Pending Apple Patent For 'Inferring User Mood' 79
theodp writes: "Apple has recently disclosed a pending patent for Inferring User Mood Based on User and Group Characteristic Data, which has received surprisingly scant attention from the press even though it ups the ante for privacy intrusion. The brainchild of iAd team members, Apple boasts its invention will make it possible to 'charge a higher rate for mood based content delivery' by scrutinizing 'channel characteristics, demographic characteristics, behavioral characteristics, spatial-temporal characteristics, and mood-associated characteristics.' Apple further explains: 'Mood-associated physical characteristics can include heart rate; blood pressure; adrenaline level; perspiration rate; body temperature; vocal expression, e.g. voice level, voice pattern, voice stress, etc.; movement characteristics; facial expression; etc. Mood-associated behavioral characteristics can include sequence of content consumed, e.g. sequence of applications launched, rate at which the user changed applications, etc.; social networking activities, e.g. likes and/or comments on social media; user interface (UI) actions, e.g. rate of clicking, pressure applied to a touch screen, etc.; and/or emotional response to previously served targeted content. Mood-associated spatial-temporal characteristics can include location, date, day, time, and/or day part. The mood-associated characteristics can also include data regarding consumed content, such as music genre, application category, ESRB and/or MPAA rating, consumption time of day, consumption location, subject matter of the content, etc. In some cases, a user terminal can be equipped with hardware and/or software that facilitates the collection of mood-associated characteristic data. For example, a user terminal can include a sensor for detecting a user's heart rate or blood pressure. In another example, a user terminal can include a camera and software that performs facial recognition to detect a user's facial expressions.' Your move, Google!"
Re:OBEY (Score:5, Funny)
Eyes: Shifty
Likely contemplating act of domestic terrorism. Dispatch Ministry for State Security
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That's the Ministry of State Love to you!
Re:OBEY (Score:4, Insightful)
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I still read it as "Apple Patents Pissing Off Users, Nonusers, Onlookers and Passers-by."
Seems more plausable.
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I dunno. I first encountered it in ELIZA.
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And how does ELIZA make you feel?
No need for all that data collection for my mood (Score:1)
Just remember: When you try to patent such idiocy I will be pretty pissed off. Nice rule of thumb.
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Oh no... Trying to patent an idea! It's almost like that's what patents are designed for!
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Your Move Patent Office. Are they trying to patent an idea again?
yes [uspto.gov]
Re:Your Move Patent Office (Score:5, Informative)
Your Move Patent Office. Are they trying to patent an idea again?
Well, yeah, that's what patents are for.
More precisely, an overly broad, idea that would be fairly trivial to implement using existing hardware.
A steam engine is pretty easy to build. Hell, you can 3D print one at home now. Does that mean they should never have been patentable? Difficulty of implementation has never been a requirement for patentability in the statutes... if you disagree with that, then contact Congress, not the patent office, because only the legislature can add a new requirement.
Given that, do they have even a working implementation?
Most likely, but even if they don't, prototypes haven't been required for decades. That's a good thing - it makes it easier for small inventors with brilliant ideas but no capital to get protection for their invention and then sell it to large companies who have the ability to implement it. Say, for example, you come up with a great idea for a new, super-efficient and secure file system architecture. Are you going to write your own OS? And try to make it in the marketplace as a brand new OS, competing with Apple and Microsoft? You'd never get past .01% market share. But if you could sell it to one of them and it gets implemented in their next OS release, your idea would get used by a much greater portion of the population. Isn't this a good thing for society?
These are real questions, I haven't read TFA. These are the kind of patents that need to stop though.
How do you know, if you haven't read TFA? We already know that you're wrong about the requirement for difficulty of implementation, the requirement of prototypes, and the requirement that something not be an idea. Why should we think you're right when you haven't even read the article?
Copyright the implementation of your algorithm and move on.
Copyright will protect you from people making exact copies of your algorithm, from your source code. If they reverse engineer it and remake it - like say one of those OS companies and your file system architecture - it's not copyright infringement. Copyright only protects things where having the specific thing is important - it protects movies, because you want to see "The Hulk", and not the Mockbuster "Angry Green Man" knockoff, or you want to rent "Drop Kick Panda" instead of "Chop Kick Panda". It protects art because you want a Warhol original, not the selfie I just took of me holding a soup can. It protects books because you want OSC's "Ender's Game" and not "Fighting Kids in Space".
But it doesn't protect software, because you don't really care about the specific thing, you want the general concept - you don't care whether you use TaxAct or TurboTax; you don't care if you play Farmville or Farmtown; or Tiny Tower vs. Dream Heights; or Candy Crush Saga vs. Candy Link Epic. It's only useful where someone is locked into a particular implementation due to lack of compatibility - you have to use Microsoft Word because you keep getting .doc files with proprietary formatting, etc. And those are bad things for consumers.
Basically, copyright is useless for most developers, unless they're leveraging a monopoly power to lock people into their software.
