84results about How to "Less reliable" patented technology

A method and apparatus for determining predicted failure rates for computational resources provided by a system comprising multiple components. The method comprises storing failure rate information about individual components and determining a current configuration of components within the system. The method further comprises identifying from the current configuration dependencies between components within the system. The stored failure rate information and the identified current configuration dependencies can then be used to generate predicted failure rates for the computational resources in the current configuration of the system.

An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for authenticating users through multiple communication channels. The authentication method of the present invention may be used to supplement password systems or replace password authentication, effectively enabling secure sharing, auditing, delegation, and revocation of authority.

A replicated decentralized storage system comprises a plurality of servers that locally store disk images for locally running virtual machines as well as disk images, for failover purposes, for remotely running virtual machines. To ensure that disk images stored for failover purposes are properly replicated upon an update of the disk image on the server running the virtual machine, a hash of a unique value known only to the server running the virtual machine is used to verify the origin of update operations that have been transmitted by the server to the other servers storing replications of the disk image for failover purposes. If verified, the update operations are added to such failover disk images.

A replicated decentralized storage system comprises a plurality of servers that locally store disk images for locally running virtual machines as well as disk images, for failover purposes, for remotely running virtual machines. To ensure that disk images stored for failover purposes are properly replicated upon an update of the disk image on the server running the virtual machine, a hash of a unique value known only to the server running the virtual machine is used to verify the origin of update operations that have been transmitted by the server to the other servers storing replications of the disk image for failover purposes. If verified, the update operations are added to such failover disk images. To enable the replicated decentralized system to recover from a failure of the primary server, the master secret is subdivided into parts and distributed to other servers in the cluster. Upon a failure of the primary server, a secondary server receives a threshold number of the parts and is able to recreate the master secret and failover virtual machines that were running in the failed primary server.

Method for preparing classified advertisements for publication in printed media, comprising the steps of: capturing (112) at least the textual content (30) of each classified advertisement expressed in natural language, automatically classifying and extracting (120-124) a plurality of data units (480) out of said textual content (30) and storing each data unit into a corresponding field of a record (48) in an electronic database (9), using said database for determining the textual content, the layout and / or the position of the classified advertisement in said printed media.

An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for authenticating users through multiple communication channels. The authentication method of the present invention may be used to supplement password systems or replace password authentication, effectively enabling secure sharing, auditing, delegation, and revocation of authority.

A sensor based human motion detection gaming with false positive detection uses a single sensor or a combination of sensors to measure the physical motions of the player and then uses this motion as input in an interactive game. The interactive game resides on a mobile host such as a mobile phone. The system uses algorithms on the data gathered by the sensors to determine the current physical activity being performed by the player. Game play progression is then based on the physical activity being performed. The system also filters data to detect cheating patterns that may be used by a player to gain an unfair advantage in a game that uses such a system.

A capacitive sensor system for controlling operation of a device in response to a rate of change in capacitance due to motion of a proximate object includes at least two sense electrodes disposed on a surface and a phase locked loop, including a voltage controlled oscillator and a phase / frequency comparator, connected between the sense electrodes and an RC network for providing an operating frequency to the sense electrodes. A circuit loop, including a reference oscillator, provides a fixed frequency reference for the phase locked loop to follow and a phase delay circuit connected between the phase / frequency comparator and the voltage controlled oscillator causes the voltage controlled oscillator to run ahead of the reference oscillator. A trigger circuit provides a control output in response to a change in phase shift between the fixed frequency and the operating frequency.

A replicated decentralized storage system comprises a plurality of servers that locally store disk images for locally running virtual machines as well as disk images, for failover purposes, for remotely running virtual machines. To ensure that disk images stored for failover purposes are properly replicated upon an update of the disk image on the server running the virtual machine, a hash of a unique value known only to the server running the virtual machine is used to verify the origin of update operations that have been transmitted by the server to the other servers storing replications of the disk image for failover purposes. If verified, the update operations are added to such failover disk images.

A network of terminals, where each terminal is operable by a student in a group as a response apparatus, is in contemporaneous communication with a teacher station. The modes of operation include visual, i.e. hand writing, hand drawing and typing, as well as audio, in particular the voice of the user, which may contemporaneously accompany the visual, such as when explaining what is being drawn. Such an apparatus can also be used by a teacher to author a lesson, including graphics and audio, providing information and questions which are recorded at the teacher station. The communication means between the student apparatuses and the teacher's station is in a preferred embodiment of the invention via an 802.11 wireless gateway when the students are in the same room as the teacher or in close proximity, or via the Internet especially in the case where individual students are remotely located from the teacher.

