I mean, is there someone out there who can say how many Star Wars games actually got ABOVE average scores?
I can list several off the top of my head that all received very favorable reviews:
Star Wars (Original Arcade Game - vector graphics)
Super Star Wars (SNES)
Super Empire Strikes Back (SNES)
Super Return of the Jedi (SNES)
X-Wing (PC)
TIE Fighter (PC)
Dark Forces (PC)
Dark Forces II (PC)
Rogue Squadron (N64)
Rogue Leader (Rogue Squadron II, GameCube)
Rogue Squadron III - Rebel Strike (GameCube)
Star Wars: Battlefront (PS2, Xbox)
And those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head.
Honestly, the Star Wars video games, as a whole, are far better than almost any other movie-to-game translation. The original arcade game was revolutionary and I still enjoy playing it. Rogue Leader was hailed as far and away the best GameCube launch title and stole the show at E3 2001. X-Wing and TIE Fighter are also two of the best PC games ever.
Now, sure, there's been a lot of average games, too (LEGO Star Wars, as an example), but really, the exposure each crappy game got is far less than the exposure each of the six (now seven) crappy movies got (Episodes I-III, Clone Wars, and the three "remakes" of the original where key ). Each one of those movies caused more outright damage to the Star Wars universe we know and love than all of the bad video games combined.
No, this one must have used an extremely advanced search algorithm, very smartly removing unlikely branches of the search.
Unfortunately we're stuck with algorithmically searching for the right move until we have sufficiently large quantum computers, that they can run a go algorithm and do it all at once.
Indeed. Mathematically, in Go, you have a ridiculous number of possible moves if you look even five moves into the future, since you can move to any adjacent spot on the board. Quite frankly, you cannot brute force it and determine a "winning" solution.
As a college project for an AI class a few years ago, we had a Go artificial intelligence competition. It was fascinating to me to attempt to solve such an obviously difficult mathematical problem. As most computer geeks know, usually game algorithms look into the future down the move tree and assign values to each board state based on how "good" it is for the computer player. They then move to the square that has the best eventual outcome.
Since you can really only look a few moves into the future because of the exponential nature of the move tree, the challenge is in assigning a meaningful value to the evaluated board state in the future, and then based off that value, deciding whether to pursue further down that move tree or to abort since it's not likely to have a "winning" state.
I'd argue that the best human Go players (and Chess players, and other strategy game players) are basically doing the same thing. The advantage is that human Go players are much, much, much better at determining how advantageous a given board state is (including their previous knowledge of what those board states are likely to end up as), so they have a much, much, much smaller tree of possible board states to evaluate and therefore can "see" much farther into the future.
So, in a sense, the original poster is right, even if it was by accident.:) We do need a better algorithm. The problem lies in coming up with an algorithm that can determine (with precision and accuracy) how likely a given board state is to lead to victory. That is a very hard thing to do.
After all, even the best Go AI players that we wrote in college were generally unable to beat human players who had only a basic understanding of the rules.
Perhaps one day we'll see quantum computers, and we'll see them be able to solve these types of problems. But then, of course, they'll probably be really good at factoring prime numbers, too, which means we can kiss our encryption goodbye.:)
No, actually I wouldn't. This is/. so I'll make the tech analogy: If a police officer asked me to hand him over the e-mails of one of my users and told me that he had the "proper paperwork taken care of" I would ask him to produce said paperwork. If said paperwork did not consist of a legal warrant signed by a judge authorizing the seizure of my users files I would deny his request.
You wouldn't because you have a good grasp of the law. However, when a company sends you a Cease and Desist letter -- even if they're legally wrong to do so -- I bet you'd most likely obey to avoid the risk of an expensive lawsuit. Maybe you wouldn't -- but most people would.
The fiduciary responsibility to ones shareholders does not override the responsibility to follow the law.
Obviously. And they clearly need to be less cavalier with their customer data and phone conversations and they should be legally responsible for their actions.
However, my only point is that like any good crime fighter, we need to focus on the ringleader (the Bush Administration), not the mindless thugs who obeyed orders (the telecoms).
Just try thinking of it from the company's point of view. The government orders them to hand over records. The government obviously shows a disdain for the constitution and considers anyone who stands in their way to be terrorist accomplices. What's going to happen to you when you say 'No'?
