The mission to pluto that was just launched put yet another atlas centaur upper stage into orbit. These have been around for a number of years, there are thousands of these flying around, but they are not going to be of much use for anything other than salvage like you say. We'll probably start using electric propulsion for these upper stages, and all these expensive rocket engines floating around will just be heaps of scrap metal.
Many people have thought to capitalize on these orbiting fuel tanks to turn them into livable space, but I dont think that will be cost effective. I think Bigelow is on the right track with his inflatable habitats. We're a long ways away from orbiting factories capable of melting down this junk. De-orbiting may end up being much, much cheaper, as electric propulsion is already 100x more efficient then chemical propulsion. If it ends up being 1000x more efficient, which is not far-fetched at all, then you may see orbiting trash haulers that can de-orbit hundreds of large objects without refueling.
I think it's just luck that we are getting into these advanced propulsion techniques. If we had to continue with chemical upper-stages indefinately, we would never have the resources to de-orbit anything.
They could take a position on the issue and still leave it to the NRA to lobby for gun rights, but they don't. They have taken the *implied* right to privacy and run with it, what's up with that? Right to privacy is something the courts invented, and doesn't really have much to do with civil liberties. If your parents let you do whatever you want when you were a kid, would you call that freedom? Or would you insist on cutting their eyeballs out too?
The ACLU is mysteriously silent on gun ownership rights. IMO this is a solid argument for them being a leftist organization. It's all you need to know. There is no reason why they shouldn't take a stand, unless they are anti-gun.
As for us being pretty happy over here, you misinterpreted me. I was saying, we have the NAFTA which is the free trade that Europeans enjoy, but for the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It's been an issue for debate, because Mexico doesn't have the same civil rights laws, minimum wages and stuff, and some think free trade is enslaving Mexicans. That is just a small issue, once you go beyond free trade and start standardizing everything, a whole new set of battles erupt.
I don't know what you're talking about with spheres. You leave out half the world, like south america, japan, taiwan, australia. All significant players in the world economy. Fuck unifying everything.
This could very well be a form of economic warfare. Look at it this way, Google's stock value is like 6 or 7 times the IPO value after what, a year or two? I suspect France and Germany are worried that it will turn into taxable profits of hundreds of billions of dollars, funding the dreaded American military which France has been against for a long time.
Of course, it's almost certainly going to fail for them.
Create a more hospitable corporate environment in France, or Europe, and maybe companies like Google will plant themselves there. It's so simple, that's been our strategy here in the U.S. all along.
We have NAFTA over here, which is similar to the EU but I think the EU goes beyond that and is trying to reach the level of integration that the United States has. Someone else posted a reply to my original message saying they envision a completely unified and integrated Europe in the future, which is a dangerous view I think, and it may be more widespread than it appears.
Look at the United States as an example. I'd consider the United States very lucky to have made it through our trial-by-fire. We couldn't have done it without brutal military conflict.
Hopefully the EU can draw a red line in between trade policy and total social integration. Going to be rough sailing for a while, I think.
I think if views like yours, that europe should be "united" under one central power, become popular, then we're in for some serious fighting. We're pretty happy over here in North America, nobody wants to unify anything any further. I see a lot of tension brewing between EU member states, and certainly Turkey and Russia will make matters worse.
Well once you realize that this is the same guy that argued that earth is a macro-organism, you realize how twisted his reasoning is. He thinks humanity is the cancer in the body of earth. His argument for macro-organism was pretty far-fetched, he will come up with a wacky idea and argue it without any attention to detail, or reason.
I'm familiar with him because I tried to argue his Gaia Hypothesis in a college philosophy class, and I was very easily shot down by just about anybody who argued with me, on multiple levels. It was a very hard thing to argue for.
As a side note, I think living mad-max style would be so cool. It'd give me an excuse to build an underground lair in my backyard, the wife wouldn't appreciate that much right now.
Why was this categorized as politics? So that we could all argue who is better, Europe or the U.S?
Had this been put in the proper category, like Hardware or Science, I'd say: Great, maybe I could get 10cm accuracy with this, GPS and GPRS combined.
But since it's politics we're discussing here, I say: how long before France, Germany and the U.K. start argueing over trivial issues. This whole European Union thing is too de-centralized, it's only a matter of time before it's torn apart.
I went from perl to ruby, I investigated python, but I chose ruby because I liked the syntax better, and it seemed to have more OO features and I am an OO nut.
