Posts by Long John Silver 337 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2018
Shouldn't teenagers capable of running rings around complacent corporate and government agencies be sent to a 'boot camp' wherein they receive intellectual stimulus and are enabled to hone their skills for constructive uses? Of course, in a nation run by unimaginative people, that will never happen. Instead, unrelenting application of legal 'due process' will stultify the youth's potential and deny the community an asset.
Whilst sharing the concerns of others about how modern computer-based technologies can facilitate surveillance, and control, of individuals, I have discovered some recently (last decade or so) introduced facilities I would rather not do without.
Regarding surveillance risk, I don't draw a distinction between AI and other potential sources of information leakage. Any software on my devices that periodically 'calls home' to its vendor/distributor, or elsewhere, requires a cautious approach. An obvious example, one which I avoid, is Microsoft Windows. Also, caution is required when using commercial (e.g. Google) incarnations of Android.
That said, I am amazed by how quickly written language translation has advanced. It is freely available, easily invoked, rapid, and, as back-translation suggests, accurate. It enables ready access to web pages from across the globe. No longer am I reliant upon English and a smattering of French. Nowadays, I can read and, to some degree, write, in Spanish, German, Russian, Farsi, Chinese (various), etc. Perhaps, one day, there will be a version enabling translation of American English, and other bizarre variants, into Received Standard English.
Another useful tool is a Firefox add-on which does a good job of checking spelling, grammar, and style. This definitely refers to an external AI. Also, it offers subscription to enhanced features, of which I have no need. Perhaps my refusal to adopt some of its suggestions contributes to the AI's education.
If I were paranoid, I would eschew even the aforementioned aids. However, I almost certainly am known to GCHQ and to the NSA. From time to time, I offer the former some amusement (American agencies don't do humour); should I desire, which at present I don't, to engage in activities very troubling to the 'deep state' (the ruling cabal within the Privy Council), I can give them a run for their money.
Владимир, когда ты пересечешь Ла-Манш, у меня будет запас водки, чтобы выпить за твое здоровье.
The outage in a British school is an inconvenience. However, aren't present day teachers capable of extemporising? Can't they work around their problem? Even should lessons planned for the next few days be reliant upon computer technology, teachers ought to be able to hold classes on interesting topics, else elaborate upon matters already taught, with reliance only upon blackboards/whiteboards. Also, written work in class can be issued and later discussed. Presumably, schools still retain libraries with a core stock of printed books.
Thus far, discussants of this topic express displeasure over Microsoft's decision. Some mention ditching Windows in favour of Linux, in my opinion a good choice. However, few individuals, other than in their home settings, have counter-options available. They must live with the consequences of decisions by IT managers or by those to whom these managers are accountable. Grumbling is predictable, but most organisations will knuckle-down.
Clever marketing stratagems have bestowed near-monopoly status upon Microsoft. Corporate, government, and other major customers are locked in. Special deals for educational establishments almost guarantee the influx of job applicants for positions high and low demanding access to software with which they are familiar; wow betide employers which seek to go against the flow.
Home users are another major market. Their children are being taught the Microsoft way of doing things. Also, few adults have the motivation and the means to make the break.
I am convinced that shadowy figures in the WEF - a grandly named autonomous pressure group - fully support Microsoft's dominance. Microsoft's operating system has evolved towards an ideal means for surveillance and control. Users, particularly those with the bottom-end Windows products - these almost universally bundled in with new microcomputers at a hidden cost of £200 per customer - have limited access to the deeper options determining Windows configuration and behaviour. Already an advertisement pushing platform, Windows has means to monitor customer usage and report back to Microsoft, and peremptorily to delete installed software. An ideal setup in which to insinuate security agencies and interventions by copyright rentiers: all, of course, for the sake of the children.
Whether this realisable prospect was planned by Microsoft executives or is happenstance, is irrelevant. On a plate is offered a powerful tool for conspirators towards the 'new world order' consolidating their position. Even the idea that individuals will cease owning anything is anticipated by Microsoft's adoption of rental via subscription.
1. The BBC
I use the BBC website to gain an impression of current British concerns, fantasies, and of trivia filling vacuous minds. As a news source, it is dire, but far superior to commercial offerings. Some discussion pieces are excellent. The BBC publishes far fewer reader comments than before NATO hubris and Covid-19 hit the scene; topics upon which response is permitted are restricted to the bland, i.e. matters irrelevant to the grand Western narratives we are expected to parrot by heart. Comments posted to the BBC site are subjected to strict censorship should they stray into 'narratives'. Only a marker of their existence is offered; however, the BBC sends a standard email to the author mentioning breach of conditions; it does offer to consider objections.
Although the BBC has declined from its postwar heyday, its non-news output, particularly that directed towards 'high culture' remains good. I get the impression that the BBC retains many programme producers of notable calibre; regardless of their individual political views and social values, I posit there being considerable anxiety over persistent government interference and imposition of 'narratives'. Recent governments (going back to Mrs Thatcher), Conservative and Labour alike, nowadays, each of Neo-Liberal outlook, hold the threat of privatisation over the BBC: that would be a disaster.
2. Independent broadcasters
Long ago I ceased all contact with these. They are lowest-common-denominator outlets intent upon maximising advertising revenue. I avoid being subjected to advertisements. That entails ignoring these sources of news and 'entertainment'. Also, the WWW would be out of bounds were it not for blocking software; for instance YouTube, if not subjected to 'home censorship', would be too much of a nightmare. Incidentally, 'FreeTube' for Linux does an excellent job of weeding out crap; similar utilities exist for Android and can be accessed via the free F-Droid application.
3. Print and online news vendors
Up until the current era of thought control, the Daily Telegraph did a sterling job with respect to news integrity and commentary. Also, the online community of comment-making subscribers was lively. Only the most egregiously distasteful remarks were deleted. Moreover, a couple of decades ago, the Telegraph provided a now abandoned, WordPress blog platform which was a forerunner of Disqus, and many similar.
Gradually, the online Telegraph descended into a tacky purveyor of goods for readers. In parallel, it commissioned frothy 'life-style' pieces from second-rate writers. Nowadays, the Telegraph appears to have taken on the rôle of official spokes-organ for the Ministry of Defence and NATO.
The Telegraph lost all claim to integrity when it began shadow-banning online subscriber comments. This seems to have been effected via the Canadian company the Telegraph uses to manage the online comment system. Shadow-banning is the most dishonest tool for censorship yet devised. Paying subscribers are misled into thinking their comment was published; that is misrepresentation and dishonestly accepting money under false pretences. I have a series of screenshots proving my assertions.
Once upon a time I dabbled with the Guardian. Before the most recent Editor took office, there were some interesting writers. Comment moderation was prissy, but one could get around obstacles by deploying irony. It was quite fun trying to best 'politically correct' moderators. It seems a general phenomenon that people who take themselves very seriously are so blinkered they cannot recognise irony (the brighter twin of sarcasm). Also, Americans don't do irony. My greatest success was a comment on an article about so-called 'Travellers'.
4. Alternative sources of news and opinion
To override BBC news trivia and its adherence to government diktat, I daily visit RT (formerly 'Russia Today'), and sometimes dip into Al Jazeera. RT is an excellent source of international news, and of informed opinion (writers drawn from many places). RT offers excellent documentary films and discussion 'shows'. Also, RT provides a more or less 'free for all' reader comment system hosted by Tolstoy Comments. Although lambasted by Western interests, I believe RT to have sound editorial policies, refreshingly so.
During WW2, no attempt was made in the UK to prevent people listening on the radio to German propaganda. In fact, the broadcaster, an Irishman named William Joyce, colloquially 'Lord Haw-Haw', was a great hit, but not in the manner expected by the Reich. Joyce, not a British citizen, was subjected to a gross postwar miscarriage of justice: hanged by the British. RT is forbidden to broadcast in NATO nations. Its online platform is blocked in the UK and throughout Western Europe. One has to resort to a VPN or a mirror site. Ironically, RT cannot be blocked, as yet, in the USA because that would breach the Constitution; therefore a VPN masquerading as originating in the USA makes a reliable connection.
If one seeks honest reportage on events in Israel, RT is one of several places to go. RT is also forthcoming over NATO's proxy war in Ukraine. However, for a detailed day by day account of the battles I recommend a Rumble channel called 'Military Summary' which has no affiliation with nations participating in the fighting.
Is AI akin to a pulsing brain in a jar of fluid, as sometimes depicted in Sci-fi B-movies from many decades ago: outwardly impressive, scary, and, unless thwarted, destined to rule the world?
