Monthly Archives: March 2007

Technical Expert Needed Please

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Could someone who understands hardware marketing speak better than I please translate the following into plain English?

The Inq has a preview of the Xonar D2X, an only somewhat vaporous as yet unreleased Asus sound card (they have a photo). The Xonar D2X is designed to compete with Creative's excellent X-Fi (which really is great) but it also sports an extra feature which the Inq. obfuscates as follows:

What makes this sound card a bit special is the presence of a secondary music processor, which allows legal “ripping” of music you've bought onto regular MP3, WMAs and so on. The trick is called Analogue Loopback Transformation, or in technical terms, the redirection of outputs from a physical output to secondary audio processor which will then record the file in the format you want.

Here's what I want to know: Does this mean that if one has a 'trusted' computer and/or a Vista-like 'trusted' OS that is designed to prevent the user from copying data without permission from Mom, that this sound card will rip it anyway? Is this a DMCA killer? Or does the word “legal” in the quote above mean “DRM inside”?

Posted in Law: Copyright and DMCA, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 7 Comments

Worsts

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

The current administration has managed to achieve an impressive number of record-breaking worsts.

Early Winners

  • George W. Bush – our worst President ever. Yes, even worse than James Buchanan
  • Richard Cheney – worst
    Vice President ever
  • Donald Rumsfeld – worst SecDef ever
  • Alberto Gonzales – worst AG ever (despite tough competition)
  • John Bolton – worst UN Ambassador ever
  • Alphonso Jackson – worst HUD Secretary ever
  • Michael D. Brown – worst FEMA Director ever

Additional Nominees

  • Dr. Condoleezza Rice – arguably worst National Security Advisor ever
    (gunning for SecState nomination too)
  • John Snow – worst Secretary of the Treasury since the Depression
    (and maybe before?)
  • Tommy Thomspon Tom Ridge vs. Michael Chertoff. One of them has to be the worst
    HDHS Secretary ever, as they are the only two in the department’s history.
     My money is on ThompsonRidge.
  • Margret Spellings
    – worst Secretary of Education?
  • Harriet Miers – worst White House Counsel?
  • [update] Tommy Thompson – HHS (for presiding over this)?

Care to add to the list?

Posted in Politics: US | 10 Comments

They Love Us, They Really Do

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

One of many photos from GW Bush's recent visit to Brazil.

gwb_in_brazil_051.jpg
Click photo for larger version

Posted in Politics: International | 4 Comments

U. Miami Makes Top 20 in New Law School Ranking

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

I've yet to see a ranking system for law school that I trust. Leiter's was the least bad, and it had problems. US News is so badly constructed that it's a joke, and the fact that it now is morphing into a self-referential feedback loop just makes it worse (studies show that USN rankings increasingly define reputations, and a lot of the USN ranking is based on … reputation).

But if we're going to have biased ranking systems, I prefer those that are biased in our direction. So may I introduce you to the Lawdragon 25 Leading Law Schools, based on where members of the Lawdragon 500s graduated from law school. They put the University of Miami School of Law at #18 in their rankings.

Which sounds great, but shouldn't be taken too seriously. Even if we trusted Lawdragon to tell us who the best lawyers in the US are, the survey is strongly biased to large schools, since it compares total number of law school alumni among the 'elite' without discounting for school size.

But that bias works for us, so I guess now we can claim to be a “top 20 law school”.

Realistically, however, I would not put UM among the top 20 US law schools if only because we don't have the resources that come with the sort of massive endowment the top 20 schools tend to have, and because first year classes here are very big.

For what it's worth, I do think that we ought to be somewhere low in the second 20. US News, which is as biased against size (and location in provincial legal markets) as Law Dragon is biased for bigness, ranked UM at 65 — a massive problem for the school. Average the two scores [ (18+65)/2 = 41.5] and you get something more plausible although not methodologically defensible.

Posted in Law School, Miami | Comments Off on U. Miami Makes Top 20 in New Law School Ranking

Carl Malamud Deserves a Medal

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

If he didn't deserve one already for all the great stuff he's done, Carl Malamud surely deserves a medal for trying to make quality video of every congressional hearing easily available to the public — in a technology-neutral manner.

See Malamud's Report to the Honorable Nancy Pelosi; if you want even more info there's the Internet Archive's US Congress page.

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Carl Malamud Deserves a Medal

Gonzales Flops

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Alberto Gonzales solidified his reputation as an incompetent with a breathtakingly unsuccessful press conference this afternoon, but it remains to be seen if he ends up looking more like a terminal naif, a shifty crook or, most likely, a political tool.

The great folks at Crooks and Liars have the video of Gonzales's brief press conference — and sudden lunge to escape from tough questions.

It didn't take long for the blogs to take advantage of this target-rich environment. Start with this Daily Kos diarist's refresher as to what's going on as A Gloved Alberto Gonzales Plans Search To Find Real Killer — pithly summarized by Josh Marshall at TPM as “Gonzales: I'm going to get to the bottom of what Harriet and I did.” And, one might add, why I sent off my aides to lie to Congress. Oh, and said some things myself in Congressional testimony that now seem past their sell-by date.

If you want the collected snark, a lot of it is at Needlenose.

And your latest update of the furious developments today in this widening scandal at The Carpetbagger Report, The dirge of the purge.

Next up, one hopes: what were the US Attorneys who were not fired willing to do to keep their jobs?

Meanwhile, it's hard to believe Gonzales can last two weeks if this is the best he can do. Ominously for his future, the NYT reports that a White House spokesperson said he's doing a heck of a job,

The White House took the unusual step of having [Presidential Counselor to the President Dan] Bartlett conduct a hurried briefing with reporters in Mérida, Mexico. He said the president had “all the confidence in the world” in Mr. Gonzales

Then again, the Veep is less popular than torture and he's not going anywhere, is he?

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | 2 Comments