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Facebook Patents Pokes-Per-Minute Limits

Posted by samzenpus on from the stop-touching-me dept.

theodp writes "The USPTO lowered the bar again on Tuesday, granting U.S. Patent No. 8,296,373 to four Facebook inventors for Automatically Managing Objectionable Behavior in a Web-based Social Network, essentially warning users or suspending their accounts when their poking, friend requesting, and wall posting is deemed annoying. From the patent: 'Actions by a user exceeding the threshold may trigger the violation module 240 to take an action. For example, the point 360, which may represent fifty occurrences of an action in a five hour period, does not violate any of the policies as illustrated. However, the point 350, which represents fifty occurrences in a two hour period, violates the poke threshold 330 and the wall post threshold 340. Thus, if point 350 represents a user's actions of either poking or wall posting, then the policy is violated.'"

10 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Total Garbage by NFN_NLN · · Score: 5, Funny

    No wonder the USPTO is overloaded. If this is the garbage that qualifies as patent worthy.

    I'm going to patent ass-wiping thresholds now. Once you've wiped your ass 10 times in one sitting and you're still not clean then something has gone wrong...

    1. Re:Total Garbage by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hah, Mark "Fucking" Zuckerberg here. I've already patented ass wiping thresholds, as well as asses and assholes. In fact, since Steve "Rotting Corpse" Jobs finally bit the big one, I'm even closer to cornering the asshole patent market.

      Look and be in awe of my might patented asshole!

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  2. Genius by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Funny

    Man, that is some hard core stuff right there. Is there anyone frequenting Slashdot with genius-level IQ that could possibly break down this unbelievably complex, non-obvious behavior and explain it to the rest of us? This is what having billions of dollars of capital can do for you - bring the brain power to a company that is required to make these kinds of amazing discoveries. What I'm looking forward to are the physics and mathematical papers that can expand on these newly found principles and constructs. It's really the stepping-off point to marvelous things for humanity. In fact, I do believe this may even bring us a step closer to the Grand Unified Theory.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Genius by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Funny

      Okay, then what is needed is a patent for limiting the amount of sarcasm in a commenting system. I'll lay the groundwork:

      For example, the point 360, which may represent fifty units of sarcasm in a five hour period, does not violate any of the policies as illustrated. However, the point 350, which represents fifty units of sarcasm in a two hour period, violates the sarcasm threshold 330. Thus, if point 350 represents a user's actions, then the policy is violated.

      Now it can never be said that I didn't contribute to Slashdot in a positive way after all these years.

      --
      Better known as 318230.
  3. Limit of Pokes per minute by HockeyPuck · · Score: 5, Funny

    At what point does pokes per minute turn into a tickle fight?

  4. Prior Art Part 332040450... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We used to configure eggdrop bots on IRC to auto-kick users that performed X behavior X times in a time period of X. *sigh*

  5. Slashdot Patent Violation Test by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Funny

    Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
    Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
    Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
    Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.
    Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.

    Nope, Slashdot is not in violation of the patent. Investigation closed.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  6. Slow down, Cowboy by istartedi · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slow down, Cowboy. You seem to have filed too many frivolous patents. Come back in 15 minutes.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  7. Fomenting disrespect by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can't do insane crap like this, like grant patents on token buckets, and then complain that people don't respect others' intellectual property. You're teaching us to despise your claims to ideas.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  8. Re:Guys, guys guys! Hey guys! by tragedy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The code in question is basic code, but it's basic code that loads assembly instructions into memory at 16384, 16385, and 16386, then hands the cpu over to the program inserted at 16384. The 76 is a jmp command and the next two memory addresses contain 64 (0x40) and 0 (0x00) combining to 0x4000, which translates to 16384. In other words, it's assembly code for an infinite loop.