Call me

June 14, 2012 4:32 AM

I made a post earlier today and the more inside included this cryptic message from the back of a postcard:

8.1.22.5 7.15.20 13.25
20.9.3.11.5.20 9 3.12.1.9.13
6.9.18.19.20 4.1.14.3.5
Am going home for week and you know what takes me. There was an awful smell of burning in Mitchell St. last night. Were you making toffee again. C.B.

I just checked in on the post from my iPhone and parts of the numerical component turned into call numbers. Disappointingly none of them worked for various reasons, but I was wondering, what's happening here?

posted by unliteral to Bugs at 4:32 AM (47 comments total)

This happens to me in my iPhone with all sorts of strings of numbers. I can't tell you how many times I've clicked a linked number thinking "oh, this is probably important information" but it just dials 1234567890 or whatever.
posted by Metroid Baby at 4:40 AM on June 14, 2012

yeah, the iphone tries to be helpful and do that. which makes it more difficult if you actually want to just COPY the numbers since you can't click on them.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:43 AM on June 14, 2012

Well, well! I've never encountered this before. It was worth getting up this morning.
posted by unliteral at 4:50 AM on June 14, 2012

rmd -- tap and hold on the number. A menu will come up, and one of the options is Copy.
posted by Etrigan at 4:57 AM on June 14, 2012

It reads "Have got my ticket I claim first dance." A coded flirtation.
posted by Miko at 5:21 AM on June 14, 2012 [4 favorites]

Oh, you knew that. It's the part about inserting periods that you're asking about!

*more coffee*
posted by Miko at 5:22 AM on June 14, 2012

I appreciate your attempt to cover up your mistake with "confusion," unliteral, but I am afraid the jig is up -- you have, at last, revealed your true face as a numbers station! Your reign of terror over the airwaves is soon to end!
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:33 AM on June 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

Etrigan: ah! i thought the last time i tried that it only gave me 'call' when i tapped and held. either i'm misremembering or they changed it to be more useful. thanks!
posted by rmd1023 at 5:33 AM on June 14, 2012

This behavior can be disabled on the server-side by a special meta tag:

<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">

I don't know if it's worth pb's time, and you can make the argument that this is useful in some situations.
posted by jenkinsEar at 6:06 AM on June 14, 2012 [5 favorites]

Is this something I'd have to have an iPhone to understand?
posted by Justinian at 6:50 AM on June 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

'Cause I really don't undertstand.
posted by Justinian at 6:50 AM on June 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Would you believe that Apple was able to get a patent on this nonsense, and used it to successfully bully Android handset manufacturers? Shameful. If you ever needed proof that the patent system has turned into a farce...
posted by Rhomboid at 7:00 AM on June 14, 2012 [4 favorites]

Not just phone numbers! I took down an address in the Notes app and it made it all linky. I was impressed until I clicked it and it brought up a map of small town Arkansas. Not so helpful in finding my destination in downtown Toronto.
posted by yellowbinder at 7:13 AM on June 14, 2012

Mods: please edit the post to include the meta-tag described by JenkinsEar.
posted by alms at 7:16 AM on June 14, 2012

I doubt they can do that on a per post level.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:17 AM on June 14, 2012

I just checked in on the post from my iPhone and parts of the numerical component turned into call numbers

I'm at work so I have an excuse but: Dewey or Library of Congress?

It took me several seconds to figure out what you were actually talking about and I have an iPhone and observed this behavior last night
posted by librarylis at 7:23 AM on June 14, 2012 [4 favorites]

One of the previous year's MLB app would try to call 1 [phone] when you tapped on an inning within the app.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:23 AM on June 14, 2012

Would you believe that Apple was able to get a patent on this nonsense, and used it to successfully bully Android handset manufacturers? Shameful. If you ever needed proof that the patent system has turned into a farce...

So does this mean that Android phones will be free of obnoxiously auto-linky bullshit? Dear phone: I'm not predictable. Stop trying to out think me. 123 456 7890.
posted by fuq at 7:28 AM on June 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also, it sorta shows that Apple isn't able to out-innovate others anymore? I mean, Android is linuxy in the bad way.
posted by fuq at 7:30 AM on June 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

I predict this shows up in a Nick Cage movie in 2 years.
posted by arcticseal at 7:37 AM on June 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

I was actually kind of disappointed it was simple numerical substitution. Stupid puzzles, what have you done to me!?
posted by maryr at 7:54 AM on June 14, 2012

yeah, the iphone tries to be helpful and do that. which makes it more difficult if you actually want to just COPY the numbers since you can't click on them.

