 |
|||||||
|
|||||||
Peer-to-Patent - Archived ApplicationsUpdated: September 30, 2008 These descriptions have been prepared by the Peer-to-Patent project team and do not reflect the views of the inventors or their assignees. Application No: 11/987141 Today's computer user is bombarded with information from many different sources: emails, instant messages, RSS feeds and web pages. The problem with the plethora of information sources is that each time an information item is presented to a computer user, the computer user must stop their current task and provide input to the information item. The patent application discloses systems and methods of scheduling the play of video files, playing video files, and displaying content related to video files on a computing device. Application No: 11/634399 Dynamic binary translation is a technique that may be used to rewrite or create a version of a binary program originally executable on one processor-based platform that is, after translation, usable on a different processor-based platform. Load-store disambiguation is a code optimization technique whereby loads and stores from and to memory may be re-ordered. Transforming a program in this way can potentially improve performance. However, if memory references in the load and store are aliases of each other and the instruction for the load depends on the instruction that performs the store, moving a load out of order or “above” a store can result in an incorrect transformation. Typically analysis of a program that is being optimized is required to determine two memory references of interest are aliases. Such a status is termed ambiguous if static analysis of the program has difficulty determining whether they are aliases. This patent application relates to disambiguation in dynamic binary translation. Application No: 11/562804 A hanging protocol is a set of display rules for presenting, formatting, and otherwise organizing images on a display device of a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) workstation. In general, a hanging protocol dictates the spatial and/or temporal presentation of a plurality of images on a PACS workstation. Hanging protocols are currently created using one or more of a mouse, keyboard, and graphical user interface components. In certain environments, namely healthcare and clinical facilities, it is beneficial for users to interact with the PACS by drawing/writing graffiti characters/gestures. The patent application provides methods and systems for hanging protocol generation using gesture recognition. Application No: 11/831562 This invention relates in general to the field of network communications and more particularly to a system and method for client initiated authentication in a session initiation protocol environment (SIP). In many ways, SIP is similar to HTTP and operates in the application layer of the TCP/IP model. SIP is a peer-to-peer network communications protocol for multimedia conferencing over internet protocol (IP); it is a signaling protocol used for internet conferencing, instant messaging, telephony, and the like. SIP elements that are peers in a session communicating with one another are called user agents. A user agent may initiate a SIP request or receive one and communicate a response. Because communications between user agents are susceptible to interception and mimicking, there is a need for greater security and authentication. Past authentication mechanisms can be inadequate in cases where the relationship between the client and server are coequals. The invention discloses a more secure authentication mechanism and discusses communication, reception, authentication, and response to messages. Application No: 11/559434 Data communication between message sending devices and message receiving devices generally use application messages. An application message may represent numbers, text, images, encrypted information, etc. They are typically created and interpreted using a message model. The message model specifies the message format used to interpret the application messages. Each version of the message model is typically assigned a version number that identifies which version should be used to interpret the message. To properly interpret an application message, the message model version number must match the version number of the model that created it. Changes made at various points in the process can lead to misinterpretation of the application message. Room for improvement exists for controlling the versions of message models used for application message interpretation. The invention provides multiple levels of version control including the following benefits: ability to assign a version number to a message model for interpreting application messages based on the application message format specified by the message model, the ability to assign multiple version numbers to a message model depending on the level of compatibility between message models desired in a messaging environment, and the ability to reduce the size of application messages and the transmission of redundant data in by storing constant values for an application message in the message model rather than the application message itself. Application No: 11/590034 Existing methods for matching a slideshow to an audio track are tedious, time consuming, take a great deal of skill, or else deliver poor results. In a method for matching a slideshow with an audio track, a slideshow is received. The slideshow comprises a timebase defining display times for slides of the slideshow. An audio track is received. The audio track is utilized to warp the timebase such that a display time for at least one of the slides is altered to increase a correlation between the display time and an intensity of a portion of the audio track. Various potential embodiments are described as well as the envelopes, filters, and functions used. Application No: 11/591346 Modern communication tools, such as videoconferencing and online streaming content, have given rise to situations where a user might want to watch and store voice, video, or other streaming media communication. There are a number of issues associated with storing such content. Systems designed for low latency consumption and viewing of media often achieve low latency at the expense of reliability, resulting in lost or corrupted data which is perceived by the user as some kind of disruption in the media session, such as silence or distortion. There may be insufficient time or mechanism to repair the data before it must be presented or consumed by the end user. The patent application discloses a method for rendering and correcting data whereby data is received and stored at a memory and rendered for presentation at an output device. Defects in the data stored at the memory are determined and then corrected, wherein at least a portion of the correction of the defects is performed after transmitting the data. Application No: 11/591346 Modern communication tools, such as videoconferencing and online streaming content, have given rise to situations where a user might want to watch and store voice, video, or other streaming media communication. There are a number of issues associated with storing such content. Systems designed for low latency consumption and viewing of media often achieve low latency at the expense of reliability, resulting in lost or corrupted data which is perceived by the user as some kind of disruption in the media session, such as silence or distortion. There may be insufficient time or mechanism to repair the data before it must be presented or consumed by the end user. The patent application discloses a method for rendering and correcting data whereby data is received and stored at a memory and rendered for presentation at an output device. Defects in the data stored at the memory are determined and then corrected, wherein at least a portion of the correction of the defects is performed after transmitting the data. Application No: 11/590705 Computer users are familiar with dialog boxes that alert them, display information, or request information. In a conventional dialog interaction, an application programmer writes a large amount of application-specific, procedural code to implement the dynamic changes to the dialog. Procedural programming is a type of imperative programing, meaning that it tells the computer "how." This tends to repetitive, tedious, and error-prone. This linear process is in contrast to declarative functionality, which tells the computer "what" based on associations and relationships of fields or data. Declarative association is used here. The structures and methods described herein enable deployment of a reusable library that implements the functionality and allows the application programmer to use the functionality by simply writing a dialog description. A dialog control element can be used to associate object properties with controls recursively whereby properties can contain objects which contain further properties. Application No: 11/586930 The ability to duplicate and store the contens of a storage device is an important feature in many storage systems. In some storage systems, data is stored in parallel to safeguard against the failure of a single storage device