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Amazon Patents Customized 404 Pages 167

Posted by CmdrTaco from the makes-my-heart-hurt dept.
theodp writes "Among the patents awarded to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Tuesday was one for his invention of Error Processing Methods for Providing Responsive Content to a User When a Page Load Error Occurs, which covers displaying alternate web pages in response to HTTP 404 page-not-found errors. So is this the technology that causes Amazon's Home Page to be displayed when Bezos' MIA Patent Reform Page can't be found?"
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Amazon Patents Customized 404 Pages More

Amazon Patents Customized 404 Pages

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  • The Plan (Score:5, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @08:50AM (#22233614) Journal
    They were going to sue everyone on the planet, but they couldn't find their websites.

    And by the way, what constitutes "customized" when its open source software?

    • Re:The Plan (Score:5, Informative)

      by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @11:33AM (#22235216)

      And by the way, what constitutes "customized" when its open source software?

      Their patent doesn't have anything to do with 404 pages. Their patent covers the specific case of having multiple error pages corresponding to cashed version, or closest name for a page, etcetera -and- a client side component that says failures load alternate version X. The client-side component may be prt of the browser. But the important thing is that the error type is user-settable./p

      • Re:The Plan (Score:4, Informative)

        by ashridah ( 72567 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @12:17PM (#22235824)
        closest name for a page
        So... mod_speling for apache would be an accurate representation of prior art of some of that patent, then...

        ash

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 )

          So... mod_speling for apache would be an accurate representation of prior art of some of that patent, then...

          Nope. Or rather, only if the user got to choose whether the server would use mod_speling -or- an alternate method. The patent is about letting the client choose one of N (N >= 2) methods of error handing, like mod_speling. It doesn't appear to cover any specific method of error handling.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Plaid Phantom ( 818438 )

        If I read the patent right, this is a client-side error handler (Javascript, perhaps?) which, instead of just accepting a 404 error page, forwards the URL to a separate web server which determines another page to display somewhat like mod_speling, but I'd guess it could be more powerful (which I'd imagine would be useful with the URLs I've seen Amazon come up with). But then, who would be hand-typing an Amazon link anyway? Are they recording bad links within Amazon's pages so they can fix them?

        It's cert

        • A system for handling page request errors, comprising: an error processing server; and a client component that runs on a user computing device in association with or as part of a browser program and communicates with the error processing server over a computer network; wherein the client component is responsive to detection of the unavailability of a target web page requested by the browser program by sending a request to the error processing server, and the error processing server is responsive to the requ

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Divebus ( 860563 )
      Patent Trolls weren't invented until recently and prior art is everywhere. I did this on my WebSTAR server with NetCloak nine years ago but John O'Fallon would have laughed at the suggestion to patent something like this. That was then. From the NetCloak manual:

      When a non-existent page is requested and the error page is served, THISURL is the requested (non-existent) URL. This makes the SHOW_THISURL command useful for making a smart error page. If users have a typo in their URL, the error page can automatic

  • 404'd! (Score:5, Funny)

    by boristdog ( 133725 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @08:53AM (#22233630)
    404'd! [homestarrunner.com]

    • Old news (Score:5, Insightful)

      by yog ( 19073 ) * on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @10:17AM (#22234396) Homepage Journal
      Bezos has stated in the past that he is patenting software methods as a defensive measure. "We're not saying we have bad patents," Amazon.com spokesman Bill Curry said. "We feel very good about our patents... [Bezos] makes the point very emphatically in the letter that we cannot unilaterally disarm in a world where there are big ugly players who aren't disarming." [wired.com]

      It's like road rage. When people are cutting you off and breaking all the rules, you have to tailgate and cut them off as a defensive measure (sometimes, at least). Nice guys finish last. The entire system is broken and the Patent Office really needs more legislative direction because it has strayed from its original mission.

      I think software and business methods should not be patentable in the same way that physical inventions are. Also, I question the concept of selling patents. We end up with these litigious patent holding companies that have no technical abilities of their own, only a lot of lawyers.

