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More MT 3.0
People are still talking about the MT 3.0 upgrade and new licensing scheme. Luke notes that it might spell the end for many group blogs. That would be a sad loss; I wonder if Six Apart even thought about that. He also points to this note at Tech Dirt that sums up the pricing problems fairly well:
it seems that [Six Apart] screwed up one of the most basic rules in pricing: never take away features and charge for them. You can charge for new features - but taking away features that were included for free before always pisses off your most loyal customers. They feel suckered. They feel like you've pulled a bait and switch on them. In this case, many MT users set up multiple blogs with multiple authors. That's what the software encouraged them to do. Now, they're looking at the pricing and realizing to continue doing so on the new platform would cost them around $600. "Costs more for doing less" isn't a way to make users happy. One other rule of pricing: recognize the competition. There are an awful lot of blogging tools out there, and more are coming out every day. Not all of these are free, and people clearly pay to use certain tools. However, ignoring competitive pricing (as Six Apart appears to have done, since the prices they're offering are well above the competition) doesn't make much sense - especially when the switching costs really aren't that high.
In case I wasn't clear enough yesterday, I'll reiterate that I'm happy to pay for MT. I paid when I first discovered it because I loved it, and I'll pay again (probably) for a license for the new version. Six Apart has produced a terrific product, and they deserve to be compensated for it, plus the upgrades, speed improvements, etc., are all valuable to me. So I'm not suggesting that Six Apart should not charge, I just wish they'd provide licensing options that would enable users who are willing to pay to continue using MT in the legitimate ways they've been using it for years now.
Also, and maybe this isn't true, but this feels like a shift in blogging from a start-up to a corporate entity. I'm not just talking about Six Apart, but about blogging as a phenomenon, a social space, a new territory. For a while the territory was largely commercial-free—outside the dominant paradigm under which profit drives all decisions. Now, MT has moved into the realm of capital, as has Blogger now that it's been bought by Google and now that Google is going public. Suddenly blogging may become about business, and that shift hasn't proven a positive one for most things web-related
I know the reaction of many, if not most, readers will be that this is a good thing. As a profit-generating business, blogging will grow and flourish, people will have incentive to maintain and continue developing the tools, etc. Whatever. Profit also ensures we always have new movies to watch, but that doesn't mean they're any good. People deserve fair compensation for their work, but money changes things.
UPDATE: It sounds like Six Apart is listening to the critiques of its new licensing scheme and has announced some changes. The best one:
That sounds pretty fair to me and allows users quite a bit of flexibility.
Posted 09:11 AM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging
MT 3.0
Movable Type, the software that runs this and thousands of other blogs, is no longer going to be free. (See a sample of the discussion here and here, via Scripting News.) See also the posts linked via trackback to the announcement of these changes. Many people are unhappy, for various reasons. I guess I'm one of them.
Six Apart, the company behind MT, claims its new licensing scheme will satisfy 85% of its users. I guess those of us in the other 15% should look elsewhere for a personal publishing platform. That 15% includes people who maintain or "host" more than 10 blogs on their MT installation, or who have more than 9 authors contributing to those blogs. I currently have at least 10 different weblogs running on my installation of MT, about half of which are dormant or experimental and rarely updated. Those blogs have close to a dozen authors, again, most of whom don't post frequently, if ever. To maintain this level of use, I would need to pay $150 at the introductory rate, or $190 at the regular rate. But since most of those blogs/authors were temporary or experiments, if I cut back to just what I really use, I'd still need to pay $70 at the intro rate, or $100 at the regular rate. That's not so bad, but then, what if I want to add a blog or author down the road some time? More money, more hassle.
Or, what if I wanted to start a co-op for law bloggers? Can't do it with MT anymore, I guess. It was probably a silly idea anyway.
As for Six Apart's other options, TypePad Pro offers unlimited blogs and authors, it looks like, but that will cost you $15 per month! That's $180/year. That seems like an awful lot of money to be spending for the life of your blog, doesn't it? Maybe not. Maybe this is just the price we'll have to pay. (Or, for most people, only $60/year for just one blog/author, or $120/year for three blogs and one author.) I don't really think an idea like BlawgCoop could really work even w/TypePad Pro because, although it allows unlimited blogs, the "authors by invitation" thing makes me think different authors can't have their own blog, but can merely post to yours. That's not the idea.
