Blawg Republic: About: "About Blawg Republic
Blawg Republic is a real-time search engine that monitors the legal blogging community every hour. People can browse excerpts on discussions, from Appellate Law to Technology Law. They can keep up with their favorite legal bloggers and track evolving discussions moving through the blawgosphere - the world of legal oriented weblogs.

All weblogs in the Blawg Republic Index have been categorized into one of over 30 law categories. Tracking a weblog or legal meme is easy via RSS feeds that are available for any search, and for each law category. Each weblog in the Blawg Republic Index is listed in the Directory along with its ATOM or RSS feed.
Blawg Republic is committed to adding more sources and fine-tuning its algorithms. If you know of a site that should be included in the Blawg Republic Index, feel free to submit it. "

The New York Times > Technology > New Company Starts Up a Challenge to Google:

"Before co-founding Vivisimo, Mr. Valdes-Perez was a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. He professes that the way to deal with information overload is with information 'overlook' - techniques that strip away extraneous information."

Colonial Williamsburg: Where History Lives: "
"

Borders: "20% Off the Regular Price of One Item "

: "Welcome to Wordorigins.org. This site is devoted to the origins of words and phrases, or as a linguist would put it, to etymology. Etymology is the study of word origins. (It is not the study of insects; that is entomology.) Where words come from is a fascinating subject, full of folklore and historical lessons. Often, popular tales of a word's origin arise. Sometimes these are true; more often they are not. While it often seems disappointing when a neat little tale turns out to be untrue, almost invariably the true origin is just as interesting."

Idiomsite.com - Idioms and Sayings

Law Librarians' Pay

11:58am (UK)
It Skills Pushing Up Law Librarians' Pay

By PA News Reporter


The recent growth in information technology has helped push salaries for law librarians at major firms up by nearly a third, according to a new survey.

Some of them can even command salaries of £100,000 a year – with a 30% annual bonus on top.

The expansion of knowledge management systems and techniques has also moved law librarians towards the top in their firms, as their research and associated skills have grown in importance in an increasingly competitive legal world, according to the survey, by leading law publishing firm Sweet and Maxwell.

It showed that one in five senior legal librarians among the Top 100 British law firm now reported directly to the managing partner or chief executive, or sat on their firms’ most senior management boards.

Nine out of 10 senior legal librarians had seen their responsibilities grow over the past five years, while more than six out of 10 believed their status within their firms had risen as new technology became more important to the firms’ long-term strategies and competitiveness.

Philippa Cunningham, a consultant at specialist recruitment firm TFPL, said a director of knowledge management at the biggest law firms could command a salary of £100,000 a year, with a bonus of up to 30% on top.

On average, a head librarian at law firm in the Top 100 would earn about £45,000 a year – compared with £35,000 in 2000.

The survey showed that 88% of firms questioned said that the share of internal budgets being allocated to legal libraries was rising, with the same proportion saying the increased spending was because of the introduction of new information technologies.

Almost all the firms questioned – 97% – said the increased investment had made a difference to the way they worked.

Jitendra Valera, director of Sweet and Maxwell Legal Online, said: “Knowledge management is now at the very core of law firms, and because of this, senior legal librarians are now increasingly important within their firms.

“Lawyers are increasingly dependent on their knowledge management skills.

“Increasingly lawyers base their reputation on delivering the best researched and most robust legal solutions in a timely manner to their clients – the modern legal librarians’ role is central to this.

“The old perception of legal librarians working away in small, dusty libraries, searching through volumes of legal texts is completely divorced from reality.”

Legal librarians were now responsible for managing powerful online information services and practice tools, as well as for teams of researchers and for ensuring that lawyers knew how to use the latest research tools and had all the extra information they needed for the specialisations, she added.

Pat Pritchard, national head of information services at leading law firm DLA, said: “Certainly the law library function works very differently now to that of say 10 years ago. New technology and the Internet mean that our legal and business current awareness is bang up to date.”

Metadata for Digital Collections

Graduate Workshop (1 credit hour)
Marcia Lei Zeng, Ph.D.
SLIS, KSU


Intended Audience:
Practicing library and information professionals and anyone who is involved in establishing digital collections in distinct information communities for the purposes of managing, publishing, and preserving documents in the digital environment.