It sounds like you're anticipating an attack by Christian fundamentalists. To me this is wackier than thinking god is going to come and destroy Earth, but then again, what do I know.
The fact that you're 20 years old doesn't mean 20 years in the industry.
You can't expect anybody to take you seriously. Parallel was the high-speed interface of the past, before USB came along.
If you'd been in the industry 20 years, you aught to know what a great deal HP printers are. I bought an HP laserjet 4P at the thrift store for $10 a few months back, they have the drum inside the toner cartridge, so a new toner cartridge is essentially a brand new printer, and I can buy them for $25, among the cheapest in the industry. I expect this printer will go on working for another 10 or 20 years, producing fine quality black and white laser prints. Parallel is the only way to connect to it. CUPS setup is a breeze. Sometimes the old hardware is still the best, like the 3com 10/100 network cards, I buy them by the dozen on ebay.
what're you talking about? some people could retire on that kind of money. He probably bought himself a nice house, that's all I want is a nice house, and a yacht, maybe a submarine...
See I'm shooting for a cool BILLION in maybe a year...
That's why I thought it would be fun to submit this article to slashdot, to shine a spotlight on all the tin foil hats among us. Certainly the slashdot readers would realize what a cookie is, but half of them are screaming about legality, I wonder who they hope to see burn for this.
Slashdot -- News for liberal nerds, stuff that doesn't matter unless you're liberal... ... or on drugs
I submitted this article as sortof a joke, I thought it was funny. Mountain out of a molehill is right, it's even funnier how people react to it. To me it sounds like a news article meant to play to the fears of people who don't know what a cookie is, old people, young stupid people. Pretty much every working American these days knows what a cookie is.
/me has his trusty cookie blocker plugin armed and ready
Hell just drop one of those 30,000 pound MOAB bombs near anything that lives. Unless you're in a 2 foot thick sphere of iron, the blast will pop your brains out your ears.
Good idea. Here's a good one. http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/6216.p df [state.gov] "With the exception of the habeas corpus clause, the Constitution makes no allowance for the suspension of any of its provisions during a national emergency." I recommend reading the rest of that document as well. Here's a good article (that also supports some of what you're saying): http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20020607.html [findlaw.com] '"Constitutional dictatorship is a dangerous thing," Rossiter advises. Such governments are the result of necessity, of the sheer imperative of survival. The greatest danger with such a form of government, and its related institutions and laws, is that they can remain after the crisis has abated.' That's one of my fears as well. Bush won't be in office if or when we win the war on terrorism, but what about his successors? "None of Professor Rossiter's observations about our history is more chilling than his finding that each national crisis has left the nation a little less democratic than before." Obviously there's a lot more, but I'm getting hungry.:-)
Ok, it looks like you're a genius on the subject after a bit of googling. Whatever you're reading from, it's wrong, you're picking and choosing and you happened to pick some inaccurate quotes. Lincoln suspended the habeas corpus clause when he had the army arrest some guy running for governor for coming out saying he was a tyrant and stuff. Now that was way back during the civil war, the country was still in it's infancy. Nobody has ever come close to taking advantage of presidential authority as much as Lincoln did. Lincoln violated all sorts of rules during the civil war, he called for a naval blockade before he had even declared war on the confederate army, which is illegal and Bush faced with the same decision to strike at Saddam with a tomahawk before the war had officially started, turned down the opportunity. So the quote that each national crisis leaves us less democratic is complete bullshit. That may be the authors opinion but it's completely baseless and he aught to study history more. Furthermore, if you think the president doesn't have the authority to suspend the constitution during a national emergency, look into the topic of marshal law.
But it would be OK with you, right? Because Bush is doing what he thinks is right in a time of emergency. That's what you've been saying - he can do anything he decides is necessary.
Once again, you must have a really short memory. I said the only thing that really matters is that the President is going with the consensus of congress and public opinion when he makes these decisions. I have repeated public opinion over and over, and really I think congress matters very little, congress right now is a joke, see what people think about wiretapping foreign phone calls, I think this will blow up in the face of anyone trying to use it against the president. No I'm not OK with deporting or otherwise rounding up all muslims in this country. That is a stupid question. You would make a good white-house reporter;) If only the president (or press secretary) could be as blunt as I am.
Whether it was justified before also does not have any bearing on whether it was justified now. That's even if you're correct that it was justifies in the past, which I'm not conceding.