So you see, my objections to charging for MT are not on principle, or because I think it should be free. I've donated to MT and would be happy to pay for the software—even for updates every year or three. I understand developers can't create software for free; they need to eat and have lives, as well. Great. However, the success of MT created a large group of people—dare I say a "generation" of bloggers—with the expectation that, even if the tool would not always be free, it would always allow them to create as many blogs as they wanted with as many authors as they wanted. That was one of the cool features of MT, and it's a feature that's critical because it allows the imagination to run free—knowing I could add a new blog/author at any time with almost zero hassle and no cost has allowed me to experiment in ways that just wouldn't be possible otherwise. It allowed me to at least consider an idea like BlawgCoop, and even if it was a bad idea, a better one might have followed close behind. MT in its current incarnation (pre-3.0) offers more flexibility and choice than 3.0 will, and that's one of the big things I'd be happy to pay for.
If I switch tools, that flexibility, the openness, the opportunity to dream about new ways to use blogs and to experiment with those ideas or even implement them—that will be why. It's not because I don't want to pay, but because I don't want the blogging software I use to stand in the way of what I want to use it for.
A quick survey of other options for people who want more flexibility:
TextPattern
WordPress
iBlog
GeekLog
pMachine
Others?
UPDATE: Jason Kottke is in about the same boat I'm in. He's got a great solution:
It wouldn't cover an idea like BlawgCoop, but it would still give users room to move. See more today on Scripting News.
Posted 07:47 AM | Comments (6) | meta-blogging
BlawgCoop.com
Ed note: This entry was written a few weeks ago but never posted b/c of other pressing events (a.k.a. final exams). It discusses an project that will either be abandoned or postponed because of recent changes to Movable Type. Please see the next post.
A week or two ago Buffalo Wings & Vodka migrated from Blogspot to Typepad, which was a welcome change for his readers for several reasons: now we no longer have to see ads on his page, we can subscribe to an RSS feed, the comments work smoothly and are built in to the content management system, and generally the page will probably load faster and more reliably. Plus, the site just looks a lot better, so it's more of a pleasure to read. This seems true across the board for TypePad sites—they look nice.
TypePad also appears to offer additional advantages, I think, although I'm not sure what they are. But the main thing is the reliability. Blogspot blogs are just interminably slow most of the time, and that's if they will even load at all. Was it just me, or have many Blogspot blogs been unreachable recently?
Movable Type shares most of TypePad's many advantages over Blogspot, with one crucial additional advantage: It's free. Ok, it's not free, because you need a host and a domain and all that. Plus you have to set it up and maintain it. But wouldn't it be great if novice bloggers (especially law students, law professors, and practitioners) could get all the advantages of a MT blog without the hassles?
As a reader of blogs, I think it would be really great. So here's the idea: Let's start a "Blawg" Co-Op—a server to host law student and other law-related blogs running on Movable Type.
First, we chip in to register a domain to host the blawgs. Blawgs.com is taken, as is blawg.org, so let's call it "blawgcoop.com" ("blawg co-op," see?). We'll install MT, then open it up to any law student, professor or practitioner (for starters) who would like to run an MT blawg there. Users will get their own password and an account and we'll assist where we can w/setup and basic design issues. Some or all users could have subdomains (myblog.blawgcoop.com), or they could just get their own directory w/in the main domain (blawgcoop.com/myblog). The only thing we'll ask in return is that users contribute equally to maintenance costs (hosting and annual domain registration at an annual cost of around $150/year to start). So if there were ten users, each one would pay $10/year. That's it. If we had 20 users, each one would pay $5/year. And what users would get in return would be far superior to BlogSpot (or Blog City, for that matter) in terms of quality of blogging environment and dependability, and it would also be far cheaper than TypePad.
