Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:The dirty secret of LLMs is the training data (Score 1) 38

There are projects like LLM-jp: A Cross-organizational Project for the Research and Development of Fully Open Japanese LLMs looking to solve this problem by creating LLMs from open data. These are helped by a meaningful Open Source Definition, and hurt by a weak one.

A quarter century ago nobody wanted to make their source code public either; remember Ballmer: Linux is a cancer?

If you want to help ensure a future where Open Source AI models are plentiful rather than drowned out by commercial black boxes, then sign the Open Source Declaration.

Submission + - Community Commitment to Open Source Definition (opensourcedeclaration.org)

samj writes: In light of yesterday's OSAID fork undermining the Open Source Definition, we have prepared this Community Commitment to Open Source Definition declaration reaffirming it, and ask you to sign and share it to protect a quarter century of progress:

We, the undersigned members of the Open Source community, declare that Open Source is defined solely by the Open Source Definition (OSD) version 1.9.

Any amendments or new definitions shall only be recognized if declared by clear community consensus through an open and transparent process to be determined.


Comment Four Essential Freedoms (Score 3, Interesting) 9

Open Source protects the four essential freedoms: to use, study, modify, and share software however you want, whoever you are, and without having to ask for permission.

The OSAID doesnâ(TM)t fully protect any of them, which is why sticking with the status quo is safer: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fosd.fyi%2F

Submission + - Pirate Party Pillages Private Papers (pirateparty.org.au)

David Crafti writes: "Pirate Party Australia has made the move to host the recently leaked ACTA document in order to highlight the lack of government transparency in the negotiation process. We believe that the document is not under copyright, and we are not party to any NDAs, so there should be no restriction on us posting it. We would like to see what the government (any government) tries to do about it. If it turns out that there is some reason that we have to take it down, then we will, but if this happens, it will only validate the document's authenticity."
Medicine

Child Receives Trachea Grown From Own Stem Cells 103

kkleiner writes "Doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) along with colleagues at the University College London, the Royal Free Hospital, and Careggi University Hospital in Florence have successfully transplanted a trachea into a 10 year old boy using his own stem cells. A donor trachea was taken, stripped of its cells into a collagen-like scaffold, and then infused with the boy's stem cells. The trachea was surgically placed into the boy and allowed to develop in place. Because his own cells were used, there was little to no risk of rejection. This was the first time a child had received such a stem cell augmented transplant and the first time that a complete trachea had been used."

Comment rel=shortlink could eradicate URL shorteners (Score 5, Interesting) 145

I've had a beef with URL shorteners for a long while now for reasons that have been covered ad nauseam (not the least of which being that in addition to adding significant overhead - typically hundreds of milliseconds per request - they are just plain evil). IMO the best solution is to let webmasters create and advertise their own short links using the "shortlink" link relation (e.g. rel="shortlink" in the HTTP headers and/or HTML HEAD) such that they can be auto-detected by clients who then no longer need to generate their own using 3rd party services. I wrote the shortlink specification a few months ago (based on similar work done by others), released it into the public domain using CC Zero and went about soliciting feedback. The standard got a big shot in the arm last week when WordPress.com announced support for rel=shortlink on over 100 million pages. I've since requested support be introduced into the top 20 Twitter clients (representing over 80% of Twitter usage) and have had only positive feedback so far. A number of other high profile sites like PHP.net and Ars Technica have also jumped on board. Anyway if you, like me, are sick of URL shorteners then you're welcome to give me a hand making them go away...

Sam

Comment Conflict of Interest Noticeboard Incident (Score 0, Troll) 213

Earlier today I created the hAl Microsoft Topic Ban incident on Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest Noticeboard, highlighting some of the particularly troubling points in the contributions of a user called hAl (who reveals little beyond liking beer). It seems I'm not the first to stumble on this apparent Microsoft shill, but hopefully I'll be the last (at least on Wikipedia) as with any luck he'll land himself a topic ban having been blocked 4 times already.

