PC Magazine has named the University of Illinois -- Urbana-Champaign the most wired campus in the U.S., up from 6th place last year. The magazine looks not only at student resources, such as the availability of wireless and loaner or cheaper laptops, but at curriculum offerings in the technology fields. This honor has brought up the slightly embarassing point that the campus doesn't have outside wireless; only 1% of outdoor spaces can access the network. I might be more embarassed if we were in say, California. During most of the academic year, outside is not a super place to surf the web anyway!
Permalink | Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Check out this new device by Silicon Valley company Luxim, which ZD Net describes as "a lightbulb the size of a Tic Tac that gives off as much light as a streetlight." Folks are discussing the story at slashdot.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
In May I will be presenting in a forum that is foreign to me. More about that later, but I note it to explain why I have been watching TED more than usual lately. And hanging around Presentation Zen. Yesterday, Garr Reynolds pointed to a presentation by brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor that is about as close to perfect as I can imagine. It is simultaneously personal and universal, humorous and poignant. Her message is so simple that it is impossible to miss and so profound that I reckon it will be impossible to forget.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
TED has posted excerpts from a fascinating talk by Nicholas Negroponte from the first TED conference in 1984. That was the year I returned to BYU after serving a Church mission in Austria. Before my mission (1982), I was programming COBOL on punch cards. When I returned, I was required to take a class called Introduction to Computer Programming, which was really a class on how to use PC software (WordPerfect, Lotus 123, Basic). On the first day of class, the instructor began by distinguishing "hardware" and "software."
Obviously, Negroponte was well beyond that ... but still primitive from today's vantage.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Seriously? The moon seems so 1960s. We have already been to Mars (at least with machines), but our prestige will be hurt by China replicating a feat we accomplished 40 years ago? Mark Whittington is not joking:
Returning to the Moon represents the first step in establishing space as a venue of human economic and political activity. The potential of space or lunar based solar power, now being studied by the US military, and fusion power fueled by helium 3 to address the world's energy concerns is incalculable. The Moon is the key to accessing these resources.
NASA is plugging away on the next moon mission, but I have a hard time seeing Americans get excited about the moon again. Even if the ultimate goal is to put humans on Mars and we use the moon for practice. Especially not because of some vague notion of technological prestige.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Gordon has been cautious in evaluating the new Microsoft suite of everything. But I feel the same way about it as Fake Steve Jobs does. What did Microsoft give its consumers, Fake Steve Jobs asks?
“A new version of Word that has more buttons than the dashboard on the space shuttle. You need a pilot's license to use it. Have you seen it? It's incredible. First time someone showed me the interface I thought it was a spoof, like that fake ad about what an iPod box would look like if Microsoft made it.”
The new Word combines thirty odd menus of features and activates them via tabs and buttons, instead of text. It doesn’t work with other software programs, including old versions of Word, which can’t open documents done on the new version. It takes me an inexplicable three clicks and a trip to the secret Windows Office button to create a new document. Said secret Office button also contains a Send submenu, a Print submenu, and a Publish submenu, because those things are all so very different, apparently. It is, in short, a strange combination of bloated, confusing, and unambitious, and I would avoid upgrading to the new Word for as long as your tech services people will allow.
I know, I know, complaining about Microsoft is like hitting alt-F4 on your keyboard when you’re in your blog posting program. But still. It’s like the company never thought to look at how Nintendo succeeded with the Wii or how Google succeeded with Google. And those companies are its direct competitors. Everyone in the legal academic world uses Microsoft, but really, I’m going to look hopefully, longingly at Google Docs, marvel at the advantages of simplicity of design, sigh, and then return to my high-kilobyte, memory-intensive, draft paper, which I will revise by toggling unhappily between the footnote insertion menu (it is under “references”), the comment function (it is under “review”), and the typeface management region (it can be found at “home”).
Permalink | Technology | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
This article makes me very sad. I have enough existential angst without now wondering whether my life is really being run by a 20-something guy who doesn't leave his house very much. And all those hours I spent discussing whether free will, agency and even Paradise Lost were just wasted. I think in order to maintain my sanity I'm just going to have to be in denial here and refuse to believe that I am either part of someone's computer simulation or worse, someone's avatar! (But if I am, couldn't I be a little taller and maybe have red hair, like a nice strawberry blonde?)
Permalink | Technology | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
I am watching iPhone users from afar. USA Today reports that "90% of 200 owners said they were 'extremely' or 'very' satisfied with their phone" and "85% said they are 'extremely' or 'very' likely to recommend the device to others." Of course, some iPhone users love it even though the phone doesn't work:
Right now I can't make or receive calls inside my house. With Verizon, I could get calls inside, outside, anywhere. The service was so good, in fact, that I never bothered to get a landline. With AT&T, I must retreat to the backyard, where mosquitoes drain me of blood. Worse yet, my iPhone often takes five minutes to even detect service in the backyard. After figuring this out, I recounted some of these difficulties to my mother. She suggested that I keep my Verizon service as a backup. This led to a brief argument in which I angrily defended AT&T, claiming that the telecommunications giant was making major infrastructure upgrades. My mother hung up on me. Yes, AT&T's crappy wireless coverage is tearing my family apart.