I completely agree. Granted, these are huge telecoms, but they still have a responsibility to their shareholders. An expensive legal battle and being labeled as a terrorist by the government after 9/11 was definitely not in the best interest of the share holders.
If a police officer asks you to do something, saying he has the proper paperwork taken care of, you'll most likely do it. It's the same thing with the telecoms.
The Bush Administration, and anyone else who skirted FISA, are the real villains here. The telecoms shouldn't get immunity, necessarily, but we should focus our efforts on the people IN POWER who decided to break the law.
Interestingly, while NIMBYs are stopping a lot of alternative energy sources, it's also the existing energy industry. For example, North Dakota is so rich with the right kind of wind for wind power (strong, steady) that you can build very profitable wind farms. It's considered the Middle East of wind power.
Unfortunately, the state government is in the pocket of the coal industry, which is also very big in ND. Wind farms put coal workers out of jobs. So they don't let many wind farms get built and they don't give the infrastructure necessary to do so (such as a way to tap in to the power grid).
Right now, if you have the cash, the location, and the government allows it, you can make a lot of money (passive income, even) building and running wind turbines. The key is getting the government to cooperate.
Initially it was during the SDK announcement. A quick Google search brings up this link. Recently, there have been sightings of the IM client as well.
Ask yourself, why would Apple allow 3rd party instant messaging apps when they have a very good one themselves that they could easily port to the iPhone.
Oh, I don't know, to sell more iPhones? More people will buy them if they are more useful. Then AT&T is getting an extra $20 or $30 per month (depending on 3G) rather than the $5/$10 per month for unlimited SMS on existing phones.
Why would the price of SMS go UP when the cost of everything else related to cellphones has gone down? Compared to a few years ago, you can get more minutes, more features, better phones, etc. for the same or better prices... except SMS.
Exactly. The issue is that the providers have found a useful tool - SMS - that they can milk for money until it becomes completely obsolete.
Personally, I very rarely use SMS, and with my iPhone I'll be using instant messaging and email to communicate with people. Of course, that plan costs $20 or $30 per month, so they're still getting their money... but the cost per KB is a lot lower.
I'd like to politely disagree on your point that this is only for longtime fans. I'm in the middle of this group - I beat Metal Gear Solid several times, but I never owned a PS2, so I never played MGS2/MGS3/Metal Gear Acid/Metal Gear Portable Ops/etc.
I had never seen about half of the main characters in MGS4. (To avoid spoilers, I won't name specifics.) I just finished the game yesterday, and honestly I was completely blown away. The game has many references back to previous MGS games, and I thought they did a wonderful job explaining the back story for many of the key plot points. I'd bet that a first timer would pick up the plot just fine, although most likely they would miss some of the inside jokes and references.
I bought MGS4 and was expecting a good game, but still, I was totally blown away. Absolutely everything in this game is wonderful. In my mind, the only downside is the Michael Bay-esque product placement (Apple iMacs & iPods, Triumph motorcycles, Regain energy drinks, etc). It stood out in a bad way.
Quite simply, this is a must-buy for everyone who owns a PS3, not just long time fans. You might miss some of the inside jokes and references, but the central themes of the story - age, war, technology, morality, individuality, freedom - are universally appealing and are told in a brilliant manner.
MGS4 is one of the best games of all time, and I can honestly say that a new player would think that, too.
Is it the customer's data (and how do you plan to keep one customer out of another competitor's data of they both have this access?) in the first place and you're just storing it for them? If so, then there's a strong case that they should be allowed access to their own data.
In many cases, this isn't valid. If your database contains sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, email addresses, or passwords (even if they are encrypted), allowing a user access to it will give them the ability to either view the information or hack your encryption scheme and view the sensitive data.
Granting users access to a database is a request. Treat it like any other request. Some of the costs/issues that I can see right off the bat:
New hardware for replicating data to a new optimized DB
New process to scrub sensitive data
Resource restrictions for user so they can't kill the box
The simple fact that the user most likely doesn't understand the schema design, so their queries are not likely to be accurate (for example, they may not know to exclude rows with ACTIVE = 0)
If a schema change occurs, their queries will no longer work
Generally speaking, these types of requests - where the user defines the solution with no technical consultation - end up with a result that is unsatisfactory for them and for IS. Most likely they're trying to solve a problem but you don't know what that problem is.
