I think you're misguided. Did you read TFA? The Emily Howell program uses a different approach from Cope's previous work. It's entirely different work, sounding nothing like an existing composer. The new approach seems much more interactive, and involves machine learning, so the new program seems even more strong-AI-ish and more creative than the older, retired program that generated Mozart-like sonatas.

TFA spends a fair bit of time talking about how the software has been tuned to break the rules creatively, and is able to determine when it's OK to do so -- the older software did so to a degree, the newer software (Emily Howell) even moreso.

Cope is still right about one thing -- we are what we eat, and with music, we are what we hear. Or rather, we compose what we hear. Sometimes that inspiration comes from birds (Beethoven's Fifth comes to mind) or other environmental sounds. Usually, it comes from other humans. So yeah, there are going to be social, cultural, and regional influences... on stuff that various societies, cultures, and regions pick up from other societies, cultures, and regions. Nothing is created in a vacuum, and there is very little that is novel or original in music that isn't derived from something else. That's more of an evolutionary process, not spontaneous generation of art from pure nothingness.

So let me turn your assertion around: Humans won't be able to tread where humans haven't, since we only know the rules we give ourselves. Sounds a little absurd? Maybe. But largely a correct assertion. True innovation enters the system only slowly, usually introduced by some inspiration that impinges upon humans -- natural phenomena, new discoveries (scientific, philosophical, etc.) that shake our cultural foundations, even disasters.

At worst, you can say it's a highly repentant, largely accidental monopolist.

This is such a skewed view of reality, I had to laugh -- it's something only an engineer working within Microsoft could write, completely ignoring (just to pick one predatory example) the kinds of lopsided contracts that Microsoft's business side was penning with all sorts of hardware manufacturers, prohibiting them from shipping computers with rival operating systems or web browsers...

There was very little "accidental" about these predatory moves, and the monopoly trial very clearly showed that this was a pattern of behavior.

Contrast with:

The problem comes when the [internal] competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence. It's not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft's music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.

Gee, that sounds like the same kinds of behavior, just writ small. This strikes me as one of those "you reap what you sow" type of situations. Definitely, the offspring-eating behavior is well ingrained in the DNA of this particular organism...

The poetic justice is delicious. Pity that the author of TFA doesn't see it.

Anyone who still clings to the largely irrelevant requirement of technical skill [...]

That's what you wrote previously.

It sure seems that you're arguing the "relevance of skill," so it's a bit amusing that you'd contradict yourself in a subsequent comment and say you're not arguing the relevance of skill. Yes, you did clarify your previous intention, so we now know you meant that Duchamp had obvious technical skill, and so should not be dismissed. (Picasso had some great technical skill, too -- some of his earliest works looked photo-realistic to me.)

But it also seems that you're claiming one does not need technical skill to make art, that technical skill is "largely irrelevant." So you're also kind of saying, "Hey, you unwashed heathens, here's this artist who is acknowledged as being great, and I know you judge technical skill, so don't dismiss this guy on the grounds of technical skill... even though technical skill is irrelevant anyway, and you're all mistaken for judging by that metric."

I used to date someone at Syracuse University who was an art major there. I was shown all kinds of student art projects, and there was one that made me scratch my head -- some student was doing oil paintings of printed circuit boards. Now, I personally like the look of printed circuit boards, and I even find them aesthetically pleasing enough to put them on display occasionally. But I found the paintings to be sterile and aesthetically displeasing. When I commented that I found them to be the antithesis of art, what was I told? "You lack training in art, so nothing you say about these paintings is valid, except for your own personal aesthetic."

I still like to date artists, but that pretentious attitude was a bit much to handle. Just because I lacked the proper terminology and framework for doing "real" art criticism doesn't mean I have no valid opinions aside from what pleases me aesthetically.

That reflects more on you than Duchamp

That's a great way to blame someone for their own ignorance. What's the poor guy supposed to do, absorb that information by osmosis? Pick up a random art book and hope it teaches him about the "right" masters?

There was an art appreciation class at MIT that a friend of mine took. He told me the students in it called it "clapping for credit." I wanted to focus on writing and literature, so I skipped that class. Maybe taking it would have enriched me a great deal, but I have never had much regard for what amounts to learning a bunch of names and dates. "This guy was a really important 20th century artist." OK, because you (or someone) decided this guy was important. But was his importance for a particular reason, or some historical accident? A combination in Duchamp's case, it would seem -- and it's interesting to note that some of his works were rejected as "not being art" by artists of his time,

Some of us were discouraged from learning about things like art history by our families or our chosen academic careers. Rather than making smarmy comments about how ill-bred or ill-educated we are, maybe you could simply try to enlighten others and explain why some viewpoint is relevant or actually important.