What the hell does that mean? Is that like trying to say that it was justifiable to go to war in Afghanistan after 9/11 but now it isn't and we should be prosecuting people for wanting to go to war? This is an example of the short term memory of the public, that the public opinion can be influenced outside the scope of a certain duration, this is a political tool and I don't see any use argueing with you about this. It's all the same to me because I'm not your average dumb-ass who gets hi
Yeah, and they didn't compare Sybase XE either, which from my experience is as robust as Oracle XE but allows more freedoms than Oracle XE. I use Sybase XE over MySQL for smaller projects because the MySQL query optimizer is a joke, and most "benchmarks" that show MySQL to be faster are doing real basic selects. Try joining three tables with foreign keys that form a triad and see how the databases perform, MySQL will most likely take a few hours while the commercial databases finish in under a second.
Read the whole message before you start thinking out loud. There is no specific wording in regard to what the president can and can't do. It is intentionally vague.
So in order to execute the laws faithfully the President has to break them? Which ones are supposed to be executed and which ones broken? As for the declared emergency, who declares it and how?
The president didn't break any laws. The president has the authority to MAKE LAWS with executive order. LIKE I SAID, the only thing that matters is the opinion of the legislature and public opinion (they are the same for the most part). The president has the ability to, and did declare a national emergency after 9/11. Google "national emergency presidential powers", and more specifically those invoked after 9/11, to see how it's done.
What if the President decided that the best way to protect the US is to intern all US residents of Middle-Eastern descent or appearance? Would that be OK even though it clearly violates the Constitution, beacause of this executive authority he has?
It made more sense during WW2 to intern the Japanese because of the nature of the threat and the strange times, with Hitler and the Nazi's and all. President Bush could TRY to do something like that but he probably wouldn't get very far, that would be ridiculous, Muslims in the U.S. have very little in common with terrorist extremists.
The fact that somethung has been done before does not justify it.
If you knew the whole story you would probably understand why it was justified in each case. Is the NSA going to lobby congress to change the laws if they are doing something top secret? I could think of numerous justifications. People don't give the United States much credit for all the good we do. I have a little puppy that had to have his coat of fur shaved off because it was all matted, so he gets cold and starts to shiver lately. Sometimes I try to wrap a blanket around him but he thinks I am trying to confine him or something, all I'm trying to do is keep him warm, but he doesn't understand.
Yeah that's what Bush says too: it's shameful that someone exposed his violation of the law. Ridiculous.
To sell a book, no less!
I'd rather risk losing my safety than my liberty.
Remember, life then liberty. What good does liberty do if you're dead, or fearing death? Sure the odds are slim that you will be killed by terrorists, but you're essentially saying you want to have freedoms that you will NEVER ENJOY OR BENEFIT FROM PERSONALLY at the potential cost of human lives.
I'm sure the Criteria objects came up when ActiveRecord was being developed. The big Java ORM frameworks, hibernate and torque, both use the Criteria objects and I find them to be cumbersome. Sure it may be "pure" but that is one thing I like about rails is that it doesn't sacrifice usability for philosophical concerns.
Your example of Criteria as good automation is a poor one, and back to the comment I previously made, if you were to start a Criteria class library to solve a supposed problem with your application design, you find the Criteria objects become a maintenance boondogle, while it is already all programmed into the database you have to RE-program it into ruby each time you need to do something new, and for little gain, if any. Your code is essentially the same but without quotes, and it doesn't make sense to use inheritance which would be one of the few advantages of your solution. If you have a certain query class, and you subclass it, how would you modify the criteria it represents? It's all represented in some cryptic internal form. You would be better off working with raw text.
Another case of automation that should be avoided is the user/rbac automation, the subject has come up, I present it as a good example of why automation can be bad if taken to extremes. The user model may have to be changed significantly, and designing a whole slew of code around one specific implementation of it is bound to cause more problems than it solves.
If you're using your Criterian objects as an example of automation that should be there, I think you haven't seen the problems that arise from too much automation. Although I admit, your solution is more elegant than others that, for example, use a class constant to represent the greater-than symbol. One objection I have to yours is that it is hard to differentiate between the database and your code, and unless your goal is totally transparent persistance, then it complicates things. There is a library called DyBase which does pretty good object persistance you may be interested in.
The fact you have HTML in a separate file from the code is not sufficient for full separation. You should be able to entirely drop the web interface and instead write, say, a GTK or commandline app, without changing any of the backend code.
