The App Store may not allow you to distribute porn inside your app, but there certainly are a lot of apps that cater to porn: "private media managers" and "private browsers" and the like. My own Stash Pro app - http://stash.hedonicsoftware.com/ - combines those two categories and is the #25 top-grossing Utilities app on the iPad (it's now universal and so available on the iPhone/iPod touch as well). Some of that popularity is for people who want a general media manager: the built-in Photos app relies on syncing with your PC to organize, while with Stash you can create album hierarchies, smart albums, etc right on the device. But a large percentage of the audience is certainly using it for porn. Apple has even featured new releases in the "New & Notable" area of iTunes before, so while they don't allow you to come right out and say you're peddling porn, they may not be as prude as people think.
Why the hell was I modded "troll"? Because I dared to mention an app I created to show that, you know, I actually have some relevant experience? Or because I criticized Android development? I've noticed lately that the Android fans are even more rabid than the iPhone ones.
Many people on this thread have a very skewed picture of iOS development. I have released three fairly large iOS projects (i.e. months to years of development rather than a few days or weeks like so many toy apps). The first was a smashing success and our 3-person development company was acquired for it. The acquiring company is now my employer so I won't name specifics in this case. The second was an independent iPhone app I wrote that was a total flop. The third is my new independent iPad project called Stash that's doing pretty well so far: http://stash.hedonicsoftware.com/
Just the existence of Stash on the App Store - basically an app for porn, though it doesn't provide the explicit content - is evidence that Apple isn't nearly as draconian and capricious as many in this thread are portraying them to be. If you create a high-quality app (or hell, even a low-quality one so long as it doesn't crash) that follows their general guidelines and doesn't try to take over basic functions of the iPhone, you won't generally have a problem. Sure, there are famous counter-examples, and I really feel for those developers. I can't imagine a more frustrating experience then pouring your time into something that's rejected outright. But it doesn't change the fact that these are the few exceptions in a vast sea of approvals or justified rejections (based on the three points that Jobs outlined). Moreover, in my experience Apple is getting much better about working with developers to get apps their approved. It's still a slow process - the last release of Stash was delayed without feedback for over 2 weeks, which felt interminable - but they eventually call and tell you about any solvable issues and give you a chance to correct them.
I'd also like to point out that outside the pain of dealing with the review process, iOS development is a lot of fun. Someone on this thread said no one is in the App Store simply for the love of programming, but I strongly disagree. Apple provides some really nice APIs, and it's relatively easy to create something that looks and feels smooth and professional. I'm currently working on an Android project for my employer, and it's a real chore compared to iOS dev. I don't care how "open" the market is or even how powerful the SDK is if I hate coding for it and need a graphic design team to make it look decent. People forget that Apple/NeXT has been in the GUI framework business for a long time. They know what they're doing. They also seem to be good at letting their internal APIs fully bake before including them in the SDK, which results in a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than in Android, where everything feels over-engineered. I recently read an article by another iOS developer that sums up my feelings pretty much exactly: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/03/android-sdk-from-iphone-developer.html
That's my 2 cents. YMMV. But if you're interested in mobile development at all, you owe it to yourself to give iOS development a shot.
I keep up with modern theories about the universe and its beginnings. I read your summary of the videos in another post (who has time to watch 2.5 hours of lectures?), and it contained nothing I didn't already know, and absolutely nothing that supports the biblical creation account. Is the fact that the universe may have arisen from a fluctuation in the negative vacuum energy -- basically creating itself from nothing -- cool? Absolutely. Does it lend any support whatsoever to the biblical creation account? Hell no.
First of all, just about every religion I've ever heard of, both modern and primitive, has a creation story. So the fact that the universe was created ex nihilo can't be said to be evidence of the biblical creation account in particular -- such a general fact would be equal evidence for every other creation account known, and therefore supports none of them.
Next, the biblical creation account is wrong in just about every detail, as already mentioned. How you can ignore all that but see a divine hand in the fact that the ancients called a 50/50 bet -- infinitely old universe vs. finite age universe -- correctly is utterly beyond me. (In fact, I don't even think it was a 50/50 bet for them -- I don't think they could imagine an infinitely old universe, so it was pretty much a given to them that it was created just a short time ago.) It's cherry picking at its worst. My previous post summed it up as best I can, so I'll just copy it here:
Anyone can take any mythical creation story with sufficiently general or vague creative steps (in this case, days) and make it seem predictive a-posteriori, in the same way the bible codes or Nostradamus are predictive a-posteriori. Until you can answer for the glaring errors in the creation account or show me where it has taught us anything of value about the actual nature of the world, it's all a bunch of hand waving. I have no problem with people believing without evidence (so long as they don't make public policy based on their faith), but I hate when people misconstrue the evidence we do have to try to make it back up their fairy tales.
Homework time.. View the mentioned video. It is online for free and is not from the church side of the isle. After that, then make informed comments.
I've read the bible. I don't need a video to tell me what it says. How about making a substantive response to the gross inaccuracies in the order of creation already mentioned (and those were just the ones off the top of my head)? Anyone can take any mythical creation story with sufficiently general or vague creative steps (in this case, days) and make it seem predictive a-posteriori, in the same way the bible codes or Nostradamus are predictive a-posteriori. Until you can answer for the glaring errors in the creation account or show me where it has taught us anything of value about the actual nature of the world, it's all a bunch of hand waving. I have no problem with people believing without evidence (so long as they don't make public policy based on their faith), but I hate when people misconstrue the evidence we do have to try to make it back up their fairy tales.
Follow the lesson, then look at the biblical description of the origion of the universe. It's so close to the same to bring into question "Was this created?" Who Wrote the first book in the Bible and how did he know how the universe started when nobody else had a clue.
Leaving creation out of consideration does upset the church leadership and should upset the scientific community who are finding a strong corrolation between the two accounts.
Is this a joke? There is no correlation between the bible's description of creation (either one -- there are actually two creation accounts in the bible) and modern theories about what actually happened. Even ignoring the "6 days vs. 12 billion years" discrepancy, the order of creation in the bible is completely wrong. Plants before the sun? The earth before the stars? If you took each individual event mentioned in the creation account and scrambled them randomly, you'd likely wind up with a creation order that isn't much worse than the bible's.
To reinforce this, it was explained to me that the original translation of the Bible was not necessarily " days", but "periods of my Father" (referring to God) and the like. So, when you consider that Genisis originally stated that it was seven periods of time (length undetermined) instead of seven days, then it doesn't seem that odd that the Vatican would support evolution.