Apple probably didn't intend to release a phone that will make me less technologically accessible than before. The iPhone: the mobile device that forces you to get a landline. OK, I don't really have to get a landline—I could just move to another house. But even though I can't use it to make phone calls, I still love the iPhone.
Applehound reports that the "OS X graphical interface and applications are extremely solid!" Then proceeds to list 68 bugs!
Then there's this.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
In the mid- to late-1990s, I become a tech-media junkie: WIRED, Red Herring, Business 2.0, Industry Standard, etc. Several years ago, I switched to blogs for my tech news. Forbes now tells us that advertisers are doing the same:
Silicon Valley is booming again. But if you work in tech media, there's blood on the floor. Take Red Herring. It hung onto its offices after getting the eviction notice earlier this month. But gossip site Valleywag is breaking story after story not just on its beat--but about its woes. Meanwhile, bigger publications are hurting too: ... Business 2.0 saw ad pages drop 21.8% through March from the same period a year ago; PC Magazine's editor in chief walked out the door after ad pages fell 38.8% over the same period; and one-time online powerhouse CNET is reporting growing losses even as the companies it covers flourish. It may be happening in tech first, but there's no reason the same thing won't happen, eventually, in every media niche.
Permalink | Marketing| Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Whaddya do when you need to send a 40mb data file to your co-author who's in a
different city? Chances are you can't just email it. Your email server likely imposes an upper limit on attachment size for security reasons. And 40 megs is a big attachment. You could snail mail a thumb drive, but that seems archaic. You could post your file on your faculty webpage for download, but that may be a bit of a chore, especially if you don't have permission or software skills to tinker with it. Or . . . (drumroll), you could DropSend it. DropSend allows you to send files up to 1GB, or to upload and store files online. And best of all . . . (drumroll), it's free. You just have to register by (no surprise) giving them a wee bit of personal information. For free, you get 5 sends per month and 250MB of storage. Five bucks a month gets you 15 sends and 1GB of storage. And so on. It's a really nice service when you need it.
Permalink | Internet| Technology | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
As someone who grew up a few months too soon to be in the video game generation, I'm a little embarassed to say this, but I think my family is a Nintendo family. Last week I was reading this NYT article on how Nintendo is killing Sony and Microsoft in the video gaming industry right now, and it dawned on me that the article was about my family.
Part of the reason for the success of such products as the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS, according to the article, is that Nintendo finally realized that many families didn't want high-level geeky games created by high-level geeky gamers. Although many families have one person that these games attract, the games don't universally attract all family members. Voila! The Wii.
I completely agree. A couple of years ago, I broke down and allowed an X-Box into our house. But the games are too complicated and not kid-friendly. The Lego Star Wars series, while a really fun concept, is created for 30-somethings who love Star Wars, not the kids looking at the "E" for everyone. I don't consider it fun to have to look up on the Internet hints and secret codes for getting from Level Whatever to Level Better. When my son tries to play it alone (without Paul), he often asks me to help him, but there is literally nothing I can do. But all this is changed now. Two weeks ago, we bought a Wii!
First of all, you can hook up a Wii in 5 minutes. Then, you create your "Mii," and you can play in about 5 more minutes. (My kids think the creating the Mii part is the best game so far.) The Wii Sports games that are pre-loaded and the games on Wii Play have very steep (short, fast)learning curves. Without investing time in honing special skills, mom can jump in, friends who come over can jump in, even grandparents can jump in. For our family, this is a much better game. Although complex games may sharpen problem-solving skills, blah, blah, blah, for our family, having something that everyone can play is much more important. "Game night" doesn't have to be Monopoly anymore! (On our wish list, Mario Party 8.)
We also have a Nintendo DS Lite for our daughter. Although she's not video-game crazy either, she really likes Nintendogs, a game the article points out is one of few marketed to girls. So, I guess if we have to concede that Nintendo is winning the gaming wars by marketing to the low-brow, low-tech masses, that's at least half our family!
Permalink | Technology | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1) | Bookmark
About a year and a half ago, I bought a PDA phone, the Samsung SCH-i730. I have struggled with this device, which is clunky in every sense of that word. I want an iPhone ...
Permalink | Technology | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Apple's new iPhone looks very cool. Here is a report on the launch. I have a Samsung i730, which is an amazing device in many ways, but it is clunky. Unfortunately, the iPhone will be available only through Cingular.
The W$J asks whether the iPhone is worth the hefty price tag ($599). "Yes" seems to be the early answer, at least if you think investors have their fingers on the pulse of the market. Apple's shares rose $7.10.
UPDATE: Check out Paul Kedrosky's brief discussion of Cisco v. Apple on the name "iPhone."
Permalink | Technology | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Further to my earlier rant on flight delays and airlines' failure to disclose them in timely fashion, Delta has just started a new service that reports flight delays to your designated phone number or email address. According to a press release, the new service
will notify customers when their flights are delayed and provide continuous, real-time updates when operational changes occur, such as rebooking options or gate changes.
