81–90 of 172 posts
There has been a XSS vulnerability in the USPTO site since 2008 I reported. It still worked in 2014. Meatspinned quite a few coworkers using it.
> Meatspinned quite a few coworkers using it. Don't do this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bizarre practice of assigning session keys to visitors and somehow storing the page they're viewing in the server instead of in the URL is pretty common in Brazilian government, which is dominated by Java programmers.
A Java app of my university does this too. Is this a practice shared by most Java programmers? How come?
There has been a XSS vulnerability in the USPTO site since 2008 I reported. It still worked in 2014. Meatspinned quite a few coworkers using it.
> Meatspinned quite a few coworkers using it. Don't do this.
"Don't do this" is probably not very convincing.
Anyone looking at creating an IPFS or BitTorrent mirror yet? Edit: the PDF attachment URL's are very predictable, they're the number of the patent in a weird order + a page number, e.g.: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/10/292/096/2.pdf Back of the envelope calculations say all PDF's should only take 1 - 6 TB's (assuming 100kb to 600kb in PDF's on average). Seriously, why hasn't anyone mirrored this?
Legal issues from mirroring something that's sort-of government property? I have no idea if it is or not, but I'd guess it's some sort of grey area.
Copyright generally doesn't stop people from copying what they want to copy. Do only BigCo's have a use for patents?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bizarre practice of assigning session keys to visitors and somehow storing the page they're viewing in the server instead of in the URL is pretty common in Brazilian government, which is dominated by Java programmers.
A Java app of my university does this too. Is this a practice shared by most Java programmers? How come?
Most web technologies support rendering a view based on a set of values residing in a database, and use the values to populate a template. The template contains placeholders reserved for values expected to originate from a database.
The version of the page that appears in your web browser usually does not exist as a serialized HTML page on a disk connected to a server. It often only exists as a representation of two pieces of information bound to a session in memory on a server: 1. The Template or server-side script, 2. the values you are authorized to retrieve from the database, which may or may not be a SQL database.
What you see in the address bar does not need to correlate to the HTML rendered in the browser window. JavaScript (which is not Java) often employs this technique, termed as a "single page web application."
This is true for PHP, Mcrosoft, Ruby, Python, Perl, server-side JavaScript (such as node.js) and yes Java too.
This would be interesting for patent research; you could legitimately say "I looked for a patent that already covers X but since you cannot guarantee the data was not modified in transit, I cannot be certain that I saw what was actually in the patents I reviewed".
The USPTO databases have to be one of the most torturous services to their users in the whole of internet. The UI of both the patent and trademark search is archaic, but not in a HN way but in a really bad way. In patent search, there is no "search" box. Instead, the "quick search" forces you to specify two (and exactly two) text queries on the database columns with obligatory boolean operation.[1] Even if you happen…
The USPTO databases have to be one of the most torturous services to their users in the whole of internet. The UI of both the patent and trademark search is archaic, but not in a HN way but in a really bad way. In patent search, there is no "search" box. Instead, the "quick search" forces you to specify two (and exactly two) text queries on the database columns with obligatory boolean operation.[1] Even if you happen…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Java app of my university does this too. Is this a practice shared by most Java programmers? How come?
This practice has nothing to do with Java, at all. It is not an approach that was invented by Java, for Java, and it is not in any way unique to Java. Most web technologies support rendering a view based on a set of values residing in a database, and use the values to populate a template. The template contains placeholders reserved for values expected to originate from a database. The version of the page that appears…
It is not Java-specific, but it is common to a few specific Java frameworks as well as at least one of Microsoft's older frameworks (I forget which one).
The vast majority of frameworks (including most modern Java frameworks) do the sane thing and keep application state on the server side (often in a database, as you describe) and UI state on the browser side, which allows links and forms to work the way links are generally supposed to work.
The USPTO databases have to be one of the most torturous services to their users in the whole of internet. The UI of both the patent and trademark search is archaic, but not in a HN way but in a really bad way. In patent search, there is no "search" box. Instead, the "quick search" forces you to specify two (and exactly two) text queries on the database columns with obligatory boolean operation.[1] Even if you happen…
FWIW, you're often better off not searching, or looking at, patents. If you end up in a patent case, your liabilities will be much higher if they can sufficiently claim you knowingly infringed. Evidence that you searched for patents can weigh against you / your employer. Even if you weren't associated with the infringing product itself.