IBM Wants Patent For Lotus Notes-Free Meetings 179
theodp writes "Over at IBM, the Lotus Notes team has 'invented' preventing the use of their own product during meetings. Self-described patent reformer Big Blue has asked the USPTO for a patent covering Suppressing De-Focusing Activities During Selective Scheduled Meetings by forcing meeting attendees to 'submit to the computing system suspension requirements.' What's next — a patent for Verizon for blocking cellphone usage during movies?"
English, Motherfscker (Score:3, Insightful)
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And you sir, just epic failed in understanding his use of the word "fsck".
Grrrrr (Score:5, Funny)
DON'T. GIVE THEM. IDEAS.
Re:Grrrrr (Score:4, Funny)
You might have to talk to a supervisor two or three times a billing cycle to keep it off your account; but they wouldn't actually provide a service, even a worse than useless one, without being overpaid for it.
Re:Grrrrr (Score:5, Funny)
DON'T. GIVE THEM. IDEAS.
It's not them you need to worry about...
In other news, Microsoft has patented the process of buying products from companies that aren't Microsoft. So now, if you buy a Microsoft product you will pay them some money, and if you buy someone else's product you will still have to pay them some money because of their patent. Industry analysts say they haven't noticed any difference from the status quo.
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How exactly are you planning to receive GPS signals inside a building?
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Cat, meet A-GPS [wikipedia.org]. A-GPS, meet cat.
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They always do that or at least confirm the address. Better to confirm your address than assume it's right on the screen. And it's easier to say that than it is to explain it to you :)
[John]
Re:Grrrrr (Score:4, Informative)
Basically uses cell site triangulation to assist where GPS signal is poor
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DTOA is superior; it uses cell cite triangulation to replace GPS, which is stupid when you have multiple cell sites to triangulate from. You only need two cells to locate a phone, because the cells have sectors and they know which side of the sites you're on. DTOA has resolution comparable to aGPS, without needing GPS. The biggest drawback to GPS (after the very serious line-of-sight issues that generally make it a non-starter) is the long first-fix time, and DTOA doesn't suffer from it. There's also the fa
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I remember that... all they made was a highly vulnerable standard that creates frustrations galore for novice users.
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Why? Sounds like a great idea!
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They already did. I apparently just can't find their press release were they mention the actual patents and infringements ;-)
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Would be easier to just make all cinemas a Faraday cage? Maybe an update to the Faraday cage design/materials to block the higher cell phone signals.
Or maybe the people who work at the movie places actually enforce the no cell phone policy. If you are caught using your phone, you are thrown out.
One of those options is a lot easier to implement.
Mean while (Score:5, Funny)
IANAL, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
The only novelty, and it is a slender one, is using a calendar event as a stimulus, rather than time or location or some other variable.
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...I've run into a number of browser plugins and other utility programs designed to stop timewasting).
You can just stick slashdot.org in your hosts file and be done with it, no need for a plugin...
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Remember these patent filings can take 5-6 years. So you need to ask if it was novel back then.
But your point is taken. I recommend people interested stopping non-novel patents try this website.
http://www.peertopatent.org/ [peertopatent.org]
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There we have it all: a fruitful synthesis of scientific and technical progress to foster evolution. Soon we will arrive at a state (more like 'finite-state') were we will have an even more progressive 'enabling' technology, perhaps along the lines of "Google-life(tm) beta".
Ick.
CC.
It's a brilliant tactical move, really (Score:5, Insightful)
If IBM patents meeting without Lotus Notes, and doesn't license it, then that means everyone will have to have meetings WITH Lotus Notes! Most companies don't have it, so now they'll need to license it.
yes... (Score:2)
It's a great strategy for undermining the efficiency of companies everywhere!
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Or, they could always stop having Meetings! (I would prefer this choice!)
