Amen to that, from someone who managed to avoid the honors classes I was encouraged to take in HS for precisely that reason.
You'd think they could just give the kid more challenging material without extra busywork, but it never seems to work that way. Summer reading with 15-page papers due the first day of classes? I'll pass, thanks.
Re:The children will ask themselves
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The problem is the all-or-none way that "gifted" programs are run. You are declared uber-smart and placed in an uber-smart class, proclaimed average and placed in an average class, or labeled a moron and placed in special ed. Because, of course, there are only 3 tiers of ability, and they apply across the board.
This leads to both isolation of people at each level from the people at other levels, and boredom some of the time at all levels. Someone may be really good at one topic and awful at another, but the classes are taught at just one of the three levels. Rather than giving you something for further enrichment, teachers seem more likely to give you something "to keep you busy while everyone else catches up."
Also, including people generally pigeonholed at different ones of these artificial levels tends to be better for all. A "special ed" person who is included in a "normal" class will learn how to be around "normal" people, and the "normal" people will learn the material better by helping the "special ed" person along.
It seems that how much a person learns in school has been quantified to "how many bucketloads of facts you can remember." People in gifted programs are given bucketloads more, people in special ed bucketloads less. Never mind that this tends to have little bearing later in life. The people in the harder classes just become more adept at spewing smart-sounding BS.
/Dropped honors for regular english 2 years into H.S., not because it was too hard, but because it included countless hours of random busy work that wasn't worth the time.
I read TFA and felt like the androids in the episode of Star Trek where Kirk makes them all shut down by feeding them illogical statements. Is this guy a really lousy humorist or a serious loony?
Sure, these courses may not be essential for getting a job. However, they're quite handy when it comes to keeping a job. Just about anyone who's read a tech book can code. Knowing how to write code that is computationally efficient, and knowing how common concepts work, will get you much farther. If all you've done is learned a bunch of languages but not the theory behind them, you have a lot more catching up to do when the next language comes along.
I saw a paper on exactly this a few years ago (perhaps written by these people?). I was particuarly disappointed in the uncreative approach to attaching it to music. Completely one-dimensional, based on a single pattern rule, using the results as a simple piano roll. In this particular example, it seems the programmer has inserted a few generic style and rhythm rules as well. Cute.
If the computation could generate anything more than a bunch of undirected pitches, I might be impressed. Perhaps have variables that can trigger harmonic shifts, considerations of form, independent patterns, definitions of rules for the next 10 seconds for an evolving pattern... SOMETHING more innovative than using it as a piano roll.
It's also disappointing that the score just takes a snippet of the whole pattern and truncates the rest. Some border rule treatment could have added to it.
Hopefully, this will be only the beginning of a much more interesting project. If this is the final result, my fascination has ended.
Those ideas have been around for a while, and I think they came about by quite a few people concurrently, thankfully before patents were crazy. See the fantastic program Max/MSP (or its cousin PureData, aka PD) for what is perhaps the best implementation of this idea... pure streams of numbers, attachable to music-related inputs and outputs, in realtime if you like.
Computational music like this has been around since the 80s. This implementation isn't particularly unique... the internet just hasn't seen much of it yet.
I understand the required to-dos. I guess they just seem a lot more contrived lately. Especially when, on the way to all your to-do-ing, you have to listen to a bunch of really lame stories.
It's *really* irritating if you want to play a game a second time from the start, too. Unlike watching, say, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, watching a bunch of stale dialog and "heylookatthisthisispretty!" camera pans is not something I care to do a second time.
If I have stuff to do, just let me do it. Don't make me watch your attempt at amateur filmmaker on the way. Some games will simply say "Here is crap you gotta do." I like that. Having to watch bits and pieces of a movie on my way to doing the crap both slows the action and makes it feel rigid. When I see a cinematic, I know that my particular state in the game was explicitly anticipated. In games without cinematics, the illusion that I got to where I am in a somewhat unique way remains more intact, and it feels like a game rather than "oh, before you watch the next part of the movie you have to go to the store for Overseer McMurgolothingshire and pick up some wombat soup."