As has been pointed out, the original Hebrew really does use the word for "day", and says "And the evening and the morning were the Xth day" between each transition. However, even if you were to take "day" metaphorically, you cannot reconcile Genesis with anything we know about science. The order of creation is completely wrong. The earth is created before the stars, birds and whales are created before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants are created before any animals. It's ass-backwards.
Just wait, soon Kansas science will take over and we won't be teaching evolution. We'll be teaching that burning more coal and oil will improve the environment. We'll be teaching who knows what other Bush-science.
It has already begun. Another poster pointed out that creationism is sneaking into the classroom in the form of "Intelligent Design". And now the National Park Service is selling a book that says the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's flood.
Some of the posts on this thread disturb me. They imply that people aren't taking intelligent design (ID) seriously enough as a threat to science. The posts say that maybe ID is compatible with science after all: maybe it only applies to speciation; or maybe a god started things off at a certain point, and evolution took over from there; or if you interpret "day" to be some indeterminate length of time, maybe you can make the bible's creation story match facts (hint: you can't -- the creation story has plants appearing before the sun, for example).
The point is not whether it's possible to somehow reconcile ID with fact if you try hard enough. The point is that ID is being presented as a science, when it is clearly nothing of the sort. Are there unanswered questions in evolution? Of course. But saying "god did it" answers a small mystery with an enormous, or even completely unknowable one (god). It explains nothing, and encourages intellectual laziness. If we accepted "science" like this, we'd all still think thunder was the sound the gods make when they're angry.
I don't care if people choose to believe in god or ID based on faith; that's their right. What terrifies me is when it is presented as science -- especially in our schools. There is absolutely no doubt about it: if it weren't for the fact that ID puts a pseudo-scientific face on a certain demonstrably false and contradictory "holy" book, and the fact that proponents of that book fund ID well, it would have long since been thrown out as crackpot nonsense. Instead, it is being accepted by some school districts as science. Teaching ID as science undermines our entire theory of knowledge.
So discoveries like this possible explanation for the eye are important! They can potentially narrow the gaps in our scientific knowledge, which is the only attack against "god of the gaps" arguments like ID (the fact that ID is almost impossible to completely falsify is another big "tell" that it is not scientific).
p.s. [political rant] Defending science is especially important with Bush in the white house. This is a man who says the "jury is still out" on evolution. This is an administration that approves a National Park Service booklet saying that the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's flood. This is an administration with the worst environmental and scientific record in recent memory. [/political rant]
Re:Most violent game... ever!
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Thank you for the explanation. I think there are lots of problems with it (the stars didn't fall in that generation, for example, which was one of the signs Jesus mentioned... also, he specifically says that those signs would signal that the end is very near, and now 2000 years later we're still waiting... considering that the bible puts the age of the universe at that time at only about 4000 years, I don't see how anyone could consider 2000 more years "near"), but I do appreciate it. It's good to finally know what the church's thoughts are on that prophecy.
Re:Most violent game... ever!
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If you'll cite me some examples I'll be more than happy to discuss
You want specific examples of atrocities in the bible? There are hundreds! I recommend skipping down to Leviticus and starting there; that's where the fun begins. Numbers and Deuteronomy are even better. I'm also particularly fond of Second Kings, 2:23-24.
and all of the fulfilled prophecies in the Bible are 100% accurate
I won't get into further arguments with you, because you can just ignore the points you can't/don't want to refute, making real debate impossible (case in point: my comments demonstrating your circular logic, which went unanswered). Plus, on the topic of prophecy, skepticsannotatedbible.com has hundreds of examples of unfulfilled biblical prophecies. Since you're in contact with the site maintainer and plan on proving all of these prophecies correct, I'll wait for your masterwork on the subject. I will say two things regarding prophecies, though: 1. Swing enough times, and you're bound to get a few hits. 2. Even if you believe that every prediction the bible made is 100% accurate, its successes are dwarfed by the predictive power of the secular competition -- science.
There is one biblical prophecy that I'd like you to educate me on, though. To my mind, it's the single biggest, most obvious prophecy of the bible: Jesus' statements that the world would end within a generation. They're repeated in every gospel, but for reference, see Mark 9:1 and 13:30.
I understand that later NT books attempt to gloss over the fact that the world is still going, with no end in sight. But to be honest, I got sick of reading the bible and stopped before I got to the explanation. So I'd appreciate it if you could point me to the versus that explain how Jesus was anything but a doomsday prophet who, like all others so far, turned out to be wrong. Or if finding the verses is a pain, just give me the popular church line on the subject. That way I'll have learned something from this conversation, and hopefully you will have too (if nothing else, you should have learned that you need some better arguments for god's existence in the future; those circular ones won't do at all).
Re:Most violent game... ever!
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You see, the people living in that land prior to the Israleties were an evil people. They didnt care to live by God's rules, so God chose to put them to death.... And whats more, is who are you to question the actions of the creator of heaven and earth?
So to sum up: - Why were these people evil enough to deserve death? Because they didn't worship god. - What makes that evil? Because god says so, and god is good. - How do we know god is good? We have no right to ask that question.
Sorry, not too convincing. You can try expanding the argument by appealing to the bible as a source of authority on god's nature, but then you just get into a bigger circular argument: Why should we believe the bible? Because god wrote it. How do we know? The bible says so. How do we know god wasn't lying about his nature in the bible? Because, according to the bible (that god wrote), god is good.
Circles within circles, and nary any critical reasoning in sight.
Re:Most violent game... ever!
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I'm almost speechless. After reading your post, I thought for sure you were a troll. Who else could post something so full of circular logic without a hint of embarrassment? But based on your posting history, you're either a consistent troll, or you are indeed genuine. That, and the fact that you aren't posing anonymously, deserves some credit I guess.
Why am I a hypocrit for quoting the Bible as a source of morality? What's hypocrital about it?
It's hypocritical because god's actions in the bible are so completely immoral. Repeated genocide, killing children because of their parents' sins, killing children for minor transgressions, killing children just to demonstrate his power, insane laws that allow slavery, punish women who are raped, etc. Not to mention the whole concept of creating a life-form and commanding that it worship you (without providing any real evidence that you exist, I might add), then punishing it infinitely if it does not.
Do you believe you need a god to have morals? If so, then let me ask you this: Does god base his moral code on underlying principles, or is it completely arbitrary? If the former, then man can base his code on the same principles, without needing god. If the latter, then basically anything goes, and an arbitrary moral code authored by man is no worse than one authored by god.
Most everything you see was created by God. The evidence is everywhere and overwhelming.
Are you truly blind to how circular this logic is? You can use the same argument to prove *anything*. Here's an example:
"Everything was created by the Jolly Green Giant. Want proof? Look around! Everything you see exists, right? So there ya go. The Jolly Green Giant must have created it."
