Speak Forcefully

Old Bloggers Never Die... they just fade away...

2006-08-03T19:31:00.000-04:00

What a strange trip it's been.
Law school.
Cross country commutes to experience the full glory of Cooley.
Leave of absence (that turned into a withdrawal) from law school.
Self reflection.
Real estate deals / work.
MBA.
Return to law school.

I am downright unhappy about the big cuts in the student loan program though. I consolidated for the last time a month or so ago (in the nick of time), but will have to deal with yet another round of fresh loans at a higher rate of interest when this gig is finished. Somehow, I don't think there will ever be any relief in sight in terms of student-loans - even if some miracle happens and the Democrats return to power (this strikes me as very, very unlikely, and even if they return the media is going to obliterate them into a fine grained powder).

Still Alive

2006-05-26T20:03:00.000-04:00

I'm posting this to keep the blog alive (more like life-support).

It's amazing to me just how disruptive law school turned out to be to my life and family in particular. A never ending cycle of planes, trains and highway trips turned out to be a real drag. So... I took a break. The break became longer, I got a real estate license, my wife went to go work for my previous employer, and I decided to finish my MBA and start a business before restarting law school.

Cheers.

Something Strange

2005-12-07T17:09:00.000-05:00

A typing accident brought me to this site. Strange - yet post worthy.

My Toshiba CDROM Burner Stopped Working - What I Did To Fix It

2005-11-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

I am one of those people that got bit by the Sony Rootkit virus. Needless to say, I will never, ever buy anything Sony again. Period.

Around the same time I got hit with the Sony rootkit (serves me right I guess for venturing into Windows), my wife installed the latest iTunes. I also did a big batch of service pack updates from Microsoft. I was unaware that I had the Sony rootkit virus installed (my fault for playing fast and loose on Windows), and all of these installations took place on the same day.

After doing the above on the same day, something strange happened. I could no longer burn CD's. I also couldn't burn DVD's on my external TDK DVD burner either. Assuming it was just a Windows bug, viri, etc, I booted into Linux - but had the same exact problem on both burners.

This struck me as very strange. I wondered if I picked up a viri that embedded itself into my MBR, or perhaps some new super strange BIOS viri. But here's the really strange part...

When I moved my external TDK burner to another machine - it too wouldn't burn even on that second machine. VERY strange.

The solution: I downloaded a new TDK firmware update for the external TDK burner. After burning in the new firmware - it works and burns again.

The internal burner (a Toshiba SD-R2212) on my Toshiba laptop was a different story. Re-burning the factory firmware didn't help. Re-burning the last BIOS revision from Toshiba also didn't help as the problem remained. ultimately, I stumbled on a firmware site that has an assortment of hacked firmware for just about every drive on the planet.

I took a chance and burned one of the hacks. Now, my internal Toshiba burner works again.

If you are having a problem like mine, especially after doing a round of patches from Microsoft (I used Autopatcher XP)... check out this site:

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.php?category=15&manufactor=31

If you have an SD-R2212 like I did, the patch that worked for me was this one:

http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_file.php?site=firmware1&file=R2212_X006B.zip

Mantel Leaves Novell / Suse

2005-11-10T13:13:00.000-05:00

I suspect that when Novell purchased Ximian and later SuSE, the higher-ups at both firms probably had visions of eventually running Novell. I believe it was inevitable to see a shakeout or coup take place within Novell given the polar opposites that SuSE and Ximian team are -or- were. On all kinds of levels I bet these two teams had a certain disdain for one another, or at minimum a disgust with each's vision of the future for Novell.

Yes, Novell is going to have the KDE libraries included on their future releases, but as a practical matter I think SuSE's KDE support is going to go largely (at best) the way of RH's and Fedora's. Sure, a community project will probably appear, perhaps through OpenSuse, that keeps KDE going - but it's obvious to me that Novell is casting its lot with the Ximian/Mono team and all things Gnome. This was probably a business decision driven not so much by technical merits, but by internal lobbying and PowerPoint presentations. ;-)

If there is any good that stands to come from all of this (and such a thing is certainly questionable), it's that future editions of SuSE are definitely going to become focused on a core set of tools (Gnome, Mono, etc). That may ultimately make SuSE the winner with Gnome that it was with KDE, albeit at the latters expense. Novell probably looked over and saw all of the other big commercial outfits using Gnome - namely RH and Sun - and figured it might as well join the gang. Although I think Novell would have been much smarter to dump Gnome and focus solely on KDE with respect to the desktop, they probably couldn't justify it given all of the investments they made in Mono and the Ximian guys. Besides, I don't think Novell bought Suse because of its strong KDE focus, rather it was interested in the SuSE brand, market position, and a fast way to become the #2 player in the Linux ballgame.

Yup. Still here.

2005-11-09T19:59:00.000-05:00

So much to do, so little time to write.

To make a long story short: law school took so many twists and turns for me that I put the whole thing on ice until next Fall. My wife was looking at taking a VERY GOOD paying job in Madison, and here I was about to restart my law gig at a California school, or at least that was the plan a few months ago. Faced with doing a reverse-commute from the midwest to the southwest (like my situation at Cooley, only this time in reverse) was just too much. So, I decided to hit the brakes and know with substantial certainty where my family was going to ultimately plant roots.

As it turned out my wife took an OK paying job at, oddly enough, my previous employer in Arizona. Oh the irony.

In the meantime I'm finishing my MBA. Big whoop, although after a stint at Cooley getting an MBA seems almost fun.

Burn in Hell Blog Spammers (Moving Blog Soon)

2005-10-02T17:18:00.000-04:00

The work involved in dealing with blog spam has motivated me to move my blog. It's going to take a bit of time, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. I'll resume my law school blogging in the not too distant future once I can nail down my choice of blog tools (looking closely at something based on Plone).

Halliburton Gets Hurricane Katrina Contract

2005-09-07T13:50:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- The US Navy asked Halliburton to repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Houston Chronicle reported today. The work was assigned to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary under the Navy's $500 million CONCAP contract awarded to KBR in 2001 and renewed in 2004. The repairs will take place in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The Logic Of The World Bank

2005-09-07T13:21:00.000-04:00

The Memo

DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

Postscript

After the memo became public in February 1992, Brazil's then-Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger wrote back to Summers: "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane... Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility. To me it would confirm what I often said... the best thing that could happen would be for the Bank to disappear." Sadly, Mr. Lutzenburger was fired shortly after writing this letter.

Mr. Summers, on the other hand, was appointed the U.S. Treasury Secretary on July 2nd, 1999, and served through the remainder of the Clinton Admistration. Afterwards, he was named president of Harvard University.

Crooks and Liars

2005-09-05T19:50:00.000-04:00

Northern Command isn't happy

2005-09-05T19:45:00.000-04:00

Carpetbagger has a good post about Bush and Northern Command...

Because Northern Command oversees all active-duty military operations inside the United States, it's also responsible for organizing the relief operations on the Gulf Coast. There are early indications, however, that NorthCom officials aren't entirely pleased with the orders they've received of late from the president.

Rice Defends Bush: Jesus Is Coming...

2005-09-05T19:36:00.000-04:00

Condoleezza Rice took a break today from her round of Broadway shows and a shoe-buying spree that would do Imelda Marcos proud. Why? To tell the hurricane victims dying hourly in their homes that their prolonged suffering is God's will, not the government's fault, and to lecture them...

A Strange Moment on Fox News

2005-09-05T19:20:00.000-04:00

Watching this disconnect displayed by Sean Hannity vs the team on the ground is a moment on Fox News that probably won't be repeated too often.

Anderson-Cooper Actually Has A Spine

2005-09-05T18:57:00.000-04:00

It was a strangely uplifting thing to see Anderson-Cooper display his spine while interviewing a seemingly spineless Democrat Sen Landrieu.