You need to meet with the person requesting this and find out the root cause of what they're trying to solve and present a solution. Read only access might be the best solution, but most likely it is not.
And the irony, at least in my area, is that our electricity is generated using petroleum.
That's a good point, but I'd like to see some efficiency and pollution comparisons. The petroleum generator is going to be a hell of a lot more efficient than your internal combustion engine, but it also has to travel some distance, charge a battery, and then power an electric motor.
The question is this: Does the additional environmental impact of the copious battery waste offset any potential efficiency gains? I doubt it, especially in your case where petroleum is being used to generate the power.
I went into the Air Force after I graduated, and since then, only one employer was impressed by the fact that I graduated from Rensselaer.
This is a good point. I graduated five years ago from a smaller "state" school that isn't highly regarded in CS. The hardest part was finding a job right out of school - it took two months, but I eventually found one I liked.
Now that I have significant experience, finding jobs has become much, much easier, and the "EDUCATION" part of my resume becomes smaller and less important.
The interesting thing is that the smaller school was the second one I attended. I first attended a large out of state school and hated it - the smaller environment and personal interaction with professors made a big difference.
You can always transfer if you don't like where you ended up.
Re:Do you really want to give your code to Google?
on
Google Previews App Engine
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Struts 1/Velocity smokes any other web-application framework out there.
Really? You actually LIKE Struts? You have to be kidding me. Your statement may have been true 5 years ago but most of the Java industry has tried to move past Struts (including its author) and into something more testable and less verbose. Seriously, have you actually ever unit tested Struts code?
Your code sucks.
I love how this is the default answer. Sigh. A lot goes into supporting a million concurrent users besides "good code". Often times, using good design patterns can slightly impact performance but it gets you increased maintainability. If you really want speed, why not just write your whole web app as a CGI using C/C++? I bet that would be a heck of a lot 'faster' than anything running in bytecode.
There are crappy programmers out there, sure, and crappy platforms. However, building an app in PHP or Ruby or Python is so much faster than building in J2EE that it is a natural choice for those of us low on programmer budgets. Then, when the idea takes off, you can address scalability concerns with a reverse proxy and a few more boxes. The popular app platforms of today all have advantages, and we developers choose the best tool for the task at hand. Struts is not always better than Rails, for example. They each have their place (and Struts' happens to be, generally, on legacy apps.)
Yeah, JRuby does that, but you still have to learn Ruby. That means your existing development staff needs significant training. So it's still a big change.
On a side note - you're using NetBeans?! Everyone I know uses Eclipse and/or IntelliJ.
Wow. Did you bother asking them what they would support before writing the application? That seems like the better approach to me.
If they're only willing to support a specific language, then you need to work in their requirement (generally speaking).
Re:Good old RubyOnRails
on
Advanced Rails
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Honestly, as a J2EE developer who is using Rails to develop an application for personal use, I think you're totally right. Rails isn't perfect but it has some serious advantages. The scary part for businesses is that they can't use it in conjunction with their existing J2EE developers and infrastructure (e.g. App server).
This is where Groovy and Grails comes in. I just attended a conference with a bunch of Java developers and the Groovy/Grails sessions were all packed, and they were the talk of the show. Everyone was really excited about it.
It's amazing how two small things - making it syntactically similar to Java and making it use existing J2EE infrastructure - all of the sudden makes Java developers think it's the greatest thing in the world.
Re:has anyone really gotten RoR to scale?
on
Advanced Rails
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· Score: 1
that SDK says your app can't run in the background.
That is not entirely true. What you're referring to is a "design guideline" and not explicity denied (except later when they state that the app should follow them).
Plenty of 3rd party apps already announced - e.g. AIM - clearly need to run in the background to be effective. In addition, it is easily possible to write an app that will run in the background.
My guess is that Apple is just trying to prevent too many apps from staying open at once, thus killing your RAM usage. I am sure there will be some 3rd party apps that will run in the background.
