Actually, it might be better to use fractions of a cent.
In the story concerning Deja.com linking to advertisements, there was discussion of the fact that banner advertisements don't seem to be effective and of alternative ways for web sites to stay afloat. What if each search on Deja were to cost say, 1/10th of a cent? Would you still use it? Assuming that the payment was transparent, or nearly so, I certainly would. Same thing for Slashdot and most of my other regular sites.
Pennies are a pain because they're large and bulky and fill your pockets. Digital cash takes up no room, so there's no incentive to use larger units.
Assuming that you mean that the damage is not caused by the fall but by the sudden stop at the bottom, it's still the force of gravity that provides the acceleration to the falling body. Rather like gunpowder and a gun. The gunpowder may not do the actual damage but it's certainly the driving force behind it.
I'm not a physicist, but according to what I've read, a proton decays into a neutron by emiting a positron. If proton - positron = neutron, then seems to me that saying neutron + positron = proton should be right on some level.
According to the article, the ruling is based upon a legal precedent called Trespass To Chattels. However, this doesn't seem at all consistent with the definition of chattel. How can info on a web site be considered "personal, movable property?"
I'm not a Katz hater - I think he often has some interesting things to say, even if I don't always agree with them. However, his "geek alienation" theme doesn't bother me as much as the fact that he sold the movie short.
Katz says "We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him."
We're supposed to hate him? Says who? Why do you think the movie began with his experiences in concentration camp? Do most directors who want you to hate a character begin by giving you a compelling reason to sympathize with them? Why does Xavier go to visit him in his plastic prison? We aren't supposed to hate Magneto, any more than Shakespeare expected us to hate McBeth. Magneto is a tragic figure, unable to see that his hate has transformed him into the very thing he hates. Consider this: what was (one of) the aim(s) of the Nazis? To purify the human race. To destroy the inferior members, who should make way for the superior Aryan race. What is Magnetos aim? To destroy the ordinary humans in order to make way for the superior mutants.
The most common belief is that the painting is of Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini, the third wife of Francesco di Bartolommeo di Zanobi del Giocondo of Florence. However, Leonardo kept detailed notes of his models, and there is no record of the lady above or anyone else actually sitting for the portrait. Lillian F. Schwartz juxtaposed a self portrait of Leonardo and the Mona Lisa, showing that the features lines up perfectly, and hypothesized that da Vinci used himself as a model.
For another reason why I disagree with your view, I suggest reading Frank O'Hara's "Why I am not a Painter." Artists of all types often claim that they have no idea where a work is going, that the work itself seems to be in control and they merely an observer along for the ride. The art, they say, uses them as a tool to express itself.
As for your contention that the value of the Mona Lisa would be affected by proof that da Vinci was dissatisfied with it, I offer Vincent van Gogh as refutation. Vincent and his brother, who supported him, were only able to sell ONE painting in his life time. He committed suicide, poverty striken and believing himself a failure, certain that his paintings were worthless trash. It doesn't seem to have affected their present value a great deal.
It's one thing to disassociate yourself from a rumor site. It's another thing to use the threat of a meritless but costly lawsuit in order to censor an independent organization.
It's generally assumed that the message we get from the Mona Lisa is the one da Vinci intended (it certainly seems clear when looking at it) but if that assumption is incorrect, so is the assumed artistic merit of the painting.
Your opinions are at odds with pretty much the entire art world, but you're certainly entitled to them. When you make statements of fact, however, you're obligated to back them up. Who exactly is it that makes that general assumption? It certainly isn't most art critics or da Vinci scholars, since that very subject is quite frequently debated in art circles. It isn't even known whether the Mona Lisa is a portrait of an actual person. There are some theories, including one that Leonardo used himself as a model. And it certainly isn't clear to most of us exactly what he intended when we look at it. Indeed, its very ambiguity is what makes the painting so fascinating.
If we found da Vinci's diary tomorrow and it indicated that the Mona Lisa was a portrait and one he wasn't particularly satisfied with, it is assured that the consensus of the artistic merit of the Mona Lisa would not be affected in anyone's opinion other than your own. But you'd be quite free to regard it as drivel while the rest of us consider it a fascination work, regardless of Leonardo's intentions.
That's just one point of view. And like I said before, people who believe that are fools. Art means no more - and no less - than the artist intends. The measure of an artist's worth is how well he can communicate his intention.
Horsefeathers, fiddlesticks and poppycock. I'm a fool? You, sir, are an unlearned idiot.
What did da Vinci intend when he painted the "Mona Lisa?" I don't know. You don't know. No one knows. How, then, are we to measure its artistic merit? If the measure of da Vinci's worth is how well he communicated his intentions, we are left with no way to judge Leonardo as an artist. A hack or a master? We can't say.
It's possible that the "Mona Lisa" was simply a portrait. da Vinci's only intent would have been to faithfully represent his subject. If true, does that mean that the painting is suddenly no longer a work of art? Bah! Such foolishness refutes itself. It needs no more words from me.
Actually, you have just as much right to tell an artist what his work means as vice versa. A work of art isn't a work of art because of what the artist attempts to do or intends to put into it. A work of art stands on its own merits. Its not uncommon for artists to fail to see themes which are quite obvious to everyone else. Robert Frost's poetry, for example, contains some rather consistent dark threads which he insists that he did not intend when he wrote it. That doesn't mean the themes aren't there. There is evidence that Van Gogh had a degenerative eye disease that caused him to see strong halos around lights. Thus, Stary Night may have been the way he actually saw the night sky. True or not, however, it doesn't affect the merits of the painting itself. Once an artist completes a work, its success or failure rests entirely within the work itself; the artist is no more or better judge than anyone else.
The same is true for a film. The director may tell you what impression he wanted the viewer to get, or what was in his mind when he directed it. The actors can tell you what emotions or reactions they wanted to stimulate. But the experience stands on its own two feet.
I'd appreciate your pointing out where the book makes such a claim. In the book, the Nexus-6 brain is just hitting production. They're not sure if the test will work on them or not. Deckard takes a trip to the factory to find out whether or not the test will work. They have him test a replicant whom he thinks is human. She fails. At first, Deckard thinks that the test is fallible, then realizes that the company is trying to fool him. He tests at least three of the six escaped androids (can't remember exactly how many), who all have the Nexus-6 brain, and none of them passes the test.
The book certainly plays upon the ambiguity, but I think it makes it pretty clear by the end of the story that Deckard was not a replicant.
Sorry, but Philip K. Dick has absolutely NO say in whether Deckard in "Bladerunner" was an android. "Bladerunner" is NOT "Do Androids Dream..." The movie is based upon the book, yes, but there are significant differences and it is NOT the same story.
In the book, Deckard was a married loser who had an electric sheep because his real one died. (Owning a live animal was a near necessary status symbol.) He was only given the job of chasing down the escaped replicants because the chief bounty hunter had been lasered while trying to take one of them.
Neither the book nor the movie makes it clear exactly what a replicant is, other than an artificial human. Their brains are obviously manufactured, since the new version of the brain is crucial to the plot of the book. However, since it's impossible to tell a replicant from a human by anything other than a detailed autopsy or a psychological test, they obviously have human cells and organs. IOW, they seem much more like clones than robots, although perhaps an "assembled clone", created from original DNA instead of copying a person.
This is a repeated topic here. It usually comes up when someone compains about the press "misusing" hack or hacker.
People seem to be unable to understand that words are used within context. I'd be the first to complain if someone used "hack(er)" to mean "crack(er)" in an article posted to Slashdot. I'd tend to place less credence in an article which misused the term "gender" in a sociology journal. I'd toss in the trash a physics book which referred to an automobile engine as a "motor." But I don't worry about Newsweek articles referring to the recent hacker attack which brought the Internet to its knees, Slashdot posters who use gender to refer to the sex of a person or the fact that the local auto parts store stocks an entire aisle of motor oil.
