Virtue and Man Essay Example for Free

Virtue and Man Essay Throughout the ages, many have spent their lives on a quest for power, believing that power holds the key to all they desire. Yet power, with its illusive duality, may enable one to accomplish amazing feats or result in ones tragic downfall. In Macbeth, the character of many power hungry men was put to the test, and each respond differently based on the traits they possess. For many different characters in Macbeth, Shakespeare entwines the traits, which epitomize a man, none of greater importance than ones honor. Throughout Macbeth, many of the characteristics that embody a man vividly display themselves. However, no individual portrays all of these traits. Malcolm lists many of these desirable traits: The king-becoming graces, As justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude. . . . (IV iii 106-109) While this list of virtues and traits holds a high mark for any man, many men in Macbeth prove they possess these traits. Malcolm, Banquo, and Macduff exhibit courage, and fortitude in their willingness to shed their own blood in order to overthrow the tyranny of Macbeth. This display of devotion to their country earns them the respect of their countrymen. Furthermore, to earn the title of â€Å"man† one must prove himself worthy of the trust of others. Macbeth himself comments on the value of trust when he says, â€Å"The service and the loyalty I owe, / In doing it pays itself† (I iv 25-26). While a man gains respect by earning the trust of others, trust does not come without responsibility. Banquo epitomizes this responsibility as he resists the temptations to succumb to the witches lure: So I lose none In seeking to augment it but still keep My bosom franchised and allegiance clear, I shall be counseled (II i 34-37). Macbeth acts irrationally upon the predictions of the witches, yet Banquo does not fall prey to the false hopes they promise. Each of the traits previously mentioned serves a man well; however, a man has little without honor. Lacking that crucial trait prevents one from attaining many things, including that of reaching one’s full potential. To impress upon Duncan the importance of this quality, Macbeth remarks, â€Å"Which do but what they should by doing everything / Safe toward your love and honor† (I iv 29-30). Yet Macbeth, a man once honorable, strays from his good heart and begins to entangle himself into a web of deception and evil. By abandoning his most precious characteristic, honor, Macbeth has all but committed himself to a tragic downfall. Feared as a tyrant, Macbeth’s struggle with temptation afflicts many men. Many a man, once noble in their ways, have unfortunately chosen a road of evil and paved their own destruction. Macbeth laments, â€Å"And that which should accompany old age, / As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have . . . † (V iii 28-30). At this point near the end of Macbeth’s life, he realizes the fatal mistakes he has made, yet his realization comes too late. Though once an honorable and respected man, the road he has chosen proves to be one of no return. Although Macbeth ruinously, fell to the hands of evil, the triumph of good directly correlates to the traits of those men who put and end to his tyrannical rule. Macbeth’s destruction ideally reiterates the words said by Mr. Lincoln and impeccably proves his point. God’s architecture of everyman skillfully shows how vital specific traits and characteristics are to the make-up of a man. Yet he empowers us to choose how we use them.