A repeatability score is described for determining the quality and reliability of product sales data for generating seasonal demand forecasts. The repeatability scores are calculated from seasonal sales data stored in a data warehouse. Products are sorted based on their reliability scores such that those products that are highly seasonal and have a reliable year-to-year demand pattern are used to form initial or unique demand models. Products that are determined to be less reliable based on their repeatability score are added to the unique demand models through an iterative matching process or left out of the unique demand models.

A system for controlling temperature in an enclosure operates in a low heat or a high heat mode with flame always present. The presently intended use is for providing a cooking grill with a controlled temperature cooking space. An electrically controlled valve having high flow rate and low flow rate settings is interposed in the fuel line for at least one of the burners in the grill. A temperature sensor signals cooking space temperature to a controller that may be a microprocessor. The system includes a keyboard allowing the user to communicate a selected set point to the microprocessor and the microprocessor communicates status to a display. The microprocessor selects the setting of the electrically controlled valve. In a preferred embodiment, the electrically controlled valve is placed in series fuel flow with one of the manually adjustable valves commonly found on cooking grills.

The parameters of an optical code are optimized to achieve improved signal robustness, reliability, capacity and / or visual quality. An optimization program can determine spatial density, dot distance, dot size and signal component priority to optimize robustness. An optical code generator employs these parameters to produce an optical code at the desired spatial density and robustness. The optical code is merged into a host image, such as imagery, text and graphics of a package or label, or it may be printed by itself, e.g., on an otherwise blank label or carton. A great number of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

A method and system for maintaining a high reliability logical connection between hosts employs adaptive transparent pinging, clone blocking and bandwidth leveling to realize improvements in the areas of connection status verification, security and bandwidth management. In adaptive transparent pinging, a ping interval that defines a frequency at which ping messages are transmitted from an initiating host to a receiving host to check connection status is dynamically regulated based on data indicative of the reliability of a connection. In clone blocking, the receiving host verifies that a new connection that appears redundant is a re-established connection from the initiating host rather than a cloned connection. In bandwidth leveling, data bursts pending on initiating hosts that exceed a predetermined size are scheduled for transmission to receiving hosts.

Components can be mounted with an improved accuracy and efficiency, thereby realizing a thin hybrid module in which the components are mounted with a high density. The present invention provides a hybrid module including a silicon substrate having formed therein a plurality of component mounting concavities open to one of main sides of the silicon substrate, a plurality of components inserted in the component mounting concavities, respectively, with their input / output-formed sides being exposed to outside through the openings of the component mounting concavities and buried in the silicon substrate with their perimeters except for at least their input / output-formed sides being fixed by adhesive layers formed in the component mounting concavities, and a wiring layer formed on the main side of the silicon substrate to cover the components and which has a wiring pattern provided on an insulative resin layer included in the wiring layer and which is connected to an input / output provided on the input / output-formed side of each of the components.

Optical code signal components are generated and then transformed into signal bearing art that conveys machine readable data. The components of an optical code are optimized to achieve improved signal robustness, reliability, capacity and / or visual quality. An optimization program can determine spatial density, dot distance, dot size and signal component priority to optimize robustness. An optical code generator transforms tiles of an optical code or image embedded with the optical code into signal-bearing art using stipple, Voronoi, Delaunay or other graphic drawing methods so as to retain prioritized components of the optical code. The optical code is merged into a host image, such as imagery, text and graphics of a package or label, or it may be printed by itself, e.g., on an otherwise blank label or carton. A great number of other features and arrangements are also detailed.

A replicated decentralized storage system comprises a plurality of servers that locally store disk images for locally running virtual machines as well as disk images, for failover purposes, for remotely running virtual machines. To ensure that disk images stored for failover purposes are properly replicated upon an update of the disk image on the server running the virtual machine, a hash of a unique value known only to the server running the virtual machine is used to verify the origin of update operations that have been transmitted by the server to the other servers storing replications of the disk image for failover purposes. If verified, the update operations are added to such failover disk images. To enable the replicated decentralized system to recover from a failure of the primary server, the master secret is subdivided into parts and distributed to other servers in the cluster. Upon a failure of the primary server, a secondary server receives a threshold number of the parts and is able to recreate the master secret and failover virtual machines that were running in the failed primary server.

