Very Old Law Texts on Google Books

Google has scanned in the contents of numerous very old (19th century and early 20th century) law treatises, journals and other books. These are complete, unlike many of the newer books on Google Books, which are only partially available for copyright reasons. A good one to get, if you don't already have it, is "The Common Law" by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The entry point for google books is: http://books.google.com

To get a list of only Complete Texts, use the Advanced Search function.

Canceled Avvo Pro Subscription

I had my Avvo ranking up to a 7.0 and then all of a sudden it dropped to a 6.1. Reason ? No new updates to my profile. Apparently, if you don't add new material then your score can decrease. This is under the notion that your "Industry Recognition" and even your 'Experience' can be considered to have declined if you don't add new material.

Personally, this looks a bit gimmicky. Avvo likely wants users to 1) provide free content to them in the form of guides and answering online questions, and 2) get peer recommendations (i.e. get other lawyers to access Avvo and say nice things about you).

Bottom line, if an Avvo client can provide free traffic and free content then their score goes up. Otherwise, it may go down.

If Avvo were more transparent in how scores are lowered and raised, it would be helpful. Otherwise, it looks like they can game the client very easily. I suspect article publications and speaker engagements are very limited in their effectiveness, and Avvo clients will likely find out that the best way to raise a rating is to help Avvo by giving them free content and free traffic.

Anyway, no more subscription money from me. I'd rather donate the $50/month to charity.

Software Upgrades

An upgrade to the core Control Panel software will be undergoing live testing during the holiday period. Users can expect periodic downtimes in the 2:30AM - 3:00AM PST time periods during the week of DEC 26 2010 - JAN 01 2011.

Some users will see the new control panel, while others will not. Users seeing the new control panel should note that the service will be SLOWER. The new code is in Python and interacts with a variety of cloud services, rather than our current more optimized and traditional system.

A lot more features are about to rain down for current users. We thank everyone for their patience. Numerous accounts have received extensions to their renewal date so as to make transitioning easier and to better coordinate renewals with the new services.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

Reboot of one NRS server on NOV 27 @ 2:30am PST

A reboot of one of the NRS servers will take place on Saturday Nov 27 2010 @ 2:30am PST. This early morning re-boot may result in 1-3 minutes of requests not being processed. If there are any issues then a notice will be posted here and at the nrs-online.com home page. The server being re-booted does not deliver html content so the nrs-online.com website will not be affected.

DNS changes to nrs-online.com

We made some DNS changes to the domain nrs-online.com -- there does not appear to be any issues, but sometimes changes can take a while to realize themselves throughout the net. If anyone has access problems via nrs-online.com then logging in at www.sevik.com should solve them.

Planned Server Reboot: 10/15/2010 2:30am PST

Sevik will be rebooting several servers on OCTOBER 15, 2010 at 2:30am PST. This is due to a number of operating system updates that require a reboot. All services will be affected. A complete backup will occur prior to re-boot. Anticipated disruption time is 5 minutes. If there are issues, this blog will contain updates.

Web Server Restart in 10 minutes...

One of the web servers that serves static html pages for several Sevik sites will be restarted. There should not be any disruption; if a page fails to load though try again once or twice and it should load properly. This restart will not affect Control Panel access or usage as the Control Panel is hosted on different servers.