Warp wrote:
>   (And no, having a graphical sudo is not innovative. 

I'm guessing the innovation is in part limiting the presentation to accounts 
with permissions to do the job and sorting those so they come before 
accounts with permissions to do more than needed.

Which doesn't happen with sudo, since there's only one privileged account.

Remember, it's not "graphical sudo". It's *everything* in the entire claim.

For example, if your graphical sudo doesn't have a help feature, it's not 
infringing on this patent. On the other hand, help features are "obvious" so 
this isn't sufficient to distinguish this patent enough that it should have 
passed based just on that. IANAL.

If you have only root and non-root, you aren't infringing this patent. If 
you don't have a way to have accounts "associated with users" (by which I 
assume they mean "in the same group"), you don't infringe. If you don't have 
"sufficient but not unlimited rights", you're not infringing the patent. If 
you don't adjust the list based on frequency of use, you're not infringing 
the patent. If you don't have pictures associated with user accounts, you're 
not infringing the patent. If you don't authenticate to the system based on 
passwords, you're not infringing the patent.

Note that if you have *all* of these elements, you're no tinfringing the 
first claim. (I didn't delve into the second claim much, except to see it's 
basically "claim 1, only with capabilities".)  Usually when a patent has 300 
clauses in the first claim, it's because it *needs* all 300 to be considered 
different from what has come before.  *Then* you have to read all the mail 
that went between the patent office, where the patent office said "You say 
authenticator, but we already have smart cards to do this" and MS says "We 
don't mean smart cards, then. How about now?"

Which is not to say I'm not joyous that the Supreme Court is looking at 
whether to throw all this kind of crap out, but it looks like MS at least is 
already trying to work around that by claiming to patent a computer disk 
with a program on it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
     Is God willing to prevent phrogams, but not able?
       Then he is not omnipotent.
     Is he able, but not willing, to prevent phrogams?
       Then he is malevolent.

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