That depends upon your definition of radical, I think. The Windows 95 desktop was a pretty significant departure from Windows 3.1 and it caught on quite well.
You'd have to read Pratchet. He writes absurdist fantasy somewhat similar to Douglas Adams. There is no requirement for a correlation between anything which appears in a Pratchet work and reality.
With each passing post of this nature, the doomsayers and rebels and freedom fighters jump out with "How can anyone POSSIBLY regulate ME?" It can be done and will be done.
That depends upon exactly what you mean by regulation. It's already illegal to traffic in MP3s of commercial artists. In that sense, it's already regulated. But illegal MP3s will, at best, be regulated in the same sense that drugs are regulated. Sure it's illegal, and people get burned every day at all levels for breaking drug laws. But just how hard is it to pick up a vial of crack or a couple of doobies (do they still call them that?) if you really want it?
I don't see how you can call Rendezvous with Rama a post-apocalyptic novel. A huge alien craft zooms into our solar system, pretty much ignores our puny efforts to analyze it, then zooms out and on its way with a couple of extra guests, leaving us dumbfounded but pretty much unaffected.
BTW, if any one is tempted to pick up the book, do so. It's excellent. Do yourself a favor, though, and pretend that the rest of the series doesn't exist. They were tacked on long after the fact and are LAME.
Sheesh, people. This isn't about encryption! It's not about hiding data. Get over the fact that XORing is a method of encryption and look at the other implication of the technique.
Imagine ten different servers, each with a mathematically random file available for download. The files are named by letters: A through J. If you download and XOR A, D, E and I, you get a Metallica MP3. A ^ D ^ F gives you the latest chapter to a Stephen King novel. C ^ E ^ F gives you the recipe to Coca-Cola. Another dozen combinations give you a dozen different files.
Are Metallica and Stephen King both going to sue the person posting A for copyright infringement? Can the exact same data infringe upon the copyright of two different people?
You can't do any of this with Venegier's square or any other method of encryption.
Another point is that you can't search for the data. You can't look for a line from Stephen King's novel. You can't look for a pattern of bits from Metallica's song. You can't use the techniques used by anti-virus programs to look for suspicious byte patterns. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this incorporated into a virus. Most of the payload could be random, with only a tiny stub to XOR and then execute the payload.)
But the story isn't about XORing with one time pads as a method of encryption. It is, essentially, a new application of an old principle. If that particular application has been published before, then please supply a link. Otherwise, YASD is absolutely right. Make sure you understand the issue at hand before you go attacking people.
I haven't even read the article and I can see where this is going. Consider this scenario. You create a random one time pad and put it up as File A. I take that pad, XOR it with, say, Metallica's "One" MP3. I take that result and post it as file B. Someone else takes file B and XOR's it with, say, a critique of Chineese governmental policies to create file C.
Yet another person posts a web site which says A+B=Metallica's "One", B+C = government critique. Now, just who is Metallica going to sue for posting copyrighted info? Everybody is posting mathematically random data. A and B are both random. XOR A and B and you get the MP3. XOr the MP3 with A, you get B. XOR the MP3 with B, you get A. It'd be impossible to say after the fact whether A was created as a key to B or B was created as a key to A.
This is obviously a very simplified scenario, but imagine it spread out to thousands of files, with the possibility of XORing multiple files.
It isn't about security or encryption in the sense of keeping data hidden. It isn't about secretly transfering the knowledge of which key to use, accessing the key unobtrusively, or trusting the intended reader. None of that matters at all.
Slashdot Mirror
In the story concerning Deja.com linking to advertisements, there was discussion of the fact that banner advertisements don't seem to be effective and of alternative ways for web sites to stay afloat. What if each search on Deja were to cost say, 1/10th of a cent? Would you still use it? Assuming that the payment was transparent, or nearly so, I certainly would. Same thing for Slashdot and most of my other regular sites.
Pennies are a pain because they're large and bulky and fill your pockets. Digital cash takes up no room, so there's no incentive to use larger units.
