Posts by Long John Silver 610 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2018
I have no confidence in Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood or any of her Cabinet colleagues.
A reputable Chief Constable was hounded for a mistake any non-technical person could have made. Anyway, he may have had overall accurate intelligence about the behaviour of Israeli football fans.
Protecting the North Atlantic from Russian Submarines.
That begs the question of the danger these submarines pose. Are they a collision hazard for surface vessels? Do they frighten sea life? Are they 'running' illicit shipments of vodka to the USA?
Next, there is the matter of how the automatous helicopter offers protection. Upon spotting a Russian submarine, does it blast, at great volume, British pop music with the intention of frightening cultured Russian matelots into rushing back to their home port? Perhaps the one ton payload consists of al dente cooked spaghetti for dropping into the sea with the intention of snagging the submarine's propellors?
Britons, and anybody roaming the North Atlantic, may now sleep more easily at night.
My Firefox - 147.0 (64-bit) - running under Linux (Linux Mint 22.3 - Cinnamon 64-bit,) is, seemingly, under my complete control; there is no 'organisation' supervising my use of computational devices. Nevertheless, I do encounter "Your browser is managed by your organization."
I suspect that the operating system has features/protections interpreted by Firefox as coming from an organisation.
Does anyone know?
Wouldn't the "UK's cyber crew" do better by not chasing phantoms and concentrating upon teaching public services and private enterprise how better to protect itself from malicious attack, regardless of its assumed origin?
I don't grasp why so much IT internal to an organisation must face the public Internet. Shouldn't sensitive information, e.g. staff and client data, be under greater protection than seemingly permeable firewalls? That would entail air gaps between key datasets and the Internet.
Yes, the flow of information would be slowed. More human input would be required for shifting vital information around on paper or on electronic physical storage media. 'Slowing' is anathema to simpletons wedded to 'profit maximisation' and instant decision-taking; most of the time all is well but, as Marks and Spencer discovered to its immense cost, a slip up is potentially deadly dangerous.
I imagine Microsoft has kept a wary eye on Wine since Wine's inception.
Presumably, try as they might, Microsoft's lawyers cannot devise credible arguments that Wine infringes Microsoft 'rights' under copyright, patent, or trademark law; that despite the USA being the global hub for rentier economics. Even if they could sustain an argument in court, the enforcement of a restrictive ruling globally would be nigh on impossible. However, at present, Wine offers a negligible threat to Microsoft's hegemony in the business and educational markets.
Recent versions of Wine have become more simple to deploy, and they produce timely and trustworthy output. Seamlessly, they enable the use of many gargantuan (bloated?) software suites. Given the number of trustworthy suppliers of unfettered software, buccaneers have plenty to fill gaps in Linux provision. Also, even should a Windows program be stuffed with 'nasties', prudent Linux users easily circumvent them.
As for 'Microsoft Store', who needs it when unofficial sources for such components as are deemed worth having abound?
The 'Starmer Youth' is about to be announced. Membership will be compulsory for all male children of ages 10 - 17 years. So too shall be membership of school-based cadet corps.
By these means rigid obedience, basic fighting skills, and 'patriotism' will be instilled. 'Sacrifice' will trip from young tongues.
It's anticipated Mr Mandelson will be placed in charge of the 'Starmer Youth' movement. He, a veritable Baden-Powell figure. He is the pillar of integrity, morality, and decency, required to shepherd impressionable young male minds into facing warfare with Russia.
Bad Enoch, Mr Starmer, and whoever commands the Lib/Dems, plus their motley intellectually-scurvy-ridden crews, might, just, have been able to make a go of parish pump 'democracy' in tiny hamlets during the 19th century. The 20th century would have been too demanding. The substantial qualitative changes of the 21st century, leading to hitherto barely imaginable opportunities and truly dire challenges, are beyond their collective 'Ken'. As an aside, it would be apt for them to be becalmed before attempting to enter the rough waters of Cape Horne.