See, I know evolution to be a lie and God-willing if I can afford it when my child reaches school age, he/she will attend a private Christian school.
And how do you know evolution is a lie? How do you know the overwhelming evidence for evolution is all somehow wrong? I could go into a technical argument, but it's irrelevant, because you "know" it's a lie. The only possible reason I can imagine for why evolution must be a lie is because "the bible says so". And once again, you create a massive circular argument. Here's a similar one I can use to show that the earth is flat:
"Despite the evidence to the contrary, the earth is flat. How do I know? Cause this book 'Tales of a Jolly Green Giant', says so. How do I know the book is correct? Because the Jolly Green Giant himself wrote it. How do I know who wrote it? Cause the book says so. How do I know the Jolly Green Giant speaks the truth? Cause the book says so."
A marriage is between a man and a woman, not a man and a man or vice-versa. If it is so natural, why can't they procreate?... My child will have to sit in school and hear the abomination that is homosexuality is normal.
Well you know, my friend is sterile. Bad sperm. So I guess he shouldn't be allowed to marry anyone either, right? Cause he can't procreate. What about a hermaphrodite? One of god's creations. But who the hell can it marry?
And how do you know homosexuality is an abomination? Once again, because the bible says so. And once again, that means squat, because all it does is lead to a circular argument.
I have no problem with stem cell research as long as the cells not come from aborted embryos.
Yeah; let's just throw those embryos away instead! Much better use of them.
I'm enjoying the debate!:)
I'm glad. For me, though, it's just tiring and sad. It's always disheartening to watch people turn off their brains when the topic of religion comes up.
Re:Most violent game... ever!
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I'm in contact with the guy that runs that site. I'm working through the Bible and rebuking his list of contradictions in the Bible. I'd stay away from using that site as a reference - too much misinformation / not all facts are given.
I just discovered skepticsannotatedbible.com, and I thought it was interesting. Reading through it, it does seem to go overboard at times. But I didn't use it as a reference for anything; everything I mentioned is clear as day in the bible. You can't analyze it away.
Skepticsannotatedbible might be over the top in a few places, but no amount of wriggling can change the fact that the bible is full of ridiculous statements, obvious contradictions, and chilling atrocities. What little it science it includes is almost invariably wrong, and its moral teachings are corrupt.
Of course, none of that has any bearing on whether or not god exists. All it means is that people who quote the bible as a source of morality are hypocrites, and the bible is worthless as anything but an interesting fiction.
Unfortunately, once you take away the bible as a source of authority, there is simply no evidence for god. None whatsoever. And I don't typically believe in outlandish theories with zero backing evidence.
You can believe in god if you want; I couldn't care less. What pisses me off is that because of those beliefs, children are being deprived of a proper education in evolution. Because of those beliefs, gays can't enjoy the same civil liberties as the rest of us. Because of those beliefs, embryonic stem cells that might help find cures for terrible diseases are being wasted. Because of those beliefs, people stop questioning the nature of the universe, and accept the vacuous answer that "god did it". Because of those beliefs, my child will have to stand up in school and pledge allegiance to an invisible man. Not to mention the violence that erupts when fanatics take religion to extremes.
Maybe at some point in history, religion was a good or even necessary institution. I believe, however, that that point is long past. It is now a hindrance to progress. Unfortunately, it won't abate any time soon -- not in the US at least. Luckily, our laws at least allow me to voice my frustrations in posts like this one.
Most violent game... ever!
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I would love to see a game based on the bible. It would be the most violent, debased game in history!
Those of you who've read the bible with any sort of objectivity know what I'm talking about. How many places in the OT does god command the jews to wipe out entire peoples, including women and children? There are even passages where he is angered because the jews decide to spare a few individuals or animals. So in any true bible game, genocide has to play a key role. And of course god doesn't leave all the fun to his chosen people; he certainly gets his hands dirty as well. Some of the more famous instance of god's handiwork include leveling Sodom and Gomorra, killing all the first born in Egypt when the pharaoh refuses to free the jews (interesting note: according to the text, god intentionally "hardened the pharaoh's heart" to Moses' pleas; god forced the pharaoh to refuse so that he could demonstrate his power via the plagues), and wiping out almost every living thing on the planet in a big flood cause he didn't like the way the humans he created were turning out.
Or, how about a Sims-type game? You could try to follow god's laws as they're laid out (mostly in Leviticus, IIRC) without getting stoned to death. Choose to pick up some sticks on the Sabbath? Sorry: you get stoned. Are you a woman who gets raped in the city? Sorry: you get stoned. In a city you should have been able to scream loud enough that someone would have heard. Is your Sim character a child who makes fun of a bald guy? Sorry: god sends some bears out of the woods to maul you. On the plus side, though, you can have slaves and multiple wives, sell your daughters, and have sex with your servants. (Yes, these are all actual biblical laws/stories.)
And the NT isn't much better. You've got the whole crucifixion thing, which is plenty violent (and intentional; not like the omniscient being didn't know it was going to happen). And then there's the problem that Jesus' core message is about as horrible a moral as you can find: "Worship me or you'll be tortured for all eternity, regardless of how good a person you are." And considering god's actions throughout the bible, could any truly moral person worship him in good conscience?
So yeah, I'd like to see a game based on the bible. I want to see the religious right squirm when a game based on the actual stories of their holy book makes Doom 3 look like Big Bird on Ice.
p.s. If you doubt the accuracy of anything I've said, I encourage you wholeheartedly to read the bible yourself. You'll see that the points above are but a tiny sampling of the atrocities the bible has to offer. I just discovered that some enterprising folks have even distilled a lot of the horrors (as well as the ridiculous "science" and many contradictions) of the bible for you: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
Actually the Dell battery is not meant to be replaceable either (or at least I consider gluing the battery to the unit a sign that it is not meant to be replaced by the user... I could be wrong:)
Unlike Apple, Dell doesn't seem to have an official replacement program in place. I'm sure they'll institute one once the first wave of customers start finding that their Jukeboxes can't hold a charge, just as Apple did. Also, you can purchase replacement batteries and do the install yourself for about $50, just as for the iPod.
The point, though, is that the Dell is no better than the Apple in terms of battery replacement.
IANAOCP (I Am Not An Objective C Programmer), but from my limited experience, Objective-C and C++ went in pretty much completely opposite directions in how they decided to add object-orientation to C.
