Posts by John Brown (no body) 25409 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
I once worked in a public building with a similar floor, full of marble chips. Being the main entrance, it got very dirty over time with many hard to remove stains. So one of the cleaners decided one night to pour the neat cleaning fluid across the floor then use the normal rotary floor scrubber on it. If fizzed in reaction to meeting the marble and left small impossible to clean indentations across almost the entire floor. It never recovered and was never replaced or repaired. The Council simply could not afford it. Eventually the entire building was demolished to make way for new houses.
"Who upon entering said room pulled out his vacuum cleaner and blew about 10 years of dust all around our multiple VAXes."
That was silly. Vacuum cleaners are supposed to suck when in normal operation. Blow is on option on some. And any service tech who knows what they are doing never uses the blow option because they really, really don't want a cloud of dust of unknown provenance forced into a cloud around their head waiting to be breathed in!
I think the point is that it's not done when politicians of other countries are mentioned in these august pages. eg UK MPs are sometimes credited with which party they are from, but not always, and we rarely get told which constituency they represent. So why is it important for US politicians but not others? All or none would make more sense.
On the other hand, when Walmart rolls into Hicksville and opens its doors....
China are just doing it on a bigger scale. I'm not defending China here, just saying they learned the practice from somewhere. They didn't invent it. Most supermarkets will have "loss leaders" on the basics and essentials to get customers through the door. China have gone a step further and promote everything as loss leaders.
The EU is not only far too bureaucratic to actually do what you describe, but because it's so bureaucratic there would be whistle blowers galore if they tried that, And anyway, there are governments around the world, the US leading the way, which require commercial source code be submitted to them under various circumstances either for QA or "safekeeping". What's being proposed by the EU isn't new, other than being more specific on what it wants.
And don't ever forget, processes which you accuse the EU of are waaaay harder to implement there than in the US. Shout "patriotism" in the 50 States of the US, there are two parties, REP and DEM will often come to agreement quite quickly on a national issue. Try that in the EU and you've got 27 national governments each with AT LEAST two main parties, often many more, all trying to come to their own internal decisions before they even think about agreeing with all or most of the 26 others. And if a new EU "law" is introduced, it's then up to each nation to implement as they see fit. Usually more or less all the same, but often with variations.
"TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW""
"UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW"
Licences and contracts cannot override national law, which the quoted licence makes clear. The concern is how that new EU law might affect the licence terms above, ie the applicable law. It's also the reason you almost NEVER hear about some products T&Cs being disputed in a Court of Law, rather the supplier/manufacturer will settle out of court.
Maybe "AI" should be treated as an "employee" in terms of how it "represents" the company, ie it produces "work" for the company like any other employee therefore the employer is 100% reposonsible for it's actions and what it produces during it's employee time. In other words, there are processes in place to make sure the employee is producing valid work up to spec. It doesn't matter what the "thought processes" are inside the employees head, what comes out as a result of those thought processes are what counts and what needs to be up to spec.
Yes, this already has existing similarities in existing case law. The recent case of a woman who died eating a "vegan" product from Pret which it turns out was "contaminated" with milk product triggering her dairy allergen reaction. The company producing the ingredient claimed the product was dairy-free. Pret had no evidence that they had checked those claims and then went on to repeat the claims on their end product. Both made claims and so both are on the hook for it. If either had NOT made that claim, the one or both of them would probably not be on the hook.
If open source AI models and/or code is used, they have to be careful with what they claim and anyone using it commercially has to equally make sure any pre-existing claims are valid and that any changes they make in the code, the model, the data or how it's deployed also meet any claims they may make.
"That may suit a lab project but would obviously invite a trademark lawsuit from a similarly named social media company were commercialization ever considered."
Why? It's very, very different from any form of social media application. Otherwise the estate of L. Frank Baum would be suing the social media video app first. Tik Tok was a very sociable mechanical man, a robot of sorts, and much closer to being a social network than this system.
A few staff, yeah. Marketing and Sales. No one else. Of course, by definition, that makes it a huge success because "everyone"[*] loves it and uses it all the time.
We've had a few various "social media-like" things at our workplace over the years. In almost every case there were specific "channels" set up and only the sales and marketing ones saw much use. I remember the first one they tried and those same marketing and sales people seemed to think it was their personal Facebook account, posting the same sort of drivel they put on there. It took a couple of months for someone senior to finally stamp on that and point out it was meant for business use. At which point it turned into a wasteland :-)
On the other hand, now we have a better system where individual teams have their own channels, created as needed, and it does get used properly and relatively frequently. This is because anyone from team leader and up can create channels rather than top-down defined channels made be people who see the "big picture" but have no idea what individual staff need, want or do. The company wide channels and/or anything at division level are barely used.