Or you could tell people not to bring their laptop (Score:5, Insightful)
The app seems like a verbose way of saying that the calendar system shuts down access to other apps during the meeting; which is a technical solution to a social problem (people banging away on laptop keyboards during meetings)
Re:Or you could tell people not to bring their lap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or you could tell people not to bring their lap (Score:5, Insightful)
We seem to be evolving a culture where we try to solve every problem with technology. Sometimes technology is not the answer.
No. Clearly the problem is that people are invited to meetings when they feel there is more value in doing something else than actually paying attention at the meeting.
Probably the best solution is to have fewer meetings and make them shorter and more focused.
If you then still need the meeting and making it shorter and focused does not keep the attention of the people involved, maybe they need a different job where they won't be distracted by such meetings.
I work for a large corporation and I believe we have far too many meetings that are not really needed. When I'm bored in one of these meetings, I like to look around the table and try to estimate the cost in salary and benefits of the particular meeting. With a VP, a handful of directors and several managers, a one-hour meeting easily costs the company a few thousand dollars.
This kind of technology won't solve the problem of people doing other things in meetings and it will most likely just piss them off.
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Re:Or you could tell people not to bring their lap (Score:4, Informative)
Crossword puzzles. Just put one on the top page of a clipboard holding a pad of paper and lean back a bit and it will look like you're listening and taking notes, but you're actually trying to figure out what 5 across is.
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Probably the best solution is to have fewer meetings and make them shorter and more focused.
Which is kinda hard when half of your audience is busy being elsewhere with their thoughts.
You have to start somewhere. Speaking as someone who is leading meetings on a regular basis, I would gladly take any and all technological solutions to shut down all electronic devices in the room. After a few meetings without, I'm sure people would notice how much more focussed, efficient and thus shorter these meetings can be - but getting there is the problem. And no, convincing people doesn't work, we've tried tha
Re:Or you could tell people not to bring their lap (Score:4, Insightful)
Several studies have shown that the productivity of a meeting begins to drop off rapidly when you add more than three people. The only real reason for bigger meetings is to share blame. Fewer meetings is not the correct solution, smaller and shorter (but potentially more) meetings is. If a lot of people need to know what was discussed at the meeting then email out detailed minutes, don't require them to all be there in person.
If someone is not paying attention in a meeting, it means that they don't feel that the meeting demands 100% of their attention, and if that is the case then they are probably right. Rather than force them to sit in a meeting which only demands 50% of their attention on average, split it into two meetings, one where they do have to pay attention 100% of the time, and one where they don't have to attend.
If you read any management theory textbook written in the last 30 years, you'll see exactly this advice.
What about taking minutes? (Score:2)
What about taking minutes of the meeting on a laptop? I did that for a while, and nobody complained.
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I like to look around the table and try to estimate the cost in salary and benefits of the particular meeting. With a VP, a handful of directors and several managers, a one-hour meeting easily costs the company a few thousand dollars.
We need to invent a big ol' tote board sign wired to a prox card reader at each seat. When you sit down the board logs you in and starts adding your hourly rate second by second to a giant total on the board, so these management fuckers can see how much they're costing the company as they talk about synergizing their core competencies.
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Have we really become a society that believes that the only way to prevent anti-social or anti-productive behavior is to use tech and patents to make it impossible?
If a company doesn't like what people are doing during their meetings, they should consider why people aren't paying attention (maybe the meeting wasn't necessary) and if they determine that the employees really are out of line, punish them.
These days, we've ad
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Did you mean
? :)
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Of course I typically have a minimum of three computers on my desk, and none have Lotus Notes. If I must bang on my keyboard however I use mute. Being the tech means I often have to bang on a keyboard for a while to enable others to get into the meeting.
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Keep in mind that inside of IBM very few meetings take place in person. IBM is a very distributed organization, with a great number (probably the majority) of its employees working from home, so meetings are normally conducted via phone and netmeeting.
Obviously you can't tell people in such an environment not to "bring their laptop", nor are there body language cues available to let you know if people are paying attention.