Mayor Nagin Speaks Forcefully...

2005-09-03T22:17:00.000-04:00

I hope the above link lasts long enough so that everyone can hear Mayor Nagin speak...

What America Will Look Like With Peak Oil

2005-09-03T00:13:00.000-04:00

The notion that we've arrived at "Peak Oil" is hardly new, but how it relates to the recent disaster and the implications for our future are a bit... disturbing.

Here is an interesting perspective on the Peak Oil with the recent national disaster to hit the US.

Fundamentalist Wingnuts And Their Odd Sense of Priorities

2005-08-30T18:42:00.000-04:00

When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.

Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it's obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.

Acosta's stated goal of prosecuting distributors of adult porn has angered federal and local law enforcement officials, as well as prosecutors in his own office. They say there are far more important issues in a high-crime area like South Florida, which is an international hub at risk for terrorism, money laundering and other dangerous activities.

Another STUPID Patent

2005-08-30T14:57:00.000-04:00

"Nintendo scored a patent Tuesday for a Sanity system for video game, which covers causing a game character to hallucinate - e.g., see bleeding walls and hear maniacal laughter - as its sanity decreases in response to encountering a creature or gruesome situation."

What I'm Reading Now: The Grunch of Giants

2005-08-21T12:53:00.000-04:00

There is no dictionary word for an army of invisible giants, one thousand miles tall, with their arms interlinked, girding the planet Earth. Since there exists just such an invisible, abstract, legal-contrivance army of giants, we have invented the word GRUNCH as the group designation—"a grunch of giants." GR-UN-C-H, which stands for annual GROSS UNIVERSE CASH HEIST, pays annual dividends of over one trillion U.S. dollars.

As world society divests itself of that which experimental evidence demonstrates to be untrue and embracingly enters into its computer the mathematical formulae of all that can be experimentally proven to be true, all the socially, selfishly malignant characteristics of the giant may vanish and the omni-pro-social-advantage-producing capabilities may prevail and flourish.

-- R.Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants, 1983

Patently Absurd Patents

2005-08-19T12:41:00.000-04:00

Patent Reform Legislation in Congress Amounts to Little More Than a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card for Microsoft

By Robert X. Cringely

Late last month, shortly before the U.S. Congress shut down for its summer recess, the Senate Judiciary Committee's Intellectual Property subcommittee held an unusual hearing -- unusual because the only committee member attending the hearing was the chairman, Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah. Why would such a prestigious committee hold a hearing in Washington attended by only one member? To slam through some controversial legislation, of course. Senator Hatch was trying to pass a new law "reforming" the U.S. patent system and apparently felt it would all go much more smoothly without the presence of the other committee members. And it might have gone smoothly, except someone in the press noticed the unusual hearing and decided to attend, essentially scotching the intended markup of the bill a week later and passage just as an unwary Congress was heading home.

Lord save us from patent reform.

My Law School Path - Revised Yet Again

2005-08-18T12:58:00.000-04:00

I was wary about returning to law school this Fall given the fact that my home life is (or was) in such limbo, so I deferred my return until Spring 2006.

My wife’s job sucks, or maybe I should say her job sucked as she had two alternatives she lined up when she decided to resign – one job option being in Madison, Wisconsin and the other here in Arizona. Just as I swore I’d never return to the upper Midwest, lo and behold she latches on to a position that stood to pay upwards of six figures (her MBA is starting to pay off). The money was very tempting, but threw my law school plans into a tail spin. I had already experienced airport life and home-life-from-a-distance with my experience at Cooley with my residence being in Arizona. Now, I was facing the same thing all over again (Wisconsin commute to California) in reverse. I refuse to do the 2100 mile commute gig all over again and I am less than thrilled about ever returning to the Midwest (although Madison is perhaps the closest exception I would ever make as it is a fantastic community).

In the end, my wife settled for a higher paying job here in Arizona, but it pays a lot less compared to the job in Madison. We’re going to give it a month in her new job to make certain it’s going to work out and not be a repeat of her last wacky company. Considering the owner was Best Man (a great guy) at my wedding – odds are everything is going to work out fine.

I still haven’t made up my mind as to whether or not I will ever indicate on this blog details about my new law school (assuming we don’t end up moving again), although I suspect it won’t be difficult to figure out after a few dozen blog postings.

Another Law Blog / Law Student Blog...

2005-08-11T14:30:00.000-04:00

Insightful, depressing and sobering - all at the same time. A good one to add to help one remain firmly planted in the reality of law school and the legal profession itself.

ThinkFree Office Online is VERY COOL!

2005-08-09T14:55:00.000-04:00

I've been playing with ThinkFree Office Online and thus far I am AMAZED. It does have a few glitches here and there, but overall it's imported and exported files in Microsoft formats with near perfection. The 30mb of free space on the ThinkFree site is nice, although at this point I wouldn't trust saving important documents on a free server, as a proof-of-concept it's pretty darn cool. I might change my mind down the road once I have a better picture of the degree of security ThinkFree implements on their servers. Regardless, the service is pretty cool and product is feature-rich and demonstrates the impressive power of Sun's Java.

The best part about ThinkFree Office Online is that I can create and access my documents from anywhere that gives me web access (and supports Java). At this moment I'm using Mozilla to run the ThinkFree Office suite, although Firefox and that thing Microsoft calls a browser also seems to work.

An article about ThinkFree in the market can be found here.

Bush's EU man attacked for Microsoft links

2005-08-08T23:26:00.000-04:00

C. Boyden Gray, a lawyer who lobbied on behalf of Microsoft during the US antitrust battle with the Justice Department, was named by Bush late last month as his choice to be America's next EU ambassador.

Georg Greve, the president of FSF Europe, claimed on Monday that this appointment shows the level of political control that Microsoft holds in the US. "[It] is quite an explicit statement of who truly holds the political power," said Greve in an email.

One Big Giant Mess

2005-08-05T18:44:00.000-04:00

The link above is probably one of the better articles I have come across regarding the situation in Iraq. It's one hell of a mess.

EU lawmakers threaten open source

2005-08-02T13:21:00.000-04:00

It looks like the Microsoft/SCO lobby is hard at work in Europe. Mind you a company called Google runs on Linux (when you use Google, you are being served by Linux-based servers), so Microsoft can put itself in a win-win situation by not only killing Linux with such a law (something it is anxious to do) using alleged IP claims, but also get Google thrown into the klink as well (since Google uses Linux, which they will argue infringes on Microsoft IP, Google must pay tribute to The Beast of Redmond or die). Good strategy. It'll take time, but I think it will work.

The European Commission has proposed a law that could allow criminal charges to be pressed against businesses using software that is believed to infringe upon another company's intellectual property (IP).

The proposed directive, which was adopted by the European Commission last month, would allow criminal sanctions against "all intentional infringements of an IP right on a commercial scale".

Richard Penfold, a partner at law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, said last week that the proposed directive could "quite possibly" allow the imprisonment of the boss of a company that is using infringing software, although it would depend on whether the defendant can argue that the infringement was unintentional.

Is Microsoft preparing Linux law suits?

2005-08-02T12:20:00.000-04:00

From Distrowatch...

Is Microsoft getting ready for patent infringements law suits against Linux? There are those who believe that this is indeed the case. Their reasoning was given further credibility last week when an independent survey company representing several major IT players conducted a paid survey among IT decision makers. A large section of this survey was devoted to public perception about how Red Hat Enterprise Linux infringes on Microsoft patents. Here is one of the questions: "Given this statement, would you be more or less likely to believe that Red Hat Enterprise Linux infringes patents owned by Microsoft?" The survey then went on to present a hypothetical situation that Microsoft granted patent rights to Red Hat, but not to other Linux vendors, then asked: "How would that impact your interest in deploying other brands of Linux in your IT system?"

