Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Padilla Alleges Three Years of Torture

Posted on October 6, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

With the headline Jose Padilla on the offensive, the Southern District of Florida Blog gives us just a tease:

The Federal Defender’s Office has filed a number of motions on Jose Padilla’s behalf, including a motion to dismiss for pre-indictment delay, a motion to dismiss for a violation of Padilla’s speedy trial rights, and a motion to dismiss for outrageous government conduct. The motions have some extreme allegations, including saying the Padilla was tortured for three years while held in complete isolation. More to come after I’ve read them all.

Ok David, you’ve got my attention.

Posted in Padilla | 1 Comment

US Falling Behind, Doesn’t Even Know It

Posted on October 6, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Susan Crawford had a visit from a Taiwanese legislator:

In Taiwan, internet access is virtually free.

At one point, he noted that Taiwan watches Japan and Korea very closely and tries to compete with them in making low-cost broadband access available. They’re going great guns, so Taiwan is too.

He asked me whether the US was watching Europe closely to see what they were doing — we talked about northern Europe, and the UK, and I told him about the European Commission’s rejection of Deutsche Telekom’s plans. “Aren’t they your competitors?” he said.

I said that as far as I could tell the US doesn’t care what Europe is doing with broadband access policy. We don’t feel that they’re competitors of ours. We’re content to slide farther and farther behind, while feeling confident that we’re leading the world.

Actually, this could be said about a lot more than just DSL and telecommunications policy….

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on US Falling Behind, Doesn’t Even Know It

Like a Bad Movie

Posted on October 6, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Daily Kos: DE-AL: Castle (R) stroke severity covered up by local media. If this story is true, it’s like one of those old movies.

Only I don’t think we are going to get Jimmy Stewart saving the day.

I find it hard to believe that a newspaper could be as corrupt as is being suggested. They are not, after all, Republicans in Congress.

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze | 2 Comments

Olbermann Unchained

Posted on October 5, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Watch Keith Olbermann as he calls out Bush for all but accusing his political opponents of treason. (No, not in the Constitutional sense; in the more rhetorical sense of wanting to leave the country undefended.)

Olbermann is just sanctimonious enough that I sometimes have to fight off the urge to grind my teeth while also wanting to cheer.

I do, however, think that it's a terrible shame that you can't see anything like this on a network that someone actually watches. Let's face it, excluding the Internet re-runs, most of the time basically nobody is watching MS-NBC.

So here's a little of the transcript to read while waiting for the video's long slow download from Crooks and Liars:

Continue reading →

Posted in The Media | 1 Comment

Why Has Google Gone Laconic On Me?

Posted on October 5, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

UPDATEIt turns out the problem was the Googlepedia extension that was running wild. (It replaces the right half of your search results with the wikipedia entry it thinks is most relevant to your search.) As the author of the extension put it, “Recent changes to Google meant my AdWords removal code also removed website descriptions.” And he kindly provided a fix.

Where oh where have my snippets gone?

All of a sudden, my Google search results have gone all laconic. Instead of the rich snippets and the offer of a cached copy, all I get are one-line links from page titles. I have reproduced this on three computers, attached to two different networks. Search results on the main google, but not on blog search, now look like this:

sample google search results

In contrast, the blog search still works like it used to:

sample blog search results

This is disconcerting and much less useful than what I have become all too accustomed to. Is this an evil beta? A move to force me to sign in and personalize (and be tracked!)? Was there some copyright-based injunction no one told me about? Or is it just a bad day down at the server farm?

Or… is The End of Google as We Know It?

Posted in Internet | 2 Comments

In Your Face

Posted on October 5, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

BoingBoing takes us to Tattooed teacher teaches tolerance:

Bruce Potts is a teacher of Public Speaking at the University of New Mexico and has a full tribal face tattoo. He has a straight forward attitude and imparts a cool vibe of acceptance. We’ll bet his students get an extra edge on using demeanor and attitude in public speaking. And a life long lesson on not judging books by their covers. Either that or they study really hard because they’re afraid he’ll eat them.

Bruce_potts

You know, I bet he doesn’t have to deal with problems like this.

Posted in Etc | 7 Comments