Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Amtrack should be working on (Score -1, Flamebait) 127

by azav (#47656793) Attached to: DEA Paid Amtrak Employee To Pilfer Passenger Lists
Ignorant? Really?

Bigoted against tranny prostitites? On government transportation that the public rides on? HELL, yes. Publicly visited transport should be free of this filth. You're a complete fucktard for thinking this is not completely fucking disgusting and actually supporting it's actions. Just because some assclown wants to pretend it's a woman, that certainly means that it isn't. Get that seedy shit off of national transportation that people have to pay to be on. Clown.

Comment Amtrack should be working on (Score -1, Offtopic) 127

by azav (#47654479) Attached to: DEA Paid Amtrak Employee To Pilfer Passenger Lists
Arresting tranny prostitutes on their trains. I was pretty shocked when I took a train across country and there was a man dressed as a woman who was always around the bathroom whenever I happened to walk by. Didn't take long to figure out that this was a tranny prostitute and when I mentioned it to the staff, they appeared to know about it. Fucking disgusting to have a working prostitute travelling along the train lines and even more disgusting to have it being a tranny pretending to be a woman. So damn repulsive.

Submission + - Enforcing the GPL

Submitted by lrosen
lrosen writes: I am responding to the article in Opensource.com by Aaron Williamson, "Lawsuit threatens to break new ground on the GPL and software licensing issues."

I want to acknowledge Aaron's main points: This lawsuit challenges certain assumptions about GPLv2 licensing, and it also emphasizes the effects of patents on the FOSS (and commercial) software ecosystem. I also want to acknowledge that I have been consulted as an expert by the plaintiff in this litigation (Ximpleware vs. Versata, et al.) and so some of what I say below they may also say in court.

Let's be open about the facts here. Ximpleware worked diligently over many years to create certain valuable software. The author posted his source code on SourceForge. He offered the software under GPLv2. He also offered that software under commercial licenses. And he sought and received and provided notice of United States patent claims related to that software.

Unbeknownst to Ximpleware, Versata took that GPLv2 software and incorporated it into Versata products – without disclosing that GPLv2 software or in any other way honoring the terms of the GPLv2 license. The reason Ximpleware became aware of that GPLv2 breach is because some months ago Versata and one of its customers, Ameriprise, became embroiled in their own litigation. The breach of GPLv2 came out during discovery.

Ximpleware has terminated that license as to Versata. This is exactly what the Software Freedom Conservancy and others do when confronted by GPL breaches.

That earlier litigation is between two (or more) commercial companies; it is not a FOSS problem. These are mature, sophisticated, profitable companies that have the wherewithal to protect themselves. I know that in my own law practice, whether I represent software vendors or their commercial customers, we typically provide for some level of indemnification. Perhaps Ameriprise and the other customer-defendants can count on Versata defending them against Ximpleware. Such a commercial dispute between big companies – even if it involves the GPLv2 software of a small company and separate indemnification for copyright or patent infringement – is between them alone.

But as to Ximpleware and its GPLv2 copyrighted and patented software, there are a few misunderstandings reflected in Aaron Williamson's article:

1. The notion of "implied patent licensing" has no clear legal precedent in any software licensing. While it is true that goods that one purchases include a patent license under what is known as the "exhaustion doctrine," there is no exhaustion of patented software when copies are made (even though copying of the software itself is authorized by GPLv2). For example, a typical commercial patent license nowadays might include a royalty for each Android phone manufactured and sold. Companies that distribute Android phones and its FOSS software acquire patent licenses so that recipients of their phones are indeed free to use those phones. But that isn't because of some implied patent licenses that come with Android software, but because commercial companies that distribute phones pay for those patent rights, directly or indirectly. I think it is entirely reasonable to require that commercial companies get their patent licenses in writing.

2. Versata's customers who received the (in breach!) GPLv2 software all moved to dismiss Ximpleware's infringement claims against them, pointing to Section 0 of GPLv2, which says that "[t]he act of running the Program is not restricted." What that sentence actually means is just what it says: The GPLv2 copyright grant itself (which is all there is in GPLv2) does not restrict the act of running the program. Nor could it; that is a true statement because running a program is not one of the enumerated copyright rights subject to a copyright license (17 USC 106). The authors of the GPL licenses have themselves made that argument repeatedly: The use of software is simply not a copyright issue.

3. Because there are U.S. patent claims on this Ximpleware software, Section 7 of GPLv2 prohibits its distribution under that license in the United States (or any jurisdictions where patent claims restrict its use). If Ameriprise and the other defendants were outside the U.S. where the Ximpleware patents don't apply, then GPLv2 would indeed be sufficient for that use. But inside the U.S. those customers are not authorized and they cannot rely on an assumed patent grant in GPLv2. Otherwise GPLv2 Section 7 would be an irrelevant provision. Reread it carefully if you doubt this.

