Some recent notables from other Canadian law blogs:

(1) Michael Geist highlights the recent changes to Canada’s legal deposit regulations, and the administrative effect on LAC:

Stats Can has released a survey of maintenance enforcement statistics for 2005/2006, examining data from the various provincial agencies that enforce family maintenance orders registered with them. The full report in PDF is free. And The Daily has a summary of the results. The news appears to be good news: payments are made on time in the majority of cases (which are overwhelmingly child support orders); and in most cases that were in arrears when registered with the agencies, the payor has made inroads into the debt. . . . [more]

There’s a great story on the NY Times website, T. Zeller Jr. “Documents Borne by Winds of Free Speech“, about a court’s likely misguided attempts to recall information that has found its way on to the web. It’s part of a suit against Eli Lilly concerning Zyprexa, an antipsychotic that Lilly makes. I can understand the court’s indignation that its order to seal documents in the action was either flouted or circumvented, if there’s a difference; but it’s clearly a case of too little power applied to too great a mechanism.

The money quote comes from the title . . . [more]

An interesting piece in PhysicsWeb about the challenge that our current reliance on email will pose for future historians.

I was struck by three quotes:

E-mail is cheaper and encourages quicker thought, and it introduces a peculiar blend of the personal and professional. Science historians have detected a decline in the use of lab notebooks, finding that data are often stored directly into computer files. Finally, they have noted the influence of PowerPoint, which can stultify scientific discussion and make it less free-wheeling; information also tends to be dumbed down when scientists submit PowerPoint presentations in place of formal reports.

As Simon Chester reminded us, today is Martin Luther King Jr. day in the U.S. It occurred to me that as the March on Washington and King’s famous “I have a dream” speech took place in 1963, many — hell, most — Slaw readers are too young to have seen and heard these events at the time. I’ve found a site that has a movie of these events that you might like to see. I was young then and living in the States; these were portentous times for that country, and the events made a very great impression on me; . . . [more]

Not yet a Canadian issue, legal, IT, or otherwise; but it is IT, and may eventually become a Canadian IT issue involving some legal research, so … 

There’s no news, yet, about when the (it may not be called the iPhone, by then) Apple “iPhone” will hit Canada. In the meantime, for those following the nascent iPhone trademark war, here’s a side story.

Here’s the link to a Slashdot story on what might be another Jobian dilemma involving the iPhone, if the story is accurate. The story’s title is “iPhone Not Runing OS X”. The article’s point (I believe) is . . . [more]

In time for Dr. M.L. King Day on Monday, the Thurgood Marshall Law Library has worked since 2001 to create a complete electronic record of United States Commission on Civil Rights publications held in the Library’s collection and available on the USCCR Web site. The publications are made available over the Internet as page image presentations in PDF format.

Each item is linked to the appropriate bibliographic record in the Catalog. Publications are also searchable by keyword and accessible by date and title.

. . . [more]

Something easy, today, somthing gently mindless. I’m pressed hard against a project deadline and need the escape, which, I’d guess, is not an uncommon (love that lawyer double neg) plight among Slawyers.

This is a game. Actually, as the maker says, it’s not a game because there’s no point to it: so it’s a toy. It’s a winter toy for those who, like me, prefer mental sports when it’s cold outside. But a toy even so, which is what I meant about mindless.

Now for the gentle part: it’s called Line Rider, because you take this little soul and . . . [more]

As some of you might remember from last year’s CALL/ACBD conference, I happened to be lucky enough to win a $300 dollar shopping spree courtesy of Oceana/Oxford publishing. I would like to say that I bided my time waiting for the holiday book sale but it would be more accurate to say that I didn’t get around to ordering until the deadline was approaching and was pleasantly surprised to discover the holiday book sale. Regardless, I headed for the reference section and was lucky enough to get 9 wonderful tomes that I likely would not have purchased otherwise. . . . [more]

Last week Michel-Adrien Sheppard pointed out the new book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. I was so impressed with some of the Globe and Mail columns that Michel-Adrien pointed to in his post that I ran out, bought the book, and started reading it immediately. Then I heard about the book launch taking place at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto last night, and invited myself along. Well, I didn’t exactly crash the party, but let’s just say I didn’t have an invitation to the invitation-only event.

The book itself is not just about . . . [more]

As anyone who’s seen the film knows, things are different in North Dakota.

But those wonderful Fargo police officers handing out vehicle infraction tickets are also feeding the County Law Library. I’d never heard of a $10 fine surcharge just to go to a law library, but it’s an interesting idea.
. . . [more]

Archivaria, the journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists, has made its content freely available online. Using the Open Journal System of Simon Fraser University’s splendid Open Knowledge Project, the journal offers (sometimes hazy) PDF files of back issues that contain some 2200 items. Anyone wanting to get a feel for the range of topics archivists talk about among themselves should browse throught the list of titles. Lawyers are not archivists but they and their firms certainly do have to concern themselves with the preservation and retrieval of materials, about which archivists have a good deal to . . . [more]