February 21, 2010
February 20, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor – Have Keyboard, Will Travel – NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Contributor – Have Keyboard, Will Travel – NYTimes.com. Applies to lawyers too?
In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power – New York Times
In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power – New York Times. These judges can apparently imprison defendants for up to two years!
October 10, 2009
Attorney Judy Wang remembered for tireless advocacy, dedication
By BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian
A compassionate mentor. A fierce advocate. A tireless community champion who dedicated her life to making our corner of the world safer, healthier and stronger.
Those are just some of the accolades used Sunday to describe Judy Wang, 57, a prosecutor in the Missoula city attorney’s office who died unexpectedly over the weekend when a driver who smelled of alcohol crashed into her car and caused it to roll on Interstate 90 near Anaconda.
Wang, said those who knew her well, viewed justice with a capital J, and she applied that perspective in her daily work as a tenacious attorney who helped create legislation to strengthen the laws that protect victims of domestic violence.
“Her death is such a shock to all of us,” said Cindy Weese, executive director of the YWCA. “She was our expert and our greatest advocate for policy around victims and domestic violence.
“Not only was she a mentor to me, but she had an incredible impact on everyone working in this field statewide – she was a teacher to us all.”
Wang’s sudden death leaves an immeasurable void on many levels.
…
May 17, 2009
This BBC story explores the history of packet-switching:
. . . The problem with human speech is that most of it is made up of silence – be that the pauses between words, time taken to breathe or gaps when one person waits for another to speak.
Using most of a telephone network to transmit silence is not a very efficient use of that resource. Far better would be to find a way to fill the blank spots with the moments from others calls when those folk were speaking. . . . .
Ubuntu Geek Found Fix For Atheros Wifi Problem
My work box is a Lenovo Thinkpad T42p I bought from Emperor Linux in 2006 — maybe earlier than that. I don’t remember. There’s a receipt somewhere. It ran on Ubuntu Linux (Breezy Badger? Dapper Drake?) which I’ve dutifully upgraded. Its running on 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) now.
When the Thinkpad arrived, it had a special “empkernel” which made all the hardware run. When I upgraded, the empkernel was left behind. Ubuntu mostly kept the hardware running fine though.
Some exceptions . . . . This month, when I upgraded to Jaunty, the Atheros wireless card stopped talking to the OS. Horrors! I need that card. On the other hand, I had a new excuse to play with the bash shell. I dug out an old ethernet cable to get back on the net and began googling for solutions. Not much luck at first. . . .
Then I found Ubuntu Geek. Problems over. The wireless card problem?
Fixed here: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/new-madwifi-now-supports-ar2425-in-madwifi-trunk-branch.html
But wait! My wpa encryption support still isn’t fixed! No. Ubuntu Geek had that covered too . . .
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/enable-wpa-wireless-access-point-in-ubuntu.html
So. If you’re sort of a newbie like me to Ubuntu and spend waaayyy too much time googling around and not finding stuff, and you like using the command line, then my suggestion is to start with Ubuntu Geek next time.
April 18, 2009
Concise History of Alligator Wrestling? I Can’t Look Away . . . .
Maggie Koerth-Baker* reports for Boing-Boing:
Why It’s Hard to Find Good Gator Wrestling Help These Days?
In 2000, members of the Seminole tribe near Hollywood, Florida put an ad in the local paper. They were looking for a new alligator wrestler. Mano-y-gator conflict is nothing new to the Seminole. Hand-caught gators were a traditional food source. But it was only in the 21st century that the tribe had hard luck finding people willing to jump in there (i.e., the swamp) and go for it (i.e., pin several-hundred-pound, sharp-toothed creatures to the ground with only their soft and presumably tasty bodies). This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wrestling alligators for the benefit of white tourists used to be one of the few Seminole-friendly job markets in Florida. Improved access to higher education–and the fact that, today, Seminole are more likely to actually own the tourist trap, rather than just work there–meant fewer tribe members willing to risk life and limb for a poorly paying job. And thus, the newspaper ad.
*Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental floss magazine.
EFF Argues Against Proxy Server Use as Basis for Federal Sentencing Enhancement
Hugh D’Andrade reports for Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Last month, the US Sentencing Commission considered new sentencing guidelines that would classify the use of proxy servers as “sophisticated means” when used in the commission of a crime, thus requiring extra prison time. EFF spoke out against these guidelines, sending Staff Technologist Seth Schoen to appear before the Commission to argue (PDF) that the use of anonymizing technologies is a widespread practice that requires no special knowledge or skills.
Happily, it appears the Commission has decided, at least for now, not to classify the use of proxies as a sign of sophistication.
