Each piece replicates pretty well the style and feel of a particular author or genre of music.
To me, this is why grand proclamations of 'Computers Compose Music!' have had a fraudulent tone to them. The first step in supposedly getting a computer to 'compose' music is to feed it a bunch of music in a style originated by a great composer. Well, the human being did the 'black box' work of inventing the genre in the first place; all these programs seem to do is play some kind of souped-up mad-libs with that body of work.
"But Mozart studied other people's work before he wrote his works!" Yeah, that's true, but he *didn't* study *Mozart's* work before he wrote it. These works of genius are sui generis, original, unlike what came before it. Mozart studied other people's stuff, and came up with his own unique, original stuff. This program studies Mozart, and comes up with Mozart-stuff.
What seems to be missing is some creative element, that isn't merely copying or re-hashing what came before it, but somehow is truly 'creative' in the sense that it makes something brand new, unlike its predecessors.
If they have sudo and reset your root password, they're going to have to explain themselves later.
Forgive me newbishness. What evidence would you have that *they* did this? If they were unscrupulous, couldn't they just say, "LOL Sorry you got rooted. No way it was us. Make sure you don't have a keylogger on your system n00b"
If a machine could write a Mozart sonata every bit as good as the originals, then what was so special about Mozart?
What was so special about Mozart? Are you effing kidding me? How about that he wrote great music?
You take some great composer who creates a seminal style, writes some really great music, and then a program comes along and makes a descent song in that style. It still sounds like we need Mozarts, Bachs, Beethovens, and Ellingtons and Parkers to come up with that great genre for the programs to work in.
Wake me when a program writes a really great genre all by itself. You want to know what I'll say then? "Wow, human beings and programs can write some really nice music."
The difference between a placebo and homeopathy is the doctor prescribing a placebo KNOWS there is no medicinal value in what they are giving to a patient, whereas the person using homeopathy CLAIMS there will be a medicinal benefit.
Not quite correct. A lot of research into the placebo effect has shown that placebos do what they are purported to do ( and a lot of doctors are aware of this research ):
"A placebo described as a muscle relaxant will cause muscle relaxation and if described as the opposite, muscle tension.[36] A placebo presented as a stimulant will have this effect on heart rhythm, and blood pressure, but when administered as a depressant, the opposite effect.[37] The consumption of caffeine has been reported to cause similar effects even when decaffeinated coffee is consumed, although a 2003 study found only limited support for this.[38] Alcohol placebos can cause intoxication[39] and sensimotor impairment.[40] Perceived ergogenic substances can increase endurance[41] and weight-lifting ability,[42] leading to the question of whether placebos should be allowed in sport competition.[43] Placebos can help smokers quit.[44] Perceived allergens which are not truly allergenic can cause allergies.[45] Inventions such as psychotherapy can have placebo effects.[46]pp 164-173 Swimsuits have even been thought to increase swimmer speed.[47] The effect has been observed in the transplantation of human embryonic neurons into the brains of those with advanced Parkinson's disease.[48]"
In short, if a placebo is meant to harm someone, it will harm them. If it is meant to help them, it will help them. My personal interpretation is that we're a social animal, and if we feel that we're being taken care of by the group, then know we are worthy and should get better. If the group doesn't want us around anymore, we'll just curl up and die. But it's not just belief ( "I believe this will work, so it does" ) -- it's a practice. You actually have to *do* something -- administer some treatment, perform some procedure, etc. If you don't *do* it, the brain doesn't perceive that anything has been effected.
What does traditional medicine have to do with a discussion of homeopathy (other than that many practioners of traditional medicine, in Western countries, are also believers in homeopathy).
The unspoken assumption is often that any form of medicine other than western scientific medicine is fraudulent, and if it does work, it's because of the placebo effect.
The GP asked how a company is supposed to know how a company is supposed to know if a contractor has other clients. If I had a contractor, and I got a bill for five hours in the past week, I wouldn't think about it. If I got a bill for forty hours or more for the past week, I would wonder about it, and call the contractor and ask them. That's how I would come to know.
I agree that we should look at this man's thoughts and actions with an open mind. I read his website and his manifesto the day this happened. I came away with the sense of a guy who felt special, entitled and an out-sized sense of his own importance to the world.
I pretty much concur with Dave Cullen's analysis at Slate. He was a guy who chafed at having to pay taxes, though he was God's gift to programming, and blew himself up, thinking society's loss of Him would start a revolution, when he began to see that neither of his grandiose fantasies of self-worth were true.
He burned his wife and kids out of a home. How does that action help anybody or make the world fairer?