And apparently, many people here on Slashdot and elsewhere reject the notion that art is whatever an artist says it is. Merely reiterating that statement over and over, and then saying "some important dude named Duchamp said so, so this must be a true statement," is not an argument. (Well, it's a fallacious argument.) Repeating something doesn't make it true, and citing an "authority" that is only recognized among artists and those who collect or appreciate art is an appeal to false authority, not a proof.

In short, for those of us who value logic and empiricism, there is little value in these claims.

Now, it might be true that art is important (whatever that means), or that it exists as more than just a perceptual construct of the human mind, or even that merely calling something art makes it so. But don't be shocked that rationalists are going to act skeptical of such claims, and don't go blaming said rationalists for their perceptions.

Note that I'm not actually taking a side here, just pointing out that those perpetuating this viewpoint, citing Duchamp etc., seem just as entrenched in a viewpoint that they're not willing to give up, as those they are arguing against.

Speaking to the point of authorities -- in most disciplines, there is the notions that practitioners of the discipline recognize some figures as authorities, but in the scientific and mathematical disciplines (including computer science), there are some things which are provable without appealing to any authority. So while an art authority is only recognized within the world of art, and his statements may be taken as truth by those who accept them within that realm, the truths expressed in mathematics are provable to anyone, by anyone. while in the sciences, what was received wisdom one day is a rejected notion the next. You can't do that for art, so people who are hyper-rational thinkers are not going to accept claims based on Marcel Duchamp's say-so. Or Frank Zappa's.

In earlier ages, the reason why you were supposed to be quiet in a library was because some people were there to do research and couldn't check out all the reference books they could possibly need. Who needs that, now that we have the Internet?

Anyone who needs to use a primary source that isn't available online. I'm not talking about encyclopedias or other "reference" books that are a good first step to finding out what you need, but rather, source books which may be out of print, or which are so specialized that few people other than librarians would ever consider purchasing them. Some of these books are rare enough that they'll never be put in circulation. And believe me, high school English teachers can be very insistent that you use those obscure primary sources for term papers and so forth.

And if your library has the materials to support the sort of hard-core research that requires dead-tree copies of things that aren't on the Internet yet, they probably have quiet research rooms.

But many libraries are under-funded, or too small to justify creating or adding on a dedicated research room. My home town library was like that, and it was once a mansion. (The children's library was built as an addition.) The Phoenix Public Library, main branch, has been in decline for years -- they spent a fortune creating a really lovely space inside with a waterfall or fountain type structure around a stairwell, though I've never seen it fully running. It totally doesn't surprise me that many patrons are rude, talking on cellphones or letting their children run wild. I needed to do research for my boss a few years back, and he sent me to the library to go find some journal articles and a book or two; the library staff actually kind of sneered at me, and told me that the library had "changed its mission" (focusing less on obscure publications and more on books, periodicals, and other activities that were deemed beneficial to the community at large). The stuff I needed had to be obtained from other libraries in other locales, through inter-library loan. Maybe the Phoenix Public Library, which the GP sort of mentioned, has some quiet research rooms, but my impression was that there was precious little dedicated space for such things -- you were expected to photocopy what you needed and take that with you.

This will show a digital copy of the image in includes all the digital processing and sensor data.

The link for the patent is available in someone else's post in a parallel thread. I took a look at it.

In point of fact, Kodak specifically talks about the motion preview mode using fast, lower quality processing, with fewer pixels being processed and displayed (in a dedicated ASIC), and a slower still mode using more sophisticated processing algorithms (done by a general purpose processor or DSP) for a much higher quality image.

So no, Kodak isn't showing you all, or even most, of the image data. Just enough that it's suitable for use as a viewfinder.

A few things:

• First, CCD is a sensor technology, and LCD is a display technology. Comparing the two as you do makes no sense: "[...] camcorders as well as the QV-11, which used CCD technology, not LCD technology [...]"
• The "novelty" of avoiding the first step of converting the video signal to NTSC is in the eye of the beholder; I am fairly certain there's prior art for this notion, albeit not in a still camera. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that conversion of raster data from a sensor into an NTSC signal is entirely unnecessary, when the intended end result is to display that image data on a screen contained in the same device. So Kodak "invented" not performing an unnecessary conversion to and from an intermediate format? I'm not buying it.
• Looking at the patent, I would also submit that scaling the image data to fit on a display with fewer pixels (some EVF implementations use very tiny LCD screens in a classic-style viewfinder you put your eye close to) is something for which prior art exists -- the techniques go back decades, and are covered in references such as Foley, Van Dam, et. al.
• The patent mentions de-mosaicing the image data to recover color information. This is something Kodak already holds a separate patent on.

