Project Troglodyte has raised enough interest that we’ve decided to spin it off as a separate project altogether. It will now continue at http://www.project-troglodyte.org. Old posts and pages are archived here.

Environmental sensors

For just about any environmental application, sensors are a crucial yet unglamorous and easily underestimated part. An single overly broad patent in the sensor area, especially communication between the sensors and the rest of the system, could wreak havoc by blocking a wide variety of applications.

This work has barely started, yet we are quickly starting to see some worrisome trends. Sensor networks in particular seem vulnerable to trolling.

Aug 28, 2012. How farmers were punished for using a shovel. A case study from the 1870′s. Unfortunately, the same mechanisms are in place now, and something equally ludicrious could happen today.

Aug 16, 2012: The trolling triad. Analysis of a probable troll company (Sipco LLC). “So is Sipco a patent troll? I follow the old adage: ‘If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it probably is a duck.’ Sipco even smells like a duck. You decide.”

Aug 22, 2012. CleanTech 2. Systems and methods for remote irrigation control. “As inventors ourselves, we think this was already trivial somewhere around the year 1900 (the invention of radio).” [Should we worry about this patent a lot? We're not sure, but it's a uncomfortable step in the dystopian direction].

Aug 13, 2012: CleanTech 1. Transmitting pollution information over an integrated wireless network. ”This is really no different from saying ‘If my invention sees a problem, it solves it’”.

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Jakke Mäkelä on Google+