Just as long as Strong Binding knows when to garbage-collect the old DLLs that aren't being used anymore, even if the uninstaller fails to explicitly remove them.
In addition, the OS should be intelligent enough to know when an EXE's been manually deleted (thrown in the Recycle Bin). The current practice of placing all unstallation responsibilities on the vendor tends to result in DLL buildup when the uninstaller doesn't work right or isn't provided (not uncommon.) There should be a unified process for adding a DLL that links it to the executable file that requires it.
You can't very well hold people responsible for tax evasion when there was never any money, hence taxes, to evade in the first place.
However, there've been some very interesting cases before the US Supreme Court over whether conspiracy convictions can be obtainable when there was never any chance that a criminal act was going to take place. As far as I know, the issues are still undecided, and technically you can be arrested (in the US) for conspiracy to commit a crime even when that crime simply isn't possible to commit.
In this case, you've got that sort of situation.
Oh wait. The telco's aren't making a profit. And my stock isn't worth enough for me to spend the transaction fee to sell it. Telco's are bleeding like there is no tomorrow because they are investing in all this high-tech internet stuff that didn't make them any money.
The Baby Bells aren't making huge gains, but they're not being decimated like the telcos that actually have to compete. Take a look at a 5-year stock price comparison of Verizon vs. AT&T. Or (if you want to be cruel) Verizon vs. Worldcom. You can do roughly the same comparisons with the other major Baby Bells, like SBC (not US West, though, which made the mistake of merging into a competitive market, those fools.)
The Bell's flat performance ain't so bad when you note that telcos in competitive markets have seen a 50%-99% reduction in stock price over the same period of time. That's the assurance a monopoly will buy you. Hell, Verizon has done better than Disney, and almost as well as Microsoft over the past five years (don't forget, those charts don't include the Bells' healthy dividend payments.)
So everything's relative, and when people talk about the telcos that are bleeding, they're sure not talking about the ones from this article.
Besides leaving your label at that point means other labels probably won't want to touch you because _they_ won't make as much money from you, since you'll know what you're really worth
Furthermore, the labels have learned that it's not in their best interest to be highly competitive over artists, except for the very few cream-of-the-crop megastars.
By presenting a united front, everyone makes more money.
Thanks to independent promoters, you can't get a song played on commercial radio or MTV without paying big bucks. It's possible to build up a following without these vehicles, but in practice it's very, very difficult.
Wind isn't noisy, it certainly isn't ugly. And most importantly, it's far, far cheaper than nuclear power any way you measure it. Nuclear as we currently operate it is by far the most expensive production source of power in the world.
Wind does not require a "backup". It cannot be a sole source of power for a grid, but it can produce about 20% of the power necessary for a geographically diverse country like the US. Currently we generate about 0.3% of our power from sources like wind, so we can build many more turbines before this becomes an issue.
Given some of the inaccuracies and misrepresentations in your spiel, it's clear that you have very little actual knowledge of the technologies you condemn. I couldn't imagine what your agenda might be until I got to the little paen to Nuclear power at the end (did I mention, by kw/h the most expensive power source mankind has broadly deployed?)
There seems to be a vocal minority in this country and on this board who will disparage just about any power source if it's not nuclear. We could invent a perfect power source, and there would be a spate of Slashdot posts ripping it apart because, well, it just wasn't nuclear.
The power grid of the future may-- nay, probably will-- include nuclear. It will also include non-constant (and vastly cheaper and less dangerous) power sources like wind up to the absolute limit that the grid can handle. But we don't need to start building nuclear plants yet (and in fact, most power companies don't want to), because it can't compete with wind, let alone coal or gas.
I could go further and say the liberals running Salon run a budget about as well as the liberals in politics handle budgets.
No, see, Salon handles its money badly. In the last twenty years or so, liberal Presidents have presided over the only balanced budgets this country has seen. So I think you got your analogy backwards.
I like reading opinions I disagree with but I hate it when there is no real method to rebut. Disagree with a story? Tough luck, no way to contact the author and no forum tied directly to the story.
I do agree that it'd be nice if they had a Slashdot-like forum to rebut their stories. I think it'd be even nicer if the Wall Street Journal editorial page had such a system. Life ain't perfect.
