Apple Awarded Anti-Sexting Patent

eldavojohn writes "If your parenting skills aren't up to snuff, Apple's got a patent on the device that will allow you to control what your child sends and receives. Entitled 'Text-based communication control for personal communication device,' this patent uses examples like increasing the number of Spanish words your child receives so that they can better learn Spanish. You could even use it to control your child's grammar and spelling in outgoing text messages. But news sources seem to be focusing on the censorship issue that Apple has been criticized for before: 'The control is in line with earlier efforts adopted by Apple like Playboy which entered into a deal with Apple to censor its content to secure a place in App Store.' Perhaps the wives and agents of popular athletes would be more interested in this technology? Apple is certainly sending a message opposite to the one Microsoft advertises."

Comments

You're?

[LearnToSpell]

Sounds like you could use it, eldavo.

Re:Parenting skills?

[jedidiah]

Yeah... because no one ever just jumped into a dumpster 30 years ago.

There is nothing "new" or "innovative" here. Stuff is just more VISIBLE. The fact that it's going on is in everyone's faces. You can't ignore it. It's much harder to be unaware of what people are doing.

Re:Parenting skills?

[mapkinase]

Morals are not about failing, it's about taboo. You can fail if you "DO" something, taboos are about "NOT" doing something. IT's opposite.

You cannot fail if you follow the taboo.

If you daughter does not put herself into a compromising position, she won't be in a compromising position with very rare exceptions of freaky accidents. If your son does not go to a drinking party, he won't get drunk at the drinking party.

The solution is not on the level of parents, the solution is on the level of the society: curb freedoms that burn the fabric of it.

In Related News...

[sexconker]

Slashdot Rewarded Anti-Sexing Patent.
Here's patent law expert Troll Trollington with the breakdown. Troll?

Thanks, Jim. So what we've got here is a classic case of a non-obvious method of avoiding sex. Traditionally we've used disease, genital mutilation - often going as far as full-on castration, chastity belts, and plain old ugliness to avoid sex.

What Rob Malda has come up with, and this is quite ingenious, Jim, is an internet site you can go to get all the latest Digg rejects, Apple PR, and Linux circle jerking. What this does, in effect, is draw in all the undesirables. By wasting their time on Slashdot discussing the finer points of the latest copy-pasta troll about eating one of Obama's turds, the Slashdot "community" (and this is a euphemism, Jim) becomes, collectively, COMPLETELY UNDESIRABLE. It doesn't matter what you, personally, are. You could be a 10 who's getting blowjobs and puppies just for walking into a room. Once you register for an account on Slashdot, your sexual worth is reduced to nothing.

CmdrTaco realized that the shittiness of a person is defined by the shittiness of the group he belongs to. They call it "crowd sourcing", I think. By leveraging the attributes of the entire group, you're able to turn any individual member of the group into the best of the best, or in Slashdot's case, the wort of the worst.

Now, Troll, I've been told that not all Slashdot members actually want to be on Slashdot. For this "crowd sourcing" scheme to work, don't you have to ensure a large and undesirable crowd?

Exactly, Jim. What they've done on this site really boils down to 3 things.

First of all, anyone can post. If you don't have an account, you can post as what they call an "Anonymous Coward". These posts are largely ignored by the Slashdot members, but reflect on the Slashdot community, as seen by outsiders. Thus Slashdotters generally enjoy their self-imposed prison, while decent people like you and me know enough to stay away.

This has a couple of effects. Decent people who want to contribute to Slashdot will sign up for an account in an effort to get the community to stop ignoring their "Anonymous Coward", or "AC", posts. A warning to our viewers, Jim. Many decent people have been sucked in by this. The AC feature also allows us desirable people to keep the reputation of Slashdot in the gutter. For example, if Slashdot ever posted an article that wasn't an advertisement, a dupe, a Digg/Reddit reject, or otherwise a worthless piece of shit, the world's opinion of Slashdotters might go up, ever so slightly. We have dedicated trolls in place that spam Slashdot via the AC feature. Unfortunately I can't read any of these posts on the air, Jim, but I can assure you, they are VERY effective in making sure everyone on the outside has a low opinion of Slashdot.

The second thing they've done to keep people from leaving Slashdot is implemented a half-assed social network backend. People on Slashdot can rate posts, become friends or enemies, and even write in their own shitty blog which is hosted right on Slashdot. By throwing in all of your posts in your blog section, people feel connected to their Slashdot identity and won't want to leave it. Someone with 1000 shitty Slashdot posts and 0 blog entries will feel just as connected to their Slashdot profile as a blogger with over 1000 entries. Another piece of this puzzle is "Karma". Karma is a rating of how shitty you are, ranging from "very shitty" to "barely shitty enough to post on Slashdot". If you're Karma is shitty, your posts are automatically rated lower, and go ignored. You're also limited to only a few posts per day, and it takes ages to submit them.

Now let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly, Troll. This is an automated system?

Yes and no, Jim. Karma is assigned automatically based on voodoo calculations that are constantly changing and constantly breaking. But we think it has something to do with post ratings. Posts are rated by Slashdot members. Bu