tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:39:03 +0000http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/PeterBlogger228125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-8013236805385546763Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:00:00 +00002008-03-09T04:39:03.276-07:00Euro-elections; European Movement; 60 Ideas for EuropeThe European Movement has launched an interesting campaign in the run up its 60th Anniversary event to take place in The Hague, commemorating the Congress of Europe held there in 1948. The campaign "60 ideas for Europe" aims to collect the best sixty ideas and present them to Euripean leaders gathered in The Hague in May. Never one to shy away from a challenge, I thought a bit (not very much, http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2008/03/allowing-citizens-choice-to-use.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-5826335236763187523Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:02:00 +00002007-11-20T09:31:37.267-08:00eIdentitySOACitizenshipData ProtectionThe news announcement, that personal data of more than 25 million British people has been compromised, was greeted with the inevitable tut-tutting. "Mistakes by junior officials" meant that two disks, containing copies of the data, went missing when courriered between two Government offices.... But, hold on a minute. That such a practice can happen in the first place is surely the mistake, not http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/11/when-will-egovernment-really-join-21st.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-1805881679030802728Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:14:00 +00002007-08-04T12:17:04.365-07:00DRMCitizenshipWeb 2.0Internet"…we aren't angels. We don't always do the right thing. That is why we have enacted laws that help us to regulate our darker impulses and behaviours". This is one of the key arguments that Andrew Keen advances against the so-called "Web 2.0" in his controversial 200-page easy-to-read rant "The Cult of the Amateur – How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting our Economy". Overall Ihttp://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/08/we-arent-angels-andrew-keen-book-review.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-8482372297707495Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:52:00 +00002007-07-25T02:41:34.261-07:00Harry PotterPensieveWith less than an hour to go before the final instalment is released, my suspicions seem to be being confirmed: The Pensieve - that made its debut in the fourth Harry Potter book - is key: my hunch after Professor Dumbledore's demise in Book 6 is that Harry will need to the Pensieve in order to re-visit some of the Professor's thoughts and find the key to unlock some of the puzzles with which he http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/07/pensieve-is-key.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-2778276114361234756Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:36:00 +00002007-07-25T02:38:15.710-07:00Harry PotterSnapeThe drama of the sixth Harry Potter book centred around the death of Harry's mentor, Albus Dumbledore, at the hand of the most hated teacher at Hogwarts, Severus Snape. I'm going to go out on a limb here though: Dumbledore had been practically condemned to a slow and painful death by thirst after visiting the lake of the Inferi with Harry in search of one the Horcruxes. So his plea to Snape to "http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/07/snape-real-hero.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-7228601676143203807Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:04:00 +00002007-07-25T02:48:00.621-07:00Harry PotterGiven the name of my blog, it seemed to be that it would be indecent to overlook the looming deadline: the release this Saturday of the long-awaited final volume of the Harry Potter series - the Deathly Hallows. I always thought that the Pensieve - introduced in Book 4 - was a pretty neat idea and that I would like one for myself. Whilst I scurry around trying to build it, I thought that a blog http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/07/harry-potter-final-showdown.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-2400690522176283736Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:51:00 +00002007-04-24T05:51:58.184-07:00In the work of the Ontology Summit this week in Gaithersburg, USA, our working group tried to get its collective head around the idea of ontologies having "dimensions". These dimensions are intended for use to evaluate the significant presence within one ontology or another of certain characteristics, such as expressive power, intended use, etc. The problem we had was being presented with each ofhttp://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/reference-model-for-ontology.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-6191702340576665355Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:41:00 +00002007-04-17T16:41:56.300-07:00If the volume and the quality of the posts to the online discussion forum are anything to go by, next week's two-day Ontology Summit promises to be a exciting and stimulating event. Cutting through the hype of semantic web technologies, this Forum has been valuable in cutting to the quick regarding tight, formal definitions of some of the most fundamental concepts used as building blocks for the http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/ontology-summit-2007.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-9023138096872851964Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:29:00 +00002007-04-17T16:29:48.675-07:00So, half way through blogging the OASIS Symposium, my blog client seizes up. The reason? I'm still using an "old" Blogger account, provided by those nice, happy guys out in Google. Only now they want me to create a Google account in order to go using the previously free service. And they didn't tell me. And the blog client doesn't know what to do except to say that the account doesn't work any http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/time-to-pay-for-free-lunch.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-6342906693830289846Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:12:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.899-07:00OASISSOAIn the work of the OASIS Reference Model for SOA, I and others repeatedly raised the issue of whether we should spell "web services" –upper case or lower case? For me, Upper case implies the WS-* stack of specifications, whereas lower case could be used more generically for all types of SOA-based services, including ebXML and others. The panel seemed to be focussed more on the former but in the http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-round-table-on-web.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-1109291693943304687Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:27:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.900-07:00OASISSOATwo papers, from Sri Gopolan (Booz Allen) and Murty Gurajada, looking at how SOA should also pay attention to how data is managed and moved around in orchestrated eService transactions – the idea of specific data services. I missed Sri's paper but am familiar with the work from cooperation we've had over the last months on attempting to charter a new piece of work on this theme through OASIS. In http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-data-services.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117682941669444398Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:03:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.901-07:00OASISSOAAndrew Townsley from Archistry in Ireland presented on the need for a real paradigm shift in how SOA is used. With the continued growth in the proportion of the total workforce involved as "knowledge workers" (see McKinsey Quarterly, 2005 N°4), and ever more outsourcing, companies are going to need to turn increasingly to on-the-fly interactions between companies rather than within a company. Thehttp://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-soa-and-content.