The Elton John AIDS Foundation, a charitable organization run by the singer, is planning to auction off six pieces of contemporary art next month at Sotheby’s in London. The art is expected to bring in about $750K, with all proceeds going to the foundation.
The Wall Street Journal had the musical headline for the story this morning:
“Don’t go breaking my art”
Kiki Dee could not be reached for comment.
Judges in Virginia are elected by the General Assembly, and the Old Dominion is now the only state using this system. South Carolina used to be with us, but they have adopted a two-step process using judicial evaluation panels.
Many states have direct election of judges, one of which is Louisiana, where I visited last weekend for the national convention of the Society of Professional Journalists.
On a ride up Canal Street on a New Orleans streetcar (it was really hot and steamy, prompting a colleague to call our vehicle “A Streetcar Named Perspire”), I saw proof that Louisiana is very different from Virginia.
Any number of law firms line Canal, which is a major thoroughfare. And in the lawns of their buildings, you’ll find … campaign signs from judicial candidates. The picture above shows the lawn of a law firm, decorated with signs from several judge wannabes.
So, if you’re a lawyer who puts a judicial candidate’s sign on your lawn, what happens if that guy wins? On the other hand, what happens if the other guy wins? Just asking.
Facebook, the social media giant, has sprung a number of new changes on its millions of users this week, and the early reviews are not good.
Among the changes:
• The old News Feed now shows up on the right side of the screen in a constantly moving crawl as your friends provide new updates on their activities or comment on each other’s cute cat pictures.
• The center of the page provides a list of “Top Stories” which apparently provides updates from some of your friends, but not all. There is no explanation of why an item is a “top story.”
• In what seems to be a feature taken directly from new competitor Google+, you can set up “lists” based on, well, whatever you want. You can set up a school list, or a work list, or a list based on some common interest. It’s up to you, if you want to invest the time.
• You can decide which of your Facebook friends are your “close friends.” As if Facebook hasn’t already presented you the dilemma of whether to accept the “friend” request of someone who really is only an acquaintance….
If this seems like a lot of work to fix something that wasn’t really broken, you’re right.
I have yet to see anyone who really likes it (one friend claimed to like the changes, just to be an iconoclast). I saw more than a few friends last night who reposted a photo with a banner that said “Hate the New Facebook.” Mysteriously, those posts had disappeared by this morning.
One friend out in the Seattle area had reposted a Dr. Seuss-style poem: FB Poem #2: I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like Facebook spam. I do not like the new Facebook change, I do not like my friends rearranged. I do not like them in a row, down below or coming up and appearing slow. I do not like them by family, friend, city or state. I do not like the page to hesitate. I do not like the Facebook change, I do not like my friends rearranged! I do not like this new Facebook crap. Kill it, smash it, make it scrap (author unknown).
Brad Panovich, a meteorologist in Charlotte, is a Facebook maven and he has posted a couple of videos on the new Facebook. In particular, he has a video with advice on how to jigger the list function to the list function to get your News Feed pretty much in its previous format. It’s worth a look.
And if you are really, really unhappy with the new Facebook changes, I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg will give you your money back.
The entertainment rental company Netflix angered many longtime customers with a new pricing scheme a few weeks ago.
This week, the company “apologized” by announcing it was splitting itself into two companies – one that would handle DVD rentals and one that would do online streaming. Previously the two services were available from a single website. Now, a user must go to two different sites and have different logins.
The new DVD service is called “Qwikster.” But here is something that will chill the spine of any intellectual property lawyer who ever did due diligence on a new company name. And it should prompt any lawyer who helps a client to start a new business to add another line to the checklist – one for a Twitter handle.
The Twitter handle “Qwikster” is already taken, by a dope-smoking potty-mouth named Jason Castillo, according to Wired magazine. Many of his tweets recount his exploits with women and weed and aren’t really fit to print here. Check out @qwikster and you’ll get the idea fast.
Netflix may be planning to use @QwiksterDVD as its handle. “Qwikster” is listed as the owner, but the account for now is by invitation only.
You have to wonder just how many more hits (the PR kind, not the kind familiar to Mr. Castillo) Netflix can take, and why whoever is orchestrating all this still has a job.
Living on the Lawn or the Range at the University of Virginia ranks among the highest honors for a U.Va. undergraduate.
