Futurelawyer

Texting A Driver - Testing The Limits Of Foreseeability

N.J. Court: Text Recipients Can Be Held Liable In Accidents � CBS New York. Every first year law student learns, in Torts I, about liability for negligence that is the proximate cause of an injury. They learn about proximate cause from Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad, (248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 N.Y. 1928), in which poor Mrs. Palsgraf lost her negligence action against the Railroad. Briefly, two Railroad employees tried to help a passenger carrying a package on to the train while it was moving. The package fell, and just happened to contain fireworks, which fell on to the track, ignited, and scared Mrs. Palsgraf at the other end of the platform. Putting aside her lack of physical injury, the issue decided was that it was not "reasonably foreseeable" for the railroad employees to know that their action might trigger the fireworks, which they had no reason to know was being carried by the passenger. Now, fast forward to the Internet age, in which a driver texting while driving receives texts from a friend safely ensconced on the living room sofa. Is it reasonably foreseeable to the couch potato that sending a text to the driving friend might be read while on the road, making the couch potato jointly liable for an automobile collision? This New Jersy court said yes. What do you think?

 

Welcome To The Matrix

Leap Motion. If you thought the hand waving computer manipulation in the Matrix was cool, this is a real product that you can buy that enables fine tuned hand and finger motions to control a computer screen. In the future, gestural control will be the way we interact with our computers, and a real holodeck is not out of the question. Using a mouse to navigate? How quaint.

Life In First Gear Isn't Living

Execupundit.com: Life in First Gear. Execupundit and I must have been on the same wavelength this morning. He posted this almost simultaneously with my post on the joy of the mundane. The corollary to doing things for yourself is, of course, taking risks and following passions. Every day contains such opportunities for us. Don't waste any.

Neptune Pine Smartwatch - Put A SmartPhone On Your Wrist

Neptune Pine Smartwatch Goes Up For Pre-Order, Still the Watch of Dreams %u2013 Droid Life. Okay, I know. I could start a blog with just my posts on new smartwatches. But, you should thank me. You are now able to converse in social situations about the state of smartwatch technology. You're welcome. Now, to the new Neptune Pine. In addition to looking pretty nice, this is not your standard accessory smartwatch. It is an almost complete Android smartphone, with a 2G/3G radio and WiFi in it. So, you could use this thing as your only smartphone, although it won't be as full functioning as your current smartphone. You will need to make calls via Bluetooth, so no Dick Tracy here. But, still, you can preorder it now, for around $400. My advice is to watch and wait, unless you want a reprise of my two year wait for the I'm Watch.

Reason Number 180 For Why I Am A Solo

Make Time for the Work That Matters - Harvard Business Review. This Harvard Business Review article discusses delegation of unimportant tasks to other workers. Its premise is that knowledge workers (like lawyers?) can be more "productive" by delegating "unimportant" tasks to lower level workers. These researchers claim that their research shows that knowledge workers spend 41% of their time on tasks that could be competently handled by others. Respectfully, that is a crock. In fact, the well lived life is one in which the bottom line is not the goal. The goal should be to perform the tasks which you choose, and to do each with your best effort. I suppose that is why I am a solo lawyer. I try to enjoy each task, even those which seem mundane and "unimportant". I realize that, as lawyers, we often are required to perform tasks under pressure and deadlines not of our own making. In my view, that makes it all the more important to do things we enjoy when we have the opportunity. Delegate tasks that you cannot do well, or do not have the time to do well. I don't need an assistant to make a pot of coffee in the morning when I get to work. In fact, the aroma of the coffee, the task of filling the pot, and everything that goes with it can become a loved daily ritual. Call it the zen of the mundane. Don't rely on researchers to tell you what is important. Don't sweat the small stuff. Savor it.

What Is Your Goal Weight?

As I approach my goal weight, I am happy to say that my progress has been steady. Most of you already know that I have been dieting; but, honestly, it is more of a life style change. I abhor most forms of exercise; but, I enjoy doing active things that have a function; for instance, cutting the grass, walking the mall and flea market, etc. Here is a photo of me many years ago. You will get a current photo when I am at that weight again. (Shut up. I will make it.)

When Your SmartPhone Is Turned Off, Does It Dream?

Intel Emotion Sensing Tech Could Allow Your Next Smartphone to Cheer You Up. Seriously, a smartphone that senses your emotions and mood, and reacts? What's next, a smartphone that will hug us? Until robotics takes an iRobot turn (naturally, Apple will claim copyright on iRobot), our devices may be worn on our bodies, they may be carried in our pockets, and they may have sensors that react to external stimuli; but, human emotion is not necessarily the equivalent of the human response to it. For instance, tears can be interpreted as happiness or sadness. Many emotions are masked by humans in order to protect oneself or to deceive. As most lawyers know, lie detectors can measure galvanic skin response; but, they really can't measure the truth or falsity of a person. They may be an effective tool to measure deception; but, human motivation and other internal human traits are more complex that we imagine. Even sensors now being developed for billboards to identify the gender and age of the viewer have limitations. External symbols of age belie the fact that I am 8 years old inside. Just ask SWMBO.

Hey, Grandpa, What's A Floppy Disk?

Why does Google hate your SD card? | Pocketnow. Is it so long ago that we transferred data to and from our computers on big, eight inch, floppy disks that we inserted into big slots in the front of our 25 pound "portable" computers? Now, it would appear that an assassination squad from Google is out to get the remaining vestiges of the data storage market; at least, that part of the market that resides on pinky sized cards that slide into ever decreasing sized slots in our ever smaller computers. MicroSD cards are tiny, tiny, tiny, which makes them easy to lose, and they store more data than a human could accumulate in an average lifetime. But, Google isn't in the business of making storage media, so it is increasingly in the cloud that our data is stored. Modern phone and computer manufacturers stopped making built in floppy drives a long time ago. Now, we are computing on Chrome computers that have no floppy drives, no DVD drives, and no SD slots. In the old days, we called this workstation computing. No real computers except in the server room. Everybody else had what was called a "dumb terminal". Everything old is new again.

Galaxy Gear - Only The Young And Hip Need Apply

Samsung Exec Confirms Galaxy Gear Smartwatch Aimed At Younger, Hip Buyers Coming Sept. 4 | TechCrunch. Well, I guess I won't be allowed to add to my SmartWatch collection when the Samsung Galaxy Gear is introduced next week. Apparently, the device is designed as an accessory to the Samsung smartphones for the "young and hip". In relative terms, say in comparison with the age of the earth, I am "young". However, while I grow larger hips as I age, I am in no way "hip" in the sense that it goes with "young". I suppose that I could give the money to my son, and ask him to buy it for me. Except that he couldn't care less about being "hip". Wait, didn't "hip" go out of fashion in the Eighties? This is a new century; maybe I can create a new meme around the term. Be hip. Buy a Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch? Probably not. This thing has a design more likely to engender comparisons with an Eighties Accutron. Hey, maybe the designers were "hip" in 1985?

 

Feedly Pro - Just Say No...For Now

feedly Pro. Hey, I like Feedly. It feels like home, now that Google Reader is gone. However, do I want to pay $5 a month for the privilege of usng it? Not yet. I don't need to get in the front of the support line. I don't need to search within my feeds.And, since all I do is read my feeds, I don't need to save them anywhere. I will keep an open mind, however, as I know these services need to find a revenue stream somewhere. For now, it won't be coming out of my pocket. But, watch out Feedly. If you handicap the free users, like me, you will chase us away, and that won't be good. RSS readers feel like yesterday's news already. Twitter and Google Plus already are more current.