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Multi-Channel Communication Patent Up For Sale

Posted by kdawson on from the can-you-say-prior-art dept.

OTDR alerts us to the latest software patent stupidity in the news as patent number 6,418,462, "methods allowing clients to perform tasks through a sideband communication channel, in addition to the main communication channel between a client and server," snubs its nose at AJAX, ftp, and decades of prior art and goes on sale next month in San Fransisco. "Singled out are AJAX mashups including Google Maps and Gmail, and Microsoft 'Live'... Also in the frame are Amazon's S3 and EC2 and clusters from Microsoft, VMware, and Oracle. eBay's Skype, Napster, and Microsoft's Groove are also listed as potentially infringing on the patent in P2P."

5 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Patent Link by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Informative

    First off, they don't quite link to the patent so on a non-slashdottable version is here or you can go straight to the full massive PDF if you want (single file if you have problems viewing above in Linux).

    Looks pretty much like a poster child example of why the patent system is broken. Either that or the USPTO needs to start looking at revoking patents in hind sight or after professional review by many leading members of the field. So much for patent reform!

    --
    My work here is dung.
  2. How does this relate to AJAX exactly? by revelation0 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Abstract of mentioned patent:

    A new method of distributed computing, sideband computing, that is global, scalable and can utilize many idle CPU resources worldwide. Sideband is defined as when a user connects to some (normal) network services, a separate communication channel is opened, through which a server distributes its tasks to all the clients and collects the results later. By this method, any network server which has a lot of clients can compute very large parallel computing problems by dividing it into small individual parts and have them calculated by its clients. With little cost, the network server can act as a supercomputer.
    It is laying out a way to distribute parallel processing tasks to a large number of clients, which SETI@Home thought up a full two years prior. The only argument I can see is they seem to be saying they can do this discreetly while the client is using some other service? I don't have time to go and pick through the entire patent right now, but it seems that this nonsense has gone beyond simply being out of hand.
  3. Re:haha by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yup. The actual claim 1 (the important part) is:

    A method in a metacomputing, distributed network of utilizing remote client resources in the network, comprising:

            a server that implements tasks by utilizing idle resources in multiple clients;
            individual communication channels between each client and the server;
            a second, separate dedicated communication channel (sideband channel) between each client and server, through which the server distributes the tasks to the each client downstream and through which each of the clients sends the results of the task upstream to the server.

    So how the HELL does this have anything to do with Ajax, FTP etc.

    Another Slashdot summary to laugh at.

  4. Trojan! by easyTree · · Score: 2, Informative

    The MCC Foundation is reporting a whole different story according to Yahoo. [yahoo.com]
    This redirects to a trojan!
    --
    Requiem for the American Dream
  5. The summary is wrong; but the patent is stupid. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

    As above, the summary isn't especially accurate. What the patent proposes is a system where anybody who connects to a webserver is asked by that server to compute a chunk of some distributed processing problem. Essentially, the concept of SETI@home or distributed.net; but allegedly bodged on top of an ordinary communication session with a web server. Trouble is, it's a bloody stupid idea. The system depends on the client system executing whatever code the server asks it to execute. There are two ways of implementing this: the hideously insecure way, and the hideously slow way. The idea that the client would execute a chunk of native code at the server's request is just crazy; riddled with possibilities for misuse and wholly unacceptable. Even if this were alright, the current ways of doing this semi-safely(java and the like) are not lightweight enough to set up, run the numbers, and bring down during a simple client/server connection session. The alternative is the hideously slow way: hack together a javascript implementation of your algorithm and use AJAX tricks to hand out the data and pull back the results. This would work; but there is a reason why people don't do scientific computing with javascript. Also, many browsers are on the lookout for scripts pulling excessive resources, and throttle or kill them to keep themselves responsive. I'm sure that somebody's javascript BLAST implementation isn't going to cause any trouble. If the patent dodges this problem by using dedicated client software then it will work just fine(for the class of very, very parallel problems); but runs into a long list of prior art. That said, I'd be amused to see an AJAXed equivalent of distributed.net or similar, just for the amusement factor; but it would be a monstrosity in performance terms.