Leaving IE...

I was a dedicated Netscape user for many years, until finally, several years back, Internet Explorer eclipsed Netscape in functionality. Then I finally broke down and switched, but it's always bothered me. However, recently, I discovered there is hope...

I just installed Mozilla Firefox 0.9, and, frankly I'm blown away. Not only does it seem to render pages faster than IE, but it has more features (hooray for tabbed browsing!!) and extensions and themes! So now I have a browser that not only blocks pop-up windows, but also filters out on page ads! Thanks to a little extension called AdBlock. And honestly, I have only discovered a handful of sites that only work with IE (mostly due to Active X stuff) and they are sites I can either live without, or fire up IE just for dealing with those sites.

Oh yeah, and since Microsoft doesn't seem to care about making IE safe from a number of different security flaws, I'm glad not to use it. I'll report more later, after I've been using Firefox for a while.

Summer Music

ambivalent imbroglio has some summer music recommendations, so I thought I'd chime in with my latest purchases...

Good News for People Who Love Bad News - Modest Mouse
I know you've heard "Float On" since it's everywhere at the moment. It's good pop tune, but not the best on the album... I like "Ocean Breathes Salty" and "Dig Your Grave" but "The View" has to have some of the catchiest pop licks on the album. Overall, the whole album is a good listen, but my fav Modest Mouse offering is still Lonesome Crowded West.

You Are the Quarry - Morrissey
Yes, I am a child of 80s alternative rock. C'mon. I was weaned on The Smiths, I had to buy this. The single, "Irish Blood, English Heart" is a decent song, and the rest of the album doesn't disappoint... it's some of Morrissey's most biting and cynical lyrics yet... but man, the music on his solo works have never held up... where's Johnny Marr when you need him?

Van Lear Rose - Loretta Lynn/Jack White
Wow. If you thought country sucked (and "radio" country generally does) then pick up this album and hear what good country music sounds like. I was worried that this would be a White Stripes album with Loretta Lynn but it's not... it's Lynn through and through, and Jack White does an amazing job as her producer... even his appearances on the album are appropriate and add quite a lot.

Chutes Too Narrow - The Shins
I'm still trying to decide if I like The Shins or if I'm ambivalent about The Shins. One minute, they sound like a well-polished pop band, and another they sound all whiny and moody. I dunno. I think this is a "listen to it a few times in a row until you get it kinda album. I know a lot of people who are way into them though, so you know. But then again I know a lot of people who were into the Flamming Lips... puke.

A Ghost is Born - Wilco
Obligatory. First, I freakin' loved Uncle Tupelo. Second, I live in Chicago. I think there's a city ordinance that you have to buy every new Wildo release. That said, I actually like the album... and I actually liked Being There, Summer Teeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot too, so who am I kidding? But I still think Tweedy was the lesser song writer from Uncle Tupelo... Jay Farrar was amazing, and the first Son Volt album, Trace is better than anything Wilco's done. But I'm getting off on a tangent...

I think I'm also going to pick up Franz Ferdinand's album, because I can't get "Take Me Out" outta my damn head... what a catchy, well crafted pop tune... and I'm super psyched to hear Interpol's followup to Turn On the Bright Lights I'll get that as soon as it's released...

Supreme Court Decisions

It was a busy day yesterday at the Supreme Court (I refuse to use the “SCOTUS” acronym, it just sounds so wrong). Among the decisions published were Rumsfeld v. Padilla, Rasul v. United States, and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. There are some excellent discussions of these cases out there, which would be of value for all Americans to read. They provide some insight into how the court will approach protecting our Constitution during this war on terror, and frankly, more American’s should take an interest in protecting their Constitutional Rights.

There’s a great blog, SCOTUSBlog, which tracks Supreme Court decisions, and offers some good insight, despite the horrible name. And Tung Yin offers some interesting analysis over at the Yin Blog.

The Court copped out on the Padilla case, dismissing it on a technicality. Of course, it was split along the typical conservative/liberal 5-4 vote count. Can you guess who voted each way? I’ll bet you can. Essentially, they ruled that Padilla had not named the proper respondent in his original suit, claiming that habeas challenges should have the warden of the facility where the prisoner is held as the proper respondent. I doubt we’ve heard the last of this case.

The Rasul case, commonly known as the “Gitmo” detainee case, was a bit of a blow to the administration, but was a clear victory for the power of the courts. In a 6-3 vote (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas dissent) the court ruled that the habeas statute does extend to detainees in Cuba, which essentially means that all the enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay have the right to have their appeal heard.

