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Links for December 3rd

Wednesday, December 3, 2008
  • Government as cyber-bully - Los Angeles Times
    Nevertheless, the federal government has no business using an anti-hacking statute to enforce an online business' usage rules. When lawmakers targeted unauthorized access, they were aiming at the cyberspace burglars who pick electronic locks or phish for passwords, not people who walk through open doors on the Internet to do things their online hosts cautioned them not to do.
    (overcrim myspace )
  • MySpace case bends the law
    If this were a movie, we'd fade to black and be done with it, but real life is rarely so straightforward, and this case is a good example. Drew wasn't convicted of driving someone to suicide or showing criminally poor judgment, but of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes unauthorized use of a computer a crime.
    (overcrim myspace )
  • Economists Have Abandoned Principle - WSJ.com
    Bankruptcy is an opportunity for a company (or individual) to make a fresh start. A company in financial distress faces the danger that creditors will try to seize its assets. Bankruptcy gives it some respite. It also provides an opportunity for claimants to figure out whether the company's financial trouble was the result of bad luck or bad management, and to decide what should be done. Short-cutting this process through a government bailout is dangerous. Does the government really know whether a company should be saved?
    (bailout bankruptcy )
  • Tax Fraud Finale - WSJ.com
    The Department of Justice finally got something right in what was once the biggest criminal tax-fraud case in history: It dropped the case.
    (overcrim kpmg )
  • Prof. Adam Pritchard and Securities Class Action Reform: “The Revolution Has Begun (Maybe)”
    University of Michigan Law School Professor Adam Pritchard’s recent proposal to reform securities class actions via shareholder proposal has moved from a purely academic discussion to the real world. Prof. Pritchard reports today that a shareholder in Alaska Air has submitted a proposal to the company under Rule 14a-8 to amend Alaska Air’s certificate of incorporation to provide for “a partial waiver of the ‘fraud on the market’ presumption of reliance created by the Supreme Court in Basic v. Levinson.”
    (securities )
  • Mercenaries, Sonic Blasters No Match for Pirates | Danger Room from Wired.com
    Cheap solutions usually deliver cheap results – or in this instance, gave the shipping company a false sense of security but will cost, in the long run, a lot more than they bargained for. A counter-piracy team must be able to give more to a shipping company than simply a warm, fuzzy feeling. These men need to be armed with real weapons, with real bullets and take every action possible to prevent the pirates even approaching the ship they are supposed to be protecting.
    (pirates )
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Links for December 2nd

Tuesday, December 2, 2008
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Links for December 1st

Monday, December 1, 2008
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Links for November 30th

Sunday, November 30, 2008
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Links for November 24th

Tuesday, November 25, 2008
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Links for November 24th

Monday, November 24, 2008
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Links for November 23rd

Sunday, November 23, 2008
  • Facebook ‘Kick a Ginger’ campaign prompts attacks on redheads - Telegraph
    Dozens of children left messages on the page claiming to have carried out attacks on "National Kick a Ginger Day" on Thursday, and a girl in Alberta, Canada claimed that she and her 13-year-old sister were punched and kicked by pupils at their school.
    (hair hatecrimes )
  • Frozen Tropics: Taylor’s Menu

    (hstreet restaurants )

  • Threat Level - Wired Blogs
    But when the prosecution rested its case Friday at about 2:00 p.m., defense attorney H. Dean Steward moved for an immediate dismissal, based on testimony that proved Drew never saw MySpace's contract, and wasn't the one who set up the account and accepted the terms.

    Steward argued that the case was based on Drew intentionally violating MySpace's terms of service but said that prosecutors "haven't proven that portion of facts that would go to a knowing violation of a legal obligation." They provided no proof that Drew "ever read or had knowledge of the terms of service" therefore could not prove her intention to violate them.
    (overcrim myspace )

