Whoops.. says so in the first paragraph. My bad.:) But is it accurate.. Like I said, it might well be the first to actually combine robotics and musical accompaniment. I'm not sure. I guess I'll give the article the benifit of the doubt!
Of course, musical accompaniment systems have been around since the 80's and earlier. It's been a research topic in artificial intelligence nearly since its inception!
Robert Rowe published a book on the topic in 1992, on his Cypher system. Here's another good article on the topic by Chris Dobrian. For an open-source system, check out Bob van der Poel's MMA.
Additionally, there's been plenty of work done on robotics for playing instruments, particularly for percussion.
So, admittedly, this is the first time I've personally heard of a project combining the two, so I'll give it that credit for innovation. But I'd be sorta surprised if it hasn't been done previously. When you think about it... all these musical accompaniment systems react in real-time to MIDI input. Simply make a couple of motors respond to MMA's ouptut, for example, adjust timing according to latency and inertia, and you could probably have this project done in a few days.
Not to play it down, I always love to see fun projects like this..:) And the physical design is quite beautiful for a drum-playing robot. But "first".. well, give credit where it's due. I think the summary is over-reacting. (I scanned the article.. don't believe it makes any such claims.)
If it could be made to run rockbox or linux, it would make a great portable player, and you could use the wireless in more useful ways. I imagine they've made it difficult to break though. I certainly won't buy one unless it is made able to run homebrew, and even then... I dunno.
Not that I necessarily disagree, but just to play the devil's advocate here... in your example, wasn't Mozart copying the score? Wasn't he infringing copyright by writing down a copy of the piece? Just because it wasn't through printed medium, but rather through memorization, doesn't mean he wasn't copying it.
In professional music, it is a requirement to learn how to write down a piece of music upon hearing it -- musical dictation. Writing down a piece that you heard on the radio is still an act of making a copy of that piece, isn't it?
But of course that doesn't take away from that fact that it was an absolutely amazing feat. I hadn't heard that particular story.
The team learned that if the tether is pulled hard by wind, it starts to buckle and deform slightly, creating crinkles. The robot climber hit these crinkles and could not proceed because they made the tether too thick for it to handle.
"We broke our robot by doing this," Laine says. "It's the kind of failure we never would have learned had we only been doing 6-hour tests." Future designs will have to incorporate sensors to tell the robot when it is about to encounter varying thicknesses. Strong but thin
Hm... do you think that if your tether is beginning to BUCKLE AND DEFORM, you might have a slightly more fundamental problem than just needing to redesign the robot?
Well, I'm sure they're aware of it. But this kind of thing probably won't become more obvious until they do a 6-month test, I guess. Or 6-years. But the potential for your tether to break off eventually is probably going to be a slight drawback.
[quote]Because if you shortcircuit any laptop battery the only thing stopping it from detonating in a spectacular manner is the control electronics.[/quote]
sorta makes you rethink whether laptops should be allowed on flights, no?
Wow, you could understand your school's PA system? Kids have it so easy these days... I remember hearing a fuzzy sort of crackle coming from the speaker, and someone would just go, "Uh, did it say something important?"
"Wow, that's great," I thought, as I read the title of the article. Then I made the mistake of clicking on "Read more..."
Man are you lot ever a bunch of depressed, jaded people. Almost every single comment has been attacking Mr. Tolkien for doing homage to his father's work. How sad...
I just finished reading the Baroque Cycle a few weeks ago, so this period is really fresh in my mind. (I really enjoyed it.) This is like icing on the cake...
his story made the evening news in Montreal, back then.
wow.... I live in Montreal and I never heard that one. (May be too young, I would have been in high school.)
Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
At least, afaik, there is a law saying that a pawn shop has to hold items for about 2 weeks before being able to sell them, in case the stuff turns up stolen. However, this is only hearsay..
But seriously, that's a bit f*ked up. Pawn shop owners should be held liable if they accept stolen goods, no?
Cool, thanks.:) This would then be the "one" extension I think would be nice as being a permanent part of Mozilla..:) I'll check it out.
Though I think I'd still prefer just a short XML description file instead of making a copy of the whole extensions folder. Anyways, I did actually file a wishlist item for this feature..:)
Why not offer a few different builds with pre-installed extensions so that Mom & Pop can just download a version with the features they want?
One thing I recently thought of that would be a great thing to include in FF is some kind of "extension profile". Every time I install FF (not that often, but it happens) I find myself going to addons.mozilla.org and re-installing the same list of extensions. It would be really nice to be able to have an XML file or something with my list of extensions, and have FF install all of them in one shot instead of having to search for each one individually.