If you want to discuss the stories, try k5, slashdot, Plastic.com or any of the other million MLP sites. Slashcode is inifinitely superior to the forums that most news sites provide, anyway.
And security professionals thought this up? I sure wouldn't mountain climb with that level of security.
Remember that security professionals also thought up the old-style Unix password file. That didn't work out so well in the end, either.
Whoever invented this was stuck with some pretty unpleasant parameters. The bank wanted machines that could do offline transactions. Probably every qualified security pro said "are you nuts?" But it was the bank's money and they were prepared to risk it.
There was a big problem back in the 80s with Bank of America, which used to keep bank balances on the magnetic strip. Let me repeat that: bank balances. On the magnetic strip of your ATM card. To give your savings a $5000 boost all you needed was crack the code and buy a card writer. That was somewhat disastrous for BofA, and pretty much put the nail in the coffin of offline verification. Unfortunately, banks still use the broken crypto system for online verification.
It's a very cool place. I visited a few years back and stood on an overhead walkway above a couple of the half-built planes. They looked like toys from that height. You can see from the picture that the building's supporting framework is on the outside.
Also, there is a Concorde in the front yard. Not having been "lucky" enough to fly on the thing, it was my first time seeing it. They're amazingly small.
The whole project struck me as insanely inefficient, though. Parts are manufactured all the hell over the place, purely for the purposes of making different governments "feel good". Special trucks are the least of the oddities; the first thing the consortium had to build was a fleet of special guppy planes to hall aircraft parts from Germany, England and Spain into Toulouse. I can't imagine that this is at all cost-effective, and I wonder whether they'd survive without generous gov't assistance (of course, you could easily say the same thing about Boeing, given their huge defence business.)
This guy is correct. The vulnerable system is used by banks in the US just as much (or more) as it is in the UK. The idea was to create ATMs that could verify PIN numbers without dialing into a central computer. Very few ATMs do that these days, but the vulnerability remains.
According to the researchers, the attack would really require direct access to the bank's pin-verification computer (Hardware Security Module) in order to be useful.
They also note that you can avoid traps that rely on a series of bad PIN entries by mixing your "guesses" with valid requests from the card's owner.
The secret is that it is not the idea (or the API in this case) but rather the implementation that gets copyrighted. You copyright the source code and the binary is a derivative work (lots of precedence here). The API can either be reverse engineered, or in the case of readline it isn't even protected.
This is a fascinating legal work of art. I produce a binary that does not include a drop of material or source from a library, and merely loads a shared external library and executes a particular procedure... But by doing so my entire binary becomes a derivative work. Yikes. Where is the precedent for this?
This is nothing like re-writing the ending to an existing book; in that case it would only be illegal to do so because you're ripping off copyrighted characters and plot and including them in your work-- which you are not doing in this case.
Meanwhile I can rip off an entire API from a copyrighted (GPLed) library and re-implement it without violating any copyrights?
It now looks like some of these vulnerabilities have also been discovered by the bad guys.
Of course, this isn't necessarily the case. Note that this particular scheme would require a insider in the bank with access to the pin-verification system. Until somebody verifies that, or at least combs through the logs to look for patterns of suspicious PIN guessing, any connection between the increase in phantom withdrawals and this vulnerability is pure speculation.
Once again, read the licenses of the libraries that you are linking against. You will probably be surprised. The fact of the matter is that the software industry has worked like this forever. You simply haven't paid any attention to software licenses before.
Ok, but you still haven't explained to me how the GPL forces you to GPL your applications, but lets you re-implement a GPLed library under a non-GPL license.
I'm just interested, because your interpretation has consequences affect far more than the GPL. If what you're saying is correct, then just about every software company is exposing itself to massive litigation simply by publishing their work, if it includes even one call to an external library that they didn't write.
I simply cannot believe that the industry would sit back and accept such a precarious legal situation-- one where they could get sued out of the blue at any moment. The FSF would be the least of their worries; I'd be concerned about staying in business for five minutes in that environment.
Also, wrt interface locking, am I incorrect in what I said in my other post?
If you write an application that links (dynamically or statically it doesn't matter) with a GPLed library then you must distribute your application under the GPL (assuming you distribute your application). This doesn't "lock" the interface or the API because you are perfectly free to create your own replacement for libfoo (called libbar, of course). Example: libedit is a replacement for readline.
