One of the most convenient things about the Internet--to the mind of the beleaguered law student, at least--is the fact that jurisprudence is literally only a click away. The accessibility not only allows the average Malcolm denizen to escape the confines of the library, but provides an opportunity to access the most recent jurisprudence and comments on prevailing case law from the comforts of his or her own home.
I used to think that many older professionals were simply intent on bemoaning the glory days of their youth whenever they commented that technology has done much to deprive the new generation of aspiring lawyers of "old school training." Some professors still refuse to have laptops opened in their classes, preferring that students take down their notes by hand, while others require hand-written summaries of cases and jurisprudence. It seemed like such a lamentable waste of time, effort, and available resources, in much the same way making your own digest of a case appeared to be an attempt to reinvent the wheel. As in many things, however, four years in law school has taught me to have a little more faith in the teachings of my elders.
Looking back, I realize that the lessons that come easiest to mind are those branded into memory by countless rereadings necessitated by one professor's clean-table policy. In contrast, I find myself scrabbling for my codal in instances when I only gave my readings a cursory glance, secure in the knowledge that a (comparably complete) digest is available in the unfortunate case that I am called to recite. Most of all, I have realized that I am my best, OLA-worthy intern with reference to obscure aspects of law made familiar by foregone sleep, coffee, and the simple terror of a professor. Older and wiser, I've turned my back on lex libris and referred to the original SCRA publication--having learned that not all things convenient are the best or even accurate.
True, resort to technology has made my life as a student far easier and convenient than students of twenty, thirty years ago. Wehave photocopying machines operating at reduced prices, the Internet, and perhaps most importantly, air-conditioned classrooms. However, as with many things, it seems that the best way to learn the law is to go back to basics, at least in my experience. Indeed, technology can be very helpful in the short-term--certainly at midnight, when Blessings is closed. In the long run, on the other hand, I defer to my betters and advocate for learning the old-fashioned way.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Year of the Rat and The Use of Technology to Get Lucky
What kind of luck will the Year of the Rat bring to us?
According to the Chinese Zodiac, which has a twelve-year cycle, the Year of 2008 is Year of the Rat (Earth), which officially begins on February 7, 2008 (a week before Valentine’s Day) and ends on January 25, 2009. This year should be a time of renewal in so many ways. A Rat Year is a time of hard work and activity, just like what the rats do. This is a good year to begin a new job, get married (or get a new boyfriend or girlfriend or both, depending on your preference), launch a product or make a fresh start. Although ventures begun now may not yield fast returns, opportunities will come for people who are well prepared and resourceful. The best way to succeed, according to the Chinese, is to be patient, let things develop slowly, and make the most of every opening you can find. People born in an Earth Rat are said to be logical realists, shrewd, charming, ambitious, and inventive. Of course, the entire horoscope must be considered when making any personality assessment.
Since we know now that the Rat Year, is a year of plenty, bringing opportunity and good prospects, we can try observing and speculating out of fluctuations in the prices of commodities and the stock market. Hopefully, the world economy in general will boom. Businesses could be on the upswing and fortunes can be made, meaning, it will be an easy time to accumulate wealth. But we should not take chances or unnecessary risks because the Year of the Rat is still ruled by the cold of winter and the darkness of night. What does that mean? Those who speculate indiscriminately and overextend themselves could end up really sad.
So what do Americans think about the Year of the Rat? With the oil prices at its highest to start the year (USD 100 per barrel) and the American dollar at its lowest in almost seven years, the U.S. could very well head into a recession soon. The U.S. Federal Reserve has already slashed borrowing costs by 50 basis points to 4.75 percent to try and shore up the world's biggest economy and is widely expected to lower interest rates again. Remember the saying, “When America sneezes, the whole world catches flu.” I’m not sure if this is still true.
What do the Chinese think? Well, to them, there’s no turning back. The Shanghai Composite Index was trading at 1800 points around this time of last year. Today, I just checked and it’s 5361.57. My goodness, surging Chinese equities had formed a bubble. But bubbles always grow too big just to explode badly.
