April 29, 2007

Welcome to Issue #266 of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, a newsletter that delivers relevant and timely legal research information, and other fun stuff, to your inbox every Sunday. If you like what you read, please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to do the same! To subscribe, all you have to do is visit Inter Alia and fill out the subscription form -- it's free!

I had no time this week to find any news of interest, so all we have are the....

Blawgs of the Week
Here's a selection of some of the great law-related weblogs I featured on my blog this past week:

Here at the Help Desk we're covering the types of things that can cause your computer to sloooooooow dowwwwwwwnnnnnnn.... This week, let's talk about your BIOS settings. BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output Settings, and in plain english, your BIOS files help to prepare your computer to run software programs during the startup process. It's embedded on a chip on your computer's motherboard, the primary circuit center for your PC. Sometimes you install new programs that the BIOS settings are not configured to optimally handle, which can cause a slowdown.

How to find your BIOS settings? It can be different, depending on your computer. When your computer is booting up, the screen may say "Press ____ for Setup" -- if so, that's how you get to your BIOS settings. Your computer manual may also tell you the magic key -- sometimes it's the Delete key, sometimes it's F2, sometimes it's F10 -- once you find the right key, press it down for a second or two during bootup (BEFORE you get to the Windows screen), and you'll be in your BIOS settings.

What settings are optimal for your computer? Again, there's no set rule for this -- a Google search for the name of your motherboard and BIOS as keywords should yield the correct settings.

If you don't want to fool with configuring the settings, just visit your computer manufacturer's website -- in the support area, you should be able to download the most recent version of your BIOS files, with optimal configuration. Make sure you follow the instructions carefully on installing the new BIOS files -- it is very important that you do it correctly.

Next Issue: Get to Know Your Windows Services.

Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net – I’ll post your question (don’t worry, I won’t use your real name) and try to get an answer for you!

National Library of Medicine Gateway
Billed as "your entrance to the knowledge resources of the National Library of Medicine," this gateway allows you to search across the 23 sites/databases associated with the NLM. When you conduct a search, it will show you the number of results from each database -- then you'll have to click on each database for those specific results. On each page of results, you have the option to save them to your "locker," email them to yourself or others, or order documents. You can save each search with a bookmark, or just see your entire search history all at once for future reference.

Patent Fetcher
When you search for and find a patent on the USPTO website, it's a pain to download a copy of the patent from the government site. Patent Fetcher makes the process simpler, by providing the complete patent or patent application in one PDF file. Just plug in a patent number, and you'll get the file in a few seconds. Ultimately you'll have to pay 65 cents per patent, but until they can get another payment company, you can download all you want for free.

The Sales Tax Clearinghouse
This site is primarily for merchants -- it provides software, services, and sales tax data to help determine and calculate correct sales tax rates to apply in over 7,000 jurisdictions. But if you have a need to find out a particular sales tax rate, you can use the site, too. Click on Lookup Rates, and you'll find the state tax rates, as well as additional rates from particular counties.

Singapore International Arbitration Centre
All right, I'll bet that not many of you have a need for an arbitrator in Singapore....but maybe some of you know (or are) lawyers with an international practice. If you have clients in Asia, you might consider using SIAC for your arbitration needs. Here you'll find information on their services, as well as the Asian-American Arbitration Journal, articles, arbitration codes of practice, rules, model arbitration clauses, and more.

State Legislated Actions on Tobacco Issues
This page is part of the American Lung Association site, and it tracks state tobacco control laws, such as restrictions on public smoking or laws on tobacco taxes. You can read the site's reports in a number of ways: by searching the entire database, reading condensed summary reports, or browsing by state. You can also subscribe to the Tobacco Control Tribune e-newsletter, as well as other types of newsletters published by the ALA.

Getting tired of the games I've been mentioning in this space? I hope not, because I still have a few more to go:

I love Desktop Tower Defense -- you stop the enemies from crossing your desktop, by placing tower defenses across the screen.

Well, that’s it for Issue #266 – I hope you liked it! If you did, pass this along to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to subscribe. Also, feel free to drop me an e-mail any time if you have questions, or if you have websites or other topics you want included in a future issue.

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