[OT]Einstein was right ...

[Emmanuel Lecharny <el...@apache.org>]

.. when he said that two things were infinite :
- the Universe,
- human stupidity

But he added that he doubts that the first assertion was right. 
Regardless, the second one seems to be correct :

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7035846/claims.html
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7315854.html

How possibly some idiots can patent such an incredibly piece of garbage ???

So pathetic ...

-- 
--
cordialement, regards,
Emmanuel Lécharny
www.iktek.com
directory.apache.org

Re: [OT]Einstein was right ...

[Howard Chu <hy...@symas.com>]

Emmanuel Lecharny wrote:
> Howard Chu wrote:
>> I don't
>> believe in software patents though; this is all pretty stupid.
> This was my point.

Cool.

>> The second patent is essentially one step beyond syncrepl and other
>> similar replication mechanisms that have existed for many years. We've
>> had partial and fractional replication for ages. The difference that I
>> see here is that he's using query containment to decide to return a
>> referral to the master server, when a searched-for entry isn't present
>> in the replica. In our current implementations, if you ran such a
>> query against a partial replica, you'd just get no result back for the
>> missing entries. As patents go, it follows the standard formula - add
>> one step to an existing well known process and presto, you've invented
>> something new. Whether it's actually useful or not is a different
>> question - IMO, anything that relies on LDAP referrals is
>> fundamentally flawed anyway.
> Thanks for the insight Howard !

I would expect the above patent to fail the obviousness test, if nothing else. 
Or perhaps I should now file a new patent on all of the above, adding in the 
use of chaining instead of returning a referral back to the client, since 
that's always my preferred method for distributed operation. Given the crap 
that gets granted these days, it would probably fly too.
>
> I have some friends working in big telco companies, and they told me
> that their boni was partly based on the number of patents they register.
> This clearly leads to a ridiculous patent race.

Yep. Same in a lot of places; same when I worked at Locus and PLATINUM. 
Somewhat the same at JPL, though as a government employee we couldn't actually 
get patents. But we still got bonuses for publishing inventions...
>
> We see the very same thing happening in the research area : if you don't
> publish, you don't exist. Thanks god, Ig Nobel has been created to grant
> the most stupid research papers... (have a look at this paper :
> http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants/jnlwdpdf/wpafbchem.pdf.
> Top of page 2 is simply hilarious :)

Sigh. Our tax dollars at work...

-- 
   -- Howard Chu
   CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
   Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
   Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/

Re: [OT]Einstein was right ...

[Emmanuel Lecharny <el...@apache.org>]

Howard Chu wrote:
>
> I wouldn't call query containment "garbage" - 
Garbage = to patent something which is prior art :)
> LDAP search queries can be pretty complex, and it certainly takes some 
> thinking to get caching right. Give credit where it's due. I don't 
> believe in software patents though; this is all pretty stupid. 
This was my point.
> And of course, Apurva's original implementation was pretty atrocious; 
> I had to rewrite about 95% of it before it would offer any performance 
> benefit over no cache at all.
:)
> The second patent is essentially one step beyond syncrepl and other 
> similar replication mechanisms that have existed for many years. We've 
> had partial and fractional replication for ages. The difference that I 
> see here is that he's using query containment to decide to return a 
> referral to the master server, when a searched-for entry isn't present 
> in the replica. In our current implementations, if you ran such a 
> query against a partial replica, you'd just get no result back for the 
> missing entries. As patents go, it follows the standard formula - add 
> one step to an existing well known process and presto, you've invented 
> something new. Whether it's actually useful or not is a different 
> question - IMO, anything that relies on LDAP referrals is 
> fundamentally flawed anyway.
Thanks for the insight Howard !

I have some friends working in big telco companies, and they told me 
that their boni was partly based on the number of patents they register. 
This clearly leads to a ridiculous patent race.

We see the very same thing happening in the research area : if you don't 
publish, you don't exist. Thanks god, Ig Nobel has been created to grant 
the most stupid research papers... (have a look at this paper : 
http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants/jnlwdpdf/wpafbchem.pdf. 
Top of page 2 is simply hilarious :)



-- 
--
cordialement, regards,
Emmanuel Lécharny
www.iktek.com
directory.apache.org

Re: [OT]Einstein was right ...

