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Imagine a philosopher with no practical experience of anything vaguely robotic wrote a book on robotics. This is what they would write. Braitenberg talks about vague concepts like memory, foresight, logic and trains of thought. But these discussions are completely sophomoric jumping from systems with one or two neurons to imaginary systems with the above properties. I don't need a book to point out that an intelligent machine needs foresight, and I don't need a book to point out that a simple neuronal system with persistence might have something to do with memory. Unless you're going to say something about the details between neurons and full blown brains then you're just armchair philosophizing and any sophomore can do that without the help of a book. Maybe if he had written the book in the forties it'd be interesting. But by the eighties every science fiction writer and his dog had written about these subjects with far more detail.

But I do love the pictures by Ladina Ribi and Claudia-Martin-Schubert. They are quite special.

June 13, 2002
An International E-Competition Relies on the High-Tech E-Piano
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Early this evening in St. Paul a panel of seven pianists will gather in the intimate Sundin Music Hall on the campus of Hamline University to judge the six young finalists in a new international piano competition. But in an unprecedented move, an eighth judge, Yefim Bronfman, with the highest profile among these pianists, will also be evaluating the finalists. From Hamamatsu, Japan. Where it will be early Friday morning.

How is this possible? Welcome to the first International Piano-e-Competition.

Mr. Bronfman, whom the contest's Web site (www.piano-e-competition.com) calls an "e-judge," is to sit in a 200-seat recital hall in the international headquarters of the Yamaha Corporation listening to the performances of the young pianists in St. Paul as reproduced onstage through a Yamaha Disklavier Pro piano, essentially a 21st-century player piano. With Yamaha as one of the sponsors of the competition, it has a blatantly promotional underlay. But beyond product placement, the contest does raise questions about the uniqueness of live performance and the appropriate uses of ever-advancing technology in music.

For this round the finalists are required to play any Schubert sonata of their choice. As Mr. Bronfman hears each disembodied performance, he will be able to watch a video relay of the actual Schubert-playing performer in St. Paul, synced exactly to the music.

Though these pianos are Yamaha concert grands that can be played like any standard piano, they are equipped with the Disklavier computer system, the most advanced of several on the market that strive to replicate a pianist's performance. (A Disklavier Pro concert grand retails for $152,995, while a standard nine-foot Yamaha sells for $25,000 to $30,000.)

These systems, their promoters and champions assert, can precisely analyze and store every nuance of touch, every pedaling effect in a pianist's performance. The stored performance, they say, can then be reproduced on the piano with the flick of a switch, or downloaded onto another Disklavier piano and reproduced with the same exactitude.

The idea for involving e-judges in the competition originated with Alexander Braginsky, 58, a professor of piano at the University of Minnesota School of Music as well as the co-founder, president and artistic director of the Piano-e-Competition, who approached Yamaha for its support.

The Moscow-born Mr. Braginsky was "raised in the most competitive musical environment ever," he said in a recent interview from Minneapolis. So he is dismayed that competitions have lost respect among large segments of the profession, he said. Though most critics would say the problem stems from the basic inappropriateness of trying to rank artistic performances, Mr. Braginsky blames the inadequate quality of the judging.

When he moved to the West, he was often asked to be a competition judge. "Everywhere I went, I met the same judges," Mr. Braginsky said.

They were typically retired pianists, pianists with modest performing schedules, former competition finalists whose careers had not fulfilled early expectations and teachers. "They traveled from one competition to another," he added.

He said he wanted to entice into the judging ranks notable concert pianists like the Russian-born Mr. Bronfman. But pianists with heavy touring schedules are often not free to judge long competitions. (This one began June 4 and concludes on Sunday.) The answer? Bring the competition to the touring pianists.

Mr. Bronfman, on tour in Korea and Japan, is scheduled to arrive in Hamamatsu late tonight from Seoul. He has agreed only to help with the final rounds during the next four days.

Mr. Bronfman's colleague and New York neighbor, the pianist Emanuel Ax, had originally agreed to join him in Japan as a second e-judge. But Mr. Ax pulled out a few months ago, he said in a recent interview, because of a scheduling conflict.

His withdrawal clearly rattled the competition's organizers. As recently as last week Mr. Ax's name was still prominently featured on the event's Web site.

