At least they took your report. I had a handyman rip me off for a $1k deposit, then I found out he had ripped off dozens (maybe hundreds?) of other people. He does really good work for 3-4 people every six months to use them as shining references then screws everybody after that.
Contractors aren't licensed in Texas so there wasn't much of any other way to find out the guy was a crook. HOWEVER, the police refused to take my report because the guy technically STARTED the job (just a few minutes of actual work). In spite of the dozens of other victims and similar criminal cases that have ended in conviction, the police refused my report, insisting that it was only a civil matter.
The guy has already been sued but if you don't want to pay a judgment there are dozens of techniques to just keep dodging any collection attempts.
Fact is, reporting crime is bad for the department and bad for the city elected officials. To get re-elected you have to show that crime is going down, so there is a disincentive to taking reports if you can avoid it. I'm just glad I wasn't raped and have to argue to the cops the meaning of "no".
I have a milk shake mixer made out of steel and ceramic and an Osterizer blender made out of steel and glass. They both used to belong to my parents. They were purchased in the 1950's and 1960's. I still use both all the time and never yet needed service.
When I have to buy plastic appliances they rarely last over 10 years. The cheapest appliances tend to crumble apart in 1-2 years.
IANAL, just commenting on my limited understanding of law. Do not rely on my comments for any purpose.
Depending on the jurisdiction of the judgment debtor, the wrong defendent in this case, could claim they were never served. Then it is on the plaintiff to prove they were served. Given that the plaintiff didn't serve the proper defendent the judgment debtor (wrong defendent) could rely on this fact alone to show that the plaintiff didn't have the competence to properly serve process. To say "I never got the summons" is proof enough, since the plaintiff cannot claim that they did serve the right person.
Now if they can sucessfully show this to the court the wrong target could sue for gross negligence fraud. Courts in many states can award treble damages for fraud. Damages would be to their reputation and credit history. If the judgment ever shows up on their credit report then they could be denied a loan or a business opportunity. Now that the judgment has been blasted all across the media and internet the wrong target should have a strong libel claim. Perhaps the owner of "TheDirt" will win $11 million against Sarah Jones and her lawyers. Maybe more.
Given that people now rely on information available on the internet, even firing employees for the content of their facebook pages, the owner of TheDirt may always be denied opportunities because of the reference to the $11 million judgment.
IANAL, but I believe this is common legal information that anyone could look up. Verify your own facts and don't rely on anything I state below:
The article does not mention, but I am very curious to know how the wrong website was served. If you sue a living person you have to serve process in person in most states. The process server literally has to hand the citation directly to the person being sued. In some states you can still serve process by certified mail, but the signature better be the person being sued or else it is improper service of process and a judgment can be thrown out. If a business is sued then all that is required is to serve the registered agent, but even then you have to serve the registered agent (such as for a corporation) in person or by certified mail (receipt signed by the registered agent).
There are other ways to serve process. For example, in Texas you can serve process by publication if you cannot locate the defendent, but there is a cavaet: If the person finds out that a judgment was entered against them by default after service by publication and failure to appear, the defendent has a window of time to call for a re-trail. But, in this case the plaintiff must cover all of the defendent's legal expenses.
To sum it up, suing the wrong person or serving process incorrectly can be a costly mistake. To then try to collect on a judgment when the plaintiff knew they sued the wrong person could give the defendent an opportunity to sue for fraud, for which the court can award TRIPLE damages. Most likely, the plaintiff will send the wrong defendent an apology and not attempt to collect.
I love this idea and I would like to see them try. Unlike commercial TV, Radio, and even Cable TV, the internet is not broadcasted. The first minute that the internet goes down, every geek with a wifi connection will turn up their gain and connect to their neighbors network. Over a short period, with a lot of help from the neighborhood geek, entire communities will be able to link up through their own grass roots mesh networks.
This has already been attempted on smaller scales where residences of a community were not happy with high priced ISPs. Economics has kept the idea from going global, but a kill-switch would definitely serve as a powerful trigger to truly free up the technology that drives the internet. Of course you will probably have to pay some mobster to make high speed connections outside your local area, but unless they cut off land-based telephone service as well, you can at least find a long-distance number to dial for 56k speed.
And if they shut down the land lines, well there's always the retired HAM operator next door.
Parents should teach their kids to keep their THEMIS away from such things. Most 7th graders are just beginning to understand their instruments at that age.
What if a state legislature just throws up its hands and says, "I got nuthin". Can they just, ah... foreclose on a state?
