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Beer-Coated CDs are Optical Biocomputers
commodoresloat writes "A DJ and scientist in Melbourne whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells, serendipitously created an 'optical biocomputer' when he spilled beer on his CDs and left them over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's some of his research, and some media samples which include mp3s of the distorted music." Yes, the term biocomputer is used in the loosest sense.
This is an obvious attempt by RIAA blackhats to get everyone to buy new CDs while simultaneously destroying computer CD-RW. Time to grep for a good lawyer.
This is another good example of how beer benfits our lives. First I found out if I drink a beer a day it somehow helps my heart, but now... now.. my life is complete.
Paint.NET, a Free Image Editor, with Source Code Available!
Coating CDs in beer, wine, whiskey, or any other hard or malt liquor/liquer is a violation of the DMCA.
Allowable liquids:
Windex
Water
Pepsi (One, Blue, Vanilla)
Beer, is there anything it can't do?
It's precisely beer o'clock down under (17:18 Friday), so while this article is otherwise a complete waste of 1's and 0's, at least it's aptly timed.
Aussies don't have any beverages that could be regarded at beer.
As the Monty Python Joke goes:
What is the difference between making love in a canoe and Austrailian Beer?
Nothing. They are both fucking close to water!
COPYRIGHT BEER! Yes, 12 year old girls are not enough! Now they want to sue us for drinking beer!
Those SOBs! If only Rainbow Brite were alive. She would know what to do.
Well, back to my beer...er, research. *hic*
...I've had Beer on my AOL coasters for 10 years now.
"If it's lost, it'll turn up. Things always do" "I love it when a plan comes together"
the more interesting question would be:
can you influence the fungus that it does something useful and not only distort the data randomly...
might be useful for encryption if you could find a way to restore the original data with a secure "key"/method/anti-fungus-spray/whatever.
".Sig Stealer" was here
Hmmmm ... gives new meaning to the term, "Moldy Oldies".
Caution: Be aware that beer contains a lot of female hormons. If you drink too much you start takling nonsense and you're unable to drive a car.
- [...] the way fungus and bacteria [grow] can shape the sound in weird ways.
Tosh. It's flipping some of the bits in a bitstream which represents audio encoded with an arbitrary codec. Dude - there are more interesting ways of flipping bits, and ones that might just tell you a bit more about bacteria, fungi, music, life, the universe, and everything.What's this guy on? I want some.
/beer, you say? Good. I can do that.
yes, we have no bananas
Ok, so this sounds a lot like a troll, but...
I don't see that this is terribly impressive. I mean, he's done a fair bit of research, wrote several papers, and uses big words like "nanoscale chemical filter" and "Boolean string re-arrangements," but in the end, all he seems to have done is pour chemicals on CDs and make them skip. I could do the same with a brillo pad. Why is that impressive? He makes a lot of noise about computing, but is any usefull computing actually going on? What are the practical applications of this "technology"?
Taking a look at the media samples, it doesn't strike me that he's stumbled on a cool new artistic technique at all (it should be mentioned that the artist Oval has been scratching up CDs in the name of art with much better results for years). This is the same thing anyone has gotten when they accidently scratched up a CD or DVD. There's no art to it, and frankly it sounds terrible.
I can understand why this would be important if his techniques yielded predictable, useful results, such as achieve a specific, desired audio or visual effect. But basically all that he gets in a broken file. The same could be done by randomly flipping an arbitrary number of bits inside a mp3. Nothing usefull is being computed or done at all. So why is this important, or even relevant?
Stupid like a fox!
"A student and teenager in Australia whose research is in the area of communication
through pick-up-lines, serendipitously created an 'optical biocomputer' when he spilled
beer on down his throat and left it there for a couple of hours. The resulting drunkeness
that formed distorted the sound of his voice in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's
some of his research, media samples which include mp3s of the distorted "music" coming soon."
Yes, the term biocomputer is used in the loosest sense.
Formal music created through random, pseudo-random, or mathematical processes is almost a century old at this point. Check out some Schoenberg or John Cage. It may not be your kind of thing (I'm not really into it myself), but it is an interesting branch of art.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Losing Karma. Oh well, that is what it is for. (At least I get to sleep easy at night because I speak up for what I believe in.){=Original and not a bad sig.
/.
/. logo.
/. so why not some Quid Pro Quo?
Two issues with this story, one is the fact that if you indeed get the 'perfect' mold grown on your disk it is very difficult to freeze the err, data in a static way.
The number two thing is why are people researching this 'Fungus-effect' rather than say, rubbing crayons onto cds with a far more reproducable effect?
Bio-cds perhaps?
Not to mention the health hazards are also greatly reduced with crayons. Of course you will still have to deal with the issue of the foreign matter of your choice clogging up your CD drive.
Also the offbalancing in that 100x drive you picked up at costco for twenty bucks. is going to cost you a trip to the return line.
It's your hardware, please do as you wish. (Just let us know what happens) Visions of mold based prior art dance through my head sorta like the SCO executives.
Personally I vote to wait and see what the community will come up with the 'New Mold sound' and then start a fund to blast it from afar into BG's compound.
The Karma Killer: This was indeed posted on Fark.com a day ago. To be fair. Fark takes great pains to acknowledge any scoops from
They even show the
It kinda ticks me off that we can't even acknowledge a odd story news gathering site with a tech bias. Fark is zero threat to
Slashdot is depth. Fark is popcorn.
Sometimes popcorn needs to be chewed in depth.
And sometimes depth has to be chewed by popcorn.
Thank you for reading my semi-off topic rant that I am sure to pay for in the morning.
The last possible shield for my slim castle of karma: I showed this article to a fellow co-worker when we were both under a very tight deadline (He moonlights as a DJ, Biggest cd collection I have ever seen. 5000+ collection)
He just started laughing and laughing. I know that is sorta creepy but it was a relief sort of laugh, not one of those ones in the very scary under-reported storys thread.
That kind of stuff is hard to refute.
I work in the Media and that thread gave me great pause.
One nice thing I really like about Slashdot is the fact that I might take a verbal tongue lashing from the literati, I don't usually get my lug nuts pried of my car because I think different. I am using a metaphor for having my car stereo ripped off a long time ago. What I learned was don't keep expensive stuff in your car. (Basic knowledge 101)
Actually it is a bit older: Mozart (1756-1791) did a Dice-Sonata: he composed 176 bars of music, of which you choose 16 by playing dice. This gives 11^16 different sonatas!
These kind of musical dice-plays where in fashion in Mozarts time, the oldest known is from 1757: "Johann Philipp Kirnberger: Der allezeit fertige Polonoisen- und Menuettencomponist, Winter. Berlin 1757.".
You can find more info (in german) on this page. There is quite a list of pieces and books...
If you spill beer on a copy protected CD (you know, the kind with induced errors on it), does the fungus distort the errors so they disappear?
If so, will the fungus be sued under the DMCA?
"Examples are given for both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular interference with optically stored data. Differences in cellular parameters such as organelle density, refractivity, and gross morphology (branching versus aggregation) are shown to impact on error correction using the Cross Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code."
Holy crap. You could have just said, "Hey, when I grow shit on my CD's it sounds funny."
If it's not one thing, it's Steve's Mother