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The "graphical user interface" bit is weird. I suppose you are fine if the software is driven entirely by keyboard shortcuts.
by incompatible 7y ago
The "graphical user interface" bit is weird. I suppose you are fine if the software is driven entirely by keyboard shortcuts.
- extropy 7y agoIMO that's an indication that this was made for a specific piece of software and trying to limit the collateral damage.
- incompatible 7y agoYes, it seems very specific.
- atmosx 7y agoSame here. They are framing a specific software, possibly a very specific business deal from happening.
- peter303 7y agoMaxar
- floatingatoll 7y agoNot so weird. Palantir put a GUI on Hadoop/whatever and that was enough to sell it to every government for citizen inspection. It’s the GUI that gets the contracts, not the technology alone.
- oefrha 7y agoIf a government 1) wants to acquire a geospatial imagery recognition program; 2) does not have the tech themselves; 3) can import the underlying tech without interface; I highly doubt a restriction on GUI export will stop them.
- Aperocky 7y agoBut in the mind of the geniuses that make up the US Congress, it does. How will anyone operate a computer without GUI? That’s impossible! /s
- floatingatoll 7y ago3) will stop them from buying an off the shelf commercially-ready product. Yes, they can develop one from scratch, but only at enormous cost and difficulty relative to simple dollars.
- Mirioron 7y agoIt'll stop them from buying it from the US. They can just buy it from China instead.
- cstross 7y agoCorrect. You can't get a contract without marketing/sales interaction with the customers. Customers at a high enough level to sign off on a payment with 7-9 zeroes following the number are not generally programmers (or, if they were, they haven't been working at the coal face for decades): they're senior managers or civil servants. A GUI front end is a really amazing marketing tool for any piece of software insofar as GUIs are designed to expose all the internal configuration variables and controls in a visually appealing, or even intuitive, manner that is accessible to non-programmers. Like the folks signing the big checks. (Here's a second possibility: we know it's possible to use CAPTCHAs to crowdsource recognition of objects. Maybe they're trying to prevent export of a NN training system that uses unwitting mechanical turks for quality control?)
- mark_l_watson 7y agoAbsolutely correct! I used to sell expensive software for Lisp Machines and what sold it was the UI that was dual purpose: for development and for demos to management that they could understand. BTW, off topic, but I love your books!
- floatingatoll 7y ago“Please select the images that show US military bases to proceed”
- sanguy 7y agoThe GUI is specifically mentioned for training (tagging) of positive/false-positives that the ML then incorporates. If you think about tagging it is something you need a GUI for unless you are lucky enough to have pre-tagged samples. Eg: the famous Silicon Valley hotdog AI. You either need to have a GUI to allow users to select hot dogs and not hot dogs in a bunch of images, or you need a bunch of images already tagged.
- SilasX 7y agoI thought input method is orthogonal to whether it’s a GUI. I think GUI is meant as opposed to text console or eg audio (like a phone dial-in service); it doesn’t necessarily mean a touch screen like I think you’re implying.
- tomaskafka 7y agoYes. Or, the software will export everything into some common format, that could be opened with any GIS viewer, and we've just gotten around the restriction?