Yes, China will foreclose on California since they are the primary creditor. This will give the Chinese a logistical advantage to pump their cheap plastic into the rest of the States. The Chinese will also solve California's unemployment, since every Californian will be guaranteed a position on an assembly line for $0.14/hour. This will also solve California's illegal immigration problem.
Don't worry, the new Smart Phone, M.D. will come with a label: "Warning! This phone emits radiation known to the State of California to cause cancer... but this phone will text you to let you know when it happens."
And that is why our health care is so expensive. If sub-standard providers were allowed to practice there would be more mal-practice but there would be more options for those who don't have any care at all. Medicaid and charity care are too spotty to cover everybody who needs affordable care, not to mention the many exclusions. Our current regulations only exist to protect the upper middle class who are too stingy to pay top dollar for quality care. Afterall, they have yacht payments to worry about, and who has time for background checks? For now the best your smart phone will be allowed is a Voodoo app.
BP is completely incapable of plugging the hole without trying each of the cheapest solutions first. RECOVERING the leaking oil for future refinement and sale is priority #1. Winning hearts and minds will be just a pleasant byproduct of stopping the leak. In the end the leak probably won't be plugged but instead a group of politicians and "experts" will decide upon an agreed "acceptable level of leaking."
Here's an example - scientists first rejected the big-bang concept because it seemed too religious. Its echoes of “in the beginning” bothered them.
The most astounding scientific break-throughs begin with a far-fetched half-proven hypothesis, like say for example, a space elevator. Too prove the theory often takes thousands if not millions of dollars in funding. So REAL scientists on the cutting edge are always engaged in a struggle against their peers and non-scientists, a struggle that can be emotional, heated, even downright bitter. And whenever an idealogical cause depends on what kind of truth will come out, there will always be this struggle, and the naysayers will always claim to be unbiased.
In a world where people still want to teach creation to school children there will be some scientists so worried about setting back the advancement of logic and reason over religion and superstition that they will inevitably consciously or subconsciously supress evidence that may appear to support superstitious claims.
Perhaps Penicilin could have been discovered a few decades earlier if there was an interest at that time in studying what Native American healers might actually be doing right instead of dismissing their entire practices because of the intermingling of superstition with their art.
Point One: Since when in the last five years have pay phones been an anonymous or pseudonymous form of communication? You cannot use a pay phone today without assuming that a CCTV system is recording your face and the time/date of your conversation. Today just about anything can be traced. Even in 1968 James Earl Ray was caught only two months after he shot MLK Jr. They traced him from a stamp placed by a laundry cleaner on an article of clothing that he left behind. And the stamp only showed that the laundy service was located in California. And today's technology can identify a person from their voice just like a fingerprint.
Point Two: This law if passed will make the private after-market for prepaid phones virtually dissappear. Do you want the cops raiding your home after your phone is used by a drug lord or terrorist? People are going to stop selling their phones to lesson their liability. And the providers will likely be quick to shut-off service after a phone is reported stolen, or use telemetry to help cops locate the theif.
Drug lords and terrorists will go back to using walkie-talkies and satellite phones purchased overseas.
Maybe because people are cruel to ugly people so they lash back at society more often. People choose to surround themselves with good looking people, so ugly people miss out on opportunities, friendships, jobs, advancement, and other facets of social life. Not feeling good about life makes them not want to smile, which just makes them uglier.
When was the last time to saw an ugly CEO, politician, salesperson, or "employee of the month"? Ugly people could be famous musicians, but that was before MTV. And without success people sometimes resort to crime.
So there is probably a greater proportion of guilty ugly people, but the innocent ugly definitely have a tougher battle than the good looking ones. The charming crooks tend to evade suspicion from the beginning, so more "ugly" suspects will get picked up off the street, possibly just because the forensic artist lacks talent and all his sketches look ugly. Crime victims tend to describe their assailants as "ugly", because, let's face it, even good-looking people look ugly when they're trying to strangle you.
I haven't RTFA, but I've been in archeology for decades, and I've never heard of this Lidar fellow. Is that is first name or last name? He must be very respected to have a team of archeologists to go scanning the jungle with him. I've been to Central and South American numerous times and my travel companions always turned on me.
As for staring at reflected light, it might be better than staring directly at the light, but I recommend keeping your EYES SHUT! Last guys I knew that kept their eyes open - well - their faces melted!
Held liable by whom? PrivacyProtect.org is one such service. They have a PO BOX in the Netherlands and they state boldly "all mail is refused." This makes service of process for subpoenas and citations very difficult, unless you are suing in a Dutch court. Remember, this is HOLLAND we're talking about! Anything goes (prostitution, cannibis, cartoons of Mohammad, etc.), and they don't like to waste time enforcing laws or checking underwear for explosives.
