Blog dedicado a la formación en todos sus ámbitos: presencial, online, a distancia
You may not have heard of either company, but one of them probably runs a death-care business somewhere near you. More likely SCI, which owns around 1,450 funeral homes, 374 cemeteries (including 213 combination funeral homes/cemeteries) and 100 crematories. They’re the parent company of Neptune Society. That was one of the hurdles for this merger, in fact: the FTC identified 59 markets where the union of the two companies would eliminate competition and be generally bad for consumers. All of the funeral homes in town might have different names, but if they have the same parent company, that means they can charge higher prices. A merger between two competitors might “substantially increase the risk of collusion between SCI and the few remaining competitors,” warns the FTC.
In the affected markets, the FTC will require the two companies to sell 53 funeral homes and 38 cemeteries sometime in the next six months before they get hitched, in order to maintain healthy competition in the funeral business in that area.
If you’ve forgotten the major plotlines of HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” you can read up on SCI’s business model and the major complaints about the company in this great Businessweek piece from October.
FTC Puts Conditions on Service Corporation International’s Proposed $1.4 Billion Acquisition of Rival Funeral and Cemetery Services Provider [FTC]
How a Funeral Giant Overcame Antitrust Concerns and Gobbled Up Its Rival [Businessweek]
FURTHER READING:
Is Funeral Home Chain SCI’s Growth Coming at the Expense of Mourners? [Businessweek]
If I had a nickel for every time my donkey meat snack turned out to be fox meat instead, I’d have no nickels. But there would be plenty of coins coming in for customers at some Walmart stores in China after tests showed that what was labeled as “Five Spice” donkey meat was tainted with the meat of other animals.
Walmart is now pulling the item from shelves and refunding customers who bought the meat while it tries to figure out how the mixup happened, reports Reuters.
It’s bad timing for Walmart’s reputation in China as the company is planning on opening 110 new stores in the country over the next few years. But shoppers could be put off by such an incident because as we all know, what the label says is what you should get.
While it’s not like everyone in China is chowing down on donkeys, it’s a popular snack in some areas. In 2011 China slaughtered 2.4 million donkeys for consumption, so ostensibly someone is buying the stuff and wouldn’t be pleased to have it be any other kind of meat.
“We are deeply sorry for this whole affair,” said Wal-Mart’s China president and CEO, Greg Foran. “It is a deep lesson (for us) that we need to continue to increase investment in supplier management.”
Wal-Mart recalls donkey product in China after fox meat scandal [Reuters]
Yes, by “reed flutes” we mean “flutes made from dried reeds.” The confusion came from rules that ban fresh agricultural products in order to stop the spread of plant diseases. The musician apparently was carrying new reeds home to Boston to make new flutes, and had checked them with his finished flutes in his baggage. His baggage was missing when he came home to Boston on December 22nd, but all air travelers know that happens sometimes. It was when the airline delivered his bags to his house the next day, bereft of flutes, that he knew something was wrong.
He eventually learned that the instruments and reeds that he was bringing home from a trip to the Middle East via Spain had been seized by U.S. Customs at John F. Kennedy airport in New York.
To replace the flutes, Razgui says that he’ll have to gather more reeds: they only grow in a few countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Spain, and his native Morocco. He claims that the reeds he was carrying in his checked baggage were already dried. Also, he says that the flutes aren’t made from bamboo.
Customs disagrees with his account, claiming that what it destroyed were “fresh green bamboo canes.” Not flutes. Not reeds. Speaking to Gothamist, a spokesperson insisted, “There were no instruments destroyed according to our people.” Destroying the non-approved “bamboo” was necessary in order to keep “exotic plant pathogens” out of the country.
U.S. Customs seizes, destroys musician’s flutes over agricultural concerns [NY Daily News]
Snapchat is leaking
While many Snapchat users are used to nudity, many of them only thought they were exposed for the 10 or so seconds that late-night selfie was on their recipient’s screen. But a new report says the phone numbers and usernames associated with more than 4.6 million Snapchatters in North America were leaked and posted online.