As Schoen told the Commission, “While proxies may be an advanced technology, using a proxy is often no more difficult than using Microsoft Word. Many kinds of people use proxies for all sorts of legitimate purposes, so only a court can reliably assess which uses are truly employed as a ’sophisticated means’ of committing a crime and which are for privacy, free speech or some other innocent purpose.”
EFF is not declaring victory on this issue just yet. We look forward to hearing the reasoning behind the Comission’s ruling, and to seeing what revisions to the amendment they plan to propose. Today’s ruling is undoubtedly a step forward, and we applaud the Commission for their decision.
This is just one area where we’re watching closely to ensure that common Internet practices are not regarded as criminal by the government. EFF’s work is ongoing in a case in which Boston College Campus Police cited a student’s computer skills as evidence of wrongdoing.
March 23, 2009
Word Press in Missoula Courtroom for Grace Trial
The law school and the journalism school are helping report on the U.S. Attorney’s prosecution of W.R. Grace and five officials for criminal offenses.
I understand but have not personally confirmed that U.S. District Judge Molloy gave permission (rare) for reporters inside the courtroom to keep their cell phones and/or laptops turned on so twittering may occur.
Here’s one news story among many describing the revolutionary coverage of this federal trial:
http://www.newwest.net/city/article/um_journalists_cover_wr_grace_trial_in_real_time/C8/L8/
Here’s a link to the blog itself:
http://blog.umt.edu/gracecase/
Still no Creative Commons license for the content, but change comes slow. This is still an amazing use of Word Press.
March 22, 2009
Half A Dozen Linux Lawyer Problems Solved
1. Description. OpenOffice files unreadable from shell.
Solution. odt2txt unreadable_file | less
2. Description. File on remote server unreadable from local host.
Solution. mkdir /mnt/stuff
sudo sshfs user@userserver.no-ip.info:/home/user/Desktop/matters /mnt/stuff
cd /mnt/stuff
ls -l
fusermount -u /mnt/stuff
3. Description. eGroupWare calendar and contacts unreadable from local host.
Solution. ssh -L 4444:192.168.0.65:80 user@userserver.no-ip.info
firefox
http://localhost:4444
4. Description. Unable to read or write file.
Solution. sudo chmod 0777 unreadable_file
5. Description. Missing an executable.
Solution. sudo apt-get install missing_executable
6. Description. Need to reboot from shell.
Solution. sudo shutdown -r now.
January 31, 2009
Law of the Commons CLE – March 13, Seattle University School of Law
Steven Reisler of Penguin in my Briefs fame, advises that the Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild is offering a Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar on March 13, 2009 on The Law of the Commons. It looks like property law will be examined and discussed with reference to concepts in intellectual property and free and open source software. At least I hope that’s what its about. Looks fun. 8:30 am through 8:00 pm.
Link.
January 3, 2009
Linux is the new Typing 101
My long, intrepid journey to convert my law office from proprietary to free and open source software (FOSS) included some surprises. The largest surprise was that the trip required linux code literacy no less than traveling an ocean would require navigation skills. Learning FOSS is nothing like licensing “out-of-the-box” software.
When I started practicing law, it was still relatively common for older lawyers to use dictation to create documents. These lawyers often did not know how to type let alone know how to use a word processor.
My grandmother was a lawyer who knew how to type, but her peers often mistook her for someone who was merely there to do the typing. She nevertheless recalled the skill as an advantage in the days of manual typewriters and carbon copies.
My mother forced me to take an introduction to typing class when I was in high school. I learned to use word processors when the first ones arrived so the transition was easy. Today I am able to do my own word processing. An assistant generally slows me down when I’m drafting and editing a legal document. As I’ve migrated to FOSS, my need for an assistant has continued to decrease.
That said, I’ve also realized I’m missing an entire set of skills that later generations of lawyers will likely take for granted. I interact with computers, software and networks like a consumer. Those skills aren’t enough. I need developer skills. All lawyers do. Like lawyers today know how to type. Lawyers tomorrow will need to know how to code.
In order to unlock the power of the computer and of networks, lawyers need to understand what the computer essentially is and what it can do. Its critical to have some notion of the computer as a logic machine and to understand its power to manipulate and organize datatypes. Apart from a deeper understanding of what it means to write and compile code, database literacy is probably the most obvious missing skill I can identify.
At a more general level, its a stunning irony that lawyers use logic as a professional tool but often lack any concept of how to use free code to unlock the logic engine inside every PC.
So its trite to conclude a project with the discovery that the journey is less complete at its end than it was at the beginning. But that’s where I find myself today.
True. There is no proprietary code left which is needed to run my law practice. The code in my office will already do more than the proprietary code I used in the past.
But I’ve exhausted a ridiculous amount of time and money to get where I am. And I’ve barely scratched the surface of what can be done. The limit I encountered is not the code. Its my own skill level.