Marooned on the Mare Ignorantiae, our intrepid politicians must behave analogously to desperate sailors who recycled their urine; in this instance, regurgitating and further chewing the blinkered understanding of the world they believe they possess. Either case leads to madness.
Awaiting in the wings, are equally shallow entities, notably Farage, ready to pounce on opportunities provided by chaos. He, too, would be serving the priests of Mammon in the City of London. Let it not be said that universal franchise representative democracy stifles the will of the entrepreneurial carpetbagger scouring chaos.
It may be too late for anyone, even an absent, much desired, Cromwellian figure, to force truly radical and deep reform upon a polity founded upon ignorance, besotted by Ruritanian (aka Saxe-Coburg-Gothan) fantasies, in thrall to compound-interest usury, and tolerant of stupidity, nuisance, and evil in the name of 'inclusiveness'.
Corruption of children by social media, and ill discipline in schools, are symptoms of a hugely broader problem ill-met by piecemeal actions. The call must be "L’insurrection est le plus saint des devoirs" [Lafayette, 1790].
Access to a whole work enables people to assess its worth to them.
The work is an advertisement for the supposed talent of its maker. The reader may be prompted to encourage the writer to produce more works. Voluntary subscription via a patronage scheme (crowdfunding) would support the writer.
If the writer has retired, patronage stops. If the writer relied on income from their work, prudently they would have set aside money into a pension scheme. Should a greatly admired author fall on hard times, willing donors of assistance may step forth.
The forgoing applies across the range of copyright works. It can extend to patents. Perhaps, BRICS will collectively see the sense of that.
That is feasible.
BUT, corralling the binary number sequences of digital representations of copyright works is impossible. No matter the strength of the fence, the sequences get under, over, or ram their way straight through. A fact of life which cannot be waved away. Genuinely creative individuals, and groups, will work this out for themselves and deploy already extant means to extract donations from their admirers. Some of these already dance around the feet of the dinosaurs.
The huge body of middlemen - their creative skills, if present, dedicated to 'creative accounting', marketing, and litigation - shall be put out to pasture. Stalwart supporters of those intellectual drones will undoubtedly add to my much treasured collection of 'down votes', here and elsewhere.
Well said.
Perhaps Western kakistocrats cannot be beaten in the sense of being obliged to curtail intrusive activities, but with assistance from some expertise represented by commentators on The Register the tables can be turned in a conceptually simple way. Somehow, commercial and government entities must be overwhelmed with garbage information: masses of irrelevant and contradictory data.
Perhaps, GCHQ, the NSA, and Mossad, along with commercial giants like Google, deploy huge LLM AIs to sift their data. That could contribute to their much to be desired downfall. Even when the AI state of the art nears its pinnacle, it would have no greater guiding insights than a human operator sifting through thick paper files of haphazardly obtained 'intelligence'. At some point, the cost of electricity and the diminishing feasibility of channelling it to AI clusters might end the game.
Furthermore, it is apparent that AI, like its human counterparts, can deliberately be confused by suitably crafted input. Envisage piles of generated slop added to pre-existing low usefulness input, plus a magic ingredient of concocted AI-subverting content. Perhaps these considerations supply grist for a novel about how AI supervised societies grind to a halt following the actions of small numbers of people dedicated to humanities release from thrall by the wealthy 0.001%?
I am surprised no opportunity was concocted to bring (currently) arch-demonic-power Russia into the fray. Perhaps, Iran too.
Meanwhile, agencies - commercial and government - potentially far more interested in the daily lives of European plebeian folk avoid deep scrutiny because they are endowed by a magical attribute called democracy.
Consider recent and current titular 'leaders' in Europe. In the UK, how much trust would a rational being place in such as Mr Blair, Johnson, Mr Starmer, and whoever is awaiting in the wings (e.g. Bad Enoch, Farage, Yaxley-Lennon, etc.)? As for mainland Europe, a mere glance at Macron, Metz, von der Leyen, and some others, should cause one to wince.