This is the same idea behind offshore banking - if you have a bank in the US and get sued in the US, the winner of the suit can get a court order to have your funds taken from the bank. The local sherrif literally visits the bank and levies the account. If you lose a suit in the US but you keep your cash in the Cayman Islands, the Caribbean banker isn't going to care jack-squat about any US court order!
Of course engineers make better terrorists. Generally, engineers are better at just about everything. I know this is an offense to liberal arts and under-grad business majors. While there is a definite sub-population of engineers with social deficiencies, most REAL LIFE engineers don't fit the stereotype. 25% of all MBA graduates have engineering backgrounds, and engineers dominate many MBA programs. You will find engineering graduates pursuing careers as lawyers, surgeons, investment bankers, Fortune 500 executives, heads of state, FBI agents, rock stars (yes, I said "rock stars"), and so on. The executives running the company where I work all started as engineers. Our sales and marketing team consists mostly of engineers as well, and they are definitely not the shy nerdy type.
I even have friends from college who dropped out of our engineering program and excelled to the top of their class with business degrees. We're just better at what we do! I never met anyone who washed out from a liberal arts program and had to major in engineering as their second choice.
Here's my advice for these students. Save money and get . . .
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Two words: CASH FOR GOLD. You mail whatever gold crap you have and they will pay you something for it (though nowhere near melt value).
This story is not set in the US, but in the UK. And no that's not a part of the US.
OK, then answer me this: How many UK military bases are located on mainland USA? How many US military bases are located on the British Isles?
Now, I'll ask again, who own's who now?
At least they took your report. I had a handyman rip me off for a $1k deposit, then I found out he had ripped off dozens (maybe hundreds?) of other people. He does really good work for 3-4 people every six months to use them as shining references then screws everybody after that.
Contractors aren't licensed in Texas so there wasn't much of any other way to find out the guy was a crook. HOWEVER, the police refused to take my report because the guy technically STARTED the job (just a few minutes of actual work). In spite of the dozens of other victims and similar criminal cases that have ended in conviction, the police refused my report, insisting that it was only a civil matter.
The guy has already been sued but if you don't want to pay a judgment there are dozens of techniques to just keep dodging any collection attempts.
Fact is, reporting crime is bad for the department and bad for the city elected officials. To get re-elected you have to show that crime is going down, so there is a disincentive to taking reports if you can avoid it. I'm just glad I wasn't raped and have to argue to the cops the meaning of "no".
I have a milk shake mixer made out of steel and ceramic and an Osterizer blender made out of steel and glass. They both used to belong to my parents. They were purchased in the 1950's and 1960's. I still use both all the time and never yet needed service.
When I have to buy plastic appliances they rarely last over 10 years. The cheapest appliances tend to crumble apart in 1-2 years.
And then your insurance won't cover your medical bills because there won't be any evidence of a collision.
IANAL, just commenting on my limited understanding of law. Do not rely on my comments for any purpose.
Depending on the jurisdiction of the judgment debtor, the wrong defendent in this case, could claim they were never served. Then it is on the plaintiff to prove they were served. Given that the plaintiff didn't serve the proper defendent the judgment debtor (wrong defendent) could rely on this fact alone to show that the plaintiff didn't have the competence to properly serve process. To say "I never got the summons" is proof enough, since the plaintiff cannot claim that they did serve the right person.
Now if they can sucessfully show this to the court the wrong target could sue for gross negligence fraud. Courts in many states can award treble damages for fraud. Damages would be to their reputation and credit history. If the judgment ever shows up on their credit report then they could be denied a loan or a business opportunity. Now that the judgment has been blasted all across the media and internet the wrong target should have a strong libel claim. Perhaps the owner of "TheDirt" will win $11 million against Sarah Jones and her lawyers. Maybe more.
Given that people now rely on information available on the internet, even firing employees for the content of their facebook pages, the owner of TheDirt may always be denied opportunities because of the reference to the $11 million judgment.
IANAL, but I believe this is common legal information that anyone could look up. Verify your own facts and don't rely on anything I state below:
The article does not mention, but I am very curious to know how the wrong website was served. If you sue a living person you have to serve process in person in most states. The process server literally has to hand the citation directly to the person being sued. In some states you can still serve process by certified mail, but the signature better be the person being sued or else it is improper service of process and a judgment can be thrown out. If a business is sued then all that is required is to serve the registered agent, but even then you have to serve the registered agent (such as for a corporation) in person or by certified mail (receipt signed by the registered agent).
