Google Wants Patent On Splitting Restaurant Bills 196
theodp writes "In a classic example of parody coming to life," writes GeekWire's Todd Bishop, "a newly published patent filing reveals Google's ambitions to solve one of the most troublesome challenges known to humanity: Splitting the bill at the end of a meal." In its patent application for Tracking and Managing Group Expenditures, Google boasts that the invention of six Googlers addresses 'a need in the art for an efficient way to track group expenditures and settle balances between group members' by providing technology that thwarts 'group members [who] may not pay back their entire share of the bill or may forget and not pay back their share at all.'
Bistromatics (Score:5, Funny)
"Innovation" (Score:5, Interesting)
These kind of bullshit patents spring up when a company incentivizes it's employees to generate as much IP as possible during their day to day development, so as to mine the path for any other company trying to reimplement the technology and follow the same (obvious and non-innovative) path.
I don't know how Google does it, but my company offers a 2000$ monetary bonus for each submission that reaches the filling stage, the vast majority of which are accepted by the patent office. That's right, anything from inventing public key crypto to splitting the bill is patented and squirreled away in the defensive portfolio. The innovatory aspect does not even matter any more, it's all about quantity, they set up all sort of "innovation targets" that entail reaching a certain number of patents. A patent per year is required for any senior wanting to get a good year-end rating.
This is the most anti-competitive, anti-science and anti-progress way to do R&D that I can imagine.
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We have the same thing here (fortune 100 company); approximately same bonus too.
The big problem is of course that if we didn't do this our competitors, who all do the same thing, would haul our asses into court on every contract we tried to sign or product we tried to launch (not that they don't already, but it's generally kept at a low level / settled beforehand since both parties know that the other also has hundreds of patents that an unknowledgeable jury or arbiter _might_ find infringing)..
Re:"Innovation" (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly the same I.P. policies at my place of employment. We also split that 2K if more than one person works on it. This causes people to hide their ideas (& other's) & develop then in secret. Then file their invention disclosures on the sly. This causes a lot of animosity & accusations of idea theft.
Very little real innovation has happened in years under this policy. A whole lotta crap though!
Re:"Innovation" (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the most anti-competitive, anti-science and anti-progress way to do R&D that I can imagine.
That's because it has nothing to do with R&D. Fairly few patents generated by engineers in tech companies even have anything at all to do with their day to day work, and aren't things that they actually build.
Incentives like the ones you mention (and, yes, Google does the same thing, except IIRC the bonus amounts are higher) do accomplish exactly what they're intended to accomplish: to build up a massive quantity of low-quality patents as inexpensively as possible. This is because the companies incenting this patent mania don't actually intend to use the inventions in any products, or really to use them directly at all. The goal is merely to build up a warchest of patents to increase the odds that if the company is sued for patent infringement that it can find something in its warchest with which to countersue.
In a nutshell: These patent incentives are about building legal capabilities, not technical capabilities.
For much of its existence, Google eschewed this patent arms race because it (rightly) viewed it as irrelevant or even harmful to actual progress. But the reality of the system in which we live eventually caught up with Google, and after finding itself at the mercy of other companies who did play the game, Google realized that it also has to play. Google bought Motorola to acquire a pre-packaged patent warchest, and also began incenting its engineers to produce patents.
Not many Google engineers do, actually, because outside of the bonuses there's little or no internal incentive to do it. Getting a bunch of patents that everyone knows are silly and useless won't get you promoted, or even a raise, and it won't increase your peers' estimation of you (which is why it won't get you promoted; promotions are based almost entirely on peer review). Nor will it lower your peers' opinions of you. It's just irrelevant, except for the extra cash.
IMO, this is exactly the right response by Google's management. The reality is that Google must have and continue accumulating a patent warchest, because that's how the world works. Google is also lobbying for patent reform, but that's a slow and uncertain prospect. But it's also true that while being able to survive legal battles is critically important to a tech company's survival, a company's success comes from its technology, so it would be a bad idea for Google to build a culture that actually glorifies patents. So, promotions and status are based on impact, but Google engineers who want to can earn a little extra cash by coming up with patentable ideas.
It's not ideal, but within the context of the litigious world we inhabit it's the best approach.
