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Microsoft Seeks Patent On 'Quieting Mobile Devices'

Posted by samzenpus on from the seen-and-not-heard dept.

theodp writes "GeekWire reports on a pending Microsoft patent that proposes to give parents a centralized dashboard on their phones for remotely monitoring and setting restrictions on other family members' mobile devices. The newly-published patent application for Automatically Quieting Mobile Devices explains how parents could use the dashboard to shut down family members' devices during certain time periods, at designated locations, during specified events, and in designated quiet zones. From the patent: 'Aspects that might be disabled include any type of interactive functions and/or features of a device (except, in some examples, initiating emergency telephone calls or emergency text messages and displaying the current time/date or information related to the quiet time may still be permitted), playing games, communicating (via phone, VOIP applications, text messaging, instant messaging, and/or email), using other applications (e.g., browsers, messaging applications, social networking applications, or consuming certain content (e.g., digital media content).' Microsoft also proposes equipping parents' phones with 'biometric detection' to thwart kids who try to circumvent 'Big Mother'."

17 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Not creepy at all by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

    I'm sure when this tech hits the market, the government will get to play the role of Big Mother too, and all of those features are pretty scary in that context.

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  2. Microsoft doesn't need a patent by JoeyRox · · Score: 3, Funny

    Their mobile phone business is already quiet as a whisper.

  3. Instafail by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Clearly, the engineer who cooked this up has never had kids. Look, they're like prisoners -- they're bored, and have nothing better to do than spend hours trying to do what they're told they can't do, because doing what you can't do is really, really fun.

    You could give it nine biometric sensors, make it out of solid neutronium, and mandate 40 character randomly generated passwords and an attachment to attach to your dick and take a urine sample... and kids will still giggle, smile, and then proceed to hack it, then destroy it, then flush the pieces down the toilet, then claim they don't know what happened.

    Because that's how children roll.

    There is no technology that can be a substitute for good parenting -- namely, you say "don't touch this" and if they touch it... you ground their bitch ass. Problem solved. And coincidentally... parental involvement is the only thing that DOES solve the problem.

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    1. Re:Instafail by symbolset · · Score: 3, Funny

      No doubt, knowing Microsoft, it will be the kids locking their parents out, not the other way 'round.

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    2. Re:Instafail by fateblossom · · Score: 2

      Men, Kids... It's the same think 99% of the time

    3. Re:Instafail by RJFerret · · Score: 2

      Destroy it, heck no! Think of the possibilities? Teen girls could prevent their boyfriend(s) from texting anyone other than them. Enemies can disable one's fav game or pr0n access. In the midst of a test, mysteriously cheat notes aren't accessible. The kids who hack this stand to make lotsa' cash, or gain sexual favors, or whatever kids want nowadays...Adderall.

    4. Re:Instafail by artor3 · · Score: 2

      It's rather sad how people always blame the parents for not controlling their kids, and then those same people bitch and moan whenever someone tries to introduce a technology to help parents control their kids.

      Those people always insist that technology is no substitute for good parenting, as if that's some sort of sage revelation. But it's not. It's a distraction. It's changing the subject. No one is saying technology like this replaces good parenting. It's not designed to replace good parenting. It's designed to enable it.

    5. Re:Instafail by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      It's rather sad how people always blame the parents for not controlling their kids, and then those same people bitch and moan whenever someone tries to introduce a technology to help parents control their kids.

      Those people always insist that technology is no substitute for good parenting, as if that's some sort of sage revelation. But it's not. It's a distraction. It's changing the subject. No one is saying technology like this replaces good parenting. It's not designed to replace good parenting. It's designed to enable it.

      Technology has nothing to do with good parenting. Because smartphones didn't exist in huge quantities 10 years ago. Internet was new and novel 15 years ago. VIdeo games at least in popularity is barely 35 years old, and home computing is barely over 40.

      And we've had kids and have been parenting them for thousands of years. The industrial age (or really what we'd call modern life) is close to 150 years old. And the electronic distractions are barely a third of that.

      Sure we've all had screaming kids and tantrums, and kids have been bored since forever. But sticking a shiny screen in front of them is relatively new, and barely a blip on the timeline when doing it out and about. (Hell, a perambulator is way smaller than the urban SUV strollers people have that basically needs an entire lane - be the poor fool who is going the other way and have to get around them).

      Hell, you'd think it was the dark ages when cellphones weren't as ubiquitous as they are now - somehow a lot of us older folk grew up in houses where our parents went out for the night and were for the most part, unreachable - the babysitter didn't have a way of contacting the parents directly. Hell, doctors didn't carry cellphones as much either - and yet, we seem to have managed medical emergencies just fine as well.

      No, the problem is not technology, is the societal response to technology - everyone's becoming ruder, and they can't imagine not having immediate access to anyone else, for any reason. (Back in the "dark ages", if the boss needed to reach you after hours, there was a chance they couldn't get you. And you know what? It was just fine.

      That's why there's a push back to "good parenting", sans technology. Kids SHOULD get bored. They should also find ways to occupy themselves without getting into trouble (something a good parent teaches them about). A bored kid doesn't immediately turn to drugs and guns and gangs and violence (some did, but they still do today). No, they turned fingers into literal hand guns, cops and robbers, indians vs. cowboys, built stuff using lego (and smash them - it's half the fun) and many other things. Some of which could include chores to encourage the aforementioned behavior.

