Monthly Archives: April 2009

CCR Symposium: What is To Be Done?

Posted on April 16, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

I've posted a second entry to the Concurring Opinions symposium, What is To Be Done?”.

I doubt it will be as controversial as my first entry, but we'll see.

Posted in Law: Internet Law | 2 Comments

Internet Governance in Hard Times

Posted on April 15, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

I was invited to an interesting seminar in London, sonsored by the Oxford Internet Institute, The New Economic Context of Internet Governance. It was being held only a few steps away from where I used to work when I lived in London. And all they wanted was a two-page position paper.

Unfortunately, the travel budget doesn't really stretch to a day trip to London, and they didn't include a ticket with the invitation.

But what the heck, I wrote a position paper anyway, and I've appended it here. I'd appreciate comments. Virtual seminar, anyone?

Continue reading →

Posted in Internet | 2 Comments

Defending the Constitutional Right to Be Anonymous

Posted on April 14, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Today through Thursday I'm participating in an online symposium at Concurring Opinions in which a whole list of us have been asked to comment on Danielle Citron's article Cyber Civil Rights.

There are already a large number of interesting contributions there, and I've just added mine: CCR Symposium: The Right to Remain Anonymous Matters. It may be controversial.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Law: Constitutional Law, Law: Internet Law | 7 Comments

3GB Is Still Enough RAM

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Tom's Hardware : Do You Really Need More Than 6 GB Of RAM?

Not much has changed since 4 GB of RAM became the “sweet spot” for performance and price in the enthusiast market. While 32-bit operating systems previously limited those 4 GB configurations to around 3 GB of useful memory space, today's test shows that 3 GB is still usually enough.

Which is good, as 32-bit versions of popular operating systems can't actually address much more than that anyway. They do say you might go to double that if you have a 64-bit OS which can take advantage of it, but more on some future-proofing theory than anything else. Note, however, that it's far from costless,

Every time we doubled memory capacity, idle power consumption increased by around 10 W. Using the Sandra Memory Bandwidth benchmark, load power consumption for the entire system increased by around 10% for each increase in memory capacity.

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 1 Comment

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Roger Ailes:

Now that Navy forces have rescued Richard Phillips and killed three Somali pirates, President Obama's military accomplishments exceed those of Ronald Reagan.

Posted in National Security | 19 Comments

Cute Beats Smart?

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Cute Beats Smart is an excellent curative to this horror.

Posted in Etc | 4 Comments