Bruce Schneier wrote (in applied crytography or secrets & lies, I forget which) that to erase truly sensitive information, he recommended over-writing it with all ones and all zeros about 10 times. Further, given the current state of the art in electron tunnelling microscopes (or something like that) this may not be enough. yikes!
everything is mathmatizable. any finite (i'll say, to play it safe) set of data can be modelled. somebody above made the good point that sheet music is essentially a calculational reduction of music. does it seem so strange that, given a piece of music, you would be able distinguish debussy from lennon? nobody is saying that music IS math; someone has just discovered an interesting and useful map. this map is hardly unique.
and that thing about math being devoid of feeling? so wrong. i hope you don't actually believe that. it may be accurate to say that adding your phone and electric bills requires no soul. this has, roughly, the musical equivilent of, say, the C major scale played at 100mm. but to say that math is unfeeling, just because you don't like to do your taxes is saying that music is unfeeling based on your opinion of the C scale. math is an aesthetic discipline with criteria for beauty that differ from person to person. unfortunately, the more beautiful pieces of mathematics are inaccessible to anyone but a specialist. a great thing about music is that listening to it requires no training.
and a great thing about math is that you can use it to do your taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
why are the artists better dressers?
and that thing about math being devoid of feeling? so wrong. i hope you don't actually believe that. it may be accurate to say that adding your phone and electric bills requires no soul. this has, roughly, the musical equivilent of, say, the C major scale played at 100mm. but to say that math is unfeeling, just because you don't like to do your taxes is saying that music is unfeeling based on your opinion of the C scale. math is an aesthetic discipline with criteria for beauty that differ from person to person. unfortunately, the more beautiful pieces of mathematics are inaccessible to anyone but a specialist. a great thing about music is that listening to it requires no training.
and a great thing about math is that you can use it to do your taxes.