A choice excerpt: "More comical is Stack's portrait of his own misery. As a fuller, objective emerges, we're likely to see more dramatic chasms between reality and his depictions, but the contradictions are already comical. Stack likens his plight to an elderly woman in the neighborhood living on cat food. He doesn't mention eating it in the cockpit of his private plane. In Stack's version, he lived and died a pauper. In real life, he amassed a series of businesses, a $230,000 home in an affluent community, and the airplane he crashed into the building."
Here are the traits that Cullen identified and shows in Stack's writing:
The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes a corrupted religion.
That's not war, that's a crime ( just like Aum Shinrikyo ) , and when we start thinking it's a war, and treating it as such, we begin to turn society into a militarized police state. Welcome to 1984.
Of course successful people think that failure is good for you: they stopped doing it.
What you are saying here is that failure or success is more or less a choice, an activity you do. You could actually go out and succeed or fail, by sheer choice.
I think what these 'successful' people are saying is, "Look, I didn't do anything different in the times when I failed or succeeded. It looked like a good idea, I worked very hard, and nothing came of it. Then, on another project that had similar looking prospects to the failure, by chance it succeeded. So if you don't persist through failures, you will likely never see the success, which is more the case of 'fortune favors the prepared'."
People don't get elected just to have a title, they get elected for the power that goes with the title. The more power the better.
Okay, so how do these power-hungry people actually go about getting elected, which they are so wont to do? They have to get voters to vote for them. How do they do this? By enacting legislation that people want.
...[A]nd politicians don't like to be chained. They like to be free to act and control whatever they want.
This is the naive mistake a lot of people make.
Politicians simply like to get re-elected, and doing that means doing popular things, such as cracking down on crimes and making sure that counterfeit drugs don't end up in supermarkets. The people demand it, and vote for politicians who do it.
Yes, you're absolutely correct for the late. I'm not a proponent of religion, but I don't like atheists trying to re-write history any more than I do theists, or anybody else for that matter. I'll say it again, science and scientists have had a long and intertwining relationship with religion. This is apparent to anybody who has looked at the history.
at the time of newton if you were a declared atheist, you would have gone into serious serious problems, falling apples and math would have been your last concern
That's remarkedly not the reason for Newton's interest in religion. He was interested in all sorts of mystical and esoteric subjects, such as alchemy and anagrams in the names of popes that would spell "antichrist" and stuff like that.
Wikipedia says this: "Historian Stephen D. Snobelen says of Newton, "Isaac Newton was a heretic. But... he never made a public declaration of his private faith -- which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unravelling his personal beliefs."[6] Snobelen concludes that Newton was at least a Socinian sympathiser (he owned and had thoroughly read at least eight Socinian books), possibly an Arian and almost certainly an antitrinitarian.[6] In an age notable for its religious intolerance there are few public expressions of Newton's radical views, most notably his refusal to take holy orders and his refusal, on his death bed, to take the sacrament when it was offered to him.[6]
"In a view disputed by Snobelen,[6] T.C. Pfizenmaier argues that Newton held the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity rather than the Western one held by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and most Protestants.[64] In his own day, he was also accused of being a Rosicrucian (as were many in the Royal Society and in the court of Charles II).[65]"
So for a man who might feign interest in religion to avoid scrutiny by authorities, he sure was dabbling in the wrong kinds of stuff. I think the evidence shows that he was rather a spiritual or mystical person. This is nothing more than atheists re-writing history to fit an atheist agenda. Science has scientists have had a long and intertwining relationship with religion.
Well, I'm not trying to make a rubric for determining what is or isn't a planet; I'm trying to figure out some set of rules whereby we could keep the canonical nine planets.
According to this graph, doing non-satellites by mass puts only Eris ahead of Pluto. Maybe we could just throw Eris in, and cut it off at Pluto.
Well, Pluto does seem to have the biggest satellite. If we wanted to maintain tradition and keep Pluto a planet, this might just be the fudge factor we need.
It's very simple and works like any other sort of 'social interaction' charges leveled against someone, like sexual harassment: you have rules that say what it is and what it isn't, you take a formal complaint from someone, you investigate what they have to say and what the accused has to say, and you make a decision about what to do.
Well, this "identity human nature" theory ( "Human nature is human nature is human nature" ) doesn't seem to have much explanatory power in helping me understand why certain people act this way and other people that way. Why does an Amish man cradle the father of a murderer for an hour, while a Huaorani warrior lives in mortal terror of a five-year-old boy in the next village, who will one day grow up to avenge his father's death? The idea that the Amish and the Huao have different cultures sheds much more insight on why these two human men -- with the same human nature -- behave totally differently in response to violence.
Slashdot Mirror
Each piece replicates pretty well the style and feel of a particular author or genre of music.
To me, this is why grand proclamations of 'Computers Compose Music!' have had a fraudulent tone to them. The first step in supposedly getting a computer to 'compose' music is to feed it a bunch of music in a style originated by a great composer. Well, the human being did the 'black box' work of inventing the genre in the first place; all these programs seem to do is play some kind of souped-up mad-libs with that body of work.