or medium, allowing users to recover a prior version of inadvertently edited or erased data. In an effort to become more efficient and mitigate costs, storage systems and storage software products provide ways to make “point-in-time” copies of disk volumes, sometimes referred to as “snapshots”. Copies can be made quickly without significantly disturbing applications using disk volumes. Further, copies can be made to share storage instead of copying all the disk volume data. Storage systems that create snapshots are limited in the number of snapshots that can be created under a single Logical Disk, all of which need to have the same RAID type. This application discloses methods, apparatus, and systems for managing snapshots in storage systems by logically linking a plurality of snapshots to a Logical Disk in a storage network and then splitting the snapshots from the Logical Disk to form a snapshot tree that includes the snapshots split from the Logical Disk. Application No: 11/553444 Memory allocation systems receive requests for memory and assign blocks of memory to satisfy the requests. One memory allocation system is the buddy system. In a buddy system, memory is divided into pairs of equally-sized blocks, called buddies, of certain permitted sizes. The buddy system memory allocator also maintains free block lists for each size of block. If a request cannot be fulfilled from one of the free block lists, then a larger block is split and one piece fulfills the request and the other gets placed on a free block list. Blocks can also be joined, merged, or coalesced. External memory fragmentation occurs when the buddy system memory allocator divides large memory blocks to satisfy memory requests and leaves many smaller blocks unallocated. The small blocks may be too small to satisfy further requests and therefore can acculumulate over time which causes performance problems. This is typically addressed by only allocating blocks of a particular size or classifying memory requests based on the length of time the memory will be used. These solutions do not fully solve the fragmentation problem. This application proposes an enahnced and/or modified buddy system memory allocator to manage memory allocation by indexing, processing, and assigning blocks. If the modified buddy system memory allocator does not locate a single memory block that is greater than or equal to the size of the request, the modified system determines whether the available memory blocks comprise a plurality of contiguous, differently-sized memory blocks that collectively add up to a size that would satisfy a larger memory request. This leads to a better utilization of memory and reduces fragmentation. Application No: 11/868675 Storage Area Networks (SANs) are computer systems in which large mass storages such as Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) devices are connected to a central processor or processors via high-speed network technology. SAN’s are increasingly used to store vast amounts of information and their usage has grown exponentially with the rise of the Internet. The application relates to a method of fast writing operations to a mirrored volume in a volume manager. This includes implementing, at one end, a virtualizer capable of sending and receiving commands and messages, and at the other end, a SAN including an initiator and a plurality of mirrored storages. The initiator sends a write command to the virtualizer who in turn sends the write command to the mirrored storages. Upon receiving a transfer ready message from the first of the plurality of mirrored storages, the virtualizer relays the message to the initiator. The initiator then sends to the virtualizer a data message to be sent once a transfer ready message has been received from each of the plurality of mirrored storages. Application No: 11/585497 Communications networks consist of nodes. The typical computer-based graphical user interface (GUI) shows individual nodes. As the network grows, it becomes more difficult to visually keep track of the nodes. This application describes a way for users to group nodes based on metrics or characteristics of the network nodes. Icons representing each group are then displayed in a GUI. This allows the user to view much wider swaths of the network at once. The grouped nodes can be used to analyze and modify various operational or administrative tasks, resulting in greater efficiencies. The system can monitor and modify the groups by comparing nodes to each other or to the group. Records are then stored in a variety of described ways. Application No: 11/585017 In certain computer processing systems there are workloads (jobs) that have long processing times and certain jobs that process quickly. Since the short running jobs are those upon which humans are typically waiting, it enhances productivity if the quick processing jobs are handled separately from those that take longer. One prior solution to this problem is for the user to establish separate queues for short running and long running jobs. This works if the jobs are correctly entered but leaves significant room for abuse or simple mistakes and limits the pool of running jobs to a set ratio of short to long, which may need to change over time. Another solution is to only run long jobs at night, reserving the computer system for short jobs during the day, but leaves computer resources unused if the short jobs do not use up all of the CPU (or other resource) capacity. The application describes a system and method of expediting certain jobs in a computer processing system. Short processing times are given preference over jobs requiring longer processing time by processing to completion all jobs for the first N seconds of the job. Jobs requiring longer than N seconds to complete are given a lower priority than a newly arriving job can and continue being processed, but are subject to reduction in resources by new jobs as each new job arrives. Application No: 11/585007 Computers store information in memory in a variety of ways. Random Access Memory (RAM) is fast, accessible, and volatile, which means that the information is retained only as long as power is supplied. On the other hand, non-volatile storage retains its contents without requiring a power supply but takes longer to access. One type of non-volatile memory is Flash memory, which is programmed in blocks ("block-accessible"). Flash memory is popular in portable devices. This application describes the creation of a particular relationship between the non-volatile memory and RAM. New information from RAM is periodically compared to the non-volatile memory and added. In order to reduce the inconvenience of the slow response time of non-volatile storage, it has been proposed to provide non-volatile storage devices, including flash memory, with a RAM cache. The application discusses the logic, configuration, manipulation and physical implementation of this process. Application No: 11/856562 Some network protocols, such as certain versions of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), allow for the transparent use of compression and encoding algorithms in sessions between a client and server. Because certain data, such as web pages, tend to compress well, the use of compression may significantly improve network performance, while the use of encoding (e.g., in encryption algorithms) is important in maintaining security. As a result, current network security devices, such as intrusion protection systems (IPSs) face the problem that a server can send malicious traffic compressed and /or encoded to a “victim” client. Writers of such malicious content can exploit the fact that many IPS devices cannot inspect encoded or compressed HTTP sessions. In order to inspect such traffic, an ISP would have to first decompress/decode the traffic for inspection, which may not be feasible at high speeds. The invention relates to enhanced server to client session inspection. A client request is modified in an effort to prevent the transformation (encoding/compression) of data by the server in order that unencoded data may be received, which can then be inspected without the overhead associated with having to decode the data first. Further, in the event the data is encoded despite modifying the client request to prevent such encoding, the server may be untrustworthy and one or more appropriate actions may be taken. Application No: 11/987138 Many people today use handheld devices to organize their busy schedule, get information from the internet and communicate with their friends. A problem with handheld devices is their high costs. Advertisers today enjoy exposure on two “screens”: the TV screen and the computer screen. Advertisers are eager to extend their coverage to the third “screen”: the display of handheld devices. The invention relates to prompting users of computing devices on a scheduled basis and taking actions based on the user’s responses to the prompts. The invention further relates to playing media files on computing devices. Application No: 11/531430 For many generations IBM has used glass ceramic interconnection modules in its manufacture and design of large computer systems. These modules have many layers of connections which are used to provide bus