The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is considering to invalidate many (if not most) software patents and significantly restrict the issuance of new process patents. No doubt, intellectual property does deserve decent protection, and I think that this move by the USPTO will in fact result in better protection of property: copyright law provides ample protection against IPR theft while not getting in the way of real innovations. To draw a technical comparison, process patent law protects the

Whoever thought we’d be using blogs for vacation notices? But until we have real Internet-wide presence service, it seems much more sane than problem-prone email bounce-backs. So count on me to be completely offline (and I mean completely) until August 4th. I’ll blog more on why when I return (in complete bliss).

Joe Andrieu nails another super post (where DOES he find the time to write/draw all of these???), this time about what it means for a platform to really be open. My favorite part is that he doesn’t just do it in words — he does it in pictures, deliciously simple and understandable graphics that make it [...]

So much for the naïve thought that I’d have time at the Burton Catalyst conference last week to finally blog about two subjects near and dear to my heart that I knew would be covered at the conference. It backfired because they were too topical—all available time was consumed by related conversations. I did manage two [...]

The current economic situation is not exactly ideal: amongst many significant issues, one of the most concrete and pressing problems of today is the highly volatile energy market. Many current problem in the world (such as clean water, food, housing) could be solved almost completely, given that there is sufficient energy at hand[1]. Electric energy generation has seen a variety of approaches: some of them are quite childish, while others lack in public acceptance. Ultimately, only a sound mix of

To day, I would like to take a peek at a technology that has been living in the shadows for some time. While HDTV and digital broadcast over-the-air have been getting some attention lately (especially with the January 17, 2009 deadline looming), digital radio broadcast have not been getting any significant media attention in the U.S.A. One of the reasons for the lack of attention might be that the digital radio standard chosen by the FCC has been met with some serious criticism . The two arguments

In my earlier article today I pointed out a rather significant security blunder in Germany, where a number of municipal IT departments failed to secure their systems. This lead to exposure of at least 500,000 personal data records to the internet - so far I have not heard that any affected person was informed about their involuntary expose to identity thieves. In this context it seems a little untimely to publicly announce a new electronic signature program that will start in 2012.Under this program,

The new announced Information Card Foundation has nine community board members, and I’m pleased to report they all have a keen sense of humor. Case in point: Pam Dingle’s bio on the Board of Directors page: Pamela Dingle Pamela Dingle is an Enterprise Identity Consultant at Nulli Secundus Inc . She is also the founder of [...]

YAF? (“Yet Another Foundation?”) Some in the identity community have had that reaction to the announcement of the Information Card Foundation (ICF) today at the start of the Burton Catalyst conference in San Diego. As one of two members of the ICF board who also serve on the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) board (Mike Jones is the [...]

While Germany and Europe in general have some of the strictest rules regarding the use and storage of personally identifiable information, the last few months have seen rather extreme data security breaches. Today, the German media is reporting about a new installment of irresponsible negligence government incompetence: According to the SPIEGEL ONLINE a spokesperson for the software company HSH admitted that the personal information of more than 500,000 residents of at least 15 cities and towns were