Obfuscated source is not source
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Abusing the GPL?
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· Score: 1
It seems to me that the process of obfuscating the source code (as described by the original poster) and releasing only that violates the language in the GPL that defines "source code" as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" (section 3). What this company is offering is not the "source code", and distributing a work derived from GPL code without making the source code (as defined by the GPL) available. As I read the GPL, the distribution of an executable which contains GPL code not owned by the distributor along with an offer to make available obfuscated source violates the GPL.
For the 100th time: Bluetooth and 802.11 are not competing technologies. They each have separate and complimentary uses.
I'm sure Bluetooth is prone to say nice things about 802.11, and vice versa, but I think the word you're looking for here is "complementary". Please buy a dictionary before posting again. HAND.
Walid's patent should be condemned under eminent domain. Even if it is a true invention (which, from what I saw, it's not), why can't the United States just declare that this piece of "property" is of sufficient public interest to take it away from him?
First, it's not the judge writing that, but the Indianapolis City Council. The passage in question was quoted from the ordinance under review.
Second, the part about "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" is straight from Miller, the case which defines "obscenity" as a matter of constitutional law.
And the City of Indianapolis doesn't mean "video game"; it means "violent video game".
Next time, perhaps, you could actually read the material BEFORE commenting on it?
It looks like the Seventh Circuit's reasoning is that the City of Indianapolis hasn't drawn a sufficiently clear connection between violent video games and "harm to children". Surprise, surprise.
And I went into the opinion expecting to find an economic argument. After all, it was Judge Posner writing the opinion.
Anyone who doesn't know about TSIG is a dolt
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New Linux Worm
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· Score: 1
Anyone who doesn't know about the TSIG bug must be living in a cave somewhere. I heard about it on my car radio on a general news & traffic station (WBBM 780, Chicago).
Yes, you can revoke your key. However, nobody will know that your key has been revoked unless you tell them that it's revoked; there's no way to be sure that someone who has received a copy of your key will receive the revocation notice as well, if the key was delivered to them via channels. Once someone has received a public key which they trust is authentic, it's very hard to convince them otherwise.
Ever read the warranty that comes with anything from Verisign? They won't even warrant that their certificates actually represent the individuals or organization that they claim they represent.
While that might have been true at one time, this is changing quite rapidly. Its clear to anyone that follows business news these days that we're shifting to a completely "at will" employment arrangement.
Shifting TO? "Completely at will" has been the status quo in employment for quite a long time now. As my labor law prof was fond of saying, "You can fire someone for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all." It's just that companies are being more ruthless in enforcing their rights (and employees' lack of them) than they used to be.
When I was in law school I read noncompete cases decided in the early part of the 20th century. The idea of noncompete is nothing new. The idea of enforcing noncompetition in the absence of an agreement is also nothing new. It's well-established that employees have a fiduciary duty to their employers which is not discharged by termination.
The cited article wasn't news; it was a policy analysis piece.
Get this: a four kilobyte program, that checks every internet transaction, and then DOES NOTHING ABOUT IT. The law does not stipulate what comprises censorware. Make it free, and be done with the whole thing.
There may very well be a definitions section elsewhere in the law (not part of this bill) which defines blocking software (or whatever the term used in the legislation is). Did you check for this before you posted?
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see a micropayment system for television programming before too long. Would you pay 50 cents to get an ad-free copy of the new episode of your favorite show, downloaded into your TiVo to watch at your convenience? I'd seriously consider it.
The reason it won't happen at the moment has nothing to do with revenue or with handling the micropayments; the problem is that once the content is delivered to the end user, there's nothing they can do to keep the end user from watching it over and over again or giving copies to friends. Until they have play-once-and-delete mechanisms in place, media distribution firms aren't going to go for this. What's to stop you from downloading the program, copying it, and giving it to three or four friends, after all? As soon as the media people get strong encryption in place and force the receivers to operate in a show-once-and-delete mode, they'll be doing this sort of thing. (All hail the DMCA.)
This is all part of the same general problem: creative content costs money to create, people want lots of it, people tend to share good creative content with their friends, and nobody wants to pay very much for it.
Michael's comment about the ability of Congress to tie conditions to funding programs is off-base in this situation. Congress can use funding restrictions to get around the Commerce Clause; it cannot use them to get around the First Amendment.
The Commerce Clause says (effectively) that Congress can only legislate on matters involving interstate commerce. A national drinking age is not a matter of interstate commerce; it's a state policy decision that Congress is not constitutionally competent to regulate. So Congress used "legislative bribery" to force states to adopt a national drinking age. Since there is no constititional "right to drink", however, this doesn't offend the Constitution because Congress is entitled to determine how to spend federal money.
