If you are a Linux, Free-Speech, or "Duh!" fanboi, you may want to brace yourself for this one:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7814163.html
You can read of that what you want, but I'll basically sum it up for you:
- The patent effectively is an "invention" for filtering blocked words - you know, like how we censor **** - in a really nothing new way.
- Special parts of this involve:
- Telling the user if text is blocked and providing "progressive hints to the user of an error" that is blocked.
- Using a "skill-level", based apparently on age, education, and what-not, to determine what to block (I'm 16... can I still say my grandfather's name?).
- To check whether or not the language is at all similar to something "bad" (so its not dictionary blocking per sé, but it'll basically try to see if any text looks similar to something in a dictionary; an example I crafted long before the patent ever was made: http://dex.victoryroad.net/lookup/Pppeeeeckkachuu, http://dex.victoryroad.net/lookup/Ball)
I also love this line: "such as, for example, text messaging 'LOL' instead of typing out the full text of 'lots of luck'"
The irony of all this is that I could do this, in PHP no less, in probably a 24-hour coding marathon.