Assuming that you mean that the damage is not caused by the fall but by the sudden stop at the bottom, it's still the force of gravity that provides the acceleration to the falling body. Rather like gunpowder and a gun. The gunpowder may not do the actual damage but it's certainly the driving force behind it.
I'm not a physicist, but according to what I've read, a proton decays into a neutron by emiting a positron. If proton - positron = neutron, then seems to me that saying neutron + positron = proton should be right on some level.
According to the article, the ruling is based upon a legal precedent called Trespass To Chattels. However, this doesn't seem at all consistent with the definition of chattel. How can info on a web site be considered "personal, movable property?"
Katz says "We're supposed to hate Magento, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him."
We're supposed to hate him? Says who? Why do you think the movie began with his experiences in concentration camp? Do most directors who want you to hate a character begin by giving you a compelling reason to sympathize with them? Why does Xavier go to visit him in his plastic prison? We aren't supposed to hate Magneto, any more than Shakespeare expected us to hate McBeth. Magneto is a tragic figure, unable to see that his hate has transformed him into the very thing he hates. Consider this: what was (one of) the aim(s) of the Nazis? To purify the human race. To destroy the inferior members, who should make way for the superior Aryan race. What is Magnetos aim? To destroy the ordinary humans in order to make way for the superior mutants.
It might affect it's fiscal value. It might not. I doubt that it would affect the consensus view of its artistic merit.
For another reason why I disagree with your view, I suggest reading Frank O'Hara's "Why I am not a Painter." Artists of all types often claim that they have no idea where a work is going, that the work itself seems to be in control and they merely an observer along for the ride. The art, they say, uses them as a tool to express itself.
As for your contention that the value of the Mona Lisa would be affected by proof that da Vinci was dissatisfied with it, I offer Vincent van Gogh as refutation. Vincent and his brother, who supported him, were only able to sell ONE painting in his life time. He committed suicide, poverty striken and believing himself a failure, certain that his paintings were worthless trash. It doesn't seem to have affected their present value a great deal.
It's one thing to disassociate yourself from a rumor site. It's another thing to use the threat of a meritless but costly lawsuit in order to censor an independent organization.
Your opinions are at odds with pretty much the entire art world, but you're certainly entitled to them. When you make statements of fact, however, you're obligated to back them up. Who exactly is it that makes that general assumption? It certainly isn't most art critics or da Vinci scholars, since that very subject is quite frequently debated in art circles. It isn't even known whether the Mona Lisa is a portrait of an actual person. There are some theories, including one that Leonardo used himself as a model. And it certainly isn't clear to most of us exactly what he intended when we look at it. Indeed, its very ambiguity is what makes the painting so fascinating.
If we found da Vinci's diary tomorrow and it indicated that the Mona Lisa was a portrait and one he wasn't particularly satisfied with, it is assured that the consensus of the artistic merit of the Mona Lisa would not be affected in anyone's opinion other than your own. But you'd be quite free to regard it as drivel while the rest of us consider it a fascination work, regardless of Leonardo's intentions.
Horsefeathers, fiddlesticks and poppycock. I'm a fool? You, sir, are an unlearned idiot.
What did da Vinci intend when he painted the "Mona Lisa?" I don't know. You don't know. No one knows. How, then, are we to measure its artistic merit? If the measure of da Vinci's worth is how well he communicated his intentions, we are left with no way to judge Leonardo as an artist. A hack or a master? We can't say.
It's possible that the "Mona Lisa" was simply a portrait. da Vinci's only intent would have been to faithfully represent his subject. If true, does that mean that the painting is suddenly no longer a work of art? Bah! Such foolishness refutes itself. It needs no more words from me.
The same is true for a film. The director may tell you what impression he wanted the viewer to get, or what was in his mind when he directed it. The actors can tell you what emotions or reactions they wanted to stimulate. But the experience stands on its own two feet.
The book certainly plays upon the ambiguity, but I think it makes it pretty clear by the end of the story that Deckard was not a replicant.