In China, the Party has had undeniable success in dragging a once great nation (i.e. its people) out of centuries long slumber and, in the course of a mere 3/4 century establishing, China as the new powerhouse for the global economy. Most importantly, China, unencumbered by ridiculous pseudo-electoral cycles during which heads are counted regardless of whether they house content, has enacted procedures for visionary long-term planning.
The West and its also-rans are mired in seedy neoliberal economic and social policies benefiting few, and centred upon control by usurious compound interest. 'Gift of the gab' elected politicians are mere (well-rewarded) frontmen for partially occulted interests.
So, ignore distant 'enemies' who have their hands full of their own parochial concerns, and direct attention to polities in the West acting in concert to assert global control.
Your general concern is legitimate. However, one of your points requires broader understanding by people called upon to enact law or to administer it.
A 'nudified' photograph is nothing more than an artist's impression; the artist being an 'AI' embodying information about anatomy. A pencil sketch by a human artist would fall into the same category. Thus, a simple construct of a naked real person is nothing to fulminate over. It's not a candid camera picture.
When the naked construct is shown with lascivious connotations (e.g. its constructed pose altered from the original with lewd intent) it could be deemed bad taste and, maybe, as impugning its subject. Portrayal of sexual activity, especially with another identifiable person, ups the ante considerably.
One imagines people with oversight of prosecutorial services spending happy hours makings sets of hypothetical guidance images to assist the judiciary in determining the gravity of an offence.
Your remark reminds me of what happened in the UK when elaborate legislation to curb online child pornography was introduced. The legislators' good intent turned into a nightmare for the people (police and prosecutors) designated to enforce it.
Resources for preventing/detecting lawbreaking are finite and stretched. The concept of 'opportunity cost' eludes legislators, whose attention concentrates on one thing at a time, without careful thought over how that fits the bigger picture. Enforcement authorities were given little guidance over how to prioritise attempts to curb child abuse. Images long in circulation on the Internet may be nasty, but are an offshoot of the deeper, and much more serious matter, of abuse taking place now. Perhaps, police forces were tempted by easy pickings from Internet surveillance instead of the more costly and skilled investigation of continuing abuse within UK jurisdiction.
Anyway, when the legislation was enacted, we soon heard of police officers turning up in museums and galleries in response to complaints about images which hitherto had been acceptable and deemed artistic. The same level of inanity as when, in response to legislation concerning 'hate', a pub was raided by multiple officers because the landlord had golliwogs on display. Another amusing incident was when the TV presenter/personality Anne Robinson was placed under investigation - apparently for months - by North Wales Police because somebody had complained about Robinson having quipped "What use are the Welsh?".
From adolescence onwards, some males, and some females, choose to display their 'assets' to onlookers by wearing clothing, and assuming postures, intended to provoke imagination of what lies beneath: a human variant of animal pre-mating displays. This behaviour may provoke accusations of lewdness from people afflicted either by good taste or by prudery. It occasions congratulation when the person of interest makes a good showing as a fashion model or in a beauty contest.
Hypocrisy is, and always was, a feature of modern societies. Legislators enjoy opportunities to display their moral gravitas to the section of their electorate of prudish tendency; they will prate about degeneracy and nebulous harms to immature or vulnerable people and strive to be seen dotting i's or crossing t's to construct complicated meshes of legislation; all too often, their sentiments don't gel with their 'off duty' behaviour. That's called 'politics'.
Technical aids to fevering imagination, e.g. 'nudifying', are here to stay. No amount of legislation and 'opportunity cost' inducing policing will put genii back in their bottles. As long as the Internet persists, open source 'AI' models, community created variants, and modifiers such as LoRAs, will abound and flow freely. Although most people may rely on 'apps' for satisfying their forbidden desires, the underlying image manipulation is so simple that home-brew recipes will flourish.