In reality, AI is each of mundane and exciting: as determined from one's perspective.
I suggest that the strengths and weaknesses of AI are most easily grasped by comparison with a much simpler tool of empirical modelling, which remains in wide use. I refer to multiple linear regression, this is an extension of the simple linear regression dating back to at least the 19th century. The advent of increasingly easy means to do arithmetic led to multiple linear regression's use (and misuse) in many academic disciplines, and in commerce.
In essence, from a set of data representing numbers and categories a 'best fitting' linear combination of the recorded variables ('independent variables') as predictors of a variable of particular interest ('dependent variable') is obtained. 'Fit' is commonly decided using 'least squares'.
An example is studying the relationship between the onset of dementia (independent variable) and hypothesised predictive (or potentially 'confounding') variables such as age, sex, educational attainment level, occupationally defined social class, and categories of ethnicity. This study may have the intent of elucidating causal relationships. In the hands of a competent researcher, various combinations of independent variables (perhaps interactions among them too) will be explored; the selection of the final model from which inferences will be drawn is not delegated to the encompassing software.
Alternatively, motivation for the study may be to inform decisions over the allocation of health and social care services to populations of varying structures. Utility of this model depends upon faith in its overall ability to predict need for financing services: insight regarding causal relationships of particular independent variables to the outcome is not sought.
Key points for consideration when comparison to AI is made are as follows.
1. For either motivation for study, variables of plausible relevance are decided by the investigators. Depending upon the reason for a study, values of variables can be sought either from routinely collected aggregate sets of data, or by interrogating individuals drawn from the population by random sampling.
2. Depending upon the face-validity and how well the gathered data represent the 'population of data' from which they are drawn, the influence of chance upon the magnitudes of resulting model coefficients may be adduced e.g. constructing confidence intervals.
3. Model coefficients are weights attached to the independent variables. This is explicitly so when the variables are standardised to a common scale.
4. Correlation and regression techniques cannot establish causal relationships. Carefully conducted, these may suggest patterns worthy of further investigation by appropriate study designs.
5. Studies intending to identify the possibility, and magnitude, of causal relationships take place within a theoretical context adopted by the researchers.
6. The calculations made by regression analysis software are simple to understand, and for a given set of data exactly reproducible.
AI technology is problematic in the following respects.
1. At present, it is hard (impossible?) to make an AI produce its chain of reasoning other than when drawing abstract logical and mathematical inferences according to a predefined calculus. In fact, special purpose software, for running in the conventional manner, appears able to achieve the same.
2. Current AI configurations don't discriminate on the basis of the provenance of information used to determine their internal model weightings.
3. Related to the above-mentioned, AI 'training' based upon general Internet 'content', and throwing in books, and music, lacks rationale beyond 'the more, the better'. Training differs greatly from mentored instruction provided to children; AIs do not mimic curiosity, neither does training for a general purpose, rather than covering a specific domain of knowledge/application, involve human judgement over the relative merits of information sources. 'Rubbish in, rubbish out' is an apt description.
4. Just as naively used regression analysis produces nonsense, so does AI. For example, university students across a range of disciplines are shown how to use statistical software packages such as SPSS; these resources are well-constructed, and invaluable in the right hands; however, an inadequately taught or supervised student may choose inappropriate analysis options, and may place undue emphasis on particular resulting statistics e.g. significance tests. These failings are identifiable by competent instructors: the nature of faulty decisions is evident. Wrongness emanating from an AI will remain opaque unless the AI's assertions are contradicted by its interlocutor's prior knowledge. How the AI strayed from reasonable summation of knowledge and deductions therefrom may never be known.
Despite grounds for strong reservations, AI technology is amazing and may offer much more in the right hands. Its capacity for interacting using human language is truly impressive, this despite reservations, exemplified in the paper quoted from in the Register report, over what epistemological status AI merits.
AI appears to complement and advance pre-existing techniques for image manipulation. Swathes of activity by business (e.g. film making) look set for fascinating development.
The 'hype', misunderstanding, and potential for nefarious purposes, already is evident, but that can be true for any innovation.
The first operating system (OS) encountered by most individuals is Windows. That's inevitable given Windows' ubiquity in schools, colleges, and workplaces. Home users, educational establishments, government agencies, and businesses, are cleverly locked-in by Microsoft's marketing strategy. Few users explore alternatives to Windows.
Disregarding Android, some alternative OSes are inherently more secure against intrusion, but their main advantages rest upon their, relatively to Windows, small user bases. Home users of Windows are particularly vulnerable because their connection to the Internet lacks mediation by a local server, with supporting staff, configured to filter out some threats and to ensure that individual workstations are properly set up.
For three reasons, it's not worth the bother of crooks (security services are a different consideration) trying to grab personal information from non-Windows home users. First, a paucity of such users. Second, the 'demographic' of that category most likely differs considerably from Windows users with respect to where, and how, on the Internet they might expose themselves to risk. Third, it's not worth the bother for crooks to learn the intricacies and particular modalities of vulnerability of multiple OSes when one suffices for their purposes.
The versions of Windows intended for home use are packed with garish gizmos and blandishments to buy products from Microsoft and its 'trusted partners'; updates and security fixes in need themselves of being 'fixed' soon after add to the joy of wandering through the jungle. Predatory beasts lying in wait to consume credit card details and blackmail materials add to the je ne sais quoi of the experience.
“The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away”– Job 1:21 (KJV). Unto virus eradicator vendors, He giveth prosperity. Everything balances in the end.
'AI', thus far, appears to lack deep understanding by its designers and operators of how its internal processes lead to particular results. 'AI' is a 'black box' for seeking connections among data slung at it during a so-called 'learning' process. Of itself, 'AI' has little, if any, ability to discriminate among its 'sources' with respect to their provenance and reliability. Its cobbled together responses appear impressive and authoritative because they are expressed in natural language, this last being the truly powerful part of the process.
'AI' development has much in common with, perhaps roots in, the specious 'large data' movement which, crudely put, assumes the bigger the haystack the more easily golden needles may be found.
Present moves towards enhancing 'AI' by increasing its capacity for storage and processing resonates with “Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width” [a 1967-71 British sitcom]. Until powers of discrimination are programmable, the best to do is employ human judgement in selecting the source of training data. That suggests reliable 'all singing, and all dancing' AI is a pipe dream until underlying processes of cognition are better understood. Present heuristic methods might produce more useful results when focussed during 'training' upon clearly defined areas of application; even so, moderation by subject specialists should be required.
Before LLMs arrived, information (e.g.text of a novel or of an instruction manual) could sit on a personal computer as a discrete entity of known storage requirement; similarly for numerical data represented as, for example, by spreadsheets. In effect, the computer serves as a static library of human-readable works. The choice of works, the Interpretation of individual works, and comparisons between works, remains the responsibility of the computer's operator. If the data are numerical, their interpretation may be aided by using a statistical analysis package; said package facilitates the selection and use of algorithms, but responsibility for these tools being appropriate to the task rests with their users.
The data upon which the LLM has been 'trained' were selected as being appropriate by the maker of the model. After that, even the maker is unable to explain details of the numerical structure of the model's data store or to show how the model constructs particular inferences. One becomes entirely reliant upon the capabilities of the software component linking the user to the data for trawling through the data when seeking patterns to which the user may attribute 'meaning'.
Viewed in that manner, LLMs, regardless of being housed by a single computer or a cluster, require several layers of 'faith' by the user regarding the validity of steps in the process. Cynically, this may be taken as the ultimate inanity flowing from the movement towards 'big data': the base level of silliness being the construction of enormous sets of data without prior thought about how each component could contribute to finding as yet unspecified nuggets of knowledge and understanding from within noise. This approach is contrary to the parsimony required for well-directed enquiry. Moreover, its beguiling nature offers the prospect of unwary users failing to grasp the distinction between correlation and causality; the latter accessible only via planned data collection within the context of an experimental design.
Encrypted communications periodically worry the mighty minds of legislators, The latest EU attempt to assert control is to require 'client side' pre-vetting of data before they are encrypted and sent on their way; this proposal has been placed on hold.
'Client side' surveillance of Internet communication and of activity on individual computational devices could be easy to introduce by modification of existing bundled utilities in MS Windows (Apple products too?) intended harmlessly to aid users. 'Windows Defender' (WD) detects and eradicates malware. It appears to reach deeply into the user's data. Also, WD seems not able to be permanently switched off by the user.