Many, if not most, of a class’s student leaders will rate a room on the Lawn. In a vacuum, you might wonder why the space is so desirable. The rooms are small and somewhat cramped. To get to the bathrooms and showers, one has to go outside (January must be interesting). Tourists are omnipresent, gawking at Mr. Jefferson’s historic Academical Village in the shadow of the impressive Rotunda.
But such rooms are a U.Va. tradition, for which students will endure a lot. One bonus: the fireplaces. Many rooms have a stack of firewood outside to use in the active fireplaces. On a cool fall day, the smell of woodsmoke lends an 19th century ambience to a stroll through the Lawn then along the serpentine walls toward the Range.
Well, there won’t be any fires on the Lawn or the Range this year. U.Va. discovered that there are numerous cracks in the flues and chimneys of the fireplaces, so fires have been banned.
The University’s news release indicated the school is weighing whether to repair the problems are simply seal up the fireplaces and relegate them to the history books.
The smart money is on the likelihood that some alumni group will mobilize and pony up the cash to get the fireplaces fixed. Tradition is tradition.
[Photo by Jane Haley, www.virginia.edu]
Computer security gurus Sharon Nelson and John Simek have enumerated a number of “Stupid mistakes that lawyers make with technology.”
Two of the eight errors they flag involve computer passwords, or, the failure to take precautions when creating or safeguarding same.
If you look up and see the yellow sticky note hanging from your monitor with “User Name” and “Password” written on it, you might want to take that down before reading on.
Selecting a password is obviously a highly personal task, and some people use their first names, the names of their children or their birthdays.
According to PC Magazine, the most common password among the millions used on the Internet is simply “123456.”
That’s not terribly creative, nor is the second-most-used password: “Password.”
Rounding out the top five were qwerty (the top row on the keyboard), abc123 (a progression of sorts) and the plaintive letmein.
The website whatsmypass.com a few years ago compiled a list of “The 500 Worst Passwords of All Time.”
The compiler noted that he came across some interesting choices when putting together the list. An erstwhile Trekker used ncc1701 (the Starfleet number of the Enterprise on “Star Trek”) while a George Lucas fan used thx1138, the title of Lucas’s first film.
Someone used 8675309, the phone number from the 1982 song by Tommy Tutone. Maybe this guy was Jenny’s ex.
A surprising number of passwords on the list are Not Safe For Work, perhaps the tamest of which we can print is “sexsex.”
Dave Piscitello, who blogs about Internet security at securityskeptic.typepad.com, analyzed the list of 500 worst passwords, and found some recurring mistakes.
The bad ones often are short, or they use single English words or names. They may be a sequence of keystrokes off the keyboard. They don’t show much forethought, and none uses a capital letter or special character that would make it harder to crack.
A good password, Piscitello counsels, incorporates a combination of characters including capital letters, numerals and special characters.
It would look something like this: I!Want!1!More!Cookie or 3@Musketeers @Bar
This may all sound very basic, but when you don’t take the time to think through a password, you are putting yourself at risk. Just Google the phrase “password cracking software” and you’ll uncover the cottage industry that has developed to get past your weak password choice and into the data on your network. To give you an idea of the thieves’ mentality, one of the top cracking programs is called “John the Ripper.”
So pick a password that you can remember easily and that the bad guys can’t guess, even with the algorithms in their cracking programs.
If you want to check the strength of your password, Microsoft provides a handy Password Checker at www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/password-checker.aspx.
Microsoft advises, as do Nelson and Simek, that a password should be at least 14 characters long and use a combination of the characters as described above. Use numbers that are meaningful only to you somewhere in the password.
Anything less, the experts advise, and you might as well take that post-it that was hanging from the monitor, scribble “Please Steal Me” beneath your password and hang it back in the middle of the screen.
U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin, Texas, made headlines earlier this month, as noted in this space, when he whacked the lawyers in a civil dispute in his court. Because of their behavior, he ordered the two to appear at a “kindergarten party” he would be holding in his courtroom.
The lawyers quietly settled their dispute after that and the judge cancelled the party, reported the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
But they talk plain down in Texas, and Sparks got a not-very-subtle reminder that everyone has a boss, or at least someone to whom he or she is accountable.