Then, for example, people could post their extension profiles on their blogs or whatever, and you could find one that you like and just install all those recommended extensions. (Or perhaps easily select the ones you want.)
Hm, maybe I'll stick this in their bugzilla wishlist...
I'm sorry, what? Where did I mention anything about the CLI? I certainly did not mean to imply that there's anything wrong with a GUI. But there IS something wrong with dynamically hiding parts of a GUI based on some unspecified learning algorithm. Do you understand what I mean? Computers should be transparent and obvious, THAT is what makes them easier to use, not artificially messing with the interface to pretend the "hard parts" don't exist. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to use the mouse to interact with them. It just has to be designed well -- meaning everything accessible in a logical manner, whether it is through the keyboard or the mouse.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
on
A New Kind of OS
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Normal people can't do that. I can't program worth shit, and I don't even know how to mess with the Kernal. They mean an OS that changes with you, without you having to do it with coding. If Linux could do that, it would be MUCH better.
You know, as a programmer, I get really tired of people suggesting ways to program computers "without doing any coding". That's where BAD things come from. That's where "dynamically hiding menu items" come from, so you never know where things are. That's where "visual programming" comes from, so you're staring at a screen full of boxes and lines with little to no organizational structure.
No. If you're gonna program a computer, learn how to program. The CS field as a whole apologizes for the fact that computers are hard. They are complex machines. Unfortunately it is not always easy to get them to work they way they should, or the way you want them to. But that's life. If you're not willing to learn how to program, you should be willing to learn how to use what other people have programmed, or learn how to write specs and make intelligent suggestions to the community. But this bullshit about "intelligently adapting the OS to a user's needs" is just asking for trouble. It's asking for "programming" without actually asking for any "design" or "specifications". It will end up being crap.
The fact is, making something "user friendly" means making the front-end more simple -- and thus making the back-end more complicated. But this complexity always eventually compounds and compounds until the end user can't understand what's happening and gets confused. In the end, we learn that computers are easier to use if you understand the back-end, and that can only happen if you use a minimum of metaphor. That is-- a straight-forward system that is obvious and transparent.
The mistake that Windows and many GUI systems have made is in trying to HIDE the system in metaphor. It always backfires, because although a transparent system may be harder to learn, it is far, far easier to deal with once the learning curve has been climbed. And since we've discovered that even the simplest metaphoric GUI requires "training", well.. you may as well train the end user how it actually WORKS instead of trying to hide it from them in a bubble of "interface".
Of course, that's just MHO. Though I believe Neal Stephenson agrees with me.
(My apologies to the parent. My comments aren't really directed at you, per se, I just get tired of people suggesting that computer programming should be effortless. Computer using should be easy, but programming is programming, if you know what I mean.)
Are there console mode tool out there for working with ODF, for example?
Not that I know of, but I certainly think it's a great idea! The closest thing I can think of is writing docs using AsciiDoc and then converting the file to DocBook and then ODF/PDF. However a console editor for doing word-processor-like things is a good idea. Emacs with the correct mode settings is probably the closest thing right now that I know of.
I think your description and comments were really interesting. I hope someone who's developing these sorts of apps see them.
I've always felt that the command-line is a faster and more direct way of doing things than with GUI, and I'm not even blind.;-) It's just a more straight-forward metaphor for telling the computer What To Do. It requires less attention to what's on the screen, and more keeping temporary information in your head, so I can see why it would be nice for the blind.
My father is partially sighted (not blind), and pays more attention to document layout than anyone else I know. He's far more aware of layout because it's not automatic for him. He expects to spend some effort on layout, while the rest of us bang out half-arsed documents with headers in three different font sizes through the document.
I find this pretty interesting actually. What sort of workflow does he use for editing layout? You have to admit this is a particular case of partial blindness, which is not necessarily equal to full blindness, where one would need to work with a brail reader or text-to-speech engine. I imagine he would enjoy a program such as Lyx, where you specify styles and let the program do the bulk of "layout" work. (Well you can also it in Word or whatever, only Lyx is especially made for this kind of style-oriented editing.) So does he uses styles a lot (whatever software he uses), or does he just stare at the screen really close, minutely editing things with the mouse?
I'm honestly curious how a partially blind individual works on layout.
Just because a blind person is creating the document, doesn't mean that only blind people will be using the document.
All the more reason for the text of the document to be accessible in a format easily editable in a simple text editor, or some other application that is not the original word processor. For example, an XML format in which text can easily be edited without losing formatting and structure.
Documents saved in some kind of XML format should be quite easy to load into a specialized application for example for a Brail reader or something, and re-saved without actually messing up the tags used to surround the text.
