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Domain: vivaria.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to vivaria.net.

Comments · 8

  1. It's always bugged me by FrootLoops · · Score: 2 · on A Few Million Monkeys Finish Recreating Shakespeare's Works
    ...that monkeys are an extremely poor imitation of a random text generator. In Wikipedia's words:

    In 2003, scientists at Paignton Zoo and the University of Plymouth, in Devon in England reported that they had left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Sulawesi Crested Macaques for a month; not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, they started by attacking the keyboard with a stone, and continued by urinating and defecating on it.

    (source)

    Here's their output and a little more info/some pictures.

  2. Re:That's good and all by visgoth · · Score: 4, Informative · on Fake Scientific Paper Detector

    Oh, I'm sure the work of monkeys is quite easily identifiable.

  3. Re:Feces by Lorenzarius · · Score: 2, Informative · on Wiki to Help Solve Millennium Problems?
    The result of the experiment: Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

    And the slashdot story.

  4. Re:Local zoo... by comp.sci · · Score: 1 · on USPTO Unable to Find Top Ten Patent Holders

    Some interesting experiment done on actual monkeys and a typewriter:

    http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58790,00. html

    and their publication:
    http://www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/publicati on/NOTES_EN.pdf

  5. Re:Random number machines predicting the future eh by PyroMosh · · Score: 1 · on Random Number Generator That Sees Into the Future

    Doesn't work., Monkeys will not reproduce Shakespeare, because monkeys are not true random number generators.

    You will mostly just get the letter "s".

  6. The complete text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative · on Six Monkeys And An Old Saw

    is available here (warning: 2.82 MB pdf)

  7. Re:Why is this funded? by Meowing · · Score: 1 · on Six Monkeys And An Old Saw

    Np medical research funding was harmed in the production of this performance art piece. It was paid for by Vivaria and Arts Council England. Why MSN chose to report it as research? Well, media outlets are funny like that.

  8. The experiment's website by ApharmdB · · Score: 1 · on Six Monkeys And An Old Saw

    Is here. It is a slow server and will get slashdotted quickly, so someone mirror the pdf of the monkey's output if you can.

    The abc news article says that it was intended more as performance art then as a real experiment.