And what do Filipinos think? President Arroyo recently called for a summit on oil price change. And who is organizing this summit? Of course, the Secretary of Energy – General Angelo Reyes. I will not comment on that. Just check this out. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view_article.php?article_id=110378
Likewise, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is believed to have been intervening in the currency market in early trade today (Friday) when the peso hit its best level against the US dollar since year 2000. Why? Too strong a peso can cause a sudden surge in our trade deficit by encouraging more imports. Please see this:
http://business.inquirer.net/money/topstories/view_article.php?article_id=110356
In any event, our technology today allows us to monitor these financial matters at any time. So my advice? Make a fresh start. Don’t count on your dollars (especially not with your old lover). Bet on our peso. It’s the Year of the Rat – the year to make fortunes out of calculated risks.
According to the Chinese Zodiac, which has a twelve-year cycle, the Year of 2008 is Year of the Rat (Earth), which officially begins on February 7, 2008 (a week before Valentine’s Day) and ends on January 25, 2009. This year should be a time of renewal in so many ways. A Rat Year is a time of hard work and activity, just like what the rats do. This is a good year to begin a new job, get married (or get a new boyfriend or girlfriend or both, depending on your preference), launch a product or make a fresh start. Although ventures begun now may not yield fast returns, opportunities will come for people who are well prepared and resourceful. The best way to succeed, according to the Chinese, is to be patient, let things develop slowly, and make the most of every opening you can find. People born in an Earth Rat are said to be logical realists, shrewd, charming, ambitious, and inventive. Of course, the entire horoscope must be considered when making any personality assessment.
Since we know now that the Rat Year, is a year of plenty, bringing opportunity and good prospects, we can try observing and speculating out of fluctuations in the prices of commodities and the stock market. Hopefully, the world economy in general will boom. Businesses could be on the upswing and fortunes can be made, meaning, it will be an easy time to accumulate wealth. But we should not take chances or unnecessary risks because the Year of the Rat is still ruled by the cold of winter and the darkness of night. What does that mean? Those who speculate indiscriminately and overextend themselves could end up really sad.
So what do Americans think about the Year of the Rat? With the oil prices at its highest to start the year (USD 100 per barrel) and the American dollar at its lowest in almost seven years, the U.S. could very well head into a recession soon. The U.S. Federal Reserve has already slashed borrowing costs by 50 basis points to 4.75 percent to try and shore up the world's biggest economy and is widely expected to lower interest rates again. Remember the saying, “When America sneezes, the whole world catches flu.” I’m not sure if this is still true.
What do the Chinese think? Well, to them, there’s no turning back. The Shanghai Composite Index was trading at 1800 points around this time of last year. Today, I just checked and it’s 5361.57. My goodness, surging Chinese equities had formed a bubble. But bubbles always grow too big just to explode badly.
And what do Filipinos think? President Arroyo recently called for a summit on oil price change. And who is organizing this summit? Of course, the Secretary of Energy – General Angelo Reyes. I will not comment on that. Just check this out. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view_article.php?article_id=110378
Likewise, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is believed to have been intervening in the currency market in early trade today (Friday) when the peso hit its best level against the US dollar since year 2000. Why? Too strong a peso can cause a sudden surge in our trade deficit by encouraging more imports. Please see this:
http://business.inquirer.net/money/topstories/view_article.php?article_id=110356
In any event, our technology today allows us to monitor these financial matters at any time. So my advice? Make a fresh start. Don’t count on your dollars (especially not with your old lover). Bet on our peso. It’s the Year of the Rat – the year to make fortunes out of calculated risks.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Hacking on Heaven’s Door
So, the DOJ website got hacked. Hmm, well, there was no serious damage, except maybe a little embarrassment on the part of the department. The hack took place sometime after the New Year celebration. Apparently, instead of featuring the picture of Secretary Gonzalez, the website displayed a flash presentation of Enchanted Kingdom complete with background music. Cute.
