Posts matching tags 'mit'
2006/2/2
This looks pretty cool; the latest thing from the MIT Media Lab, Hyperscore, a new music-composition program which works in an interestingly high-level paradigm. Rather than working with notes or loops, it uses "motives", which can be applied by drawing lines; harmonies can be created by shaping a "harmony line". There is a free version here; it's apparently limited to only 30 to 60 seconds per song, and is promoted as a ringtone creation tool. It's currently Windows-only, though the WIRED article says that Mac and Linux versions are "in the works". (A Mac version I can believe; as far as Linux goes, I'll believe when I see it. Then again, the fact that MIT's $100 laptop for the developing world will run Linux could be reason enough for them to make one.)
(via Make) ¶ [1 comment]
2005/7/29
A researcher at the veritable MIT Media Lab is mining volunteers' mobile phone location and call data, and using it to determine all sorts of things, from simple things such as how long people work and how much they procrastinate to which people are friends and which ones are merely coworkers. Not only that, but the data can predict people's behaviour:
Given enough data, Eagle's algorithms were able to predict what people -- especially professors and Media Lab employees -- would do next and be right up to 85 percent of the time.
Eagle used Bluetooth-enabled Nokia 6600 smartphones running custom programs that logged cell-tower information to record the phones' locations. Every five minutes, the phones also scanned the immediate vicinity for other participating phones. Using data gleaned from cell-phone towers and calling information, the system is able to predict, for example, whether someone will go out for the evening based on the volume of calls they made to friends.
Eagle was also able to see that the Red Sox's improbable breaking of the World Series curse shook even the world of MIT engineers. "I actually saw deviation patterns when the Red Sox won," Eagle said. "Everyone went deviant."The information was recorded by special custom programs running on the phone; the same information is gathered by the mobile network operators, though is not available to the general public. However, it is available to law-enforcement agencies, and is probably being used right now for assembling automated dossiers on entire populations.
(via schneier) ¶ [no comments]
2002/8/16
The story of how a team of math geeks from MIT hacked Las Vegas blackjack, developing a team-based card-counting method that raked in huge profits and evaded the casinos' usual countermeasures -- for a while, anyway. (via Plastic)