"Cheers,
Marc & Eric"

Thus signed off Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina when they released v. 0.10 of the NCSA Mosaic browser, ten years ago yesterday. Slashdot has the story, a link to browsers.evolt.org where old versions of Mosaic are available for download (when the servers aren't quite as hammered as they must be now), and predictions about what "information-access-over-electronic-networks" will look (and feel) like in 2013. [via The Screen Savers]

According to the current newsletter of the ABA's Council of Appellate Lawyers, Susan Hanley Kosse and David T. ButleRitchie (7th down at that link) will publish an article about legal writing skills in the AALS Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 53, issue 1 (late March 2003). The authors conducted a survey that "asked members of the profession—attorneys, judges and law professors—what they thought of the writing skills of their colleagues." In a fascinating recap of the survey results, the authors reveal among other things that 57.3% of the respondents did not feel that new members of the profession write well when compared with more senior members. In the forthcoming article, the authors promise to "examine in detail possible reasons why lawyers do not write well," including, "New lawyers do not write well because of the Generation X factor."**

That ought to be interesting.

*"You're Lost Between 'Baby Boomer' And 'Generation X' If..." [via Whole Wheat Bagel] Yeah, I remember when Jordache jeans with a flat-handled comb in the back pocket was cool, what of it???

**I did alert the Council of Appellate Lawyers to the rather humorous (considering the subject matter) typo currently present in the text quoted (sans typo) above. With any luck by the time you click through it will be but a dim memory.

A possible demonstration sport in the next IBU Figureblogging extravaganza: pairs blawging. Ernie and Monique now have stiff competition from Bill and Andrea. Citius, altius, fortius!

In today's Los Angeles Times:

• Inspired by Congressman Robert Ney's adjustments to the House menus (Fuddruckers appears the latest to follow suit), Adam Tschorn suggests various alternatives to things commonly dubbed "French:" "patriot portals," etc.
• People's West Coast style editor Steven Cojocaru describes his three year stint as a temp in Disney's consumer products division: "I had a ponytail and an earring, which in Disney terms meant I was part-trans-sexual, part-Lucifer."

Liberty Lip Lock?

A Slashdot thread was posted yesterday concerning the FareChase injunction. (Thanks, Frank.)

Michael O'Connor Clarke has posted what may be the most [insert extravagant hyperbole of your choice here] law firm retainer letter typo yet witnessed. (Nope, Snopes doesn't list this as fake.) [via Gary Turner]

Thanks, Lisa Rein, for posting video of Professor Lessig's SXSW presentation. SXSW has more conference video, including Dr. Weinberger's opening remarks.

Lately debarked the The Spirit of Disneyland after a brief trip to the Bay Area for some work and some fun. (Do try to book a forward seat on "The Happiest Plane on Earth," unless the song stylings of Julie Andrews on A Spoonful of Sugar are a particular favorite.)

Much masking tape was harmed in the painting of this plane.

The Intel v. Hamidi case pending before the California Supreme Court has been set for oral argument on April 2 at 9:00 a.m. in Los Angeles. In this case, the Court will determine whether unsolicited email can constitute an enjoinable trespass to chattels. (More on this, from the EFF.)

Related links:

• The opinion (PDF) under review (California Court of Appeal, Third District)
• The California Supreme Court case summary (PDF)

A few blawgs, comin' in low and fast:

• Fred is a government lawyer in Washington, D.C., and thus a Bureaucrat by Day. He offers a congenial blend of political, legal and social commentary, not to mention Gong Show references. What's not to like?
• Matt will start law school this fall, and can hold the door for me any time.
• Adam Starr is in Atlanta, also waiting on law school admissions results and quite understandably thinking about judicial confirmations and beer in the meantime.
• Michael of Buffalo Wings & Vodka launched said blog with a truly great inaugural post: "I accidentally got into law school. More later."
• The blogger at Ambivalent Ambroglio is a bit of a Mac geek and soon-to-be law student, possibly at American University: Washington College of Law.
• S/R of So Sue Me is a law school applicant, and clever.
• Matt Stucky too is waiting for law school results, and dreaming of Italy.

There's quite a passel of future blogging law students out there . . . [The foregoing via the Blawg Ring, one another's blogs and JD2B.]

Blogger should get bonus Corporate Weblog Manifesto points for its Status Blog, and an entry last week from Steve Jenson:

Good Guy Hacker Adrian Lamo got ahold of us a few weeks ago to let us know of a few security holes he found. We checked through the logs and none of them appear to have been used before Adrian found them. We have fixed the security issues and Blogger is better for it. Adrian rocks for not only finding the problem but also for letting us know about them so other people won't be affected. Thank you, Adrian.

Note how Blogger's discussion diffuses the sensationalism or panic that might otherwise go along with a story headlined "Security holes found in Google's Blogger." [via TVC Alert]

The operative petition, briefs and temporary injunction order in the American Airlines, Inc. v. FareChase, Inc. matter discussed below are as follows (all are PDFs):

American Airlines

• Amended Petition (1.80MB)
• Opening Brief (4.85MB)
• Repy Brief (3.52MB)

FareChase

• Opposition Brief (3.77MB)
• Reply Brief (4.31MB)

Determination of Donald J. Cosby, Presiding Judge

• Temporary Injunction (March 8, 2003) (495K)

We represent FareChase in connection with the dispute described in this Star-Telegram article. The EFF has the injunction, signed last Saturday, available on its site. As my colleague Morgan Tovey put it, "At [American Airlines]'s request, the court has, by this order, created a new property right not only for AA but for all large companies with Internet Web sites: the right to monopolize forever public information." Alex Macgillvray has some additional thoughts.

The ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo is coming up in June: "[T]he first business-oriented forum to address the recent emergence of Weblogs into the business world and their rising importance as a medium of communication." Thanks to Robert Scoble for the pointer. The David score is high (Winer, check; Weinberger, check), but to really shine the conference would do well to showcase Robert's dead-on Corporate Weblog Manifesto (read it three times, then read the link cosmos), and Chris Pirillo's related insights: "We 'allow' Winer to promote Radio UserLand, and Null to promote his latest book—but that's only because they talk to us. They engage us. B-Blogs do exist, but I'd like to believe they exist because their owners have a passion for their subject matter burning deep inside of them."

It would be easy but unwise to start down the road of public institutional blogging without deciding these are words to live by. Eric Norlin highlights Source ID, etc., as examples of intelligent business blog life forms. [Update] And Nick Denton emphasizes the contrapositive: "Remind me to shoot myself." [via Hylton]

Finally got around to reading David Goldman's incisive interview with Mark Webbink, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Red Hat. Open source, shared source, DRM and more. (Note too that David has a topic devoted exclusively to blawgs and blawging.)

An interesting article about Web standards compliance? Yep. At W3C, few practice what they preach: "[A] vast majority of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) member home pages do not pass the standards body's own test for compliance with W3C recommendations." Wonders study author Marko Karppinen in an IM interview with CNET staff writer Paul Festa, "The authoring companies...are pouring millions into the development of (Adobe's) GoLive and (Macromedia's) DreamWeaver—why are these tools producing invalid markup by default?"

Kim Garretson's pulp fiction art, and tribute to "Doc and Dr," are good fun. Also, if you've been waiting to see The Hours I'd suggest you do it while it's still in theaters. It's a film that deserves a big screen.

Some thoughtful comments about cautionary blawging have appeared in response to my "Crash Course" post, and you can check them out or add to them at this link (add more of your "getting started" resource suggestions too, by all means). The commenters include lawyer/writer David Maizenberg ("If Bork Had Blogged"). Ernie Svenson, Sam Heldman, The Academy and Jerry Lawson have posted related thoughts.

[Update] Howard weighs in.

Other legal bloggers who have come my way recently include Rotsam Marzban, a "cosmopolitan Iranian" and Harvard law student, and the Harvard 2003 LLM class, blogging at llm2003. [both via Weblogs at Harvard] Check in with the CaffMonster for "the buzz in law and literature," and see if you can tell me what language (other than English) is happening at Cyberlawnews.

"In the white foliated earth, transmute fear into trust. Defense into welcome. As it turns out, this is harder than it looks." [The EGR Weblog]

In one fell send (and no doubt by other insidious means), Christopher Locke, aka RageBoy®—more here, from the Guardian—pulled me and over two dozen other souls into the whitewater of weblogging, leaving most of us sputtering but enjoying the ride. The devil in the machine was EGR, which, if you were not ducking the shrapnel of these email grenades in real-time, is archived for posterity. (I think to get the full dose you would start here, pick things up here, then mosey on over here to make sure you haven't missed anything. Or, if you prefer your reading in a neat, handheld package, many comprise The Bombast Transcripts.)

If EGR is receding—and I hope it merely has been recouping in the Yucatan—there is no pain as long as Chris keeps blogging. And fear not, there remains ample opportunity to become one of the many, the iniquitous, the Valued Readers. One never knows what the wee hours of the morning may yet engender.

There have been so many tidbits, columns and big, whopping features that have captured my attention from this weekend's editions of the L.A. Times I thought I'd point 'em out.

• The Points West column by Steve Lopez consistently is some of the best the paper has to offer. Today, it examines weather-independent atmospheric differences between L.A. and D.C.: "[I]t's quite tense here. Cabbies listen to NPR. That's how tense."
• The weekend's L.A. Times Magazine is a special Silicon Valley Issue. Lots about Buck's and bucks, Five Reasons to Hope (interesting, but too narrow), an unreformed sock puppet and a mostly reformed hacker. (The tirading lawyer might be my favorite: "There were all these 20-year-olds all over the place, going on about 'eyeballs' and 'mindshare' and riding their stupid scooters back and forth to their offices, and I was simultaneously wanting to puke and jealous as hell.") There's also some propitious news for Dave, as the Times reports that "Boston comes closest to matching Silicon Valley in terms of its breadth of technology and ability to reinvent itself."
• From today's Business section, an article on automotive manufacturers following in the footsteps of Dell.
• From today's Travel section, an article about mistakenly low Web-advertised fares or rates. (Ouch—$850/night, over-water Bora Bora bungalows, listed for $85/night; people tried to book them for two months at a stretch.)
• From yesterday's Business section, an article about the Navy and Marines sending troops to the Middle East with "a weapon of mass information: a high-definition digital camera" (to generate digital Movietone newsreels).
• From yesterday's Business section, an article about a lawsuit over the "Survivor Yell" (see track 9). (See also the Yahoo yodel.)

Stan McCoy is with the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling, and writes the International Trade Law and Policy blog. [via Blawg.org] Stan is commenting on some very interesting stuff over there, which, taken together, could make for quite an exotic meal and/or vacation (shrimp and turtles, beaujolais, tiny island nations...).

I must be slipping, this thing actually validates. (That should last about as long as hot sliced gelato.)