      A few years ago I looked into making and marketing a telephony device that would be an incremental but useful improvement over existing equipment, and discovered that so many methods related to telephony and voicemail are patented that practically speaking there was no way to make a device without infringing. "A method for playing back a telephoned message by pressing a button"--give me a freaking break. No wonder the U.S. has slipped behind in technical innovation, when much of the incentive for incremental product improvement has been removed by the threat of instant litigation. Thank goodness the Asians still believe in incremental improvement.

      I'm OK with Amazon patenting stupid obvious things, as long as they don't enforce those patents, which I believe they have done very little of, and as long as Jeff Bezos continues to crusade for patent reform. Just my 2c!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by JCSoRocks ( 1142053 )
        That's all well and good until someone steps in and replaces Bezos. What happens when we get someone who sees patents as a profit center and not just a way to prevent other wackos from patenting it? What happens when they decide to sell those patents to some patent warehouse owned by lawyers? Needless to say, it could get ugly fast. The fact is, these patents should never have been granted in the first place. They're nothing but harmful to American business.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by cching ( 179312 )
          Of course you're right, but with the system the way it is, someone grabbing them now so that they aren't used against anyone else is the best we can hope for. Ideally, there would be a body out there to whom you could assign "obvious" patents so that they can't be used for evil. That seems like such a good idea that I'm sure it must exist. If so, maybe we could lobby Amazon to contribute their "defensive" patents to this body so we're in the clear now and forever.

          • Ideally, there would be a body out there to whom you could assign "obvious" patents so that they can't be used for evil. That seems like such a good idea that I'm sure it must exist.


            You'd think so, but I have a patent on the idea and I'm just waiting someone to infringe on it.
          • I figure that, with the way things are going, the Patent System is going to go critical before long. Innovation will grind to a standstill in the US because of sheer litigation of Patent claims.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Yez70 ( 924200 )
          Personally, I'd rather have someone like Bezos holding the patent, if it were going to be granted in the first place. He has so far held up to his word on the collection of silly patents they have, that never should have been granted. For example, Amazon also owns the patent for internet affiliate programs. They've had it for most of this decade. Technically, they could stop every one of their competitors and any other business that sells online by using traffic from affiliates. 99% of webmasters would

          • A question, then, regarding the point that Amazon holds patents which have clearly been violated but are not being enforced. My understanding is that once a patent is granted in the U.S., the holder must defend it or risk losing the patent. So to the point that "I'd rather have Bezos hold the patent because he has not yet Done Evil," is there any way for someone to obtain the same or similar patent once it has already been "lost," or does it automatically become part of the public domain?

            (clearly IANAL)

            • the holder must defend it or risk losing the patent
              I believe you're thinking of trademarks, which do require active defense in the face of illegitimate use. To my (layperson) knowledge, there is no such requirement of patents once they are issues.

        • What happens when they decide to sell those patents to some patent warehouse owned by lawyers?
          What happens when they decide to sell those patents to some patent whorehouse owned by lawyers?

          There -- fixed it for you...

      • Re:Old news (Score:4, Insightful)

        by seebs ( 15766 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @12:18PM (#22235834) Homepage
        Bezos has said that, yes.

        Would you call his one-click lawsuit from a few years back a "defensive measure"? I would not.

        The fact is, he's lied on every last thing he's said on the issue, and swallowing these lies given his clear, repeated, public contradictions of every such claim is just pathetic. I mean, it's long past "stupid".

        You believe they have done "very little" of enforcing patents on "stupid obvious things". How much is okay? Would you say that demanding an injunction against a competitor running their existing web site, at all, during the holiday season is "very little"? Reasonable for you? You think it's no big deal to demand that someone suddenly, on no notice, stop accepting any orders on their web site until they revise their system not to conflict with a "stupid obvious" patent?

        The fact is, Bezos is part of the problem, and actively so, and all his "crusading" for patent reform has consisted of, purely reactively in response to negative outcries over his abuses, saying sets of things that his critics would like him to say... And then doing nothing about it, and continuing to use the system, as is, to his advantage. Including filing suits.