The patent wording is a bit disingenuous in that it speaks of the "necessity" of generating an NTSC signal. It obviously isn't necessary if Kodak isn't doing it. Then again, they need to make this claim sound as patentable as possible... At the very least, many of the claims in this patent appear overly broad; the only claim that doesn't appear that way to me is something covered in another patent.

Y'see, Kodak is patenting what is known as an electronic viewfinder. It's not that they have patented the idea of hooking up a display device to a sensor and then displaying what the sensor "sees" -- there's plenty of prior art for that! No, they're patenting the obvious idea of using a sensor and a display device to take the place of a traditional viewfinder as you might find in an SLR camera (where there's an array of mirrors and prisms to accomplish this goal).

Yes, Kodak has invented plenty of useful things that deserve patent protection, including the mosaic pattern on digital camera sensors to obtain color images. This viewfinder thing, though, isn't worthy of patent protection -- because it's obvious.

once we take away the double negative (which is, of course, a no no in english. sorry for the pun!)

A couple things. First, you're being overly simplistic when you say double negatives are a "no no" in English. (Note that English is capitalized, by the way.) In fact, many fine examples of English prose from days of yore contain double and even triple negatives; one example would be the Declaration of Independence, and another would be the U.S. Constitution. Back in those days, it was expected that the reader would sit there and ruminate for more than half a second to divine the meaning of a sentence, and therefore was adequately equipped to discern the meaning of said double negative.

The only time in English that double negatives are a "no no" is when they are unintentional, as when some poorly educated speakers mean one thing but say the opposite. "I ain't got nothin'!" The speaker meant he has nothing, but in fact is literally saying that he has something.

Secondly, "no no" doesn't really qualify as a pun. Even if you disagree, it's pretty weak -- even for a pun.

At any rate, the person to whom you are responding clearly falls into the "unintentionally self-sabotaging" category. :-)

My only observation is that there's some validity to his viewpoint, even if he did mangle the expression of it. If the source code for a plugin is readable only by disassembling the plugin, I'm not sure if that plugin really qualifies as Open Source (as defined by the industry). It seems to me that to meet the definition of Open Source, the author or publisher of the browser plugin ought to explicitly publish the source for the plugin.

Yes, I know my use of "disassemble" might seem strained to some folks, but the steps you have to take to get at the source for the plugin are not that far removed from decompiling a Java class you extract from a JAR file, for example, or running a binary through a disassembler. I'm sure others will grouse over what "explicitly publish" means -- frankly, I'd be satisfied with distributing commented source along with the plugin as a separate, human-readable file, or exposing it on a web site.

While you cite a Wikipedia article that states that neodymium isn't all that rare, the article (which I actually read) doesn't say what the relative concentrations are at the different mines. In other words, what are the provable reserves in China vs. the United States? We have 1 major mine in the U.S. that was producing (in the mining sense of the word -- providing, furnishing, supplying) rare earths, but shut down. The Chinese tried to purchase that mine, but the U.S. government wisely blocked that sale. I guess there are some other mining locations in the states which need to be developed, and the mine I already mentioned is apparently going to be reopened.

Still, China remains the primary producer of rare earths. You made the mistake of assuming that (a) the distribution of rare earth elements in the Earth's outer crust is uniform -- it isn't -- and (b) there isn't a substantial start-up cost or lead time to extracting useful amounts of rare earths from new mines, or mines that need to be restarted.

As TFA states, many mines outside of China are 5-10 years away from producing in useful quantities. It also states that the Chinese are actively attempting to buy mines in other countries, not just the U.S. one I mentioned. So I think you're off-base; I think it's very clear that the Chinese can and are trying to corner the market on rare earths, not just neodymium.

Your comment was a great example of how to take a quote out of context, add emphasis to further take it out of context, and use it to support an argument that it doesn't actually support. For crying out loud, even the Wikipedia article notes that neodymium falls behind cerium in abundance, so you can't even say neodymium is the most abundant of the rare earths. The "not rare at all" bit is a relative thing. It's pretty damned rare compared to, say, carbon, or iron, or silicon, or lead... In short, yes, there are rare earth mines in many countries, but everything I've read on the subject -- which is way more than TFA -- seems to indicate that China has the greatest provable reserves.

Optical is rubbish? Maybe if you don't care about archives. Yes, archival CD and DVD (and now Blu-Ray) media exists, and it's not cheap, but is guaranteed to have a century-plus shelf life after writing to it.

