TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (152)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of news.com.au via WorldwideStandard.com (from Thursday, January 24; links good at time of posting):

A would-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say.

It was the second such incident in two days, with another man killing himself and three others on Tuesday when his bomb-filled waistcoat exploded as he was putting it on in the southern town of Lashkar Gah.

. . . .

The would-be attacker tripped as he was leaving a building apparently to target an opening ceremony for a mosque that was expected to be attended by Afghan and international military officials, said Sakhi Mir.

"Coming down the stairs, he fell down and exploded. Two civilian women and a man were wounded,'' Mir said.

[Previous TGIS]

Judge this Blawg Review by the character of its content.

Gideon hosts the Martin Luther King Day edition of Blawg Review, Blawg Review #143 for those of you scoring at home, at the Public Defender Stuff blog. With a criminal defense focus touching on many of the themes associated with Dr. King, this is an excellent edition of the carnival of legal blogging. Kevin Thompson hosts next week's issue at his Cyberlaw Central blog.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (151)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Smoking Gun (from Tuesday, January 15; link good at time of posting):

Disgraced and disbarred, Mike Nifong is now bankrupt. The former North Carolina prosecutor, whose career imploded with his botched handling of the Duke University rape case, today filed for bankruptcy, listing liabilities in excess of $180 million.

. . . .

Almost all of that sum represents legal claims filed against the former Durham County district attorney by members of Duke's 2006 lacrosse team, including the three players who were accused of raping a stripper at a team party.

. . . .

He lists nearly $5000 monthly in pension or retirement income and describes himself, charitably, as retired.

[Previous TGIS]

Free Trade = Peace (Or Does It?)

Marjorie Florestal at the IntLawGrrls blog describes that her desire, as a young Haitian immigrant, was to become "the international Thurgood Marshall". Working at a large law firm, she discovered her "first love" -- International Trade Law -- but now doubts about the power of trade have entered her mind:

Free trade brought prosperity, abundance, peace and security to all nations—at least in principle.

The more I learned, the more I became convinced I had discovered the Theory of Everything: Free Trade = Peace + Prosperity – (Ignorance + Zenophobia). Or even more succinctly: Free Trade = Peace.

. . . .

But this idealism is put to the test when I consider the way war can unravel in a heartbeat the prosperity that trade takes generations to produce. When I reflect on the recent fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the slow-burn in the Congo and the Ivory Coast, and the continuing instability in Haiti, I wonder if I have gotten it all wrong.

This post is the first of a series; I can't wait to read the rest.

Honesty is the best policy.

From The Register:

Computer giant Dell stunned a Reg reader seeking a processor upgrade when it told him he might want to consider a "Mac".

The El Reg reader had emailed the firm's hardware technical support team asking whether it was possible to upgrade his one year old Dimension 9150's processor to a Core2 CPU without having to also replace other components.

Here's how Dell hardware frontline responded:

Thank you for your response to Dell hardware tech support. It's true that if you want to upgrade the processor to a high end, you need to upgrade motherboard and consequently other devices like PSU, proc fan etc. I would suggest that purchasing a new PC is a better option than to upgrade it on this system as replacing the motherboard and processor is going to be expensive.

It's better you get a new system with duo or quad core processor. Mac is a good option. You may also look at XPS systems of Dell [XPS One is the best in XPS performance line], you may google on this system to get more information.

[Emphasis added.]

Well, sending customers to your competitors when your own offerings are inadequate was a strategy which worked well for the fictionalized Macy's in the classic Miracle on 34th Street. I suppose we can now safely infer what Michael Dell's holiday viewing included.

Our Compliments to Blawg Review's Editor 'n' Chef

Blawg Review, the carnival of legal blogging co-founded by the anonymous editor of Blawg Review, highlights the best legal blogging each week. Issue after issue, hosts from across the legal blogosphere (and occasionally beyond it) are selected by the anonymous editor of Blawg Review to present the carnival in their own voices, sharing their personal and professional experiences and interests with the ever-growing Blawg Review audience. In developing each issue, the anonymous editor of Blawg Review guides each host, offering invaluable advice and links to worthy posts. Working tirelessly behind the scenes, the anonymous editor of Blawg Review brings attention to this cooperative effort and to the bloggers who produce each edition of the carnival.

Yes, there is a theme here.