connections from chip to chip and from the chips to the hoards and cards they are connected to. Manufacturing defects could be resolved in one of two ways: the defective connection could be re-routed, which required a unique fix for each connection failure, or the module could be scrapped as unfixable. In recent generations IBM has been using the Elastic Interface, bus connections which are high speed interfaces that have clock sent with data. While faster, the net topology of the EI increased the difficulty of a re-work solution or made it impossible, increasing the number of modules that needed to be scraped as unusable. This application discloses a system and method to support use of bus spare wires in connection modules. In a computer system with multiple chips connected via a connection module with high speed elastic interface buses that support bus repair is enhanced by use of a spare net. Support is provided to ensure that the spare net can be tested in the same way that every normal bus net can be tested at all supported environments, further ensuring that the system controller can find out what connections are bad and how to apply the controls to repair them for all tests and in the field for the customer. Application No: 11/534747 Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) are used for acquiring, storing and transmitting medical data obtained from technologies like ultrasound, x-ray or PET images. The medical data is typically attached to object identification data for the purpose of associating the medical data with the patient. A medical professional may add a secondary set of data including dictation reports or voice annotations. The use of the medical data is important in research but there is a concern for protecting the privacy of the patient. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act contains privacy rules but allows for certain entities to “de identify” the object data such that the medical data may be used freely. Current methods for “de identifying” the medical data are not able to provide a masking for the secondary set of data that may comprise identification details of the patient. This application describes a method of “de identifying” medical data by filtering the medical data and secondary set of data and replacing confidential data with standard characters. Application No: 11/618289 Internet search engines serve a valuable function by collecting data accessible throughout the internet and presenting the data in a form available for convenient search by the public. Frequently, in order to make search results more useful, internet search engines present excerpts of content from websites in their search results which may include text excerpts surrounding the search term and/or thumbnail images. Underlying data for search engines frequently comes from programs known as “web crawlers”. The operator of a website can exclude specific search engineers from searching the website by editing a file named robots.txt. However, many website operations would like having search engines trawl their websites but not to reproduce content in the search results. The protocol of the robots.txt file does not permit control of what content search engineers may reproduce in their search results. This application relates to an invention of using flags associated with the content to provide an authority level for copying and subsequent reproduction of a portion or all of the associated content. Also disclosed are methods of granting and licensing permission for copying and reproduction of content from a website. Application No: 11/468863 A social network consists of individuals and their relationships to other individuals. Two individuals in a social network may have a direct relationship and may also have indirect relationships. For example, if Tom and Mary both have a direct relationship with Jim they have an indirect relationship to each other. The number of relationships between two individuals is commonly referred to as their “degree of separation”. For example, Tom and Mary have two degrees of separation. Because social networks can have thousands of individuals social networks can be very complex. Luckily, much of a person’s direct relationships can be derived from data stored by computer system such as contact lists for e-mail programs, instant messaging programs, event organizing programs, or so on. This application relates to a method and system for recommending potential contacts who are related to the user through no more than a maximum degree of separation. The system identifies the user’s contacts and then identifies contacts of those contacts until the maximum degree of separation is reached. The system then may rank the contacts based on contact paths and may also filter out identified users who do not satisfy a recommendation criterion. The user can then decide whether to add the presented users as one of their contacts. Application No: 11/470580 A typical storage area network (SAN) comprises multiple entities such as hosts, storage subsystems, host bus adapters, storage volumes, and ports. Storage infrastructure management (SIM) software may be used to manage such complex SANs comprising equipment from multiple vendors. There is a need for systems and methods to detect missing elements in a storage network with multiple sources of information. This application discloses a detectability service for a SIM operating on a SAN directed to addressing a situation where there may be multiple sources of duplicate or contradictory information to the SIM about the presence and condition of an element in the SAN. Application No: 11/834333 Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems. While Unicode allows interoperation between applications and character streams form many different sources, it comes at some cost in processing efficiency such as requiring additional hardware to achieve desired throughput, additional energy consumption in carrying out an application on a particular character stream, and/or additional execution time for an application to complete processing. Although the evolution of character encoding has now likely reached a point of long term stability through the Unicode standard, processor architectures are continuing to evolve. In particular recent years have seen an increasing mismatch between processor capabilities and processor requirements. Processors have also developed sophisticated instruction and data caching facilities for increasing throughput. This application discloses a method and apparatus for an inductive doubling architecture that solves problems associated with processing data streams. Application No: 11/505223 This application deals with two types of data used in a computer network, “operational data” and “enterprise data”. Operational data is data generated during the normal course of operation of a computer network. Enterprise data is data maintained for administrative aspects of an enterprise that is independent of the operation of the system. In existing computer security applications, these two types of data are treated separately. This application relates to techniques for correlating these two types of information to build new security mechanisms that leverage both operational data and enterprise data. Application No: 11/619501 Healthcare facilities use information systems to access patient information for scheduling, diagnosis, treatment, or other tasks. Separate, kiosks and other workstations allow patients to check-in to healthcare facilities without going to front-desk personnel. The problem is that the healthcare information systems need to be updated with kiosk information to be kept up-to-date. Prior solutions have used separate kiosk interfaces and third party updating systems. These solutions have not had been able to update the information systems in real-time, transmissions were limited by kiosk interface record definitions, and if the interface engine were down or otherwise unavailable the kiosks would not work. This application relates to a system and method for integrating a patient kiosk with a healthcare information system using a Web service to communicate between the kiosk system and the healthcare information system. Application No: 11/493046 Power consumption is a growing problem for today’s servers. It is desirable to reduce the power consumption of a server to as low a level as possible, while maintaining maximum performance. In addition to saving on electricity costs, which for a large server farm could be considerable, reducing power consumption also lowers the amount of internal heat generated by the servers. The heat generated by a server reduces that server’s reliability and places more stress on internal circuitry. Current computer processors contain logic to lower clock speed and thus power consumption on demand. Power consumption can be resolved through offline configuration of the processors to maintain a desired power state. This process is simple but not desirable because it requires the server to be taken out of use temporarily. The application discloses a method of remotely controlling the power consumption of one or more servers by providing remote control to an administrator over the server’s power state. This is accomplished by building