estate companies don't do well in public markets. Let's look at one example of a company associated with discounts, Zip Realty. I think they did an IPO in 2004 or so. Over the years things didn't go well so they were forced to merge. Now, you might say, REDFIN is different. This is somewhat true but I am sure if you read the Redfin S1, you will see some of the concerns I have addressed.
This is coming from a non-traditional broker. I have always gone against the grain. I believe Redfin will need to evolve a lot to get the public market to embrace them. If I had to guess they will become a little more "traditional" overtime.
I hope Redfin trains better and figures things out. Otherwise, they will need to merge post-IPO.
Sorry for the long comment. I could write forever on this topic. I may do this on my site when I have a couple of hours.
