Abstract: In a computer system in which caching is utilized for improving performance, a method for determining whether an uncached object should be cached, and, if so, which objects, if any, should be removed from a cache to make room for the new uncached object. The method assigns a metric correlated with the desirability of caching an object, considering parameters such as access frequencies, object sizes, object lifetimes and times to calculate and/or to fetch the object. The metric weights more recent accesses more heavily than less recent accesses. The method can be used for improving the performance of an algorithm which utilizes priority queues and can additionally be applied when attempting to predict the expected frequency of an occurrence based upon past occurrences.

Abstract: There is described a method and system for calibrating measurements, in particular for calibrating a high resolution counter against an accurate real time calibrated clock signal. The method comprising obtaining the calibrated low resolution clock measurement and the corresponding high resolution counter measurement and calculating a range of possible corrections to the counter measurement to align it with the clock measurement. The correction range is adjusted to make it consistent with a previously stored correction range and a value is taken from it to calibrate the counter measurement. If the calculated range and the stored range are inconsistent then only the calculated range is used. A further measurement of the clock or counter is taken to double check.

Abstract: A battery attaching mechanism for a portable computer by which an accommodated battery can be safely stored and secured, yet easily removed. The battery attaching mechanism comprises a recessed battery compartment provided on the body of the portable electronic apparatus, a latching member for latching the battery pack, said latching member being provided on a side wall of said battery compartment and having an outer latching member surface, a locking member for inhibiting said latching member from being released by contact with said outer latching member surface of said latching member, a connector for receiving a connector of said battery pack, and a removal assisting section for, in the vicinity of said connector, pushing said accommodated battery pack away from said connector.

Abstract: A three-phase database crash recovery mechanism is detailed including a forward phase, a backward phase, and a third, so-called “sideward” phase for recovery of transactions which were interrupted at the time of the crash, using Global Transaction IDs to track the status of the transactions at the coordinating and at the participating nodes. Depending upon the status of the transaction at the time of the crash, either a query message to the coordinating node or a vote message to the participating nodes is generated and processed, thereby allowing most interrupted transactions to be completed.

Abstract: A technique of monitoring the cache footprint of relevant threads on a given processor and its associated cache, thus enabling operating systems to perform better cache sensitive scheduling. A function of the footprint of a thread in a cache can be used as an indication of the affinity of that thread to that cache's processor. For instance, the larger the number of cachelines already existing in a cache, the smaller the number of cache misses the thread will experience when scheduled on that processor, and hence the greater the affinity of the thread to that processor. Besides a thread's priority and other system defined parameters, scheduling algorithms can take cache affinity into account when assigning execution of threads to particular processors.

Abstract: A system for collecting, categorizing and searching metadata about content provided on the internet and/or intranet for delivery in accordance with customized user profiles. The system collects internet information and categorizes same for provision at a customer's intranet server. The system is additionally adapted to either passively receive or actively collect and categorize internally-provided content for delivery with the externally gathered and categorized content and for matching to user profiles.

Abstract: A gate dielectric layer comprising a carbon film aligned to, and continuously covering, the gate electrode. The carbon dielectric film adheres to a wide variety of gate metals and is readily etched using etch processes which do not etch into the gate metal. In a preferred embodiment, the self-aligned carbon gate dielectric is deposited by plasma deposition, followed by deposition of a redundant gate dielectric.

Abstract: A data retrieval system in which a plurality of objects having a multi-level hierarchical relationship are stored is disclosed. Thus, each object has a respective parent and a set of children. The system includes an index table comprising a respective name and associated identifier for each object, and a data table comprising a respective set of attributes and a position key associated with each object in the system. Each position key comprises a series of components, each component corresponding to a level of the hierarchy. A first component of said key stores the identifier of an associated object, and each successive component stores the identifier of the parent of the object stored in the previous component.

Abstract: An improved wireless information processing apparatus that is connectable to an appropriate one of the access points prepared by an internet provider even under a mobile environment. A terminal and method of operation whereby a user of the terminal requests connection to the Internet, the terminal extracts a CS-ID from notification information transmitted from a wireless base station and, then, retrieves its own association table to acquire a telephone number of an access point nearest to the current location. Then, the terminal dials-up to the acquired access point to establish an internet connection. As a result, the terminal is allowed to download an electronic mail destined therefor, a Web page (HTML file or the like) stored in a disk of a given Web server and the like.

Abstract: The invention provides that each of the components (i.e., switches, LAN segments, and workstations) is treated as a node for placement in a tree structure topology, with one switch at the top of the tree. Each switch may have other switches or LAN segments connected to it, with each LAN segment having a plurality of workstations attached to it. The workstations are the leaf nodes of the tree and cannot have anything connected to them. The inventive method for determining optimal partitioning is to calculate the mean switch delay, the mean segment delay, and the standard deviation as a function of the total number of workstations in the network, and to sum the values together. Finally, the invention applies a Tabu Search to the potential tree-structured solutions to the problem in order to rapidly and accurately determine the optimal network configuration.