In addition, there are behind-the-scenes algorithms doing housekeeping tasks on users' stored data; these could be extended into noting the nature of the data. Windows 'calls home' regularly; that can be postponed, but not halted. Batches of security fixes, and enhancements arrive, so it is already established that MS, acting independently, has two-way communication with devices and, e.g. through WD, can change user introduced software.
There is no evidence supporting the idea that Microsoft, other than by the nature of its mode of doing business, behaves underhandedly. Yet the scope is enormous.
In principle, MS could report the presence of information proscribed, or indicative of suspicion, to government agencies. MS could contract with 'trusted partners' to enforce copyright; offending materials (e.g. audio) or software aiding its gathering can be blocked, deleted, and reported. DRM could be rigorously administered. Also, access to personal information could be used to further tighten the bond between advertisers and MS. The regular updates might contain freshly acquired hash codes identifying software and data of concern.
Extending state/commercial surveillance does not require an imposition upon device manufacturers, or upon users, to install crippled software. Given the blessing, the apparatus is already to hand, and covers a huge swathe of individual citizens, businesses, academia, and other entities. Those not in the net would be difficult to recruit anyway. Among them would be many anxious to preserve privacy. They must be targeted in a different manner.
One can take the vendor's word that it applies secure encryption to sensitive information, or not.
Without imputing malfeasant intent to Microsoft or any other vendor of operating systems, good sense dictates having every aspect of storage encryption under one's own control: the nature of the open source algorithm, and the desired level of security, this last traded against computational cost.
For many users, the default encryption mechanism may be adequate. However, the OS vendor should provide a hook enabling substitution of an alternative algorithm.
'AI' is but the latest technology to sow fear in the denizens of the copyright rentier luxury chicken coop.
Prowling foxes have had a cumulative effect by progressively diminishing the size of the coop in which supposed copyright can be protected. During my lifetime, home recording off-air or from a disc caused anxiety for purveyors of analogue recorded music. Worry increased when cassette players displaced bulky reel to reel tape recorders, and became ubiquitous. Identical concerns arose when analogue 'video content' could be home-recorded, or purveyed on the 'black market'. In the light of things to come, unstoppable erosion of 'rentier' markets was negligible: no worse than 'evaporation' of stock in a supermarket, and easily accommodated within a monopoly pricing regimen supported by giving an impression of the analogue products being desirable luxury goods expensive to produce.
Meanwhile, the increasingly cheap and very efficient photocopier was projected to cause mayhem for publishers of academic paper-based materials. Restrictions imposed, and supposedly enforced by librarians, were irksome nonsense involving filling in forms. These were circumvented whenever possible by use of less zealously guarded copiers located outside library confines. Librarians themselves were no more enthusiastic than their 'readers', but obliged to be seen to enforce the copyright nonsense because otherwise their institutions would be hammered by lawyers.
The introduction of digital formats for music, static images, video, and text, diminished the size of the 'coop' considerably. Initially, CDs and DVDs, were arcane technology, but soon the hugely expanded market for office and home computers, these equipped with read/write CD/DVD attachments, demonstrated the easy and perfect reproducibility of 'content' abstracted from digital media, plus the cheapness of storage media.
Although a considerable amount of material allegedly owned by the rentiers did escape into the wild, 'bottom lines' were not affected in the slightest. Purveyors of digitised 'content' had many means, these including creative accounting, for making up any difference (if it should actually exist).
The arrival of the Internet in most offices and homes changed the game considerably. Not only was academic and entertainment 'content' beginning to be free for all who knew where to look, but so also was computational software. Although the writing was on the wall — at least in small text — the industries involved chose to ignore it and to double down on their existing modes of business whilst pursuing legal remedies to protect their specious 'rights'. 'Catch a mole' became the game. Rentiers attempted to cast wide nets to entrap wicked people who objected to monopoly distortion of open markets. The industries attempted technological solutions (e.g. DVD encryption) which promptly were overturned.
Setting aside so-called 'AI', which is promising much fun, big battles at present are waged over unauthorised streaming of sports and of films from online purveyors such as the Premier League, Netflix, and HBO: IPTV is the name of that game. For example, in Italy, drastic measures have been taken to prevent the 'intellectual property' of football leagues leaking out through illegal vendors offering much lower prices (aka competition). A recent article in “TF” suggests these responses are doomed to fail. At present, 'content'; encrypted by means such as “Widevine” is intercepted and 'rebroadcast' not encrypted via the Internet for the benefit of subscribers to 'pirate' IPTV services. This mode of copyright circumvention is, in principle, defeated by a tight regimen of on-the-fly pirate-site blocking. Under pressure/persuasion from the Premier League, the next British government will introduce legislation similar to that in Italy.
However, according to the TF article, no longer is in-depth knowledge required for end-users of Pirate IPTV to instead arrange their own decryption. There is at least one online repository, seemingly immune to take-down, offering open source decryption tools suitable for this purpose. Anyone with access to a bright teenage boy can have this quickly set up. More feared by the rentiers, is the prospect of these tools being seamlessly incorporated into free IPTV agents, as on Kodi.
One's stance on the propriety of viewing arbitrarily priced digital 'content' either at reduced cost from an intermediary or directly for nothing at all, is irrelevant to how matters shall transpire. Law is being broken. It will be increasingly so. For large tracts of the planet, that is the most sensible option (e.g. textbooks for Africa, academic papers for India, and entertainment for the impecunious elsewhere). The fate of 'intellectual property' law is collapse; historically, that is the way all inherently unenforceable laws end. Whilst retained, the law fittingly is mocked. In this instance, copyright law is an unwieldy edifice of Byzantine complexity, and perhaps understood in its entirety by only a handful of people (c.f. Sherlock Holmes brother Mycroft and other people who understand the 'Balkan problem').
The challenge from AI — a technology not containable in all legal jurisdictions — may be the last stray. The chicken coop will collapse. Its occupants, and the supposedly 'creative' people on whom they feed, must find other means to raise income. Of course, the truly creative shall, as always they did in the past.
History is littered with examples of stupid legislation. A marked proportion of this must have been unenforceable, particularly when ordinary people refused to abide by it.
Naïve EU legislators may go along with the idea. It would get nowhere without active support by the EU Commission. One wonders where the true motivation of the Commissioners and of their sponsor countries lies: most likely in surveillance of dissident opinion and actions ensuing from it.
Let the legislation stand. Even should it be capable of implementation, the workarounds are numerous. Legislators and Commissioners are too ignorant or arrogant to notice the egg on their faces.
I decide for myself the level of trust to place in any particular gobbet of information,
Also, I strongly object to the notion that it is in my best interests not to be exposed to ideas contrary to those of 'authority'. Most of the people prating about 'disinformation' are from a Western political class for which I have low regard concerning its members' abilities beyond 'gift of the gab' and self-enrichment.
The article mentions Mr Putin. As it happens, I hold Messrs Putin and Lavrov in high regard. They speak with clarity. Their positions are consistent. Their stance on Ukraine and on other geopolitical matters makes sense. Other people may disagree, but the worth of their opinions is zero when they acquiesce to being denied an opportunity to encounter a contrarian viewpoint.
RT (formerly known as Russia Today) is Internet blocked from the UK, not that blocking thwarts access. Ironically, there is no Internet blocking from the USA because its Constitution forbids it. Being a regular visitor to RT (and to other unapproved outlets elsewhere) I am aware of a considerable amount of information of relevance to an informed person which in the UK is either ignored or comes across garbled from MSM.
The Russian Federation has a point of view. Doubtless, it is presented as strongly as possible. That may entail additional gloss. One must use judgement, but bear in mind that statements from NATO nation, and EU, 'leaderships' are inconsistent among persons and often over course of time for particular individuals. So-call 'misinformation', actually outright lies, has been promulgated by those sources.
The current position of NATO, via proxy war through Ukraine, vis a vis Russia (perhaps China too) is fraught. Respected US retired senior military officers (e.g. Col. Wilkerson) are openly (e.g. via YouTube and Rumble) fearing that the West is pushing for direct conflict with Russia, and this might be on the verge of going 'nuclear'.
People kept deliberately in ignorance of one side of the argument are in a similar position to civilians who foolishly allowed themselves to be sucked into WW1, an event a prudently led UK would have steered clear from. Within Europe there is talk by the self-proclaimed 'great and good' of moving economies onto a war footing; that is one step from conscription and mobilisation, and likely to require backing by proclamation of martial law. Cynically put, warfare is a get out from intractable economic difficulties, whereby 'sacrifice' is invoked to justify austerity for all other than the armaments industry and for feather-bedded politicians.
