San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won three critical exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions today, carving out new legal protections for consumers who modify their cell phones and artists who remix videos — people who, until now, could have been sued for their non-infringing or fair use activities.
More here: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26
Want to resolve 80% of the technical problems you will encounter with your Mac? Follow these two relatively simple steps:
1. Reboot your Mac and simultaneous hold down the command-option-p-r keys. If you do this properly your Mac’s screen will flash and it will cycle a reboot. Keep holding down the keys until your Mac chimes twice. What you’re doing is resetting a chunk of memory that stores settings for all kinds of settings (see below for specific details). Clearing up these settings often resolve wacky problems like screen artifacts, sticky keys on your keyboard, and a lot more.
2. Now restart in Single User Mode by holding down the command-s key (thanks Eduardo!) while your Mac is booting. If you’ve done this successfully, a bunch of Unix code will spew across your screen. Don’t worry! You’re just looking at the underbelly of the beautiful Mac OS. Wait until the text stops scrolling by and you will see a flashing cursor at the bottom of your screen. All you need to do is type:
/sbin/fsck -fy
and hit the return key. fsck is pretty much like the Disk Utility app except that it runs outside the operating system. Like Disk Utility, if it encounters any problems with your files, it will automatically repair them.
Tip: if you run fsck and it says everything is OK but it reports the disk was modified, then run fsck again to ensure there are no problems.
If fsck reports that the problems it encountered couldn’t be resolved, I recommend taking your Mac to the Genius Bar or other authorized Apple repair center. If you’re adventurous, then you should consider purchase some industrial-strength disk utilities like TechTool Pro, DiskWarrior, and/or ProSoft Drive Genius. My help desk uses these tools to repair hard drives so that we can recover data. We then “nuke and pave” the drive by formatting it and reinstalling the OS from scratch.
References
Resetting Parameter RAM: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
Single User Mode: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417
Resolving startup issues: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417
Tech Tool Pro: http://www.micromat.com/
DiskWarrior: http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/
ProSoft Drive Genius: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php
Lazy summer days make for some lazy blogging (or re-blogging). Gizmodo reports on the new features of the Livescribe Echo Smartpen:
“Echo lets you put pen to pad to draw on your computer (Mac or PC) via USB port, records audio, and can even sync that audio with your note-taking. The 60-plus selection of Livescribe apps range from the American Heritage Desk Dictionary to a poker game, and a new feature called Launch Line lets you launch an app by underlining an associated word and tapping the line. You can also create custom notebooks, just as you would an iTunes playlist.”
and the really good stuff…
“Livescribe also announced a few enhancements coming this fall, including Connect—software that lets you send notes and audio from your smartpen to email addresses, websites, and other applications—Paper Tablet collaboration software, and Pencast Player, which lets you access your pencasts on iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.”
Here’s a quick ad/demo if you’ve never seen Livescribe products in action.
The Echo smartpen from Livescribe
Read the full article and press release here.
If you’ve followed Mac Law Students for any length of time, you know that I’ve struggled to figure out what to do with the site since I graduated from law school waaay back in 2008. I’m happy to report that after a mere two years of screwing around, I’ve finally come up with a way to keep the site going and infuse it with a new sense of purpose.
The fact that I decided not to take the bar exam after obtaining my J.D. should be evidence enough that anyone who is serious about becoming a lawyer should not be spending their few spare hours each week managing an online resource for Mac-using law students. But I also feel strongly that the person who runs the site should be someone involved in the law school experience, someone who is close to the subject matter.
Enter Dennis Bishop. From the early days of MLS, Dennis has been an excellent source of information, and a leader in getting the word out about the benefits of Macs in law school. Even better, Dennis has a day job that keeps him in touch with law school technology; he’s the the Director of Information & Technology at the University of Oregon School of Law.
After several discussions, Dennis and I agreed that he would be the right person to take over MLS. This is a personal project for him, and Mac Law Students still remains unaffiliated with any law school or other entity, legal, illegal, past, present, or future. Dennis will be running MLS for fun. He even refused to take the six-figure salary I offered him.
I will continue to own the domain and pay for the hosting of MLS, and Dennis will run the rest of the show. I’m excited to see what he does with the site, and I hope you will give him your support as he takes the ball and runs with it.