Applications of CAPTCHA

Applications of CAPTCHA Ramteen Talib CAPTCHA is a powerful tool Qingkun Ramteen Talib A CAPTCHA or Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in to computing o ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. CAPTCHAÂÂ   requires that the user type letters or digits from a distorted image that appears on the screen. Any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human else user is bot and denied access. It is sometimes described as a reverse Turing test. OCRs(Optical Character Recognition) are not able to read CAPTCHAs Characteristeics A CAPTCHA is a means of automatically generating new challenges which: Current software is unable to solve accurately. Most humans can solve Does not rely on the type of CAPTCHA being new to the attacker. CAPTCHAs rely on difficult problems in artificial intelligence Origin First developed by Alta Vistain 1997.The term coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum and Nicholas J. Hopper of Carnegie Mellon University and John Langford of IBM. Primitive CAPTCHAs seem to have been developed in 1997 by Andrei Broder, Martin Abadi, Krishna Bharat, and Mark Lillibridge to prevent bots from adding URLs to their search engine. Turning Test Proposed by Alan Turing To test a machines level of intelligence Human judge asks questions to two participants, one is a machine, he doesnt know which is which, If judge cant tell which is the machine, the machine passes the test. CAPTCHA employs a reverse Turing test, Judge = CAPTCHA program , Participant = user if user passes CAPTCHA, he is human If user fails, it is a machine Types of CAPTCHAs 1.Text Based CAPTCHAs 2.Graphics Based CAPTCHAs 3.Audio or Sound Based CAPTCHAs Text Based Typically relay on sophisticated distortion of text images rendering them unrecognizable to the state of the art of the pattern recognition programs but recognizable by humans. Examples: Simple, normal language questions: What is sum of three and thirty-five? If today is Saturday, what is day after tomorrow? Very effective, needs a large question bank Cognitively challenged users find it hard . Gimpy: Originally designed by Yahoo and CMU. Based on human ability to read heavily distorted and corrupted text. works by choosing a certain number of words from a dictionary, and then displaying them corrupted and distorted in an image; after that Gimpy asks the user to type the words displayed in that image. EZ-Gimpy: A modified version of Gimpy. Used in Yahoo Messenger Service. It contains only one random character string. The word is random and not picked from the dictionary. Its not a good implementation of CAPTCHA, and already broken OCRs. MSN Passport service CAPTCHAs: its provided for Microsoft MSN services. uses 8 characters. Warping is used to distort. Its very strongly implemented and hasnÂÂ ·t been broken Graphic Based CAPTCHAs Requires user to perform image recognition test. Examples: IMAGINATION: CAPTCHA that requires two steps to be passed. first step visitor clicks elsewhere on the picture that composed of a few images and selects in this way a single image. second step the selected image is loaded. It is enlarged but very distorted. Also variants of the answer are loaded on the client side. The visitor should select a correct answer from the set of the proposed words. BONGO: After M.M.Bongard, pattern recognition expert. User has to solve a pattern recognition problem. ASSIRA: Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access. Its a HIP that works by asking users to identify photographs of cats and dogs. Difficult for computers but humans can accomplish it very quickly and accurately. Audio CAPTCHAs Require user to solve a speech recognition test. In this version of captcha letters are read aloud instead of being displayed in an image. Helps visually disabled users Below is the Googles audio enabled CAPTCHA. 3D CAPTCHA 3DCaptcha is the captcha nice to humans, bad to machines. It is written in PHP. A new approach to captchas, using humans spatial cognition abilities to differentiate humans from machines. It uses a markov-chain to generate words that resemble human language and are easy to type, yet avoid dictionary lookups. It filters profane language. Its easy to deploy. Re-CAPTCHA Free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. Each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on animage and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a wordcannot be read correctly. Working of reCAPTCHA: Two words are shown, one word is known as Control Word, and another one is known a questionable word. System assumes that if human types the control word correctly, the questionable word is also correct. The identification performed by each OCR program is given a value of 0.5 points, and each interpretation by a human is given a full point. Once a given identification hits 2.5 votes, the word is considered called. Applications Preventing Comment Spam in Blogs Protecting Website Registration Protecting Email Address From Scrapers Online Polls Preventing Dictionary Attacks Search Engine Bots Worms and Spam Advancing Artificial Intelligence Called Hard-AI problems. CAPTCHA tests are based on open problems in artificial intelligence (AI). A win-win scenario: Either a CAPTCHA is not broken and there is a way to differentiate humans from computers. Or the CAPTCHA is broken and an AI problem is solved. Thus AI knowledge is advanced if CAPTCHAs are broken. V/S Constructing CAPTCHAs Things to keep in mind: Dont store CAPTCHA solution in Web pages meta data A CAPTCHA is no good if it doesnt distort Need a large database of different CAPTCHA questions Avoid repetition of questions CAPTCHA Logic: Generate the question Persist the correct answer Present the question to user Evaluate answer, if incorrect, start again-Generate a different CAPTCHA If correct, allow access to user Guidelines: Accessibility Image security Script security Security after widespread adoption Custom implementation or a general CAPTCHA? Breaking CAPTCHAs Cracking CAPTCHAs through programs Convert CAPTCHA into greyscale Detect patterns in the image corresponding to characters Or, read session files of that user and know the CAPTCHA word Solution: Only store a hash of the CAPTCHA word in session files Issues with CAPTCHAs Usability issues W3C mandates Web to be accessible to all people Some CAPTCHAs are inaccessible to visually impaired, cognitively challenged people Compatibility issues JavaScript may need to be activated in browsers Some may need Adobe Flash plugin installed Real World Conclusion CAPTCHAs are an effective way to counter bots and reduce spam They serve dual purposeÂÂ ²help advance AI knowledge Applications are variedÂÂ ²from stopping bots to character recognition pattern matching Some issues with current implementations represent challenges for future improvements