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117682714524021188Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:25:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.902-07:00OASISExcellent presentation from Rik Drummond and a simple and blindingly obvious message once you think about it: good technical standards are only technically good. If they are to be operationally good, then a whole host of organisational and management issues need to be properly addressed. Rik put the percentage of the total problem that this represents as high as 75%.http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-web-security.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117682320975148955Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:20:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.902-07:00OASISAs the name suggests, a brief overview of the work in progress by a number of OASIS technical committees (4 minutes each – I can't type that fast so won't manage to capture the main points): OASIS Biometric Identity Assurance Services (BIAS) Integration TC Emergency Management TC including work on the latest version of the Common Alerting Protocol Enterprise Key Management Infrastructure (http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-tc-lightning-rounds.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117676798232297023Mon, 16 Apr 2007 23:59:00 +00002007-04-19T16:53:09.330-07:00SOAIn uncharacteristically summary form, I gave my answer: adaptability, predictability and accountability. I'm sure that doesn't capture the whole of this afternoon's discussion, but it hits some of the important base points.http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/3-main-benefits-of-soa-for-egovernment.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117676668020486361Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:38:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.903-07:00OASISSOAA short introduction with my take on the subject as part of a multi-presenter panel. I used my now much used slide of Jean-Luc Picard (see "Just make it SOA, Number One") to get over the simple message about what SOA should be: just give me the service, and spare me the details, please… In the eGovernment space, this is not as easy to do as it is to state however: in the European space, an http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-soa-and-egovernment.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117676684712607110Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:40:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.903-07:00OASISA number of speakers and many participants have been talking about the idea of a new OASIS initiative on "personal data services" – a number of us will meet at lunch tomorrow to discuss the strawman proposal that has been drawn up as a result of some preliminary discussions, hosted by Pensive, and involving some dozen OASIS member organisations. I'll report more on this after the discussion.http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/personal-data-services.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117674425594382928Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:24:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.904-07:00eIdentityOASISData ProtectionMy presentation on "Putting citizens at the centre of identity management" is available on the Pensive web site. Fulup Ar Foll, working for SUN and representing the Liberty Alliance here, followed up with an interesting paper on the specific public sector concerns regarding identity management (OASIS symposium site; direct link promised later), and the need to provide citizen-centric solutions. http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-identity-management.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117674060531052430Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:23:00 +00002007-04-19T17:09:35.505-07:00OASISW3CBob Sutor from IBM gave an opening keynote – "In the Middle of the End". Arguing that the first important issue regarding "open" standards is one of transparency, the ability of any one to understand what is going on, how to get involved and be inclusive. On this he's right that OASIS stands head and shoulders above many "standards" organisations – its process is certainly more understandable andhttp://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-opening-keynote.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117665206205170751Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:47:00 +00002007-04-19T17:08:34.906-07:00OASISI arrived a day early to give myself time to recover from the inevitable jet-lag after 19 hours flying... I had hoped to spend the day relaxing and taking in a trip to Balboa Park and El Prado, but the weather was not up to the OASIS promise of sun and lazy pool-side chatter. So, in best stakhanovist traditions, I set out to catch up with a number of outstanding small items on the never-ending http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/04/oasis-symposium-san-diego.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117119739969536959Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:36:00 +00002007-02-11T04:58:24.600-08:00 A sting in the digitial tale "I was working in an archive of a 250-year-old business, reading correspondence from about the time of the American Revolution. Incoming letters were stored in wooden boxes about the size of a standard Styrofoam picnic cooler, each containing a fair portion of dust as old as the letters. As opening a letter triggered a brief asthmatic attack, I wore a scarf tied overhttp://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/02/whats-point-of-identity-2.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117120122898670178Sat, 10 Feb 2007 18:08:00 +00002007-02-11T05:40:29.000-08:00 Thinking inside the box... Managed to catch the current exhibition of work by Austrian artist Edwin Wurm, finishing tomorrow. A refreshingly interesting modern artist, with a playful and original take on everyday life and objects. As Christiane said, it's not every artist who makes you smile and reflect. His work although good fun is also occasionally spiced with deeper meaning and social http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/02/edwin-wurm-one-minute-sculptures.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117113220220404769Fri, 09 Feb 2007 10:58:00 +00002007-02-11T05:41:09.446-08:00...so I shouldn't need to name and shame. I'm getting a bit sick and tired of every damned piece of software and component on my computers wanting to get in on the act of "updates" - even the InstallShield wants to go online and update itself (and doesn't respect my preference where I've opted clearly for the "get lost and leave me alone option"): what on earth for is beyond me, as the installerhttp://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/02/you-know-who-you-are.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117094067163809244Thu, 08 Feb 2007 12:19:00 +00002007-02-11T05:00:55.713-08:00 Identity expressed in formal logic - two "things" are identical if all properties of both are the same. I've been following and participating in a series of activities and projects relating to the ever difficult questions surrounding electronic identity management, and I've decided to post a few entries to clarify my own thinking. So, to start off, I'm interested in answering the question: whathttp://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/02/whats-point-of-identity-1.htmlPetertag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6206755.post-117087360764070952Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:10:00 +00002007-02-07T10:43:52.296-08:00From the BBC News site: Microchips in Britain's new ePassports only have two-year warranties, a National Audit Office report says. They are so new, no-one knows how long they will last, or how the scanners reading them will work, the NAO said. Public Accounts Committee chairman Edward Leigh said the fact they had a two-year warranty, when passports were kept for 10 years, was "most worrying". http://www.xmlbystealth.net/blog/2007/02/warning-over-epassport-microchips.htmlPeter