When contacted this week, Mr. Ax said that it was his understanding that he had been asked to judge the finals by means of a "video feed" alone. He called the Disklavier "a fabulous gadget" and said he was considering using one to help in practicing.

Still, despite his enthusiasm for the Disklavier, Mr. Ax said that he would have found relying on one to judge a young pianist's performance "very weird." When his schedule conflict forced him to withdraw, he felt relieved in some ways, he said.

Mr. Bronfman expressed excitement over his own role. "I thought it would be kind of neat to be sitting in a little room in Japan and seeing what happened in Minnesota at the same time," he said in an interview from Seoul.

But it will not be exactly the same time. It takes roughly 30 minutes to transmit and download a performance over the Internet.

Still, though he sees "enormous possibilities" for this technology to reach wider audiences, as of Monday he had never tried out or heard a Yamaha Disklavier. "If I have any doubts about what I hear," he said, "I will not submit my remarks."

As Mr. Ax indicated, the Disklavier piano is a fabulous gadget. James Wooten, the director of the services department at Yamaha Artists Services in Chelsea, explained that the key mechanism of a grand piano is a long, thin piece of wood that functions like a seesaw. A Disklavier computer uses fiber-optic sensors to calibrate the speed, pressure and touch of the finger's impact on the exposed end of the seesaw.

A Disklavier piano is equipped with electronic solenoids that essentially lift the other end of the wooden seesaw when the stored performance is played back. Measuring pedaling effects is far more complicated. But the Yamaha engineers, who pioneered this technology in the late 1980's, have made enormous advances in recent years, though other manufacturers of pianos, both acoustic and digital, have also done work in this field.

On Tuesday at the Yamaha studio I heard a Disklavier reproduction of excerpts of a performance of Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7 played on June 8 in St. Paul on another Disklavier by Edisher Savitski, who was recently named one of the finalists. The disembodied performance sounded uncannily real, full of nuance, sweep, clarity and power. I then played part of a Beethoven bagatelle and listened with genuine amazement to the playback.

But it's one thing to listen to yourself for purposes of self-study. I would be loath to venture any opinion about Mr. Savitski's Prokofiev performance in Minnesota based on the Disklavier reproduction in New York. After all, the pianos, though identical models, were different, as were the room, humidity, weather and acoustics: all the things that affect how a piano performance sounds in a particular space on a particular day.

Michael Bates, the director of academic and institutional relations for the Yamaha piano division, said that to make the differences between the pianos in Minnesota and Hamamatsu as insignificant as possible, the Yamaha piano factory built three Disklavier concert grands in succession, specifically intended for the competition. And technicians in the two places strove to voice the pianos similarly. Voicing is a process that primarily involves adjusting the hardness or softness of the felt hammers that strike the strings. The idea is to make the piano sound even from bottom to top of the keyboard, so that no notes stick out in an ungainly way.

But no two machines as complicated as grand pianos ever turn out alike. And voicing is a subjective art.

Even putting aside reservations about differences in halls and hammers, what about the human factor in a piano performance? Pianists learn to adjust their touches to a particular piano with a degree of refinement that would seem impossible to calibrate. And no measuring system can replicate an artistic presence, the vibes of the performer, however charismatic, tender or surly.

In some ways it's easier to trust the fidelity of those scratchy old 1930's recordings of Artur Schnabel performing the Beethoven sonatas. All the elegance, sparkle and vigor of his playing come through with affecting presence and honesty.

Some promoters of the Disklavier promise more a faithful mode of enjoying piano performances than recordings. They envision a future when, instead of buying a Martha Argerich CD, one could pop a floppy disk into a deluxe Disklavier and hear her performance, albeit without Ms. Argerich's galvanic presence. But isn't this prospect, to borrow a word from Mr. Ax, just weird?

This weekend the finalists in the piano competition will perform concertos (which must be chosen from a restricted list of repertory staples) at Orchestral Hall in Minneapolis. Mr. Bronfman will judge these performances via high-tech video and audio relay systems. Will the day come when an orchestra will accompany a Disklavier playing Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto? Don't laugh.

It's hard to know how the judges in Minnesota, who include some distinguished artists, like the superb Slovenian pianist Dubravka Tomsic, will factor in Mr. Bronfman's opinions from afar. Among them there is some discomfort over the use of the Disklavier. The pianist Abby Simon, 80, chairman of the judges, said the technology "adds some oddness to the whole business."