[Howard Chu <hy...@symas.com>]

Graham Leggett wrote:
> Emmanuel Lecharny wrote:
>
>> .. when he said that two things were infinite :
>> - the Universe,
>> - human stupidity
>>
>> But he added that he doubts that the first assertion was right.
>> Regardless, the second one seems to be correct :
>>
>> http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7035846/claims.html
>> http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7315854.html
>>
>> How possibly some idiots can patent such an incredibly piece of garbage ???
>
> Prior art kills patents.
>
> Both caching and reverse proxying have well documented prior art in
> httpd going to before 1999 (when I first got involved with it). It would
> have to be determined whether HTTP and LDAP differ enough to argue that
> the work is original. (Both HTTP and LDAP are request response protocols
> where an end user makes a request for information and receives a response.)
>
> Alternatively, I am sure that Sun produced an LDAP proxy server capable
> of doing directory aggregation about a decade ago, may be good to check.
> Anyone remember?

Sun didn't have one back then. I wrote back-ldap for OpenLDAP in 1998 though; 
that was my first contribution to OpenLDAP in fact. The rest of the world 
wasn't even thinking about LDAP proxy servers at the time, they were too busy 
building LDAP islands that didn't talk to each other.

I would say that the technique used to perform LDAP query containment was 
interesting and certainly novel, wrt to HTTP. But the problem with this patent 
is that it was granted in 2006, and we had already implemented this in 
OpenLDAP in 2002.

http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-devel/200209/msg00013.html

Apurva Kumar, who developed the first version of the OpenLDAP code, is also 
the inventor on both of the above patents. Since he's an IBM employee, it's 
not surprising that he would have applied for patents (in general), since 
that's common practice at IBM. But someone ought to have told him that once an 
invention has been shared with the world, it is no longer patentable.

I wouldn't call query containment "garbage" - LDAP search queries can be 
pretty complex, and it certainly takes some thinking to get caching right. 
Give credit where it's due. I don't believe in software patents though; this 
is all pretty stupid. And of course, Apurva's original implementation was 
pretty atrocious; I had to rewrite about 95% of it before it would offer any 
performance benefit over no cache at all.

The other thing about patents is you used to have to submit an implementation 
along with the app; i.e., you can't just concoct an idea and send it in. You 
have to demonstrate that the idea is practical in the real world. And, you're 
supposed to submit the best possible embodiment of the idea. If he used his 
original OpenLDAP contribution in the patent app, it's clear that it was 
nowhere near the best possible embodiment. Oh well.

The second patent is essentially one step beyond syncrepl and other similar 
replication mechanisms that have existed for many years. We've had partial and 
fractional replication for ages. The difference that I see here is that he's 
using query containment to decide to return a referral to the master server, 
when a searched-for entry isn't present in the replica. In our current 
implementations, if you ran such a query against a partial replica, you'd just 
get no result back for the missing entries. As patents go, it follows the 
standard formula - add one step to an existing well known process and presto, 
you've invented something new. Whether it's actually useful or not is a 
different question - IMO, anything that relies on LDAP referrals is 
fundamentally flawed anyway.
-- 
   -- Howard Chu
   CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
   Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
   Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/

Re: [OT]Einstein was right ...

[Graham Leggett <mi...@sharp.fm>]

Emmanuel Lecharny wrote:

> .. when he said that two things were infinite :
> - the Universe,
> - human stupidity
> 
> But he added that he doubts that the first assertion was right. 
> Regardless, the second one seems to be correct :
> 
> http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7035846/claims.html
> http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7315854.html
> 
> How possibly some idiots can patent such an incredibly piece of garbage ???

Prior art kills patents.

Both caching and reverse proxying have well documented prior art in 
httpd going to before 1999 (when I first got involved with it). It would 
have to be determined whether HTTP and LDAP differ enough to argue that 
the work is original. (Both HTTP and LDAP are request response protocols 
where an end user makes a request for information and receives a response.)

Alternatively, I am sure that Sun produced an LDAP proxy server capable 
of doing directory aggregation about a decade ago, may be good to check. 
Anyone remember?

Regards,
Graham
--