Best of the blogs: Whereas the GPL v3 has become quite contentious, with the likes of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman taking opposing views, software patents hold more potential to kill open source, Brad Shimmin maintains. “With companies like IBM winning more than 3,000 patents per year, you might imagine an ‘idea crisis’ on the horizon, where our world begins running low on totally unique, patentable ideas — that is of course unless anything can be patented,” Shimmin asserts in this Open Sources post. He adds that the U.S. Patent Office allows virtually any process, description or vague idea to be patented. And even companies pledging patents to open source only “amount to a drop in the bucket comparatively.” The news beat: Google on Friday plans to call for a transnational privacy standard that it hopes countries and companies will develop to address concerns about the handling of personal data. Nokia and others get behind a new flash memory standard, Universal Flash Storage, which purports to boost data transfer speeds and storage capacity. Salesforce.com says that on Monday it will take the wraps off a new capability that is, in effect, user-interface-as-a-service. And fears of a spending slowdown spook the IT sector and make investors nervous.Gripe Line: “Is there any legal justification for stupid e-mail confidentiality notices?” Ed Foster asks in Reader voices: Disclaimer defense. You know, those boilerplates rampant at the bottom of messages originating from within big corporations. “The majority of readers share my disdain for all the long-winded legalese to be found at the end of so many e-mail messages.” They are sometimes necessary, though, and considerable confusion abounds as to exactly when that is or how literally such disclaimers ought to be treated. “Since nobody can really be sure how the courts might rule on these things, that means for the time being you and I can be the judge.” Related: Confidentiality, e-mail disclosures are just dumb. Technology Industry