Abstract: Techniques for secure communication in a tunnel-less VPN are provided. A key server generates and provides, to each VPN gateway, different, yet mathematically-related keying material. A VPN gateway receives distinct keying material for each designated address block (e.g., subnet) behind the VPN gateway. In response to receiving a packet from one a source host whose address falls within one of the designated address blocks, the VPN gateway identifies the appropriate keying material. The VPN gateway determines an identifier for the address block that includes the destination address. The identifier and the identified keying material are used to generate a key. The VPN gateway encrypts the packet with the key and forwards the encrypted packet to the destination host.

Abstract: An envelope for conveying an item from a sender to a recipient and back with a window and unique identifying indicia. The envelope comprises a base panel with a window, a sender address panel, and a recipient address panel. The sender address panel is affixed to the base panel by an adhesive region, which defines a pocket sized to accept an item. The adhesive region extends laterally on the base panel to ensure that a postal cancellation is not applied to an area overlying the item. The recipient address panel is joined to the base panel by a detachable joint. A fragile item may be conveyed from the sender to the recipient and back without damage to the item. The base panel includes indicia that uniquely identify the envelope among a plurality of envelopes. Reading the indicia assists in resolving inventory problems, for example, when unknown items are returned.

Abstract: A method of and device for enabling the requisitioning of items over a network. The network is coupled to a server, thereby allowing communication between the server and a generating-user, a requisitioning-user and an initiating-user. The server generates a requisition template in response to input received from the generating-user. The server sends an initial e-mail message to the requisitioning-user's e-mail address in response to direction received from the initiating-user. The initial e-mail message includes the requisition template. The initial e-mail message is configured to result in the creation of a reply e-mail message in response to the requisitioning-user selecting to reply to the initial e-mail message from the e-mail application that is accessing the initial e-mail message, the reply e-mail message including the requisition template.

Abstract: Techniques for statistically estimating a rating or other “figure of merit” for a user are disclosed. According to one such technique, a first quantity of submissions that were submitted by a user is determined. A second quantity of submissions that (a) were submitted by the user and (b) obtained a particular rating from a rating mechanism also is determined. A user rating for the user is determined based at least in part on the first quantity, the second quantity, and a factor that is independent of both the first quantity and the second quantity—such as the probability that an answer submitted by any answerer in a population will obtain the particular rating from the rating mechanism. The influence that the second quantity has on the user rating relative to the influence that the factor has on the user rating may depend at least in part on the first quantity.

Abstract: An image enhancement circuit (26, 60, 190, 260) includes an input interface (64, 262), which is operative to accept a stream of input pixel values belonging to pixels (32) of an input image. The input image includes a plurality of different input sub-images including respective subsets of the pixels, such that the input pixel values of the pixels in the different input sub-images are interleaved in the stream. A plurality of filter cells (92, 144, 206, 222, 238, 364) are connected in a two-dimensional array configuration and are arranged to separately filter the input pixel values of each of the input sub-images with respective two-dimensional deconvolution kernels so as produce respective output sub-images that include output pixel values. A multiplexer (88, 332) is coupled to multiplex together the output pixel values of the output sub-images so as to produce a filtered output image.

Abstract: Techniques for implementing a scalable DOM and a pluggable DOM are provided. A scalable DOM implementation manages a DOM tree in memory to free unreferenced nodes, avoid generating nodes unnecessarily, and avoid storing multiple versions of the same data on disk. A pluggable DOM implementation includes an abstract interface that is defined between the API layer and the data layer of a DOM implementation. An implementation of the abstract interface is defined for each data source that is plugged in to the pluggable DOM implementation and that stores XML data in a different format.

Abstract: The present invention generally relates to computer software, and more specifically, to a computerized utility for analysis of optimized program files. A method and apparatus for optimized program analysis is disclosed.

Abstract: A network device is allowed to transmit only authentication protocol traffic and no other traffic on an interface that is coupled to a port using port-based authentication until after authentication succeeds. If the network device is using a switch port that does not have authentication enabled, or if an authentication protocol client in the network device is disabled, then the device bypasses a delay and test process, which is otherwise used to allow the authentication to succeed before other packets are sent from the device.

Abstract: An apparatus for offloading network, block and file functions from an operating system comprises a network interface coupled to a network for receiving packet flows; one or more processors each having one or more processor cores; a computer-readable medium carrying one or more operating systems and an input/output networking stack which are hosted in one or more of the processor cores. The networking stack is shared among the operating systems. The networking stack comprises instructions which when executed cause receiving a request for data transfer from one of the operating systems at internal network, block and file system interfaces, and permitting data to be transferred between the internal interfaces and a plurality of external interfaces by preventing the operating systems from performing the data transfer and performing the data transfer on behalf of the operating systems.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for processing an electronic document in a secure manner is provided. A client may verify that the configuration state of a standalone document-processing device has not changed since a prior configuration state by issuing a request to a security server. The security server may process the request to determine whether the configuration state of the standalone document-processing device has changed since the document-processing device was registered with the security server. The security server may also verify that actions performed on the document-processing device. A storage medium of a document-processing device may be protected against unauthorized removal of the storage medium by storing, separate from the storage medium, a password required to access the storage medium, and when the document-processing device is powered on, the password is provided to the storage medium.

