Abstract: Methods and arrangements for facilitating and streamlining patch management in “road warrior” and analogous contexts. Particularly, there are broadly contemplated herein, in accordance with at least one presently preferred embodiment of the present invention, methods and arrangements for facilitating determinations of suitable times for enabling system updates and/or downloads.

Abstract: Load shedding schemes for mining data streams. A scoring function is used to rank the importance of stream elements, and those elements with high importance are investigated. In the context of not knowing the exact feature values of a data stream, the use of a Markov model is proposed herein for predicting the feature distribution of a data stream. Based on the predicted feature distribution, one can make classification decisions to maximize the expected benefits. In addition, there is proposed herein the employment of a quality of decision (QoD) metric to measure the level of uncertainty in decisions and to guide load shedding. A load shedding scheme such as presented herein assigns available resources to multiple data streams to maximize the quality of classification decisions. Furthermore, such a load shedding scheme is able to learn and adapt to changing data characteristics in the data streams.

Abstract: The disclosure relates to toy figures, corresponding play sets and play set accessories. In particular, the toy figures have a body portion comprising at least two articulated appendages and a magnetic base portion disposed at the bottom of the body portion, wherein the magnetic base portion has a distinct shape permitting the magnetic base portion to be detachably coupled with a recess of compatible shape. Additionally, corresponding play set and play set accessories can have magnetic, distinctly shaped recesses for receiving the particular distinctly shaped base of the toy figure. Thus, the magnetic base portion and the recess of a play set or play set accessory have essentially the same distinct shape.

Abstract: Systems and methods for easily and at high speed re-encrypting data recorded on a magnetic recording medium when the data is encrypted using an encryption key and the encryption key is changed. A track where effective user data is not recorded is set as a first reserved track, then data is read out from the first updating source track and decrypted using a first encryption key KEY 1, which is reencrypted using a second encryption key KEY 2 and recorded in the first reserved track, next, the first updating source track is set as a second reserved track, and a second updating source track is set, and the encryption key is updated by repeating these steps until all tracks to be subjected to the key updating processing have been subjected to the key updating processing.

Abstract: A power pack arrangement for a laptop computer, wherein an AC/DC adapter is integrated with a battery pack to form one cohesive unit freely insertable into and removable from a laptop computer housing.

Abstract: The provision of a mode in silver zinc batteries where a user can access extra capacity as an emergency reserve for times when extra capacity is needed. While this temporarily increases capacity, it does not detrimentally affect cycle life over the longer term, and it permits a silver zinc battery to essentially mimic the long term capacity and cycle life characteristics of a lithium ion battery while still affording inherent advantages associated with silver zinc batteries. In a variant embodiment, this ability to temporarily increase capacity is optimally employed at the end of a battery life cycle in a controlled “roll-off” that accords additional cycles of battery service life. In another variant embodiment, the general capability to control capacity is employed to gradually decrease the available capacity of a battery over the life of the battery, to thereby extend the battery service life.

Abstract: A system and method is provided for remotely controlling and interacting with a multimedia device using a mobile phone. This is accomplished by utilizing cell and mobile phones capable of establishing persistent Internet connections. A software application is provided for the mobile phone which receives inputs entered by a user on the mobile phone's keypad and translates the inputs into commands that are recognized by a multimedia device. For example, the multimedia device may be a television, set top box, or a digital video recorder such as a Tivo or ReplayTV. The software application transmits the data input by the user to the device, either directly, or through at least one central server. Mapping of the commands entered on the mobile phone into commands recognized by the remote device may occur on the phone, at a central server, or at the device itself.

Abstract: A protective casing structure of an electronic apparatus capable of keeping the apparatus compact and light is provided. A display-side block includes a display module and a display casing. The display casing is provided with frame edges at a periphery thereof, with projections formed on the frame edges. Grooves engaging with the projections are formed in a system casing. When the display-side block is closed, the projections engage with the grooves to increase rigidity against pressing from the outside in the closed state. The casing structure thereby increases the protective capability of the display module while keeping the apparatus compact and light.

Abstract: Novel methods and systems for the privacy preserving mining of string data with the use of simple template based models. Such template based models are effective in practice, and preserve important statistical characteristics of the strings such as intra-record distances. Discussed herein is the condensation model for anonymization of string data. Summary statistics are created for groups of strings, and use these statistics are used to generate pseudo-strings. It will be seen that the aggregate behavior of a new set of strings maintains key characteristics such as composition, the order of the intra-string distances, and the accuracy of data mining algorithms such as classification. The preservation of intra-string distances is a key goal in many string and biological applications which are deeply dependent upon the computation of such distances, while it can be shown that the accuracy of applications such as classification are not affected by the anonymization process.

