Month: December 2012

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Hackthelaw: Piratebox meets Free Law

There are few “down” times in the CALIverse, but the Christmas through New Year holiday break is one of them. I use the time to do updates and upgrades and installs that would be disruptive at other times of the year. I also use the quiet stretches to try out new things. One of the new things I took a shot at this break is building a PirateBox.  A PirateBox is:

 Inspired by pirate radio and the free culture movements, PirateBox utilizes Free, Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS) to create mobile wireless communications and file sharing networks where users can anonymously chat and share images, video, audio, documents, and other digital content.

— http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox

I grabbed an old Asus Eee PC net book that runs Debian Linux and followed the instructions on the wiki. The setup was pretty straightforward, but it is important to remember that you are disconnecting the wireless on the pc from the Internet and using it to create an access point of its own so once you launch the PirateBox script you no longer have Internet access via wireless. I decided to call my version hackthelaw.

Once I had it up and running there was the matter of content. As it happens I have a lot of free law laying around (occupational hazard). I was casting about for a USB thumb drive to load stuff onto when I remember the great Free Law Reporter thumb drive that we did for CALIcon11. It contains LOTS of court opinions in EPUB format and seemed like a perfect starting point for downloads. I took one of the FLR drives and added all of the eLangdell ebooks (all formats), some choice gov docs from FDsys including the US Code, and the EPUB version of the Delaware state code. I plugged this into hackthelaw and had a very nice collection of law that could be downloaded to anyone who connects to hackthelaw.

If you’re still with me, you’re probably asking yourself, “So, what does all this mean to me?” Well, that’s a good question. The hackthelaw box is an open, anonymous network stocked with primary and secondary legal materials that are freely available for download.  People can connect to the network and download any of the materials as well as chat with others connected to the network. All this is in a closed network space separate from the Internet.  I can easily imagine setting this up in a library as a way for folks to access legal materials and even ask basic questions about the resources.  Any device that has WiFi can connect to the network, so folks could download materials directly to their phones or tablets as well as laptops. Consider hackthelaw as another Free Law access point.

Beyond being a distribution node for Free Law, devices like hackthelaw have potential uses in legal education and practice. A closed private network could be used to distribute and receive law school exams. A professor could launch a network at the beginning of a class to provide students with that day’s material. In practice such a device could be used for gather initial client intake information. In conferences or negotiations a private network could handle the exchange of documents between parties. There are lots of possibilities here, and, as time becomes available, I hope to be looking into some of them in the not too distant future.

If you’re interested, I’ll be running some sort of hackthelaw device at the CALI booth in the AALS exhibit hall in New Orleans, January 4 -6, 2013.

 

 

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Dewald On Blending the First-Year Contracts Classroom At Utah

We wanted the students to watch the videos prior to class. Instead of spending 30 minutes lecturing about the Restatements and then discussing them, the students came to class prepared to do the discussion. This reduced the time necessary in class and also facilitated a deeper discussion.  The time savings was used throughout the semester for more in-class group work. In class time was constructed assuming the students had watched the videos.

via Law School Ed Tech – Blending the First-Year Legal Classroom.

This is a great article and information is carries should serve as an example to law schools on how things should be done. Aaron provides great detail on the background in setting up the contracts course, how the videos were created, and the results from surveying the students who took the course.

The playlist of videos is on YouTube.

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Analysts Sound Death Knell For Dedicated E-Readers, So Multi-Purpose Tablets Win

Selburn said that 2011 appears to have been the peak of the e-reader market, when IHS said that 23.2 million e-readers shipped, compared to 14.9 million shipped for all of 2012. By 2016, Selburn said that just 7.1million e-readers will ship, equal to a loss of more than 66% since 2011.

via Last chapter for e-readers? – Computerworld.

This shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Single use tech devices have a more limited audience especially when they must compete against more feature rich multi-purpose devices. Why have just a reader when for just a few dollars more you can get all the features of the reader plus all the features of a tablet. You can read the latest best seller AND check your email, update Facebook, chat with friends and so on. Of course e-readers aren’t going away, but they won’t be dominating the market for hand held devices either.

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Some Quick Drupal Troubleshooting Tips

You don’t have to use Drupal (or any other user configurable software package for that matter) for very long before you do something that causes it to do something unpleasant. While answering one of those “why is it doing that ” type of questions this afternoon it occurred to me that there are a number of rules/tips I follow when working with Drupal.

Following these little tips makes life easier will help you maintain some sanity while getting some work done.

  •  Always use the admin or user 1 account (the first one you created when you installed the site) when turning modules on and off. Sometimes modules have odd permissions settings that require the super user to do the install but they don’t bother to tell you that or give any useful error when it goes wrong.
  • Always clear the cache when you install modules, change/add content types, create/edit views or panels, make any theme changes or do any sort of updates. Drupal caches lots of stuff and it’s easier to clear to the cache manually then it is to try and guess if what you just did is cached or not. I usually don’t worry about the warnings about clearing the cache affecting performance because most sites are small and lightly used enough for it to not make that much of a difference.
  • Install and test modules one at a time. Don’t install a bunch of stuff and then go back and start testing because if things go wrong troubleshooting is easier if you’ve only just changed one thing. Of course some modules require others, so you’ll have to install groups of modules at some point, but remember to turn them all off if something goes amiss.
  • Don’t monkey with the Drupal database unless you REALLY know what you’re doing. Something as simple as saving a blog post in Drupal can touch a lot of tables. Even if you are seeing database errors, it’s usually a better idea to try everything you can to clear them up from the Drupal admin pages first.
  • Keep a second  (or third) browser handy so that you can have an anonymous view of your Drupal site while you’re developing. This is really handy when those pesky caching problems pop up. Also helps avoid those “I can see it, why can’t you” problems that crop up when someone actually tries to visit your site.

I’m sure there are more so feel free to add them in the comments.