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Google offers a financial bonus to employees who get patents. The program started when Google found itself and its partners on the receiving end of some major patent lawsuits from other big corporations, and Google realized it didn't have much to fight back with. So for Google, it is strictly defensive. Whether it will still be defensive in 10 years or 20 years is up to your best guess. I'm sure many other people started defensively too.
The patent system is complete and utter horseshit. Don't focus on the c
Re:"Innovation" (Score:4, Interesting)
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I am going to patent a screw-your-buddies software package that divides the bill up among me and my friends in such a way that I pay zero, and they do not know it...;)
What happens if 7 of a group of 8 people have the software ?, would the one guy paying the whole bill plus tip figure it out?
Can this be applied to votes? Oh, it already is....
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I could never calculate Recipriversexclusons and so had to survive on packaged Ramen in university
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Simple solution, smart phone app and bluetooth restaurant menu. Each person makes their own order and the service staff directly track and confirm each order to a specific person and deliver the appropriate individual bill, no splitting required.
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Why bother? Any modern POS can split bills and/or keep track of multiple cheques per table. It's pretty fucking simple: when the waiter comes over as you first sit, down, ask him or her to keep separate bills for everyone. WTF is so hard about this?
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Imagine this: (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup. Exactly this kind of non-productive non-activity is why America is circling the drain. US was a great cuntry while it lasted.
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Too bad it costs a small fortune just to litigate to the point that the judge is in a position to toss this crap out.
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Sadly I don't have to imagine. I've been through that process (at Google). Nobody is blind. Everyone knows the entire thing is bullshit. I really feel for the patent lawyers who end up doing this stuff all day.
These sorts of patents result from pressure from management to generate patents. Simple as that. They argue, of course, that it is for defensive purposes, and there is surely some merit to that. Google is unlikely to get bought or liquidated anytime soon. And whilst current management is in place they
Re:Imagine this: (Score:4, Interesting)
Any yes, one year for software is long enough.
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"One Click" (finally defeated)...
The One-Click patent was confirmed as patentable after reexamination.
Bistromathics (Score:5, Informative)
I think Douglas Adams worked this one out a while back:
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Bistromathics [wikia.com]
The third and most mysterious piece of nonabsoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for.
You'd have thought that Google, of all people, would have checked to see whether there was an app for that already...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=restaurant+bill+app [lmgtfy.com]
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whether there was an app for that already...
Heck, I had a feature phone a decade ago with that as one of the six utilities.
But I'm gonna assume they integrated it with Hangout, or tacked 'with location' or 'in the cloud' or some other nonsense onto the existing known methods.
Used to be I'd read the patent to figure out what kind of sociopathic evasion they engaged in, but that's when I still believed the patent system had some redeeming value.
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What about restaurants like Denny's (and there are many others around me) that just list every food item under a specific seat number on the paper receipt they bring you for your bill. You can then cash-out by paying either the entire bill or a specific seat number, or even group of seat numbers. It's all pretty straightforward and easy to understand.
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Fine Print (Score:1)
This isn't just "splitting the bill". The patentable part of Google's code is how it stores the information on who ordered what, who paid what and who got screwed by ordering water to drink while everyone else ordered from the bar ... and sends all of this info immediately to Law Enforcement agencies.
If you get pulled over the cops already know how much you've had to drink. If you're questioned by the FBI they already know where you where, when and with who. The NSA, well, they already knew everything beca
Re:Fine Print (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't just "splitting the bill". The patentable part of Google's code is how it stores the information on who ordered what...
And the not-so-fine print is that anyone who is that creepy about itemising his/her expenses to that extent at a social gathering will be the individual who will not be invited again. The sociable thing to do (unless one member of the party consumes just half a leaf of lettuce) is to divide the bill by the number of people at the table. Sure, there will be imbalances, but over multiple occasions (in normally reasonable and congenial company) they should pretty much average out.
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You weren't invited again, were you?
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After a meal, our team had all divided up the money into our own shares, with each of us kicking in for the tip as we felt was appropriate. I always tip at least 15%, and so do most of my friends. One guy on the team said "I'll collect all the cash and put the whole thing on my credit card so I get the 1% cash back reward." We didn't think anything of it, so we let him do it. He stuffed all the cash in his wallet, then wrote out the credit slip. But someone noticed that he tipped 5%.