In C++, everything is statically typed, and performance is a primary goal. Objective C has more overhead, but is much more dynamic. Some cool Objective-C features (note: in Objective-C parlance, "message passing" is basically method invocation):
- Very weak typing. If you want to, you can just pass around all your objects as variables of the built-in type "id", and this allows you to send any message to any object without casting, and of course to build container classes that hold any object. If you want some more typing help from the compiler, you can use typed pointer variables to reference objects, in which case it'll warn you about passing messages that the class doesn't implement.
- Message forwarding. I've always loved this feature in languages that have it. Makes it so easy to create delegating objects -- you can implement a single "catch-all" type method that allows you to forward any unsupported messages someone passes to your object on to another object.
- Categories/mix-ins. Add functionality to existing classes without having to extend them. The functionality is automatically given to all instances of the class the program creates.
- Sending messages to nil (null). Rather than throwing an exception when you try to send a message to a nil reference, Objective-C just returns nil back. Sounds weird, but this actually saves a lot of nil checks in practice.
- Introspection, which others have mentioned. Facilities to figure out what messages an object or type can respond to, to create new instances given the type name, to send messages based on the method name, etc.
- Methods as first-class objects. You can elegantly pass around method pointers, and the Cocoa frameworks take advantage of this for GUI callbacks and such. If you're familiar with C# and Java, Objective-C is similar to to C# in this respect, and I much prefer these sorts of method callbacks to Java's system of creating (usually anonymous) listener classes.
There are a lot of other advanced late-binding things you can do in Objective C too. I have some complains with the language (it's a little too verbose for my tastes, for one), but overall it seems like a great language for building dynamic systems and GUIs.
I agree that the article's idea of technical numbers is laughable.
Here are some application benchmarks that include the dual G5. For a lengthy discussion of each, head over to Ars Technica's battlefront forum... I believe each has its own thread.
As you can see, the G5 is certainly competitive with the fastest x86 offerings.... better at some things, worse at others. I personally find this pretty amazing for such a new chip; I think the situation will only improve as developers further optimize for the G5. The promise of 3Ghz systems within a year (recently reiterated once again by Steve Jobs, who is usually very secretive about future products) is exciting as well.
I think the situation will be the same for the Opteron, which unfortunately just doesn't seem to be in enough hands to be tested thoroughly yet. I expect it to make a big splash, but to take some time to fully realize its potential as well.
But what I don't get is why being able to ignore the db is touted as one of the advantages of JDO.
Because 99% of the time you can ignore the DB. And because JDO retains its API regardless of the back-end data store. You can use JDO on top of relational DBs, flat files, Object DBs, etc.
By leaving the gap in the specification, they prevent someone who's using JDO from easily swapping vendors. At that point, I still say that the application interface is nice, but I'll take an approach that blew off the cruft the first time around and did it the right way from the start.
What approach? JDO is the standard. The only other options are certain vendor's products. I'd rather write to JDO + vendor extensions and then be able to port to different JDO vendors and even different data stores just by re-doing the parts that needed vendor-specific support... than to code my whole project to some non-standard API! Then you have no ability to switch at all!
If you want to get a technical feel for JDO, Solarmetric has an online document that covers all the spec basics here. It's not as in-depth as a full JDO book, but it covers JDO concepts pretty nicely in about 40 pages (if it were printed).
Re:JDO vs EJB Entity Beans?
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Actually most relational JDO implementations already let you bypass the JDO layer and deal with SQL when you want to, and let you map classes to an existing schema (or even generate classes and O/R mapping data from an existing schema). At least, I know you can do all this with Kodo JDO. If you haven't checked out JDO lately, I'd say you should give it another shot. Keep in mind that the spec is barely a year old... implementations are adding features very rapidly.
I believe you are confusing JDO with something else. JDO does not use OQL. It has its own query language that looks exactly like Java boolean expressions. For example:
name == "John" && address.zip == 77096 && nickNames.contains ("JJ")
Also, JDO is certainly not slow. In fact, a good implementation with object caching and (if relational) prepared statement pooling and statement batching can be as fast or faster than staight JDBC.
You might be thinking of Castor JDO, which has "JDO" in its name, but is not a Java Data Objects implementation.
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While it was widely used in designs a year ago, JDO will probably go down in history as the proverbial chicken that crossed the road when the CMP2.0 truck came along.
If you read a lot of Marc Fleury's public comments carefully, it is clear that he doesn't know what JDO is. He equates JDO with Castor JDO, which is a relatively simplistic persistence solution that happens to have "JDO" in its name; it is not a Java Data Objects implementation. The quote above is a perfect example: the JDO spec is barely a year old! So JDO was not widely used a year ago: Castor, however, was getting a lot of publicity around that time.
Fleury would do well to research the JDO spec, because a lot of the things he's proposing in his new vision for CMP are things that real JDO already does. JDO can persist vanilla Java classes with no code changes. Persistent fields and relations are completely transparent. Just declare a field of some other persistent type, and the relation is managed for you. Same with Collections and Maps and so forth (including collections and maps of relations to other objects). Data is lazily loaded as you access it, and change tracking is automatic. The runtime API for managing persisting objects consists of only a few classes. The query language looks just like Java boolean expressions. The whole system is elegant, but powerful. It stays out of your way. It's everything EJB is not:)
I enjoy reading Hannibal's CPU articles on ars, but (if this isn't an impostor) what he's saying here doesn't make any sense:
Floating-point: the 970 will spank the G4e Integer: The G4e will spank the 970
Let's look at the SPEC scores:
Disclaimer: The PPC 970 scores are IBM's stated estimates only... though IBM tends to under-estimate, if anything. Also, I could not find official G4e scores from Motorola, but the ones here were referenced in several places on CPU web sites.
Based on those numbers, I certainly wouldn't say the G4e spanks the 970 on integer performance! In fact, I'd say exactly the opposite. Hannibal rightly says that the 970 spanks the G4e on FP; those numbers are even more skewed!
So it looks to me like the 970 almost doubles the G4e's performance on integer, and more than triples it on FP. I'll guess I'll have to wait for Hannibal's ars article to see why he reaches the conclusions he does.
P.S. Despite these numbers, I don't believe Macbidouille.com's posted application benchmarks are real. But I do believe Apple will use the 970 before the year ends, and I do believe that the 970 is going to be a huge improvement over the G4. Though I personally get along with my 667Mhz machine just fine...
Slashdot Mirror
The App Store may not allow you to distribute porn inside your app, but there certainly are a lot of apps that cater to porn: "private media managers" and "private browsers" and the like. My own Stash Pro app - http://stash.hedonicsoftware.com/ - combines those two categories and is the #25 top-grossing Utilities app on the iPad (it's now universal and so available on the iPhone/iPod touch as well). Some of that popularity is for people who want a general media manager: the built-in Photos app relies on syncing with your PC to organize, while with Stash you can create album hierarchies, smart albums, etc right on the device. But a large percentage of the audience is certainly using it for porn. Apple has even featured new releases in the "New & Notable" area of iTunes before, so while they don't allow you to come right out and say you're peddling porn, they may not be as prude as people think.