Anyways, I dunno I'm just hypothesizing, but it seems to me that going with an open format here can only HELP with disabled accessibility.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF is a "bugged email"?
Whoops.. says so in the first paragraph. My bad. :)
But is it accurate..
Like I said, it might well be the first to actually combine robotics and musical accompaniment. I'm not sure. I guess I'll give the article the benifit of the doubt!
Of course, musical accompaniment systems have been around since the 80's and earlier. It's been a research topic in artificial intelligence nearly since its inception!
:) And the physical design is quite beautiful for a drum-playing robot.
Robert Rowe published a book on the topic in 1992, on his Cypher system. Here's another good article on the topic by Chris Dobrian. For an open-source system, check out Bob van der Poel's MMA.
Additionally, there's been plenty of work done on robotics for playing instruments, particularly for percussion.
So, admittedly, this is the first time I've personally heard of a project combining the two, so I'll give it that credit for innovation. But I'd be sorta surprised if it hasn't been done previously. When you think about it... all these musical accompaniment systems react in real-time to MIDI input. Simply make a couple of motors respond to MMA's ouptut, for example, adjust timing according to latency and inertia, and you could probably have this project done in a few days.
Not to play it down, I always love to see fun projects like this..
But "first".. well, give credit where it's due. I think the summary is over-reacting. (I scanned the article.. don't believe it makes any such claims.)
If it could be made to run rockbox or linux, it would make a great portable player, and you could use the wireless in more useful ways.
I imagine they've made it difficult to break though.
I certainly won't buy one unless it is made able to run homebrew, and even then... I dunno.
Well, of course it's slowly, it takes a very long time to say anything in Old Entish.
Not that I necessarily disagree, but just to play the devil's advocate here... in your example, wasn't Mozart copying the score? Wasn't he infringing copyright by writing down a copy of the piece?
Just because it wasn't through printed medium, but rather through memorization, doesn't mean he wasn't copying it.
In professional music, it is a requirement to learn how to write down a piece of music upon hearing it -- musical dictation. Writing down a piece that you heard on the radio is still an act of making a copy of that piece, isn't it?
But of course that doesn't take away from that fact that it was an absolutely amazing feat. I hadn't heard that particular story.
Hm... do you think that if your tether is beginning to BUCKLE AND DEFORM, you might have a slightly more fundamental problem than just needing to redesign the robot?
Well, I'm sure they're aware of it. But this kind of thing probably won't become more obvious until they do a 6-month test, I guess. Or 6-years. But the potential for your tether to break off eventually is probably going to be a slight drawback.
[quote]Because if you shortcircuit any laptop battery the only thing stopping it from detonating in a spectacular manner is the control electronics.[/quote]
sorta makes you rethink whether laptops should be allowed on flights, no?
Wow, you could understand your school's PA system? Kids have it so easy these days... I remember hearing a fuzzy sort of crackle coming from the speaker, and someone would just go, "Uh, did it say something important?"
Wow. Now THAT was depressing.
I'm going to go stare at the corner for a while.
Best... post... ever.
"Wow, that's great," I thought, as I read the title of the article. Then I made the mistake of clicking on "Read more..."
:)
Man are you lot ever a bunch of depressed, jaded people. Almost every single comment has been attacking Mr. Tolkien for doing homage to his father's work. How sad...
(Please, no "You must be new here" comments..
I'm actually really amazed at the type. It's very interesting. It's so clear.
;-)
They must have typeset it all by hand using metal templates.
I'm sure they could have benefitted from LaTeX back then...
(The DNA article does look almost like it was typeset in LaTeX.)
I'm surprised at the shape of the 's'. It looks like an 'f'! I had no idea they used to write the letter s differently..
I just finished reading the Baroque Cycle a few weeks ago, so this period is really fresh in my mind. (I really enjoyed it.) This is like icing on the cake...
wow.... I live in Montreal and I never heard that one.
(May be too young, I would have been in high school.)
Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
At least, afaik, there is a law saying that a pawn shop has to hold items for about 2 weeks before being able to sell them, in case the stuff turns up stolen. However, this is only hearsay..
But seriously, that's a bit f*ked up. Pawn shop owners should be held liable if they accept stolen goods, no?
Cool, thanks. :) :)
:)
This would then be the "one" extension I think would be nice as being a permanent part of Mozilla..
I'll check it out.
Though I think I'd still prefer just a short XML description file instead of making a copy of the whole extensions folder. Anyways, I did actually file a wishlist item for this feature..
Very nice way of putting it..
Thanks.
