Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Top 10 Reasons Why I Didn’t Write About It

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

People sometimes ask me why I didn’t write about something. This happens more often than I would expect, be it in comments, in person, or by email. But not being a professional pundit, and indeed having long given up promoting the blog, I feel no obligation to weigh in on everything.

So here are the top ten reasons I didn’t write about that thing you asked about, more or less in order of frequency:

  1. I had nothing original to say that wasn’t being said on lots of other blogs.
  2. You’ve got the [law/economics] backwards in your comment, but it’s clear that no amount of facts or explaining will get through to you.
  3. Even I can tell that I don’t know enough about it, and I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to find out what I’d need to know to write about it sensibly.
  4. Drafted something, but didn’t like the way it sounded.
  5. I don’t agree with [law schools’/U.Miami’s] critics, but anything I write is too likely to be dismissed as partisan pleading for my [profession/employer].
  6. I had deadlines for real work.
  7. I’m writing about that topic for a law review, and it’s too hard to compress an article into a blog post; I’ll link to the article when it’s done.
  8. It would make UM look bad without sufficient justification (most often applicable when I have nothing original to say).
  9. I was out of town while it happened.
  10. Beats me.
Posted in Discourse.net | Comments Off on Top 10 Reasons Why I Didn’t Write About It

Fun With Traceroute (Updated)

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

[Update: It’s gone. The whole thing has been DDOSed out of existence.]

Traceroute is a network tool for figuring out what route a packet takes to get from some point to your machine. This can matter when something is gumming up the works.

If you have a unix machine connected to the internet, odds are you can do traceroute [domain name or IP #] straight from a command line.

If you are on a windows machine you go to a command prompt and type tracert [domain name or IP #] (see the directions here).

For example traceroute google.com tells you about the routing of packets from a big famous internet company.

Play around with it a bit. Once you have the hang of it, on unix try

traceroute -m 200 216.81.59.173

or on windows make it

tracert -h 200 216.81.59.173

(The extra argument tells the trace not to stop after 30 hops, which is is important.)

It should produce something fun. You can also try it from a web-based traceroute interface, but I couldn’t find one that would go over 30 hops, which sort of spoils the fun.

Yes, due to the blizzard in the North East, someone has way too much time on his hands.

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Fun With Traceroute (Updated)

Fight Procrastination on Taxes to Avoid ID Theft

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

This may be the first piece of advice the U has sent me on ID theft that I actually agree with: Tax Season Is Here; File Early to Avoid Scams:

As faculty and staff start receiving their W-2s and other tax documents, it is time to start thinking about filing income tax returns—early. This is also the season when identity thieves go into overdrive, attempting to file fraudulent tax returns. Tax fraud is now the third-largest theft of federal funds after Medicare/Medicaid and unemployment-insurance fraud. South Florida, already the leader in Medicare fraud, is also taking the lead in tax-identity theft. Florida has the highest rate of identity theft in the country, with 178 complaints per 100,000 residents in 2011. Tax-identity theft exploded to more than 1.1 million cases in 2011 from 51,700 in 2008.

Fraudulent tax returns can come in the form of tax-identity theft, refund fraud, or return-preparer fraud. With e-filing, evidence of fraud is difficult to find. There are no signed tax forms, envelopes or fingerprints, and e-filing promises quick refunds. For criminals to e-file in your name, they need your name and Social Security number, combined with a phony W-2 (wages) or fabricated Schedule C (business income). These ID thieves steal your personal information and then use it to file a fake tax return in your name, usually tweaking the numbers to get a large refund. The refund can be posted to an anonymous “Green Dot” prepaid Visa purchased at a drugstore, Wal-Mart, etc. The taxpayer whose ID has been stolen will not find out until he or she attempts to file the real return and then is informed by the IRS that the return has already been filed and the refund sent. That is the primary reason to file as early as possible, before a potential criminal attempts to do so on your behalf. To read the complete tip, including steps to protect your tax identity, please click here.

Interestingly (at least to me) the tip comes from the U’s Office of HIPAA Privacy & Security whose web site suggests it might be run by sensible people. This differentiates it from the junky and fearmongering advice I find strewn on a table at the front of our library at the start of every school year and which is issued by the campus police department.

Posted in ID Cards and Identification, U.Miami | Comments Off on Fight Procrastination on Taxes to Avoid ID Theft

3TB of Storage for Under $150

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

Amazing. I would almost buy one just to have it. The truth is, though, I don’t need it: I’ve almost given up recording movies I’m not getting around to watch.

Specs: Fanless, USB3 external drive, $149.99, free shipping. Not tiny, not the fastest, but it has a 3 year warranty.

Still, three Terrabytes. I remember when 1.2M 3.5″ rigid “floppy disks” seemed a huge advance over 360K/640K floppy disks. In fact I still have some of each in a closet.

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 3 Comments

Rebranding?

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

–via the awesome Pulp-o-mizer.

Posted in Discourse.net | Comments Off on Rebranding?

Civilized Discourse Construction Kit

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

Jeff Atwood, of the great Coding Horror weblog, writes about his new “next-generation, 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.”

He’s calling it “Discourse“.

As much as existing forum software is inexplicably and terrifyingly awful after all these years, it is still the ongoing basis for a huge chunk of deeply interesting information on the Internet. These communities are incredibly passionate about incredibly obscure things. They aren’t afraid to let their freak flag fly, and the world is a better place for it.

…

The goal of the company we formed, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., is exactly that – to raise the standard of civilized discourse on the Internet through seeding it with better discussion software:

  • 100% open source and free to the world, now and forever.
  • Feels great to use. It’s fun.
  • Designed for hi-resolution tablets and advanced web browsers.
  • Built in moderation and governance systems that let discussion communities protect themselves from trolls, spammers, and bad actors – even without official moderators.

Our amazingly talented team has been working on Discourse for almost a year now, and although like any open source software it’s never entirely done, we believe it is already a generation ahead of any other forum software we’ve used.

Love the ambition, love the name. Not so sure yet about the interface, though, which seems very busy with all those avatars and stuff.

Posted in Discourse.net, Software | 3 Comments