A site run by a mysterious, anonymous group or person called SnapchatDB posted the information on its site with the details of the app’s users next to their locations. Though the last two digits of each phone number have been obscured “to minimize spam and abuse,” but SnapchatDB says it’ll reveal the info to anyone who contacts it asking for the full number, reports The Verge.
Using that information could allow snoopers to try to “find phone number information associated with Facebook and Twitter accounts, or simply to figure out the phone numbers of people you wish to get in touch with.”
So that’s creepy, but at least the site has been taken down by now.
Last week Snapchat discussed concerns Gibson Security had with the app, after it claimed it had found a major security hole in app’s “find friends with phone numbers” function. Snapchat responded to that claim on Dec. 27 saying in theory, if someone uploaded a bunch of phone numbers — “like every number in an area code, or every possible number in the US” — they could ostensibly match those with usernames.
But it added that it had also “implemented various safeguards to make it more difficult” to pull that off in the last year.
Despite those measures taken by Snapchat, SnapchatDB claimed that the leak was possibly “through the recently patched Snapchat exploit.”
If you’re worried that your phone number has been leaked, you can use a tool from Gibson Security to look it up. Then you might want to delete your Snapchat account and tighten up your security settings on any other social media accounts to prevent creepers from contacting you. Unfortunately as Gibson points out, this won’t erase your number from the leaked database.
4.6 million Snapchat phone numbers and usernames leaked [The Verge]
The Motorola Moto G — the less-frilly version of its Moto X — came out around Thanksgiving at a retail price of $179, unlocked, meaning AT&T and T-Mobile customers could take it on either network and didn’t need to sign a contract.
While it looks like our cohorts at Consumer Reports have yet to test the device, it does have some rather positive reviews, ranging from a 7.0 to a perfect 10 on Engadget’s round-up of ratings. It’s by no means a top-line device — it doesn’t have LTE capability, its screen is smaller than some more expensive competitors (though it has better resolution than some), and its camera has fewer megapixels — but many of the reviews say that the Moto G is about as good as you could hope for a $179 phone.
Then came reports earlier this week that the Verizon-compatible version of the device was selling for only $99.99 at Best Buy. For an unlocked, new phone, that’s virtually unheard-of. Best Buy has confirmed it’s been selling the Verizon version at that price since shortly before New Year’s and Verizon confirmed today that it will be adding the Moto G to its currently slim prepaid device pickings on Jan. 9 for the $99.99 price.
Sprint’s Boost Mobile says it will also be offering the phone, but at $129.99.
With its brightly colored options and the low price point, the Moto G is obviously looking at the iPhone 5C as competition. However, the iPhone’s $99 price tag is the subsidized version that requires a two-year commitment to a wireless provider. The unlocked 5C will actually cost you $549.
Granted, the 5C has more features than the Moto G (LTE service and a better camera chief among them), but do those improved specs really merit a $449 price difference?
Even the full-price AT&T/T-Mobile version of the Moto G is $370 less than the unlocked iPhone 5C. It’s also significantly cheaper than most of the options that T-Mobile sells directly to customers through installment plans. For example an iPhone 4 from T-Mobile will eventually cost the buyer $408 (24 installments of $17), and that phone came out in 2010.
As I mentioned last week, if phone companies are going to shed their practice of selling subsidized phones — a practice that, in my opinion, is an antiquated holdover from the transitional period between landlines and wireless — something will need to be done about the sticker prices of phones. While things like installment plans help delay the huge retail price of high-end smartphones, they are really just a substitute for the contracts we all hate.
If we want true mobility in the wireless market, manufacturers need to make affordable, unlocked phones that will give consumers the freedom to choose their wireless providers without having to pay an exorbitant price for that freedom.
Over at DealNews, they outline some items that, according to their research, you may or may not find the best deals on during the month of January. What should you avoid shopping for?