In the book, Deckard was a married loser who had an electric sheep because his real one died. (Owning a live animal was a near necessary status symbol.) He was only given the job of chasing down the escaped replicants because the chief bounty hunter had been lasered while trying to take one of them.
Neither the book nor the movie makes it clear exactly what a replicant is, other than an artificial human. Their brains are obviously manufactured, since the new version of the brain is crucial to the plot of the book. However, since it's impossible to tell a replicant from a human by anything other than a detailed autopsy or a psychological test, they obviously have human cells and organs. IOW, they seem much more like clones than robots, although perhaps an "assembled clone", created from original DNA instead of copying a person.
Agreed. Additionally, all of the escaped androids who come to the Earth are identified in the book. In the movie, one is never identified.
People seem to be unable to understand that words are used within context. I'd be the first to complain if someone used "hack(er)" to mean "crack(er)" in an article posted to Slashdot. I'd tend to place less credence in an article which misused the term "gender" in a sociology journal. I'd toss in the trash a physics book which referred to an automobile engine as a "motor." But I don't worry about Newsweek articles referring to the recent hacker attack which brought the Internet to its knees, Slashdot posters who use gender to refer to the sex of a person or the fact that the local auto parts store stocks an entire aisle of motor oil.
That depends upon your definition of radical, I think. The Windows 95 desktop was a pretty significant departure from Windows 3.1 and it caught on quite well.
You'd have to read Pratchet. He writes absurdist fantasy somewhat similar to Douglas Adams. There is no requirement for a correlation between anything which appears in a Pratchet work and reality.
Wouldn't cutting the weight down that much reduce its effectiveness against an armored opponnent?
That depends upon exactly what you mean by regulation. It's already illegal to traffic in MP3s of commercial artists. In that sense, it's already regulated. But illegal MP3s will, at best, be regulated in the same sense that drugs are regulated. Sure it's illegal, and people get burned every day at all levels for breaking drug laws. But just how hard is it to pick up a vial of crack or a couple of doobies (do they still call them that?) if you really want it?
BTW, if any one is tempted to pick up the book, do so. It's excellent. Do yourself a favor, though, and pretend that the rest of the series doesn't exist. They were tacked on long after the fact and are LAME.
Imagine ten different servers, each with a mathematically random file available for download. The files are named by letters: A through J. If you download and XOR A, D, E and I, you get a Metallica MP3. A ^ D ^ F gives you the latest chapter to a Stephen King novel. C ^ E ^ F gives you the recipe to Coca-Cola. Another dozen combinations give you a dozen different files.
Are Metallica and Stephen King both going to sue the person posting A for copyright infringement? Can the exact same data infringe upon the copyright of two different people?
You can't do any of this with Venegier's square or any other method of encryption.
Another point is that you can't search for the data. You can't look for a line from Stephen King's novel. You can't look for a pattern of bits from Metallica's song. You can't use the techniques used by anti-virus programs to look for suspicious byte patterns. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this incorporated into a virus. Most of the payload could be random, with only a tiny stub to XOR and then execute the payload.)
But the story isn't about XORing with one time pads as a method of encryption. It is, essentially, a new application of an old principle. If that particular application has been published before, then please supply a link. Otherwise, YASD is absolutely right. Make sure you understand the issue at hand before you go attacking people.
Yet another person posts a web site which says A+B=Metallica's "One", B+C = government critique. Now, just who is Metallica going to sue for posting copyrighted info? Everybody is posting mathematically random data. A and B are both random. XOR A and B and you get the MP3. XOr the MP3 with A, you get B. XOR the MP3 with B, you get A. It'd be impossible to say after the fact whether A was created as a key to B or B was created as a key to A.
This is obviously a very simplified scenario, but imagine it spread out to thousands of files, with the possibility of XORing multiple files.
It isn't about security or encryption in the sense of keeping data hidden. It isn't about secretly transfering the knowledge of which key to use, accessing the key unobtrusively, or trusting the intended reader. None of that matters at all.