last message

["Chawla, Jay" <jchawla@cooley.com>]

I don't want to waste any more of this group's time, but I want to thank
Trent again.  I'm reading a bunch of old internet RFCs related to message
digests, and it looks like a direct, literal read on claim one in the
patent.

Kudos!

Jay 

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Trent Piepho [SMTP:xyzzy@speakeasy.org]
> Sent:	Wednesday, March 22, 2000 2:36 PM
> To:	vanilla-list@us.netrek.org
> Cc:	Chawla, Jay
> Subject:	RE: [VANILLA-LIST:3019] technical question
> 
> On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Chawla, Jay wrote:
> > Hi everyone.
> > 
> > Thanks for all of your great responses!  I still have some questions
> based
> > on what you've all said and some reading I've done, so I'll intersperse
> them
> > between what you guys wrote, along with any comments I have regarding
> this
> > patent
> > or patents in general.  My new questions/comments are in ALL CAPS.
> 
> Do you think you could not use all caps?  It is normal email style to
> quote
> others' messages with a > character at the beginning of each line, and
> then
> write your response in legible text with proper capitalization.  You might
> also want to try to wrap your lines at 80 columns wide, rather than making
> some lines short, 
> because it looks really bad when you do this and it is again hard to read.
> 
> > > If its plain text messaging, you're describing 'irc,' or Internet
> Relay
> > > Chat, that has been around for quite some time.
> > >  
> > I READ THE IRC SPEC (RFC 1459) AND IT MAKES NO MENTION OF 
> > ANY AGGREGATION -- THE SERVERS JUST FORWARD OUT MESSAGES 
> > SEPARATELY TO EVERY GROUP MEMBER.  IT'S BEEN SUGGESTED
> > TO ME THAT PLAIN OLD SOCKET OUTPUT BUFFERING DOES THE 
> > AGGREGATION DESCRIBED IN THE PATENT, BUT I DON'T SEE IT.
> 
> What do you mean by, "I DON'T SEE IT"?  When small pieces of data are
> transmitted by TCP, they are usually aggregated into larger packets, to
> make
> more efficient use of the network.  See the "NAGLE Algorithm", which
> describes
> the most common way for a TCP/IP networking stack to aggregate data into
> larger packets.  You could easily show a network trace, which had a single
> TCP
> packet with IRC messages from more than one group member in it.
> 
> > I THINK THE PATENT CLAIMS AGGREGATION OF PACKETS, AND
> > FURTHERMORE THE AGGREGATION IS DONE BEFORE THE
> > PACKETS ARE ENQUEUED TO GO TO ANY SPECIFIC GROUP
> > MEMBERS -- THE AGGREGATION IS DONE FOR THE WHOLE 
> 
> I don't seem to remember this from the claims.  It appears that the
> payloads
> must be aggregated before the message is transmitted, but that seems
> obvious,
> as the server can't very aggregate a message that has already been
> transmitted. 
> You can't add more items to a package once you've mailed it.  Does any
> claim
> state that all members of the group must transmit a packet to the server
> during the aggregation time interval, or can only *some*?  As well, must
> the
> server send the aggregated data to *all* or only *some* members of the
> group? 
> Must the data the server sends to each group member be identical, or can
> different group members receive different data.
> 
> > > and sendmail server that sends out group messages.  An aggregated
> message
> > > is a digest message consisting of list email collected over a period
> of
> > > time.
> > 
> > MY UNDERSTANDING FROM READING RFCs 821(SMTP) 1429 (LISTSERV DISTRIBUTE
> > PROTOCOL)
> > AND A COUPLE OF OTHERS, IS THAT MAIL TO A GROUP IS SENT SEPARATELY TO
> EACH
> > SERVER THAT HAS MEMBERS IN THE GROUP.  ALSO, I COULDN'T
> > FIND MENTION OF ANY AGGREGATED MESSAGE OR DIGEST MESSAGE IN
> > THOSE DOCUMENTS.  COULD YOU PLEASE POINT ME TO A SOURCE
> > THAT DESCRIBES THIS OR TELL ME WHAT I MISSED?  
> 
> A "digest" is a basic concept of publishing, dating back who knows how
> many
> hundreds of years.  In a digest, a number of pieces of information that
> were
> published separately are aggregated together into a single publication.
> For
> example, a company might piece together AP items and other news stories
> about
> a specific topic, and then publish them in a monthly trade digest.
> Perhaps
> you even subscribe to some of these?
> 
> This same concept applies to an email list.  In a normal mailing list,
> email
> messages are sent to members of the group as they are received by the
> server. 
> An individual subscribed to the list may get many emails.  Some people
> don't
> want to receive a few emails every day from their list, and would rather
> all
> the messages were aggregated into a single email, which they receive at
> the
> end of a time period, for example one week.  It's a common thing for
> mailing
