Starting Right Corporation free essay sample

The consideration must not be past. Re McArdle (1951) Ch 669 Majorie McArdle carried out certain improvements and repairs on a bungalow. The bungalow formed part of the estate of her husbands father who had died living the property to his wife for life and then on trust for Majories husband and his four siblings. After the work had been carried out the brothers and sisters signed a document stating in consideration of you carrying out the repairs we agree that the executors pay you ? 480 from the proceeds of sale. However, the payment was never made. Held: The promise to make payment came after the consideration had been performed therefore the promise to make payment was not binding. Past consideration is not valid. 2. The consideration must be sufficient but need not be adequate. Lampleigh v Braithwaite [1615] EWHC KB J17 The defendant had killed a man and was due to be hung for murder. He asked the claimant to do everything in his power to obtain a pardon from the King. The claimant went to great efforts and managed to get the pardon requested. The defendant then promised to pay him ? 100 for his efforts but never paid up. Held:Whilst the promise to make payment came after the performance and was thus past consideration, the consideration was proceeded by a request from the defendant which meant the consideration was valid. The defendant was obliged to pay the claimant ? 100. 3. The consideration must move from the promisee. Tweddle v Atkinson [1861] EWHC QB J57 Queens Bench Division A couple were getting married. The father of the bride entered an agreement with the father of the groom that they would each pay the couple a sum of money. The father of the bride died without having paid. The father of the son also died so was unable to sue on the agreement. The groom made a claim against the executor of the will. Held:The claim failed: The groom was not party to the agreement and the consideration did not move from him. Therefore he was not entitled to enforce the contract. 4. An existing public duty will not amount to valid consideration. Collins v Godefrey (1831) 1 B amp; Ad 950 Kings Bench Division The claimant, Collins, had been subpoenaed to attend court as a witness in separate court case involving the defendant, Godefrey. Godefrey had sued his attorney for alpractice and Collins was required by the court to attend as an expert witness. In fact Collins never gave evidence but was required to be on standby for six days in case he was called. After the trial Collins gave Godefrey an invoice to cover his time spent at court and demanded payment by the next day. Without giving him the full day to pay, Collins commenced an action to enforce payment. Held: Collins wa s under a public duty to attend court due to the subpoena. Where there exists an existing public duty this can not be used as consideration for a new promise. Godefrey was not required to pay him. 5. An existing contractual duty will not amount to valid consideration. Stilk v Myrick [1809] EWHC KB J58 Kings Bench Division The claimant was a seaman on a voyage from London to the Baltic and back. He was to be paid ? 5 per month. During the voyage two of the 12 crew deserted. The captain promised the remaining crew members that if they worked the ship undermanned as it was back to London he would divide the wages due to the deserters between them. The claimant agreed. The captain never made the extra payment promised. Held: The claimant was under an existing duty to work the ship back to London and undertook to submit to all the emergencies that entailed. Therefore he had not provided any consideration for the promise for extra money. Consequently he was entitled to nothing. Requirement of contract Consideration: Value given in return for a promise. However, a court will generally not inquire into whether or not a particular form of consideration is sufficient. So, if you decide to sell your house for $50, and after the deal is done, realize youve made a horrible mistake, you cant go to court and argue that the sale is invalid, because there was no consideration. The fact that $50 is an absurdly low price for any house is irrelevant, as long as you agreed to the sale freely. The requirement for consideration is why you will sometimes hear of very expensive items being sold for very small amounts of money, such as a house or car being sold for $1. These transactions are essentially gifts, but the token consideration is there to ensure that the agreement is legally binding, in case the donor tries to back out. By making the agreement legally binding, the donor shows good faith. However, if there is a breach of a promise supported by consideration, the victim of the breach has suffered a loss, especially if they have already performed their end of the agreement, and are now getting nothing in return. Offer and acceptance An offer is an expression of willingness to contract on certain terms, made with the the intention that it shall become binding as soon as it is accepted by the person to whom it is addressed, the offeree [G. H. Tretel, The Law of Contract, 10th edn, p. 8]. The expression referred to in the definition may take different forms, such as a letter, newspaper, fax, email and even conduct, as long as it it communicates the basis on which the offeror is prepared to contract. An invitation to treat is not an offer, but an indication of a persons willingness to negotiate a contract. In Harvey v Facey, an indication by the owner of property that he or she might be interested in selling at a certain price, for example, has been regarded as an invitation to treat. The courts have tended to take a consistent approach to the identification of invitiations to treat, as compared with offer and acceptance, in common transacions. The display of goods for sale, whether in a shop window or on the shelves of a self-service store, is ordinarily treated as an invitation to treat and not an offer. The holding of a public auction will also usually be regarded as an invitation to treat. Postal acceptance rule As a rule of convenience, if the offer is accepted by post, the contract comes into existence at the moment that the acceptance was posted. This rule only applies when, impliedly or explicitly, the parties have in contemplation post as a means of acceptance. It excludes contracts involving land, letters incorrectly addressed and instantaneous modes of communication. 0ffer an offer made in response to a previous offer by the other party during negotiations for a final contract. Making a counter offer automatically rejects the prior offer, and requires an acceptance under the terms of the counter offer or there is no contract. Example: Susan Seller offers to sell her house for $150,000, to be paid in 60 days; Bruce Buyer receives the offer and gives Seller a counter offer of $140,000, payable in 45 days. terminate and discharge of contract (frustraction) Discharge of a valid contract involves the process under which the primary (performance) obligations come to an end. Discharge by breach will generally give rise to secondary obligations to pay damages. Discharge by performance will not give rise to secondary obligations, as the contract will have been successfully completed. Discharge by frustration does not give rise to secondary obligations but rights to restitution under statute. Discharge of a valid contract should be distinguished from termination of an invalid contract, as with Mistake amp; Restraint of Trade where the agreement is deemed to be void. In such instances no obligations can be aid to have existed whereas in the case of a valid contract the primary obligations cease but the contract may remain in existence and give rise to the secondary obligations to pay damages.