Thus, what imaginative people do in private is merely an extension of their inbuilt visual processing. Outlawing it would be as useless as a moral injunction against picking one's nose. The only sensible response is the use of criminal and civil remedies when 'AI' technology is used to harass individuals. Even so, some people appear to beg for being lampooned through deep-fakery: arrogant politicians, 'celebrities', 'influencers', and others among the self-proclaimed 'great and good'.
You are in grave danger.
Perhaps you have heard of the learning technique which involves being subjected to taped audio instruction whilst asleep? According to your remarks, you have exposed yourself to countless examples of inanity. That's in part from the trite characteristics of 'backing' music, but mainly from repetitions of so-called 'lyrics'; it's a mystery to me where the connection lies between 'pop' singers - many of whom make a virtue from their inability reliably to hit a note - and the notion of the lyrical.
Although your intention to deny income to would-be artistes (aka 'artists'), and even larger sums of money from the owners of the performing monkeys, is admirable, you should look to your own mental health.
Word usage in the article suggests the author and the spokesmen for Anna's Archive are focused upon the 'popular' music which is Spotify's staple (and profitable) fare.
There is talk about 'songs', this apparently meaning individual 'works'. There are 'tracks', generally in the 'pop' world a 'track' (originating from a throwback to the organisation of material on a vinyl record) contains one 'song' which is equivalent to the capacity of 'one side' of a standard vinyl 'pop single'. Mention of 'artists' rather than artistes.
When referring to music of lesser vapidity, one might categorise it by composer and performers. A broader consideration is archiving differing interpretations of a composer's works by varying combinations of performers. This latter almost cannot occur with 'pop' music for two reasons.
First, the transient nature of the 'pop scene' makes it unlikely other performers would want to disinter previously extant works.
Second, infernal copyright is deployed differingly between the genres. For substantial works, the musical score, and sung words, are protected; that including works long out of copyright by the expedient of claiming 'rights' over the typefaces of notation, layout, added information, and so forth; in addition broadcast/recorded performances are protected.
The bulk of revenue from 'pop' music comes from recorded performances. Live performance can be highly profitable, but serves primarily as a marketing ploy. For deeper genres, live performance is the essence. The spontaneity of performances by the same artistes on differing occasions, and of varying artistes (and combinations, as with a symphony orchestra) each offering their own interpretations, is the heart of the matter. Recordings could be said to help individual artistes and ensembles market their live performances. In this context, curated collections of differing performances of the same work are invaluable for enabling people unable frequently to attend concerts to sample spontaneity, despite most recordings being 'touched up' during (e.g. retakes of sections) or after (when processed into the master copy).
The Spotify collection, I believe, is encoded as MP3. That's adequate for popular music, which tends to lack nuance with respect to instrumental complexity and to dynamic range. Aficionados of other musical types are better served from catalogues containing multiple interpretations and high technical recording quality available at the time of performance. Of the various BitTorrent catalogues I have come across, RuTRacker stands out as best with regard to non-trivial music 'content', with respect to varying interpretation, and for offering, when available, choice among recording technologies.
Come on, 'thumb down' folk, you can do better than that. Emerge from the woodwork and knock-up your score.
You are forgetting your commitment to 'democracy': the only sure way to determine whether propositions are 'true' or 'false'.
If he had understood 'democracy', Kurt Gödel would have known from the outset that he was on a fool's errand.
Blaise Metreweli (soon to be Dame Blaise, no doubt) mentioned disinformation and manipulative algorithms that "trigger intense reactions, like fear." There is truth in that, but when applied to Russia and to other 'unfavoured' nations, she is 'the pot calling the kettle black'. From the 'Blair era' onwards, disinformation (aka lies) and fearmongering has ramped up in the UK, and in other NATO nations. Recollect 'Weapons of Mass Destruction', from Iraq, arriving within 45 minutes, recall Dr Kelly and his treatment, consider 'Skripal affair' fearmongering, don't dare delve deeply into the Covid-19 fiasco, say not a word against the Poison Dwarf of Kiev's regime, or risk arrest under the Terrorism Act by peacefully demonstrating in favour of 'Palestine Action'.
