Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

As Bad as US News’s Law School Rankings

Posted on November 3, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Spurred by this post, I went to technorati.com to see what Discourse.net's rankings were.

According to technorati.com, this blog currently has an “Authority” of 229, and a “rank” of 23,628.

Authority seems to mean no more than “the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months”. That's not “authority” — at best it is a measure of inter-blog popularity. And rank is just a measure of relative inter-blog linkularity: “Technorati Rank is calculated based on how far you are from the top. The blog with the hightest [sic] Technorati Authority is the #1 ranked blog. The smaller your Technorati Rank, the closer you are to the top.”

When I started blogging, I cared about this sort of stuff; now I can't seem to care very much. Is that a sign of maturity, or that it's time to stop?

Posted in Discourse.net | 2 Comments

Petraeus: Hero, REMF, or Model Proconsul?

Posted on November 3, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Reading this rabidly negative deconstruction of Gen. Petraeus's fruit salad (the tabs and medals on an officer's dress uniform), I was struck by the extent to which it remained open to a counter-narrative. It may be that Patraeus is the antithesis of a fighting General, but it may also be that he is a very good administrator (even if he's also a man who married well and is very good at ascending in environments studded with greasy poles).

It is possible to distrust, even despise, the bootlicking of superiors — evident in the General's public and obsequious support of the Bush administration's political objectives — traits alleged in that article to be long-running hallmarks of a career, and yet admire the ability to motivate subordinates and manipulate the media. Even if one discounts for the besotted reporter factor, it seems pretty clear that the areas of Iraq that General Petraeus's troops occupied were more peaceful and stayed bought longer than other non-Kurdish areas under US control. That was an achievement, exactly the sort we hope for from our modern military Proconsuls, although not one that can easily be replicated on a larger scale now that he's starting from a worse position.

Posted in Iraq | 2 Comments

Schumer and Feinstein Sell Out Legislative Prerogatives and Surrender in the Fight Against Torture

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Senators Schumer and Feinstein have demonstrated that they have no regard for democratic principles — and none for Democratic principles either — by announcing that they plan to vote for AG nominee Mukasey. Not the first betrayal from Feinstein, but a new low for Schumer.

Term limits are looking better every day.

Posted in Torture | 3 Comments

Why rc3.org is a Good Read

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Perhaps because I run a somewhat quirky blog (it's a “personal blog” – says so right in the margin), I like blogs with interesting and not-totally predictable content.

Here's two recent examples from rc3.org, which is often full of interesting things social, legal, and technical:

First, The pre-bankruptcy debt trade:

Today I learned about a robust industry trading in consumer debt that has been discharged by bankruptcy courts. Business Week explains how firms collect on debts that the debtors have no obligation to pay:

In the 1990s, businesses adept at tracking and trading consumer debt expanded their reach to dabble in accounts enmeshed in bankruptcy. That dabbling has grown into a robust market. Some of the trade in so-called bankruptcy paper involves debts that remain collectible. What’s troubling is that the market now also includes billions in discharged debts, which ought to have no dollar value. Owners of canceled liabilities can revive their value in two main ways: by directly pressuring consumers to cough up cash or by gaming the credit system, as allegedly happened in the Rathavongsa case.

How does this work? The creditors simply refuse to update the credit file of the consumers who filed for bankruptcy, so that it looks like a debt that has been legally discharged is still in collections. If the consumer wants to get a new loan, they have to pay up. In other words, it’s extortion.

Second, How software warps your brain, which meditates on how it can be that the same person can love the open-endedness of Wikipedia and still get hives when managing an office software app in which almost everyone gets admin privileges.

Posted in Blogs | 1 Comment

Dinosaur Forced to Evolve

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

For many years — nine to be exact — I have used Sidekick 98 a calendaring / to-do-list program that I am very fond of. I particularly like the way it allows me to define multi-day projects (e.g. trips out of town) with a bright text bar that extends across the dates and makes a month at a glance easy.

Like other rabid Sidekick 98 fans, I accept no substitutes: Sidekick 99 was a lousy, stripped-down nonfunctional mistake. Sidekick 2000 or whatever they called it wasn't even worth thinking about. And then Starfish Software cratered. Someone got them to do a Y2K patch, which was necessary, and I thought I was good for long while.

I sure didn't expect that there would be a Year 2006 bug. Yes, even with the Y2K patch, Sidekick 98 gets very unhappy about dates in 2006 and 2007.

So it may be that the time has come to find myself a nice iCal compliant calendar with good privacy features (desiderata that leave out the two biggest contenders, Outlook and Google Calendar).

Hard to make the move, but getting harder not to. And hard too to pick what to move to. Whatever I pick has to be something I can have resident on both office and home desktops, with data transferred via a USB drive (can't be solely via the net since I want it on my laptop too, and that's not always in use where there is internet access).

Nothing seems to offer the great color-coded monthly views I've gotten to depend on. But the two leading contenders are scrappy Rainlendar and sleek Essential PIM. (I don't think I like the look of Time & Chaos, which is more contact manager than scheduler, so that's a third, outside, choice.)

Advice anyone?

Posted in Software | 5 Comments

In Which the System Chews Up and Spits Out an Honest Man

Posted on November 1, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

One Fewer Good Man.

Why do we have to lose straight-arrow Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, but keep the odious Col. Boylan?

Posted in Guantanamo | 1 Comment