[*] ie, of those polled by Marketing and Sales, ie only those who actually thought it was "exciting" stuff and joined in.
"But you can still get your fix at his site - https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com/ "
And having been over there a couple weeks back, it looked like there may be a post every few weeks or even months. But since he's no longer submitting to El Reg, he seems to be doing exactly the same style on a weekly basis now. Actually more so in terms of style. The double entendres are back, which seemed to be lacking ion recent El Reg submissions.
He also explains in the comments on this weeks article why and what went on with El Reg, ie not much.
" (they've had 5 years since Windows 10 to plan the next version) "
Not really. It;s just patching on patching on patching. There are no new versions as such. When a new "version" is announced, what really happens is the coloured pencil department make visibly obvious changes by adding lipstick to a very slightly genetically modified pig.
Exactly. Any satellite without a guidance and positioning system isn't really going to be all that much use. Empty steering jet fuel tanks or worn out gyros are the life limiting factors, barring other operation failures. Using the last of the steering ability to point a SRB in the right direction at the right moment shouldn't be too hard. Making sure that a one shot SRB can sit in space for years and still work might be a little more difficult.
Yeah, words can be as slippery as H2 molecules in a sieve :-)
The plans was to launch. Something went wrong and the launch was scrubbed. They failed to reach the point of launch so could be a failed launch. Likewise, if a rocket ignites and starts going up and then explodes a mile or two up, arguably that was a successful launch but a fail in the flight, not actually a failed launch.
The situation you just described is a pretty rare occurrence, otherwise the news would be full of reports of bodies being found in ditches all over the countryside. Providing a service to millions "free for the first two years" where the actual need for it might be a very few people still sounds like a marketing gimmick. It comes across as "if saves one childs life, it's worth spending billions/restricting the right of millions/whatever" type of cries we here frequently.
I'm not saying this service should not exist, nor that it is pointless or useless. I'm simply pointing out that a hugely profitable corporation like Apple isn't doing this to save lives. it's a marketing exercise, for whatever reason they think they have for it. Maybe it's costing them next to nothing to add the feature and they think it's worth the extra expense for the reputational gloss they get from it?
It's certainly a new feature. But at this early stage, I'd suggest it's more of a "nice to have" option for a minority of iPhone users and not a "killer app". After all, *all* features are useful to *someone*, but when it's a small minority, it smells more like desperate marketing rather than genuinely useful for the many. There's not been anything really new or revolutionary in the smartphone market for a while now. New "flagships" are ann9ounced every year or two and they are only minor upgrade iterations of the last one. That, along with market saturation, is killing Apples "upgrade or die" model.
"Their constitutional position in each of those separate countries is identical."
Not sure of that. I was only half listening to something on the radio while driving up the M1 today when someone mentioned something about one or more of those countries constitutions referring to "The Queen", not "The Monarch". If I heard correctly, there may need to be a bit of hasty re-writing.
Yes, I also heard that on the news today too. I was a little surprised that plans were not already in place, just awaiting the final approval. The PO also said they have been told not to pulp or otherwise "waste" the existing stick of stamps, even when new ones with the King[*] on them are ready.
It still feels weird saying "King". I've had 59 years, my entire life, with the "Queen" on money and stamps. (Apart from the many King George and Queen Victoria coins still around when I was younger, pre-decimalisation, some so wor you could barely make out the letting on them)
...and remains burned on a bonfire of lawyers?
(I suspect that either Heinlein didn't know much about constitutional monarchies or it was just another of his "phases" that he went through re politics and political systems, since there's not much tyranny to be had in a constitutional monarchy. He was probably referring to absolute monarchs, which we've not really had ever since that gathering at Runnymede.
Agreed. The thing is though, what jobs do they need to be good at? All round mechanic and troubleshooter in case anything breaks? LEM pilot in case the automation fails? They won't actually be doing much science on the Moon. Just setting up equipment and collecting samples. Maybe an amateur selenologist to pick out "interesting" looking samples. One of them will be a government "minder" of course, to make sure there's no photos or video of the alien base. Or the Nazi base.
"Many of the animals will rely on the morning dew to live I wonder how much this will reduce that dew."
Yes. Most "deserts" have an ecosystem. Few are the "rolling sand dune" we imagine when hearing the word "desert". They are not all like the sandy dunes of parts of the Sahara.
"Nope, no more than I assume you're defending Western/EU/NATO expansionism."
Errr, what? Western/EU/NATO "expansion" is not only voluntary, but countries *apply* to join, they aren't forced at gunpoint. The recent "expansion" has been a direct result of Putins neighbours being concerned about his *violent* and fear-mongering expansionism. Finland, for example, has been happy for many years to be a neutral between NATO and Russia. Not any longer. They are desperate to join NATO now. NATO "expansion" directly attributable to Putin.
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