Is this a beginning of a new Microsoft versus Linux battle? And are we going to witness an endless series of patent infringement law suits against Linux companies? Whatever it is, it seems that the largest software company in the world is getting more and more desperate every day....

Corporate Deals With Nazi Germany

2005-08-01T17:05:00.000-04:00

Henry Ford, a notorious anti-Semite, formed a kind of mutual admiration society with Adolf Hitler. The German dictator enthusiastically applauded American mass-production techniques. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," declared Hitler, who kept a life-size portrait of the American industrialist next to his desk. In 1938, Ford accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could award a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle...

...After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, GM Chairman Alfred P. Sloan commented that the Nazis’ behavior "should not be considered the business of the management of General Motors." The GM plant in Germany was highly profitable. "We have no right to shut down that plant," Sloan declared.

"When American GIs liberated the Ford plants in Cologne and Berlin, they found destitute foreign workers confined behind barbed wire and company documents extolling the ‘genius of the Fuhrer,’" writes Michael Dobbs.

Shamelessly, after the war both GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. government for damage to their German plants caused by Allied bombing. In 1967, GM was compensated with $33 million from the U.S. government for the American bombing of its Russelsheim plant.

Feb Calfornia Bar Pass Rates - Online Schools outperform Cooley and several other ABA schools.

2005-07-29T12:01:00.000-04:00

La Verne continues to impress me. Their Feb 2005 performance on the California Bar was 67% - respectable performance for a non-ABA school and is at or above many ABA accredited schools. Likewise, Concord (a non-ABA online law school) consistently produces good bar pass rates year after year - this time it was 55%. Mind you in California, the Gold Standard of bar exams, performing at or above 50% is a good showing.

Cooley's bar pass rate in California was 14% - affirming my decision to leave the school as being a wise move. I should note that this does not mean I believe Cooley is a bad school per say, rather the cost of legal education at Cooley, or perhaps any ABA accredited school for that matter, is way out of line with the tuition charged. I've come to believe, based in part on my experiences at Cooley, that traditional legal education (traditional in the sense that the ABA has had a near monopoly on legal education for the past 50 years, whereas before the ABA monopoly nearly HALF of all practicing lawyers had obtained their credentials by correspondance and/or non-ABA education) is fast becoming obsolete and the elitist nature of the ABA is doing more harm than good. In fact, a considerable number of ABA school bar pass rates are below those of non-ABA/Online law schools (ABA schools - U of Denver 25% , New England School of Law 17%, Whittier 33%, Thomas Jefferson 32%, to name just a few...).

I would be pretty ticked off about an education investment that cost $150,000+ only to discover that I was still unable to practice law in ANY state, whereas my counterparts who spent a total of $10,000+ were engaged in the profession.

From Slashdot: Patent Examiners Flee USPTO

2005-07-29T11:39:00.000-04:00

"Soaring numbers of patent applications for software and business processes is not only leading to the ludicrous patents for the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. The stress of dealing with vast numbers of applications is leading to an exodus of patent examiners from the USPTO, reports FCW.com. A US Government Accountability Office report (PDF) says that the USPTO has made progress in hiring examiners, 'but challenges to retention remain'. The IP Kat blog quotes Jason Schulz of the EFF, who comments that 'The incredible surge of patent applications, especially in the software and internet business method arena, is just crushing them, and the management problems are rising to the surface with greater visibility for those reasons. Where anything under the sun is patentable, it puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on the patent office'."

Physicist throws time-travel theories a curve

2005-07-29T11:35:00.000-04:00

By Michelle Lefort, USA TODAY
What do you get when you join a 1981 DeLorean, a "flux capacitor" and a digital dial set to Nov. 5, 1955? If you're the character of Dr. Emmett Brown in the 1985 movie Back to the Future, you've created a time machine.

The possibility of time travel has occupied the fantasies of philosophers, authors, children and directors. But to some physicists, it's more than pure fancy.

In the July issue of Physical Review Letters, Amos Ori, professor of physics at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, argues that the laws of physics don't stand in the way of building a time machine.

Ori hasn't created, or even designed, a physical time machine. He instead constructed a situation — a mathematical model — in which the laws of physics will make one for him.

Surgery

2005-07-25T11:14:00.000-04:00

In a couple of weeks I am going under the knife. Odds are I'll blog about it and heck – I might even post a few pictures of the gory details. I debated waiting until Christmas break, but decided now is the best time to get this problem solved once and for all.

Intellectual Property Is Costing Me My Life

2005-07-07T22:01:00.000-04:00

A great story about a man who is very sick and being... killed thanks to wonderful US "Intellectual Property Laws" - just the phrase makes me sick.

Non-ABA University of La Verne College of Law must be doing something right.

2005-07-07T18:37:00.000-04:00

La Verne’s February 2004 California Bar Pass rate was 67% and July 2004 pass rate was 82%. For several years running this non-ABA school has been churning out bar pass rates that exceed those of some of the expensive California ABA schools, yet for some reason the school can’t seem to secure anointing by the ABA. Perhaps the school needs more library books, comfy chairs or mahogany trim to meet the ABA’s high standards?

Cooley bar pass rate in California over the same period was 33% (July 2003), 0% (Feb 2003) and 33% (July 2004). Online Law School Concord had 25%, 43% and 50% respectively. In February 2004, Oakbrook showed a 73% pass rate.

* February 2005 results should be showing up soon...

California Bar Exam Results

No US-Style Patents (yet) in EU

2005-07-07T18:01:00.000-04:00

It's hard to call this a victory, more like a respite from the next battle being planned by Sith Bill Gates of Microsoft - a company well known for its reliable software and high ethical business standards.

Thomas M. Cooley Loses Lawsuit Against The ABA

2005-07-07T15:22:00.000-04:00

The opinion and judgment can be found HERE and HERE as PDF documents.

You can also link HERE and download accordingly.

This is probably old news to Cooley students as the judgement is dated June 9th, but for non-Cooley students it's an interesting read. Life is subject to become much more interesting at the remote campus locations now that ABA accreditation remains a bit of an issue...

Phoenix International School of Law - Revisited

2005-07-07T01:14:00.000-04:00

Last week I participated in an online chat session hosted by the admissions department at PISL. By rough estimate 15 to 20 prospective students signed on and asked pointed questions about this new up and coming law school. For the most part the admissions staff came across as candid and helpful, with only occasional boilerplate answers used when queries were related to PISL working toward its ABA accreditation. Overall - I came away mildly impressed.

One prospective student stood out in that he was already practicing law (a graduate of a non-ABA law school i.e. Concord, Taft, North Central, or something similar) and wanted to explore the option of entering the school as an advanced student. Before the DOJ anti-trust action against the ABA in the mid 1990’s such a tactic would have been impossible, but today a handful of non-ABA practicing graduates/lawyers are going back to school as advanced students to obtain ABA credentials.

I also learned that PISL is NOT taking transfer students until they obtain their ABA credentials. It's not clear to me if this is a requirement of the ABA or just PISL's desire to have new, untainted blood from the get-go. One CAN enter as a new student, but I would need a CAT Scan before deciding to throw away a year of credit hours earned at an ABA law school.

I will be very surprised if PISL fails to become anointed into the ABA guild within the next few years, since the school seems to be doing a lot of things right. By the time the ABA visits sometime in 2006 the school will (probably) have a high number of applicants and a low number of acceptances – a formula the ABA seems to like. Toss into the mix experienced and highly credentialed faculty, pricey tuition and school policies that keep attrition rates low, PISL just might pull it off. I believe it's long overdue for a booming state like Arizona to have at least one (if not more) law schools in the Phoenix area.