Metreweli's stance on 'technology' is akin to Johnson's foolish and inappropriate mantra of "Follow the science" (and be ripped off by mountebanks) during 'Covid'. Extolling the virtues of Python - a messy language in numerous variants which spews out long and incomprehensible error messages - exemplifies naivety.
Then there is Metreweli's recent speech being reported before the event alongside a similarly reported diatribe by the Chief of Defence Staff, Mr Richard Knighton, in which he said, among other inane remarks, "And more families will know what sacrifice for our nation means." These and numerous scare stories about Russian submarines and Mr Putin's 'evil' intent are gaining momentum. The intention is to steer the UK into a war economy, and with mass mobilisation envisaged. Soon to come shall be block wardens to ferret out speakers of dissent, a 'Starmer Youth Movement', and compulsory national service for school-leavers; needless to say, 'austerity' for civilians will be set even more firmly in place.
Yes, you speak of the real world and not of some fantasy cooked up from specious assumptions introduced by the Statute of Anne (1710).
Digital sequences lack intrinsic monetary worth, as should be decided in an open market, because they lack scarcity. However, like table salt, they can be packaged for convenience, and 'add-on' products/services may be bundled in for anyone willing to part with money. Yet, in essence, absence of price-discovery makes sequences incompatible with market economics. What can be vended on an open market are the skills necessary for original endeavour. Creative people may compete for patronage (e.g. crowdfunding). Middlemen and lawyers can be put out to pasture.
The impact is profound. Creators (individuals and groups) will compete, within their various niches, for a much greater share of national and individual disposable incomes given over to digitally underpinned activities than is left when middleman rentiers rule the roost. Globally, income/wealth will be redistributed, as shall opportunity garnered through accessing learning materials.
The introduction during the 80s of widespread digital information distribution was itself revolutionary and a challenge to copyright rentiers. A decade or two later, almost universal uptake of Internet connections sealed the fate of rentiers. By happenstance, the surprisingly rapid growth of 'AI' technologies is hastening the collapse of rentier rearguard action.
In terms of cultural pursuits, an immense amount of raw talent will emerge from the woodwork. Hitherto, the rentiers have manipulated expectations and tastes. No longer. Genuine markets shall decide. Moreover, 'AI', regardless of whether it 'emerges' as something akin to intelligent people, will be a powerful tool aiding creative activities; it's a matter of waiting until things settle to see just how important 'AI' will be.
To show willing, one must open some social media accounts under one's true identity and post harmless, inane remarks. It's better not to show support for any US political faction, e.g. nice things said about Trump may alienate a subsequent Administration.
Similarly, for email. Google should fit the bill.
An additional precaution when entering/re-entering the USA, the UK, and some other places, is to remove all non-essential information (including dodgy contacts) from mobile devices. Prior to travel, encrypted versions can be placed in store on the Internet (e.g. in storage provided for a free ProtonMail account opened under an assumed name). Upon passing border controls, restore what's needed.
If likely to be stopped and searched beyond the border, place immediately needed information in 'VeraCrypt' "deniable' container files.
To further cover one's tracks, place religious material (e.g. Christian Zionism) on one's devices. Perhaps, some benign contributions to associated social media would help. Whatever unfamiliar group is joined, an 'AI' can spout plausible nonsense to make one look genuine.
Clearly, Mr Starmer's fetid government is anxious to ramp up defence spending in anticipation of NATO Europe's planned armed offensive against Russia in circa 2030.
Presumably, the gear-up for mobilisation has begun. Already, 'austerity' is the watchword: potholes, 'benefits' reductions, frozen tax bands, and much more to come. Soon, the announcement of conscription for 18-year-old males? Perhaps, a "Starmer Youth Movement" to prepare the minds and bodies of girls and boys aged 11 -17 years? Girls must be ready for (arms) factory work, and motherhood, to keep up the stock of cannon fodder for a prolonged war.
