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Microsoft Patents sudo
Jimmy O Regan writes "Justin Mason (of SpamAssassin fame) has this blog entry: US Patent 6,775,781, filed by Microsoft, is a patent on the concept of 'a process configured to run under an administrative privilege level' which, based on authorization information 'in a data store', may perform actions at administrative privilege on behalf of a 'user process'."
So, I guess the prior art will be easy to show... right?
5468652047616D65
So SU me!
Probably redundant by now.
So of course this is completely unenforcable...I wonder if they'll even try. What is the process to go about for getting this patent revoked?
I wonder when they will patent the spell checker...
Time travel is possible. We are quickly heading for 1984.
But why on earth would Microsoft patent this? Sure they've patented plenty of things that have demonstratable prior art, but come on, this is just silly. 20 years of prior art! Whats next? A patent on $ or # as a prompt?
I thought crackers would have had the patent for sudo on Microsoft products long ago. You would have thought it would be easy for Microsoft to see that prior art.
man sudo >/dev/uspto
A process configured to run under an administrative privilege level, eh? excuse me a second... ah --- ah---- ahchoooooounixpriorart !
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Wouldn't this patent also cover setuid, as that's a way you can have an app run under superuser privs for a regular user?
I don't think I've seen a true unprivileged user under an M$ system yet. Everyone is talking about previous art, which is definitly around, but I'd say make M$ prove they actually understand sudo before you start complaining about "I saw it first."
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
sigh, patents, get a clue.
$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/hdd1 /mnt/win1
Instant patent violation!
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
In reading the patent, it does look pretty obvious that it's doing what SUDO is doing... I think this should be blown up with little effort.
Is there any penalty for filing patents for which you KNOW prior art exists? If not, there definitely should be.
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
US Patent 6,775,786 : Filed by Microsoft : The concept of clicking a mouse button to perform a task.
Closely followed by...
US Patent 6,775,787 : Filed by Microsoft : The concept of intercourse to procreate.
Seriously, what is the world coming to. Corporates such as Microsoft should not be allowed to patent bogus things like this.
This is truly Capitalism at it's worst...what power have the US given these people!?
Well, actually, you just described the serial transfer protocol used to get data from the keyboard, not the keyboard itself.
Microsoft will, of course, patent both.
No, sudo asks for the password of the currently running user, and then if correct, checks a data store - /etc/sudoers - to see if that user is allowed to use sudo, and only then runs the administrative command. The root logon is not involved; it's actually disabled on some of my boxes.
sudo can be configured not to require admin password (or whatever auth scheme you like) for certain commands. See the sudo man page.
I can see missing prior work as prior art. But missing the famous setuid patent seems just silly.
http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/history.html
Prior art.
That phrase, "in a data store" seems to be the innovation that qualified for the patent. The sudo command lets a process run as root, but requires the root logon to do so.
What the hell are you talking about? The whole point of sudo is that it lets you run with root priviliges without the password.
Someone please mod this overrated.
I'm not going to put it off anymore, I have an amazing idea and I'm off to patent it. Its a web based front end for system updates, see, it scans the system to determine what updates are needed, then only presents them to the user in such a way that they can see what updates are critical and which are just general enhancements. I'm going to make a mint.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Hmmm... just about any worm can escalate priviledges and run as administrator. I wonder if Microsoft has patented buffer overflows as well.
I am glad the European's are harmonizing with our US Patent and Copyright systems. It's time to forget IT and go work on International Patent Law so I can get that house on the bay that I've always wanted.
> sudo rm -Rf windows
Hmmm, I'm wondering if they are trying to "patent" the process by which hacks and 'sploits use to elevate their rights so that they can throw "patent" infringement charges at the authors of worms / viruii and other malicious malware type stuff, in addition to the tired old "hacking" charges. Then, with the recent change in the political wind, they can use Federal Agents under the Patriot Act to hunt down and arrest those "terrorists" - or was that from "copyright" infringement? I'm getting those two as confused as the congressmen and federal agencies are!
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Remember that story about microsoft attempting to 'patent double clicking'. I think they have some program that searches google for strings that have 'linux' or 'mac' or 'freedom' in them and attempts to patent the concept.
For example:
"To do * in linux you make a program a SUDO to make the program act as if it was executed by a different user.
Microsofts program (known as thousands of workers typing in searches by hand) finds this and then they automaticly are forced to walk to the nearest patent office and patent the basics of the idea on behalf of microsoft.
I only use sudo to run commands as root, but the file /etc/sudoers seems to allow any user to run commands as another user. sudo also has a -u switch to change the user who will execute the command.
I'm moving to Pluto. I bet the U.S. Patent Office has no reach there.
Yeah but they don't got my patent that I have for purging excrement from my anal cavity into a sanitary bowl used for disposal into a sewer system.
Why???
Because it's Microsoft and in their offices the sh*t is always real DEEP.
I think you are confusing sudo with su.
Yes, I always su root before using sudo so that I can run things as root.
In exhibit A, user foo can make a shortcut calling sudo /usr/bin/bar, and that program will be run without asking any passwords whatsoever.
Technically you could call a directory a "data store". If so, this is no different than setuid/setgid, right along with sudo.
"All those tubes and wires and careful notes!"
...to find prior art. LOL. How ridiculous that the patent office did not dismiss this out of hand. I'm laughing about how Microsoft's patent attorneys are obviously ****ing them over because even the most modest effort in researching this would have resulted in acknowledgement that this is indeed presupposed by SUDO. Hehe... Money well spent Microsoft!
Loading...
<pre>
C:\>sudo r00t_thisB0x.cmd
'sudo' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Besides, silly! All you need is User access on Windows(tm) to r00t it!
C:\>
</pre>
vodka, straight up, thank you!
The post completely misstates the functionality of sudo.
Sudo functions by having an administrator define commands, which must be run as root, and allocating privledge to specific users, or groups of users, to run said commands. This setup, in concert with the passwd file (or applicable shadow) is the datastore. From the user perspective, the user enters, not the root password, but his own password to invoke the higher privelege and run the allowed commands.
The user never knows the root password.
I'm not really worried about patents like these because I feel that the whole patent issue is coming to a head, and that in the end, things will change. Silly patents will not even be contested in court, and many will be tossed out for sheer sillyness.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
...Microsoft patents "A method of drawing oxygen into a human body automatically by process of instinctive involuentary contraction of a diaphram in the mid-tosto region for the purpose of combining said oxygen with the bloodstream."
The USPTO found no prior art.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
sweet! is Microsoft embracing hackers now? Hell, I'll be breaking into song soon....
[to the tune of "this land is our land"]
This comp was your comp, and now its my comp
I gotta root kit, now you can't do shit
I'll catch ya lata, with all your data
Windows is made for h@x like me!
...now does it. It's a legal issue. If a court of law decides this is valid royalties will be billed. Now say a particular sitting president is re-elected, we can be pretty certain how all those cases will go. Sounds like a national security patent.
" the concept of 'a process configured to run under an administrative privilege level' which, based on authorization information 'in a data store', may perform actions at administrative privilege on behalf of a 'user process'."
Hell, that sounds like Klez!
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
msudo
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
The American patent system is so out of control, it's unbelievable. The companies that abuse the overworked, underqualified patent office to stack up dubious patents for future ammunition against competitors ought to be sanctioned!
;)
I don't have words to express how angry this IP grab makes me - and I'm not even an American! Did the Patent Office do any looking into prior art in this case at ALL?
Whose brilliant idea was it to give corporations the same legal rights as an individual? I wonder if this kind of crap would happen if only individual inventors could apply for patents, whether or not they were funded by a company that paid for their research. Hell, make it illegal for companies to defend patents or fund the defense of their employees' patents - make it up to the inventor to go to court and defend themselves! Jail time if prior art is found!
Research would still get funded, but only for the purpose of improving products, not for expansion of intellectual property portfolios.
IANAL (obviously), I know these are probably stupid suggestions, but damn it, we need some extreme methods to match the extreme opportunism shown by these companies. Anyone else have other pie-in-the-sky, impractical ideas for changing the US patent system?
In all seriousness, someone should do this as it should make this filing a nice waste of at least $10K of Microsoft's money. Maybe they will get a clue and do proper prior art searches(duh, look in Unix).
Sometimes I wonder about the quality of their programmers, I think this is an obvious example that they need to get more experience using 'rival' software. Anyone who has actually used a Unix knows about this stuff, so to think they 'invented' it would be outright dishonest or more likely in this case just ignorance.
Companies are getting rich by stealing the future inventions of people with these generic fucking patents. What are the odds that those who invented the patenting process actually envisioned it being twisted around and allowing people to patent ideas, and concepts, the like of which they themselves have no idea how to achieve.
