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Re: [News] Customised 404 Pages Isanely Patented by Jeff Bozo; FFII Speaks Out

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Linonut
<linonut@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
 wrote
on Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:28:10 -0500
<%24oj.62980$vt2.20167@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> * [H]omer peremptorily fired off this memo:
>
>> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>>
>>> Amazon Patents Customized 404 Pages
>>
>> Damn.
>>
>> I guess I'll have to purge these then:
>>
>> http://slated.org/400.shtml
>> http://slated.org/401.shtml
>> http://slated.org/403.shtml
>> http://slated.org/404.shtml
>> http://slated.org/500.php
>
> And this one:
>
>    http://www.microsoft.com/poopoo
>
> Apparently a lot of people value mushy fruit!
>

The original article refers to US Patent #7325045
of which I can get the abstract easily enough:

    A client component runs on a user computer in
    conjunction with a web browser and detects errors, such
    as but not limited to "404: page not found" errors,
    in which a requested web page or other object cannot
    be displayed.

This is an interesting claim.  Basically, this is *not*
simply a web browser hitting a 404 wall.  However, it *is*
something the web browser is hosting which is hitting a
404 -- such as applets and ActiveX, and quite possibly
Mozilla installable components (which are little more
than some Javascript and a web page).  It might also refer
to Javascript.

    In response to detecting the error, the client
    component notifies an error processing server, which
    uses the URL of the failed request to identify an
    alternate object to display.

Now we're getting into AJAX territory.

    The alternate object may, for example, be (a) an
    object retrieved from replacement URL, or from a URL
    that is otherwise related to the requested object,
    (b) a cached version of the requested object, (c) an
    object retrieved from a closely matching URL found in
    the user's clickstream history, or (d) a dynamically
    generated page that includes links to one or more
    of the foregoing types of alternate objects. Also
    disclosed are methods for identifying alternate objects
    for a given URL.

It is not clear what Amazon's licensing policies are here, but
they'd better be clearly documented somewhere.  I'm not going
to go through the claims here, although they are basically
the same as the abstract, with a more precise description.

Slashdot's CmdrTaco might be slightly sloppy here, but it
is a bit of a worry.  However, it does not appear to apply
to such things as Apache error pages.

-- 
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Windows.  Multi-platform(1), multi-tasking(1), multi-user(1).
(1) if one defines "multi" as "exactly one".

-- 
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com


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