        You know why so many 419 scams have phrases like "in God's name" and "we are devout Christians"? Because there are millions of people who will reflexively assume that anyone who claims to be Christian is honest and trustworthy, as long as they use a few of the right buzzwords. Bezos has found the corresponding hole in your cognitive system; you simply can't be bothered to investigate the truth of his claims. Why? Because, if they were true, they would be exactly what you wish he'd think.

        It ain't so. Amazon is an abuser of the patent system. Amazon is a spammer. Amazon is everything we hoped they wouldn't be, and they rely on our wishful thinking to convince us that, really, they're a great company, when they are actually systematic scumbags. They spam, and then they get caught and "fix" it. They abuse the patent system, and they don't even stop abusing it, they just say it's "defensive". They have filed suits against competitors who were not using patents against them since they first claimed this was defensive.

        Why do you keep trusting them? What's your emotional investment in never, ever, considering the possibility that they lied to you?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Fishead ( 658061 )
      Awesome! That's the best 404 page I have ever seen!

      Any strongbad related post deserves +6 awesomeness!
  • cat /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf |grep -B 5 404

    # Customizable error responses come in three flavors:
    # 1) plain text 2) local redirects 3) external redirects
    #
    # Some examples:
    #ErrorDocument 500 "The server made a boo boo."
    #ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html
    #ErrorDocument 404 "/cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl"

    Customizable error responses come in three flavors:
    # 1) plain text 2) local redirects 3) external redirects

    • Not prior art (Score:5, Informative)

      by codegen ( 103601 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:01AM (#22233690) Journal
      The patent is not about the server serving custom
      error pages (which is your post), but about a client
      side process that communicates with a separate error server
      to generate the appropriate response. So I would guess it
      is a intended to be a plugin for a browser.

      But then this is slashdot, why bother to read the article.

      • Re:Not prior art (Score:5, Funny)

        by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:04AM (#22233728) Homepage Journal
        What error is displayed when the error server is not found?

      • Re:Not prior art (Score:4, Funny)

        by PinkyDead ( 862370 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:12AM (#22233808) Journal
        What article?

      • Re:Not prior art (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:18AM (#22233860)
        The "client-side component" in question is (or can be) simply a part of the browser's built-in functionality. And don't tell me that using a redirect to a different server dedicated to dynamic 404s is bloody "innovative".

        (And having a 404 handler that tries to figure out what the user is looking for [which is the other major component]? That has very, very much been done before).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by codegen ( 103601 )
          I agree completely. I don't believe that having a smart browser component to handle error pages from the client side using an error server is in any way innovative. I don't believe in software patents anyways. I was just noting that the ability of the apache server to return alternate error pages is not prior art in this case.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cduffy ( 652 )
            I think that's because you're reading in "smart browser component" where the patent only specifies a browser component. The innate ability of the browser to handle even regular 404 error pages isn't excluded by definition from Claim 1.
        • Every Copy of IE is prior art ... It shows a custom 404 page with redirects to pages to solve the problem rather than the server produced 404 page ...

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by nschubach ( 922175 )
            ...or it redirects you to MSN search for some ludicrous reason.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cduffy ( 652 )
            Not necessarily for the more specific claims -- they cover looking at the user's history with the site, at the URL being attempted (ie. the section it's trying to reach) and so forth. I don't think IE's built-in functionality is applicable.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by holloway ( 46404 )
          Good point -- IE doesn't display custom 404s unless the response body is over a certain length.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gravesb ( 967413 )
        Additionally, the hierarchy of redirection can be set on the client side. Maybe something like an A9 search toolbar with customized redirects.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Creepy ( 93888 )
        Isn't that the intent of Microsoft's "Show Friendly HTTP Error Messages" in IE? I admit, they never did much with customizing it, and to be quite honest, they make the message worthless instead of knowledgeably useful, but you could argue they did client side customization of the error message.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by lanswitch ( 705539 )
      Reminds me of Marvin:

      The requested patent is totally fake.
      No patent here.
      Even tried multi.
      Nothing helped.
      I'm really depressed about this.
      You see, I'm just a web server...
      -- here I am, brain the size of the universe,
      trying to serve you a simple patent,
      and then it doesn't even exist!
      Where does that leave me?!

