Slashdot Mirror
Statistically Optimal Music
ShinyPlasticBag writes "'Eigenradio makes its optimal music by analyzing in real time dozens of radio stations at once. When our bank of computers has heard enough music, it will go to work on making more just like it. Since we listen to so much music all the time, Eigenradio is always on and always live. What you hear on Eigenradio is the best of the New Music, distilled and de-correlated. One song on Eigenradio is worth at least twenty songs on old radio.' Listen up here or here (SHOUTcast)."
So how long would this thing need to listen to NPR before it can start spitting out nice, liberal-minded stories with the sweet ring of Nina Totenberg's voice?
As far as information thoery goes, there can't be too much more real information in your average NPR bit than in a few minutes of dance music.
What makes you think that the slashdot effect changes the content of the music?
It wouldn't necessarily change the music itself.
But if enough people hit it to cause major packet drop in the path from the server to the listener, the listener's player will try to fill in the gaps.
A common way to do this is to replay the last buffer. If the outage is long this tends to generate a metallic buzz if the buffer is short and a "Max Headroom"-style stutter if the buffer is long.
You could also get a metallic buzz out of a voder if the updates stopped coming in.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
w00t w00t!!
Shame on Google.