People in the UK, ask yourself why NATO, conflict in Ukraine, general foreign policy, and resultant defence policy don't figure at all during the supposed election 'debate' which consists of displaying attractive baubles intended to entice some or other sections of the electorate. Are those policies disconnected from other fundamental economic woes?
Mozilla, and other Internet dependent enterprise, can explore and proselytise any mode of advertising they like. However, my bottom line remains: I refuse to accept or view advertisements unless I am actively seeking a specific type of product or service. Thereby, I miss the prospect of 'an opportunity of a lifetime', a 'fantastic bargain in an unrepeatable offer', or the chance of being envied for purchasing and displaying 'designer' tat and bling such as grossly expensive watches, but I can live with that.
Therefore, I am not in the least interested in what Mozilla and other companies are doing, or proposing to do, except in one respect: persistence of independently produced free (or pirated) tools capable of stemming the deluge and of preserving anonymity, unless I happen to choose otherwise. So far, the Internet ecosystem independent of commerce has managed to remain a step ahead of enterprise and government intrusion. A major facilitating factor being the existence of operating systems (e.g. Linux varieties) wherein users co-operate in devising protections.
The mode of business deployed by Oracle, Microsoft, and many other software companies, lives on borrowed time. Therefore, they must make the best of it whilst opportunity remains.
Rip-off pricing for intangible goods (these lacking scarcity necessary for price discovery) cannot be sustained now that the USA's grip upon the world is failing. How much revenue from the Russian Federation reaches Oracle? Soon, ditto for BRICS, including China; these shall be rethinking impositions of 'rental' from abroad for digital products. Such payments, regardless of being taken from business or from private individuals (e.g. accessing knowledge and for entertainment) impact upon disposable incomes (national, corporate, and personal); software costs must factor into charges made by purveyors of tangible goods and services.
Monoliths like Oracle and Microsoft are set for eventual collapse because sheer size makes them increasingly unmanageable, and sclerosing arteries diminish the flow of innovation. This appears to be a general rule concerning corporate giants once their 'lean and hungry' originators step back. Boeing exemplifies this. Regarding software, vibrant cottage industries will arrive; these also eventually to give way to others.
In the meantime, Oracle, Microsoft, et al., could (briefly) extend their existences as giants by becoming early adopters of the business ethos their agile successors perforce must embrace: acceptance that digit products contain no intrinsic monetary value — this despite effort in their making — but what are marketable are skills in their making, and associated 'added value' goods and services; for software vendors, 'added value' lies in support services, including bespoke adaptations of software, the possessors of the software voluntarily contract to receive.
“Copyright is in principle a good, as it protects creative output …”
No, copyright impedes genuinely creative output. Ideas lack the properties necessary for being marketable products. Copyright depends upon shoehorning ideas into a pseudo-market protected by legal monopoly. Properly structured market-economics eschews monopolistic practices.
The only true commodity is imagination and skill for developing ideas and, when suitable, applying them. These attributes exist in individuals and in groups working to common purpose. People/groups must compete for attention and the prospect of commissions (e.g. via crowdfunding) to enable them to realise their ambitions. Reputation is what they bring to the market in competition with similarly inclined others. To maintain order, it is necessary to recognise entitlement to attribution, and to have legal remedies against people intent upon impersonating successful players in the skill-market, that done to obtain undeserved patronage.
Barely recognised by profiteers from trading copyright is an ethos running in parallel yet wholly dependent upon free flow of ideas in a context of sharing with strict attribution and encouragement of 'derived' works. The standing of a scholar is linked to his impact upon his peers; impact is best demonstrated when other people take the baton and run forward with it.
In the days when the only way of disseminating information was by distributing paper copy, publishers made a major contribution to academia. Gradually, within the dogma of copyright, they sought to assert a high degree of financial ownership of that which they propagated. Their restrictive practices now stifle access to knowledge and thereby hinder education and scholarship. The arrival of such as Sci-Hub and LibGen were of an effect like a sorbet served after a stodgy course at a banquet.
A broader point arises. An enforced attribution culture, one wherein it is creative skills rather than digital end-products which are marketable, should apply across the board of human activity. It would include the highly profitable for some, trashy element of popular culture. That component would be restored to the dynamic of former folk culture, wherein 'derivation' and freedom to explore facilitate participation rather than passive endurance. As with academia, 'derivation' (with due acknowledgement), is the sincerest flattery.
The availability of money to support cultural endeavours would increase considerably because a huge raft of copyright rentiers and middlemen could be set to useful work digging ditches. No longer would a large proportion of individual and national disposable incomes go into the pockets of parasites whose only encounters with creativity entail its application to accountancy. Moreover, taste and whom to laud, would cease to be dictated by monolithic commercial entities. A return to individuals and cottage industries surviving on their wits. A massive bonus accrues from consigning a swathe of lawyers to manual labour.
Legal jurisdictions, and the associated idea of national sovereignty, are, so far as access to information is concerned, being sidelined.
Within a jurisdiction, national or composite by international agreement, it remains feasible to obstruct and punish people engaged in selling digitally expressed 'content' nowadays anachronistically under claim of 'ownership'. The former entails blocking conventional routes for payment and increasingly futile efforts at blocking Internet locations.
Beneficent organisations like the Internet Archive should ensure multiple redundancy of their data by placing copies around the globe. Additionally, some copies should be held within the strongly emergent anonymous distributed networks running in parallel to the commercially orientated WWW. It might behove the Archive to move its frontage elsewhere, e.g. to a Global South nation beginning to flex muscle to assert independence from Western information hegemony.
'AI' is cracked up to be a bountiful offering. It definitely has promise as a means of curating archived data and for enabling users to seek out relationships among data (including contradictions) in an exploratory manner. Its capacity for communicating in natural language is astounding.
At present there appears to be impetus towards creating 'all singing, all dancing' AI 'educated' via exposure to pretty much any material its owners can find. Materials can range through learned texts, news reports, social media, and beyond. Already apparent is that eclecticism can lead to nonsense being spewed. In part, this might relate to AI software being unable to discriminate over the quality and provenance of data; after all, AI cannot be claimed to understand that which it analyses and manipulates. Perhaps it passes the 'Turing test', but that indicates the test as inadequate for establishing machine sentience.
I wonder whether the best way forward in developing AIs suitable for use by professionals in various fields is to restrict their training data to materials audited by the relevant profession and deemed, at face value, trustworthy? Therefore, one wouldn't train an AI intended as a legal aid on 'Twitter discourse'. Similarly, an AI encompassing academic philosophy, rather than the homespun variety, is better fitted for purpose if its training does not include 'pop music'.
In addition to the cost of storage media, their capacity, and their potential speed for writing and reading data, there is the matter of storage durability. This concerns the intended timescale for the preservation of archives. Individuals, businesses, and archivists of human knowledge and digitally expressed culture, will have differing perspectives and requirements.
During the post-WW2 boom in digital data storage, various technologies have emerged. Some, e.g. hard drives, have advanced apace. Meanwhile, tape remains a reliable backup. Hard drives are in competition with static storage devices. Some media are obsolete, e.g. floppy disks, and information stored upon them may no longer be retrievable. CDs and DVDs are a modern version of inscribing information on tablets of stone, yet their resistance to the ravages of entropy appears negligible in comparison. Paper/cardboard based media — leaves of paper, punched paper tape, and punched cards — under proper storage conditions can survive many centuries, but their data capacities are tiny by modern standards. Also, paper libraries by touch of a flame can become bonfires.
The above underpin the very important question of how mankind can preserve information and (non-transient) digital cultural artefacts for the long-term. Some materials have necessitate preservation for a fixed time only, e.g. records of a deceased individual's bank transactions. Many others are too voluminous to merit indefinite preservation; for example, only samples of content on Twitter and Facebook justify permanent archives.
All present stores of digitised culture/knowledge are susceptible to sudden large scale entropic disruption arising from natural disaster, civil disorder, or warfare. Moreover, apart from noble efforts by the likes of the Internet Archive, Lib-Gen, Sci-Hub, and Anna's Archive to both preserve and make readily available these materials, there is no incentive for present keepers of 'content' deemed proprietorial to participate in systematic archival preservation; indeed, they put tremendous effort - albeit with diminishing returns - to retain informational/cultural fiefdoms.
The reported concerns are what arise when people who insist upon the anachronistic notion of 'intellectual property' (IP) being analogous to physical property are confronted by the digital paradigm and its consequences.
Law pertaining to IP is a tangled web of inconsistencies, special provisions to suit major players in IP (e.g. Disney), and a cash cow for lawyers supporting people who trade in so-called 'rights'. The notion of IP was always specious: the inception of the digital era is bringing that truth home to people in droves.
