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Earlier today a pending non-provisional utility patent application assigned to Apple Computer published. This application, US Patent Application 20090265214, is titled Advertisement in Operating System, and covers exactly what the title implies; namely an operating system that is capable of displaying a variety of advertisements to users. You are likely to have heard of the first listed inventor, Steven Jobs, the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc. While it is difficult to know the purpose and strategy behind a patent application, the attorneys at Fish & Richardson in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who drafted and filed the patent application certainly did a very good job describing just about every conceivable feature and alternative that could coincide with the displaying of advertisements to users of an operating system. ...
This could never happen in the OpenSource world.
Technology
Comments
Corporations are neither evil nor good. They are trial-and-error profit-seeking organizations, which works out well for some purposes, and which overall serves society providing their is legal infrastructure that channel their profit-seeking to methods that enhance technology and satisfy consumer demand, without too much exploiting external cost.
Posted by: Russell | October 24, 2009 9:13 PM
Russell, you must watch the documentary "The Corporation." Then come back and we'll talk about evil.
Posted by: Greg Laden | October 24, 2009 9:19 PM
Go to http://video.google.com/ and search for:
"The Corporation Part One"
"The Corporation Part Two"
"The Corporation Part Three"
Posted by: RC Nelson | October 24, 2009 10:57 PM
I recommend Linux. And The Corporation is one of the best political documentaries ever made. I can't praise it enough.
Posted by: EMJ | October 24, 2009 11:09 PM
I shall continue to not click on ads. I am not a shopper though I do make purchases after research and due consideration. Those purchases are made from local merchants, in person. Usually with some mutual exchange of jocularity in addition to the valuables that change hands. I like to look 'em in their eyes.
I am not a consumer. I am a producer. And my money is worth more to me than it is to any salesman.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | October 24, 2009 11:29 PM
on the bright side, now that someone has a patent on it, no one else can do it without licensing the patent.
Posted by: peter | October 25, 2009 1:23 AM
Sorry, what were you saying? I wasn't concentrating. The ads on this scienceblogs page were distracting me so I started reading those instead.
Posted by: Ian Tindale | October 25, 2009 5:52 AM
"This could never happen in the Open Source world" What?!? Of course someone could make advertisements appear in an open source operating system. I understand what you meant, though. There would not be much point in going to that effort because it would be so easy for someone else to remove that capability, but there is a difference between 'could never happen' and 'not much point in happending.'
Posted by: David Barrett | October 25, 2009 7:47 AM
Sorry, what were you saying? I wasn't concentrating. The ads on this scienceblogs page were distracting me so I started reading those instead.
Wisass.
Anyway, there is a difference between an OS pushing ads and a browser always having ads because site have ads. I mean, who uses a browser for most of their ...
Oh, never mind.
David: It is too early on a Sunday morning for me to come up with the snark you are asking for right now.... let me have a couple of cups of coffee and get back to you on that....
Posted by: Greg Laden | October 25, 2009 9:48 AM
Even without the extra vowel, I gave up any remnants of such beleiefs about Apple when they unilaterally canceled the contract of their only local dealer within a hundred miles of where I lived (along with the contracts of many other "underperforming" small-town operations), back in the early '80s.
And that was long before they rubbed salt in it by unilaterally aborting the paid-for extended warranty on ImageWriters and other peripherals about a decade later.
That couldn't happen with open-source operations, of course: no warranties to begin with...
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | October 25, 2009 9:53 AM
We don't need not stinking warranties.
Posted by: Greg Laden | October 25, 2009 10:00 AM
This patent isn't evil. This is wonderful. Apple has generously protected hundreds of millions of users of non-Apple operating systems from having advertising integrated into the operating system.
Posted by: llewelly | October 25, 2009 8:34 PM
Right, I was actually thinking that too. Unless they sell the use of the patent, of course.
Posted by: Greg Laden | October 25, 2009 8:41 PM
As far as I can remember, MS patented the same thing a few years back.
Posted by: Tobias | October 26, 2009 8:37 AM
It can't very well have been the same thing. That would sort of defeat the point of having patents. Similar, maybe, but there has to be some distinctive difference between the two patents.
Posted by: konrad_arflane | October 26, 2009 10:54 AM
Posted by: llewelly | October 27, 2009 12:00 AM
Luckily, the moment this becomes a reality at the OS level, there will be an open-source firewall distro with a built-in blocking mechanism.
Posted by: rpsms | October 27, 2009 11:20 AM
rpms: I agree, but an OS that, to be functional (i.e., not have ads popping out all the time) requires filtering from the user is an OS FAIL.
Posted by: Greg Laden | October 27, 2009 11:26 AM
I wonder what the public feeling was when it was first demonstrated effective to insert interrupting advertising into radio and television programming?
It's interesting watching the advertising industry change these days. On one hand, it's seeing increasing opportunities to present itself in novel places. On another hand, it's demonstrating a curious mix of understated professionalism that doesn't quite know how to behave in those new spaces, versus some utterly amateur attempts at advertising with clearly no background or experience in the practice, growing up in public as it were. On yet another hand, I suspect that the advertising industry will be the next thing to go the way that the print media newspaper industry is currently going, although there's plenty of time yet for the newmedia ad industry to wallow in.
Ultimately, I don't think advertising will be effective in these new spaces unless it's entertaining or adding value in some way (besides simply promoting something in our faces). In my opinion, the 'review' will supplant the advert, but then again, we've got the same problem only worse, there - reviews are increasingly written by utter amateurs, rendering much of them valueless.
Posted by: Ian Tindale | October 27, 2009 7:00 PM