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Soviet's have regularly sailed through the Northern Sea Route in summer since, at least, the middle of the last century. There is some great prose written with such sailing as a backdrop, in fact (in Russian, not sure about translations).

The sailing was not easy and the airplanes were occasionally required to investigate movement of ice-fields. At the beginning and the end of the season, the ships were organized in convoys, that were headed by icebreakers. (USSR even had a few nuclear-powered ones, first one built in 1959). But in the middle of the summer a regular ship could make the trip on its own...

Maybe, there is less ice there now, but it is not like the trip has only just become possible.

I'd highly recommend StarCalc. It's free and has plenty of plugins. It's really quite excellent. http://www.m31.spb.ru/StarCalc/main.htm

Sorry to disappoint you, but for Russia it is much more logical to become ally with China

Just take a look at the map.

As to the joining NATO: Clinton's Russia specialist Strobe Talbot put it in his memoir "The Russia Hand," NATO expansion is inevitably seen by Russians as spearheading a U.S. strategy "to replace their influence and exploit the vast oil and gas resources of the Caspian Sea basin." NATO Expansion May Prove a Fateful Error

The biggest problem of force projection, is to transport materiel to where it is needed. It appears that the Russians have been selling Zubr hovercraft. I had the pleasure of seeing some of these laid up in a St. Petersburg shipyard, 60-knots and about 540 tonnes. The PRC has ordered six at the moment. If they start to buy more or seek a manufacturing license, this could be a cause for worry.

Well, my favorite music band ( http://dartz.spb.ru/ ) has all its songs in public access ( http://music.lib.ru/t/the_dar/alb4.shtml ) and earns money from concerts.

So it's quite possible to earn money not only from CD sales.

• Possibility to a certain degree of working at home through the use of TV-telephones, telefaxes, etc. (forecast: 1998)
• Acquisition of observation data from unmanned probes around Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and outside the solar system. (1999)
• Development of optical communication technology that can realize substantial savings in the use of copper. (1999)
• Possibility of external fertilization or artificial womb. (2001)
• Widespread use of heart transplant from human being by resolving problems such as transplant immunity, rejection and donor. (2001)
• Practical use of rapid-transit railway using iron rail and iron wheel, which can run at 300 km/h. (2006)
• Development of artificial ear. (2007)

There are lots of astronomical programs. One small, simple and free one is Starcalc. Just set it up with your latitude and longitude and it'll show you the sky at any time past present or future. Anyway, this shows that this is not a brief duration event like an eclipse but the three planets are very close over several days.

I am flattered, thanks! :) Sadly, I don't have a blog or diary, and the website is rudimentary, but perhaps, I should start one.

3D analysis requires stereo-pair of images, like this. Alternative would be to use some kind of radar or sonar, measuring time-differences of bounced signals, etc. Those and other methods for 3d digitizing.

You don't need a reason for people to congregate today. In the past it made sense to build them on the rivers, so that they have access to transportation or serve as nodes in a large transportation network.

But in 1703 Russian emperor Peter the Great said "A city shall be found here" (to spite the Swedes and to become a new capital). He drew the original plan himself and so the city grew orderly from the very beginning (though fortunately it was improved by architects better than the Emperor, such as ober-architect Peter Eropkin and others). This city, bearing the name of it founder (technically the name of his patron saint, which is the same), is the 3rd largest city in Europe today and one of the most beautiful in the world.

Today you can build a city anywhere, as evidenced by the success of Las Vegas or some cities in Saudi Arabia or Emirates (such as Dubai Internet City - though not technically a separate city, it's a great example of how vision + investment = city + jobs + growth + happiness).

Ports don't need many people anyway, neither do plants. A city today, if you ignore the legacy of most modern cities, is just a place for people to live and work comfortably (wasn't it always :] ) - and it can be done in almost any place on Earth. Your comment about arbitrary shape and structure of the imagined cities is certainly valid, but the one about location is probably not.

Runs Descent, Descent2, Jazz Jackrabbit and One Must Fall 2097 for me. Although DOS4GW doesn't work on it, but you can replace the extender with the Zurenava DOS Extender, for example.

The site's in Russian, but it's simple to use. You run it on the game executable to replace the extender it uses. After that it works fine. Some games seem to lock up on exit on my laptop, but everything works fine during play, so it shouldn't be a huge problem.

The facts are: US law does not universally apply, and Copyright is not some sort of divine right. If you will look around a bit you will see some of the countries with the least restrictive copyright laws have very outstanding artistic histories.

