April 2005 Archives

John Gruber translates Adobe's FAQ about its acquisition of Macromedia into plain English.

Here's an excerpt of one of my favorites:

Do you anticipate a reduction in force as a result of this transaction?

When two successful growing companies join together, the result is a combined organization that creates new and exciting opportunities. The combination will lead to powerful new areas of innovation, new products and solutions, and an acceleration of our respective growth agendas. At the same time, there will be some duplication of employee functions between the two companies, and upon the close of the transaction, we anticipate some level of reduction in force. While we anticipate the integration team will identify opportunities for cost savings, the primary motivation for this acquisition is to continue to expand and grow our businesses into new markets.

Yes.

Have a look at the whole thing. I was amazed how much marketing bulltwacky Adobe's FAQ contained.

The website for Denver's KMGH Channel 7 has this slideshow of two Seaworld penguins going through the metal detectors at Denver International Airport. [Link via Bruce Schneier.]

TSA didn't subject the penguins to a pat-down, but some of the onlookers wanted to.

I guess that just goes to show that under the right circumstances, penguins can fly.

Seth Finkelstein has a commentary on section 202 of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.

My summary of Seth's take on the Act: The Act creates an exception that's about as narrow as can be, and the only winners are a lobby of religious conservatives. On the other hand, there are no big losers. But it's too bad that the Act wasn't set up in a way that would have created or codified more freedoms regarding how we use material that's protected by copyright.

[Update: EEJD blog criticizes the tone of Seth's post: "These additional excerpts [from Seth's post] seem to communicate that Seth's problem has more to do with the fact that the bill is aimed at 'religious prudes' than the fact that the bill gives more control to consumers…"]

Section 202, you may or may not recall, makes it clear that people can legally sell equipment and software that "filters" DVD recordings of movies as they're being played. People who want to watch, say, "violence-free," "cursing- and profanity-free," or "sexual content-free" versions of movies can do so without keeping a finger on the fast-forward button, because they can buy these "filters" that will tell their DVD player what parts to skip automatically. The reason this was a potential copyright problem is that it looked like interposing that kind of technology might result in a derivative work of the original — something the copyright law forbids. (I vaguely recall a case in which someone produced "cleaned-up" VHS videotape copies of films, an even-bigger infringement problem because it resulted in an additional copy of most of the videorecording; the new law still doesn't allow that.) The boundaries weren't very clear. The Act eliminates the risk of infringement for a very narrow set of activities.

Ed Felten has a pragmatic censorship & free speech analysis of Sections 201 and 202 of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. He concludes that the Act does not promote censorship. Alan Wexelblat (Copyfight) appears to agree, and has other links.

The Act seems tailored to let people choose what they want to watch in a movie, and to make DVDs that will let people easily skip scenes they don't want to watch. It requires that the end-user ultimately make the decision about whether to skip scenes. I like that the law implicitly rejects any "moral rights" of a copyright holder by which the copyright holder could force people who buy a movie to watch the whole thing. That's good because the U.S. copyright system is not based on any moral rights in the copyright holder (there is only one exception to this policy I can think of); U.S. copyright law is only supposed to create economic incentives for creative expression. Under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, the copyright holder in a movie still gets paid for the whole movie, which satisfies the policy of the copyright law.

There are still social questions that arise from this kind of law. For example, if people can simply edit out controversial parts of a film, does that not overly allow people to insulate themselves from artistic efforts to address difficult social issues?

I think the answer is, Maybe so, but copyright law doesn't have anything to say about that.

Today I received a note envelope from West Group with a note card that said,

Dear Valued west.thomson.com Customer,

Please accept the enclosed $20 gift card as a thank-you for purchasing on west.thomson.com. …

There was no gift card accompanying the note.

But I suppose I can't complain. I didn't shop on west.thomson.com. I haven't shopped on west.thomson.com since the end of 2002. And this year, when my 2005 Colorado Court Rules arrived in the mail, I returned them to West and cancelled my subscription, because I have other up-to-date copies of the Rules. I hope other, more genuine, West customers got gift cards with their notes, though.

My wife and I spent some time on Saturday evening driving through neighborhoods in our general area to get a sense of how they're laid out and what kinds of lots and houses they include. This is the very beginning of a house-search that we hope we'll be able to press forward more decisively in the next few months.

Right now I'm still in the "wow, everything is really expensive" stage. I'm told that might not end. The Denver area has relatively high property prices compared to the midwestern prices with which I'm more familiar (and more comfortable).

I've also been taking some time to read up on a few topics I haven't recently been following and to brush up some skills that might have otherwise been falling out of practice. For example, I spent a while on Saturday reading sample land survey field notes, decrypting various parts of the official BLM survey manual, and reviewing the Colorado laws on the conduct of surveys by registered Professional Land Surveyors.

Exciting times, let me tell you.

Actually, these are potentially exciting times, but I don't know yet whether certain possibilities are going to pan out. I hope to know more later in the week.

While a bunch of smart people were attending the LexThink! gathering in Chicago recently, the Anonymous Lawyer must have been attending whatever the antithesis of LexThink! is. Here are his sentiments.

