stories about: "ibm"
IBM Seeks Patent For Biosensor-Based Hiring
from the taylorism-is-back... dept
theodp writes "A just-published IBM patent application for Optimizing Utilization of a Donor describes how to monitor 'the somatic (i.e. physical) and affective (i.e. emotional) states of human resources' to determine 'an optimal allocation of the human resources to tasks.' IBM further explains that 'the emotional and physical states may be sensed via non-invasive biosensors.' And what exactly will be measured and sensed? Physical condition can be determined by measuring 'the level of blood sugar, the blood heat, or the like.' And clues to 'a human resource's mood to perform a job with lust, joy or any other emotional condition' can be found by looking at 'changes in autonomic functions, such as, for example, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, sweating, trembling, and other features like hormonal changes; changes in body temperature; and changes in neural function that are measurable.' So if you want that job with Big Blue, perhaps you better make sure that your Blood Pressure, Pulse, Mood, and Level of Fatigue are as up-to-snuff as your skills. Yikes."This sounds like the modern equivalent of Taylorism, which never faired all that well in the first place. Effectively, this sounds like simply applying modern technologies to a typical Taylor-like review of a worker.
IBM Patents 'Paper Or Plastic'?
from the patent-examiners-apparently-don't-shop-much dept
Slashdot points us to the latest absurd patent to get approval from the USPTO. IBM has been granted a patent on the concept of storing your packaging preference information on your customer card. Yes, basically, the act of storing whether or not you like paper or plastic bags on your customer loyalty card is considered such an original idea that it deserves a monopoly.We've been having some debates over the last few days in the comments on the question of "obviousness." This patent hopefully demonstrates the point that many of us are trying to make. The defenders of the patent system will claim that this is a perfectly reasonable patent because no one has done it before (where's the prior art, etc?). But that doesn't get into whether or not this is actually obvious. Customer cards store all sorts of information. Should we give someone a patent on each and every one? The implementation isn't hard at all. If you were to ask your average (or, even below average) techie, how they would go about storing and retrieving such information, they would do so in an instant. It simply makes no sense to award a long-term monopoly on adding just another bit of info to your customer card. And, yet, that's the system we have these days.
Filed Under: obviousness, paper, patents, plastic, point of sales
Companies: ibm
IBM Seeks Patent On Typing-To-Speech In A Call Center
from the seriously? dept
theodp writes ""Caller: What is my account balance? The call handler responds by typing in the response '250 dollars.'" That's an excerpt from a pending IBM patent for cutting offshore call center costs further by hiring reps whose local accents make them incomprehensible to their U.S. customers without the magic of IBM text-to-speech synthesis, which Big Blue explains converts typed responses into "the native language and accent of the caller so that the outgoing voice sounds familiar to the caller.""As Theodp noted in sending this in, you would think that Stephen Hawking's computerized speech system might count as a bit of prior art. Of course, while the patent covers more than just that, it's hard to see how the idea of letting someone type responses that are converted into speech deserves monopoly protection.
Filed Under: call center, patents, text-to-speech
Companies: ibm
Now IBM Wants To Patent Responding To Chaos
from the no-one-but-IBM-can-do-that... dept
theodp writes "Thanks to IBM, the next time a crisis of 9/11 or Katrina magnitude strikes, you may have to worry about patent infringement. Just-published USPTO documents reveal that Big Blue has a patent application for Optimizing the Selection, Verification, and Deployment of Expert Resources in a Time of Chaos, which covers responding to 'episodes of profound chaos during hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves, solar flares, flooding, terrorism, war, and pandemics to name a few.' If anyone from Homeland Security is reading, it's apparently this easy." Yes, this is actually a patent application for a computerized process (not, as theodp suggests, just for responding), but it still seems rather bizarre that you would patent such a thing. Does one firm really deserve to have a monopoly on a computerized system for responding to a chaotic event?IBM Banned From Federal Contracts; No One Saying Why
from the that-can't-be-a-good-thing dept
It's not at all clear what's going on yet, but apparently the EPA has banned IBM from getting any contracts for some unnamed (serious) infraction. Apparently when one gov't agency does such a thing, others follow suit, meaning that effectively IBM may be barred from getting any new government contracts for an extended period of time (potentially up to one year). This is rather unusual, and no one seems to be saying why this ban was put in place, but needless to say, it suggests some sort of pretty serious infraction on the part of IBM.Filed Under: bans, epa, government contracts
Companies: ibm
IBM Patents Real-Time Auto Insurance Surcharges
from the fair's-fair dept
theodp writes "Better think twice before volunteering to tutor underprivileged kids or delivering Christmas gifts to homeless children. Thanks to IBM, you could be rewarded with a hefty car insurance premium increase for your efforts. A new patent was issued to Big Blue last Tuesday for its 'invention' of the Location-Based Vehicle Risk Assessment System, which describes how surcharges will be added to your auto insurance premium when a GPS device reports that you drove into an area in IBM's bad neighborhood database (stay too long and your car is disabled). It's all about assigning insurance costs more appropriately, explains Big Blue, which used the same argument to justify punishing employees for having fat kids."Filed Under: insurance, patents, surcharges