There are other ways to serve process. For example, in Texas you can serve process by publication if you cannot locate the defendent, but there is a cavaet: If the person finds out that a judgment was entered against them by default after service by publication and failure to appear, the defendent has a window of time to call for a re-trail. But, in this case the plaintiff must cover all of the defendent's legal expenses.
To sum it up, suing the wrong person or serving process incorrectly can be a costly mistake. To then try to collect on a judgment when the plaintiff knew they sued the wrong person could give the defendent an opportunity to sue for fraud, for which the court can award TRIPLE damages. Most likely, the plaintiff will send the wrong defendent an apology and not attempt to collect.
Windows look out through you!
I love this idea and I would like to see them try. Unlike commercial TV, Radio, and even Cable TV, the internet is not broadcasted. The first minute that the internet goes down, every geek with a wifi connection will turn up their gain and connect to their neighbors network. Over a short period, with a lot of help from the neighborhood geek, entire communities will be able to link up through their own grass roots mesh networks.
This has already been attempted on smaller scales where residences of a community were not happy with high priced ISPs. Economics has kept the idea from going global, but a kill-switch would definitely serve as a powerful trigger to truly free up the technology that drives the internet. Of course you will probably have to pay some mobster to make high speed connections outside your local area, but unless they cut off land-based telephone service as well, you can at least find a long-distance number to dial for 56k speed.
And if they shut down the land lines, well there's always the retired HAM operator next door.
Wow! That beats even goatse!
Parents should teach their kids to keep their THEMIS away from such things. Most 7th graders are just beginning to understand their instruments at that age.
What if a state legislature just throws up its hands and says, "I got nuthin". Can they just, ah ... foreclose on a state?
Yes, China will foreclose on California since they are the primary creditor. This will give the Chinese a logistical advantage to pump their cheap plastic into the rest of the States. The Chinese will also solve California's unemployment, since every Californian will be guaranteed a position on an assembly line for $0.14/hour. This will also solve California's illegal immigration problem.
Don't worry, the new Smart Phone, M.D. will come with a label: "Warning! This phone emits radiation known to the State of California to cause cancer ... but this phone will text you to let you know when it happens."
And that is why our health care is so expensive. If sub-standard providers were allowed to practice there would be more mal-practice but there would be more options for those who don't have any care at all. Medicaid and charity care are too spotty to cover everybody who needs affordable care, not to mention the many exclusions. Our current regulations only exist to protect the upper middle class who are too stingy to pay top dollar for quality care. Afterall, they have yacht payments to worry about, and who has time for background checks? For now the best your smart phone will be allowed is a Voodoo app.
BP is completely incapable of plugging the hole without trying each of the cheapest solutions first. RECOVERING the leaking oil for future refinement and sale is priority #1. Winning hearts and minds will be just a pleasant byproduct of stopping the leak. In the end the leak probably won't be plugged but instead a group of politicians and "experts" will decide upon an agreed "acceptable level of leaking."
Here's an example - scientists first rejected the big-bang concept because it seemed too religious. Its echoes of “in the beginning” bothered them.
The most astounding scientific break-throughs begin with a far-fetched half-proven hypothesis, like say for example, a space elevator. Too prove the theory often takes thousands if not millions of dollars in funding. So REAL scientists on the cutting edge are always engaged in a struggle against their peers and non-scientists, a struggle that can be emotional, heated, even downright bitter. And whenever an idealogical cause depends on what kind of truth will come out, there will always be this struggle, and the naysayers will always claim to be unbiased.
In a world where people still want to teach creation to school children there will be some scientists so worried about setting back the advancement of logic and reason over religion and superstition that they will inevitably consciously or subconsciously supress evidence that may appear to support superstitious claims.
Perhaps Penicilin could have been discovered a few decades earlier if there was an interest at that time in studying what Native American healers might actually be doing right instead of dismissing their entire practices because of the intermingling of superstition with their art.
It would be so much cooler if they embedded a chip in the fly and became the first to transmit a virus from a PC to an insect that smells light. http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/05/26/1214214/Scientist-Infects-Self-With-Computer-Virus?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+(Slashdot)
Point One: Since when in the last five years have pay phones been an anonymous or pseudonymous form of communication? You cannot use a pay phone today without assuming that a CCTV system is recording your face and the time/date of your conversation. Today just about anything can be traced. Even in 1968 James Earl Ray was caught only two months after he shot MLK Jr. They traced him from a stamp placed by a laundry cleaner on an article of clothing that he left behind. And the stamp only showed that the laundy service was located in California. And today's technology can identify a person from their voice just like a fingerprint.