an instruction command that can be transported over a data network from an administration terminal to one or more servers that are capable of interpreting and executing the command without powering down. Application No: 11/834494 In general, high-speed text processing uses sequential, character-at-a-time (or byte-at-at-time) processing. However, processor architectures have evolved to be capable of dealing with a number of characters or code units at a time. This application relates to processing XML character steams into parallel bit streams and processing the parallel bits streams together with the character stream. Application No: 11/881893 In enterprise computer networks, it is often necessary to translate information represented in a database or directory service from one format to another. A typical directory service consists of one or more server computers hosting instances of directory server software. In order to provide an anticipated level of availability or performance from the directory service when deployed on server computer hardware and directory server software with limits in anticipated uptime and performance, the directory service will often have a replicated topology. In certain situations, the deployment might incorporate multiple distinct implementations of directory servers that are not based on the same protocols. The application describes a system and method for ontology-based translation between directory schemas. It relates to an information processing system comprising a translation from a directory or individuals input source to a state database containing a resource description framework (RDF) consisting of three fields. The subject resource identifier, predicate, and object fields (together called a “triple”) of the RDF in the state database are mapped from one ontology class to another, and a translation from the triples in the state database to a directory or individuals output sink. Application No: 11/485101 Publication No: 20080016013Publication Date: January 17, 2008 Takedown Date: May 8, 2008 Inventor Name:Rajesh Venkat Subbu; Stefano Romoli Bonissone Assignee: GE Title: System and method for implementing a multi objective evolutionary algorithm on a programmable logic hardware device Evolutionary algorithms operate on a population of potential solutions to a problem by applying the principle of survival of the fittest to produce better solutions. At each generation, a new set of solutions is created by the process of selecting solutions according to their level of fitness in the problem-solving task and breeding them together using genetic operators. This process leads to the evolution of populations of solutions that are better suited to their problem-solving task. Since evolutionary algorithms work with a population of solutions, significant computational speed-ups may be achieved by parallelizing the fitness computation or using distributed evolutionary computing techniques on a decomposed problem. However, for the efficient execution of applications requiring high-frequency multi-objective optimization constrained by the size of the computational unit, it would be desirable to develop a multi-objective evolutionary technique that enables high optimization speed-ups with a small computational footprint. This invention describes a system for implementing a multi objective evolutionary algorithm on a programmable hardware device which addresses that need. Application No: 11/489337 Digital photography has stimulated the desire of photography enthusiasts to be able to produce images with different types of special effects applied to the images. The invention relates to image manipulation such that a reflected version of an input image is generated, thereby creating a kaleidoscopic effect. The application discloses a method for achieving this effect by selecting a first center point for a first portion of an image, copying the first portion to a buffer, and inverting the copied first portion about a first edge. The method can be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination of hardware and software. Application No: 11/457457 Integrated circuits are becoming increasingly more complex as devices and supporting logic are integrated onto a single chip. As the levels of device integration on a single chip increase so do the manufacturing costs. Accordingly, it is desirable to identify product defects as early in the manufacturing process as possible. Typically, multiple independent built-in self-test (BIST) runs are needed to verify the internal logic of multiple functional packages of an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). Because complex circuits contain a variety of embedded cores there is a need for a controller to run BIST on the entire chip or only on selected ports of the complex circuit. This invention describes a programmable controller that allows software to selectively run BIST on different ports of the complex circuit and examine the results. The programmable BIST controller is implemented to execute selected BIST operations, wherein software may choose to either enable or disable running of a particular BIST operation. Application No: 11/425398 The use of pipelined resources in an SMP computer creates various timing/floor planning issues. To solve these issues, pipelines are often replicated and partitioned by using address/data steering techniques and parallel pipelines. Normally, these pipelines each use dedicated resources and the arbitration can occur independently within a pipeline. However, there are instances when multiple pipelines need to share common resources. Common resource sharing is currently accomplished in two ways. First, using an added shared queue to the common resources and having operations which exit each of the existing pipelines to be queued for the common resource. This can cost considerable queuing resources when both pipelines each need the common resource for many consecutive cycles and the logic to handle the process can be complex. Second, is to build extra arbitration into the top of each pipeline to avoid the case where more than one pipeline can contend for the same common resource. This can hurt timing on all requests to the pipelines causing a negative impact to performance. This invention eliminates the problems with the methods above by utilizing a post-arbitration reject step in each pipeline. Whenever there is a resource conflict within a pipeline after arbitration, a reject is issued to re-queue the request that had a conflict. Once the resource is free, the request can vie for priority back into the pipeline. Application No: 11/472929 Increasingly, people are required to remember passwords in order to access computer services. For some security applications, for example, it is desirable to have encryption keys as large as 128 bits or more. For many people, such random passwords are hard to remember, and typically the user will write the passwords down somewhere or otherwise store the passwords, compromising the security of the password. Current solutions assign one or more English code words to each bit pattern of a fixed number of bits. While this is easier to memorize than a 128 bit key, the generated mnemonic is still a random word sequence where the words have no relationship to each other. The application describes a method for generating mnemonic random passcodes comprised of choosing a schema to guide the generation of the word sequence and then transforming the passcode into the word sequence using the schema. Application No: 11/451751 The physical memory of a computing system is usually divided into physical pages. In computing systems that employ a virtual memory management scheme, some of the physical pages are mapped into the system kernel's virtual memory address space. Furthermore, a computing system may comprise multiple system boards, each board having its own range of physical memory addresses. A large computing system may be logically divided into multiple separate domains with separate functions (i.e. one domain to run a web server, another to run a database, etc.), each of which might be allocated one or more system boards. It is sometimes desirable to change the allocation of system boards. Reallocating the system boards entails relocating the data stored on that system board's physical pages to another system board's physical pages, a time consuming and complicated process. Because of the likelihood that system boards in a large computing system will be reallocated from time to time, all kernel pages are confined to a limited subset of all of the system boards. However, this limited subset of system boards containing kernel pages are often subject to heavy contention and thus the overall performance of the entire computing system may be degraded. The application describes a technique for relocating the contents of kernel pages, whereby kernel pages may be distributed among all computing system boards Application No: 11/421724 Videoconferencing and other forms of virtual collaboration allow the real-time exchange of video, audio, and other data among systems in remote locations. Typically this occurs over a computer network in the form of streaming video and audio data. Many systems can establish media streams