The disclosure of the data causes little to no harm to those who are in possession of it, at least as long as the disclosure is kept secret, which is easy to do.
It causes great harm to others, but they have no way to influence its handling and no way to find out it has even been disclosed.
And the problem with OSS projects releasing beta software is that they very, very seldom release anything BUT beta software. Beta releases have taken over the role of regular releases, and nobody puts in the effort to polish up a working version but instead just adds more half-finished features.
What would make me feel better is if more open source projects would pick a subset of all the features they want, and implement and polish those until they work, and release this as non-beta software before moving on to working on adding new things. It would improve software quality immensely.
I thought it was mostly teenager who thought it was clever to substitute cynicism for insight, but judging from your user ID, you're probably not one. So what gives?
Why would Apple want to switch to them in the first place? Have you ever used an iMac? It has a fan that starts up for about two seconds when you power it on, and then never again. Can you build a computer like that with an AMD chip these days?
"ï" is not an "umlauted i". "Umlaut" is a feature of German and other related languages, where "i" is never umlauted. English does not have umlauts at all. It uses the double-dot symbol to mark a diaeresis, not an umlaut.
It sure must be convenient, living in a black-and-white world like that. None of those annoying shades of grey that make everything so complicated for the rest of us.
So tell me, do you support private citizen's rights to own thermonuclear weapons?
"...we may regard our use of imaginary time and Euclidean space-time as merely a mathematical device (or trick) to calculate answers about real space-time."
It's obvious you do not understand this quote. "Real space-time" refers to the unified concept of space AND time. They are not considered separate entities, as in Euclidean space-time, but all part of the greater whole that is space-time, where they mix freely. Even in the simplest spaces described by general relativity, such as the Schwarzschild metric, you cannot separate time and space, as they are fundamentally intertwined. Only in flat Minkowski space does time seem to stand out as somewhat independent of space, but even there you run into strangeness at high speeds.
Apparently some people, erm, slashdot posters, forget that they know fuck all about physics.
Special and general relativity both are built around the very central concept that time is a dimension just as much as the three dimensions of space is. Neither theory would make any sense if this wasn't the case, and neither would reality, where the time and space directions freely get mixed up with each other all the time.
Actually Tesla created the equivalent of a waterwheel that tapped the energy of Earth's motion through the coelestial aether. However, the resulting drag force was larger than he'd predicted, and after his experiments introduced a full extra day in 1892 (February 31, 1892 - google it), he was forced to stop his experiments. The original wheel is still on display in his home town of Smiljan. On special occasions, it is started up and let spin freely, without an load attached.
Also, Tesla had to use the energy he'd stored up from the wheel (in a huge bank of capacitors - creating this was such a feat that the unit for capacitance is now named in his honour) to actually drive the wheel and restore the Earth's proper rotational period. Of course, the transfer wasn't without loss, which is why years divisible by 100 do not have leap days any longer.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess your pragmatists never built a SQUID, then.
The disclosure of the data causes little to no harm to those who are in possession of it, at least as long as the disclosure is kept secret, which is easy to do.
It causes great harm to others, but they have no way to influence its handling and no way to find out it has even been disclosed.
Now where's the motive to protect it?
No, the attitude that people who make laws are idiots and that laws are useless is cynicism, and totally misguided.
Especially in this case, where the only regulating mechanism is the law, as there's zero economic pressure to handle sensitive data securely.
And just how are you defining what an "English word" is?
And the problem with OSS projects releasing beta software is that they very, very seldom release anything BUT beta software. Beta releases have taken over the role of regular releases, and nobody puts in the effort to polish up a working version but instead just adds more half-finished features.
What would make me feel better is if more open source projects would pick a subset of all the features they want, and implement and polish those until they work, and release this as non-beta software before moving on to working on adding new things. It would improve software quality immensely.
It would kind of have to be "funny" first, though.
I thought it was mostly teenager who thought it was clever to substitute cynicism for insight, but judging from your user ID, you're probably not one. So what gives?
It's also no secret that Apple would prefer not to divulge the inner workings of their proprietary software, and the same goes for Microsoft.
That hardly has any bearing when they have already thoroughly divulged those inner workings, now does it?
Nobody said it was. The original post claimed it was propietary and secret, which are completely different things.
MPEG-4 is several codecs, a container format, a virtual machine, and any number of other things.
And that container format is Quicktime.
How about blaming AMD for not making a chip good enough to put in a Mac?
Why would Apple want to switch to them in the first place? Have you ever used an iMac? It has a fan that starts up for about two seconds when you power it on, and then never again. Can you build a computer like that with an AMD chip these days?
Welcome out of the nineties.
MPEG-4 is Quicktime. It doesn't get much more standardized than that.
Thanks, but seeing as how I was the one giving the lesson, I already understood it, no?
"ï" is not an "umlauted i". "Umlaut" is a feature of German and other related languages, where "i" is never umlauted. English does not have umlauts at all. It uses the double-dot symbol to mark a diaeresis, not an umlaut.
This is been a lesson in nitpicking, you fucker.
The observation skills of birders may be amazing, but the reading skills of Slashdotters, not so much.
I guess it amuses you about as much as reading and understanding Slashdot articles.
The International Herald Tribune "writes"? How about "wrote, a year and a half ago"?
It sure must be convenient, living in a black-and-white world like that. None of those annoying shades of grey that make everything so complicated for the rest of us.
So tell me, do you support private citizen's rights to own thermonuclear weapons?
"...we may regard our use of imaginary time and Euclidean space-time as merely a mathematical device (or trick) to calculate answers about real space-time."
It's obvious you do not understand this quote. "Real space-time" refers to the unified concept of space AND time. They are not considered separate entities, as in Euclidean space-time, but all part of the greater whole that is space-time, where they mix freely. Even in the simplest spaces described by general relativity, such as the Schwarzschild metric, you cannot separate time and space, as they are fundamentally intertwined. Only in flat Minkowski space does time seem to stand out as somewhat independent of space, but even there you run into strangeness at high speeds.
Apparently some people, erm, slashdot posters, forget that they know fuck all about physics.
Special and general relativity both are built around the very central concept that time is a dimension just as much as the three dimensions of space is. Neither theory would make any sense if this wasn't the case, and neither would reality, where the time and space directions freely get mixed up with each other all the time.
Actually Tesla created the equivalent of a waterwheel that tapped the energy of Earth's motion through the coelestial aether. However, the resulting drag force was larger than he'd predicted, and after his experiments introduced a full extra day in 1892 (February 31, 1892 - google it), he was forced to stop his experiments. The original wheel is still on display in his home town of Smiljan. On special occasions, it is started up and let spin freely, without an load attached.
Also, Tesla had to use the energy he'd stored up from the wheel (in a huge bank of capacitors - creating this was such a feat that the unit for capacitance is now named in his honour) to actually drive the wheel and restore the Earth's proper rotational period. Of course, the transfer wasn't without loss, which is why years divisible by 100 do not have leap days any longer.
Al Gore is talking about General Relativity now?
Doubtful that this guy bought the guns for the massacre.
/ NA-GEN-US-University-Shooting-Weapons.php
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/17/america
Criminals will break the law. Therefore laws against gun ownership make the situation such that law-abiding citizens cannot defend themselves.
That's some serious tunnel vision you've got going on there.