« October 05, 2003 - October 11, 2003 | Main | October 19, 2003 - October 25, 2003 »
iTMS II
Salon's Farhad Manjoo says iTunes for Windows represents Apple's capitulation to Windows' dominance. Um, yeah, maybe. But he also says:
Many of [Apple's] fans have long wished that the company would devote itself solely to software, and that it would make its best apps available to the wide Windows world.
Not. Sorry, but that's like saying many Cubs fans have long wished all their favorite Cubs players would get traded to the Yankees so they could finally be on a winning team. Those are Cubs fans? I don't think so. So yeah, Apple's making a concession here, but I wouldn't expect to see Mac OS X running on Intel processors anytime soon.
But while Mr. Manjoo seems perhaps a little too eager for Macs to disappear, his story has a great quote from U2's Bono, who was beamed in on video for the iTunes for Windows intro yesterday:
I'm with you Bono. I kiss few corporate asses, but Apple's is the most kissable. To see why, check out the top two things that make the iTunes Music Store rock:
- 5,000 audiobooks, including Snow Crash, unabridged.
- Celebrity playlists from Michael Stipe, Moby, Billy Corgan, and more. Think custom mixtapes from your favorite artists. Way cool.
Plus, if you're an iPod owner, you can now buy some cool new accessories for your dream jukebox, including my favorite, the Belkin Voice Recorder which allows you to record voice notes directly to your iPod. If you want to show me love and buy me a new toy, just let me know. ;-)
Posted 06:23 AM | Comments (1) | mac geek
Stuffy Professors Suck
Note to professors: Please do not begin email to your students with "Attached hereto is...." Sorry, but there's really no need for humans to talk that way, even if they are lawyers or law professors. Thanks.
Posted 06:02 AM | Comments (2) | law school
I saw a pig fly!
No, the Cubs didn't make it to the World Series (sadly, although the Sox still may). Instead, Apple has released iTunes for Windows. Currently Apple's homepage sums up this development pretty succintly. It reads:
Indeed. Still, it's probably going to be good for everyone—consumers, artists, music labels, Apple—to get more people downloading music legally, and right now nobody makes that easier or is more successful at it than Apple.
Who knows, maybe a few Windows users will see how easy iTunes is to use and realize that using a computer doesn't have to be a painful and frustrating experience. Hell has frozen over, right?
Just Wait
To the person who came here looking for "what to do as a law school flunk out ," just wait a couple months and I might have some great ideas for you.
We have a midterm in CivPro on Monday and people are really starting to worry about grades. I've never cared much for grades, and although I know everyone is right when they assure me that grades do matter in law school, I just can't seem to make myself care. I mean, of course I care, but not probably not enough. Put it this way: When it comes down to reading or watching "Survivor," I choose "Survivor." At lunch w/professors a few weeks ago (all four have invited us to lunch in groups, which is nice; one of them even picked up the tab) ProfTorts said the best piece of advice he could give to law students would be to "kill your television." He's right, of course, but that's like telling people to stop shopping at Wal-Mart; it would make the world a much better place, but it ain't gonna happen. ;-)
Now is the time in the first semester when I'm disgruntled. Wait, I'm always disgruntled. Perhaps I should change the name of this blog to "Slanted and Disenchanted" in a blatant Pavement ripoff that would more correctly portray its usual bent. But really I'm too ambivalent about my cynicism and disenchantment to do that much about it.
Instead perhaps I will chuckle at the self-importance of the GW journal write-on competition. It happens next March and already they're warning us to save the date and begin our planning. That's somewhat understandable, given that the competition is the first weekend of spring break and lots of people might be making spring break plans already. What's funny is the precision with which they describe the procedure for competing:
Got that? If you turn your packet in at 8:00:01, your out, buddy. I hope they have a plan for synchronizing our watches, or we could be in trouble.