  • How stupid can the patent office be.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by bleh-of-the-huns ( 17740 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @08:58AM (#22233668)
    I mean seriously, in the last 2 weeks, we have the Minerva Industries patent on smartphones, and now this.. Who the hell is working in the patent office.....

    I am sure we can find some prior art.. the most annoying being angelfire and geocities from way back when.

    • Re:How stupid can the patent office be.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rucs_hack ( 784150 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:09AM (#22233770)
      Its not all the patent offices fault. They have to follow the rules, and those rules were not set up for the torrent of patents they receive these days.

      If you get too many patent applications, the process of establishing if prior art exists also gets swamped. Thus without a special effort, patents which have prior art can still get granted.

      I've skimmed the patent in question, and it sounds like a new thing to me. There may be bits and pieces that invalidate some of what it does, but since the USPTO allows patents for software products (which has always struck me as dumb), this is probably valid.

      • Re:How stupid can the patent office be.. (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:43AM (#22234110)

        Its not all the patent offices fault. They have to follow the rules, and those rules were not set up for the torrent of patents they receive these days.


        They should use Comcast, then. That should slow the torrents down a bit...

        *cower (Rank 8)*

      • Re:How stupid can the patent office be.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @10:14AM (#22234368) Journal

        If you get too many patent applications, the process of establishing if prior art exists also gets swamped. Thus without a special effort, patents which have prior art can still get granted.

        Um, easy solution, don't issue any patents until you're sure there's no prior art. If there are too many patents submitted, tough shit, no patents for anyone. That would motivate reform!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sancho ( 17056 )
          How sure should you be? How much time should you spend researching prior art?
          • Good point. But whatever answer you come up with -- or the Patent Office comes up with -- should not be based on the size of the backlog of pending patents.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Hatta ( 162192 )
            Sure enough that you're willing to risk some sort of liability if you issue the patent and prior art is later discovered.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Sancho ( 17056 )
              No one will want to risk that, if nothing else, due to the sometimes capricious nature of the courts. Under this plan, expect patent examiners to be in short supply.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Hatta ( 162192 )
                Ok, make the patent applicant liable if prior art is discovered. They're the ones trying to profit off of a fraudulent patent anyway.

            • Sure enough that you're willing to risk some sort of liability if you issue the patent and prior art is later discovered.

              Even better make the patent holder liable if the patent is found to be invalid for any reason. If you sue someone for patent violation and the patent is found to be invalid for any reason you have to pay the person you sued the amount you were suing for. Make the liability cost enough and applying for BS patents would end overnight. Enforcement of existing patents would be much more selective and less of a shakedown scheme as it is now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

      Who the hell is working in the patent office.....

      I always wondered whether the "According to Jim" writers were working day jobs during the strike. Now I know.

  • RTFA you tards (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:03AM (#22233720)
    It's not a patent on 404 handlers. It's a patent on a client-side component that detects errors including, but not limited to 404s, then relays the error to an external server and receives an alternate URL or resource to serve the user. Blame the patent office for being idiots if you want, but this time *you* are the idiot.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cheers for clearing that up, Jeff.
    • So why would Amazon be patenting a client-side component?

      (not to mention that they would be total tards for actually implementing it, given how much pain IE causes by intercepting 404 already)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by somersault ( 912633 )
      Oh so you mean it kinda does what Apache does when you get an error (including, but not limited to, 404s), except it keeps the list of redirect pages on a separate server? Sounds like something that should be allowed a patent to me, I mean it's completely non-trivial!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sancho ( 17056 )
        It probably keeps the whole redirect logic on the server. They could redirect dynamically ala Google Ads, based upon the URI. I don't understand why it couldn't be done on the server itself, though, as it should have access to all of the header information (and more) that the client has.