Why the hell was I modded "troll"? Because I dared to mention an app I created to show that, you know, I actually have some relevant experience? Or because I criticized Android development? I've noticed lately that the Android fans are even more rabid than the iPhone ones.
Many people on this thread have a very skewed picture of iOS development. I have released three fairly large iOS projects (i.e. months to years of development rather than a few days or weeks like so many toy apps). The first was a smashing success and our 3-person development company was acquired for it. The acquiring company is now my employer so I won't name specifics in this case. The second was an independent iPhone app I wrote that was a total flop. The third is my new independent iPad project called Stash that's doing pretty well so far: http://stash.hedonicsoftware.com/
Just the existence of Stash on the App Store - basically an app for porn, though it doesn't provide the explicit content - is evidence that Apple isn't nearly as draconian and capricious as many in this thread are portraying them to be. If you create a high-quality app (or hell, even a low-quality one so long as it doesn't crash) that follows their general guidelines and doesn't try to take over basic functions of the iPhone, you won't generally have a problem. Sure, there are famous counter-examples, and I really feel for those developers. I can't imagine a more frustrating experience then pouring your time into something that's rejected outright. But it doesn't change the fact that these are the few exceptions in a vast sea of approvals or justified rejections (based on the three points that Jobs outlined). Moreover, in my experience Apple is getting much better about working with developers to get apps their approved. It's still a slow process - the last release of Stash was delayed without feedback for over 2 weeks, which felt interminable - but they eventually call and tell you about any solvable issues and give you a chance to correct them.
I'd also like to point out that outside the pain of dealing with the review process, iOS development is a lot of fun. Someone on this thread said no one is in the App Store simply for the love of programming, but I strongly disagree. Apple provides some really nice APIs, and it's relatively easy to create something that looks and feels smooth and professional. I'm currently working on an Android project for my employer, and it's a real chore compared to iOS dev. I don't care how "open" the market is or even how powerful the SDK is if I hate coding for it and need a graphic design team to make it look decent. People forget that Apple/NeXT has been in the GUI framework business for a long time. They know what they're doing. They also seem to be good at letting their internal APIs fully bake before including them in the SDK, which results in a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than in Android, where everything feels over-engineered. I recently read an article by another iOS developer that sums up my feelings pretty much exactly: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/03/android-sdk-from-iphone-developer.html
That's my 2 cents. YMMV. But if you're interested in mobile development at all, you owe it to yourself to give iOS development a shot.
I keep up with modern theories about the universe and its beginnings. I read your summary of the videos in another post (who has time to watch 2.5 hours of lectures?), and it contained nothing I didn't already know, and absolutely nothing that supports the biblical creation account. Is the fact that the universe may have arisen from a fluctuation in the negative vacuum energy -- basically creating itself from nothing -- cool? Absolutely. Does it lend any support whatsoever to the biblical creation account? Hell no.
First of all, just about every religion I've ever heard of, both modern and primitive, has a creation story. So the fact that the universe was created ex nihilo can't be said to be evidence of the biblical creation account in particular -- such a general fact would be equal evidence for every other creation account known, and therefore supports none of them.
Next, the biblical creation account is wrong in just about every detail, as already mentioned. How you can ignore all that but see a divine hand in the fact that the ancients called a 50/50 bet -- infinitely old universe vs. finite age universe -- correctly is utterly beyond me. (In fact, I don't even think it was a 50/50 bet for them -- I don't think they could imagine an infinitely old universe, so it was pretty much a given to them that it was created just a short time ago.) It's cherry picking at its worst. My previous post summed it up as best I can, so I'll just copy it here:
Anyone can take any mythical creation story with sufficiently general or vague creative steps (in this case, days) and make it seem predictive a-posteriori, in the same way the bible codes or Nostradamus are predictive a-posteriori. Until you can answer for the glaring errors in the creation account or show me where it has taught us anything of value about the actual nature of the world, it's all a bunch of hand waving. I have no problem with people believing without evidence (so long as they don't make public policy based on their faith), but I hate when people misconstrue the evidence we do have to try to make it back up their fairy tales.
Homework time.. View the mentioned video. It is online for free and is not from the church side of the isle. After that, then make informed comments.
I've read the bible. I don't need a video to tell me what it says. How about making a substantive response to the gross inaccuracies in the order of creation already mentioned (and those were just the ones off the top of my head)? Anyone can take any mythical creation story with sufficiently general or vague creative steps (in this case, days) and make it seem predictive a-posteriori, in the same way the bible codes or Nostradamus are predictive a-posteriori. Until you can answer for the glaring errors in the creation account or show me where it has taught us anything of value about the actual nature of the world, it's all a bunch of hand waving. I have no problem with people believing without evidence (so long as they don't make public policy based on their faith), but I hate when people misconstrue the evidence we do have to try to make it back up their fairy tales.
Follow the lesson, then look at the biblical description of the origion of the universe. It's so close to the same to bring into question "Was this created?" Who Wrote the first book in the Bible and how did he know how the universe started when nobody else had a clue.
Leaving creation out of consideration does upset the church leadership and should upset the scientific community who are finding a strong corrolation between the two accounts.
Is this a joke? There is no correlation between the bible's description of creation (either one -- there are actually two creation accounts in the bible) and modern theories about what actually happened. Even ignoring the "6 days vs. 12 billion years" discrepancy, the order of creation in the bible is completely wrong. Plants before the sun? The earth before the stars? If you took each individual event mentioned in the creation account and scrambled them randomly, you'd likely wind up with a creation order that isn't much worse than the bible's.
To reinforce this, it was explained to me that the original translation of the Bible was not necessarily " days", but "periods of my Father" (referring to God) and the like. So, when you consider that Genisis originally stated that it was seven periods of time (length undetermined) instead of seven days, then it doesn't seem that odd that the Vatican would support evolution.
As has been pointed out, the original Hebrew really does use the word for "day", and says "And the evening and the morning were the Xth day" between each transition. However, even if you were to take "day" metaphorically, you cannot reconcile Genesis with anything we know about science. The order of creation is completely wrong. The earth is created before the stars, birds and whales are created before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants are created before any animals. It's ass-backwards.
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Just wait, soon Kansas science will take over and we won't be teaching evolution. We'll be teaching that burning more coal and oil will improve the environment. We'll be teaching who knows what other Bush-science.
