My point is that they are patenting something which may not have been done before. The ends may be similar but the means are different, and the means are what matter for patents - as they should. The mechanism is specifically designed to maintain an incentive to come up with new and better ways of achieving the same purpose.
You're citing prior art for the concept, which is not the same thing as prior art for what is actually being patented. There are 1000s of patents for "mousetraps." The fact that a mousetrap had been invented by someone first did not mean that other people could not invent other kinds of mousetraps. Just because people have built sketch based search technology before does not mean that Microsoft (or anyone else for that matter) can't invent an improved version of sketch based image search and then patent that method. That appears to be what they have done here.
Retrieving images to match with a hand-drawn sketch
query is a highly desired feature, especially with the popularity of devices with touch screens. Although query-bysketch has been extensively studied since 1990s, it is still
very challenging to build a real-time sketch-based image
search engine on a large-scale database due to the lack of
effective and efcient matching/indexing solutions. The explosive growth of web images and the phenomenal success
of search techniques have encouraged us to revisit this problem and target at solving the problem of web-scale sketchbased image retrieval. In this work, a novel index structure
and the corresponding raw contour-based matching algorithm are proposed to calculate the similarity between a
sketch query and natural images, and make sketch-based
image retrieval scalable to millions of images. The proposed solution simultaneously considers storage cost, retrieval accuracy, and efciency, based on which we have
developed a real-time sketch-based image search engine by
indexing more than 2 million images. Extensive experiments
on various retrieval tasks (basic shape search, specic image search, and similar image search) show better accuracy
and efciency than state-of-the-art methods
This is probably not as simple as Microsoft trying to patent something which has already been done before. You may want to check out some of the actual research they have done here:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mindfinder/
I seriously doubt that they are not familiar with all of the prior art examples that have been brought up here, and they would not have spent the money on a patent if they did not think they had improved on the existing methods sufficiently for it to stand up to even basic scrutiny.
The source article links to a page on the windows phone marketplace where it claims to be linking to details about the actual patent. Does anyone have a link to that?
To discourage others from operating infrastructure that can aid in DDoS attacks? This kind of high visibility move tends to invoke certain emotions among people who might be otherwise inclined to assist in some criminal enterprise. Whoever owned that server is probably not having a good week right now, and it's clear that simply operating some seemingly benign infrastructure that aids in a conspiracy to commit a crime is something that can get your equipment seized and your ass in hot water.
At the end of the day it's going to be the FCC settling this debate. Limiting consumer choice is never a good idea when you have a strong market position (like Apple's with mobile devices). The US government tends to frown on that in the long run.
Honestly it doesn't hurt me particularly either way. I'm just pointing out that HTML5 is disruptive to flash; developers know it, Adobe knows it, and a battle will likely follow. You seem to have quite a lot invested in it though which is unfortunate; that kind of zelot like commitment to anything can only serve to hurt you when making critical decisions. Also, I think most people in the technology space would point out that predicting the dominance of various technologies a decade out is a fools errand 99% of the time.
Linux V windows was a very different story. The problem there was the OEMs, who had trouble seeing the value in offering (let alone promoting) the linux operating system as a substitute for windows to mass market consumers. On the server market where the same obstacle did not exist the shift did happen.
There are a lot of issues with the integration of Java applets in browsers which really prevented widespread adoption. In a lot of respects Flash took advantage of Java's mistakes in this area and improved on the methods substantially to come up with a better platform that really put the final nails in the coffin. Both flash and java applets suffer from similar deficiencies when compared to the advantages of HTML5 (and related technologies). Point is, Java applets failed to take hold for reasons beyond the ones you are pointing to so it's not really a good parallel.
You're absolutely right. If you're a SaaS developer you're going to build your application for the most widely distributed platform that meets your needs so that it is as easy to sell as possible. However you're overlooking the possibility of new functionality made possible by HTML5 (and other open standards) which could enable the development of SaaS apps that address specific needs of the enterprise that were not previously possible without a client application. Look at some of the stuff Google is exploring with their upcoming extension store thing for Chrome. Those applications may not exist yet in widespread use, but that's not the point. The point is that they are now becoming possible, and possible only on the platforms that support the new technologies. If those platforms are in widespread enough use at this point to justify development, and if the use cases are compelling enough to some buyers to justify installing a browser (where they would have previously installed a client app, which is just as expensive if not even more expensive to maintain) then the tide will really start to shift.