"But Mozart studied other people's work before he wrote his works!" Yeah, that's true, but he *didn't* study *Mozart's* work before he wrote it. These works of genius are sui generis, original, unlike what came before it. Mozart studied other people's stuff, and came up with his own unique, original stuff. This program studies Mozart, and comes up with Mozart-stuff.
What seems to be missing is some creative element, that isn't merely copying or re-hashing what came before it, but somehow is truly 'creative' in the sense that it makes something brand new, unlike its predecessors.
If they have sudo and reset your root password, they're going to have to explain themselves later.
Forgive me newbishness. What evidence would you have that *they* did this? If they were unscrupulous, couldn't they just say, "LOL Sorry you got rooted. No way it was us. Make sure you don't have a keylogger on your system n00b"
If a machine could write a Mozart sonata every bit as good as the originals, then what was so special about Mozart?
What was so special about Mozart? Are you effing kidding me? How about that he wrote great music?
You take some great composer who creates a seminal style, writes some really great music, and then a program comes along and makes a descent song in that style. It still sounds like we need Mozarts, Bachs, Beethovens, and Ellingtons and Parkers to come up with that great genre for the programs to work in.
Wake me when a program writes a really great genre all by itself. You want to know what I'll say then? "Wow, human beings and programs can write some really nice music."
The difference between a placebo and homeopathy is the doctor prescribing a placebo KNOWS there is no medicinal value in what they are giving to a patient, whereas the person using homeopathy CLAIMS there will be a medicinal benefit.
Not quite correct. A lot of research into the placebo effect has shown that placebos do what they are purported to do ( and a lot of doctors are aware of this research ):
"A placebo described as a muscle relaxant will cause muscle relaxation and if described as the opposite, muscle tension.[36] A placebo presented as a stimulant will have this effect on heart rhythm, and blood pressure, but when administered as a depressant, the opposite effect.[37] The consumption of caffeine has been reported to cause similar effects even when decaffeinated coffee is consumed, although a 2003 study found only limited support for this.[38] Alcohol placebos can cause intoxication[39] and sensimotor impairment.[40] Perceived ergogenic substances can increase endurance[41] and weight-lifting ability,[42] leading to the question of whether placebos should be allowed in sport competition.[43] Placebos can help smokers quit.[44] Perceived allergens which are not truly allergenic can cause allergies.[45] Inventions such as psychotherapy can have placebo effects.[46]pp 164-173 Swimsuits have even been thought to increase swimmer speed.[47] The effect has been observed in the transplantation of human embryonic neurons into the brains of those with advanced Parkinson's disease.[48]"
In short, if a placebo is meant to harm someone, it will harm them. If it is meant to help them, it will help them. My personal interpretation is that we're a social animal, and if we feel that we're being taken care of by the group, then know we are worthy and should get better. If the group doesn't want us around anymore, we'll just curl up and die. But it's not just belief ( "I believe this will work, so it does" ) -- it's a practice. You actually have to *do* something -- administer some treatment, perform some procedure, etc. If you don't *do* it, the brain doesn't perceive that anything has been effected.
Perhaps because it's deceptive, and profiting off lies is generally considered unethical,
Western doctors often prescribe placebos for people.
What does traditional medicine have to do with a discussion of homeopathy (other than that many practioners of traditional medicine, in Western countries, are also believers in homeopathy).
The unspoken assumption is often that any form of medicine other than western scientific medicine is fraudulent, and if it does work, it's because of the placebo effect.
I only use FOSS when it happens to be best-in-class
Just curious, what FOSS have/do you use?
The GP asked how a company is supposed to know how a company is supposed to know if a contractor has other clients. If I had a contractor, and I got a bill for five hours in the past week, I wouldn't think about it. If I got a bill for forty hours or more for the past week, I would wonder about it, and call the contractor and ask them. That's how I would come to know.
I agree that we should look at this man's thoughts and actions with an open mind. I read his website and his manifesto the day this happened. I came away with the sense of a guy who felt special, entitled and an out-sized sense of his own importance to the world.
I pretty much concur with Dave Cullen's analysis at Slate. He was a guy who chafed at having to pay taxes, though he was God's gift to programming, and blew himself up, thinking society's loss of Him would start a revolution, when he began to see that neither of his grandiose fantasies of self-worth were true.
He burned his wife and kids out of a home. How does that action help anybody or make the world fairer?
A choice excerpt: "More comical is Stack's portrait of his own misery. As a fuller, objective emerges, we're likely to see more dramatic chasms between reality and his depictions, but the contradictions are already comical. Stack likens his plight to an elderly woman in the neighborhood living on cat food. He doesn't mention eating it in the cockpit of his private plane. In Stack's version, he lived and died a pauper. In real life, he amassed a series of businesses, a $230,000 home in an affluent community, and the airplane he crashed into the building."