Interview With Deep Cache

2005-07-06T13:55:00.000-04:00

"We're pretty confident that the FOX network uses Microsoft products. We're very confident that these Microsoft product include numerous security vulnerabilities, which our script exploits to take control of the ticker on the bottom of the screen. Then, each week, we insert random subliminal messages about freedom, democracy, and penguins. Neo-Cons watch FNC religiously and will happily consume these subversive messages without realizing that they are slowly undergoing a de-re-education program."

Among other subversive themes, the messages include excerpts from the U.S. Constitution, including "Congress shall make no law..." (1st Amendment) and "The right of the people... shall not be violated" (4th Amendment).

Deep Cache concluded, "Most Neo-Cons have never read the full text of the Constitution, instead relying on 15-second summaries and soundbites. By dominating the FOX crawl, we will quietly deliver the Bill of Rights into the homes of millions, one bite-sized phrase at a time. This will do more for the future of intelligent debate in this country than turning Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Robert Novak over to the Vogons."

Bill Gates Attack Money

2005-06-29T19:02:00.000-04:00

A very interesting article is running on LXer about Bill Gates and his connections with Tom Delay, the House Ethics scandal, and the rather odd reporting / changes made to certain stories reported by The Washington Post (Melinda Gates sits on the Board of The Washington Post).

This is the kind of reporting the entertainment-news media quit doing decades ago.

I Hate Microsoft - Typical Microsoft Behavior...

2005-06-29T00:22:00.000-04:00

Msn.com updated to filter mouse click events such that right-clicking functionality is only provided by IE. Firefox user's attempt to open links in another tab find themselves SOL as a right click attempt simply behaves as a left click thereby proceeding to the Msn site in the current window. This is completely uncalled for. Just because open source is stealing IE's market share they had to go below the belt and pull an immature stunt like this. As far as I am concerned there is no legit security reason for a move like this so I am curious to hear their response when confronted. Spread the word!

Firefox users can read about a work-around here.

The Empire's New Clothes

2005-06-27T12:05:00.000-04:00

At the end of the day, there’s probably only one thing that can unite this country behind the Iraq war again, and that would be a return to fear: a new, massive attack on the United States.

What I Am Doing On Summer Break

2005-06-20T18:34:00.000-04:00

What am I doing on my summer break from law school? Aside from working, THIS is something I used to do back when I was young and single (uhm... no, I haven't told the wife yet about my travel plans...) – and fortunately for me I found my jump logs during my brief move to Michigan. I’ll have to take a refresher course and back I go…

I can’t wait to relax with my knees in the breeze. After a year of law school, this stuff looks perfectly sane to me.

Prediction: Theodore Olsen will replace Rehnquist when he retires. Clarence Thomas will be made Chief Justice.

2005-06-20T11:52:00.000-04:00

Prediction:

I love making predictions. So here goes...

Former Solicitor General Theodore Olsen is a bit of a long shot, but I'm placing my bet on him getting the nod to join The Supremes - as he is very loyal to the reactionary right-wing currently running the country. Clarance Thomas is, in my book, a given to become Chief Justice - although I think Scalia still has a shot at the title.

Abe Lincoln On Becoming A Lawyer

2005-06-17T12:42:00.000-04:00

“If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anybody or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books and read and study them until you understand them and their principle features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read in Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books and your capacity for understanding them are just the same in all places. Always bear in mind that your resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”

Sharkfish Blog (law school at a distance - no debt. no pomp. no circumstance.)

2005-06-16T19:35:00.000-04:00

I have found Sharkfish to be very informative when it comes to law school in general and especially to anyone exploring the non-ABA online law school path.

In addition, the following post appeared on Sharkfish that I believe provides insight to all future law students, Cooley or otherwise, about the need to NETWORK and play the game accordingly to succeed in the real world.

I posted to this board way back in 1999 when I was a 45 y.o. 1L and
this group first started up. Just finished chatting with a woman
who'll be starting lawschool this fall at age 38 and, after advising
her to join this group, it occured to me that I ought to log in
again. Since I'm now well into my third-year of practice, I thought
you all might find my hind-sight helpful.

First off, let me say that I loved law school but my first couple of
years of practice were TOUGH. I have now settled into a GREAT firm,
am getting to do really interesting legal work, and am (finally)
earning the kind of money I expected to make as an attorney. Yes, I
would do it all over again!

A few pointers:

1) Don't hang your hopes on landing a big-firm job.
As you are no doubt aware, for new attorneys (and for students
looking for summer work), the big money is at the big firms. But
your chances of landing a cushy summer clerkship or a $120K/year job
fresh out of school are practically nil if you're over a certain
age. For women, the cut-off age seems to be about 32-35; for men, 37-
40. Basically, the older you are, the fewer large firms will give
you serious consideration UNLESS you have some highly relevant pre-
law experience. (i.e., if you were CEO of a fortune 500 firm before
you went to law school or were a state legislator for 20 years, your
age probably won't be a hindrance.)

I've heard some rather naive folks argue that "law firms wouldn't
discriminate because it is against the law." Baloney. Of the 16
over-forty students in my class of 350 (at a top-twenty law school),
at least ten or eleven graduated in the upper 50%. Seven, I know,
graduated with honors. Two were on law review. Several others won
some of the most prestigious awards given by the school. But NONE
managed to land a big firm job.

Continued here

AND

HERE.

The Power of Attorney's

2005-06-15T19:44:00.000-04:00

The Stupid Lawsuit Collection - fun to read.

Concord Law School - The 5th Minnesota Law School?

2005-06-14T20:33:00.000-04:00

A very old essay on Concord circa 2000, but interesting none the less given Concord graduates pass the California state bar at a rate well above those of Cooley graduates - not to mention dozens of ABA and California Bar 20th century style schools.

With the University of St. Thomas opening its doors in the fall of 2001, Minnesota will have three private law schools and a state law school located within a few minutes of each other. Collectively, these four schools will eventually graduate more than 900 lawyers a year. With annual full-time tuition at the private schools hovering around $20,000, and student loan obligations for many graduates exceeding $90,000, is there room for a fifth law school designed to accommodate well-qualified persons who simply can’t afford this kind of debt? A school that is open to persons looking for a change in their jobs or seeking to enhance their present careers? One that recognizes that some persons must continue to work at their present jobs to keep bread on the family table and who can’t afford the traditional part-time tuition? A law school that could deliver a solid four-year legal education with annual tuition of about $5,000?

While some may argue that such a law school is not feasible, they probably have not taken a careful look at the Concord University Law School, which opened in October 1998. Concord’s tuition is only $4,800 a year and a juris doctor degree can be attained after four years of study. Its stated mission is to provide a legal education to qualified students who without it could not obtain a law degree.

RealBASIC 2005 Released

2005-06-14T12:34:00.000-04:00

I am probably the only one who cares about this, but I'll post it anyway.

RealBasic 2005 has just been released.

Alleged Pentagon hacker out on bail

2005-06-14T12:24:00.000-04:00

This says a great deal about what I have found to be the typical Microsoft-based system administrators in government and business...

"U.S. prosecutors said McKinnon hacked into military computers nationwide running Microsoft Windows software that were left vulnerable to a design flaw for which Microsoft had issued repairs three years earlier."

The People Own Ideas

2005-06-13T11:55:00.000-04:00

From Slashdot: "Lawrence Lessig has a great article up on Technology Review about the World Social Forum held this past January in Brazil. In addition to telling an engaging story, it covers topics ranging from GNU and DRM to Brazil's interesting stance on the rights of foreign copyright holders, and is a good introduction to the permission culture/remix culture debate. It also makes me want to live in Brazil."

Public Broadcasting Targeted By House Republicans

2005-06-10T13:39:00.000-04:00

Panel Seeks to End CPB's Funding Within 2 Years

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 10, 2005; Page A01

A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children's educational programs as "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," "Arthur" and "Postcards From Buster."