The "No Competing Browsers" I understand as well. You see, on the iPhone, the browser really isn't ordinary, but the keys to the kingdom of usability and utility. Apple wanting to protect that makes sense.
From TFA, Apple never said "no competing browsers" specifically. Their verbiage is, to me, intended to stop things like Installer.app from being available in the App Store. That way they can protect the integrity of their network.
TFA is assuming that Opera and Firefox fall under the same category as Installer.app because they "download and interpret" code (e.g. JavaScript and Plugins). TFS implies that Apple is explicitly disallowing competition to Safari, which is totally false.
Fortunately for you, Apple announced that Enterprise apps will have a completely different distribution method. You'll be able to deploy apps to your phones without any third party intermediary.
Really you should consider signing up for the Enterprise beta... I think you'd be impressed.
It's widely known that gravity is the weakest of the four major forces (strong nuclear, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and gravity). And, presumably, gravity is the only thing that's holding the Virgo supercluster together.
However, the Virgo supercluster has a whole lot of mass and a whole lot of gravity - enough to keep those galaxies in a cluster. Gravity is all that's keeping our solar system and our galaxy together, and they're considered considered structures in TFS.
Therefore, the Virgo supercluster should be considered a structure, and (unsurprisingly) TFS is incorrect.
You're half right - the Columbia fuel tank example is correct. The hydrazine fuel tank is highly insulated so it had a high chance of making it down to Earth intact. The chance of it killing someone (assuming a random distribution) is ob viously low, but two football fields of toxic hydrazine is not something to scoff at. Imagine the PR disaster if that landed in China!
The Navy had 200 of the most highly regarded experts in the field working on modifying the Aegis missile for this purpose and they were concerned whether or not they could make it in time. In addition, the Aegis missile is not capable of reaching a working satellite in normal orbit. The only reason it worked was because the satellite was in such a low orbit.
Sure, it's theoretically possible the government used this as a test for a Star Wars II: Attack of the Cloned Missiles Against Satellites program. However, that has about as much chance of being true as that horrible movie did of winning an Oscar for best picture. We already proved to the world (and "tested") that we can destroy a satellite in 1989 using a fighter jet and a modified air-to-air missile.
Normally I have sympathy for the tinfoil hat viewpoints espoused here on/. But let's be realistic - in all remotely fathomable likelihood, this was only an attempt to preserve human life.
Slashdot Mirror
I can list several off the top of my head that all received very favorable reviews:
And those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head.
Honestly, the Star Wars video games, as a whole, are far better than almost any other movie-to-game translation. The original arcade game was revolutionary and I still enjoy playing it. Rogue Leader was hailed as far and away the best GameCube launch title and stole the show at E3 2001. X-Wing and TIE Fighter are also two of the best PC games ever.
Now, sure, there's been a lot of average games, too (LEGO Star Wars, as an example), but really, the exposure each crappy game got is far less than the exposure each of the six (now seven) crappy movies got (Episodes I-III, Clone Wars, and the three "remakes" of the original where key ). Each one of those movies caused more outright damage to the Star Wars universe we know and love than all of the bad video games combined.
No, this one must have used an extremely advanced search algorithm, very smartly removing unlikely branches of the search.
:) We do need a better algorithm. The problem lies in coming up with an algorithm that can determine (with precision and accuracy) how likely a given board state is to lead to victory. That is a very hard thing to do.
:)
Unfortunately we're stuck with algorithmically searching for the right move until we have sufficiently large quantum computers, that they can run a go algorithm and do it all at once.
Indeed. Mathematically, in Go, you have a ridiculous number of possible moves if you look even five moves into the future, since you can move to any adjacent spot on the board. Quite frankly, you cannot brute force it and determine a "winning" solution.
As a college project for an AI class a few years ago, we had a Go artificial intelligence competition. It was fascinating to me to attempt to solve such an obviously difficult mathematical problem. As most computer geeks know, usually game algorithms look into the future down the move tree and assign values to each board state based on how "good" it is for the computer player. They then move to the square that has the best eventual outcome.
Since you can really only look a few moves into the future because of the exponential nature of the move tree, the challenge is in assigning a meaningful value to the evaluated board state in the future, and then based off that value, deciding whether to pursue further down that move tree or to abort since it's not likely to have a "winning" state.