Sorry, I don't get the logic. So it's copyright infringement (creation of a derivative work) if I insert a function call specific to a GPLed library in my work. In order to avoid that copyright infringement, I would be forced to license my application under the GPL.
HOWEVER, I am allowed to re-implement the same GPLed library-- complete with the same API-- and release it under a non-GPL license? Seems to me that if my application is a derivative work, then a re-implemented library would be just as much (more!) of a derivative work. In order to legally create a non-GPLed version of the library, I'd be infringing copyright once again!
So I'm stuck now. If an application developer is liable for copyright infringement for writing an app that references a GPLed library, then a developer would be liable for copyright infringement if he re-implemented the library from scratch. So therefore an API is locked no matter what you do.
Once you take that first step and make any program a "derivative work" just because it calls a function from a library, you pretty much open the gates wide for all of the evils of interface copyrights.
I actually have read Title 17, and I am afraid that I will have to agree with the legal folks at the FSF (and every major software company).
Could you cite me some precedent? Of course software companies are pushing for the broadest possible interpretation of the law. I'm curious if the courts have ever put their seal of approval on it.
From what you say, just about every piece of code ever written is now a derivative work, if it even calls one function from another library.
Maybe a few trunks here and there and some antique pre-ESS equipment is partially paid for with tax-dollars, but the phone companies have had to install all new, multi-million dollar switches, D-Slams, remote terminals, fiber, etc.. to support DSL. That stuff isn't being paid for with public money.
AFAIK, the ILECs have received huge tax breaks for investing in broadband equipment. Not to mention the natural government protection that makes it very difficult for would-be competitors to build their own infrastructure. That protection gives them enormous control over rights of way and other such important assets.
As for your belief that GPLing a library is an attempt to lock the *interface*, that's blatantly false. As proof of this take a look at libedit [sourceforge.net]. It's goal is to be 100% API compatible with readline, but with a BSD-style license.
I write an application called FooEdit, which dynamically links to a GPLed library called libfoo. I distribute FooEdit under some closed license, requiring my users to get their own copy of libfoo. Have I done wrong? If I understand your post correctly, then you believe that the FSF does not really have a case against me.
What I get from this interview is that the FSF does think it has such a case. The question I'd like to see answered is how it would go about enforcing it. In distributing FooEdit, I haven't agreed to the terms of the GPL, so they would have no choice but to go after me for copyright infringement. In order to gain any traction they would have to argue that my use of libfoo's API constitutes copyright infringement.
Is the FSF willing to argue that point in a court of law? Or are they just blowing hot air and hoping to scare people into licensing their applications under the GPL?
Just because the government handed out some money to someone, does that give everyone else the right to share their assets? The government subsidizes farmers, but if I wander onto a farm and pick a few apples, I'll get arrested for theft. Or a better example, I wouldn't be able to walk onto the farm and plant a few sq. yards of my own crop. Or at least I shouldn't be able to.
I'm not aware of any quid pro quo arrangement with farmers regarding subsidies (though who the hell knows.) When the Telcos received their subsidies (not to mention their exemption from Antitrust lawsuits), the government made it clear that it would reserve the right to regulate those lines. A great deal for the telcos, by the way, who have been consistent earners as a result of the arrangement.
This isn't a case of a government handing out gifts and then suddenly claiming the right to nationalize an industry. The understanding was in place from the get-go.
Yeah, but what do you do otherwise? Regulate them forever?
Regulate them as long as they continue to control the majority of the market with their natural monopoly. Getting rid of the regulations doesn't promote a free market, and it's not something you do just because you're tired of regulation.
Cellphones and cable are only beginning to make inroads into the market. Attempts to get the Bells to open their network have been only marginally successful; they charge a premium for the service and they've proven quite adept at discriminating against smaller carriers.
Times change; just because they were a monopolist in 1980 doesn't mean they would do the same thing now
All of the Bells are and have been monopolies; the breakup didn't change their monopoly status, it just made them smaller. A quick look at Verizon should show you how quickly they've been re-amalgamating-- almost at the speed that US law allows it. They fund the expansion through the guaranteed profits afforded by their monopoly.