Goals and Objectives:
Metadata is a critical mechanism both in knowledge representation of digital collections and in data mining. Metadata describes the attributes of a resource, where the resource may consist of bibliographical objects (e.g., as represented by MARC metadata), archival inventories and registers (e.g., EAD metadata), geospatial objects (e.g., FGDC metadata), museum and visual resources (e.g., CDWA, VRA, CIMI metadata), or software implementation (e.g., CORBA). This workshop examines the role of metadata in the digital environment. Emphasis is on the development and implementation of metadata schemas in distinct information communities and on the standards and technological applications used to create machine understandable metadata.

After completing the workshop, the students will be able:

1. to understand the concepts and structure of metadata;
2. to explore various operational and proposed metadata standards for specific digital collections;
3. to understand different issues in the applications of metadata standards in a larger context of a project, a community, and the society;
4. to acquaint experience in applying a selected metadata standard to records or collections;
5. to be able to design, evaluate, and modify metadata elements according to local need; and
6. to contribute to the implementation of metadata in a website or a database.

Kylie Minogue Official Calendar 2005 UK CALENDAR (304303): "KYLIE MINOGUE Official Calendar 2005 (Amazing calendar featuring 12 stunning colour and black & white images of Ms Minogue in various sexy poses & positions!)"

E-Commerce News: Trends: Virgin Selling Music via Net:

Virgin Selling Music via Net

By Saul Hansell
09/27/04 8:07 AM PT

Virgin Chief Richard Branson is introducing a new online music store today, VirginDigital.com, selling music as streams of bits to be downloaded from the Internet. This makes Virgin the first major music retailer to enter the download market, which has been dominated by Apple and other technology companies."

A9.com > Company > Why use A9.com?: "Why use A9.com
The web is easy to use, but using it well is not easy. We are inventing new ways to take search one step farther and make it more effective. We provide a unique set of powerful features to find information, organize it, and remember it--all in one place. A9.com is a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book-- results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more.
A9.com remembers your information so you don't have to. You can keep your own notes about any web page and search them; it is a new way to store and organize your bookmarks; it even recommends new sites and favorite old sites specifically for you to visit. With the A9 Toolbar installed your web browsing history will be saved so you can search through your whole history (and clear items you don't want kept). A9.com uses your history to recommend new sites, to alert you to new search results, and to let you know the last time you visited a page."

You are so Grounded, Mister

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The war against hats....: "Knocking on the front door of any home in Britain could now land a 30-year-old Londoner in jail.

The man was also banned from using doorbells or phoning households without permission. He had stolen from 250 elderly people after entering their homes by posing as a milkman, a policeman, or simply by asking for a glass of water. "

Am I reading this right? They guy has stolen from 250 people and he is not in jail for 20 years? No wonder crime is out of control.

LawFuel - law, attorney, lawyer, legal news and legal resources: "LawFuel was started in 2001 as an independent news service for lawyers - aggregating law firm and lawyer news from the most reputable and reliable worldwide sources it can locate, using both electronic and extensive 'hands on' editing services. It has grown to become one of the largest online legal letters on the Internet and now offers a growing range of products and services to its international audience, including an expanding news release service for law firms.

Published from New Zealand by privately owned new media company Might-e-Media, LawFuel prides itself on independence and an ability to offer its international audience news that is both interesting and useful in their own practices."

VDH's Private Papers :: The U.N.? Who Needs it?

September 24, 2004

The U.N.? Who Needs It . . . ?

It is about time to think the unthinkable: the UN is not beneficial, neutral, but increasingly hostile to freedom.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Wall Street Journal

(A shorter version of this essay appeared in the Wall Street Journal, on September 23, 2004)

These are surreal times. Americans in Iraq are beheaded on videotape. Russian children are machine-gunned in their schools. The elderly in Israel continue to be blown apart on buses. No one—whether in Madrid, Istanbul, Riyadh, Bali, Tel Aviv, or New York—is safe from the Islamic fascist, whose real enemy is modernism and Western-inspired freedom of the individual.