In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.

..."Americans overwhelmingly see public broadcasting as an unbiased information source," Rep. David Obey (Wis.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said in a statement. "Perhaps that's what the GOP finds so offensive about it. Republican leaders are trying to bring every facet of the federal government under their control. . . . Now they are trying to put their ideological stamp on public broadcasting."

Interview with Google's Chris DiBona on Summer of Code

2005-06-10T10:18:00.000-04:00

As soon as Google's Summer of Code project was announced, Groklaw member Marko Djukic suggested to me that we do an interview with Chris DiBona, who is now Open Source Programs Manager, at Google Inc., about the project, and Chris was gracious enough to say yes. Djukic is Core Developer for the Horde Project, a Summer of Code mentor

I threw in a couple of questions myself, because I really wanted to know the answers. Google intrigues me. I think it's the SCO effect. After two full years of immersing myself daily in SCOthink (Groklaw turned 3 on May 16), I can't help but be attracted to a company that affirmatively decides it doesn't want to be evil, and believes that it isn't necessary to be evil to be successful.

And they actually are successful. That is the beauty part.

Here's my favorite sentence in the interview with DiBona:

"Google uses a lot of open source. For instance, we run our web/server clusters on Linux, so whenever you visit Google, you're visiting a Linux machine."

Do you realize what that means? Yoo hoo. World. You are using Linux, most of you every single day, even if you didn't know it. How do you like it? Do you find it works out well for you? Do you think maybe Google knows something your business needs to know too?

Here are some companies that have taken the plunge to Linux who are happy they did, including E*Trade Financial and Citigroup. Here's an article on how to build a Linux virtual server. You know. Clusters. I believe Google knows the value of clusters. Here's the opening paragraph:

With the explosive growth of the Internet, the workload on servers providing Web, email, and media services has increased greatly. More and more sites are being challenged to keep up with the growing demands and are employing several techniques to avoid overloading their servers. Building a scalable server on a cluster of computers is one of the solutions that is being effectively put to use. With such a cluster, the increasing requests can be easily managed by simply adding one or more new servers to the existing cluster as required. In this article we will look at setting up one such scalable, network load-balancing server cluster using a virtual server via the Linux Virtual Server Project.

I couldn't resist. I have just spent several hours reading a smorgasbord of articles and apparently coordinated comments all over the Internet about Linux being killed off by Apple, blah blah, and other reasons why it is now doomed one way or another, and coincidentally, I'm sure, how great Microsoft is.

Let me be the first to tell you. There is no competition between Apple and GNU/Linux. I use both, and I enjoy both, but I could no more be satisfied with just my PowerBook than I could fly. I know that now for sure, because when I am travelling with just the PowerBook, I miss GNU/Linux so much. I'll tell you exactly what I miss. I miss the freedom and transparency, the feeling that you are flying your own plane, with no hidden stowaways calling home behind your back. I can never have that feeling in any other operating system, and that is the simple truth. Why? Because proprietary operating systems are deliberately opaque, like they have put up a big "Keep Out" sign to keep you from the inner workings.

CONTINUED HERE

Something Fishy Going On In The Linux Community

2005-06-09T15:30:00.000-04:00

Those Against the Community Spending Time In the Community

...Linux did not get to where it is today because it was promoted extensively, strategically deployed, well marketed, etc. It got to where it is today because there is an unquenchable thirst in the world (I'm talking about all of humanity) for creativity and collaboration....

... [It] seems that perhaps Microsoft maybe using an approach that targets each segment. It's my opinion that perhaps to their core users they have provided some rather strong messaging regarding Linux. The symptoms to which we see wrongly manifested in aggressive behaviors such as threatening authors of pro-Linux articles with emails filled to the brim with every conceivable cuss word imaginable (some are really quite imaginative). I was approached by one individual who believed that Linux was putting thousands of people out of work including himself and he demanded I stop helping promote "that damn free thing," while another gentlemen simply regards Linux as "a socialist tool to undermine democracy."

The second audience is the mass market of people. These are the mainstream, the middle of the road. They are often those who've never heard of Linux except from the headline news or announcements like when they learn that ILM maker of Star Wars graphics uses Linux servers to generate those fancy movie effects.

These people are getting more and more intrigued and asking "just what is Linux?" to which I'm finding a fascinating amount of non-Linux people responding to the question.

I'm noticing a great load of new articles regarding "what is Linux" and then using the forum to expose its apparent "weaknesses, infancy, or lack of support." And at the same time, I'm seeing more articles on the virtues of Windows now than ever before in my life, and I've been computing for a good long while.

Undoubtedly, this is because the Linux community, where most people who want to learn something about Linux come to, is now being inundated by information that is not from the community itself.

Intel Set To Buy Apple Computer & Dethrone Microsoft?

2005-06-09T14:45:00.000-04:00

Robert Cringely knows his stuff and he makes a very solid case as to why this might be more fact than fiction...

The crowd this week in San Francisco at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference seemed mildly excited by the prospect of its favorite computer company turning to Intel processors. The CEO of Adobe asked why it had taken Apple so long to make the switch? Analysts on Wall Street were generally positive, with a couple exceptions. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE!? Are these people drunk on Flav-r-Ade? Yes. It is the legendary Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field at work. And this time, what's behind the announcement is so baffling and staggering that it isn't surprising that nobody has yet figured it out until now.

Apple and Intel are merging.

Nerds Make Better Lovers

2005-06-09T13:28:00.000-04:00

My wife would probably disagree, since she *hates* computers and all things tech-related...

"The New York Daily News, fine bastion of reporting that it is, released an article today discussing the rise of nerd popularity among women in general, and famous women in particular. Detail is given into the dating exploits of Christina Aguilera and Elin Nordegren (nerdy Tiger Woods' supermodel squeeze), among a bunch of regular Janes. Apparently being a nerd is now in?"

Looking For Liberty? Try Sealand

2005-06-09T12:43:00.000-04:00

Sealand was founded as a sovereign Principality in 1967 in international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain. The island fortress is conveniently situated from 65 to 100 miles from the coasts of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. The official language of Sealand is English and the Sealand Dollar has a fixed exchange rate of one U.S. dollar. Passports and stamps have been in circulation since 1969, however, contrary to many misleading websites and news articles, Sealand passports are not for sale, and anyone offering such are selling forgeries. Within a radius of 500 miles of Sealand live more than 200 million people who enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world. This area also encompasses the financial, industrial and cultural heart of Europe.

The history of Sealand is a story of a struggle for liberty. Sealand was founded on the principle that any group of people dissatisfied with the oppressive laws and restrictions of existing nation states may declare independence in any place not claimed to be under the jurisdiction of another sovereign entity. The location chosen was Roughs Tower, an island fortress created in World War II by Britain and subsequently abandoned to the jurisdiction of the High Seas. The independence of Sealand was upheld in a 1968 British court decision where the judge held that Roughs Tower stood in international waters and did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. This gave birth to Sealand's national motto of E Mare Libertas, or "From the Sea, Freedom".

Patriot Act Expanded and Other Freedom Killing News...

2005-06-09T10:27:00.000-04:00

A couple of Slashdot posts I am reposting...

"It seems that the patriot act is being expanded rather than scaled back after a vote late Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence committee. The FBI has gained new powers to demand documents from companies without a judge's approval, as well as the ability to designate subpoenas as secret and punish disclosure of their existence with up to one year in prison."

...

"A leading Canadian television network is reporting that the Canadian government will introduce copyright legislation next week that will bring DMCA-like provisions north of the border. Amazingly, the Canadian recording industry, which previously praised the reforms, now says they aren't good enough. Canadian law prof Michael Geist cuts through the spin in the pair of blog postings titled Fact and Fiction and CRIA's New Take on Copyright Reform."