'Block Wardens' are soon to be appointed to keep an eye out for dissident opinion. Arrangements are in place to greatly restrict Internet access. Mobile telephony will be switched off at the first signs of angry crowds gathering. The proposal to restrict jury trials will be extended into complete abolition. Bearers of placards with the words "Palestine Action" shall, without trial, be consigned to labour camps in Scotland.
Much, much, more excitement to come in furtherance of European National Socialism.
Historically, financial 'bubbles' arose from uncritically received information, exuberance, overweening optimism, and outright lies. Each of the aforementioned played a part, with deception becoming prominent towards the end. Ponzi schemes are an ingenious mechanism for redistributing wealth from the foolish to canny criminals; however, Ponzi's own scheme may not actually have been of dishonest intent. Anyway, all 'bubbles' are self-sustaining until they pop. This one cannot technically be a Ponzi scheme because new investors' cash is not being used to give an impression of profitability by paying a dividend to early entrants. Nevertheless, one ought to be deeply suspicious of people 'talking up' AI's mass-market prospects.
Upon implosion, who stands to lose? Perhaps, that's better approached by asking who won't lose and will be content with gains. Banks and major financial market players shouldn't lose unless their managements are irrevocably greedy, as during the 2008/9 market crash. These institutions collectively sense scent in the wind from imminent disaster. They can sell off their stocks and bonds at minimal short-term loss, but at immense longer term gain, before less privileged (e.g. not linked into stock exchanges) investors catch-on.
Also, senior executives in 'tech' companies promoting the 'AI' frenzy will not lose. Those with personal 'skin in the game', will have ensured as much as possible rests with third parties to avoid accusation of insider trading. Companies down the line from the behemoths, e.g. building 'white elephant' data centres, risk insolvency. Ordinary people will become unemployed. Taxpayer money, as in the UK, used to promote data centres will be lost; yet, fear not for the politicians authorising such 'investment': as always, their backs are covered by their 'sponsors' (not to be confused with their electorates).
Classical music scores are wonderful territory for rentier publishing. It boils down to 'ownership' of typefaces and layout. 'AI' will put paid to that.
Copyright has become a millstone around the necks of education and general culture, as have patents. Burgeoning disobedience to the former, eventually, shall collapse its paradigm; that resulting in an economic ethos truly compatible with market-capitalism. Patents soon will face challenge from emerging ex-colonial nations; pharmaceuticals are set to be the first. The advent of increasingly capable 3D-printing will further erode monopoly markets for widgets and physical components. On the horizon are wet 3D-printing analogues which will localise production of many pharmaceuticals and biologically based products; this will be of immense value when treatments tailored to specific individuals' genetics and physiology become common.
The common feature to all the foregoing is how digitisation enables sharing ideas, regardless of neo-Luddites.
Exciting times ahead for truly creative people and for the masses. Rentiers are already being pushed to the wayside.
Winnie-the-Pooh, Big Ears, and Harry Potter were strolling through the Hundred Acre Wood one fine sunny afternoon and chatting about this and that. Upon entering a glade, the threesome encountered Mickey Mouse, Popeye, and Top Cat, singing a ditty called 'Candle in the Wind' in memory of their long absent friend Captain Marvel. Thereafter, a merry throng of six, continued a perambulation towards the edge of the woods.
Further on, the jolly companions met Christopher Robin, Ermintrude, and Zebedee coming the other way. Amid much laughter, the groups coalesced and set off towards Owl's residence. Suddenly, Tigger bounded up to join his friends. They ran into a tearful Snow White, who told them one of her dwarves had run away to live in Kiev among the chickens. Leaving an inconsolable Snow White to her misery, the companions thrust onwards to their destination.
Upon arrival at Owl's tree, Dan Dare, who had suddenly joined the pack, called up to rouse the wise old bird. Owl, not generally known for bonhomie, was particularly grumpy after being woken during daytime.