There's a guy who w
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++true.
I have people who try to work out what they ordered to see how much they should pay.
Re:Fine Print (Score:5, Interesting)
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Sure, there will be imbalances, but over multiple occasions (in normally reasonable and congenial company) they should pretty much average out.
ROFLMAO
You've clearly never gone out to lunch with groups of co-workers on a regular basis. There's almost always one douche who orders the most expensive thing on the menu because he knows the check will be split evenly and others will wind up paying most of it. It doesn't average out. Everyone just gets sick of that guy and stops inviting him.
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Here in Canada you can already split the bill The waiters will allocate according to the person who ordered and anything that is shared can be split between the indicated people at the table. The order system already know how to indicate who ordered what and produce the bill accordingly. I am still not seeing too much novelty in what Google is providing?
Most places very similar... (Score:2)
Canada, just like everywhere else I've been, this depends.
At least in some restaurants in Vancouver, if you ask before you order, they might be reasonably accommodating. If you ask after the bill came the first time, you'd end up waiting 2 hours for your bill... Go to a high-volume restaurant with a high-end point-of-sale system**, life is much easier...
Same is true in the USA.
In most places in Asia, you'd generally get a blank stare.
In the UK, in some of the better restaurants, you would get a b
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there's two ways to do it sociably.
either someone pays it all knowingly buying food for the whole group. or you split it by what people ordered. that's the really social thing to do.
everyone paying a random sum isn't sociable because it makes sense only if everyone on the table is rich enough to pay the whole bill for everyone without blinking(if someone in the table is gifting the price of their portion for someone on the table that's another issue and not related to this).
you know, back in finland where I
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And the not-so-fine print is that anyone who is that creepy about itemising his/her expenses to that extent at a social gathering will be the individual who will not be invited again.
OTOH, if the detailed itemization is completely automatic, except for people voluntarily marking the items on the bill that were theirs, there won't be any socially-awkward discussion about it. In just a few seconds everyone pays their proper portion. If someone fails to claim their items on the bill then that may lead to some awkwardness, which will motivate everyone to do the right thing.
I can see the system working very well.
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Not if I never get a drink and everybody else does.
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I'm with you. Split it equally, voluntarily add some extra if I've caused a disparity in cost.
Or just pay the lot, as I did at lunch today. Away from the table, so that nobody else even knew the bill was being paid, let alone how much it was.
prior art?? (Score:2)
I think that lot's of the POS software has stuff like in it and it has been there likely for years
Not a problem in a lot of places . . . (Score:5, Informative)
In a lot of places in Europe, the waiter/waitress does it for you. Like in Germany, for example.
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but that would require a waitstaff that can do simple arithmetic.... might be commonplace in germany.... but in the u.s....... not so much.
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They do it for you in America too, at least at every place I've eaten in the last 10 years where we've needed to split the check, as far as I can remember. Saying something like, "We're splitting that appetizer between the three of us, but this one only between those two, we're each covering our own entrées, and then I'm covering the dessert," is almost always met with either a "Could you repeat that again?" or a "No problem, I'll have the checks to you in a minute" response.
I don't know why people sti
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I don't know why people still consider this to be "one of the most troublesome challenges known to humanity".
What amazes me, it that we think that we need a high-tech solution. It's like for every little minor troublesome bother . . . we need an app to solve it.
It's like we're somehow addicted to technology solutions now for this. It's our big hammer for anything that could be nail. And patents are the score of the game. The biggest company with the most patents, and the best lawyers wins.
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They do it for you in America too, at least at every place I've eaten in the last 10 years where we've needed to split the check, as far as I can remember. Saying something like, "We're splitting that appetizer between the three of us, but this one only between those two, we're each covering our own entrées, and then I'm covering the dessert," is almost always met with either a "Could you repeat that again?" or a "No problem, I'll have the checks to you in a minute" response.
Wow. Not only would I feel utterly embarrassed to do that to a waiter, but where I live a lot of restaurants won't do it. It's not uncommon to see signs saying they won't split between more than two or three credit cards, either.
Maybe it's a factor of my age, too? As in, I'm not fresh out of school and most of the people I go out to eat with are going to be from more or less the same economic class as me, so we all just split the bill, or one person picks it up because they're feeling generous.
