Category: a learning experience

FindLaw’s Modern Practice – Feature

as blogging becomes even more popular, more and more questions will arise. For example, can blogs be cited, like extemporaneous notes, as evidence of one’s state of mind or knowledge on a particular date? And in the patent law context, could blogging about a particular technology be construed as evidence of knowledge of prior art? In the small law firm context, blogging is an especially useful publicity tool. All the firm’s lawyers can post to the firm’s blog and build it up to be a real destination for readers. But what if the firm breaks up? Who owns the blog name? How about the archives? Was it all work-made-for-hire to the firm?

Same questions come up in any professional role: medicine, engineering, you name it.

This is actually something better suited to knowledge logging, as an internal unstructured documentation method.

I sent a file to someone — a Word document in Office 98 on the Macintosh — to a Windows user, without a file extension, and what they got was filename.dat and a non-descript file icon. All because the file didn’t have .doc attached. Why can’t the OS look at the file signature to see what it is?

FreeBSD knows what it is:

[/usr/home/paul]:: file filename
filename: Microsoft Office Document

OS X does, of course.

And can you drag the document icon to an application icon and get it opened that way? Of course not: you have to ask for and wait for the “Open with” dialog to open and then scroll (type the first character to get what you want? Fat chance) through the choices. And does the association get made for you? Does the OS ask if it can help you out for next time?

Pthpbbth. It’s always puzzled me that Mac users have been accused of being dependent on the mouse over the keyboard, but any reasonably Mac user knows you can do a lot without the mouse, from navigating through file lists to opening and closing applications and folder windows. Try that in the Leading Brand.

Mobiles have a life-affirming sense of humor. It’s hard to imagine a grim, fanatical mobile.

My new boss here at the UW has been passing me stuff to read and follow up on: this Viridian Design stuff is fascinating.