PythonicAlpha

I don't think, that you are free to set your own price. But of course, I am not current in these special law topics. But in Germany, as in many other countries: If it goes to court, you will loose against a big company.

It was an other situation, but a lawyer once told me, what happens when such things go to court: The corporation will bring 10 witnesses against you and will bring 10 experts certifying what the corporation needs.

And than you will be very alone and be gracious to get even a little money. You will loose your job anyway.

Don't know the situation in the US, but in Germany you might get some trouble:

(citing myself:)

Don't think, that in Germany the situation is that much better. We might not have those agreements in the contracts, since in Germany there are (luckily) many regulations what can be put into contracts. But the German law has also some specialties: For example, when you make an invention in your free time, even when it has nothing to do with your current job, you must first ask your employer, if he wants to buy the invention, if you want or not.

When you file a patent, they will. And then they will drag you to court.

Yeah, but the American dream does not function to much longer this way. Because more and more people are born in bad situations, they have to take jobs to earn some money to start -- sign such contracts ... and you are enslaved.

Even if you get rid of these ... Than you have a good idea, only to find, that your idea violates dozens of corporate patents ... and your idea is waste.

Thus the dream is just a shadow of the past ... and propaganda for a system that does not hold its promises any more.

Don't think, that in Germany the situation is that much better. We might not have those agreements in the contracts, since in Germany there are (luckily) many regulations what can be put into contracts. But the German law has also some specialties: For example, when you make an invention in your free time, even when it has nothing to do with your current job, you must first ask your employer, if he wants to buy the invention, if you want or not.

That is the reason, I am against the term "Intellectual Property".

Ideas are (naturally) belonging to the person who had the ideal. "Intellectual property" in contrast is "owned" to those that have enough money to buy it.

This notion of making more and more parts of human life own-able and thus putting a price tag on it, is just devaluating these parts and our own living.

In result, we will be slaves of the big corporations and the billionaires of the world.

Right. And they even changed it, I think in Py3.3 -- but that was very late, when many people already decided not to port.

This is a result of some not so optimal design decisions in the past.

I remember, when Py3 first came out, everything was incompatible -- unnecessary incompatibilities like the u" notation for Unicode string literals that was dropped. Unnecessary incompatibilities in the C-extension-module implementation layer. And so on. The list of incompatibilities was just huge.

Later several of them where dropped, like the string literal trouble ... But than the trouble was already done. Many extension modules where not lifted to the new version, since the overhead was to big.

I think, many more projects would have adopted Py3, if more extension modules would support it.

The huge library of extension modules was always the strength of Python. Now we have many projects still running on Py2, because Py3 did ignore this strength.

That is the problem with invention vs. "intellectual property". Inventions belong to the inventor -- property belongs to the owner.

I don't understand what you want to tell me with all you said, after the "Plus".

The point of self implemented allocators is not, that they are all better than malloc or that the implementor is more wise or that there is some magical additional stuff or even that some code is saved (the oposite is true) ...

The point is only, that malloc implements the most general case (what it must, since it is the magical "I can do it all" tool (at least in memory management)). When you go away from the general case you can find several specific cases, that can be implemented specialized for this case -- and those specific cases could be implemented very much more efficient (concerning speed, not coding!).

That is the whole point. Also there are some specific allocators that also implement some safeguides for common memory problems. But that seems to be more of the exception, when I take into account the feedback.

If you read my statement correctly, I did not say, that some forms of malloc would not be helpful in finding or even preventing the bug. I only attacked the statement, that some kind of malloc could magically help finding a bug in testing -- a bug that only appears when provoked (and when you come up with the idea, provoking it, you don't need any malloc anymore to find it).

As much I understood the article (had also to look twice), the problem is not the OPENSSL_Malloc near the troublesome coding, but an other allocation for the received data. And that is (as much I understood) handled by the freelist. But the portions where of course allocated by normal mallocs.

A free list implementation is some kind of self made allocator.

I did not check the contents of the article on correctness. It seems to me, that OPENSSL_Malloc is really only malloc by default -- but I lack the time to really check.

I wrote this sentence, because there is a big discussion ungoing, with some people blaming the self written allocator of OpenSSL. See the link, I gave. My point is, that even when it is so, having the standard allocator does not guarantee that you find this bug /in testing/ -- what is claimed in that article.