However, IBM does not use this Notes-blocker internally, not that I've ever seen,
Uninformed summary (Score:5, Insightful)
One part of IBM's strategy for patent reform has been to build as large a patent library as possible, but enforce only (what they see as) legitimate innovation while using the rest only to club patent trolls. While I have no objection to anti-software patent advocates, or full-blown anti-imaginary property advocates, insinuating that IBM is guilt of misrepresentation or hypocrisy with this filing is absurd.
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Cite?
IBM does make substantial revenues (>$1B per annum) from patent licensing, but from everything I've seen it's all based on very legitimate patents, most of which focus on hardware.
What is IBM trying to do? (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM has been attempting to get patents for some of the craziest things lately, and I wonder how many of these were actually accepted. Are they trying an easy way to beef up their patent portfolio, for defensive tactics, to keep up the yearly count or simply to prove how broken the system is? In the meantime, they will ensure they keep getting noticed by Slashdot ;)
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Are they trying an easy way to beef up their patent portfolio, for defensive tactics, to keep up the yearly count or simply to prove how broken the system is?
Think about it. Big Company. Decides to manage patent portfolio. Hires patent manager. Patent manager is assessed on statistics. Manager decides he will ensure his figures look good.
All hail bureaucracy!
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IBM has recently changed their internal patent awards so that patents are worth less now and publishes to ip.com are worth more, at least for individual inventors. I can't speak for the patent attorneys.
So, they are, to a certain extent, putting their money where their mouth is. IBM does leverage its patent portfolio but it doesn't tend to "patent troll". Instead, it tends to use its portfolio defensively against patent trolls like SCO.
Re:What is IBM trying to do? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm guessing that they're trying to reform patent law by coming up with such ridiculous patents that the patent office can no longer take itself seriously, if indeed it still does.
Either that, or they have some seriously messed-up people in charge over there - c'mon, patenting non-use of software? Am I the only person who laughed at this article? Never even mind the patent summary itself, which keeps referring to the act of not using Lotus Notes as an "invention".
I think I'm going to go out and patent not using my personal computer between the hours of 6 pm and 10 pm EST. That way everyone else has to pay me for not using my PC during that timeframe.
Patent stupidity? It's been done already! (Score:4, Informative)
... such ridiculous patents that the patent office can no longer take itself seriously, if indeed it still does.
They're too late. Much too late:
766,171 "Apparatus for signalling from a grave" (before horror movies even existed)
1,749,090 "Apparatus for obtaining criminal confessions" (oooh, scary ghosts)
2,929,459 "Rocket-propelled pogo stick" (yay for Wile E Coyote!)
3,216,423 "Facilitating birth by centrifugal force" (I kid you not)
4,016,875 "Penis locking and lacerating vaginal insert" (the mind boggles)
4,429,685 "Surgical procedure for unicorns" (WTF?)
5,443,036 "Method for exercising a cat" (fun with a laser pointer)
5,456,625 "Jesus doll lights when crucified" (surreal BDSM toy, intended for kids!)
6,025,810 "Faster than light communication" (physics from another reality)
6,368,227 "Method of swinging on a swing" (eventually cancelled, alas)
This is just a sampling from my collection of US PTO brainfarts. Other wierd wonders have titles such as "Body condom", "Santa Claus detector", "Making a drink hop along a counter", "Thermochromic urinal mat", "Motorized ice-cream cone", "Electrified table cloth", and so forth. I've also collected turds from the French, German, Japanese, and UK patent offices, but they are less profligate than the US patent orifice.
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Now, I'm not saying that 766,171 is novel, they might well have lifted the idea from somebody else; but it is hardly ridiculous.