There are a lot of things that Dealnews says that you should consider buying in January, because the best deals around are going on now or about to start soon. What are those things?
The Best and Worst Things to Buy in January [Dealnews]
Pulling off a heist sounds like a criminal rush and all, but cutting a hole in a cinder block wall to steal anywhere from $65,000 to $75,000 in electronics still sounds like a whole lot of effort. That’s how thieves boosted a bunch of merchandise from a Brooklyn Best Buy, say police investigating the incident.
Although reports vary on how much stuff was taken — with NBC New York reporting $65,000 in electronics and the New York Post saying $75,000 — one thing seems to be pretty consistent: It’s kinda nuts to go to such lengths with high-powered demolition tools for a theft.
“That’s crazy, why would someone go to that extreme?” said one shopper.
The robbery was discovered when a manager showed up at 6 a.m. on Tuesday to work and saw a “gaping” hole in the rear wall, cops say. Shelves were left fairly bereft of tablets, cameras, phones and other gadgetry.
It’s unclear how the thieves or thief got away, but one theory that’s been floated in reports is that whoever pulled off the heist could’ve used a boat tied up in the inlet behind the store to make off with the goods.
That might not hold up as the NYP reports a snipped chain-link fence in the alley nearby and drag marks on the cement, but still, a four-foot hole was smashed into the store, so there’s that bit of excessive robbery shenanigans.
“That’s some Ocean’s 11 stuff that they’re doing,” another shopper observed.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt couldn’t be reached for comment on that topic. Mostly because they refuse to ever answer any Oceans 11 emails I send.
Thieves Cut Hole in Cinderblock Wall at Best Buy, Steal $65K in Electronics [NBC New York]
Cops probe $75K heist from Best Buy [New York Post]
Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World entered the public domain in Canada yesterday, but not in the U.S., where it will remain protected for another 20 years.
Starting in 1978, a new law lengthened the terms of copyright protection from the previous maximum of 56 years from date of copyright, to the author’s lifetime plus 50 years.
The law also retroactively provided that new, longer protection period to still-copyrighted material published between 1923 and 1977. Since many authors of works published during this period failed to initially extend their copyright, or hadn’t properly indicated that their works were copyrighted, a number of things still came into the public domain after the 1978 law. However, since most successful books, films, songs, etc., had actively been extending their copyright under the old law, the new life-plus-50 rule kicked in.
Then there was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which not only further extended protection by 20 years (life of the author plus 70 years), but automatically provided 95-year terms for all still-copyrighted pre-1978 works.
And so even though plenty of authors died between 1923 and 1943, meaning their works should now be in the public domain. But because of the 95-year terms granted by the Extension Act, the earliest these works will enter the public domain is 2019.
There are those who point the white-gloved finger directly at Disney for this public domain vacuum, as the company lobbied heavily for the Extension Act out of fear that some of its earliest properties — most importantly Mickey Mouse — would enter into the public domain.
Critics of the extension worried that continuing to stretch out protections wasn’t a matter of helping the artistic community, but instead was a demonstration of how media interests could manipulate lawmakers.
“To suggest that the monopoly use of copyrights for the creator’s life plus 50 years after his death is not an adequate incentive to create is absurd,” wrote Sen. Hank Brown of Colorado in a 1996 report for the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The real incentive here is for corporate owners that bought copyrights to lobby Congress for another 20 years of revenue—not for creators who will be long dead once this term extension takes hold.”
The Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has this round-up of the well-known books and films that would have joined the public domain yesterday without enactment of the 1978 law, including Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat; Ian Fleming, From Russia, with Love; Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria; and The Seventh Seal, directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Even under the like-plus-50 guideline established by the 1978 law, works from authors like Aldus Huxley, C.S. Lewis, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, and W.E.B. DuBois, would now be in the public domain. In fact, these authors’ works are now in the public domain up in Canada, where they follow the life-plus-50 rule.