The idea of a patent is, or at least should be, to patent an invention. Not some task or distant goal which you can imagine some day being achieved, but are unable to currently achieve yourself.
Imagine if Ford had been able to patent the automile in generic enough terms so that any motorized land vehicle was covered... Where would we be today Wine makers had patented the fermentation process before beer had existed?
IMHO, patents should be for very specific inventions, and processes, which you have invented, and can accurately demonstrate at the time of patent request, and which of course didn't exist in it's current form prior to your invention
The computer industry, and it's money sucking lawyers have been allowed to chisel away at the wording and verbiage of the patent laws to such an extent that you are now able to patent just about any idea/concept someone may have down the road. Just think about the stifling of innovation if those science fiction writers of the 50's had patented all that they foresaw.
What makes me mad is that no one has yet come forward and shown prior artwork for a patent on lawyer wielding companies who make their money by exploiting the ideas and innovations of others through a series of generic and vaguely worded patents and threats. Perhaps then this whole mess would disapear.
The article's headline may be a little misleading, as it looks like Microsoft isn't directly patenting "sudo", but rather the concept of "a process configured to run under an administrative privilege level." Microsoft patenting "runas" may be a better description.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
*mid-torso
In other other news, Tokerat is found to be partially illiterate.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
i'm sure 20 years ago ibm's dos/vse, vm and mvs used to do this to allow an ordinary user to run one program which required the services of another so could invoke the other program to run with elevated priviledges. the priviledges were associated with the program not the user.
sudo - through the use of it's data-store the "sudoers" file, can be configured multiple ways.
#1 - To require the "root" password.
#2 - To require the password of the userid that the user is running as.
#4 - To require the password of the userid the user wishes to switch to.
#5 - To not require any password at all.
When not requiring a password, it can be configured by the userid, or the command that is being run.
All in all, it's very configurable, and definately fits the prior art criteria.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Guys, LostCluster is a known karma whore (read his posting history). Usually he manages to at least to copy his information and change it up a bit but this time he couldn't go to the trouble to get his facts right.
sudo, if he knew anything about it, allows users to run certian commands or even gain a shell (if configured so) without knowing the root password.
Mods - please do not reward total and complete inaccuracy.
It's a pseudo-patent.
thanks, I'll be here all week....
I'm going to patent the process of applying for a patent without doing any research for prior-art.
I think MS has prior art on this one. Their programs have been executing at a higher than normal privilage level for awhile.
Personally I hope the Patent office continues granting MS patents that have such prior art ---- two things will happen -- 1) it makes the patent office look to be a joke and can be used in court against patents in general and 2) makes MS look to be even more a fool seeings how they really should know better then to file such patent applications for such prior art stuff in software...
~~~~~~~SHOA
im fukcin givin props to GNAA
i told u i was hardcore 40th postage
Pubpat or the Electronic Frontier Foundation
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Although it's easy to view this patent as a frivolous innovation that will probably be overturned (eventually) if MS chooses to pursue action against competitors, the danger is in the precedent that is continually being set by the USPTO. By failing to adequately examine the concepts behing these obvious patents (eg, running a process authorized by root, single/double/triple clicking a mouse, etc.), our patent system is perverted into one where the burden falls on new inventors to prove that their innovations do not infringe on patents, rather then a system where the burden falls on patent-holders to prove that their IP has been infringed upon.
This strategy may work in the US, where we can simply put the inventor^h^h^h^h^h criminals in jail (note that the US already has among the highest incarcerated population %-ages), but it probably won't hold up well against the rest of the world, especially the parts that don't think the USPTO is the last word. Unless we can start to incarcerate a larger percentage of the world's population for infringing on US IP, this strategy may not prove to be sustainable.
Perhaps corporate sponsorship of prisons facilities would help make this strategy a winner...
So is SCO going to sue Microsoft for infringing on their claim to sudo?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
fuck 'em America. FUCK 'EM!
My theory is that Microsoft is patenting all these things so they can use it as part of a marketing campaign to PHBs when Longhorn comes out. Something to the effect of, "Why take the risk of running Linux when we own the patents on everything they use?" I know a few people it would convince pretty easily... Tis all FUD.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
And no, it does not always run programs as "root".
Each command can be configured to be run as a single userid (even non-root), or as any userid.
sudo -u
will run the as on the system, if the sudoers file is defined to allow it.
sudo -u -H -s
will spawn a new shell, set the HOME environment variable the the 's home directory. After the shell prompt appears, a simple "cd" command will take you to the user's home directory.
Coupling carefully crafted sudoers file across multiple systems, with SSH using locked down public-key authentication, can be used to make a very powerfull distributed job control system.
I use it in conjunction with SAN attached tape drives to allow systems to "check-out" tape drives, and inform operators which "drive" to load with which "type" of tape, before starting the backups. After the backup is complete, the tape is ejected, the operator is informed, and the tape drive is returned to the available pool.
All with simple shell scripts, SSH and SUDO.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
This is pathetic. They're trying as hard as they can to patent everything damn-near possible with software so they can destroy Linux. This kind of bullshit is what makes the patent system useless. Damn, I hope karma is real, because Microsoft, prepare to bend over, and take it hard from the GNAA.
A friend and I resolved a while back that we should file a patent for A protocol for expansion of the human race, and essentially describe the process of sexual intercourse in extremely vague terms.
After taking over all the porn sites in the world, we could start suing parents across the nation.
In fact, you should really just give me $699 today if you plan on having sex any time soon. The license is good for a whole year! (But only for one partner.)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
It's an old news, but I wonder have slashdot crowd found out this patent:
P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=200301895 97&OS=20030189597&RS=20030189597
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
The most interesting part is the images. There you can actually see the Gnome logo. (There is an extra karma bunus for the first who find the KDE logo;)
So Microsoft have already begun patenting Linux.
It is true that M$ cannot buy GPL code, but it can buy the coders.
Now, guess what will happen after the fiaSCO is over.
Not exactly. I use "sudo ./apachectl start". On Solaris it asks for the user's password. On AIX it does not. Maybe it has something to do the way it is setup.
And people say MSFT doesn't invest in R&D. Brilliant!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Partially? You're being too modest!
Hints: "involuntary"; "diaphragm".
Please, explain how runas is in any way at all different from sudo.
I don't think there's an out this time. Usually, when you get posts saying "Microsoft patents clicking!!" there's usually something in the patent that says "clicking on an icon by using a joystick, underwater, over the internet" or something ridiculous that means the patent doesn't have prior art, but the idea itself does, and will probably be used to try and stretch the patent as far as the courts will let it.
But this time, it looks like they are doing exactly what sudoes. Maybe finally all the anti-Slashdot-stereotype trolls will be wrong.
Here's my read:
CLAIMS:
1. Processing a request from a non-admin user to do admin tasks. check.
2. Determining if the user can do such a request. Check.
3. Checking a data source to do #2. Check. (etc/passwd, others)
4. Checking a data source to see which one of many admin tasks the user can do. This might be a bit iffy, because I'm not incredibly familiar with sudo. I would assume it's possible to restrict the usage of sudo for different tasks, and if so, Check.
5. Multiple users. Check.
6. Groups. Check.
7. Using it for Methods. I think the Linux kernel might allow only certain system calls to be done by an administrator. If so, check.
8. Groups for #7. Check-maybe.
9,10. Combining classes and methods. Here it seems they get really specific, and it doesn't look like they define "class" or "method." Maybe.
11-13. Passwords. Check.
14-23. A computer to do the above. Check.
24-34. A security framework to do the above. Check.
35-49. Doing it over a network. Check. Now, here, a network seems to involve "hyperlinked documents creating a user interface." Certainly this idea is older than 2000. Check.
50-62. Again, having a computer to do 1-49.
63-end. Yeesh. Having a computer to do everything from 1-62. I guess they are covering every single combination.
So there's the claims. There's nothing in there that sudo really doesn't do, because I think the vauge language MS is using can be applied to a lot of different methods of unix-style security.
So who's going to care? No one, especially not at the Patent Office.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Perhaps, if the SCO actually has the IP rights it thinks it has, this might almost be a worthy lawsuit :)
Then again, then I wouldn't want either side to win....
You can change the config in the sudo.conf file to ask for user passwords, or to run without it for certain users, etc.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oops - If only I had learned to count!!! [8^B)
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
With sudo (an instance of using the suid capability of UNIX), the process itself is priviledged, with privs based upon information in the data store and command line arguments.
This patent sounds more like there's a root daemon running in the background and I send it a message asking that it mount a CD-ROM for me; it looks me up in a database of users permitted to mount CDs; and performs the mount on my behalf.