Nothing else comes close in terms of longevity or durability. Magnetic media degrades over time. Solid state storage eventually loses its data, and IIRC on time scales far shorter than a century.

Also, most solid state memory cards are tiny because of the applications/devices they're used in. They get lost and broken easily. Optical discs are actually an ideal size for handling and storage, and offer enough surface area on both the top of the disc and the carrier to print or write a fair amount of information about what's on that media.

He's talking about stereo imaging for an audio signal. I'm going to assume you figured out that he was making an analogy between sample rates for digital audio and frame rates for video (recorded or computer generated). Since his ears are the engaged organs in this example, "hear" is the appropriate verb. And the creation of a 3D soundstage is the whole point of using stereo, as opposed to having a single channel for sound.

As for what it means to "hear" imaging, it's really obvious to anyone who's ever listened to a high-end system with a musical sample they're intimately familiar with. Better imaging means you can more precisely locate instruments in the stereo soundstage -- at the very least, better localization in the horizontal plane, and if you're lucky, the "height" of the soundstage may seem to expand. Instead of getting a smear of sound across some general area, you can point your finger and say, "I hear the oboe coming from right there."

Obviously, higher frequencies are more directional than lower frequencies, so some musical instruments localize better than others.

And no, you don't need gold-plated anything to get this kind of performance, but it doesn't hurt to have gold plating on terminals to prevent corrosion. I've had cables with RCA connectors on them give a poor, noisy connection until I've cleaned off the oxidation.

I will say, though, that after listening to a $500,000+ system at a local HiFi boutique and comparing to, say, my current approx. $5000 system at home -- a difference of 2 orders of magnitude -- I know that I'm missing out on some of what the top-shelf system can reveal to me, but not enough to justify the massive difference in price. (The high end system was fed by Mark Levinson equipment, with two massive monoblock amps plugged into 220V mains feeding the speakers. Pretty outrageous.)

On the other hand, I can say that SACD definitely provides a superior experience to CD, as the GP indicated -- the effective sample rate for SACD is ridiculously high, even though the technology isn't directly comparable since CD uses 16-bit PCM and SACD uses 1-bit DSD. DVD Audio, not quite as much, but I have heard some impressive DVD-A demos at 192 kHz sample rate, 24 bit/ch sample size, which were almost holographic.

The bottom line is, whether you're talking about audio or video, more samples/sec or frames/sec is a good thing, especially with (in the case of video) a rapidly moving subject. This truth is why, for instance, "Doc" Edgerton at MIT pioneered high speed cameras and strobe technology to photograph bullets ripping through playing cards. OK, in the still photography case, you care about the inverse of frame rate, so to speak, but the principle applies; I do know "Doc" also did film work, and even won an Oscar.

mushroom cloud-sized implosion

And why would you hyphenate cloud with sized?

Because that's the convention for adding a hyphenated modifier to a compound noun. "Mushroom cloud" is the noun, and when you're combining a noun with an adjective like "sized" to qualify that adjective, you use a hyphen. For example, "He shot me with the .357 magnum, and as I looked down, I saw a bowling ball-sized hole in my chest."

Speaking of bowling ball examples using "-sized" in them, I found a perfect example from Science News: Bowling ball-sized Devil Toad probably ate hatchling dinosaurs

(Come to think of it, there was probably a Slashdot story about that...)

But the rest of your comments are spot-on. Mushroom clouds are generally caused by explosions, and yes, they do come in all sizes, rendering the original author's statement completely meaningless.

For the size of an implosion, I reckon most people would consider the size to be the volume or area affected by the implosion -- same as for the "size" of an explosion. Since an implosion tends to pull in surrounding matter...

I'm sure the author of the summary thought the phrase sounded cool until we all started nit-picking him.

All the platforms that used to run Cobol, you mean. I'm looking at you, J2EE.

I don't see much C# (or other CLR managed code) running on set-top boxes, for just one instance, so I think it's a bit ludicrous to make such an assertion -- even if Java is often touted as the "COBOL of the 21st century." J2ME is part of Java, too, and that runs on cell phones of all types -- yet only phones running Windows Mobile will run apps written in C#.

For those reasons, I'm going to support the GP's assertion that Java is alive and well and running on platforms .NET could never dream of. Still. And I'm not just talking about enterprisey environments where COBOL used to dominate. If that's really all you can think of, you need to open your eyes.

I should also mention that a lot of new dynamic languages are hosted on the JVM, which may well outlast the Java language itself. The Java runtime is actually quite useful that way. JRuby and Groovy are gaining a lot of traction, and Groovy contains many of the things we in the Java world have been waiting forever to get (e.g., closures).