One copyrighted character that got a huge stay in public domain execution was Superman. Even though Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the two creators of the character, died in 1996 and 1992, respectively, the actual copyright on the first publication belongs to DC Comics (though this has been a matter of much dispute). The pre-Extension Act copyright law provided protection terms of 75 years for corporate copyright holders. Since Superman first appeared in 1938, he would have been set for public domain in 2014.
But the 1998 Extension Act extends copyright protection for corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever comes first, thus granting DC Comics several more years to squeeze money from the Man of Steel… and some time to save up to lobby for another copyright extension law.
Public Domain Day: January 1, 2014 — The Road NOT Taken [Duke Law]
15 years ago, Congress kept Mickey Mouse out of the public domain. Will they do it again? [Washington Post]
No books for you: U.S. starves public domain for another year [GigaOm]
The Seattle mother of two challenged herself to complete the endeavor last year and restricted all her meals to only what she could buy at Starbucks or “Starbucks-inspired” (translation: Starbucks-owned) stores like Roy Street Coffee, Tazo Tea and Evolution Fresh. Yes, even on her birthday and holidays. She did prepare regular food for her children, however.
“WHY? am I doing this challenge? Or WHY? will I do any challenge in the future? Because I LOVE being human and I LOVE the privilege of being able to ask the question WHY? in the first place!” she wrote on her blog at the start last year, via the New York Daily News.
It’s not cheap to eat only at coffee shops, either — she spent around $500 to $600 every month on food, which she photographed along the way.
And then there’s the tongue-numbing boredom of being stuck with a limited menu.
“In the last month, in the last couple weeks, it’s been really difficult. People had pizza at the office last week and I was dying,” she told the NYDN. “I’m happy to be able to eat whatever I want (again).”
To celebrate her culinary freedom, she gnoshed on fish and chips and had a bit of a tough time at first.
“My taste buds have been freaking out for the last 24 hours,” she explained. “Starbucks doesn’t really have anything that’s fried, and you can only eat so much after you haven’t had stuff like that for a year.”
I would’ve bought food at Starbucks and then fried it up as a food disguise, although that might be considered cheating. Or just not restrict myself to one company’s food in the first place, but that’s another matter.
Seattle woman eats nothing but Starbucks food for a year [New York Daily News]
This time, 72 pallets of various Mars brand candies worth more than $362,000 disappeared from a logistics company warehouse in Illinois. The theft occurred in mid-December, but the company first investigated to make sure the candy wasn’t just misplaced. The news broke after Christmas, and we only heard about it today.
Like our theories that Target exists in its own reality, that Comcast seeks to colonize customers’ own cable modems, and that Sears and Lenovo are massive anti-capitalist pranks, the Comfort Food Crime Wave is a joke. It’s extremely unlikely that the same people are responsible for any of these crimes.
Midwesterners, if anyone tries to sell you a candy bar that “fell off a truck,” be wary.
When a Florida Walmart manager followed a couple of suspected beer thieves out into the parking lot, he probably wasn’t expecting he’d end up going on a 12-mile ride in the back of their truck, tossing beer cans toward passing cars in the hopes of getting someone’s attention.
The manager of the Titusville, FL, store tells WFTV in Orlando that he’d spotted a male and female leaving the Walmart with some 25 cases of beer that we was pretty sure they hadn’t paid for.
“I had asked them for a receipt and they kept throwing beers into their car,” he recalls. “I ran up to get their license plate, but when I realized how close I was, I jumped in the back so they didn’t run me over.”
And so the truck took off down I-95 with the pilfered Bud Light and a freaked-out Walmart manager in the back.
In an attempt to get someone to call the police, the manager began tossing beer cans into the road.
The manager says they stopped the truck twice. The first time, the shoplifters attempted to beat him up. They later pulled off onto a wooded road and tried to force him out of the truck.