"This signature quote intentionally left blank"
/etc/sudoers
/etc/sudoers asks for user's password /etc/sudoers asks for password the command is running as (e.g. root) /etc/sudoers lists commands that can be run without a password
The configurations must be different. I've seen these configurations used:
1)
2)
3)
4) a group (e.g. sudo) allows members belonging to it to never have to enter a password for anything
Isn't this patent more closely associated with su? Since Run As.. requires the destination user's password (so does su [unless you're root]) and sudo requires the source user's password and checks the command against a list of valid commands the user is allowed to perform.
LOAD ".SIG"
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
So this seems like one of those things that would be blindly obvious to anyone "versed in the art". Why doesn't stuff like this get caught _BEFORE_ the patent is issued? Isn't there a comment period before the patent is actually issued? Is there an easy way to get access to those pending patent descriptions?
I would imagine that the slashdot crowd hearing about this in its pending state and having several people respond to the USPTO would have a sanitizing effect.
Does anyone else see the obvious use for their patent (besides killing a tree and fleecing the patent lawyers' pockets)? I think the answers is really quite simple. Microsoft has no legal recourse against those that write viruses and worms. Most (if not all) of these viruses and worms have to elevate their privileges to do something as Administrator in order to spread. With this patent Microsoft would be able to sue the virus/worm creator with patent infringement. Doesn't that seem like an obvious use of this patent to anyone else? Of course those that they sue would have a pretty easy (but costly) time of proving prior art to invalidate MS's patent and dismiss their claims. Or can they? Does the owner of the prior art have to introduce the claim themselves or can someone else do it for them? Hmmm...
What an auspicious start. Maybe M$ will decide to patent some of the new features.
Ya know, usually patents like this can make it through because there's something differentiating them. Unfortunately, while looking for that distinction, my screensaver went on.
"Derp de derp."
Maybe Firefox knows something I don't?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Everytime there is a frivolous patent article on Slashdot, everyone rants and posts their example of prior art, and says how easy this patent will be to overturn. BUT - is anyone out there actually fighting this patent through the system? I have a feeling that Microsoft will get this patent without challenge and everyone will forget about it in two weeks.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
A sweet little strategy for Microsoft would be to toss a patent application into the mix every once in a while for a piece of software or technology that they know already exists in Linux.
With the burden of proof for prior art and invalidity resting squarely on the shoulders of the people who you may or may not sue you are one clueless patent examiner and press release away from a marketing campaign.
Ideally this type of approach would backfire unless they do it in such a way that they could shrug these targeted patents off as anomalies. This approach seems easier than patenting obvious innovations that Linux might impinge on in the future. At least this way you would be guaranteed to receive patents that cause trouble.
Since no one is filing software patents on behalf of open source projects another angle might involve monitoring CVS or development roadmaps for some high profile projects. Patents filed to cover these works in progress wouldn't be granted for years.
I think it is important to stick to the high road. It will be very hard to see patent litigation as anything but predatory and ridiculous particularly once they start defeating the purpose of patents in the first place-to protect innovation. Truth will always prevail.
To those who say I'm an idealist: guilty as charged. I believe in open source and I refuse to think that defeat is a foregone conclusion.
Maybe SCO should sue MS over this patent.
I mean, this could be a case SCO could win! They've got prior-art!
Listen up feckers, this isn't a patent for `sudo (8)!' Another poster said it was a patent for "runas" but that's not true either. If you read it carefully, it's for an administrative _process_, not a _program_ like sudo. So this means that there is a single system-wide "security process" that you request to perform restricted actions for you.
It's a slight destinction, I agree, but that's the whole point of patents. You only patent a specific way of doing things, any slight change in the implementation is a different (patentable) innovation! So we should patent the FUCK out of sudo(8) and chmod(1) and all the rest of them.
Tangentially, we can all agree that the implementation this patent covers is a piece of shit. One long-lived process responsible for all authentication? Can you imagine the attack surface it's exposing?
Tetris rules.
And the brethren went away edified.
where everyday johns can give prior art example to the USPTO with a list of 20-50 signers attesting that a said patent should be nullified. The USPTO should then look at the patent again and judge wether or not they did a mistake.
If the summary is correct, sudo doesn't count.
At least, normal sudo use doesn't count.
This looks more like a daemon that will accept
commands to run. With sudo, you don't have a
privileged process performing actions on behalf
of a user process. It's a privileged process all
by itself, plain and simple.
Maybe xcdroast+cdrecord would count, if cdrecord
is setuid and xcdroast is not. That's key. You
have to have two processes, one of which is not
privileged. Knowing the way Windows would likely
do things though, a daemon may be required.
That mother fucker is going too far here... DOS is a shit disk format that has propagated like a noxious weed. If he thinks this will work, then I will just have to fuck him in the ass like I did his wife that dumb mother fucker. FUCK YOU BILL!
Of course, it's quite possible that the prior art involved is that of the programmers working on the original Xenix product for MS.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Re-inventing the wheel at every turn.
That's only shown as an example desktop.
"Where would we be today Wine makers had patented the fermentation process before beer had existed?
Actually historians are not certain which beverage came first. Although wine was found in 7000 year old Babylonian pots, a recipe for beer was found on a tablet from over 6000 years old. There isn't any real proof that wine came first.Creative Demolition
Onto the description which is not as sound as commenting on the actual claims but at least provides an idea of what they want to patent. First thing to note is they are once again on the appliance angle. They aren't discussing a PC. They're discussing an XBox or NAS.
Now hitting the Detailed Description, here is where they slide in that the patent can cover general purpose PCs. Lots of discussion about Web-based administration. So it's not just sudo but Webmin+sudo.
If anyone wants to take this to the next level go for it. I did my best to RTFP and this is as far as I think I'm going to take it. It was kinda cute to note how general things were in the patent e.g. "data store" that can cover the registry or a text file but there are other things to read tonight.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Like this:
youracct ALL=(ALL)NOPASSWD: ALL
Slashdot doesn't like the caps so I'm forced to write this extra text which has no relevance to this post.
sudo allows you to run things as root and other users. root is not an administrator root is above that :)
I'm going to finally patent my wheel invention: method of locomotion friction reduction by way of a continuous radial surface concentric about an axis of rotation containing a bearing system, rigid support structure, solid or pneumatic contact surface, and verticle axis directional control attachment mechanism.
Got the idea when a guy dropped a cheese and it rolled down a hill. If he had been on one of my wheels, he could have caught up with his cheese.
my new patent is the process of reserving intelectual property to monopolize the intelectual community...
AKA I'm patenting the idea of the american patent office
the time machine. There can be no prior art
(because I'll go back and remove it). This notice is effective immediately,
also to include the dawn of creation through the end of time.
while we're at it, does anyone know to pronounce sudo? is it like "pseudo" (the way i say it), or "SOOdoo" (the way a more experienced sysadmin friend of mine says it)?
The more similar patents, the sooner will U.S. patenting model make itself economically irrelevant and ignored by rest of world.
There you are, staring at me again.
'a process configured to run under an administrative privilege level' which, based on authorization information 'in a data store', may perform actions at administrative privilege on behalf of a 'user process' I think what that says is that an administrative process is running (like a daemon), and a user process asks it to do some tricks for it. Not like sudo at all, sudo is not a daemon. Then, again, there are many other suid root daemons -- X server anyone?
How soon before a court rules that due to an underfunded or incompetent USPTO ALL patents examined between START_DATE and END_DATE and which have not withstood later challenges are considered "suspect" and ORDERS that OTHER COURTS to NOT consider them VALID ON THEIR FACE?
In other words, how soon before a court says to all other courts "if someone challenges any of these patents, assume the USPTO goofed until proven otherwise."
It will probably never happen for legal-technical reasons, but I'm thinking some judges would just LOVE to give an order like that.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm not sure where sudo originated, but if MS were called to account for all the UC Berkeley code it still uses today (as supplied in BSD UNIX), they'd have a heck of a legal battle on their hands. So, what I want to know is -- do any of those FreeBSD machines running over at the MS development labs have sudo installed? No much of a "clean room" environment for a patent applicant, I'd say. The USPTO has long been a complete sham when it comes to dealing with obvious prior art situations like this, time to shut it down and start over. Fdisk, and fdisk /mbr.
The subject says it all. There's no doubt that MS has some great programmers working for them, but whoever came up with this one truly earned the "King Dumbass" crown.
Right on, brother. The K is barely obscured (look for item 106). The person who submitted this application knew that it was fraudulent.
That's not what su or sudo do (say that five times fast). They use no separate root process waiting to receive and proxy privileged calls.