People in my blogroll who use BlogSpot who I'd love to see on a better platform include:
Mixtape Marathon
L-cubed
Half-Cocked
So Sue Me
Musclehead
a mi parecer
Jeremy Blachman
Naked Furniture
Althouse
Tbagged
Undeniable Dilemma
Screaming Bean
Veritable Cornucopia
See, there's over a dozen candidates right there, plus all the new "blawgs" coming online all the time—if they started up at BlawgCoop, they'd automatically connected to the community of existing law bloggers. So what do you think? Is anyone interested in such a "service"? Would anyone like to set up an MT-powered blog and pay something like $10/year or less?
Of course, a new option I just learned about for people wanting to switch to a more stable and reliable system and have their own domain is bloghosts. Their plans start at $3/month, plus annual domain registration fees ($20-$30), so again it begins to add up, but you would get your own custom domain, which is certainly worth a bit more.
Possible drawbacks to the whole "blawgcoop" plan include scalability—if the "service" attracted a lot of users, costs would go up as bandwidth and disk space increased. But then, if everyone's sharing those costs, they wouldn't be too high for anyone. Theoretically the cost per user could vary depending on bandwidth/disk space, but that would only come into play if one user started using dramatically more than everyone else. Also, support would have to be limited so it didn't become a huge time drag on anyone, but perhaps support responsibilities could be shared as well among users w/varying levels of expertise. I'm sure there are other drawbacks, like security weaknesses I'm not aware of perhaps.
On the plus side, another potentially fun thing we could start with the "service" is an optional group blog to which all users would be invited to post. Welcome to the BlawgCoop. You will be assimilated. ;-)
Posted 07:46 AM | Comments (2) | law general meta-blogging
Ani Live
I saw Ani DiFranco last night at the 9:30 Club. Great show, as usual. This was the fourth time I've seen her live since '96 (gulp! time flies!) and she never fails to play a great show. She doesn't seem to play very long (just a bit over an hour for the last two shows with only one, one-song encore), but she plays hard.
She's touring in support of her new album, Educated Guess, so she played quite a few songs from that album (the title track and "Origami" are the only ones I recognized; I don't have the album yet), as well as quite a few from the last album, Evolve, including the title track, "Phase," and "Serpentine." She also played some older faves, including "Firedoor," "Untouchable Face," "As Is" (with a super-funky arrangement—her electric guitarist, "Tony," was awesome), and "Angry Anymore" among others. Most of these were sing-alongs with the crowd shouting the lyrics so loudly in the small venue that they almost drowned Ani out. She played radical variations on some of them, and I wondered if one reason for that is to thwart the sing-alongs. I would guess she'd do this esp. on "Untouchable Face"; when I first heard her play the song live (at a show at the Berkeley High School, I believe), before she played it she actually asked the audience not to shout the chorus at her since it's not really fun to be at the front of the room while hundreds of people shout "F-you" at the top of their lungs. But that may have nothing to do with it; maybe she mixes up the arrangements just to keep the songs fun and fresh. Whatever the case, it was an awesome show. If she's coming near you this summer, don't miss it!
Posted 07:38 AM | Comments (5) | life generally
Pre-Law School Summer Reading
Along with the handful of requests from people wondering about GW in particular, I've also received a handful of requests for advice on pre-1L-summer reading and preparation in general. All I can offer are my own impressions of what was helpful or might have been helpful; many others have been down this road before and if you look around you'll find terrific insights on these topics on other blogs. That aside, I'd say that as far as preparation goes, I wish I'd spent the summer before 1L working in some sort of legal position—volunteering for a judge or an attorney or a nonprofit, or even working in the mail room at a firm or temping at a legal copying service or something. Anything that gets you thinking about the practice of law and in a position to at least observe the profession at work should be a good way to spend the summer. Of course, a law-related summer job isn't necessary; I'm just saying that if I had it to do over again, I would have tried a little harder to get one. It will give you a taste of what you're getting into, and it won't look bad on your resume when you're trying to get that first summer job after your first year of law school.
Other than that, there's the reading. About a year ago I was thinking about books I might read in preparation (and here). In those posts and comments you'll find a very short survey of the most likely suspects. I did end up reading Law School Confidential, and once I got to school it seemed like a very high percentage of my peers had read it too. I guess I'd recommend it as a general primer, but the study schedule it suggests is just insane.