This is a philosophical argument, in practice MVC works well for GUI apps, where the application architecture is all the same, but for a stateless web application you must code everything differently. I'm not going to go into great detail on this, but MVC was originally used in GUI applications with no intention of dropping in a web browser layer. Try writing a web browser layer to interface with GTK treeview and see how useful it is. It may actually make sense if your application is structure with a lot of AJAX components, which is a breakthrough I've just recently started to utilize (web applications that act like GUI apps).
Then you have not seriously used it with other databases. I recommend you hop on #ruby-lang on irc.freenode.net (I'm there as oGMo as well), and ask around for people's experience with Rails and other databases.
I use pg and it works fine. I don't use Oracle but I wouldn't be surprised, most Rails users are probably more interested in an open source database, that may change.
Uh, you have metrics for this where? All of the above modules are much older and more developed than Rails. Rails is the new kid on the block, and it's still got a lot of growing up to do.
Time doesn't mean it's more thoroughly tested. It's the size and strength of the community. It's obvious the ruby community is growing by leaps and bounds because of the number of people interested in rails.
Notice I removed the idiot label. I apologize for thinking you're an idiot.
Slashdot Mirror
Many people have thought to capitalize on these orbiting fuel tanks to turn them into livable space, but I dont think that will be cost effective. I think Bigelow is on the right track with his inflatable habitats. We're a long ways away from orbiting factories capable of melting down this junk. De-orbiting may end up being much, much cheaper, as electric propulsion is already 100x more efficient then chemical propulsion. If it ends up being 1000x more efficient, which is not far-fetched at all, then you may see orbiting trash haulers that can de-orbit hundreds of large objects without refueling.
I think it's just luck that we are getting into these advanced propulsion techniques. If we had to continue with chemical upper-stages indefinately, we would never have the resources to de-orbit anything.
They could take a position on the issue and still leave it to the NRA to lobby for gun rights, but they don't. They have taken the *implied* right to privacy and run with it, what's up with that? Right to privacy is something the courts invented, and doesn't really have much to do with civil liberties. If your parents let you do whatever you want when you were a kid, would you call that freedom? Or would you insist on cutting their eyeballs out too?
The ACLU is mysteriously silent on gun ownership rights. IMO this is a solid argument for them being a leftist organization. It's all you need to know. There is no reason why they shouldn't take a stand, unless they are anti-gun.
As for us being pretty happy over here, you misinterpreted me. I was saying, we have the NAFTA which is the free trade that Europeans enjoy, but for the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It's been an issue for debate, because Mexico doesn't have the same civil rights laws, minimum wages and stuff, and some think free trade is enslaving Mexicans. That is just a small issue, once you go beyond free trade and start standardizing everything, a whole new set of battles erupt.
I don't know what you're talking about with spheres. You leave out half the world, like south america, japan, taiwan, australia. All significant players in the world economy. Fuck unifying everything.
Of course, it's almost certainly going to fail for them.
Create a more hospitable corporate environment in France, or Europe, and maybe companies like Google will plant themselves there. It's so simple, that's been our strategy here in the U.S. all along.
Look at the United States as an example. I'd consider the United States very lucky to have made it through our trial-by-fire. We couldn't have done it without brutal military conflict.
Hopefully the EU can draw a red line in between trade policy and total social integration. Going to be rough sailing for a while, I think.
I think if views like yours, that europe should be "united" under one central power, become popular, then we're in for some serious fighting. We're pretty happy over here in North America, nobody wants to unify anything any further. I see a lot of tension brewing between EU member states, and certainly Turkey and Russia will make matters worse.
I'm familiar with him because I tried to argue his Gaia Hypothesis in a college philosophy class, and I was very easily shot down by just about anybody who argued with me, on multiple levels. It was a very hard thing to argue for.
As a side note, I think living mad-max style would be so cool. It'd give me an excuse to build an underground lair in my backyard, the wife wouldn't appreciate that much right now.
Had this been put in the proper category, like Hardware or Science, I'd say: Great, maybe I could get 10cm accuracy with this, GPS and GPRS combined.
But since it's politics we're discussing here, I say: how long before France, Germany and the U.K. start argueing over trivial issues. This whole European Union thing is too de-centralized, it's only a matter of time before it's torn apart.
I went from perl to ruby, I investigated python, but I chose ruby because I liked the syntax better, and it seemed to have more OO features and I am an OO nut.