By far the most interesting of the rulings is Hamdi, which was one weird breakdown on the vote. The majority opinion was written by O’Conner, and joined by Rehnquist, Kennedy and Breyer. Souter and Ginsberg wrote their own opinion, but joined the majority on the fact that U.S. Citizens should be given the right to challenge their classification as an enemy combatant. Now, how’s this for strange-bedfellows!? Scalia and Stevens wrote that the government only had two options: get congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (yeah, right) or that barring that, the government should charge him with treason, and proceed as normal through the court system on those charges.

I’m glad the court found that detainees have a right to at least plead their case; it does help promote the values we espouse here in America to the rest of the world. I mean, either they are prisoners of war, in which case, we need to follow the Geneva Convention, or they are criminals who should be processed through our legal system. I’m disappointed that the court found congress did give the president the power to declare people “enemy combatants” but at least there is some remedy for them.

As for the Hamdi case, again, at least some of the rights of a U.S. Citizen are protected, and I suspect this will have some bearing on the Padilla case eventually as well, but I think Scalia and Stevens were correct: with a U.S. Citizen, he should be tried as a U.S. Citizen, and the government should have no rights to “reclassify” someone as an enemy combatant, essentially stripping them of their rights as an American.

Interesting cases…

Bloglines

Well, after taking Kleio's suggestion, I signed up for Bloglines.com, which is a web-based News Aggregator. So far, I do like the service... of course, I have a few suggestions:

1. When in the folder "Tree View" it is really annoying to have everything marked as read just by clicking on the folder name. It's instinctive to click on the folder name to expend the folder (since it is underlined as a link) and when that marks everything as read, well, it pisses me off.

2. It would be very nice to not have everything automatically be marked as read... when I open a subscription. Sometimes I want to skim entries, but come back later to really read them, and I don't want to "Save" entires, or use a pulldown to make them visible again. If you had a preference to be able to set "Mark As Read" to default to off with a "Mark Read" link, similar to the "Mark Unread" link in the Blog Title box, that would be really great. I think it would suit both styles of readership equally.

3. Nothing against the color scheme but it would be nice to customize it.

4. Making the "Saved Items" folder searchable would be the bomb.

5. It would be really cool if I could export an XML file with my saved entries.

I think that they are 95% of the way to my dream news reader... and if they go the distance and are able to add features like the ones I've suggested, I would gladly pay for this type of service.

Fahrenheit 9/11

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend with some friends, and I thought I should post to encourage anyone who might be reading to go see it.

First, let me qualify this "review" or "endorsement"... I am a liberal, although I'm not a Democrat. I have distinct Libertarian leaning, although I do believe in some level of compassion toward humans expressed through social programs. In addition to being upset about the international good will America has lost through the current administration, I am also particularly upset with the loss of our civil liberties, through abominations like the USA Patriot Act.

Now, I also have mixed feelings about Michael Moore. I think he is a generally funny fellow, who does have a definite political agenda. And like most pundits (and he is a pundit) he often twists the facts a bit in order to make a point. And he can sometimes come off a bit self-righteous. That said, you need to see this movie.

Moore limits his screen time in Fahrenheit 9/11 more than in his previous films, and while there are some typical Moore moments (like when he tried to get members of Congress to enlist their kids in the military) he really does address some very troubling issues with regard to the Bush administration, which I think the mainstream press would be doing the American public a service by covering a little bit more. For example:

Why did the Bush administration allow members of the Bin Laden family to fly out of the U.S. on 9/13 before the FBI even had a chance to question them at all?

Why does the Saudi embassy get Secret Service support??!

Why, when 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi's, do we not pressure Saudi Arabia for more cooperation in the "War on Terror".

Why was Hamid Karzai, a former consultant to Unocal, installed in Afganistan as the leader, to aid the "war on terror" and what is his role in the Unocal pipeline?

And why don't we place a little more scrutiny on the Carlyle Group, which is a major defense contractor, heavily invested in by the Bush family, and until recently, heavily invested in by the Saudi's?

If it were just one thing, it might be easier to dismiss. And I'm not even advocating that we necessarily accept Moore's postulations... just that these are questions worth looking into, and we're not. There are just too many questions raised to dismiss them, and adopt a Britney Spears, "we have to stand by our president and trust him to do the right thing" attitude. It's clear that even if you hate Moore, we can't trust our president.

