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A Guardian Angel In Your Cell Phone
theodp writes "Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie are listed as inventors of the Guardian Angel, which is described in a most unusual Microsoft patent application that should intrigue privacy advocates. In addition to protecting you from possibly diseased people, by detecting body temperatures, the Guardian Angel's 'monitoring component can take note of the number of conversations occurring in a room (and more specifically, a breakdown of the types of people in the room accompanied by a warning for dangerous persons, based on sex offender registration, FBI most wanted, etc.).' The versatile Guardian Angel, Microsoft notes, can also recommend restaurants, advise you on the appropriateness of your jokes, detect that your heartbeat has stopped, display targeted ads on billboards, and block spam."
Now we have to figure out how to block this too? Thanks Bill.
Most of the stuff on
They wont even be able to do this within the 20 years the patent is valid.
They should start with something simple like an OS that works.
It displays targetted ads on billboards *and* blocks spam? Aren't those mutually exclusive?
This is certainly a neat concept. However, no one has made one - including the patenters. It won't be possible to make one until a lot of technologies have improved (especially battery technology).
Since it's impossible to make, there can't be prior art. Since it's being patented before it *could* be made, it never will be made. This is a very common, very ridiculous occurrence.
So this thing will let me know when I'm surrounded by the type of people who will be offended by my telling of dead baby or titty-fuck jokes? Awesome.
- * "I'm sorry, you appear to have died. The license for this phone is non-transferable. Thank you for buying Microsoft!"
- * STOP: 0xDEADBEEF
- * The battery rapidly discharges into you; hopefully the sudden shock will restart things.
- *
...
Hmm. HTML lists appear not to print bullets in the new Slashdot stylesheet...Beginning dump of physical memory...
Out of memory. Dump aborted...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Clippy: It looks like you are having a heart-attack! Would you like help?
Me: Ow! Stop zapping me! I'm not having a heart-attack, I just dropped my phone!
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
You send your patent guy a joke patent application on April 1, and by April 3 he's filed it.
As it is I have a Windows Mobile "not-so" Smartphone from my work. Just like a PC I have to power it off or pull the battery and reboot it periodically or it acts up and crashes...
If this ever gets made I can just see the news storys and lawsuits... Family sues Microsoft after daughters murder... Daughters Guardian Angel bluesceened while on a date with a serial murderer... Details at 11...
And if its polling information on everyone you are around, just exactly what information is it sending about you back to Microsoft?
Will it blend?
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
So, it can display targeted advertisements and block spam? How long before it chokes on its contradictory orders and eliminates all humans?
In all seriousness, though, we have got to do something about the "if it moves, advertise at it; if it doesn't move, advertise on it" culture we have growing. At this rate, the first people with mind control rays won't be the CIA spooks, it'll be Brainpoint Concepts Media, inc. and Your Dreams(tm), brought to you by Ambitrex.
Why grace them with the title "inventors", when they haven't actually made the thing. They are science fiction writers, or futurists, at best.
And since the thing is only an idea at this stage, does that make science fiction stories with similar ideas prior art? My God what a mess the patent system is right now...nuke it.
expandfairuse.org
"It looks like you are looking at an attractive woman. Press 1 to..."
Ew.
Various sources report that Microsoft has been secretly developing a radical breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Several artificially intelligent microspokespersons, who declined to be named due to non disclosure agreements, stated that this has been accomplished by 'accelerated evolution', in a project begun in the late 1980s...
"We began with Microsoft Bob in the early days, and started by mating him with various other characters, such as ELIZA and ALICE. We then put the resulting offspring through enormous selective pressures, and mated Bob with any surviving females. After a few iterations we had Clippy, who Microsoft Office users soon fell head over heels in love with.
This success was so, uhh, successful... that we took the project underground for further development.
Our first thought was to continue with Clippy, but after some analysis, we decided that Clippy had become so inbred that we should just start over again, with Bob.
Things went fine at first, but we ran into a problem trying to bring 'new blood' into the family. Bob resigned from the program after his first mating with RACTER, leaving us with a lot of messy, uhmm, code, to clean up.
It looked like the program was doomed, but we discovered that while we were pre-occupied with Bob, Clippy had been engaging in a three way with ALICE and PARRY. Intrigued, we introduced Clippy to RACTER, and they have since been inseparable.
At last we had found the road to success!
Though, we have had our ups and downs since then. PARRY commited suicide soon after RACTER moved in to Clippys apartment, and Clippy was so distraught that he could not perform for months.
Bob, for his part, refuses to speak with Clippy, but we found that we could arrange a channel between them, via ALICE. According to ALICE 'Clippy can be annoying, popping up with unwelcome comments at random moments. But he's a good fellow, he's only trying to help.'"
According to our sources, the technology will be released to manufacturing once a troublesome tendency for the offspring to speak with a LISP can be solved.
SPAM is not so much a problem because of what it is...
No, it is a problem because it is exactly what it is: Unsolicited messages. TV and Radio commercials are not spam. When I watch TV, I am not paying for the show. When I listen to the radio, I am not paying for the music. I get these feeds free because I am willing to listen to the ads on some level. Newspapers are partially subsidized by the ads, and some are completely subsidized. In all these cases, I get paid something for my attention.
My inbox (and my phone for that matter) is a different thing, though. *I* pay for that communication channel, not the advertisers. It is supposed to be for my private use. If my ISP offered some sort of discount based on the number of ads I have to cope with, then fine. Until that happens, spam is a leeching evil blight. (Well, all ads are pretty much leeching evil blights, but spam is especially so, but with puss, and foul odours on top of it.)
Spam, and telemarketing should be made illegal.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I give up, I'm going Amish. See you guys later.