I've just subscribed to the service, so I can't yet say whether notifications will be timely. But it's certainly a step in the right direction. As I wrote previously, this seems in the airline's interest as well as the passengers':
[I]s it that costly to disclose the departure delay in advance? Presumably, some passengers would find alternative flights, and Delta couldn’t impose cancellation penalties for flight commitments it couldn’t fulfill, right? Even assuming that’s right, it seems to me that it still might be profit maximizing for Delta to disclose early. First off, under current pricing practices, it would probably be difficult for most passengers to find a palatable fare on an alternative airline on such short notice, so there won’t be many cancellations—except for those passengers who simply decide not to fly that day. Second, wouldn’t a policy of early disclosure offer enormous marketing advantages? If an airline always disclosed flight delays as early as possible, I would certainly favor that airline over its less helpful competitors. Even if it didn’t enable me to switch flights, I would appreciate the information for planning purposes.
Permalink | Technology| Travel | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
My office telephone has a message on it right now. I am supposed to call someone back. I hate calling people back. I like email, which allows me to write them back anytime of the day or night.
Lately, I have been noticing that many teens do not use email. See, e.g., here and here. I have learned that emails (not just mine, but emails generally) are a burden to my 18-year-old daughter. She doesn't like to respond to emails. She prefers texting. Or talking on the phone.
So I am feeling betwixt and between, not able to communicate effectively with the next generation older or younger. I am imagining myself twenty years from now, still blogging and using email, and annoying all of the younger professors.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
The Milken Institute has just released an extensive report of biotechnology transfer entitled Mind to Market: A Global Analysis of University Biotechnology Transfer and Commercialization. The report ranks universities around the world based on "publication rankings, patenting activity and office of technology transfer (OTT) outcome measures, or how universities perform in the overall innovation pipeline."
Wisconsin ranked #14 in publications, #9 in patenting activity, and #22 in OTT outcomes. In addition, Wisconsin ranked #4 in licensing income and #5 in patents issued. Well done, Badgers!
Other key findings:
• Harvard ranks first in terms of biotech research, as measured by papers and citations, followed by the University of Tokyo and University of London. U.S. universities hold eight of the top 10, and 28 of the top 40 positions. California universities hold five of the top 25 rankings; the UK and Japan hold three each.
• The University of Texas system scores first on our Biotech Patent Composite Index, followed by UC San Francisco — which is likely first among individual campuses since the University of Texas doesn’t report data on individual campuses — and Johns Hopkins. Nine of the top 10 patent holders are U.S. universities. The University of London ranks first among foreign universities (10th overall). (U.S.-issued university biotech patents grew from a cumulative total of 433 through 1995 to 11,430 in 2004.)
• Our University Technology Transfer and Commercialization Index shows MIT first on outcome measures, which include such factors as licensing income and startups. The University of California system ranks second (led by UC San Francisco), with Caltech third, Stanford fourth and Florida fifth. The University of British Columbia was the highest-ranked Canadian institution, coming in eighth overall.
• Among U.S., Canadian and European universities, the United States leads in invention disclosures, patents filed and granted, licenses executed and licensing income. However, European universities surpass their U.S. counterparts in startups established.
• Research activity has a high rate of return. Each 10-point increase in our Research Papers score contributes an additional $1.7 million in annual licensing income.
• Investments into OTTs also offer high returns. For every $1 invested in OTT staff, the university receives alittle more than $6 of licensing income.
• In terms of job creation, the Amgens and Genentechs most differentiate the economic impact of U.S. university-based biotech commercialization that originates from universities in other nations.
Interesting stuff, though if you want to read the whole thing, you will need to reserve a few hours.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
In this age of technology, why would you hire DJ for your wedding reception? Not for the music library -- for a typical $650 fee, you can download a lot of eclectic tunes. For the DJ's witty repartee? Perfect sense of timing to know just when the crowd wants to do the Chicken Dance? Probably not. The WSJ today warns that iPods are killing the DJ industry. For the cost of renting speakers and maybe cajoling a pre-teen cousin to watch the playlist, couples are opting out of the DJ era. This seems sensible to me. No one who plans a wedding ever really wants a DJ. You want music. However, live bands are expensive, so many people opt for the DJ. The D.J. is usually not something you tout -- he doesn't match the color scheme -- instead, you want him to be as inconspicuous as possible. What's more inconspicuous than an iPod?
Permalink | Technology | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Sony made the batteries, but Dell is issuing the recall. Here is the story, and here is Dell's website. Or you can just enter your battery ID here.
My laptop is a Dell Latitude 610, which is on the list of laptops with "potentially affected batteries." And I bought it during the relevant time frame. But my battery is not affected. Still, Dell is not inspiring a lot of confidence lately.
UPDATE: Dell's share price is up this morning by over 2.5%. Michael Dell noted that the recall would not be a material event for the company because Sony is going to cover the cost.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
From W$J:
The nation's technology capital lost 185,000 jobs, or one in five, between 2001 and 2005. This year, state economists expect a net inflow of people into the area for the first time in six years.
Just as noteworthy as the comeback is the source of all the new jobs. For the most part, it isn't giants such as Cisco Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Intel Corp. They're adjusting to slower growth rates and in some cases continuing to shed workers. The biggest demand comes from thousands of small and midsize companies and start-ups ..., suggesting that Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial ferment survived the bust just fine. Companies are typically looking for experienced workers who are well-versed in hot technologies.
And, yet, fears of recession seem to be spreading elsewhere in the U.S.