You're right, Adobe is not stupid and they will try and find a way to fight back effectively. Right now the biggest battle that they are losing is on the mobile front. Apple has essentially told them to go fuck themselves and even though Google has done the work to build them into Android 2.2 that OS has yet to be widely deployed. In the mean time a huge ecosystem of apps developers who could have (and I'm sure Adobe would have preferred to have had) developed their applications in flash (in theory) have become accustomed to building native applications which is a really bad position for them to be in even on the platforms that they will finally be breaking into. So Adobe clearly needs to find a way to get onto these mobile platforms in a serious way, and all of them. Once they are on the platforms, they need to fight back the tide of native application development and assert themselves as the superior alternative to the already now very entrenched paradigm. How are they going to do that exactly?
And it again reverts to a question of when rather than if. When that happens, flash is going to have some major problems if they have not changed their strategy pretty significantly.
At the end of the day corporate IT departments do what they are told in terms of platforms and software to support. More and more of the software businesses are using is moving into the SaaS space rather than client applications. The same dominance that prevented anything but windows from running on the average corporate desktop could be a critical factor in pushing other browsers into the pre-installed space on the average at work desktop. If management decides to purchase a subscription SaaS application to do X critical business function, and it requires Y browser to run, they will order the IT department to find a way to install it enterprise wide. A few Microsoft disciples in the ranks may grumble but at the end of the day they only make recommendations as to what should be done they don't have total control over the decisions.
Why Symantec? Also this could be an interesting thing for google to develop as part of their new chrome extension/add-on platform particularly if they come up with some nice AppEngine integration on the backend. It really only takes one killer app for something like this to be developed and gain traction and there are a few very well positioned companies out there to take advantage of such a development from both the development standpoint and the platform standpoint.
It may not be sufficient to replace flash on day 1 for all applications but it will probably meet the needs of other systems engineers and application developers that flash cannot as easily realign to address. Such a tool could run in circles around flash gathering new applications, locking up small segments of the market, wounding it each time, until even the more general cases have been toppled. My point is, in your "version 3" scenario, by the time "version 3" comes out Adobe will have lost the war.
Users will switch to other browsers if the use case is compelling enough. If enough innovative applications are developed that don't run in I.E., particularly applications with good business use cases, than the numbers will fall even further. The critical fact here is that FF/Chrome/Safari are starting to have enough combined market share to make the development of such applications an economically viable thing to do. It's entirely possible that this has already tipped against I.E.'s favor. Flash and Internet Explorer are strange bedfellows.
Only one team could make DNF. In this case however any entrepreneurial firm or individual who sees the pain felt by designers, recognizes the need and thus opportunity to develop these tools, can then attempt to marshal the resources necessary to do so and execute. That is the beauty of a free and open system and that is yet another performance vector that Flash will not be able to fight back on effectively without seriously changing their strategy.
The biggest advantage that the new technologies have that flash has been trying very hard to get into is the ease with which interactive applications that integrate well with the browser and backend services can be developed without having to pay huge scaling licensing fees to anyone. The designers are certainly critical in making applications look good, but they don't get to decide what technologies the system is built on, they have to work with what they are given. If the requirements are that the webapp does X, Y and Z which flash cannot do, then it doesn't really matter what the designer would prefer to work with. They will be forced to work with what they are told to work with. If the need for good tools is great enough than the development of said tools will inevitably follow.
True, but HTML5 can attack flash from below and gradually, somewhat inevitably, displace it from each of the applications mentioned. I don't dispute that he was arguing flash has an advantage, but I don't think it is as safe from the new threat as he suggests that it is. How long do you think flash has? Two years? Five? The relevant question that the piece suggests but does not address is not if, but when!
Slashdot Mirror
My point is that they are patenting something which may not have been done before. The ends may be similar but the means are different, and the means are what matter for patents - as they should. The mechanism is specifically designed to maintain an incentive to come up with new and better ways of achieving the same purpose.
