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Microsoft Seeking Hot-Or-Not Patent
theodp writes "In its just-disclosed patent application for the Online Personal Appearance Advisor, Microsoft describes the 'invention' of its three Microsoft Research employees in these words: 'The contributor uploads self images for viewing and rating (or voting) by viewers who choose provide an opinion on different fashion and/or cosmetic looks of the contributor.' So what do you think — is Microsoft's invention really Hot or Not?"
I vote that news "HOT".
I hate sunlight, fresh air and physical activity. I'm pasty white and commonly sport cheeto stains on my shirt.
Am I hot or not?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Well Hot or Not is mainly about breasts and not about fashion. This is what might differ.
...and rated not so hot by developers, developers, developers the world over!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
They're trying to secure as many patents that could potentially bring them some sort of income NOW, lest they go bankrupt in the future.
The vagueness of this patent could easily cover someone's picture on Facebook if they said "Tell me how I look!", "What do you think of this makeup?", or "Do you think the pocket-protector goes with these pants?" Back off Microsoft - you're not IBM - leave the pointless patents to them...
The site is 50% spam and 50% sexual predators.
Enjoy your home-grown product, Microsoft.
I'm having a very hard time seeing how this is not obvious.
Like anyone in their right mind would take the advice from MS on fashion issues. They have a hard enough time trying to keep their OS running and that's their main job. If they can't do that I hardly think their fashion advice will be any better.
I always preferred the approach of howmanywouldittake.com (now defunct)...
always seemed so much more realistic to rate attractiveness by required level of intoxication than some artificial 0-10 scale
A world full of Bill clones - the horror, the horror!
In other news... there's a revolution going on in Iran and it's turned violent.
But that's not Stuff That Matters, so yeah, let's talk about Microsoft's stupid patent applications because that's News For Nerds.
Intellectual property is a serious point of discussion. China's monopoly on tea and silk caused empires to rise and fall.
If patents go to far, they can completely destroy the incentive people have to innovate, as all their innovations will be reliant on other patented processes. If Yahoo had owned a patent on internet search, then Google would never have had a chance to monetize Pagerank. But Yahoo would never have gotten so far, because previous companies would have patented the technology Yahoo used.
The medieval guilds arrested a lot of development, by guarding their secret knowledge. The Masons were not powerful because of their political connections, they had political connections because they simply knew how to build stone buildings. Sure, they had earned that knowledge from previous Masons, but the process of knowledge transfer was so opaque that corruption and inefficiencies were bound to creep in.
The printing press destroyed the monopolies of the guilds, because their knowledge could be cheaply and efficiently disseminated. Open source, the FSF, Wikipedia and other open movements are furthering this movement.
But patents are a way for the establishment to fight back, and try to create an environment in which they can reap more profits than a free market would allow.
So yes, it is Stuff That Matters.
I think a lot of these bogus patent filings from Microsoft simply show that the people at Microsoft have not the slightest idea of what is going on in the real world. Microsoft is designing software for the last century. Even Bing is merely a Google clone.
Although I enjoy bashing Microsoft as much as the next Slashdotter, haven't we seen enough obvious patents? We get about one per week. Maybe we could hear stories about people trying to change the system? Anything constructive? Judging from what I've heard on slashdot, the patent office is run by retarded rodents that approve patents based on the applications' fiber content.
Natashia, they re-elected squirrel.
Microsoft can suck my nasty balls.
+10, Hot!
Microsoft has passed the age of being Hot a long time ago, so this seems to be a feeble attempt to make money out of everyone else that's classed as hot.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If I'd spent the last 25 years peddling shit to idiots for billions of $ I'd have too much time on my hands, too.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Microsoft Employees get a $2500 bonus for every patent. They don't have to write it either, The patent lawyer does.
All you do is describe the idea and give any pertinent documentation and someone else converts it to a patent.
I have a few MS patents under my belt when I worked there.
(Score: -1, Delusions of Grandeur)
Only the dimwits at M$ could try and patent this kind of teen-aged bull$hite... Talk about lowest common denominator! What is this, a Limbo Line???
~Just as a thing fails if it lacks a kernel, so too it fails if it lacks a skin. ~ Rumi, Discourses
That's right. If MS gets this patent it'll never be implemented as GPL software. Hopefully, IBM will *buy* MS for a pittance and merge it into a small division in Iceland somewhere, someday.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
I'm sure you could even patent "An apparatus and method for making farts noiseless", there's a wealth of prior (f)art in the US Patent system. Oops -- it's already patented as US47263879273672? I should have thought so.
Intellectual Property: an immaterial non-entity, most fiercely contended by those with no proper intellect to speak of.
In other news, which is offtopic here... oh wait, let's just stop there.
Slashdot is news for nerds. If we want news for everyone, we know where to look. Thanks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Didn't Yahoo! already do this a few years back?
I thought there was a hot or not website out in the wild a few years ago. Are they trying to patent that or have they made some significant change to putting your picture up and having people rate you not or not?
Maybe someone should let these guys know it's been done already, years ago.
[0003]A variation on this model is also applied to rating websites where users can rate other on physical appearance, pets, personality and other user traits and attributes. In voting sites, typically, it is a general purpose question posed to viewers, and once the viewers have answered the question they tend to leave the website to do something else. In other rating websites, when viewers have rated an image, the viewers are presented with a seemingly endless series of other images to be rated or voted on, the purpose of which is to generate a flow experience so the viewers will stay at the website to continue participating. This process can generate revenue for advertisers by presenting advertisements while the viewers are voting. Moreover, there is a fascination with anonymously critiquing the appearance of another person.
So, Microsoft is claiming this invention does something more than that. Now, l haven't read it, so I can't comment further, but the discussion should be "what's the supposed improvement", not "zomg Microsoft has never heard of Hot or Not!"
just tell your customers to unhitch their wagon from Microsoft, which is heading ever-faster toward a cliff.
It's not as if there are no better alternatives.
you had me at #!
But, I really don't think one should be able to patent this either. There is nothing innovative about showing a group of people two pictures of one's self dressed in different styles and asking them which is better.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
And yet, I haven't seen a patent for other innovations - which we've seen recently - like "a method of updating an operating system that allows a backdoor so that a normally secure browser (e.g., Firefox) can now allow sites to silently install software on a user's machine without their knowledge or consent"
That's a Firefox feature you ignorant idiot.
Yeah, unfortunately one of the things Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on is poor software security. Although to be fair this issue with Firefox came to light because Microsoft exploited it.
By the way, that hideous .net helper plugin can't install in Linux versions of Firefox.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sounds like it's time for someone to launch amihotornotornot.com to review code.
Look somewhere else for a sig.
Guess what, we're capable of tracking more than one story at a time. Pretty amazing technology we have here.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Funnily enough the first thing that came into my head was not that Microsoft is the evil empire but that any country that could seriously have an intellectual property patent for "hot or not" has actually regressed to the intellectual capacity of a slime mold. You have to be kidding surely, you cannot patent "hot or not" and sell licenses to business corporations, not unless the corporations are run by thirteen year olds.
Maybe thats the answer, American corporations are run by thirteen year olds. That could possibly explain why four thousand trillion dollars has been lent to shysters and shoveled into holes in the ground known as housing for some inexplicable reason. It explains why the global financial system just went tits up and yours and my pension has been destroyed. The only consolation is that Iran is still an infinitely worse place to live than Disney land.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
This "Fashion Advisor" sounds to me like they are trying yet again to find a use for Clippy, the reviled and ultimately fired MS Office assistant. "I see that you are putting on white shoes after labor day. Would you like help?".