The patent specifically says that the request comes from a non-root user and goes to a root process; that the data sent across particularly describes an OS call and its arguments; and that the root process makes that precise call on behalf of the user.
Now, I'm not going to claim that no one has ever done this in the history of the universe. But it's not what sudo does, and the RPC based utilities that I can think of don't fit this exact pattern.
NT
Since most rogue apps on Microsoft OS's can elevate privilidges and they have predefined tables for what they want to execute, perhaps they are actually patenting a virus so they can sue virus authors for infringement :)
"A one handed device to manually change certain computer controlled graphical bits that appear on screen to allow the controlling person to intuitively make decisions on a virtual environment and quickly execute any chosen task."
Do you think the patents office would say no to that?
diegoT
Because they are incompetent they can be granted an exclusive license to thwart the competent? Sounds like the USPTO and M$, so you might be right.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
- What the US government has to say about IE security being bad for IE users
- About Windows security vs. Linux security. Windows is bad.
- About 'Total Cost of Ownership' (TCO) statistics; Microsoft's lies
How much more proof do you need to stop using Windows?Ok Slashdot, we get it, the MSPO sucks and anyone can get a patent for anything, who cares, move on with your focus. If this keeps up /. will be a mirror of http://patft.uspto.gov
Mod the parent up! The post he was replying to was totally inaccurate, and yet it is modded as informative. What is wrong with the moderators, have you guys ever even used sudo? It's the most basic thing that anyone who had ever set it up would know... you don't need to enter a password if you don't set it up that way.
And when someone points out a mistake of a post that was incorrectly modded as say "Informative" when it should have been modded "Totally Wrong Information" you should damn well have the balls to admit that you're as dumb as the original dumb ass and mod the correct information up to an appropriate level!
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
configured to run under an administrative privilege level'
/yawn. Next article: "MS Patents Buffer Overflow"
I get it! I GET IT! Zarro Boogs found!
I'm going to patent 'cd'.
We'll see which command gets run more.
Mu-ha ha ha....
I look forward to the competition, mr Gates.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
And so did I. M$ is trying to patent all improvements to pagers. It's much quicker to paint shop than it is to code. This is one of the reasons that software patents are stupid to begin with: software is inherently an abstraction not an invention or even a discovery. The discovery is pure math. The invention is more like this, a UI enhancement that might be subject to copyright but only according to layout. A copyright on Gnome's layout with one or two tweaks would be rejected without thought. A patent of it should be rejected for the same reasons.
Microsoft is disgusting and the idiot who signed off on that patent needs a refresher course.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A bunch of comments here are exclaiming that
1) This patent is identical to sudo! Prior art!
2) Microsoft will use its patent on sudo to attack Linux.
Obviously both statements cannot be true. If Microsoft ever attempted to enforce this patent on distributors & users of sudo or a sudo-like device, they would have no case. They would have proven that the patent is invalid, because the product that they are attempting to block is considerably older than the patent.
1) This is like sudo, but different enough to merit a patent.
2) Microsoft will never attempt to enforce this patent on something that is older than the patent.
And I don't even have to read the patent. Keep in mind that "different enough to merit a patent" is barely different at all. Even the dumbest programmer does 200 patentable things per day. If you're the first person to do any of them, you can file. If you're the second person to do any of them, you're liable. That's the problem, not that Microsoft has gotten away with patenting some existing feature of Unix (and Windows, for that matter).
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Not so fast, partner. The text of the patent application (snippet below) acknowledges other desktop managers, but says that it's superior to them. The claims of its superiority are dubious, but MS is not trying to patent the Gnome pager.
To get it passed, make some pictures. Take a screen shot of M$'s update notification and then add some preview buttons, a block diagram and other widgets. You might not be able to patent M$'s dinky notification, but you can keep them from improving it. That's what they are trying to do to Gnome's Pager.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The day they patent my ass is the day I'll pay attention. Till then they can keep kissing it.
Su-su-sudio.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
The USPTO only consults prior patents as prior art. Therefore, the MS patent is valid as far as they are concerned.
Oh well, what the hell...
-Steve "I love this company" Baller.
A patent filer has to place some money in escrow as a hedge against anyone finding prior art within, say, two years.
25K or 50K is nothing to MSFT, but is big bucks to the new profession of patent hunter. No prior art search occurs before its granted (just like today, heh heh), but the cash is forfeited if its a prior art patent.
The escrow cash increases as the number of previously bounties claimed against your patents increases.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR's and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
It seems that the "prophets" that stated the true intent of MSFT tactics were right. Based on its actions, it seems that this part of their plan is like this: ' MSFT MASTER PLAN AGAINST LINUX. ' BUILD 6663856668936668666 FOR i=1 TO 666 Patent('Stuff used by linux') NEXT IF Windows.Profits = 'Endangered' THEN Lawyers.Count = 666 Lawyers.Pay = 1E100 SET LAWYERS.Target = Linux WHILE Linux != 'Dead' AND FSF != 'Dead' LAUNCH LAWSUIT END WHILE END IF WINDOWS.PRICE = 1000 RELEASE WINDOWS.XP.SP3 WINDOWS.DEVELOPMENT = STOP FOR i=1 to oo PROFIT NEXT .......
Of course, in simple english, that would be
1) Patent, patent patent
2) Sue Linux to death ???
3) Profit!
8 minutes to reply, still too slow, bitch.
-WG Gates.
sudo is such a hack. I say good riddance. At the same time as we banish sudo, let us also banish the requirement that only root can bind to ports lower than 1024, and remove many other root-only restrictions. (Obviously, put some thought into 'em ;) )
Wouldn't it be neat to write a self-aware program that could have the foresight to announce it's presence to the entire planet?
WTF?! Isn't Phil Collins gonna ..... oh, wait. Never mind.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
"This is truly Capitalism at it's worst...what power have the US given these people!?"
This is an example of a centralized government controlled, government regulated, economy....an unsocialized capitilist economy would have no patents what so ever.
I don't know if this would work, no patents, but it has become painfully obviouse that the current system is broken. To blame capitalism is wrong...the broken system is an example of government regs which are unwatched, badly written and damaging to the economy. Not to mention contrictive to civil liberties....it isn't the coporations which enforce patents its the government.
stendec@gmail.com
Both the KeyKOS factory (US patent 4,584,639) and the EROS Constructor appear to do what MS has apparently patented. The KeyKOS patent was issues in 1986, and expired this year. The design pattern that MS has patented is so fundamental to how EROS works that we don't even emphasize it anymore -- it's old news!
Jonathan S. Shapiro (The EROS Guy)
I say we get another group going, working with the Free software foundation and everyother group within the free software foundation and patent everything left over by Microsoft.
/., if you don't mind.
Once MS violates one of the patents, we each throw in a buck. Thats 70 million computer users times 1% (linux users) thats $700,000. Okay scratch that, everybody throw in a $100 bucks. Now that $70 million dollars. Now we have a court case Everybody throw in $10 more bucks, that's 7million bucks, now we can buy media attention.
Now, lets all go around with flyers and concerned looks on our faces asking CTO's whose going to protect us from this MS patent violation. MS says they'll only protect us up to the amount we paid for the software.
Okay, so it's Friday night and I've had a few beers, I can dream can't I.
Seriously, SCO and MS are blatantly taking advantage of rules and laws which we have made to protect our society and culture and it basically pisses me off
The only thing I can think of to do, is get up tomorrow and help somebody in a newsgroup solve their problem with installing linux or working with linux and not be sarcastic about it.
I'll save may rants and explosions of temperament for
Come on Karma.
Patent 6,775,893
Microsoft, SCO, et al
Abstract: A process by which competition can be stamped out through the blatant abuse of the patent system. Vague ideas, which are the only logical way to achieve something, and for which massive prior art exists are stockpiled as patents in order to legally harass other businesses. This can be achieved by dedicating an ordinate amount of revenue to attorneys and using this as your principal business capital.
I'm going to be RICH!
Wondering.
This "prior Art" of which everyone is speaking.
Would it apply to a full-form patent application posted publicly?
Meaning, if I present here the idea of a type of list-browsing method where the user is presented with newest added or scanned items inserted into the next selected cursor position in an updateable or actively updating list as they browse arbitrarily sorted or ordered items or values, that this declaration itself constitutes prior art (if, theoretically, the language was legally sound)?
Even if it's not prior art it's still a good idea huh?
I digress.
Is the concept of an "open patent" even applicable legally? I hope so, because I have some ideas that I would like to open up (and I have the feeling i'm not the only one).
It would be great, having this huge database of ideas that any designer or engineer could feel free to impliment or incorporate or merely look into for inspiration.
Competition is good in practice, but cooperation is better in play.