Chinese gamer sentenced to life

2005-06-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

A Shanghai online gamer has been given a suspended death sentence for killing a fellow gamer.

Qui Chengwei stabbed Zhu Caoyuan in the chest when he found out he had sold his virtual sword for 7,200 Yuan (£473).

The sword, which Mr Qui had lent to Mr Zhu, was won in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3.

Attempts to take the dispute to the police failed because there is currently no law in China to protect virtual property

Pot as Medicine: An Odd Decision

2005-06-08T11:31:00.000-04:00

Can the cultivation and use of marijuana for noncommercial purposes solely within one state be construed as "interstate commerce?" Six members of the U.S. Supreme Court say yes. The other three say -- in effect -- that's nuts.

US leads in mental illness

2005-06-07T18:47:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON, June 7 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States leads in mental illness globally with 46 percent of Americans suffering mental disorders ranging from anxiety, depression to substance abuse in their lifetime, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Recruiting headaches at Microsoft

2005-06-07T18:45:00.000-04:00

A recent blog item from a Microsoft recruiter makes clear not all is peachy in the way the Redmond giant looks for and hires new talent.

The post is a self-described tirade about the trials of working with Microsoft managers who ultimately make employment offers. A chief problem is the way these managers are self-absorbed, suggests Gretchen Ledgard, a senior technical recruiter at Microsoft. "(T)hey can't seem to get it through their heads that 1) Microsoft isn't the only place hiring, 2) Working at a big company isn't everyone's dream, and 3) Redmond is not the first place people say they want to move when they wake up in the morning."

Fallout of marijuana verdict

2005-06-07T18:40:00.000-04:00

ASHLAND, ORE. – The US Supreme Court's decision this week asserting federal control over marijuana used for medical purposes would seem to bring that controversial practice to a halt. Uncle Sam - not the states - has the last word here, the court ruled.

But the 6-to-3 ruling may have raised more questions than it answered - and not just in the 10 states where medical marijuana has been legally used to treat the pain and nausea of certain illnesses.

So much for "States Rights" as it's all just one big imperial ballgame now.

Body parts fall from plane approaching JFK

2005-06-07T18:38:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pieces of a man's body fell from the wheel well of a South African Airways passenger plane bound for John F. Kennedy International Airport on Tuesday and landed in the yard of a suburban home, police said.

The Free Software Foundation

2005-06-07T17:13:00.000-04:00

The Free Software Foundation (FSF), established in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free software, particularly the GNU operating system, used widely in its GNU/Linux variant. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues surrounding freedom in the use of software.

Playboy spreads open source software

2005-06-07T16:32:00.000-04:00

Instead of visiting some dry, boring Web site to download your favorite open source software, why not put some spice in your life and get it from Playboy?

That spice is in name only, because you won't find any interesting pictures or stories at mirrors.playboy.com -- just a few unadorned directories linking to mirrors of the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) and the latest releases of FreeBSD, Apache, Fedora, and mod_ssl.

mirrors.playboy.com is even an official mirror site for Firefox and Thunderbird, says Playboy Unix administrator Tim Yocum. He wanted to give something back to the community from which his company has drawn so deeply.

US Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Lexmark Case

2005-06-07T12:08:00.000-04:00

" The US Supreme Court has rejected Lexmark's petition for certiorari in its long and bitter battle against North Carolina-based Static Control Components (SCC). For those out of the loop on this one, Lexmark tried to lock in consumers and lock out competition by adding code to their printers and toner cartridges so that only Lexmark toners would work. SSC defeated their monopolist technology and began selling the off-brand chips to aftermarket toner cartridge makers. As discussed here earlier, in mid-February Lexmark was dealt a defeat by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, who denied Lexmark's request for a rehearing. Other related threads here, here, here, here, and here." The story is on the AP Newswire as well.

About Those Google Ads

2005-06-06T14:13:00.000-04:00

As you have probably noticed, I am experimenting with Adwords/Adsense by Google.

It's been fun to watch Google try and fit the right ads to my blog. Initially, my feeds had everything from Gummy Bears to Scientology (perhaps the Google crawler picked up my posts about Rev. Moon and Republicans/Bush being one and the same), but it looks like (as of today anyway) the feeds are law and technology based.

It's kinda cool to get crawled by Google and watch their algorithms try and guess the best ads to feed. I got the idea from my cousin who makes upwards of $150 a quarter feeding Adwords, and while he's not getting rich Adsense does help him pay his hosting bills.

A Return To The Dark Side

2005-06-06T14:04:00.000-04:00

I guess I'm going to be a bit full-of-myself on this post, but then again my supersized ego comes as little surprise to those who actually know me.

I have been sticking my toe back into the business world, a world as it turns out I am far more comfortable in than law, and lo and behold I am weighing the merits of working with my father on a substantial “deal” that involves millions of dollars in what is essentially a private placement / investment deal with a dozen people. I am wary to become involved, yet at the same time drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Although I might be the closest thing the family has to a lawyer, I know my limits and there are certain places even angels fear to tread. This just might be one of them, but alas I’m reading up on “Secured Transactions” and related goodies anyway. It’s also nice to get some additional experience on the topic as I’m bound to confront the subject at Law School X later this year.

If there was ever a time I wished I had Secured Transactions at Cooley under my belt – this is it. Unfortunately, Secured Transactions wasn’t going to hit me until my 4th term and likewise I would have been a dirt poor Cooley student shelling out insane amounts of money for a Cooley education – and hence not involved in the business world except in an abstract, law school way. That is perhaps what I hated most about law school – the lack of real-world application to the concepts taught in class. I am not fond of being taught by professors who spent the last 25 years teaching instead of doing, although I understand (barely) the rational of the ABA’s disdain for practicing lawyers teaching law (an ABA requirement is that the bulk of faculty have to be full-time, non-practicing lawyers). I’d rather have people working the craft in the current marketplace passing along what they know over a professor who has spent most of his or her life teaching out of a book.

One of the most important things I took away from Cooley was the importance of money. When a business I started in 1990 lost millions and took a lot of people down with it – I lost my appetite for business and commerce. I wandered in a desert of low-income (sub $40,000 is low-income to me) jobs combined with a growing household of children and needs that began to outstrip my earning capacity. One thing led to another and I ended up at Cooley in my attempt to answer one of my passions plus get some bearing on what I wanted to actually do with my life. Thanks to law school and Cooley, my lust for business and capital returned in a way I hadn’t experienced in nearly 15 years. I’m not sure what those people did to my head, but I am thankful for their enlightenment in returning me to The Dark Side – where the metal meets the rail and ascetic living is for people who have already had their fill of money and success.

Left-Wing Blood Pressure Booster

2005-06-06T12:10:00.000-04:00

Suffering from low blood pressure? Do you have a burning desire to get pissed-off before starting your day? Check out the eclectic assortment of Truthout Videos to begin your day in a dark and brooding mood.

Dress Steve Jobs

2005-06-03T15:15:00.000-04:00

Vermont Country Store

2005-06-03T14:06:00.000-04:00

The Vermont Country Store’s future is in your past. The mostly mail-order business specializes in selling things that have all but disappeared from store shelves but not from people’s memories: Dick and Jane books. Tangee lipstick. Ship’n Shore clothing. Charles Chips. Beeman’s chewing gum. Pants stretchers. Horlick’s malted milk tablets. Men’s opera slippers.

All the latest stuff — from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.

"Your Papers Please..."

2005-06-01T16:01:00.000-04:00

Hiring Problems At The Judicial Branch

2005-06-01T12:45:00.000-04:00

Judicial Branch at a Hiring Disadvantage
The judicial branch is rapidly losing its ability to attract and retain top-level staff because it cannot pay as much as the executive and legislative branches, according to a memo prepared for senior U.S. court officials.