The body of IP law is bizarrely complicated compared to that concerning 'rights' over individual instantiations of physical property. Ordinary citizens have a grasp on where they stand regarding their physical property and that of other people. In general, that perception is absent for IP. Even people active in IP related industry and commerce rely on the not always unambiguous 'say so' of highly specialised lawyers.
Moreover, market-economics has been distorted to accommodate IP. A 'product' lacking tangible existences in time and space, one devoid of natural scarcity, one for which 'price discovery' cannot hold, has been shoehorned into markets through the ploy of artificially constructed monopoly.; oddly, monopoly in other circumstances is frowned upon.
Global society and its economic underpinning is currently in a state of flux. This in large part a result of ease of communication (personal, financial, diplomatic, etc) brought on by the Internet. The so-called 'Global South' is developing muscle. It should not be taken that assumptions enshrined in international law whilst most of the Global South had colonial status shall carry forth.
IP cannot fit into market economics. What does exist is a market for people, and groups thereof, to offer their creative skills, but with no pretence of ownership thereafter of what they produce. 'Rights' cease to be an ersatz commodity. They are replaced by a general entitlement to attribution, coupled with protection against usurpation of reputation by other people fraudulently angling to gain commissions.
So, the point has been reached at which an appeal against Assange's extradition can be launched. That leaves a serious question in need of an answer.
Why has it taken so many years for Assange to become eligible for a full appeal?
Supplementary enquiries concern the studied inactivity of successive British governments, and the stunning silence in the Houses of Parliament. Being of questioning nature, I ask whether there could be credibility in the suggestion that members of the Commons (Conservative and Labour) were somehow 'bought' or threatened by lobbyists working on behalf of whoever owns the USA.
In addition, setting aside matters of legal process, there is what should be the overriding consideration of basic decency. Whatever wrong Assange is alleged to have perpetrated, it certainly did not endanger anybody. There was no crime of violence. Incarceration would not have an element of justification in terms of protecting society from a dangerous criminal. Assange's offence was, at most, administrative, i.e. releasing information a government chose to keep secret yet officialdom was so incompetent as not to be able to keep it away from prying eyes. The American government's embarrassment was acute: vengeance was sought.
No British Prime Minister, Home Secretary, or member of the judiciary, possessed sufficient integrity to declare “Enough is enough!” and put an end to the matter.
There is a parallel to the case of Kim Dotcom in New Zealand. He invoked wrath from US copyright cartels. Given that dealing in so-called 'intellectual property' is a major component of the US economy, it's no surprise to discover US government malice could keep Dotcom bottled up for so long in a battle for extradition. Also, New Zealand's gutless government offers no surprises either.
We haven't been told how this double-criminal — one who breaks the law and also cheats his customers — was identified. Presumably, there was painstaking detection involving a degree of traditional 'feet on the street' police work.
One assumes dark networks, these used with a modicum of sense, can be safe places for expressing dissident opinion and for sharing digital artefacts. However, when money changes hands and/or physical goods require delivery, bets on safety are off. Cryptocurrencies, e.g. Bitcoin, are not wholly anonymous because transactions can be tracked and related to points of linkage to conventional banking services. Similarly, collection or delivery of illicit physical goods entails risk regardless of whether a legitimate postal service is used.
Tor, when the chosen intermediary technology, may be less secure than some other options. This because Tor depends upon conventional Internet connections to servers, albeit a short chain thereof passing onwards encrypted traffic. Within the digital realm, peer to peer systems with distributed storage (e.g. Freenet), are much harder than Tor to track foci of illicit activity; however, seemingly, only Tor offers rapid interaction between a vendor and a customer in a manner resembling that of the open Internet.
Another factor is the susceptibility of Tor to users' identities being revealed via patient monitoring of activity on 'false flag' sites. Browser fingerprints, plus additional information gleaned from text, can be stored in massive databases, such as within the capacity of the NSA, GCHQ, and similar others, to process (these perhaps deploying so-called 'AI'). Similar information can be collected from ordinary Internet users and linked to ISP addresses.
Despite carrying considerably greater ambiguity of identity than current police services' ordinary fingerprint and DNA data stores, digital fingerprints could be helpful in raising suspicion of other criminality by people under enquiry for something else. Bear in mind that encryption of traffic (on Tor and/ or using a VPN) does not obscure fingerprint identity. Digital fingerprints can be obfuscated but, as with other means of maximising privacy, would not be a widespread practice. Notably, this method for keeping a wary eye open for patterns of unlawful activity cannot apply to encrypted darknets with distributed data storage.
Eight newspapers, all owned by the same hedge fund, in a tussle with software giants. A battle far abstracted from the lives of ordinary people interacting with the newspapers or the software companies.
At face value, the opposing entities each has an arguable case on ethical grounds, despite the tangled web of law they are traversing. From the software companies', and the ordinary citizen's, perspectives, access to published 'information', including comment and opinion, ought not come at much, indeed any, cost; it's just that information peddlers are stuck in an anachronistic mode of income generation.
On the other hand, newspapers (paper and online) are offering a sense of immediacy, this usually with something passing as 'analysis'. By whatever means a newspaper seeks to raise an income, a paper's key asset is reputation among its intended readership. Reputation is hard won, easily lost. Therefore, it behoves individuals and organisations reproducing or quoting from a source to offer attribution. The nature of attribution must point to the original source, indicate whether an article is intact or quoted from, and mention whether there is paraphrasing.
Paraphrasing raises issues in its own right. There is a gray area between attributable use of information, and widely known (or reported) information fitting the category of 'general knowledge'.
Operating within existing 'intellectual property' law entails acknowledging an entitlement for authors/publishers to receive recompense, during some specified period, for redistribution of a 'work': rental under the guise of 'royalties'. In all contexts, one might expect passage of time since initial publication to diminish what should be deemed fair rental; this influenced too by whether availability of the material has fallen (in the extreme cases 'orphaned works' and 'out of print works', the underlying consideration being continuation of active vending). Newspaper reports and associated articles depend upon topicality of interest to readers. Hence, if courts deem there to be rental due from 'AI' training, and later use, they should factor in a diminishing return; for newspaper articles this should drop precipitately soon after publication.
When an 'AI' outputs a garbled version of attributable information, the remedy sought lies in damages for reputational harm to the original publisher.
The notion that leaving no leaf unturned leads to omniscience is a modern conceit found among people engaged upon 'intelligence', policing, governance, marketing, finance, the murky realms of academia, and so much else.
Any particular supposed datum is not worth the bother of collecting and storing unless, when data gathering is implemented, the datum's potential use, in conjunction with other data, is understood. To this general principle can be added considerations of data quality/reliability, cost of acquisition, opportunity cost against spending resources on something more demonstrably useful, and the undesirability of burying needles in haystacks. The process of gathering, organising, and trawling through data using algorithms, is meaningless unless there is overall intelligence, of the human mentational variety, overseeing it.
Intellectually lazy proponents of 'big data' may these days say, 'So what? We can delegate the task to an AI.' Indeed, AI technology, despite not being all it's cracked up to be, is helpful for organising data and identifying putative patterns within data. Yet, no penetrating insight shall arise unless the process is under the control of the sharpest forensic minds; which poses whether such minds would be attracted to said activity.
There are differing interests supporting the crackpot legislation underlying all this. Understandably, yet not justifiably, there are people working in the general field of 'intelligence' keen upon expanding their empires, influence, and tenuous claims to esteem. Elements in commerce perceive opportunity to sell equipment and consultancy services. The motivations for parliamentarians are the usual mix of self-interest via kickbacks from shadowy people and, more widely, individual perceptions of their need to be 'seen' to do something, no matter that everything is beyond their ken.
Most crime impacting on the general population has human victims. Its essence rests not in Internet interactions per se, but in their use as preparation for some kinds of crime. What truly matters are tangible adverse outcomes on people, and the prospect of averting them.
Internet eavesdropping by 'authorities' has equivalence to tapping landline phones and intercepting correspondence via postal services. In the days when abstracted surveillance, and physical observation of movements and 'planting' specific spying devices, was costly in manpower, these tools were deployed sparingly. Even when used, initial suspicion generally arose from ordinary members of the community or from nurtured police informants. This approach necessitated police forces on the streets keeping their eyes and ears open, and interacting with honest citizens who, by and large, trusted the police, especially those members of the force they were used to seeing around the neighbourhood.
