Laughing Meme

NYTimes has an article on the ongoing Netflix recommendation open challenge thing. ($1mil to a team that can produce the best collaborative filtering mouse trap)

Unfortunately the project is flawed, because the basic question is flawed, fundamentally and in a very simple way. We have moods, we have shifting interests, and trying to compile all those multi-variates into a single vector of interest is impossible.

Rather then making the computers super smart, I’d rather see an interface like the Pandora channel creation where you choose 2-4 songs that suit your mood and the system finds the common elements.

Tonight at the video store I wanted something that was smart and fast enough to be engaging, without being so smart that it took work to follow. Maybe a political thriller? If I could have mixed a recommendation queue out of 3 Days of the Condor meets Wag the Dog meets something like Enemy of the State to find something in that vein that would have been better then all the weighted neural nets.

And I’ll wave the million dollars if they just build it already.

Not sure where this systemic biasis for computer as deep thinker comes from, probably dates all the way back to the Ultra project and other primordial computer science legends. But its the wrong metaphor here and now, smarter, smaller tools to extend the human reach, not replace humans.

(can you tell I didn’t find my movie?)

Photo by wili

I never read Hellblazer, so I only know Gaiman’s interpretation of John Constantine, but if there was ever a character who seemed less clueless then Constantine, and less appropriate to be played as if he were suffering a lobotomy, I can’t think of it now.

So while Keanu is a brilliant choice as drug addled view point character of gorgeous looking Scanner Darkly (via), what the hell were they thinking casting him as Constantine?

I’d like to be able to subscribe to an RSS feed of my favorite writers, directors, and actors to find out when they have new projects going into production, or about to be released. For example, I’m just finding out about Silver City, which means I’ve totally lost the fun of anticipating it for months already.

Ideally IMDB would supply these feeds as screen scraping is never a good option, but I’ve got to say IMDB is up there in the top 20 or so easiest sites to screen scrape, the format has been largely static for years, and the URLs are simple, if not particularly flexible.

Anyone?

Caught the matinee showing of Chicago on a chilly, snowy Boston afternoon with Jasmine, and one of her housemates. The hilight was the thermos of hot chocolate, made with Ghiradelli and cloves, smuggled in under a jacket, and poured into sake cups. But the movie was fun as well. The songs are still skuttling around in the back of my mind. But more then anything, the impression I was left with was:

Chicago is a Hollywood re-make of Dancer in the Dark.