Abstract: Methods for transforming queries that contain EXISTS and NOT EXISTS subqueries are provided. The methods provided transform original queries that contain EXISTS and/or NOT EXISTS subqueries in conjunctive or disjunctive combinations into transformed queries that coalesce the original EXISTS and/or NOT EXISTS subqueries into a reduced number of EXISTS and/or NOT EXISTS subqueries, thereby eliminating duplicative table accesses and join operations.

Abstract: Inverse search systems and methods operate on identifiers of content items in a corpus such as the World Wide Web In an inverse search, the user submits a query that includes an identifier of a target content item in the corpus and receives information (metadata) about the target content item being returned to the user. Many types of metadata can be returned, including ratings or other metadata related to the target content item obtained from users, popularity data specific to the target content item, information about previously submitted forward search queries that led to the target content item being identified as a hit, and metadata extracted from the target content item.

Abstract: Techniques are provided for managing, within a storage system, the sequence in which I/O requests are processed by the storage system based, at least in part, on a one or more logical characteristics of the I/O requests. The logical characteristics may include, for example, the identity of the user for whom the I/O request was submitted, the service that submitted the I/O request, the database targeted by the I/O request, an indication of a consumer group to which the I/O request maps, the reason why the I/O request was issued, a priority category of the I/O request, etc. Techniques are also provided for automatically establishing a scheduling policy within a storage system, and for dynamically changing the scheduling policy in response to changes in workload.

Abstract: Techniques are described for combining pieces of information from two sources. The techniques may be used to improve the performance, for example, of hash join operations that are parallelized using slaves distributed across multiple nodes. According to one technique, bitmap filtering operations are performed by the probe-phase producer slaves, rather than the probe-phase consumer slaves. To avoid having to merge separately built bitmap filter chunks, the left-hand rows may be sent to every probe-phase consumer slave. Alternatively, the merge operation may be avoided by distributing the rows of one source based on how the other source has been statically partitioned.

Abstract: Approaches for provisioning phones in packet voice networks are disclosed. One approach includes determining that an Internet Protocol (IP) phone has registered in a network; receiving a unique identifier of the IP phone; receiving identifying information about a user to be associated with the IP phone; determining, based on the information provided, a user identifier; generating a configuration for the IP phone based on the user identifier that includes information such as phone number, feature sets, and other configuration parameters; and providing the configuration to the IP phone. Various approaches for determining a user identifier based on information provided by the user are disclosed.

Abstract: A cluster console user interface provides a single console control point for a network device cluster comprising a first switch device, a plurality of active routers, one or more standby routers, and a second switch device. Using the cluster console, a network administrator can perform various operations with respect to the cluster as a whole, without knowing identity information for particular network routers serving as active or standby, or for the switch devices.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for recognizing and synchronizing to in-band data at a multimedia device is provided. A content stream includes in-band data. The in-band data is processed and in-band data pattern data associated with the content stream are created. Metadata are attached to the event identification data. The event identification data are provided to multimedia devices which receive broadcasted multimedia content streams containing video programs with in-band data. The in-band data are processed and compared to the event identification data. If a match occurs, the multimedia device uses the metadata to perform specified actions.

Abstract: A system for distributing printed documents comprises print device logic comprising a Web Services server, wherein the print device logic is configured to send one or more Web Services messages that indicate attributes of a print device; sender print manager logic comprising a first Web Services client that is coupled over a network to the printer logic; wherein the sender print manager logic is configured to store the attributes, to request print history information from the print device, to determine one or more preferred print devices for one or more users based on the print history information, and to store a mapping of identifiers of the users in association with identifiers of the preferred print devices; wherein the sender print manager logic is configured to select one or more of the preferred print devices based on the mapping, and to initiate one or more print jobs to print a document on the selected preferred print devices.

Abstract: An approach is provided for managing the processing of print data at a printing device based upon available consumable resources. A printing device includes a print process configured to determine consumable resources that are currently available at the printing device. The print process is further configured to determine which print data is to be processed based upon the consumable resources currently available at the printing device and the consumable resources required to completely process each of the print data. Print data that can be completely processed using the currently available consumable resources are selected for processing. The print process may also be configured to cause a notification to be provided to a client device to indicate the consumable resources currently available at a printing device and/or that insufficient consumable resources were available to process particular print data and to recommend other consumable resources to process the particular print data.