While he takes time each week to recognize the hosts of Blawg Review, and annually singles out an outstanding Blawg Review of the Year, it has been the Anonymous Editor's practice since the beginning of the Blawg Review endeavor to shun publicity for himself. Notwithstanding, Diane Levin and Colin Samuels, the "Sherpas" who assist the hosts and the anonymous editor to source posts for each issue of Blawg Review, would like to take this opportunity to recognize, and to invite others to recognize, Ed.'s efforts.

Over nearly three years, Blawg Review has grown to become a widely-respected brand in the legal end of the blogosphere. Presented each week by a different host, Blawg Review shows readers the many faces of the law, both in the U.S. and across the globe. In the best tradition of law and justice, as an institution it is open for all to participate, bringing well-deserved attention, appreciation, and traffic to the many lawyers, legal academics, law students, legal professionals, and others who blog about legal topics and issues.

Blawg Review has prospered where other carnivals have failed; it has grown in reputation where others have dissolved into infighting. Blawg Review stands tall as a positive and enduring example of what can be accomplished by and among bloggers; its success results in large part from the efforts of the anonymous editor of Blawg Review.

Thank you, Ed.

Cross-posted by Diane Levin at MediationChannel.com.

Grazie!

My Paradiso-themed Blawg Review #137 has been recognized as Blawg Review of the Year for 2007. Thank you to all those who voted during the nominations period; it's tremendously gratifying to know that my efforts were appreciated by my fellow Blawg Review hosts and particularly by several whose own work this year was, in my opinion, more deserving of this honor.

Although this completes the trifecta for my Divine Comedy Blawg Reviews (as Ed. mentioned, the Inferno-themed #35 won in 2005 and the Purgatorio-themed #148 won in 2006), this third award is likely the end of my run. The little-known fourth chapter of Dante's work, Snakes on a Gondola, is unlikely to provide such a rich source of theme material for another Blawg Review.

Wii are not amused.

Engadget reported yesterday that the innovative Nintendo Wii motion-sensitive controller might not be quite as innovative as previously believed:

Patrick Goschy, an ex-Midway employee, has a YouTube video of himself demonstrating something astoundingly similar to a Wiimote / Nunchuck... eight years ago. His demo shows his hacked-together controllers providing a surprisingly-responsive interface for a bit of Ready 2 Rumble Boxing on the Dreamcast. Goschy, who appeared on Fox News in Chicago last night, says that he has had no formal involvement with the Wii, but holds the related patents . . . .

Brett Trout offers some patent insights as well as details of the patent involved:

Claim 1 of the patent reads as follows:

A video game system comprising:

a game controller;
a hand-held control unit coupled to the game controller and housing an accelerometer and a light sensor,
the accelerometer sensing tilt of the control unit with respect to an axis, the accelerometer producing an acceleration signal indicating the tilt of the control unit with respect to the axis, the game controller processing the acceleration signal to control the movement of a game character on a video display coupled to the game controller and further processing the acceleration signal to control directional navigation of the game character through a game environment, said navigation corresponding to the tilt of the hand-held control unit,
the light sensor detecting one or more light pixels from the video display corresponding to a direction in which the hand-held control unit is pointing, the light sensor producing a detection signal to the game controller, the game controller determining from the detection signal the light pixels from the video display detected by the light sensor.

The video appears to be a valuable demonstration of the patented claims and could be damaging for Nintendo. Notwithstanding, the one thought in mind as I watched was not "This video appears to be a valuable demonstration of the patented claims and could be damaging for Nintendo" but rather "Why is this man not wearing any pants?"

I'm sure when Goschy made the video demonstrating his invention eight years ago, he didn't intend it for public consumption or as some sort of authoritative record of his technical achievement. All in all, I was reminded of my mother's admonitions to always wear clean underwear because you never know when a pantsless video of you will be posted to an as-yet undeveloped worldwide forum as evidence of a possible patent infringement. Or something along those lines.

UPDATE: Engadget has followed-up with Goschy, who confirmed that he has no standing to sue Nintendo -- all of his patents are assigned to Midway. He indicated that, "as far as he can tell, Nintendo bought the patents from Midway, since Nintendo references one of the patents in its application for the Wiimote." According to Engadget, "He's going to do a redo of the original video -- hopefully with pants this time -- if he can scrounge himself up a working Dreamcast."

What's in a Name?

Susan Cartier Liebel hosts Blawg Review #142 this week at the Build A Solo Practice, LLC blog. Personally, I would not have wanted to follow Charon QC's marvelously literary review posted last week, but Liebel not only took up the challenge but carried it through with aplomb. #142 is composed as a letter to new lawyers and incorporates the names of many of the leading lights of the legal blogosphere and is well-worth a close read.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (150)... The Sequel!

