Law n Thangs

This particular video edit of the Republican Convention speakers (via BoingBoing) could really have saved us all a lot of time; the speakers themselves should have cut out all the other crap. I mean, c’mon, how can you vote for the other guy, who doesn’t even like missiles, when there’s Danger Mouse and his trusty sidekick Dickey on the ballot? Haven’t you heard? The Saddamists are headed westward from Araby at full steam, and they’re bringing the Islamites with them! Only the House of Bush can save us from these dastardly Armies of Evil!!

evan :: Oct.07.2004 :: NetBits :: 1 Comment »

I just finished reading Cory Doctorow’s teardown of a recent Gizmodo feature post about the current issues with ebooks. I was mildly annoyed by the feature when I first read it, but Cory really threw the book at them, which in retrospect they wholly deserved. More importantly, though, his post remind of two excellent speeches he’s given in the past year which I had never given their due: “Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books” and his Microsoft Research DRM talk.

Both these speeches articulate beautifully a side of the copyright argument that needs a wider audience. As a working author who is successful because he made his work freely available online, Cory has an essential perspective on how to balance copyright law today. Most people are simply happy to accept the “intellectual property is the exact same thing as physical property” argument and leave it at that, no matter how incongrous that is with other things they probably value, like schools and libraries, or with the history of the world.

evan :: Jul.29.2004 :: NetBits :: No Comments »

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the quality of online resources for budding Legal Eagles like myself, and I’m not just talking about the LSAC’s chock-full-o-services-but-built-with-shit-code website. Somehow in my travels I ended up at JD2B.com, which is billed as a “non-commercial coummunity[sic] for law school applicants”. It has a nifty blog section, but oh lord, the links. The sheer multiplicity of them. Multiple links for abso-fucking-lutely everything a law student could be concerned about. Most interesting for me, though, was lawschoolnumbers.com. Everyone tells you that all that matters is your GPA and LSAT score, but this site tells you how they matter. Using the internet for what it’s good for, these guys simply set up a database and a registration system and asked people to put in their info: GPA, LSAT score, schools they applied to and whether they got in or not. You can put in more info if you like, but those data points give us prospective applicants a very sound basis for comparison with our GPA/LSAT. At this point they’ve got over 3000 users and it’s growing.

I’m particularly fond of the lawschoolnumbers approach because I’ve never understood why it isn’t considered polite to discuss things like test scores and salaries. In both cases you’re presenting yourself to an evaluator who has all the facts, and yet you’re restrained from getting a sense of where you stand in the competitive landscape by social norms. Certainly, if everyone knows your score/salary, there’s some potential for embarassment, but there’s also a greater good being served. The employees/applicants as a group are much better informed if each individual shares their information, and if an individual finds their information embarassing, that’s all the more motivation to improve it by retesting or renegotiating. Even if you don’t agree with me that the potential harm of the embarassment is outweighed, an anonymous database like lawschoolnumbers removes the potential entirely. So why don’t they have something like this for all application-type processes we go through in life? Fuck modesty and decorum, man, I need the numbers!

evan :: Jul.26.2004 :: NetBits :: 5 Comments »

So instead of having to come up with a witty paragraph every time I want to share a link with the world, I’ve decided to stick my most recently Furled items on the left sidebar.

You could say I’ve gotten lazy (to which I’d reply “Hah! Lazy like a fox, maybe,” which would enable you to smack me for being a pretentious twat) but I’m really just striving to distill all the tasty internet juice into a fine spirit that will instantly revitalize you on every visit to this page. For instance, I defy you not to chuckle at these rewritten Spider-Man comic strips (reload for new ones, via DPH).

evan :: Jun.24.2004 :: NetBits :: 5 Comments »

The Religious Right is mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore! The Somdomites and Lesbithans have apparently taken over, so they will simply have to found their own nation…in South Carolina (via Neil Gaiman). These idiots are going to need a much better slogan than “Civil War in 2016″ (if only they could get their shit together this year), but they have at least kept to the proper Complete Lunatics’ Code of Conduct by posting the details of their dastardly plan on their website. Otherwise how would we have any chance of thwarting it?

