It's what it sounds to me.

Once a little piss ant company that no one has ever heard of needs to make some quick cash, they sue Apple. From the description, they're describing something that has been in UNIX for a very long time. They can't possibly own this technology. Why would they wait so long to sue if they did?

Gotta agree with Howie. I was using a Unix permissions system just like the patent describes the best part of 30 years ago. Did the US patent office simply give up on the idea of 'prior art' or something?

Actually, this is less about unix permissions and more like sandboxing. Its all about what can and can't an application use/read/write/execute, which is different than standard Unix permissions, which are all about what the user can and can't do.

So, the question is "where did Sun get its tech and ideas for Java runtimes?". That's where you should be looking for previous tech.

If Apple is using this technology and did not do a proper patent search then shame on them.

Then again if the IP holder just waited years, knowing that the IP was being violated and did nothing about it then they should be forced to forfeit there claim.

Who are these obnoxious parasites (those in question harassing Apple once again, this time on the premises of OS X's intrinsic security)? Do I understand it right that these cretins demand that the virus-proof nature of Macintosh and OS X be eliminated? Curse them, I'd spit in their faces if the opportunity arose, bloody mosquitoes!
That one dares to demean to such behaviour!..

it is the same as UNIX permissions, have you never used a UNIX system before (and not like jurassic park if thats all you know..). When a person runs an application, it runs with THE USERS PERMISSIONS, hence user space permissions affect programs. This is why you have things such as sudo, that let you run a program as another user with greater permissions.All sandboxing does, beyond kernel level memory protection which has been in every OS for god knows how long, is create an operating environment which the program is run as a user that only has permissions to access those locations allowed - It cannot READ beyond those areas even, cannot even see that they exist. This is similar to why you run Apache as the Apache user - then Apache can ONLY write to locations it owns and has permission to use. You then grant it READ only access to your files to serve. Not that hard... and ages older than this patent

Yes I've run unix systems. And I know how permissions work ( gee just read my comment). And you aren't reading of correctly. As I said (and you repeated) standard unix permissions are all about what the USER can do. The patent is about defining what an APP can do.

You're apache example shows this as well. You are defining what the apache user can do, not what the app can do. This, if you were to run apache under a different user, it would have different rights.

And just as obvious. If this was the same as unix permissions, it wouldn't get this far.

(note that I'm not defending the patent just pointing out it isn't what most claim it is)

Testudo has used, done, raped, violated, licked, poked, touched, controlled, spoken with, seen, bent over, witnessed, driven, jumped, it all! Anything you can think of, he's done it and if you've done it, he did it better and it was easier for him too. And he's going to give you his opinion on it, and you know what it's going to spot on! And if you give your opinion on his opinion, he's going to give you his opinion on your opinion that you gave him about his first opinion.

He might even quote you and for that you should feel flattered! Because for someone who has done EVERYTHING and SEEN EVERYTHING to quote you, well... we should all feel privileged to have been a part of that.