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Microsoft Patents OS Shutdown
An anonymous reader writes "You would think that shutting down software could be fairly simple from an end user's view. If I ask you to shut it down, would you mind shutting it actually down, please? Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, because you need to ask the user if they really want to shut down and if unsaved documents should be saved. And that warrants a patent that also covers Mac OS X. Next time you shut down Windows, remember how complicated it is for Windows to shut down. Perhaps that is the reason why this procedure can take minutes in some cases."
One has to wonder if they are also trying to patent the inadvertent "BSOD" shutdowns. They seem much more complex. ;-)
Shutting down Windows, evacuating ones bowels.
Potayto potahto.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Yes, but an Apple fanboy takes a lot longer to shut up.
When can I, um, patent shutting down the USPTO?
No, no, you have it wrong. Please patent keeping the Patent Authorities operational and then refuse to licencense that to anybody.
It's yet another case of Windows taking a "don't tell the user anything, it might scare them" approach.
Are you sure?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
A: The USPTO looked in the mirror and found prior art!
Hope is the currency of fools
Bill Gates had fight through Tier 1 support like the rest of us? Maybe I've been too hard on the guy.
-- Seq
Except for a couple things:
A) You assume someone gives a shit about your sig, and more importantly,
B) You got the term wrong. The correct term is "It is now safe to turn off your computer".
You have had the wrong term in your sig for 10 years. If that isn't an Epic Fucking Fail I don't know what is.
Even better was the time I told my laptop to shut down because I was low on battery. I came back 5 minutes later to find it hadn't shut down because a Windows dialog had popped up saying I should shut down because I was low on battery (true story).
My webcomic
"sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/kmem bs=8192"
is a lot more fun than just /sbin/halt
--Joe
Shutting down windows is like a bad breakup. It's a long and drawn-out process, that you wish you could just walk away from, but there's always some unnecessary complication that leaves you wondering why you settled for this in the first place and if you will have the willpower to avoid coming back tomorrow.
Not so fast! I have a patent on that.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen