You could argue that, but you'd be wrong.
on
The End of Encryption?
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· Score: 2, Informative
True randomness does exist, it's all around us.
You are probably thinking "If we just knew everything about the starting conditions, we could predict the outcome."
In this universe, however, you CANNOT know the starting conditions to an infinite degree of accuracy. I don't mean "it's difficult" or "we can't do it with today's technology" but that it's fundamentally not possible. No state exists whereby you can know waht you would need to know. Such predictions are not possible.
You can say we don't know enough about quantum mechanics yet or whatever.. but look at something as simple as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: you cannot know the speed and location of a particle at the same time. The more accurately you know one, the less you know of the other. This coupled with chaos theory means things really are random.
You are correct in that some things can be predicted.. we COULD measure enough about a roulette wheel to predict with a high degree of accuracy what is going on.. same with a coin toss. But look at something like nuclear decay, for instance... and we will NEVER be able to predict when a given atom is going to decay... it's buried in the quantum noise and in the uncertainty principle.
If I write some code from scratch, and release it under the GPL....and then Mr Jerk takes it and starts releasing his own version and not abiding by the license...
The ONLY person who has a legitimate grievance with Mr. Jerk, and the only person who can actually bring any sort of legal action is ME, because I hold the copyright... and this guy would be distributing MY copyrighted work without permission.
Only the copyright holders are in a position to do anything.
Your assumption about the contributed code being under the GPL is not necessarily clear cut, though probably correct. Yes, he should have asked for copyrights to be assigned to him. On the other hand, those contributing probably didn't specify the license they were licensing the code back to him under. This is why most serious projects have very clear statements, one way or the other, about how rights assignment works... because things get muddy. The way he releases code to the public is a separate transaction from how people release contributions to HIM... and are not necessarily related.
You, and I, who do not have any sort of copyright claim to the Xchat code, can scream all we want, but unless the copyright holders have an issue with it, we can't do anything.
The GPL sets the terms under which you can do some things that copyright law normally doesn't let you do.... period.
Replace "GPL" with "GENERIC LICENSE" to make sense of this.. don't get hung up on the exact wording of the GPL.... either you are using someone elses copyrighted material legally, or you are not. IF you are not, only the rightsholders can do anything about it.
If I find you using a copy of Windows without a license.. I can't sue you... all I can do is tell Microsoft. Same thing here.
Zed has stated clearly that he's releasing HIS project in this manner.. the only part to be disputed is code contributed by others.. and he's stated that he's willing to deal with those others should they object. If the rightsholders don't object, that's that.
If those who contributed to the project are okay with it, then there is no problem.
You don't own my project just because you contributed a bit of code to it.... though you may have a claim on the use of your own code depending on HOW it was contributed.
Zed clearly states why he thinks what he is doing is okay, and honestly, the only people who have any legal beef with this are those who have contributed their own IP to the product.. it's not an issue for the public at large to solve.
I don't get how a port of something to windows suddenly has a bunch of non-gpl parts.
All code modifications needed to get it to build under windows, and all build scripts and makefiles used to make that windows version are considered the source code of that binary version.
You could possibly argue that the installer is a separate piece... as an installer can be fairly generic... but that's about it.
I'm not assuming that I own it... I'm just saying it's not necessarily clear cut who really does. It's not as clear as, say, it would be if the code was actually licensed back to him officially.
If he wrote the vast majority of the code, only linked against LGPL libraries, and if the contributors to his project have not specified a license then the only people who have a potential issue at all are those contributors.
He's indicated he's perfectly willing to deal with copyright issues if contributors feel they have been wronged....
If you contribute some code to my project, it depends entirely on how you contribute it.
If you just post it somewhere under the GPL, as a patch against my code, and I take it and use it.. then we can be fairly sure I haven't obtained any additional rights to it. The only reason I can use it is because you released it under the GPL.
If, on the other hand, you email it to me and say "Hey dude, I wrote this, I want to donate it to your project".... it's not so clear. You are donating the code to me, and although I'm probably going to release it under GPL.. I can also make a case that you gave me that code with no restrictions, and I am free to relicense it to someone else at a later date along with my other original work.
What you say about the sticky details is true... except, in this case, X-chat for windows is a single application, a single derived work of the original X-chat, and therefore can only be released under the terms of the GPL. There are not "GPL parts" that are considered seperate, as far as the GPL is concerned.
There is no problem with it even having a 30 day timer.. as long as the full source used to build that binary is provided and licensed to the recipient under the GPL.
The only real issue seems to be that they are not providing the appropriate GPL licensed source that the binaries were built from.
If I want to write a binary that has a time delay in it, and then asks you to pay me money or it will disable itself... I don't believe I'm actually violating the GPL. Hear me out here....
The shareware like features are part of the program itself... they are NOT contractual obligations or other stipulations. They are part of the derived work that is created... just another one of it's functions.
The problem is that the source is not adequately provided.. if it were, we could just build up a new version without this feature, if we were so inclined.
Realistically, they keep the backlash to a minimum by stopping it early. If some great tools came out now, and then google suddenly axed them when they went out of beta there would be even more people saying google sucks, is unfair, etc...
In a public beta like this, PR is still very important. The brand is already at stake. To treat it any other way would be stupid. People won't care about the Beta distinction later.
My point isn't that the police should break the law, but that as a society, we have to put SOME level of discretion in the hands of those we want to enforce the law, or the law can't be enforced.
We make it legal for police to, say, buy drugs off drug dealers in order to obtain a conviction.
I'm not sure where all this stuff about cops breaking the law comes in.. you said yourself you don't know of anything illegal about the cop's activites in the article in question, so the point is moot.
Who says the evidence wasn't strong? do you know something we don't?
The feds don't often shut down entire businesses without some evidence.
I agree, there are times when law enforcement oversteps their bounds, and we have to try our best to ensure that they don't, and punish them when they do... but I don't see how this is one of those times, unless you know something we don't?
Yes, you are free. You are free to sue the person who failed to hold up his end of your business arrangement. You are free to choose your business parters wisely.
Nothing is without risk, I'm sorry.
They did not cause you harm; your hosting provider breaking the law blatantly and using his business for illegal purposes is the one who caused you the harm; the system being shut down was a natural outcome of his actions. Let's put responsibility where it is supposed to be.
Those who lost money because their sites went down can take it up with the CEO who flew the coop. They can sue him for lost profits. I'm sure it's in their contract.
If not, they can learn a lesson and choose a more reputable hosting company. I don't recall any big names using FooNet....
Just curious... what was improper about their warrant? When your business is literally shut down by a DDOS extortion racket.. what do you want the police to do? Nothing?
What was it about their original method that was illegal?
Nobody is above the law.. except criminals, who operate outside the law to begin with.
If we operate 100% by a set of rules and regulations, and leave nothing open to individual decision or responsibility, we end up paralyzed by beurocracy.
Shutting down a shitty little colo where there was strong evidence the colo was heavily involved in a serious crime (breaking into thousands of computers, stealing network resources, extortion, etc) is not a bad idea.
The customers who found themselves out of a hosting provider can take it up in court with their former provider for failing to provide services.
If their business heavily depended on that service, they should have chose a more trustworthy and credible provider, of which there are about a thousand.
If it turns out the mob is running a restaurant and using it to kill people and hide bodies, do we whine when the feds shut down the restaurant because you lost your dinner date?
The situation you ahve with ext2 to ext3 is unique, and not indicative of normal filesystem decisions during administration.
If you have a large filesystem with important data, you choose a system that meets your needs, and generally stick with it unless you need to upgrade.
The appeal of ext3 IS that you can seamlessly go back and forth to ext2 without any real structural change to the FS.... sure... but that's unique.
You don't just convert your array to XFS to Reiser, etc.... you decide what meets your needs and use that.
IT's not feasible to keep all filesystems compatable so upgrades don't require reformatting, unless you are talking about small changes, or speed penalties.
And during that one moment when, say, your UPS fails, or the plug gets kicked out of the back of the computer, or some moron leans on the power switch too long...
Or when your power supplies fail....
The list goes on...... other hardware failure, fire, earthquake... etc.
Do you want a system designed to not corrupt itself to hell and back during a hard outage, or not?
A typical farmer would by TONS more than McVeigh used in Oklohoma. That's the point.
Building a bomb, especially if size isn't too much of a consideration, is EASY. There are many, many ways to do it.
Further, it doesn't take a large bomb to make terrorism work.. someone tossing sticks of dynamite (easily available all over the world) into nightclubs would get people worked up just about as well. The whole point of terrorism is that it's cheap... a single event and a few deaths is so spectacular that everyone forgets to put it in scale. More people died in car accidents in the US last year than did on Sept. 11th, but the US isn't throwing billions into auto safety or cars that self-drive. More people died from smoking-related disease, but you don't see the government outlawing tobacco.
Are there really more terrorist threats lately, or is that just what you tend to see in the news?
My passport is one of the most important documents I carry. I need it to travel anywhere. I need it even to fly back to Canada. I need it to open a bank account, and it has more than just a record of travel.. it has residency permits and visas and whatnot.
Now... the thing is, A passport takes a lot of abuse. They go through the wash. They get sat on, run over, etc. IN the end, a passport is a picture ID with a book attached to it to record information.
Adding technology to a passport seems like asking for trouble.. though it would be convenient at the airpot for a customs agent... they spend more time filling out forms and analyzing paperwork you have filled out than they do looking at your passport.
People are still better at facial recognition than machines.. let's remember that.
Sometimes I'm sure a sales guy does stretch the truth for sales.
More often, however, is that poeple simply don't pay attention. They conveniently don't hear the "resulting from normal use of the product" part of the replacement.
I mean, seriously, no matter how big you are.. would you actually accept returns that were deliberately broken by the customer? I wouldn't.
I might take returns of unopened packages with no fee as a nice gesture. I might even take returns of opened packages for a restocking fee, depending on the type of packaging (damn blister packs)...
I would definately take returns of defective crap, and take it up with my supplier.. unless I made it clear to the customer that the sale was final and not guaranteed to work.
Slashdot Mirror
True randomness does exist, it's all around us.
You are probably thinking "If we just knew everything about the starting conditions, we could predict the outcome."
In this universe, however, you CANNOT know the starting conditions to an infinite degree of accuracy. I don't mean "it's difficult" or "we can't do it with today's technology" but that it's fundamentally not possible. No state exists whereby you can know waht you would need to know. Such predictions are not possible.
You can say we don't know enough about quantum mechanics yet or whatever.. but look at something as simple as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: you cannot know the speed and location of a particle at the same time. The more accurately you know one, the less you know of the other. This coupled with chaos theory means things really are random.
You are correct in that some things can be predicted.. we COULD measure enough about a roulette wheel to predict with a high degree of accuracy what is going on.. same with a coin toss. But look at something like nuclear decay, for instance... and we will NEVER be able to predict when a given atom is going to decay... it's buried in the quantum noise and in the uncertainty principle.
After reading the article, it says nothing at all abouut anyone proving that P=NP, or breaking encryption...
just that if they COULD prove this, then encryption would be meaningless.
So.. what's the big deal?
OSX supports X11 just fine... KDE libs will work fine.
If I write some code from scratch, and release it under the GPL....and then Mr Jerk takes it and
starts releasing his own version and not abiding by the license...
The ONLY person who has a legitimate grievance with Mr. Jerk, and the only person who can actually bring any sort of legal action is ME, because I hold the copyright... and this guy would be distributing MY copyrighted work without permission.
Only the copyright holders are in a position to do anything.
Your assumption about the contributed code being under the GPL is not necessarily clear cut, though probably correct. Yes, he should have asked for copyrights to be assigned to him. On the other hand, those contributing probably didn't specify the license they were licensing the code back to him under. This is why most serious projects have very clear statements, one way or the other, about how rights assignment works... because things get muddy. The way he releases code to the public is a separate transaction from how people release contributions to HIM... and are not necessarily related.
You, and I, who do not have any sort of copyright claim to the Xchat code, can scream all we want, but unless the copyright holders have an issue with it, we can't do anything.
The GPL sets the terms under which you can do some things that copyright law normally doesn't let you do.... period.
Replace "GPL" with "GENERIC LICENSE" to make sense of this.. don't get hung up on the exact wording of the GPL.... either you are using someone elses copyrighted material legally, or you are not. IF you are not, only the rightsholders can do anything about it.
If I find you using a copy of Windows without a license.. I can't sue you... all I can do is tell Microsoft. Same thing here.
