Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: In summary....

The relevant issue here is that ChatGPT is providing a service which is based on what is essentially a database which is derivative of the training materials. The regurgitation is simply a means of providing proof of that. The value of ChatGPT and hence of OpenAI depends in part on their software for which they've (presumably) paid their developers but also on the training material for which they might or might not have paid but the use of which will exceed the T&Cs attached to it.

Companies 101

"When did people forget that the stock market is effectively gambling?"

What's more when you buy a share you're becoming part of the company. The company is called that because "company" is a collective noun, in this case the collection of people who each own a share of the company. The clues are all there in the name. So if you're a shareholder the company's funds are your collective funds. If you are a shreholder and sue the company you're suing yourself along with all the other shareholders. If you think the C-suite or directors are gypping you, sue them, not yourself. If you're prompted to sue yourself by a lawyer remember it's the guaranteed winner who's prompting you and if you want to find out who's the loser, look in the mirror.

When small companies have few or one product it's quite likely that they were designed by enthusiasts who actually understand what's needed because it's something they actually want themselves. When they get bought out by big companies the products are specified by marketing who believe they know what the market wants with no interest in using the product themselves..

Re: Wtf?

So they can be sold to telcos to remotely manage them.

When PlusNet decided to remote manage mine to the point where I was unable to get in to make changes to my DHCP allocations it was time to pull it and install my own. Do I want to join the manufacturer's remote management scheme? No I do not. Turn off remote management.

Do you mean Microsoft?

Re: I don't get it

Best to come to a patent deal if you want to build a car with rounded corners.

Prior art? Never heard of it.

Re: Y2K times a million

"If it was even a little bit important, nobody would have gone down the Intel / 80x86 branch, but would have stuck with the "cleaner" addressing modes of the 68000. Yay! let's revive the architecture battles of 40 years ago."

The early SMB-scale Unix computers I used were either Z8000 or 68000 based. That wasn't, at least directly, because of cleanliness of addressing modes, it's because, at system integrator level, it's what was available to buy.

But because IBM chose Intel for their PC and the economies of scale prevailed all that stuff became a dead end. So much for not throwing away backwards compatibiliy.

Re: In the absence of files...

Whether you call something a directory or a folder it's still an abstraction of a place in which to store other things, some of which may also be files or folders depending on the vocabulary you choose to use. You're confusing the abstraction with its implementation.

Re: Well

"the cost of making the poor decisions"

The poor decisions are usually made for the sake of operational convenience rather than security. Let's not bother with the inconvenience of a separate privileged user ID with a separate password, let's not enforce complex passwords, let's not fence of different bits of the network, etc.

The hardware and languages will support better but better costs some user effort and a few seconds of time here and there and time is money...

Re: Costs and Benefits......

AIRI the first Mac was little more than a toy. It required a few upgrades to become useful. Jobs had fought the developers to design it to a price. He also did his best to make it non-upgradeable, Somebody sneaked in an ability to solder in a link to enable it to take higher capacity memory without having to buy the bigger version next year or whenever it was. I wonder to what extent Jobs planned it as a bait and switch.

Re: NV RAM never entirely went away & predates Optane

Over the years I've seen a few would-be memory technologies come and go (bubble memory is one that comes to mind - what was it again?). The few that have stood up to reality and their predecessors are the few we have today. Reality includes the cost of completely revising the way things are done to take advantage or having a commercially viable, if niche, use case. Mobile would appear to provide a suitable use case for PRAM. If it can't make an inroad there it doesn't seem likely to succeed elsewhere.

Re: Costs and Benefits......

Wasn't Lisa's real problem that it didn't get the Jobs fairy dust* sprinkled on it? Macs were also pretty expensive for a good deal less functionality.

* Decisions about relative pricing might have been a fairy dust ingredient.

Re: Technology moves in circles

"there's always been an engineering trade-off between speed and capacity"

Between speed and price and it's price - including the price in terms of power consumption - that determines capacity. Can it achieve the speed of DRAM at the price of DRAM or close enough to lower the overall cost of the system?

Re: from Apollo days there wasn't one mission that went absolutely perfectly

On Mars, or course, the NASA copter had a rotor failure and still ended up standing on its feet.

Re: Recommended negotiation equipment

Or bovver boots?

Re: Temporary Waiver

"How can you turn ALL on at once?"

From the server.

Re: Wallbox

Seeing that it's "controlled" with a smart phone it probably means it's actually controlled with a server which isn't secured.

Re: Let's Check the Server Room Access Log

System stopped while they were there but continued when they weren't & started when they were there. Problem doesn't correlate well with their presence. Couldn't be them.

And I don’t think anything was “legally binding”

It's just that the legal court bound them to pay up.

AFAIK in English law it's got to be a good deal higher than a small claims hearing. The High Court at least, I think.

Re: The Landan response: f**k off and do one mate.

"unreasonable changes to my conditions of employment"

Big IR35 fail there.

"some folk are just STUPID."

They might start out a bit stupid but given a long enough run they get very good at it.

What happened to B♭?

Mine was "ficus", after the plant in my office.

I remember visiting some office where the plant was called Floella.

OTOH the ones who tell you they can manage anything can manage nothing.

As far as I can make out if you take any single word in the middle of the output the few words either side of it are words which are more likely to be found in those positions in the training material than any other words taken at random. The run of words is very likely to look like it was written by an intelligence because it has been so written many times. But as you get a word or two further away the next lot of adjacent words also emerge a very likely from the training material but not necessarily from the same contexts as your central word and even less likely will the words a little way either side of your central word have come from the same contexts. It might all appear to make sense as a well constructed sequence of English words but not as a coherent assemblage of facts or argument being expressed by those words.

Re: "relying on ChatGPT to do anything related to their jobs could be a bad idea"

Admitting is probably better than trying to keep quiest an being found out.