The Secretary was not pleased of course. He raised security concerns and the possibility that while the hack did not do any harm, it was very much malicious. He even posed the possibility that it might just be a test hack in preparation for a more destructive attack. Thus, he called the NBI anti-fraud and IT division to investigate and even contacted PLDT, the company hosting the government website, to give a report regarding the incident.
While I was listening to this, I was wondering what is actually in the DOJ website that the Secretary would speculate that it might get hacked again. I honestly believe that whoever did this was simply bored during the Christmas break. I think it could have been any government site actually. Perhaps the DOJ website was randomly chosen or maybe the culprit was simply banking on the fact that the Secretary would get irritated, talk to the media and give him the publicity that he wanted. In which case, it seems like mission accomplished.
Of course this does not mean that I am tolerant of these things. I honestly think that such an act is criminal, one that gets in the way of public service. The Filipino people are paying for that website and whenever the website does not properly function, that is time and money down the drain. Furthermore, I think this is a waste of talent. True, such an act shows the ingenuity and skill of Filipinos in I.T. (I’m betting it’s a Filipino because it featured Enchanted Kingdom) but what good is it if it is directed at such useless ends? We have what it takes to be the best in the world. Now, if only we can focus our energies towards something more productive then maybe we would become a better nation.
I hope the investigation actually leads somewhere. It would be a very sad thing if the government cannot stay ahead of bad people when it comes to IT training and development. How then can it enforce our laws and protect even more sensitive information if it is susceptible to these petty hacks? Simply put, it cannot.
P. S. My apologies by the way to anyone who wanted to write a blog about this topic. I know this news was practically screaming to become a blog entry. I was thinking of a topic to write about when the news was featured on TV. It was fate. I just had to write it.
The Secretary was not pleased of course. He raised security concerns and the possibility that while the hack did not do any harm, it was very much malicious. He even posed the possibility that it might just be a test hack in preparation for a more destructive attack. Thus, he called the NBI anti-fraud and IT division to investigate and even contacted PLDT, the company hosting the government website, to give a report regarding the incident.
While I was listening to this, I was wondering what is actually in the DOJ website that the Secretary would speculate that it might get hacked again. I honestly believe that whoever did this was simply bored during the Christmas break. I think it could have been any government site actually. Perhaps the DOJ website was randomly chosen or maybe the culprit was simply banking on the fact that the Secretary would get irritated, talk to the media and give him the publicity that he wanted. In which case, it seems like mission accomplished.
Of course this does not mean that I am tolerant of these things. I honestly think that such an act is criminal, one that gets in the way of public service. The Filipino people are paying for that website and whenever the website does not properly function, that is time and money down the drain. Furthermore, I think this is a waste of talent. True, such an act shows the ingenuity and skill of Filipinos in I.T. (I’m betting it’s a Filipino because it featured Enchanted Kingdom) but what good is it if it is directed at such useless ends? We have what it takes to be the best in the world. Now, if only we can focus our energies towards something more productive then maybe we would become a better nation.
I hope the investigation actually leads somewhere. It would be a very sad thing if the government cannot stay ahead of bad people when it comes to IT training and development. How then can it enforce our laws and protect even more sensitive information if it is susceptible to these petty hacks? Simply put, it cannot.
P. S. My apologies by the way to anyone who wanted to write a blog about this topic. I know this news was practically screaming to become a blog entry. I was thinking of a topic to write about when the news was featured on TV. It was fate. I just had to write it.
scandals-per-second
Step 1. Go to http://www.google.com/
Step 2. Type "malaysian health minister"
And boom, Results 1 - 10 of about 223,000 for malaysian health minister in 0.12 seconds. In a tiny fraction of a second, I was able to verify this "top news" on local TV I've seen tonight. The International Herald Tribune reports:
Malaysia's health minister resigned Wednesday after admitting that he and a female friend were the couple in a secretly filmed sex video that has severely embarrassed the government.