Zed has stated clearly that he's releasing HIS project in this manner.. the only part to be disputed is code contributed by others.. and he's stated that he's willing to deal with those others should they object.
If the rightsholders don't object, that's that.
I did, and it doesn't change anything.
If those who contributed to the project are okay with it, then there is no problem.
You don't own my project just because you contributed a bit of code to it.... though you may have a claim on the use of your own code depending on HOW it was contributed.
Zed clearly states why he thinks what he is doing is okay, and honestly, the only people who have any legal beef with this are those who have contributed their own IP to the product.. it's not an issue for the public at large to solve.
Which parts are those, exactly?
I don't get how a port of something to windows suddenly has a bunch of non-gpl parts.
All code modifications needed to get it to build under windows, and all build scripts and makefiles used to make that windows version are considered the source code of that binary version.
You could possibly argue that the installer is a separate piece... as an installer can be fairly generic... but that's about it.
I'm not assuming that I own it... I'm just saying it's not necessarily clear cut who really does. It's not as clear as, say, it would be if the code was actually licensed back to him officially.
I think Zed's position is correct.
If he wrote the vast majority of the code, only linked against LGPL libraries, and if the contributors to his project have not specified a license then the only people who have a potential issue at all are those contributors.
He's indicated he's perfectly willing to deal with copyright issues if contributors feel they have been wronged....
Where, exactly, is the problem?
The devil is in the details here.
If you contribute some code to my project, it depends entirely on how you contribute it.
If you just post it somewhere under the GPL, as a patch against my code, and I take it and use it.. then we can be fairly sure I haven't obtained any additional rights to it. The only reason I can use it is because you released it under the GPL.
If, on the other hand, you email it to me and say "Hey dude, I wrote this, I want to donate it to your project".... it's not so clear. You are donating the code to me, and although I'm probably going to release it under GPL.. I can also make a case that you gave me that code with no restrictions, and I am free to relicense it to someone else at a later date along with my other original work.
What you say about the sticky details is true... except, in this case, X-chat for windows is a single application, a single derived work of the original X-chat, and therefore can only be released under the terms of the GPL. There are not "GPL parts" that are considered seperate, as far as the GPL is concerned.
There is no problem with it even having a 30 day timer.. as long as the full source used to build that binary is provided and licensed to the recipient under the GPL.
The only real issue seems to be that they are not providing the appropriate GPL licensed source that the binaries were built from.
If I want to write a binary that has a time delay in it, and then asks you to pay me money or it will disable itself... I don't believe I'm actually violating the GPL. Hear me out here....
The shareware like features are part of the program itself... they are NOT contractual obligations or other stipulations. They are part of the derived work that is created... just another one of it's functions.
The problem is that the source is not adequately provided.. if it were, we could just build up a new version without this feature, if we were so inclined.
Realistically, they keep the backlash to a minimum by stopping it early. If some great tools came out now, and then google suddenly axed them when they went out of beta there would be even more people saying google sucks, is unfair, etc...
In a public beta like this, PR is still very important. The brand is already at stake. To treat it any other way would be stupid. People won't care about the Beta distinction later.
Because you don't want some third party tool getting a foothold until you have a chance to launch your own production version.
My point isn't that the police should break the law, but that as a society, we have to put SOME level of discretion in the hands of those we want to enforce the law, or the law can't be enforced.
We make it legal for police to, say, buy drugs off drug dealers in order to obtain a conviction.
I'm not sure where all this stuff about cops breaking the law comes in.. you said yourself you don't know of anything illegal about the cop's activites in the article in question, so the point is moot.
Who says the evidence wasn't strong? do you know something we don't?
The feds don't often shut down entire businesses without some evidence.
I agree, there are times when law enforcement oversteps their bounds, and we have to try our best to ensure that they don't, and punish them when they do... but I don't see how this is one of those times, unless you know something we don't?
Yes, you are free. You are free to sue the person who failed to hold up his end of your business arrangement.
You are free to choose your business parters wisely.
Nothing is without risk, I'm sorry.
They did not cause you harm; your hosting provider breaking the law blatantly and using his business for illegal purposes is the one who caused you the harm; the system being shut down was a natural outcome of his actions. Let's put responsibility where it is supposed to be.