And the Bells would be watched closely for evidence of regressive behavior.
I see no evidence that anyone was watching the Bells while they systematically demolished the independent DSL providers who were leasing their lines. The problem with stupid deregulation is that political wheels move much more slowly than business. Once you get rid of the regulations, generous campaign contributions will make sure nobody develops an enthusiasm to "watch closely"... At least not in a timely manner.
though the Channel 13 weather girl here in L.A. who does the weather braless in her tank top and tight leather pants would sure look
On the contrary, she'd probably look like a hag. That's the problem with HDTV-- it lets you see all of the imperfections that are normally masked by the low resolution of standard-def TV.
Not that this is a perfect comparison to your channel 13 weather girl, but I watch The Jay Leno show in HDTV, and you can really see the pockmarks in his face.
This is regularly overlooked by so-called "free market" types, whose ideology begins and ends with taking the gov't out of the equation.
Eh, those are anarchists you're talking about. The vast majority of free-market idealists (such as myself) are a little more realistic than that.
I would say that belief applies, to a certain degree, to a lot of people who are in power now. Take a gander at the current push for deregulation in so many industries, combined with an ideological antipathy to the Antitrust regulations.
Or look at the mad rush to deregulate the telecommunications industry-- a business built on the back of a government-mandated monopoly, and one that is just itching to re-integrate itself into that monopoly. Mainstream politicians and lobbyists will passionately argue for both of these courses, on the grounds that it will get big, bad government off business's back and encourage competition, and yet they will fail to point out that those businesses themselves have made an art-form out of restricting competition.
Many of these arguments are made out of political self-interest. But they clearly play well with a certain segment of the voting public.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition, the OS should be intelligent enough to know when an EXE's been manually deleted (thrown in the Recycle Bin). The current practice of placing all unstallation responsibilities on the vendor tends to result in DLL buildup when the uninstaller doesn't work right or isn't provided (not uncommon.) There should be a unified process for adding a DLL that links it to the executable file that requires it.
50% of the human race is below median intelligence, you nitwit :)
However, there've been some very interesting cases before the US Supreme Court over whether conspiracy convictions can be obtainable when there was never any chance that a criminal act was going to take place. As far as I know, the issues are still undecided, and technically you can be arrested (in the US) for conspiracy to commit a crime even when that crime simply isn't possible to commit. In this case, you've got that sort of situation.
The Baby Bells aren't making huge gains, but they're not being decimated like the telcos that actually have to compete. Take a look at a 5-year stock price comparison of Verizon vs. AT&T. Or (if you want to be cruel) Verizon vs. Worldcom. You can do roughly the same comparisons with the other major Baby Bells, like SBC (not US West, though, which made the mistake of merging into a competitive market, those fools.)
The Bell's flat performance ain't so bad when you note that telcos in competitive markets have seen a 50%-99% reduction in stock price over the same period of time. That's the assurance a monopoly will buy you. Hell, Verizon has done better than Disney, and almost as well as Microsoft over the past five years (don't forget, those charts don't include the Bells' healthy dividend payments.)
So everything's relative, and when people talk about the telcos that are bleeding, they're sure not talking about the ones from this article.
Furthermore, the labels have learned that it's not in their best interest to be highly competitive over artists, except for the very few cream-of-the-crop megastars.
By presenting a united front, everyone makes more money.
Thanks to independent promoters, you can't get a song played on commercial radio or MTV without paying big bucks. It's possible to build up a following without these vehicles, but in practice it's very, very difficult.
Wind does not require a "backup". It cannot be a sole source of power for a grid, but it can produce about 20% of the power necessary for a geographically diverse country like the US. Currently we generate about 0.3% of our power from sources like wind, so we can build many more turbines before this becomes an issue.
Given some of the inaccuracies and misrepresentations in your spiel, it's clear that you have very little actual knowledge of the technologies you condemn. I couldn't imagine what your agenda might be until I got to the little paen to Nuclear power at the end (did I mention, by kw/h the most expensive power source mankind has broadly deployed?)
There seems to be a vocal minority in this country and on this board who will disparage just about any power source if it's not nuclear. We could invent a perfect power source, and there would be a spate of Slashdot posts ripping it apart because, well, it just wasn't nuclear.