Network effect free essay sample

Network effect is seen as a phenomenon where a network service (SNS or PNS) becomes more valuable as the number of users increase. This phenomenon encourages continually increasing membership within the network. This can happen when a user adopts a network service initially to connect with current users, or later, when â€Å"everyone† is using the network service. Although there may be a larger increase in new membership for SNS’s, it is stated throughout the LinkedIn case that new membership for PNS’s is likely to be more valuable to users because of the nature of the connection. Many people will not want to change PNS’s because they will lose their multiple connections already created (Yoffie et al. , 2009). The case examines the likelihood of SNS’s overlapping and taking over PNS’s. This outcome seems unlikely. By examining Exhibit 6 (Yoffie et al. , 2009, p. 16), the correlation among factors such as age, income, college education, and position within an organization sets LinkedIn squarely within its target market. We will write a custom essay sample on Network effect or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Also, Yoffie et al. indicates the distinct uses of professional and social apps on Facebook. The multitude of users who use social apps vs. lower use of professional apps shows that Facebook users are less likely to make their profiles into professional networking tools, leaving PNS’s like LinkedIn for leveraging their professional careers (Author, p. 14). Question #2 Emerging companies need to generate new dynamics that are modernized, innovative, and easily adaptive to survive in this world. The new dynamics should be economically viable for the industry because they affect issues of whether to pursue a build or a buy approach to expand globally. LinkedIn Corporation, a PNS, is used by professionals globally to interact professionally. Uses include recruiting, getting expert advice, group collaboration, and more. Differentiating strategies were adopted by LinkedIn in order to separate itself from competition and answer the uestion of whether to utilize a build or buy approach. A build approach involves both monetary and other resource investments from the company. For LinkedIn, Investments in certain professional apps such as conference calendar, a tool used to indicate when certain conferences will be coming up, and which of a user’s connections will be attending, are examples of utilizing the build approach. The buying approach is where the company buys/merges with an existing SNS/PNS and integrates it within the existing systems. Although this expands a company, it constrains the ability of a company to customize the existing network with its own. Therefore, a company amp; its procedures need to adapt to the technology it buys. If they use a build approach, the company can build to their own specifications differentiating itself from existing networks (No Quote, Does not answer question). Question #3 LinkedIn’s strategy is straight to the point, be the best in the market of professional networking services (PNS). By focusing on providing a â€Å"virtual platform for professional interaction† (Yoffie et al. , 2009, p. 2), LinkedIn would provide various productive services to its users. Services provided include professional search, reference checking, recruiting, advice search, job searching amp; posting, and workgroup collaboration, which were successful because they allowed their users to become more effective in their professional careers. Also, its success was accounted for being involved with countless industries, rather than focusing on a specific industry like other PNS providers. Within its strategy, LinkedIn encompassed three premises which attributed to LinkedIn being the best in PNS, â€Å"remain a strongly differentiated category from SNS,† â€Å"maintain a hold on professional users for reasons both positive and negative,† and â€Å" embrace establishments rather than fight them† (Yoffie et al. , 2009, p. 3). LinkedIn’s success strongly accounts for maintaining a quality PNS by providing a productive atmosphere, which involves being separated from SNS. It is important for LinkedIn to remain separate from SNS capabilities in order to maintain its high PNS quality and core values. The risk of inheriting this strategy’s premise involves losing the users that want a network that hosts both professional and social networking capabilities. LinkedIn could potentially lose users to SNS businesses, like Facebook, who are starting to provide PNS services in its SNS atmosphere. In the second premise for its strategy, holding its users for positive and negative reasons also brings both success and risk. The positivity hold, having users create positive professional identity, is a success because it is a competitive advantage over SNS providers who only provide social identity or cannot separate the two. But holding onto its users for negative reasons promotes the similar risk as mentioned in the first premise. When users think to switch from LinkedIn to a SNS that provides both SNS and PNS capabilities, LinkedIn banks on the fact that they believe users would not put losing its contacts in jeopardy. This negative hold on LinkedIn users is a risk because it is quite possible that sooner or later SNS companies that promote both PNS and SNS capabilities will also have relatively the same contacts as LinkedIn. It is risky to assume that LinkedIn can keep users based on the premise of this assumption. Lastly, the third premise for its strategy brings on success. Having companies embrace the concept of LinkedIn in the end creates more users. LinkedIn is designed so that professionals will be more productive and more effective in their careers. If LinkedIn does eventually provide SNS qualities in its service, this could pose as a risk. Companies might not want to promote a network that could waste work time with their employees playing games and spending time on personal social interaction on the network. Therefore, companies would end up fighting LinkedIn. LinkedIn has always incorporated a control over its network as part of its strategy. Keeping out non-professional information and photos helps keep the quality of its PNS professional and on top. It also embeds value propositions for its professional users as well as its corporate users which revolve around a simple user interface. Although this is what maintains its quality’s success, it also brings a risk by shying away companies who do not want to be part of a network that they cannot control. Lastly, LinkedIn is successful because of its strategy of how to obtain its