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People are bashing this for being 'pointless', but hey, so is the next great to-do list app you made in 48 hours. This is a fun little experiment. I can see an

People are bashing this for being 'pointless', but hey, so is the next great to-do list app you made in 48 hours. This is a fun little experiment. I can see an actual use for this. Look for example at Identicons, Wavatars, and MonsterIDs[1]. They all use browser variables to generate random avatars for use around the web, e.g. on blog comments. I imagine this could do something similar, and a nice colour palette is a little more classy than a monster. [1] http://blog.gravatar.com/2008/04/22/identicons-monsterids-and-wavatars-oh-my/ http://blog.gravatar.com/2008/04/22/identicons-monsterids-an...

duiker101 14y ago
I don't think that I can agree enough with this comment. Pointless are only comments point it out. How many people ask what they could do to learn programming? A lot, and I don't like all the "read books & watch videos", working on a little project like this is a great thing to learn many good things while doing something more fun than the common notepad or to-do-list
Shish2k 14y ago
I was considering something related for my own software -- giving some level of differentiation to "Anonymous" users in a discussion, to reduce samefagging; users on the same subnet would get similar colours, etc. The main downside with that is that it's then plausible to look at somebody's colour and work out their IP address :P
- Udo 14y ago
  Just hash the actual IP address. For example, take the IP and apply MD5; then take three bytes each to make, say, 3-colored "flags". That would totally work and yet be reasonably anonymous. This would also take care of the fact that colors come as three byte values and not four.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    That would not work, as stated. The search space is way too small. Simply exhaustively building a table mapping hash to IP address is tractable. This could be ameliorated by including a site-specific secret in the hashed value; I'm not comfortable calling that "secure" but it does address this particular flaw.
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      Yes, but given a single hash you are only able to reduce to 200 candidate IPs.
      - ryan-c 14y ago
        If a site specific secret is present you would not be able to do that - unless the site will act as an oracle for you and doesn't care about you making several billion requests.
sgt 14y ago
I agree! Useless things can be some of the most fun things to do with your time. I do recreational motorcycle riding, and admittedly from a practical point of view it's pointless, it's my favorite activity!
up_and_up 14y ago
I see this as like an internet art installation. It injects art into an unexpected place/space. Finding patterns and/or meaning out of nothing is quite interesting. Is art useless and not worth executing?
- pdenya 14y ago
  Is generating a 4 color palette based of a random seed all it takes to be art? Not to say it wasn't worth executing from a personal standpoint, it was probably fun to build if nothing else, but really what possible use can anyone else get out of this?
  - pcole 14y ago
    We put this together one afternoon because it was fun and quick to do. We were looking into generating colours for our site and logo that would somehow be different for every visitor. We thought about this but then realised it wouldn't be that practical. If it can inspire someone to do something similar but more useful then that's enough for me :-)
  - cormullion 14y ago
    These days, 'art' is an almost meaningless term, since it has to include this: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/creed-work-no-233-p78388 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/creed-work-no-233-p78388
    - ezequiel-garzon 14y ago
      You had me at "fu". Bookmarked! And, on a more serious note, pretty depressing.
      - barking 14y ago
        Being depressed by this is a bit like being depressed by pop because you think only classical music is music. He's not stopping anyone from doing better art. I wouldn't be into his art particularly but neither am I into the sort of paintings you see in national galleries either. Really it wouldn't surprise me if he turned around one day and said the whole thing was a big joke. He practically does just that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6syZr_me_Bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6syZr_me_Bg
tlrobinson 14y ago
I actually like my IP's color scheme. I might try to use it for something.
spion 14y ago
Its not pointless at all - I can think of situation where this idea would be very useful: When looking at client (request) logs full with IP addresses, the colorful visual cue would give you an idea which requests group to a single client.

duiker101 14y ago

I don't think that I can agree enough with this comment. Pointless are only comments point it out. How many people ask what they could do to learn programming? A lot, and I don't like all the "read books & watch videos", working on a little project like this is a great thing to learn many good things while doing something more fun than the common notepad or to-do-list

Shish2k 14y ago

I was considering something related for my own software -- giving some level of differentiation to "Anonymous" users in a discussion, to reduce samefagging; users on the same subnet would get similar colours, etc. The main downside with that is that it's then plausible to look at somebody's colour and work out their IP address :P

Udo 14y ago
Just hash the actual IP address. For example, take the IP and apply MD5; then take three bytes each to make, say, 3-colored "flags". That would totally work and yet be reasonably anonymous. This would also take care of the fact that colors come as three byte values and not four.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- dllthomas 14y ago
  That would not work, as stated. The search space is way too small. Simply exhaustively building a table mapping hash to IP address is tractable. This could be ameliorated by including a site-specific secret in the hashed value; I'm not comfortable calling that "secure" but it does address this particular flaw.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    Yes, but given a single hash you are only able to reduce to 200 candidate IPs.
    - ryan-c 14y ago
      If a site specific secret is present you would not be able to do that - unless the site will act as an oracle for you and doesn't care about you making several billion requests.

sgt 14y ago

I agree! Useless things can be some of the most fun things to do with your time. I do recreational motorcycle riding, and admittedly from a practical point of view it's pointless, it's my favorite activity!

up_and_up 14y ago

I see this as like an internet art installation. It injects art into an unexpected place/space. Finding patterns and/or meaning out of nothing is quite interesting. Is art useless and not worth executing?

pdenya 14y ago
Is generating a 4 color palette based of a random seed all it takes to be art? Not to say it wasn't worth executing from a personal standpoint, it was probably fun to build if nothing else, but really what possible use can anyone else get out of this?
- pcole 14y ago
  We put this together one afternoon because it was fun and quick to do. We were looking into generating colours for our site and logo that would somehow be different for every visitor. We thought about this but then realised it wouldn't be that practical. If it can inspire someone to do something similar but more useful then that's enough for me :-)
- cormullion 14y ago
  These days, 'art' is an almost meaningless term, since it has to include this: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/creed-work-no-233-p78388 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/creed-work-no-233-p78388
  - ezequiel-garzon 14y ago
    You had me at "fu". Bookmarked! And, on a more serious note, pretty depressing.
    - barking 14y ago
      Being depressed by this is a bit like being depressed by pop because you think only classical music is music. He's not stopping anyone from doing better art. I wouldn't be into his art particularly but neither am I into the sort of paintings you see in national galleries either. Really it wouldn't surprise me if he turned around one day and said the whole thing was a big joke. He practically does just that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6syZr_me_Bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6syZr_me_Bg

tlrobinson 14y ago

I actually like my IP's color scheme. I might try to use it for something.

spion 14y ago

Its not pointless at all - I can think of situation where this idea would be very useful: When looking at client (request) logs full with IP addresses, the colorful visual cue would give you an idea which requests group to a single client.