I found this a pretty interesting and useful way to look at this.
One additional factor I would love to see: situations where one person is coming on a "late" cofounder (e.g. a basic product has already been made, e.g. with outsourced Eastern European developers, and there is some minor traction).
I actually came into this situation with my current startup. My partner had the MVP built by contractors before I came on. He is completely BD/sales, but he had a close advisor who helped him get the product built.
Honestly, this is kind of a nuanced situation. First of all, it depends how long the first guy has been working on the project, and whether he was doing it full-time or on the side. Also, it depends on whether the MVP has product/market fit, or whether it needs to pivot and be re-built before it is really what the customers want.
Overall, without knowing what weights this "calculator" assigns to various variables, it is pretty much useless. Also, as much as technical founders want a formula for everything, equity split comes down to a negotiation (especially if founders come on at different times).
I'm not sure whether or not your wife is working, but how do you manage your time with her and that relationship? Is it just shared time that you spend with your daughter in the evening (since you usually go back to work after your daughter goes to bed)?
She doesn't work, so we see each other throughout the day and when my daughter naps she usually helps me out with financial/tax type work for the businesses.
At night we all spend time together for dinner, hanging out with our daughter, and then usually 1-2 nights a week I don't work (depending on how busy I am it might be more) and we watch a movie and hang out. (or get a sitter to go out)
>Second, condom-only regulation would also encourage a black market in adult film production. So movies featuring no-condom sex would not only still exist, but those actors and actresses would no longer be required to participate in the industry's HIV testing program, increasing the risk of an HIV outbreak in the industry and the population at large. One need only look at prostitution to see what happens when an industry operates underground.
Nice, but why not allow integration with common authentication devices available, such as SecurID? I don't want to end up with 5 or 6 of different authentication devices.
That (in addition to the fact that everyone lives in the suburbs) perhaps provides some of the explanation for why Atlanta rush hour traffic seems to be some of the worst in the country, despite having more lanes and a smaller population than cities that have better traffic.
I have had to commute on two of the top ten worst rush hour stretches of highway in the country (and they're within a few miles of each other in southern California, on the 91 and I-10). Noodle is exactly correct that such driving "cultures" do exist, and they make this consciously regularizing driving style worse than useless.
Interesting, my instinct has always been to try to "punish" the cheaters by preventing them from merging in, thinking that this would discourage this behavior. But I can't really stop this, and the article provides a good explanation for why you might as well just let people merge in front of you.
The problem is that allowing merges incentivizes zooming ahead in the merge lane, which should result in there still being drivers who can't merge, creating the jam. I don't have a good solution for this.
To an extent I think you're right and some people will do it regardless. On the other hand, smoothly flowing traffic creates an incentive to not zoom ahead in the merge lane. There's less of a feeling of a need to cut ahead and people don't seem to do it as much when there isn't already a jam. (That is, the jam provides an incentive to cut in front of everyone)
And if people were to implement this strategy, the provided space gives an incentive for those zooming ahead to merge a little sooner rather than risk waiting half a minute for someone to let them in right at the exit. It's been my experience that most of the "cheaters" will merge a little sooner if there's space rather than zoom up right to the end. They'll still be passing you, which is IMO aggravating, but at least things will move a little sooner.
I used to as well, until one of the cheaters got out of his car and yelled at me at the next traffic light for "cutting him off". I decided that this potential outcome wasn't really worth it, especially since they always find a way in anyway. Another upshot is I also don't have to focus as hard on not rear-ending the person in front of me.
You can actually be sued for anything. Whether or not you can win is another matter, and it's difficult to recover legal costs for a frivolous lawsuit. The lawyer is probably just hoping for a settlement.
Exactly. People fail to understand this all of the time.
I'd be pretty impressed if they got one court to agree that Google was doing something illegal by failing to comply with an order from another court. Courts are understandably loath to castrate each other like that.
