Microsoft Patents Looks-Are-Everything Dating

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Microsoft Patents Looks-Are-Everything Dating

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday January 2, 2011 @08:10AM from the electronic-eye-of-the-beholder dept.

theodp writes "Screw that eHarmony Compatibility Matching System nonsense. 'Physical appearance is generally considered one of the most important search criteria among users of online dating services,' according to a patent granted Tuesday to five Microsoft Research Asia inventors. Its Image-Based Face Search technology not only allows people to specify the 'gender, age, ethnicity, location, height, weight, and the like' of their prey, explains Microsoft, it also allows them to 'provide a query image of a face for which they would like to search for similar faces.' So, even though you can't have the real Angelina Jolie or Natalie Portman, Microsoft will fix you up with a look-alike."

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Good grief. by Frosty+Piss · 2011-01-02 08:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

Come on! Patenting searching for someone who looks like someone else?

What's gong on at the Patent Office? I'm starting to think they all need to be drug tested.

--
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
1. Re:Good grief. by jonbryce · 2011-01-02 08:56 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  If the computer can do it for you by recognising features on the uploaded photo, then maybe it is patentable. However, the patent shouldn't be granted on the general idea, but on the specific technology that makes it possible.
2. Re:Good grief. by mangu · 2011-01-02 09:00 · Score: 2
  
  What's gong on at the Patent Office? I'm starting to think they all need to be drug tested.
  They can't do it because a method for selecting patent office workers based on analysis of drug use has already been patented.
3. Re:Good grief. by camperslo · 2011-01-02 09:24 · Score: 2
  
  I think there's prior art...
  http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushmonkey3.htm
4. Re:Good grief. by causality · 2011-01-02 09:40 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What's gong on at the Patent Office? I'm starting to think they all need to be drug tested.
  They can't do it because a method for selecting patent office workers based on analysis of drug use has already been patented.
  That reminds me of a really good quote:
  
  No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
  -- P. J. O'Rourke
  
  I'd say those four things provide a coherent explanation of the current patent system.
  
  --
  It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
5. Re:Good grief. by Theaetetus · 2011-01-02 09:48 · Score: 2
  
  They get paid to assign patent numbers.
  Actually, they get paid to reject applications. They just have to come up with a good reason to do so.
6. Re:Good grief. by aaaaaaargh! · 2011-01-02 09:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Part of the reason the patent system is broken is there is a huge misconception among people about what a patent is and isn't.
  I disagree, the patent system is broken because the patent evaluators have no clue about prior art and far too lax criteria for what counts as a specific implementation. That's why there are ridiculous yet valid patents for things like using windows as GUI elements or electronically serving structured documents from a remote server.
7. Re:Good grief. by andydread · 2011-01-02 12:01 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Right and as patents are for the betterment of the arts and were created to encourage inventors to show how their invention works for the betterment of the arts, the patent filing should include the source code.
8. Re:Good grief. by DrVomact · 2011-01-02 13:00 · Score: 2
  
  If the computer can do it for you by recognising features on the uploaded photo, then maybe it is patentable. However, the patent shouldn't be granted on the general idea, but on the specific technology that makes it possible.
  Right. An image search algorithm that does this well would indeed be technologically interesting...maybe even unique, as it's my understanding that current "face recognition" technologies don't work that well. Certainly, the Department of Homeland Security would be very interested. But patent the "general idea" is exactly what they did. It's clear nobody that nobody's been home in the U.S. Patent Office for some time...but I bet they keep collecting their paychecks.
  
  --
  Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Only the face? Not good enough. by John+Hasler · 2011-01-02 08:12 · Score: 3, Funny

n/t

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Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Website name by girlintraining · 2011-01-02 08:15 · Score: 2

And they'll probably call it iShallow.com.