revenues. Its five sources of revenue include advertising, subscriptions, job postings, corporate solutions, and primary research that evenly contribute to its earnings. If one of the sources does not do as well as expected, LinkedIn has the other four methods to rely on. Question #4 Companies implement strategies to achieve a target or reach a goal that may e becoming the market leader of the industry, increasing profits by a certain percent, or even attracting new members to use a professional network service. As mentioned in the second week of classes, a company may choose one of the four Porter’s generic strategies that include differentiation, overall cost leadership, focus differentiation, and focus low cost to achieve competitive advantage (Kumar, 2010, p. 24). LinkedIn’s strategy is a focus differentiation since it was first founded, and its strategy has helped the company to become a leader in the PNS market. The differentiation strategy involves constant innovation and providing users with what they need and want in a new or better manner than what competitors can provide. Therefore, LinkedIn and many companies in other industries may ward off its competitors through innovation, quality, and reputation although overlapping products may be present. While Facebook may present threats to LinkedIn with the intent to blur the distinction between SNSs and PNSs, LinkedIn would still maintain a competitive advantage in the PNSs. LinkedIn has always focused on differentiating itself in the PNSs by providing users a different degree of privacy, standards, and quality tools to â€Å"†¦find job candidates for position in their company, to reach out to experts around the world in order to get advice and  make better decisions† (Yoffie et al. , 2009, p. 4). LinkedIn differentiates from Facebook and other SNSs not only on the type of service that is provided, but also on the value it adds to the professional identity of each user, and the reputation it maintains. SNSs such as Facebook and MySpace may be very popular and well known around the world for the types of applications available, the connectivity advantages, and the numbers of users within the network. However, the SNSs have presented privacy issues as well as reputation issues. As mentioned in class by Professor Kumar and Mehdizadeh (2010) in her article, SNSs provide a self-presentation characteristic of low self-esteem and high narcissism users. Alternately, LinkedIn targets a long-term goal in the attempt to create a different type of environment, a â€Å"professional ecosystem† with the addition of applications and modules to help users increase efficiency in their work and portray the professional self. The existence or emergence of other PNSs would increase competition for LinkedIn; however, LinkedIn already has a well-established professional networks composed of top executives, CEOs/CFOs, and other important professionals that attract individuals who seek advice or just the possibility to connecting professionally. LinkedIn’s users may have difficulty and a cost to switch networks, but they also find value in the services available. The continuous promotion of the benefits that can be obtained and the innovation of new modules such as LinkedIn news and customizable settings will help the company ward off competitors. Question #5 Question # 5a The distinction between social and professional is clear. This distinction likens LinkedIn to the Wall Street Journal â„ ¢, and SNS’s to publications like Peopleâ„ ¢, indicating that creating a more social aspect to LinkedIn will depart from the needs and wants of their target market. The expansion by Facebook into an open platform allowed third parties to develop social apps and created a â€Å"viral [spread]† across the network. Hoffman (Yoffie et al. , 2009, p. 7) stated that he wanted to prevent this within the LinkedIn network, instead insisting on stringent protocols and reviews of all new apps, so as to provide professionals with â€Å". . . the right sort of tools to interact with their network. † Maintaining a walled garden, as opposed to an open platform, is critical to continuing LinkedIns success. Like stated before, its strategy is based around being the best PNS in the industry. Users flock to this website because of how LinkedIn keeps the network professional, promotes productivity, and enables users to advance their careers success. Keeping this prestige will conserve LinkedIn’s quality and continue to attract its target market, professional users. Question # 5b LinkedIn should not broaden the scope to include elements of social networking. LinkedIn began and still operates since 2003 as a PNS. This strategy has allowed it to flourish, generating a customer base of 75 million users spreading around 200 countries, which includes professionals from all fortune 500 companies (Yoffie et al. 2009). This growth can be attributed to its departure from obtaining the majority of its revenues from advertising, like SNS’s, and creating a focused concept that does not necessarily remove innovation within the network, but instead indicates a policy of professionalism throughout with the controlled inception of professional applications. Different from SNS, of which the majority of revenue is from advertising, LinkedIn has framed its revenue model on five sources: (1) Advertising, (2) Subscriptions, (3) Job Postings, (4) Corporate Solutions, and (5) Primary Research. Steve Sordello, CFO for LinkedIn, stated â€Å"This model gives us a lot of sustainability, even if one of those revenue streams doesn’t succeed as we expect, we have others† (Yoffie et al. , 2009, p. 6). In order to sustain a competitive advantage, in 2007, LinkedIn change a policy to accommodate users who wished to upload a single professional head shot for identification. In 2008, LinkedIn launched a product called Company Groups that brought all LinkedIn users who worked for an organization into a closed forum which provides a collected, protected space for employees to talk to each other, as a part of application program interfaces (API). Other launches included Conference Calendar, as stated above (Yoffie et al. , 2009). Question # 5c LinkedIn has created a successful user base in foreign countries. This growth is attributed to LinkedIn’s concept of build not buy, using an organic growth model, giving it a competitive advantage over its main foreign rival Xing. This advantage is through LinkedIn’s ability to control segments of its business outside the U. S. , separate from Xing who buys outside networks limiting its control, in addition to Nye’s observation that â€Å"being in English first† is an advantage.