Point Two: This law if passed will make the private after-market for prepaid phones virtually dissappear. Do you want the cops raiding your home after your phone is used by a drug lord or terrorist? People are going to stop selling their phones to lesson their liability. And the providers will likely be quick to shut-off service after a phone is reported stolen, or use telemetry to help cops locate the theif.
Drug lords and terrorists will go back to using walkie-talkies and satellite phones purchased overseas.
Maybe because people are cruel to ugly people so they lash back at society more often. People choose to surround themselves with good looking people, so ugly people miss out on opportunities, friendships, jobs, advancement, and other facets of social life. Not feeling good about life makes them not want to smile, which just makes them uglier.
When was the last time to saw an ugly CEO, politician, salesperson, or "employee of the month"? Ugly people could be famous musicians, but that was before MTV. And without success people sometimes resort to crime.
So there is probably a greater proportion of guilty ugly people, but the innocent ugly definitely have a tougher battle than the good looking ones. The charming crooks tend to evade suspicion from the beginning, so more "ugly" suspects will get picked up off the street, possibly just because the forensic artist lacks talent and all his sketches look ugly. Crime victims tend to describe their assailants as "ugly", because, let's face it, even good-looking people look ugly when they're trying to strangle you.
The solution is to make sure that at least one juror is blind. And one juror needs to be deaf just in case the defendant sounds as ugly as he looks.
I haven't RTFA, but I've been in archeology for decades, and I've never heard of this Lidar fellow. Is that is first name or last name? He must be very respected to have a team of archeologists to go scanning the jungle with him. I've been to Central and South American numerous times and my travel companions always turned on me.
As for staring at reflected light, it might be better than staring directly at the light, but I recommend keeping your EYES SHUT! Last guys I knew that kept their eyes open - well - their faces melted!
What the article fails to mention is that no one noticed how hard it was until the hot intern started to polish it.
Held liable by whom? PrivacyProtect.org is one such service. They have a PO BOX in the Netherlands and they state boldly "all mail is refused." This makes service of process for subpoenas and citations very difficult, unless you are suing in a Dutch court. Remember, this is HOLLAND we're talking about! Anything goes (prostitution, cannibis, cartoons of Mohammad, etc.), and they don't like to waste time enforcing laws or checking underwear for explosives. This is the same idea behind offshore banking - if you have a bank in the US and get sued in the US, the winner of the suit can get a court order to have your funds taken from the bank. The local sherrif literally visits the bank and levies the account. If you lose a suit in the US but you keep your cash in the Cayman Islands, the Caribbean banker isn't going to care jack-squat about any US court order!
Of course engineers make better terrorists. Generally, engineers are better at just about everything. I know this is an offense to liberal arts and under-grad business majors. While there is a definite sub-population of engineers with social deficiencies, most REAL LIFE engineers don't fit the stereotype. 25% of all MBA graduates have engineering backgrounds, and engineers dominate many MBA programs. You will find engineering graduates pursuing careers as lawyers, surgeons, investment bankers, Fortune 500 executives, heads of state, FBI agents, rock stars (yes, I said "rock stars"), and so on. The executives running the company where I work all started as engineers. Our sales and marketing team consists mostly of engineers as well, and they are definitely not the shy nerdy type. I even have friends from college who dropped out of our engineering program and excelled to the top of their class with business degrees. We're just better at what we do! I never met anyone who washed out from a liberal arts program and had to major in engineering as their second choice.
you and your obsessions. fat people are not discriminated against or humiliated in any way in my country. the country is turkey...
Fat people are not discriminated against in a country named after a delicious fat edible bird. Oh the irony!
DIPLOMAS AWARDED BASED ON LIFE EXPERIENCE - University and College Degrees
Have all the experience in your profession but no university degree to show for it? Sometimes we consider life experience to be just as good as classroom instruction
Get your online University Degree based on your life experiences in less than 24 hours!
US & CANADIAN RESIDENTS
INTERNATIONAL RESIDENTS
These are real, genuine degrees that include Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees. These are verifiable degrees and matching records/transcripts with all pre-requisite courses are also available. This little known secret has been kept quiet for years.
The opportunity exists due to a legal loophole allowing some established colleges to award degrees at their discretion. With all of the attention that this news has been generating, I wouldn't be surprised to see this loophole closed very soon.
GET YOUR LIFE EXPERIENCE DEGREE TODAY! - College & University Diplomas based on Life Experiences.