I'd argue that the best human Go players (and Chess players, and other strategy game players) are basically doing the same thing. The advantage is that human Go players are much, much, much better at determining how advantageous a given board state is (including their previous knowledge of what those board states are likely to end up as), so they have a much, much, much smaller tree of possible board states to evaluate and therefore can "see" much farther into the future.
So, in a sense, the original poster is right, even if it was by accident.
After all, even the best Go AI players that we wrote in college were generally unable to beat human players who had only a basic understanding of the rules.
Perhaps one day we'll see quantum computers, and we'll see them be able to solve these types of problems. But then, of course, they'll probably be really good at factoring prime numbers, too, which means we can kiss our encryption goodbye.
No, actually I wouldn't. This is /. so I'll make the tech analogy: If a police officer asked me to hand him over the e-mails of one of my users and told me that he had the "proper paperwork taken care of" I would ask him to produce said paperwork. If said paperwork did not consist of a legal warrant signed by a judge authorizing the seizure of my users files I would deny his request.
You wouldn't because you have a good grasp of the law. However, when a company sends you a Cease and Desist letter -- even if they're legally wrong to do so -- I bet you'd most likely obey to avoid the risk of an expensive lawsuit. Maybe you wouldn't -- but most people would.
The fiduciary responsibility to ones shareholders does not override the responsibility to follow the law.
Obviously. And they clearly need to be less cavalier with their customer data and phone conversations and they should be legally responsible for their actions.
However, my only point is that like any good crime fighter, we need to focus on the ringleader (the Bush Administration), not the mindless thugs who obeyed orders (the telecoms).
Just try thinking of it from the company's point of view. The government orders them to hand over records. The government obviously shows a disdain for the constitution and considers anyone who stands in their way to be terrorist accomplices. What's going to happen to you when you say 'No'?
I completely agree. Granted, these are huge telecoms, but they still have a responsibility to their shareholders. An expensive legal battle and being labeled as a terrorist by the government after 9/11 was definitely not in the best interest of the share holders.
If a police officer asks you to do something, saying he has the proper paperwork taken care of, you'll most likely do it. It's the same thing with the telecoms.
The Bush Administration, and anyone else who skirted FISA, are the real villains here. The telecoms shouldn't get immunity, necessarily, but we should focus our efforts on the people IN POWER who decided to break the law.
Fantastic post. You're exactly right.
Interestingly, while NIMBYs are stopping a lot of alternative energy sources, it's also the existing energy industry. For example, North Dakota is so rich with the right kind of wind for wind power (strong, steady) that you can build very profitable wind farms. It's considered the Middle East of wind power.
Unfortunately, the state government is in the pocket of the coal industry, which is also very big in ND. Wind farms put coal workers out of jobs. So they don't let many wind farms get built and they don't give the infrastructure necessary to do so (such as a way to tap in to the power grid).
Right now, if you have the cash, the location, and the government allows it, you can make a lot of money (passive income, even) building and running wind turbines. The key is getting the government to cooperate.
Instant messaging? When did Apple announce this?
Initially it was during the SDK announcement. A quick Google search brings up this link. Recently, there have been sightings of the IM client as well.
Ask yourself, why would Apple allow 3rd party instant messaging apps when they have a very good one themselves that they could easily port to the iPhone.
Oh, I don't know, to sell more iPhones? More people will buy them if they are more useful. Then AT&T is getting an extra $20 or $30 per month (depending on 3G) rather than the $5/$10 per month for unlimited SMS on existing phones.
Exactly. The issue is that the providers have found a useful tool - SMS - that they can milk for money until it becomes completely obsolete.
Personally, I very rarely use SMS, and with my iPhone I'll be using instant messaging and email to communicate with people. Of course, that plan costs $20 or $30 per month, so they're still getting their money... but the cost per KB is a lot lower.
I'd like to politely disagree on your point that this is only for longtime fans. I'm in the middle of this group - I beat Metal Gear Solid several times, but I never owned a PS2, so I never played MGS2/MGS3/Metal Gear Acid/Metal Gear Portable Ops/etc.