It has already begun. Another poster pointed out that creationism is sneaking into the classroom in the form of "Intelligent Design". And now the National Park Service is selling a book that says the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's flood.
Some of the posts on this thread disturb me. They imply that people aren't taking intelligent design (ID) seriously enough as a threat to science. The posts say that maybe ID is compatible with science after all: maybe it only applies to speciation; or maybe a god started things off at a certain point, and evolution took over from there; or if you interpret "day" to be some indeterminate length of time, maybe you can make the bible's creation story match facts (hint: you can't -- the creation story has plants appearing before the sun, for example).
The point is not whether it's possible to somehow reconcile ID with fact if you try hard enough. The point is that ID is being presented as a science, when it is clearly nothing of the sort. Are there unanswered questions in evolution? Of course. But saying "god did it" answers a small mystery with an enormous, or even completely unknowable one (god). It explains nothing, and encourages intellectual laziness. If we accepted "science" like this, we'd all still think thunder was the sound the gods make when they're angry.
I don't care if people choose to believe in god or ID based on faith; that's their right. What terrifies me is when it is presented as science -- especially in our schools. There is absolutely no doubt about it: if it weren't for the fact that ID puts a pseudo-scientific face on a certain demonstrably false and contradictory "holy" book, and the fact that proponents of that book fund ID well, it would have long since been thrown out as crackpot nonsense. Instead, it is being accepted by some school districts as science. Teaching ID as science undermines our entire theory of knowledge.
So discoveries like this possible explanation for the eye are important! They can potentially narrow the gaps in our scientific knowledge, which is the only attack against "god of the gaps" arguments like ID (the fact that ID is almost impossible to completely falsify is another big "tell" that it is not scientific).
p.s. [political rant]
Defending science is especially important with Bush in the white house. This is a man who says the "jury is still out" on evolution. This is an administration that approves a National Park Service booklet saying that the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's flood. This is an administration with the worst environmental and scientific record in recent memory.
[/political rant]
Thank you for the explanation. I think there are lots of problems with it (the stars didn't fall in that generation, for example, which was one of the signs Jesus mentioned... also, he specifically says that those signs would signal that the end is very near, and now 2000 years later we're still waiting... considering that the bible puts the age of the universe at that time at only about 4000 years, I don't see how anyone could consider 2000 more years "near"), but I do appreciate it. It's good to finally know what the church's thoughts are on that prophecy.
If you'll cite me some examples I'll be more than happy to discuss
You want specific examples of atrocities in the bible? There are hundreds! I recommend skipping down to Leviticus and starting there; that's where the fun begins. Numbers and Deuteronomy are even better. I'm also particularly fond of Second Kings, 2:23-24.
and all of the fulfilled prophecies in the Bible are 100% accurate
I won't get into further arguments with you, because you can just ignore the points you can't/don't want to refute, making real debate impossible (case in point: my comments demonstrating your circular logic, which went unanswered). Plus, on the topic of prophecy, skepticsannotatedbible.com has hundreds of examples of unfulfilled biblical prophecies. Since you're in contact with the site maintainer and plan on proving all of these prophecies correct, I'll wait for your masterwork on the subject. I will say two things regarding prophecies, though:
1. Swing enough times, and you're bound to get a few hits.
2. Even if you believe that every prediction the bible made is 100% accurate, its successes are dwarfed by the predictive power of the secular competition -- science.
There is one biblical prophecy that I'd like you to educate me on, though. To my mind, it's the single biggest, most obvious prophecy of the bible: Jesus' statements that the world would end within a generation. They're repeated in every gospel, but for reference, see Mark 9:1 and 13:30.
I understand that later NT books attempt to gloss over the fact that the world is still going, with no end in sight. But to be honest, I got sick of reading the bible and stopped before I got to the explanation. So I'd appreciate it if you could point me to the versus that explain how Jesus was anything but a doomsday prophet who, like all others so far, turned out to be wrong. Or if finding the verses is a pain, just give me the popular church line on the subject. That way I'll have learned something from this conversation, and hopefully you will have too (if nothing else, you should have learned that you need some better arguments for god's existence in the future; those circular ones won't do at all).
You see, the people living in that land prior to the Israleties were an evil people. They didnt care to live by God's rules, so God chose to put them to death. ...
And whats more, is who are you to question the actions of the creator of heaven and earth?
So to sum up:
- Why were these people evil enough to deserve death? Because they didn't worship god.
- What makes that evil? Because god says so, and god is good.
- How do we know god is good? We have no right to ask that question.
Sorry, not too convincing. You can try expanding the argument by appealing to the bible as a source of authority on god's nature, but then you just get into a bigger circular argument: Why should we believe the bible? Because god wrote it. How do we know? The bible says so. How do we know god wasn't lying about his nature in the bible? Because, according to the bible (that god wrote), god is good.
Circles within circles, and nary any critical reasoning in sight.
I'm almost speechless. After reading your post, I thought for sure you were a troll. Who else could post something so full of circular logic without a hint of embarrassment? But based on your posting history, you're either a consistent troll, or you are indeed genuine. That, and the fact that you aren't posing anonymously, deserves some credit I guess.
... My child will have to sit in school and hear the abomination that is homosexuality is normal.
:)
Why am I a hypocrit for quoting the Bible as a source of morality? What's hypocrital about it?
It's hypocritical because god's actions in the bible are so completely immoral. Repeated genocide, killing children because of their parents' sins, killing children for minor transgressions, killing children just to demonstrate his power, insane laws that allow slavery, punish women who are raped, etc. Not to mention the whole concept of creating a life-form and commanding that it worship you (without providing any real evidence that you exist, I might add), then punishing it infinitely if it does not.
Do you believe you need a god to have morals? If so, then let me ask you this: Does god base his moral code on underlying principles, or is it completely arbitrary? If the former, then man can base his code on the same principles, without needing god. If the latter, then basically anything goes, and an arbitrary moral code authored by man is no worse than one authored by god.
Most everything you see was created by God. The evidence is everywhere and overwhelming.
Are you truly blind to how circular this logic is? You can use the same argument to prove *anything*. Here's an example:
"Everything was created by the Jolly Green Giant. Want proof? Look around! Everything you see exists, right? So there ya go. The Jolly Green Giant must have created it."
See, I know evolution to be a lie and God-willing if I can afford it when my child reaches school age, he/she will attend a private Christian school.
