...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7924183 | Method and system for reducing required storage during decompression of a compressed file A method and system for decompressing a compressed file is disclosed in this invention, the method comprising: reading a compressed data block from the compressed file; decompressing the compressed data block; outputting the decompressed data for storage into a deco... | 04/12/2011 |
| 7890603 | Apparatus, system and method of performing mail message searches across multiple mail servers A system, apparatus and method of performing e-mail message searches across multiple mailboxes are provided. The system, apparatus and method perform the e-mail message searches across multiple mailboxes by launching a search feature of a currently accessed mailbox ... | 02/15/2011 |
| 7405583 | Functional and stress testing of LGA devices Improved methods, systems, and apparatuses are disclosed for testing LGA devices. One example embodiment include vertical routing of test nest assembly cooling lines in order to minimize the test nest footprint and increase available test sites on a single test card... | 07/29/2008 |
| 7398369 | Memory leakage management Methods, systems, and media to enhance memory leakage management by identifying a suspect allocation pattern during execution of a task, which may be indicative of memory leakage and implementing measures to protect against memory leakage based upon the suspect allo... | 07/08/2008 |
| 7352200 | Functional and stress testing of LGA devices Improved methods, systems, and apparatuses are disclosed for testing LGA devices. One example embodiment include vertical routing of test nest assembly cooling lines in order to minimize the test nest footprint and increase available test sites on a single test card... | 04/01/2008 |
| 7350047 | Memory overflow management Methods, systems, and media to enhance memory overflow management by identifying a memory overflow condition associated with execution of a task and adjusting memory allocation for the task to attenuate the memory overflow condition are disclosed. In particular, emb... | 03/25/2008 |
| 7263511 | Creating user metric patterns including user notification Exemplary embodiments of the present invention include a method for creating a user metric pattern. Such embodiments typically include receiving, within the network, a plurality of disparate user metrics, determining that the plurality of disparate user metrics rece... | 08/28/2007 |
| 7257373 | Method and apparatus for determining adjacency of wireless device to POS terminal One or more stationary wireless readers are used to determine the relative strength of calibration signals sent from fixed locations adjacent to POS terminals. Then, the signal strength of signals being transmitted by wireless devices within range of the one or more... | 08/14/2007 |
| 7231294 | Navigating a UAV Exemplary embodiments of the present invention include a method for navigating a UAV. Such embodiments include receiving in a remote control device a user's selection of a GUI map pixel that represents a waypoint for UAV navigation. The pixel has a location on the G... | 06/12/2007 |
| 7225309 | Method and system for autonomic performance improvements in an application via memory relocation A method, an apparatus, and a computer program product in a data processing system are presented for using hardware assistance for gathering performance information that significantly reduces the overhead in gathering such information. Performance indicators are ass... | 05/29/2007 |
| 7174410 | Method, apparatus and computer program product for write data transfer A first device is operable to communicate on an bus according to a first protocol. A bridge is also operable to communicate on the bus according to the first protocol. A second device is coupled to the bus via the bridge and operable to communicate according to a se... | 02/06/2007 |
| 6922727 | Method and system for managing parallel data transfer through multiple sockets to provide scalability to a computer network A method and system for managing the transfer of data in parallel through multiple sockets. The present invention facilitates the use of multiple sockets and avoid monopolization of a socket by releasing the socket as soon as data from a client request has been sent... | 07/26/2005 |
| 6910212 | System and method for improved complex storage locks An improved system and method for improving complex storage locks that manage access to a shared resource. A FIFO queue is maintained for processes waiting to read or write to the shared resource. When the shared resource is available, the first item is read from th... | 06/21/2005 |
| 6895453 | System and method for improved handling of fiber channel remote devices In traditional Fiber Channel systems, remote devices connected to the Fiber Channel network using a bridge or included in a storage enclosure are not tracked. If a remote device, such as a SCSI disk device, is removed or swapped, data errors such as data corruption ... | 05/17/2005 |
| 6848000 | System and method for improved handling of client state objects A client state object, such as a “cookie,” allows a server to save client state information on the client. This information is returned when the client requests information from the server. A server includes two identifiers—a primary name and an alternate name... | 01/25/2005 |
| 6845504 | Method and system for managing lock contention in a computer system A system and method for efficiently managing lock contention for a central processing unit (CPU) of a computer system. The present invention uses both spinning and blocking (or undispatching) to manage threads when they are waiting to acquire a lock. In addition, th... | 01/18/2005 |
| 6823482 | System and method for reporting platform errors in partitioned systems Hardware errors are stored in an error buffer for processing by one or more system partitions within a computer system. When errors are first placed in the buffer, an Already Reported Flag (ARF) is initialized to indicate that the error has not yet been reported to ... | 11/23/2004 |
| 6819313 | User interactive cursor control in a computer controlled display system with supplemental mouse lighting to aid in cursor positioning A visual indication on a cursor control device is triggered when the cursor is within a designated region on said display screen. Usually the user activated cursor control device is a computer control mouse, but the invention may operate effectively with joy sticks ... | 11/16/2004 |
| 6817521 | Credit card application automation system A universal credit card system utilizes a portable card access device which stores information associated with multiple bank card accounts, electronically authenticates a user of the bank card accounts, allows the user to select a particular one of the bank card acc... | 11/16/2004 |
| 6803929 | Method, apparatus and computer program product for moving or copying information A method for a user interface includes selecting information from a current location and placing the information in a queue for later placement at a destination, and then selecting a destination and placing the information at the destination. Responsive to the placi... | 10/12/2004 |
