Discourse.net

UM Law Freezes (and Partly Lowers) Tuition

2010-02-08T13:56:53-05:00

Hot news from UM Law Dean White:

I am pleased to be able to announce that there will be NO tuition increase for the 2010-2011 academic year. In fact, while full-time tuition will remain at its current level of $18,709 per semester, the per credit tuition amount charged for part-time attendance will be reduced to $1337 from its current level of $1633.

The new part-time number lowers the cost of summer classes and of taking non-cross-listed courses elsewhere in the university.

I suppose this is one good outcome from the salary freeze.

Law Internet Down; World Isoloated

2010-02-08T09:44:02-05:00

UM law school's internet connection is down, and we're told it will be hours not minutes before it comes back up. So, no email for me; apologies if you are trying to get in touch.

Update: All fixed. Seems the A/C went out in the server room….

Salvete!

2010-02-07T00:20:05-05:00

I, for one, salute our new South Florida blog overlords.

For My Relatives and Friends in DC

2010-02-06T22:26:19-05:00

Snowpocalypse With Soundtrack

Yes, it's a Baltimore weather forecast, but it's right next door….

There Are Many Ways to Be Bad

2010-02-06T16:00:59-05:00

It's an amazing world where a few clicks leads me from boingboing's overly enthusiastic endorsement of what it calls 'Afrikaans rap-rave' (check out the comments too), to this chilling, compelling, greasy-sickening south african trash-rap (now taking the world by storm to this pointless confection) to wikipedia's dry dissection of bubblegum dance.

Now if I could just decide which I more wish I had never heard of…

Update: To ice the cake, according to the folks from South Africa in this comment thread, Die Antwoord are playing roles. The lead rapper, for example, is Waddy Jones, who is anglophone, not an Afrikaner.

There Is a Difference Between Warning About Something and Doing It

2010-02-05T22:35:44-05:00

I know, I know, I have a case of this today:

…but forgive me.

There is a very serious error in the IT World posting Can you trust Chinese computer equipment?. I've written to the author to ask him to correct it, and to post the correction to Slashdot, which has repeated the error (which is how I came to find it).

The original item states,

Indeed, back in 1983, Ken Thompson, one the creators of Unix, admitted that he had included a backdoor in early Unix versions. Thompson's backdoor gave him access to every Unix system then in existence.

“Why am I always the last guy in the world to hear about this stuff?” I wondered. In this case, it is because it is not so. If you look at the actual article referenced, Ken Thompson's Reflections on Trusting Trust, his famous acceptance speech for the Turing Award, you will see it basically says the opposite of what the quote above suggests.

For starters, the very elegant backdoor attack presented in Ken Thompson's paper is a PROOF OF CONCEPT not an “admission” that anyone in fact did anything like it to early or late Unix builds. Ken Thompson in fact takes a very strong stand against such hacks. His point, though, is that the nature of compilers makes what have become known as “Thompson hack” or trusting trust attack very hard to detect.

It would be good if IT World ran a correction; if not maybe someone trying to chase down this latest piece of tin foil will find this posting instead.

Why the 'Enmeshed Male'?

2010-02-05T00:00:48-05:00

In the secret script at USA Networks (aka the enmeshed male), Grant McCracken thinks he's found USA's hit formula for shows like Burn Notice:

A man riding high is brought low. He now survives by dint of his wits and only because he relies on people he never relied on before. This man is now thoroughly enmeshed in a small group of friends and relatives. Without them he is nothing.

But his question is, Why this?

Explain, please, why this new pattern is so much in evidence in these USA Network shows.

What is happening in American culture that might help explain this new vision of our masculinity? After all, American culture has long been home to a notion of the unconstrained, rogue male. Consider all those tradtional TV heroes and movie stars, men who answered to no one. Why a new pattern? Why an enmeshed male?

He's even running a contest for the best explanation.

