I was checking out some feeds in my RSS reader, when I came across this little horror. It seems the Microsoft just grabbed a software patent. Okay, nothing new there, but it’s for a system that deliver targetted ads to your PC ….. by scanning the content of your hard drive. I kid you not.

From the Ars Technica article:

“It’s such a tremendously bad idea that it’s almost bound to succeed. Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an “advertising framework” that uses “context data” from your hard drive to show you advertisements and “apportion and credit advertising revenue” to ad suppliers in real time. Yes, Redmond wants to own the patent on the mother of all adware.”

“The adware framework would leave almost no data untouched in its quest to sell you stuff. It would inspect “user document files, user e-mail files, user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, computer status messages (e.g., a low memory status or low printer ink),” and more. How could we have been so blind as to not see the marketing value in computer status messages?”

I hope they’re just grabbing that patent in a form of pre-emptive self defence, it’s a possibility; after all they wouldn’t really be crazy enough to try running that kind of spyware/adware would they? Mind you, considering their record I find myself harbouring dark suspicions, power corrupts and all that.

*Shudder* This sort of thing is one of the reasons why I run Linux.