Blackberry was awesome for this - numbers automatically become phone numbers which you can either call or add to your address book and edit. Android does not do this nearly as well. *sob*
posted by KokuRyu at 8:07 AM on June 14, 2012

Mods: please edit the post to include the meta-tag described by JenkinsEar.

If we do this it will be something we roll out sidewide and not for one particular post. It's not trivial to do it at a per-post level.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:14 AM on June 14, 2012

Data Detectors were in MacOS 8 in the late 1990s. At the time they were pretty novel. And annoying because they were not implemented really well. They make a lot more sense in 2012 than they did in 1997

Now I'm used to them. I love, for example, seeing a URL in mail and clicking on it instead of having to select the string, copy, open my browser, give focus to the address bar, paste and press 'enter'.

In some browsers, this might be an active link: http://tidbits.com/article/04154 . That is a convenience to users and a use of the idea that Apple patented. Apple had to have that in iOS because they didn't have copy/paste in the initial rev of the OS.

This may be one very commonly violated (or licensed) patent. Certainly the patent data that Rhomboid linked has been widely cited in other patent claims.

If you flat-out disagree with the idea of software patents, then it's an example of one. It doesn't seem specifically more egregious than any other software patent.
posted by Mad_Carew at 8:30 AM on June 14, 2012

Clearly this is an ARG. That must be why no one is talking about the fact that it's an ARG.
posted by roll truck roll at 8:30 AM on June 14, 2012

So is it the phone number for an Asian massage parlour?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:31 AM on June 14, 2012

We discussed adding the meta tag sitewide this morning, but we don't want to disable this feature of the iPhone. Even though phone numbers come up very rarely on MetaFilter, it's a handy feature to have when they do come up so it's worth the trade-off of occasional false positives.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:35 AM on June 14, 2012

I was excited to find out about the meta tag though! Added it to my site.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:41 AM on June 14, 2012

If you flat-out disagree with the idea of software patents, then it's an example of one. It doesn't seem specifically more egregious than any other software patent.

It's more egregious than say, the patent for a media codec in my opinion. With a patent that actually captures a non-trivial algorithm to do something obvious but difficult, then it can be an actual asset that makes sense to be licensed. Like licensing a particular design of a car engine that is more efficient than existing ones. But these kinds of patents are just patents on high level requirements. It would be similar to engines and wheels already being common and granting a patent for "A system of that converts gasoline into mechanical movement of wheels" with no new mechanical innovations, it's just a high level description of the problem being solved and licensing it is basically just allowing someone to implement their own solution to the problem. That's not how patents are supposed to work.
posted by burnmp3s at 8:47 AM on June 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Rhomboid: "Would you believe that Apple was able to get a patent on this nonsense, and used it to successfully bully Android handset manufacturers? Shameful. If you ever needed proof that the patent system has turned into a farce..."

Just to clarify, it's not the data-tapping that Apple has a patent on. But rather, it's showing a menu of multiple options for what to do after tapping on data. Not that I think that's much better, but it does get around many examples of Prior Art.
posted by Plutor at 8:56 AM on June 14, 2012

It would be similar to engines and wheels already being common and granting a patent...

I'm not convinced it was already common in 1996. At the time context menus were still somewhat novel to most users. UI innovation certainly moves very quickly from "no one has ever thought of doing that before" to "everyone must do this" to "that's so last year". Software Patents of twenty years may be too long, perhaps, but a lot of what is obvious now had to be dreamed up by someone.
posted by Mad_Carew at 8:57 AM on June 14, 2012

Auto-linking is not some genius idea that was the result of years of R&D. It's a simple observation that any programmer would have after working with a markup language, and it can be implemented by a competent programmer in an afternoon at most. Hell, I can write a crude regexp to do it in five minutes. No programmer can say with a straight face that this involves real innovation of any form, or that some corporation should have the right to "own" such an idea and prevent everyone else from using it.