With the onset of the Internet and cheap computing power, a movement arose which extols trawling through routinely recorded 'big data' on the off chance of finding patterns of criminality. Institutions such as GCHQ and the NSA place considerable reliance upon this kind of serendipity. Obviously, they do assist police enquiries on targeted individuals and organisations. However, by being kept under a veil of secrecy it is impossible for outsiders to assess their worth, and to argue things could be done differently. In fact, 'secrecy' gives operators of surveillance a sense of undue personal importance; by extension this carries to such political figures as are entrusted with partial understanding of the processes.
The advent of so-called 'AI' is 'manna from Heaven' for individuals and industries centred upon surveillance. AI carries mystique, conferring ineffability. Playing with computers is much more fun than pounding the streets and interacting with the joys and sorrows of ordinary folk.
Enterprises — ranging from corner shops to behemoths such as Microsoft — are not static fixtures. Their internal dynamic varies with passing time; it is at its strongest during the period when its founders run a company. In principle, market-capitalism shares the key feature of Darwinian evolution: competition in adaptation to circumstance. Incidentally, only those ignorant of modern Darwinian theory ascribe “red in tooth and claw” to Evolution and, by analogy, to market-capitalism together with what they deem 'desirable' societal structures. Present day Darwinism recognises the rôle within species of kinship and ultraism. Recognised, too, is the place for symbiotic interaction among species. Furthermore, evolutionary process offers no guarantee of upward progression (according to criteria of an observer's choice); for example, species of fish dwelling in unlit caves have regressed because internal selection among said species no longer favours members in possession of eyesight.
During recent years, a business/social ethos based upon, deliberately misconstrued by others, economic theory propounded by Friedrich Hayek, has taken hold, This most noticeably in the West during the 80s when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, neither of whom previously claimed deep economic insight, were gulled by people nowadays designated as Neo-liberals. Nothing arises easily from a void, thus progenitor ideas expounded by Ayn Rand and similar arch-enemies of Communism/Socialism formed a background for Hayek's thinking.
The foregoing context is required for understanding Microsoft's, and unrelated enterprises', present positions and their prospects for the future.
Neo-liberalism has spawned 'deregulation', 'financialisation', 'globalisation', and hegemony for Western economic thought and business practices. Generated wealth has been arrogated by very few people; therefore it is inaccessible to would-be entrepreneurs. Conglomeration of businesses into transnational entities has created near-monopoly (monopsony, too) conditions. Multinational companies (e.g. Google and Amazon) can run rings around inept national governments and sclerotic institutions such as the EU. 'Financialisation', productive of little that is tangible, has resulted in major businesses (including banks), being run by 'money men' graduates from (educationally tacky) business schools; these creatures have latched onto 'profit maximisation' and 'never mind externalities'.
Most current 'captains of industry and commerce', having no stake in their businesses other than that handed by shareholders (within a 'democracy' every bit as manipulable as the political variety), have no incentive to think beyond their next routinely due bonus, and they adore opportunities for self-enrichment via share buybacks which increase share values and thereby executive 'compensation' packages. By comparison, Ayn Rand comes across as a nice person.
Microsoft, and many other huge enterprises capable of keeping (perhaps by buying) governments in thrall, are about to hit the buffers. Accelerated by foolish American foreign and trade policy, echoed by 'bought' politicians in the UK and on mainland Europe, deglobalisation, eschewal of the USD (perhaps return to commodity backed currencies) are afoot. New trade and security blocs are arising. Also, long-standing international conventions (e.g. regarding 'intellectual property'), these imposed upon emergent nations, shall be flouted, formally abandoned, or radically redrafted, at the behest of the 'Global South'.
Microsoft sprouted, flowered and conferred global benefit for, perhaps, three decades. Now its fruit withers on the vine. Microsoft is entrenched in a mode of doing business no longer sustainable. Days beckon for return to 'cottage industries', these across much of the spectrum of manufacture and service.
I hope the Editor will forgive my posting here a slightly modified version of what I posted earlier under the article linked to by https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/10/congressional_bill_would_require_ai/
After all, in the greater scheme of things, it is only a handful of digits providing 'free copy'.
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Copyright is 'bad law' by virtue of two characteristics.
1. It was always a specious concept that ideas, and their expression, can be owned in the same sense as oxen and asses. Nowadays, 'medium' (e.g. paper) and 'message' written upon it are not bound together; the 'message', in digital format, is an entity in its own right; it can be duplicated and distributed without there being practical restraint. The 'economics' of the digital differs profoundly from that pertaining to 'medium-bound' messages; the latter entails the cost of binding the two together, and the distribution of a physical entity; thusly presented it has properties similar to wholly physical artefacts: individuality, and a unique position in time and space; hence the erroneous impression arises that the 'message', not merely that to which it is bound, has the nature of property. That which is 'messaged' is an abstract entity, a product of the mind, and one easily incarnated in digits. From which it follows that ready duplication in digital format implies no monetary worth beyond that of storage and transmission. In turn, is implied lack of scarcity. Traditional supply/demand market economics with price discovery makes no sense. In desperation, monopoly distribution 'rights' are imposed by law, with the resulting irony that 'true believers' in market-economics abhor monopolies.
2. Copyright, this in the context of the dawn of the digital era, is no longer enforceable. Immense rearguard action is being taken by those believing they hold 'rights', but to increasingly less avail. For instance, the current spat in the USA over use of copyrighted material fed into AIs is parochial; copyright cannot, despite effort by the increasingly anachronistic US Trade Representative, hold sway as deglobalisation progresses. People elsewhere are becoming enabled to defy monopolist rentiers. The case of the Luddites illustrates how technological advance can disadvantage some people whilst opening doors to opportunity for others. In the current example, so-called holders of 'rights' obfuscate the matter by asserting ruin for creative people: in fact it is publishers and distributors, the principal complainants, who stand to suffer greatly should they not adapt. The truly creative, not meaning people 'constructed' by publishers, have an opportunity to enthusiastically adopt the alternative (pre-copyright) means of financing their work; thereby, having deployed the Internet to cut away middlemen, the people upon whom the creative depend, shall have more disposable income to support cultural activities according to their interests: many big fish shall be rendered tiddlers, and many more people at present hesitant to explore that which their imaginations offer shall emerge as contributors to genres of culture.
A separate consideration is the opportunities so-called AI offers mankind. Although grossly exaggerated overall, AIs are being shown capable of two-way communication in natural language, this coupled with potentially immense aptitude at being curators of knowledge/culture drawn across divers fields. In that regard, some already possess a breadth of information far exceeding that of the best educated among the people. Discussion of whether AIs can understand the information they possess should be relegated to the same realm of debate as that concerning the number of dancing angels which can be accommodated on the head of a pin; however, regardless of metaphysics, it's apparent that AI 'skills' go beyond curating stores of information and simply regurgitating some of it. In response to requests, especially well posed ones, AIs can trawl through their data and identify correlations and putative patterns. What they express may be insights (connections) which their human interlocutor, or indeed any human, had not previously perceived. As the technology advances, the proportion of nicely worded nonsense will drop. Even so, humans grovelling before this new fount of knowledge shall remain obliged to apply personal understanding and reasoning skills in order to distinguish correlations and patterns worth following up, from the wholly spurious.
Should the US Congress impose regulations of the sort under discussion in the article above, then people dwelling in the USA shall be denied the full potential of AI, else forced to pay sums of Danegeld to people of 'rentier' mentality in excess of that they pay already. Clearly, some members of the British Parliament harbour a similar taste for anachronisms and rentier economics as their counterparts in the USA. Meanwhile, other places, e.g. the Global South, will deploy information as they see fit.
It is to be hoped that LibGen, Sci-Hub, and similar noble efforts to share knowledge and culture, shall gain access to AI technology.
-----
Released under the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence”
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Copyright is 'bad law' by virtue of two characteristics.
1. It was always a specious concept that ideas, and their expression, can be owned in the same sense as oxen and asses. Nowadays, 'medium' (e.g. paper) and 'message' written upon it are not bound together; the 'message', in digital format, is an entity in its own right; it can be duplicated and distributed without there being practical restraint. The 'economics' of the digital differs profoundly from that pertaining to 'medium-bound' messages; the latter entails the cost of binding the two together, and the distribution of a physical entity; thusly presented it has properties similar to wholly physical artefacts: individuality, and a unique position in time and space; hence the erroneous impression arises that the 'message', not merely that to which it is bound, has the nature of property. That which is 'messaged' is an abstract entity, a product of the mind, and one easily incarnated in digits. From which it follows that ready duplication in digital format implies no monetary worth beyond that of storage and transmission. In turn, is implied lack of scarcity. Traditional supply/demand market economics with price discovery makes no sense. In desperation, monopoly distribution 'rights' are imposed by law, with the resulting irony that 'true believers' in market-economics abhor monopolies.
