Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Three Key Questions About the Kindle

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

It would be cool to have all my work materials on a little platform like the Kindle (or, heck, just on pdf so I didn't have to carry them!). But so far the Kindle doesn't seem for me. Cory Doctorow gets at some of the reasons in Amazon releases some Kindle source-code when he says he can't warm to the Kindle until he understands what he can do with it.

1. Is there anything in the Kindle EULA that prohibits moving your purchased DRM-free Kindle files to a competing device?

2. Is there anything in the Kindle file-format (such as a patent or trade-secret) that would make it illegal to produce a Kindle format-reader or converter for a competing device?

3. What flags are in the DRM-free Kindle format, and can a DRM-free Kindle file have its features revoked after you purchase it?

No one at Amazon will answer these questions. I've asked them of my contact there, a manager who wrote me to tell me about the existence of Amazon's DRM-free option for Kindles, and he hasn't replied to my questions over a period of several months and several re-asks. Then, an O'Reilly exec asked Amazon to clarify this, as O'Reilly is releasing all its books as DRM-free editions for the Kindle, and he, too, has been stonewalled. Then I wrote to their press office, on behalf of the Guardian newspaper, and they didn't even deign to reply with a simple “no comment.” Just radio silence.

Someone should start a betting pool on when we get the answers.

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | Comments Off

Word Hell

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

So far, this working vacation is less fun than I had hoped. And the culprit is clear: Microsoft Word.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool WordPerfect guy. I've been using WP since version 4.1. Back in the DOS days, I could practically speak macro language. I made the switch to the windows versions somewhat reluctantly, driven to by the need to import/export to HTML, and stayed for the great integration with PDF. (And I never did get fluent in the new macro language, which needs to be compiled and is ust too fussy.)

I basically only ever use Word when a law journal makes me, and if the program has feelings it knows how I feel about it. A couple of days ago I got the first edited version of my latest article back from the journal. They converted it from WordPerfect to word, which they'd warned me they would do. There's one thing — only one thing — that Word does better than WordPerfect, and that's the “track changes” feature, so I'm reconciled to the idea, at least in principle.

But the practice! All the converted footnotes are in the normal style; when I make a new footnote, they are in “footnote” style — which in this document doesn't have superscripts, full justification, or single-spacing. Messes up everything. (In the last document I worked on, new footnotes came out in four-point type. I have no idea why, and the help desk couldn't fix it.) Similarly, when I drop in inserts from other documents, the formatting in the notes goes all funny. I know there's supposed to be a way to copy formatting from one place to another, with a little paint brush icon, but it only seems to work erratically for me.

And then there's the way the cursor jumps about, the constant opening of new windows (e.g. to read a comment) that must be dragged to be closed, and the general frustration of expectatoins built up over many years.

Switching costs are not a myth.

Posted in Software | 7 Comments

A Working Vacation

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

After a couple of stops along the way, we reached our vacation destination, a rented abode where we plan to stay for four weeks, a period that will include a significant wedding anniversary.

It's not all beer and skittles (“what,” I hear Tom Lehrer saying, “is a skittle anyway?”): we brought a considerable amount of work with us. The theory is that pleasant and cooler surroundings, the absence of distractions, will be conducive, and we can reward ourselves with walks and the occasional adventure. We'll see.

I do hope to have a few things to say about law teaching in a week or two, once I get done writing my early-term lectures. And after the shock of relaxation works off, I may get back to firehose newsreading. But meanwhile, I'm sitting out the issues of the day such as whether progressives manage to block the supplemental war appropriation for its failure to include an Iraq withdrawal timetable and the Obama administration's continuing flight from transparency.

Posted in Personal | 9 Comments

Threat Models

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Stewart Baker, ex-DHS guru, ex-NSA General Counsel, writes,

We're actually closer to 1984 than most people realize. Antidemocratic forces have the ability to turn on cameras in our homes and offices — to monitor our every action and every keystroke. That's the lesson of the ghostnet report.

The ghostnet report is about large-scale zombie computer networks. So there's the tiniest bit of hyperbole here, since the cameras being turned on in your home to which Baker refers are, so far, web cams. (The more interesting question to me is which cell phones can be turned on remotely, but the ghostnet report doesn't discuss that.)

Baker wants to sound like an optimist: he tells us he's confident that “the 1984ish powers aren't being exercised by the US government or NSA”. I actually share this confidence: Why zombie millions of computers, leave traces and create a host of fourth amendment issues, when the NSA can instead intercept all your packets at the switch?