However, there is a Constitutionally-protected right of free speech. Furthermore, this right acts to limit not only Congress but also the states and other entities which are acting as governmental agencies (including public schools and public libraries). The First Amendment will no more countenance "legislative bribery" that restricts speech than it will a direct regulation that does the same.
As proof, I offer a case handed down earlier this term, in which the Supreme Court invalidated a regulation that requires lawyers who receive funding from the Legal Service Organization to refrain from representing clients who were challenging the legality or constitutionality of welfare reform laws. The Supreme Court held that this restriction violated the free speech rights of both the lawyers receiving the funding and their clients. I don't see how the instant matter is any different.
I'm not convinced about fuel efficiency. Once your satellite is in orbit it requires only nominal fuel to correct its orbit for the life of the satellite. The airplane has to spend fuel continuously to maintain airspeed or crash. The energy requires to orbit a plane in atmosphere at 20,000 feet has to be magnitudes more than the energy required to orbit an object at 20,000 feet -- or 100,000 feet --- in the absence of an atmosphere, after all. Sounds like a comparison between fruits and vegetables.
I don't offhand know what the fuel consumption to boost a satellite to orbit vs. orbiting a plane for three years, but I'd really be surprised if it takes more for the satellite.
This sounds like a terribly bad idea. Not only does it use up a large number of pilots who could be doing other, more productive activities, but it generates great heaping loads of pollution (air and noise), consumes mass quantities of jet fuel, and occupies air traffic lanes. I can't see how this can be more economically viable than low earth orbit or geosynchronous satellites.
Is this any different from the marathon Dune movie that was released several years ago? I was without the Sci-Fi channel for quite a while and admit to not even being aware of the miniseries until now.
Dune is probably one of those books that just should never be made into a movie for any reason simply because there's no hope that the screen can do it justice.
There's no such thing as a "mini widget set" that is "basic but uncomplicated" that is useful for anything more than "Hi, this is my program, click here to exit". The problem most half-assed programmers have with GUI programming is that they can't think correctly; it's got nothing to do with the GUI environments themselves.
There are internet groups that foster true communities, such as the Straight Dope Message Board (http://boards.straightdope.com/smbd/index.php). However, the difference between Straight Dope and Slashdot, as far as I can tell, is the SDMB actually provides open fora for conversation; Slashdot just lets people rant at whatever topics Slashdot's editors feel fit to spur ranting at the moment. The "community" has basically no say at all in what the topics of discussion are to be.
The failure of Slashdot to spawn an effective online community should not be proof that such cannot exist. Slashdot is actually pretty pathological as online communities go.
I question whether the kids would not have been interrogated by the police even if the entire quotation had been shown. All they would have seen is the word "shotgun" and gone into the usual unthinking mode that school & LEO types get into when they see weapon-related words in the context of a schoolchild. Reading the rest of the quotation would have been unnecessary.
"If Judy in the secretarial pool pirates software, nobody questions the company's liability." That's because copyright infringement is a tort -- you can hit the company for negligent supervision and hold them liable, or use agency theory in tort where agency is given a broader read. However, we were talking about breach of contract, which is not a tort.
BTW, most managers are not agents either, or only have limited agency. By default, the only individuals who are agents for a corporation are its directors, its officers, and its counsel of record.
Contracts which seek to prevent a person from speaking are scrutinized closely by the courts, and only upheld when the restraint is clearly reasonable. NDAs are permitted because the person presumably goes into them with their eyes open and receives substantial economic benefit as consideration. Gag agreements as part of settlements receive similar treatment -- but the remedy for breach of a gag agreement is recission of the settlement, not injunction or contempt: the imposition of those penalties violates the First Amendment rights of the gag breaker.
Also, keep in mind that while waiving the right to speak as part of a contract is permissible, using the courts to enforce that waiver make that enforcement a "public action". The court's action in enforcing the agreement is subject to the same strict scrutiny for constitutionality that any other state action which interferes with civil rights is subjected to. Courts can and do refuse enforcement of contract terms when those terms are "contrary to public policy", and the right to free speech is one of the strongest public policies in the United States.
Your statement "A [sic] EULA attempts to restrict the ways that you can use the software,..." is wrong. An EULA grants the user to the right to use the software, a right which she would otherwise not have. To that end, the GPL is an EULA. It grants the end user the right to use the software under certain (very broad) conditions. You must have a license to use software. If the GPL didn't say "The act of running the program is unrestricted..." then you wouldn't be able to run it at all.