Security vs. Privacy essays

Security vs. Privacy essays Security verses Privacy: How much do we need to be watched? You walk out of your house, get into your car, and drive down the street towards some unknown destination. However by leaving your house, someone sees you. They keep track of every move you make. This person already knows where you live and what kind of car you drive. When you make a left turn, the person finds out your name because you yell out the window to your friend. You go downtown and drive through the ATM. Guess what? The person following you now has your pin number and knows what bank your money is in. Your next stop is the post office where you go inside to get your mail. Right behind you, watching to see your post office box number, is the same person. They stand just close enough to watch you flip through your mail and to see where every letter came from and to see which letters you put in the out box. Are you feeling a little worried yet? Do you want this person to leave you alone? Do you know this is all legal? Leaving your house or getting on the internet is not secure or private. Internet-Service Providers can keep a record of the sites you visit, every move you make on-line. Web sites use cookies to follow people around the internet. They use them to see what sites people are visiting and to see what people are downloading. Every time you use your credit card on-line you can never be sure if it will be secure or if someone will be able to access it (Cohen 34). I used the example of the post office before for a specific reason. Electronic mail, commonly referred to as e-mail, is equivalent to someones post office box. According to the New York Times, the government may get into our e-mail to read subject lines of sent and received mail. They may do this without having to show probable cause to a judge. The government must only show that the information may have relevance to an ongoing case (Guernsey 1...