Also, as a note, there are already dozens if not hundreds of patents for this concept as well: https://www.google.com/search?q=sketch+image+search&btnG=Search+Patents&tbm=pts&tbo=1&hl=en
There are already dozens if not hundreds of patents in this same area.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sketch+image+search&btnG=Search+Patents&tbm=pts&tbo=1&hl=en
You're citing prior art for the concept, which is not the same thing as prior art for what is actually being patented. There are 1000s of patents for "mousetraps." The fact that a mousetrap had been invented by someone first did not mean that other people could not invent other kinds of mousetraps. Just because people have built sketch based search technology before does not mean that Microsoft (or anyone else for that matter) can't invent an improved version of sketch based image search and then patent that method. That appears to be what they have done here.
Retrieving images to match with a hand-drawn sketch query is a highly desired feature, especially with the popularity of devices with touch screens. Although query-bysketch has been extensively studied since 1990s, it is still very challenging to build a real-time sketch-based image search engine on a large-scale database due to the lack of effective and efcient matching/indexing solutions. The explosive growth of web images and the phenomenal success of search techniques have encouraged us to revisit this problem and target at solving the problem of web-scale sketchbased image retrieval. In this work, a novel index structure and the corresponding raw contour-based matching algorithm are proposed to calculate the similarity between a sketch query and natural images, and make sketch-based image retrieval scalable to millions of images. The proposed solution simultaneously considers storage cost, retrieval accuracy, and efciency, based on which we have developed a real-time sketch-based image search engine by indexing more than 2 million images. Extensive experiments on various retrieval tasks (basic shape search, specic image search, and similar image search) show better accuracy and efciency than state-of-the-art methods
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/149199/0630.pdf
This is probably not as simple as Microsoft trying to patent something which has already been done before. You may want to check out some of the actual research they have done here: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mindfinder/ I seriously doubt that they are not familiar with all of the prior art examples that have been brought up here, and they would not have spent the money on a patent if they did not think they had improved on the existing methods sufficiently for it to stand up to even basic scrutiny.
The source article links to a page on the windows phone marketplace where it claims to be linking to details about the actual patent. Does anyone have a link to that?
Couldn't one make the exact same specious point about Anonymous or Wikileaks?
To discourage others from operating infrastructure that can aid in DDoS attacks? This kind of high visibility move tends to invoke certain emotions among people who might be otherwise inclined to assist in some criminal enterprise. Whoever owned that server is probably not having a good week right now, and it's clear that simply operating some seemingly benign infrastructure that aids in a conspiracy to commit a crime is something that can get your equipment seized and your ass in hot water.
At the end of the day it's going to be the FCC settling this debate. Limiting consumer choice is never a good idea when you have a strong market position (like Apple's with mobile devices). The US government tends to frown on that in the long run.
Honestly it doesn't hurt me particularly either way. I'm just pointing out that HTML5 is disruptive to flash; developers know it, Adobe knows it, and a battle will likely follow. You seem to have quite a lot invested in it though which is unfortunate; that kind of zelot like commitment to anything can only serve to hurt you when making critical decisions. Also, I think most people in the technology space would point out that predicting the dominance of various technologies a decade out is a fools errand 99% of the time.
Linux V windows was a very different story. The problem there was the OEMs, who had trouble seeing the value in offering (let alone promoting) the linux operating system as a substitute for windows to mass market consumers. On the server market where the same obstacle did not exist the shift did happen.
Agreed! Good discussion, very interesting. Should be fun to see how it plays out over the next few years.
There are a lot of issues with the integration of Java applets in browsers which really prevented widespread adoption. In a lot of respects Flash took advantage of Java's mistakes in this area and improved on the methods substantially to come up with a better platform that really put the final nails in the coffin. Both flash and java applets suffer from similar deficiencies when compared to the advantages of HTML5 (and related technologies). Point is, Java applets failed to take hold for reasons beyond the ones you are pointing to so it's not really a good parallel.
