I have been thinking for at least 10 years that e-books' time has come but the technology world has either not gotten it or I'm too optimistic about the costs. Basically I advocate that we need electronic reading devices that can duplicate all the good features of paper books (ruggedness, ease of reading, little power requirement). Yes, there are things that technology can do to improve on the 500 year old paper book but the enhancements must not come at the cost of simplicity. People do not want and will not use a reader that is anything more than marginally more complex than current paperbacks. That means you can't have buttons all over the place and it can't be big and heavy and it can't be hard to read in daylight. People just don't care enough about "power features" to give up the convenience of reading an old fashioned book.
It also needs to be cheap.
Amazon today released Kindle, a machine that satisfies some of the requirements of a hit product but not others. It is allegedly light, has a long lasting battery and is easy to read in daylight. It even improves on traditional books by having built-in wireless for purchasing new books over the airwaves.
Unfortunately it's too clunky. What's with all those buttons? Didn't Amazon get the memo from Apple? Touch screens and software-based keyboards that appear when you need them are where it's at. And the price is outrageous. I'm not saying that it doesn't cost that much to build—it very well may—but we're trying to supplant paperbacks here! Who wants to pay US$400 for for a machine to read books when you can buy actual books for $10 or for less than a buck if they're used?
The price needs to come down, the screen needs to be bigger (and colour would be nice), and they need to get rid of all those ridiculous hardware-based buttons. If only Apple would bring their brilliant design skills to this market.
Yes, I know this has nothing to do with law. I'm a philomath. Sue me.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
I told you so
As I speculated recently, the ball is beginning to unravel for the traditional music industry companies. Their perennial woes (falling sales, ridiculous alienation of customers, defecting artists) are now beginning to hit them in their stock prices.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Credit trackers finally taking the right steps
A while ago I posted my general thoughts on why the "identity theft issue" is not one that consumers can or should be expected to solve. In a nutshell, the narrow point in the process is the credit tracking industry, since there are 3 companies in the US, 2 in Canada that control all access to consumer credit by managing "credit histories". If these companies stop allowing just about anyone to "authorize" a credit enquiry (and, consequently, perhaps get credit in someone else's name and therefore cause a lender to begin adding false records to the victim's history) then the whole identity theft scam falls apart. If knowing my name, address and SIN is not enough to convince the credit bureau that you're me, you can't steal my identity (at least in the manner typically used to falsely obtain credit in my name).
Finally, all three credit bureaus in the US are offering "credit freeze" plans, where a consumer can put a freeze on his or her credit history so no lender can receive a report. To successfully apply for credit the consumer will likely need to allow his or her credit history to be sent to the potential lender so there is a process for a temporary "thaw". A brief search didn't show any similar program in Canada yet, unfortunately.
This is a good first start but there a few disturbing things about this news. First, it turns out that 39 states already had laws requiring credit tracking agencies to offer credit freeze options. However, only now is this service being offered to consumers in the 11 states negligent enough not to enact such legislation. Worse, Equifax (at least) is charging an exorbitant amount of $10 per freeze/thaw. Why is this exorbitant? Because this process should be so trivially inexpensive for them to manage (after initial setup) that $10 per transaction is essentially $10 pure profit on every transaction. If it's not, it's only because Equifax has not implemented its system efficiently.
So we are moving toward a system where consumers can control access to their credit histories, which is good, but control over their private information is coming at a ridiculously high price, which is very bad. The credit reporting agencies have made a healthy profit for a long time off consumers' credit histories. They do not need to make further profit off our ability to permit or deny access to our own information.
Finally, all three credit bureaus in the US are offering "credit freeze" plans, where a consumer can put a freeze on his or her credit history so no lender can receive a report. To successfully apply for credit the consumer will likely need to allow his or her credit history to be sent to the potential lender so there is a process for a temporary "thaw". A brief search didn't show any similar program in Canada yet, unfortunately.
This is a good first start but there a few disturbing things about this news. First, it turns out that 39 states already had laws requiring credit tracking agencies to offer credit freeze options. However, only now is this service being offered to consumers in the 11 states negligent enough not to enact such legislation. Worse, Equifax (at least) is charging an exorbitant amount of $10 per freeze/thaw. Why is this exorbitant? Because this process should be so trivially inexpensive for them to manage (after initial setup) that $10 per transaction is essentially $10 pure profit on every transaction. If it's not, it's only because Equifax has not implemented its system efficiently.
So we are moving toward a system where consumers can control access to their credit histories, which is good, but control over their private information is coming at a ridiculously high price, which is very bad. The credit reporting agencies have made a healthy profit for a long time off consumers' credit histories. They do not need to make further profit off our ability to permit or deny access to our own information.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Canadian Law School Rankings
This just in from the "it had to happen sooner or later" department: as reported at the "Law Eh?" blog, Maclean's Magazine has created a ranking of Canadian law schools. This might seem silly to you since there are only 16 Common Law law schools in the country (plus another 5 Civil Law law schools) but I guess you gotta rank something.
Now I can proudly tell all my US friends that I go to a "top 10" law school. We might as well rename ourselves YaleVic.
Now I can proudly tell all my US friends that I go to a "top 10" law school. We might as well rename ourselves YaleVic.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
A waste of time
Something I've observed over the past year is that the "typical" class in law school is a waste of time for me. This isn't just an indictment of law school because I could make the same claim about most undergraduate courses I've seen.