Promoters say that the competition's main purpose is to bring attention to young talents. There are typical cash awards (with a $25,000 first prize) and performance opportunities for the top winners. But bringing attention to the Disklavier seems a comparably important goal.

"If they were not using this technology in Japan," Mr. Bronfman said, "we would not be talking about this competition in Minnesota."

Exactly.

"There's plenty of opportunities" for adding mammal DNA to gorilla scat after the fact, Schubert said. "I don't really think they're eating meat."

Investigators then obtained what Anne Marie Schubert, the Sacramento district attorney, called "abandoned" DNA samples from Mr. DeAngelo. "You leave your DNA in a place that is a public domain," she said.

THIS is the part one really needs to worry about. Is it abandonment, or is a search warrant needed since it's "our person"?

Specifically books 6 and 7.

Also wish I'd played Half Life 3 sooner.

I heard that Chuck Norris has done all of those things. And he has heard the third and fourth movements of Schubert's 8th Symphony.

Bach overrated? He's always in the top 3 amongst people who know about that music: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. Even such geniuses as Schubert, Haydn, Mahler and OK, Vivaldi aren't quite in that league. It's like saying Leonhard Euler is overrated.

Here's Vivaldi's unearthly Nisi Dominus.

Schubert's 9th. Second Movement. Or first? 24 minutes.

First, need to get some pedantry out of the way

It is Die Forelle written by Chopin.

Schubert actually

The title roughly translated to English would be: The Fish.

The Trout to be a little more exact.

Sorry about that, anyway I don't get these lyrics:

I'm done, come get your clean clothes
The cycle is complete
The wash and rinse have finished
The spin was fast and strong
I'm ready now to be emptied
Don't make me wait too long
I'll be here patiently awaiting
I'll soon repeat this song

...I mean, does your washing machine actually sing to you? Or do you get the lyrics in the manual and are you supposed to gather the family around for a nice sing-a-long around the washing machine...

Which classics?

Anna Karenina, The Odyssey, The Old Man And The Sea, The Brothers Karamazov. Also anything by Beethoven or Schubert.

"He wrote in the blog that that lead counsel for the Sanders campaign told him that Garvey, Schubert, Barer sent the demand letter without any consultation with the Sanders campaign."

If that's the quality of advisers that Sanders is attracting, he's got a problem with his ability to identify good staff.

... but I know enough about scales that I can find the notes and I also know that they are historically grown - much like the computer keyboard. I also can sing and recite some classic songs from Schubert and Loewe. I learned all this in school, in regular music class. I also learned poetry and what a jambus rythm is. These are all small but valuable cornerstone of my education.

Long story short: No one in his right mind expects everybody to be able to code a well-architected appserver or an asynchronous website that runs on all browsers or whatever. Or, hell no, how to deal with those bazillion quirks modern IT comes with. ... That is the job of people who are grown up and earn their money with this sort of thing.

What people should learn in school is the difference between a variable and a value and a constant/literal. They should also have some basic concept of a digital network such as the internet and what a client and a server are and what their differences are and how these two relate to each other. CUAS and a few regular expressions or simply knowing that such things exist would be neat too. If they can write an if statement and roughly know how a function looks in some easy but useful PL such as Python - that would be something someone knows after having "accelerated IT" in school as a kid or something.

The big problem is that even professionals today don't know the CUAS, don't know how to use the clipboard or that a computer is there for automating stuff and that somewhere within their word processor there probably is some function for a more adanced search & replace. This is the problem we have to fix. If members of the bundestag are to dumb to handle computers and the entire site gets infected by malware and bots - that's an exact result of people not even learning the very basics of computing - something someone would learn in less than two hours in their initial lesson with a computer professional.

Bottom line: Proper computer classes in school won't magically transform society into an utopia, but teach children the very basics of how to handle computers and smartphones and tablets and "cloud-services" correctly. And that would be a very big plus.

My 2 cents.

How many women did they nominate?