Once again you lot confuse commerce with art. Artists have traditionally sought benefactors and relied on individual sales and performance contracts to generate income. The people who benefit from US copyright law.. blah blah blah blah... we've heard it before

So I'll say it again: look around. Russia has a very loose copyright system and yet they are far from being devoid of artists - nor of plastic pop has-beens. And, in fact, some of the brightest artistic moments from that part of the world came when artists were most persecuted - nor have their very liberal policies cost them their share of post-modern innovation.

I'm not saying we should abuse artists (well, except mimes) but the simple fact is these russian (and Ukrainian - another FSU state that is slated to join the EU) websites are simply exploiting the weakness of the oppression existent in our own economy - no different than when we exploit the labors of those kids who work for a buck a day rolling beedies, assembling hundred dollar sneakers, or putting overpriced plastic dolls in boxes.

So... how does it feel to be exploited by the foibles of your own beliefs?

Links to the mirrors:

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Really folks, is it so hard to throw a <a></a> tag around a url?

I doubt you were looking for lyrics on a popular site, unless this site started distributing lyrics. The "Free Access Plugin" or "Content Access Plugin" is for p0rn. It seems they've become rather creative and started using the JavaScript src property (<script src="http://www.xxxtoolbar.com/ist/scripts/prompt. php?recurrence=always&account_id=56715&adid=a10503 87595&event_type=onload"></script>) to call PHP files to launch the prompt to install/cancel the "Content Access Plugin".

I know I will be scorned by you for this, but I will say it anyway. :) I am not a nanoscientist. Even more (or less), I am not a physicist. So although I am still excited by some of the real physical problems that we face, this excitement is limited by my inability to fully comprehend them. So personally (sorry about that) I prefer speculations (hopefully with some basis in reality) about transhuman and posthuman possibilities of advanced nanotech, AI and hypercomputers to analysis of real (by that I mean things more advanced than the level of this particular dicussion covered in the article) technical or scientific issues (not to say I don't like to read a scientific paper on these topics occasionally).

Another thing is that being relatively young and more optimistic about the speed of progress than you are, I already (to a large extent) feel like an immortal being (however strange that might sound to most people). For this reason I do not worry too much about immediate developments (although I still care about it), knowing that in 10-20-30 years things will somehow work out (yeah, I do realise people like you are responsible for this somehow).

Speaking about predictions, while they might look silly to a physicist, they are extremely useful to politicians, businessmen and the public at large. While we might not know the exact schedule of nanotech development, we know enough about it to be able to give some estimates. There can be many techniques, although few with proved reliability, to be used for such forecasting. You can read some of my ideas about planning and the need for it in my small essay Planning for the Future. BTW, overoptimistic predictions are nothing good, I agree here. The question is how to make realistic ones...

Such people are constant treat of spreading diseases and of being involved in all kinds of criminal activities, including terrorism. Any reasonable government should keep tabs on them. See here for details

The United Energy System (EES), created in the USSR, was a complex interconnected automated system, not only joining all power stations over the huge territory of Russia, but also connected into the international energy system of COMECON countries. The system provided reliable and uninterrupted electricity supply thanks to the combined capacity of the interconnected subsystems. At the same time, the system was designed for variable seasonal load changes. Because of that large-scale power outwages were literally uknown in Soviet times.

(translated from here )

Having lived in USSR for 11 years (until it broke up) I can confirm that this was indeed true. While short local blackouts sometimes happened (a house or a few blocks), anything on the city scale was unheard of. But Americans had to face such crap then (some famous blackouts decades ago) and they still do. Behold the wonders of the capitalist economy!

Ever heard of the KX Project? Its a small group of people who have released alternative SB Live drivers for Windows. I've been using their beta release for the last few months and I can say that these drivers are MUCH better than anything Creative Labs has put out. Finally, I can get decent ASIO performance with my Live! The KX drivers also allow you to do some extra-nifty effects loading and output routing things that the Creative Labs drivers won't do. I highly reccomend trying them if you haven't already. I don't know if they work in an SMP environment, as I don't have one, but it might be worth investigating.

I firmly believe much of what people find lacking in "digital film" is the noise and grain - much like digital audio. Of course, the technology is very young - digital video is relatively where digital audio was around 1985. Still, taking a "clean" film and adding a bit of "grain" richens it considerably.

Anyway, let's see you do a complete 90 minute feature in one very long take while hauling around a film camera...

