Prior Art for Automatic Updates

In the Early 80s I worked at MIT in the Laboratory for Computer Science.
My main project was the MACSYMA computer algebra program. That system  
ran on a PDP-10 under the ITS timesharing system. Whenever someone  
starting a MACSYMA session the program ran a program to load a 'fix'  
file without any intervention by the user. The fix file was prepared  
by the group of which I was a part.

Also, the MIT Lisp Machines (early personal computers) had a 'load- 
patches' function which would automatically load any operating system  
patches without any user intervention from a pre-defined 'patch  
server.' Several staff had the equivalent of 'cron' jobs that loaded  
patches automatically over the network.

I hope this is helpful. Please don't hesitate to contact me if I can  
be of any further help.

Jim O'Dell

Received on Monday, 22 June 2009 08:56:09 UTC