This is a remarkable precedent (Score:2)
It's great for creativity really. Imagine the proliferation of patents that are based on not doing something. I didn't eat at McDonald's today - can I patent that? Can I patent not using Windows?? This is fun. But as someone else noted above, IBM's true genius is the catch-22 ... if you choose to use Notes, you're paying for the privilege. IBM figured out a way to still make you pay when you choose not to use Notes.
We're in Trouble (Score:2, Funny)
They have a chronic and terminal disease (Score:4, Funny)
Or Be More Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Want people's attention during your meeting? Try a few basic things:
Start on time.
Get to the point when speaking.
Keep the discussion on topic.
If the meeting is more than an hour, have a 5 minute break for email and bathroom.
Never read your slides to the audience.
Then again, I dislike speaking in front of people, even if I do it well, so I'm quick myself.
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Want people's attention during your meeting? Try a few basic things:
Start on time.
Get to the point when speaking.
Keep the discussion on topic.
If the meeting is more than an hour, have a 5 minute break for email and bathroom.
Never read your slides to the audience.
Then again, I dislike speaking in front of people, even if I do it well, so I'm quick myself.
And remove the chairs from the meeting room (unless you really need a multi-hour drone-a-thon). The meeting then gets to the point faster, and finishes without excessive blather and time wasting.
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The best way to deal with Lotus Notes... (Score:2, Funny)
...would be to send a robot killer back in time to take out Ray Ozzie's mother before he was born.
Lotus (Score:2)
Notermitator?
Lotus Notes is a Worldwide CONSPIRACY (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been riding a downhill slope of enterprise email systems for the last half decade.
First I started working at a Novell shop, Groupwise was of course the flavor. Well, I thought
it was lacking in usability and features, until we ditched it for a worldwide Lotus Notes
enterprise solution. What groupwise lacks in features and usability, Notes takes and twists
into infinitely complex knots, lashings, and tangles. Preferences? We got em all over the
fucking place. Location preferences, user preferences, security prefernces, address book
preferences, all dispersed throughout different menus and buttons. There is no way
a non admin could properly configure this evil bitch. Want to archive some email and get
it out of your active database (oh yes, this is not a mail file, this is a full fledged encrypted
domino database, bitches) ? Ok, follow this simple 10 step process! To change the font size, you
have to leave the application and edit a preference file by hand on Macs. We had to send out
a small magazine to explain how to use an html signature. The default browser when you
install? Notes browser. Ugh.
I have come up with a fairly plausible theory that Lotus Notes is a conspiracy
of complexity to keep huge numbers of IBM engineers and testers, as well as external
Notes administrators in business. Witness the ease of use of modern email.
We have well over 20 Notes admins for our global enterprise. REALLY?
Re:Lotus Notes is a Worldwide CONSPIRACY (Score:4, Interesting)
I have come up with a fairly plausible theory that Lotus Notes is a conspiracy of complexity to keep huge numbers of IBM engineers and testers, as well as external Notes administrators in business.
IBM specialise in this. Have a look at the entire Rational product line, particularly ClearCase.
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I fully agree with everything you've said. The US branch of my company switched from Exchange to Notes when we merged witht he European network. And Notes has been completely asstarded. Client side it has a huge memory foot print, it's damn near impossible to customize, and just recently we discovered a really nasty security issue with it (lotus script in emails FTL). Server side, well, it's called Domino for a reason. If one server dies, they all fall down.
-Rick
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We used notes at my last company. it was garbage. It wasn't too bad at first but then some idiot got the idea that everything should be maintained in notes databases...
we had a company phone list (for our local office) contained in a spreadsheet on a shared server. You could create a desktop link and find any phone number you wanted in about 8 seconds..
someone decided we should maintain a company wide database, including our parent company and unrelated subsidiaries.
need to find a phone number for a local p
Lotus Notes: (Score:4, Funny)
The only winning move is not to play.
~Philly
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actually I must be the only one who read the patent. It makes no mention to Lotus Notes at all.
PRIOR ART (Score:2)
Hey, my grade-school teacher had prior art on that one, from "No chewing gum in school" to "There'll be a test at the end."
