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Intelligent MIDI Sequencing with Hamster Control
An anonymous reader writes "Levy Lorenzo managed to build a MIDI sequencer that is powered and operated by hamsters. The hamsters work in teams of two to control melody and rhythm, and Markov chains are used to modify the hamster-based inputs. The sample MP3 sounds pretty good." From the article: "The MIDI sequencer intelligently produced melodies by manipulating the musical elements of rhythm and note-choice. Guided by inputs based on hamster movements, Markov chains were used to perform such beat and note computations. In culmination, 3 simultaneous voices were produced spanning 3 octaves and 3 rhythmic tiers."
The true test would be to see if an observer detects any difference between random controls and a hamster.
...But a cute dupe. Nice littly fuzzy hamsters making music.
/. article is about.
Slashcode needs a system to detect dupes. Here is what I propose:
All submissions will include a link to the "article text." This is the primary link in the submission: what the
These links will be kept in a database. Any time an article is submitted to slashdot its primary link will be searched for in the database. If found, the article will be flagged as such (NOT automatically rejected, someone might notice something new about an old document (probably legal or similar) or some such.)
Now to go off and learn to program, so I can add that into the mess that is slashcode... ugh.
Not a sentence!
After listening to the likes of Ashlee Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, and a few others, I'd say it'd be an improvement.
You'd get just as interesting music from a beepmap of a picture of hampsters. The Markov Chain approach is what leads to this being "listenable", and that's commonly done with all kinds of bizarre input.
It's unfortunate that we hear this music with the human's choice of timbres.
actually mp3s are just instructions telling the computer how to "re-syntasize" the _music_ too, but it has 1 less level of abstraction. Never the less the mp3 is *NOT* the actual sound produced (you only get that coming out the speakers, and only then if there is something around to observe it).
Just FYI
Only on slashdot will you find some condescending twat complaining that music produced by rodents isn't complex enough. Next, we'll have to hear about how hamsters suck because they don't run Linux, their tracks aren't released in .OGG, and they aren't as safe or efficient as pebble bed reactors at generating electricity.
But on the bright side, these brave independent artists are forgoing a large cash advance in order to distribute their albums internet-only. Take that, RIAA!
That will never happen. Aside from Taco's view that editors can do a better job than pure mob rule, such a system would be open to immense abuse. Also, Slashdot gets dozens, maybe hundreds of submissions an hour. Do you really want to spend your time looking thtough all of them? That's a lot of drudgery, and the only people willing to do it would be those with an agenda or without a life. That's not exactly the crowd I want picking my stories.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
"That will never happen."
That FAQ answer was 5 years ago, things have changed. Back then I think Rob probably still cared, he probably was still aiming to cash in on the dot.com boom, probably hadn't cashed in any stock yet, and it was before moderation. All the complaints he had there about what the mob would pick can be said about moderation on posts too but we still do that now. I wager he cares a lot less about Slashdot today than he did then or he would have taken some action to put an end to all the dupe front page stories. I'm wondering if:
A. he hasn't even noticed the massive number of dupes and bogus stories lately
B. he doesn't care
"That's a lot of drudgery, and the only people willing to do it would be those with an agenda or without a life."
Uh no, it would be the same people who moderate posts, everybody would do a little. Either moderation works or it doesn't. If it doesn't work it shouldn't be used on ordinary posts. If it does work it will work on submissions too with a little tweaking. You could start out just taking one or two moderated front page stories a day to work out the details and see if it works.
I can also see a big benefit of having all raw submissions being publicly viewable. If you are about to submit a story you can look and see if its already submitted and not waste everyone's time posting it again if a good submission is already in the queue. It would be kind of interesting to see all the things people are submitting that are getting rejected.
@de_machina