at the beginning of an event, but cannot transition smoothly to new configurations as various systems enter or leave an event. While numerous methods have been devised to connect systems with identical or substantially compatible capabilities, managing events involving systems with differing capabilities is substantially more difficult. Application No: 11/497886 Videoconferencing and other forms of virtual collaboration allow the real-time exchange of video, audio, and other data among systems in remote locations. Typically this occurs over a computer network in the form of streaming video and audio data. Many systems can establish media streams at the beginning of an event, but cannot transition smoothly to new configurations as various systems enter or leave an event. While numerous methods have been devised to connect systems with identical or substantially compatible capabilities, managing events involving systems with differing capabilities is substantially more difficult. As current virtual collaboration systems do not adequately support systems with varying levels of functionality or allow dynamic reconfiguration of participating systems without interruption of an event in progress, the application describes a system and method for managing virtual collaboration systems. This includes a communication network coupled to a plurality of nodes and a gateway subsystem, with the gateway subsystem in turn coupled to a management subsystem. The management system is configured to dynamically manage the topology of a virtual collaborative event based on the node signals. Application No: 11/443154 A computer network may comprise hundreds or thousands of interconnected devices such as routers, switches, and end-nodes that may include computers, servers, and printers. Because of the sheer number of end-nodes, it is an end-node that typically causes network problems due to faulty hardware, virus infestation, and/or too much traffic due to the uploading or downloading of files over the network. The application describes a method and apparatus for determining the switch port to which an end-node device is connected. This would allow a user to receive an address for the end-node being used and discover a switching device that forwards traffic only to the selected end-node. Application No: 11/321022 Computer processing units (CPUs) are fed instructions in order to perform an operation. Typically, the instruction tells the CPU to read data and then manipulate the data in order to reach an outcome. However, the instruction rarely contains the actual data that the CPU needs. Rather, it contains an address, or "pointer" to the relevant data. Modern CPUs implement a technique called instruction pipelining that is similar to an assembly line. In simplified terms, one CPU sub-unit might decode the pointer, with the next sub-unit fetching the data, and finally one sub-unit might perform the operation. Instead of merely pipelining the instructions, vector processors also pipeline the necessary data. Thus, instead of having to decode every address that holds relevant data, the vector processor knows from the instruction that there is a series of addresses holding relevant data and it can then accurately predict what the next address will be. While the pipelining of instructions and data can provide significant time-savings, vector processors are designed to have a specific data width and if the execution data path does not match a maximum vector length, micro operations contained within the instructions may be ported to code using a shorter data length, causing the code to run slower. The patent application discloses a method for a Vector length tracking mechanism whereby a vector length tracker receives a value and then establishes a vector length for subsequent micro-operations to be executed corresponding to the value. Application No: 11/437223 A computer network may connect many devices such as desktop computers, printers, web servers, routers, databases, and laptops. In a large networked environment these devices are routinely being connected and disconnected. In such an environment it is difficult to accurately know what software may be loaded on each device and what devices are connected to the network at any given moment. A large networked environment may create a risk of having networked devices connected without the knowledge or permission of network managers. Unauthorized networked devices may contain viruses, lack proper virus protection, or may be used for unauthorized capture of network traffic. A need has arisen for network managers to be updated about unauthorized networked devices within the shortest amount of time and what software may be loaded on each network device. This application describes a system and method to dynamically scan a network to discover unauthorized devices. It uses a first network scanner and a second network scanner wherein a new network address is identified by the second network scanner but not the first network scanner. Application No: 11/419690 Manufacturing applications are used for controlling and monitoring processes. The typical user interface environments for these applications utilize a graphical tree control to organize and present data to a user. The user selects an item of interest from the graphical tree similar to a folder system in which all items have parent and child objects forming branches that can be expanded and collapsed to view or hide features for selection. Tree control software systems then present menus within the selected item for selecting an operation. There are many problems with a tree control system user interface for these applications. Accordingly, a need exists for a new user interface incorporating a paradigm which enhances the overall user experience. This application describes a user interface for manufacturing applications that employs a paradigm having a single progression for displaying manufacturing system information regardless of the functional point of view of the user. The user interface simplifies the navigation to particular items of interest and provides components that allow immediate and visible access to the operations that can be performed on the selected items. Application No: 11/437223 A computer network may connect many devices such as desktop computers, printers, web servers, routers, databases, and laptops. In a large networked environment these devices are routinely being connected and disconnected. In such an environment it is difficult to accurately know what software may be loaded on each device and what devices are connected to the network at any given moment. A large networked environment may create a risk of having networked devices connected without the knowledge or permission of network managers. Unauthorized networked devices may contain viruses, lack proper virus protection, or may be used for unauthorized capture of network traffic. A need has arisen for network managers to be updated about unauthorized networked devices within the shortest amount of time and what software may be loaded on each network device. This application describes a system and method to dynamically scan a network to discover unauthorized devices. It uses a first network scanner and a second network scanner wherein a new network address is identified by the second network scanner but not the first network scanner. Application No: 11/419690 Manufacturing applications are used for controlling and monitoring processes. The typical user interface environments for these applications utilize a graphical tree control to organize and present data to a user. The user selects an item of interest from the graphical tree similar to a folder system in which all items have parent and child objects forming branches that can be expanded and collapsed to view or hide features for selection. Tree control software systems then present menus within the selected item for selecting an operation. There are many problems with a tree control system user interface for these applications. Accordingly, a need exists for a new user interface incorporating a paradigm which enhances the overall user experience. This application describes a user interface for manufacturing applications that employs a paradigm having a single progression for displaying manufacturing system information regardless of the functional point of view of the user. The user interface simplifies the navigation to particular items of interest and provides components that allow immediate and visible access to the operations that can be performed on the selected items. Application No: 11/382364 Enterprise computing refers to the networks and computing systems used in large, often widely dispersed, corporations. Enterprise computing monitoring relates to the monitoring of the different, granular components of an enterprise computing environment. They are typically organized in a hierarchical fashion, with sensors distributed throughout the network. The sensors relay monitored events that can be interpreted, translated, and provided to interacting administrators in order to facilitate the management of the enterprise computing. Due to the complexity and magnitude of many enterprise computing systems, plainly reporting every event arising in hierarchy can