        As far as software patents go, it's not all that bad. But that's like saying that as far as serial killers go, Charles Manson wasn't all that bad.
    • I have been using customized errorpage since Apache 1 supported it;
      A lot of these pages are still to be found on the Internet archive dating back in the 90's...
      Whenever someone goes to http://myserver/username/directory [myserver] it looks up in an internal database where to go to if the user or directory doesn't exist.

      So, now I am doing this illegally .. suddenly ? .. What's the scope ? ..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kindbud ( 90044 )
      It's not a patent on 404 handlers. It's a patent on a client-side component that detects errors including, but not limited to 404s, then relays the error to an external server and receives an alternate URL or resource to serve the user.

      Keep that up, and you'll NEVER be asked to be a Slashdot editor. Who the fuck wants a clear, concise and specific one-line statement about the gist of the off-site article? Where's the adventure in that?

      I wonder what happens if the external server throws an error when tryin
    • I am not sure I agree.

      My reading is that the client *could* be a CGI script on the web server (or even the web server itself) just as that script could also be described as a database client. The only issue is that something is sent somewhere else to handle the error. I am not at all sure that the "client" refers to the web browser here (i.e. it could be part of an N-tier app).

      In short, the only thing here is that the error handling routines rather than included in the web server are daemonized. So does

  • It's *CLIENT* based (Score:5, Informative)

    by ps236 ( 965675 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:05AM (#22233736)
    If anyone else has read the patent, they'll realise that it's a CLIENT-SIDE component that's involved.

    Most (all?) 'automatic redirect' systems I've seen are server based - the server runs a script which says 'That page couldn't be found, did you mean any of these...'

    I can't imagine who'd put this on the client with client-server communication going on. It sounds like a vastly over-engineered and 'Enterprisey' solution to me. It DOES have the advantage that it can look back in the browser history, but I'm not sure I see how that could benefit the user (the component COULD tell the server what's in the history though, so it could benefit Amazon!)

    • MSIE did it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:09AM (#22233778) Homepage Journal
      Much as I'm loath to hold it up as an example of anything ever, Internet Explorer has been using client-based action to generate a friendly "This page cannot be displayed" page in place of 404 errors for years and years.
      • Yeah, but to the best of my knowledge MSIE doesn't customize the content of that page any way, or communicate with an external server before rendering it - it just prints the pretty message.

        Or maybe it does, but the customization is like, subtle, man.

        (Warning: I haven't read TFA either. :) )

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mstahl ( 701501 )

        That's always annoyed me so much! "Page cannot be displayed" is a lot less informative than an http error number. It displays the same thing, practically, for a 404 error as when your internet connection is down. Presumably Amazon's dealie will be more useful? I dunno the patent just seems to be for a pretty useless service.

    • It DOES have the advantage that it can look back in the browser history, but I'm not sure I see how that could benefit the user

      Especially if the user in question has some things in their history they might not want popping up in front of others.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by simong ( 32944 )
      Looking at the age of the supporting documents, this patent application dates back to the days when client side apps were thought to have a role in the browser. I'm thinking of things like Realnames, and various push client mechanisms that had client side authentication. Then again, someone at Amazon must see a value in it if they have persisted in getting the patent.
    • Most (all?) 'automatic redirect' systems I've seen are server based - the server runs a script which says 'That page couldn't be found, did you mean any of these...'

      When Google first came out with its cache I wrote a little widget to try the Google cache, then archive.org on a 404. It's been so long, I'm not sure how much of that was in javascript, greasemonkey or AppleScript, but it was certainly 'client-side'. I also thought it was 'obvious' and there's probably a FireFox extension to do it too.

  • Patents (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rik Sweeney ( 471717 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:11AM (#22233798) Homepage
    The problem is though that who's really at fault at the end of the day, Amazon for trying to apply for the Patent or the Patent office for allowing it?

    It's like the loophole I found when I was in Game a few months ago:

    "£9.99 please"
    "But it says it's half price"
    "No, it's only half price when bought with something else"
    "Oh... so if I buy two of these then I get them both for less than the price of just one of them?"
    (Realising the problem) "...yeah... yeah you would actually"
    "OK, I'll be back in a minute"
  • And yes. I know it's client side bla bla, but still :) If you just redirect all your 404 pages to Amazon, at say www.amazon.com/thispagedoesnotexistyoubastards I wonder how that'd work out :)

    Considering almost everyone uses the 'back' option anyway after hitting a 404...