      That's why people bitch and moan because all these changes are recent. In fact, less than a generation old. The same parents who want these techno babysitters themselves grew up without them. Even the newly married folks or college age kids didn't have them when they were young. The earliest kids would really be in their early teens and barely able to drive.

      Oh yeah, there was television, but not the thousand channel universe, and rarely more than one or two TVs in the house. And radio played the same crap then as they do today. No streaming radio, you listened to what they played, and no Amazon to order your specific tastes if the local store didn't have it. If you were lucky, you could mail-order, which was a 4-6 week ordeal.

  4. Parenting much? by Acapulco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow, it can do ALL those things?
    I guess parenting is overrated!

    Joking aside, it's worrysome how more and more, even discussed in Slashdot ad nauseaum, there are people developing parenting-avoiding tools.

    Every time I see someone asking for some software to monitor their kids and avoid them going to unwanted internet pages I'm amused how my parents monitored me when I was young.

    The answer? Put the computer in the living room where every one walking about the house could take a peek at the monitor. Up until maybe 13-14 years old it was this way. Later they allowed me to have it in my room after they had some "certainty" that I knew how to surf safely. Sure, I watched porn and even once in a while things that my parent probably wouldn't have approved of (gore and stuff like that), but by that point I had a pretty firm grasp of what I was "allowed" to do. Read: Allowed as in I trusted my parents to do what it was good for me.

    If they prefered I stayed away from certain pages I would most certainly stay away, maybe taking a quick peek but in general nothing to worry about.

    I mean, if you are not going to be (and I hope most people won't) glued to the side of your child so you can monitor it 24/7, why would anyone expect some software to actually do that? I believe that children behave for the most part, according to how the parenting went. So if your kid can't stay away from the smartphone in important events, the the issue is not with the techology (as usual) but with the way those parents raised their children.

    After so many patents and technology products and ideas going in this direction, I wonder if some sci-fi writer is ever going to write some stories about how the future of humanity will be determined by how parents *configured* their kid's robo-nannies and even sue the robo-nanny maker because their child grew up spoiled, even when they bought the enhanced DLC for super-behaved children!

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  5. Sadly this could sell by onyxruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Too many parents refuse to parent and let the media do their work for them. For those parents that have raised snowflakes this would be the perfect passive aggressive way to handle things.

    Sorry snowflake, the phone says you can't send text messages at dinner time, don't be upset with me!

  6. Good plan... by Genda · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Am I being overly concerned about building an access channel into the phone designed to yield aspects of phone control to another party. I can't imagine that hackers and cracker worldwide wouldn't hit this new feature like a schist-storm looking to use it as a pry tool to access control of people's Win-Phones. I guess MS is safe as long as the number of users is too small to justify the interest of the hackers.

  7. Wrong target audience by Gibgezr · · Score: 2

    As a parent, I have no need of this.
    As a teacher, this would be useful.

  8. Patents are beyond absurd... by Assmasher · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...and this isn't an anti-Microsoft rant as all public companies and most private ones are guilty of this as well.

    Step 1: Take common ingredients used in hundreds if not thousands of other applications and/or software
    Step 2: Mix them together in a way that is any more innovative than any new software package is by the mere fact of being new
    Step 3: Patent it

    WTF?

    Why can't restaurants patent mixing ingredients together then? It's the same crap, lol...

    Chef - "Oh, I added a cherry on top of the Bananas Foster - surely that's patent worthy, right?"
    Patent Lawyer - "Oh, HELL YES, and I'm not just saying that because my entire livelihood and those of my useless brethren is riding on the answer... Go meshugah..."

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    1. Re:Patents are beyond absurd... by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They're only "seeking" this patent. Sure, it might be granted eventually but that's when the complaints should start.

      The problem is with corporations treating patenting of basic features as a primary buisness goal. There's basically an ongoing patent war amongst all the companies of a certain size. Basically you need to acquire a certain amount of patents, keep acquiring more, then deal with your competitors to exchange patents in exchange for no lawsuits while ganging up on smaller companies attempting to enter the space. Ultimately the validity of patents is of little use in the war because the goal is to make it too expensive to litigate rather than to innovate.

      Also, everyone should learn to read patents and patent applications. These are very often misinterpreted. I'm sure there's nothing whatsoever here that is patenting "quieting mobile devices" but is instead patenting a specific way of doing this. The boilerplate of supporting claims are not the main claims of patents.

  9. Not new? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But how can this be patentable?

    The idea of having an Administrator set group policy, and being able to monitor both that policy and the use of devices on the network is nothing new.

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    1. Re:Not new? by LandDolphin · · Score: 2

      Ahh but they added "on a mobile device". It's the newest version of "on the internet".

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  10. Re:So just factory reset... by canadiannomad · · Score: 2

    Yeah, and you're on slashdot. I'm willing to bet that you are not the "Average person". OR do you claim to not no more about how computers/tech works then the average teenager?

    I think it depends on whether or not your teenager discovers that google knows the answers to their problems...
    Google search "bypass smartphone lock"
    and they don't need to be tech savvy to realize it is possible and find a video that walks them through it, or get a friend to help.

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