Some used to talk about creating "the next Silicon Valley," while others argued that there is only one. Well, Silicon Valley is looking pretty unusual right now.
HT Darian Ibrahim.
Permalink | Internet| Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
From the W$J. Any surprises for you?
The high representation of California cities is to be expected, but Boise is a mild surprise to me. I have visited Boise, and I know that it is more than just Micron, but its placement at #8 is a bit surprising.
The W$J also has an interesting podcast to go with the story, though the story's author says Bend, Oregon like it's an obscure Tibetan village. Bend is a widely known vacation spot, right?
Permalink | Intellectual Property| Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
My colleague Anne Miner made an interesting observation at the end of her presentation. She has studied university technology startups around the world, and she observed that policy makers and tech transfer officers worldwide have embraced an enormous vision of the power of technology startups to solve many of society's ills. Not just problems like unemployment or economic growth, but racial tensions caused by immigration (France) or the lingering problems caused by colonialism (Thailand). This is the world of technology startups as social movement.
Are they right? Probably not. But this is about hope, not experience.
Permalink | Entrepreneurs| Technology | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Last week, my Discover Card was cancelled after someone transferred an $11,000 balance to my account. Discover was right on top of the problem. We now have a new account number, and the $11,000 has been removed. Fresh from that experience, I was drawn to a W$J article with a great lead:
When Brenden Walker got his new MasterCard PayPass ATM card in the mail last month, he headed to the gas station to try it out.
To test the card's "Tap N Go" convenience, he passed it in front of the scanner, which activated with a beep and displayed the word "authorizing..." on its LCD screen.
That was quite enough for Mr. Walker. Without completing the transaction, he put the card down on the pavement and took a hammer to it.
You probably have guessed that Mr. Walker was destroying the radio chip that is embedded in the card. Lots of people are worried that their card information might be stolen or that they will inadvertently pay for someone else's purchase. If you are one of those people, you probably should avoid the microwave option:
Others are using do-it-yourself methods for disabling radio chips, including microwaving them. The electromagnetic energy emitted by a microwave oven fries the chip and renders it useless. The downside: Tagged items might burst into flames in the process, warns Caspian, a consumer group campaigning against the widening use of radio tags. The group suggests cutting out the chip with a pair of scissors, puncturing it with a straight pin, crushing it or pulverizing it.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1) | Bookmark
No one does it better than the U.S. according to Sebastian Mallaby:
In the race to turn scientific ideas into businesses, the United States is hard to beat. There's no dividing wall between academic labs and commerce, and scientists surf from one world to the other on waves of money and cultural approval.
This portrait is too rosy. The University of Wisconsin -- more specifically, WARF -- is as good as it gets in tech transfer, but we face plenty of challenges, both economic and cultural.
Mallaby's main point is that the "science lobby" in the U.S. should stop invoking Chinese scientific and technological prowess as a national threat.
What matters is the way science is diffused through an economy: the availability of venture capital, the flexibility of workers, the quality of corporate leadership, the competence of government policy, the reliability of public infrastructure -- all help to determine how science is absorbed. The United States scores well in nearly all these areas, which is why it's defied alarmist predictions for a quarter of a century and will continue to do so.
Under Mallaby's view, scientific advances in China actually help Americans, who use that knowledge for our own gain. We are able to do this, Mallaby claims, because our economic institutions are magnets for top scientists. Thus, he enters a longstanding debate about chickens and eggs: If you want to build a vibrant, entrepreneurial economy, which comes first, the science or the legal and economic infrastructure?
The answer (probably) is that they develop together. China has been developing the science quickly, but it also has been developing market institutions. Mallaby is more confident of the U.S. position than I am. China's trajectory over the past 30 years is nothing short of astonishing.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
OK, I now have an iPod. After having let the whole Palm, PDA thing completely pass me by, I am taking this opportunity to keep up with at least one technological trend. After putting most of my CDs and my brother-in-law's on my iPod (including the first two epidsodes of Lost), I feel like there is a lost opportunity here. I wish there were some way that I could swap my music with others. Say, like if someone out there were looking for Nanci Griffith, I could let them copy mine. And, if someone had some Pat Greene out there, then I could copy it. I wonder if anybody ever thought about that. . . .
Permalink | Technology | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
In a post last month over at Prawfsblawg, I talked about the different approaches of the two primary legal repositories, SSRN and bepress. SSRN promotes its download count feature, while bepress provides this information only to the authors. These different approaches highlight different philosophies about how new technology can be applied to the scholarly enterprise.
To follow up on these issues, I spoke with bepress’s Jean-Gabriel Bankier. Bankier is the manager of the bepress Legal Repository, as well as ExpressO and LawKit, two legal scholarship services discussed below. Bankier has twelve years of software marketing, product management and market research experience. He holds a BA degree in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Masters degree from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
(1) Tell us a little about the Berkeley Electronic Press. When did BEP begin? Are you affiliated with University of California, Berkeley? Are you a nonprofit or for-profit organization?
The Berkeley Electronic Press ("bepress") produces tools to improve scholarly communication, by providing innovative and effective means of content production and dissemination. Bepress has a portfolio of services including peer-reviewed journals, institutional and subject matter repositories, working paper series, and editorial management software. We are a private, for-profit organization founded by UC Berkeley faculty in 1999. Two of the founders, Bob Cooter and Aaron Edlin, are law professors at Boalt Hall.