Companies: ibm
Limelight Level 3 Gears Up For Patent Nuclear War
from the wasted-money dept
Update: Made some updates to this post as I misread the original article, suggesting that it was Limelight, not Level 3, that bought the patents. Earlier this month, we wrote about Akamai's patent lawsuit against competitor Limelight. Akamai had dominated the content delivery network space for many years, but Limelight and others have made serious inroads lately, putting a ton of competitive pressure on Akamai. Akamai's response to sue for patent infringement is exactly the sort of societal negative that shows how the patent system harms society. To reinforce that, it appears that, rather than just further innovating, others are now spending money that could have (and should have) gone to research and development on buying up its own patent portfolio to act as a nuclear stockpile to fight off Akamai. In this case, Level 3 (not Limelight, as originally stated in this post), is buying up patents from IBM. End result? Lots of money wasted on patents and patent infringement lawsuits, less innovation in the space and less competition. How can that possibly be a result that promotes the progress?Filed Under: content delivery network, patents, stockpiling
Companies: akamai, ibm, level 3, limelight
IBM Patents 1-And-Only-1-Click Ordering
from the this-is-patentable? dept
theodp writes "Last week, the USPTO granted IBM a patent for Single Submission Buttons, an 'invention' that essentially consists of ignoring the second and subsequent clicks of a button. Like Amazon, IBM seems to be finding it easier to talk-the-patent-reform-talk than walk-the-patent-reform-walk."Is IBM Commoditizing IT? Or Kicking Off The Next Round Of IT Innovation?
from the it-still-seems-to-matter dept
For the past few years, there's been a debate going on over whether or not information technology still matters, or if it's simply become a commodity that doesn't provide any real advantage any more. Last Thursday, IBM joined this debate by announcing plans for Blue Cloud, an offering targeted at making it easier to run large-scale applications with massive databases over the Internet. Blue Cloud includes grid-computing software, Xen and PowerVM virtualized Linux operating system images and Hadoop, the open-source software platform that eases the prospect of writing and running data intensive applications. IBM is aiming to open the prospective market for companies to benefit from extreme scale of cloud computing infrastructures quickly and easily, through commoditization .Does this signal the onset of a future where core infrastructure really doesn't matter? Not quite. In fact, IBM's ambitions in the area of cloud computing proves that IT infrastructure matters more than ever. A fact that will require Google to respond by further differentiating along a similar curve. Plus, with the distinct possibility of IBM commoditizing the "Google data center," through successful commercialization of Blue Cloud alive and well, the search giant will have to find ways to translate its edge in IT infrastructure into the domain of its increasing bevy of developer-centric plays. Efforts like OpenSocial serve as evidence that Google has already embraced the notion of the cloud on some level. Continued progress by Blue Cloud might spur the notion of a more comprehensive Google cloud that expands beyond social networking platforms, targeted at newer forms of enterprise-centric web development models and architectures. It is also very possible that Google might develop a native set of interfaces similar to those available for Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) in pursuit of burgeoning market for cloud computing.
Furthermore, IBM's involvement and the potential for a Google response, does nothing but add to the momentum behind cloud computing as an evolving battleground between tech heavyweights, meaning it is undoubtedly on Microsoft's radar. Currently, the Redmond-based company finds itself in a world where virtualized, Internet-driven computing platforms like Blue Cloud are minimizing developer dependency on the operating system. A stark reality that does not bode well for its Windows and Office based hegemony. Essentially, Microsoft must explore how it to competitively respond with its Live versions of Windows and Office amongst the backdrop of a rapidly maturing cloud computing space. In the face of an ill-equipped response over the long haul, it will face mounting pressure from rapidly maturing Linux alternatives on the desktop front and cloud computing on the web end.
As the demand for Web 2.0 capabilities continues to explode over the next three to five years, companies across the globe will have to investigate if/how their current IT infrastructure will scale towards meeting that demand internally and externally. With Blue Cloud, IBM is positioning itself as a one-stop shop for establishing a cloud computing environment ready to test and prototype Web 2.0 applications within enterprise environments. Still, IBM must better express the value proposition for cloud computing including illustrating how seamlessly cloud-enabled applications can/will integrate with existing IT infrastructure. This entails addressing the plethora of questions regarding security, privacy and reliability. A critical part of easing the learning curve associated with any new model. In general, Blue Cloud's impact stands to affect the overall acceptance of the entire cloud computing paradigm. The reality moving forward is that cloud computing for the enterprise will remain a good idea in concept, until a strong association can be made with a common set of business problems and/or industry standards.
Filed Under: blue cloud, grid computing, it doesn't matter
Companies: amazon, google, ibm, microsoft
