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Kurzweil Gets A Patent For Poetic Software
theodp writes "Ray Kurzweil, inventor of the Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind, has developed what he calls a cybernetic poet, software that allows a computer to create poetry by imitating but not plagiarizing the styles and vocabularies of human poets. A sample: 'Sashay down the page...through the lioness...nestled in my soul.' Impressed? The USPTO, who sponsored the Independent Inventors Conference Mr. Kurzweil spoke at on Nov. 17, seems to be. On Nov. 11, Ray Kurzweil received U.S. Patent No. 6,647,395 for Poet Personalities."
Maybe that's why those darned Vogons are so intent on building that hyperspace bypass here...
Now my computer's going to get laid more then me.
Poetic justice is pending.
/usr/games/fortune -o limerick
...I keep getting the same poem.
A patent has been granted
Giving backing to my lines,
So if you write some similar code
You'll face some hefty fines.
My haiku:
Tonight On Slashdot
Kurzweil Poetry Machine
Please don't mod me down
... Maybe I shouldn't quit my day job.
I planned on inserting something witty here but never got around to it.
And the best part is it only takes 556 gigs of reference material to do something along the lines of "the cat is fat".
I, for one,
welcome our
new cybernetic
poet overlords.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Here you go, W.C.Williams....
So much (i.e. my
Pulitzer)
depends upon an ambiguous
statement
with no actual
application
beside a bland
image
--
That's mine. Oh, and here's one from my lit book, by Kenneth Koch, tearing apart the silly Plums one
"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams"
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you have been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
--
No, the patent is overkill. W.C.W. could be replaced with a very short shell script.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Their website has this as a haiku written after reading various authors:
You broke my soul
the juice of eternity,
the spirit of my lips.
But it doesn't work out. The first line is four syllables, while the last line is 6. Haiku are 5-7-5. Silly computers, they must have taken the adding chip out of that one.
Finally, poetry with no deep, hidden meaning!
ugh, i think if you played that music through a holophoner, you would see yourself diving into skies of battery acid while the goatse.cx guy frolics nude with giant diesel banana spiders and the twin SCO lawyers, Pain and Anguish, crawl under your skin.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
We should just take already existing poems, have them translated into Japanese, and then have the Japanese translate it back into English. Put it all together and voila!:
All your base are belong to us.
You guys are morons...
A blog like any other.
...that in granting Kurzweil a patent on software that composes poetry, the government has issued him a poetic license?
Or perhaps it's simply poetic justice that such a seemingly silly patent should be issued.
No matter how bad things were already, with the advent of digital poetry, I can't help but think that things have gotten a bit verse.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
(In Brooklyn accent) I gotcher classics right here: Here I sit, all broken-hearted. Tried to SCO, but only farted.
Just tonight, Kurzweil's cyberpoet made his way into my /home and demanded WINE from me. I relented. He died nearly instantaneously, apparently from a poorly made batch.
I entrust you with his posthumous manuscript:
file_set_error: Permission denied
fixme:ntdll:RtlNtStatusToDosError no mapping for 0001869f
wine: Unhandled exception, starting debugger...
err:seh:start_debugger Couldn't start debugger ("winedbg --debugmsg -all --auto 134725312 0x44") (2)
Read the Wine Developers Guide on how to set up winedbg or another debugger
Oh cruel fate! Another genius cut down!