2. Copyright, this in the context of the dawn of the digital era, is no longer enforceable. Immense rearguard action is being taken by those believing they hold 'rights', but to increasingly less avail. For instance, the current spat in the USA over use of copyrighted material fed into AIs is parochial; copyright cannot, despite effort by the increasingly anachronistic US Trade Representative, hold sway as deglobalisation progresses. People elsewhere are becoming enabled to defy monopolist rentiers. The case of the Luddites illustrates how technological advance can disadvantage some people whilst opening doors to opportunity for others. In the current example, so-called holders of 'rights' obfuscate the matter by asserting ruin for creative people: in fact it is publishers and distributors, the principal complainants, who stand to suffer greatly should they not adapt. The truly creative, not meaning people 'constructed' by publishers, have an opportunity to enthusiastically adopt the alternative (pre-copyright) means of financing their work; thereby, having deployed the Internet to cut away middlemen, the people upon whom the creative depend, shall have more disposable income to support cultural activities according to their interests: many big fish shall be rendered tiddlers, and many more people at present hesitant to explore that which their imaginations offer shall emerge as contributors to genres of culture.
A separate consideration is the opportunities so-called AI offers mankind. Although grossly exaggerated overall, AIs are being shown capable of two-way communication in natural language, this coupled with potentially immense aptitude at being curators of knowledge/culture drawn across divers fields. In that regard, some already possess a breadth of information far exceeding that of the best educated among the people. Discussion of whether AIs can understand the information they possess should be relegated to the same realm of debate as that concerning the number of dancing angels which can be accommodated on the head of a pin; however, regardless of metaphysics, it's apparent that AI 'skills' go beyond curating stores of information and simply regurgitating some of it. In response to requests, especially well posed ones, AIs can trawl through their data and identify correlations and putative patterns. What they express may be insights (connections) which their human interlocutor, or indeed any human, had not previously perceived. As the technology advances, the proportion of nicely worded nonsense will drop. Even so, humans grovelling before this new fount of knowledge shall remain obliged to apply personal understanding and reasoning skills in order to distinguish correlations and patterns worth following up, from the wholly spurious.
Should the US Congress impose regulations of the sort under discussion in the article above, then people dwelling in the USA shall be denied the full potential of AI, else forced to pay sums of Danegeld to people of 'rentier' mentality in excess of that they pay already. Meanwhile, other places, e.g. the Global South, will deploy information as they see fit.
It is to be hoped that LibGen, Sci-Hub, and similar noble efforts to share knowledge and culture, shall gain access to AI technology.
-----
Released under the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence”
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
I don't know what control German states have over publicly funded educational provision, but it might be sensible to wean schools, and tertiary education, off reliance upon proprietary software.
Microsoft's grip upon educational establishments is tight. In most respects, these institutions are suckered into being loss-leader outlets for MS. Staff are hooked onto MS products, thereby their pupils/students are too. Upon entering employment, young people demand access to those MS products with which they are familiar.
During the past decade, increased simplicity of use and greater reliability of Linux and LibreOffice software in the hands of non-technical people, has bloomed. A major factor is ease of installation, coupled with user interfaces not too dissimilar from those offered by MS; ordinary users don't care about what goes on under the bonnet.
MS Windows, including its enterprise editions, offer bloat accompanied by degrees, according to the edition, of marketing by MS and its “trusted partners”. The 'Home Edition', presumably that handed out to pupils/students to take home, is garish and represents the tacky extremes to which some commercial vendors go; in fact, MS Windows and Google Android are in a competitive downward spiral of tastelessness; I know little about Apple products, but suspect they support a similar ethos.
Concerns over privacy are legitimate. All MS products 'call home' from time to time (as do Linux and LibreOffice). In MS's case, the user has little control over what is altered under the guises of security and product enhancement. Whilst there is scant reason at present to assume MS abuses its position regarding personal information, that is, other than acting as an advertising platform embedded in an expensive product, there's no doubt of Windows being well-equipped to take on major rôles on the behalf of government agencies (especially in the USA), targeted advertising, in 'policing' distribution and use of copyright infringing 'content', and through facilitating censorship on behalf of private agencies.
What's the point of having an 'official narrative' about geopolitical affairs when opportunities to embellish it are ignored?
We have been taught that China, Iran, N. Korea, and Russia are foci of evil, they collectively dedicated to smashing the benign 'world order' devised by Western European and North American powers. Particularly troubling to British folk is the imminent prospect of invasion by a Slavic horde intent upon rampaging through Britain in search of strong liquor and nuns of easy virtue.
The brave nations of NATO have temporarily stemmed the tide of interlopers during the latter's Ukrainian incursion. The great statesmen of Europe and the USA are united in belief that Russian forces soon shall tramp through Poland on their way to Berlin, Paris, and London. Britain's best hope is to gather forces, the remnants after mass surrender and return home by French, and other armies, all disillusioned by the ineptness of their political leaders; these troops, will make the 'last stand'.
The mighty minds of the UK Department of Defence, supplemented by renowned strategists at the Atlantic Council, deem it possible to bottle up Russian forces in the Paris Disney World and to await their voluntary dispersal back to Russia after sampling Anglo/American 'high culture' with its accompanying cuisine; anyone believing Grant Shapps, and his NATO equivalents, capable of devising this “cunning plan” for avoiding bloodshed must be inhabiting Cloud-Cuckoo Land: credit is due to the operator of the ministerial lift (aka elevator) in Whitehall.
The 'opportunity' alluded to in the title is to lay blame upon Russian saboteurs for attacks on UK fibre networks. This should raise fear in the UK to fever pitch. What if the Eurovision Song Contest, and other highlights in Western culture (e.g. Premier League football) no longer can be broadcast to the nation for the enrichment of entertainment moguls? To cement national unity, it will become a criminal offence to listen to Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, et al., or to show awareness of Russian literature, of Russia's contributions to mathematics and science, or to offer recognition of Russia's vital rôle in defeating Nazi Germany.
Повествование — это все.
The digital era, in so far as it impacts upon ordinary people (scathingly called 'consumers'), took off in the 80s. Digital technologies have ceased to be optional in the context of most activities, ranging from manufacture through to entertainment; their applications to warfare undoubtedly excite the reptilian brains of belligerent political 'leaders'. Applications at one time in the realm of Sci-fi lie on the horizon. Digital technology is pregnant with further possibilities.
The latter 20th century, through to now, is the most intellectually challenging, hence stressful too, time experienced by ordinary people. Their leaders, sadly almost all of them far too 'representative' of the limited outlook and capacity for thought among electorates, are well beyond their depth. In part, it is understandable for people in general to be confused, and rudderless, because instant communication demands instant response; this leading to cascades of inanity on 'social media' (MSM too) such as X-twatter.
There is deep irony to observing Microsoft and publishers of so-called 'news' battling in court. Not only is each a leviathan by size and temperament, but also they may fittingly be considered remnants of the dinosaurs. They both wallow in a protected pool wherein their anachronistic modes of doing business (rentier economics) persist; they are arguing over share of the 'cake', not matters of principle.
Legislation rooted in the 18th century is not, in fact never was, fit for purpose. The inception of the 'digital age' has made clear that constructs capable of being expressed in digits cannot be owned, and controlled, in the same manner as physical artefacts. Law framed as if that were so is becoming unenforceable. That is pragmatic reality. Only simpletons imagine 'law' always to reflect a common notion of morality, or law always to coincide with good sense.
The players, in this reported legal battle, bear comparison with the Luddite's of old. Of course, they collectively are far more powerful/influential than were Luddites. They are trying desperately not to be swept away by an innovation supporting creation of possibilities for the many. Irony is compounded by the fact that doing away with 'intellectual property' (IP), to be replaced by 'attribution', leads to market-capitalism far less tainted by monopoly; however, in a world dominated by conglomerates, market-capitalism, as once understood, has ceased to be.
A further twist is that this and other 'protection of interests' legal actions (including criminal prosecutions) can be rendered nonsensical by a few strokes of the pen elsewhere on the planet. The 'Global South', so-called, contains many nations recently emerged from Western colonisation. Each has entered a global market for things, and for ideas, which is dominated by rules (conventions) set during the colonial era. It takes but one nation, that is one out of reach by US Marines, to recognise that its population's future is best served by unshackling people from a moribund body of law. The nature of the beast is that following the dropping of pretence in one nation that IP exists, the whole rotten legal edifice will collapse across the globe; that unless fools in the USA and UK take it as an opportunity to start WW3.
