Slashdot Mirror
Pictures by Hive Mind
nofrance writes "A very interesting little experiment where multiple viewers get to select whether to set a single pixel to black or white, to help build a picture. All pictures can also be viewed as animations over time, often showing just how close the picture got to finished before returning to something closer to static."
Ten thousand pixels every second. That's why the server is glowing red.
The animations aren't working for me in Safari - it looks like it's showing all the pixels spread out in a single horizontal line, which is then animated.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I helped build a picture of a lamp. Maybe I can get hired by Amazon!
Just a blank screen. I don't think I want to see what /. would do to that experiment anyway.
that was fast
The universal picture of the Slashdot logo: 404.
Pixelfest is cooler.
Maybe the readers of Slashdot could be allowed to select, say, a "subject" or a "verb" for the opening line of an article? That would be 31337.
We are borg. Welcome to the Hive.
i changed a pixel. then it died. sure answers that question(mark).
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
because I'm not repeating it:
.
...what percentage of them are trolls?
We once tried to use about 300 windows in a high rise to display a picture using lights. What a fias o getting people to follow directions.
This is interesting as the image progresses quickly.
The human scanner, 1 person per pixel.
Oh right... their servers just died...
>
> A very interesting little experiment where multiple viewers get to select whether to set a single pixel to black or white, to help build a picture.
We are the Slashdotters.
Purchase more bandwidth and increase your hosting budget.
We will add your experimental and pixelogical distinctiveness to our own.
Your images will adapt to resemble that of the Goaste Guy.
Resistance is futile.
A very interesting little experiment where thousands of slashdotters in a massive hive mind get to select whether to allow a single server to exist or not. All servers can also be viewed as coral cached over time, often showing just how close the server got to consistent 200 return codes before returning something closer to static.
Coral cache link
internet controlled Christmas lights on a a budget.
I still think its a hoax. Like some remote server across the world can have any possible influence on the ability of MY monitor to turn a given pixel on or off. Yeah, right. sheesh. you people will believe anything.
this might be a little offtopic but during the penny arace expo this year i heard some poeople talking about a game they would make called pixel quest that involved clicking a pixel till it turned a differnt color( and paying for it to). he also talked about haveing a mode that involves making a picture like with one pixel at a time like the article says
as if millions of pixels suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly blanked.
That wasn't long at all... slashdotting record?
Who knew that the collective minds of people using ONLY black and white pixels could make a picture that looks amazing like the /. effect. I mean seriously...What are the odds?
by "multiple" we mean "console"
Just waiting for the group of people to change the "?" question mark to the goatse guy!!
/. users are going to be arrested for participating in a DNS attack.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Site overloaded. Either this has been linked from somewhere with heavy traffic, or you're experimenting with a clever script to try and mess with the pictures. Come back later, or stop it.
do these guys know about slashdotting?
Site overloaded. Either this has been linked from somewhere with heavy traffic, or you're experimenting with a clever script to try and mess with the pictures. Come back later, or stop it.
This dude needs to borrow a clue from his logs.
After reading about the future and potential of networked minds, it's hilarious to load up this page and see a near-random ASCII grid with the caption "The collective conscious is trying to create 'a bucket'". Now that's putting things in perspective.
"Site overloaded. Either this has been linked from somewhere with heavy traffic, or you're experimenting with a clever script to try and mess with the pictures. Come back later, or stop it."
Maybe we should stop trampling his server till it melts down, move our asses out of this mess and wait for it to return to a solid state ? Ho wait. Maybe I should submit a request to our server melting overlord.
(Mostly off topic, but, heck.. what is the topic?)
If you only get black and white pixels, I hope they are rendering them as XBM images. XBM is the coolest long-lost, widely supported image format - client side scriptable too!
Site overloaded. Either this has been linked from somewhere with heavy traffic, or you're experimenting with a clever script to try and mess with the pictures. Come back later, or stop it.
Fight the fall of slashdot by supporting PlayfullyClever in your sig.
He Finally Got It :D.
Hello! I brought a few friends. I hope you don't mind. *sniff, sniff* Mmm... is that server flambé?
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
I opened like 50 FF tabs and a couple actually connected and worked.
/. to open 50-100 tabs on their site, but if it works....
I hate to encourage
Rebecca and Gary
English 44A
Creative Writing
Prof Miller
In-class Assignment for Wednesday
Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.