I firmly believe much of what people find lacking in "digital film" is the noise and grain - much like digital audio. Of course, the technology is very young - digital video is relatively where digital audio was around 1985. Still, taking a "clean" film and adding a bit of "grain" richens it considerably.

Anyway, let's see you do a complete 90 minute feature in one very long take while hauling around a film camera...

There are many games set in fictional countries and even fictional universes, but somehow the signs are written in perfect English. I don't ask the developers to adopt an actual language, be it Russian (although that would be nice), Ukrainian, Serbian, Mongolian or any other, but making the signs at least readable to anyone familiar with Cyrillic would be nice. Even people whose native language is based on latin alphabet, would probably be happy to invest a little time to learn a few extra letters if they are going to spend 50+ hours playing the game.

The developers decided to use meaningless babble-speak a la The Sims, but I doubt that they made it sound like some sort of Geonosian.

In any case, I am sure that the problem is deeper than the wish of developers to create a fictional country. Here is just one example of many.

Film: The Bourne's Identity, Time: 0:17:10 (in Swiss bank)

The Russian international passport shown in this scene is issued for Foma Kinaev. Everything looks authentic enough, except that the name in Cyrillic sounds more like Lsh'f Lshtshfum. But it's written in those cryptic Cyrillic letters (note, how the filmmakers favoured the letters which aren't also in English alphabet) and so probably no viewer will understand it. For some reason, Brazilian passport is done correctly, as well as the rest of them.

Honestly, I cannot find any reason behind this other than simple ignorance or outright idiocy (if Bourne's Identity makers got a Russian passport, they must have had someone who also knows how to spell a Russian name).

Some bands may choose to cater to that core audience and "stay small" - but I doubt many would turn down the chance at a major tour if one of their "indie releases" suddenly turned into a popular download.

I personally have zero use for iTunes - I don't have a Mac and even if i did I'm not gonna pay a dollar a goddamn track for RIAA label downloads locked into a DRM'd format. But if Apple can sign a bunch of bands and release them in a more consumer friendly format (ie >256kbps MP3) then I'd be all over that. What would really rock is if they'd sign some of the international artists and DJs I've grown attached to but who get little to no respect in the US - like Garmarna, Linda, NOME, Oceania, Juno Reactor, Natacha Atlas, Digiweed, etc. If I could pay a buck a track to download HQ tracks from artists I like and I knew with some certainty the artists were getting a significant benefit from my purchase, my opinion of iTunes would change dramatically - and likely would for many, many others as well.

Where do I sign up?

• BeOS5-PersonalEdition.exe (45 MB) - BeOS which installs its filesystem virtual into one file on your Windows partition. No partitioning required, no risk involved! Ideal for trying it out.
• BeOS4Linux.tar.gz (41 MB) - same thing, but installs into a Linux ext2 partition. Needs a bootdisk here, though.
• dano_51d0.zip (68,4 MB) - Never released "next generation" BeOS. If link is buggered, paste this without spaces into emule/lmule/xmule: ed2k://|file|dano_51d0.zip|71802854|30CA778C7F8E1B 5A94557E5CD8923B93|/
• DeveloperEdition-1-1-boot-and-main.zip (188 MB) - Needs own partition. Great distro, about as much fun as a Linux desktop of two years ago.
• BeOS-Zeta-Presentation-CeBIT2003.avi (67 MB)
• OpenBeOS recreates the OS in open source

How about another view on the issue? Are We Living In Nick Bostrom's Speculation? is a detailed rebuttal of Bostrom's Simulation Argument, revealing logical and mathematical mistakes in the original proof. Comments are welcome.

Regarding Nick Bostrom, see my related post here. I'd like to think that he has some academic honesty (and I am grateful to him for writing/editing the Transhumanist FAQ), but his simulation ideas are bullshit , indeed.

I've written a small essay with a more or less detailed explanation of the errors. Unfortunately, the final version is available only in Russian and only a rough draft is available in English.

I've written a small essay with a more or less detailed explanation of the errors. Unfortunately, the final version is available only in Russian and only a rough draft is available in English.

Or you can avoid Creative's drivers by installing the kx drivers available here.

Those these drivers are aimed more at musicians than gamers.

I wonder if the drivers from the kx project can bypass this limitation?

I seem to remember reading that this is the case... can anyone back me up on this?