Radio Woes

I would really love someone to build a better news aggregator. If I weren't already up to my eyeballs in projects, I'd do it myself. I no longer use Radio for my blog, because it's a memory leaking, bloated application that slowly brings most systems to a halt. I just got tired of rebooting. However, the news aggregator feature is just about perfect. It can run as a web accessible service, so I can access it from anywhere, and on any machine, and it keeps track of things I've read. These are two features I've grown to love, and that aren't included in most other news aggregators.

After bouncing some ideas off Ken, he had another great suggestion, along the lines of GMail... why throw out RSS articles at all? Hard drive space is cheap, it would be cool to archive them, and make them searchable. Here's my dream news reader:

- Cross Platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) - Accessible via the web (password protected, of course) - Keeps all articles grouped by site, and ordered by date/time - Tracks "read" articles and doesn't display them after they are deleted/archived - Archives "read" posts, for searching later - Supports RSS (.9x, 1.0, 2.0) and ATOM

I would pay for that news aggregator... I really would, and I think others would too.

Update:

Kleio pointed me to an new service called Bloglines which is an on-line news reader, and has many of the features I was asking for... I've signed up for an account, and I'm going to be giving it a try this week. I hope it's cool!

GMail

Wow. I have to admit, I was skeptical about GMail before I tried it, but I'm a pretty enthusiastic convert. The idea of never throwing away e-mail (which I don't anyway) is so appealing... and with Google's search integrated... wow. I just wish I could run a client on my desktop for work e-mail!!

I was fearful of not being able to delete mail, but you can delete e-mail, archiving is just the default. I'm already using it for mailing list traffic. It will be interesting to see how it handles spam as I use it more, and post the address in more public areas, but so far, I'm very impressed.

GMail!

Cool! With a big thanks to Ernie the Attorney, I have a GMail account now and I'm ready to get started putting it through the paces. As someone who never deletes e-mail anyway, I think I'm going to like it...

Watch As Your Rights Are Slowly Eroded

The Supreme Court today upheld the conviction of Dudley Hiibel. Hiibel was arrested in Nevada when he refused to identify himself to a police officer. He was not arrested or charged with any crime, he simply refused to give an officer his name when asked.

I reviewed the video on Hiibel's website, and I think he was being a little beligerant, and the officers were there because someone had reported a possible domestic dispute. However, when the police showed up, it was quite clear there was no crime in progress. They could have easily asked his daughter if there was a problem and determined that there was no crime committed without knowing his name. The shame here is that now, essentially, any police officer has the right to ask you to identify yourself for nearly any reason.

Dissenting were Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg... better known as the soul of the court.

Update:

Someone asked me today, "What's the big deal about having to give your name to the cops?" Which, in light of this decision, is a good question. The problem, I believe, is that this decision is a "slippery-slope" which may end in the further erosion of our rights.

For example, the state in this case argued that providing your name is not unreasonable, and that it doesn't violate your 4th or 5th Amendment rights. (The right to not be unreasonably seached, and your right against incriminating yourself.) The court agreed, stating that it was unlikely that providing your name would be incriminating, but that it would provide the officer with potentially useful information to assess the current situation, for example, did you have a criminal past or a history of domestic violence, etc.

The problem can easily be summed up with this hypothetical: what if the citizen provides a false name? The value of the name provided is then completely negated. The officer can't determine anything of value, based on a false name. Additionally, the officer has no way of knowning that a false name has been provided unless the officer is also free to request some type of identification. If the officer can't confirm your identity, the name is useless. But now, there is a justifiable reason for legislatures to pass statutes requiring citizens to produce documentation of identity to law enforcement officers. Chilling, indeed.

Update:

Will Baude has an excellent essay entitled "Bad ID" which reiterates the slippery slope here, and gives some case law backup.

Tribune's 50 Best Magazines

The Tribune has posted a list of the Top 50 Magazines, as selected by their writers.

Number one on the list? Wired. Yeah, beats me. Occasionally Wired does do something interesting (the InfoPorn stuff for example) but for the most part, Wired went way down-hill after they went all Mondo 2000 on us.

Some other highlights from the list:

3. The Economist. The no-nonsense font and rigid layout style make it look like a class handout on the first day of an MBA program, but don't be dismayed. This magazine features the most succinct, globe-encompassing wrap-ups of politics and economics on the market. Even often overlooked cultural features such as book reviews glisten with insight.

