One of our keener readers is the anonymous English magistrate blogger, who proclaims himself entranced by the posting on the new Ontario civil procedure forms, in a post captioned Leading Edge Law From The Land of The Lumberjack and The Beaver Hunter.

He comments:

Slaw is a Canadian legal website, with a technical and IT slant.

Much of it is of strictly Canadian, but I couldn’t resist Changes to the Ontario rules of civil procedure forms which, in its way, is as immortal as Beachcomber’s “List of Huntingdonshire Cabmen”, albeit without the latter’s quality of barely-suppressed excitement.

Readers . . . [more]

dork
slang (chiefly U.S.)
…
2. A foolish or stupid person; also as a general term of contempt.

(Can. also, seemingly)
1974 P. GZOWSKI Bk. about this Country 13/1 Meeting some of the famous people of the country (some of whom, confidentially are dorks).

advanced dork
neologism (chiefly geek)

1. A Firefox plugin that presents the user with a contextual menu whenever a highlighted term is right-clicked, which menu allows the user to search Google using any of the previously chosen advanced operators, of which there are 15.

2006 S. FODDEN Passing thought 17/7 IANAD [I am not . . . [more]

Here’s a thing: LexisNexis/Butterworths (Canada), which publish The Supreme Court Law Review, not too shabby a journal, have absolutely no information whatever about it on their website(s). Zero. Nada. Zilch.

After half an hour of frustration I went retro and phoned LexisNexis. Their customer rep spent another fifteen minutes searching — by now I was pruriently curious — asked her nearby website expert, and reported that there was nothing about it on the site. Rien du tout.

I’d be happy to be proven wrong. . . . [more]

Le droit des valeurs mobilières est sans aucun doute, au Canada, le domaine du droit qui a exercé le virage technologique avec le plus de promptitude et de justesse. C’est sans aucun doute le domaine du droit qui le premier a cerné et compris ce que veulent dire « neutralité technologique » et « équivalence fonctionnelle », des concepts qui bien que repris par la plupart des lois canadiennes sur le commerce électronique, et notamment dans le Code civil du Québec aux articles 2837 et suivants, sont méconnus ou, pire, incompris; une incompréhension qui se traduit d’ailleurs dans plusieurs . . . [more]

Our Nicholas is the top item in today’s LLRX feed. It’s featuring his Update to Researching Australian Law.

Good on you, Nick. (And next time, Sabrina, a wee plug for Slaw wouldn’t hurt. ;-) ) . . . [more]

They've closed Bow Street Magistrates Court and are going to turn it into a boutique hotel.

I just know that among all you Slawyers there are hidden artistic talents waiting for the merest opportunity to spring forth and suprise the world. In order to prevent any such springing, I offer you Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas. I mean, five minutes with a Pollock and the whole artistic endeavour seems a trifle overblown. And, believe me, this is something your six-year-old niece could do.

Go to the site and you’re presented with the archtypical blank canvas. Some of you might choose to leave it at that. Others, however, will wiggle the mouse, as we say. Ta . . . [more]

I’m pleased to announce that Michel-Adrien Sheppard has joined Slaw as a core contributor. As Slawyers will doubtless know, Michel-Adrien is the Reference Librarian at the Supreme Court of Canada, and, perhaps even more important, Library Boy the blogger, at http://micheladrien.blogspot.com/.

Welcome, Michel-Adrien, to Slaw, made even more significant by your participation. . . . [more]

I was trolling the Canadian Library Association/association canadienne des bibliothèques website to see what is new (note their new bilingual name!). I found a couple of interesting items on copyright: a letter to the Ministers about Copyright Legislation, and a Resolution by the Association regarding an Access Copyright iniative, “Captain Copyright“. . . . [more]

If you're into podcasts, you might not be able to find what interests you without relying on titles to search with -- something that won't take you very far into the audio world.

In a recent Slaw comment, Connie asked if someone would write something about Drupal. Subsequent comments from Patrick and Simon gave brief summaries, but I thought I’d go a bit further, and try to relay some of the basics surrounding this type of web software.

Briefly, Drupal is an open source CMS, written for the LAMP stack, which is modular in design. What does this mean? Well, let’s start with a couple definitions.

• Open Source (OS) – open source software (generally) lets you download the software for free, view the source code, alter and re-distribute. Each OS product typically

. . . [more]

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.–A 1995 e-mail extracted from the hard drive of a recently unearthed Compaq desktop PC offers a tantalizing glimpse into the day-to-day life of a primitive Internet society, said the archaeologists responsible for its discovery.

“We’re very excited by this find, because only by understanding our e-mail past can we hope to understand our e-mail present and future,” said Northwestern University archaeology professor Lane Caspari, who has been leading the dig through the equipment storage area of a Knoxville-area credit union since late April, on Tuesday. “The discovery also sheds new light on the 1990s–an era we know very . . . [more]