Well, the problem with a lot of the people demanding refunds for unused copies of Windows is the UCC only gives you "a reasonable time" to claim your refund. I think it's ten days, but it might be three. You can't decide six months after you buy the software that you don't want it and return it for a UCC license-rejection refund.
The real problem here is that you don't get to read the contract until after you've bought the software and opened it, at which time it becomes unreturnable.
If you purchase software with a undisclosed license at the time of sale, and subsequently discover that the license terms are unacceptable to you, you are entitled by law to return it for a refund. (I wish I could remember the UCC provision for this, but there IS one. I don't have a copy of the UCC handy.)
As for cases on clickthrough, go to your local law library and ask one of the friendly librarians to help you do a law journal search on "clickthrough". Then pull some of the journal articles; there will be plenty of cases in the footnotes.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that the process of obfuscating the source code (as described by the original poster) and releasing only that violates the language in the GPL that defines "source code" as "the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it" (section 3). What this company is offering is not the "source code", and distributing a work derived from GPL code without making the source code (as defined by the GPL) available. As I read the GPL, the distribution of an executable which contains GPL code not owned by the distributor along with an offer to make available obfuscated source violates the GPL.
Walid's patent should be condemned under eminent domain. Even if it is a true invention (which, from what I saw, it's not), why can't the United States just declare that this piece of "property" is of sufficient public interest to take it away from him?
First, it's not the judge writing that, but the Indianapolis City Council. The passage in question was quoted from the ordinance under review.
Second, the part about "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" is straight from Miller, the case which defines "obscenity" as a matter of constitutional law.
And the City of Indianapolis doesn't mean "video game"; it means "violent video game".
Next time, perhaps, you could actually read the material BEFORE commenting on it?
It looks like the Seventh Circuit's reasoning is that the City of Indianapolis hasn't drawn a sufficiently clear connection between violent video games and "harm to children". Surprise, surprise.
And I went into the opinion expecting to find an economic argument. After all, it was Judge Posner writing the opinion.
Anyone who doesn't know about the TSIG bug must be living in a cave somewhere. I heard about it on my car radio on a general news & traffic station (WBBM 780, Chicago).
Yes, you can revoke your key. However, nobody will know that your key has been revoked unless you tell them that it's revoked; there's no way to be sure that someone who has received a copy of your key will receive the revocation notice as well, if the key was delivered to them via channels. Once someone has received a public key which they trust is authentic, it's very hard to convince them otherwise.
Ever read the warranty that comes with anything from Verisign? They won't even warrant that their certificates actually represent the individuals or organization that they claim they represent.
When I was in law school I read noncompete cases decided in the early part of the 20th century. The idea of noncompete is nothing new. The idea of enforcing noncompetition in the absence of an agreement is also nothing new. It's well-established that employees have a fiduciary duty to their employers which is not discharged by termination.
The cited article wasn't news; it was a policy analysis piece.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see a micropayment system for television programming before too long. Would you pay 50 cents to get an ad-free copy of the new episode of your favorite show, downloaded into your TiVo to watch at your convenience? I'd seriously consider it.
The reason it won't happen at the moment has nothing to do with revenue or with handling the micropayments; the problem is that once the content is delivered to the end user, there's nothing they can do to keep the end user from watching it over and over again or giving copies to friends. Until they have play-once-and-delete mechanisms in place, media distribution firms aren't going to go for this. What's to stop you from downloading the program, copying it, and giving it to three or four friends, after all? As soon as the media people get strong encryption in place and force the receivers to operate in a show-once-and-delete mode, they'll be doing this sort of thing. (All hail the DMCA.)
This is all part of the same general problem: creative content costs money to create, people want lots of it, people tend to share good creative content with their friends, and nobody wants to pay very much for it.
Michael's comment about the ability of Congress to tie conditions to funding programs is off-base in this situation. Congress can use funding restrictions to get around the Commerce Clause; it cannot use them to get around the First Amendment.
The Commerce Clause says (effectively) that Congress can only legislate on matters involving interstate commerce. A national drinking age is not a matter of interstate commerce; it's a state policy decision that Congress is not constitutionally competent to regulate. So Congress used "legislative bribery" to force states to adopt a national drinking age. Since there is no constititional "right to drink", however, this doesn't offend the Constitution because Congress is entitled to determine how to spend federal money.
However, there is a Constitutionally-protected right of free speech. Furthermore, this right acts to limit not only Congress but also the states and other entities which are acting as governmental agencies (including public schools and public libraries). The First Amendment will no more countenance "legislative bribery" that restricts speech than it will a direct regulation that does the same.