Doris Duke :: Essays Papers

Doris Duke Many people may think that money is the key to happiness, but Too Rich, written by Pony Duke and Jason Thomas proves this theory wrong. Doris Duke was one of the richest people in the world, in fact at her time, she was the richest woman in the world, but money does not make all people happy. Actually, being rich could lead to and extremely lonely life, such as Doris Duke’s. Well, of course money can buy a person any and every material item that they want, but some things are priceless. Even the MasterCard commercial says so, â€Å"Your child’s first baseball game, priceless. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.† Money cannot buy happiness and companionship. The reason that a biography was written about Doris Duke is because she was the richest woman in the world. Her family and she used their money towards worthy causes. Doris’ father founded Duke University and Doris helped to preserve national forests and monuments. The Duke fortune started with the American Tobacco Company. At one point their tobacco company was a monopoly, but then others formed. When Doris was born she was referred to as the one million-dollar tyke. This became true when her father, Buck Duke died. The message conveyed in this novel is that money can buy most things, but it cannot buy happiness. Happiness is the one thing that Doris Duke craved and needed in her life more than anything else in the world. She was very lonely and trusted too many people. The most important lesson that her father taught her that she did not follow was not to trust anyone. The dedication of the book reads, â€Å"This book is dedicated to Doris Duke, who should have believed the person who told her ‘never trust anyone’†(iv). Doris wanted to be loved. She tried to find real affection from so many people, but found mostly fortune hunters. Doris also grew up alone and isolated. All of the people she allowed into her life did not love her for her, which she found out sooner or later, but later much more often than sooner. Doris is portrayed as a lonely loving woman, who would do almost anything for anyone if she offered before she was asked.

Old Navy and the Infantilization of the American Consumer :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

Old Navy and the Infantilization of the American Consumer It is certain that the Old Navy store is full of clothes and accessories for all shapes, sizes and genders. Its presupposition, however, is that all shapes, sizes and genders will be of one primary inclination: that of the infant. In front of me as I peruse the Old Navy is a pink purse with metallic flecks infused into its plasticine construction. I find this purse in the "Woman's" section, next to the display rack full of puffy-sleeved t-shirts, whimsically cut blouses, flare pants and lo-rider blue-jeans embroidered with alarmingly cute curlicues. All this is, appropriately enough for a consumer juggernaut like Old Navy, sized to fit the adult woman. What is revealed in the Old Navy is an ideology, objectification of the self-as-consumerist entity, indeed of the child-as-consumer to a patriarchal Capitalism. Althusser asks it this way: Why do [people] "need" this imaginary transposition of their real conditions of existence in order to "represent to themselves" their real conditions of existence? (241) In the case of Old Navy, the answer lies in the combined natures of Capitalism and the infantilist regression it engenders. Capitalist objectification of the self, the subjectification of Althusser, begins with the Old Navy ad. Here, kindly old mother-figures or warm and attractive young women assure us in their slightly lobotomized ways that shopping at the Old Navy is "fun," that their cargo pants are all the rage, that their carpenter jeans are the perfect thing. The representation of the self as Platonic form in the person of the model on the television screen recreates the self as consumer object: [I]t is not their real condition of existence, their real world that "men" "represent to themselves" in ideology, but above all it is their relation to those conditions of existence which is represented to them there. (Althusser 242) Ideology is created by the double-movement of idealization and desire. The model, the idealized Capitalist figure for the self, creates its own ideological structure as a means to selfing, as an objectified desired on the official apparatus of the communication and creation of Capitalist ideology, the television screen: [H]is ideas are his material actions inserted into material rituals which are themselves defined by material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject, (Althusser 243) that subject of ideology, that objectified self. Thus the consumer is removed from the self by the ideological system of the Old Navy ad.

