* Posts by Sam Johnston

6 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Feb 2009

Begun, the open source AI wars have

Sam Johnston

Access to training data is enough to protect the four essential freedoms

Nobody's still seriously asking for a "purely idealistic approach" but the OSI keep trotting out this strawman. We have settled on a compromise that allows both open licensed and publicly accessible data, but rejects proprietary data available for a fee (e.g., NYT articles, Adobe stock photos) and inaccessible data (e.g., Facebook social graph) as these prevent you from studying or modifying the model, while exposing you to legal, security, and other risks.

In any case, the OSI admits they are not competent to answer the question in outsourcing it: https://samjohnston.org/2024/10/15/the-osi-lacks-competence-to-define-open-source-ai/

Father of Lisp and AI John McCarthy has died

Sam Johnston

Father of cloud computing dies

"If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry."

— John McCarthy (speaking at the MIT Centennial in 1961)

It's been pointed out that McCarthy used the term "utility" rather than "cloud", but many of us would argue they are one and the same. Indeed Wikipedia defines it as:

"Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet)."

In any case, can anyone think of anyone more deserving of the honour of the title "father of cloud computing" than McCarthy? I certainly can't.

Cisco cuddles all clouds but one

Sam Johnston
WTF?

In other news...

Trend Micro trademarks the Intercloud™ http://bit.ly/7N8V1

Sam

Microsoft loudly disses secret 'Cloud Manifesto'

Sam Johnston
Thumb Up

Update

Thanks for clarifying my [lack of] involvement with the offending manifesto - most appreciated.

Sam

Apple preps netbook 10-inch touch screen thingy

Sam Johnston
Alert

They say a picture's worth a thousand words...

Crystal Ball: Apple's $599 "iPad Touch" Netbook (with pictures)

http://samj.net/2009/03/crystal-ball-apples-599-ipad-netbook.html

Sam

Blogger fights Psion's claim to 'netbook' name

Sam Johnston
Thumb Up

Psion Teklogix may lose Netbook trademark

But wait there's more (from /. post):

"Psion Teklogix, who own international trademarks on the term "netbook" relating to a product that was discontinued in 2003, had recently sent cease and desist letters to "literally hundreds" of recipients, including netbook enthusiast sites. The Save the Netbooks campaign was launched by an Australian firm "to fight the impending trademark threat" and has since declared victory and retired after only 48 hours. Having already had some success in their first mission to reverse the AdWords ban, they were in the process of filing a petition to cancel with USPTO when they discovered they had been beaten to it by none other than Dell Computer (who we discussed last year on the other side of a similar scandal relating to the "cloud computing" trademark). In the petition, in addition to abandonment and genericness Dell also alleged fraud, claiming that a Sr Product Manager at Psion Teklogix had given a false declaration of use under penalty of purgery back in 2006. In any case it is now very likely that the term "netbook" will be unencumbered and free for all to use (for better or worse)."