I have fond memories of MS-DOS, CPM, and Torch's CPN. Each was obliged to be compact in order to work with limited RAM and simple processors. Optional bells and whistles had to be provided from elsewhere. Early MS Windows piggybacked on MS-DOS.
The various iterations of MS Windows (I know nothing of macOS) accumulated bloat; this may be its eventual undoing. The Linuxen started off slim. The Kernel, common apart from tweaks amongst Linux flavours, defines the OS. Everything else in a particular distribution is an add-on designed to serve well some category of Linux use and/or users.
Linux Kernels have increased in size considerably, but this seems in part a necessity for accommodating a huge variety of base hardware products. However, the developers have some choice over what goes into the core, and what might be relegated to distribution designers to incorporate, or not.
Early versions of openSUSE (perhaps other distributions also) contained a powerful text-based utility enabling relative novices such as I to tune and compile the kernel according to taste, e.g. for a particular specification of central processor. Thereby, kernel size was reduced, and perhaps more clearly targeted operation enhanced its efficiency. Obviously, devotees of the internal complexities of the OS can do this off their own bats.
Nowadays, most Linuxen are aimed at IT support technicians and/or at individual users, wishing to deploy them 'out of the box'. Fast central processors, cheaper RAM, and peripheral storage, rapidly accessible and potentially of enormous capacity, abound.
If Linux is to gain greater foothold amongst office workers and home users, then acceptance of bloating may be necessary. However, Linux, amongst major OSs, is unique because of (mainly) open-source development involving divers private enterprise and independent operators. Thus far, the kernel development team has maintained a good grip, and is not under commercial imperatives to rush through novelty whilst neglecting to trim legacy code. The worst outcome for Linux would be a pathway split in Kernel development resulting in incompatibilities, rendering it difficult for end-users to take software off the shelf.
Precisely how does Amazon fit ads into its presentation of 'content'?
Do they occur within the flow of a programme/film, that is, as ad-breaks familiar to commercial TV viewers?
If so, then what is the frequency of interruption per hour, and what is the range of individual 'break' durations?
How does this vary among recipient nations? For example, the UK has tighter regulation over terrestrial broadcast 'ad breaks' than the USA. Also, the nature of allowed ads varies.
Shall Amazon, in laxly controlled regions, adopt highly intrusive advertising, whereby ads show on the screen whilst a programme is running?
Will there be restriction on sudden, and large, upward variations in sound intensity when a 'break' is entered?
Also, to consider, is the matter of 'break' influence upon programming. Shall 'content' commissioned by Amazon be created in the knowledge of 'ad break' timings? This distorts dramatic flow when 'cliffhangers' are interpolated in order to retain audience interest across 'breaks'.
'Profit maximisation', or attempt thereat, in distinction from long-term sustainable income, this in the face of 'piracy', may be counterproductive.
Whenever the USA 'justice system' gets its teeth into a high profile case, it, more than many other such state apparatus elsewhere, goes for broke when sentencing.
On the assumption of Schulte truly having undermined security along with all other things fine about the USA, and placed children in harms way, one nevertheless is puzzled about how the sentencing tariff is arrived at. Presumably, the applicable law is framed in a broad manner, such as ten years to life. That leaves the matter of how judges (and appeal courts) arrive at figures like 40 years instead of, say, 47 years or 22 years.
Schulte's sentence offers negligible prospect (assuming early parole is disallowed) of later taking account of genuine repentance and good behaviour. Similarly, if deterring others from committing these crimes is an intention, many would consider very long sentences, those going beyond the need to protect the public by physically isolating the felon, to be devoid of effect; after all, the USA abounds with murder despite having the death penalty; also, in a past century, a British hangman was himself hanged for theft. It's often asserted that the chance of being caught outweighs a potential custodial sentence in the calculations of a would-be felon.
The above considerations leave one with the impression of sentencing in high profile cases containing a considerable element of political theatre.
There was only one measure introduced during the Covid-19 epidemic which definitely benefited susceptible individuals: handwashing.
Whilst airborne droplets from someone else's sneeze may bring infection to somebody nearby, that even after deflection upwards by a mask, these are not the major means of transmission.
Droplets settle on nearby objects. Viruses remain potent for an appreciable time. Another means for viruses to rest on surfaces is when nasal discharge or saliva gets onto an infected person's hands, and later the person touches an object such as a door handle.
Handwashing, simply with soap and water, and for convenience using an antiseptic gel, protects against taking in the virus as when touching food to be placed in one's mouth (or when prone to picking one's nose).
Regular handwashing, especially just before touching food, is a basic hygiene precaution everybody should take during daily life. It reduces the prospect of infection by settled infectious materials (fomites) including the common cold, influenza, and various organisms which induce gastrointestinal illnesses. The benefit from handwashing ought to be instilled in children as soon as they are capable of using the procedure; the lesson should be reinforced throughout school life, and beyond.
My impression of events in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic was of headless chickens running around at No, 10 Downing Street. Confusion was exacerbated by the UK's three devolved Assembly Governments devising their own measures willy-nilly. When I pointed out this ludicrous situation to my MP, the response was that it was proper for “democratically elected” assemblies to devise measures suitable for their electorates. At the best of times, I have little enthusiasm for universal franchise representative democracy as at present implemented: Covid-19 exemplified the unsuitability of this method of governance, wherein ignorant representatives of ignorant people took it upon themselves to micromanage a disease outbreak. This 'response' appears to have been mirrored elsewhere; for example, chaotic behaviour within the USA at Federal, State, and municipal levels was evident.
Inkling of a systematic approach to infectious disease control arose early in the 19th century. The names Jenner, Pasteur, Snow, Chadwick, and Farr, spring to mind. The foundations for communicable disease epidemiology were laid. Medical Officers of Health (MOsH) were appointed in boroughs, and one at Westminster government level. Each district MOH was employed by a town council; he was allotted powers which could not be overridden by councillors. Thereupon, academic disease epidemiology, means of disease control, and relevant clinical disciplines arose; these in the context of a burgeoning scientific underpinning. A discipline known as Public Health arose, and during the course of time its scope and capabilities increased. In the 1970s, Public Health Medicine became a specific branch of medicine overseen (regarding training) by the newly created Faculty of Public Health Medicine (FPHM) within the Royal College of Physicians.
Successive subsequent 'health services reforms' led to dilution and fragmentation of public health services. Nowadays, the role vaguely equivalent to that of MOH is open to nonmedical applicants. MOH powers diminished greatly, especially freedom from local political control. The FPHM, now the Faculty of Public Health (FPH), opened to people other than medical practitioners, has become more 'woke' than professional; incidentally, the FPH appears to have made negligible contribution to discussion of Covid-19 control measures.
That sets the scene for the Johnson government's chaotic attempt at managing Covid-19. There still exists a MOH advising government. In the past, said person, in conjunction with colleagues at district/borough council level, would have taken the initiative. Ministers' responsibilities would encompass asking searching questions about proposed measures, and providing resources for those agreed. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) would be subordinate to the MOH and his team. It would be recognised that SAGE members, regardless of their 'distinction', are mostly narrow specialists perceiving threads of the tapestry, but not its entirety. No competent person managing the epidemic would place reliance on prognostication produced by an untested computer model (modern 'snake oil') proffered by Imperial College; at best it could offer qualitative insights concerning infection control measures, but public quotation of numbers emanating from the model was utterly foolish.
The general overlay of emotion and the presentation of mortality statistics without discussion of their import regarding years of quality life lost was worrisome.
Worst of all was insistence on “following the science”. Thereby, hard won experience by disease control professionals was set aside, and round wheels reinvented in square shapes. 'Science' cannot provide reliable answers during the timescale of a 'flu-like pandemic. The vaccine fiasco was appalling: prudent assessment procedures previously required for new vaccine roll-out were ignored, this particularly lamentable in the instance of introducing a hitherto untested production technology.
Also, the present day (going back at least two decades) crop of career politicians lack the broad education, rigorous reasoning skills, and facility for interpreting numerical data. These are required to pose searching questions to supposed 'experts', and to recognise bullshit answers.
The World Economic Forum, a grandly named club for self-appointed global meddlers, has no credentials whatsoever for devising plans to prevent/curtail the next pandemic of 'whatever'. However, to the Neo-liberalism dominated thought in the West, the WEF is inspirational for all matters.
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