  • Government’s Star Witness Stumbles: MySpace Hoax Was Her Idea, Not Drew’s | Threat Level from Wired.com
    The young woman who typed the final, cruel message to 13-year-old Megan Meier the day she killed herself testified Thursday that it was she — and not defendant Lori Drew — who came up with the idea to create a fake MySpace account as a boy who first flirted and then turned on the troubled teen.
    (overcrim myspace )
  • Dead Teen’s Mother Testifies about Daughter’s Vulnerability in MySpace Suicide Case — Update | Threat Level from Wired.com
    Steward's point: by lying about her age, Megan herself had committed the same terms-of-service violation that Drew is now facing felony prosecution over. He introduced this theme earlier in his cross examination, asking Meier if she'd read MySpace's contract before allowing Megan to establish the MySpace profile through which she befriended "Josh." MySpace doesn't allow users under the age of 14.
    (overcrim myspace )
  • Great zinfandels to drink on Thanksgiving. - By Mike Steinberger - Slate Magazine
    For other producers, however, maximum ripeness is the aim; they want their zinfandels to come in above 15 or even 16 percent alcohol. It is a stylistic preference for many of them, but there are also commercial considerations: Heady zinfandels are the ones that seem to score best with critics, and the wine-buying public appears to really like them, too. A study released last year by Zinfandel Advocates & Producers, an organization that represents some 300 wineries, found that just 10 percent of consumers surveyed felt that zins were too ripe and alcoholic. The fact that demand for zinfandel remains strong clearly suggests that elevated alcohol levels are not an impediment to sales and may even be part of the attraction.
    (wine zinfandel )
  • Dømkirke | Pitchfork
    But what's so special about Dømkirke isn't that it was made by tattooed guys in dark robes playing doom metal in a beautiful church…
    (records )
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Links for November 22nd

Saturday, November 22, 2008
  • The Volokh Conspiracy - Bankruptcy and the Detroit Three:
    But the other half of an argument against a bailout is that GM (or the others, but I'll use GM to illustrate the point) presents an unusually good case for Chapter 11 reorganization. GM is, in fact, the textbook example of what Chapter 11 was invented to do. GM almost certainly will not liquidate, and if it does, then this will almost certainly be beneficial from a social perspective because it will illustrate that the resources are better deployed elsewhere in the economy.
    (bailout bankruptcy )
  • Judge Considers Throwing Out Lori Drew Case | Threat Level from Wired.com
    But when the prosecution rested its case Friday at about 2:00 p.m., defense attorney H. Dean Steward moved for an immediate dismissal, based on testimony that proved Drew never saw MySpace's contract, and wasn't the one who set up the account and accepted the terms.

    Steward argued that the case was based on Drew intentionally violating MySpace's terms of service but said that prosecutors "haven't proven that portion of facts that would go to a knowing violation of a legal obligation." They provided no proof that Drew "ever read or had knowledge of the terms of service" therefore could not prove her intention to violate them.

    U.S. District Judge George Wu acknowledged that "intentionality is a requirement" of conspiracy.
    (overcrim )

  • foto_decadent: Mommie dearest

    (photography style fashion )

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Links for November 19th

Thursday, November 20, 2008
  • Deirdre McCloskey on Writing - Stepcase Lifehack
    One of the best books for writers in the social sciences is Deirdre McCloskey’s Economical Writing, a very short, very small book that offers a number of important principles for writing. McCloskey is an economist by training, but she has written across a wide variety of fields. Economical Writing is a must-have and a must-read for any serious writer. Here are five of her points from Economical Writing and elsewhere I have tried to incorporate into my own work (not always perfectly, certainly, as my dissertation committee could not doubt verify).
    (writing )
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Links for November 19th

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
  • Judge Reveals Long Witness List In Lori Drew Trial | Threat Level from Wired.com
    The list, which Judge Wu, read to prospective jurors on Tuesday, includes more than half a dozen other witness. Presumed to be among them are Drew's hairdresser, to whom she reportedly discussed the hoax as it was occurring, and a deputy sheriff who spoke with Drew after Meier's suicide. The latter is expected to testify that Drew admitted to instigating the MySpace account, among other things.
    (overcrim myspace )
  • Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy | The A.V. Club
    I've maintained a decent living by making easy jokes about Axl Rose for the past 10 years, but what's the final truth? The final truth is this: He makes the best songs. They sound the way I want songs to sound. A few of them seem idiotic at the beginning, but I love the way they end. Axl Rose put so much time and effort into proving that he was super-talented that the rest of humanity forgot he always had been. And that will hurt him. This record may tank commercially. Some people will slaughter Chinese Democracy, and for all the reasons you expect. But he did a good thing here.
    (klosterman gnr records )
  • Defense Says Jury Pool Filled With ‘Viciousness’ Towards Lori Drew | Threat Level from Wired.com
    Judge Wu asked Steward for the names of the jury candidates who appeared most biased against Drew, then reviewed their questionnaires from the bench. "Some of the responses are, for lack of a better term, strong, and some of those would not be able to serve on the case," he said afterwards.
    (overcrim )
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