Not much difference between 'decommissioned' and 'abandoned'. There was no control tower, there were no emergency vehicles, and while 32R was still used for amateur aviation, the only light stations were for 32L. Bob Pearson (The PIC at the time) says "Never even saw 32R, focusing instead on airspeed, altitude, and his plane's relationship to the threshold of 32L"

Agreed. RME makes arguably some of the best hardware around AND has good Linux support.

There was an interesting article in electronic musician a few years ago about music production on Linux (June 1999; unfortunately no longer available in the on-line archives at emusician.) The article had a key point: the idea of Linux-based music production is exciting but the market for music hard/software is relatively small and most companies are struggling to break even on Win/Mac. Jim Rippie of Cakewalk supposedly had this to say: "...Getting information about the number of people using an OS that can be freely downloaded is a slippery proposition, making it difficult to create a proper business case for porting to Linux". This point I imagine isn't exclusive to music production software.

But you never know what some intreped hacker might dream up... Someone was able to reverse-engineer ASIO drivers for SoundBlaster cards after all.

The only reason I own an Audigy was that it replaced my Live! Creative kept promising ASIO drivers for the Live! but none ever materialized =(

There are ASIO drivers for the SB Live. Check out the kX Project. They claim to get as low as 5.33 ms latency with a Live, although I must admit I find that somewhat hard to believe. I have never used these drivers, perhaps someone who has tried them can validate the claim?

alex

Thanks for enlightening me about the meaning of "throbber" in this particular context. I'd reckon that pornzilla will probably feature a different set of tiles than the original, quite possibly involving "members"?

If pornzilla pulls this off (...) and gets really successful, there might be hard times ahead for Microsoft. Somehow, I cannot imagine them doing an "Internet Explorer 8.0 - the best browser for one-handed operation" ad campaign. But then again, read on, the really fun part comes now:

Microsoft actually looked into entering the pr0n business in the 90s, according to this 1994 article by Andrew Schulman in DDJ. Quoting from it:

"The best bet is to find areas where Microsoft doesn't have a product, and where there is a chance of a several-year window of opportunity before it does have a product. On the other hand, the only market I've ever heard of that Microsoft didn't want to get into was pornographic screen savers and related multimedia titles. As one company employee told me, 'We looked carefully at adult software, and decided to leave that money on the table'".

Microsoft pr0n, imagine that. The mind boggles.

Several days ago, in the "Securing Win2K, NSA Style" story, one of the crapflooders posted this comment. I was interested by it and did a search on Google and found a site with MP3s of Tom Waits.

So, if you want to learn about good and interesting music, don't read the stories, just browse at -1 ;).


kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.

A church that's 800 years old looks like the day it was built to my eyes, and that most of the wear and tear that I'm used to has occurred just within the past century.

No kidding! Just look at this picture of the Church of St. Dmitrii from the exhibit, and compare it to this one, taken in the early 1990s. The recent one is filthy.

That the deterioration to these buildings occurred largely in the last century is correct, but do not place the blame solely on the industrialization. The Soviet state had a much greater effect on the current poor condition of Russian Orthodox churches.

During the rule of Lenin and Stalin, thousands of churches were completely destroyed, most famously, The Church of Christ the Saviour, in Moscow. Many more were damaged and looted, others were used as clubs or wharehouses, like the magnificent Church of the Savior on the Blood in St. Petersburg (picture here). It has only been relatively recently that major restorations have been undertaken to return some of these architectural landmarks to their former glory. Furthermore, a state obsessed with military parity with the West had few resources left to perform even simple maintenance to clean the facades of many buildings.

Something else that is interesting is how, in some respects, so little has changed from the time these pictures were taken. Aside from the clothing, this picture could have been taken in any Russian town this very day. And a train ride through the Russian countryside reveals many villages that look similar to this even today.

Prokudin-Gorskii's photographs are simply amazing, though, a real treasure. I agree with many of the other posters who said that these pictures place one's black and white mental image of the past in a whole new light. Kudos to the Library of Congress for this exhibit. I am sure it will be of immense value to scholars and students world wide.

OK, normally I don't like to post a bunch of links but your post has me wondering. Is this accident just an effect of some type of inertial gyroscopic propulsion? I have heard of such systems (admitedly from the 'alternative' side of fun things related to space) where forced opposition of gyroscopes casues a similar effect. Here are a few links to sites that discuss this phenominon: some patented gyro propulsion ideas
an open source gyroscopic inertial thruster
a list of space drive patents
someone with way too much time on his hands
100 anti grav links Take a look at some of those links (with a grain of salt). I would be willing to bet this guy had some sort of setup that upon 'falling' forced the unit mass against the gyroscopic forces of the motor and thats why his result was it 'flying'. I am not a scientist so excuse my ignorance on the mechanics/physics of this subject. It is fascinating...

