Domain: ubu.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ubu.com.
Comments · 10
-
Racter
I'd kind of hoped the dialog would be more coherent. It reminds me a lot of the output of the Racter program from 1984. The program "wrote" a hilarious but very strange book called The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed. Its output was generated from templates, so it wasn't even an attempt at AI, but it was kind of fun.
-
The Most Wanted Song
Available here:
http://www.ubu.com/sound/komar.html
"This survey confirms the hypothesis that today's popular music indeed provides an accurate estimate of the wishes of the vox populi. The most favored ensemble, determined from a rating by participants of their favorite instruments in combination, comprises a moderately sized group (three to ten instruments) consisting of guitar, piano, saxophone, bass, drums, violin, cello, synthesizer, with low male and female vocals singing in rock/r&b style"I hate it, but I quite like the Most Unwanted Song.
-
The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed
More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity.
I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber.
I need it for my dreams.
--Racter -
Re:You've got to be kidding me!
Lol! Victor Buono! Victor Buono MP3 on 356 Days Project (scroll a bit down)
-
Re:The real vaporware
My killer app for Windows is Quicken. I've been using it since version 1, back before Linux's kernel hit 1.0 and before GNUcash development was started. My file is something like 12 MB in size. Whenever the topic of "how do I migrate from Quicken for Windows to GNUcash?" comes up, the solution involves a very tedious and lossy export/import of QIF files, usually with some childish jabs as to why I would ever use such a closed platform.
I bought a Windows PC specifically to run Quicken after seeing how unbelievably awful Quicken for Mac is: the migration process from Quicken/Windows to Quicken/Mac is nearly as bad as the one from Quicken/Windows to GNUcash.
Show me a program that can import my whole Quicken for Windows file into a Free Libre Software program format, and I'll go down on you. -
Re:Speaking of Ed Wood
POINT OF PARLIMENTARY PROCEDURE!!!!!
Maurice La Marche didn't do the voice of the Robot devil. Dan "Homer Simpson" Castellaneta did. La Marche did (according to IMDB): Lrr, Morbo, and Calculon among others.
la Marche also did Orson Welles on "The Critic"
and lastly the infamous Orson Welles "frozen peas" spot that inspired La Marche. -
The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed
How about poetry?
The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed is a book that was "written" by an artificial intelligence program back in 1984. Supposedly the selections were not tweaked by humans but were certainly were selected by humans - this book of prose poetry was created by a program called "Racter". You can read Racter's work online.
The software for Racter was available for various 8 bit computers. A DOS version can be downloaded from the Home of the Underdogs.
Is it art? Well, if a large canvas painted entirely blue can be considered art, maybe just maybe the incoherent ramblings of an AI program can be too. The real consideration is WHO is the artist? Is it the program, or the programmer? -
Re:do you know how old "re-mixed" material is?
If you're interested in that idea, you may also want to check out a remarkable paper by Raphael Rubenstein that was published in American Poetry Review five years ago, called "Gathered, Not Made: A Brief History of Appropriative Writing". Rubenstein traces a long and rich literary tradition of "remixes" that re-appropriate and recombine "found words" into new creations.
-
Re:Quickie Slashdot Poll...
1. 0% - although I have used these things in the past I no longer have any of the files. To be honest I don't have a very high opinion of these illegal sources, I once gave my mate (who is a big "warez d00d") a list of CDs to get for me and he couldn't even find one of them!
2. 0%
3. under 5% - from places like UbuWeb
4. 95% - all ogg vorbis for my Rio Karma :-)
5. Hmm, now you mention it about half of the aforementioned 95% are from my big brothers CDs although I would never in the past considered buying CDs that there are already copies of in the house; just like I would never buy a book if somebody in my house had a copy, what a rediculous thing to do (although no doubt the music industry thinks we should).
Back to the point of downloading, I find a much more rewarding way of exploring music is to listen to radio stations like Resonance FM, this also has the added advantage that you are presented with music you had never heard of rather than seeking an mp3 of something you already know a bit about. -
Re:This makes sense
I had a similar experience involving throat-singing. Not only are they persistent, they appear to also have an impressively high tolerance to pain. (That or they're all hard of hearing.)