result in an event flood that can quickly overwhelm the monitoring system. Because capturing every event stemming from a root cause is not as helpful as correcting the root cause, the focus is on resolving the root cause as that invariably leads to resolution of all other resulting events. The application describes a method, system, and computer program product for detecting event correlation rules in an enterprise computing monitoring system. This includes determining temporal proximity of events and frequency of occurrence, as well as reporting causal relationships of events. Application No: 11/416647 Computer systems and electronic devices, such as microprocessors, may contain timer circuits to maintain a running numerical count for use by other logic or devices. For example, the timer can be used to count time between events or maintain a real-time clock. On occasion, a timer may need to be updated with a new value by a user or computer program. A known method of updating a timer is by first reading the current timer value, storing it, loading a new timer value, and then programming the new timer value into the timer. The problem is that these operations take time to perform. Therefore, some time may pass between the first operation and when the new timer value is finally programmed into the timer. This creates a difference between the “real time” and the time reflected by the timer. Each timer update increases the difference between real time and the timer value. This can cause problems for programs or processes running on the computer. This application describes a technique to modify a timer without the timer advancing by a significant amount. In one embodiment, the time corresponding to the amount the timer increments (decrements) may be added (subtracted) to (from) the update timer value to compensate for elapsed time during the update process. In other embodiments, the number of operations used to update the timer is reduced in order to reduce the elapsed time during the update process. Application No: 11/380939 Wind turbines for wind power generation are typically grouped in large numbers referred to as wind-farms. Large wind-farms can comprise wind turbines numbering in the hundreds. Within each wind turbine are a number of possible devices including controllers and sensors. Typically, wind-farms have a centralized control unit connected to a local area network of wind turbines to allow for monitor and control of the entire wind-farm. Each device connected to the wind-farm network requires an IP address in order to communicate on the network using internet protocol. In addition, the central control unit needs to be able to uniquely identify each device in this network. A unique identification is lost using dynamic address assignment. For this reason, network settings in a wind-farm network are done manually. This is extremely time consuming, labor intensive, and prone to error. This application describes a method of automatic configuration of a local wind-farm network. The method operates by automatically assigning an IP address to a device connected to the network, automatically receiving an identifier tag from the device, and relating that automatically assigned IP address to a specific device using the identifier tag. Application No: 11/739021 The claimed invention is directed toward improving the security of protected assets, particularly assets protected with a password system, including personal identification numbers. In spite of the many efforts made to increase the security of password-accessible systems, there remains a need to provide more flexible convenient systems in which users can configure security rules for access to secured assets. The application describes a security system for protecting assets, including a password-based security system that can provide different levels of access responsive to entry of a primary or secondary password. In some versions, user-configurable security rules can provide customized responses to entry of primary or secondary passwords including feigned or limited access, security alerts, etc. Passwords comprising overt and covert components can be used to provide enhanced security and improved user control over system response. Improved security systems involving transactions between multiple parties are also considered, with options for user-customized security rules including primary and secondary passwords, and reverse challenge and response methods. Systems for Limited Use Credentials are also disclosed to reduce the risk of identity theft. Application No: 11/405994 In computer applications that access data in a streaming fashion it is often desirable to estimate the sortedness of the data steam. Sortedness being the number of operations required to place the elements in the data steam in a sorted order. An estimation of sortedness may be useful in data steams corresponding to network routing or when comparing very long rankings (i.e. ordered lists of distinct items). However, it is difficult to estimate sortedness in a feasible manner without having to scan the data steam more than once and/or without having to actually sort the entire sequence. Therefore, there is a need for a method that requires only one pass over a sequence of data elements and adequately samples data elements from the sequence to allow for an estimation of sortedness. This application describes a method of scanning in a data stream once in order to obtain uniform data samples from selected intervals and using the obtained data samples to estimate the degree of sortedness of that data steam. Specifically, multiple samples are randomly selected for storage in one or more data buckets. Those samples are then randomly obtained from the bucket(s). Each sample is associated with a specified interval immediately prior to a selected point in time. The balance of probabilities between selection of elements stored in the bucket and the selection of elements included in the samples allows that elements scanned during the specified interval are included in the sample with equal probability. These multiple data samples are then used to estimate the degree of sortedness of the data stream. Application No: 11/393198 The ability to drag-and-drop objects in a user interface has been around for some time. It does however have shortcomings. When dragging an object to a drop target in a remote part of the interface, a user can often expect to make multiple gestures with the mouse or touchpad to get to the desired location. Similarly, if the drop target is in a part of a list that is offscreen, the user must wait and hold the object while the list scrolls to the target. The claimed invention provides mechanisms for improving the usability of drag-and-drop functionality. The application provides methods and apparatus for manipulating objects in a user interface. After a user selects an object to move, at least one additional interface object, representing a drop target with which the selected object may be associated, is presented in the user interface in proximity to the selected object. Application No: 11/395232 Crossbar arrays have been used in a number of applications, primarily in information storage and retrieval. While there has been some development in using crossbar topology to replicate the functions of the basic logical units (AND, OR, NAND, etc.) as used in conventional arithmetic logic units, the claimed invention uses a different approach to provide a new level of computational power. The application provides for a crossbar arithmetic processor combining a crossbar array with a programming unit, an input unit, and a post procession unit. The programming unit sets the conductive states of the crossbars, which are preferably controlled through rectification layers between layers of the crossbar array. The input unit provides a bit pattern of input numerical values to the columns while the post-processing unit converts analog signals output from the rows of the crossbar array into digital output bit patterns that are further processed into an output numerical value. The end product is an arithmetic sum or product based on the programmed and input numerical values. Application No: 20070234286 Thunking describes any variety of process by which a first process executing a first set of machine executable instructions compiled with specific parameter (platform type, word size, bit-value, etc.) is able to successfully make a function call to another set of machine executable instructions compiled for another set of parameters. In general, thunking involves a translation of function calls, function call parameters, and/or return parameters between at least two processes compiled for differing specifications. When a process makes a function call to another process being executed by a virtual machine, the virtual machine will copy calling parameters from the initial process. The calling parameters in many cases will be actual data needed by the virtual machine in order to complete the request. In other cases, the calling parameters may be pointers to data. An increasingly common trend (as in the Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology) has the processor send either actual data or data pointers based on the size of the data structure being sent. Currently, virtual machines have no way of knowing whether the passed data structure is actual data or a pointer to data and thus the virtual machine cannot successfully implement the necessary thunking. The application describes methods and apparatus to implement annotation based thunking. The process sends as call paramaters, based upon a predetermined threshold, either data or a data pointer and adds to the data structure an annotation record to allow the process receiving the function call to complete the request. Application No: 11/389579 The application provides for a system that selectively executes different versions of executable code for the same source code. The system receives an executable code module containing two or more versions of executable code, each optimized for a different condition. Upon receiving the executable code module, the system administers and evaluates a test condition. After evaluating the test condition, the system executes the version of executable code that is optimized for the test condition. Application No: 11/388524 Companies looking to reduce the high cost of data storage often aggregate data onto shared virtualized storage systems thereby reducing infrastructure and management overhead of storage systems. However, the aggregation of data onto shared virtualized storage systems can lead to unexpected interference between applications using the same storage device. Therefore, a virtualized storage system must provide assurance that the behavior of one application does not interfere with the performance of other applications. Conventional storage systems manage resources according to specification of reserves and limits. Virtualized storage systems manage resources in pools and sessions. A pool represents the virtual entity composed of reserve and limit resources used by an application. Within each pool, each application may subdivide into sessions. The problem of managing I/O performance resources can be divided into the problems of (1) how to specify allocations for pools and sessions and (2) how to deliver on those allocations. There are existing approaches to resource management which enforce fair sharing between applications and enforce reserves and limits; however, there is a need for a performance resource management system that further prioritizes applications based on deadlines. This application relates to an invention that satisfies this need, and presents a system, a service, a computer program product, and an associated method for managing storage system performance as a resource.
Application Number: 11/389857 Clinical decision support systems provide assistance to physicians and other healthcare providers in making decisions regarding diagnosis and/or treatment of a patient. In order to provide valuable assistance, a clinical decision support system must utilize relevant medical evidence about a patient. Medical evidence, such as, patient medical histories, imaging data, test results, allergies, and other reports, can be stored on various electronic medical systems which may be located in more than one geographic location. With current clinical decision support systems, the healthcare practitioner must manually seek out medical evidence to be used with the system. This application relates to a system, method, and set of instructions on a computer-readable medium used to search a plurality of medical evidence systems for medical evidence given a search parameter.
Application Number: 11/304021 The application discloses an invention that provides a displayable progress indicator for a program execution by a corresponding computing device. The progress indicator is updated to accurately reflect the progress of the program execution by the computing device. This invention discloses a method for updating and inserting a progress indicator of a multi-step program execution by a computing device. This method involves a computation for each step of the multi-step program based on a completion time baseline for each step of the multi-step program. The method would apply to any multi-step application or operating system program that is executable in steps by any type of computing device. The progress indicator can have any form including the form of a progress bar.
Application Number: 11/276483 Computers browsing internet sites are often exploited by the sites they visit. Internet sites can either perform actions not requested by the visiting computer or even trick the user into performing an un-intended action. A typical example of such an exploit is the installation of malware. This application relates to a system/method used to actively explore sites on a network and detect if a site is capable of accomplishing exploits on a machine. This “honey monkey system” detects malicious browser-based exploits by actively searching uniform resource locators (URL’s) on a network and uses a browser-based vulnerability detector to detect exploits.
Application Number: 11/353478 The application relates to a system for implementing synchronized objects in software transactional memory comprising one or more processors. It also provides for a memory comprising program instructions executable by the processor in order to implement a transactional-memory manager that is configured to coordinate memory access requests directed at the memory from a plurality of transactions.
Application Number: 11/276178 The application describes a method for operating a gateway for wireless mobile clients in a messaging system, a core messaging system, and at least one gateway process or gateway acting as a proxy on behalf of the clients. Application Number: 11/333019 The application describes a system of security management for software applications associated with multiple user registries that includes an integrated console configured to host one or more applications or resource objects in corresponding realms. Application Number: 11/342055 Many data management systems are implemented as a single centralized application, which users access via the world wide web. Advantageously, this implementation minimizes a burdensome need to provide individualized application service, maintenance, and upgrading at local levels. If, however, an application server, web server, or the like associated with a centralized application needs to be restarted for some reason, then it is likely that at least some of its users may endure information and data loss or session termination, which are undesirable, inconvenient, and commonly require users to re-log into the application in order to continue use. This application describes a system and method whereby information is still stored on an external database but is retrieved into a memory associated with a server. The user is then able to access the memory through an interface. Users are able to maintain user sessions and prevent information and data loss or session termination resulting from service interruptions to a data management system. Application Number: 11/312201 Many computer systems involved in mission critical activities (such as banking, telecom, and stock markets) depend upon a high level of computer reliability. In order to achieve reliable, fault- tolerant computing, many computer systems utilize multiple processors. Processors operate at core voltages set by the manufacturer. When multiple processors are used, the resulting nondeterministic behavior can lead to system failures. This application describes a method, apparatus, and system for tuning core voltages of processors in order to avoid failures. Application Number: 10/548823 Complex systems use a multitude of processes, which are linked to one another, making it very difficult to predict the influence of changes of individual links and parameters on the behavior of the complete system. Since the number of influencing variables increases exponentially with the size of a manufacturing process, company, or project, one may not be able to distinguish relevant from non-relevant variables. Currently, models are directed to a certain, current system condition, which permits an evaluation of current or past characteristic values for assessing the system performance and there exists no possibility of comparing different systems with one another. This application describes a method, a data-processing system and a computer program for the comparison of models of a complex system. Application Number: 11/329801 This application describes a system whereby local workstations provide screen update data, which is received by a remote console that is enabled to display the data from at least two of the local workstations simultaneously as well as interface with the local workstations. The invention relates to the simultaneous observation and/or operation of a plurality of workstations by remote console. The invention has application to a number of fields, such as providing support for medical imaging systems. Rather than retaining a technician that is able to travel to each medical imaging system that needs support, a remote service technician may access the imaging system to perform diagnostic routines, configure imaging settings, and train local personnel to use the system. Previous remote observation systems allow a single connection