This patent is just more bullshit. Didn't IBM get the memo on "in re Bilski"? Can't patent something that's not a product ...
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a particular machine, not a "concept" - which in the case of IBM, would translate to "show me a frigging product, not a concept".
Used to be that the patent office required a working model. Hopefully, they'll go back to that.
Can't patent methods and concepts. Just implementations.
Useless feature (Score:3, Insightful)
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The "In Theory" part is right. I worked for a large company with a huge Notes installation. We were supposed to be running with all sorts of customizations but I could never tell the difference.
The REAL problem with Notes is not its arcane interface or weird scripting. Notes' fatal flaw is that although it may have seemed cool in 1995, its claim to fame (simple distributed database backed forms) would be better done by web apps. This was true in 2000 and it is certainly true now. Being obsoleted by newer te
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What happens if it is your boss who is not paying attention? Do you report him to HR?
What if an attendee is not actually goofing off, but being distracted by email from his boss or subordinates who are not actually in the meeting?
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So what you are saying is that as a meeting convener you would not see the need to use an email blocker for a meeting. What about people who might see the need to do this ... in the face of bosses, laterals and/or subordinates who don't know how to behave?
My point is that I have experienced situations where an email blocker would have been a very helpful.
job security (Score:5, Funny)
Do nothing. Schedule meetings all day. Prevents termination by Lotus Notes. Works for middle management!
Patent on blocking male advances (Score:2, Funny)
Newsflash: Woman patents rejecting a guy's advances. The technology, dubbed Method and Apparatus to Block Male Advances, is patented under U.S. Patent #562434645779680584735235644. What that means for us geeks is that if you ask out a girl, she must say "Yes" unless she licenses that patent.
Let me explain.... (Score:2)
..no, there is too much. let me sum up...
1. During meetings, people like to do other work. Shocking, I know.
2. At IBM - as in many shops that use Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime - a large amount of the things people work on, are done using these tools.
3. IBM's customers, in some cases, want to prevent people from doing non-meeting things during their meetings. Probably, this is more about meetings using shared screens and browser based meeting software -- prevent it from being backgrounded.
4. IBM Soft
draconian companies and obsolete solutions (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a great idea if your some draconian control freak company. If your primary line of business is trying to stifle innovation and make your employees miserable please by all means get this software installed on your obsolete mail system.
The concept of a "mail server" is slowly becoming obsolete. With Google Apps a company can do exactly what they did with Lotus Notes or Exchange just as securely for a fraction of the cost. Why do so many people still run mail servers and their own BES servers? They
Not just IBM (Score:2)
The clean desk policy and security stuff is something I have seen at other places with cube farms too.
And there are good reasons for it too. The last thing you want is some cleaner earning 5c a night spotting something someone left out on the desk labeled "confidential" and deciding to steal it and offer it to the highest bidder.
Burn after reading (Score:2)
The clean desk policy and security stuff is something I have seen at other places with cube farms too. And there are good reasons for it too. The last thing you want is some cleaner earning 5c a night spotting something someone left out on the desk labeled "confidential" and deciding to steal it and offer it to the highest bidder.
In my opinion, most stuff labeled "confidential" isn't really worth anything to anyone. Good luck trying to sell it... See the recent Cohen movie for instructions on how to (not) sell a former CIA agent's memoirs to the russians...
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You clearly havent worked at any of the places I have. I worked at a cellphone manufacturer a while back (who shall remain nameless) and had access to a whole pile of sensitive information (including such things as prototype phones that had not yet been announced, ideas invented by the company and in the process of being patented, full source code to most of their (at the time) current phones and full details of exactly what customizations, lockdowns, restrictions and changes made for each carrier in the f
Swell (Score:2)
Most of the time we play solitaire in the meetings anyway.