Testing Your Perl Installation

Testing Your Perl Installation In order to test our fresh installation of Perl, well need a simple Perl program. The first thing most new programmers learn is how to make the script say Hello World. Lets look at a simple Perl script that does just that. #!/usr/bin/perl print Hello World.\n; The first line is there to tell the computer where the Perl interpreter is located. Perl is an interpreted language, which means that rather than compiling our programs, we use the Perl interpreter to run them. This first line is usually #!/usr/bin/perl or #!/usr/local/bin/perl, but depends on how Perl was installed on your system. The second line tells the Perl interpreter to print the words Hello World. followed by a newline (a carriage return). If our Perl installation is working correctly, then when we run the program, we should see the following output: Hello World. Testing your Perl installation is different depending on the type of system you are using, but well take a look at the two most common situations: Testing Perl on Windows  (ActivePerl)Testing Perl on *nix Systems The first thing youll want to do is make sure youve followed the  ActivePerl Installation tutorial  and installed ActivePerl and the Perl Package Manager on your machine. Next, create a folder on your C: drive to store your scripts in for the sake of the tutorial, well call this folder  perlscripts. Copy the Hello World program into C:\perlscripts\ and make sure the filename is  hello.pl. Getting a Windows Command Prompt Now we need to get to a Windows command prompt. Do this by clicking on the  Start  menu and selecting the item  Run.... This will pop up the run screen that contains the  Open:  line. From here, just type  cmd  into the  Open:  field and press the  Enter  key. This will open (yet another) window which is our Windows command prompt. You should see something like this: Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. C:\Documents and Settings\perlguide\Desktop We need to change to the directory (cd) that contains our Perl scripts by typing in the following command: cd c:\perlscripts That should make our prompt reflect the change in the path like so: C:\perlscripts Now that were in the same directory as the script, we can run it simply by typing its name at the command prompt: hello.pl If Perl is installed and running correctly, it should output the phrase Hello World., and then return you to the Windows command prompt. An alternate method of testing your Perl installation is by running the interpreter itself with the  -v  flag: perl -v If the Perl interpreter is working correctly, this should output quite a bit of information, including the current version of Perl you are running. Testing Your Installation If you are using a school or work Unix / Linux server, chances are Perl is already installed and running when in doubt, just ask your system administrator or technical staff. There are a few ways we can test our installation, but first, you will need to complete two preliminary steps.​ First, you must copy your Hello World program to your home directory. This is usually accomplished via FTP.   Once your script has been copied to your server, you will need to get to a  shell prompt  on the machine, usually via SSH. When you have reached the command prompt, you can change into your  home  directory by typing the following command: cd ~ Once there, testing your Perl installation is very similar to testing on a windows system with one extra step. In order to  execute  the program, you must first tell the operating system that the file is OK to execute. This is done by setting the permissions on the script so that anyone can execute it. You can do this by using the  chmod  command: chmod 755 hello.pl Once youve set the permissions, you can then execute the script by simply typing its name. hello.pl If that doesnt work, you might not have your home directory in your current path. As long as you are in the same directory as the script, you can tell the operating system to run the program (in the current directory) like so: ./hello.pl If Perl is installed and running correctly, it should output the phrase Hello World., and then return you to the Windows command prompt. An alternate method of testing your Perl installation is by running the interpreter itself with the  -v  flag: perl -v If the Perl interpreter is working correctly, this should output quite a bit of information, including the current version of Perl you are running.