My only guess is that the imposition of great adversity makes it OK for traditional male hero characters to be a bit vulnerable, even sensitive. Which makes for better plots, and also makes plots that will appeal to women as well as men. And we've now moved to a state where a tough guy being a little vulnerable — with good cause — is not disqualifying.

That said, I still think from what little I've seen of him that that guy in Burn Notice is pretty wooden.

Sheer Carly

2010-02-04T11:44:06-05:00

OK. Now we know what happened to Mike Gravel's media team: they're working for Cal Sen candidate Carly Fiorina. Here's an early but very strong entry in the contest for weirdest campaign video of 2010.

Via Kos which says, too kindly,

It's as if a very expensive Senate campaign for an incredibly wealthy woman in the biggest, richest state in the United States of America collectively dropped acid and decided to make an art school, prog rock “concept commercial.”

(Mike Gravel Flashback 2 and Flashback 1.)

Speechless

2010-02-04T11:31:38-05:00

Wordless Editorial from the Tuscon Citizen.

(Via Barbara Brandon).

Jon Stewart on Fox

2010-02-04T10:34:55-05:00

“How is Barack Obama a socialist? As far as I can see, the majority of the billions of dollars he's given, he's given to banks. So if he's a socialist, he's dyslexic.”

—Jon Stewart during his Fox Bill O'Reilly appearance.

EFF's Panopticlick Pierces My Privacy Illusion

2010-02-03T11:49:45-05:00

Panopticlick

Ran this the other day in Firefox and got:

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 551,209 tested so far.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 19.07 bits of identifying information.

Not one of the 551,209 browsers tested so far emit my plugin details

Similarly, not one of those 551,209 browsers has the same mix of fonts installed.

Might as well surf naked.

IE8 with privacy mode on is only a little better:

Within our dataset of several hundred thousand visitors, only one in 275,626 browsers have the same fingerprint as yours.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys 18.07 bits of identifying information.

And that 'other person' is probably … me.

Kos GOP Poll Leads to Phone Threats

2010-02-02T22:03:32-05:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation:

Just got this note from Del Ali, president of polling firm Research 2000:
We have received two threatening phone calls in the past hour. Interestingly enough, both calls conclude that both you and I are terrorists promoting a gay and of course ant-American agenda.
Got it? Polling Republicans and asking them what they think, then jotting down their answers, promotes terrorism, gays, and an anti-American agenda. It's fun being a wingnut!

Earlier post: What the GOP Believes When It's At Home

What the GOP Believes When It's At Home

2010-02-02T16:24:46-05:00

Consider The 2010 Comprehensive Daily Kos/Research 2000 Poll of Self-Identified Republicans paid for by Daily Kos and conducted by Research 2000.

In reading these quite horrifying numbers, I think it's important to note that recent polls suggest that the ratio of self-identified Republicans is at a low ebb: maybe as low as 20%

So when you read that 63% of respondents think President Obama — who often looks like a Rockefeller Republican to me — is a socialist, that could be as low as 14% of the voting population as a whole.

But as Kos notes, these numbers matter because they set the tone for the obstructionism of the elected officials in the GOP — they have to survive primaries in which these folks are the ones most likely to vote.

So, a majority of the resondents either agreed with or were not sure about each of the following statetments:

Obama was born abroad
Obama 'wants the terrorists to win'
Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama
ACORN stole the 2008 election
Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people

Only a large minority, though, would go along with this:

Do you believe your state should secede from the United States

Yes 23
No 58
Not Sure 19

Some patriots.

Lawyers (and Judges) Doing Good

2010-02-02T11:19:31-05:00

It's pretty easy to get cynical about the law. Almost any recent volume of the Supreme Court Reporter can do it.

So here's a palate cleanser: Kentucky Supreme Court recognizes nonbio mom in stunning opinion.

Line of the Day

2010-02-01T13:04:18-05:00

Best line of the conference yesterday: “99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.”