| 6785723 | TRACKING THE TRANSMISSION OF WEB DOCUMENTS OR FILES SENT FROM RESOURCE LOCATIONS THROUGH SERVERS ON THE WEB TO CLIENT COMPUTER STATIONS WHICH SEND TRACKED TRANSMISSION CHARACTERISTICS DATA BACK TO SAID SERVERS Tracking the success or failure of and the quality of communications between requesting client station computers and servers, particularly servers for accessing resource locations for the present complex and circuitous environment. Conventional browsers are provided... | 08/31/2004 |
| 6779106 | Apparatus and method for an enhanced integer divide in an IA64 architecture An apparatus and method for performing integer divide operations in an IA64 architecture based data processing system is provided. The apparatus and method insert integer divide checks in place of NOP instructions in the instruction bundles associated with integer d... | 08/17/2004 |
| 6778837 | System and method for providing access to mobile devices based on positional data The present invention includes as one embodiment a method for automatically controlling access to a mobile computing device with pertinent data. The method includes predefining access parameters of the mobile computing device, determining an actual location of the m... | 08/17/2004 |
| 6778192 | System and method for creating markers on scroll bars of a graphical user interface The present invention is embodied in a system and method for creating markers on scroll bars of a graphical user interface. Basically, the present invention allows users to reference locations of interest within a document using scroll bars of a user interface by cr... | 08/17/2004 |
| 6768993 | System and method for file system cooperation in a multi-threaded environment A file system maintains information about files in data areas called dinodes. Dinodes are grouped into dinode pages wherein each dinode page includes information about one or more dinodes. Each dinode may use extended attribute data. Each dinode page having at least... | 07/27/2004 |
| 6766442 | Processor and method that predict condition register-dependent conditional branch instructions utilizing a potentially stale condition register value A processor having improved branch prediction accuracy includes at least one execution unit that executes sequential instructions, a condition register, and a branch prediction circuit that predicts a condition register-dependent branch instruction by reference to a... | 07/20/2004 |
| 6766352 | Indicator to show that a cached file is being displayed on a client system A modified client application within a network for use in accessing and displaying cached files. The modified client application has access to a client cache in which a copy of files downloaded from the network server is stored. When a particular file is requested, ... | 07/20/2004 |
| 6745345 | Method for testing a computer bus using a bridge chip having a freeze-on-error option A method for testing a computer bus using a bridge chip having a freeze-on-error option that enables a computer system's central processing unit (CPU) to recover and continue processing even when the computer bus is not functional. The testing method of the present ... | 06/01/2004 |
| 6732248 | System and method for ghost offset utilization in sequential byte stream semantics A system and method for releasing storage space at the beginning of a byte stream while maintaining sequential byte stream semantics is provided. A ghost offset is initialized when a file is instantiated or opened. When information is deleted at the beginning of the... | 05/04/2004 |
| 6732138 | Method and system for accessing system resources of a data processing system utilizing a kernel-only thread within a user process A method and system are disclosed for managing access to system resources by a user process within a multitasking data processing system. The data processing system includes a processor for executing kernel threads scheduled to the processor and a memory having a us... | 05/04/2004 |
| 6728788 | Method and system for converting a remote procedure call to a local procedure call when the service is on the same device as the calling client A client process resides on a host computer within a distributed data processing system, and the client process requests a remote procedure call for a service procedure. A binding handle of a server process is obtained; a determination is made as to whether the bind... | 04/27/2004 |
| 6728718 | Method and system for recovering DHCP data A system in which a DHCP server executes a recovery routine after detecting a corrupted IP address state database. The routine determines whether an IP address is assigned to a DHCP client by querying an IP address/port reserved for DHCP clients. If the response sug... | 04/27/2004 |
| 6725366 | System and method for 32 bit code branching to 64 bit targets A system and method for converting 32 bit addresses into 64 bit addresses and enabling the 32 bit address to include a region index. The region index is stored in low order bits of the 32 bit address. In some architectures, namely the Intel IA-64 architecture, the l... | 04/20/2004 |
| 6725252 | Method and apparatus for detecting and processing multiple additional requests from a single user at a server in a distributed data processing system A method and apparatus in a distributed data processing system for processing requests for documents. A request is received from a user for a selected page at a server. The selected page is returned to the user with a unique token, wherein each user is sent a unique... | 04/20/2004 |
| 6721786 | Method and apparatus for balancing bandwidth usage in a browser A method and apparatus in a data processing system for managing receipt of data by a browser through a communications interface. Data is received at the browser through the communications interface using a portion of the bandwidth for the communications interface. R... | 04/13/2004 |
| 6714953 | System and method for managing file export information A system and method for including export information in the file system extended attribute data area is provided. File export information is determined by a system administrator or automated process. The determined export information is stored in an extended attribu... | 03/30/2004 |
| 6715062 | Processor and method for performing a hardware test during instruction execution in a normal mode A processor includes instruction sequencing logic, execution circuitry, data storage coupled to the execution circuitry, and test circuitry. The test circuitry detects for a hardware error in one of the instruction sequencing logic, execution circuitry, and data sto... | 03/30/2004 |
| 6711644 | Apparatus and method for communicating the completion of asynchronous input/output An apparatus and method for communicating the completion of asynchronous I/O requests is provided. In particular, the apparatus and method make use of a new function call which is capable of waiting for a predetermined number of I/O requests to be completed prior to... | 03/23/2004 |
| 6697939 | Basic block cache microprocessor with instruction history information A processor, data processing system, and a related method of execution are disclosed. The processor is suitable for receiving a set of instructions and organizing the set of instructions into an instruction group. The instruction group is then dispatched ... | 02/24/2004 |
| 6662294 | Converting short branches to predicated instructions A microprocessor and method of processing instructions therein are disclosed. Initially, a sequence of instructions is dispatched by a dispatch unit of the microprocessor. A code sequence recognition unit (CSR) is configured to detect a short branch seque... | 12/09/2003 |