An aircraft gateway processing system for wirelessly transferring data between an aircraft and a ground server. The aircraft gateway processing system includes an aircraft gateway processor unit that includes a protocol data processing unit; and, a store and forward unit operably connected to the protocol data processing unit. An auxiliary battery power unit is operably connected to the aircraft gateway processor unit and configured to provide self-powered operation of the aircraft gateway processing system in the event of a loss of aircraft power during communications or initiation of communication when aircraft power is not available. At least one wireless communication interface is operably connected to the aircraft gateway processor unit for connection to the internet and ultimately to a ground server connected to the internet. At least one network data interface is operably connected to the aircraft gateway processor unit and operably connectable to another aircraft unit.

Artwork carrying machine readable data is generated by editing artwork according to a data signal or transforming the data signal into artwork. The machine-readable data signal is generated from a digital payload and converted into an image tile. Artwork is edited according to the image tile by moving graphic elements, adapting intersections of lines, or altering line density, among other techniques. Artwork is generated from the data signal by skeletonizing it and applying morphological operators to a skeletal representation, such as a medial axis transform. Artistic effects are introduced by filtering the data signal with directional blurring or shape filters.

The invention concerns a method for precoding in an open loop transmission communications system, wherein the method includes precoding data at each of M REs with a precoding matrix, precoding each of DM-RSs with one column of a precoding matrix which is same as that used for precoding M data REs. The method is distinguished by using at least L≧2 different precoding matrices from a set of precoding matrices W to precode the M REs and the E allocated REs such that REs precoded with a first precoding matrix are interleaved with REs precoded with at least one additional, different precoding matrix and the number of used precoding matrices L is adapted to the transmission rank r and number N of available DM-RS. The invention further concerns a radio transmitter and a user equipment.

A method and system for assessing health of a power source includes measuring voltage and current of a power source in a system using a device in the system as the load. An internal resistance of the power source is determined based on the measured voltage and current. A health assessment of the power source is determined and provided based at least on the determined internal resistance and a stored baseline internal resistance for the power source.

A capacitor switch including a power contactor and an impedance contactor located within a relatively slender container filled with dielectric gas. The container may be a “dead tank” or an insulator. For the insulator configuration, the switch also includes a conductive cap housing a charging impedance located on the end of the insulator. The power contactor includes a relatively fixed probe contact and a linearly moving socket. The impedance contactor is ring-type butt contactor surrounding the penetrating contactor that includes a retracting (but otherwise fixed) contact that surrounds the fixed probe, and a traveling ring contact that surrounds and moves with the moving socket contact. The impedance contactor closes before the power contactor on the closing stroke to introduce the charging impedance into the circuit. A puffer mechanism retards the expansion of the retracting contact on the opening stroke, which causes the impedance contactor to open before the power contactor.

Disclosed are NFC-enabled communication systems for provisioning wireless vehicle communication, control logic for operating such systems, and motor vehicles equipped with an onboard NFC-enabled device for short-range communication with one or more off-board NFC-enabled devices. A disclosed method for provisioning data exchange between an onboard electronic device of a motor vehicle and an off-board electronic device includes detecting if NFC-enabled components of the onboard and off-board electronic devices are within a predetermined proximity of each other and, if the components are within proximity, establishing a wireless communications session between the devices. After establishing the wireless communications session, determining whether or not to grant the off-board electronic device access to an NFC tag in the NFC-enabled component of the onboard electronic device. If access to the NFC tag is granted, a message data packet is transmitted from the off-board electronic device to the onboard electronic device or a personal computing device.

Embodiments of the subject invention are drawn to power supply units and systems for supplying power to loads. Specific embodiments relate to systems incorporating the loads. The power supply units and systems can include a feedback mechanism for monitoring the system and maintaining a parameter of interest at or near a desired value (e.g., for maintaining the frequency of operation at or near resonance). The feedback mechanism is configured such that, if the at least one parameter indicates that the frequency of operation is away from a resonant frequency of the power amplifier, the feedback mechanism adjusts the frequency of operation closer to the resonant frequency of the power amplifier. The at least one load can have a variable impedance, though embodiments are not limited thereto.