Slashdot Mirror


McAfee Granted Firewall Patent

BadUspto writes "BetaNews reports that 'The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted software maker McAfee a patent for tracking network events on a computer using a firewall. The patent filing involves tracing the location of an incoming connection and displaying a map showing where the remote system geographically resides.' Doomsday for VisualRoute and others?"

11 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. Yea! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Patents do an industry good! All hail our patent overlords!

  2. movie reference by Zeb-9000 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Am I the only one thinking of Jay and Silent Bob in the final moments of J&SBSB when they are touring america to put the beat down on the people that dissed them on the "internet" And shouldn't that count as prior art?

  3. JESUS H CHRIST IN A CHICKEN BASKET! by Chuqmystr · · Score: 4, Funny
    ***WARNING, KNEE-JERK REACTION FOLLOWS***

    For the love of whatever! Is nothing sacred? I finaly found something, a nice combo of BSD/Linux/OS X over various devices that returned a bit of control to my computing experience. Mind you, I've been into this since the very begining of PC use. And now, some greedy fuck (whom is OS specific none the less) needs to step in and take advantage of one of the most chiken-shit money grabs in the known world, the USPTO. Sigh... Yeh, yeh, prior art, blah blah. There's plenty of flesh-eating lawyers out there for MacFuckify to employ and possibly make this a pain in the ass for some time to come. Goddamn you windoze and all the leaches on your digi-herpies infested ass. If this flys, I'm going ludite right down to the use of an abacus. Fuck it, I'm tired...

  4. Re:US freedom again by jerryasher · · Score: 2, Funny

    You're missing the point. You were running xtraceroute on a computer. McAfee got this to work on a firewall !!

  5. Re:Good Grief by brainboyz · · Score: 2, Funny

    Where's my DMCA lawyer? You've broken the encryption on my patented "Turning the opposite of right while indicating intent" method and released my secret to the world. I'll sue!

  6. Re:since when... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    What is this 'Poland' that you speak of?

    Some sort of country? I forget.

  7. Re:I'm a little affraid by SilverspurG · · Score: 5, Funny

    I fear a world where Microsoft has a patent on "Operating System"

    I think it would be "Method of configuring a computer to spread viruses"

    In the same train of thought: could one patent a "Method of encoding a self-replicating computer program", release it under a non-transferrable license, and then sue the crap out of everyone who gets infected?

    --
    fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
  8. Re:I'm a little affraid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    So what? Every piece of graphical open-source software is so fucked up from a usability point-of-view that everyone besides the ultra-n00b uses command-line tool anyway.

    Nothing lost there.

  9. Re:US freedom again by eric76 · · Score: 2, Funny
    McAfee got this to work on a firewall !!

    Yeah.

    Wait til the porn industry gets a hold of this. We'll have internet-enabled dildos that visually show the source of an intrusion.

  10. Re:prior art? by moonbender · · Score: 2, Funny

    IIRC MS patented boolean values a few months ago?

    Yep, that's tr... correct. (Actually, I have no idea.)

    --
    Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
  11. Re:Surely some prior art? by NigelJohnstone · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Or is the patent including something new?"

    Yes, it includes a *plurality* of views. Not just one screen, two screens, but N screens. Total genius, only a Communist would object to a patent like that. /sarcasm