I also worked my way through most of Getting to Maybe and I found it to be indispensable. It's both an exam preparation book and a way to think about law more generally, so it's something you can read at any time. I found it a bit hard to read before I'd started class because it seemed too abstract, but once I'd started school it was hard to find time to read it, and you should really read it before your finals. If I had it to do over again, I'd try to get through more of it before school started, then I'd finish it in bits as the semester progressed.
But while those books are useful, they're not necessarily fun summer reading. For that, I turned to Brush with the Law by Robert Byrnes and Jaime Marquart , and the infamous One L by Scott Turow. What follows is a review/comparison of the books that I wrote upon finishing them but never posted.
The first, Brush with the Law, is a rather new entry in the field of law school accounts. (Note: It was slowly being serialized here, but it looks like all that's available now is the last installment.) The book offers parallel accounts of the authors' experiences at Stanford and Harvard, respectively. In a nutshell, Byrnes was a bike-riding crackhead who never went to class and did just fine at Stanford [note: I'm not sure his drug of choice was actually specified, but it sounds pretty cracklike], while Marquart began as a sort of sincere straight-arrow at Harvard, attending every class and trying to dot every "i," but gradually became a gambling-addicted slacker who never went to class and, you guessed it, still did just fine at Harvard. Their stories are at once hilarious, insightful, and strangely deflating, like a confirmation of many of my worst fears about law school. Rather than participate in the mythical account of law school as "America's most demanding post-graduate curriculum" (that's really the title of a book), Byrnes and Marquart describe two of the United States' most prestigious law schools as little more than empty facades behind which mostly wealthy, self-aggrandizing students and professors play out their fantasies of what law school is supposed to be. Meanwhile, the "smarter than you" bad boys are learning to laugh at the whole grand show. And while it's refreshing to see law school cut down to human proportion like this, it's also disappointing and dispiriting because it raises again one of the main questions that makes law school seem like such a bad deal, namely: If law school is such a big joke, then why do students have to spend so much damned money, not to mention three years of their lives, to practice law? (I'll leave that question hanging for the moment to spare you a rant against the cartel that is the ABA.)
I then picked up the infamous One L, which, as I mentioned before, struck me as melodramatic in the extreme. As strange as it sounds, I'm glad to have read these books together—they're like antidotes for each other. For every instance in which Turow tries to mystify, aggrandize, or otherwise inflate some aspect of the law school experience, Byrnes and Marquart offer an anecdote to mock, belittle, and otherwise eviscerate the same aspect of law school (probably along with a few others at the same time, for good measure). Jeremy Blachman offers the best summation I've seen for One L when he writes:
The best aspect of One L for me was its historical value. I found myself thinking again and again that little has changed since 1975. One of the first points where I noticed this was in Turow's notes about coming to terms with "legal thinking," which he at first finds "nasty" (86), but later seems to realize is valuable once he accepts that "there were no answers" (101). I fear humanity is doomed if we don't start learning the difference between "nastiness" and "critical thinking," but again, that's another rant for another day.
One thing that has changed in the last 33 years is the value of a dollar:
Can you say "inflation"? The same poll also showed that 80% of students at Harvard in 1975 said they'd prefer something other than corporate law practice (BigLaw), i.e.: "public interest work, political work, work on behalf of the poor" (95). Have those numbers changed, or has it just become
harder than ever to follow that path?
Apparently, law students thought school was already pretty expensive in 1975, so students wanted to know why their classes were so big. According to one of Turow's professors, schools adopted the Socratic method because it enabled a professor to effectively teach 140 students at a time, and this made a legal education "cheap" (122). Perhaps this is true, but if so, the cost savings were never passed on to students. (Cue silent rant against ABA Cartel, take II.)