Abstract: Described is a method and apparatus for transforming computer data from a first form to a second form, by representing the first form of the computer data by an object model having a plurality of objects, providing a plurality of transformational agents each for transforming an object into a portion of the second form, and linking the transformational agents to produce a transformational agent model to transform the object model into the second form of the computer data.

Abstract: A system and method for uniformly describing space and frequency views of multi-dimensional lattice data, including regions, tilings and hierarchical decompositions of image, video, audio content, and time series data in space, time, frequency and resolution. The space and frequency view description scheme provides a way to specify regions in space, time, frequency and resolution in term of space and frequency views. This allows specification of concepts such as “half resolution”, “upper right quadrant” or “high pass band”, such as when referring to views of an image. The space and frequency view description scheme also provides for SFTilings comprising non-redundant sets of views and SFPartitionings which are SFTilings which completely cover the space, as well as SFHierarchical decompositions comprising hierarchies of SFViews where there are processing dependencies among views.

Abstract: A parcel trace system for tracing parcels handled by a service provider for a plurality of clients. The system includes relay (30) adapted to communicate with the clients across the Internet and with a server database. The server database stores a plurality of parcel objects, each parcel object including a parcel identifier attribute and a parcel location attribute. The server database further includes a URL attribute for each client. A client database (80) includes a plurality of parcel objects, each object corresponding to a parcel being handled for the client and including a parcel identifier and a parcel location attribute. A client database controller (70) communicates with the relay, and across a second network, possibly the Internet with the client. The relay is responsive to a change in state of the parcel location attribute to relay the change in state of the parcel location attribute to the client database controller across the Internet.

Abstract: A search request is syntactically analyzed, and location constraint data for keywords and function words (FNWORD) are extracted that constitute partial-order relationships. A document, which is to be retrieved and for which no syntactic analysis is required, is searched for that contains a sentence that matches the partial-order relationship. In the search for the document containing the sentence that matches the partial-order relationship, a sentence having a short context that matches the partial-order relationship is regarded as a sentence that has a higher similarity.

Abstract: A method for exchanging information between vehicles involved in or near a collision site. When a collision is sensed by one vehicle, a message is transmitted from the one vehicle to at least one of the other vehicles within a threshold distance of the one vehicle. The message contains at least the identity of the one vehicle and preferably driver information, insurance information, along with the time and place of the collision.

Abstract: Data is transferred by establishing a communication link without deciding in advance the primary and the secondary nodes in a distributed processing system which uses a connection oriented API. When an application program (AP) issues a connection request signal, a communication link A1 is brought to a condition in which it can be established (S100) and a communication link A2 is brought to a condition in which it can be accepted (S102). It is determined whether or not the communication link has been established (S104). If the link A2 is established, the communication link A2 is registered as a communication link A (S106) while it is requested to establish the communication link A1 otherwise (S108). It is determined whether or not the communication link A1 has been established (S10) and, if it is established, it is registered as a communication link A.

Abstract: A cache system in accordance with the present invention consists of one or more cache components and a set of one or more consistency-replacement functions. A cache component caches one or more items in its one or more cache entries. Items that hit in the cache can result in corresponding cache entries being read or written. Any valid entry in a cache component includes status information reflecting whether the entry has been accessed and whether it has been modified, and is linked to a consistency-action matrix that, in correspondence with the entry's status information and access type (i.e. read or write), determines what consistency action has to be executed in conjunction with the current entry access. Consistency actions and the consistency-action matrix are the inventive mechanisms for implementing cache-coherency and cache-replacement policies. Any valid entry in a cache is linked to a consistency-replacement function that implements one or more consistency and/or replacement policies.

Abstract: One aspect of the invention provides a method of processing an PPM encoded input signal transmission of data pulses to a data processing apparatus by processing the pulses by lengthening or shortening the pulses to a length within the predetermined acceptance pulse duration range of the data processing apparatus comprising: detecting when the input pulses of the input signal fall below the duration required and lengthening the pulses by a sufficient amount to bring them within the predetermined duration; detecting when the input pulses of the input signal exceed the duration required and reducing the duration of the pulses by a sufficient amount to bring them within the predetermined duration.

Abstract: Multilayer metal materials are selected so that the materials will alloy or intermix under rapid thermal annealing conditions. The individual materials of the multilayers are preferably chosen such that at least one of the materials may be selectively etched with respect to the other material by wet chemical or electrochemical etching. For electroplating applications, the alloyed plating base material will assume some of the etch resistance of the original electrodeposit material such that a selective wet etch of the plating base can be performed without substantial undercutting. Furthermore, the graded composition alloy will exhibit other advantageous physical and chemical properties for electrode formation and use. The alloying or intermixing may be accomplished before or after patterning of the materials, for the instance wherein the materials deposited as blanket layers.

Abstract: A system for tailoring user queries and for categorizing and searching metadata about content provided on the internet and/or intranet for delivery in accordance with customized user profiles. The method and system categorizes query content and document content to facilitate the collection, storage and usage of same. Query content and document content are tokenized, vectorized, and provided for comparison processing by the inventive method.