Monthly Archives: January 2007

Pandora’s Peculiarities

Posted on January 14, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

I love Pandora, but it has done two strange things recently.

I recently took the Secunia Software Inspector out for a spin, and it in addition to finding all sorts of obscure software that it thought needed updating, and I thought needed deleting, it also found multiple outdated copies of Java and the flash player. So I deleted them all except the newest. Alas, now that I had only the newest version of the Flash player, Pandora stopped working — it was convinced I was blocking the flash player from storing its data locally, even when I wasn’t. I laboriously followed the directions in Pandora’s FAQ and went through the flash privacy panel (I hate that obscure thing) and gave Pandora the rights to everything short of my first-born, but no dice. I eventually had to uninstall version 9.x of the flash player and downgrade to 7.x to make Pandora work again. This is odd.

And then there’s the station I created with Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”. That’s one weird station.

Posted in Internet, Software | Comments Off on Pandora’s Peculiarities

Prize Snark from Talking Points Memo

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Joshua Micah Marshall,

Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, says there should be a boycott of law firms defending Gitmo detainees. Too bad one of those firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison is representating Scooter Libby in his trial that starts Monday.

Guess Scooter won’t be honoring the boycott.

The widespread pushback against Stimson’s little piece of thuggery has been amazing. One more way in which this administration is alienating even its allies in the ruling establishment.

Posted in Law: Ethics | Comments Off on Prize Snark from Talking Points Memo

The Latest

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Digby has much more information about the US and Iran than I found in my newspaper.

Posted in Iran | 2 Comments

The Conservative Crack-Up Begins

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Glenn Greenwald points to an NPR essay by a New Republic stalwart — Rod Dreher: “Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation this”?

Better late than later.

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on The Conservative Crack-Up Begins

Jim Morin on Bush’s Speech

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

The Herald’s Jim Morin is frequently predictable, but now and then he hits one out of the park:

Posted in Iraq | 1 Comment

Paranoia Strikes Deep in the Heartland

Posted on January 13, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” — David Hume.

putative.com: FedEx refuses shipment of made-up stuff, empty cans

FedEx guy: Is this really what this is? Rocket fuel?
Me [laughing, used to this reaction from being at the space-travel supply store]: Oh, no, no, no. Of course not. It’s… made-up. Kind of a joke. It’s actually full of sugar, which I just put in to give it some weight, but that’s all it is.
FedEx guy: You can’t ship this.
Me: But… it’s just sugar! What, uh, what if I empty it out? It doesn’t really need to have sugar in it.
FedEx guy: No. They would still x-ray it, and then you’d get a call when it was en route. I don’t think it would make it.

…

FedEx guy: Nope. You can’t ship these either.
Me: But… they’re empty! It’s just air. And… nitrogen? It’s, like, almost 80% of the atmosphere. There’s nothing dangerous about nitrogen, even if it were pure.
FedEx guy: They look too much like bomb-making materials.

Posted in Civil Liberties | 4 Comments