Microsoft Patent Aims To Curb Obnoxious Employee Behavior

theodp writes "GeekWire reports that a pending Microsoft patent for monitoring workplace behavior would do Dwight Schrute proud. Three Microsoft inventors propose curbing obnoxious workplace habits in an equally obnoxious fashion — using a computer device for monitoring and analyzing workers' interactions over video conferences, telephone, text messages and other forms of digital communication to look for patterns of negative and positive behavior, and assigning behavior scores to employees based on what the system finds. Bad behavior, Microsoft explains, might include wearing dark glasses in a video conference, wearing unacceptable clothing to a business meeting, cutting off others during conversation, prolonged monologues, and even how one nods one's head in agreement, shakes one's head indicating disagreement, and makes hand gestures."

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Re:wrong logo

[Penguinisto]

Apple is still the most closed choice in computing.

Depends on what angle you view it from:

Hardware? Yeah, Apple's a stickler, though Hackintoshing is not all that hard to do, as long as you do your homework first. Microsoft doesn't sell PC hardware, so it's kind of a non-comparison.

Software? I beg to differ, greatly.

Until you can show me where I can download the Windows kernel/core source code without signing an NDA or paying a huge bucket of money? Microsoft is still king of the closed-source software, and since they are primarily a software company, they're still the most closed.