Humanity Test

The Turing Test will soon be passed by a machine - or so some believe. I think we need to up the ante. How about something that simultaneously captures humanity and aesthetics in a way impervious to mere brute calculation attacks?

I want to see a machine be genuinely moved watching this particular rendering of Cold Play's Fix You.

Lisa Hannigan <-> Beth Gibbons

So, I've been playing Lisa Hannigan's debut album a lot lately. I have been nagged by the feeling that she reminded me of someone and I couldn't put my finger on it. I've previously blogged the bits that remind me of Leonard Cohen and Norah Jones but the one I missed has finally
come to me: Beth Gibbons of Portishead. It feels like a mystery solved.

Faster Jython?

Yes, and faster jruby etc. etc. All thanks to invokedynamic in JDK7. Its been a long time since 2004 but kudos to Tim for getting that ball rolling.

Library of Congress

Well, without a doubt, the highlight of this trip to D.C. for me was the behind-the-scenes tour of the Library of Congress. The scale of the operation is just astounding. I got to stand next to some books that Gutenburg himself probably touched. I got to breath that unmistakable aroma that comes from really, really old books.

The Library of Congress does *volume* like no other entity I know and it was truly impressive. I stood in the stacks - the size of two football fields. 2.5 million books. I gazed at a 5 foot high card catalog which, essentially, disappeared over the horizon in both directions. Amazing. A Disneyland for a book nerd like me.

Books, cats...life is good

I'm at the AALL conference in Washington DC and amongst all the predictable exhibits from publishers and technology types there is a lady selling T-shirts and nightshirts of a "bookish" nature.

The one that really caught my eye said "Books, cats...life is good".

I can think of, oh, 30 people straight away who would either love one or have a significant other who would love one.

Versioning URLs

Jeni is wondering about versioning URLs. A fascinating area and one I spend a bunch of time working
on for Propylon.

Jeni, I tried to add a comment to your blog but the Captcha system proved that I was a bot to its own satisfaction so I'm replying here:-)

Two words:
Rigid Designators

A terribly useful concept for reasoning about URI versioning from Saul Kripke.

I have successfully applied Kripke's rigid designator concepts to some thorny document management problems - in particular legal citation. Sadly, making it work for the Web-at-large would involve centralizing some plumbing in a way that is anathema to the decentralized model of the Web.

:-)

Sean

Please re-enter your e-mail address..

"Please re-enter your e-mail address...".

Gosh, I really, really hate that in a form. All I do is copy paste the previous one anyway. Not the worlds most effective cross-checking control.