(2) What does bepress have to offer for law students and professors?
Bepress has several services to help professors along the legal publishing chain, starting with ExpressO, a manuscript submission management service, in order to facilitate the flow of faculty (and some student) papers from authors to law reviews. We also created a legal working paper series service to promote scholarly works-in-progress. A bepress service dedicated to students is LawKit. This editorial management software saves student law review editors countless hours and administrative nightmares by keeping track of submissions in an online database.
(3) How does the bepress Legal Repository work? Can anyone post there?
The bepress Legal Repository serves as the home for legal working papers series. We automatically convert the papers from Word or WordPerfect to PDF so anyone can submit a paper. Papers submitted to an institution’s series are vetted by a professor or administrator at that institution. Those submitted to the bepress Preprint Series (via ExpressO or directly) are vetted by bepress.
(4) Do you have subject matter journals?
We publish half a dozen peer-reviewed subject specific law journals, but I fear that is not what you mean by “subject matter journals”. We do not repackage and resell working papers in the form of subject matter journals to law libraries. Instead readers can browse papers by current index to legal periodicals subject headings. Taking it a step further, we make it possible for legal scholars to select topics of interest (subject, author, legal term, etc.) and request notification whenever a paper that matches their search criteria is added to the repository. Legal scholars are embracing this free service. Thousands have signed up for personalized e-mail notifications since we launched the service in July 2004.
(5) How do your database and notification services differ from SSRN’s?
SSRN and bepress send out mailers announcing recent working papers by participating institutions. Bepress also sends out subject matter mailers for the New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO) and the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. Unlike SSRN we do not charge libraries for the right to receive subject-matter mailers.
(6) As to those six peer review journals -- do they come out in print as well? Do they require exclusive publishing rights? How do they differ from traditional law journals?
The peer-reviewed law journals are currently only available online. Bepress does not seek the copyright on published articles. Authors are largely free to circulate or republish their articles, in print or on institutional repositories, for example. Authors, however, give bepress a perpetual, nonexclusive license to publish the article in question.
Our journals are different from traditional student run law reviews in that they are peer-reviewed by experienced professors and other legal scholars rather than student-reviewed. They are different from peer-reviewed journals in that the editors are using EdiKit to manage papers. EdiKit was designed to facilitate and accelerate the manuscript management process creating a better experience for authors, editors and reviewers alike.
(7) I'd like to ask you more about the download issue. Lots of legal academics seem focused on their SSRN downloads as an indicia of scholarly impact. If only SSRN downloads are publicly available, then bepress downloads don't "count" toward scholarly impact. Are you worried that authors are going to direct readers to SSRN and away from bepress?
Authors with papers in the bepress Legal Repository are emailed download statistics every month. We have seen that papers posted to SSRN and the bepress Legal Repository have comparable downloads-per-posted-days rates. This isn’t an issue of bepress hiding figures. Rather, we are concerned that popularity and scholarly value not be conflated. SSRN feels differently, and this is reflected in their approach. It’s an honest difference of opinion. I think at the end of the day, authors want their research to be read by those who would learn and benefit from it. This means creating multiple paths of discovery to their work, via SSRN, bepress, law reviews, institutional repositories, and other venues.
(8) What is your relationship with NELLCO? Do you have similar relationships with other repositories?
The New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO) licenses our repository software to offer law working paper series to its members. While they are the only group using our software to host a subject-matter repository today, there are several dozens universities that have bepress-hosted institutional repositories.
(9) Could you explain what ExpressO is, for readers who may not be familiar with it? How is ExpressO affiliated with the Press? Are you the only company doing electronic delivery to law reviews?
Bepress created ExpressO to facilitate the delivery of papers from authors to law reviews. Currently, 86 law schools have institutional ExpressO accounts for their faculty but a school account is not required to use the service. We serve 500 law reviews including all of the top 100. We deliver manuscripts electronically and make submissions available to respective editors on a secure dedicated Web site. We print and mail manuscripts to some 35 top-tier law reviews that prefer to receive submissions from ExpressO in that manner, and also have special arrangements with select top-tier law reviews that accept electronic deliveries only through ExpressO. We track when law reviews are full and no longer considering submissions so that authors do not waste their time and money submitting to law reviews that are effectively closed for the season. The system even provides authors with tools to make an expedite request or withdraw their submission.
Permalink | SSRN| Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
I am looking to upgrade my PDA. If you were looking, would you consider Blackberry?
I'm not, but I am considering Samsung SCH-i730 and the Palm Treo 650, both of which would work with my Verizon account.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
For some reason it seems to have passed with little fanfare (at least in my rarefied circles), but recently the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced a startling discovery: The government, in conjunction with printer manufacturers (or is it the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the reverse vampires?) have for some time been tracking computer printer output. Details are sketchy, but it looks like the government has been working with printer manufacturers to embed coded messages in every document produced on certain color laser printers (indicating the serial number of the printer and the time and date of printing) in an effort to assist enforcement against counterfeiters. According to this article, the technology has been employed by some manufacturers for decades.
