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Modern media centers: the hard 20% is socio-legal
Cory Doctorow points out that the first 80% of creating a media center is easy: a decent computer (I used an old Pentium III and an old PowerBook, but you can use newer tech if you’re not a poor student), video out (S-Video to an old-school TV, VGA or HDMI to a new HDTV), big hard drives, maybe network sharing (I used an Airport Extreme I inherited) so you can access media from multiple rooms. But what about content – “the other 20 percent”?
October 2009 / 2 min.
Is virtual lawyering the future?
An interesting paragraph from an article dealing with the idea of “Good Enough” – services or products that may not have all the “bells and whistles” of their more-expensive competitors, but do enough at the right price to be runaway successes: It turns out to be a remarkably efficient way of offering what Granat calls legal transaction services – tasks that are document intensive. For everything from wills to adoptions to shareholder agreements, elawyering has numerous advantages.
September 2009 / 3 min.
The case of the disappearing case law
The cloud consists of data and services that live on someone else’s servers. Although the term itself is new(ish), the basic idea is embodied by traditional legal research services like LexisNexis and Westlaw – data lives on someone else’s servers, not your own. Thus, someone else controls the data, not you. And someone else can delete or modify the data, and you’d never know…
August 2009 / 2 min.
Should the government need a warrant to access your Google Books history?
Should accessing content via the Google Books service provide the same protections as one would receive when relying on a bookstore? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU say, “Yes.”
August 2009 / 2 min.
Different social networks for different purposes
Different social networks serve different purposes. Keep them straight, but always remember that what you post online could end up anywhere and post accordingly.
August 2009 / 2 min.
Amazon apologizes for Kindle fiasco
Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com apologizes for the 1984 Kindle fiasco.
July 2009 / 1 min.
When is print better than online?
Cost is a major element of this: online access to a treatise (a compendium of legal research, opinion, etc. that’s an extremely useful resource for understanding an area of the law before diving into more specifics) can run to around $825 an hour, while the print version of the same treatise costs $499 per year (or less, if you don’t mind out-of-date treatises). But it’s more than simply the straight-up cost of access - print research can be more effective and time-efficient for many tasks.
July 2009 / 3 min.
Using a blog to get a job
A blog can be a very useful way for a lawyer looking for work to find connections and, hopefully, get a job.
July 2009 / 1 min.
WordPress and the GPL
Any WordPress theme is so entwined with the main WordPress code as to make it a “derivative work,” and thus subject to WordPress’ copyright and licensing (which is the GPL).
July 2009 / 4 min.
Should ringtones count as a “public performance”?
Should someone – either you or your carrier – have to pay additionally for a “public performance” of a song when your phone rings?
July 2009 / 2 min.