Actually, Google basically fought its way to the first hurdle (the point that the court told them to release personal information) and then said 'yeah, sure, whatever' and coughed up the dough. If they were really concerned about privacy, they would have fought it a long way further, or applied for an appeal before releasing the information, however they didn't. I'm sure this could be grounds for a suit.
Their users have a reasonable expectation of privacy and it'll take a court to decide if Google actually made a reasonable attempt to protect her privacy. Google should have offered to delete the blog and ban the user, but apparently they did neither and went through the motions.
I'm not saying this suit is right, but I'm sure there's definitely grounds for this woman's suit. It wouldn't be one court commenting on another courts decision, it would be one court ruling on Google's inaction on taking it further. The whole reason there are appeals and the supreme court is that a just decision can't necessarily be made by just one judge or jury.
Higher courts often find the lower courts wrong, but from what I understand basically never penalize the corporation for following the offending court's orders. It's obvious why, it would set a terrible precedent.
Corporations don't have a responsibility to take every case to the Supreme Court if they have to. If a court orders them to cough up information and they do, there is virtually 0 chance they will ever be penalized for that by another. Can you name one instance?
I'll ask my IP attorney friends about this, but I remember one expressing similar sentiment about mobile phone corporations before.
Again though, that comes back to my original point: Is it the duty of a corporation to question the direction of the court in decisions of law?
In other words, does google have a moral obligation, as defined by the state, to defend your privacy against the state? To what end? The plaintiff in this case seems intent on establishing a precedent that will effectively elevate corporations to be equal to that of government in enforcing legal constructs.
That doesn't seem like a reality I'd really like to see.
Is there not some office that at least validates the merits of the suit though? Otherwise, the legal system can pretty much be used as a tool for extortion no?
You can file for a summary judgement if there are no material fact in dispute which could cause you to lose the case.
Basically, the judge can say "even if all the plaintiff's allegations are true the defendant will still win, so lets skip the trial." That's probably what will happen here.
The closest you'll get is that very few lawyers will take your case if it completely sucks. And it can get thrown out pretty much off the bat from the the judge
Criminal cases do have grand juries which weigh the merits of a case before going to trial.
So theoretically, an organization with large enough pockets could literally destroy a competing organization with lawsuits designed only to ensure the victim expends large amounts of cash on legal fees, correct?
I'm wondering if this method of "business" has ever been attempted?
When the Golden Gate Bridge was being built, the ferry companies (who would be put out of business by the bridge) tried to sue the bridge to death with something like 2000 trivial lawsuits. While each of these was easily defeated, the only thing that stopped the ferry companies was that the local populace boycotted the ferries until they stopped the lawsuits.
So yes, it's been done before, is probably being done now, and will happen again. You can counter-sue trivial lawsuits to make the plaintiff go away (and stop filing suits against you), but it takes some work and laying out some money to lawyers.
Thanks for the background. This whole thing strikes me as a horrible loophole in the legal system. I'd imagine the same is true in most western countries.
Sadly it is the same in most western countries, however if you sue me because I wore a pink hat (frivolous lawsuit) I have the right to counter-sue you (which would be a non-frivolous lawsuit). Yours would be thrown-out and cost you money and probably a lot to get a lawyer to take it on, mine however would likely be taken on on a no-win-no-fee basis by basically any lawyer because it would be so easy to win. So your suit would cost you money, and mine would likely cost me nothing or make me money.
So yes the loophole is there, but the loophole itself is kind of self destructive for anyone dumb enough to try it.
The RIAA, as much as it pains me to say this, is acting within the letter of the law, in that I would not call their suit frivolous. Immoral and unethical sure, but not frivolous.
They've put forward a case that explains that a particular person has broken an existing law and caused them damages of x amount, and the court has agreed with them in most cases.
It would at least make sense to deal with plurals. I can't tell you the number of times I've searched for something using an s (or not) at the end, and failed to find what I was looking for, only to remember later that I should try to add or remove an s from my search term.
One additional factor I would love to see: situations where one person is coming on a "late" cofounder (e.g. a basic product has already been made, e.g. with outsourced Eastern European developers, and there is some minor traction).