Net Neutrality & Recent Court Decision: A FAQ

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down rules that the Federal Communications Commission adopted to protect the openness of the Internet.

What does this ruling, as well as the principles of Net neutrality that it affects, portend for the Internet user? Read more here.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Digital Collections: National Library of Medicine's Free Onine Archive

"Digital Collections is the National Library of Medicine's free online archive of biomedical books and videos. All of the content in Digital Collections is freely available worldwide and, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. Digital Collections provides unique access to NLM's rich, historical resources.

About the Collections
Texts
The majority of the texts within Digital Collections were digitized at NLM using a Kirtas KABIS III scanning system, which produces several files per page and per book.  After cropping, deskewing and reviewing the source images, additional image derivatives and metadata are then created using NLM-defined scripts.   A smaller number of texts were digitized from original or microfilm by a vendor offsite.
The texts comprising the Medicine in the Americas collection were digitized for a multi-institutional digital library project, the Medical Heritage Library, which uses Internet Archive to host its collection.  Therefore NLM routinely deposits copies of its digitized books to Internet Archive.  More information on the Medical Heritage Library can be found here.

Films
The films available in Digital Collections come from NLM's reel and videotape holdings of government and military-created productions.  The source material was digitized to MPEG2 format, which served as the digital master for the range of video derivatives offered by the repository. Each film was manually transcribed, with time-coded captions then created using WGBH's Magpie application."
Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

The Technological Singularity

Movies like "Her", "The Terminator" and "The Matrix" have a concept known as the Technological Singularity (or just the Singularity) as part of their basic plot.  So what is the Singularity? 

"Popularized by science fiction author Vernor Vinge as well as inventor and now Google director of engineering Ray Kurzweil, the Singularity is a theoretical point in future history when artificial intelligences exceeds the power of the human mind, become self-aware and dramatically change the balance of power on the planet while simultaneously transforming the very nature of humanity itself." Excerpt taken from Mashable.com.

Read more about the Singularity, AI in movies and the recent Golden Globe winning movie "Her" here.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Random Acts of Academic Kindness

Hat Tip to TaxProf blog for the post of Random Acts of Academic Kindness.  It links to the "Academic Kindness" Tumblr a place for students and professors to post acts of kindness experienced or witnessed in higher education.

It is sometimes too easy to be negative.  It is always worth remembering that people can and do help one another.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

New Enhancements to HeinOnline Welcome Page

HeinOnline has recently added some new enhancements to the welcome page.  The page has been designed to be more user-friendly with new options to search.  The new page now shows tabs with different options available for searching including Full Text Search, Catalog Search, Citation Navigator, Fastcase, and MyHein.  To learn more about the new enhancements click here.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Bankruptcy Blog

For those of you coming back to a Bankruptcy or Advanced Bankruptcy course this semester, there's an excellent blog that I'd like to recommend.  Bankruptcy Blog stays current with daily updates and commentary on case law from all U.S. jurisdictions and other developments in the highly specialized field of corporate bankruptcy.  This blog is a creation of the premier bankruptcy firm, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, and is published by their Business Finance & Restructuring (BFR) department.  Partners and associates from across the firm contribute to the blog, with occasional outside contributors.

In 2012, Weil's Bankruptcy Blog was the only bankruptcy-related blog included in the 6th Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100, an annual listing of the top 100 legal blogs as selected by the ABA Journal staff.  It will keep you in the know about how bankruptcy law is being interpreted by the courts and discussed by the experts.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

More Socio-Philosophical musings - Cats v. Dogs

Moving from feudal thoughts of the dark ages to an ageless debate - cats v. dogs.

Two preeminent pundits in the NY Times debate dualism and the age-old fundamental philosophical question - are you a cat person or a dog person -  with some politics thrown in.

How could I resist with this photo featured ?



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

A Neo-Feudal Model of Online Security?

Such is the provocative thesis of this article in Wired magazine. According to the article,

“Some of us have pledged our allegiance to Google: We have Gmail accounts, we use Google Calendar and Google Docs, and we have Android phones. Others have pledged allegiance to Apple: We have Macintosh laptops, iPhones, and iPads; and we let iCloud automatically synchronize and back up everything. Still others of us let Microsoft do it all. Or we buy our music and e-books from Amazon, which keeps records of what we own and allows downloading to a Kindle, computer, or phone. Some of us have pretty much abandoned e-mail altogether … for Facebook.

These vendors are becoming our feudal lords, and we are becoming their vassals. We might refuse to pledge allegiance to all of them – or to a particular one we don’t like. Or we can spread our allegiance around. But either way, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to not pledge allegiance to at least one of them.”

Have a look at the article and see whether you agree.


Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

20 Best Legal Productivity Apps of 2013

If you want to know what apps are popular with the legal crowd, check out this list of the 20 most popular legal apps for 2013 taken from LegalProductivity.com's popular App of the Week posts.

From Air Sketch – Turn your iPad into a Whiteboard or Presentation Tool to JuryPad – Everything You Need to Select Your Jury, you can find a wide variey of apps perfect for your legal career.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Online Research Resources: Medical Research Law & Policy Report (BNA)

If you are interested in a publication that offers coverage of regulatory and legal developments concerning the medical research industry, then take a look at BNA's Medical Research Law & Policy Report.  Dates of coverage are from March 20, 2002 to the present.

To access the Medical Research Law & Policy Report (BNA) :

• Click the "Online Resources Subject List" link
• Then, click "Health Law/Medicine" link
• Scroll down to "Medical Research Law & Policy Report (BNA)"

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat