Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention allow a user to replace unwanted content, such as advertisements, in data distributed over a network with wanted content. Data include Web pages, Internet television broadcasts, Internet radio broadcasts, or any other kind of data that contains content. The data, such as a Web page, is ultimately presented on the user's system, presenting the user with the wanted content. Wanted content includes, among other things, personal photographs, advertisements that the user has expressed interest in, and even advertisements for which the user is compensated for viewing or listening to. In accordance with the present invention, a user opts in to a system that replaces unwanted content with wanted content. The user opts in by providing information that helps determine (a) what content he does not want to see and thus will likely ignore if presented to him and (b) what content he would likely find interesting and thus likely view.

Abstract: A system and method for providing a distributed debugger system for a distributed target computer application are disclosed wherein the programmer/developer of the application can be at one host machine and wherein the application being developed makes use of objects and object implementations which may be located on a different host machine which is unknown to the programmer/developer. The system and method provides solutions to problems which are encountered in trying to debug a new application which is associated with the use of objects in a widely distributed, object oriented, client-server system. In a distributed object environment, requests and replies are made through an Object Request Broker (ORB) that is aware of the locations and status of objects. One architecture which is suitable for implementing such an ORB is provided by the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) specification.

Abstract: A system and method for providing a distributed debugger system for a distributed target computer application are disclosed wherein the programmer/developer of the application can be at one host machine and wherein the application being developed makes use of objects and object implementations which may be located on a different host machine which is unknown to the programmer/developer. The system and method provides solutions to problems which are encountered in trying to debug a new application which is associated with the use of objects in a widely distributed, object oriented, client-server system. In a distributed object environment, requests and replies are made through an Object Request Broker (ORB) that is aware of the locations and status of objects. One architecture which is suitable for implementing such an ORB is provided by the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) specification.

Abstract: An improved technique for serializing access to multithreading unsafe resources is described. A baton manager is used to manage the serializing of accesses to a multithreading unsafe resource. For a thread to access the multithreading unsafe resource, the thread must first obtain a baton from the baton manager. Then, once the thread has finished accessing the multithreading unsafe resource, the thread releases the baton to the baton manager. Hence, by using the baton manager to manage the baton, accesses to multithreading unsafe resources are serialized while program crashes or deadlocks are minimized. The multithreading unsafe resource will typically have a plurality of baton objects associated therewith. The baton objects are objects of object-oriented programming. The baton manager will permit at most one of the baton objects for a given multithreading unsafe resource to own the baton at a time.