Tag Archives: communication

The First Amendment and Video Games

Posted by on 06/27/2011 2 comments

The US Supreme Court struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tional California’s ban on sell­ing and rent­ing vio­lent video games to minors.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/08–1448.pdf
Which is how it should be.
Except it’s not, really.
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An Answer to the FTC’s Question?

Posted by on 12/09/2009 No comments

While I was perus­ing the twit­ter­stream yes­ter­day, @ProfJonathon shared a link to a new web ser­vice named CMP​.ly. Accord­ing to the web­site, it pur­ports to be a “dis­clo­sure engine” for every­one online — from blog­gers to Agen­cies.
My first ques­tion to ProfJonathon was whether it was rec­og­nized by the FTC. Since he was merely shar­ing a link and was in no way asso­ci­ated with the ser­vice, we agreed that it was an inter­est­ing intel­lec­tual exer­cise and we each went our sep­a­rate ways. Then, I got a response from @cmply:

@ProfJonathan @mglickman — Good ques­tion. Although the FTC can­not endorse a par­tic­u­lar solu­tion we met and reviewed our sys­tem. DM for info.

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Realities of Criminal Defense — Updated

Posted by on 11/23/2009 4 comments

UPDATE
Please take a moment and read Scott’s and Rick’s posts. I severely abridged their posts to the point of ruin­ing their mean­ings, and I apol­o­gize about that.
This post has been mod­i­fied in response to Rick’s com­ment below.

Yes­ter­day brought another inter­est­ing post from Scott Greenfield’s Sim­ple Jus­tice. He had been made aware of a blog by a new law school grad­u­ate with hopes of enter­ing the world of crim­i­nal defense. The author mono­logued about the moral dilemma a defense attor­ney has when rep­re­sent­ing a “guilty-as-charged” client. Her ulti­mate answer to it was that a defense attor­ney has a duty to tell her client’s story in order to achieve a fair outcome.

Scott, lodged in a les­son about the dan­gers of blog­ging (Loose blog posts Sink egos, or some­thing of the sort), explained that there is no moral dilemma. A defense attor­ney is there to beat the pros­e­cu­tion and win free­dom for his client. It is, after all, an adver­sar­ial sys­tem. (Dis­claimer: This is my sum­mary. Read his com­ment.)

That was yes­ter­day.
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The sum is not greater than the whole of its parts

Posted by on 11/09/2009 1 comment

Dear World,

Social Media.
Social.
Media.
Why do these two words con­fuse the hell out of so many peo­ple? I don’t just mean con­fuse in the whim­si­cal way your par­ents might be con­fused about how to open a file in an email. I mean con­fused — to the point where peo­ple end up doing things com­pletely bass-ackwards and screw­ing them­selves over.

Yes­ter­day, Scott Green­field and Brian Tan­nebaum posted excel­lent, some­what related and extra­or­di­nar­ily rel­e­vant state­ments regard­ing the need for lawyers to sub­scribe to and fol­low an eth­i­cal guide­line. The over­lap between them lies in a lawyer’s online pres­ence, and since I am so obvi­ously steeped in online real­ity that I instantly asso­ci­ated those verbs as online col­lo­qui­alisms (“sub­scribe” to a feed and “fol­low” on twit­ter) I will focus mainly on the online aspect of the issue.
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Quick rundown of interesting tidbits of the week…

Posted by on 12/10/2008 No comments

I’m in train­ing this week for Script­ing and Automat­ing Web­Sphere Appli­ca­tion Server (WAS) v.6.1. I cur­rently script and auto­mate WASv.6.1 but I do it much the way a typ­i­cal tod­dler solves dif­fer­en­tial cal­cu­lus. Hence, the training.

Betwixt the lec­tures and labs I’ve been see­ing some inter­est­ing things I wanted to share (read as tweet) but haven’t been able to (thanks to a band­width tight agency around the hol­i­days restrict­ing every­thing from twit­ter to gmail):

Well, that’s all for now. Time to head home.

Email can be hazardous to you health

Posted by on 11/20/2008 No comments

Inter­est­ing arti­cle dis­cussing con­flict res­o­lu­tion through var­i­ous media for­mats:
http://​dav​e​fleet​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​1​/​h​o​w​-​r​i​c​h​-​i​s​-​y​o​u​r​-​c​o​m​m​u​n​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​-​c​o​n​f​l​i​ct/ I wanted to share my expeiences with email in particular.

The use­less­ness of email as a seri­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion method can­not be over­stated. I have stepped into heated email threads across divi­sions by walk­ing to one side’s desk and sim­ply stat­ing the same argu­ment that was made by email. The result? Smiles, coöperation.

Have you ever received an email that infu­ri­ated you? I have. I must admit that I have sent emails that I knew would frus­trate peo­ple. One word responses, delib­er­ately not answer­ing the unasked-but-implied ques­tion. When I’ve had my cof­fee, though, I will never reply to an email that gets to me when I receive it. If it’s pos­si­ble I’ll walk over to dis­cuss the issue with the per­son; if that’s not pos­si­ble, I’ll wait until I can write a ratio­nal and unemo­tional response.

Using email with­out actively think­ing about its pos­si­ble pit­falls will never work for you.