Your method j
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I'll admit that it could be a factor of economic class, but I'm more inclined to think that it's simply a societal norm that is quickly shifting thanks to better point-of-sale systems that make it a snap for the wait staff to handle. I am aware that there's an expectation that someone will be picking up the bill at a traditional fine dining establishment, just because if you're taking someone to that place, it's generally for a date or for wining and dining a potential client (but if you're taking someone t
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I'll admit that it could be a factor of economic class, but I'm more inclined to think that it's simply a societal norm that is quickly shifting thanks to better point-of-sale systems that make it a snap for the wait staff to handle.
The POS might make it easier to itemize people's bills if people hadn't got drunk during the course of the meal and decided to debate and ask questions about everything on their bill only to decide, "Yeah, you're right, my mistake." How many times would you want to go through that a night if you were a waiter?
Also, the POS doesn't make it any easier for a waiter to have to ring up five separate credit cards for a single table. In addition, splitting the bill among five people means the tip (which is the all
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It's pretty standard practice in the Bay Area. Any more than six people and they'll probably add the gratuity to the bill automatically, too.
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Yes, the waiter simply asks, "Separate checks?"
Also, the tip is included in the meal prices.
We still give tips.
However, not everything is better in Europe: a glass of water might cost €2. Even McDonalds charges €0.60 (~ $1) for a cup of tap water.
Hint for americans: The water served is usually mineral water from a well known spring and not like the bottled water you get in big plastic cans (If you ask you can get tap water for free (excellent quality here, on par with mineral water, but better tasting usually). This water is priced like the other drinks. So if you really want to do something for your water and electrolyte balance feel free. I don't like the taste of it.
6,50€ for an excellent (italian, arabic, indian, thai, ..
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We still give tips.
You cannot compare what is meant as "tip" in the US vs "tip" in Europe. In the US you are supposed to leave roughly 15-20% of the bill price. In Europe you are not expected to tip at all, but if you were satisfied with the service it's customary to leave a small amount of "pocket change" money. This form of tip is nowhere near the amount expected in the US.
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"We still give tips."
Some places, not others, and how much you tip depends entirely on the level of service. Answering with a single example for "us" and "we" may give our American cousins the impression we're a uniform lot. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In the UK, service is typically not included in the bill and a tip of around 10% is expected on table service. There, a steak with chips in a pub typically costs £10 (~ $16 / EUR 12) and the person serving you may earn as little as half that
Tapwater in Germany (Score:4, Informative)
The quality of German tapwater is highly monitored and thus the water usually is microbially and chemically at least as clean as bottled water. There is dispute whether it is even monitored /better/ than bottled water.
The risk of contaminating it with a filter is way higher than drinking it directly from the tap. You might have some issues with lead piping in old houses if you have soft water, though.
Concerning taste YMMV, some places have harder water, some temporary add some chlorine after heavy rain, but usually it's tasty.
Over all your warning is complete bollocks.
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I used to work in a UK lab that tested drinking water and I can confirm that the quality of tap water usually far exceeds that of bottled water. Bottled water is unlikely to make you ill, but if you are drinking it for some perceived health benefit then you're wasting your time and money.
Bottled water is one of the biggest rip-offs of modern times and is unecessary given that all European countries have to comply with strict EU water quality regulations. Not to mention its cost and the damage it does to the
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I remember drinking tapwater in my trip to Berlin a few years ago. The taste of the water was... actually, the water amazingly had no taste.
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This can be the case elsewhere in the world too. No doubt some of it comes with pictures on the lable and a name to make people think it is something else.
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However, not everything is better in Europe: a glass of water might cost €2
In England restaurants and bars which sell alcohol are legally obliged [moneysavingexpert.com] to serve free tap water to their customers.
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Yes, the waiter simply asks, "Separate checks?"
And - unlike the US - they actually HOPE for a "yes", because splitting the bill among five parties means five times a tip.
Also, the tip is included in the meal prices.
However, not everything is better in Europe: a glass of water might cost €2. Even McDonalds charges €0.60 (~ $1) for a cup of tap water.