Bush

2005-06-01T12:35:00.000-04:00

With the exception of perhaps four or five people, everyone else I know LOVES George Bush. My wife did a survey at her work wherein one of the questions was to write down someone they admired - a huge number penned George Bush.

In law one is taught to stick close to the facts. The facts of this administration are astonishing even when the emotional or idealogical aspects are removed: record budget deficits, record spending, massive trade deficits and a falling Dollar, and mind you those deficits are now so huge that a decade from now it will become difficult if not impossible to simply make the minimum-payment on the national credit card let alone pay any of it off.

Here's Bush verbatim on the Amnesty International Report (how anyone takes this guy as a leader or even as a person with an IQ of 2 points above plant-level is beyond me)...

"In terms of, umm -- you know, the -- the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on, on the word of, uhh -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, uhh, you know -- yes, sir."

Object Desktop Coolness

2005-06-01T11:43:00.000-04:00

I have Object Desktop and it's pretty cool, although it can run bit heavy on the resource usage scale.

Object Desktop 2005 is the yearly mile-stone snapshot of Stardock's premiere desktop enhancement suite. Installing Object Desktop is a lot like upgrading Microsoft Windows to the next level. It adds features and functionality to the base OS that allow you to do amazing things on your computer.

Over the past year, Stardock has worked hard to improve its award-winning product suite to make it easier, more powerful, and more useful to all users.

MainActor 5.5.7 Review for Linux

2005-06-01T11:25:00.000-04:00

The above topic links to an indepth review of MainActor for Linux. I still do most of my video work on Windows (and hopefully a Macintosh down the road here... soon... very soon), but it's nice to see applications like MainActor take the Linux marketplace seriously.

Slashdot: Video Game Patents

2005-06-01T11:22:00.000-04:00

"Gamasutra is running an article titled It's Just a Game, Right? Top Mythconceptions on Patent Protection of Video Games where two IP lawyers try to convince the videogame industry of patenting everything in sight: ideas, technical contributions, etc. They show as an example a Microsoft patent on Scoring based upon goals achieved and subjective elements. They also have created a weblog, The Patent Arcade, to promote their business. Will this be the real end of innovation in videogames?"

Antenna betrays high-tech cheats

2005-05-31T15:33:00.000-04:00

ATHENS: Three Greek youths were arrested on Saturday for conspiring to cheat in a university entrance exam using a wireless camera hidden in a pen, police said.

The police were alerted to the ploy by the principal of the Athens high school where the mathematics exam was being held, who noticed an antenna cable running from the school's front gate to a clump of bushes nearby.

Two of the unidentified youths, aged 20 and 24, had hidden a laptop in the bushes overnight, allegedly planning to use it to help their 19-year-old friend cheat.

The 19-year-old intended to use his miniature camera to transmit the exam questions to the computer, and his friends would provide him the answers though his mobile phone earpiece.

Once arrested, the trio confessed to also having cheated in a May 26 biology exam by obtaining the topics from earlier exam-sitters and conveying the answers by mobile phone.

The Next Stop in The Law School Twilight Zone

2005-05-31T12:32:00.000-04:00

I am mulling over a short list of options with respect to law school. I can always return to Cooley in the Fall... but have pretty much ruled that out due to the horrific commute. It does seem to get a little better each term as my C's have all been a few points away from hitting the next grade level, whereas last term my C's were barely (and I mean barely) C's in terms of the point spread. I also find it interesting how so many of my peers don't like (or didn't like) to discuss their grades when things went bad. Perhaps this is perfectly logical when all you have are grades to define your future or your next job, but in my case my resume is jam-packed with other things and a JD is in some respects frosting on the cake. Plus, I've never envisioned myself looking for work, but rather planned (and still plan) having my own practice.

I like the idea of Concord as it would let me work plus get a legal education, but serious and obvious drawbacks exist. Last, but not least, is another T4 school in California that is (knock on wood) becoming a green light - short commute, but still expensive and a hassle. And then there is Phoenix International... non-ABA, but only an hour away. Because my application is subject to be very, very late, the best I can hope for is a January admission. It also means tons more private loans (something I am less than thrilled about).

And yes, "C" students CAN transfer out of Cooley, although it is by no means an easy task.

In September I'll post where I end(ed) up at.

Patent absurdities are plain unsporting

2005-05-29T17:29:00.000-04:00

Take this [Microsoft] application for "Efficient string searches using numeric keypad". The details of this work of genius: "Contacts are stored in memory on a mobile device with a limited input device containing input points. Each input point corresponds to a subset of the alphabet. For each contact, a string comprising characters representing the input points that correspond to the letters of the alphabet contained in the name of the contact is generated and saved with the contact in the memory. When a user desires to retrieve a contact, the user presses the input point that corresponds to the subset of the alphabet containing the first letter in the name of that contact. A prefix search for the character representing that input point is performed on the saved generated strings. Any contacts containing a matching string are then presented to the user. "

That's what we, you and a billion others do every day when we look up contacts in our mobile phones — and what Microsoft is claiming to have recently invented.

Microsoft struggles to hit EU deadline

2005-05-29T17:23:00.000-04:00

MICROSOFT is this weekend trying to finalise new proposals to satisfy the European commission’s concerns about its anti-competitive behaviour, and to avoid the threat of daily fines of about €5m (£3.4m).

From Slashdot: Terrorism and Copyright Piracy

2005-05-29T17:19:00.000-04:00

American politics is becoming breathtakingly stupid...

"John Stedman, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in charge of IP violations, testified in front of the Senate Homeland Security committee that some associates of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah may be involved in copyright violations. According to CNET's Declean McCullagh: 'Even though Stedman's evidence is circumstantial, his testimony comes as Congress is expected to consider new copyright legislation this year. An invocation of terrorism, the trump card of modern American politics, could ease the passage of the next major expansion of copyright powers'."

National ID System To Be Built On Microsoft's .NET?

2005-05-29T17:18:00.000-04:00

At first I thought this was a joke - Microsoft and HP developing the National ID system, but alas it is not a story out of The Onion after all...

"Yahoo is running a story about HP's national ID plan, 'The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,' said Jim Ganthier, worldwide leader, Defense, Intelligence and Public Safety, HP. 'HP and Microsoft are working together to provide government agencies the ability to access the integrated data streams needed to securely identify people both in the physical and virtual worlds.'"

Moodle: An open source learning management system

2005-05-29T12:25:00.000-04:00

Distance education is becoming more important in today's connected world. Universities and schools are supplementing traditional classroom-based learning with electronic learning management systems (LMS) -- software designed to deliver on-line education. You may know such software by other names, such as managed learning environments, virtual learning environments, or course management systems. Moodle is the definitive open source learning management system. Like most LMSes, it make extensive use of the Internet, with features such as discussion forums, chats, journals, automated testing and grading tools, and student tracking. Because it's open source, it's also broadly extensible by its large user community.

Digital rights management embedded in Intel chips

2005-05-29T12:19:00.000-04:00

Microsoft and the entertainment industry's holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset.

RIAA Sues More Internet2 File Swappers

2005-05-27T15:57:00.000-04:00

The Recording Industry Association of America announced Thursday it has filed a second wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against students swapping files on the Internet2 network. The group added 20 new universities to its list of targets, specifically suing 91 students across 33 college campuses.

Slashot Repost: Nuclear Fuel How-To

2005-05-27T15:55:00.000-04:00

"The BBC has an article that pretty much sums up everything you might need to know if you wanted to refine nuclear fuel and build some atomic weapons." From the article: "Uranium is the basic raw material of both civilian and military nuclear programmes. It is extracted from either open-cast pits or by underground mining. Although uranium occurs naturally all over the world, only a small fraction is found in concentrated ores. When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission."

