Comment Re:Is it searchable? Where does it contain 3141592 (Score 1) 95
The Pi search engine only looks at the first 200 million digits.
The Pi search engine only looks at the first 200 million digits.
In England, if you can show that such an ad impairs the system, it violates the Computer Misuse Act, which prohibits non-consensual use of computer services to harm users.
You'd have to show actual harm, but this is Microsoft. Actual harm is quite possible. Being the OS owner would not exempt Microsoft from the provisions of the Act.
The same will apply to their forcible upgrades.
The relevant part is section 3. Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act makes it illegal to perform an unauthorised act with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, the operation of a computer.
In both the above cases, recklessness applies.
Section 3A of the Computer Misuse Act makes it illegal to create, supply or obtain any article for use in committing another offence under the Computer Misuse Act. Article includes software.
Non-blockable ads and imposed updates constitute creating tools for reckless interference, whether or not the tools actually cause damage.
The example on the police.uk website is this:
You downloaded a programme which was able to take remote control of a friend’s computer without their knowledge. You didn’t get a chance to use it before you were caught. This offence covers the possession of ‘malware’ but also legitimate software for which you had the intent of using it to commit an offence.
In this example, we can see that intent to use is sufficient.
Section 3ZA of the Computer Misuse Act makes it illegal to perform an unauthorised act causing, or creating the risk of, serious damage of a material kind. If the damage is caused or threatened to human welfare or national security you can go to prison for life, otherwise the maximum sentence is 14 years in prison.
We know from Heartbleed and from the effects of ransomware that ICU computers on the Internet use Windows. If these crash, due to a non-blockable popup or a forced upgrade, there's material damage. We only need to show there's a risk of it, we don't need to show it actually happening.
Clearly there's a risk. That puts Microsoft in violation of 3ZA.
The act is here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-g...
IANAL, but I can see that a common reading of the Act puts the popups and forced updates in violation. Ownership of the OS is not considered an exemption anywhere in the text. The text clearly refers to the computer and the users thereof, not the owners of what is running on it.
A lawyer would be needed to say if the forced popups or the forced upgrades actually broke the law. Actually, I suspect it would take a court case, so there's case law on the subject. This is because legal uses of a word don't always match common uses.
But I'd contend that there is a reasonable expectation that the law would cover such cases.
Will result in temporary gain, followed by a collapse when customers realise they can get better products for either not much more or a great deal less.
AI is "cheap" but produced vastly inferior results.
That works when your product is cheap anyway and bought by people who are themselves cheapskates, which is why automation was effective in the Industrial Revolution. Mass-producing goods is only useful when you're selling to a huge market.
Effective, but crippling in the long-term. Worker injuries and deaths were frequent, which meant there was a high turnover and low skill retention. And they were frequent because companies hired children (a practice returning to the US). Virtually none of the megacorps of the time survive into today.
It was actually crippling at the time. Many of the corporate giants operated by burning down rival factories (sometimes with the workers still inside) in order to gain an edge. They couldn't swing a healthy profit with the level of competition at the cheap end of the market. Verizon, Comcast, Microsoft and Google have clearly been taking notes.
What we're doing with AI simply repeats all this. And it'll end the same way. The big names will find that there's always someone willing to be cheaper and naffer, and the ones who can afford quality will do do.
So basically you're in favour of retaining the workers and firing management and HR.
Microsoft might not have violated antitrust law, if they'd been working with IBM, and that would have resulted in a healthier ecosystem.
OS/2 would have meant that microchannel architecture would have replaced the old bus standard, which might have accelerated bus development. Or might have throttled it entirely.
That's the problem with alternative histories, there's a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle interplays and you can't factor them all in.
IBM were partnering with Microsoft and wrote a big chunk of the code, from what I recall. It shows that programming is about discipline, and that perfectly good programmers existed at the time.
The Republicans have no issue with unsafe food (chlorination chicken doesn't kill ecoli except on the surface, it merely stops ecoli being detected).
But the miniscule risk of an insignificant drop in profits amongst Republican voters... That calls for instant action.
My ancestors are the Welsh and Scots, so I've already done the first and second bit. Oh dear, hatred really isn't working for you, is it?
I've actually suggested that for the land I'm on.
No, I've no opposition to England being returned to the Welsh/Cornish and parts of Cumbria/Northumbria being returned to the Scots. The Norman French who control British politics have largely run it into the ground, so the sooner they're kicked out of the country, the better.
Good point.
Are just statistical calculators. They don't understand words, they have no concept of semantics. As such, it will always be possible to bypass restrictions, because there will always be a way to attain the same semantics in a way that isn't checked. All they can check is syntax, because that's literally all they have access to.
This lot were the subject of a coue of series of BBC podcasts, due to the mayhem they were wrecking.
They were linked to a massive Sony hack, a billion dollar bank heist, a scam involving a vast number of people using fake ATM cards, the Heartbleed attack, amongst others.
They're also apparently linked to a quasi-legal casino in China.
They're a particularly nasty lot, and giving them any kind of assistance is a Bad Thing.
Windows is used heavily by the US government. Not a group you want the North Koreans pwning.
Right of conquest was abolished by the UN, but I believe that post-dates Britain's control of Palestine. I also believe pre-existing arrangements were grandfathered in.
The failings and abuses of one nation do not justify of excuse the failings and abuses of another nation. That applies in all cases, it is not limited to any one situation or any one context.
And, no, I don't excuse any nation or supernation in this. Each nation is 100% responsible for its own corruption and degeneracy, no matter how much worse others are, and it is never excusable. The standards we're allowing governments to get away with are horrific. Governments behave like feudal lords, which is not OK in the 21st century AD.
I don't know what the practical alternative is, but what we have is broken and is incapable of dealing with any of the current emergencies, and the alternatives getting discussed all seem to be far worse.
We need to stop excusing this nation or that. These excuses are why things are messed up. If there is a critical defect in a mission-critical service, you absolutely do not excuse the programming of it. If current emergencies haven't shown that, then Boeing certainly should have. You FIX flaws. Allowing them to stand because some other product is worse is NOT an acceptable strategy.
In principle, yes, you can clean-room an implementation. Provided it's AI-compatible with the closed-source module, vendors could then simply "fail to check" what is being used.
In practice, Corp lawyers are very good at launching lawsuits and then simply delaying everything to run the other side out of cash.
There's a way to do it, DeCSS Jon showed that if someone in a reasonably neutral country is prepared to risk all (including unlawful arrest), then such blockades can't last.
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.