Monthly Archives: January 2014

What is Scorecardresearch Doing Here?

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

Excess of Democracy blog has a post about trackers on lawprof blogs. Coincidentally, I spent a couple of hours today trying to figure out why it is that gtmerix reports that discourse.net has this redirect, which both slows the site and amounts to a tracker on users:

I certainly didn’t put any of that in here on purpose. I have grepped all the code for this site and the words “scorecardresearch” and “specificclick” don’t appear anywhere in it. That means either something is inserting the code, or it is obfuscated in some way.

I can imagine three possibilities: (1) a plugin has some javascript; (2) something in the right margin; (3) a malicious code injection.

I tried disabling several of the plugins (but not all as some are essential), but nothing changed. I tried removing a couple of the most likely suspects from the right margin, but that wasn’t it. I don’t know how to look for the code injection.

Any thoughts on how best to track this down?

Posted in Discourse.net, Software | 5 Comments

Great List of Accepted Papers for We Robot 2014

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

I’m really proud of the great list of We Robot 2014 Accepted Papers.
I think this year’s conference is going to be the best one yet!

Posted in Robots, Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on Great List of Accepted Papers for We Robot 2014

A Second Swallow

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

Another strong Democratic video: The Cost of Speaker Boehner’s Repeal:

“One swallow doesn’t make a summer.” How many makes winter?

Posted in 2014 Election | Comments Off on A Second Swallow

Have Democrats Learned to Play Hardball?

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

Years of experience counsels otherwise, but then there is this:

(Spotted via Digby.)

Posted in 2014 Election | Comments Off on Have Democrats Learned to Play Hardball?

A Word to the Wise: Quicken and Dropbox Don’t Mix

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

It’s not just the security issue (only somewhat ameliorated if you password protect the file), but a fundamental incompatibility that can scramble your files — apparently at any time, and without warning.

Warning signs include “Quicken cannot open the data file because it is in use by some other application” and various other error messages when you try to backup your Quicken file.

Posted in Software | 8 Comments

Dream On

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

Scrivener’s Error:

It would be an unconstitutional attainder to prohibit the spouses, siblings, children, and first-degree nephews and nieces from running for any elective office after actual seating of an individual as a federal elected official; it would also be an extremely good idea, if we really care at all about limiting nepotism. Hell, I’d go so far as to include state and major local elections, too (Chicago mayors for $500… and the Daleys weren’t the first).

An anti-nepotism constitutional amendment would certainly upend South Florida politics, not to mention put spokes in the electoral plans of the Kennedy, Cheney, Bush, and Clinton families. Assuming this would be a good idea in principle, there are lots of details to consider. Should the ban be absolute, or just be limited to the offices the first person held? (I.e is there a meaningful difference between two Bushes or Clintons running for President and a Cheney running for Senate?1) Also, for some reason I feel more comfortable with the ban on children than the one on spouses and siblings. In particular, a spouses ban will harm women much more than men.

Although if we’re dreaming, big money in politics is a much bigger problem than nepotism, not that the two are unrelated.

Meanwhile, when will we resurrect the John Quincy Adams precedent and have a good former President serve in the House? Although with our luck we’d probably get the Andrew Johnson precedent and get a bad former President in the Senate.

  1. Best joke of the day. [↩]
Posted in Law: Constitutional Law | 3 Comments