Not quite. The SERVICE is included, which allows the "tip" to be what it is supposed to be: a voluntary gratuity for good service, and NOT a method of shifting the burden of paying the service staff away from their employer towards the guests. (For those who don'T know german tipping conventions: It's basically rounding up to the next full euro sum if you had something to drink or an ad
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In the UK pubs and licenced restaurants (ones that can sell alcohol) are required to provide tap water free on request. I space out beers with water to reduce the chances of falling over on the way home or getting into an argument with a lamppost. It also reduces my chance of a hangover the next morning as it helps prevent dehydration.
The licenced trade like this idea even though it theoretically cuts into their nightly take as it also reduces the incidences of fighting, assaults on serving staff, puking, f
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According to http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/tap-water-rights [moneysavingexpert.com] that is not true.
They claim that restaurants that are licensed to sell alchol in england scotland and wales are obliged to provide free tap water but that restaurants in northern ireland and restaurants that are not licensed to sell alchol are not. Furthermore while they can't charge for the water itself they apparently can charge for the "service" and the "use of the glass".
Re:Not a problem in a lot of places . . . (Score:2)
can charge for the "service" and the "use of the glass"
Yep. Some restaurants charge a small fee for the glass: You Sushi in particular does, but they have taps on the table and you can get unlimited fizzy water, for your glass fee which is fine by me. Since they leave all the glasses on the table anyway I guess this stops people messing up too many glasses. Also, since I normally go there in a train station it is of benefit to me to have very low-latency service.
Other places want to charge each time they re
@AC 12:54 - Re:Not a problem . . . (Score:2)
While I don't like paying for water, why should you not be allowed to sell it for profit?
It is an ancient law in the UK which there is no reason to change. It is hardly a big problem for these places. It is a bit like motorway service companies being obliged to provide free toilets to all comers,.
Abolish patents (Score:4, Insightful)
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Patentable? (Score:1)
One of my ex-colleagues years ago came up with a fancy excel sheet for this purpose. You fill in the bill items and amounts, taxes and surcharges, fill in the names of the participants, then mark how many shares each person has of each item. People can have more than one share in each item e.g. 2:1:1:1 split. Then fill in how much has already been paid by each person, then you'll see how much is left to be paid by each person, or how much each person has to be paid back. You send the sheet to everyone and p
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I couldn't be bothered to read the whole application but I did read part. As far as I can tell, it's not online at all. In fact, it appears that the problem it's solving is the one in your third paragraph.
Ironically, the fact that you identified group payment as a real problem and dismissed out of hand the idea that it could have been solved here actually implies that this could be legally patentable (assuming you are a person of at-least ordinary skill in the art).
It talks about moving money between the
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Still not really worthy of a patent though.
Google Is Evil (Score:1)
Evil I tells ya. Eeeeeeevil!
Voice activated check split app (Score:5, Funny)
I already use a voice recognition/voice activated app for this. It uses a two word 'trigger' phrase.
When the waitperson is within range, any party at the table faces them and say the trigger phrase: "separate checks."
When the meal is done, multiple bills arrive that are delivered to each dining party, with the amounts for each of their food & beverage items listed, tax and total. Each party can calculate a gratuity based on their own opinion of the individual service they received.
This app also allows for the parties to arrive, and leave, at staggered times.
This is fairly advanced tech, so don't expect to see it on phone/tablets for a while...
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Hmm, I can see an 0-day exploit in that protocol - "seven tables for one, please"
Careful when trying to screw Google out of their due, son.
More seriously - Seriously? What possible purpose does such a rule serve, except to make things more difficult for everyone (including the server, who gets handed a pil
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Here in the US the server can usually do better with separate billing. Most will round up on the customary 20%. Of course that is only my own observation.
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When did the customary 15% become 20%?
It used to be that a gratuity was meant as a bonus to the server.
When was that? It wasn't the case when my grandmother was waiting tables in the 30s. AFAICT it's always been the case that the waitstaff makes a significant portion of its income from tips. At really high-end restaurants, the waitstaff is compensated purely by tips.
That doesn't change the fact that the customary 15% is just fine, unless service is truly outstanding.
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Yes, servers often earn more in tips than actual wage. That doesn't change the fact that servers used to be paid more in past generations. My brother earned minimum wage + tips in the 1980s, but his daughter currently earns $2.75 / hour + tips.
I still don't think there has been any change in law or practice, your anecdote notwithstanding.