EFF does some decent work (cracking this code, for example, would have to qualify), but unfortunately it’s also a group of fear mongers — not that just because they’re paranoid there isn’t anyone following them. It’s just that they have limited credibility when this is their take:
Even worse, it shows how the government and private industry make backroom deals to weaken our privacy by compromising everyday equipment like printers. The logical next question is: what other deals have been or are being made to ensure that our technology rats on us?
Look guys — as Posner would tell you (and so would any other economist) it’s about trade-offs. Do you think counterfeiting is a problem? Should the government use any resources to combat it? Now, if so, how can you be sure that this is not, in fact, the best way to do so, even though it entails a cost? What doesn’t? The next logical question is hardly “how else has private industry colluded with the government to screw us over?” The actual next logical question is, “is this the most cost-effective way to deal with the problem of counterfeiting, given the potential cost?” Now, how hard was that? Let’s not assume our conclusions before we even ask the questions, shall we?
By the way — here’s what I think really ought to be the next question: “How on earth was this kept secret for so long?” I mean — there had to be dozens if not hundreds of folks in on this, in both industry and government. How did the secret not get out? How is it possible that not a single programmer involved in the project at Xerox leaked the news? Or — did they? Was this known to the counterfeiting community long ago? (And, of course, if so, question one — was this a good idea? -- becomes a little easier to answer).
Relatedly, what kind of protections could EFF want in the future? Disclosure? That would immediately defeat the purpose, and, again, assume the conclusion of the very question being asked. So what, realistically, should be done?
Also, I note that, according to the EFF itself, the tracking dots are used only in color laser printers. Maybe this is itself a decent compromise position. If the government really wanted secretly to monitor subversive organizations like Greenpeace and the ACLU through their printed output, wouldn't it make more sense to target the black and white printers? Or are these organizations printing strictly in color these days?
Finally, my real beef with EFF is not that it is wary of government; there's plenty to be wary of. My real problem is that it seems not to discriminate between potential government violations of one's privacy and anonymity on the one hand, and private sector incursions on the other. This, by the way, is a problem it shares with one of the organization's intellectual godfathers, Larry Lessig (see here).
The point seems obvious, but there is an enormous, qualitative difference between the threat posed by Leviathan reading your emails and that posed by your boss doing it. If you don't like your boss doing it enough, you work someplace else (or contract with your boss to stop). If you don't like it that Sony encodes intrusive DRM software on its CDs, you buy another label's CDs. If enough people share your aversion to these incursions in the private sphere, the market will induce the violators to respond and/or it will provide alternatives. But we can't say the same for Leviathan, and the democratic process is hardly a reliable system for inducing the government to respond, even to the preferences of the majority.
Permalink | Business Ethics| Current Affairs| Politics| Technology | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) | Bookmark
The Yale Law Journal's launch of a bloglike "online companion" for the Journal, called The Pocket Part, has generated a well-deserved bit of blogobuzz. It quickly generated reportage posts by Stephen Bainbridge, Ben Barros, Heidi Bond, Orin Kerr, Dan Markel, and Larry Solum. Like others, I'm delighted to see this development. And, just at it did for Paul Horwitz, Pocket Part prompts me to think about how internet-based technologies that lower the costs of collaboration could spark new socially-produced scholarship or scholarship tools ... in short, how the scholarship's social layer may grow. Paul muses on the Wiki-Treatise. Matthew Bodie has a paper at SSRN about an open-source approach to the casebook. My own hope? Social tagging for scholarly papers. More below the fold ...
Existing social tagging technology and practice, on sites such as Flickr (for photos) and del.icio.us (for web bookmarks), show the power of letting users grow a social layer to comment on the content layer in a way that organizes the content.
Now that others (besides Westlaw and Lexis) present electronic versions of scholarly articles, I start to wonder: Can we bring social tagging to legal scholarship? I've been looking around for this phenomenon in other scholarly fields and have not yet seen it. But I'm going to keep searching.
Why? What's the point? Well, my own motivation is that I think keyword searching within the text of an article is far too crude a search tool, but it is all that Westlaw and Lexis offer. Social tagging strikes me as a much more nuanced and powerful search tool. And I know that I would add tags, sharing with my colleagues in the hope they would share with me, to make my research time far more productive as the social layer grows.
Perhaps Westlaw or Lexis will roll out a user-based social tagging system at some point. Perhaps repositories like SSRN and Berkeley Electronic Press will beat them to it. In the interim, I hope that individual law reviews themselves will think about doing so. Many of them already host electronic copies of the articles they publish. Wouldn't it be simple to, e.g., generate a tag cloud from the text of each article for a baseline tag set, then use social tagging tech to let users generate a second tag set thereafter? The law reviews that make their articles more usable with a rich social tag set will doubtless attract more readers, which may boost citations to those articles in other articles.
Permalink | Blogs and Blawgs| Internet| Junior Scholars| Law Student Blogs| Legal Scholarship| SSRN| Technology | Comments (3) | TrackBack (2) | Bookmark
Executive compensation issues, including disclosure questions, are doubtless part of the regular intellectual diet for hearty Conglomerate fans. What connection could executive compensation disclosure rules have with patent law? Find out below the fold ...