Ok, so I'm a geek. And I kinda collect watches. But I have to say that I think this is cool.

I've been waiting for a watch with RF wireless connectivity (bluetooth, 802.11, whatever) so that I can use it as an ntp server for all of my other wireless devices which have no need to have an accurate clock in them when I am wearing one on my wrist.. Syncronizing the clocks on my phone, watch, computer, pda etc would be made a lot easier that way. Maybe a radio-referenced watch too, so that I wouldn't ever need to set it :-)

Enough rambling.

As for it being too big and heavy, it's probably lighter than my Casio DEP-600 which I'm wearing now ;-) (can't find any other pages on it atm)

For instance, what do you do in the US if someone in Russia decides to ignore copyright?

Is it fair?

No.

Can you stop it?

..?

Cheers,
Ben

Breaking the terms under which someone releases them to you is stealing, whether it happens to be easily copiable or not.

We can debate the definition of stealing in the digital realm all day long. I don't think what I'm doing is wrong. I consider it the equivelent of listening to the radio. Luckily, since I have the 'Net, I get to pick my own programming. The 'Net empowers people, as I'm sure you're aware. Now on to the examples.

I suppose if you copy photoshop and use it and give it to whoever you wish, as long as you don't sell it, that's okay

I don't consider Photoshop to be the same thing as an MP3. One it is a tool used to create content, rather than the content itself. Photoshop is not somethig you can turn on the radio and hear. Photoshop is not a cornerstone of our culture, music is.

What if you simply photocopy all the Tim O'Reilly books rather than buy them?

Why would I do that? I don't pay to go see Tim (or any of his authors) read thier books live. Why take the hours to copy something when I could spend those same hours making the money to buy it? MP3's make my listening efficient. Besides if you wanted to, you could just go here and print them out page by page.

I've seen numerous "examples" in various debates on this issue, and have yet to find one that fits or makes any discernable point by fitting.

You seem to have the very confused idea that stealing equals "Selling what I took".

That is a response to the whining of the RIAA that "pirating" costs them potential sales. Well, heart disease does the same thing. The only way they would lose "sales" is if someone spends the money somewhere else to obtain the same product. Of course, online MP3's might seriously undermine the demand for CDs (the physical media), but I have yet to see evidence for that position. In my own life, it has proved the opposite. The RIAA is working very hard to keep the supply of it's product limited, which goes against both the ideals of music as an art form and the current nature of the product (given the Internet).

I see - so I suppose you send off checks to the artists you're "listening to" currently? Do you pick an arbitrary amount, or do you ask the artist.

Hell no. At least not under the current environment. But do I think that's a possibility in the future, yes. You've seen street musicians, no? Play a bit, ask for hand-outs. Move that to the web, set-up up a micropayment system, and such a model might be possible. Given the right artists who works hard to continually provide high quality service to their fans. Given a possible audience of 6,000,000,000 most talented musicians could find a niche to get comfy in. Couple this with selling cd's and touring (which is how many musicians have made a living since time was recorded), and I think it would be possible to build a music career. There are numerous other suggestions around, if you are an artist and wish to go this route, I think creativity might be a dang good quality to posess.

So we just need to do is indoctrinate society to do the right thing, and viola, problem solved!

Nope, just the idea that art should appeal to *you* and not someone you've been taught to think is better than you. To put it bluntly, I think this society (U.S) is severely fscked up when it comes to things like art and beauty, how to deal with them, and what they mean. I think it's a side effect of a number of influences, not the least of which is a media that focuses on appealing to the lowest common denominator and repetition, repetition, repetition. By convincing you so deeply that sharing is stealing, they've built a nice nest egg with which to sue.

Why? Many reasons, but I'll stick to one - almost no one is willing to pay for these mp3s you self distribute.

no, but many, including me, are willing to pay both for the CDs from which they came, and the gate/door fees for the places that they (the artists) are playing.

That makes it real hard to make a pro sounding CD, support a tour, or cut back on the dayjob a little to make more music. So as bad as the tradional model is, artists are forced to it simply because it is the only way they can hope to make any money.