Sure it was.
Those who lost money because their sites went down can take it up with the CEO who flew the coop. They can sue him for lost profits. I'm sure it's in their contract.
If not, they can learn a lesson and choose a more reputable hosting company. I don't recall any big names using FooNet....
Exactly.
To put it another way... if you are not responsible for your own actions, who else can be?
Sure, you might get shot for disobeying an order. that does not make you any less responsible for killing someone else.
Just curious... what was improper about their warrant? When your business is literally shut down by a DDOS extortion racket.. what do you want the police to do? Nothing?
What was it about their original method that was illegal?
Nobody is above the law.. except criminals, who operate outside the law to begin with.
If we operate 100% by a set of rules and regulations, and leave nothing open to individual decision or responsibility, we end up paralyzed by beurocracy.
Shutting down a shitty little colo where there was strong evidence the colo was heavily involved in a serious crime (breaking into thousands of computers, stealing network resources, extortion, etc) is not a bad idea.
The customers who found themselves out of a hosting provider can take it up in court with their former provider for failing to provide services.
If their business heavily depended on that service, they should have chose a more trustworthy and credible provider, of which there are about a thousand.
If it turns out the mob is running a restaurant and using it to kill people and hide bodies, do we whine when the feds shut down the restaurant because you lost your dinner date?
Give me that keyboard, but with esc and ~` in their proper position (what were they thinking)
and with an option for NO capslock key, and I'll be happy.
The situation you ahve with ext2 to ext3 is unique, and not indicative of normal filesystem decisions during administration.
If you have a large filesystem with important data, you choose a system that meets your needs, and generally stick with it unless you need to upgrade.
The appeal of ext3 IS that you can seamlessly go back and forth to ext2 without any real structural change to the FS.... sure... but that's unique.
You don't just convert your array to XFS to Reiser, etc.... you decide what meets your needs and use that.
IT's not feasible to keep all filesystems compatable so upgrades don't require reformatting, unless you are talking about small changes, or speed penalties.
And during that one moment when, say, your UPS fails, or the plug gets kicked out of the back of the computer, or some moron leans on the power switch too long...
Or when your power supplies fail....
The list goes on...... other hardware failure, fire, earthquake... etc.
Do you want a system designed to not corrupt itself to hell and back during a hard outage, or not?
Huh?
A typical farmer would by TONS more than McVeigh used in Oklohoma. That's the point.
Building a bomb, especially if size isn't too much of a consideration, is EASY. There are many, many ways to do it.
Further, it doesn't take a large bomb to make terrorism work.. someone tossing sticks of dynamite (easily available all over the world) into nightclubs would get people worked up just about as well. The whole point of terrorism is that it's cheap... a single event and a few deaths is so spectacular that everyone forgets to put it in scale. More people died in car accidents in the US last year than did on Sept. 11th, but the US isn't throwing billions into auto safety or cars that self-drive. More people died from smoking-related disease, but you don't see the government outlawing tobacco.
Are there really more terrorist threats lately, or is that just what you tend to see in the news?
My passport is one of the most important documents I carry. I need it to travel anywhere. I need it even to fly back to Canada. I need it to open a bank account, and it has more than just a record of travel.. it has residency permits and visas and whatnot.
Now... the thing is, A passport takes a lot of abuse. They go through the wash. They get sat on, run over, etc. IN the end, a passport is a picture ID with a book attached to it to record information.
Adding technology to a passport seems like asking for trouble.. though it would be convenient at the airpot for a customs agent... they spend more time filling out forms and analyzing paperwork you have filled out than they do looking at your passport.
People are still better at facial recognition than machines.. let's remember that.
Sometimes I'm sure a sales guy does stretch the truth for sales.
More often, however, is that poeple simply don't pay attention. They conveniently don't hear the "resulting from normal use of the product" part of the replacement.
I mean, seriously, no matter how big you are.. would you actually accept returns that were deliberately broken by the customer? I wouldn't.
I might take returns of unopened packages with no fee as a nice gesture. I might even take returns of opened packages for a restocking fee, depending on the type of packaging (damn blister packs)...
I would definately take returns of defective crap, and take it up with my supplier.. unless I made it clear to the customer that the sale was final and not guaranteed to work.