between the local operator and the remote console resulting in a 1:1 ratio of training personnel to trainees. Hence, when a new tool or interface is released a trainer may have to repeat the same training for many different operators, which is time-consuming and expensive. Application Number: 11/329773 This application describes a cipher method for verifying a decryption of an encrypted user data key. It relates to methods for checking the validity of a decrypted user data key upon restore of encrypted user data in a manner that links the user data key and a key used to decrypt an encryption of the user data key. The invention is intended to meet the need for a secure and reliable method for verifying a correct decryption of the encrypted user data key in view of asymmetric key-based cipher methods. Application No: 11/329656 This application relates to the delivery of a device driver to an operating system without user intervention. While most computer platform operating systems are configured with device drivers for all devices installed in the computer platform when it was purchased or delivered, if a newer driver becomes available after the platform is delivered, the owner may need to download or install the driver from diskette, across a network, etc. This makes it difficult to execute an old operating system on a new computer platform because the operating system will generally not be configured with drivers for controlling all components of the new platform. Because there is no readily available method or scheme for automatically updating an old operating system with the drivers needed for a new computer platform (i.e. the driver was not available when the operating system was originally released), this application describes a method and apparatus whereby a device is identified for which a driver is needed during the boot phase of an operating system and the driver is then requested from a service processor of the computer platform, retrieved, and delivered to the operating system. Application Number: 11/296194 This application describes systems and methods for an off-line economy for digital media whereby media devices of buyer and seller perform secure off-line sales transactions that are recorded on the media device so that a percentage of the sale price can be applied to a copyright owner as well as the seller as an incentive. Thus, even resale of pirated media content benefits the copyright holder. This attempts to solve problems associated with both copyright holders who have been driven to seek their revenue on-line, which limits customers to purchasing media clips only when they are connected to the Internet, and the widespread phenomenon of file sharing, where content distribution is economically isolated from copyright holders. Application Number: 11/291378 This application describes methods and apparatus to identify memory communication by creating a stack tracker structure to store information that may be utilized to generate a distance value corresponding to a relative distance between a load instruction and a previous store instruction. The invention attempts to solve problems associated with memory renaming (MRn) which allows transformation of memory communication into register-register communication. MRn predicts which data will be renamed and instructions that source data that is predicted to be renamed can then source the data directly from the original producer instead of waiting for the data store to load memory communication. A correct prediction avoids load latency associated with accessing memory outside of the processor. When a prediction is incorrect, the processor state must be returned to a point prior to the misprediction and performance suffers. By generating a distance value between load instructions and store instructions, the invention attempts to minimize the number of incorrect predictions. Application Number: 11/304021 IBM's application describes an invention for optimizing the migration of a database by collecting details (parameters) about the source system and the target system in order to generate configuration information that can be used to fine tune the database's operation on the target system. This invention attempts to solve the problem presented by inconsistencies between the source and target systems that interfere with the migration of a database. Application Number: 11/301,399 This invention relates generally to a system for grouping and managing multiple process related variables for an industrial system. For example, when control room operators operating a power generation facility view processes associated with a system using a display type console, a large number of individual parameters are observed. These parameters are dynamic (or variable) and dependent upon aspects of the facility operations. Collectively, a certain set of variables is indicative of the status of the process. In operations parlance, each member of the set of variables is commonly referred to as a "tag." Evaluation of process status by viewing a set of tags can be confusing. This confusion can be exacerbated by the fact that a tag for one process can also relate to another process. This application claims an apparatus and a method for receiving operational data and displaying summaries of processes for an industrial system includes a block object to define blocks for defining aspects of variables related to the operational data as well as a display client for using the blocks to provide useful and concise summaries of the processes. Application Number: 11/286,554 This application relates to electronic computing, and more particularly to a computing system that implements user selectable management alert format. When a system manager remotely accesses or controls a computer system with devices attached to it, the devices may be able to alert the system manager of problems in a number of formats, with each format requiring a separate program to read the alert. For example, network interface cards (NICs) or other computing components may be operable in accord with the alert standard format (ASF) protocol or with the active management technology (AMT) protocol. In many instances, the devices may use common hardware, and the device is configured to operate in accordance with a specific management alert protocol though software or firmware installed onto the device. This application describes a system for improving efficiency of remote access by displaying to the user a list of formats available (as determined from the devices attached to the computer system being remotely accessed) and allowing the user to select a single format for all of the devices to use. Application Number: 11/290,893 Large number of accesses to datastores that retain information related to various business functions (i.e., business or medical records) can lead to degradation in the performance of an informational system. This application describes methods for improving datastore management information systems by enhancing the ability to process, store, and retrieve data quickly and more efficiently. The embodiments of this invention provide several methods and systems for managing an operational datastore and a staging area datastore. Application Number: 11/286,585 Prefetching in microprocessors can help to load instructions or data used by a processor ahead of when the instructions or data are actually needed, thereby improving performance. Performance suffers, however, if the prefetched data or instructions are later found not to be needed by the processor. At least one technique described in this patent application, enables numerous types of prefetch access patterns used by a processor to prefetch data and/or instructions, so as to help increase the number of prefetched data and/or instructions that are actually used by the processor during the course of program execution, while reducing the number of prefetched data and/or instructions that are not. Application Number: 11/164,393 The invention relates to techniques for increasing performance efficiencies of memory management. Existing physical memory allocation schemes result in fragmentation and cause inefficient re-use of physical memory. This in turn makes the computer system run slower. A solution is proposed which would enhance computer performance by making enhancements to the memory allocation routines. The method includes enabling a kernel to free memory in a physical memory space corresponding to memory allocations released by processes in a virtual memory space. After freeing the memory, the system determines whether freed physical memory in the physical memory space spans one or more fixed size memory units (e.g., page frames). The method further includes designating a status of the one or more page frames as available for reuse; the freed page frames marked as available for reuse being available for backing new processes without requiring the kernel to delete data included in the freed memory released by the process. According to the description of the invention, this is possible because “rather than recycling a page when no longer needed by a process, the kernel records the page as available for reuse…thus cutting overhead associated with recycling the available page.” |
|||||||
|
2.gif)