A one-hour DVD recording circulated anonymously last week showed Health Minister Chua Soi Lek, a married man with three children, performing sexual acts with the woman in a hotel room.On Tuesday, Chua, 61, admitted he was the man in the video and described the woman as a "personal friend." He refused to elaborate.
The former physician has risen fast in the government in recent years, but the scandal has turned into a high-profile embarrassment for Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who brought Chua into the cabinet in 2004.
Being helplessly distracted by nature, I have two thoughts simultaneously in my mind right now. One, scandal spreads too damn fast nowadays. And two, google is a whole lot faster. I'm amazed at how information can travel at this rate. One minute some enterprising person sees a distinguished politician enters a hotel room with a woman decidedly not his wife. The next minute the person sets up his video camera and hits record. A few moments after that, the file is all over the interwebs, being featured on every geek habitat in the planet. Now, if the Malaysian health minister were aware of this, he would've double-checked for holes in the walls.
typosquatting
This evening while surfing the net for the latest happening in the IT world, I came across this news headline: "Microsoft sues domain name registrar for typosquatting." This was followed by about 30 seconds of head-scratching. Typo-what?! Apparently, the practice of "typosquatting" or as some would call it, "cybersquatting", is the act of snatching up domain names that are confusingly similar to a popular company's marks in order to profit from Web advertising. According to IT World, "typosquatting is the practice of registering domain names that contain misspellings of trademark terms. Cybersquatting is the registration of a variant of a trademark."
The offense is basically a form of trademark infringement, rooted in the protection of one's intellectual property. In this instance, the domain registrar that Microsoft is suing is called Red Registrar, which according to Microsoft owns the following domain names: windowslivecare.com, msnmesnger.com and ageofmathology.com. As the IT World article reported, web surfers may be tricked into clicking ads on the typosquatting sites instead of the true Microsoft sites. In IP Rights terms, the bogus sites get to ride on the goodwill of the goodwill of the popular company's name and amass profits from this.
The suit was filed by Microsoft against Red Registrar in Seattle on December 4, but was actually precedented by similar law suits filed by other big names such as Yahoo and Dell against another domain registrar.
In this day and age, more and more suits are being filed with causes of action rooted in intellectual property. These suits are being complicated by the element of information technology. I wonder how many more curiously named causes of action will arise in the future, such as typosquatting.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
PDF Publishing of LAW Books?
Nowadays it is quite common to see law students carrying around laptops wherein all of their class notes are stored as well as soft copies of the beloved codal. However, hard copies of books and annotations are still used as the insight of commentators is sometimes necessary in order to understand our country's laws. These books take up space and students who cannot afford to buy their own copies consume tons and tons of long bond and short bond paper in order to xerox the books
Why not just sell electronic copies of law books in pdf form that are appropriately coded thru watermarks on every page in order to save space? Such a system was adopted by Monte Cook, a well known former Dungeons and Dragons' roleplaying game designer, when he launched his own roleplaying line. And it worked. Nowadays, pdf publishing is the preferred mode by which rpg fans buy books online which would cost too much to ship overseas. Excessive import duties and taxes are avoided as the information does not pass thru the government bean counters but goes straight to the buyer's computer via the information highway.
If a proper system is set in place wherein the purchaser of the pdf can be traced thru his tin or credit card then it would be possible for the author of the book or the publisher to determine the identity of the purchaser of the watermark coded pdf and sue them in the event that the pdf is pirated.
Under the current set up, book author's have arrangements with publishers wherein they earn a commission for every book sold. The goal is obviously to sell the book at a high price as the publisher must recover the expenses of production as well as make a profit. The excessive price leads students to just xerox the book.
