found_drama

Via Boing^2: “Surprise! Computer scientists model the exclamation point” - - /sigh again?

As A will no doubt attest, this is nothing new. There have been biological and mathematical models of “surprisingness” for quite a while. (Decades, if I’m not mistaken.) Does science have to take place at UC Berkley USC to be important or something? Or is it just news “all over again” because it finally made it over there from Cornell and Princeton and Brown etc.?

And (again, as I’m sure A will attest) the thing that causes the most /shudder here is the eye movement stuff. “Eye movements” (also called “saccades”) are all the raging vogue among neuroscientists right now. Which I think is funny because that fails to challenge the assumption that eye movements are (in and of themselves) the most salient piece of biological feedback to the environment.

UPDATE: After a brief email exchange w/ David Pescovitz @ BoingBoing, I took his advice and fired off the following to the USC contact listed in at the beginning of the article:

Subject: re: “Surprise!”
Date: November 29, 2005 9:39:00 PM EST
To: mankin {at} usc {period} edu

Eric–

re: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/uosc-scs112805.php

These are very interesting findings mentioned in the above press release. I was curious where I might find out more about the research that they’ve cited. Specifically, I’m wondering in what ways their work has paralleled or considered that of Rescorla & Wagner (1972) and Pearce & Hall (1980). Their assertion that surprise “lacked a formal definition” seems to fly in the face of over 30 years of learning theory.

Let’s see where this goes…

Via TUAW: the Internet iTunes Registry - - upload the XML dump of your iTunes Library and join the info smorgasboard!

On first glance, this seems an awful lot like a variation on what I was talking about recently in “programming serendipity” - - it’s a little too soon for it to be “the lazy web” effect but I’ll take it.

From their home page:

This site allows its users to upload their iTunes playlists and run them through a (growing) series of reporting tools in an effort to help you, the listener, better understand your musical collection.

Some of the interesting things available (once you make an account) include a Browse-By-Letter tool for your iPod, rankings of entire songs and albums, an estimate of how diverse your music collection is and a handy little report that sits in your iPod’s ‘Notes’ folder, and gives you some interesting statistics on each of your genres.

“..estimate how diverse your music collection is…”? I wonder what that’s supposed to mean. Standard deviations away from the mean number of genres in a typical library? Or something else…? I’m curious what all is in there and how it ties back in with what I was talking about the other day.

More to follow…

UPDATE: Well, seems their servers keep flaking out because of dinks like me that saw the TUAW post and flocked there like a dunce pigeon. So I haven’t been able to explore too terribly much but I did get a dump of my Library’s XML file up there:

(image plumps when clicked)

So… We’ll just have to keep our eyes peeled and hit it up again in the next couple days.

Paul Thorrott over at “SuperSite for Windows” posts part two of his Windows Vista Beta 1 vs. Mac OS X “Tiger”, breaking down the key parts that are to give two cents about. Best line out of the whole thing:

My educated guess is that Vista won’t be as secure as OS X, however, because cobbled together systems are rarely as foolproof as those that were designed correctly from the start.

His round-up is a good one and takes a lot of important factors into account w/r/t/ “getting what you pay for” out of these two competing OSes… Highlights:

• Security. It’s safe to say that he calls OS X a more secure OS, overall (as quoted above). He makes a specifically compelling point in this regard though: OS X’s inner security genius is due in large part to FreeBSD/*nix under-pinnings - - thus “standing on the shoulders of giants” - - but could make them slower to respond to threats.
• Data Encryption. FileVault is better than EFS in terms of raw encryption and usability. But FileVault’s failing (as I’ve commented many times before) is that it’s not atomized enough. Jury is still out on this one.
• Built-in Maleware Protection. Lauds to Microsoft for bundling these features right in to Vista. But shameful shakes of the head that this should even be an issue. On that note, why is the OS X firewall OFF by default?
• Networking. Vista will be easier but not as easy as OS X. (Paul doesn’t comment too much though on the different frames of mind that inform how the two OSes treat network shares, boiling it down instead to …when you want to access individual shares, you do so from a weird Connect dialog. /shrug)
• Power Management. OS X wins (despite not having a true “Hibernate” mode - - but honestly: WTF?)

Hot on the heels of my last rumination on the subject, the (so-called) rumors start flying about the next Mac mini release being A/V-oriented as something of an Apple PVR/media center device. TUAW and Gizmodo both follow-up on the ThinkSecret post that highlights the “Kaleidoscope” Mac mini as scheduled for release come MacWorld in January.

As some TUAW readers have commented, this doesn’t really seem like much of a rumor. The Mac mini always seemed oriented at/toward “living room integration”; one individual remarked that one merely need look at the number of AV accessories that are available for the mini to get a sense of what’s in store there. The other “ho-hum” comment had to do with the supposition that it would ship with an Intel chip inside. No surprise, since Apple had already said that the “lower end” models would be the first ones to get it. (Recent revisions to the PowerMac and Powerbook lines only lean in the direction of confirming this.)

The interesting questions are indeed re: How do they plan to handle different broadcast formats? HD support? How will they manage iTunes video downloads w/r/t/ sharing and on-TV-display? A new remote for FrontRow that takes DVR abilities into account? Why not a Bluetooth remote? Are they taking on TiVo or is this just a “me too!” proof-of-concept thing? Switch to 3.5″ drives or stick with 2.5″?

It’s going to be interesting to see what they turn out, no matter what it is. My guess: It’ll be slick and will kick some ass in the Media Center department re: music and DVD-playback - - but the DVR part will under-perform (it’ll be cool but will feel like it’s missing something).

Washington Post article “Omen on the High Court?” remarks on the recent damage to the “Authority” statue on the Supreme Court’s building yesterday (28-Nov):

At the foot of the Supreme Court steps, where engineers were photographing the remains of the Vermont marble pieces and carefully loading them into crates, one onlooker nudged a friend: “Notice how it happened on the right side. Not the left. The right.”

That’s all well and good but let’s get real people. The real lesson here? Use granite, not marble.

currently playing: Depeche Mode “Policy of Truth”

There’s some kind of “build your own bike” web meme going around. Basically everyone is posting there 10 Steps (always 10 Steps) on how to build their own bike. For most folks it’s more like “list 10 ingredients” than “10 steps”. I’m not participating per se (I have no real interest in building a bike but I’ve commented on the meme for some reason - - probably it’s DIY aesthetic and all that.) Regardless, I keep getting calls on my cell phone from this woman named Elizabeth who wants my help. She says that all she’s been able to come up with is the bike chain. I keep trying to explain to her that there’s nothing I can do to help her but she keeps calling. Eventually she comes up with some wheels but doesn’t know what to do with those either. Her number shows up in my phone as an 888 number. Every time she calls she just says, “It’s Elizabeth,” and I have to ask her: “Elizabeth who?”