Here are the traits that Cullen identified and shows in Stack's writing:
A very insightful and prescient piece.
How can they be expected to know this is beyond me.
If they get a bill for 80 hours in the past two weeks, is it really that difficult to piece together?
The rules of war have changed... the enemy isn't a state, it's a force of people loyal to a cult that believes a corrupted religion.
That's not war, that's a crime ( just like Aum Shinrikyo ) , and when we start thinking it's a war, and treating it as such, we begin to turn society into a militarized police state. Welcome to 1984.
Of course successful people think that failure is good for you: they stopped doing it.
What you are saying here is that failure or success is more or less a choice, an activity you do. You could actually go out and succeed or fail, by sheer choice.
I think what these 'successful' people are saying is, "Look, I didn't do anything different in the times when I failed or succeeded. It looked like a good idea, I worked very hard, and nothing came of it. Then, on another project that had similar looking prospects to the failure, by chance it succeeded. So if you don't persist through failures, you will likely never see the success, which is more the case of 'fortune favors the prepared'."
Good point.
Caste system.
People don't get elected just to have a title, they get elected for the power that goes with the title. The more power the better.
Okay, so how do these power-hungry people actually go about getting elected, which they are so wont to do? They have to get voters to vote for them. How do they do this? By enacting legislation that people want.
...[A]nd politicians don't like to be chained. They like to be free to act and control whatever they want.
This is the naive mistake a lot of people make.
Politicians simply like to get re-elected, and doing that means doing popular things, such as cracking down on crimes and making sure that counterfeit drugs don't end up in supermarkets. The people demand it, and vote for politicians who do it.
Yes, you're absolutely correct for the late. I'm not a proponent of religion, but I don't like atheists trying to re-write history any more than I do theists, or anybody else for that matter. I'll say it again, science and scientists have had a long and intertwining relationship with religion. This is apparent to anybody who has looked at the history.
at the time of newton if you were a declared atheist, you would have gone into serious serious problems, falling apples and math would have been your last concern
That's remarkedly not the reason for Newton's interest in religion. He was interested in all sorts of mystical and esoteric subjects, such as alchemy and anagrams in the names of popes that would spell "antichrist" and stuff like that. Wikipedia says this: "Historian Stephen D. Snobelen says of Newton, "Isaac Newton was a heretic. But ... he never made a public declaration of his private faith -- which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unravelling his personal beliefs."[6] Snobelen concludes that Newton was at least a Socinian sympathiser (he owned and had thoroughly read at least eight Socinian books), possibly an Arian and almost certainly an antitrinitarian.[6] In an age notable for its religious intolerance there are few public expressions of Newton's radical views, most notably his refusal to take holy orders and his refusal, on his death bed, to take the sacrament when it was offered to him.[6]
"In a view disputed by Snobelen,[6] T.C. Pfizenmaier argues that Newton held the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity rather than the Western one held by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and most Protestants.[64] In his own day, he was also accused of being a Rosicrucian (as were many in the Royal Society and in the court of Charles II).[65]"
So for a man who might feign interest in religion to avoid scrutiny by authorities, he sure was dabbling in the wrong kinds of stuff. I think the evidence shows that he was rather a spiritual or mystical person. This is nothing more than atheists re-writing history to fit an atheist agenda. Science has scientists have had a long and intertwining relationship with religion.
I'm curious -- how do we determine the mass on an object that has had a fly-by? By how much it affects the orbit of the fly-byer?
Well, I'm not trying to make a rubric for determining what is or isn't a planet; I'm trying to figure out some set of rules whereby we could keep the canonical nine planets.
According to this graph, doing non-satellites by mass puts only Eris ahead of Pluto. Maybe we could just throw Eris in, and cut it off at Pluto.
I'm curious to see how long they can keep it going.
My bet is right up until Steve Job's new liver gives out.
Well, Pluto does seem to have the biggest satellite. If we wanted to maintain tradition and keep Pluto a planet, this might just be the fudge factor we need.
It's very simple and works like any other sort of 'social interaction' charges leveled against someone, like sexual harassment: you have rules that say what it is and what it isn't, you take a formal complaint from someone, you investigate what they have to say and what the accused has to say, and you make a decision about what to do.
Well, this "identity human nature" theory ( "Human nature is human nature is human nature" ) doesn't seem to have much explanatory power in helping me understand why certain people act this way and other people that way. Why does an Amish man cradle the father of a murderer for an hour, while a Huaorani warrior lives in mortal terror of a five-year-old boy in the next village, who will one day grow up to avenge his father's death? The idea that the Amish and the Huao have different cultures sheds much more insight on why these two human men -- with the same human nature -- behave totally differently in response to violence.