Category Archives: Talks & Conferences

To Minneapolis

Posted on March 22, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I am off to Minneapolis to give a ‘works in progress’ talk to the law faculty. Usually, when I go places I try to bring something nearly finished even if it’s touted as a ‘half-baked’ talks series. This time, maybe for the first time, I’m bring a true work in progress, which does make me slightly nervous.

It’s an article I wrote a strong first draft of some time ago (quite a long time ago in Internet years), and then set aside because I thought something was missing. I’ve started updating it now, with an eye to finally getting it out the door. But I still think it’s missing something.

Maybe talking it over with a room full of smart folks will help me find that missing ingredient. Or maybe I’ll just look silly.

It’s a very short visit — I get back to Miami around midnight Thursday — but I gather I will need my coat.

Posted in Talks & Conferences | 3 Comments

Life’s Little Disasters

Posted on March 2, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Disaster struck late last night, just after I finished reviewing my slides for my second presentation at FC06 (I got roped in as a substitute for Stephan Brands in the panel on Identity Management; would that I were a real substitute for one of the word’s top crypographers!).

I’d started preparing my talk at home, and had six pages of notes that I was gradually turning into slides. After I finished the last slide while sitting propped up in the hotel bed, I got out of the bed. In the process I slipped, and while flailing around my arm caught the neck strap (laniard) that is attached to my USB drive. The force wrenched it out of its slot on the side of my laptop, ripping it into two parts: the memory part came apart from the metal tongue, which remained in the usb slot of the laptop, complete with dangling bits of metal strip that had formerly joined the RAM to the tongue. I got the metal out of the laptop, but that was it for my data.

Humpty dumpty was not going to be put back together again. And what backups I have are on my desktop in Miami, not on my laptop. (I do hope I have a recent backupl of my calendar, or I’m going to miss some meeting or deadline…)

So, starting around 11pm, I had to reconstruct an hour’s talk from memory and redo about thirty slides. The resulting version had, I’d guess, about 85% of the content of the original and only a few of the cute pictures. And of course I was pretty tired when I gave the talk in the morning. The audience was kind, but the subject is fairly depressing and I think we had more fun yesterday.

On the bright side it didn’t actually rain yesterday, and the sky looks OK now, although it seems a little hot and sunny out right now to go walking anywhere, and we’re a ways from the beach.

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology, Talks & Conferences | 1 Comment

The Weather is Here

Posted on March 1, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I arrived in Anguilla late last night, after a journey that was longer, and thus more unpleasant, than it needed to be. To add injury to insult, I got to the hotel about five minutes after the bar closed, so no dinner nor even consolation drink for me.

Shortly after I went to bed it began to rain torrents, but it was very nice this morning when I awoke (7:30am — 6:30am Miami time — if you want breakfast, these cryptographers are not into sleeping late, it seems), if a bit windy. And there are now some ominous clouds in the distance.

The cryptographers are here in force, and surrounded by all this beauty seem intent on giving life to every geek stereotype: the hotel’s conference room, a sizable facility with modern projection gear, is located in the sole basement, and appears to have no natural light whatsoever (the better to see your slides by, my dear).

Myself, I’m playing hooky on the first session, and enjoying the view from my balcony. With wireless access.

(Only fly in the ointment: in just the time I’ve typed this, including a ten minute break to check the headlines, those big dark clouds have covered another 30% of the sky and now block the sun. I think we’re in for it. Hmm. Basement might not be so bad after all…)

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Off to Anguilla

Posted on February 28, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I’m off today to Anguilla, a beautiful small island in the Carribean (near St. Maarten), where I’ll be attending the annual Financial Cryptography ’06 conference sponsored by the International Financial Cryptography Association. I attended the very first Financial Crypto conference ten years ago, and had a great time. Now I’ve been invited back for a tenth-year retrospective.

Yes, I hear you thinking, it’s a tough life being a law professor. But consider: it takes seven hours just to get to Anguilla from Miami. And the forecast is for pretty solid rain all week.

Even if it rains, it will be wonderful to see some people I’d lost touch with as crypto moved off the front burner of my academic writing. I used to write a lot about the regulation of cryptography, including The Metaphor is the Key: Cryptography, the Clipper Chip and the Constitution, 143 U. Penn. L. Rev. 709 (1995), Flood Control on the Information Ocean: Living With Anonymity, Digital Cash, and Distributed Databases, 15 U. Pitt. J. L. & Com. 395 (1996), It Came From Planet Clipper, 1996 U. Chi. L. Forum 15, and of course Digital Signatures Today in Financial Cryptography 287 (Rafael Hirschfeld ed., 1997) (Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol. 1318), a write up of my talk at FC #1. Nowadays I write more about things that use crypto than about crypto itself.

Blogging may be quite light for the next few days. Meanwhile, to tide you over, here’s an abstract of the talk I’ll be giving, called “Are We All Cypherpunks Yet?”:

Continue reading →

Posted in Cryptography, Talks & Conferences | 3 Comments

Noooooo. Another Good UM Symposium.

Posted on February 8, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The University of Miami Law Review is pleased to invite you to its 2006 Symposium titled, “The Schiavo Case: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” The Symposium is designed to examine the issues that survive the Terri Schiavo case, including basic questions that may affect the structure and perceptions of our legal system, from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. We will address this situation from standpoints that include ethics, therapeutic jurisprudence, family law, Florida and United States constitutional considerations, judicial independence, economic implications, disability law, executive branch power, media influence, and government responsibility. The Symposium will feature academics and practitioners from around the United States representing both the legal and medical fields. The Symposium will begin at 9:00 am on Saturday, February 18th, and will include breakfast, lunch, and a cocktail reception.

Make them stop. I have work to do.

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When Am I Supposed to Get Work Done?

Posted on February 7, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

In addition to everything else, there’s a ton of good seminars coming up in the law school and nearby on campus. For example:

  • An ethics seminar series on “Confidentiality and the Professions” being presented by visiting scholar Ronald Goldfarb, starting Thursday, and being held both at the Coral Gables campus and the medical school.
  • “Dreaming of Democracy,” a symposium in honor of my colleague D. Marvin Jones’s recent book: Race, Sex, and Suspicion: the Myth of the Black Male (Praeger 2005), Friday, Feb. 17, from 2-5pm in the law school, room E352.
  • A Symposium on “Wrongful Convictions: Psychological and Legal Issues” on Friday, Feb. 24, starting at 1pm in the law school, room E352.

Continue reading →

Posted in Talks & Conferences, U.Miami | Comments Off on When Am I Supposed to Get Work Done?