How many is a billion?

Posted on 12 July, 2011 by Charles Holloway

How many is a billion? Everyone knows the answer.

Or do they? Does it actually matter?

The official answer is that what we in England used to know as a billion has been downgraded. Is this just another example of Governments massaging statistics? I suppose it matters if you are trying to make something look bigger than it actually is. If I am a billionaire, I want to be worth a million million. But I am not, so do I care that I am these days only worth a thousand million?

Likewise with a trillion which has undergone an even more extensive cut. What used to be a million, million, million million is now only a million, million.

We are obsessed these days with the “how many?” question. How many friends have you got on Facebook? How many followers on Twitter? How many connections on LinkedIn?

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Twit, twittle, twit. The long view of e-disclosure

Posted on 23 June, 2011 by Charles Holloway

There is a view often expressed that the law is failing to keep up with developments in technology. You only have to read the papers (if anyone still does) or read what people are saying on a myriad of social networking sites of which Facebook and Twitter are the most often quoted.

Occasionally the law comes up against someone who is perceived by some to be a particularly persistent “offender”. That person writes a series of articles, the subject of which then seeks to prevent disclosure of the material. The matter comes to court and then the unexpected (or should I say unintended?) happens. The trial does not go as expected and the whole point of the court case is lost. The person who attempted to prevent disclosure has a considerable amount of egg on his/her face and the information they wished to keep secret is more widely disseminated than they could ever have feared.

Does this sound familiar? If so, you are probably thinking footballers playing away, super injunctions and tabloids screaming with names, pictures and luridly illustrated stories.

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A leap into the unknown

Posted on 11 May, 2011 by Bridie Sheldon

We push the youngest member of our team Bridie Sheldon into writing a blog… about blogging.

Imagine you have just thrown yourself off a bridge. You are plummeting ever nearer and nearer to the ground and then, in a split second, the free falling feeling turns into a stomach churning rebound up into the stratosphere, or so it feels. This is because you have a piece of stretchy cord tightly strapped around your ankles.

Yes, I’m talking about bungee jumping. For some, including myself, the idea sounds exhilarating. The feeling of free falling is undeniably unbeatable, giving you the chance to let go of everything… and fly.

Why would anyone not? Well I have to admit, I remember standing at the top of the ragged gorge and, as I looked down, I began to think of the risks involved. What happens if they didn’t calculate my weight correctly or what if the bungee snaps…? I could end up with a serious headache.

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Minority report

Posted on 15 March, 2011 by Charles Holloway

I am now in a minority in my own country! Some people would say I have been heading that way for some time! However, it is now official.

If you are a fan of Tom Cruise, or possibly Samantha Morton, you will remember the 2002 film, Minority Report, where, in the future, criminals are caught before they can commit their crimes. One of the officers in the special crime unit is accused of a crime and sets out to prove his innocence.

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John Wayne never had to put up with this

Posted on 10 February, 2011 by Charles Holloway

Two Red Indian braves are pictured standing on a rocky outcrop looking over a scrubby cactus strewn expanse of desert towards the horizon where four puffs of smoke rise steadily in procession towards the sky. One brave turns to the other and says: “It says that someone has hacked into my emails!”

Matt’s cartoons for The Daily Telegraph have for a long time been favourites of mine so I was particularly amused to see this apposite offering a few days ago as I settled into my seat on the BA flight to New York where I was to attend Legal Tech 2011. As a Legal Tech virgin I was determined to make the most of what is probably the pre-eminent gathering of the Legal Technology industry each year. And I did!

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Executed by tweet

Posted on 30 June, 2010 by Charles Holloway

It was just a wooden chair! There was nothing remarkable about it until one realised that the padding at the sides consisted of cushions piled on top of one another and strapped together and that underneath was a shallow metal tray.

Even that did not really capture the menace behind the image until one realised that the blemishes grouped together in the left hand corner of the back of the chair were in fact the marks made by the bullets fired by his executioners into the chest and heart of convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner.

Whatever your views about capital punishment I was left with the overwhelming sense that this was not what I wanted to see published in my newspaper. After all, in the days when we had capital punishment here we were not treated to interviews with the hangman or grisly pictures of the swinging noose ( or at least not since the days of public executions).

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King Charles I and the Twitterati

Posted on 27 October, 2009 by Charles Holloway

I hope you have not been put off by the title above and that you will read a little further! There is only a little bit of history to come but last week we may have seen a significant event to rival the attempt by King Charles I to arrest 5 sitting MPs by storming into the Commons Chamber with armed soldiers.

Frustrated by Parliament’s refusal to grant him money and irritated in particular by the speeches of the members, the King tried to arrest John Pym, Sir Arthur Hazelrigg, William Strode, John Hampden and Denzil Holles in the Commons Chamber, an event which helped to trigger the start of the Civil War in 1642. News of the King’s intentions had filtered through to the five who had long since fled the Chamber by the time the King arrived.

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The Last Straw

Posted on 6 October, 2009 by Charles Holloway

I remember a time when law firms were at pains to make it clear that they did not accept service of proceedings by fax unless specific arrangements had been made in advance. Doubtless many firms still carry the necessary words as part of their email signature and/or on their notepaper.

Now, suddenly, there is a new problem!!

On 1st October 2009, the High Court jumped into the “Tweetosphere” (is there such a word, after Blogosphere?) by agreeing to allow a claimant to serve an injunction via Twitter.

Mr Justice Lewison agreed with Matthew Richardson instructed by Griffin Law that Twitter was the best way to reach the person behind www.twitter.com/blaneysblarney whose anonymous writer was said to be impersonating Donal Blaney. Richardson said that the ruling had widespread implications for identity theft on the internet. A spokesman from Strathclyde University called it a landmark decision.

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the Smart e-Discovery blog

Tag Archives: twitter

How many is a billion?

Twit, twittle, twit. The long view of e-disclosure

A leap into the unknown

Minority report

John Wayne never had to put up with this

Executed by tweet

King Charles I and the Twitterati

The Last Straw