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Microsoft Patents Tech That Would Silence Your Phone For You
tsamsoniw writes "Microsoft has filed a patent for a mobile technology called Inconspicuous Mode, aimed at helping you not be 'that guy' who disrupts movies, meals, or meetings with noisy, bright-screened phone alerts. It's a setting that would effectively put your phone in stealth mode when the device sensed it was in a movie theater (thanks to location information) and that the lights had gone down. The idea is, you could still receive alerts if a call or text came in, but no one around you would be disturbed by phone sounds or screen flashes."
I already have a phone that does this. As someone who is aware of my surroundings and generally conscientious, I simply turn my phone to "vibrate" or even - God forbid - OFF... It works very well indeed. And I even still receive alerts if a call or text came in. Amazing technology.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Or silent mode...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
people drive like asswipes because they think the world revolves around them
same here, the people disrupting the movie won't care about this. and probably won't enable it even if their phone had it.
the only solution is to wait two weeks or more until after a movie comes out to see it in an almost empty theater
as opposed to just sitting in your dark pocket?
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Doesn't tasker already let you do this?
I thought hammers have been known for centuries, how did they manage a patent on that?
The same way you patent anything else, by adding the words "over the Internet" to its description.
I own and operate a movie theatre. I have policy trailers that I play before every show telling you to turn your cell phone off. If I see a light from a cell phone while the show is on, I'll go in and ask you to turn it off until the show is over. If I see your light again, I'll ask you to come to the lobby with me, and when you get there I'll tell you to go home.
Since I have been doing this for years, ever since cell phones existed, I have very little problem with cell phones here.
Consistent enforcement is the answer. I have to tell maybe one or two people a month to turn their phones off, sometimes I can go a few months without having to do it once. And I can't remember the last time I threw someone out for that -- it's been at least a couple of years.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
....but I guess you have to play the game.
Only if you intend to perpetuate it.
"I must do evil, because everyone else does" is not a valid excuse, and only serves to eternalize douche-baggery.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
There are several programs that can be set to automate your phone like this. The problem is that location awareness isn't as good inside a movie theater as you might hope. For instance, I live about a half a mile away from the nearest megaplex. I setup a rule on my phone to turn off the ringer and wifi when the phone is at the address of the cinema. However, the rule kept triggering when I was sitting in my living room. Even if I didn't live so close, if I was shopping at the stores next door, my phone would be going to vibrate mode automatically. I've found that doing location based things only works well if your location isn't near anything else. For instance, I work in the middle of nowhere. I set a rule to turn off WiFi & bluetooth from 8am to 4:45pm when I'm at my work location. Works great to save battery. But for the movies, I still set it manually.
Currently, using wifi location, my phone thinks it is on the other side of the road from where it actually is. Accurate enough to find the nearest bus stop or whatever I'm looking for, but certainly not accurate enough to know that I am actually inside a particular screening room of a theatre rather than out in the foyer or in a shop next door. As I'm indoors, GPS or Glonass location isn't an option, and even if it was, it still isn't accurate enough for that.
I agree with you, in this particular case. But there will be situations where I find something trivial and obvious that you find to be a pain in the ass, and vice-versa. Once person might say "I'm aware of what I'm watching and it's trivial and foolproof to press fast-forward on my Tivo remote when there's a commercial" and the other person might say "I shouldn't have to do that or think about that, when I'm trying to concentrate on the actresses' boobies, so mythfrontend should automatically commercial-skip for me." One person might say "I want a padlock icon when it is a totally sure thing (except for a glossed-over list of exceptions, all of which I want to always be un-acknowledged) there is no MitM attack, and I want lack of an icon when the certainty is less than 100.00%; I don't want to think about grey areas and degrees of certainty" and another person might prefer a realistic UI which says "MiTM is probably not happening" or "MitM is very very likely not happening" or "The level of conspiracy required for a MitM right now, has precedent." or "You only have one stranger's assurance that nothing shady is going on, and betrayal would require no conspiracy at all."
We say just a little awareness and common sense solves the problem, maybe because our phones happen to be something we sometimes think about, for whatever reasons that have emerged from our personal quirks. Someone else says "I shouldn't have to be aware of something as unimportant as the current sleep/wake state of one of my pocket computers, among the dozen items I happen to be carrying." If eyeglasses or shoes or hats sometimes spontaneously started screaming in response to external activity, that same person might want the behavior automatically suppressed at some times, whereas you and I would probably raise an eyebrow at the thought of ever buying a screaming hat in the first place, because we already have enough to worry about (our phones) without having to worry about screaming hats.
Different strokes for different folks.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Because in the US rudeness varies a lot as do our other personality attributes. There are some ethnic/cultural attributes which vary interestingly. For example, asian people seem to have the most positive of stereotypes where they are nearly always concerned about whether or not they are in someone else's way. They never want to be rude. Black people tend to be the opposite as they never seem to care when they are in the way of anyone else, talking TO the movies and more. White and hispanic people seem to vary more in the middle of the spectrum. I think it's also important to note that while the stereotypes are "generally" true, I know some black people who simply do not fit the description at all as well as a few asians who aren't very 'asian.' But everyone seems increasingly comfortable talking about the problem of black people in the movie theaters so why can't we tell the rest of the truth and be okay with it?
I guess it would have been enough to say "we have a lot of different types of people and personalities in the US and we don't think or act the same." But sometimes I like to elaborate.