--
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
1. Re:Website name by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-01-02 08:23 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Shallow, yes; but also refreshingly honest about it. Arguably giving such people an efficient clearinghouse in which to practice their assortative mating is a net win for everybody: If they have a clearly superior option, they will flock to it, and the people who aren't don't have to worry about the possibility of dealing with one of them who is emulating an interest in nonvisual qualities. Everybody wins.
2. Re:Website name by erroneus · 2011-01-02 08:27 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Truth is often the most ugly thing about life. We spend our daily lives dressing up and hiding the truth at every turn. When someone dies, we say "pass away." And when someone is defrauded or tricked in some way, we say "fucked." And no one goes out looking for someone with deformities or obesity and VERY few people can seriously "look past" them.
  I have been with great-looking women and many not-so-great-looking women. Great-looking women are rarely great people on the inside though and the only teacher of that is experience unfortunately and I had to become "over 35" to learn that lesson and accept the truth of it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NF5XU-k2Vk -- there is a lot of truth in this song but I can't easily tell my wife that... it hurts her feelings. So instead I tell her another truth -- I am with her because she treats me very well and I appreciate it deeply) So yeah, there is something to be said about how "shallow" it all is, but the fact is, most people are shallow even when they think they are not. I know I am shallow in many ways and I accept it, because this shallowness is a part of human nature.
3. Re:Website name by Smauler · 2011-01-02 08:45 · Score: 2
  
  Meh - if finding your partner attractive is shallow, then I'm shallow. To be honest, being with someone you don't find attractive is way more shallow in my opinion.
4. Re:Website name by Announcer · 2011-01-02 08:52 · Score: 2
  
  You've said "Beauty is only skin deep" in much more eloquent words.
  Who are they trying to kid? This new(?) site/service is only going to set people up for 1-night-stands, with a very poor ratio of GOOD relationships.
  Eharmony is for people who want to be serious and have a good LIFE.
  This mess is for people who want to remain as shallow as rain puddles.
  Choice is good: To each their own.
  
  --
  Willie...
5. Re:Website name by causality · 2011-01-02 09:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Not at all. Let's face it, looks might not be everything, but they are important. It's only shallow if that's your only criterion.
  What looks mean to you can also be non-shallow. I'm likely to catch some flak for this but I'll give an example: obesity. That's a matter of looks, but it's also a matter of how the person got to be that way. It says something about their ability or willingness to take good care of themselves. If they do not wish to be obese but have failed to effectively do something about it, it says something about their level of discipline and commitment to goals that are important to them. If they do not accept personal responsibility for their own health, and instead have a million excuses for why their obesity is somehow not their fault, it tells you that they have a victim mentality and are unlikely to be honest about their own shortcomings within the framework of a relationship. That honesty about each other's shortcomings is the first necessary step towards accepting them and growing past them.
  
  Anyone angry or upset by the above paragraph is failing to understand one thing: you can be objectively honest about such matters, ugly though they may be, while also having compassion for the person who struggles with them. Just because someone doesn't meet your criteria for what you want in a mate, just because there are good reasons for that, doesn't make them any less human or any less worthy of kindness and respect. The level of childishness that has infiltrated this site is the only reason I feel a need to explain that, as many of you are trigger-happy when it comes to "ZOMG, he said something that might be negative, hurry, demonize him and deny any point he made!" It's the very opposite of benevolent benefit of doubt when multiple interpretations are possible, in other words.
  
  If a dating site has a prefilter that somehow magically figures out what you find physically attractive and only shows you those matches, that's tens of thousands of profiles you wouldn't have considered anyway that you no longer have to look through.
  That's true for someone who wants a serious relationship or a sexual relationship and will accept nothing else. It leaves little or no room though for deep, satisfying, rewarding friendships that you might have with someone who isn't attractive to you but has a big heart, a strong spirit, or a perspective on life that you truly appreciate.
  
