Category Archives: Internet

Got this interesting TV widget from Google:

Dog on hind legs, for sure. But do I have a use for it?

Update: By popular demand, I've changed the code so that the TV doesn't go on by default. You'll have to click the arrow to make something happen. Should have figured that my readers like TV about as little as I do. (Although I am seriously thinking of getting one before the next election.)

Great Firewall of China lets you test if your website is blocked by the Chinese government.

This blog is not blocked, but my homepage, law.tm is blocked. Go figure.

If he didn't deserve one already for all the great stuff he's done, Carl Malamud surely deserves a medal for trying to make quality video of every congressional hearing easily available to the public — in a technology-neutral manner.

See Malamud's Report to the Honorable Nancy Pelosi; if you want even more info there's the Internet Archive's US Congress page.

Is John Edwards (or a staff droid) really using Twitter?

Ross Masyfield, who thinks about this stuff in a much more organized way than I do, says Twitter is tipping the tuna which is his code for a network good tipping into importance (but something less than hitting the bigtime).

Myself, I don't think twitter would improve my life. The last thing I need is more distractions and interruptions.

But it's an interesting phenomenon. “Only connect” morphed into “always connect”.

As Miami's own Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.

More States Move To Ban Internet Hunting: A Texas businessman who wanted to allow computer users to hunt from the comfort of their homes has instead spawned dozens of state laws banning the practice. Texas lawmakers shut down San Antonio businessman John Lockwood's operation

in 2005 and two dozen other states have since banned Internet hunting. Connecticut lawmakers are now considering whether to follow suit and ban state residents from using a computer mouse to point, click, and kill penned animals herded before a Web-based camera.

On the one hand, this seems like a barbaric practice, and I'm perfectly happy to see it banned. On the other hand…is this our most pressing social problem?

Crooked Timber, You Can be The Ethicist:

Graduate Admissions Committee for the department in question is deciding whom to admit. For said discipline, as for several others, there is a website on which potential students gossip share information about the departments to which they are applying, and many do so anonymously. However, many such students say enough about themselves that if you are in possession of their file (as graduate admissions committee is) you can identify them with near, and in some cases absolute, certainty. One applicant to said department behaves on the website (under the supposed cloak of anonymity) like… well, very badly, saying malicious things about departments he has visited, raising doubts about whether he is honest and the kind of person it would be reasonable to want other students to deal with, and generally revealing himself to be utterly unpleasant.

Question: is it wrong for the GAC to take this information about the applicant into account when making a decision? Secondary question: does it make a difference to your answer that the department is in a private, not a public, university?

My knee-jerk reaction was that one better be pretty darn sure one has the right person before making a major decision about them based on something posted on a web site.

This reaction was reinforced by one of the many very interesting comments at Crooked Timber, which asks how the committee can be sure that this wasn't a joe-job. Indeed, if it became known that this sort of attack was possible, what a way to do down one's rivals and ex-inamoratas!

I can imagine a world in which a committee might ask for further information in light of something like this, but depending on what amounts to hearsay without some sort of confirmation is, I think, a dangerous road to tread. It might even be a denial of due process in a public process.

Here's a slightly different hypothetical that may serve to test my intuition: suppose instead of a web posting that seems to be by the applicant, the committee received an unsigned letter accusing the applicant of the same bad behavior. What result, and why?