I had never seen about half of the main characters in MGS4. (To avoid spoilers, I won't name specifics.) I just finished the game yesterday, and honestly I was completely blown away. The game has many references back to previous MGS games, and I thought they did a wonderful job explaining the back story for many of the key plot points. I'd bet that a first timer would pick up the plot just fine, although most likely they would miss some of the inside jokes and references.
I bought MGS4 and was expecting a good game, but still, I was totally blown away. Absolutely everything in this game is wonderful. In my mind, the only downside is the Michael Bay-esque product placement (Apple iMacs & iPods, Triumph motorcycles, Regain energy drinks, etc). It stood out in a bad way.
Quite simply, this is a must-buy for everyone who owns a PS3, not just long time fans. You might miss some of the inside jokes and references, but the central themes of the story - age, war, technology, morality, individuality, freedom - are universally appealing and are told in a brilliant manner.
MGS4 is one of the best games of all time, and I can honestly say that a new player would think that, too.
Like, for example, the Bearded Lady? You really are a progressive!
In many cases, this isn't valid. If your database contains sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, email addresses, or passwords (even if they are encrypted), allowing a user access to it will give them the ability to either view the information or hack your encryption scheme and view the sensitive data.
Granting users access to a database is a request. Treat it like any other request. Some of the costs/issues that I can see right off the bat:
- New hardware for replicating data to a new optimized DB
- New process to scrub sensitive data
- Resource restrictions for user so they can't kill the box
- The simple fact that the user most likely doesn't understand the schema design, so their queries are not likely to be accurate (for example, they may not know to exclude rows with ACTIVE = 0)
- If a schema change occurs, their queries will no longer work
Generally speaking, these types of requests - where the user defines the solution with no technical consultation - end up with a result that is unsatisfactory for them and for IS. Most likely they're trying to solve a problem but you don't know what that problem is.You need to meet with the person requesting this and find out the root cause of what they're trying to solve and present a solution. Read only access might be the best solution, but most likely it is not.
And the irony, at least in my area, is that our electricity is generated using petroleum.
That's a good point, but I'd like to see some efficiency and pollution comparisons. The petroleum generator is going to be a hell of a lot more efficient than your internal combustion engine, but it also has to travel some distance, charge a battery, and then power an electric motor.
The question is this: Does the additional environmental impact of the copious battery waste offset any potential efficiency gains? I doubt it, especially in your case where petroleum is being used to generate the power.
I went into the Air Force after I graduated, and since then, only one employer was impressed by the fact that I graduated from Rensselaer.
This is a good point. I graduated five years ago from a smaller "state" school that isn't highly regarded in CS. The hardest part was finding a job right out of school - it took two months, but I eventually found one I liked. Now that I have significant experience, finding jobs has become much, much easier, and the "EDUCATION" part of my resume becomes smaller and less important.
The interesting thing is that the smaller school was the second one I attended. I first attended a large out of state school and hated it - the smaller environment and personal interaction with professors made a big difference.
You can always transfer if you don't like where you ended up.
Struts 1/Velocity smokes any other web-application framework out there.
Really? You actually LIKE Struts? You have to be kidding me. Your statement may have been true 5 years ago but most of the Java industry has tried to move past Struts (including its author) and into something more testable and less verbose. Seriously, have you actually ever unit tested Struts code?
Your code sucks.
I love how this is the default answer. Sigh. A lot goes into supporting a million concurrent users besides "good code". Often times, using good design patterns can slightly impact performance but it gets you increased maintainability. If you really want speed, why not just write your whole web app as a CGI using C/C++? I bet that would be a heck of a lot 'faster' than anything running in bytecode.
There are crappy programmers out there, sure, and crappy platforms. However, building an app in PHP or Ruby or Python is so much faster than building in J2EE that it is a natural choice for those of us low on programmer budgets. Then, when the idea takes off, you can address scalability concerns with a reverse proxy and a few more boxes. The popular app platforms of today all have advantages, and we developers choose the best tool for the task at hand. Struts is not always better than Rails, for example. They each have their place (and Struts' happens to be, generally, on legacy apps.)
Yeah, JRuby does that, but you still have to learn Ruby. That means your existing development staff needs significant training. So it's still a big change.