If the patent system were working the way it was devised, then I should be able to read the patent and gleam some kind of insight from it that I would not have come to in my ordinary dealings. After all, that is the social contract: we force the applicant to reveal their stunning innovations instead of keeping them secret, and in return we give them a temporary monopoly. But I can guarantee you that none of those many programmers who have implemented this feature in their software ever went and looked at an Apple patent application to see how it was done. That idea is simply laughable, both because the patent application does not actually reveal any technical details, and because the idea is so straightforward in its own right. On this basis, the social contract is broken; there is nothing being graciously donated to the realm of public knowledge. There is simply a troll with a lot of money waving a big stick.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:00 AM on June 14, 2012 [7 favorites]

That's not how patents are supposed to work.

There was recently a patent awarded for "Thermally Refreshing Bread." Or, you know, a toaster.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:01 AM on June 14, 2012

(And I don't mean to single out Apple -- there are many trolls waving many sticks. Practically every large software company must do this to remain competitive. That's the real tragedy.)
posted by Rhomboid at 9:06 AM on June 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

BBs have been doing that forever. How did they escape prior art?
posted by bonehead at 9:14 AM on June 14, 2012

Same way any other evil trolling patent escapes prior art: clueless and/or overworked patent examiners.
posted by flabdablet at 9:30 AM on June 14, 2012

There was recently a patent awarded for "Thermally Refreshing Bread." Or, you know, a toaster.

US 6,080,436, made (in)famous by "This American Life". What TAL conveniently forgot to mention is that the patented method involves toasting the bread at 2500 to 4500° F for 3 to 90 secs. Oops.
posted by Skeptic at 10:32 AM on June 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Same way any other evil trolling patent escapes prior art: clueless and/or overworked patent examiners.

If somebody was clueless or overworked there, it's the ZDnet hack who wrote the article. Clue to journalists and Random Internet People: a patent abstract (never mind the title) is legally irrelevant: what defines the scope of the patent are the claims. And what do the claims of that patent say?

In a computing environment, a method comprising: displaying at least one page of a document that has multiple pages, at least one of the multiple pages, and the displayed at least one page including a first page displayed beginning at a starting point offset from a top of the document and from a top of the first page; calculating a height of at least the first page; calculating a row offset of the starting point of the first page; calculating a vertical offset at the starting point of the first page, wherein the vertical offset is calculated according to a formula of the form {[(p-1)/c]h}+r, where p is equal to the number of pages in the document, c is equal to the number of columns of the document which are simultaneously displayed, h is equal to the height of at least the first page, and r is equal to the row offset of the starting point of the first page; receiving a command indicative of a whole page-based incremental scroll request related to changing first content currently being displayed in the at least one page; determining a whole-page increment for scrolling from first content to second content, wherein determining the whole-page increment includes calculating a vertical offset at a second starting point in the document, the vertical offset being calculated according to the formula V.sub.1.+-.(cr), where V.sub.1 is the vertical offset at the starting point of the first page; and changing the display to display second content, by replacing the at least one page of the document with at least one other page, the display of the at least one other page beginning at the second starting point.

In fact, the purpose of the claimed invention, as it is helpfully explained in the full description (which certainly acknowledges the previous existence of PageUp and PageDown buttons), is to ensure that the pages are correctly scrolled up and down even when the user has zoomed them up.

Perhaps not the most ground-breaking of inventions, but again not the outrage that some make it up to be...
posted by Skeptic at 10:42 AM on June 14, 2012

As I use Google Voice and have a Chrome extension for it, I have phone numbers linkified in my desktop browser all the time. It's more discriminating than is the code in the iOS, I've noticed. Which is weird, really, because as Rhomboid says (implicitly) regexes are extremely powerful and (if you're proficient) you can craft one that rarely results in false positives. I don't really understand why iOS's isn't very good, except that it's possibly because phone numbers vary geographically and how they're commonly represented. But that just raises the question of why they don't make it specific to a region, as they do so many other things, including dialing numbers themselves.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:20 PM on June 14, 2012

8.1.22.5 7.15.20 13.25
20.9.3.11.5.20 9 3.12.1.9.13
6.9.18.19.20 4.1.14.3.5

That last 9 should really be an 8, right?
posted by misha at 12:27 PM on June 14, 2012

No programmer can say with a straight face that this involves real innovation of any form, or that some corporation should have the right to "own" such an idea and prevent everyone else from using it.