This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Register (from Thursday, January 10; link good at time of posting):

A Polish bloke got a bit of a shock when he decided to nip out to a brothel - his missus was among the establishment's employees.

According to tabloid Super Express, the woman had been earning extra cash on the side while hubby thought she was working in a store in a nearby town. He told the paper: "I was dumbfounded. I thought I was dreaming."

The couple, married for 14 years, are now apparently divorcing. Whether he is dumping her for working as a strumpet or she is ditching him for soliciting the services of strumpets is not noted.

[Previous TGIS]

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (150)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the BBC (from Monday, January 7; link good at time of posting):

TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column.

The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people's personal details on two computer discs.

He wanted to prove the story was a fuss about nothing.

But Clarkson admitted he was "wrong" after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK.

Clarkson published details of his Barclays account in the Sun newspaper, including his account number and sort code. He even told people how to find out his address.

"All you'll be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out. Honestly, I've never known such a palaver about nothing," he told readers.

But he was proved wrong, as the 47-year-old wrote in his Sunday Times column.

"I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account," he said.

"The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.

"I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake."

[Previous TGIS]

It's getting better all the time.

Many news sources reported that yesterday India's Tata Motors unveiled the world's least expensive car, the bare bones Tata Nano, costing $2,500.00.

While that price alone generated a lot of headlines, Hit & Run puts that number in perspective by comparing the Nano's price with the costs of the Ford Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, and the Yugo, adjusting prices both directions to account for inflation. The comparisons illustrate how extraordinary Tata's achievement truly is.

In 1909, the Model T cost $825; today, it would cost around $18,000. In 1909 dollars, the Nano would cost $115. In 1961, the Beetle cost $1,565; today, it would cost around $10,500. In 1961 dollars, the Nano would cost $375. In 1985, the Yugo cost $3,990; today, it would cost around $7,500. In 1985 dollars, the Nano would cost less than $1,400 (Hit & Run's number is off; my estimate is drawn from information provided by a commenter).

Strike Two for GPL v.3

Two of the more prominent open source projects around, Google's Android initiative and the ongoing development of the Linux operating system, have officially spurned the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) third-version General Public License(GPL). As mentioned here earlier, Google chose the Apache Software Foundation license over GPL v.3; Linux originator Linus Torvalds has now opted to stay with GPL v.2 rather than move his project to the newer version:

Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3.

GPL 3, which was released last year by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), reflects the FSF's goals while GPL 2 closely matches what Torvalds thinks a license should do, Torvalds said.

"I want to pick the license that makes the most sense for what I want to do. And at this point in time, Version 2 matches what I think we want to do much, much better than Version 3," said Torvalds, who is now a fellow at the foundation.

Crimea and Punishment

British legal blogger Charon QC, one of my favorites from any part of the globe, hosts Blawg Review #141 this week. He opens with a passage from Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade and notes by way of introduction that he is of "the Charge of the Light Brigade category of blawgers":

I'm . . . not entirely sure why I am doing it, not entirely sure if it needs to be done, not entirely sure what I am doing or where I am going… but… it keeps me at the bar…. the one with the red bottles breathing nicely before the gentlemen topers arrive.

With a kind nod to my own Dante-inspired Blawg Review efforts, Charon has collected some of the best legal posts from the past week into a very literary, literate, and lengthy entry of the carnival. While he began with Tennyson's immortal words, he did not end with them. His poem concluded:

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

I've only just completed my nominations for last year's Blawg Review of the Year award; Charon's #141 deserves the first place on my nominations list for this year's award. When can his glory fade? O what a wondrous Blawg Review he made! We needn't have wonder'd.

Cyber Law

The various holidays gave me some much-needed time to finish up a number of books I've been reading lately. One of these was Cyber Law, which Brett Trout, the volume's author as well as a practicing patent attorney and Blawg-IT blogger, was kind enough to send me.

Subtitled "A Legal Arsenal for Online Business," Cyber Law is not an overly lengthy or academic work; instead it's one of the most concise and useful overviews of the relevant laws concerning online business and presence I've yet seen. There are many weapons in this "arsenal" useful -- both offensively and defensively -- to non-lawyers engaged online in business or personal pursuits.

Even on those topics where I'm comfortable with my level of knowledge, I've discovered that Trout's "best practices" approach often helps to focus my thoughts on the essentials and improves the quality of the guidance I'm providing to my in-house clients. I suspect that this book will remain close at hand for some time. I don't hesitate to recommend it.