You're absolutely right. If you're a SaaS developer you're going to build your application for the most widely distributed platform that meets your needs so that it is as easy to sell as possible. However you're overlooking the possibility of new functionality made possible by HTML5 (and other open standards) which could enable the development of SaaS apps that address specific needs of the enterprise that were not previously possible without a client application. Look at some of the stuff Google is exploring with their upcoming extension store thing for Chrome. Those applications may not exist yet in widespread use, but that's not the point. The point is that they are now becoming possible, and possible only on the platforms that support the new technologies. If those platforms are in widespread enough use at this point to justify development, and if the use cases are compelling enough to some buyers to justify installing a browser (where they would have previously installed a client app, which is just as expensive if not even more expensive to maintain) then the tide will really start to shift.
You're right, Adobe is not stupid and they will try and find a way to fight back effectively. Right now the biggest battle that they are losing is on the mobile front. Apple has essentially told them to go fuck themselves and even though Google has done the work to build them into Android 2.2 that OS has yet to be widely deployed. In the mean time a huge ecosystem of apps developers who could have (and I'm sure Adobe would have preferred to have had) developed their applications in flash (in theory) have become accustomed to building native applications which is a really bad position for them to be in even on the platforms that they will finally be breaking into. So Adobe clearly needs to find a way to get onto these mobile platforms in a serious way, and all of them. Once they are on the platforms, they need to fight back the tide of native application development and assert themselves as the superior alternative to the already now very entrenched paradigm. How are they going to do that exactly?
And it again reverts to a question of when rather than if. When that happens, flash is going to have some major problems if they have not changed their strategy pretty significantly.
At the end of the day corporate IT departments do what they are told in terms of platforms and software to support. More and more of the software businesses are using is moving into the SaaS space rather than client applications. The same dominance that prevented anything but windows from running on the average corporate desktop could be a critical factor in pushing other browsers into the pre-installed space on the average at work desktop. If management decides to purchase a subscription SaaS application to do X critical business function, and it requires Y browser to run, they will order the IT department to find a way to install it enterprise wide. A few Microsoft disciples in the ranks may grumble but at the end of the day they only make recommendations as to what should be done they don't have total control over the decisions.
Why Symantec? Also this could be an interesting thing for google to develop as part of their new chrome extension/add-on platform particularly if they come up with some nice AppEngine integration on the backend. It really only takes one killer app for something like this to be developed and gain traction and there are a few very well positioned companies out there to take advantage of such a development from both the development standpoint and the platform standpoint.
You mean something likethis?
It may not be sufficient to replace flash on day 1 for all applications but it will probably meet the needs of other systems engineers and application developers that flash cannot as easily realign to address. Such a tool could run in circles around flash gathering new applications, locking up small segments of the market, wounding it each time, until even the more general cases have been toppled. My point is, in your "version 3" scenario, by the time "version 3" comes out Adobe will have lost the war.
Users will switch to other browsers if the use case is compelling enough. If enough innovative applications are developed that don't run in I.E., particularly applications with good business use cases, than the numbers will fall even further. The critical fact here is that FF/Chrome/Safari are starting to have enough combined market share to make the development of such applications an economically viable thing to do. It's entirely possible that this has already tipped against I.E.'s favor. Flash and Internet Explorer are strange bedfellows.
Only one team could make DNF. In this case however any entrepreneurial firm or individual who sees the pain felt by designers, recognizes the need and thus opportunity to develop these tools, can then attempt to marshal the resources necessary to do so and execute. That is the beauty of a free and open system and that is yet another performance vector that Flash will not be able to fight back on effectively without seriously changing their strategy.
The biggest advantage that the new technologies have that flash has been trying very hard to get into is the ease with which interactive applications that integrate well with the browser and backend services can be developed without having to pay huge scaling licensing fees to anyone. The designers are certainly critical in making applications look good, but they don't get to decide what technologies the system is built on, they have to work with what they are given. If the requirements are that the webapp does X, Y and Z which flash cannot do, then it doesn't really matter what the designer would prefer to work with. They will be forced to work with what they are told to work with. If the need for good tools is great enough than the development of said tools will inevitably follow.
True, but HTML5 can attack flash from below and gradually, somewhat inevitably, displace it from each of the applications mentioned. I don't dispute that he was arguing flash has an advantage, but I don't think it is as safe from the new threat as he suggests that it is. How long do you think flash has? Two years? Five? The relevant question that the piece suggests but does not address is not if, but when!