Scary Stories :: essays papers

Scary Stories Campfires surrounded by frightened people listening to blood curdling stories of terror, mystery, and murder is where screams were made. Before modern technology, before the flashy lights and whistles of Hollywood there were ghost stories. Some of the most original, chilling, and spine tingling tales ever, were told around these fires, generation after generation, with each one adding his or her own twist. Many spooky tales were scripted into novels and short stories with vividly graphic details. With advances in technology, black and white movies started thrilling lives. These colorless thrillers kept much of the movie going population up at night and checking the closets for mythical spooks. Early films such as â€Å"Frankenstein† would have little to no effect on current thrill lovers. Time changes and so does current technology. Movies in the black and white period made use of intense symphonic music to build suspense and excitement. Building up music and right at the climax a scarey boogie monster would jump out and make an audience shriek, is a common way of producing a scarey part of any movie. In â€Å"The Shining† by Stephen King, the great emphasis is on music as a tool to pump blood through spectators’ veins. â€Å"The Shining† tells a story about a man named Johnny, that looks after a haunted hotel during the winter months, while finishing his novel. With his wife and child he tended to the hotel, while a fierce blizzard blocked them in. As the week progresses, strange occurrences begin to happen and eventually the man becomes possessed by the hotel. In the most famous scene, the young boy is shown riding his big wheel through the halls of the hotel. He rolls across the wooden floors making a hollow wooden noise interrupted by the dul l sounds of rugs scattered across his path. This combination of sounds gives viewers an anticipation of something scary to come. Turning a corner the boy runs into two ghosts of brutally slaughtered little girls that haunt the place. The boy swings around and goes back across the rugs on the wooden floor, faster than before. At the very climax, the boy flies into a room with his father and out of harm’s way. Without the over emphasized sound, this scene would be a pointless and almost useless part of the movie. Twenty years later, humans still enjoy a good thrill, but now extreme visual effects are put into play to try to frighten viewer that have been dulled by the same old routine of music effects with zombies popping out of bushes.

