Friday, July 27, 2012

Algorithms And Creativity


Can Creativity be Automated?
Computer algorithms have started to write news stories, compose music, and pick hits...... The process record labels use to find new talent—A&R, for "artists and repertoire"—is fickle and hard to explain ...... an algorithm tasked with finding hit songs. .... hundreds of books and studies that have attempted to explain creativity as the product of mysterious processes within the right side of the human brain. Creativity, the thinking has been, proves just how different people are from CPUs. ..... When Novak submitted a song to McCready's engine through the Web, it was graded on a par with classic hits such as I've Got a Feeling by the Eagles and Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild.
You may have a hit.
Music X-Ray's algorithms use Fourier transforms—a method of separating a signal from the "noise" of complex data—to isolate a song's base melody, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, pitch, chords, progression, sonic brilliance, and several other factors that catch a listener's ear. The software then builds three-dimensional models of the song based on these properties and compares it with hit songs of the past. Putting a just-analyzed song on the screen with No. 1 tracks of yore shows a kind of cloud structure filled in with dots representing songs. The hits tend to be grouped in clusters, which reveal similar underlying structures. Get close to the middle of one of those clusters and you may have a hit.
And why, writing also. This bodes well for natural language search and communication, the idea that you can have a conversation with anyone in real time regardless of if they speak your language.
Music lends itself naturally to being parsed by algorithms—mathematics is mixed up in every chord, beat, and harmony that we hear. ..... Bots can't yet script prose worthy of awards, but on some metrics of economic importance to publishers—such as number of page views a site registers—bots can be far more productive than any journalist. They can write articles in seconds ...... his newer ones have consistently composed classical music that imitates masters like Johann Sebastian Bach so well that people can't always tell the difference
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Bullshit


NSA Boss Wants More Control Over the Net
The Internet should be adapted to allow for oversight by the National Security Agency, the organization's boss says.
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Google Books Deserves To Get Life

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
Just like sane countries force broadband providers to share their pipes with competitors, Google Books should be made to share its content to other online distributors, and authors of the books should get their cut, but the idea of getting in the way of digital books is plain stupid. Why deprive humanity of the treasure trove?

Google urges end to authors' digital book lawsuit
its ambitious plan to build the world's largest digital book library .... Google has said it has scanned more than 20 million books, and posted English-language snippets of more than 4 million .... authors actually benefit because the database helps people find and buy their books ..... a "de facto monopoly" to copy books en masse without permission and served to "further entrench" its market power in online searches. ..... Among the libraries whose works have been scanned are those of Harvard University, Oxford University, Stanford University, the University of California, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library .... The United States, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp had been among those to raise antitrust concerns about the settlement.
Paper books should feel odd. Digital books should be the norm. Digital copies of all books current and past should be available. Why do you want to get in the way of authors penetrating markets?


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Same Day Delivery: Possible


Not under all circumstances, and not everywhere, and not for every item, but what's the big deal with same day shipping? If you placed your order in the morning, why can't you have it by the time you get home in the evening?

Amazon CFO 'doesn't see a way to do same-day delivery'
"we don't see a way to do same-day delivery on a broad scale economically."

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Open English: Online Teaching

Image representing Open English as depicted in...
Image via CrunchBase
80,000 students for $43 million does not jive. The number of students needs to be much higher.

Open English raises $43 million to teach English online across Latin America
Open English was founded in 2006 and launched commercially in 2008. Since then, it has expanded all across Spanish-speaking Latin America and Brazil, while Flybridge invested $4.25 million in its May 2011′s Series B round. ..... more than 50,000 students in 20 countries, it now plans to use its new funding to reach the 80,000 student milestone by the end of the year
Why only English? This can and should be applied to any subject, at any level.
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