So law schools still have large classes, and they still charge rapacious tuition, but do they still serve the status quo? On this point Turow writes at length about a speech he heard Ralph Nader give to the students at Harvard in November of 1975 in which Nader pointed out that the law taught at U.S. law schools is largely the law of "the well-to-do [who] could afford the huge legal fees of prosecuting an appeal, of bringing a case to the stage where it was likely to be reprinted in ... casebooks" (133). Turow's description of this speech alone makes One L worth your time. He writes:
[Nader] talked about the model of a lawyer's work that the steady stream of appellate cases suggests. Weren't we really training to be lawyers who only interview clients and write briefs and argue before courts—the kind of lawyers Legal Methods was teaching us to be? Where were we shown images of lawyers as organizers, determined advocates, rather than the disinterested hired hands of whoever could throw the price? Did we honestly believe, as was sometimes suggested, that the most intriguing legal problems were those presented in cases? Was it really more absorbing to fuss over the details of some company's tax shelters than to face (as our education so seldom asked us to do) the gravest legal problems confronting the society—corporate and government corruption, the bilking of consumers, the dilemma of bringing adequate legal services to the poor? (134)*
Yes, nowhere, no, and no. Sure, the Dean's welcome speech at GW touched on these issues, but the fact that a law school Dean feels he needs to place special emphasis the public service and social justice aspects of a legal career show that those aspects are still tangential to the mainstream of legal education and legal practice. (I doubt many Deans feel the need to remind students that they could work for big law representing corporate interests; that's the default.)
The results of Nader's speech on Turow are a terrific example of this. Turow leaves the speech "feeling high ... full of hot purpose," but "not sure where those feelings could be rightly aimed" (134). Then, in a typically melodramatic turn, Turow aims all his "hot purpose" at agonizing over whether to join his fellow students in trying to censure one of their professors for being an ass in class. Um, Scott, I'm pretty sure that's not what Nader had in mind. What's more, if legal thinking is "nasty" at all, it's not because it asks its practitioners to think critically about the world, but because—thanks to "law and economics"—it too often encourages them to dehumanize situations and events, and to reduce questions of justice and equity to naked economic equations.
That said, I can't condemn law school as an evil tool of wealth and privilege that hasn't changed at all. For example, I'm pretty sure most law schools today have much more robust clinical programs than they did in 1975. Besides, according to Brush With the Law, none of this matters because it's all just a big joke, anyway, and the key to getting the most out of it and getting on with your life is to never take it too seriously. That's good advice, regardless of what you hope to do with your JD.
* This is what I was trying to get at when I mentioned my frustration in my first Torts class when my professor spent an hour discussing the merits of the "sausage beater" case. Our culture gives plenty of attention to pro sports and other tangential issues as it is; meanwhile, countless injustices never get press or time in court (or appearances in casebooks). PTorts could have chosen many different cases to introduce us to the subject; why did he choose this case?
Posted 06:33 AM | Comments (1) | law school
Thinking About GW?
I've received several emails in recent months from people thinking about attending GW. They often have similar questions, and some other readers who haven't asked may wonder about the same things, so although I'm guessing this comes too late for most since most people have probably made their choices for this fall, below is the most recent wondering-student email (in italics) and my responses.
As a general preface I'll say that whether a school is good for you really depends on what you want out of your law school experience and what you hope to do w/your JD. Know before you go, if you can! Also, visiting your top schools in person before you make your final choice is vital; you need to feel comfortable with a place and the best way to see if you do is to spend some time there in the flesh. I've not made much of a secret of the fact that I haven't loved GW, but I try not to be too negative about it b/c I hated it when I visited in person and decided to come anyway—mainly for the rank and location—so I got pretty much what I deserved. Which reminds me, rank can be a really poor way to choose a school if you care at all about being happy. Go where you think you'll enjoy your three years! GW has provided about what I expected, and it's grown on me a bit; it's a fine place, excellent for many students. Don't decide not to go just because I haven't loved it.
Finally, many other wise people listed in the ai blogroll have given great advice for choosing schools—surf around and do some searches for "advice" on their sites and I'm know you'll come up with some excellent wisdom nuggets.
Without further ado, the wondering-student email and my quick responses:
Hello,
I'm a soon-to be 1L. A friend of mine--who's also going to law school--directed me to your web site. I've enjoyed reading your thoughts on this and that and hoped you might take the time to answer a couple of questions for me. (I tried askastudent@gw...but got no response. Guess I should write at a time other than finals.)
