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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."
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?
Traditionally, the way to block devices this intrusive was to divorce them.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
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.
The following section of 35 U.S.C. states the requirements relating to enabling disclosures:
35 U.S.C. 112 Specification.
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
In that case, and at least theoretically (i.e. the Examiner would have to catch it), the application could be rejected for not having an enabling disclosure. The idea behind the patent system is to only be able to get patents on inventions you provide an enabling disclosure for, in other words actually invented.
Oh thanks. And am I going to be conscious when it tells me that? Talk about BSOD!
Nobody is going to be walking around with freakin' defibrillator pads on their chest and a Microsoft Guardian Angel in their pocket.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
"It looks like you are looking at an attractive woman. Press 1 to..."
Ew.
which is totally what she said
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.
I give up, I'm going Amish. See you guys later.