Posted 08:57 PM | Comments (2) | law school
CEDP:
This week, Oct. 13-1, is Death Penalty Awareness Week, sponsored by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. Get a quick education by reading Five Reasons to End the Death Penalty.
L. and I went to a CEDP "Live from Death Row" event last night where we listened to a former death row inmate talk about his experiences. He had to phone in via speaker phone because he's still hin prison—his sentence was commuted to life w/out parole. He was preaching to the choir as far as L. and I were concerned, but it was still a powerful experience to hear him talk about how the CEDP saved his life. If you keep an eye out, you might find a similar event near you this week.
Posted 08:27 AM | law general
Driving tanks: Not yet a usual activity
Continuing the torts thread of liability for abnormally dangerous activities, such as blasting or keeping tigers in your apartment, yesterday's reading revealed that in determining what qualifies as an abnormally dangerous activity we should consider, among other things, the extent to which the activity is not a matter of common usage. Restat. 2d Torts, ยง 520 (1977). Helpfully, my torts textbook informs me that:
Thanks, Professor Epstein. It's good to know driving tanks is not yet a usual activity, but we better hurry up and file our class action against all Hummer drivers before it becomes so.
Posted 06:29 AM | Comments (3) | law school
Media: Big v. Little
The cover story on today's USA Today shouts, "Wesley Clark's fledgling campaign hits its stride."
Funny how different that BigMedia noise sounds from the LittleMedia version of the current state of the Clark campaign (also lots more inside detail here, and of course, there's always the letter from the leader of the Draft Clark movement that begins, "By the time you read these words, the bell will be tolling for Wesley Clark's candidacy."
Has the DNC exercised some influence at USA Today, or are this writer and her editors just not doing a very good job researching? Or are the bloggers just wrong?
Posted 06:13 AM | election 2004
Legal Eye for the Homicidal Guy
Last Thursday was game day in CrimLaw. I guess after a couple weeks of intense discussion about rape,* ProfCrim thought it would be good to lighten the mood with a little game about homicide. Yeah, that's just the kind of class it is.
In a well-planned exercise, ProfCrim handed everyone in the front row a poster describing a different crime. A few of the posters read as follows:
- My boyfriend tried to have sex w/me after I said no and I killed him.
- I drove home after drinking and killed a girl.
- I'm a police officer and I shot a burglary suspect in the back.
- I'm a hit person for the mob and for big bucks I killed one of the Sopranos.
- A guy called me a crossdresser and I killed him.
- I greased my son's steering wheel like I saw on Jackass and he had an accident and died.
- My dear mother asked me to kill her when her Alzheimer's made her a vegetable and I did.
Out of a class of approx. 100, no one agreed w/the way the student ranked the crimes, showing what a difficult task such ranking really is, and what a big job lawyers and judges and legislators have in making distinctions between different types of killing. But speaking of killing, I continue to be surprised at how willing people seem to be to use the death penalty. Some of them seem wholly ignorant of the growing opposition to the death penalty (also here). My peers never cease to amaze me.
In other law school news, this weekend I finally spent the weekend studying like a real student. We turned in our first legal memo last week, and our next assignment has already begun. The issue: Whether our client is eligible and likely to be granted asylum in the U.S. I spent hours researching asylum law, but unfortunately most of that time was spent fighting with the online legal research services I love so much. At first glance, I prefer Westlaw because it's just easier for me to find things there, but for some reason Westlaw crashes Safari like nobody's business. So I had to turn to Lexis, where it's much more cumbersome to search in different databases. Is it even possible to search multiple databases at the same time via Lexis?
On the plus side, I discovered DEVONthink ("Your supplementary brain!") is a great legal research tool. Whenever I find something on Lexis that seems relevant to my topic, I just highlight, hit shift-command-0, and bang! that bit is copied into my DT database and automatically filed in the appropriate category (that's the gee-whiz cool part).