Beg to differ on several points. As both a programmer and a historian, I can tell you with conviction that some things which you think are self evident were once innovative. Calling this out now because you don't think it's innovative seems unfair and ahistorical.

If you don't agree with software patents or assignment of patents, that's OK. I've been known to have serious differences with the almost-sorta-kinda-in-perpetuity of Copyright myself. I don't love patent hoards and the Mutually Assured Destruction defense models of the big players and I really loathe the Eastern District Court of Texas. However, when I really do invent something, I want to have the ability to exploit it without giant, well-funded rivals driving me into the dirt.

I'm not sure what the solution is. If you remove the ability of a creator to assign patents and trademarks for cash, you eliminate their ability to make money from their IP. I actually like the patent system much more than the Copyright system because the term is limited to something reasonable.

@bonehead: This is a 1996 patent. The first BB wasn't introduced until 1999, so it's unlikely to count as prior art. From what I read, Motorola would certainly have loved to invalidate this one but hasn't successfully done so. Either RIM has a license or they are not in violation due to some technical aspect of how they implemented or they are in violation.
posted by Mad_Carew at 12:58 PM on June 14, 2012

0118999...
posted by schmod at 2:33 PM on June 14, 2012

regexes are extremely powerful

Did you consider that regular expressions are so-called because they describe a class of formal languages called regular languages, and that there is a Chomsky hierarchy which classifies formal languages based on expressive power, and that regular languages are the weakest class of language in that hierarchy? So that in that sense, this statement is exactly false? Codes and language FTW
posted by deo rei at 3:31 PM on June 14, 2012

In fact, the purpose of the claimed invention, as it is helpfully explained in the full description (which certainly acknowledges the previous existence of PageUp and PageDown buttons), is to ensure that the pages are correctly scrolled up and down even when the user has zoomed them up.

Stripped of all the deliberately obscurantist fluff, what the claim boils down to is a method of making Page Up and Page Down scroll a document by one page. Which, you know, DUH. Presented with that requirement, any competent programmer would be able to code it, most likely in exactly the way described, without reference to the patent - and that fact alone should have made the patent unclaimable.

The only non-obvious thing here is the inflated verbiage in which the idea is written down, which is unfortunately absolutely typical of patent claims. I'm sure there must be some kind of skill in being able to turn two lines of C into a half page of rolling legalese, but it's certainly not a skill I can respect. And I find it very difficult to believe that the Patent Office engages in a robust process of consulting persons having ordinary skill in the art before approving half this crap.
posted by flabdablet at 6:10 PM on June 14, 2012

Mad_Carew writes "In some browsers, this might be an active link: http://tidbits.com/article/04154 . That is a convenience to users and a use of the idea that Apple patented. Apple had to have that in iOS because they didn't have copy/paste in the initial rev of the OS."

IMO this isn't a convenience; at least on the desktop. Hope it doesn't become more common.

Mad_Carew writes "I'm not convinced it was already common in 1996. At the time context menus were still somewhat novel to most users."

Most users are idiots. Right click context menus existed in Win 3.11 and was common enough we used to slag on Macs for only having a single mouse button even way back then.

Ivan Fyodorovich writes "But that just raises the question of why they don't make it specific to a region, as they do so many other things, including dialing numbers themselves."

People dial people in other regions.
posted by Mitheral at 6:37 PM on June 14, 2012

"People dial people in other regions."

That's true. But I'd wager that more people are affected by nonsensical phone-linking of non-telephone numbers than would be affected by the failure to do so with out-of-region phone-numbers.

"IMO this isn't a convenience; at least on the desktop."

I think it's a convenience on the desktop. And I'm having trouble understanding how it wouldn't be. Granted, there's some number of URLs that are explicitly intended to not be links that people write (usually as examples that are gibberish). But I bet those are the minority, especially when we don't require the transport protocol portion. In most cases, those are actual URLs and it's actually kind of perverse for them to be addresses that aren't links.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:29 PM on June 14, 2012

it's inconvient when you want to select a portion of the URL that doesn't include either the first or last character. And it's double inconvient the way Office implements it as partial selection in one direction selects the whole "word".
posted by Mitheral at 8:29 AM on June 15, 2012