Correction: When you read the article of this topic exactly, the freelist implementation (allocator) is used for recvd data. That is what started the discussion.

Ok, I stated "many", but not all or most.

I of course have not your expertise. I am also not totally up to date with the newest mitigation techniques. I think, it depends largely on the focus of the allocator. Most have only speed on focus and that is what is implemented.

The simple statement that was given here: http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/analysis-of-openssl-free... that the developers just had to test with normal malloc to detect the error is a little to simple for me. I can't see this "simple" solution.

Testing is utterly hard. It means that you need creativity, something that many lack or are to lazy to. Many programmers are to lazy to think about testing, I fear. That is the reason, there exist some very limited number of really good software testers in the world.

When you want to find that bug in testing (taken, you even have the super-malloc), you first have to come up with the idea, to send a falsified message length for exactly this message type. Without this idea, even the super-hero-malloc would have no chance at all to give any indication of a bug.

AND when you have such an idea, you would find the bug, even without any super-hero-malloc ... any malloc or any freelist would suffice, because the result would show you, that something bad is going on.

So the focus on the self-written allocator seems to get a little biased in this discussion.

Yes, when writing security relevant libraries, you should be really, really careful and you should take any chance you get to make it more save. And it might have in some cases increased the chance of finding the bug in production, when just using the standard malloc (with security mitigation active) -- but I really doubt, that it would have increased the chance in testing.

I also must say, that really many successful software products use their own specialized allocators -- the reason is simple: Because malloc is so unspecific, it is not the fastest beast around -- and many specialized allocators have their own security mitigation build in.

A last point: Google also wants (or wanted) to switch to OpenSSL. The reason: Speed. So to blame the OpenSSL guys that they want to make their library really fast, has a little bad taste. Everybody wants speed -- even those that claim other after something has happened. My thought for you: What would be the benefit, if OpenSSL would fail because of bad speed, nobody would use it but an other product -- and exactly that product would have the trouble we found now in OpenSSL (or worse?) .....

Computer Industry can sometimes be unforgiving. How you do it, it is wrong.

Thanks, so for the tires are two possible solutions: Rotate them, or bring them to the UK, if rotation is to much work. ;-)

I just wondered, if the parts of the trucks (specially wheels and steering parts) have uneven wear (off?) by this practice.

Apart from that, sounds like a good engineering/optimization result.

PS: But there is a solution to that problem, as I see the other posts around .... just bring the trucks with uneven wear to the UK after a while ...

Sometimes, less is more.

Some said: "A piece of art is only finished, when there is nothing left, that can be taken away."

The art in computer programming is, to find ways to bring the problem to the point, to find out what is really necessary to solve the problem (and not more). This reduces (often, not always) the runtime, the amount of memory needed -- and (most importantly!) the amount of maintenance that is needed. The maintenance of a program is directly dependent on the number of code lines.

Many companies start fast with a superior product, but than comes the time of growth and growing demand, new employees are rushing in ... and the number of lines explode. That is the point of danger. The company is about to strangle itself. The number of errors are rising.

I remember an old, but once famous database product. The first 2 or 3 versions where great and the company grew out of 4 developers to a horde. The next version came out much much later than expected and was first a bug ridden chaos. The problem: The number of employees and the number of code lines grew faster than the company could manage them.

It is also said: "Adding new members to a late project, makes it later" That's because of the overhead of managing those peoples and the added code does not always add to project speed.

When you program with today's tools and all that we have, you forget very fast, how it was in the beginning and how difficult it is to start from scratch.

Today you always have some sort of compiler or cross compiler. Starting totally with nil (not even an assembler) is really not so simple.

This little article shows nicely, how bootstrapping can work. Pulling myself out of the mud on my own hair (like the Baron Muenchhausen from literature).

But don't forget: He still had the operating system not bootstrapped ... so repeating the whole computer history would need some more bootstrapping to do ....

Interesting book and good title.

The problem is really that so called Intellectual Property is just a new form of monopolizing new areas of human living. The result is, that intellectual work will be also dominated by those that have monopolized already the other things in the world: the rich.