On the whole, I gained a new appreciation for legal research this weekend. There are a lot of cases out there, and it's no small or easy task to decide which are the best ones to apply to your case. Speaking of which, I've got an annotated outline to work on. Happy Monday, everyone!
* L-cubed has a nice little note about whether "no" means "no" (yes, it does), with links to opinions from Greg Easterbrook and Dahlia Lithwick.
Posted 06:45 AM | law school
Quick Campaign Update
The Kerry and Gephardt campaigns are ganging up on Dean.
Wesley Clark's campaign is having growing pains, and that's putting it nicely. Jim Moore has been tracking this well, and he's also got some great thoughts and a link on what the Dean campaign could still do better.
Posted 05:16 AM | election 2004
Lying About War: A Strict Liability Offense
So far in Torts we've covered intentional torts (i.e.: assault and battery), and whether liability for unintentional torts should be decided on the basis of negligence or strict liability. The question is: Should we make people pay for damages they cause to others only if those damages were the result of their negligence, or should we make them pay no matter what (strict liability)?
I thought of this distinction yesterday morning when I caught an interview w/John Kerry on ABC's "This Week" (the one hosted by former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos). George Will was grilling Kerry on wether he'd agree w/Ted Kennedy that the most recent war against Iraq was a "fraud" "made up in Texas." Will wanted to pin Kerry down on this; he was trying to argue that calling the war a "fraud" goes beyond the question of whether Bush and Co. mislead the world about the need to go to war. I believe the way Will put it was "fraud goes to intention." So Will was essentially asking Kerry to say whether Kerry thought Bush and Co.'s intentions in going to war were fraudulent. Kerry would neither say yes or no, only that he's said clearly that he believes the President mislead the world.
And that's the bottom line: Lying to start a war is (or should be) a strict liability offense. Bush did it, now he should have to pay—by being voted out in Nov. 2004, and by having his legislative and social agenda shut down for lack of support until then.
Our legal system decided long ago that when you do something that's inherently dangerous to others, no amount of care or good intentions on your part will place you beyond accountability for your actions. When you keep an animal known to be "accustomed to biting mankind," it doesn't matter how careful you are in keeping the animal locked up; if it bites someone, you're liable and must pay for damages. When you set off explosions—as when blasting a highway tunnel, for example—it doesn't matter how careful you are in blowing the charges; if someone is injured or someone else's property is damaged by your blasting, you must pay.
Lying to get us into war is an inherently dangerous activity. By definition, it threatens the lives of every American service person, and it inevitably threatens the health of the nation (via loss of standing with the rest of the world, for example, not to mention the budget and other problems it causes). Therefore, Bush and his entire administration must pay for what they've done. We, the American people, should make them pay by withdrawing any faith we formerly had in them, by distrusting every single thing they say, and by demanding that our legislators stop supporting their failed policies.
Sure, it would be nice to understand what Bush and Co. were thinking in starting the war. Did they really think Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat? Had they drunk their own kool-aid? Maybe, the fact that Woflowitz and Pearle had been planning this war for a decade makes that seem pretty far-fetched. Did Bush and Co. really think they could waltz into Iraq, take over the oil production, and start reaping the windfall w/out any trouble? Maybe, but again, that seems pretty unlikely. Did Bush and Co. see a war against Iraq as a brilliant way to funnel what was once the largest budget surplus in history away from the public and into the hands of private corporations like Halliburton? Again, it's hard to say, but this seems the most likely explanation, since this is, in fact, what happened. (And why would Bush and Co. want to push the U.S. government closer to bankruptcy? Well, gee, Bush and Co. have always hated the "social safety net" of so-called government entitlements like social security, medicare, etc. And what better way to get rid of them than to simply say, "oops, sorry, we don't have any money to pay for them"?)
Frontline has a big special report on the possible reasons we went to war and what went wrong. However, Bush and Co's intentions in going to war will be something for history to determine. What matters now is that they lied, and for that they're strictly liable.
Posted 05:05 AM | election 2004 general politics
