---
date: 2019-03-16
---
>```
>Muse!  When we learned to
>count, little did we know all
>the things we could do
>
>some day by shuffling
>those numbers: Pythagoras
>said "All is number"
>
>long before he saw
>computers and their effects,
>or what they could do
>
>by computation,
>naive and mechanical
>fast arithmetic.
>
>It changed the world, it
>changed our consciousness and lives
>to have such fast math
>
>available to
>us and anyone who cared
>to learn programming.
>
>Now help me, Muse, for
>I wish to tell a piece of
>controversial math,
>
>for which the lawyers
>of DVD CCA
>don't forbear to sue:
>
>that they alone should
>know or have the right to teach
>these skills and these rules.
>
>(Do they understand
>the content, or is it just
>the effects they see?)
>
>And all mathematics
>is full of stories (just read
>Eric Temple Bell);
>
>and CSS is
>no exception to this rule.
>Sing, Muse, decryption
>
>once secret, as all
>knowledge, once unknown: how to
>decrypt DVDs.
>```

Seth Schoen, [DeCSS haiku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS_haiku)