And how do you know evolution is a lie? How do you know the overwhelming evidence for evolution is all somehow wrong? I could go into a technical argument, but it's irrelevant, because you "know" it's a lie. The only possible reason I can imagine for why evolution must be a lie is because "the bible says so". And once again, you create a massive circular argument. Here's a similar one I can use to show that the earth is flat:
"Despite the evidence to the contrary, the earth is flat. How do I know? Cause this book 'Tales of a Jolly Green Giant', says so. How do I know the book is correct? Because the Jolly Green Giant himself wrote it. How do I know who wrote it? Cause the book says so. How do I know the Jolly Green Giant speaks the truth? Cause the book says so."
A marriage is between a man and a woman, not a man and a man or vice-versa. If it is so natural, why can't they procreate?
Well you know, my friend is sterile. Bad sperm. So I guess he shouldn't be allowed to marry anyone either, right? Cause he can't procreate. What about a hermaphrodite? One of god's creations. But who the hell can it marry?
And how do you know homosexuality is an abomination? Once again, because the bible says so. And once again, that means squat, because all it does is lead to a circular argument.
I have no problem with stem cell research as long as the cells not come from aborted embryos.
Yeah; let's just throw those embryos away instead! Much better use of them.
I'm enjoying the debate!
I'm glad. For me, though, it's just tiring and sad. It's always disheartening to watch people turn off their brains when the topic of religion comes up.
I'm in contact with the guy that runs that site. I'm working through the Bible and rebuking his list of contradictions in the Bible. I'd stay away from using that site as a reference - too much misinformation / not all facts are given.
I just discovered skepticsannotatedbible.com, and I thought it was interesting. Reading through it, it does seem to go overboard at times. But I didn't use it as a reference for anything; everything I mentioned is clear as day in the bible. You can't analyze it away.
Skepticsannotatedbible might be over the top in a few places, but no amount of wriggling can change the fact that the bible is full of ridiculous statements, obvious contradictions, and chilling atrocities. What little it science it includes is almost invariably wrong, and its moral teachings are corrupt.
Of course, none of that has any bearing on whether or not god exists. All it means is that people who quote the bible as a source of morality are hypocrites, and the bible is worthless as anything but an interesting fiction.
Unfortunately, once you take away the bible as a source of authority, there is simply no evidence for god. None whatsoever. And I don't typically believe in outlandish theories with zero backing evidence.
You can believe in god if you want; I couldn't care less. What pisses me off is that because of those beliefs, children are being deprived of a proper education in evolution. Because of those beliefs, gays can't enjoy the same civil liberties as the rest of us. Because of those beliefs, embryonic stem cells that might help find cures for terrible diseases are being wasted. Because of those beliefs, people stop questioning the nature of the universe, and accept the vacuous answer that "god did it". Because of those beliefs, my child will have to stand up in school and pledge allegiance to an invisible man. Not to mention the violence that erupts when fanatics take religion to extremes.
Maybe at some point in history, religion was a good or even necessary institution. I believe, however, that that point is long past. It is now a hindrance to progress. Unfortunately, it won't abate any time soon -- not in the US at least. Luckily, our laws at least allow me to voice my frustrations in posts like this one.
I would love to see a game based on the bible. It would be the most violent, debased game in history!
Those of you who've read the bible with any sort of objectivity know what I'm talking about. How many places in the OT does god command the jews to wipe out entire peoples, including women and children? There are even passages where he is angered because the jews decide to spare a few individuals or animals. So in any true bible game, genocide has to play a key role. And of course god doesn't leave all the fun to his chosen people; he certainly gets his hands dirty as well. Some of the more famous instance of god's handiwork include leveling Sodom and Gomorra, killing all the first born in Egypt when the pharaoh refuses to free the jews (interesting note: according to the text, god intentionally "hardened the pharaoh's heart" to Moses' pleas; god forced the pharaoh to refuse so that he could demonstrate his power via the plagues), and wiping out almost every living thing on the planet in a big flood cause he didn't like the way the humans he created were turning out.
Or, how about a Sims-type game? You could try to follow god's laws as they're laid out (mostly in Leviticus, IIRC) without getting stoned to death. Choose to pick up some sticks on the Sabbath? Sorry: you get stoned. Are you a woman who gets raped in the city? Sorry: you get stoned. In a city you should have been able to scream loud enough that someone would have heard. Is your Sim character a child who makes fun of a bald guy? Sorry: god sends some bears out of the woods to maul you. On the plus side, though, you can have slaves and multiple wives, sell your daughters, and have sex with your servants. (Yes, these are all actual biblical laws/stories.)
And the NT isn't much better. You've got the whole crucifixion thing, which is plenty violent (and intentional; not like the omniscient being didn't know it was going to happen). And then there's the problem that Jesus' core message is about as horrible a moral as you can find: "Worship me or you'll be tortured for all eternity, regardless of how good a person you are." And considering god's actions throughout the bible, could any truly moral person worship him in good conscience?
So yeah, I'd like to see a game based on the bible. I want to see the religious right squirm when a game based on the actual stories of their holy book makes Doom 3 look like Big Bird on Ice.
p.s. If you doubt the accuracy of anything I've said, I encourage you wholeheartedly to read the bible yourself. You'll see that the points above are but a tiny sampling of the atrocities the bible has to offer. I just discovered that some enterprising folks have even distilled a lot of the horrors (as well as the ridiculous "science" and many contradictions) of the bible for you: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
Actually the Dell battery is not meant to be replaceable either (or at least I consider gluing the battery to the unit a sign that it is not meant to be replaced by the user... I could be wrong :)
Unlike Apple, Dell doesn't seem to have an official replacement program in place. I'm sure they'll institute one once the first wave of customers start finding that their Jukeboxes can't hold a charge, just as Apple did. Also, you can purchase replacement batteries and do the install yourself for about $50, just as for the iPod.
The point, though, is that the Dell is no better than the Apple in terms of battery replacement.
CONS
.86 = 9.52 .62 = 6.1 .56
.36
- slightly wider (not that much)
- slightly thicker (not that much)
- slightly heavier (not that much)
While each dimension might seem only "slightly" bigger/heavier, the results are surprising if you do the math.
The Dell is 56% larger by volume and 36% heavier than the iPod. Figures below.
Volume:
Dell: 4.1 * 2.7 *
iPod: 4.1 * 2.4 *
(9.52 - 6.1) / 6.1 =
Weight:
Dell: 7.61
iPod: 5.6
(7.61 - 5.6) / 5.6 =
IANAOCP (I Am Not An Objective C Programmer), but from my limited experience, Objective-C and C++ went in pretty much completely opposite directions in how they decided to add object-orientation to C.