“I was like, ‘I’m not getting out for you to run me over,’” he recalls.
This got the attention of one driver, who pulled up behind the stopped truck on a country road and announced that he’d called the sheriff.
“Well, I just saw all the beers alongside the road,” says the driver. “The gentleman in the back got out, and as soon as he did, the other guy jumps into the pickup truck and just leaves.”
While it’s not like we’re super worried that Valentine’s Day won’t get its due attention (read: not worried at all because we know the hearts and mushy cards will coat the country in a blanket of buyable affection) it’s still way, way too early to decorate for St. Patrick’s Day.
At least reader Leigh thinks so when she submitted the above and below pics in Maryland yesterday, writing: “This is worse than Target setting up for Valentine’s the day after Christmas.”
Officially, a United spokesperson told reporters that a toilet clog was to blame. One passenger told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that wasn’t quite it: a modern jet was grounded because of a disposable diaper sent down the toilet.
“After six hours of giving us diaper updates, they finally just cancelled the flight,” he told the newspaper. Sounds enthralling.
Sure, the plane could have taken off with the clog, but a flight with no working bathroom might be the only thing worse than using an airplane bathroom.
Toilet clog cancels United flight to Cleveland from Phoenix [Cleveland Plain Dealer]
The woman, named Marjorie, tells KGO-TV’s Michael Finney, that other people began illegally using her Social Security number, along with variations on her first name — Marge, Margie, Margaret — to open Comcast accounts all around Northern California.
“I know that two addresses in Oakland were used and the first time I talked to Comcast they said that accounts had been opened in Dublin and Pleasanton and Berkeley and kind of all over the East Bay,” she recalls.
Somehow, the repeated use of the SSN did nothing to trip off alarm bells at Comcast, but when the actual Marjorie used her actual info to open her first Comcast account, she was told she owed $1,500.
Even after she explained to Comcast that these were fraudulent accounts the cable company demanded payment and sent a collection agency after her for money she didn’t owe.
“I got really nervous and scared,” she tells Finney. “I had heard things happening with debt collection agencies that follow you for the rest of your life.”
As happens, once Finney and his 7 On Your Side team contacted Comcast, the cable company was suddenly apologetic and said it would call off the debt collector dogs.
So why could so many accounts — Marjorie claims it was 15; Comcast says it was fewer, but won’t give a number — be opened using the same SSN?
According to the Comcast brain trust, its system didn’t catch the multiple uses of the same Social Security number because customers sometimes open multiple accounts. However, it claims to have put something in place (I think it’s called “common sense”) to help prevent this from happening in the future.
Now that you can legally buy marijuana for recreational use in Colorado, many potential customers might be wondering: What exactly am I buying? Never fear, there are apparently very knowledgeable sales people ready to help and explain the finer points of Bubba Kush and any other strains of cannabis you may be interested in.
Cameras were a’clicking and reporters were very clear about which shots they wanted to see yesterday during the first legal purchase of recreational marijuana was marked with a bit of a ceremony at a store in Denver, reports the Denver Post.
In an event arranged by activists, a veteran of the Iraq war who uses pot to ease the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder was the first customer to make a marijuana purchase at about 8 a.m. Anyone 21 or older will be able to do the same thing in the state as of yesterday.
The store’s owner stood in a scrum of a reporters yelling requests at her to hold up the pot a bit higher so the cameras could see it, and explain the finer points of the items for sale.
“I’m holding an indic a strain of cannabis called Bubba Kush,” she said, after also showing off some chocolate truffles infused with pot.
“It’s a huge honor, to say the least,” the first customer added, saying that he uses marijuana for his symptoms because he’d rather use it than other drugs to combat his PTSD. When a reporter asks how long that eighth will last him, he laughs and says he might just keep it in a frame in his home as a memento.
It seemed for the most part like sales went smoothly, with customers lined up to patiently wait for their turns to buy pot.
