"______________"

A colleague of mine recently sent an accidentally blank email to all our southern California attorneys, i.e., he hit send before typing in his text. It seemed a colossal waste of time to recall the blank message, so he didn't. The responses, of course, rolled immediately in:

• "Your e-mails have become too brief."


• "I agree completely."


• "You have my vote."


• "I recommend this person."


• "I'll attend."

And my personal favorite,

• "No, I don't know this proposed mediator."

Technology: funny whether it knows it or not.

[Unrelatedly related]: Dennis Kennedy has "a few thought questions about virtual law firms." [Via Ernie Svenson]

Today's New Blawg

A "criminology and criminal justice undergrad student and self-admitted law junkie still deciding about law school & the future" writes Crimeny.net. [Via the Blawg Ring] Kelly attends the University of Maryland, which received some hardware largesse from alumnus Sergey Brin: "Brin's alma mater is the first to benefit from [the gift of a Google search appliance] through the newly established Google Search Appliance Donations Program."

"I'm An Attorney, But What I Really Want To Do Is Spam"

You may have steered clear of this week's Sobig.F worm but still not emerged unscathed. This is because the worm uses addresses—maybe yours—it finds on infected machines to propagate itself. The comet tail of this effect is the slew email you might be receiving from spam or virus blocking software, alerting you that "your" send was intercepted because it failed filtering tests.

On an infected system, the worm scans various documents for email addresses. The worm then distributes itself to other inboxes using a built-in SMTP engine. When it distributes itself, it "spoofs" in the "From:" field an email address it finds on the infected machine instead of using the infected user's address. Because the address doesn't match that of the infected machine, it's difficult to trace the string of infected computers. [The Screen Savers]

Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus firm F-Secure, said Sobig F had been written by a spammer looking for ways to get past spam filters.

He said: "For once, we have a clear motive for a virus – money." [BBC News, via Dave Winer]

Thus, even non-Windows users are feeling this one, albeit indirectly.

[Update] Kevin O'Donovan's "thinking jail isn't enough. I'm thinking something involving of a pair of pliers and a blowtorch..."

"A bit of analysis"

Rick Hasen follows up on this afternoon's district court determination not to delay the California gubernatorial election, and plans to submit an amicus curiae brief in the inevitable appeal.

Worth A Few Showers

The final Alpha Male is Halley's Jackson: "The girls love this." Indeed they do.