Bluesky: @oppedahl.com
Of course it is smart to install whole-house surge protection as it relates to the electrical power wires in the house. See blog article. Having installed a nice Seimens FS140 whole-house surge protector, do you get to relax? Of course not! If a person is going to be thorough about this, one needs to think about the other wires and cables that enter the house from outside. Continue reading “Lightning protection around the house”
(Update: The oral argument took place on December 7, 2023 and you can see the transcript here.)
(Update: the appellee’s brief has been filed – blog article.)
(Update: the appellant’s reply brief has been filed – blog article.)
Readers will recall that a few days ago I wrote:
This would be a perfect time for amici to file amicus briefs.
An amicus brief has now been filed in the case about the Trademark Office demanding to know where the trademark applicant sleeps at night (blog article). You can see the amicus brief here.
(update: an amicus brief has been filed.)
(update: the appellee’s brief has been filed.)
(update: the appellant’s reply brief has been filed.)
Many readers are aware of the keen obsession that the Trademark Office at the USPTO has in knowing where trademark applicants sleep at night. Readers who are familiar with the statutes and rules and accumulated court cases relating to the right and wrong ways to do “rulemaking” may also have gone to the trouble of looking at the steps that the Trademark Office followed in promulgating its rules that, since a couple of years ago, have required applicants to reveal to the Trademark Office where they sleep at night. But perhaps not so many readers are aware that right now there is pending in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit a case that asks the Court to consider striking down those rules.
There is now an important development in that Court of Appeals case. Continue reading “The “where you sleep at night” Federal Circuit appeal – first brief”
Readers will recall that I am slowly creeping in the direction of doing some ham radio transmitting.
It turns out that anybody who creeps in this direction sooner or later realizes that he or she is going to need a “dummy load” (Wikipedia article). Continue reading “Dummy loads”
If you regularly make use of TEAS or PAIR or Patentcenter or EFS-Web, you probably find yourself checking the USPTO Systems Status and Availability web page (screen shot at right) from time to time.
Wouldn’t it be nice if somehow you could be notified automatically when that web page changes? Well, now you can be notified automatically, if you choose to participate in a beta test of my new change-detection system. Continue reading “How often do you check the Systems Status page?”
Yes, you heard it here first (blog article). On August 5, 2022, I was the first to tell you this very exciting news about the Polish patent office becoming trendy, modern, and up-to-date. Continue reading “Today is the day for the Polish patent office”
There are quite a few ways to set up two-factor authentication in ePCT. Last week there was a problem with the SMS-type 2FA in ePCT, and users who had failed to set up a second type of 2FA found themselves unable to log in. This offers a reminder that you should always have at least two types of 2FA set up with your WIPO user ID. I am delighted to report that I have successfully gotten it set up so that I can use my EPO smart card as a form of 2FA in ePCT. Continue reading “With ePCT, always have at least two kinds of 2FA”
From time to time I have commented upon nice things about ePCT. Here is one more. Continue reading “YANTAePCT (Yet Another Nice Thing About ePCT)”
Hello readers. For some twenty years now I have had the highest level of amateur radio license that it is possible to have (“extra class”), but until now I have not really made full use of the license (call sign AA2KW). Until now I had only made use of the license for communications in the two-meter (VHF) and 70-centimeter (UHF) bands. Those bands are only useful for local communications (with others who are no more than a few miles away). Recently, however, some neighbors who are good friends asked if I might introduce their grandchildren to the world of HF (high frequency) amateur radio, which can reach thousands of miles. So I have put my toe in the water and maybe soon I will successfully do some two-way communications in the 40-meter HF band. Continue reading “Starting an HF ham radio station”
Everybody who is a Comcast internet customer eventually finds out that if you have one of these Comcast-provided routers that is the size of a cereal box, you are providing something called an “Xfinity hot spot” to everybody in the world.
The idea of the Xfinity hot spots, of course, is that this becomes a selling point — a reason why somebody might want to subscribe to Comcast internet service, so as to be able gain the benefit of the ten million or so of these cereal-box-sized routers that are in place around the US.
When you as a Comcast customer learn that you have one of these routers, and you learn that you are hosting an Xfinity hot spot, you wonder if there is any drawback to this. Are you, for example, going to see a hit on your internet speeds if half a dozen members of the public are connected to your hot spot and making heavy use of the connection? (I have done tests and yes, if you put enough public users on the hot spot, it does slow down the internet for the paying customer, especially if they are on a low-speed tier of service.) But a completely separate question is, is the Xfinity hot spot taking up radio spectrum space that you might need in your home or office for other devices, such as Bluetooth hearing aids, DECT cordless phones, or mesh networking devices? And of course the answer is yes.
Comcast goes out of its way to tout the ten million Xfinity hot spots to their potential users, and goes out of its way to minimize its candor toward the customers who host those hot spots. It takes quite a lot of clicking around on the Comcast web site to learn that you, dear reader, are hosting such a hot spot, and it takes even more clicking around on the Comcast web site to learn how to toggle the hot spot on or off.
Which leads to the natural question, how does one go about turning off one’s Xfinity hot spot? I spent the past 24 hours trying to turn it off for my new service that got installed yesterday, and I have still not succeeded. Continue reading “Trying to turn off Comcast’s stealth wifi hotspot”