When there are so many cinematics, the vast majority of games, I find, try to be both a game and a movie, and succeed at neither.
Lately it feels like game developers/publishers want to be movie directors. Perhaps if we'd get rid of cutscenes (bless the developers that let you skip them) and put that budget toward the elusive "fun," it'd be a big step in the right direction.
Most games with cinematics that I play end up feeling like I'm running around fulfilling someone's to-do list. I end up saying "Forget that. YOU take the magic gem to the wizard!" and dropping the game. I think that removing the "well, you NEED to do that in order to see something pretty, and we need you to see something pretty in order to justify having made the cutscene" factor, games could start to return to being fun.
Isn't this what college minors are for? If computer science majors would go out on a limb a bit more with their minors, into something relevant yet divergent, and actually put a good deal of effort into it, they'd be partway here already.
In my program, minors are optional, and most that do take one will take it in math, because it's only an extra course or two (and, in my opinion, pretty useless compared to ANY OTHER MINOR YOU CAN GET)
/Former music minor, now finishing my last year as a double-major in computer science and music composition.
Yeah, if you're shelling out 30 grand a year, you're likely to be career-focused. A good state university, though, will cost you perhaps $2000 to $8000.
Slashdot Mirror
Now now, let's not bring MATH into a discussion of statistics.
Amen to that, from someone who managed to avoid the honors classes I was encouraged to take in HS for precisely that reason.
You'd think they could just give the kid more challenging material without extra busywork, but it never seems to work that way. Summer reading with 15-page papers due the first day of classes? I'll pass, thanks.
The problem is the all-or-none way that "gifted" programs are run. You are declared uber-smart and placed in an uber-smart class, proclaimed average and placed in an average class, or labeled a moron and placed in special ed. Because, of course, there are only 3 tiers of ability, and they apply across the board.
/Dropped honors for regular english 2 years into H.S., not because it was too hard, but because it included countless hours of random busy work that wasn't worth the time.
This leads to both isolation of people at each level from the people at other levels, and boredom some of the time at all levels. Someone may be really good at one topic and awful at another, but the classes are taught at just one of the three levels. Rather than giving you something for further enrichment, teachers seem more likely to give you something "to keep you busy while everyone else catches up."
Also, including people generally pigeonholed at different ones of these artificial levels tends to be better for all. A "special ed" person who is included in a "normal" class will learn how to be around "normal" people, and the "normal" people will learn the material better by helping the "special ed" person along.
It seems that how much a person learns in school has been quantified to "how many bucketloads of facts you can remember." People in gifted programs are given bucketloads more, people in special ed bucketloads less. Never mind that this tends to have little bearing later in life. The people in the harder classes just become more adept at spewing smart-sounding BS.
So does this mean that all banks will be required to have machines that read TFA?
Stop saying that!
What about television? You recall that contract we all entered into that prohibits us from going to get a snack during commercials, don't you?
I read TFA and felt like the androids in the episode of Star Trek where Kirk makes them all shut down by feeding them illogical statements. Is this guy a really lousy humorist or a serious loony?
This new moon will really wreak havoc on astrological charts.
TFA is ten pages long. I'll take your word for it.
Isn't that version already out?
Sure, these courses may not be essential for getting a job. However, they're quite handy when it comes to keeping a job. Just about anyone who's read a tech book can code. Knowing how to write code that is computationally efficient, and knowing how common concepts work, will get you much farther. If all you've done is learned a bunch of languages but not the theory behind them, you have a lot more catching up to do when the next language comes along.
Should be trivial. It's already in midi. Open it up in your notation program of choice (e.g. Finale), BAM, you have sheet music.
Sheet music that sucks, but sheet music nonetheless.
Judging by the "How WolframTones Works" page...
I saw a paper on exactly this a few years ago (perhaps written by these people?). I was particuarly disappointed in the uncreative approach to attaching it to music. Completely one-dimensional, based on a single pattern rule, using the results as a simple piano roll. In this particular example, it seems the programmer has inserted a few generic style and rhythm rules as well. Cute.