The Fair Labor Standards Act
... which was passed in 1938. It has been amended many times, but none of them substantially changed the fact that as long as the employee receives at least $30 per month in tips, and as long as the net pay (hourly wage + tips) is at least the minimum wage, then employers don't have to pay minimum wage. The have been some tweaks to how tip pools are handled, mostly clarifying who may or may not be included, but t
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I already use a voice recognition/voice activated app for this. It uses a two word 'trigger' phrase.
When the waitperson is within range, any party at the table faces them and say the trigger phrase: "separate checks."
When the meal is done, multiple bills arrive that are delivered to each dining party, with the amounts for each of their food & beverage items listed, tax and total. Each party can calculate a gratuity based on their own opinion of the individual service they received.
This app also allows for the parties to arrive, and leave, at staggered times.
This is fairly advanced tech, so don't expect to see it on phone/tablets for a while...
But, but, but... Google is doing it on a computer! THAT got to deserve a new patent in the US.
This is already a service... (Score:1)
http://www.ifc.com/portlandia/videos/portlandia-professional-tipper
PayPal already did it (Score:3, Interesting)
This is in fact how PayPal came to be. These four guys would go out to eat often, and when it came time to pay, one guy would cover the meal, and the other three would reimburse him by whipping out their PDAs and transferring the funds to his bank account. They quickly realized that this concept of quickly and easily transferring money electronically was the wave of the future, formed a company called Confinity, and launched this product called PayPal a year later. Within only a few months, Confinity was bought out by some guy named Elon Musk.
I just wish Google would buy out PayPal and have it all under one damn roof. Plus, how cool would it be if Google made space ships? :D
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Plus, how cool would it be if Google made space ships? :D
Pretty cool, except of course when you fly over China only a subset of the desired data would be transmitted, over the EU you'd only transmit data to the EU; and none of the foregoing would matter because when it passes over the US all the data it collected would be beamed down anyway...
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I just wish Google would buy out PayPal and have it all under one damn roof.
Problem is, PayPal is now part of eBay, or is that the other way around? It's not something trivial to snap up.
If Google is like any other large corporation... (Score:1)
then most patents are the result of individual efforts, rather than some overarching corporate vision. Some guy at Google has an idea, good or bad. Either he thinks it will actually help Google's business, or he thinks having a patent on his resume/job description will help his career, or he just like the feeling of having a patent. So he submits it to Google's patent/IP branch. There the lawyers decide if it's worth patenting. If they reject it, they run the risk of dealing with one unhappy patent submitte
Prior art (Score:2)
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A Dutch bank already has this built into their mobile banking application stack. One person foots the bill and the app takes care of splitting things up and billing the individuals that are splitting the bill. It also tracks their payments and helps send out reminders.
Is that why they call it going Dutch? ;)
Solutions to Problems that Don't Exist (Score:2)
Yes. I paid for your share. Yes, my cybernetic brain allows me to match this pattern against your past actions to deduce it's your turn to pay. I also sense that you are trying to weasel out of paying. I see it. I recognize the pattern well. But I am a good friend. You are there for me when I rant incessantly about the uselessness of organic life. I will pay your share because we all have our faults, and what you owe in mere currency, you have repaid countless times over with kindness.
User Story. (Score:2)
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"An automatic service charge of 18% will be added to groups of 8 or more."
Add "With 50% of that being a royalty for the patent", and this story gets done-done in the next sprint..
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So, they're patenting... (Score:3)
Don't be evil (Score:2)
This is not the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The actual problem are the passive-aggressive douchebags who make it a contest to see who gets to pay for everyone's meal, and later whine about how some people never pay for everyone's meal, so that they can be both the altruistic Christian hero and the exploited supply-sider hero.
I think google is purposely doing stupid patents (Score:2)
What is a better way to show that the patent system is broken, and that software patents are really stupid but by pushing a bunch of really obvious stupid ones thru?
It probably costs less then they are paying for litigation with current software patent wars, and if they can show the system is broken and flawed, and that software patents are bogus, wouldn't it make things easier for them?