  Also, it could be set up in such a way that you only see each other if you both are likely to find the other attractive. That would be a huge win because it would save an awful lot of awkwardness when one person likes the other but not vice-versa. For people who are intimidated by such social interaction, that would be a godsend.
  I admit that this is true, but is it ultimately a good thing? It would be "a godsend" in the short term. In the long term, wouldn't it also provide a means to run away from confronting one's own fears, overcoming them through persistent effort, and becoming a stronger person? Don't we do enough of that already?
  
  Combine that with something like eHarmony's matching scheme, and you could rapidly narrow down the choices to the dozen or so people that might actually work out, instead of having to manually weed out the million that wouldn't.
  The problem is that the patents on these systems make it less likely and more expensive for a single comprehensive service to offer both. It is one potential example of how the patent system actually retards progress.
  
  --
  It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
6. Re:Website name by Sir_Sri · 2011-01-02 10:10 · Score: 2
  
  Well that's the advantage of online dating in general. Have a monacle fetish? Tired of your friends setting you up on dates with people who don't have monacles because you haven't told them about this. No problem, online dating will help. You can be brutally honest about what you want, and don't want. The downside I can see with online dating is that there's a difference between wanting a fantasy (wanting a woman who looks like angelina jolie), and wanting something you learned from experience (someone who is both willing, and financially able to go on at least 2 weeks of overseas vacations a year). I think the younger generation, teenagers, early 20 somethings, who don't yet know or fully appreciate what they do, or don't want are going to be handed a lot of tools to find a fantasy. For all of it's faults what eharmony purports offer is an attempt at least, to understand what you seriously want in a partner and not just what would fulfil your immediate daydreams. Whether it succeeds or not I have no idea, having never tried the service.
  I suppose in the parlance of computer science it's requirements specification. Online is a great way to do pattern match and some sort of combinatorial optimization to 'rank' different pairs of people, but you need to have accurate input in the first place on just what people want and are. There might be a neat machine learning problem there where you could take a dataset of people and then as it pairs them up ask them how the date went in a number of ways and then build a set of relations between some sets of have - want properties.
7. Re:Website name by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-02 13:48 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  you say it is diet but if i starve myself for a week no fat loss only water weight loss
  Dieting: you're doing it wrong.
8. Re:Website name by SuricouRaven · 2011-01-02 20:12 · Score: 2
  
  "if i starve myself for a week no fat loss only water weight loss"
  
  Are you aware that you need to lug your lard-filled body off the couch and actually move around a bit in order to use up the fat??
9. Re:Website name by rubycodez · 2011-01-03 03:44 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  blaming the water? aw cmon, how do you explain the thin people in your area. Eat a good diet of mostly vegetables and fruit, with rice or potatoes without the butter or sour cream, with six ounces or less of lean meat a day, and get off the workstation chair and start walking, adding a little distance each day, get to two miles or more a day. Then add some of those exercises we all learned in school PE, jumping jacks and pushups and such.
  You'll be amazed what happens in six weeks....
creepy creepy creepy... by maxwells_deamon · 2011-01-02 08:28 · Score: 2

Probably more patentable than most software patents if you actualy patent the means of doing it and not the idea.
You need another patent on how to get sane people to sign up for this. I can see a first date meeting at a restarant.
"No you can't be my date, you don't look like my mom"
1. Re:creepy creepy creepy... by SEWilco · 2011-01-02 10:25 · Score: 2
  
  So, is this patent Hot Or Not?
fixed that for you by e065c8515d206cb0e190 · 2011-01-02 08:42 · Score: 2

And they'll probably call it iSwallow.com.
Image editing by coolmadsi · 2011-01-02 08:58 · Score: 2

If this actually gets implemented, I wonder what percent of photos uploaded will be edited in some way or another.
Re:Racist by jhoegl · 2011-01-02 09:32 · Score: 2

Actually its called Prejudice....
But I love how you follow up with a stereotype.