The Versata customers certainly cannot depend on an implied patent license received indirectly through a vendor who was in breach of GPLv2 since the beginning – and still is! Versata ignored and failed to disclose to its own customers Ximpleware's patent notices concerning that GPLv2 software, but those patents are nevertheless infringed.

Should we forgive commercial companies who fail to undertake honest compliance with the GPL? Should we forgive their customers who aren't diligent in acquiring their software from diligent vendors?

As Aaron Williamson suggests, we shouldn't ignore the implications of this case. After all, the creator of Ximpleware software made his source code freely available under GPLv2 and posted clear notices to potential commercial customers of his U.S. patents and of his commercial licensing options. Lots of small (and large!) open source commercial companies do that. Although it is ultimately up to the courts to decide this case, from a FOSS point of view Ximpleware is the good guy here!

There is rich detail about this matter that will come out during litigation. Please don't criticize until you understand all the facts.

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag (lrosen@rosenlaw.com)

Submission + - Injecting Liquid Metal Into Blood Vessels Could Help Kill Tumors

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: One of the most interesting emerging treatments for certain types of cancer aims to starve the tumour to death. The strategy involves destroying or blocking the blood vessels that supply a tumour with oxygen and nutrients. Without its lifeblood, the unwanted growth shrivels up and dies. This can be done by physically blocking the vessels with blood clots, gels, balloons, glue, nanoparticles and so on. However, these techniques have never been entirely successful because the blockages can be washed away by the blood flow and the materials do not always fill blood vessels entirely, allowing blood to flow round them. Now Chinese researchers say they've solved the problem by filling blood vessels with an indium-gallium alloy that is liquid at body temperature. They've tested the idea in the lab on mice and rabbits. Their experiments show that the alloy is relatively benign but really does fill the vessels, blocks the blood flow entirely and starves the surrounding tissue of oxygen and nutrients. The team has also identified some problems such as the possibility of blobs of metal being washed into the heart and lungs. Nevertheless, they say their approach is a promising injectable tumour treatment.

Submission + - Swim Fins Inspired by Humpback Whales Boost Speed, Efficiency (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We've seen airplane wings and turbine blades inspired by whale flippers — and now the biomimicry trend is filtering down to consumer products. Speedo just unveiled a new set of swim fins with channels, holes, and ridges inspired by the flippers of hunchback whales — and they supposedly displace significantly more water than conventional designs.

Submission + - Is gut bacteria making you fat? (paleomagonline.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Widespread use of antibiotics, increased rates of caesarean sections, certain aspects of modern hygiene, highly processed diets, and indoor living are just some of the factors that alter the gut microbiome, and some researchers have now begun talking about a westernized microbiota, a microbial rainforest that has lost key species and lacks the resilience of the ancestral microbiome.

Submission + - Google Is Backing A New $300 Million High-Speed Internet Trans-Pacific Cable 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google has announced it is backing plans to build and operate a new high-speed internet Trans-Pacific cable system called “FASTER.” In addition to Google, the $300 million project will be jointly managed by China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and SingTel, with NEC as the system supplier. FASTER will feature the latest high-quality 6-fiber-pair cable and optical transmission technologies. The initial design capacity is expected to be 60Tb/s (100Gb/s x 100 wavelengths x 6 fiber-pairs), connecting the US with two locations in Japan.

Submission + - Inside the CryptoLocker Takedown

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The takedown of the GameOver Zeus malware operation in June got more than its share of attention, but it was the concurrent demolition of the CryptoLocker ransomware infrastructure that may prove to have been the most important part of the operation. That outcome was the culmination of months of behind the scenes work by dozens of security researchers who cooperated with law enforcement to trace, monitor and ultimately wreck the careful work and planning of the CryptoLocker crew.

“This was something new. This was ransomware done right,” said John Bambenek, president of Bambenek Consulting, who was involved in the working group that tracked CryptoLocker and talked about the operation at the Black Hat USA conference here Thursday. “It made for a good case study on how to do threat intelligence.”

The working group that came together to defeat CryptoLocker was global and had people with all kinds of different skill sets: malware reverse engineering, math, botnet tracking and intelligence. Some members worked on taking part the domain-generation algorithm while others looked at the command-and-control infrastructure and still others broke down the malware itself. What the researchers began to notice as they dug deeper into the CryptoLocker operation was that the crew behind the ransomware had done a lot of things right, but had also exhibited some oddly inconsistent behaviors.

Submission + - Chile earthquake triggered icequakes in Antarctica (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In 2010, a powerful magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of central Chile, rocking much of the country and producing tremor as far away as Argentina and Peru. But a new study suggests its effects were felt even farther away—in Antarctica. In the wake of the Maule temblor, the scientists found, several seismic stations on the frozen continent registered “icequakes,” probably due to fracturing of the ice as the planet’s crust shook.

Slashdot Top Deals

Dynamically binding, you realize the magic. Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.

Close