The Shifting of Imperial Power

The Shifting of Imperial Power and its Effects on the Indian Rebellion of 1857 Koala Collins HEISTS: world History Since 1500 March 18th, 2014 The Shifting of Imperial Power and its effects on the Indian Rebellion of 1857 Before the British Empire even set a foot in India, there was a thriving civilization known as Hindustan that occupied the area. As mentioned in the lectures by Dry. Cotton, the McHugh people were powerful people of Islamic faith who swept into this region in the late sass and early sass and began to implement their ruling system over the people of Hindustan, and grew wealthy off of the labor and resources of the Natives. However, it is the specific ways the McHugh Empire exercised this power that made them so successful in governing this area. It is the observation and imitation of this power system that allows the British Empire to slowly assert and expand their rule over India later in the sass. Therefore, it is due to these power changes and shifts from the trad itional power structure of the McHugh Empire to that of a strict, Imperialistic British Empire, that resentment of foreign occupation by the Native peoples of India grew strong enough to warrant a rebellion on their part against the British occupiers in the mid-sass.When the McHugh Empire conquered the Hindustan peoples in the late sass, a man by the name of Baber was at the head of the McHugh Empire. 2 However, as Baber entered the scene he did not oppress the peoples of Hindustan or impose strict laws demanding the assimilation of their culture to that of the McHugh people, and neither did his successors. In addition, as noted in lecture, his later successors such as, Kafka, who worked to expand the territory of the domain, decided that the est. form of power to ensure the cooperation of the conquered peoples was that which let them govern themselves for the most part. Although the Empire built up impressive displays of Islamic and McHugh might such as the various Mosques and arch itectural works of art such as the Tax Mall, they did not force their religious beliefs on the Hindustan people, but allowed them to continue their practice of their Hindu religion and cultural customs. 4 Furthermore, McHugh leadership put Native, non-Muslim officials, called Seminars, in certain mains of power in order to increase the cooperation of the native peoples for the wealth of the McHugh Empire and its leaders. This system of power encouraged the cooperation of the natives, which helped expand the wealth of the McHugh Empire that began to attract the eyes of other wealthy empires such as the British Empire. At first the British did not come as weapon-wielding conquers of the Mussels. It was only through the permission granted by the Nash and Maharajah, who were, as cited in lecture, McHugh and Indian Princes respectively, that the British were allowed to build trading posts and factories in the Empire. The rulers of the McHugh Empire saw this as a beneficial trading relati onship in which both empires could work together to bring wealth to their countries. Overtime the British presence began to grow in India, and the development of the powerful East India Company helped give an even stronger economic foothold for the British in America. 7 However, the relationships were not hostile between the British and the people of the McHugh Empire, nor with the natives of India.In fact, the image from the Lecture of Kelsey Snyder, is of a painting that depicts this specific time period in history in which there is a typical McHugh parade taking place and all of the natives are armed with British Muskets. 8 The synthetics shows the harmony of the cultures, and the willingness of the British to arm these people depicts the imitation of the McHugh exertion of power, or rather the allowance of certain freedoms and tolerance of Native peoples to derive the cooperation of the natives.However, as the British Empire began to change internally, their form of rule in thei r colonies began to change. Britain had begun to expand into a more literate culture with issues of morality, especially regarding the slave trade, becoming popular topics of writing and debate. 9 The attitude of Great Britain towards her colonies began to change to that of a greater Imperialistic culture with aims to improve the morality and education of the world beginning in herself and then her colonized areas. 0 Around this time in the mid-sass the McHugh Empire had weakened from corruption and it was during this time period that the McHugh Emperor Mir Safari awarded one of the most powerful positions in the Empire of tax electing called the Dianna-I to a British military officer named Robert Clive. 1 1 With such economic power in the State now in the Hands of the British, their confidence increased, and due to the moral revival in Great Britain there developed a push by the British to spread Christian beliefs, and education throughout the colonies, which in their eyes, include d the Indian peoples.The feelings of Racism also began to grow which increased tensions between the British and the Native peoples. This can be exemplified in the fictional but historically accurate story of The Siege of Krishna. The section reads, â€Å"if the native was coming either directly towards them†¦ It was fair to assume that his intentions were mischievous and they could blow him to smithereens,† which depicted the generalized loathing that these British soldiers had towards the Native peoples no matter the true intention of the man, and the labeling them all as one â€Å"mischievous† person groups all Native people into one negative image. 2 Moreover, the final straw that forced the Indian Revolt in the mid-sass, as related in lecture, was the refusal of the Native soldiers to load their weapons cause of the use of pig and cow grease that coated the cartridges that must be torn off by the teeth to insert into the muskets. 13 As revealed in lecture, the se men were loyal soldiers of the British crown, but refused to compromise their religious beliefs by consuming a part of the cow that was sacred in their religion, Just to adhere to British rule. 4 The retaliation of the British for insubordination of by the Native soldiers sparked Native anger. Dry. Cotton stated in lecture, that this event showed the failure of the British to recognize the importance of the religion of the datives, and unlike the McHugh Empire, the British Crown tried to force their beliefs upon the native military men inciting an Indian Revolt in 1857 that left many dead, and a stain in the history of the British Crown.Because of their shift to Imperialistic control, and their push for assimilation of the Native peoples the British thrust the Native peoples past their limits, which led to the bloody revolt. Therefore, although the British were successful in the beginning of their occupation of the Indian Territory and engaged in wealthy commerce, it was because of their shift to a more rueful and imperialistic rule, they were unable to pacify the natives, and instead drove them to revolt under their leadership.The abandonment of McHugh idea of power delegation to Seminars, and Dianna-is, left the British implementing their imperialistic rule from their moral revival. The collapse of the McHugh Empire solidified the economic strength that Great Britain held in the country and led to their increasing aggressive and racist attitudes towards the Indian people. Lastly, the ignorance of the British to honor the religious and cultural principles of the Native peoples, and what they believed to be Justified aggressiveness in their shift to a more dominating imperialistic rule, is what led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Even if computers become self-aware Essay