When a POWER USER can add an ADMINISTRATOR account on Win2k/XP where are account limitations???
I advise you all to read the patent application more carefully.
It talks about OS routines and passing those routines literally between places.
OS kernel function calls, i.e. driver installations, which require privlidge levels of Administrator for the most part, would fall into this category.
It's a proxy RPC system for allowing users to call privlidged commands they may not otherwise have use for *to the operating system*, not to run any given program as a superuser.
It's probably going to make its way into some new security API, not be a seperate application.
My geekiness tells me that you won't hit an EOF (^D) so you'll be waiting for that prompt to come back for a very long time. Other than that I highly approve of this geek humor. ;)
John Hancock
PowerBroker? http://www.symark.com/powerbroker.htm
A great way to resolve such patent issues would be a public consultation before they issue a patent, especially if the patent application is from a major corporation. Would also add voice and credibility to the process that currently looks very arbitrary
Ugly and insecure I know but my choices were to get off my ass every time the server bogged (not bloody likely), give every bozo with enough rank to work overtime for free admin and show them how (even less likely, I'd quit first) or implement an ugly kludge that could screw things up royal if used by morons.
I also realize upgrading to a OS that did'nt leak memory in it's network service was a long term option.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When did Microsoft discover "administrative privileges"? One user, one privilege, one system to sell and bind them.
Myth: Having a patent makes you rich.
Myth busted: You make $0 on a patent until someone licenses it from you or you sue someone successfully for infringing.
The idea of a patent is, or at least should be, to patent an invention. Not some task or distant goal which you can imagine some day being achieved, but are unable to currently achieve yourself
Slashbot mentality: you should have to demonstrate your invention.
Mentality busted: Hardware fabrication is not an overnight accomplishment. You have idea of how a chip or board will come together, but until it is physically constructed and tested, you really won't know. Simulations are great and all, but you can never really know until it is constructed. So do you wait to patent your idea until you can demonstrate it works, or do you patent the general idea, and by general I mean sufficiently novel, but does not describe the transistor level? Well it depends if you want to stay in business or not.
What makes me mad is that no one has yet come forward and shown prior artwork for a patent
Slashbot mentality: Someone should stop these evil companies and have this stuff re-examined
Mentality busted: It is expensive. If you're not willing to do it yourself, then don't bitch about others not doing it themself. I'm sure they want to spend their money better ways too.
Truth is, this sounds similar to sudo. What would be interesting would be to pull the file history for the patent (feel free to order it from the PTO. I think anyone has the right to see it once the patent issues). The file history will reveal what the examiner cited, what the original claims looked like, and what the inventors gave up in terms of trying to get the patent allowed.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
This is no flame, but an honest question.
It has been said before that employees of the PTO are paid on a per patent basis. I'm don't know whether this true, but it seems the PTO has to start to be held accountable for its practices.
If a company has to go through a lot of legal expenses to prove a patent invalid, can the PTO be backcharged? Or could one sue directly if the negligence was obvious?
kernels?
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
'... In software, assume that everything is already patented. You can't build anything, no matter how new it is, without infringing someone's patent. patents and linux ...'
[tim bray]
must make a mention of tim brays article on software patents that I've recycled from a while ago.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
There was a temporary privileges under RSTS/E back in the 70s that accomplished this.
Fight Spammers!
I had a vanity license plate back in 1999...
RMDIRMS
I had it offset a bit so it looked like:
RM DIRMS
I got photographed at the SJ Linux Convention/Expo and BOY did people have a riotous laugh when I had the front and rear plates in hand, posing for the photos.
Even harder they laughed when I answered to the explanation that RM -RF MS would be better (since rmdir only removes EMPTY directories)
"Who says there's anything of substance in the directory called 'ms' (or, by implication "or the company called ms")?"
Hopefully the rest of the world realizes what pusillanimous and obsequious dumbasses there are in the USPTO. If the rest of the world wants to suffer the consequences, they'll keep bending over or the likes of mshaft...
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Fu** You MS
You can pry my Linux/FreeBSD disks out of my left hand, once you have pried the 44 mag out of my right.
garbage patents like this are why the patent offices need to re-imburse people when they get patents overturned
Hmmm, let's see, VAX/VMS, circa 1980: "set proc/priv=all" (become system's administrator) or "set proc/priv=oper" (join the operator priv group) This is twenty years prior to the filing of M$'s patent. And if I recall, Sun/Solaris, HP/UX, IBM/AIX, DEC/Ultrix, and yes, even SCO, all had the concept of "privileged" groups/users dating well back into the '80's...... There is literally TONS of prior work out there that should invalidate this patent. It's more a question of who is going to fight it?.....
Anyone know how Nero's BurnRights works? It may be Prior art on the MS platform!!
That's all I have to say, and all of you on slashdot would like to hear. Mod this up! :D
before microsoft gets to it. I think they're just going through the linux source code and patenting whatever they come across. You know you actually have to challenge a patent inorder to invalidate it. Right now, the only way to do it is a law suit, and you must present clear and convincing evidence (instead of just preponderance of evidence) against the patent. Open source people will definately run out of money before microsoft in a tit-for-tat law suit like that.
"Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever" - Napoleon Bonapart.
I would prefer a ~6 month public comment period, after full public disclosure.
Also infers requirement by PO to listen and follow up.
It's going public anyway...
cheap, almost free, and if noone cares, it gets approved.
Also would disseminate the "new" ideas, which is the REAL point of patents in the first place.
One more requirement: must be comprehensable to the average HS graduate, and provide FREE links to all references. (implies HTML)
Isn't this the very heart and soul of the original Dennis Ritchie/ATT "Oh yeah, by the way, you could do this in software, if you wanted to" very very first ever software patent??? You know, from back in the days when patents applied to physical objects?
Isn't this the very thing that started us down this particular slippery slope in the first place?
If Newton lived today, he wouldn't be allowed to "stand on the shoulders of giants"; the court-ordered gag rule in the ongoing multi-year, multi-billion lira patent/copyright/contract/FUD lawsuit between Galileo(TM) Inc and Copernicus(R) Corp would prevent him from making any public statements regarding Gravitational(C)(TM)(R) effects.
Of course, Newton should have spent his life and fortune in IP litigation with Leibniz...
Me, I'm working on my "A Method Of Preparing Comestible Substances Utilizing Rapid Oxygenation Of Hydrocarbon-Rich Materials" USPTO application...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
In other words, should we start patenting everything we can get our hands on?
r p 1,2
'inetd' does this. 'cron' does something very similar. 'X' does the reverse. Passing access rights (UNIX-domain sockets sendmsg/recmnsg) is designed to achieve this. These are all old enough that even had they been patented, the patents would be expired now.
Solaris has a system similar to this...started in Solaris 8 I believe, but I could be wrong. Anyhow, you can create users who have authority to perform certain admin functions even though they do not have root access. The authorizations are stored in a set of files, aka a data store. Was complicated as could be to configure, but it's in there. So I'd assume Sun (if they have any cash for it :-P) would pursue this one as well.
I think its great how Microsoft steals ideas from other people (*cough*NIX), comes up with a totally frelled implementation that many times doesn't work - and then A) breaks the existing standards, B) goes off and patents the idea as their own or C) both
Now the M$ police will come and get you. You do know it is illegal to publcize trade secrets, don't you?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
ssh allows (via authorized_keys) to execute selective remote/local actions by certain authenticated entities. And it is all highly configurable:
- who can execute remote (or local) commands
- what operations (commands) can be executed
- using what privileges (via setuid/setgid bits and command owner/group)
And since the agent (sshd) is a permanently running process, there's really nothing new in this patent as decribed.Am I missing something?
su root /mnt/windows /mnt/windows
umount
rm -rf
Sudo isn't enough because it lacks a daemon? Well here's a stronger example.
/root/.ssh/authorized_keys), and run a command. The command is executed by root. Is there anything in the patent that this prior art does not cover?
Sshd runs, as a daemon, as root. A local unpriviliged user can ssh to localhost, using either passwords or a keypair (where the public key is in
Mike
...but there wasn't a USPTO back then.
The First Beer:
The University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, analyzed an organic residue from inside a pottery vessel dated circa 3500-3100 B.C. from the site of Godin Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. Their findings provide the earliest known chemical evidence of beer in the world.
The First Wine:
source Combining archaeology with chemical and molecular analysis, McGovern has carved a niche for himself as an expert in ancient organics--particularly wine. He has already pushed our knowledge of vinicultural history back to Neolithic times (the late Stone Age). Now McGovern is searching in eastern Turkey for the origins of grape domestication.