  • Useful bit of engineering (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:27AM (#22233956)
    ... which is using a well known malware/phishing technique.

    It is a client component (read adware/malware) that intercepts 404 messages, calls home to find out where to redirect the user, then redirects.

    i.e. if you type in "slahdsot.org" it will search a database of misspellings and redirect you to "slashdot.org".

    or.. in the case of malware.. if you type in "myinternetbank.com" it could redirect you to "myphishingsite.com".

    I'd be surprised if there isn't prior art among the less ethical Internet inventions out there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      I'd be surprised if there isn't prior art among the less ethical Internet inventions out there.

      It took me just a few google searches to find a worm that did exactly that; it intercepts and redirected google searches to a results page with different ads.
      I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find malware that intercepts 404's.
    • Actually spyware does this all the time, so I am not sure you did not just point out prior art with your phishing example.

  • Wheel patented in Australia (Score:5, Funny)

    by SplatMan_DK ( 1035528 ) * on Wednesday January 30, 2008 @09:54AM (#22234190) Homepage Journal
    An Australian man has been issued with an innovation patent for the wheel after setting out to test the workability of a new national patent system.

    John Keogh was issued the innovation patent for a "circular transportation facilitation device" under a patent system introduced in May 2001.

    (read the rest...) [newscientist.com]

    :-)

    - Jesper
  • Error 404: Please pay Amazon 2 cents to see what caused the error.
  • I guessed a URL on Amazon replying at a different story on slashdot, http://www.amazon.com/topsellers [amazon.com] , it gives an ordinary 404 which is not clever of any kind.

    On sites with actual smart 404 , it will grab the / part and do a site search showing relevant results or if it is plain obvious like my guess, even forward the person to right URL.
  • prior art [sugarmotor.org]
  • the 405th page as we speak.
    • Case of the baby Alien eating its mother Alien (in Alien movie saga).
      I don't think Amazon would sue USPTO, but it would definitely sue Microsoft: for IIS which allows customized 404 pages,
      and Apple, and Oracle, and IBM.
      By the time the dust settles in court, Amazon's would have been equally split between Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and IBM.
      Jeff Bezos's ultra-secret Spacecraft would be sold for undisclosed sum to Virgin Atlantic as a part of court settlement.
  • Not that it's inventive in the slightest but according to the WayBackMachine I posted this back in May 2001,

    "Misspelling and synonyms

    A good webserver should catch misspellings or synonyms - taking you to the appropriate content or offering a list of near matches (instead of a common 404). Above I used /employment (of a bad URL) but one should catch requests for /employment. Similarly, I don't know of any site's URL structure that isn't annoyingly brittle... where a /job/hamilton will work but /jobs/hamil

  • Well hell, at least Amazon is sticking to ideas from the current era. It's not like they applied for AND GOT a patent for a coordinate transformation that PREDATES THE FRICKING PATENT OFFICE [patentstorm.us]!

    Bemopolis

  • The title of the article is a bit deceptive. I suspect that customized '404' pages have been around long before the patent application. (The style of the customization would depend upon the web site designers and administrators. They range from cryptic through helpful, sarcastic, sympathetic and clueless.)

    Having the browser use client side data to provide information as to WHY you are getting '404' is a form of customization that is different. While old style customized '404' pages might display possibl

  • In typical slashdot fashion, I didn't read the article yet. (I have a meeting in a moment and wanted to type this out while it was on my mind.)

    For several years now, I have used a custom error404 page for a client in order to handle the following scenario:

    www.example.com/username01

    The username01 folder does not exist, so the error404 script is called. The script checks the database to see if the user exists, and if so, renders a custom webpage for that user. I'm certain other sites do this as well.

    Is thi
    • Meeting was delayed, I read the patent and see that it's something totally different than this. Carry on.

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A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom. -- Parkinson

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