The Streisand effect

Posted by on 2007 May 02, Wed in Technology / programming, Thoughts

Until not that long ago, I would express this idea using the Romanian saying: "De ce te temi, de aceea şi dai", which means approximately "You bump into that what you try to avoid" (I'll probably try to come up with a better version later).

I never knew there was another name for this too - the Streisand effect.

What is it about? The essence of this phenomenon is that one's attempt to hide or censor something will result in that 'something' becoming extremely popular, an effect opposite to what the censor had in mind. Origin:

The name Streisand effect comes from an incident in which Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for $50 million in an attempt to have the aerial photo of her house removed from the publicly available collection of 12000 California coastline photographs, citing privacy concerns. Adelman was photographing beachfront property as a way to document coastal erosion. The picture of Streisand's house that previously carried almost no interest to anyone suddenly spread all over the Internet.

This is becoming very common nowadays, since the Internet is omnipresent, and it can be used to spread information across the globe at a very low cost, in a very short time.

The latest occurence of this effect relates to the discovery and publishing of the HD-DVD processing key. You should check out the comments on Slashdot, I haven't had such a good laugh for quite some time; some of the comments are really funny, they point out how hi-tech humour can be, how inventive (see IPv6 address example) and cooperative the community is.

Finally, here is a fragment of Python code; what it prints on the screen is left as an exercise for the reader.
[code]
s = "CDZRHERNTPHPQJWETXEQJGGPVKQ"
n = 0
for c in s:
n *= 26
n += ord(c) - 65
print ("0%x") % n
[/code]

5 comments

Comment from: nogroup Visitor

e gresit randul cu print… trebuia sa scrii fara paranteze sau sa inchizi paranteza dupa “% n"…

cu parantezele ii aratzi care-s argumentele functziei.. cam ce o fi “% n” daca argumentele se termina pana la el ;)?

Comment from: gr8dude Member

Nu, e corect asa cum e scris; vezi “printf-like formatting in Python". Procentul din paranteza indica tipul variabilei, iar procentul dupa paranteza marcheaza aceea ca urmeaza variabila in sine.

Comment from: nogroup Visitor

esti sigur ;)?

Python 2.4.3 (#1, Feb 23 2007, 06:56:27)
[GCC 4.1.1] on linux2
Type “help", “copyright", “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>> s = “CDZRHERNTPHPQJWETXEQJGGPVKQ”
>>> n = 0
>>> for c in s:
… n *= 26
… n += ord© - 65
… print ("0%x") % n
File “<stdin>", line 4
print ("0%x") % n
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>>

Comment from: admin Member

Da :)

Problema este ca atunci cind scrii direct in consola Python, apesi pe Tab ca sa treci in interiorul for’ului. Dupa aceasta, inainte ca sa scrii instructiunea print apasa o data pe Enter, ca sa faci un newline care te va intoarce cu un nivel inapoi; vei observa ca in loc de ‘…’ ai iarasi ‘>>>’, cum in primele linii.

Nota: aici in comentarii tab’urile nu se afiseaza cum trebuie.

[gandalf@ralienX ~]$ python Python 2.4.4 (#1, Oct 23 2006, 13:58:00) [GCC 4.1.1 20061011 (Red Hat 4.1.1-30)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> s = "CDZRHERNTPHPQJWETXEQJGGPVKQ" >>> n = 0 >>> for c in s: ... ____ n *= 26 ... ____ n += ord(c) - 65 ... ____ >>> print ("0%x") % n 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0 >>>

Alternativ, pune toate astea intr-un file si vezi ce se petrece:

[gandalf@ralienX ~]$ head demo.py s = "CDZRHERNTPHPQJWETXEQJGGPVKQ" n = 0 for c in s: ____n *= 26 ____n += ord(c) - 65 print ("0%x") % n [gandalf@ralienX ~]$ python demo.py 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

Comment from: nogroup Visitor

data viitoare o sa dorm mai mult inainte sa scriu comentarii ;))

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