The scientist lacks the physical evidence to prove his hypothesis that hunter-gatherers made what he calls "Stone Age beaujolais nouveau." But he has shown, through a combination of archaeological sleuthing and chemical analysis, that the history of wine extends to the Neolithic period (8,500-4,000 B.C.) and the first glimmerings of civilization.
AFAIAK hurd has such a kind of deamon?!
(sirously)
MVS had this kind of subsystem process decades ago. Program Call support in ESA made it look even more like the patent. This is how DB2 works for example. The user says what they want done, the server process running at a much higher level of authorisation does it. There is some question about that an "administrative method" is. I am sure some of the system programmer toolkits do this exact thing.
The patent office always favours the body with the most money. It literally awards more power to those who already have it. This is because:
- you need money to pay for the patent(s)
- you need money to contest a patent(s)
This goes against all the efforts of the Dept. of Fair Trading etc whos goal is to give a level playing field to the benefit of fair competition and thus economic benefit.
Microsoft really can come along and patent other peoples work if there is no one funded body willing to risk opposition it. And so they will.
Trying to contest every little patent like sudo isn't a real answer. We all know that the patent system needs to be dealt with; either destroyed or made equal to all by everyone paying for it equally (if we feel it's that important).
A blog I run for the wealth
Patents are monopolies created by the government on single products. There's got to be a way to introduce competition into the patent process, at least in generating prior art. Especially when the prior art is owned by the public, so the patent is privatizing public property. How can this public central registry work to protect the public, rather than just feed off it?
--
make install -not war
not only would the applicant lose the patent and the filing fee, the filing fee would be awarded to the individual who provided the first prior art which invalidated the patent.
It really angers me that anyone should get patents on such an obvious thing.. how in the world can the USPTO possibly pretend to know that no one in the world of software has ever done this before? Software differs from making airliner parts, in that anyone with a computer has all the pieces required to produce any piece of software they can think of. There have been probably millions of programs written over the last 50 years, and since software wasn't considered patentable during the vast majority of that time, there's an enormous corpus of prior art that should rightfully be extremely difficult to discount.
When the average cost of patent litigation is on the order of $3 million dollars, it's way too much to Microsoft's advantage (yes, even taking the Eolas patent into account) for the USPTO to allow any but the most extremely novel software patents to be granted.
Gah!
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Actually, you forget that patents expire (unlike what seems to be happening to copyright law lately).
So, in a worst case, long-lived inventions like the car would have been "freed" while the invention was still useful.
In today's day and age, things change so quickly (especially for software and processes), that the concept is likely to be useless by the time the patent runs out.
I'm not a supporter of software/process patents - but at the very least the duration of them should be much shorter than "normal" patents.
4-5 years would be enough for a company to recoup their investment, and the invention would still be beneficial elsewhere afterwards.
Isn't that the point of the system? Provide the inventor a period in which to profit from their invention, then turn it over to the public? 20-year software patents are like the MPAA giving Vanilla Ice CD's to public libraries to pay their fines. q:]
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Actually, sudo isn't covered under this patent because sudo doesn't stay upon acting as a "server" for clients to connect to. Xserver might count, given regular users connect to a root-ran Xserver which does stuff a regular user cannot (its xhost list is the "data store" and is rather exclusive). All process separation would likely fall into this category as well, especially the example of having a user ssh process talk to a root ssh process to switch users for someone. Since there's no mention that all the processes have to run on the same machine, telneting in as a non-root from one box into another would count (you're not "normally" allowed to become a user on a remote machine) as would telneting into the machine you're already on (just to be clear, the data store then would be the passwd file, though this example might be considered a stretch since there's su and you can just login physically; of course the patent talks about what one "normally" is authorized to do, but that's semi-stupid given with something like sudo and enough utils, there's nothing you're "normally" unable to gain authorization to that a service would somehow be able to magically be able to provide instead; so either telnet is prior art or the patent doesn't cover anything because there's no field of abnormal functions).
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Sounds like how Oracle works when you create a stored procedure under the SYS account, with definer rights, and then GRANT EXECUTE to a role or another user. When another user executes that procedure, it effectively executes under the SYS account, which is an administrator.
stevejobs% sudo rm -rf * Microsoft
That's pretty much the function of ACPs (Ancillary Control Processes) in both RSX-11 and VMS: providing a process context in which to execute code at a different privilege level to that of the user initiating the request.
I think a pretty good analogy would be the VMS network management code: commands received via RPC, privileges checked against a local database and the command executed by the ACP on behalf of the user.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/au
So, I guess the prior art will be easy to show... right?
Absolutely,
however, if you want the prior art to have any legal meaning, you will have to affort a costly legal process with the evil empire's lawyers.
You see, it doesn't matter so much who is *right* any more. It costs a awful lot of money just to have your case heard.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
In the UK, if you want to get permissions to build on land, or change how your land drainage works, set up certain types of businesses in residential areas, etc, you have to have the details published in the local newspaper and anyone who wants to complain about them can do so.
Why don't we do the same with patents? When a patent regarding, say, computing comes out.. why doesn't it end up in PC Magazine, or on Slashdot, for peer review? That way, anyone who has a complaint about the patent can register it with the patent office, and we can stop silly stuff like this happening.
I can't get the article at the moment (slow net connection), but based on the other comments, I think I have prior art on this. I'm not a genius and I suspect that others have done similar things.
Our user management is handled by two guys who don't have strong UNIX skills. They have to setup users, add mail aliases and set passwords etc. The operator type roles that sys admins like to delegate.
They are trusted individuals in the sense that they won't intentionally damage a system, but their experience is such that they can, and have caused accidental damage (one of them deleted all lines in the mailaliases file using vi by mistake).
I wrote a menu wrapper for their logins that allow them to request certain functions be performed (password wipes etc.). When they action a function, a temporary lock file is written to a directory (/var/local) that only their group can write to. A cron job, running as root, executes every minute and if a lockfile exists, will perform the command (with some sanity checking involved - e.g., it's not possible to change password if the requested user has a UID less than 100).
It's not 100% secure, but it does the job. I don't have a patent on it, but it's worked for the last couple of years without problems.
Change password under unix would not work without it. There are alot more advanced systems alot older with the same function. This is a dead and really unable to patent. Even OS/2 warp had ways of doing this.(UNIX is the oldest I think but Xerox might top it with there os or at&t). Newer version of UNIX and BSD and Linux have better ways of handling this without some of the old problems the flaws that letter people get to root o that right I can still get to System level in a windows box so this is not fixed yet. Note the the question is whos prior art? When was it invented and by who. It might be another thing we have to thank xerox park developers or it might be the early xerox clone makers(UNIX).
Come on SCO sue someone has really stuffed up this is true infringement.
Software patents are turning the USPO into a laughing stock. I can understand the USPO not being able to thoroughly examine patents for some esoteric science. Sudo is not an esoteric science. If the USPO is going to issue software patents they should have somebody who knows something about software. This sort of patent should have been caught by anybody who has any knowlege of Unix-like operating systems.
May I please humbly and respectfully request and suggest that American Corporations patent also the act of fucking themselves?
Correct me if i'm wrong, but things like sudo, the xserver and the numerous other situations where prior art exist. Are these things not implemented at a higher level ? in the kernel? and sudo , xserver and whatever else are just making use of the existing multiuser framework?
If the linux kernel does this, could it be in violation? This is sure to cause some major outrage. I think if companies continue to make a mockery of the patents system so flagrantly, it wont be long before people begin to disregard it as being genuinely useful.
Nick...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
The most interesting part is the images. There you can actually see the Gnome logo. (There is an extra karma bunus for the first who find the KDE logo;)
/.'ers -- can you think of prior art for this? Codetek's Virual Desktop is similar, but it uses application icons to represent windows, instead of shrunken pictures of the actual windows. However, from this FAQ, it appears the Codetek has at least tried to show shruken pictures in their pager, and found it was too processor intensive.
Listen, I hate MS as much as the next guy -- but did you read the rest of the patent? In the "BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS" section, it reads:
[0013] FIG. 1A [referring to the KDE front panel] is a pictorial diagram illustrating a desktop of a graphical user interface according to the prior art.
[0014] FIG. 1B [referring to the Gnome front panel] is a pictorial diagram illustrating one implementation of a panel containing a desk guide used to switch among multiple virtual desktop according to the prior art.
In the "BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION" section, it points out that in KDE, the pager doesn't show you the pictures of the desktops: "As more and more application windows 102 are dispersed throughout these virtual desktops, it may be difficult for a user to remember which desktop contains which application window." You have to click on each desktop until you find it.