1) How is the general environment? Do people charge after grades and study constantly? Or will I have time to catch up on TV?
I found the environment at GW to be about as competitive as you make it, which means if you want to be watching tv, it doesn't have to be competitive at all. I slacked all year and never really suffered. 80-90% of your fellow students are likely to be very nice and willing to help if you ask (allowing you to borrow notes, recommending the best hornbook that works for them or even letting you borrow theirs, pointing you to other resources and info, etc). Check out Dubitante's law school study group curve—I think a lot of people at GW see things this way when it comes down to study time.
On the other hand, I knew people who got so stressed they became sick, unable to sleep, very very unhappy. Why, I don't know, but they were basically competing against themselves and perhaps a handful of other people who were "gunning" for the straight-A or A+ grades. Unless you're just astoundingly brilliant or find the whole read, memorize, regurgitate (w/analysis) evaluation method very easy, you will have to work very hard to get top grades, but that's probably true at most schools.
2) Is the career planning/placement office helpful? I'm fairly clueless about what I want to do in the future and how to get there.
The career office has been helpful in the sense of the people being nice and available to respond to questions, but I'm looking at public interest career options and they're really only mediocre when it comes to helping in that area. Don't get me wrong; they're great people and they try, but there's only so much they can do. If you want to work for a firm, I get the idea that helping you get the firm job is the reason the career office exists, so you should be fine. They did offer 3-4 ok sessions throughout the year on the subject of "what can you do with a JD" so they can be helpful that way. If you're clueless about your future, you may not want to go to law school. If you're determined to go for whatever reason, I'd definitely at least visit the "Career Boot Camp" at Decision Books.com. It will at least give you a hint of what you should be looking for in a legal career, and will also help you start learning what your options are. I also highly recommend NALP's "Official Guide to Legal Specialties." I read it basically cover to cover before I passed in on to another law student who was as clueless as I am. It's a great introduction to the major "fields" of law and should help you narrow your career choices a bit.
3) Is a car necessary? I averaged about one accident per year of driving when I had a car, and that was in a rural area.
Car not necessary, especially if you live downtown or on the blue or orange Metro lines — GW is at the Foggy Bottom metro stop). If you live on the red line, Farragut North is about a 5-10 minute walk from the law school. Many students live in Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, Adams Morgan, or in Virginia near the Rosslyn, Courthouse, or Clarendon stops. Plan to pay at least $700 if you live with a roommate, or probably $1000-1200 minimum to live alone. The cost blows. But getting back to your question: The public transportation is very good. I share a car w/my girlfriend, but we really only use it to get groceries and dog food. Even that's not necessary since there are grocery stores at several metro stops, but it's a luxury we've decided to maintain for the sake of convenience. Many GW students don't have cars and they do just fine.
One more piece of advice I tell all who will listen: Despite what the computer "support" people tell you, you *can* use a Mac at GW. They won't help you support it, but I can help with many of your questions and I simply haven't had many problems using mine. The only thing you can't do w/a Mac at GW that you can do w/a Windoze machine is print to the network printers from your laptop (that's easy to work around), and take finals. The finals thing is kind of a big deal, so I have an old used Windoze laptop I use for that, but otherwise, my nearly 3-yr-old iBook got me through the first year w/ease, and w/much less hassle and headache than a lot of of my colleagues had w/their Dells.
Good luck with your choice! Let me know if you end up at GW so I can say hello and answer any more questions you might have with your first year.
UPDATE: Oops. This post edited to remove my name, which I had cut and pasted from the email I sent to the inquiring student. As I said, I'm not trying to remain anonymous, only to remain below the "google radar." Thanks to Sam for pointing out the error. I guess that's what I get for trying to convert an email into a blog post.
Also, Sam kindly offered to share his experience w/GW if anyone has more questions, and Scott who just graduated (or will formally graduate very soon) is another potential source for great GW info.
Posted 07:36 AM | Comments (3) | law school
National Mall
You can't visit D.C. without spending at least a day on the National Mall visiting all the monuments. Or, avoid the sunburn and all the walking and take a quick virtual tour here.
Posted 06:49 AM | Comments (1) | life generally