On a side note - you're using NetBeans?! Everyone I know uses Eclipse and/or IntelliJ.
What if the IT department was doing code-level support and their staff only was trained in supporting a specific language and infrastructure?
I agree with you in principle, but it sounds like in the original comment that there was no communication between IT and the developer in question.
Wow. Did you bother asking them what they would support before writing the application? That seems like the better approach to me.
If they're only willing to support a specific language, then you need to work in their requirement (generally speaking).
Honestly, as a J2EE developer who is using Rails to develop an application for personal use, I think you're totally right. Rails isn't perfect but it has some serious advantages. The scary part for businesses is that they can't use it in conjunction with their existing J2EE developers and infrastructure (e.g. App server).
This is where Groovy and Grails comes in. I just attended a conference with a bunch of Java developers and the Groovy/Grails sessions were all packed, and they were the talk of the show. Everyone was really excited about it.
It's amazing how two small things - making it syntactically similar to Java and making it use existing J2EE infrastructure - all of the sudden makes Java developers think it's the greatest thing in the world.
Twitter uses RoR, so yes, it is possible.
that SDK says your app can't run in the background.
That is not entirely true. What you're referring to is a "design guideline" and not explicity denied (except later when they state that the app should follow them).
Plenty of 3rd party apps already announced - e.g. AIM - clearly need to run in the background to be effective. In addition, it is easily possible to write an app that will run in the background.
My guess is that Apple is just trying to prevent too many apps from staying open at once, thus killing your RAM usage. I am sure there will be some 3rd party apps that will run in the background.
The "No Competing Browsers" I understand as well. You see, on the iPhone, the browser really isn't ordinary, but the keys to the kingdom of usability and utility. Apple wanting to protect that makes sense.
From TFA, Apple never said "no competing browsers" specifically. Their verbiage is, to me, intended to stop things like Installer.app from being available in the App Store. That way they can protect the integrity of their network.
TFA is assuming that Opera and Firefox fall under the same category as Installer.app because they "download and interpret" code (e.g. JavaScript and Plugins). TFS implies that Apple is explicitly disallowing competition to Safari, which is totally false.
Fortunately for you, Apple announced that Enterprise apps will have a completely different distribution method. You'll be able to deploy apps to your phones without any third party intermediary.
Really you should consider signing up for the Enterprise beta... I think you'd be impressed.
It's widely known that gravity is the weakest of the four major forces (strong nuclear, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and gravity). And, presumably, gravity is the only thing that's holding the Virgo supercluster together.
However, the Virgo supercluster has a whole lot of mass and a whole lot of gravity - enough to keep those galaxies in a cluster. Gravity is all that's keeping our solar system and our galaxy together, and they're considered considered structures in TFS.
Therefore, the Virgo supercluster should be considered a structure, and (unsurprisingly) TFS is incorrect.
There really isn't any valid argument for not trying this operation.
The only valid argument is whether or not it was worth $60 million for #1-#4 on your list. Clearly, our government thought that was the case.
That kinetic interceptor looks suspiciously similar to the garbage disposal I put in this weekend.
Time to go buy some In-Sink-Er-Ator stock!
You're half right - the Columbia fuel tank example is correct. The hydrazine fuel tank is highly insulated so it had a high chance of making it down to Earth intact. The chance of it killing someone (assuming a random distribution) is ob viously low, but two football fields of toxic hydrazine is not something to scoff at. Imagine the PR disaster if that landed in China!
/. But let's be realistic - in all remotely fathomable likelihood, this was only an attempt to preserve human life.
The Navy had 200 of the most highly regarded experts in the field working on modifying the Aegis missile for this purpose and they were concerned whether or not they could make it in time. In addition, the Aegis missile is not capable of reaching a working satellite in normal orbit. The only reason it worked was because the satellite was in such a low orbit.
Sure, it's theoretically possible the government used this as a test for a Star Wars II: Attack of the Cloned Missiles Against Satellites program. However, that has about as much chance of being true as that horrible movie did of winning an Oscar for best picture. We already proved to the world (and "tested") that we can destroy a satellite in 1989 using a fighter jet and a modified air-to-air missile.
Normally I have sympathy for the tinfoil hat viewpoints espoused here on