Dynamic and Static Linking

[W. Yip]

In my reading, I have encountered a great swathe of diverse opinions on the
issue of whether dynamic linking and/or static linking is covered by GPL.

I am unschooled in the intricacies of programming, and would like to ask
the following few questions. While I appreciate there is no set answer, and
this is probably an old thread, any links to related articles would be
greatly appreciated for me to catch up with what I missed. I have been
swimming through slashdot and deja archives on this subject, and it has
been a very confusing.

1) What is dynamic linking? Is it the 'ln' command in Linux for symbolic
linking?

2) What is static linking? Is that a link to libraries on your hard disk?

3) Can you give me some examples of dynamic linking (un)covered by the GPL?
Is BeOS a case in example?