Why is this patentable? (Score:2)
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sensationalism? (Score:3)
this isn't about splitting a single dinner bill as the headline (Google Wants Patent On Splitting Restaurant Bills) suggests.
it's a little more complicated.. where, say, 5 people hang out together for a week, where multiple bills are paid individually by different people over the duration of the vacation or whatever and you need to "settle up" when you get home.
Yes, no matter how you slice it, it's just math (so whether or not you should be able to patent it is arguable) - but, if the patent is for the means by which it's tracked, and the design of the (i assume) app that you use to solve the equation, then a patent may have some merit.
You can solve this using Excel, but a dedicated app to to track the scenario mentioned in the original piece could be very useful to some.
"As an example, assume that a group is created to track and manage the expenditures of four friends (Friends 1-4) while on vacation in Miami. While on vacation, one of the days only three of the friends (Friends 1-3) go eat lunch at a restaurant because Friend 4 is not hungry at the time. The bill for lunch is $60 and Friend 1 pays the bill using a mobile payment service available on his device 104. Friend 1 adds the lunch as an expenditure of the group. When the form is presented to Friend 1 for the lunch, Friend 1 indicates that the lunch should be allocated to Friends 1-3. The lunch is not allocated to Friend 4 because Friend 4 did not participate in the lunch. Further, Friend 1 provides the following amounts of allocation in the form: Friend 1 $25, Friend 2 $16, and Friend 3 $19. In this example, the amount of allocation for each friend is based on what each friend ordered during lunch."
could be further "complicated" if your group of friends has vegetarians (where entrees are usually less than those with meat), and people who don't drink - so the cost of that bottle of wine should be split between the 4 of 6 in your party who actually had some. if someone brought their kids, that introduces yet another variable.
it'd be pretty cool to be able to take a picture of the itemized receipt and assign each line item to a person (drinks and entree), or the group (shared desserts, appetizers) - whatever is appropriate.
Banks are getting in to person to person transfers (using nothing but a mobile number or email address).. https://clearxchange.com/ [clearxchange.com]
the natural evolution of paying each other is to be able to request money FROM each other.. so i can use my credit card to pay for lunch, then send a note telling my friends they owe me $.
google couple potentially integrate with clearxchange, and card.io (take picture of CC instead of entering the number manually) to settle up once the costs are calculated.
this isn't a patent for a system to do math (addition, subtraction and division). this is a patent on a system that makes it so you don't have to think about the math.
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It's a little more complicated.. where, say, 5 people hang out together for a week, where multiple bills are paid individually by different people over the duration of the vacation or whatever and you need to "settle up" when you get home.
It's a balance sheet, but on a computer!Good job no one [ibm.com] has thought of doing that before.
"He who looks at the bill first pays it" (Score:2)
Growing up amongst my friends (and in general) we had a rule that he who picked up the bill and looked at it (at least without discussing it first with the other people at the table) was on the hook for the whole thing. It was more or less a courtesy. If I went with someone who was older than me (ie. my grandma) and she brought me out to lunch it would be very rude of me to look at the bill that I'm not going to pay.
So if Google wants to get in the middle of my restaurant bill payment, well...
Honesty (Score:2)
Often at business meetings we would go out to dinner. Usually when the bill came we would have everyone chip in including tip the amount of money they felt they owed. Some folks had drinks, wine with dinner, and desert. Others may have had only a salad. It was a good judge of character to see who was honest about it. Since this is Slashdot I should mention that we were scientists and engineers so we could do the math. Most the time we would end up with a few extra dollars which would just go for a bi
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Since this is Slashdot I should mention that we were scientists and engineers so we could do the math.
Clearly you've never been out with drunk scientists and engineers. At that point proving they can do the math (they can't because they're drunk and want to prove they can because they're drunk) is more important and the actual bill is a secondary concern. This leads to very loud and heated arguments. Of course no app could solve it because the primary concern is proving you can do it in your head.
We used to take turns... (Score:2)
One day, we got to talking about how it might be unfair if you tended to end up having it be your turn to buy the meal when you were someplace cheap, and issues like different numbers of people being present, and eventually concluded that all solutions to these problems consisted of reinventing money.
So we came up with the real solution: Fuck it, it's not worth the time to worry about it. We roughly take turns and no one cares.
My Serve app already does this (Score:2)
Prior art? I can show it to them if they driver over from their nearest datacenter.
What a load. Serve included this as as base feature.