Yearly Archives: 2010

Amazon.com is Offering Free Prime Memership to “College Students” — Does That Include Law Students? (Updated)

Amazon.com has a new promotion out to offer free two-day shipping to college students who have a .edu address and can supply the name of their college and their major. (They're also going to market to you incessantly, but that's what filters are for.)

According to the Amazon Student Terms & Conditions:

To sign up for and use Amazon Student, you must (1) have an Amazon.com account, (2) be a college student actively enrolled in at least one course at a college geographically located in one of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, (3) be able to provide proof of enrollment upon request and (4) have a valid e-mail address that contains the domain suffix .edu. We may accept or refuse membership in our sole discretion. We may ask you to furnish documentation supporting your eligibility. If you do not provide documentation indicating that you meet the eligibility requirements above, you may be required to reimburse us for benefits you received as a result of your Amazon Student membership. The Amazon Student membership is for personal use only and not for the purpose of resale. You may not transfer or assign your Amazon Student membership or the benefits associated with an Amazon Student membership.

Does this offer of a free year of Amazon Prime include law students? Sadly, I have to think that as worded it does not: law students (except those few in a free-standing law school) are in a University, but only the undergraduates are in the “college.”

Join me in calling on Amazon to extend this promotion to graduate and professional students — they need books too!

(Spotted via Lifehacker)

UPDATE — Good news: Commentator Keith reports that when he went to sign up,

The two drop-down menus (one for level and one for field of study) contained explicit options for graduate students, specifically including law students.

So, law students, you're in! (I still have to pay $79/year.)

Posted in Shopping | 4 Comments

The Octopus Was Right

Guardian, Psychic octopus Paul predicts Spain to beat Holland in World Cup final

The octopus had, we are told, correctly predicted a string of world cup matches. And, indeed, Spain won.

Suppose for the sake of the argument we could satisfy ourselves that the claims about earlier matches are all true and there was no experimenter bias here, no Clever Hans phenomenon. Would one be justified in risking money on the cephalopod's next football/soccer prediction?

Most of the social science I ever learned (not to mention common sense) says no — if there's no underlying theory (and I for one don't believe in psychic octopuses) then it's rash to rely on a correlation this is likely spurious. The argument for “sometimes” holds in some systems there may be correlations between thing you can't see, for example A and B may be correlated because both are caused by C, and if you think that might be the case you might be wise to rely on the correlation even if you can't see the link,

I can't stretch that to the octopus. But it seems some folks made money off it. Will Paul move to Las Vegas?

Update: Octopus Paul is hanging up his spurs retiring.

Posted in Science/Medicine | Comments Off on The Octopus Was Right

Wikileaks 1.0 Is Dead

Cryptome reports Wikileaks Website to Be Abandoned.

There is talk, though, of a new Iceland-based site to be started without the original founder.

Posted in Law: Privacy | Comments Off on Wikileaks 1.0 Is Dead

Happy Birthday EFF

EFF celebrates its 20th anniversary with a new animation by Nina Paley. “This short cartoon,” EFF writes, “highlights some of the reasons why EFF is here.” And it's fun too.

I have the privilege to be on EFF's Advisory Board.

Posted in Law: Internet Law | 2 Comments

PR

The law school has done an effusive writeup announcing my (temporary) chair: UM Law Awards Silvers-Rubenstein Endowed Distinguished Professorship to A. Michael Froomkin.

Posted in U.Miami | 3 Comments

It’s Sticky ‘Round Here

Traffic may be down by a third (that's all?) but Discourse.net still places in the top five for amount of time that readers spend on the site, aka “stickiness,” at least according to Paul Caron writing at TaxProf Blog.

I guess I'm flattered that this is worth two minutes and thirty-eight seconds of your time.

Posted in Discourse.net | 4 Comments