Patents Assigned to Microsoft Corporation
  • Patent number: 7496565
    Abstract: A method and system for maintaining namespace consistency between selected objects maintained by a file system and a filter associated therewith. A filter monitors selected types of requests (or operations associated therewith) and determines whether the object is within a namespace associated with the filter. The namespace associated with the filter is updated based on a change to the object.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 30, 2004
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Ravinder S. Thind, Sarosh Cyrus Havewala, Neal R. Christiansen
  • Patent number: 7496799
    Abstract: A monitoring tool requests traceable information from a server. Such traceable information preferably includes traceable events and associated columns. The monitoring tool preferably generates a display of the traceable information, from which a user may select information to be traced. The monitoring tool requests a trace of the selected information. The trace is preferably displayed to the user, and the user may use the trace to identify and correct problems occurring at the server.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 3, 2006
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Bruce Prang, Dmitry Sonkin
  • Patent number: 7496495
    Abstract: Attempts by drivers of a virtualized legacy computer game to communicate with nonexistent legacy game system hardware are converted into calls to actual hardware of the host computer game system. An access control list (ACL) restricting and/or reducing page permissions is used to explicitly forbid the drivers of the legacy computer game operating on the virtualized legacy computer game platform from writing to the MMIO addresses of the legacy computer game system. When the operating system of the virtualized legacy computer game platform attempts to touch its driver memory by writing to the MMIO addresses, the operating system of the host computer game system perceives a memory access violation, suspends the virtual machine implementing the virtualized computer game platform, and passes the intended write to an exception handler of the host operating system.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 12, 2005
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Andrew R. Solomon, Dinarte R. Morais
  • Patent number: 7496582
    Abstract: A method identifies components associated with a first end point in an environment, such as a social environment. The method further identifies components associated with a second end point in the environment. A determination is made regarding whether any of the identified components are associated with both the first end point and the second end point. The method then displays relationships between the first end point, the second end point, and any components associated with both the first end point and the second end point.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 31, 2003
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Shelly D. Farnham, William L. Portnoy, Lili Cheng
  • Patent number: 7496927
    Abstract: A significant challenge in modern computing is to provide a user interface that as starting point takes the end user's goals. A taskoriented user interface addresses this issue and presents and guides the enduser through useful and relevant tasks that map directly to the tasks the enduser needs to carry out. The present invention discloses a method and a system for automatic generation of a task sequence by use of a computer system. a generic task sequence is configured for a variety of business objects at design time. At runtime the task sequence is initiated by a task presented in the user interface (UI) to a user of the application. An input in response hereto makes the computer system start querying whether the elements of the relevant Business Object are in a state where they can complete the task. If not so, identify by use of the computer system what needs to be completed in order to bring element in a state where it can participate.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 9, 2001
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lars Hammer, Christian V. Scheller
  • Patent number: 7496889
    Abstract: The present invention provides a system and/or method that facilitates expanding keywords within an existing computer programming language by employing a whitespace keyword containing embedded whitespace. A whitespace component can receive code, and create a whitespace keyword based at least upon a successive comparison of adjacent tokens. The whitespace component creates a whitespace keyword by replacing more than one token with a single token containing embedded whitespace. Moreover, the whitespace component can utilize a lexical analyzer to group code into tokens and a parser component to parse the code.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 22, 2004
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Herbert P Sutter, Jeffrey J Peil, Brandon R Bray, Mark L Hall, Jonathan E Caves
  • Patent number: 7496500
    Abstract: The present invention relates to systems and methods that determine intent for received data (e.g., email, voice, graphics . . . ) and respond to the data based on the intent. The systems and methods employ various combinations of features based on shallow and deep linguistic analysis (e.g., semantic and syntactic) to yield very high accuracy. The systems and methods analyze and categorize received data to locate data that can include intent. This data can be further refined by extracting features related to the intent. The features can be utilized by a classifier to determine the intent. If the intent warrants a response, the data are further scrutinized and reformulated to generate a description that is indicative of the intent. The reformulation can include representing the features in a logical form, transforming the form and generating a description of the intent that can be presented to a user visually and/or audibly.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2004
