

Microsoft patents Operating System Shutdown - ferostar
http://www.conceivablytech.com/2530/products/microsoft-patents-operating-system-shutdown/

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sprout
Specifically they're patenting graceful shutdown of a graphical windowing
environment, with a series of prompts to ask the user if they are sure that
they want to terminate processes that cannot be gracefully stopped.

All of it seems blindingly obvious, but then it also doesn't look like a claim
against any non-Windows OS would last 10 seconds in a court, as there are a
ton of clearly Windows-specific claims.

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terinjokes
Actually, I read the patent differently. They seem to be claiming that a
series of prompts is slow to the user, and that they've invented a more
efficient and faster system.

1) Non-GUI applications (or applications without a window) should be
terminated automatically 2) Applications with a top window can veto, but when
they do the other applications are removed from the screen, so that the user
can focus on the application veto-ing. 3) Users can be presented with a "Shut
Down Now" button, to force the shutdown, ignoring any application vetoes.

Also, remember the description is not part of the patent, only the claims
section is. As far as I see, the claims are OS-agnostic.

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ithkuil
I don't see that differently from what other graphical OS do; of course there
are minor differences but both macosx and gnome (didn't check other linux
GUIs) have something similar.

I'm not saying that they didn't copy it from windows, but I think the features
were there before microsoft filed this patent (2005).

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Calamitous
So did they _file_ this patent, or were they _awarded_ this patent? I'm not
familiar enough with patent terminology to tease this info out of the article.

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lanstein
Awarded. Link: [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,788,474.PN.&OS=PN/7,788,474&RS=PN/7,788,474)

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mootothemax
The flowchart seems to describe the current Windows 7 shutdown sequence. As
much as I hate to say it: if this is so obvious, why hasn't any other
operating system implemented it?

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joeybaker
As a patent on a process instead of on an actual product, how does this kind
of patent tend to fare in the courts?

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mattmanser
Pity that they're incapable of actually implementing this properly.

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mattmanser
Sod the d/vs, they really have utterly failed at implementing this properly.

In win7 on shutdown on various different computers I constantly get empty
dialogs saying "waiting for the following windows to close:"

With an entirely empty dialog...

The actual offending programs are Outlook and Steam. But MS programmers
screwed up the implementation of this patent.

Just another example of a patent being worth jack without implementation.

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whyme
That's all right. Using my Mac I rarely have to anyway... and really wonder if
I even need to.

~~~
bigfudge
Admittedly the parent post is somewhat fanboyish, but it's true that the
macbook (and imac) sleep functions are light years ahead of most PC laptops.
They sleep very quickly on closing the lid, and resume fast too... I've never
found sleep to be as effective on Dells given to me by work.

~~~
walkon
Avoiding reboots in definitely preferred. I've heard very good things about
Mac's sleep speeds, but I have a home built PC and Lenovo ThinkPad that do ok.
They take around 5-10 seconds to go from in or out of sleep which is fast
enough that I don't think about it and I usually only reboot to install
Microsoft Updates, which is a different story.