It's not "the future" yet.

The outstanding new science fiction blog io9 revisits what the Los Angeles Times thought the courtroom of the future might look like twelve years ago. As an in-house counsel, I don't regularly find myself in a courtroom, but I'm guessing that robot bailiffs, virtual reality juror goggles, floating cameras, and computerized judges haven't featured in your recent courtroom experiences either.

Blawg Review Nominations

Offered in response to the anonymous Editor's call for nominations, the following five posts are, in my humble opinion, the best of the best in what was an outstanding year of Blawg Reviews:

• #89 (Blawg Review) and #127 (Deliberations) -- What do these posts have in common? Each, in addition to collecting examples of excellent legal blogging, taught me something about arcane and somewhat quaint traditions -- mummering and voir dire, respectively.
  
  When the anonymous Blawg Review Editor produced #89 on January 1, 2007, I wrote, "It's never happened that the Blawg Review of the Year was the first one of the year, but (assuming the Anonymous Editor is willing to accept the award him/herself) this year's award may just go to the first of 2007"; it's held up over the course of the year. At the time, in keeping with the mummering tradition, Ed. invited his audience to attempt to guess his identity. Since then, I've had the pleasure of getting to know Ed. more personally. A year after #89, I'm pleased to say that I know who Ed. is even though I still don't know his name.
  
  When #127 was posted in September, I wrote, "[W]hen a particular Blawg Review is a destination in itself, a post which educates and rewards time spent reading and considering, what a treat that is!" I was treated not only to a bit of enlightenment about the voir dire process but also introduced to an outstanding blog written by an outstanding blogger. Anne Reed's Deliberations has since become a favorite.


• #116 (Corporate Blawg UK) and #122 (Preaching to the Perverted) -- Nos. 116 and 122, posted in July and August respectively, are the best examples this year of how creatively a collection of legal blog posts can be presented. Corporate Blawg UK and David Gulbransen's Preaching to the Perverted get two of my five nominations this year for remembering, in the course of hosting the carnival of legal blogging, that carnivals should be fun. Corporate Blawg UK presented an entire Blawg Review in rhyming couplets; Gulbransen produced one in the form of a course catalog.


• #134 (New York Personal Injury Law Blog) -- If this vote were a weighted one, Blawg Review #134 would receive my top vote. When Eric Turkewitz posted #134, publicly I wrote that it was "an instant classic. Turkewitz' theme -- the New York City Marathon -- is as well-integrated into the narrative of his Blawg Review as any I can recall seeing over the more than two years this carnival's been making its rounds." Privately I lamented that he couldn't have been scheduled to host just after rather than just before my next-scheduled Blawg Review. #134 was my favorite in 2007 and would be a very worthy Blawg Review of the Year winner.
  

I can't speak for any of you, but I'm more eager to see the final vote for Blawg Review of the Year than the final tally in the upcoming presidential election. Perhaps it's because we have better candidates from which to choose?

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (148)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Daily Mail (from Monday, December 31; link good at time of posting):

It was a moment to make angry wives applaud and two-timing husbands – and the Chinese government – squirm.

With eight months to go to the Beijing Olympics, Zhang Bin . . . one of the most famous faces on the nation's television, was proudly relaunching its main sports network, CCTV-5, as the Olympics Channel.

As Zhang talked enthusiastically into the cameras before a studio audience, a small woman in a brown duffel coat clambered on stage, bore down on him and grabbed his microphone.

Onlookers immediately recognised Zhang's wife, Hu Ziwei, herself a well-known sports anchor.

But what came next surprised everyone as Mrs Hu launched into a blistering attack on her husband for having an affair with another woman. Only two hours earlier, she said, she'd discovered his "improper relationship."

And as Zhang stood open-mouthed, uncertain what to do, she bravely coupled his infidelity with her country's poor human rights record.

. . . .

Zhang thought he might avoid public embarrassment because as usual in a nation always anxious to censor out any unwanted disclosures, the show was being pre-recorded.

His wife's outburst could be edited out, he thought. But, as has happened in the past, the authorities underestimated the power of the Internet and the mischief of its enthusiastic devotees. Within hours a renegade tape of the three-minute confrontation was posted on the Chinese websites tudou.com and Sina.com.

As Chinese authorities scrambled to remove it from those, it was switched to YouTube and other international sites they could not control - and they reported that hundreds of thousands of people were watching it.

. . . .

The nation's leaders, always eager to paint a picture of a perfect society, were said to be deeply embarrassed.

[Previous TGIS]