It sounds like you're anticipating an attack by Christian fundamentalists. To me this is wackier than thinking god is going to come and destroy Earth, but then again, what do I know.
I got one of those cheap 'ol dell inspiron 8200's and the laptop battery hasn't died, it's 4 or 5 years old now.
You can't expect anybody to take you seriously. Parallel was the high-speed interface of the past, before USB came along.
If you'd been in the industry 20 years, you aught to know what a great deal HP printers are. I bought an HP laserjet 4P at the thrift store for $10 a few months back, they have the drum inside the toner cartridge, so a new toner cartridge is essentially a brand new printer, and I can buy them for $25, among the cheapest in the industry. I expect this printer will go on working for another 10 or 20 years, producing fine quality black and white laser prints. Parallel is the only way to connect to it. CUPS setup is a breeze. Sometimes the old hardware is still the best, like the 3com 10/100 network cards, I buy them by the dozen on ebay.
See I'm shooting for a cool BILLION in maybe a year...
There are other kinds of news? I'll be damned!
Slashdot -- News for liberal nerds, stuff that doesn't matter unless you're liberal...
... or on drugs
Hell just drop one of those 30,000 pound MOAB bombs near anything that lives. Unless you're in a 2 foot thick sphere of iron, the blast will pop your brains out your ears.
Don't ever order the large at coldstone. I normally order a large ice cream but they put about a gallon of ice cream in a cup.
I prefer drinking out of the jug, Carlo Rossi wine jug. If I could lift the damn carboy in my basement I'd drink right out of that!
Good idea. Here's a good one. http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/6216.p df [state.gov] "With the exception of the habeas corpus clause, the Constitution makes no allowance for the suspension of any of its provisions during a national emergency." I recommend reading the rest of that document as well. Here's a good article (that also supports some of what you're saying): http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20020607.html [findlaw.com] '"Constitutional dictatorship is a dangerous thing," Rossiter advises. Such governments are the result of necessity, of the sheer imperative of survival. The greatest danger with such a form of government, and its related institutions and laws, is that they can remain after the crisis has abated.' That's one of my fears as well. Bush won't be in office if or when we win the war on terrorism, but what about his successors? "None of Professor Rossiter's observations about our history is more chilling than his finding that each national crisis has left the nation a little less democratic than before." Obviously there's a lot more, but I'm getting hungry. :-)
Ok, it looks like you're a genius on the subject after a bit of googling. Whatever you're reading from, it's wrong, you're picking and choosing and you happened to pick some inaccurate quotes. Lincoln suspended the habeas corpus clause when he had the army arrest some guy running for governor for coming out saying he was a tyrant and stuff. Now that was way back during the civil war, the country was still in it's infancy. Nobody has ever come close to taking advantage of presidential authority as much as Lincoln did. Lincoln violated all sorts of rules during the civil war, he called for a naval blockade before he had even declared war on the confederate army, which is illegal and Bush faced with the same decision to strike at Saddam with a tomahawk before the war had officially started, turned down the opportunity. So the quote that each national crisis leaves us less democratic is complete bullshit. That may be the authors opinion but it's completely baseless and he aught to study history more. Furthermore, if you think the president doesn't have the authority to suspend the constitution during a national emergency, look into the topic of marshal law.
But it would be OK with you, right? Because Bush is doing what he thinks is right in a time of emergency. That's what you've been saying - he can do anything he decides is necessary.
Once again, you must have a really short memory. I said the only thing that really matters is that the President is going with the consensus of congress and public opinion when he makes these decisions. I have repeated public opinion over and over, and really I think congress matters very little, congress right now is a joke, see what people think about wiretapping foreign phone calls, I think this will blow up in the face of anyone trying to use it against the president. No I'm not OK with deporting or otherwise rounding up all muslims in this country. That is a stupid question. You would make a good white-house reporter ;) If only the president (or press secretary) could be as blunt as I am.
Whether it was justified before also does not have any bearing on whether it was justified now. That's even if you're correct that it was justifies in the past, which I'm not conceding.
What the hell does that mean? Is that like trying to say that it was justifiable to go to war in Afghanistan after 9/11 but now it isn't and we should be prosecuting people for wanting to go to war? This is an example of the short term memory of the public, that the public opinion can be influenced outside the scope of a certain duration, this is a political tool and I don't see any use argueing with you about this. It's all the same to me because I'm not your average dumb-ass who gets hi
Yeah, and they didn't compare Sybase XE either, which from my experience is as robust as Oracle XE but allows more freedoms than Oracle XE. I use Sybase XE over MySQL for smaller projects because the MySQL query optimizer is a joke, and most "benchmarks" that show MySQL to be faster are doing real basic selects. Try joining three tables with foreign keys that form a triad and see how the databases perform, MySQL will most likely take a few hours while the commercial databases finish in under a second.
