Re: OT - Enough to Gag a Maggot

[jporter@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Julie Porter)]

>Bruce Grant wrote:
>
>> If we could arrange to have the VMS transmitted convincingly from space,
>> we could enlist the help of a whole new set of players, the SETI
>> community! Anybody got any pals at NASA?
>>
>> Bruce
>
>An odd thgought that springs from this that may actually be of
>real use for the VMS.  Those SETI guys crunch an awful lot of
>data.  I know it's of a very different nature, but I wonder if
>their methods have any application?  They basically are looking
>for set patterns not caused by natural phenomena in a sea of
>noise with little preset notions as to what they are looking
>for.  Perhaps it might lend itself to picking out oddities and
>identifying patterns...Anyone know more about the subject?  If
>those methods are of any use, we could synthesize the text into
>a sound file and feed it through the programs they already
>have.  Since it would be an intelligent signal, you would have
>to somehow change the tolerances on what the program wants to
>call intelligent, but I assume with that much data to work on,
>their software already does this in a multiple tiered 'weeding
>out' process.  They might even have software built up in reserve
>for 'the big day'.  It's a longshot, but who knows, they might
>be able with a few keystrokes to produce a hundred variants on
>every type of analyses done so far as well as quite a few not
>thought of yet.  Anyone know anybody in SETI?  On a similar
>note, what other existing forms of sophisticated data analyses
>are out there?  Maybe instead of modifying existing techniques
>we could just translate the text into different forms?  I
>believe some work has been done in computer analyses of the
>musical styles of various composers, for one example.  Sounds
>crazy, but at least it's a different approach.
>Regards,
>Brian
A number of my friends who are in amateur rocketry run the seti programs in
their spare time. I think there might be something on www.erps.org. Look
for something called seti@home.
I do know a number of folk who are part of the SETI efforts. The problem is
that I usually only see them intermittenlty. This next time will be at the
end of May as the convention usually held over thanksgiving is not
happening this year.
There is a diffrent convention called CONTACT. I know several people who
are active with that. I am not sure when the next one is. If we have a
liason who is elequent and could write up exactly what is desired I can
forward that. Perhaps they could put it on a panel.

I have mentioned the VMS in passing to these folks. If some of the people
on this list were interested in attending BAYCON here in the silicon
valley. www.baycon.org I *might* be able to get them onto a panel where
this could be disussed. This would be next May on the memorial day weekend.
The SETI panels are quite popular I have even been on several myself.
I know there have been VMS meetings in europe. Perhaps there should be one
here in high tech centeral. BAYCON would be a really good venue. These
conventions are held all over the world. Look for a science fiction
LITERARY convention rather than a media convention. BAYCON is regional
however the World scence fiction convention comes to San Jose in 2002. (I
think the page is www.conjose.org) I would highly encourage anyone on this
list to make plans to attend now.

Right now I have my hands full with several mecanical music/Autamata
projects. I have a problem with trying to invert? a 4x4 matrix to find the
inverse of a projection matrix. I need a simple algoritim preferably to
handle nxn matrixies. Never thought to ask this group.
The actual problem is to locate epipoler lines in N images. There are a
number of papers to this effect. The math is a bit beyond me and the people
with the code are selfish and will not share it.

The problem of Photogramertry is not unlike these other problems SETI and
the VMS. It is easy to map 3d points to 2d space. Taking two (or more)
images and recovering 3d world corrdinates is diffucalt. Yet Humans (and it
s beleved many animals) do this naturally.
Another problem I recently ran into is in music to take a analog recording
(*.wav) and convert it to a MIDI file, recording the keys and timings of
the instrument played. A person with a trained ear can do this without
thinking.

I think it would be amusing if there was one simple soloution for all of
the above :-)

My favorite SETI quote:
'If you want to know how to talk to alien life forms, step outside and
learn to talk to plants first.'
-julieP