June 6th, 2008
Microsoft Applies for “Device Manners Policy” Patent; What an Idea!
By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
Finally, finally! One of the most annoying things when seeing a movie in the theater is when some dimwit not only fails to turn off his cell phone, he answers it! While there are some chains such as Regal that are taking some steps, no theater, in this country at least, has instituting cell phone jamming.
Microsoft has applied for a patent for what they call a “device manners policy” (DMP). This wireless zone-enforced protocol. It would that allow someone to turn certain device features off or on based on a specified policy.
After all, if you can’t give people good manners, give it to their electronics.
Besides the obvious application for shutting down phones at theaters, such a policy could be used to enforce no audio or video recording rules at concerts, etc., etc.
The patent application says:
The present invention includes methods and technologies for defining and administering device manners policy (”DMP”), propagating DMP, reception and recognition of, and compliance with DMP. Such policy may be used to communicate to various mobile and other devices the “manners” with which compliance is expected or required. Similar to some of the social manners honored among people, such as with “no smoking” or “employees only” zones, “no swimming” or “no flash photography” areas, and scenarios for “please wash your hands” or “no talking out loud”, devices may recognize and comply with analogous “device manners” policy.
I would hope that, except perhaps for people who don’t care about being polite to others at theaters, this would be seen as a universally great idea. Naturally all OEMs would have to embrace the technology (and thus, license it from Microsoft), but still, I have to really, really applaud this idea.
Rudy says:
I can see how people are going to be up and arms about their “privacy” and freedom to use their product being tampered with. But you’re right, if the people don’t have the common sense, maybe someone should just go ahead beat it to them.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Greg says:
I already see a way around this feature if you are at a concert, and you want to take pictures/video. You can turn off the wireless feature on your phone before you get to an area that has DMP.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Kirstin says:
As someone who carries a pager or cell phone due to a job requirement to be “on-call” off hours, this concerns me. So basically all of us on-call systems developers, physicians, etc, won’t be able to attend movies or concerts? What about when you leave the kids with a sitter? There are many legitimate reasons why someone would need mobile service at these venues, and most of us put it on vibrate and leave the theater before returning the call. Jamming it seems irresponsible and dangerous.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Steven says:
The better answer would be for the theaters to just kick people out (without refunds) who use their phones during a movie. But they don’t have the nerve to do this.
Some problems with this type of technology are:
o) What type of range does it have? 20 feet outside the theater? 50 feet outside the theater? Will it interfere with a neighboring business?
o) What happens if my battery dies after been turned off? Are there any routes that would prevent a disabled phone from being reenabled?
o) Is this only for incoming calls? If someone is having a heart attack (happens), will we have find a pay phone (very hard to find) or run 50 feet outside the theater to call for help?
I hate when society punishes responsible people for the sake of catching all the irresponsible people in one net.
June 7th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Jason says:
Wouldn’t the end user have to pay for this ‘feature’? Who’s going to do that? For that matter, I could see the OEMs being afraid to implement this spec, for fear of losing business to competitors that don’t…
June 9th, 2008 at 1:26 pm