* * * * * *
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.
--
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
--
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.
--
Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"
--
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.
--
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.
--
You total $*&.
--
Stupid %&#$!.
From the site when trying to play with the pixels: Site overloaded. Oh. Slashdot. That would explain things. Hello.
Site overloaded. Oh. Slashdot. That would explain things. Hello.
"Site overloaded. Oh. Slashdot. That would explain things. Hello." That's what the link now says. /.ing kills, or at least overloads.
You just got troll'd!
If you keep trying, you can access it.
Pretty neat site too. I haven't found the animations yet, but the pictures work quite well.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
If like collaborative art, also check out the ice.org gallery.
The guy who wrote this (kevan.org) has written lots of neat online games. My favourite is urban dead - urbandead.com. It's completely pathetic for the first five minutes and then utterly addictive. I recommend starting as a fireman :)
Believe with me, my saplings.
See this old /. story.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Move along, nothing to see here.
well, I think that proves that our collective conscience > their server.
I bet that any pictoral representation of the interenet's collective mind will end up pornographic.
Something that's actually useful (mentioned here 'cause it's from the same guy): The Prior-Art-O-Matic. "It's a series of randomly-generated product ideas! It raises questions about the nature of prior art in patenting issues, has some inspiring ideas, and is occasionally amusing!"
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
I hereby donate half my humor to Sheepdot UID 211478 on Slashdot in the hopes that it might make him or her feel better about life and have at least one laugh each day.
Compliments
Anonymous Coward
acting on behalf of the world
I saw it. It said: pwnd
Some guy coming with an (whois)Arizonian link points out a site that gets ./ed in a blink. That site appears to be in Berkshire, UK (kevan.org).
Well, the final target might be missed sometimes, but our success rates are well above 80%!
The funniest part are google's ADs on the source. Ouch.
What if this Hivemind approach could be applied to drawing a vector image. Or even CAD, for building a house/car/spaceship? Suppose a webpage could feature a large vector-drawing canvas, sort of like a simplified version of Adobe Illustrate or the Macromedia Flash editor. Perhaps it could be built using AJAX. Start off with a blank canvas, and allow a visitor to lay down a single vectorized stroke. Then see what everyone's strokes all add up to. This 'wisdom of crowds' idea is pretty intriguing. Anyone have any links to other webpages based on this idea? Anyone have any ideas for what might make for a good webpage project based on this idea?
Before /. killed it, I'd swear it was a picture of an old MAC! Perhaps that's how my conciousness perceives the perfect computer. Funny, I've never owned a MAC - I've always been a PC man after Commodore died. I'd think the collective (un)conciousness would draw a Windows PC....
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I'm a fan of SwarmSketch. Each user can draw so many line segments, and then they can vote to make certain lines lighter or darker. The system averages the darkness from each user to find the darkness of the line. Each month is a new themed picture.
Got the screenshot.
Interesting idea indeed, it makes me think of a manual "life" game, community-driven. Especially in the animation mode and if the images can be perpetually changed it may show interesting brain patterns.
Why would I choose black or white when I'm (black) surrounded? Good for psychiatry as well.
Funny, I just finished The Wisdom of Crowds, a book I picked up on a whim at Costco (not Amazon, but linking is easier). Summary - pretty much; A bunch of people looking out for their own interests, makes the world a better place.
How this applies to creating a picture on a computer screen, I dunno... what's in it for me?
Of course, that wise philosopher George Carlin said "Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!" So, I don't know where that leaves us...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Join in by adding a word to this sentence:
Teh
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
I remember this from a long ass time ago. Anybody else?
I just started reading "The Wisdom of Crowds" tonight. One of the first questions in my mind was, "Can a crowd create art? What happens if people get to vote on brush-strokes & color?" Looks like this website is an interesting experiment on that idea.
I would like to see, just as a concept for the entertainment factor, somebody implement the following :
* a first-person perspective inside a 3D maze is constructed.
* users hold red lazers and point this at a big screen where the output image is being projected.
* users position the red lights to turn the player, move ahead etc. so having more red lights to the right of the screen would rotate the 'player' to the right side etc.
* there is a video camera picking up the co-ordinates of all the lazer lights, and this works out an average and outputs the appropriate movement.
* how well will the players do ?