As proof, I offer a case handed down earlier this term, in which the Supreme Court invalidated a regulation that requires lawyers who receive funding from the Legal Service Organization to refrain from representing clients who were challenging the legality or constitutionality of welfare reform laws. The Supreme Court held that this restriction violated the free speech rights of both the lawyers receiving the funding and their clients. I don't see how the instant matter is any different.
I'm not convinced about fuel efficiency. Once your satellite is in orbit it requires only nominal fuel to correct its orbit for the life of the satellite. The airplane has to spend fuel continuously to maintain airspeed or crash. The energy requires to orbit a plane in atmosphere at 20,000 feet has to be magnitudes more than the energy required to orbit an object at 20,000 feet -- or 100,000 feet --- in the absence of an atmosphere, after all. Sounds like a comparison between fruits and vegetables.
I don't offhand know what the fuel consumption to boost a satellite to orbit vs. orbiting a plane for three years, but I'd really be surprised if it takes more for the satellite.
This sounds like a terribly bad idea. Not only does it use up a large number of pilots who could be doing other, more productive activities, but it generates great heaping loads of pollution (air and noise), consumes mass quantities of jet fuel, and occupies air traffic lanes. I can't see how this can be more economically viable than low earth orbit or geosynchronous satellites.
Is this any different from the marathon Dune movie that was released several years ago? I was without the Sci-Fi channel for quite a while and admit to not even being aware of the miniseries until now.
Dune is probably one of those books that just should never be made into a movie for any reason simply because there's no hope that the screen can do it justice.
There's no such thing as a "mini widget set" that is "basic but uncomplicated" that is useful for anything more than "Hi, this is my program, click here to exit". The problem most half-assed programmers have with GUI programming is that they can't think correctly; it's got nothing to do with the GUI environments themselves.
The failure of Slashdot to spawn an effective online community should not be proof that such cannot exist. Slashdot is actually pretty pathological as online communities go.
I question whether the kids would not have been interrogated by the police even if the entire quotation had been shown. All they would have seen is the word "shotgun" and gone into the usual unthinking mode that school & LEO types get into when they see weapon-related words in the context of a schoolchild. Reading the rest of the quotation would have been unnecessary.
"If Judy in the secretarial pool pirates software, nobody questions the company's liability." That's because copyright infringement is a tort -- you can hit the company for negligent supervision and hold them liable, or use agency theory in tort where agency is given a broader read. However, we were talking about breach of contract, which is not a tort.
BTW, most managers are not agents either, or only have limited agency. By default, the only individuals who are agents for a corporation are its directors, its officers, and its counsel of record.
Contracts which seek to prevent a person from speaking are scrutinized closely by the courts, and only upheld when the restraint is clearly reasonable. NDAs are permitted because the person presumably goes into them with their eyes open and receives substantial economic benefit as consideration. Gag agreements as part of settlements receive similar treatment -- but the remedy for breach of a gag agreement is recission of the settlement, not injunction or contempt: the imposition of those penalties violates the First Amendment rights of the gag breaker.
Also, keep in mind that while waiving the right to speak as part of a contract is permissible, using the courts to enforce that waiver make that enforcement a "public action". The court's action in enforcing the agreement is subject to the same strict scrutiny for constitutionality that any other state action which interferes with civil rights is subjected to. Courts can and do refuse enforcement of contract terms when those terms are "contrary to public policy", and the right to free speech is one of the strongest public policies in the United States.
Your statement "A [sic] EULA attempts to restrict the ways that you can use the software,..." is wrong. An EULA grants the user to the right to use the software, a right which she would otherwise not have. To that end, the GPL is an EULA. It grants the end user the right to use the software under certain (very broad) conditions. You must have a license to use software. If the GPL didn't say "The act of running the program is unrestricted..." then you wouldn't be able to run it at all.
Well, the problem with a lot of the people demanding refunds for unused copies of Windows is the UCC only gives you "a reasonable time" to claim your refund. I think it's ten days, but it might be three. You can't decide six months after you buy the software that you don't want it and return it for a UCC license-rejection refund.
If you purchase software with a undisclosed license at the time of sale, and subsequently discover that the license terms are unacceptable to you, you are entitled by law to return it for a refund. (I wish I could remember the UCC provision for this, but there IS one. I don't have a copy of the UCC handy.)
As for cases on clickthrough, go to your local law library and ask one of the friendly librarians to help you do a law journal search on "clickthrough". Then pull some of the journal articles; there will be plenty of cases in the footnotes.