Cross-reference: Jeremy Blachman, The Attorney-Client Relationship (for those who don't know, Jeremy is known as, among other things, the creator and author of a fictional weblog called "Anonymous Lawyer." And he attended the real LexThink! gathering.)

Also: Douglas Sorocco (on rethink(ip)), Is your attorney working for you or against you?; Meaningful and Nonbillable Conversations with Clients, and — heck, just go over to rethink(ip) and read everything there. It's not just about intellectual property law. Not by a long shot.

Ernie the Attorney: "I think that many of the lawyer bloggers who refer to each other in posts are essentially acting like an 'Internet Bar Association.'"

Works for me. And like Ernie, I'm enjoying watching three leading members of the "patent section" of the Internet Bar over at rethink(ip). I don't work in the area of patent law, but their astute observations about patent practice tend to translate well to other practice areas.

Ernie the Attorney muses today about his motives for posting about personal topics. Blogger, know thyself; Reader, find something better to do. He concludes that he doesn't necessarily have any explanations for many of his decisions about which stories to tell, particularly in those posts that he calls "self-referential."

I have a blog and you don’t. Let’s say we meet. You tell me you’ve read my blog, and you ask me about one of my ‘personal observation’ posts. At some point I come to understand that you have read a lot of my blog, obviously trying to get a sense of who I am. Lately, this has happened a lot. …

… Every once in a while, in one of these strange encounters, the person will hesitantly tell me that they have a question. Invariably what they will focus on is how I often speak freely about certain personal observations. They just don't quite understand that. Aren't I afraid of the consequences? How can I be so open? That's what intrigues them.

Ernie discusses a theory that some of his decisions about what to write might be based on unconscious mental processes that he isn't really in a position to articulate. He concludes with this advice for the reader:

… So feel free to comb through my weblog for clues and feel free to form judgments about my personality. Just don't ask me to explain why I am the way I am or why I talk about certain things. I really don't have a good answer. I'm flattered that you ask the question, but I politely suggest that there are more important questions for you to be asking. Aim your curiousity at something truly important, which is not certainly not me and my motivations.

If I were you I'd just go outside and enjoy the nice day. Or, even if it's not a nice day, then surely there's something more interesting to do than read my self-referential blog posts. Don't you think?

I don't spend time wondering why Ernie or other "self-referential" bloggers write what they do, but I am often glad that they choose to tell some personal stories. Sherry Fowler, for example, is one of my favorite bloggers because of how well she tells her stories. Her blog isn't even in the "Legal" category in my RSS reader, because her blog doesn't try to be about law. (Her blog focusing on professional life, however, is in the "Legal" category.)

When we first meet in online or physical space, we tend to label each other; in the United States, we most commonly choose labels associated with what we do for work. "Attorney" or "Lawyer," for example. But of course such labels tell us very little about the person so labeled. They're shorthand for general traits — stereotypes, at that, which may or may not express themselves in a particular individual.

Those "self-referential" posts with personal stories often tell me something about someone who would otherwise be just a name with a few labels attached. They put flesh on a skeleton, and a face on the flesh. When they appear in lawyer-blogs, they give me a sense of humanity in a profession that often tends to be bound up in formalities. They create people I respect rather than websites that I read. They often make me wish that I could write more personal posts.

But the "self-referential" posts I appreciate the most show me something about myself as well. Ernie, Sherry, and others have done just that on numerous occasions, and I thank them all.

Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo are strung in a line along the "Front Range" of Colorado, abutting the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and connected by Interstate 25. Colorado enjoys some of the greatest numbers of sunny days of anywhere in the United States, but the weather patterns can change dramatically over the course of a few days.

For example, here between Boulder and Denver, the temperature rose to 70 degrees today, and once morning clouds had burnt off we were graced with an afternoon sunshine. But the National Weather Service has also issued a Winter Storm Watch, because Saturday night's forecast calls for four to eight inches of snow, with more on Sunday and possible storm totals of a foot of snow.

They predict that the temperature will be around 60 again by Tuesday or Wednesday. I suppose that's the good news. It's also good news whenever we get more moisture, but at this time of year I would prefer rain. It takes up a lot less space and doesn't require such chilly temperatures.

I moved here in the middle of May, 2002. On an eighty-degree day, my wife, a friend, and I hauled furniture from our rented Budget truck up the stairs to this apartment. A few days later, I awoke to discover two inches of snow on the ground. The apartment complex's automatic lawn sprinkler system was running according to its schedule, and its black sprinkler heads peeked out over the snow, dutifully watering it.

Many people have linked to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's article,. Several people have shared their personal experiences about (not) blogging anonymously, like Scheherazade Fowler. Her blog is among my very favorites because of how she so artfully writes about her life and its many dimensions apart from the law.

Back in February, I posted an entry about why many lawyers might choose to blog anonymously.

The title of the EFF article is a little overly optimistic, because half of the article is dedicated to identifying topics that one might want to avoid. But I think that it provides some useful tools that one can combine as needed to reduce the risk of a clash with one's employer. Which combination is "right" will depend on the circumstances. They're not the only tools out there, but they're some of the most significant ones.