Best Novel
The Dark Between the Stars – Kevin J. Anderson – TOR (23 FEB 2015 interview)
Trial by Fire – Charles E. Gannon – BAEN (2 MAR 2015 interview)
Skin Game – Jim Butcher – ROC
Monster Hunter Nemesis – Larry Correia – BAEN
Lines of Departure – Marko Kloos – 47 North (Amazon)

Best Novella
“Flow” – Arlan Andrews Sr. – Analog magazine November 2014
One Bright Star to Guide Them – John C. Wright – Castalia House
Big Boys Don’t Cry – Tom Kratman – Castalia House

Best Novelette
“The Journeyman: In the Stone House” – Michael F. Flynn – Analog magazine June 2014
“The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale” – Rajnar Vajra – Analog magazine July/Aug 2014
“Championship B’tok” – Edward M. Lerner – Analog magazine Sept 2014
“Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” – Gray Rinehart – Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

Best Short Story
“Goodnight Stars” – Annie Bellet – The Apocalypse Triptych
“Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer” – Megan Grey – Fireside Fiction
“Totaled” – Kary English – Galaxy’s Edge magazine, July 2014
“On A Spiritual Plain” – Lou Antonelli – Sci Phi Journal #2
“A Single Samurai” – Steve Diamond – Baen Big Book of Monsters

Best Related Work
Letters from Gardner – Lou Antonelli – Merry Blacksmith Press
Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth – John C. Wright – Castalia House
“THE HOT EQUATIONS: THERMODYNAMICS AND MILITARY SF” – Ken Burnside – Riding the Red Horse
Wisdom From My Internet – Michael Z. Williamson
“Why Science is Never Settled” Part 1, Part 2 – Tedd Roberts – BAEN

Best Graphic Story
Reduce Reuse Reanimate (Zombie Nation book #2) – Carter Reid – (independent)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)
“The Lego Movie” – Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
“Guardians of the Galaxy” – James Gunn
“Interstellar” – Christopher Nolan
“The Maze Runner” – Wes Ball

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
Grimm – ” Once We Were Gods” – NBC
The Flash – “The Flash (pilot)” – The CW
Adventure Time – “The Prince Who Wanted Everything” – Cartoon Network
Regular Show – “Saving Time” – Cartoon Network

Best Editor (Long Form)
Toni Weisskopf – BAEN
Jim Minz – BAEN
Anne Sowards – ACE/ROC
Sheila Gilbert – DAW

Best Editor (Short Form)
Mike Resnick – Galaxy’s Edge magazine
Edmund R. Schubert – Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show
Jennifer Brozek (for Shattered Shields)
Bryan Thomas Schmidt (for Shattered Shields)

Best Professional Artist
Carter Reid
Jon Eno
Alan Pollack
Nick Greenwood

Best Semiprozine
Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show
Abyss & Apex
Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine

Best Fanzine
Tangent SF On-line – Dave Truesdale
Elitist Book Reviews – Steve Diamond
The Revenge of Hump Day – Tim Bolgeo

Best Fancast
“The Sci Phi Show” – Jason Rennie
Dungeon Crawlers Radio
Adventures in SF Publishing

Best Fan Writer
Matthew David Surridge (Black Gate)
Jeffro Johnson
Amanda Green
Cedar Sanderson
Dave Freer

The John W. Campbell Award
Jason Cordova
Kary English
Eric S. Raymond

Jesus Christ -- they nominated "looks like FORTRAN to me" ESR? What for? Worst identification of a programming language?

the software was unfinished.

codenamed 'Schubert'?

Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

Debian developers also threatened author with lengthy imprisonment, denied existence of author's contributions

Previously a debian developer, Erich Schubert, claimed that the author of gpcslots had never
contributed anything to opensource, was corrected, replyed to the corrections,
and then deleted the corrections and left up his false claims.
Author has contributed gigabytes of media to opensource, years of programming
work, and has been involved in numerous projects.
http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/2...

Another debian developer, Josselin Mouette, (while bragging that he, JM, had successfuly
campaigned to ban prostitution in france, have Johns arrested, and had run
mafias out of the country) told the author that he was going to have him
arrested by the FBI (van'd) because the author suggested there was no sin
in marrying young girls (and cited a bible verse in support of that).
http://np237.livejournal.com/3...

The threats were originally posted to Twitter by @kingZortic. At about 3:51 p.m. the account, which had earlier challenged the FBI, CIA and NSA, posted an address on the 4500 block of West Schubert Avenue in Chicago and issued another challenge to "come get me I got guns, COME AT ME."