“It’s kind of a relief, frankly,” said Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown of the “peacefulness of the crowd.” “This could have gone a lot of different ways. So far, so good.”
World’s first legal recreational marijuana sales begin in Colorado [Denver Post]
“It was a tough decision, but we did have to change the formula of our Original Pine-Sol due to a lower amount of pine oil available,” explains a company representative on the Pine-Sol Facebook page.
If you thought that a cleaning solution couldn’t inspire this level of devotion…well, you’re wrong. Complaints are a regular fixture on the Pine-Sol Facebook page, and a Change.org petition reveals consumers’ devotion to the product.
This whole world changes, nothing is perfect. EXCEPT ORIGINAL PINE-SOL! I DO NOT GET MAD EASY, THINGS HAPPEN FOR REASON, AND WE CAN’T CHANGE EVERYTHING. I’M 37 AND HAVE BEEN A FAITHFUL, ADDICTED CUSTOMER TO ORIGINAL SCENT PINE-SOL, I USE IT EVERYWHERE, FOR EVERYTHING…
I WILL FIGHT,THIS STUPID MOVE YOU GUYS DID TILL I’M TO [sic] OLD TO MOVE, THEN I’LL DIE, AND COMEBACK AND HAUNT YOUR ASS, AND KEEP FIGHTING FROM MY GRACE [sic]. IT’S BULLSHIT YOU KNOW IT, NOW CHSNGE [sic] IT BACK.
Now, that, Clorox, is what you’d call a loyal customer.
Pine Sol: Change the original scent back [Change.org] (Thanks, Scorpio!)
Target won’t give a specific number, confirmed the slip-up to both Reuters and the AP. The store says it will honor these cards and that anyone with a faulty card can bring it to any Target service desk or call 800-544-2943.
This is certainly not how Target wanted to end its 2013 holiday shopping season.
“It’s another black eye that makes you question the internal operating procedures of Target,” Brian Sozzi, CEO of Belus Capital Advisors tells the AP. “Target needs to be doing everything perfectly. It can’t afford to lose any more confidence among its guests.”
Target confirms some shoppers’ gift cards were not properly activated [AP]
Target faces problems with gift cards sold over holidays [Reuters]
Are you in the market for some nice braaaaaaains? Er, brains? If you see some jars of human brains for sale on eBay, it’s probably best not to purchase them. Police in Indianapolis say a man had been breaking into the Indiana Medical History Museum and boosting brains and other preserved body parts and selling them, because apparently there’s a market for such a thing.
While we’re not sure pickled brains would even be attractive to zombies, at least one person forked over hundreds of dollars on eBay and then reported the exchange to the authorities, says the Indy Star.
Police claim the 21-year-old broke into the museum multiples times this year to boost the brains of dead mental patients. The museum used to be the Central State Hospital, which treated patients with psychiatric and mental disorders between 1848 and 1994.
The tipster told cops he’d snagged six jars of human brains on eBay for the tidy sum of $600 — plus shipping, natch — but had gotten suspicious when he saw labels on the containers that indicated the brains might not be on the up and up.
Police used that eBay transaction to track down the seller and subsequently set up a sting earlier this month, pretending that someone wanted to meet in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen and buy some brains from the man. He’d allegedly stolen 60 jars of human tissue from the museum just the day before.
Cops busted the suspect during the parking lot deal and has been charged with theft, marijuana possession and paraphernalia possession. No word on whether he was hawking the brains as some kind of Wizard of Oz but the museum’s executive director is mightily displeased that anyone would boost such items.
“It’s horrid anytime a museum collection is robbed,” she said. “A museum’s mission is to hold these materials as cultural and scientific objects in the public interest. To have that disturbed — to have that broken — is extraordinarily disturbing to those of us in the museum field.”
As for the man who was in the market for the brains in the first place, she adds that he said he just liked to collect “odd things.” Or he was secretly a scarecrow.
Police: Indy man stole brains from museum, sold them for cash [Indy Star]