Despite the seemingly disparate geography of these continued attacks, we are always familiar with the similar spooky signature: civilians dismembered by the suicide belt, car bomb, improvised explosive device, and executioner’s blade. Then follows the characteristically pathetic communiqué or loopy fatwa aired on al Jazeera, evoking everything from the injustice of the Reconquista to some mythical grievance about Crusaders in the holy shrines. Gender equity in the radical Islamic world is now defined by the expendable female suicide bomber’s slaughter of Westerners.

In response to such international lawlessness, our global watchdog, the United Nations, had been largely silent. It abdicates its responsibility of ostracizing those states that harbor such mass-murderers, much less organizes a multilateral posse to bring them to justice. And yet under this apparent state of siege, President Bush in his recent address to the UN offered not blood and iron—other than an obligatory “the proper response is not to retreat but to prevail”—but Wilsonian idealism, concrete help for the dispossessed, and candor about past sins. The President wished to convey a new multilateralist creed that would have made a John Kerry or Madeline Albright proud, without the Churchillian ‘victory at any cost rhetoric.’ Good luck.

. . . read more

John Kerry does it agian

Cal Thomas found at OldGuns.net

Jewish World Review Sept. 21, 2004/ 6 Tishrei 5765

Cal Thomas

John Kerry does it again

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has achieved something that may be unique in the history of our country. He has managed to oppose two wars while they are being fought, undermine the objective of the nation and give aid and comfort to those who are killing American soldiers and kidnapping American civilians.

In a speech at New York University on Monday, Kerry questioned President Bush's judgment in ordering American troops to topple Saddam Hussein, saying the president had exchanged a brutal dictator for "chaos."

While acknowledging "there has been some progress, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our soldiers and civilians in Iraq, (and) schools, shops and hospitals have been opened, (and) in parts of Iraq, normalcy actually prevails," Kerry claimed that "most Iraqis have lost faith in our ability to deliver meaningful improvements to their lives. So they're sitting on the fence . . . instead of siding with us against the insurgents."

Kerry is an expert at fence-sitting, having sat on one most of his life. He has taken both sides in the war and tried even in this speech to distinguish between granting George W. Bush authority to wage war and reserving his right to micromanage the war the president wages if it doesn't immediately produce victory.

It wasn't long after Kerry returned from Vietnam that he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He slandered his fellow soldiers, calling them indiscriminate killers and comparing them to Genghis Kahn. . . .

[Please hit the link to read the rest]

GOES EAST HURRICANE IR



Jeanne? Is that her name?

The Ultimate Flop?

source

This was in the Washington Times this morning, and Drudge has linked to it, so it may be old news, but it's still pretty stunning. This may be the ultimate John Kerry flip-flop:

During a 1997 debate on CNN's "Crossfire," Sen. John Kerry, now the Democratic presidential nominee, made the case for launching a pre-emptive attack against Iraq. "We know we can't count on the French. We know we can't count on the Russians," said Mr. Kerry. "We know that Iraq is a danger to the United States, and we reserve the right to take pre-emptive action whenever we feel it's in our national interest."
Rep. Peter King was on the Crossfire show with Kerry, and had a tape of the program, which he has shared with the Times and a New York radio host.

It would be possible, but not easy, to imagine a more damaging quote from Kerry's past.

By the way, at lunch today I saw an editorial cartoon that made an excellent point--one that should be obvious, but that I, at least, hadn't put together. The cartoon shows "President" Kerry on the phone, saying something like: "Bonjour, Jacques, I'm calling to ask you to send some troops to help fight the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." I'm not sure that anyone ever believed that Kerry could somehow persuade our reluctant "allies" to lend more help in Iraq. But given the way in which he is now trashing the war effort, it would seem that Kerry will have to abandon the claim that if elected, he would be able to bring more allies on board.

UPDATE: A transcript of the 1997 CNN show has surfaced via Lexis/Nexis, and, while it has some similar comments by Kerry, it does not include the language quoted above from King's tape. So what gives? I don't know; for now, we're suspending judgment. Congressman King was on the show himself, so it's not like someone handed him the tape in an envelope at a livestock show. No doubt we'll learn more soon. In the meantime, we won't add this one to Kerry's Hall of Fame collection of flip-flops.

