Verizon recently won a patent lawsuit against Vonage. The common wisdom in the industry is that it will have a chilling effect on the VOIP market.
Again, companies should be rewarded for their patents – but patent law has not advanced with technology. Patent law is not being used to protect patent holders – it is being used to lock out competition. All of us as consumers suffer waiting for significant patent law reform.
This study pretty much debunks the value of biometrics to secure identify that’s all the rage these days.
More evidence that Google is displacing Microsoft as the evil empire. Computerworld is reporting that KinderStart.com Inc. has filed a class action lawsuit in California alleging that Google:
…violating its right to free speech under the U.S. Constitution, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by using a monopoly position to harm competitors, engaging in unfair practices and competition under California law, and committing defamation and libel.
KinderStart operates a web site for parents of children under the age of 7. There’s so much we don’t know yet – but this can’t be good news for Google’s PR folks.
Patent Office in Violation of Patent – That’s the headline I want read some day.
Michael Crichton (yea – that one) has written a New York Times Op-Ed piece on a the use of correlation patents in the biomedical industry. Anyone who thinks the patent office and associated industries isn’t ripe for an oversight body needs to read this editorial. I’ve lost track of the number of stories like this. It’s criminal but there is apparently no way to get off the bus.
From the editorial:
All this may sound absurd, but it is the heart of a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday. In 1986 researchers filed a patent application for a method of testing the levels of homocysteine, an amino acid, in the blood. They went one step further and asked for a patent on the basic biological relationship between homocysteine and vitamin deficiency. A patent was granted that covered both the test and the scientific fact. Eventually, a company called Metabolite took over the license for the patent.
Although Metabolite does not have a monopoly on test methods — other companies make homocysteine tests, too — they assert licensing rights on the correlation of elevated homocysteine with vitamin deficiency. A company called LabCorp used a different test but published an article mentioning the patented fact. Metabolite sued on a number of grounds, and has won in court so far.
The seven concentric circles of hell are populated by an ever increasing number of lawyers. Patent lawyers comprise the inner circle.
I recently read a posting entitled A first look at HP ServiceDesk. I’m going to have to read the referenced thesis – The Convergence of Metadata and IT Service Management. I don’t have enough context to comment but I’m not really seeing the point.
I didn’t realize until I had started in on this that this post was from 2003. I’m sure everyone’s moved on at this point – soooo, never mind.
My company uses OVSD. We stumbled early on with CIs because we tried to be too granular. It is the hardest one of the hardest things with which we dealt. That being said, our challenge was around whether it made sense to consider a subsystem a CI. We dove too deep and ended up having to withdraw to a higher level. This is one of those traps that’s easier to see after you’ve fallen in.
For us, several factors influenced us to raise the level of detail:
OVSD is a service management tool – not a configuration management tool. The low level of detail should be reserved for development methodology oriented tools. If you’re building software and you need to keep versions of objects, the little pieces matter. If you’re trouble shooting a problem, if you can see the change orders associated with a CI and you understand the symptoms within that context – you’re almost all the way there. Most support professionals don’t need more to resolve issues.
I’ll read the thesis, but from my perspective the point is to strike a balance between the different service offerings. Technical professionals do not use OVSD to determine if an index should be added. The support staff responsible for an application should know the volume and performance characteristics of a table based on the DBMS reporting tools. OVSD is a general tool which binds together others (the one ring) – it does not displace them.
The post ends with the following questions. I have added my answers besides each:
An earlier post referenced the rumor that Google was potentially entering the wireless market. The original story on Business 2.0 speculated that if Google could track the geographical location of a wireless user, they could target advertising more precisely.
Whether that’s true or not is still a matter of speculation. What is true is that this rumor has legs. Seven days after the fact the IT related web news sources are still reporting on it. What probably produced the original rumor is this page on Google’s web site. It is instructions to users in a test market in San Francisco. Is this intended for a broader audience? I don’t know – but it is fun (evidently) to speculate.
An interesting article from Business 2.0 where they are speculating that Google is bent on providing wireless access for free to the masses. It’s an interesting article on a variety of levels:
A recent article on O’Reilly by Phil Windley entitled Identity Management Architectures and Digital Identity provides a good overview of identity management.
The metaphor used by Mr. Windley is a familiar one to those of working in the information management industry. City planning as a model for governance topics has been used successfully in other information management arenas. Here it is referenced as a starting point for managing corporate and personal identities. The author has provided a link to his personal web site where tempate information is provided.
More interesting to me personally are the resources referenced in the article. As a recent victim of identity theft, I value the idea of protecting my personal identify. The Identity Commons, the commercial 2idi initiative have personal relevance.