[Via Slashdot:]

Instead of a guy constantly repeating "Can you hear me now?" over the phone, Verizon tests its network using a fleet of specially-equipped Ford Taurus wagons. Because it's driving around anyway, it also tests its competitors' networks.

Jon Gales of MobileTracker went on a ride-along with a Verizon Wireless network tester in Florida and wrote up this report, with photos.

I use one of Verizon Wireless's competitors. I'm pretty satisfied with my wireless phone service, but I can never be sure that my phone will work inside buildings. My calls sometimes drop when I'm indoors, especially at the fringes of a wireless cell or in buildings with a lot of steel, concrete, or stone (for example, in downtown Denver).

Not even Verizon Wireless's would want to promise perfect indoor service, though, and Jon Gales's article demonstrates that Verizon Wireless's testing program is focused on outdoor reception.

Telecommunications industry trivia: Verizon Wireless (VAW) LLC is a separate organization from Verizon Communications, Inc. The latter company is most well-known as the incumbent regional Bell operating carrier in the northeastern United States, though it also has three other divisions. Verizon Wireless is jointly owned by Verizon and Vodafone Group Plc. Vodafone is a British wireless carrier, spun off from Racal Electronics, that went on an acquisition spree in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There was a minor controversy in 2000 over whether the FCC should allow a company with significant foreign ownership to acquire U.S. radio licenses. Discussion of the issue tapered off, and we now have both Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. (Deutsche Telekom AG owns T-Mobile.)

I've only dealt with Verizon Wireless once. The people I talked to in the Court Orders & Subpoenas division of their legal department were courteous and efficient, but they're not the people that most customers have to deal with (one hopes!).

Arnie Herz writes about "positive psychology" and its management theory analogue, "positive organizational scholarship." The notion of positive psychology comes from, among others, Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the APA. There's a Psychology Today article about him and others working in the area of positive psychology. Here's a quote that sums up why you should have a look.

Why do we only focus on negative behavior patterns, rather than learning to nurture our children's--and our own--untold strengths? "There is a misguided emphasis in psychology on finding the problem and correcting it." …

The overall goal of "positive psychology" is to enhance our experiences of love, work and play. It is a psychologist's "birthright," says Seligman, to explore optimism, love, perseverance, originality, responsibility, good parenting, altruism, civility, moderation and tolerance. "This is a revelation for a group that has focused on dysfunction, illness, healing and coping strategies," which are just a small corner of the mental health field.

It is no surprise that in the psychological literature over the last 30 years, there have been 54,040 abstracts containing the keyword "depression," 41,416 naming "anxiety," but only 415 mentioning "joy."

Well-being is something more than just surviving, merely coping.

Others are trying to apply the same kinds of principles in the study of businesses and other organizations. Arnie linked to an interview [S.D. Bernstein, for the Mich. J. of Mgmt. Inq.] that discusses the topic from that perspective.

It's been a beautiful spring weekend here in Denver — sunny, with highs in the 60s and 70s. There's some much-needed rain in the forecast for mid-week. Wind, cold, and rain are in the forecast for Tuesday. As luck would have it, I've got an interview that day. Will it be my ill fortune to get drenched on the way to the interview?

A year ago today, I was spending a weekend in the office preparing to second-chair a two-week arbitration hearing. That was the case for which I worked four weeks of long days with no days off. The arbitrator eventually returned a favorable but relatively undramatic award. I don't have a very clear memory of the first half of 2004, apart from transcripts, exhibits, pleadings, and letters. I came to the conclusion that that's not much of a life.

Two years ago today, I was preparing to start a new job the next Tuesday.

Three years ago today, I was working my way through my last semester of law school. (And how wretchedly it dragged on!)

It's April 1. Get ready for fake technology announcements from all corners of the web.

Of course, there's a bunch of folks expecting one company to make a very real product announcement, and rumor has it that they're on track to do just that.

I think this is the first time I've had coffee at 1 a.m. I pulled a few all-nighters in law school (and one in college), but I wasn't a coffee drinker back then. I'm not really one now, either, but here I am, working on a mug of coffee. I'm eating some ice cream, too, and imagining that I'm just having a nice late dessert with coffee.*

My wife has been visiting family in California this week. She was supposed to arrive in Denver at around 11:30 tonight, but some flight delays interfered with her connection in Phoenix, so now she's been routed through Las Vegas and is arriving sometime between 2:40 and 3:00 a.m.

I hear the Denver International Airport is pretty quiet at 3 a.m.

* (I was, after all, ordered to do my best to eliminate the ice cream before my wife returns from California. I haven't quite achieved that, but I have made significant strides — or "scoops" — toward that end.)

There are not many advantages to a lack of steady work, but I sure am glad I don't have anywhere to be in the morning.

Update, 2:10 a.m.: Flight tracker websites, including the airline's own, show that the flight is now delayed until about 3:10 a.m. Their on-time rates for my wife's flights this week are nearing 0%. Yikes. I wonder what their on-time rates are like when the weather is bad.