From Wired, a report that the Diebold Voting System Has a ‘Delete’ Button . And more coverage here. . . . [more]

About two years ago there was a contest on Slaw to see who could come up with the best collective noun for, well, a legion, a conspiracy, a bombast, an argument, etc. of lawyers. I thought we might revisit the broader topic of collective nouns this Friday, and as a resource to help you follow along you might want to open another couple of tabs in your browser to these two sites (one, two) that have improbably long lists of collectives.

I’m resisting the temptation to delve into the history and origin of the whole business of . . . [more]

♫ They used to tell me
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
…
Brother, can you spare a dime? ♫

Lyrics by Yip Harburg and music by: Jay Gorney.

There is one magical quality of a picture – it can convey information in a manner that drives home a point faster than text could ever hope to do.

Accordingly it is one thing to read about the layoffs in the legal profession in a serial fashion in the news – it is entirely another to see that same information graphed and displayed in living . . . [more]

CALL’s Vendors’ Liaison Committee is conducting a brief survey of Canadian law libraries. If you are the person responsible for administering the budget for your library, please take a moment and reply to the survey here. . . . [more]

A few weeks ago Simon Fodden wrote about the “Ontario in the Creative Age” report that basically says we need to turn more to creative work to be successful economically. That builds on the creative class theory that says communities with a higher % of the creative class tend to do better economically.

Especially in light of that, its dissapointing to see that an ITU report that measures the use of information and communications technologies in more than 150 countries dropped Canada from 9th in 2002 to 19th in 2007.

Michael Geist comments that:

No country in the top 50 . . . [more]

March 13th is the deadline for comments on our family law project options paper. We’ve taken a different approach to this potential project compared to how we selected previous projects. . . . [more]

Congratulation to Slaw’s own Dominic Jaar, who has just been named CEO of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology. From the press release:

The mandate for the CCCT is:

1) Bringing the justice sector stakeholders together, including deputy ministers, lawyers, senior court administrators, judges and representatives of the public, to create an atmosphere favourable to technological innovation and excellence in our court systems to enhance access to justice.
2) Supporting the effective transfer and sharing of information between courts and other elements of the justice system.
3) Providing the tools and activities needed to exchange information and

Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, Patrick Monahan, has accepted the invitation of the President of York University to become York’s new Vice-President Academic and Provost. President Shoukri has indicated that the search for a new dean for the law school will be thorough and will take some time. Osgoode Professor Jinyan Li has agreed to become interim dean, during the search process. . . . [more]

I seem to think I go on a lot about food on the Friday Fillip — but that’s not the case, I discover. Maybe I’m simply always on about food in my head. At any rate, the fillip today is about a blog about food. The Internet Food Association is a relatively new cooperative blog that’s hit the big time lately. What caught my eye was the exchange on IFA about Alice Waters’ OpEd in the NYTimes about school lunches, something that interested me even before Jamie Oliver took on Brit-crap at English schools.

But I stayed for the casual, . . . [more]

Connie wrote a couple of days ago about the submission deadline for the upcoming CRTC network neutrality / network management / traffic shaping hearings. Since then, some submissions have been made public that illustrate how important this hearing will be, and how it will affect Canadian consumers and content providers.

The federal Privacy Commissioner has filed an well written submission that discusses the privacy aspects. The Commissioner’s blog post on the topic starts with:

What would you think if you wrote a letter and it could be opened up by a postal or a courier service before it reaches its . . . [more]

♫ is it possible
to be so confused
at this point
and its rational that its logical
there is no point in denying
give yourself a chance, you might like it

we must make connections
we must make connections
we must make connections
we must make connections… ♫

Lyrics and Music by Criteria (Steve Pedersen, Aaron Druery, A.J. Mogis, Mike Sweeney).

Web 2.0 is defined by Wikipedia as follows:

“The term “Web 2.0″ refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design, that aim to facilitate communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. . . . [more]

Kim Nayyer’s column on the use of law reform agency materials for legal research has prompted me to talk about how the Law Commission of Ontario thinks about this very issue. Use of law reform commission materials by others can be a major source of a commission’s reputation. . . . [more]