After money was cached in the hand of view, after land has been sold, after everything has its price-tag -- the last thing, how some people can change their faith and also can get some piece of the pie, their ideas, shall also be monopolized.

That's all it is about.

Without patents, some can have a good idea, invent something and become rich. But with full patent enforcement in place, the durability of IP (copyright and patents) enhanced to the max, you can not have any ideas any longer, since every idea you will have, will infringe on some patent. You can not even sing "Happy Birthday" without paying to somebody.

The big companies already want, that patents, copyrights and the sort are coming to new areas, like film-making. So every idea can be owned, by the big companies and thus by those that own the most shares of them.

And it is also a convenient way to hold smaller companies with good ideas but smaller pockets at bay.

>Patent reform should focus on helping small and independent innovators, when in reality it is being driven by large deep-pocketed corporations.

That is right. I am also wondering all the time about the focus of patent reforms: so called patent-trolls. But as annoying they might be, the whole case looks very much like a diversionary tactic to distract from the real problems of the system.

The problem is only, that patents happen to protect the big companies more often than any small company.

There was once a company, it got visited by the lawyers of a big corporation.

They claimed that this company violated patent X of the corporation and they wanted Y millions for it. The smaller company proofed that they did not violate this specific patent.

The lawyers just said, that their corporation owned X thousands of patents and many, many lawyers worked for it. If they go empty today, they will search and find 10 patents that where violated by the smaller company.

Tell what, the smaller company paid.

It might be, that to own some patents is good and to ask for it is reasonable for investors. But with the view on the nationwide or world-wide economics, patents are essential bad.

I once also heard (I am not so good in this history, so sorry I can not give details), that the US economy and inventions had so a quick rise, one reason was because they at first abandoned the patent system of the UK and did not care about the patents in the "old world".

I agree. But that believe is wrong.

The thing about "IP" is also, that differently from "ideas" or "inventions" -- "property" can be sold and bought. Also in the most cases, inventors are small people in big corporations that just get some small and fixed (at least in Germany this is the normal case) money for it. A bargain for the corporation that "owns" from now on the "ideas" and "inventions" of their employees.

Make a price tag on everything and you will get a world not worth living in!

Big companies always claim, that make the IP (so called "intellectual property") rights stronger does strengthen the innovators. The opposite is true!

When old (and stupid) patents hinder innovation (what happens all day today), than the patent system becomes the biggest hindrance to innovation. Somebody said about IP: When it is better to "own" old IP than to make new one, the system is strangling innovation, nothing else. We already at this point (and it was fostered by the owning people).

Patents once where made up, to bring inventors an incentive to share their inventions with the others. But this "sharing" brings only benefits to the society, when the inventions bring any knowledge gain to the community.

Software patents are the worst: Most of them include trivial things that do not bring any new knowledge to the industry, but are blocking other inventors. Good example is Amazons One-click patent (but this is only one of maybe thousands examples): What is the knowledge gain of the world, by having this patent?

This system is for the "owners" not for the "creators"!

I am glad, that make exists. Guess what would happen, if every open source tool would use its own build environment. Open Source Software would be much more difficult to build from sources (sometimes, I can't do without).

So it is rather straight forward. Type make, sometimes autoconf and most of the time you are done.

Also in my own projects I prefer make to many other build tools. In software development, command line still rules (if you want to be really productive)!

I of course did not only mean the no-fly list. In Germany they also adopted or at least politics are trying to adopt some stupid ideas about terrorism. For example storing telephone connection meta-data. It is a widespread knowledge, that such a thing does not help in preventing terrorism, but they try and try to force it through parliament.

Also in other areas, the US is always the biggest example. For example the managers in Germany always compare themselves in regards to the salaries of US managers. But when it goes to liability, they do no comparison (in Germany, you can as a manager do nearly anything and are not liable for anything). Also of course they do not compare their salaries to those of Japan -- because in Japan, the corporations are bigger and the managers get still much less.

I guess, when the meta-data storage is threw legislation, they could come up with Germany's own no-fly list ...

Might be. But I see some other phenomenon: The World is adopting more and more the bad things in the US but never the good things of it.

That one worries me.

Sometimes fiction can only be topped by ... the reality.