Microsoft Patent Aims To Curb Obnoxious Employee Behavior 312
theodp writes "GeekWire reports that a pending Microsoft patent for monitoring workplace behavior would do Dwight Schrute proud. Three Microsoft inventors propose curbing obnoxious workplace habits in an equally obnoxious fashion — using a computer device for monitoring and analyzing workers' interactions over video conferences, telephone, text messages and other forms of digital communication to look for patterns of negative and positive behavior, and assigning behavior scores to employees based on what the system finds. Bad behavior, Microsoft explains, might include wearing dark glasses in a video conference, wearing unacceptable clothing to a business meeting, cutting off others during conversation, prolonged monologues, and even how one nods one's head in agreement, shakes one's head indicating disagreement, and makes hand gestures."
wrong logo (Score:5, Insightful)
The Borg Gates would have been more apt.
Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone notices bad behavior, there is no need for additional monitoring. But if noone notices it, there is no harm done. What's the point?
Re:So... Balmer... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But how can they tell? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only ones that ever complain about something like that are the fat girls out of jealousy.
Re:Annoying boss? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't seriously think managers will be monitored, do you?
Just wait for the flood of discrimination suits (Score:4, Insightful)
So it's "bad behaviour" to wear dark glasses during a videoconference. Is it also "bad behaviour" to bring your guide-dog into the v/c, too?
A lot of these attributes seem to be culturally insensitive and would be prohibited in many workplaces as being discriminatory
I'm all for it - start at Microsoft HQ! (Score:1, Insightful)
What this actually means... (Score:4, Insightful)
Smart (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a perfect disguise for getting patents on human behavior.
clothing to a business meeting (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not as simple as this. If we could accept wearing shorts, short sleeve shirts and sandals to business meetings in hot weather we could save a lot of energy on air conditioning, dry-cleaning, ironing, transportation, etc. And by this we would prevent global warming, catastrophic climate change, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.
Why only suits and ties, the clothing of 19th century British peasants, is supposed to be acceptable?
Re:I'm all for it - start at Microsoft HQ! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Bill Gates is on the board of directors.
2. The xbox hardware problems stemmed from decisions he was responsible for as CEO, and "missing the internet" was also on his watch.
3. Microsoft invested in Apple to keep it afloat because of anti-trust concerns. Microsoft argued that Apple did provide competition i an attempt to get out of the anti-trust fiasco. The anti-trust problem was caused by decisions made by Bill Gates, as was the decision to buy Apple shares. Microsoft wouldn't be experiencing Apple Envy if Bill Gates hadn't acted illegally in the first place in preserving and extending Microsofts' monopoly.
Re:Annoying boss? (Score:5, Insightful)
Managers have managers. Yes they will.
Re:Grammar Checker Remix (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all a big reason I want to retire as early as I can. No one even tells jokes at work anymore lest some thin skinned frightened little bunny gets offended. Performance reviews are increasingly focusing on "behaviors" instead of technical competence and accomplishments. A person can't just show up and do a good, honest job anymore. We have to prove (somehow) we Act With Integrity and Value People and Frolic In The Sunshine or whatever. Everyone just sits there staring at the self-appraisal forms baffled as to what to put in the blanks.
Re:wrong logo (Score:5, Insightful)
Little has really changed. Apple is still the most closed choice in computing. Microsoft does some really bad things but is still much more open than Apple. All that's happened is Jobs died and Gates, realizing he is old is furiously working on some of his karma debt before he dies too.
Re:wrong logo (Score:2, Insightful)
Both full schematics and manuals for the expansion slots would be less than useful now days.
You aren't going to be fixing traces on a 6-8 layer motherboard so the schematics are less than useful.
You also are unlikely to be building PCI interface cards based on a manual that came with your desktop PC.
Apple doesn't make tinker toys for Linux fans to play with. They make desktop PCs for non-nerd users. Doing what you want them to do would be wasteful in multitudes of ways. They aren't making nerd machines anymore, they make people machines.