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Luis Villa's Home Page 

Ramblings on law school in New York, free software, and the spaces in between.
Post Frequency: 1.5/day Last Entry: February 26, 2020 at 00:21:04 Recent Entries: 244
By Luis Villa
Go to Luis Villa's Home Page, find other Law Students blogs, or browse all law blogs.
class notetaking rant
Posted on February 14, 2008So… if you’re given a wiki to take notes into to share with your classmates, and you’re typing notes, why would you not type notes into the wiki? Lots of typing and at least some visible notetaking last week, but nothing in the wiki...
Evangelia?s thesis available online
Posted on February 14, 2008I got an email today from Evangelia Berdou, who came to a couple guadecs to meet, greet, and pick GNOME-y brains. Turns out she’s published the fruits of her GNOME research- her PhD thesis. I haven’t had time to read it yet, but I’m sure it is interesting- she had a habit of asking very [...
tech law journal blogging
Posted on February 13, 2008Reference point: another student tech-law journal that is blogging, fairly successfully, it looks like. Maybe it is time to get all the tech-law journals that blog under one roof so we can swap notes… :)
Bzzzzt.
Posted on February 12, 2008Wrong answer. giant by brom. License: The six month release cycle is not an all-controlling god, and bugs in one known, specific subsystem are not undebuggable without wide release (which was KDE’s most valid excuse). If it isn’t ready for wide use, it isn’t and shouldn’t be a GNOME ...
CLE opportunities past and future
Posted on February 11, 2008Twice in the past few days I’ve been asked to sign up for Continuing Legal Education (CLE). Sadly, I have to ‘graduate’ first. Oops. Still… each was interesting: The Friday CLE opportunity was at Columbia’s symposium on Fair Use...
in market for new feed reader
Posted on February 09, 2008Mis suscripciones RSS by torchondo. License: I’ve finally gotten fed up with my feed reader. Most of the time I don’t really care if my feeds are updated in a timely manner, but when I want it timely I want it timely. Like, on election day, I want my politics feeds to update more often [...
another better writer captures what I?m thinking perfectly
Posted on February 05, 2008Via Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden explains why he voted for Obama in the primary, capturing my critical thought perfectly: I?m for Obama knowing perfectly well that, as Bill Clinton suggested, it?s a ?roll of the dice?. A roll of the dice for Democrats, for progressives, for those of us who?ve fought so hard against the [...
Yes, we can.
Posted on February 05, 2008Hope - Obama (Shepard Fairey poster) by Steve Rhodes. License: Today is a unique day in my lifetime; a primary day where almost 1/2 of states are voting, but where the outcome is still very much in doubt. If you’re in one of those states, whether or not you agree with me about Obama, find [...
more software that rocks my world: Zotero
Posted on February 04, 2008GTD Kitteh! by Karin Dalziel. License: I’m doing a research project right now for a faculty member, and I’ve finally found the research software that I’ve wanted since my high school history teacher taught me to take great notes (good) on note cards (bad)...
?why should a customer care about IP assurance??
Posted on February 03, 2008Matt Asay asks “Why should a customer care about IP assurance?” He and Savio Rodrigues both make what appears to be the same error: comparing IP to “environmental rules or workplace safety regulations”. There is a critical difference, of course: if the EPA or comes after Microsoft, and I use Microsoft products, I can’t be [...
a vast flood of random web/legal curiosities
Posted on February 02, 2008Hello ABA Journal readers. Welcome to my blog! You may want to look at the copyright license this blog is under, and my explanation of Why I Blog. You may also want to subscribe only to the law feed, since much of what I write about is technology or personal...
?why should a customer care about IP assurance??
Posted on February 02, 2008Matt Asay asks “Why should a customer care about IP assurance?” He and Savio Rodrigues both make what appears to be the same error: comparing IP to “environmental rules or workplace safety regulations”. There is a critical difference, of course: if the EPA or comes after Microsoft, and I use Microsoft products, I can’t be [...
a message to overwhelmed friends; alt., why I love Tracks and GTD
Posted on February 01, 2008Hipster PDA and GTD notes, tighter crop by Teo. License: So, this was an all-too-common pattern in my life, prior to about 18 months ago: get busy lose some or all track of what is on my plate feel guilty about not understanding what was on my plate; and never say no to more projects, in part because [...
hosted tracks
Posted on February 01, 2008For those interesting in playing with tracks, you might want to look at tracks.tra.in- it is the stable branch plus a few tweaks, rather than the (totally awesome) trunk, but still gives you a good sense of what the tool does.
