SAN DIEGO — A software development firm says it has solved one of the hardest problems in artificial intelligence, successfully extracting hierarchical categories from streams of sensory data. And for $50,000, HNC Software Inc. will tell you just how it accomplished that feat.

The company's software, called Cortronics, uses neural networks to model fundamental operations that a person's brain calls on to handle those same tasks.

EE Times - AI software system extracts meaning from babble

Good resource for open sourced VST/Audiosuite/DX plugins and synths.

K-v-R : [VSTi DXi AU] - Supporting Open Standard Plugins

] "THERE is a story of a woman on a train who was intrigued
] by a fellow passenger reading a book and laughing out
] loud from time to time. He left his seat and the book
] behind. She snatched the chance to look at it. It was
] page after page of calculations. She concluded that it
] was best to find another seat. "

Just a reminder for me so that I can go to the bookstore and try to find this book. Has anyone else read/heard anything about it? I found Riemann to be an interesting part of Calculus class, so I may pick up this book.

New Scientist - Dr Riemann's Zeros

From John Watkinson, The Art of Digital Audio, 2nd edition, pg. 104:

In the early days of digital audio research, the necessary bandwidth of about 1 Mbps per audio channel was difficult to store. Disk drives had the bandwidth but not the capacity for long recording time, so attention turned to video recorders. These were adapted to store audio samples by creating a pseudo-video waveform which would convey binary as black and white levels. The sampling rate of such a system is constrained to relate simply to the field rate and field structure of the television standard used, so that an integer number of samples can be stored on each usable TV line in the field. Such a recording can be made on a monochrome recorder, and these recording are made in two standards, 525 lines at 60 Hz and 625 lines at 50 Hz. Thus it is possible to find a frequency which is a common multiple of the two and is also suitable for use as a sampling rate.

The allowable sampling rates in a pseudo-video system can be deduced by multiplying the field rate by the number of active lines in a field (blanking lines cannot be used) and again by the number of samples in a line. By careful choice of parameters it is possible to use either 525/60 or 625/50 video with a sampling rate of 44.1KHz.

In 60 Hz video, there are 35 blanked lines, leaving 490 lines per frame or 245 lines per field, so the sampling rate is given by :

60 X 245 X 3 = 44.1 KHz

In 50 Hz video, there are 37 lines of blanking, leaving 588 active lines per frame, or 294 per field, so the same sampling rate is given by

50 X 294 X3 = 44.1 Khz.

The sampling rate of 44.1 KHz came to be that of the Compact Disc. Even though CD has no video circuitry, the equipment used to make CD masters is video based and determines the sampling rate.

44100 Explained

Thist site has some downloadable MP3 clips of traditional Croatian music. There aren't a whole lot of such MP3s out there (yet), so I found this site valuable.

Croatian Traditional Music

These folks are linking me right now. I read this site every day, and I often recommend articles from it. However, I have never bothered to link it directly.

This is one of the best web logs on the internet. Much cooler then Slashdot. I highly recommend it.

Its an outcropping from a strange Austin cyberpunk zine that was around in the early 90's. A good source of art, technology, and futurism.

Boing Boing :: A Directory of Wonderful Things

Says Funk in the January 2003 issue of Playboy: "It's weird to deconstruct the sounds of sex. It makes you conscious of a lot of stuff you'd normally ignore. I remember thinking shit like, 'Oh, that slap will make a good snare drum.'" If nothing else, concentrating on the tonal qualities of an ass-slap should be an interesting new way for our male readership to forestall orgasm. Just don't forget about her needs, guys. While a full tracklist has yet to be released, it's probably more fun to make up song titles yourself. Here's hoping Hecate doesn't dump Venetian Snakes, prompting a masturbatory solo album.

Nymphomatriarchs

Mac Porn! You know you want some!

Welcome to MacSleazy !

] You are a member of the Settlement Group if you are a
] person (or entity) in the United States or its
] Territories and Possessions who purchased prerecorded
] Music Products, consisting of compact discs, cassettes
] and vinyl albums, from one or more retailers during the
] period January 1, 1995, through December 22, 2000.

The music industry might owe you $20, no joke.

IMHO, Site Meter is *the* best webcounter service out there right now. It's free, easy to use, stable, and provides a wealth of information on visitors. Since my site got listed in Schneier's "Crypto-Gram" newsletter yesterday, I've been using sitemeter to see who's visiting my site, from where, and what they clicked on to get to my site. All as a free service. It's awesome. :)

BTW, I've gotten over 2000 unique visitors to http://elonka.com/steganography since yesterday. Whee!

Site Meter - Counter and Statistics Tracker