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Microsoft's 911 Patent
The register is reporting "'Microsoft was today granted a patent for accessing data used by the emergency services.' They quote from the application 'In sum, what is needed is a way to provide users with access to needed emergency information. This should be simple from the user's perspective, so that even very emotional users can find what is needed in a straightforward, yet comprehensive process.' Apparently the patent was filed one month after 9/11."
Microsoft, for all your counter-terrorism needs.
Just another harmless drunk
Actually it looks too complex from the screenshot. It should be something simple like a big button for 911. Press it and your GPS sends an emergency to 911. Most emergencies are not going to allow you to type with a stylus. Further an one button approach makes it easy for children to do (if you are going to use this in a car).
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And I thought it was just a joke when people said that Microsoft was working to kill Apple and Linux users. Seriously though, I wonder how many people will die because other people with similar lifesaving products for OS X and Linux won't be able to release them because of this patent.
I'm sorry, but isn't the actual 911 (not 9/11) emergency services network considered prior art? And what about this makes it patentable, other than the complete insanity of the US Patent Office. This seems almost as rediculous as "One Click Shopping". Or hey, forget about originality, what about non-obviousness?
Jeesh.
i - This sig provided by
Although I'm not sure that Microsoft is the right person for the job, I agree that this was a huge need right after the attacks. Cell phone and land line exchanges were absolutely flooded with calls, and couldn't handle all the traffic.
My question: How, exactly, is a PocketPC application going to help with this? I mean, really - do they expect us to all rush out and buy one so that we can have access to emergency information? How would putting it in a rental car be of any use to the people who own the car they're driving when an emergency occurs?
I think the timing is pretty distasteful as well - almost as if they're saying "We could have done it better, and here's how!"
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"911 Operator. What is the nature of the emergency?"
"HELP! There's a criminal trying to break into my house!"
"We will have someone there right away, Ma'am. Just tell me your name, your address, and your patent use approval identification number."
"This is Mary Smith of 123 Maple Drive, and what?-- patent thingamabob?"
"Your patent use approval identification number, the proof that you can properly use this protected 911 service."
"He's got a gun! Hurry!"
"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but this seems to be a patent violation. Our enforcement officers will be out there immediately to collect payment plus penalty."
Caller: "Help, my house is on fire!"
911: "You appear to be making an emergency call. Would you like me to set up a template?"
Caller: "A what? Help me!"
911: "Accessing help..."
911: "..."
911: "Socket timed out, retrying..."
Caller: "Augh!"
911: "Welcome to the 911 help system. Please say your search terms now."
Caller: "....... FIRE!"
911: "Searching..."
911: "FIRE up your browsing experience with the new MSN Search, your comprehensive portal to the web!"
Caller: "Augh!"
"... I can get the fire service to you by, erm, next Thursday afternoon?"
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Where do you want to go today ?
[ ] Hospital
[ ] Police Station
[ ] E.R.
[ ] Fire Station
Blue Screen of Death... _literally_.
The article starts by making it seem like if you call 911, then Microsoft can access the data. But the patent makes it seem more like its a new 911 system, simply built by Microsoft. If its a new system that works better, then in this case I will side with Microsoft and say good for them, the 911 system is innefficient in some places. On the other hand, if they can access private data...to hell with them. "They that give up liberty for security deserve neither" - Benjamin Franklin
So put that in your pipe and grep it
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If this isn't a clear call to overhaul the patent system, I have no idea what is. In a way it should be amusing to see what happens with this..if say another firm tries to give support or build a system for a municipality that's looking to upgrade their response systems and Microsoft sues them.
I think, in that case, it would crack the whole controversy wide open. Think about the field day the media would have the first time a county commissioner or a mayor gets on the national news and says that they have to spend ridiculous amounts of money, or forego upgrading at all because some private firm isn't allowing them to without first paying them extortion money.
And don't even start about if those systems were to fail at a critical time such as during a disaster. The fallout would be hugely destructive to MS.
Microsoft would be foolish to try to enforce this...but a certain part of me wants them to deny reason and try, if for nothing else but the huge media circus that would ensue.
I think you miss the whole point of 9/11. It's US(the coporate world) against THEM(People who live in caves and apparently haven't got any nulearweapons).
If Microsoft DIDN'T make money off of this, the terrorists would be winning!!
I see from the diagrams from TFA, that one of the predefined emergancies is financial.
Now I agree that there are financial emergancies, but most do not require a first responder.
Unless maybe the program is sponsored by CapitalOne.
"We need a loan officer here STAT!"
The mind boggles.
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Next they will try to make money from it. An extension to something as important as 911 should not be corporate.
You mean, like the corporately made, and profitable rescue vehicles that are driven to the scene of the emergency? Or the corporately made, and profitable Motorola gear that the responders are using? Or the coporately owned and managed telecomm systems that actually carry the 911 calls? Or the countless consulting and systems integration companies that help build and run the emergency dispatch systems that handle 911 calls?
This Corporate = Inherently Bad sentiment has become an embarassment. So, if the exact same patent had been filed, and business plan had been dreamt up by just Little Old Me, would it be Bad then? How about if me and two other guys formed a small incorporated group to do it? Is it bad then? How about 30 of us? 300? 3000? What exactly is the inherently bad corporate number, anyway? There must be some cosmic constant that much of slashdot is working with, and it should be shared for peer review.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Hey there, partner...it looks like you're trying to call 911!"
