There have been so many mythical quotations attributed to Bill Gates over the years, that it’s helpful to have a journalist actually separate myth from reality.

As Bill Gates moves on to the next stage in his career, Nancy Weil has done us all a favour by gathering the quotes together. . . . [more]

Paul E. Kennedy, Chair, Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, has released his final report on RCMP Use of the Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW) (i.e. Tasers). (A PDF version is available.

As an aside, why is it that the online news stories fail to contain a link to the original report? I don’t mind doing the ten seconds of research myself, but it does seem odd that a web-based news outlet would ignore an easily available link to the documents in question. Maybe they need librarians. . . . [more]

StatsCan’s Health Reports delivered a one-two punch today with its interrelated reports on “Screen time among Canadian adults: A profile” [or PDF] and “Sedentary behaviour and obesity” [or PDF]:

A recent study of adults based on data from the 2007 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) found evidence that screen time (time spent viewing television and using computers) was positively associated with obesity, inactive leisure time and a poor diet.

I must say that at first blush the screen-time data don’t look as bad as I’d feared: 29% watch two hours of TV a day, . . . [more]

Google Trends has been improved lately — you can export data to a spreadsheet, for example — so I thought I’d take a look at how “copyright” has been faring as a search term in Canada over the last month. The graph that results shows clearly the increase in public interest as legislation became imminent, spiking just after the government introduced Bill C-61, and falling away within a day or two, headed for the usual level of general lack of interest.

If you click on the image of the chart, you can see an enlarged version; the “A” is the . . . [more]

Quietly this week, Google Docs added support for PDF files. You can now upload PDFs to your account, making them available for viewing and sharing.

Unfortunately, you currently can’t edit those PDFs, but I’m sure the feature is in the works. They’ve also had the ability to create PDF files out of your Google Documents for some time now. . . . [more]

Redesigned FindLaw.com site helps people find answers, find lawyers . . . [more]

Mozilla is trying to set a Guinness World Record. They’ve already collected over 1.7 million pledges and served up several thousand Firefox 3 downloads. To be part of the record you must download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) on June 18th.

A technical assessment of the browser, but it works beautifully for me here now. . . . [more]

To start, huge tip of hat to our colleague Jim Middlemiss, who was live blogging all morning on the three hour hearing into the BCE Bondholders dispute.

The court reserved. . . . [more]

At a Univ brunch on Park Avenue last month, I met a bright young English blogger, Roz Savage, who is blogging from a rowing boat, as she crosses the Pacific in a bid to be the first to row the largest ocean in the world. This may not have much to do with most of what we find on Slaw, but if you’re not awed by the boldness and courage of the venture, not to mention the humour of the blog, and the way that she is engaging with her friends commenting on the blog, then go to the next . . . [more]

We’ve noticed Fastcase a couple of times on Slaw, including a piece in 2006.

A recent piece from Forbes uses Fastcase as the poster boys for open source access to the law. But it also speculates what impact services like PreCydent, Public.Resource.org and Collexis Holdings’ Casemaker division will have on the major players. It makes a convincing case that for small to medium firms, the majors may have priced themselves out of consideration, opening a niche for new entrants ((Lest anyone is tempted to organize a flag day for the majors, Forbes reports that Fastcase’s revenue last year . . . [more]

Almost two years ago, Simon C. posted this entry about the many distractions created in the Information Age. Two years later, we’re probably just as distracted but now we need to worry about whether the Internet is messing with our intelligence. In the July/August issue of Atlantic Monthly, Nicholas Carr asks: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?.”

I’m glad I’m not the only know who’s noticed that longer texts are much tougher to absorb and that “power skimming” is what I regularly do. However, I’m still very much amused by the fact that I once bought a book on . . . [more]

The colour of this post changed given yesterday’s introduction of Bill 61 but I had completed some research on this prior to yesterday and I would be willing to wager that I put more thought into this post than the BGH’s ((Big
Giant Heads)) put into Bill C-61 so I’m going go ahead anyhow.

In May, the Canadian Association of Police Boards released a report which stated that Cybercrime is a close second to Drug Trafficking as the #1 crime committed in Canada. A Report on CyberCrime in Canada. I don’t want to get bogged down in the report but . . . [more]