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IBM Seeks Patent On Retailer-Rigged Driving Routes
theodp writes "On IBM's Smarter Planet, you may drive further than need be to get to your destination. Big Blue's pending patent for Determining Travel Routes by Using Fee-Based Location Preferences calls for the likes of Walmart, Starbucks, and Best Buy pay a fee in return for having your route calculation service de-optimize driving instructions to make you do a drive-by of their stores, and an additional fee if GPS tracking of your car indicates you actually took the suboptimal route. The same IBM inventors also have a patent pending for Environmental Stewardship Based on Driving Behavior, which calls for yet another fee to be assessed when a retailer-friendly-but-suboptimal route causes your vehicle to enter a congested area and produce more pollution."
IBM gets bonus points if they patent these then sit on them, thus disallowing anyone from actually implementing them.
Of course they could turn "Evil"
How many other evil things can we thing of to patent to prevent people from actually doing them?
I would bet that there is also going to be a way for the user to pay a fee not to be sent on the suboptimal route.
Just what we need get off highway and get back on for each small town you pass by.
In the past I use to get stuff like that with on line maps where they keep having you get on off the same road but may of been a bug or just poor weighting.
How long before it the gps says
"Go in to best buy and ask for geek suard for map update service Only $49.99"
Let's see...
Pick up map. Look up destination. Try to find the street on the legend, correspond to a bunch of X/Y grid entries, and get there. Try to determine the best way through all the various highways, one-way streets, etc on the way. Get partway there and run into construction. End up taking a different route. Stop, and re-read map. Plot alternate route. End up discovering that street stops and starts in multiple sections and require a roundabout route to your destination. Arrive at destination, only to discover that it doesn't exist and that you should have been on 1st Ave East and not just 1st ave. (and yes, I've had this experience before).
OR
Turn on location services. Type in "Bob's Market" in your GPS-enabled device. Click "directions." Follow the route given and spoken aloud... which is auto-corrected whenever you are diverted or have to make an unexpected turnoff to pee.
I don't need my GPS when going places in town, but when you're travelling 200+km to a destination you've never visited before, it's sure a nice thing to have...
Most convenient is if you're in an unfamiliar location, and you want to find "Store X." Pop the name into maps, and a few of the most nearby locations pops up for easy navigation.
But then again, I don't blindly drive off the road into a river/ravine/building just because my gps told me to.
Wish I'd read your post five minutes earlier...
- Sent from under water
#DeleteChrome
I'm starting to think my patent on having patent office employees smoke weed during the work day is being violated.
1. The head of a project takes his bunch of interns into a meeting room to brainstorm random things you could do which have any sort of tenuous tangential connection to the project.
2. Lawyers!!!
3. IBM pays dude a few thousand dollars bonus.
(4. Interns are eligible for bonus if they join IBM, but seek less-dysfunctional workplaces where they don't have to use Lotus Notes.)
Seriously, that's the reason I have my name on a patent which basically says "you could have a weight sensor on a bus, guess the number of passengers, and use that for capacity planning somehow." For bonus points, check out the flowchart.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Pure FUD. First to file does NOT mean that prior art is ignored. Prior art will invalidate a patent now just as it did before. The rest of the world has been "first to file" for, like, forever. If someone has published it, then no-one can patent it.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Have gnu, will travel.
my 2 year old tomtom can handle that "waypoint along route" and it will list the target stores that are on your route, with each one listed as to how much of a detour it is, you then select the one you want.
Bangkok Tuk-Tuk drivers.
New Delhi motorcycle taxis.
This is just a polite cought from IBM to remind Apple, MS, Google, HP, Samsung and the likes who invented original evil. This is classy stuff, forget about silly lawsuits and threathening to sue your customers. Control their every move like the drones they are. THAT is CLASS. That is pure unadulterated evil.
Basically they are saying, "Look out, we are still here and we are still the masters of darkness. Any of you whippersnappers forget that and we will have your headquarters surrounded by a thousand sheep following our GPS to their slaughter."
I have taken the hint and re-labelled my PC as an IBM-compatible to pay homage to the master.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.