Oh, and in case our friends have forgotten, the South loses.

evan :: Jun.09.2004 :: NetBits :: 1 Comment »

This is the question of the day, ladies and gents. And it is being posed by no less of a personage than the mongrel love child of GW Bush and Ross Perot, who is apparently in Japan pretending that he is President of the United States.

This movie (alternate version, both Quicktime) is worth it just for the bit where they make Bush dance the Hucklebuck for a second.

evan :: Apr.29.2004 :: NetBits :: No Comments »

That’s right, water that is not wet (via BoingBoing). Shit is almost too wild. I can’t really imagine what this stuff feels like, smells like, even looks like. I’m willing to bet it tastes like ass, though.

What I really want to do is put a black light in this dry water, but I’m slightly afeared of being instantly transported to a strange new dimension where everyone walks around in circles upside down.

I am also afeared that the Science Men are now that much closer to developing Ice-Nine.

evan :: Apr.14.2004 :: NetBits :: 7 Comments »

Now in stores, a decade in the making, the “debut” album from Dujeous? (they may have dropped the question mark officially, but I still got love for it). They call it City Limits:

Now full disclosure, the drummer Tomek is one of my oldest friends from high school; you’re not gonna hear much shit talking from me. I think the cover is a bit weak, getting a little to close to what these guys do, but that’s really all. Every song is excellent, and even better when you see them live. The Roots may have put live hip-hop ensembles on the map, but these guys have really refined the idea; they play together like seven different limbs of one creature. You don’t have to believe me, but you (probably) know me; you know that I don’t recommend things to people just because I like them. I’ve gotta believe you’ll like them too, and you will, if you’ve ever liked any rap this side of the No Limit Soldiers (album cover notwithstanding).

You can hear the single from the album at Third Earth Music, who also have some other artists I’ve recently been exposed to and enjoyed, specifically Roosevelt Franklin and Science Fiction.

Also, if after the album you can’t get enough, or if you’re longing for that old-time Dujeous? flavor, then cop this.

Finally, once you know what the deal is, come see them next Tuesday, April 13th at Southpaw. You know I’ll be there, reppin’ BK to the fullest. Fort Grizzle, y’all.

evan :: Apr.08.2004 :: NetBits :: No Comments »

In the future, shadows will haunt your every move (via PeterThink).

Translucent concrete is an interesting idea, and not something I ever would have thought of, but it seems a little too retrocool for me. For a long time now, things have been cool because they are somehow less visible than the previous version, from Tupperware to infinity pools. What’s the ideal we’re aiming for? Living in some future-space like Magneto’s Prison where I can see through everything is just going to make me dizzy. What’s worse, my child-like sense of wonder is based on not being able to see around (or through) every corner, and if I haven’t got that, it’s over for me.

evan :: Mar.22.2004 :: NetBits :: 4 Comments »

If one is founding a company or starting a brand or somesuch, one has to have a trademarkable name. I can respect that. Here’s what not to do, though: take a word out of the dictionary and just misspell it.

The good folks at Axium have obviously spent a lot of money on their shiny website. Too bad no one cares, because they can’t even spell axiom! It’s not snazzy, or jazzy, or even hi-tech. It’s a 4th grade mistake at best and it makes them look like a bunch of ignorant yokels.

I’m sure there are other MizSpelt^™ brands out there, but this particular one seems to have legs. I know we’re having trouble getting kids to read at grade level, but if this is what we have to show for our efforts, maybe we should just give up and get rid of compulsory education altogether.

(none of this is meant to suggest that I don’t enjoy creative misspellings as much as the next guy, though)

evan :: Feb.12.2004 :: NetBits :: 1 Comment »