For the GNOME pager, it says that "running application windows appear as small, raised squares... it is still not possible for a user to determine from these small raised squares the desired application window for which he may be looking"
The patent is apparently for MS's improvment of the concept by actually showing small recognizable representations of each desktop in a "preview" pane that shows all the desktops, and for being able to transfer application windows from a different virtual desktop to the current one, without actually bringing up the other desktop.
Ok,
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
One can name over a dozen OSes that garnered the famed Class B1 Trusted OSes status that provided this feature set since 1983. Most of them will never see the light of days due to their classified status.
Perhaps, the U.S. Patent Office should consider investigating for possible industrial payola to their underpaid $60,000/yr GS-5 ranking corporate-rejecting $125K real bad diploma-milled reviewers.
Exposed an adhoc API that allowed a manager running an app on his workstation [...] implement an ugly kludge that could screw things up royal if used by morons.
So, how did you handle the royal screwup?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Can I get a license that is good, say, within my home state? A guy's got to roam, you know...
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
As true as that is, you don't see the patent offices of other countries passing out patents to everybody and his dog for things that anybody with five minutes of experience in the field knows are an old hat. This is getting ridiculous. Next thing you know, Microsoft will be patenting the use of nine inch nails for fixing people to two wood beams set at right angles and demanding money from Trent Reznor.
There is some systematic failure in the American patent process that is responsible for these junk patents, and the longer it is left unfixed, the more expensive it is going to be to go back and clear out the deadwood. Now how much staff is that going to take? How high will the bill be for all the lawyers, judges, and clerks be that it will take to return the system to sanity?
Then again, the U.S. has money to burn, don't we. It's not like we're paying for a war halfway around the globe or are losing business to India and China or have a poverty problem...
Now, the same method of sudo is patented by MikroSoft.
And tomorrow? I will patent the lists A.C.L. if can.
EIOLAS became in the devil of HaseFroch or of U.S.of.A.
open4free ©
It sounds like they patented the virus - a process that runs at super-user level no matter what. Good job! Maybe now they can sue all those wascally hackers that keep messing up Windows systems with apps that do this.
stuff |
You can sort of see what's wrong with the patent process, vague descriptors designed to stifle competition instead of protecting an innovation. Why do I get the feeling that there will be the following patent one day...
Patent N+1: The Generic Corporation has recieved a patent for their application of a 'thing that does other things'.
I suspect sshd with priv separation works like that. I haven't nitpicked either M$'s patent nor SSH's process but they look terribly similar. Can someone with better knowlege of the details reply? Does it constitute prior art? And most importantly: is M$ targeting UNIX's most important networked administration application considering how they attacked VNC by the EULA prohibition?
Imagine:MS: UNIX admin is unsecure by design; ours is better!
Unix community: Yeah, but we were there before you put your hat on our tools... and you won't license it, damn you! MS: Pay up or shut up! Mwhahahaha!
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
One of the big problems with the USPTO is that (IIRC) it is funded by the patent fees it collects from applicants.
Which has led to the USPTO's attitude of "stop us before we patent again!" Reading their explanations for such incredibly shoddy work, they demand better funding or else they claim they cannot be responsible for doing such abhorrent, incompetent work.
I've written my Senators and Congresspersons suggesting a better approach: fire them all, close the office down, and institute a licensing process that puts the cost of both the application, prior art search, any infringement on the applicant (along the lines of "loser pays" which the US court system desparately needs in order to control class action nonsense and other trial lawyer abuse, but that's another matter).
We wouldn't tolerate air traffic controllers intentionally crashing aircraft with explanation that until they're getting better pay, they just can't help it. The private sector doesn't buy this argument either. Start at the top and finish at the bottom with this worthless, pathetic organization.
This Is a bit out of topic but this reminds me of what the english comedian Eddie Izzard said about flags:
"We stole countries! That's how you build an empire. We stole countries with the cunning use of flags! Just sail halfway around the world, stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain." And they're going, "You can't claim us. We live here! There's five hundred million of us." "Do you have a flag?" "We don't need a bloody flag, this is our country you bastard!" "No flag, no country! You can't have one. That's the rules... that... I've just made up! And I'm backing it up with this gun... that was lent from the National Rifle Association."
Is this Microsoft in a nutshell?
There may well be a degree of incompetance in the US patent office, but it is still the case that assessing all those patent applications for prior art is an herculean task.
Surely the sensible option would be to accept that the patent office will do a flawed job. So, you need a cheap, fair and readily accessible way of resolving disputes over patents. Currently, challenging a patent in law can be prohibitively expensive, which only serves to undermine the rule of law.
It is the process of resolving patent disputes that is the problem, not the issuing of those patents in the first place.
Thirty five years ago Multics had priviledged processes doing work for non-priviledged processes. It was inherent in the design. Nothing new here. Move along.
It really is up to the courts to have final say on patent issues. It would be ridiculous to expect the USPTO expend the resources required to investigate every patent to the level that would occur in court. That would create problems of it's own.
I don't know what the solution to problem of dodgy patents is, but if the MS patents is as reported, then I think that everyone can safely ignore it. The defence in any law suit would be to simply roll a *nux box into court. Any 2nd rate lawyer could defend against it for a very small fee.
Enlightenment.
Now we should patent the "system tray" and the taskbar. We should patetent everything! If we each patetented one thing and told Microsoft they cant use it, but open source people can, then we'd win! I'm patetening the clipboard :p
mysql>SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 Rows Returned
"The patent is apparently for MS's improvment of the concept by actually showing small recognizable representations of each desktop in a "preview" pane that shows all the desktops, and for being able to transfer application windows from a different virtual desktop to the current one, without actually bringing up the other desktop."
That's an excellent description of the Enlightenment pager. I'm pretty sure it's been there since before April 5 2002.
"the reaction of everyone on this page is that there must be some that does: a fairly good indication that practitioners versed in the art regard the idea as obvious."
;-)
Right, and this forum is of course a fair, objective environment, where nobody has any kind of bias against Microsoft.
I made a cursory reading the patent (my eyes start to glaze over if I try to read something like that in detail without sufficient preparation and motivation). If I had to guess, I would say this is part of Microsoft's effort to fix the hideous state of security design in their Windows product, as it is typically deployed for consumers. That is, everyone can do anything to most any Windows box, but still expects Microsoft to protect them from it. I'm thinking Microsoft is trying to come up with a way to let users do what they want, while still protecting users from themselves, using a daemon that checks what the code is trying to do.
Apple kinda does this with Mac OS X, which pops up dialogs whenever an installer needs more privileges, or whatever. And, of course, like everyone else here has been pointing out, the patent starts off with something very like sudo (but the patent goes into all sorts of detail that sudo doesn't care much about).
Whether or not the idea is patentable is not mine to say. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know when Microsoft developed these ideas. Remember, under US patent law, it is not when you file, but when you come up with the idea, that matters. If Microsoft came up with the idea before sudo's author did, sudo loses. (Not that I think that's likely, but that's just a guess on my part.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"if it is not realistic then they have no business claiming the authority"
We (or rather, our ancestors) *gave* them that authority. Read the Constituion some time.
(My apologies to non-US citizens. This is a US-centric post. But then, so is the article.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"So, the patent is filed for August 10th, 2004 ... it looks like SUDO dates back to 1980."
Under US patent law, it is when the idea was first throught of, and not when the patent was filed, that counts. Not that I really think Microsoft thought of this first.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Maybe the US Patent Office should post the patents to be approved in a special section of slashdot where users can comment on them before being actually accepted for approval. :-)
Then geeks from all over the world would cite trillions of examples of prior art and patents might never get approved
Just a thought... hey, they slashdot effect works for DoS'ing servers and other disruptive things, why not use it for something "positive"?
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
ah, well .. it was sort of fun while it lasted
'a process configured to run under an administrative privilege level' which, based on authorization information 'in a data store', may perform actions at administrative privilege on behalf of a 'user process'."
A user can't write to a graphics card directly so it communicates over a network to an X-server (which is running as root) to have it perform operations on its behalf.
Prior art? X is almost as old as I am!
What I think MS will use patents like this, is to fight open source. Possible patent problems is what is keeping several companies and institutions from running linux - now they got another one patent they can claim Linux is breaking. No matter if their patent is invalid itself, but it's the FUD they spread.
I believe Linux is the reason they ever brought their concern for manufacturers using patented filesystems. They are afraid of losing their most profiting business - selling operating systems. Instead of innovating new business models, they have gone into a hedgehog-like defence. All spikes out! Use patents, false claims, anything! I believe they're destined to fail. They'll eventually loose their 90% market share of OS (x86 comp).