And I think that is exactly the kind of attitude the RIAA will continue to enforce, through repetition, repetition, repetition. YOU CAN'T MAKE IT WITHOUT US. But, I don't think that's true any more. When the Net is as common as TV (which should be about 5 years now if trends continue to accelerate as they have been), I think the only thing that will keep it from working is artists thinking it won't. It will take an example to kick start the thing, but it will happen.

I'm still lost on your plan to protect the rights of artists.

I tell how I don't think the right way is to do it, the DMCA, and UCITA. I don't think taking rights (fair use, an origianl check vs. copyright) away from others is the best way to protect artists right to profit.

Complaining about the current model is easy. Coming up with a good solution is not.

True, it is easy to smell shit from a mile away, if it's a really big pile. But, what you are proposing we do is stick with the evil we know rather than face the one you fear.

I think popular culture in this country is very sick. I think it's part of the disease that leads to so much hate and violence here. I would like to see it change, and working from the ground up is a good way to do it. Yes, I'm a revolutionary, or perhaps evolutionary would be a better term. I see the potential for people to take back our culture from the 20 people who have been able to control it. People who have put aside ideals, or any notion of public responsibility, for a fat profit margin. I could go on and on about this, it's one of my passions, as I'm sure you've noticed, but that should suffice for now, you know where I stand and why I stand there.

(I never thought I would be arguing the ills of rampant capitalism with someone called "Commie", welcome to the 21st century (next year, ya nitpickers :))

--

Just go to http://corvin.spb.ru/ and you can download the entire Perl CD Bookshelf (as well as the Web Developer Library and Java Reference Library) from O'Reilly for free. Of course, O'Reilly charges around $60 for each of these, but hey, the guys running the site are Open Source, Linux, and Slashdot groupies, and we all know how altruistic and giving such types are, so I'm sure they're just doing it for the good of the community. Information wants to be free, right?Judging by the large number of similar sites out there, I guess it really does.

Then again, maybe things like this are why O'Reilly's is putting up only 300 bucks for the winner. :)

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

I kinda noticed that when I was posting but wasn't 100% sure I remembered the syllable counts. Now that you mention it, flipping through his sample poems, there are a bunch of them that are off by a syllable or two in various lines. I thought haiku's were all 5-7-5 in terms of syllables per line. But I have vague recollection that there are more flexible forms; are they still legitimately called haiku? An article found via Google suggests so, but while doing, describes the primacy of the 5-7-5 form. Here's another definition of haiku, pretty interesting.

The syllable patterns in the "haiku" listed in his book (p163-166) and website have the syllabic patterns:
5-5-5, 4-7-6, 5-5-6, 4-5-4, 6-5-5, 4-6-7
Another list of poems from his website includes haiku with syllabes:
5-6-5, 3-4-5, 4-4-4, 3-5-4, 5-8-5, 6-4-7, 4-6-7, 5-6-6

Fourteen haiku, all hand selected from hundreds or thousands of presumably worse ones, and not even one 5-7-5 haiku!

What's even more troubling is the potential manipulation of the input. The poem I quoted was generated "after reading poems by Ray Kurzweil and Wendy Dennis." What isn't disclosed in the book AFAICT, but is mentioned on the Cybernetic Poet website is the background of Wendy Dennis, who is one of the two authors fed in to that poem I first quoted:
Wendy Dennis (KCAT Research Analyst) organized an
effort to gather files of poetry from 16 contemporary
poets. Files of poetry from 20 classical poets were
provided by The Poetry Archives. Wendy was also the
project's Poet Personality Designer, and designed the
100 poet personalities that are included with the
program.

This implies that there could be at least two other potential factors that make the poems "look intelligent" here:
1) the particular pieces of poetry fed in to the program are carefully hand-selected to generate human-looking output
2) the poetry fed into the system could actually be *composed* in an optimal way so to produce interesting-looking output (output that owes more to the data entered than the code written)

Well, thanks for the conversational spur to look into this. It's been educational.


Artificial thought --
They call it intelligence;
I'm still better. Hah!

(Oops, forgot the nature theme to make it truly traditional.)

Winters' discontent --
a stark new competitor
arises. Shot down!

--LP


P.S. The above post was created by a wetware neural network going by the handle LinuxParanoid, an engineer by training with little education in poetry. The subject did learn how to write haiku in middle school but had no further education on the subject and has never pursued haiku as a hobby. Both haiku were written in under 2 minutes each, with the subject having written maybe one haiku in the last ten years on a lark.