20. No Depression. For those who crave that tasty trail mix of traditional country, punk, folk and rock that goes under the moniker alt country or Americana, there is no finer or more thorough source for news, reviews and profiles. We adore the long chewy portraits of the genre's big names, and the dispatches from concertland.

43. Chicago. It is impossible for a Chicagoan to read an issue and not come away with useful information. This is its first appearance on the Tempo list since The Tribune Company bought this monthly, but you don't have to take our word it belongs here. It just won a National Magazine Award for general excellence for its mix of probing journalism, clever service stories and darn good restaurant coverage.

I don't really read magazines much anymore... I can usually get more timely information and even better analysis on-line. But those three above are pretty good print-rags... back in the day, I used to read Spy pretty religiously, and I always have a soft-spot for science mags (New Scientist, Scientific American, and hell, even Discover).

I think Chicago is a bit narcissistic, but hey, I live here, and as far as local trends go, it's not too bad. Time Out Chicago is coming to town, but Chicago will probably continue to be a better blend of local politics and style, maybe not as much on the nightlife.

Blog Advice

Tony Pierce has some excellent blogging advice which is pretty valuable. However, I do take some issues with a few of his points:

8. dont worry very much about the design of your blog. image is a fakeout.

Don't worry much, but still think about it. Completely neglecting the layout/design of your blog can lead to something that is just down right painful to look at... although many readers may never actually see your blog (thanks to RSS) it's still worth a little time to make it look presentable. Hell, with so many templates, it's a no brainer to make your blog have a little style.

9. use Blogger. it's easy, it's free; and because they are owned by Google, your blog will get spidered better, you will show up in more search results, and more people will end up at your blog. besides, all the other blogging software & alternatives pretty much suck.

If you have a blog worth reading, it will spread regardless of the tool. Blogger is fine, but there are many other good choices out there. Don't get hung up on the technology. If you find one that does works the way you want it to work, but it ain't fee, so what? Pay for things you find valuable. I started on Radio, which has some pluses and minuses, and now I'm on Movable Type, and I love it. Being owned by Google doesn't mean much, you'll still get indexed. Google indexes your mother.

13. if you havent written about sex, religion, and politics in a week youre probably playing it too safe, which means you probably fucked up on #5, in which case start a second blog and keep your big mouth shut about it this time.

Everything is about sex, religion or politics. Anything you think isn't really is, you just haven't put it in context yet.

25. dont use your real name. dont write about your work unless you dont care about getting fired.

Boy howdy. That one should be the #1 on the list.

Most of Tony's advice is applicable to writing in general. I think that's the best approach to "blogging". Fuck blogging. Blogging is for chumps. The best "blogs" are in reality collections of essays by writers, with a few exceptions (which are just collections of cool stuff). So be a writer and do what writers do: write. Stop trying to "shift the paradigm" be an "early adopter" or "embrace the revolution" just write. It's about the writing.

JD v. MBA

So, why did I decide to go back to school to pursue a JD? And why not pursue an MBA? I do have a fair amount of entrepreneurial business experience, so an MBA might have made sense.

I've wanted to pursue a post-graduate education of some kind for quite some time, but I frequently vacillated between a degree in Fine Arts and a "professional" degree of some kind. I'm one of those artsy types who happens to have a head for business (or so I'd like to think). Unfortunately, returning to school full-time is not really a realistic possibility, so I needed to limit myself to degrees that I could get part-time/evening, which pretty much ruled out going back for my MFA.

I tried to think of what I really loved doing, what my passions were, and I determined that in order for me to be happy with my career, I need it to have a several components:

1. The "job" must be (for the most part) intellectually challenging.
2. I enjoy project oriented work, that is, work which involves deadlines as a motivating factor. Once a project is finished, I want the opportunity to work on another project (or handle multiple projects simultaneously).
3. I would like the career to have a writing component.
4. I would like a career that uses technology as a tool, but is not necessarily technology based (I've done software development, I'm done with that).
5. I like to interact with people.
6. I need to have some level of control over my own destiny.

So, having been on my own with several business ventures, I wanted an education that could help me find either a job for someone else that met those criteria, or would aid me in once again striking out on my own. The two degrees that made the most sense were and MBA or a JD.