Abstract: In the context of a notebook computer, multiple battery safety measures in the computer, battery pack, and individual battery cells. These battery packs include industry standard safety mechanisms as well as additional safeguards designed to increase safety. The additional safeguards can be categorized in the following ways. The first safeguard deals with multiple, independent levels of battery monitoring. The second safeguard employs abnormal condition detection methods. The third safeguard deals with improvements to mechanical and thermal design.

Abstract: Hypervisors are a new technology in the industry that enable multiple Operating Systems to co-exist on a single client. The use of a hypervisor provides a novel approach to email virus protection. The hypervisor is able to fire up an Operating System on demand, for a specific purpose, or have it running from the powering of the computer. A second Operating System can be provided as a donor Operating System that acts as a scratch area or scratch pad. Emails sent to the recipient are opened under the donor Operating System, or the “Scratch OS”. Once the email activities are complete, the “Scratch OS” can be discarded. Thus, any damage that may be caused by an email virus would be nil, and further the User Operating System would be undamaged. This method would be effective in precluding any damage that a virus may have done.

Abstract: The employment of cascading in connection with improving mixer isolation in a Gilbert mixer circuit. In this vein, there is broadly contemplated herein, inter alia, the provision of a mixer suitable for use in a direct-conversion radio receiver operating in the 57-64 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band. Such a receiver may be integrated along with a transmitter entirely on a silicon integrated circuit and can be used to receive and transmit data signals in such applications as wireless personal-area networks (WPANs). Numerous other applications, of course, are available for a mixer with improved LO-to-RF isolation, particularly at millimeter-wave frequencies where high LO-to-RF isolation is difficult to achieve.

Abstract: Classification of objects using the best boolean expression that represents the most optimal combination of the underlying features is disclosed.

Abstract: An arrangement for controlling a system generated noise level such that the same is adapted to an actual ambient noise level of the system environment. Internal noise generators will thus not run at a needlessly lowered rate than actually needed. For instance, by permitting a fan to run at a generally higher speed, the system will not needlessly undergo significant internal temperature increases. By the same token, CPU performance, to the extent that it represents a noise generator, will not be needlessly throttled.

Abstract: A method and system for configuring available resources in real-time to automatically accommodate the needs of the system user in multi-modal distributed computing system is disclosed. Information about the location or environment of a wireless device is used, preferably in combination with user personal preferences and past history to modify the behavior of the wireless device, including the selection of the most appropriate mode of interaction with the device and the activation of applications thereon as appropriate.

Abstract: Path-based ranking of unvisited Web pages for WWW crawling is provided, via identifying all the paths beginning with a “seed” URL and leading to visited relevant web pages as “good-path set”, and for each unvisited web page, identifying the paths beginning from the “seed” URL leading to it as “partial-path set”; classifying all the visited web pages and labeling each web Page with the labels of a class or classes it belongs to; training a statistic model for generalizing the common patterns among all ones of “good-path set”; and evaluating the “partial-path set” with the statistic model and ranking the unvisited web pages with the evaluation results.

Abstract: A medium having a plurality of data blocks stored therein is disclosed. The medium can be a DVD. The plurality of data blocks can be viewed by playing the medium in a medium player. The medium player can be a DVD player. A first instruction set instructs the medium player to play the plurality of data blocks of the medium in a pre-determined sequence. Further, a second instruction set instructs the medium player to play the plurality of data blocks of the medium in response to user commands that determine the order for playing the plurality of data blocks of the medium.

Abstract: An overvoltage protection system capable of maintaining a high setting voltage of a battery charger while guaranteeing that cell voltage does not exceed a value limited by a threshold value. In one preferred embodiment, a battery set is a plurality of series-connected battery cells. A protection voltage measurement portion measures a cell voltage of each battery cell. A computation portion calculates an open circuit voltage of the battery set outputs a calculated voltage as a measurement voltage. An overvoltage setting portion stops charging of battery set when the value of the cell voltage of any one of the battery cells reaches a threshold value. A diagnostic voltage measurement portion measures an open circuit voltage of battery set to output measured voltage as a diagnostic voltage. A comparing circuit stops charging of the battery set based on comparison results of value of the measurement voltage and value of diagnostic voltage.

Abstract: In the context of high-speed serial links, data-dependent jitter compensation techniques performed using phase pre-distortion. Broadly contemplated is an expansion of the notion of pre-emphasis beyond conventional amplitude compensation of ISI, whereby phase pre-emphasis for compensating data-dependent jitter (DDJ) is introduced. DDJ can be addressed by exploiting the relationship between the data sequence and the timing deviation. Phase pre-emphasis improves the signal integrity with little additional power consumption in the transmitter and with no cross-talk penalty.

Abstract: Systems and methods for the identification of correlated burst events among two or more data streams, given one or more specific query time spans are disclosed. Also broadly contemplated is the act of finding, from one or more data streams, those streams that have correlated burst events with another given data stream within a time span.