jmcgready’s misc universe

Amazon has a new service which seems
to be a mashup of guru.com, Amazon web services, and the whole GPT (get paid to) subculture -
assigning what they call HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) to individuals, who perform a task that is simple to humans, but extremely difficult for computers to do.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Announcing Amazon Mechanical Turk
——————————–
Today, humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at
completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs –
something children can do even before they learn to speak. However, when we
think of interfaces between human beings and computers, we usually assume
that the human being is the one requesting that a task be completed, and
the computer is completing the task and providing the results. What if this
process were reversed and a computer program could ask a human being to
perform a task and return the results? What if it could coordinate many
human beings to perform a task?

Amazon Mechanical Turk does this, providing a web services API for
computers to integrate Artificial Artificial Intelligence directly into
their processing.

Learn more about this new web service on our web site:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=aws_gen_nl13amt?node=15879911

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Mozart: Requiem, Exsultate jubilate

Editorial Review:

Amazon.com:
This 1978 reading of Mozart’s glorious Requiem has lost none of its luster. Carlo Maria Giulini refuses to approach the work as a romantic blood-and-thunder event (unlike, say Karajan’s 1975 account); rather, his approach is classical, devotional, and transparent–time and again one hears the orchestra’s inner voices more clearly than usual. This Requiem ’sings’ like few others, and while it is highly meditative, its drama, from section to section, is never lost. Bass Robert Lloyd is particularly good, coming through with a ‘Tuba mirum’ in which he challenges the sound of the trombone. The other soloists are good. As a bonus, EMI has given us a chirpy, agile performance of Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate, with Erika Koth, a light soprano whose repertoire included the Queen of the Night. A fine disc.
–Robert Levine

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