The MBA had the advantage of being focused on business. But the MBA also had the limitation of being focused on business. Then I came across an article that mentioned over 10% of American CEOs have JDs. Not that I want a corporate career necessarily, but the fact that so many executives have JDs indicates that on some level, a JD is beneficial in the business world. That's a big "Duh" for the most part, but still a factor in my decision.

Then I met Groklaw. I was hooked. You know you’re in trouble when you’re reading a motion written by attorneys for IBM and you find yourself laughing at the subtle humor. My wife happens to be an attorney, so I grabbed some of her books, and started reading about torts, and again, I was hooked.

I hope that my interest isn't just a passing fancy, and that the intellectual challenges of studying law continue. I would like to go into some area of intellectual property law, combining my technical skills and background into a career that I might find challenging and rewarding. And even if I don't end up practicing law (and at this point I am far from certain I want to practice law, at least in the traditional sense), it seems that the educational experience itself will be beneficial and applicable to many other areas I might end up.

Of course, this could all be the rationalization of a naïve, soon-to-be 1L...

Fixing Education In America

Ernie the Attorney quoted Philip Greenspun in his blog today, talking about how to "fix" the educational system in America. Now, I enjoy reading Ernie's blog, and he usually has some good insight, but how anyone could find this statement "brilliant" is beyond me. Greenspun said (of government schools):

"Everyone who works there is either a bureaucrat or a union member. None of these people incurs any kind of pay loss or risk of firing if the kids remain totally ignorant."

That statement is, for lack of a better word, bullshit. Pure and utter bullshit. I have no doubt that there are teachers in public schools who are coasting. Of course, that never happens in private schools, or at universities with the tenure system, does it? Oh, right, bullshit.

I went to a public school and I could count on one hand the "bureaucrats" who didn't care if kids were "totally ignorant". The fact is that I had many talented and dedicated teachers who worked their asses off to make sure we got the best education possible.

In the face of already unmanageable class sizes and dwindling budgets, many of these people sacrificed money from their own pockets or came up with creative ways to stretch pitiful funding even further. I suppose Greenspun thinks those people just became teachers so they could take summers off?

The problem with public education lies in not just a lack of resources, but misguided attempts to qualify education with standardized testing that causes schools to miss the forest for the trees. Teaching to tests sounds good in election sound-bites, and does painfully little to actually educate the populous. The problem is systemic, because we as a society value lower property taxes over increased funding for our schools and because our society seems to somehow equate poverty with stupidity. In fact, the stupidity really emanates from ignorant attitudes like Greenspun's.

His rhetoric is typical elitist bullshit. Technology is hardly a panacea for a broken system with broken values, and the broken values are typified in comments like that.

Ray Charles

Ray Charles passed away today... I can honestly say I didn't know that much about his life, other than being familiar with his "hits". Of course, I knew that he was a huge influence on soul music as well. But on NPR they were playing clips of interviews with him over the years, and one thing really struck me as being truly astonishing, not just for his time, but as also being virtually unheard of today as well:

Ray Charles owned his own music.

Not just the publishing. He owned the master recordings too. Apparently, when he first signed with Atlantic in the late 1950s, they built him a state-of-the-art recording studio in his home, but he paid for it. He retained complete creative control over his music. Atlantic told him "You worry about the music, we'll worry about the marketing." Amazing. Now that is how the music industry should operate.

The Value of MBAs

Disclaimer: I work for a very highly regarderd and ranked business school. The students here are very bright individuals who are highly motivated, and the faculty here are very intelligent and capable teachers, who do really seem to care about giving their students a top notch education. That goes a long way towards setting this school apart from the norm.

That said, a friend of mine recently sent me an article from Fortune magazine, entitled "Why an MBA May Not Be Worth It" which was a very interesting read. An even more interesting read was the paper that sparked the article. That paper, written by a Standford University business professor, is called "The End of Business Schools? Less Success Than Meets the Eye" and it has some really enlightening information, especially for anyone considering going back to school for an MBA.

It did a lot to reconfirm that I think I made the right decision in deciding to go back to law school, rather than pursue an MBA.

Drool.

Apple Introduced a Dual 2.5GHz G5 today. Liquid Cooled. How drool worthy is that?!

Web Comic Roundup

There are a lot of really good web-comics out there these days... here are some that I am currently reading on a semi-regular basis:

Something*Positive
Penny Arcade
The Devil's Panties
Queen of Wands
Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles
Red Meat
Sore Thumbs
/usr/bin/w00t
User Friendly

If you know of any others I should check out, please let me know!