Thanks to reader Scott Hoge for the Lexis/Nexis transcript.

Posted by Hindrocket at 02:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBack (10)
================
Although I am biased to beleive it is true, I would rely on the audio or videotape oft he participant. LexisNexis edits, corrects, redacts and "adjusts" it's content in the legal area and I am certain would adjust it's transcript to comply with the "official" transcript from CNN.

Transcripts regularly correct spelling and misspeaking errors, insert words that are not there [for clarification], and make corrections to content [which may be embarrassing or potentially defamatory to the publisher]. Lexis is not a publisher and is obliged to protect their sources by accepting such "quality control".

In fact, it would be interesting to do a study of what Presidential mispeaks and malapropisms get corrected or changed and what of others get changed or corrected. We recently heard James Schlesinger testifying about the 9/11 Commission Report on C-Span and he referred to the head of the FBI as Herbert Hoover. That is the sort of thing that would normally be corrected for accuracy.

A little legerdemain is fun

Entrepreneurs: Sel something!

Dictionary.com/Word of the Day: tatterdemalion: "Word of the Day for Tuesday September 21, 2004
tatterdemalion \tat-uhr-dih-MAYL-yuhn; -MAY-lee-uhn\, noun:
A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin.
adjective:
Tattered; ragged.
Last time peasant blouses surfaced, in the 1960s and '70s, they were part of an epidemic of Indian bedspread dresses, homemade blue-jean skirts, Army surplus jackets, Greek bookbag purses and love beads, the whole eclectic tatterdemalion mix meant to express egalitarian sentiments and countercultural solidarity with underdogs everywhere.
--Patricia McLaughlin, 'The peasant look,' Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, April 25, 1999
I was expecting a wild hair, clanking jewelry, a tatterdemalion velvet cape from whose folds wafted the scent of incense, a house full of candles, dream catchers, cats, and bad art.
--David Rakoff, Fraud
To my ear, though, the prose has the tatterdemalion feel of something hooked together by commas, tacked together by periods.
--Brad Leithauser,'Capturer of Hearts,' New York Times, April 7, 1996




Tatterdemalion derives from tatter + -demalion, of unknown origin, though perhaps from Old French maillon, 'long clothes, swadding clothes' or Italian maglia, 'undershirt.'"

ATF Online - Federal Firearms Regulations Reference Guide Learning Theater: "LEARNING THEATER

ATF's Learning Theater will attempt to illustrate how these laws apply in a real-life scenario. Carla is a new employee at Western Arms Guns and Ammunition. Join her as she encounters a variety of situations familiar to many firearm retailers, all under the watchful eye of her supervisor, Mr. Lucas. "

Victoria & Albert

V&A Access to Images: "


You may search here for over 16,000 works and over 20,000 images from the V&A collections. The database covers a wide range of objects, including ceramics, fashion, furniture, glass, metalwork, paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture, and textiles. Many have been selected from recent publications but we have also included less well known items and objects that cannot be permanently on display. "

WurldMedia

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

· Overview ·
· Origins ·
· Distribution ·
· Operation ·
· Risks ·
· Detection and Removal ·
· Research ·

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Overview
Summary: An IE browser helper object that detects visits to known sites and redirects them through a third-party server in order to take the affiliate fees. WurldMedia even steals the fees from other webmasters when you use their own links.
Alias: BuyersPort, Morpheus, Morpheus Shopping Club, WURLD Shopping Community
Category: Hijacker: Any software that resets your browser's settings to point to other sites. Hijacks may reroute your info and address requests through an unseen site, capturing that info. In such hijacks, your browser may behave normally, but be slower.

