Microsoft Seeking Hot-Or-Not Patent 135
theodp writes "In its just-disclosed patent application for the Online Personal Appearance Advisor, Microsoft describes the 'invention' of its three Microsoft Research employees in these words: 'The contributor uploads self images for viewing and rating (or voting) by viewers who choose provide an opinion on different fashion and/or cosmetic looks of the contributor.' So what do you think — is Microsoft's invention really Hot or Not?"
Desperate for Future Income? (Score:3, Interesting)
They're trying to secure as many patents that could potentially bring them some sort of income NOW, lest they go bankrupt in the future.
The vagueness of this patent could easily cover someone's picture on Facebook if they said "Tell me how I look!", "What do you think of this makeup?", or "Do you think the pocket-protector goes with these pants?" Back off Microsoft - you're not IBM - leave the pointless patents to them...
Re:Desperate for Future Income? (Score:3, Interesting)
What are you basing that off of? I've heard nothing but good things about Win7 (except in Linux circles, and even there I've seen positive reviews) and I haven't heard anyone say that they're going to skip it.
Most people I've read have said the opposite, that they're skipping Vista in favor of waiting for Windows 7.
Re:Desperate for Future Income? (Score:5, Interesting)
Y'know they're filing shotgun patents all over the place. They remind me of a marketing geek who accidentally got reassigned to engineering once. Previously I had helped him design an air duct that put cool air where we needed it. When a subsequent design eliminated the need for the duct, he said "That's an important piece. We have intellectual property on that."
Without blinking I told him "The Romans had prior art. It's redundant, and out it goes."
Re:Desperate for Future Income? (Score:1, Interesting)
Nobody's is getting Win7 as soon as it comes out?
I sure am! ...but the fact that it's free as part of the MSDN academic alliance might have something to do with that.
Re:It's not really the same (Score:4, Interesting)
Well Hot or Not is mainly about breasts and not about fashion. This is what might differ.
They're both about rating the visual aesthetics of a person. If a Hot-or-Not chick has a mullet and 'stache, she's going to get dinged no matter how top heavy she is.
This is close enough that the site that was created a decade ago, without any input from Microsoft, should count as prior art.
Hell, Miss America or every fashion magazine ever printed could be claimed as prior art. They look at images of people and rate the appearance. Just because MS uses computers to connect the people involved doesn't make it special.
There's also the "non-obvious" requirement for a patent. This is blatantly obvious.
That would be almost as lame as Apple patenting LCD technology and saying it's "new" because everybody else was using it on TVs and computer displays, but they're using it on phones and portable music players.
Now if MS created an algorithm for the computer to do the rating, that would be the level of innovation the patent system was intended for.
Re:Desperate for Future Income? (Score:2, Interesting)
Other than the brave, and IT professionals (on their own machines}, I feel people will WAIT to switch to Win7, until they see how it performs, and how many bugs/security holes are revealed in the first month or two... SO many people jumped on Vista before they realized it was a steaming pile of....code... Granted, -I- do not have that many problems with Vista, but I usually only run it to play games, and Linux is on my laptop (Yeah, Wine is OK, but still a pain to get some games to run under).
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news... there's a revolution [fark.com] going on in Iran and it's turned violent [youtube.com].
But that's not Stuff That Matters, so yeah, let's talk about Microsoft's stupid patent applications because that's News For Nerds.
Intellectual property is a serious point of discussion. China's monopoly on tea and silk caused empires to rise and fall.
If patents go to far, they can completely destroy the incentive people have to innovate, as all their innovations will be reliant on other patented processes. If Yahoo had owned a patent on internet search, then Google would never have had a chance to monetize Pagerank. But Yahoo would never have gotten so far, because previous companies would have patented the technology Yahoo used.
The medieval guilds arrested a lot of development, by guarding their secret knowledge. The Masons were not powerful because of their political connections, they had political connections because they simply knew how to build stone buildings. Sure, they had earned that knowledge from previous Masons, but the process of knowledge transfer was so opaque that corruption and inefficiencies were bound to creep in.
The printing press destroyed the monopolies of the guilds, because their knowledge could be cheaply and efficiently disseminated. Open source, the FSF, Wikipedia and other open movements are furthering this movement.
But patents are a way for the establishment to fight back, and try to create an environment in which they can reap more profits than a free market would allow.
So yes, it is Stuff That Matters.
Re:Desperate for Future Income? (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree, I think MS anticipated that and is using the Windows 7 release candidates to generate positive word of mouth -and if the forum posts I've read are any indication, it's probably going to work out pretty well for them. Most of the people I've seen say anything good about it have been non-IT types.
If they screw up the pricing (which seems likely) then they'll end up losing ground (probably to MacOS). I think if people end up skipping Windows 7 it will be because of price, not because of the OS itself (I'm running it instead of Vista on my desktop and laptop -it's nicer but I don't know if it's $300 worth of nicer).
Re:HOT (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft's innovation is that it allows you to give reasons for rating, right? Perhaps it runs of slashcode.
but did they think to add a (-1 I disagree) option...
because, such an innovation would be incredibly new and very patent worthy....definitely not derivative of whats been going on here for 10 years...
Patents = $ for Employees (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft Employees get a $2500 bonus for every patent. They don't have to write it either, The patent lawyer does.
All you do is describe the idea and give any pertinent documentation and someone else converts it to a patent.
I have a few MS patents under my belt when I worked there.
Re:Desperate for Future Income? (Score:3, Interesting)
What are you basing that off of? I've heard nothing but good things about Win7 (except in Linux circles, and even there I've seen positive reviews) and I haven't heard anyone say that they're going to skip it.
Microsoft is suffering from the fact that for most people, XP is "good enough" (incidentally, this is probably one of the factors stopping many people from considering a switch to Linux too). I'm sure that MS will sell Windows 7 to OEMs to be shipped on new PCs - there probably won't be as much resistance as Vista saw, but unlike many of the previous Windows releases, most XP users generally seem to be pretty happy with the status quo to I'm not really expecting to see huge numbers of people flock to the shops to buy upgrades for their existing systems.
Most people I've read have said the opposite, that they're skipping Vista in favor of waiting for Windows 7.
That's not really that surprising - if you're one of the people who is going to upgrade, it would seem silly to buy an upgrade that is about to be superseded, bad press or not.
Re:29/m/Australia (Score:5, Interesting)