Does your emergency involve:
A car accident
Chest pains
A guy with an axe
None of these - search Microsoft
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
From the actual patent, numbered 6882706:
What is claimed is:
1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:
maintaining a plurality of records in an emergency data store, each record comprising emergency data and having type of emergency information associated therewith that classifies the record as corresponding to at least one type of emergency;
providing an emergency page, the emergency page including a plurality of emergency type links, each emergency type link corresponding to a particular type of emergency;
receiving an indication that an emergency type link was actuated, and in response,
accessing the emergency data store to locate at least two records that are each associated with the type of emergency that corresponds to the actuated link;
aggregating the data from each located record into aggregated emergency data; and
providing an emergency sub-page based on the aggregated emergency data.
The abstract is even more vague. So, I don't see any invention here, nor any innovation. It sounds like a database with a simple user interface. I'm working on such a system right now. Am I violating Miscrosoft's patent? Sure, my system deals with proletariat efficiencies, but it's basically the same idea.
I don't see how a patent can be granted for this. Emergency services have been doing this for years, just on paper and with log books. Sure, it's good to have needed information in one convenient place, with a simple interface, but I fail to see any innovation or invention. How can one patent something that is simply logic? Can logic really be patented? I know it has been, but that doesn't mean it's not asinine. Maybe I read the patent wrong, but I just see this as simple logic.
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Outdoor gear, MREs, and more!
I would be very concerned about the potential abuse of this type of technology. Imagine the following scenarios:
1. Immature person tries out the emergency call just to see what happens or if it really works.
2. Creative but malicious person writes virus that triggers this technology.
3. Someone triggers the emergency call in one place, using this as a distraction away from where a real emergency (burglary, for example) is taking place.
4. Creative but malicious person writes program that blocks this technology.
These are just a few random things that come to mind. Numbers 1 and 3 can be done today using a regular phone, but numbers 2 and 4 are what concern me--the idea that someone could potentially make it look like you or I were "prank-calliing" the police or fire station, or interfere with a real-life emergency.
This is all hypothetical, of course.
Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
Operator: 911...What is your emergency?
Caller: My wife is having a heart attack! Please send someone!!
Operator: It seems you are using 911 for the first time. Would you like some help?
Caller: YES!! Send someone NOW!!
Operator: In order to complete this call, you will have to restart your phone. Please hang up and call again.
Caller: WHAT??!!
Operator: Your phone is now restarting...(click!)
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
20 minutes... 25 minutes... 23 minutes... 14 minutes... 2 minutes... 40 minutes...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One of the more well-known was the one that VoIP filed, meant to stabilize the usability of internet phones for emergency calls by rerouting VoIP calls to emergency numbers through the conventional phone system.
Microsoft's patent isn't quite like VoIPs but my point is that if this was, say, a patent being filed by Google, a number of you who decry this move would be celebrating their the foresight and genius.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
49. Less than 49 people = good, more = bad. Exactly 49, though, that depends on whether or not they're open-sourcing the product.
Needless to say, this is yet another patent that does not cover an invention (which is supposed to be the point of patents), but (arguably) a discovery--although it is more like common knowledge than something only Microsoft have discovered.
Once again like most U.S. patents:
The reason why patents were invented was to stop people keeping the workings of their inventions trade secrets which would never be released to the public (whereas--the then new-fangled--patents actually run out) thereby impeding the "progress of the science and the arts", therefore patents are only supposed to cover something that a company might be able to keep a secret. In this case, the idea (which is what they are trying to patent; as opposed to the specific invention that Microsoft has or has not yet--as the case may be--produced) would not be coverable by a trade secret as once they produced such a product it would be common knowledge (and thefore no longer a secret) that such a product could be produced. Whereas, if Microsoft were patenting the specific workings of their invention, these would be harder for someone with one of their products to hand to work out--thereby potentially patentable as they are potentionally able to be kept secret (while Microsoft sell the product).
Making a (possibly poor) analogy with the field of consumer law, this is a bit like Microsoft trying to trademark the generic term for the class of their product as opposed to a name for a particular brand (e.g.: hypothetically, if Microsoft were in the automobile maunfacturing industry, trademarking the word, "car"; or, again hypothetically, if Microsoft were in the operating-system engineering industry trademarking the word "windows" for a windows system...o, nevermind...).
The patent is entitled "a method and system of providing emergency data"; however reading it one realises that (in common with most patents using those magic `method' and `system' words in their titles) it is not actually a patent on "a [particular] method and system of providing emergency data" but actually a patent that stops anyone else from producing any "method and system of providing emergency data".
This is backed up by the way that, throughout the patent, it says that "this invention [sic.] covers [foo], [bar] and [baz]" or similar language (where foo, bar and baz are sorts of inventions that might be made in the future by others) instead of describing the actual invention that Microsoft have produced (or, I suspect, have not actually produced) so that others can gain from this knowledge after the patent expires.
There are many other ways in which this, once again, goes against the basic principles of the patent system. However, as I suspect (hopefully) everyone will laugh at any (unlikely) attempts by Microsoft to enforce this patent, I will not spend more time analysing this drivel (that Microsoft and other large corporations produced by the dead-tree load on a daily basis).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
That little picture is just about useless as a tool to make emergency communications easier.
I was a 911 dispatcher in L.A. (including during the riots) and I can tell you that in an emergency the average person sometimes forgets basic information such as: their address, vehicle type, child's name, etc.
If such a tool could ever be made to work it would need as few buttons as possible, as large as possible, with as few words as possible.
Maybe if you hit the good sized emergency button you immediately get two big buttons that almost fill the screen.
(POLICE)
(FIRE/AMBULANCE)
In a decent dispatch environment if someone hits the wrong one they can quickly be routed to the right one.
Anything else is basically not an emergency and doesn't belong on the tool.
No, 42's the meaning of life, the universe, and everything - not the point at which a company turns from good to evil. The good/evil transition happens at 49. I'm sure that would've been in the Hichiker's Guide to Small Business Management...