VMware, anyone? (Score:2)
Over tweny years of experience has taught me... (Score:2)
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IBM Wants Patent For Lotus Notes-Free Meetings (Score:2, Redundant)
I understand that you and your tribal chiefs held a tribal meeting without lotus notes last Tuesday. This is in direct infringement of our patent, and I hereby issue a cease and desist order. The fact that you have no computer or electricity does not give you the right to ignore our intellectual property rights. If you would like to cont
How passive-aggressive is THAT? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't really understand the business problem that this "invention" is intended to solve. If a manager doesn't want people using their laptops during his meeting... he should, well, tell the guy sitting ten feet directly in front of him to kindly close his laptop.
This is a technical version of your old college roommate leaving you angry notes [passiveagg...enotes.com] to clean up or change your habits... because the person was too weak and passive to simply have an adult conversation to your face. A manager who has to "communicate" with subordinates in such a manner should not be a manager in the first place.
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If a manager doesn't want people using their laptops during his meeting... he should, well, tell the guy sitting ten feet directly in front of him to kindly close his laptop.
You're assuming meetings are in-person. Many are not.
Why not? (Score:2)
The law should apply the same way to everyone. Why shouldn't Verizon patent an invention that could be patented if anyone else invented it?
Read the patent, did see much about Lotus (Score:2)
The only mention of Lotus in the patent was that one of the people was part of the Lotus group. Kind of a stretch to say that it is _only_ Lotus to be banned. Basically what it said (as far as I could parse the crappy legalese grammar) was shut off your cellphones and computers.
Is this the same IBM? (Score:2)
How the hell do you "win" a patent? (Score:2)
In a poker game?
IBM has several products to prevent Notes use... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds new to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know of any existing products with this functionality. So they wrote it up first, and you're bitching because you lack the creativity or ambition to do so yourself.
For prior art, check out any MMORPG with a parental control feature, or firewalls with time lock options. Maybe there's a sliver of innovation in that it custom schedules it based on when your meetings are, but that's pretty thin.
Oh, you don't like software patents? So competitive corporations should just throw in the towel and abandon patents that are allowed in our current system?
No, my plan is to bitch about them to draw attention to how broken the system is until we have the support to legislate them away. Until then I support companies' rights to keep trying for these things, and the people's rights to mock them for it.
Re:Sounds new to me (Score:5, Funny)
The good posts always come when I don't have mod points. Slashdot would be a much better place, if the phrase "My mocking something does not necessarily mean that I support the government suppressing it," were half as popular as that damned Franklin quote about security and liberty.
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Those who give up modpoints for mocking patents, deserve both.
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> For prior art, check out any MMORPG with a parental control feature, or firewalls with time lock options
They are not calendaring and scheduling systems though.
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They are not calendaring and scheduling systems though.
Of course not. I don't think that adds enough novelty to deserve a patent, any more than adding "... on the internet" should make recycled business plans patentable.
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I don't know of any existing products with this functionality.
You must have never tried /usr/games/adventure. Collosial caves were typically closed until 5 pm or so.
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I don't know of any existing products with this functionality.
I do. It's called not touching the computer, cell phone, PDA, etc. during the f@#$ing meeting.
So they wrote it up first, and you're bitching because you lack the creativity or ambition to do so yourself.
They invented nothing. They created nothing. I've been going to meetings for years and have been "suppressing de-focusing activities" during those meetings by not touching a computer. Is it so hard to not touch the computer that a process need
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The problem with software patents is that something like this is a great idea, but not patentable without much greater detail. Patenting "turn off non-sanctioned apps during web meetings" is hardly enough to go on. Such a patent would have to be much more specific... down to OS level hooks like how you're going to block screens from showing and restrict access to focus changes. The result would be a patent so specific to how Windows works that it wouldn't apply to Gnome or OSX.. and to "stretch" the patent
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Yes, evidently the patent was filed during a meeting, so I guess that if IBM implement their patent in Notes then that won't happen again.