The power grid of the future may-- nay, probably will-- include nuclear. It will also include non-constant (and vastly cheaper and less dangerous) power sources like wind up to the absolute limit that the grid can handle. But we don't need to start building nuclear plants yet (and in fact, most power companies don't want to), because it can't compete with wind, let alone coal or gas.
I'm always amazed at how wind gets ignored in favor of solar when it's far more viable as a production technology.
No, see, Salon handles its money badly. In the last twenty years or so, liberal Presidents have presided over the only balanced budgets this country has seen. So I think you got your analogy backwards.
I like reading opinions I disagree with but I hate it when there is no real method to rebut. Disagree with a story? Tough luck, no way to contact the author and no forum tied directly to the story.
I do agree that it'd be nice if they had a Slashdot-like forum to rebut their stories. I think it'd be even nicer if the Wall Street Journal editorial page had such a system. Life ain't perfect.
If you want to discuss the stories, try k5, slashdot, Plastic.com or any of the other million MLP sites. Slashcode is inifinitely superior to the forums that most news sites provide, anyway.
Remember that security professionals also thought up the old-style Unix password file. That didn't work out so well in the end, either.
Whoever invented this was stuck with some pretty unpleasant parameters. The bank wanted machines that could do offline transactions. Probably every qualified security pro said "are you nuts?" But it was the bank's money and they were prepared to risk it.
There was a big problem back in the 80s with Bank of America, which used to keep bank balances on the magnetic strip. Let me repeat that: bank balances. On the magnetic strip of your ATM card. To give your savings a $5000 boost all you needed was crack the code and buy a card writer. That was somewhat disastrous for BofA, and pretty much put the nail in the coffin of offline verification. Unfortunately, banks still use the broken crypto system for online verification.
Also, there is a Concorde in the front yard. Not having been "lucky" enough to fly on the thing, it was my first time seeing it. They're amazingly small.
The whole project struck me as insanely inefficient, though. Parts are manufactured all the hell over the place, purely for the purposes of making different governments "feel good". Special trucks are the least of the oddities; the first thing the consortium had to build was a fleet of special guppy planes to hall aircraft parts from Germany, England and Spain into Toulouse. I can't imagine that this is at all cost-effective, and I wonder whether they'd survive without generous gov't assistance (of course, you could easily say the same thing about Boeing, given their huge defence business.)
This guy is correct. The vulnerable system is used by banks in the US just as much (or more) as it is in the UK. The idea was to create ATMs that could verify PIN numbers without dialing into a central computer. Very few ATMs do that these days, but the vulnerability remains.
They also note that you can avoid traps that rely on a series of bad PIN entries by mixing your "guesses" with valid requests from the card's owner.
This is a fascinating legal work of art. I produce a binary that does not include a drop of material or source from a library, and merely loads a shared external library and executes a particular procedure... But by doing so my entire binary becomes a derivative work. Yikes. Where is the precedent for this?
This is nothing like re-writing the ending to an existing book; in that case it would only be illegal to do so because you're ripping off copyrighted characters and plot and including them in your work-- which you are not doing in this case.
Meanwhile I can rip off an entire API from a copyrighted (GPLed) library and re-implement it without violating any copyrights?
Of course, this isn't necessarily the case. Note that this particular scheme would require a insider in the bank with access to the pin-verification system. Until somebody verifies that, or at least combs through the logs to look for patterns of suspicious PIN guessing, any connection between the increase in phantom withdrawals and this vulnerability is pure speculation.
Ok, but you still haven't explained to me how the GPL forces you to GPL your applications, but lets you re-implement a GPLed library under a non-GPL license.
That's the missing link I'm really interested in.
I simply cannot believe that the industry would sit back and accept such a precarious legal situation-- one where they could get sued out of the blue at any moment. The FSF would be the least of their worries; I'd be concerned about staying in business for five minutes in that environment.
Also, wrt interface locking, am I incorrect in what I said in my other post?
Sorry, I don't get the logic. So it's copyright infringement (creation of a derivative work) if I insert a function call specific to a GPLed library in my work. In order to avoid that copyright infringement, I would be forced to license my application under the GPL.