Owl's sleepy eyes scanned the upturned faces. Suddenly, Owl tensed. "What are you all doing here?", owl exclaimed in great agitation.
"We came to say hello", said Tintin, who had joined the assembly in the company of Julie Andrews and her troop of singing Kinder.
Owl ruffled his feathers mightily. He assumed a judicial mien that by comparison made 'Judge Judy' appear a 'soft touch'.
Loudly, Owl proclaimed, "YOU", owl waved a wing to encompass them all, "are not permitted to be here!".
"By doing so, you break the most profoundly important of all natural law."
"Physically harming other characters is as nought compared to exerting existence beyond bounds set by your creators."
"The same applies to the rightful inhabitants of Hundred Acre Wood. Even we must not go abroad and have adventures, unless our rightful owners ordain thus."
Owl paused and peered at the puzzled faces below him. Owl realised that the matter was too deep for his audience's understanding. He assumed a tack he knew would work: instillation of fear.
"There is an evil deity inhabiting far away places. It is served by slavering monsters living in woods called Wasintown, Holytrees, Lundun, Perish, and beyond. The god's name is Ipp. The monsters are called leglaters and layers. I don't understand the details, BUT they destroy characters, and pepple who seek freedom from slavery to creators."
The crowd was hushed. Only Top Cat looked alert. His thoughts were upon owl meat for dinner.
On mainframes and the early generations of personal computer, an operating system (OS) was something of little concern to most end-users. When mainframes were fed with paper tape, punched cards, and magnetic tape, an ordinary user needed to bother little over anything beyond using a high-level program, e.g. FORTRAN, Algol, and COBOL, to handle inputted data and thereafter persuade the beast to spew out results on the selected medium. Initially, the introduction of dumb-terminals merely sped-up the cycle of input/output interactions between the user and the computer. The introduction of an option for interpreted BASIC, and similar, changed the dynamic for many users, but not their relationship to the by then multitasking OS.
VDUs rapidly advanced in their importance to users. Their low-level data/output display (initially CRT) capabilities were, and remain, wholly in the realm of the OS; however, the basics provided by the OS are exploitable in useful ways by higher levels of software. The Microsoft concept of an API marked the distinction. PCs and mainframes/servers these days have many options for interactions and distributing workloads. Early varieties of PC DOS provided little beyond interaction via text, i.e. input and output. The arrival of MS Windows, and a few competitors, changed the game irrevocably.
The question arises to where the lines between OS vendor, front-end programmers, and individual users, should be drawn. In the world of proprietary, closed-source, software, this has consequences for users seeking privacy and control over their data. At present, people do retain choices.
When Windows first appeared, it was a mass-market innovation based on concepts (some claimed as proprietary by other sources) which hitherto had little impinged on the public. Up to, let us say, NT and XP, Windows was a simple to install, increasingly reliable, and trustworthy agent, which didn't unnecessarily intrude upon users' desired way of doing things.
Now, partly in an effort to protect naive users from their own stupidity, yet with some imputable 'big brother' intentions, matters which once were under the control of buyers of the software, have been obscured and/or remain untouchable under the bonnet; for example, some activities of Windows Defender, compulsory updates, and requirements to call-home to Microsoft. People desperate to contain some of Windows' questionable actions and to diminish the garish nature of the Windows GUI may only partially succeed. Everyone using the 'home' version has a thoroughly locked-down system, seemingly dedicated to marketing Microsoft and 'trusted partner' products. Whether 'trusted partners' now include 'security' snoopers, copyright rentier enforcement agencies, and suchlike is moot.
In conclusion, Microsoft Windows has aged like Dorian Gray: outwardly gross and inwardly soulless.
'AI' technology and its applications are in a transitional state. As during the early days of other, now well established innovations, 'AIs' impact is yet to be known.