Using historical examples account for the differences between Essay - 1

Using historical examples account for the differences between peacekeeping and collective security. compare these concepts to those outlined by Boutros Boutros - Essay Example Indeed, considering the conflict situations which the United Nations has been involved in since the conclusion of World War II, it appears that it has had more failures, and spectacular failures at that, than successes. Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo are, without doubt, conflicts that will stand out as a testament to the United Nations failures in all of conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peacemaking. The source of the United Nations’ failure, its apparently persistent inability to fulfil its global peace mission, is the subject of much debate and controversy. Conflict management scholars, such as Clapham (1998) Ross (2000), Richmond (2001), Ghebremeskel (2002), to name but a handful, have identified various reason for the said failures, often presenting contrary explanatory arguments. Clapham (1998), for example, maintains failure to be a natural outcome of flawed peacekeeping, conflict resolution and conflict prevention models, while Ross (2000) maintains it to be a consequence of the UN’s lack of serious resolve. Ghebremeskel (2002), on the other hand, argues that failure is a by-product of the United Nations’ failure to appreciate the difference between peacemaking and collective security on the one hand, and its continued determination to adopt international as opposed to regional peacekeeping and conflict management efforts, on the other. The former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali, publicly acknowledged the United Nations’ failure at maintaining the peace and preventing conflict. As he argued in Agenda for Peace, this was largely because the peacemaking process was perceived of in either/or terms and not as a continuum which embraced all of conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peacekeeping and post conflict restructuring. The validity of the aforementioned, however, cannot be assessed without

MGM465-0801A-05 Business Strategy - Phase 2 Individual Project Essay

MGM465-0801A-05 Business Strategy - Phase 2 Individual Project - Essay Example Due to non-availability of statistics from authoritative sources, it is not possible to map the progressive fluctuations in purchase activities of new and existing commercial premises. However, there is a progressive rise in the successive years in construction cost for commercial buildings. The number of new commercial buildings constructed from 2005 onwards is not available. However, the construction costs for construction of new private non-residential buildings for 2005 and 2006 were $256,644 million and $295,715 million respectively. The factors responsible for home improvement were preference for larger and more luxurious living spaces, significant number of homeowners opting for remodeling of kitchen and bathrooms, and in many cases new homeowners opting for home improvement within first two years of purchase. The total remodeling expenditure in USA in 2005 amounted to $280 billion of which $188 billion was for Home repairs and improvement. (Financing Guidebook for Energy Efficiency Program Sponsors, December 2007). It is necessary to improve efficiency by shaking up the top-level management. There cannot be tolerance for stagnant and loss-making centers, divisions and departments. Improve efficiency by working out a policy of rewarding good performance. Managers who do not perform must shape up or ship

Romeo and Juliet Movie Analysis Essay Example for Free

Romeo and Juliet Movie Analysis Essay Romeo and Juliet is a beautiful and romantic famous love story known through almost all over the world. Many producers have remade this dramatic story ad producers will get many ideas from this story to help them create their own. There was a movie made in 1996 and in 1968. These two movies are very unique in their own way. Many people like the original 1968 version, but others like the newer 1996 version better. Personally, I believe that the 1968 version was better story wise because it followed the ‘reality’ of the story better. In the 1996 version, they have more of a ‘today’ like scenes with cars, beaches, guns, and helicopters. However, in the 1968 version, it was more†¦ Romeo and Juliet like than the other version. This version had more of an olden day theme that I feel personally fit the story better. They had swords, older clothing, no cars, helicopters or beaches, everything was more in the time era that the famous love story took place. When and after watching this movie there was a lot that stood out to me when thinking about the love story that everyone knows or has at least heard of before. The things that stood out to me were on how well and closely related this movie was to the story I heard and imagined in my mind when I first heard it from my family. Another thing is that because of how the movie was made, really gave off a good intention that this was how the story went, and that many people would be able to think of this version first not only cause of how old this version is, but because of the realizations that the movie had towards the original story. Even though these two movies are about the same story, and have the same concept, there are many different things that contrast between them. In one version of the movie the music gives off a more energetic, suspenseful, action sound; while the other gives off a more mellow, sweet, calming, loving sound. In one version of the movie the characters play fairly different personalities than in the other. For example, in the 1996 version, Mercutio is a wild, crazy, histarical character who will do the weirdest things that draw you to fall in love with him before he dies. However, in the 1968 version, Mercutio is still a wild and histarical character and maybe a little bit crazy but he doesn’t have the effect on you to fall in love with him before he dies. In the 1996 version, Mercutio gives you a almost ‘welcoming’ atmosphere, while the 1968 version, Mercutio doesn’t give you that feeling. Many people will have their opinions on which movie version they liked better, which movie told the better story, which movie had the better plot, but Romeo and Juliet, the original 1968 version not only follows the plot and theme, but also gives you the way many people would’ve imagined it before they saw the new 1996 version. But if you are to see any Romeo and Juliet version first, I’d suggest the 1968 version so that you can understand better how things were back when Romeo and Juliet were star cross lovers, and where the story line fits the love story better for that more original taste.