On 01/12/2011 11:10 PM, Kevin Wampler wrote:

> In addition, I'm not sure what point you're making.

Everybody is like "making tilable images is trivial; you just click this 
button". What I'm saying is that I cannot imagine any algorithm that the 
software could be executing which would actually work.

> As an illustration of (2), I've attached a tileable image that I created
> in GIMP with about two button clicks and no manual editing. Can you spot
> the seams?

No. Which still doesn't explain how this is possible.

> As a meta-comment you have a tenancy to declare things "impossible" when
> you merely cannot see a way to achieve them. Given that your assessments
> are not infrequently wrong in this regard, you might benefit from being
> less defeatist and more curious when you don't see how something can be
> done. Just my opinion though, you're obviously free to disregard it as
> bunk.

1. Everybody has a mental model of how the world works, and based on 
that model, everybody has a mostly clear idea of what is and is not 
possible. If you stopped to seriously consider every single outlandish 
claim hurled at you, you'd spend a long time considering utter nonsense. 
Thus if somebody tells me they've solved the halting problem, that they 
can remove objects from a photograph, or that they can see through 
walls, I'm going to have to say that that's impossible. It's not that I 
can't think of a way to do it, it's that there are strong theoretical 
reasons for why it should /not/ be possible, ever.

2. If you read my original post, I mostly said that certain things "defy 
comprehension". I didn't say it was "impossible". Clearly these web 
designs exist - I just cannot understand *how* they can exist. I don't 
see how it's possible. I was hoping that maybe somebody would be able to 
explain it. Instead, everybody just said "it's all trivial, you're just 
too stupid to understand that".

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