Variants: WurldMedia.bpboh
WurldMedia.mbho
WurldMedia.MDef
WurldMedia.Mo
WurldMedia.Moaa
WurldMedia.Moz
WurldMedia.MPohs
WurldMedia.MSCStat
WurldMedia.MShop
WurldMedia.TChk
WurldMedia/Mo, WurldMedia/Moaa, WurldMedia/Moz. The BHO is renamed mo030414s.dll, moaa030425s.dll or moz030715s.dll and has a random class ID; the mscstat process is renamed mostat.exe and there is a configuration program called moconfig.exe.
WurldMedia/Mostat. In this newest variant, MoStat.exe will run in your systray.
WurldMedia/MShop, WurldMedia/MPohs and WurldMedia/MDef have new IDs and filenames: m030106shop.dll, m030206pohs.dll and mdefshop.dll, respectively.
WurldMedia/TChk is bundled with the Mo, Moaa and Moz variants. It checks for the existance of the WurldMedia BHO, and, if it finds it missing, contacts its controlling server xnef.com. At the time of writing this server is not responding, but it is suspected that if it were working it would direct TChk to reinstall the software. WurldMedia/TChk tries to escape detection by using a completely random filename and ID.

Similar Pests: Hijacker
Origins
Group: www.wurldmedia.com
Vendor: WURLD Media, Inc.
WurldMedia partners with StreamCast Networks, Inc., developers of Morpheus. A download of Morpheus will result in the installation of components associated with AtomWire and other browser helper objects. Components within a Morpheus installation will carry a variety of developer names within the code, including ESD Technologies, Inc., John Marshall, My Way, Summit Software Company, Wurld Media Inc., and XMLAuthor Inc.

By This Group: WurldMedia.bpboh ·
Mailing Address: WURLD Media, Inc., 63 Putnam Street, Suite #103, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Phone: 518-691-1100 Fax: 518-691-1180
Date of Origin: Variants from February, 2003 to January, 2004

The Computers and Libraries Course: "Dr L. Anne Clyde
The University of Iceland"

Business Services Recommended

These people handle everything for a small business needing IP help.



Don't make the error of Merriam-Webster who lost their goldmine trademark into the public domain. Now any one can call their dictionary, thesaurus, or any other item a Webster's.

(More on lost tradenames and some currently-used tradenames as generics here but Wikipedia so not authoritative.)

No Matter How He Mis-says it, You Know Where He Stands,

Bushisms - Adventures in George W. Bushspeak - Updated Frequently
"In my judgment, when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn't serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences."' --George W. Bush, Meet the Press, Feb. 8, 2004"

The Hot Dog Cart / Trailer - Start Your Business In 10 Easy Steps: "Start Your Business In 10 Easy Steps

Have you ever wondered what people who succeed in business have in common? There are people who started with nothing and became rich, and there are people who were handed everything and lost it all. Fat people have succeeded in business while thin people have too. There seems to be no social model for a successful businessman or woman. So what is the common thread that makes someone successful. It is the ability to get things done, the ability to overcome obstacles and above all the determination to succeed. Why do we tell you this. Very simply, running any business is not easy, however the hot Dog business is easier than most. Once you get started, let's face it, it is not too much of a challenge to throw a Hot Dog on a bun, grab the correct type of soda the customer requested, take their money and give them their change. That is the good news. The bad news is that getting a Hot Dog business started can take a lot of time and can certainly try your patience. There are licensees, inspections and permits to deal with. There is finding a location, financing the start up costs etc. The Licensing phase can be relatively simple or very difficult, a lot of it depends on how decent the people in local government wish to be with you. An understanding and cooperative health Inspector can make all the difference in the world, unfortunately a difficult one can make your life a living hell. The point of all this is that getting started is the toughest part. The person who can overcome the initial obstacles and get started is the person that will win. We guarantee you, no matter how much of a hassle it was to get going, the day you sell that first Hot Dog and put that green cash in your pocket, all the aggravation will be forgotten. You will then be doing something most people only dream about"

What a Country

Homeless but 40% overweight.
http://www.pbase.com/image/29555398

Fasten Your Seatbelts and Catch Your Breath

Go here for amazing beauty.

Don't forget to come back.

