how to root your Android or at least understand how it works I do not know exactly how rooting works or if it can even by done on my Android (Samsung GT-N8013) device. No rootkit appears to exist yet for Android 4.1.2,  so I am left with figuring out how to root my device via other means.  

All I would like to do is do certain operations (on my own device!) e.g. read a file regardless of its permissions or run certain programs as root. So assuming we have


your own physical Android device
the permission model of Android/Linux
the tools available e.g. adb, Android NDK, 


is it at all possible to make a process run as root on the current Linux version of Android 4.1.2?  If nobody has a direct answer to this, could you please offer any ideas on how to even begin attempting to do so, or resources that really show you how rooting works (not just a wikipedia link)?

(All I know of so far is rageagainstthecage and gingerbreak, which are unfortunately, exploits, and don't work on 4.2.1 anyway. )

Thanks for any help.
root permissions means that you have full permissions to all the items of the kernel. I do not see how you can use an app that requires root permissions to work when the user shell you are operating does not have it.

As far as the in's and out's of manipulating a shell for root permissions I have no idea.