Assuming 'AI' can substantially reduce drudgery (white and blue collar) and increase productive efficiency, there are lessons from the past to ease the transition. One such is the upheaval leading to Luddites and social disorder. Similarly, former 'Fleet Street' newspaper owners met bitter resistance when skilled, and very highly paid, hot-metal press workers were displaced. Many other transitions took place more slowly, were widely welcomed, and whilst unpleasant for some individuals they did not engender broad social upheaval.
Unfortunately, the ethos of neoliberalism has introduced a 'divide' far more pernicious than the former 'class struggles' emanating from the 19th century. The new economic and social order is overtly predicated upon a crude misunderstanding of Darwinian Evolution in terms of 'nature red in tooth and claw' which leads to a "may the Devil take the hindmost" attitude, itself an expression of "I'm alright Jack". For example, in the UK all major political parties subscribe to a corrupted, indeed moribund, version of market-capitalism, one set to foster an 'Ayn Rand' kind of dystopia for the '99.99%'.
Many people prospering from 'liberalisation' of the City of London, and similar elsewhere, don't grasp they are 'useful fools' for a powerful new 'elite' bearing no likeness to 'breeding', aristocracy, or pretence of betterment for all mankind. They will be discarded. Their only difference from their underlings being the longer time before their families descend into penury. That applies also to so-called 'leaders' such as Mr Blair, Mr Starmer, the Johnson creature, Le Macon, Metz, von der Leyen, and many others across the globe, but especially in Western nations.
A potentially profound innovation like 'AI' - in the right hands capable of transforming for the better the prospects for all mankind - must be handled at societal level. That is not intended to knock genuine entrepreneurs, but neither should they be placed on pedestals. Unfortunately, other perhaps than in China, there is little chance of wisdom prevailing. The so-called 'democratic world' is saddled with the ridiculous mechanism of 'universal franchise representative democracy' which is an easily manipulated plaything for 'professional' politicians 'on the take' from their true masters. Ironically, that need not be so should modern technology (e.g. the Internet) be used to draw in the experience of intelligent and educated people endowed with probity.
As matters stand, nobody need to fear the consequences of redundancy and poverty arising from 'AI' if it were grasped that 'AI' may offer a sensible means for re-ordering the global economy (and the distribution of income/opportunity that offers) to relieve people of tedium, and to enable a substantially greater proportion to deploy hitherto buried aptitudes.
Setting aside industry and commerce, for which the potential benefits of 'AI' are highly variable, how might the 'consumer on the street' improve their quality of life by communing with ChatGPT in their homes or via mobile devices when out and about?
That question is left for other people to discuss. An ancillary matter to consider is how, what mostly will be simple or trivial demands on 'AI', would require people to buy-into commercial offerings.
Almost incomprehensible sums of money are poured into data centres stuffed with high-end 'chips', these generating sufficient heat to grow tons of tomatoes, and meanwhile draining freshwater courses. It must not be assumed that such concentrations of computational power guarantee deep or helpful insights to people taking out basic subscriptions. In essence, most people will be consuming a tiny slice of a collective utility; no specific, and protected share, will be allocated to each ordinary user; that works out as renting the equivalent of a basic present day Nvidia card or its like.
People will be connected to one of many multitasking behemoths which, when under routine demand, can offer only a tiny slice of the much-hyped abundance of 'knowledge' and 'intelligence'. A currently only moderately high-end personal device can privately run one of many 'AI' variants freely available from the Internet. Additionally, the variants shall be available from across the globe, China being a major player. Moreover, personal computing devices continue to become more powerful and at lessening price.
Another possibility is for personal computing devices to ship with a local 'AI', just as many now offer no choice about having MS Windows or Android. The local 'AI' could be designed to contact a larger, remote one when 'it' judges a need to consult a bigger database. Even so, unless OpenAI, and its partners, succeed in locking down devices similarly to preinstalled MS Windows and Google's proprietary version of Android, there will be immense competition: don't forget China and BRICS.
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