God made the integers, all else is the work of man

[pmb]

Comments

[istar.livejournal.com]

090f to that!

beautiful rainbow.

[mrsmalkav.livejournal.com]

have you read the story of zero and her origin?

[jes5199.livejournal.com]

preach it, brother!

[clipdude.livejournal.com]

That is really clever. I like it.

[clipdude.livejournal.com]

The Kronecker quote works well with it, too.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

I think it also serves as a nice illustration of how small a number they are claiming proprietorship over. That's just 6 colors right there - pretty much nothing.

Also, on a completely unrelated and math-nerdier note, I made a thing you might be interested in that I encourage you to pass it around the math dept. - http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~peter/uotheme/ - a UO theme for LaTeX-Beamer.

[dboothe.livejournal.com]

I'm totally down with the DeAACS revolution that's going on, I find it a fantastic illustration of the futility of all things DRM. However, I have to quibble with the characterization I often see that AACS is claiming ownership of this number for two reasons.

1. They aren't claiming ownership of it, not exactly. It is not a copyright claim, it is a DMCA invocation on the basis that it is a DRM-circumvention tool. Equally stupid, but distinct.
2. It is, for better or worse, perfectly possible under current law to own the rights to a number, since that's what any digital file such as a song or movie is, albeit non-trivially larger than our friend 09f9.

Fight the power, brother.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

I agree on all counts. But this is the first time that such a tiny number has been asserted illegal, and it crosses some sort of line for me. It's like they are claiming ownership of 39. I don't use 39 much, but dammit that claim simply makes NO SENSE. Claiming ownership of a 2,000,000 digit number, while equally boneheaded in a logical sense, seems much less obviously offensive.

[dboothe.livejournal.com]

What of the precedence of other small numbers like my social security number, credit card numbers, and so on? I don't "own" them, and taken out of context they are unremarkable integers. But distributing those numbers and the context in which they apply makes them very damaging to me personally and I would be justified in taking legal action to prevent said distribution. What is the distinction in this case?

I think that this AACS situation feels different, but I've been struggling to verbalize the difference these past couple days. Am I a dude, not a corporation/industry, and the morality changes? Are we standing on principle that DRM is bad, and that this is a case of the market rejecting bad policy?

[bookerz.livejournal.com]

I dunno -- the AACS situation doesn't so much feel different to me. What's, say, a death threat but a base 36 number? Bad news, is what it is. Context is key (pun not intended).

[pmb.livejournal.com]

I dunno man. But I agree that this does seem different, and I also have trouble articulating exactly how and why.

[misuba.livejournal.com]

This all puts me in mind of (an Internet video, go figure): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkP_OGDCLY0

I mean, I'm sure you meant 24.

[amoken.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Teeny number!

[amoken.livejournal.com]

Bah. God made the empty set. You can derive the integers from there. ;)

[zudini.livejournal.com]

Not without an Axiom of Pairing*, you can't.

(*: or Axiom of Power set, or some other similar thingy.)

[jes5199.livejournal.com]

also "More people now know how to crack HD-DVD than own an HD-DVD player."