In C++, everything is statically typed, and performance is a primary goal. Objective C has more overhead, but is much more dynamic. Some cool Objective-C features (note: in Objective-C parlance, "message passing" is basically method invocation):
- Very weak typing. If you want to, you can just pass around all your objects as variables of the built-in type "id", and this allows you to send any message to any object without casting, and of course to build container classes that hold any object. If you want some more typing help from the compiler, you can use typed pointer variables to reference objects, in which case it'll warn you about passing messages that the class doesn't implement.
- Message forwarding. I've always loved this feature in languages that have it. Makes it so easy to create delegating objects -- you can implement a single "catch-all" type method that allows you to forward any unsupported messages someone passes to your object on to another object.
- Categories/mix-ins. Add functionality to existing classes without having to extend them. The functionality is automatically given to all instances of the class the program creates.
- Sending messages to nil (null). Rather than throwing an exception when you try to send a message to a nil reference, Objective-C just returns nil back. Sounds weird, but this actually saves a lot of nil checks in practice.
- Introspection, which others have mentioned. Facilities to figure out what messages an object or type can respond to, to create new instances given the type name, to send messages based on the method name, etc.
- Methods as first-class objects. You can elegantly pass around method pointers, and the Cocoa frameworks take advantage of this for GUI callbacks and such. If you're familiar with C# and Java, Objective-C is similar to to C# in this respect, and I much prefer these sorts of method callbacks to Java's system of creating (usually anonymous) listener classes.
There are a lot of other advanced late-binding things you can do in Objective C too. I have some complains with the language (it's a little too verbose for my tastes, for one), but overall it seems like a great language for building dynamic systems and GUIs.
I agree that the article's idea of technical numbers is laughable.
Here are some application benchmarks that include the dual G5. For a lengthy discussion of each, head over to Ars Technica's battlefront forum... I believe each has its own thread.
Photoshop
Lightwave
After Effects
Cinebench
As you can see, the G5 is certainly competitive with the fastest x86 offerings.... better at some things, worse at others. I personally find this pretty amazing for such a new chip; I think the situation will only improve as developers further optimize for the G5. The promise of 3Ghz systems within a year (recently reiterated once again by Steve Jobs, who is usually very secretive about future products) is exciting as well.
I think the situation will be the same for the Opteron, which unfortunately just doesn't seem to be in enough hands to be tested thoroughly yet. I expect it to make a big splash, but to take some time to fully realize its potential as well.
But what I don't get is why being able to ignore the db is touted as one of the advantages of JDO.
Because 99% of the time you can ignore the DB. And because JDO retains its API regardless of the back-end data store. You can use JDO on top of relational DBs, flat files, Object DBs, etc.
By leaving the gap in the specification, they prevent someone who's using JDO from easily swapping vendors. At that point, I still say that the application interface is nice, but I'll take an approach that blew off the cruft the first time around and did it the right way from the start.
What approach? JDO is the standard. The only other options are certain vendor's products. I'd rather write to JDO + vendor extensions and then be able to port to different JDO vendors and even different data stores just by re-doing the parts that needed vendor-specific support... than to code my whole project to some non-standard API! Then you have no ability to switch at all!
If you want to get a technical feel for JDO, Solarmetric has an online document that covers all the spec basics here. It's not as in-depth as a full JDO book, but it covers JDO concepts pretty nicely in about 40 pages (if it were printed).
Actually most relational JDO implementations already let you bypass the JDO layer and deal with SQL when you want to, and let you map classes to an existing schema (or even generate classes and O/R mapping data from an existing schema). At least, I know you can do all this with Kodo JDO. If you haven't checked out JDO lately, I'd say you should give it another shot. Keep in mind that the spec is barely a year old... implementations are adding features very rapidly.
I believe you are confusing JDO with something else. JDO does not use OQL. It has its own query language that looks exactly like Java boolean expressions. For example:
name == "John" && address.zip == 77096 && nickNames.contains ("JJ")
Also, JDO is certainly not slow. In fact, a good implementation with object caching and (if relational) prepared statement pooling and statement batching can be as fast or faster than staight JDBC.
You might be thinking of Castor JDO, which has "JDO" in its name, but is not a Java Data Objects implementation.
While it was widely used in designs a year ago, JDO will probably go down in history as the proverbial chicken that crossed the road when the CMP2.0 truck came along.
:)
If you read a lot of Marc Fleury's public comments carefully, it is clear that he doesn't know what JDO is. He equates JDO with Castor JDO, which is a relatively simplistic persistence solution that happens to have "JDO" in its name; it is not a Java Data Objects implementation. The quote above is a perfect example: the JDO spec is barely a year old! So JDO was not widely used a year ago: Castor, however, was getting a lot of publicity around that time.
Fleury would do well to research the JDO spec, because a lot of the things he's proposing in his new vision for CMP are things that real JDO already does. JDO can persist vanilla Java classes with no code changes. Persistent fields and relations are completely transparent. Just declare a field of some other persistent type, and the relation is managed for you. Same with Collections and Maps and so forth (including collections and maps of relations to other objects). Data is lazily loaded as you access it, and change tracking is automatic. The runtime API for managing persisting objects consists of only a few classes. The query language looks just like Java boolean expressions. The whole system is elegant, but powerful. It stays out of your way. It's everything EJB is not
I enjoy reading Hannibal's CPU articles on ars, but (if this isn't an impostor) what he's saying here doesn't make any sense:
Floating-point: the 970 will spank the G4e
Integer: The G4e will spank the 970
Let's look at the SPEC scores:
Disclaimer: The PPC 970 scores are IBM's stated estimates only... though IBM tends to under-estimate, if anything. Also, I could not find official G4e scores from Motorola, but the ones here were referenced in several places on CPU web sites.
SPECInt2000:
PPC 970 @ 1.8 GHz: 937
G4e @ 1.4GHz: 418
G4e @ 1.8 GHz (scaled): 537
Based on those numbers, I certainly wouldn't say the G4e spanks the 970 on integer performance! In fact, I'd say exactly the opposite. Hannibal rightly says that the 970 spanks the G4e on FP; those numbers are even more skewed!
SPECFP2000:
PPC 970 @ 1.8 GHz: 1051
G4e @ 1.4GHz: 248
G4e @ 1.8 GHz (scaled): 319
So it looks to me like the 970 almost doubles the G4e's performance on integer, and more than triples it on FP. I'll guess I'll have to wait for Hannibal's ars article to see why he reaches the conclusions he does.
P.S. Despite these numbers, I don't believe Macbidouille.com's posted application benchmarks are real. But I do believe Apple will use the 970 before the year ends, and I do believe that the 970 is going to be a huge improvement over the G4. Though I personally get along with my 667Mhz machine just fine...