HOWEVER, I am allowed to re-implement the same GPLed library-- complete with the same API-- and release it under a non-GPL license? Seems to me that if my application is a derivative work, then a re-implemented library would be just as much (more!) of a derivative work. In order to legally create a non-GPLed version of the library, I'd be infringing copyright once again!
So I'm stuck now. If an application developer is liable for copyright infringement for writing an app that references a GPLed library, then a developer would be liable for copyright infringement if he re-implemented the library from scratch. So therefore an API is locked no matter what you do.
Once you take that first step and make any program a "derivative work" just because it calls a function from a library, you pretty much open the gates wide for all of the evils of interface copyrights.
Could you cite me some precedent? Of course software companies are pushing for the broadest possible interpretation of the law. I'm curious if the courts have ever put their seal of approval on it.
From what you say, just about every piece of code ever written is now a derivative work, if it even calls one function from another library.
AFAIK, the ILECs have received huge tax breaks for investing in broadband equipment. Not to mention the natural government protection that makes it very difficult for would-be competitors to build their own infrastructure. That protection gives them enormous control over rights of way and other such important assets.
I write an application called FooEdit, which dynamically links to a GPLed library called libfoo. I distribute FooEdit under some closed license, requiring my users to get their own copy of libfoo. Have I done wrong? If I understand your post correctly, then you believe that the FSF does not really have a case against me.
What I get from this interview is that the FSF does think it has such a case. The question I'd like to see answered is how it would go about enforcing it. In distributing FooEdit, I haven't agreed to the terms of the GPL, so they would have no choice but to go after me for copyright infringement. In order to gain any traction they would have to argue that my use of libfoo's API constitutes copyright infringement.
Is the FSF willing to argue that point in a court of law? Or are they just blowing hot air and hoping to scare people into licensing their applications under the GPL?
I'm not aware of any quid pro quo arrangement with farmers regarding subsidies (though who the hell knows.) When the Telcos received their subsidies (not to mention their exemption from Antitrust lawsuits), the government made it clear that it would reserve the right to regulate those lines. A great deal for the telcos, by the way, who have been consistent earners as a result of the arrangement.
This isn't a case of a government handing out gifts and then suddenly claiming the right to nationalize an industry. The understanding was in place from the get-go.
Regulate them as long as they continue to control the majority of the market with their natural monopoly. Getting rid of the regulations doesn't promote a free market, and it's not something you do just because you're tired of regulation.
Cellphones and cable are only beginning to make inroads into the market. Attempts to get the Bells to open their network have been only marginally successful; they charge a premium for the service and they've proven quite adept at discriminating against smaller carriers.
Times change; just because they were a monopolist in 1980 doesn't mean they would do the same thing now
All of the Bells are and have been monopolies; the breakup didn't change their monopoly status, it just made them smaller. A quick look at Verizon should show you how quickly they've been re-amalgamating-- almost at the speed that US law allows it. They fund the expansion through the guaranteed profits afforded by their monopoly.
And the Bells would be watched closely for evidence of regressive behavior.
I see no evidence that anyone was watching the Bells while they systematically demolished the independent DSL providers who were leasing their lines. The problem with stupid deregulation is that political wheels move much more slowly than business. Once you get rid of the regulations, generous campaign contributions will make sure nobody develops an enthusiasm to "watch closely"... At least not in a timely manner.
On the contrary, she'd probably look like a hag. That's the problem with HDTV-- it lets you see all of the imperfections that are normally masked by the low resolution of standard-def TV.
Not that this is a perfect comparison to your channel 13 weather girl, but I watch The Jay Leno show in HDTV, and you can really see the pockmarks in his face.
I would say that belief applies, to a certain degree, to a lot of people who are in power now. Take a gander at the current push for deregulation in so many industries, combined with an ideological antipathy to the Antitrust regulations.
Or look at the mad rush to deregulate the telecommunications industry-- a business built on the back of a government-mandated monopoly, and one that is just itching to re-integrate itself into that monopoly. Mainstream politicians and lobbyists will passionately argue for both of these courses, on the grounds that it will get big, bad government off business's back and encourage competition, and yet they will fail to point out that those businesses themselves have made an art-form out of restricting competition.
Many of these arguments are made out of political self-interest. But they clearly play well with a certain segment of the voting public.