> lists that carry announcements.  Rather than receive each individual
> announcement, a subscriber receives a periodic digest with several
> announcements in it.
> 
> Try looking a digest message from a mailing list:
> 
> http://newlug.org/mailArchive/gblug-discussion/9903.March_1999/15.html
> 
> > THANKS!  I WON'T REPEAT YOUR EXPLANATION HERE, BUT I THINK IT 
> > MIGHT MAKE OUR CASE!  OF COURSE, I'M NOT GOING TO STOP LOOKING 
> > FOR MORE STUFF. ;-)
> 
> It appear to me that the bulletin board systems people set up on their
> home
> computers in the 70s, as well as the PLATO notes system created in 1973,
> would
> fall under this patent.
> 
> Really, what you have here is a problem in information sharing that is as
> old
> as human civilization.  You you have a plurality of people, many of which
> have
> some information they want all the others to know about.  Each person
> can't
> send his information to all the others simultaneously, he has to tell them
> one
> at a time in person, give them each something written down, or send them a
> unicast network packet.
> 
> The most naive and unorganized way for each person to share his
> information
> with all the others, would be for each individual to simply go to every
> other
> individual, one by one, and give them the information.  This is very
> inefficient!  
> 
> Say we are a group of 100 people communicating by normal postal mail.  We
> want
> to share our ages each other.  Each person in the group would send their
> age
> to the 99 other people in in the group via 99 separate letters.  The total
> number of letters sent is 990, as there are 100 people times 99 letters
> per
> person.
> 
> There is a much better way to share information than this.  Instead, have
> each
> member of the group send their information to a single person.  This
> person
> collects and aggregates all the information he receives.  When he has
> received
> the information of each person (as in claim 3), or gets tired of waiting
> (claim 1), or a set time-limit expires (claim 2), he sends the aggregated
> information to each person in the group.
> 
> In the 100 person mail example, we would have agreed upon a coordinator
> when
> we established our group.  All 100 people would send their age to the
> coordinator, who would aggregate the information, i.e. make a list of
> everyone's age, and then send that list to every group member.  The total
> number of letters sent is now only 200!  Much better than the 990 sent in
> the
> unorganized way.
> 
> This same system is used all over the place.  Consider personal ads in the
> newspaper.  A number of people send their ads to the newspaper, who
> collects
> them over a time period.  When that period expires, the newspaper
> aggregates
> the ads onto a few pages, and sends out newspaper to everyone.  Change
> "computer" to "newspaper subscriber", "wide area communication network" to
> "paper-boy network and the postal system", and "group messaging server" to
> "offices", and that patent describes the newspaper personal ad system
> perfectly.  I'll even translate claim 1:
> 
> A method for providing group messages to a plurality of [newspaper
> subscribers] connected over [the paper-boy and postal systems], comprising
> the
> steps of:
> 
>  * providing [an] [office] coupled to said [paper-boy and postal system],
> said
>    [office] communicating with said plurality of [newspaper subscribers]
> using
>    said unicast [paper-boy and postal system] and maintaining a list of
> message
>    groups, each message group containing a list of at least one [newspaper
>    subscriber].
> 
>  * sending, by plurality of [newspaper subscribers] belonging to a first
>    message group, messages to said [office] via said unicast [postal
> system],
>    said messages containing a payload portion (the ad) and a portion for
>    identifying said first message group (the address).
> 
>  * aggregating, by said [office] in a time interval determined in
> accordance
>    with a predefined criterion, said payload portions (the ads) of said
>    messages to create an aggregate payload (the personal pages).
> 
>  * forming an aggregated message (the newspaper) using said a aggregated
>    payload; and
> 
>  * transmitting, by said [office] via said unicast [paper-boy system],
> said
>    aggregated message to a recipient [newspaper subscriber] belonging to
> said
>    first message group.
> 
> When you translate the paper to a non-computer system, it's ridiculousness
> because obvious.  It's only because patent examiners have no concept of
> computers or networks, that they let things like this pass.  Patent
> examiners
> should be held accountable for letting bogus patents pass by just because
> they
> don't understand them.
>