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I know what copyright is for, but you're not allowed to patent algorithms. This more than most software patents is an algorithm with how to create a result from set of common existing sensor inputs. It should not be patentable based on that alone.
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I know what copyright is for, but you're not allowed to patent algorithms.
You're allowed to patent processes, and isn't an algorithm just a process? Specifically, you're not allowed to patent mathematical algorithms. Algorithms that are not purely math, such as a string of commands executed by a processor, are not just mathematical algorithms. Basically, if you can do it on a pad of paper with a pencil, then it's not patentable... but if the claims expressly require a processor, then by definition, paper and a pencil isn't enough, and it is patentable - and doing it with just the
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Computers use the binary system to represent everything. Tell me again how manipulating strings using a computer process isn't mathematical.
Why would I do that? I never said that it wasn't mathematical. This is why Slashdot has a "quote parent" button.
Rather than making you repost, I'll simply fix your post for you:
You're allowed to patent processes, and isn't an algorithm just a process? Specifically, you're not allowed to patent mathematical algorithms. Algorithms that are not purely math, such as a string of commands executed by a processor, are not just mathematical algorithms.
Computers use the binary system to represent everything. Tell me again how manipulating strings using a computer process isn't- and now I see that you wrote "purely math" and "just mathematical algorithms", but actually require hardware, and hardware isn't just math, even though it may use math, and now I realize that I should have probably read your entire post carefully before responding, and at the least should have quoted it. Sorry.
No problem. Cheers.
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It protects books because you want OSC's "Ender's Game" and not "Fighting Kids in Space"
spoiler alert!
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What the hell is the "invention" here? is it a machine? device?
It's a method patent for integrating inputs and building a profile about a person. Same as the way Google has many such patents for building interest profiles based on input data it has about a user.
Apple stinks.
Ah. And there we get to your basic motivation. It must be so hard to maintain such pointless and arbitrary nerdrage.
Could be useful... (Score:5, Funny)
...if it lets advertisers know how much ads piss me off.
It seems like any user tracking can be a mood (Score:2)
Just think ... (Score:2)
... only a few years ago we would have considered this creepy and vaguely criminal.
Oh, wait! It is creepy and vaguely criminal.
Oh, don't worry it's just... (Score:1)
As if ... (Score:3)
Reading hipster moods isn't hard (Score:1)
If you can detect early signs of petulance, entitlement, ironism and PBR overdose, you've got it all covered.
AI and Advertising (Score:2)
Mood? (Score:2)
" Mood's a thing for cattle and love play, "
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OK, fine. We got the cattle part down pat.
Now, were are the ornithopters and lase guns?
Oh great... (Score:1)
If mood=="horny" and activeApplicationType==browser
AlertMaritalUnit()
Oh, they said ... (Score:2)
... infer use mood! I thought it was interfere with user mood.... That's got lots of prior computer art....
Can the Slashdot mobile site get any worse??? (Score:2)
Sorry for posting this off-topic but there is no other place to post this, so...
The mobile site:
- lousy view and navigation - confusing display of mod points
- no way to view normal site... mobile site is mandatory
- doesn't remember my login
- moderation doesn't work
- can't change view by mod points (outstanding, etc. categories are broken)
Breaking news! Now, just added!!! "popover" ads that won't go away!!!
I had an obnoxious ad for a survey overlay the site. Won't close.
In desperation, I even clicked on it t
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Being sensitive to the user (Score:2)
Computers can be helpful, but they can also annoy. Depending on my mood, a beep can be annoying, or it can be informative. A spoken warning can be more informative or irritating when I'm a bit snippy.
For some reason, probably having to do with the raised button on its current case, my ipad will , out of the blue, occasionally wake from sleep, and inform me that "Siri" [is] "not available".Because it's a wifi model, this is not entirely unexpected.
But if it could somehow understand that this normally useful
Dude. Seriously. (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, look. I know it's popular on Slashdot, especially with some submitters, to paint certain companies in as negative a light as possible and Apple is one of those companies but, good gawd, this is NOT NEWS!!
Here's a pro tip - companies the size of Apple, who invest billions (let me say that again - BILLIONS) of dollars into R&D also file for a LOT of patents. A vast majority (by a very wide margin) go nowhere other than the filing cabinet. They are patented because someone came up with an invention and, well, we live in a world where you patent inventions. Apple does it. Google does it. Microsoft does it. IBM. Samsung. HTC. The list goes on and on and on.
Implying that anything nefarious is happening because of one patent filing is absolutely, over the top, useless. If you are doing it for one company, you are very clearly and obviously trolling because, like I said, THEY ALL DO IT. I guarantee - I am willing to bet a year's salary - that if you look at every patent filing from the top 20 tech companies, you will find a notable number which are "nefarious" or "alarming".
In other words, THIS ISN'T NEWS. I don't care if it's Apple or Google or Samsung or whatever company you'd care to name. Filing a patent is not news. IMPLEMENTING a patent is news. Filing one is just business as usual.
Not an original idea (Score:1)