According to Terry Allen

Calls actually provide better downside protection than puts (as long as they are in the money), a special report:

Calendar spread using puts: Using the CBOE option calculator, with QQQ at $34 and an implied volatility of 20, the following option prices would exist. In this example, an at-the-money calendar put spread is purchased, and 30 days later, the price of QQQ fell by $1.00. The original spread purchased at $1.12 would be worth $1.27, for a gain of $.15, or 11.8% on the original investment before commissions.

Months to expiration 6 5
Price of QQQ $34 $33

Longer-term 34 put purchased $1.89 $2.27
One-month 34 put sold .77 $1.00

Net value $1.12 $1.27
gain: $.15 (11.8%)

Calendar spread using in-the-money calls: Using the CBOE option calculator again, with QQQ at $34, an in-the-money calendar call spread is purchased, and 30 days later, the price of QQQ fell by $1.00, just as in the above example with a put spread. The resulting percentage gain is a whopping 5 times the gain of the at-the-money put spread.

Months to expiration 6 5
Price of QQQ $34 $33

Longer-term 33 call purchased $2.43 $1.67
One-month 33 call sold $1.37 0

Net value $1.06 $1.67
gain: $.61 (57.5%)

The call spread continues to win if QQQ fell more than $1.00: If QQQ falls to $32, the 34 put spread would only be worth $.88, causing a loss of $.26, while the 33 call spread would be worth $1.22, for a profit of $.15 over the original cost. Once again, the in-the-money call spread provides better downside protection than the at-the-money put spread. (If we had started with an in-the-money put spread, the downside advantage for the in-the-money call spread would be even greater).

Of course, if you sold only 7 next-month puts for each 10 six-month puts you bought, the numbers would be different, but so would the profit if the stock remained the same. As with all option spreads, every adjustment has both a positive and negative potential effect, depending on the behavior of the stock.

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Protests Powered by Cellphone: "TXTMob works like an Internet mailing list for cellphones and is the brainchild of a young man who goes by the pseudonym John Henry. He is a member of the Institute for Applied Autonomy, a group of artists, programmers and others who say their mission is to develop technologies that serve the social and human need for self-determination. (The group was behind iSee, a Web site that has maps of surveillance cameras in Lower Manhattan and calculates routes for those seeking to avoid them.) "

Delaware Corporate Law Clearinghouse - Chancery Court, Court of Chancery

"Welcome to the Delaware Corporate Law Clearinghouse. This site offers access to selected filings and opinions in corporate and other business litigation in the Delaware Court of Chancery, the nation's premier trial court for corporate law. Through this site, you can:
- Search, by document type, keywords and case number, a database of filings and opinions in corporate litigation, including complaints, court opinions and orders, briefs, and settlement papers.
- Review background information about the Court of Chancery.
- Explore links to other sites dealing with corporate law and litigation. "

Stanford Securities Class Action Clearinghouse

The Securities Class Action Clearinghouse provides detailed information relating to the prosecution, defense, and settlement of federal class action securities fraud litigation. The Clearinghouse maintains an Index of Filings of 2084 issuers that have been named in federal class action securities fraud lawsuits since passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Clearinghouse also contains copies of more than 7000 complaints, briefs, filings, and other litigation-related materials filed in these cases.

fashion forcasting whatifs

http://www.reinvigorate.net/system/content.php?fashionLandscape

The Big House

Usability studies

Personas: Setting the Stage for Building Usable Information Sites: "What Are Personas?

Personas are hypothetical archetypes, or 'stand-ins' for actual users that drive the decision making for interface design projects.

Personas are not real people, but they represent real people throughout the design process.

Personas are not 'made up'; they are discovered as a by-product of the investigative process.

Although personas are imaginary, they are defined with significant rigor and precision.

Names and personal details are made up for personas to make them more realistic.

Personas are defined by their goals.

Interfaces are built to satisfy personas' needs and goals.

Source: Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, Indianapolis: Sams, 1999, pp. 123-24. (Wording condensed and modified.)

Book to consider

A Matter Of Character: Inside The White House Of George W. Bush
by Ronald Kessler

Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book. List Price: $24.95
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34 used & new from $15.55

Edition: Hardcover

Retirement Plan

Guru Analysis
Identify stocks that meet the investment criteria of some of the greatest investors of our time.