Chicago Police went to the address listed on social media and determined that the person behind the threats did not actually reside at that address, said News Affairs Officer Bari Lemmon. Police did not find any weapons and did not arrest or detain anyone, Lemmon said.

The threats targeted Southwest Airlines Flight 2492, which arrived at Atlanta from Milwaukee, and Delta Air Lines Flight 1156, which arrived from Portland, Oregon, said Reese McCranie, a spokesman for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Both planes landed safely.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/...

Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=770314

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

Debian developers also threatened author with lengthy imprisonment, denied existence of author's contributions

Previously a debian developer, Erich Schubert, claimed that the author of gpcslots had never
contributed anything to opensource, was corrected, replyed to the corrections,
and then deleted the corrections and left up his false claims.
Author has contributed gigabytes of media to opensource, years of programming
work, and has been involved in numerous projects.
http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201411/2014110901-gr-vote-on-init-coupling.html

also note: esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310

Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

------

Debian developers also threatened author with lengthy imprisonment, denied existence of author's contributions

Previously a debian developer, Erich Schubert, claimed that the author of gpcslots had never
contributed anything to opensource, was corrected, replyed to the corrections,
and then deleted the corrections and left up his false claims.
Author has contributed gigabytes of media to opensource, years of programming
work, and has been involved in numerous projects.
http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/2...

Another debian developer, Josselin Mouette, (while bragging that he, JM, had successfuly
campaigned to ban prostitution in france, have Johns arrested, and had run
mafias out of the country) told the author that he was going to have him
arrested by the FBI (van'd) because the author suggested there was no sin
in marrying young girls (and cited a bible verse in support of that).
http://np237.livejournal.com/3...

Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

Debian developers also threatened author with lengthy imprisonment, denied existence of author's contributions

Previously a debian developer, Erich Schubert, claimed that the author of gpcslots had never
contributed anything to opensource, was corrected, replyed to the corrections,
and then deleted the corrections and left up his false claims.
Author has contributed gigabytes of media to opensource, years of programming
work, and has been involved in numerous projects.
http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/2...

Another debian developer, Josselin Mouette, (while bragging that he, JM, had successfuly
campaigned to ban prostitution in france, have Johns arrested, and had run
mafias out of the country) told the author that he was going to have him
arrested by the FBI (van'd) because the author suggested there was no sin
in marrying young girls (and cited a bible verse in support of that).
http://np237.livejournal.com/3...

I do music, 2d art, 3d art, textures, pixel art, you name it. Gigabytes. All released under opensource licenses from the begining.

But since I said some things against feminism and women's rights, none of my contributions "exist"

Fuck these free software faggots. (like Erich Schubert)

"He has not contributed anything to the open source community."
This is a complete lie. I've contributed gigabytes of media alone.
I've done years and years of programming work.
I have done far more than you ever will.

"His songs and "games" are not worth looking at,"
Your subjective view. Coloured by your social views and your
disdain for those who oppose you in that.

"and I'm not aware of any project that has accepted any of his "contributions"."
The only objectively true thing you've said: you're not aware.
I'm glad you're unaware, I hope that trend continues.

Jaromil is not MikeeUSA.
MikeeUSA is not Jaromil.
They have never met.

MikeeUSA is not running the fork, no one ever claimed he has
anything to do with the fork.

Jaromil is a programmer of MuSe, a wonderful midi software package
that you likely have never used because you never bothered to
attempt to release any music. Jaromil is also a distro dev
of the dyne:bolic distribution. He has experiance creating
linux distros.

MikeeUSA is a not-nearly as good programmer. He is a programmer
of GPC-Slots 2, as an early project, and various other forks
of games. He also makes media of every type for opensource games.
He (MikeeUSA) is not boss enough to be mentioned in the same sentance
as Jaromil. You are a fuck for doing that.

You are a fuck. You make programs and scripts to data mine.
You can go to hell you fucking shill piece of shit.
You are also a male-feminist.
Hopefully you die somehow sooner rather than later.
Perhaps Russia will invade, kill you and the rest of the
progressive feminists, and force everyone to be Orthodox.
Who knows.

You also enjoy spreading libels and falsehoods, aswell
as deleting corrections.

As is known: You are a fuck.
Erich Schubert

PS: Learn english. You do not seem to understand it well enough.
America crushed your country, learn the conquer's tounge please. Thank you.