Patent blogs and listservs have buzzed a bit over the last few days with the Patent Office's release of its decision in Ex parte Lundgren, overturning a patent examiner's rejection of a patent claim to a "method of compensating a manager ... ." Dennis Crouch has excellent coverage of the decision on the Patently-O blog (a daily must-read for me), here and here. It's the latest milestone case in the business method patent craze sparked by the Federal Circuit's decisions in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Serivces (1998), about a patent on a mutual fund structure, and AT&T v. Excel Communications (1999), about a patent on a data structure that enabled a long-distance calling plan.
The focus for patent lawyers is on the continuing expansion of what's patentable subject matter. Processes have long been patentable - processes like tanning leather or refining oil. Computer-assisted industrial processes have also generally been eligible for patent protection at least since 1981, with the Supreme Court's decision in Diamond v. Diehr.
But a process for compensating an executive? How can that be patentable? The governing standard at the Federal Circuit (without the benefit of a Supreme Court opinion on this point since 1981) is whether the process yields a useful, concrete, tangible result. That's met in the compensation method claim: if you carry out the process, you end up with a transfer of funds from a firm to an executive.
And how does this connect up with corporate law's regulations for disclosure of executive compensation? The more we mandate disclosures that chip away at trade secret protection as a way for firms to get returns on investments in process innovations (like returns on compensation method inventions in the market for manager talent), the more attractive we make patent protection for such process innovations (including by making it easier for patent owners to detect infringement by others). It strikes me that those who disfavor the rise in business method patenting for reasons internal to patent law (such as the worry that the Patent Office doesn't have sufficient expertise or resources to determine whether such inventions are really new and nonobvious) should think carefully about how business disclosure rules, which they might desire for a host of good reasons unrelated to patenting rates, interact with intellectual property rules.
Permalink | Corporate Governance| Intellectual Property| Technology | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1) | Bookmark
Four years ago, almost to the day, we had a dustup with Bayer over our too-small ciprofloxacin stockpile. The mail-borne anthrax attacks on the Senate, NBC News, and elsewhere drove the surge for more cipro. This past Friday, stories by both the Associated Press and the Financial Times show that a similar, far graver donnybrook may be upon us ... this time, over Roche's exclusive license to make tamiflu (i.e., oseltamivir), a therapy that may help fight avian flu. Stephen Gordon urges the U.S. government to push forward to make tamiflu now, and pay Roche later. Tyler Cowen urges a very different approach, focused on inducing Roche to act much faster to boost tamiflu output. Neither, however, mentions the cipro flap of four years ago. The deal we struck with Bayer for our cipro stockpile makes a helpful point for today.
Cowen quite rightly warns against expropriating Roche's tamiflu production rights, and the premium those rights bring. He focuses on dynamic efficiency: "If we confiscate property rights this time around, there won't be a Tamiflu, or its equivalent, next time."
Respecting Roche's property rights does not, however, entail paying whatever price Roche demands, no matter how high. A credible threat to trigger our compulsory license rights under TRIPS provides us with important bargaining leverage, and using it will not, I think, prevent there being a tamiflu, or its equivalent, next time.
With cipro, we bargained hard with Bayer and extracted a 46% discount, from $1.77 to $0.95 per pill. Today, Roche sells tamiflu in the U.S. for $60 per treatment course. My guess is that we can get a deep discount and still provide Roche a healthy return, so that it (and others) will continue to develop powerful antivirals and other drugs. If we need to rattle the expropriation saber in our talks with Roche, so be it.
Permalink | Contracts| Economics| Health Care| Intellectual Property| Technology | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Thanks, Gordon, and thanks to Christine and Vic as well, for inviting me to sit in with them for a little while.
Gordon mentioned a couple of projects that have taken up a lot of time recently, one being the "Things" paper; the other being my other blogs. (I'm actually part of *three* blogs altogether; the third is a group blog that focuses on happenings in my little suburban corner of Pittsburgh, Mt. Lebanon, PA.) I've also recently finished a short paper on informal groups, and I wrote earlier articles about places, and about stories. I teach IP, but maybe it's fairer to say that I write about stuff.
Gordon suggested that I post about IP/corporate law overlaps, among other things, and I'll try to do that. First up is a note about blogging itself. My hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, ran this little feature yesterday about how the world of corporate PR is catching the blogging wave:
In the past three months, large traditional firms Ketchum and Burson-Marsteller and small Web development and online marketing agency Ripple Effects Interactive, all with offices in Pittsburgh, have unveiled services to help clients manage and shape their online reputations.
The goal is to sell clients on using PR experts to sort through the confusing world of blogs, search engine marketing and other technologies such as podcasting before the online world turns on them.
That kind of us/them mentality can get a person in trouble, especially when what seem like "ordinary" questions of marketing and reputation get caught up in the tangles of trademark law. As I was reading this, I thought immediately of last week's flap involving Monsanto's heavy-handed effort to silence a critic's use of the phrase "Roundup, ready" (note the comma) as the title of a series of posts about the politics of food. That episode offers a nice illustration of a point that I make frequently in my IP classes: IP law isn't just for IP lawyers. Everyone in the corporate world needs to know some IP basics.