N810 in a nutshell
Posted on January 29, 2008N810 unboxing by Matt Biddulph. License: Got my N810 yesterday. Some thoughts: GPS: sexy. All kinds of interesting possible results. Kudos to Nokia for leading in this, though now that my blackberry does rough triangulation from cells, I’m not sure how pragmatic it is...
summer internships at SFLC
Posted on January 29, 2008Passing on an announce for other tech-interested proto-lawyers: The Software Freedom Law Center is currently seeking legal interns to join the staff this summer. Applicants should have a demonstrated interest in software freedom and should be conversant in legal and technical concepts related to free and open source software, but no specific prior course of study [...
worst kind of draining?
Posted on January 25, 2008… food poisoning, or something a lot like it. And today was supposed to be a fun-ish friday… blah.
morning link bits
Posted on January 24, 2008All too short and insubstantive piece on the Amazon ‘top reviewers’. Reminds me a bit of the wikipedia cabal discussion. We will eventually demand transparency in these institutions, I think. (via the awesome furdlog- must-read if you want to keep tabs on some of the big picture tech policy issues, especially as understood by the [...
the best kind of draining?
Posted on January 24, 2008… is a class that drowns you in both history and state of the art for an hour and a half, and then spends half an hour challenging you to think about what comes next. And all of it (implicitly and explicitly) screaming at you that This Really, Really Matters...
i don?t even know what this means
Posted on January 20, 2008Objectivist phenomenology? (Seen on a mail drop box in lower manhattan.)
sunstein on obama
Posted on January 20, 2008I’ve told people that I support Obama in part because I’d rather gamble on someone who wants to lead 60% of the country than to be certain of another four years of someone who can at best lead 51% of the country. Cass Sunstein has some similar thoughts that may be worth reading if you’re [...
two important posts on services and the edge
Posted on January 19, 2008Philippe Aigrain on categories of services Danny O’Brien on self-hosting Too much data to process right now- am going through old blog posts of interest… and there are so many of them. Argh!
my classes, wikified
Posted on January 19, 2008Two of my classes this semester have class wikis: Computers, Privacy, and the Constitution Telecommunications That would be two more than I’ve ever had before. There are a few different spins you could put on this development. Along the student-faculty axis, it is putting more control in the hands of students...
you know your law school textbook must be about a ?modern? topic?
Posted on January 16, 2008… when it uses sans-serif fonts in the chapter headings. (In this case, ‘Electronic Commerce’, Mann and Winn.)
wesabe ?data bill of rights?
Posted on January 14, 2008Wesabe’s Marc Hedlund is speaking at the Princeton Cloud Computing seminar I’m at. Their ‘data bill of rights’: This Data Bill of Rights is our promise to you. You can export and/or delete your data from Wesabe whenever you want...
lent slideshow remote?
Posted on January 12, 2008I can’t find my beloved slideshow remote. To the best of my recollection, I haven’t used it/seen it since the summer. Did I accidentally lend it to someone and not reclaim it? anyone? anyone? please? :/
of oil platforms, performing, and other legal oddities
Posted on January 10, 2008Thomas: so, I know nothing about French copyright law, so take with a grain of salt. But… Several years ago now1 Dave and I were looking at a Novell slide deck which had a copyright slide. The copyright slide said that you couldn’t copy the slide deck...
on robert on obama
Posted on January 08, 2008dude: of course Obama is nuanced like that. If he’d argued any other way at Chicago Law, he’d have woken up in bed next to a bloody copy of some Posner text. If he was lucky. If he was unlucky, he’d wake up in bed next to bloody copies of all the Posner texts...
almost-post-vacation software playing/lazyweb/misc.
Posted on January 07, 2008I still have one more week of vacation, which means I’ve been starting to play a bit with software to get my brain off law for a while. Some notes: lazyweb: as previously mentioned, I’ve got a remote control which, to the computer, looks like a keyboard...
hallelujah
Posted on December 21, 2007Stewart, Colbert to return. I support the writer’s strike (they should get the same royalties across all media) but a primary campaign without Stewart and Colbert is a national calamity.
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How to deal with creditor's harassing phone calls?
Once you have sent your cease and desist letter to the company, certified mail, ...
My situation is somewhat difficult to describe, but about two months ago planes began arriving at an airport near my house and an organized stalking effort began. As I'm driving to and from home, cars will begin encircli
I would like this person 'anonymous' to get in touch with me. Question...
What is the statute of limitations in New york State as to how long a person may claim heirship?
who has paid the taxes for the last 7 to 11 yrs ? you can take a house by openly...
How to learn content of deceased parent's will?
go to the court house where your father died or the county he lived in. It is pu...
What role does financial means determine which parent gains custody?
was(am) a single male that gained custody of my daughter when she was three. Thi...