In Sparks’s case, that would be the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. According to the Texas Lawyer, Sparks got a caustic letter from 5th Circuit Chief Judge Edith Jones after his “kindergarten” order got national play.
She wrote,
Dear Sam, It has not escaped my attention, or that of my colleagues or, I am told, nationally known blog sites that you have issued several ‘cute’ orders in the past few weeks. The order attached below is the most recent. Frankly, this kind of rhetoric is not funny. In fact, it is so caustic, demeaning, and gratuitous that it casts more disrespect on the judiciary than on the now-besmirched reputation of the counsel. It suggests either that the judge is simply indulging himself at the expense of counsel or that he is fighting with counsel in what, as Judge Gee used to say, is surely not a fair contest. It suggests bias against counsel. No doubt, none of us has been consistently above reproach in our professional communications with counsel. We are all prone to human error. But no judge who writes an order should allow such rhetoric to overcome common sense. Ultimately, this kind of excess, as I noted, reflects badly on all of us. I urge you to think before you write.
Sincerely, Edith Jones
Ouch. Somewhere in Texas, two lawyers are snickering.
Back in 2007, Sen. John Kerry was attending a forum at the University of Florida, when a student named Andrew Meyer started asking the former Democratic presidential candidate a number of agitated questions.
Why hadn’t President Bush been impeached, he asked. And why had he conceded to Bush? Meyer was so wound up that security officers started to escort him outside. Kerry started to answer Meyer, who demanded to hear the responses.
Meyer was wrestled to the ground, uttering these immortal words: “Don’t tase me bro!”
Millions of YouTube viewings later, this phrase became a pop cult fixture. Meyer was charged with disturbing the peace and resisting arrest; the charges later were dropped.
So whatever happened to Meyer? The Washington Post’s Lifestyle magazine asked that very question.
Answer: He’s going to be a lawyer. Meyer graduated from UF and was admitted to the Florida International University law school, where he is now a second-year student.
Give Meyer credit for being an entrepreneur: After the incident, he trademarked the phrase “Don’t Tase Me Bro” and has a website where you can buy a T-shirt for $15.
(T-shirt artwork above is from Meyer’s site, design by Phil Fung).
It’s September, so law students are back in school, ready to learn lots and start looking for an elusive summer clerkship (2Ls) or an elusive job offer (3Ls).
The 1Ls are just trying to survive, and according to Above the Law, newbies at two different law schools are having trouble coping with, um, their lockers.
Anyone who made it through high school should be passingly familiar with having a locker and locker etiquette. Maybe some of these 1Ls are having flashbacks at having been stuffed into one.
At Washington University in St. Louis, the administration had to email instructions, including a video, on how to open the law school lockers.
And at Duke’s law school, there is a squatter’s battle going on. One student grabbed a locker another student had reserved, put his/her stuff in there, then put on a combination lock on it.
The aggrieved party of the second part responded as only a brand-new law student can: “Please remove your lock and any valuables. I do not want to have to commit a tort against you.”
OK, Mr./Ms. Hot-Shot 1L, here’s your first quiz: By posting that note, have you already committed a tort? Please discuss.
U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, who sits in Austin, Texas, is fed up with petulant, childish litigation. So he’s doing something about it.
In a case styled Morris v. Coker, he said that three non-parties had “invited” the court to quash several subpoenas that were “not properly served, are overly broad and unduly burdensome and seek privileged information.”
In response, Sparks issued an “invitation” of his own to two lawyers, counsel for the defendant who wanted to take the three depos and the lawyer who filed the motion to quash.
He said the men were invited to “a kindergarten party” in his courtroom to be held Sept. 1.
He added, “The party will feature many exciting and informative lessons, including:
• How to telephone and communicate with a lawyer
• How to enter into reasonable agreements about deposition dates
• How to limit depositions to reasonable subject matter
• Why it is neither cute nor clever to attempt to quash a subpoena for technical failures of service when reasonable notice is given; and
• An advanced seminar on not wasting the time of a busy federal judge and his staff because you are unable to practice law at the level of a first year law student.”
Sparks also said, “Invitation to this exclusive event is not RSVP. Please remember to bring a sack lunch!”
And he concluded, “The U.S. Marshals have beds available if necessary, so you may wish to bring a toothbrush in case the party runs late.”
I wouldn’t want to be those guys.