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: David R. Reed, Eric K. Ringger, Michael Gamon, Richard G. Campbell, Robert G. Atkinson, Simon H. Corston, Malcolm E. Pearson
  • Patent number: 7496512
    Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for refining segmental boundaries in speech waveforms. Contextual acoustic feature similarities are used as a basis for clustering adjacent phoneme speech units, where each adjacent pair phoneme speech units include a segmental boundary. A refining model is trained for each cluster and used to refine boundaries of contextual phoneme speech units forming the clusters.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 13, 2004
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Yong Zhao, Min Chu, Jian-lai Zhou, Lijuan Wang
  • Patent number: 7496828
    Abstract: A method and system for mapping a tag in a markup language (ML) document to a class using namespaces is described. A parser in a computing system analyzes the tag in the ML document. A definition file location attribute related to the tag is referenced in the ML document. A definition file associated with definition file location attribute is retrieved. A namespace related to the tag is referenced within the definition file to determine the class associated with the tag. The class is located in an assembly such that the tag is mapped to the class.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 1, 2005
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Robert A. Relyea, Jeffrey L. Bogdan, Peter F. Ostertag, Michael J. Hillberg
  • Patent number: 7496283
    Abstract: Various methods and systems permit digital data, such as video data, audio/video data, audio/video/subpicture data and the like, to be processed in a manner that permits playback at different speeds in both forward and reverse directions. Various embodiments are also directed to handling playback rate changes in a manner that can enhance the user's experience.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2002
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Glenn F. Evans, Alok Chakrabarti, Matthijs A. Gates
  • Patent number: 7496583
    Abstract: A property tree user interface permits user assignment of values to metadata properties and user navigation of data, within a system that includes a data storage subsystem in which data items are organized and queried by way of properties. The property tree includes nodes that expose properties of data items. A user may interact with the property tree in order to effect an assignment of a property, in which case the value associated with the property in the data storage subsystem is modified. User input with respect to the property tree may also be indicative of a query of data storage, in which case a browsable view of data items responsive to the query is displayed. The property tree may also display nodes that represent folders within a hierarchical file system, nodes that represent properties with inherent hierarchy, and nodes that represent user-defined hierarchical properties.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 2004
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Jason F. Moore, Cornelis K. Van Dok, Relja Ivanovic, Colin R. Anthony, Richard M. Banks
  • Patent number: 7496234
    Abstract: A “seamless multiplexer,” as described herein, provides a flexible and efficient system and method for multiplexing embedded coded bitstreams. Further, unlike the conventional JPEG 2000 standard, the seamless multiplexer is capable of decoding multiplexed encoded bitstreams without the need to use a demultiplexing aide as overhead in the encoded signal. In general, the seamless multiplexer provides a novel approach for multiplexing code block bitstreams by using a “decoder pointer,” for multiplexing multiple embedded bitstreams without the use of a demultiplexing aide. Consequently, the seamless multiplexer not only reduces any multiplexing overhead, but also allows much smaller granularity of access in reshaping the compressed input signal. In addition, in one embodiment, the seamless multiplexer also uses dependencies between coefficient blocks to further improve overall compression efficiency.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 20, 2003
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Jin Li
  • Patent number: 7496856
    Abstract: A system and method for capturing, displaying, and navigating text annotations in a non-modifiable document is disclosed. Once it is determined that a text annotation is to be created, the system determines the file position of the selected object. The file position of the selected object is stored along with the created text annotation in another file or a non-read only portion of a file storing the document. Using the file position, the text annotation may be properly identified with the selected object without modifying the non-modifiable document. Once a text annotation is displayed a user may easily navigate among the captured annotations.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 26, 2005
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: John L. Beezer, Marco A. Demello, David M. Silver
  • Patent number: 7496602
    Abstract: Implementations of the present invention relate in part to optimizations to peer-to-peer communication systems. For example, one implementation relates to use of a smart transceiver that creates, caches, and manages communication channels dynamically between peers. Another implementation relates to use of a central tracking object that can be used to efficiently register and distribute peer messages among the various peers. In one implementation, the central tracking object is shared amongst peers in the group. Still another implementation relates to associating peer groups with namespaces, and for including peer groups of one namespace within still other peer groups of different namespaces. These and other aspects of the invention can also be used to ensure delivery intent of a given peer message is preserved, and to ensure that optimal numbers of messages are communicated to any given peer at any given time.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 4, 2006
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Christopher G. Kaler, Gopala Krishna R. Kakivaya, Hervey Oliver Wilson, Richard L. Hasha
  • Patent number: 7496200
    Abstract: An architecture is described to manufacture console-based gaming systems in a manner that allows them to be authenticated to a remote entity for online participation. The architecture involves placing pre-established secrets on the game console during console manufacturing that may be subsequently used to guarantee the authenticity of the game console during registration time.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 31, 2005
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Boyd C. Multerer, Ling Tony Chen
  • Patent number: 7496599
    Abstract: Users and programmers view relational database tables using an schema such as an SQL-annotated XML schema. The schema describes how XML data maps into base tables and fields, including complex one-to-many and many-to-many relationships.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 2002
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Michael L. Brundage, Srinivasa R. Burugapalli, Andrew Conrad, Chris A. Suver, Alexander E. Vaschillo, Bertan Ari
  • Patent number: 7496894
    Abstract: Methods are described that enhance pointer analysis for programs. Whereas previous methods are constrained by the extremes of an inverse relationship between time and information, the present methods selectively unify information so as to allow a desired level of analytical decision within a desired duration of analysis. One aspect of the present invention includes selectively retaining information at a first order of indirection based on variables in an assignment statement while unifying information at subsequent orders of indirection. The methods are used for pointer variables, but are equally useful to function definitions, function calls, function pointers, indirect function calls, and others. The methods may be used in client analysis tools such as code browsers and slicing tools.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 14, 2004
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Manuvir Das
  • Patent number: 7496202
    Abstract: An architecture is described to manufacture console-based gaming systems in a manner that allows them to be authenticated to a remote entity for online participation. The architecture involves placing pre-established secrets on the game console during console manufacturing that may be subsequently used to guarantee the authenticity of the game console during registration time.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 31, 2005
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Boyd C. Multerer, Ling Tony Chen
  • Patent number: 7496498
    Abstract: A text processing system for processing multi-lingual text for a speech synthesizer includes a first language dependent module for performing at least one of text and prosody analysis on a portion of input text comprising a first language. A second language dependent module performs at least one of text and prosody analysis on a second portion of input text comprising a second language. A third module is adapted to receive outputs from the first and second dependent module and performs prosodic and phonetic context abstraction over the outputs based on multi-lingual text.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 24, 2003
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Min Chu, Hu Peng, Yong Zhao
  • Patent number: 7496791
    Abstract: A system for testing programs using a digital processor and programs in computer memory. A mock behavior generator identifies an interface indicated for mock behavior. The interface is identified as an input parameter of a parameterized unit test. The mock behavior generator creates a symbolic object with stubs to receive calls and mock behavior that returns symbolic values upon receiving a call to the stub. A symbolic executor, symbolically executes the parameterized unit test to obtain path constraints for an implementation under test, and at least one path constraint includes the symbol returned in response to the call to the stub. A constraint solver provides solutions for the paths including concrete values assigned to returned symbols. The mock behavior generator creates mock objects that return the concrete values when the implementation under test is executed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 30, 2005
    Date of Patent: February 24, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Nikolai Tillmann, Wolfgang Grieskamp, Wolfram Schulte