The problem is that I don't learn well using the method of "teaching" employed in law school. This method typically involves a professor simply standing in front of a class and lecturing. Students are expected to understand the lecture and integrate it into their overall knowledge in real time or, at least, to furiously take notes and later read through them and do the integration/understanding. Often, if I have done the readings in advance, the lecture is repetitious and too tediously slow to stay focused on. If I have not done the readings, the lecture is often too rapid or complex to follow.
One strategy many students use to deal with this problem is to use "outlines"—class notes transcribed by past students—which they update or modify as they like. This removes the need to write everything down in real time as someone else has already done the grunt work.
This is only a coping mechanism for dealing with a flawed system though. The simple reality is that I do not learn well using this method. Sometimes I barely learn at all this way. I learn best by digesting smaller concepts and then applying them to practical examples. Ideally, I work best if I also get sufficient feedback at the practical application stage. This is why computer science was so relatively easy for me: the classes were not taught any better but I could ignore them because the textbooks in that field are well laid out and the subject matter lends itself to practical assignments. Best yet, when a student works through a computer science assignment, there is immediate, near constant feedback about the correctness of the work. Computer programs often work well or fail spectacularly.
I believe that a legal education might better be acquired the same way. I claim that students don't rail against 100% finals (common in law school courses) just because they hate being tested; I claim they also recognize that such methodology is not helpful to them. It is intuitively plain that having little to no feedback on your ability to apply knowledge and skills until the very last minute, when it is too late to correct, is a horribly ineffective way to learn. I would prefer many smaller assignments with some mechanism for plenty of feedback throughout the year. This, of course, means a lot more work for professors both in preparation and marking. Also, professors generally are not actually teachers and have very little education about education. And even professional teachers often have little or no education about "homework" construction.
This does not mean that no students like the current, common methodology in law courses. I realize that there are numerous different types of learning styles. Some people surely learn best from exactly the methods law school are using right now. In fact, the reason that many university courses are taught this way may be that many people who excel at learning from this method end up getting PhDs and becoming professors and repeating the cycle. But I'm not one of them.
I'm not saying there is no benefit to attending class, of course. Being physically present often lessens panic at the idea of missing something; even if the whole material is not absorbed easily often a vague understanding can be gleaned through class attendance; and there are many administrative details that can be gathered in class (exam dates and content, class cancellations, and so on). Still, after nearly a year and a half, I can safely say that the classroom is not where I'm acquiring any significant proportion of my education. :-(
The problem is that I don't learn well using the method of "teaching" employed in law school. This method typically involves a professor simply standing in front of a class and lecturing. Students are expected to understand the lecture and integrate it into their overall knowledge in real time or, at least, to furiously take notes and later read through them and do the integration/understanding. Often, if I have done the readings in advance, the lecture is repetitious and too tediously slow to stay focused on. If I have not done the readings, the lecture is often too rapid or complex to follow.
One strategy many students use to deal with this problem is to use "outlines"—class notes transcribed by past students—which they update or modify as they like. This removes the need to write everything down in real time as someone else has already done the grunt work.
This is only a coping mechanism for dealing with a flawed system though. The simple reality is that I do not learn well using this method. Sometimes I barely learn at all this way. I learn best by digesting smaller concepts and then applying them to practical examples. Ideally, I work best if I also get sufficient feedback at the practical application stage. This is why computer science was so relatively easy for me: the classes were not taught any better but I could ignore them because the textbooks in that field are well laid out and the subject matter lends itself to practical assignments. Best yet, when a student works through a computer science assignment, there is immediate, near constant feedback about the correctness of the work. Computer programs often work well or fail spectacularly.
I believe that a legal education might better be acquired the same way. I claim that students don't rail against 100% finals (common in law school courses) just because they hate being tested; I claim they also recognize that such methodology is not helpful to them. It is intuitively plain that having little to no feedback on your ability to apply knowledge and skills until the very last minute, when it is too late to correct, is a horribly ineffective way to learn. I would prefer many smaller assignments with some mechanism for plenty of feedback throughout the year. This, of course, means a lot more work for professors both in preparation and marking. Also, professors generally are not actually teachers and have very little education about education. And even professional teachers often have little or no education about "homework" construction.
This does not mean that no students like the current, common methodology in law courses. I realize that there are numerous different types of learning styles. Some people surely learn best from exactly the methods law school are using right now. In fact, the reason that many university courses are taught this way may be that many people who excel at learning from this method end up getting PhDs and becoming professors and repeating the cycle. But I'm not one of them.
I'm not saying there is no benefit to attending class, of course. Being physically present often lessens panic at the idea of missing something; even if the whole material is not absorbed easily often a vague understanding can be gleaned through class attendance; and there are many administrative details that can be gathered in class (exam dates and content, class cancellations, and so on). Still, after nearly a year and a half, I can safely say that the classroom is not where I'm acquiring any significant proportion of my education. :-(
The best decade EVER
Today is the 10th anniversary of the birth of the best thing in this world... Happy birthday, Brokeback Varley!
Vancouver here I come!
I suppose I should update this record with the news that I will be working at Alexander Holburn Beaudin & Lang LLP for the summer of 2008, where I will diligently not burn the place down!
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