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Not 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 contra

Not 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 ago
If 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 ago
  But 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 ago
  3) 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 ago
    It'll stop them from buying it from the US. They can just buy it from China instead.
cstross 7y ago
Correct. 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 ago
  Absolutely 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”

Not 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 ago

If 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 ago
But 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 ago
3) 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 ago
  It'll stop them from buying it from the US. They can just buy it from China instead.

cstross 7y ago

Correct. 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 ago
Absolutely 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”