Good game sir.
Well by ShooterNeo · 2011-01-02 10:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

From the perspective of an average man in the United States : there are a number of factors working against the average man in the U.S. today in terms of dating.
1. The obesity epidemic. This removes millions of women who have the genetics to be desirable, but are instead obese.
2. High incomes of most American workers, and relative egalitarianism. Unlike say, 1950, many women don't need men for money. They are no longer remotely impressed by men making incomes in the bottom 99%.
3. Aging of the populance. All men, from age 13 to age 90, want women in the same age range. Women are fertile and make good mothers between ages 15 and 35. That's 17 years of (legal) breeding ability. Yet, out of the millions of men in the United States, every last one of them prefers women in this age range.
And other factors. Sexual harassment laws mean that men who ask anyone at work for a date risk their careers. The laws in general have gone from being biased towards men (prehistory-1980) towards heavily biased in favor of women.
This is why a lot of men in the U.S. would be best served dating oversees. If you're in the top 10-20% of income in the U.S., but not the top 1%, and you have average looks...you're a dud by the standards of the handful of attractive available non-obese women in the United States. You're royalty with that kind of money and prospects by equally attractive women in say, Ukraine.
1. Re:Well by mcvos · 2011-01-03 04:20 · Score: 2
  
  From the perspective of an average man in the United States : there are a number of factors working against the average man in the U.S. today in terms of dating.
  1. The obesity epidemic. This removes millions of women who have the genetics to be desirable, but are instead obese.
  Are only women in the US obese? I'd say this is acting against Americans in general, and not merely any single gender. And it has little to do with dating either. You can always date someone who's just as fat as you. Or you could get off your ass and get some exercise and healthier food, of course.
  
  2. High incomes of most American workers, and relative egalitarianism. Unlike say, 1950, many women don't need men for money. They are no longer remotely impressed by men making incomes in the bottom 99%.
  That just means women aren't desperate to get married for economic reasons. But plenty of women still want a man. Just not some jerk. (Or maybe they do want a jerk; some women seem to prefer them.)
  
  3. Aging of the populance. All men, from age 13 to age 90, want women in the same age range. Women are fertile and make good mothers between ages 15 and 35.
  I was under the impression that a lot of men aren't really all that eager to reproduce. They want the sex, but not the kids.
  The only real factor weighing against men (and women!) is this: unrealistic expectations. You get your expectations of the other sex from Hollywood, porn, trashy romance novels and what-have-you, and when you finally get out in the real world, all you can find are depressingly real people. Everybody wants to supermodels and ruggedly handsome doctors to fall madly in love with them despite their ill-adjusted anti-social attitudes. The problem is with you, not with the others.
Not shallow by triclipse · 2011-01-02 11:19 · Score: 2

Basing mating choices on physical appearance is the product of a hundred million years of selective pressure. It is not shallow, but rather it is one of our deepest animal traits.

--
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
1. Re:Not shallow by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-01-02 12:12 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You can't ignore physical appearance(though evolution hasn't quite caught up to the appearance of the 'myspace angle', so false signalling is a risk; but the trick is the phrase "basing mating choices on"...
  
  If this site is, largely, just for apply comp-sci efficiency to arranging hookups, it should work just fine. If people expect to form stable relationships long enough to accrue a white picket fence, golden retriever, and 2.5 children, they are going to have to examine the matter more closely...
Re:every country has a motive to be lax by Asic+Eng · 2011-01-02 11:48 · Score: 4, Informative

Patents must be respected internationally due to treaties
That's not quite correct, actually. Patents apply only in the country in which they are granted. However the Paris convention provides that filing an application in one member state gives you an exclusive right for one year, to file in any other member state. However your patent still needs to fulfill the requirements of the country you are filing in. So if you have a weak patent in the US, you may not be able to successfully apply in e.g. the UK (assuming they are more strict for the purpose of this example).
If you are based in the UK, the US patent could still be relevant for you though - e.g. if you are exporting to the US. That's one of the reasons why many foreign companies file for US patents, even for "inventions" which wouldn't be patentable in their home countries.
Drug testing the Patent Office? by commodoresloat · 2011-01-02 14:44 · Score: 2

What a great idea! You should patent that.