‘Even if computers become self-aware, they will never have anything like human souls. ‘ Discuss. In order to discuss this topic, I must obtain definitions for the words â€Å"computer†, â€Å"self-aware†, and â€Å"soul†. This is so that I can build my arguments upon a stable base. These definitions have been gathered from ‘The Oxford Paperback Dictionary & Thesaurus’. From this definition of soul, it is obvious that computers have to become a person to have a soul, and this is impossible as (by definition) a person is a human being, and cannot be anything else. However, maybe it is possible for a computer to acquire something very similar to a soul. For example, a computer may be able to have feelings, emotions, consciousness, opinions and other characteristics of human’s with souls. These abilities in a computer are known as A. I. (artificial intelligence). This seems impossible with the computers of this day and age, however, if one follows the drastic improvement in technology over the last century, one can see that what we know as standard now was inconceivable years ago. What we call a â€Å"computer† (like the one this has been written on) would have been something science fiction in the beginning of the 20th Century. Therefore, it is obvious that there is tremendous scope for computers to become a lot more improved in the future. They may even gain some if not total A. I. This implies that a computer could obtain all the intelligence of a human being if not more. The statement I am discussing asserts that even if computers become conscious, they will never have a spiritual or immaterial part to them. This is blatantly true, as we (the creators of computers) know that we have and will have only built them out of materials. I believe that we will not have the ability to insert a spiritual side into a computer within the same time-span that we will have the ability to give computers A. I. However, maybe computers can acquire A. I. , and maybe this is the next best thing to a soul. After all, we have no proof that we (humans) have souls; this is just a religious belief that we have faith in. Therefore, it is probable (from an atheistic point of view) that we are just advanced computers. The only difference is that we are made of biological materials, which are a lot more complex than the materials used in a computer. These may have a capacity, unknown to humans and incapable of other materials, to have souls. On the other hand, there are biological life forms (i. e. plants), which we believe not to have souls. Science has shown that humans have evolved over years, from animals like apes, and originally from organisms like bacteria. If this is true, then it shows that humans were once creatures without intelligence – that is just something we have achieved through evolution. Then surely, when computers gain the ability to make decisions, they will be able to improve themselves and in a virtual evolution improve and improve over time, becoming more and more lifelike? It is also possible that computers already have minds. The ‘qualia’ problem suggests that we cannot determine whether something has a mind or is conscious merely by the way it acts. Just because a computer seems to be a slave to us, doing exactly what we tell it to do when we press buttons, does that necessarily mean that this is all it is capable off? Or even all that is does? A computer obviously does a lot more than we know, as it already has vague forms of artificial intelligence. A lot of standard software has assistants with A. I. in order to assist and help us.