If the computation could generate anything more than a bunch of undirected pitches, I might be impressed. Perhaps have variables that can trigger harmonic shifts, considerations of form, independent patterns, definitions of rules for the next 10 seconds for an evolving pattern... SOMETHING more innovative than using it as a piano roll.
It's also disappointing that the score just takes a snippet of the whole pattern and truncates the rest. Some border rule treatment could have added to it.
Hopefully, this will be only the beginning of a much more interesting project. If this is the final result, my fascination has ended.
Those ideas have been around for a while, and I think they came about by quite a few people concurrently, thankfully before patents were crazy. See the fantastic program Max/MSP (or its cousin PureData, aka PD) for what is perhaps the best implementation of this idea... pure streams of numbers, attachable to music-related inputs and outputs, in realtime if you like.
Computational music like this has been around since the 80s. This implementation isn't particularly unique... the internet just hasn't seen much of it yet.
Cool! Now all we have to do is contact our friend Billywitchdoctor.com to bring back the dinosaurs!
I'm telling you, he's not a dinosaur. He's a giant chicken! Why won't anyone believe me?
I understand the required to-dos. I guess they just seem a lot more contrived lately. Especially when, on the way to all your to-do-ing, you have to listen to a bunch of really lame stories.
It's *really* irritating if you want to play a game a second time from the start, too. Unlike watching, say, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, watching a bunch of stale dialog and "heylookatthisthisispretty!" camera pans is not something I care to do a second time.
If I have stuff to do, just let me do it. Don't make me watch your attempt at amateur filmmaker on the way. Some games will simply say "Here is crap you gotta do." I like that. Having to watch bits and pieces of a movie on my way to doing the crap both slows the action and makes it feel rigid. When I see a cinematic, I know that my particular state in the game was explicitly anticipated. In games without cinematics, the illusion that I got to where I am in a somewhat unique way remains more intact, and it feels like a game rather than "oh, before you watch the next part of the movie you have to go to the store for Overseer McMurgolothingshire and pick up some wombat soup."
When there are so many cinematics, the vast majority of games, I find, try to be both a game and a movie, and succeed at neither.
Do they think we are dumb?
Well, people *are* buying the rehashed games in droves, so yes. And apparently they are correct.
People are just fooling themselves. We all know that football games peaked at Tecmo Bowl.
Lately it feels like game developers/publishers want to be movie directors. Perhaps if we'd get rid of cutscenes (bless the developers that let you skip them) and put that budget toward the elusive "fun," it'd be a big step in the right direction.
Most games with cinematics that I play end up feeling like I'm running around fulfilling someone's to-do list. I end up saying "Forget that. YOU take the magic gem to the wizard!" and dropping the game. I think that removing the "well, you NEED to do that in order to see something pretty, and we need you to see something pretty in order to justify having made the cutscene" factor, games could start to return to being fun.
Who ever said that? The only "old saying" similar to that I know regards being on quickness, cheapness, and quality.
I can name a bucketload of games with huge budgets and pretty graphics where gameplay sucks. Did they just pick one intentionally?
Sorry, but I call BS on your "old saying."
I've had no problems with either company's stuff. Then again, I use Opera.
As frequently happens with NASA tech, I expect this will make its way into the private sector.
How long will it be until they're packaging our scissors, walkmans, and USB hubs in this stuff? You thought those packages are hard to open NOW!
Isn't this what college minors are for? If computer science majors would go out on a limb a bit more with their minors, into something relevant yet divergent, and actually put a good deal of effort into it, they'd be partway here already.
/Former music minor, now finishing my last year as a double-major in computer science and music composition.
In my program, minors are optional, and most that do take one will take it in math, because it's only an extra course or two (and, in my opinion, pretty useless compared to ANY OTHER MINOR YOU CAN GET)
Yeah, if you're shelling out 30 grand a year, you're likely to be career-focused. A good state university, though, will cost you perhaps $2000 to $8000.