One thing I recently thought of that would be a great thing to include in FF is some kind of "extension profile". Every time I install FF (not that often, but it happens) I find myself going to addons.mozilla.org and re-installing the same list of extensions. It would be really nice to be able to have an XML file or something with my list of extensions, and have FF install all of them in one shot instead of having to search for each one individually.
Then, for example, people could post their extension profiles on their blogs or whatever, and you could find one that you like and just install all those recommended extensions. (Or perhaps easily select the ones you want.)
Hm, maybe I'll stick this in their bugzilla wishlist...
I'm sorry, what? Where did I mention anything about the CLI?
I certainly did not mean to imply that there's anything wrong with a GUI. But there IS something wrong with dynamically hiding parts of a GUI based on some unspecified learning algorithm.
Do you understand what I mean?
Computers should be transparent and obvious, THAT is what makes them easier to use, not artificially messing with the interface to pretend the "hard parts" don't exist. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to use the mouse to interact with them. It just has to be designed well -- meaning everything accessible in a logical manner, whether it is through the keyboard or the mouse.
You know, as a programmer, I get really tired of people suggesting ways to program computers "without doing any coding". That's where BAD things come from. That's where "dynamically hiding menu items" come from, so you never know where things are. That's where "visual programming" comes from, so you're staring at a screen full of boxes and lines with little to no organizational structure.
No. If you're gonna program a computer, learn how to program. The CS field as a whole apologizes for the fact that computers are hard. They are complex machines. Unfortunately it is not always easy to get them to work they way they should, or the way you want them to. But that's life. If you're not willing to learn how to program, you should be willing to learn how to use what other people have programmed, or learn how to write specs and make intelligent suggestions to the community. But this bullshit about "intelligently adapting the OS to a user's needs" is just asking for trouble. It's asking for "programming" without actually asking for any "design" or "specifications". It will end up being crap.
The fact is, making something "user friendly" means making the front-end more simple -- and thus making the back-end more complicated. But this complexity always eventually compounds and compounds until the end user can't understand what's happening and gets confused. In the end, we learn that computers are easier to use if you understand the back-end, and that can only happen if you use a minimum of metaphor. That is-- a straight-forward system that is obvious and transparent.
The mistake that Windows and many GUI systems have made is in trying to HIDE the system in metaphor. It always backfires, because although a transparent system may be harder to learn, it is far, far easier to deal with once the learning curve has been climbed. And since we've discovered that even the simplest metaphoric GUI requires "training", well.. you may as well train the end user how it actually WORKS instead of trying to hide it from them in a bubble of "interface".
Of course, that's just MHO. Though I believe Neal Stephenson agrees with me.
(My apologies to the parent. My comments aren't really directed at you, per se, I just get tired of people suggesting that computer programming should be effortless. Computer using should be easy, but programming is programming, if you know what I mean.)
Wicked, I had no idea Scientist could do this kind of stuff. And he's a great musician.
Strange though that he doesn't mention this kind of research on his myspace page.
Damn him for driving his exotic cars!!
Not that I know of, but I certainly think it's a great idea! The closest thing I can think of is writing docs using AsciiDoc and then converting the file to DocBook and then ODF/PDF. However a console editor for doing word-processor-like things is a good idea. Emacs with the correct mode settings is probably the closest thing right now that I know of.
I think your description and comments were really interesting. I hope someone who's developing these sorts of apps see them.
I've always felt that the command-line is a faster and more direct way of doing things than with GUI, and I'm not even blind.
It's just a more straight-forward metaphor for telling the computer What To Do. It requires less attention to what's on the screen, and more keeping temporary information in your head, so I can see why it would be nice for the blind.
I find this pretty interesting actually.
What sort of workflow does he use for editing layout? You have to admit this is a particular case of partial blindness, which is not necessarily equal to full blindness, where one would need to work with a brail reader or text-to-speech engine. I imagine he would enjoy a program such as Lyx, where you specify styles and let the program do the bulk of "layout" work. (Well you can also it in Word or whatever, only Lyx is especially made for this kind of style-oriented editing.) So does he uses styles a lot (whatever software he uses), or does he just stare at the screen really close, minutely editing things with the mouse?
I'm honestly curious how a partially blind individual works on layout.
All the more reason for the text of the document to be accessible in a format easily editable in a simple text editor, or some other application that is not the original word processor. For example, an XML format in which text can easily be edited without losing formatting and structure.
Documents saved in some kind of XML format should be quite easy to load into a specialized application for example for a Brail reader or something, and re-saved without actually messing up the tags used to surround the text.
Anyways, I dunno I'm just hypothesizing, but it seems to me that going with an open format here can only HELP with disabled accessibility.