Sam

Comment RevCanonical considered harmful (Score 1) 354

As I've explained in detail here and here, while the underlying concept is sound, the implementation has many problems:
  - "rev" is deprecated in HTML 5, so essentially a non-starter
  - "rev" and "rel" are easily confused - use the wrong one and you may well drop off the Internet
  - messing with the canonical URLs is dangerous
  - taking rather than giving canonical-ness is dangerous
  - the solution can only work for one URL (the canonical URL itself), when there can be an infinite number

A *much* better solution is to use rel="shortcut" to specify a short (but not necessarily shortest or even shorter) URL. Other alternatives like "short" are ambiguous as to whether it is the URL or its target which is "short", and "alternate shorter" are just plain wrong.

Sam

GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - CloudLeft Public License closes user data loophole

FreedomFighter writes: "In a Cloud Standards breakthrough, the FSF is teaming up with major cloud computing vendors to form the Free and Open Cloud Alliance (FOCA), a trade marketing association supporting Free(TM) and Open Cloud Computing (FOCC). The new CloudLeft Public License (CPL) is based on the ideas that data wants to be Free(TM) and all your Cloud(TM) are belong to us. It closes the "user data loophole" by requiring the release of not only the source code for a CloudLeft platform but also the data passing through it. This renders most security issues void while appropriately setting the users' expectation of privacy. "In the past, I've said that 'cloud' is complete gibberish, but while discussing fashion during my weekly squash game with Stallman he convinced me that this was a great opportunity." said Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. RMS, who previously said that 'cloud' is worse than stupidity was also pleased about the return of the advertising clause, requiring the use of the 'GNU/Cloud' name, as he is "tired of haranguing the GNU/Linux community about this". Full details will be available next Monday, including the first marketing and outreach program — "FOCC: IT in 2009""

Comment Re:Echoing Ars Technica... (Score 2, Interesting) 116

Psion have essentially given an amnesty to bloggers and journalists using the term "netbook" (which may prove reason enough in itself to take the trademark off them since any licensing must include quality assurance). That includes blogs with advertising as explained here:

"where a blogger uses context sensitive advertising that is completely outside of its control (so it has no knowledge at all whether a 'Netbook' related advert will be placed in its blog site), then we're taking the view that we need to focus on working on persuading the featured retailer to adopt a term other than 'netbook'."

This is why we believe the amnesty doesn't go far enough.

Comment Re:If the sales figures are true ... (Score 1) 116

Actually no, the netBook rather than netBook Pro figures are relevant if only because it was on the basis of a netBook flyer that Psion renewed the trademark in 2006 (long after that particular product had been discontinued). This was the basis of Dell & Intel's claims of fraud, which could well undermine the trademark altogether (assuming abandonment and/or genericide don't).

Portables

Psion Accuses Intel of Cybersquatting 116

Save the Netbooks writes "We discussed Psion sending C&Ds late last year over international trademarks held on the term 'netbook' and Dell accusing Psion of fraud last week. Since then Intel has joined in by suing Psion in federal court. On Friday Psion counter-sued Intel (court filing, PDF). SaveTheNetbooks.com has an analysis here. Psion has demanded a jury trial, profits, treble damages, destruction of material bearing the mark 'netbook' and the netbook.com domain (among other things), claiming that they are still actively selling netbooks despite also revealing sales figures showing a minuscule market share. It seems that declaring victory may have been a little premature as it will be months before the dispute plays out in court."
Portables

Submission + - Intel counter-sued by Psion over netbook trademark (savethenetbooks.com)

Save the Netbooks writes: "We discussed Psion sending C&Ds late last year over international trademarks held on the term "netbook" and Dell accusing Psion of fraud last week. Since then Intel has joined in by suing Psion in federal court and the Save the Netbooks campaign has just obtained a court filing (PDF warning) showing that Psion counter-sued Intel on Friday. They have demanded a jury trial, profits, treble damages, destruction of material bearing the mark "netbook" and the netbook.com domain (among other things), claiming that they are still actively selling netbooks despite also revealing sales figures showing a miniscule market share. It seems that declaring victory may have been a little premature as it will be months before the dispute plays out in court."

Slashdot Top Deals

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

Working...