I would love to see this experiment in action.
sorry.. but this is much cooler.. http://web.okaygo.co.uk/apps/letters/flashcom/
(look in the lower left corner to see how many people are currently dragging letters around)
You can tell the Slashdot community is involved now. They had to reclassify it as an adult sight.
Oh wait, that was The Madness of Crowds.
His main page says the server is being loaded... Well okay.. (slashdot has a tendancy to do that).
But he is nice, so he gives a screenshot...
Guess what folks, the links on his "screenshot page" appear to be live links!!! Well, I hope London is ready for this....
And traceroute shows:
(snip)
7: so-3-2-0-0.gar2.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.78.234.17) 26.187ms
8: ae-1-51.bbr1.Dallas1.Level3.net (4.68.122.1) 20.143ms
9: ae-1-0.bbr2.London1.Level3.net (212.187.128.57) 144.766ms
10: ge-10-0.ipcolo2.London1.Level3.net (212.187.131.8) 146.664ms
11: fe0-0.red1.mnet.net.uk (212.113.10.202) 144.729ms
12: cr1-fe20.rbs.uk.euroconnex.net (82.211.104.78) 155.163ms
13: cr1-fe01.gh1.uk.euroconnex.net (217.112.80.18) 150.020ms
14: wood.bocks.com (217.112.87.2) 155.446ms
Heh, liked that site, and some of the follow-up links posted in here. It would be interesting to discuss just how complicated a game/app one can make using this multi-user web app approach. I've read that these "wisdom of crowds" apps tend to fall into chaos unless rigidly structured. I wonder how one could structure an app to get the most productive effect out of it, rather than the frustrating chaos that was the case in the "stealing letters" game, and even in the multi-user sketchpad app. In the sketchpad, for instance, there was one talented guy who was drawing amazing stuff, but other dopes were messing up his work.
Should this comment be rated
STUPID or NOT_STUPID.
Goofus looks at the hive mind picture and says, "Haw haw!! I'll pick the wrong color so I can screw with the picture".
Gallant looks at the hive mind picture and says, "Oh. It looks like they're trying to draw a classic Macintosh. I think the pink pixel should be white".
Goofus gets a message from the hive mind site saying that he has used up all his chances for the day. "Stupid fools. I'll go to the next PC in the lab and get another IP so I can keep screwing with that picture"!
Gallant gets a visit from the Borg queen and seeing that he is a wuss, she assimilates him. Gallant says, "I am Wusseutis of Borg. Resistance is futile"...
Goofus gets a visit from Wusseutis. "Hey freakboy what are you up to today"? Wusseutis extends his tendrils and assimilates Gooofus.
Gallant, "I am Wusseutis of Borg. Resistance is futile. You're own uniqueness will be assimilated into the collective".
Goofus, "I am Jerkutis of Borg. Resistance is futile. You're own uniqueness will be assimilited into the collective or something"...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Map of the(ir?) world?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Somehow this experiment plugs into my long-held views about the inherent flaws of democracy - it really is merely "better than whatever's in second place", and this is an example of why. Everyone gets a vote, given a vague notion of the mutual goal, and the result is chaos.
Give people a halfway-decent picture of the goal - or metaphorically, give voters a competent and honest media which reports objectively on the issues - and I bet you'll find that far fewer steps are required for a convergence on the picture of the bucket.
Or maybe it's just late and I'm sleep deprived. And this site is just a clever hack which probably has interesting implications of its own for those who are more focused.
Perfectly Normal Industries
If you want to improve your karma, one of the tricks is to get in quick meaningful posts soon after a story breaks. Don't be vitriolic and don't try to be funny. Just get a solid well focused paragraph within the first 15 minutes of a story going up and you should be able to repair your karma in a fairly short amount a time. Don't do this too much though, or you may suffer moderator backlash (especially considering your recognzable and possibly incendiary name)
The format is actually used as one of the games (Cheddar Gorge) on Radio 4 's I'm sorry I haven't a clue, although to make it a bit more challenging the team get alternate words not paragraphs.
Players must provide one word each in turn which added to the previous submissions makes up a coherent sentence - challenging enough, you might think, but the aim of the game is never to utter a word which might be construed as actually finishing the sentence. They usually produce perfectly plausible constructs, the funniest bits occuring when one side attempts to back the other over a stretched metaphorical cliff.
For more information on I haven't a clue i would recommend the h2g2 guide's entry. Radio 4 is of course one of the last places that great english game mornington crescent is still played.