Permalink | Blogs and Blawgs| Intellectual Property| Marketing| Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Co-blogger Gordon Smith complains about the withdrawal symptoms of being stuck without internet even for a day. I think I have the modernization bug even worse than he does: The power went out in my house for about two hours and I was almost apopleptic. I couldn't find any candles or flashlights, couldn't leave in search of them because I couldn't find my shoes. The modem needs electricity to function, I can't do my laundry without electricity, can't see to clean up the kitchen without light, and it was too dark to read Ravelstein.
I tried reading via the light of my cell phone (it worked pretty well but I didn't want to run the battery out if the power was going to stay out for a while) or by a succession of lit matches (which didn't work well at all) before giving up and taking the time to stare into the oppressive but beautiful silence of my back porch and meditate on how depressing it must have been for those in Lincoln's Washington to face that kind of smothering darkness every night.
Surely even in North Korea they read books at night.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
The NYT offers this charming story about fruit distributors' plan to tattoo fruit with laser codes, eliminating the need for the stickers that currently mar the consumption experience. As with all business technology stories, there are different perspectives.
The consumer's [how did the reporter find this person?]:
Sticker-removal duty took Jean Lemeaux of Clarksville, Tex., half an hour one day last week.
"I was picking all the little stickers from the Piggly Wiggly off my plums and my avocado pears and my peaches," said Ms. Lemeaux, 76. "Then I had to make fruit salad out of the ones that got hurt when I took the stickers off, and then I had to wash the glue off the other ones before I put them in the fruit bowl."
"One time," she said, "I got up the next morning and looked in the mirror and there were two of them up in my hair."
The entrepreneur's:
"With the right scanning technology the produce could even be bar-coded with lots of information: where it comes from, who grew it, who picked it, even how many calories it has per serving," said [the entrepreneur]. "You could have a green pepper that was completely covered with coding. Or you could sell advertising space." [Emphasis added - and I can't say how much I look forward to reading ads for new cars on my morning grapefruit]
And, the artist's:
"For literally hundreds of years, artists have immersed themselves in the color and curvature of the perfect peach or apple," said Joseph Rishel, a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art who specializes in Cézanne. "So a tattoo sounds like a desecration."
"But then again," Mr. Rishel said, "there are those who say that Cézanne himself used artificial fruit."
Interesting question comes to mind: is tattooed fruit still kosher?
Permalink | Technology | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
Dreamworks is in trouble. The company's stock price is sliding, it's being investigated by the SEC, and majority owner Paul Allen wants to cash in ... but the market won't allow it. The big problem: DVD sales are sluggish. The same problem has hit Pixar. What is happening?
I have seen lots of theories, but here is mine, borne of personal experience. When I look at the wall of DVDs in my home while I am watching a program on our satellite television, I ask myself, "Why did we buy all of those?" We rarely watch any of them. We have, quite simply, reached a point of saturation. We may not be alone. The existence of pay per view movies on satellite, the ability to rent almost any video I want from Blockbuster (on the three occasions in a year when I get that urge), and the prospect of streaming video in the near future combine to dampen my enthusiasm for DVDs. Especially that last point: who wants to be stuck with an enormous library of discs that our children will view in the same light that we view 8-track tapes?
P.S. Here is a strangely contrarian forecast for European DVD sales.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1) | Bookmark
Looks like I started a fight over at Metafilter. And with my first post!
Permalink | Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
If you have ever sold a home, you might get excited about this anticipated DOJ lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors. No, the DOJ is not merely interested in the fact that nationwide, most realtors magically charge a 6% broker fee to sell your house. But, the DOJ is concerned that the NAR passed an amendment to its bylaws allowing realtors to withhold their listings from online brokers if the online brokers charged less than 6% as a broker fee. In an industry where the largest service that a broker offers is inventory information, regulators say that this bylaw will lessen competition between discount brokers and full-service realtors.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | Bookmark
I just spent the last half hour over at The Huffington Post. Blogs should never be judged too harshly on their first day, especially this one, which has a crazy-quilt of bloggers, almost all of whom are new to the medium. Although I am not ready to give the site a thumbs up, I will give it an unqualified "not as bad as I had anticipated."
The range of topics is pretty staggering, from a very serious post about consumer debt by lawprof Elizabeth Warren to a plea for help with a lemon squares recipe by Greg Gutfeld.(He begins, "Hello everyone! This is my first post!! Ever. I've never posted before!" This is sort of like a first kiss, I suppose. Pretty exciting for the kisser, but not very interesting for everyone else.)
Most of the posts are pretty tentative, and I didn't see much that was worth linking, but I did enjoy Richard Bradley's post entitled "What is Hilary Rosen Smoking?" Bradley is responding to an earlier post by Rosen. (Tip for a new blogger: link the earlier post!) In a post called "Steve Jobs, Let My Music Go," Rosen wrote about Apple's choice to link iPod with iTunes:
[K]eeping the iTunes system a proprietary technology to prevent anyone from using multiple (read Microsoft) music systems is the most anti-consumer and user unfriendly thing any god can do. Is this the same Jobs that railed for years about the Microsoft monopoly?
Is this the same Rosen who "defended the interests of the big record conglomerates, a group of
companies which treated its customers with such contempt that millions
of young people simply took to stealing music"? That's what Bradley wants to know, and I had the same question.
Permalink | Technology | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1) | Bookmark