Implied? That seems like an awfully weak defense.
Read the whole message before you start thinking out loud. There is no specific wording in regard to what the president can and can't do. It is intentionally vague.
So in order to execute the laws faithfully the President has to break them? Which ones are supposed to be executed and which ones broken? As for the declared emergency, who declares it and how?
The president didn't break any laws. The president has the authority to MAKE LAWS with executive order. LIKE I SAID, the only thing that matters is the opinion of the legislature and public opinion (they are the same for the most part). The president has the ability to, and did declare a national emergency after 9/11. Google "national emergency presidential powers", and more specifically those invoked after 9/11, to see how it's done.
What if the President decided that the best way to protect the US is to intern all US residents of Middle-Eastern descent or appearance? Would that be OK even though it clearly violates the Constitution, beacause of this executive authority he has?
It made more sense during WW2 to intern the Japanese because of the nature of the threat and the strange times, with Hitler and the Nazi's and all. President Bush could TRY to do something like that but he probably wouldn't get very far, that would be ridiculous, Muslims in the U.S. have very little in common with terrorist extremists.
The fact that somethung has been done before does not justify it.
If you knew the whole story you would probably understand why it was justified in each case. Is the NSA going to lobby congress to change the laws if they are doing something top secret? I could think of numerous justifications. People don't give the United States much credit for all the good we do. I have a little puppy that had to have his coat of fur shaved off because it was all matted, so he gets cold and starts to shiver lately. Sometimes I try to wrap a blanket around him but he thinks I am trying to confine him or something, all I'm trying to do is keep him warm, but he doesn't understand.
Yeah that's what Bush says too: it's shameful that someone exposed his violation of the law. Ridiculous.
To sell a book, no less!
I'd rather risk losing my safety than my liberty.
Remember, life then liberty. What good does liberty do if you're dead, or fearing death? Sure the odds are slim that you will be killed by terrorists, but you're essentially saying you want to have freedoms that you will NEVER ENJOY OR BENEFIT FROM PERSONALLY at the potential cost of human lives.
Your example of Criteria as good automation is a poor one, and back to the comment I previously made, if you were to start a Criteria class library to solve a supposed problem with your application design, you find the Criteria objects become a maintenance boondogle, while it is already all programmed into the database you have to RE-program it into ruby each time you need to do something new, and for little gain, if any. Your code is essentially the same but without quotes, and it doesn't make sense to use inheritance which would be one of the few advantages of your solution. If you have a certain query class, and you subclass it, how would you modify the criteria it represents? It's all represented in some cryptic internal form. You would be better off working with raw text.
Another case of automation that should be avoided is the user/rbac automation, the subject has come up, I present it as a good example of why automation can be bad if taken to extremes. The user model may have to be changed significantly, and designing a whole slew of code around one specific implementation of it is bound to cause more problems than it solves.
If you're using your Criterian objects as an example of automation that should be there, I think you haven't seen the problems that arise from too much automation. Although I admit, your solution is more elegant than others that, for example, use a class constant to represent the greater-than symbol. One objection I have to yours is that it is hard to differentiate between the database and your code, and unless your goal is totally transparent persistance, then it complicates things. There is a library called DyBase which does pretty good object persistance you may be interested in.
This is a philosophical argument, in practice MVC works well for GUI apps, where the application architecture is all the same, but for a stateless web application you must code everything differently. I'm not going to go into great detail on this, but MVC was originally used in GUI applications with no intention of dropping in a web browser layer. Try writing a web browser layer to interface with GTK treeview and see how useful it is. It may actually make sense if your application is structure with a lot of AJAX components, which is a breakthrough I've just recently started to utilize (web applications that act like GUI apps).
I use pg and it works fine. I don't use Oracle but I wouldn't be surprised, most Rails users are probably more interested in an open source database, that may change.
Time doesn't mean it's more thoroughly tested. It's the size and strength of the community. It's obvious the ruby community is growing by leaps and bounds because of the number of people interested in rails.
Notice I removed the idiot label. I apologize for thinking you're an idiot.