Developing GNOME Applications with Java

2005-05-27T15:54:00.000-04:00

By Mike Petullo on Wed, 2005-05-25 23:00.

Design your application's GUI look in XML, write the code in Java and plug the whole thing in to the GNOME desktop.

On The Register: Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' in depth

2005-05-27T15:52:00.000-04:00

I wanted to spend some more time with Tiger before getting off the fence.

So did The Register's Andrew Orlowski, and you can read his thoughts on some of Tiger's key components here.

ALSO another Register article...

Mac OS X 10.4 - More Bling Than Bang?

Creationism: Why No Single Entity is Capable of Dictating the Future

2005-05-27T15:43:00.000-04:00

How do you predict the future? That's easy. How do you create the future? That's hard.

Over the years, I've probably written a dozen columns about how to predict the future. The process is pretty simple, really. Just look for a logical vector from the past to the present, then use a bit of English to predict a second vector from the present to the future, because there is always a kink precisely at the point we call "today." Recalculate occasionally so the vector turns into a curve and converges on some date you've chosen in the future. What makes predicting the future easier than creating it is that only observation and thought are required, and that vector is the sum of all forces, seen and unseen. Creating the future, in contrast, requires lots of work, and all the forces generally have to be summoned or at least enticed by the creators, which makes it a combination of engineering, marketing and voodoo. Unseen forces, rather than being automatically integrated, are what kill you.

In high-tech, we like to look back at the days of Xerox PARC in the early 1970s as an idyllic period of future creation. Within three years, fewer than 100 people invented computer networking, client-server computing, graphical user interfaces, and laser printing. They did so by literally living in the future -- using Moore's Law to anticipate the probable performance of hardware 10 years in the future, then building that hardware, no matter how high the cost, and creating for it applications that represented the best way to get work done. Xerox PARC created many things, but one of the most important was a creative culture that was software-based because it had to be. The hardware was all cobbled from eyes of newt and sealing wax -- materials that probably wouldn't be used in real products a decade hence - but the software was real. And it changed the way technologies were developed.

From The Torture Dept... Judge: Public Has Right to See Abuse Photos

2005-05-27T15:38:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK -- A federal judge has told the government it will have to release additional pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, civil rights lawyers said.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein, finding the public has a right to see the pictures, told the government Thursday he will sign an order requiring it to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyers said.

The judge made the decision after he and government attorneys privately viewed a sampling of nine pictures resulting from an Army probe into abuse and torture at the prison.

Cherry Blossoms and Kamikaze

2005-05-26T17:45:00.000-04:00

Kamikaze means "divine wind" in Japanese, and originally referred to a miraculous typhoon that saved Japan from a Mongolian invasion force in the 13th century. The Japanese Navy used this term to describe their suicide attack planes. In America, the word "kamikaze" describes actions that are reckless or dangerous to the point of being suicidal. The term "kamikaze" is now applied to a wide range of situations, including terrorist suicide bombings, reckless drivers, and out of control classrooms.

Slashdot Reposts: Mad as Hell Switching to Mac; French Judges Decriminalize File Sharing

2005-05-26T11:58:00.000-04:00

"Security dude, Winn Schwartau, has posted an article on Network World about switching his company to Macs because he's fed up with the security issues plaguing Windows-based systems. He also offers his view on why Windows is inherently flawed and why it will eventually fail because of those reasons. From the article, 'This is my first column written on a Mac - ever. Maybe I should have done it a long time ago, but I never said I was smart, just obstinate. I was a PC bigot. But now, I've had it. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.'"

AND

Wired reports that judicial activism is taking hold in France, much to the dismay of the recording industry, as judges are beginning to suspend the sentences of convicted file swappers. Further, they believe they are starting a revolution against the draconian laws at the base of the industry's legal agenda, and that sometimes laws need to be changed. Says Judge Dominique Barella of the laws against file swapping in today's society: 'It is similar to the sociological consequences of the Prohibition period in the U.S. (during the 1920s). Certain laws can have unexpected consequences on society.'"

Legal Theory Lexicon: Formalism and Instrumentalism

2005-05-26T11:48:00.000-04:00

American law students learn about formalism instrumentalism early on—although those particular terms may not be introduced. Many law students hunger for “black letter law,” for legal rules that can be applied to the facts in a more or less determinate fashion. But in most law school classrooms, this hunger is not satisfied. Instead, the discussion is likely to focus on another set of questions: What should the rule be? What is the purpose of the rule? Would the application of the rule to these facts serve its purpose? Does that rule make sense? And so on. Of course, different professors have different ideas about what makes for good legal rules. Some emphasize good consequences—perhaps as defined by the economic concept of efficiency. Others might emphasize considerations of fairness or distributive justice.

In constitutional law, “black letter law” sometimes seems to disappear entirely. Instead, there is a Supreme Court that seems to act as some sort of super-legislature, resolving the great questions of the day, whether it be “Who shall be President?” or “May states criminalize gay sex?” or “Shall abortion be legal?” Moreover, students quickly learn that the constitutional text is not much of a barrier to a result that the Court really wants to reach. An obvious example is Bolling v. Sharpe in which the Supreme Court applied the substance of the equal protection clause to the federal government—even though it is unmistakably clear that the 14th amendment applies only to the state.

Click the link to read the rest of Legal Lexicon.

Amnesty accuses US over 'torture'

2005-05-25T19:13:00.000-04:00

"The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity. We have liberated 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have worked to advance freedom and democracy in the world," said Scott McClellan.

Set My Drivers Free

2005-05-25T19:08:00.000-04:00

Richard Stallman, one of the main forces behind the GNU/Linux operating system and the free software movement, is in Taiwan fighting on a new front -- to get the island's PC makers to release source code for their drivers.

One Way To Get an "A"...

2005-05-25T19:07:00.000-04:00

A TEEN who tried to bump up his grades to an A by hacking into his school’s computer system, accidentally revealed his cunning plan to officials.

Good To Be Home

2005-05-25T13:09:00.000-04:00

It's nice to be home. I built some shelves in the garage and installed a much-needed cabinet in the laundry room. Change the oil in the car and sort-of fixed a garage door issue. Sadly, it took a real-man (unlike yours truly) like my father-in-law to stop by to get the opener to actually work right. He's so cool. He's a FOX-news Republican, hardcore fundamentalist, but I couldn't dislike the guy even if I tried. I'm not crazy about Republican Taliban types, but he gets a pass along with my ex-boss Larry (who I happen to think is faking it and is really a closet-progressive Democrat).

It's also nice to be working plus doing some creative stuff. I'm working on a documentary about my dad - he fled Hungary in 1956 during the revolution, spent a few years at Boys Town and went from bagging groceries to becoming a multi-millionaire several times over in a span of less than 10 years. His story has as much to do with rags-to-riches-to-rags as it does with freedom gained and I believe subsequently in the midst of being lost in this country. When a serious Republican like my dad talks about going back to Europe, I can't help but realize just how far removed the Republicans of today are from the Republicans of yesteryear.

He's made-it and lost-it so many times in his life it's scary. Right now he's back at the making-it stage/cycle and although he's 65 he looks to be a man in his late 40's or early 50's. I am pretty sure he is going to be one of those men that die at 95 while in the saddle with a 23 year old busty girlfriend (probably a nurse at some hospital at that point - knowing my dad).

Outside The Beltway

2005-05-25T13:07:00.000-04:00

Yes, I know it's a right-wing blog, but I AM a political junkie and will take my fix anyway I can get - right, left or otherwise.

Law Prof's Blog

2005-05-25T13:01:00.000-04:00

Get inside the mind the of the prof who might be grading your paper. I've always wondered how THEY go about grading the papers, what they think, what they are really looking for, etc, and this blog seems to show that even law school professors have the capacity to one day become human beings. ;-)