Patent ID: 6904004

Claim:
An information processing system for making content information available to a user and for allowing the user to determine a degree of random selection from among the content information, said system comprising: a database for providing access to a plurality of content information; a player for selecting from said database and rendering various of said content information; and a controller for enabling a user to control a selection of content information from said database to be selected and rendered by said player, said controller comprising: a inventory listing the content information available on said database; a track selector for generating a playlist of various of said content information from said inventory for application of said playlist to said player; a random generator coupled to said track selector for selectively causing said track selector to generate said playlist by randomly selecting content information from said inventory; and a user interface for enabling a user to control said track selector, said user interface having a variable random control for controlling an amount of randomness of randomly selected content information in forming said playlist, said variable random control having a first position in which the track selector selects the content information from the inventory to form the playlist in the order in which the list of content information is stored in the inventory, a last position in which the track selector selects the content information from the inventory to form the playlist in a random order under control of the random generator, and at least one intermediate position in which the track selector selects the content information from the inventory to form the playlist partly according to the random generator and partly in the order in which said list is stored.