July 18, 2007
Charming new idea...
John McBride, at Ars Technica:
...Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your hard drive to show you advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time....
....The application, filed in 2006, describes a multi-faceted, robust ad-delivering system that lives on a "user computer, whether it's part of the OS, an application or integrated within applications."
"Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements," says the filing. "The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier."
....It would inspect "user document files, user e-mail files, user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, computer status messages (e.g., a low memory status or low printer ink)....
....The patent makes no mention of any method by which an actual user might exert control, nor does it mention very real privacy or security concerns....
Such an exciting future we have ahead of us. Any day now our computers will just buy stuff for us (printer ink! drugs that enhance!) and then every day will be a wonderland of surprises. But alas, not for me. I'm just too parochial and stick-in-the-mud. A cyber-Mennonite. Maybe I should purchase one of those "Windows" machines, and get a life!
Posted by John Weidner at July 18, 2007 06:08 AMWell, the nice thing about Microsquish and Itty Bitty Machine having opened up the x86 hardware and software achitecture all those years ago is that people from "outside" can write stuff that runs on x86 machines, to include things that work in ways MS and IBM don't like.
Hackers Crack Microsoft's Digital Rights Management Technology Again
So much for the dreams of Leviathan to invincibility....
via Steven Den Beste at http://chizumatic.mee.nu/
Posted by: Hale Adams at July 18, 2007 09:05 AMAlso, it's a patent. Those are written to claim everything anyone might ever even concieve of doing and many things beyond that.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at July 18, 2007 09:40 AMI know, I was just funning---I doubt it will ever happen.
MS is just thrashing around. They've picked up the idea somewhere that to have a future they need to innovate and bring out new products.....But how? How does one do such a thing? It's puzzling, like all them little mammals running around underfoot with their hot blood and all... It means something...but what? And those little cold bits of white fluff that have started falling from the sky recently....
Posted by: John Weidner at July 18, 2007 11:00 AMWhy should the Dark Empire panic? They can do what they've always done -- wait for someone else to invent a product and then mass market a cheaper version. The Dark Empire has always depended on being better at the business of selling software than the writing of it.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at July 20, 2007 07:23 PMWell, are they really better at selling? Or has it been less selling than just using their Windows monopoly to sell stuff for them?
Windows and Office...what else have they been successful at? They've actually had a lot of flops, but they never get reported as having stumbled, because the lazy press has decided they are always successful. Hey, they are always profitable, so there you are.
But I hear they lost a coupla billion on Windows for cell phones, and a billion on xBox. And maybe a billion on tablets? And wasn't Windows Media supposed to be a killer? And *ahem* Zune...
Posted by: John Weidner at July 20, 2007 07:46 PM
