Slashdot Mirror
Goldman Sachs Code Theft Not Quite So Cut and Dried
The New York Times has some interesting details that are surfacing about the recent charges brought against Sergey Aleynikov, the programmer who allegedly stole code from Goldman Sachs on his way out the door to another job. "This spring, Mr. Aleynikov quit Goldman to join Teza Technologies, a new trading firm, tripling his salary to about $1.2 million, according to the complaint. He left Goldman on June 5. In the days before he left, he transferred code to a server in Germany that offers free data hosting. [...] After his arrest, Mr. Aleynikov was taken for interrogation to F.B.I. offices in Manhattan. Mr. Aleynikov waived his rights against self-incrimination, and agreed to allow agents to search his house. He said that he had inadvertently downloaded a portion of Goldman's proprietary code while trying to take files of open source software — programs that are not proprietary and can be used freely by anyone. He said he had not used the Goldman code at his new job or distributed it to anyone else, and the criminal complaint offers no evidence that he has."
To steal code, you print screen and save it as an image file :)
Yeah, phrased weirdly, but I assume it means something like, "he incriminated himself even after being advised of his Miranda right to remain silent". It might mean something stronger, though, like police actively asked him if he was waiving his right not to incriminate himself, and he confirmed that he was--- police sometimes do this so that the recorded interview is absolutely clear that the suspect knew what his rights are and was consciously waiving them, rather than speaking accidentally or because he was tricked into incriminating himself.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It is illegal front running IF it looks at their brokerage business order flow and trades ahead of that. Do you have evidence that they are doing that? If so, you should be talking to the SEC, not posting on Slashdot.
Lots of firms implement high frequency trading strategies based on statistical probabilities of short term market movements, and order book depth analysis. These strategies are usually capital constrained, and a lot of work to implement and maintain, but can be levered up and earn a relative huge return on a modest amount of capital utilized, when implemented properly.
Of course, they can also fail to get timely execution of orders if there are 5 people going after the same trades, in which case 4 of you are likely to lose your arses. Unlike other areas, high frequency strategies are often (though not always) a winner-takes-all world where your network latency and code execution speed are measured in microseconds, not seconds, or even milliseconds.
"if you work on it using company resources, between the hours of 9am and 5pm, the company owns it" is a standard part of employment contracts, it is NOT law. I have requested that it be removed from all employment contracts I have signed, and it was either removed or a separate document was written specifying amended terms. (in most cases the term was simply omitted, in another it was re-written to include the additional condition that they only own it if they told me to do it, which I thought was a nice touch, as the original wording had them owning any code I did at home in my spare time, too, while the new wording allowed me to work on personal projects during lunch)
If a lot of companies are in the habit of raping you, it doesn't make it "law", and there's usually something you can do about the rape part, too.
No effort is spared in government to protect the dishonest business practices of these sheisters, and no effort is spared in the media to disguise it as the parent companies of the major media outlets benefit greatly from keeping the public in the dark.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. research analyst Marc Irizarry's published rating on mutual-fund manager Janus Capital Group Inc. was a lackluster "neutral" in early April 2008. But at an internal meeting that month, the analyst told dozens of Goldman's traders the stock was likely to head higher, company documents show.
Nothing like selling bonds out the front door and shorting them on your prop desk, right? Oh wait, Goldman did that too!
Securities laws require firms like Goldman to engage in "fair dealing with customers," and prohibit analysts from issuing opinions that are at odds with their true beliefs about a stock. Steven Strongin, Goldman's stock research chief, says no one gains an unfair advantage from its trading huddles, and that the short-term-trading ideas are not contrary to the longer-term stock forecasts in its written research.
Riiiight. And I'm the Easter Bunny.
It slipped my mind just now that I actually used to work for a quant myself, as a consultant. It was a futures hedge fund. That is, it would buy and sell pork belly and crude oil contracts in such a way as to... print money.
The guy who owned the fund is the richest person I have ever met, or am ever likely to meet. Yet they tried to stiff me out of my last month's paycheck, and wouldn't pay me unless I removed from my homepage what their directory of research said of me: "Your code is by far the best in our codebase."
I just violated my termination contract by telling you that. Fuck 'em - I shouldn't have had to sign that contract just to get the paycheck they owed me anyway.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
For those who are interested, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together a Surveillance Defense Project manual which discusses the basics of government search and seizure powers in the United States (among other things). There are other sources available on the same and related topics (the searches are left as an exercise to the reader), but basically the only way to completely preserve one's rights when dealing with the authorities is to refuse any cooperation, other than name and id, from the very start and continue that refusal until one's attorney is present and one is acting under advice from that attorney. Of course, our individual rights are being constantly diminished in this country so your mileage may vary, but at least in theory if you want to protect your 5th amendment right against self incrimination you must never cooperate, not even partially, until you are acting under the advice of your attorney, even if you have not yet been arrested or detained (i.e. this applies to any interactions with the authorities under any circumstances).
That analogy is, unfortunately, wholly incorrect.
The GPL requires you to distribute the source code to everyone you give the binary. If you do not distribute the binary but keep it in house, there is nothing that forces you to hand out any changes you've made to the source.
This isn't even a loophole in the GPL, this is in there by design --- if I "buy" GPL software from someone, I own it --- I am free to modify it in any way I see fit, and unless I'm seeking to profit by re-selling it, I have no further obligations to the person gave or sold me that software.
They did, well after they had offloaded their stakes.
> You appear to have a form of Stockholm syndrome
No, I have gratitude that I didn't lose my job and get a reputation for being an idiot. Because I actually was. The PC didn't have a CD burner. We plugged one in.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
TL;DR version - old military lingo from the Marine Corps
Long version -
In the Marine Corps, you have different MOSs (Millitary Occupational Specialty). They are broken down into broad groups. In the Army/Airforce/Navy, you can get guaranteed placement in a specific MOS. In the Marine Corps you can only get a guaranteed Field.
MOS's are 4 digit codes, the first 2 digits are the field, the second two are the occupation. For instance, 03## is a grunt. Someone who is on the front lines, putting rounds down range. The second two numbers indicate if you are a basic rifleman, a machine gunner, armory, or any number of other specific jobs.
All things IT related used to be lumped into the 40## field. Whether you were an RPG coder, a DBA, a network admin, ADA flight systems coder, what ever. Just to get into the 40## you had to do pretty well on your ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test. The ASVAB is broken into a bunch of different parts, the important one for the 40## field though, is the General Technical score. IIRC it ranges from 0-140 or 150. You need to get a high ASVAB score to get into the 40## field, but to get into the 4067 MOS (computer programmers) you needed to have a 110 GT score or better.
They system wasn't perfect, but it ruled out most of the square peg-round hole guys. Even so, you wound up with a handful of marines in the 4067 field that still couldn't handle basic programming logic event after a 12+ week training course. Those people, the guys and gals who just barely squeaked by, were referred to as the "110ers" (one-ten-ers). Implying that they had just enough intelligence to get in above their head.
All of this is defunct now as under the start of the Bush administration the 4067 field was scrapped, all programming duties was sold off to contractors, and the 40## field was merged down to the 06## field and almost all IT work was outsourced.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs