As this is my first post of ot8, I thought I would plant my tongue firmly in cheek and make some semi-serious, law-technology-Slaw predictions:

Over the next year…

• Online/Technology Privacy will become a much bigger issue in the mainstream.
• Someone or thing makes a small dent in Google’s search monopoly owing to privacy concerns (see Ask Eraser).
• The settlement of the Hollywood writer’s strike will have implications for the online distribution of content that are not yet anticipated.
• Google, MS or another larger fish will make an astronomical offer for Facebook.
• There will be a Federal election.
• There will

There are times when a challenge is what’s wanted and then there are other times. For me, at least, this is one of those. Other times, I mean. Gimme victories, lots of victories: too much snow, I think, too much cold, too much work piling up…

So, for those of you who, like me, don’t mind the occasional success no matter how easily arrived at, I present a couple of fun but winnable online games.

The Four Colour Problem offers you a small map of make-believe countries and four colours; you and the computer are to colour each land in . . . [more]

Welcome to 2008! Here’s to another great year for the Slaw community!!

I’m wondering if we can start this new year by sharing a recommendation or experience that would benefit others? Something that has made your life easier, or something that you wished you’d done a long time ago?

Let me start:

And I hate to admit it took me this long! … I installed my first Wi-Fi network at home in 2007. It was easily the best tech-lifestyle improvement change I could make. Laptops connecting, easier backups, the ability to watch the kids while working — it’s just easier. . . . [more]

Hardly a week meriting a fillip… Still, Friday is Friday. Herewith, then, a couple of ads, which is fitting for the week containing Boxing Day I guess.

The first is an oldie but a goodie, the marvelously orchestrated disassembled Honda that Rube Goldberg’s its way across a room:

The second is from J.C. Penney, “The Aviator,” the tale of a nerdy girl who wants to fly. I found it quite touching.

Thanks be to Boing Boing for both of these… and more. . . . [more]

I heard it on Twitter first coming into the office this morning, then word has slowly spread throughout the news agencies. Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, has been killed in a suicide bombing at one of her political rallies. The power of the wiki is evident–her page on Wikipedia was updated immediately with the news.

Google News

Related Slaw posts:

Musharraf and the Judges (Nov. 4/07)
News re: Pakistan via the Google AJAX News Bar (Nov. 8/07)
Human Rights Blog Tracking List of Arrestees in Pakistan (Nov. 14/07)
CBA March in Solidarity with the Defenders of . . . [more]

As a footnote to my post on Legal Indexing, here is a delightful piece on indexing from Intelligent Life.

And for fans of obscure works, any thoughts on what sort of work would have the following entries:

Ayn Rand School for Tots, 85, 111

B

Bacon, Francis, 291

Baldwin, Alec, 29

‘Barney Gumble’

alcoholic, 47, 129

Which website has the following completely unhelpful FAQs:

Q: What does an indexer normally charge?

A: It depends

To all our readers, a blithe Yule and a Guid Hogmanay. . . . [more]

Today or tomorrow, depending on your time zone, the sun will be at its furthest point from you and winter will officially begin. If that seems anticlimactic to you, given how autumn has been behaving, think of this vital fact: from here on in the days get longer. Yes, light fans, there’s going to be more of the good stuff. So at 10.08 p.m. tonight in Vic and Van, at 11.08 in Ed and Gary, at 12:08 a.m. tomorrow in Peg… and so on and so forth, give a cheer, however faint, as Sol begins his approach.

Now, knowing you . . . [more]

Herewith a slaw of small news items that have been gathering in my RSS reader:

• The loose Magna Carta has been sold to an American. (Sigh. I never expected that the Canadian government would actually be bold enough to bid for it… but still…) David Rubenstein paid USD21.3 million for what he called “the first rung on the ladder to freedom.”
  BBC News
• IBM, which has been playing around in Second LIfe, is planning to create a virtual world of its own, called Metaverse. It’ll be used for corporate communication — and to build spaces for clients, I’d guess.
  ZDNet

The CBC is reporting on an innovation by the Pivot Legal Society and Mountain Equipment Co-op to provide warmth and rights information to Vancouver’s Homeless.

The high-tech Blanket, co-designed and produced by Mountain Equipment Coop, is designed for homeless people, made of waterproof dernier nylon and features a printed list of people’s rights in relation to housing, security guards, police and welfare.

Law is increasingly a peripatetic (no, not “very pathetic”) profession. ((So much for video conferencing and other virtual get-togethers; f2f (^`^ en français?) just won’t go away, it would seem.)) And those of our members who are more mobile may have wondered whether it was just advancing age or that flying was indeed getting even more difficult lately — hard as that may be to imagine. Well StatsCan has just released November’s plane-spotting score, and the fault is in the stars and not ourselves:

The 42 Canadian airports with NAV CANADA air traffic control towers reported 388,559 aircraft take-offs

• Newspaper Clipping Generator
• Cliché Finder
• Bullshit Generator
• Futuristic Cereal Name Generator
• Band Name Generator

And just so it’s a true Slaw Six…

• The Ninja Text Generator

. . . [more]

Patrick Monahan has been reappointed Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School for another 5 year term, beginning July 2008. York President, Mamdouh Shoukri, announced that the executive committee of the Board of Governors approved the appointment today.

My congratulations to Patrick, who will now have the opportunity to oversee the new building that Osgoode is planning. . . . [more]