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IBM Patents Dividing The Number 60 By Your Car's Speed
from the divide-by-zero dept
theodp writes ""A billboard," IBM explains to the USPTO in its newly granted patent for Determining Billboard Refresh Rate Based on Traffic Flow, "is a large outdoor advertisement." Guess you have to pad your writing a bit when a cornerstone of your 'invention' is dividing the number 60 by the speed of a car (in mph). To be fair, Big Blue explains things this way in the patent: "A system for determining the refresh rate per minute of the dynamic billboard based on the traffic flow information, wherein the refresh rate is equal to 60 mph/V, wherein V is equal to an average velocity in miles per hour of vehicles passing the dynamic billboard. If the average velocity is 60 mph, the new refresh rate of the dynamic billboard is one refresh per minute (i.e., each advertisement is displayed for one minute), while if the average velocity is 10 mph, the new refresh rate of the dynamic billboard is six refreshes per minute (i.e., each advertisement is displayed for ten seconds)." Which begs a question: Will you see an infinite number of ads if traffic comes to a full stop?"
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Ah yes...
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To be fair...
Seriously girls, you should be hanging your heads in shame:
Primary Examiner: Goins; Davetta W
Assistant Examiner: Lai; Anne V
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That's neat but the new Microsoft Provisional Patent is better.
Not only will the billboard show rotating banner ads but it will also include photo-radar in the billboard. This is so Microsoft can report your license plate number to the authorities and various partner companies.
The logic is this: if you are speeding and they are unable to force-feed advertisements to you, they'll look for the last time you used your Bing account. If you don't have a Bing account, they'll sell your picture, likeness and license plate information to advertisers, marketing companies, and your car insurance provider.
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; P
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Ridiculous
If instead they're talking about when a new advertisement appears: dynamic billboards are allowed to change images only according to city code ordinances in which they reside. Too fast and flashy or too many, is a major distraction to drivers, which is dangerous! Don't we have enough distracted driving already without some company patenting an optimization system to squeeze the most out of our driver's attention?
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Patent Workaround
Will you see an infinite number of ads if traffic comes to a full stop?
Patent the same system with lower and upper bounds to the refresh rate. This should certainly be considered an advancement, since it is roughly three times as complicated:
freq = max( min( (60/V), 20 ), 30 )
Then when they deploy their astounding innovation, get Intellectual Ventures to sue them for payola.
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Re: Patent Workaround
Proper formula:
freq = max( min( (60/V), 20 ), 2 )
Maybe this math stuff IS complicated.
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This one, however, has even me scratching my head. Maybe there is something hidden in the file history that might alleviate my need to scratch, but having read the specification and the claims it does jump out at me what the file history could be hiding.
Perhaps more importantly, however, is why would IBM even be concerned with an invention such as this? I find it hard to believe that some aspect of this invention figures into its business plans. The only thing that makes sense to me is that someone at IBM has too much time on their hands and an imperfect understanding of when applications should be filed and when they should not. This instance seems to fall in the latter class.
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Re: Ridiculous
Interesting. My township and its neighbors are currently fighting the billboard industry tooth and nail to keep it out - we all have ordinances prohibiting signs of such a size but they're claiming those ordinances violate their constitutional right...to be utter d-bags, I guess. They're stealing my tax dollars with this fight so they can steal my property values should such a horror come to pass.
It's like the content industries - not a constitutional issue but a bad business model problem.
OT: why the hell is anyone permitted to patent math? This is the second word math problem IBM's patented in recent months (the other was weighing a bus with and without passengers to figure the difference. Otherwise known as The Cat Weight Determination Method.)
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Re: Ah yes...
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Re: Re: Ridiculous
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Thats why IBM "bought" worthless, non business related patents, because they are contractually obligated to do so. And the cycle continues forever more.
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Either way, I am jumping on the "disdain for retards in the patent office" bandwagon for this one.
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Re: Re: Patent Workaround
freq = max( min( (60/(abs(V)+1)), 20),2);
There, that should do it.
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You Punks Just Don’t Get It
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The denominator doesn't have to be zero if the numerator is infinity
Um, Mike.
If you sit there long enough you will.
Am pretty sure that works at all refresh rates.
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New Patent to Measure Distance
I'm rich!
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Re: New Patent to Measure Distance
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Re: The denominator doesn't have to be zero if the numerator is infinity
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Re: You Punks Just Don�t Get It
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