?SYNTAX ERROR
The burden of searching for and listing prior art resides on the inventor filing for a patent in the US. Software patents, like this one, with such blatant omissions of prior art should simply be revoked by the patent office. Whats needed with software patents is a review period after the patent is granted. If there are omissions in the list of prior art, the patent should either be reexamined or revoked. That would go a long way towards fixing our software patent woes and evening out the playing field between individual developers and big corporations.
sudo killall microsoft
So, doesn't init already do this? It seems to me that this basically describes what a kernel does.
There is a lot of prior art on this one!
SNMP
Any web based admin packages using a CGI and some kind of validation(host/network/id) driven by a
config file. I wrote one of these a few years ago.
I worked with a hacked up version of sudo that was
modified to only execute certain commands for
certain users driven by a data file...
This conceptually sounds exactly like IRIX's 4Dwm "Extra Desks: Desktop Overview" widget, which has been around for years now.
s gi/irixdesks
I made a quick screenshot:
http://www.bithose.com/gallery/comp_
It might not be as "pretty" but it's totally functional - you can drag and drop windows between any arbitrary number of desktops; mousing over a window outline shows the name of the window; you can reposition windows on another desktop, etc.
I'm patenting the process of making letters appear on the screen by pressing a key on a key board.
Prior art can inculde exact match and stuff that is just close. Most patents of course just include prior art that is just close so that the examiner can decide if your claims meet the criteria for a new patent based on the (listed) prior art. Leaving out significant prior art, by either the inventor or the USPTO examiner should invlaidate the patent. Mabey if you were to go to court, it would.
Uhmmm...I haven't used it for a while but I believe that Enlightenment shows a very clear representation of exactly what is on different desktops. It isn't simply giving you a representation of a desktop with tiny little app window representations on it, it is giving you a realistic snapshot of the other desktops with the actual app windows displayed.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
SU DO, or SU NOT,
There is no try
-Yoda - uh, sort of
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
One of the inventors at Microsoft appears to be this gentleman, who works on Apache and is a "founding member of the OpenSSL project". If an OpenSSL guy is unaware of sudo, we're living in Bizarro world.
But that's not how corporate research works. Nobody cares how good the patents you get are. Microsoft cross-licenses with all their competitors, anyway. Modern corporate researchers just produce legal fodder -- a slew of patents, which can be used to prevent new entrants from entering a field -- existing oligopolies are maintained by cross-licensing of patents.
May we never see th
One of my three patents certainly covers what you are talking about.. now pay up...
Which, to anyone skilled in the art, should be obvious and non-patentable. It's a matter of speed/performance tradeoff whether to spend the CPU/VPU cycles to create a full mini-render of the virtual desktop in the pager or just show it as shadows. It would in essence be the same type of image processing algorithm that a resize/zoom function performs in any image processing application. You're just taking that tool and applying it to this problem.
And KDE already does this, just right-click on the application in the task bar and you get a "To Desktop" sub-menu, or if the app is in your current desktop, just right-click on its title bar. Since KDE has had multiple virtual desktops since the 1.x days, this feature's probably been there since it first came out.
This is brilliant, genius, astounding! Lets just patent our security holes. We will call them innovative and charge people money to have them added to our OS.
Glad I don't use any of their products.
Maybe the whole point of this is that by filing thousands of pointless, indefensible patents MS hopes to make the whole patent process fall apart.
Why? Simple. MS's main advantage is its financial resources while IBM's greatest asset is its massive patent portfolio. While IBM hold so may patents, MS will have to act with at least a modicum of civility re: cross licencing etc. When the patent system is rendered a humiliated mess and it falls apart due to the fact that no-one can take it seriously any more MS can fall back on proprietry file formats (office) and its huge desktop monopoly and do what it does best - treating everyone like shit!
Remember, a cornered Rat's greatest asset is it's unpredictability. Or is that a dancing monkey boy?
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
You're right! Enlightment's pager does show small versions of the windows -- so I don't see how MS's application is patentable. I don't know the process for submitting prior art -- but I remember seeing it in the comments. Someone less lazy than me should submit it :)
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Sudo has neen around for over 20 years. Just take a look at its history: http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/history.html
I think the folks at Microsoft should learn Linux and Unix. They might get some ideas and stop reinventing the wheel.
Oh sorry. Did I say that out loud?!
...and the crowd goes wild! q;-P
bah!
Saeed al-Sahaf, at the time I am posting, you are moderated (Score:0, Flamebait). Too funny because the post you are defending is currently (Score:5,Funny).
Too funny. You accomplished your goal but your current moderation did not catch up. Oh well. Good job friend.
---
Wingit
We win together or suffer without.
> just solving the non-obviousness problem ... are not real solutions
They ARE partial solutions. One of the main problems here is that things patented that are supposedly innovative are considered by others routine. Each piece of software written might contain hundreds or thousands of lines of code that are really innovative in terms of nineteenth century industrial revolution standards, when just putting together a few things to make them do something was innovation. This is the source of thing programmers do routinely (there is nothing new in software that Turing hasn't already proved possible in 1936).
I said "one of" the main problems. The other one is not just a problem of the patent system, but is recuring in many other areas: it is the cost of using the legal system, that is supposed to give equal service to all. The way things work is that when the law doesn't fit the needs or the wishes of the people, it is changed, either peacfully by legislation, or violently (E.G. as in 1776). Anyway, long before that, patents and copyright will go the way of speed limits...
> This is the source of thing programmers do routinely
;-D )
correction:
This is the sort of thing programmers do routinely
(who invented "cut and paste" editing? is it patented?
>> Toast lands jelly down. If you jelly both sides of a piece of toast, it will hover in a state of quantum indecision.
call me picky, but you misspelled butter...
...these aren't my real teeth.
I hope Microsoft hasn't patented nose picking yet. I'd owe them an awful lot of money.
I think M$ is actually applying for a patent on Viruses here. Is this behaviour exactly what the latest batch of worms achieve???
Well I did read the patent claim, and also the lines you quoted, and in fact any root-owned setuserid executable that is started(thus creating an administrative process) by a second non-privileged process, like the shell itself or a nonroot-crontab script, fits the descriptions.
:-P
..
Actually every OS having the division administration/user, and having processes fits the descriptions of claim 1.
Some of the wording seems to indicate that microsoft actually did not have that in mind but only something that involves clicking somewhere, but thanks to the practice of legally obfuscating and bullshitting your claims, the claim now can mean something completely different.
I think that based on the empirics that a lot of "claim 1"s are by custom made overly broad that you should be allowed to just ignore claim 1 of all patents
Now, use full induction for claims (n+1),
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Let me pull out my favorite chestnut.
The term of patents should be limited to 17 months instead of 17 years.
The latter might have been appropriate in the 18th century when knowledge disseminated at the speed of sailing vessels. Not now.
Cutting the term would not only bring new developments to the public at lower cost and increase the pace of innovation as inventors need not worry as much about compounding on previously patented technology, but it would also help bad patents, like this one, expire sooner. An early death this patent most assuredly deserves.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I know this is a bit late, but I came up with an idea to fix all of this. I want to patent a process to file patents. Included therein would be a patent on patenting the patenting process, and so on recursively. Once I have the patent on patenting things, I will file patent infringement suits against anyone who violates my patenting patent.
...'screwing up' the corporation. I'm advocating a change in the environment we've created for corporations to run in.
Cases like this one show that big business will excercise every right they are given by law in order to squeeze out every last drop of profit. That's what companies do.
Therefore, the only way to curb overly aggressive, unhelpful behaviour by said companies is to strip them of some of the rights WE have granted them.
I'll make all the noise I want, thanks. Try participating in the discussion next time, mmmkay? You sound like the angry one!
This seems to be one of those necessary operating system design patterns. Any operating system with authorization would want to incorporate this functionality as it is a common use case. Do all operating systems from now on have to achieve this in some way that does not violate the patent or be force to pay licencing fees to Microsoft? I wonder how much of the software I have written violates Microsoft patents in some way? Is the goal there to try to 'own' the best solution to any given problem? They could start patenting things we think of as common software design patterns in general.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Actually... it was the char limit that caused that error.
Toast lands jelly down. If you jelly both sides of a piece of toast, it will hover in a state of quantum indecision.
"Except that if it is publicly disclosed by yourself or anyone else more than one year before you FILE, it doesn't matter if you invented it first, you can't patent it. Disclosure can consist of USING the patent publicly, even if you don't disclose how you're doing it."
:-)
Ahhhh. Interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks for the info. Of course, IANAL, I expect you're not either, and it isn't like Slashdot is a legal forum, but hey, still good to know.
After all your talk about PLATO, I had to follow your journal link, and just spent a good hour reading about cool old computer systems. Neat stuff. Sometimes I regret that a lot of that stuff came before my time.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.