Forty years ago today, yes December 9, 1968, the first prototype mouse was unveiled in a presentation by Stanford Research Institute engineer Douglas Engelbart. Made of wood with only one button. The mouse is likely older than many of Slaw’s readers.

Here is a BBC clip telling the story, and a Wired tribute.

Another time entirely. This was life before long-distance direct telephone dialling, before the photocopier, and while Colin Tapper at Magdalen was talking about computers and the law, it was all considered data-processing or cybernetics.

Law School was much as it would have been fifty years earlier. . . . [more]

So far we at the LCO are being pretty basic about the technology we’re using. A standard (I guess now “traditional”) website that is okay as far as it goes, making RSS available, posting everything we write. But we need to do more. I’m planning to issue our family law project options “paper” in other than traditional form (shamed into it by Simon C. at a lunch with KM folks), maybe as a wiki.

I listened to a webcast (pretty basic in format, too, actually) of how to connect with the new media to get the organization’s message out there, . . . [more]

Issue 2 of the Osgoode Hall Review of Law and Policy is now available online. The lead article in this student-run journal is “The SAC Proposal for the Monetization of the File Sharing of Music in Canada: Does It Comply With Canada‘s International Treaty Obligations Related To Copyright?,” [PDF] by Barry Sookman, of McCarthy Tétrault LLP and Co-Chair of its Technology Law Group. This issue of the OHRLP can be downloaded entire in PDF. . . . [more]

Recent developments regarding the official status of legislation available online are certain to have an effect on the legislative products offered by Canada’s commercial legal publishers.

As noted in a recent SLAW posting, Ontario now recognizes its legislation website as an official source of the law. As of November 30th, 2008, an “on-screen display of a statute or regulation viewed on, or downloaded from the e Laws website” is now official.

Quebec is expected to follow suit. Just prior to the recent dissolution of the National Assembly, a bill was pending that would recognize the official character of its legislation . . . [more]

Last night I wrote about RSS and whether we need to do something simpler over on my Crosby Group business blog, Connection. It seems to have struck a nerve with a number of people since there is now a good discussion going on in the comments. An excerpt: . . . [more]

Amazing that our friends at Mozilla have released a beta version of Firefox in Esperanto. This on top of offering it in Occitan.

And since they’ve got Telegu, can Kannada be far behind? . . . [more]

Chilling reading about the threats to the integrity of global communications that President Elect Obama will shortly face.

It comes from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency. Its mandate was to develop recommendations for a comprehensive strategy to improve cybersecurity in federal systems and in critical infrastructure.

The report was released on December 8, 2008 on Capitol Hill. . . . [more]

The Geographies of Legal Education: Policy, Practice and Theory
May 25-27, 2009 Carleton University Ottawa
The 2009 annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) will be held May 25-27, 2009 at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. The annual meeting will be held in conjunction with Congress 2009 of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS), and will follow the Canadian Law and Society Association’s meeting of May 23-25. This year’s CFHSS Congress theme is “Capital Connections: Nation, Terroir, Territoire.”
Building on Congress’s aim to consider the ways in which globalization has impacted the relationship between . . . [more]

We haven’t mentioned the Symposium (from the Greek – a Drinking Party) at Ryerson University. Billed as The Ryerson Symposium – Innovation in Legal Education: Ideas for the 21st Century, it was held on Tuesday, November 25th.

On the heels of reports published by two separate task forces examining aspects of legal education in Canada, expert panels examined key issues:

How will Canadian law schools shape society in the next century?

What are the latest developments in the licensing and accreditation of law schools and will it impact legal education?

Can new legal education models unleash innovation and increase accessibility?

Considering that it has the potential to profoundly reshape the nature of American legal education, I’m a little surprised that the Interim Report of the Outcome Measures Committee of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar hasn’t received more attention since its release in June. Aside from brief mentions at the places you’d expect — Best Practices for Legal Education and the Law Professors Blog Network — I haven’t seen the report and its implications discussed in much detail. So I thought I might take a crack at it.

What follows isn’t really a summary of . . . [more]

Before curtailing her recent trip to Europe to deal with the political situation at home, Governor General of Canada, Her Excellency Michaëlle Jean was participating in a discussion about Canadian culture diversity at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech on November 29, 2008.

Her blog CitizenVoices.gg.ca reprints notes from two related talks: . . . [more]

The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research institute located in Washington, D.C., has a summary and a table of US and Canadian Climate Legislation by State and Province. The table, which glosses legislation in 8 provinces and 22 states, can be downloaded in PDF.

[via Bill Dimitroff] . . . [more]