Realistically, law students have access to the internet and computers. Internet connectivity is a necessity nowadays and access to a computer is easy for everyone as demonstrated by the numerous Filipino Friendster accounts. If law students have no access to a credit card then the law school can set up a credit account for them a la PAYPAL which they can use to transact with the online book sellers. The added cost to the school can be born by the students in the form of "miscellaneous charges".
Why not just sell electronic copies of law books in pdf form that are appropriately coded thru watermarks on every page in order to save space? Such a system was adopted by Monte Cook, a well known former Dungeons and Dragons' roleplaying game designer, when he launched his own roleplaying line. And it worked. Nowadays, pdf publishing is the preferred mode by which rpg fans buy books online which would cost too much to ship overseas. Excessive import duties and taxes are avoided as the information does not pass thru the government bean counters but goes straight to the buyer's computer via the information highway.
If a proper system is set in place wherein the purchaser of the pdf can be traced thru his tin or credit card then it would be possible for the author of the book or the publisher to determine the identity of the purchaser of the watermark coded pdf and sue them in the event that the pdf is pirated.
Under the current set up, book author's have arrangements with publishers wherein they earn a commission for every book sold. The goal is obviously to sell the book at a high price as the publisher must recover the expenses of production as well as make a profit. The excessive price leads students to just xerox the book.
Realistically, law students have access to the internet and computers. Internet connectivity is a necessity nowadays and access to a computer is easy for everyone as demonstrated by the numerous Filipino Friendster accounts. If law students have no access to a credit card then the law school can set up a credit account for them a la PAYPAL which they can use to transact with the online book sellers. The added cost to the school can be born by the students in the form of "miscellaneous charges".
SMS "Marketing"
Now that the holidays are over, I'm sure most of us are exhausted because of all the preparations. While buying gifts, putting up the trees, attending the simbang gabi, and shopping and cooking for noche buena and media noche are fun, they can also be very tiring.
Year in and year out, I always hear my Nanay complain about how she never has enough time to prepare for the Christmas and New Year dinners. And every year, she promises to prepare earlier so that she won't be too exhausted to wait for 12 midnight to strike. To my family's relief, she didn't complain as much this year. We asked her why things seemed a bit easier now and she told us her secret.
In the previous years, she had to spend about two hours in the market to buy all the things she needs for the dinners. This time, she only needs less than thirty minutes and then she's out of the market. Using her PR skills, she befriended her suki in the market. They became so close that they exchanged cellphone numbers. Using this to her advantage, my Nanay would text her orders to her suki an hour or two before she goes to the market. This gives her suki the time to prepare her order. The fish is cleaned, the chicken lollipop is prepared, etc. Then when Nanay arrives at the market, all she has to do is to pay and pick up her orders. Then she can go back home and start cooking.
My Nanay's strategy gives her more time to prepare for the dinners. It also reduces her stress. Good for her. And it's good for me and my siblings too because that means we get to eat more yummy food during the holidays. Hope we all had delicious noche buenas and media noches. ;-)
Year in and year out, I always hear my Nanay complain about how she never has enough time to prepare for the Christmas and New Year dinners. And every year, she promises to prepare earlier so that she won't be too exhausted to wait for 12 midnight to strike. To my family's relief, she didn't complain as much this year. We asked her why things seemed a bit easier now and she told us her secret.
In the previous years, she had to spend about two hours in the market to buy all the things she needs for the dinners. This time, she only needs less than thirty minutes and then she's out of the market. Using her PR skills, she befriended her suki in the market. They became so close that they exchanged cellphone numbers. Using this to her advantage, my Nanay would text her orders to her suki an hour or two before she goes to the market. This gives her suki the time to prepare her order. The fish is cleaned, the chicken lollipop is prepared, etc. Then when Nanay arrives at the market, all she has to do is to pay and pick up her orders. Then she can go back home and start cooking.
My Nanay's strategy gives her more time to prepare for the dinners. It also reduces her stress. Good for her. And it's good for me and my siblings too because that means we get to eat more yummy food during the holidays. Hope we all had delicious noche buenas and media noches. ;-)
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