...must be laughing right now over another narrow escape.

Agile is the interruptor the business side has always wanted: a leash for engineers.

But it gets much abused, resulting in needless rewrites, and scattered or stunted architectures - seen it at three tech-centric companies now.

"Refactor" is a banished term in Agileland. And you never really get to refactor, to design patterns or anything else, because you're too busy replacing hand-wired code to fit the latest redesign or business strategy change.

Tech management everywhere have lost their collective spines, caving in to "get it done cheaply and quickly" every time. Even when the resources are available to develop maintainable, well-thought-out code.

NYT is protected: see the Pentagon Papers case.

Spying to steal secrets, and publishing secrets as a newspaper, are considered two entirely different actions by the law. One is protected by the First Amendment and SCOTUS case law, while the other is espionage.

I've seen 50-68% disapproval of Wikileaks - where'd you get this 80% figure? Perhaps you inverted a 20% *approval* rating? Not the same thing, if so.

As for NYT and other outlets disseminating the cables, that action was and is protected by Supreme Court precedent (see the Pentagon Papers case) under First Amendment doctrine.

Other than blood-thirsty right-wingers and the current DOJ, the most reaction I've seen to the cables is a collective *shrug*.

Not a big deal - they've just confirmed what we knew all along:
- That third world govts are corrupt
- That the U.S. gov't goes to bat for big scumbag corps
- That big scumbag corps will do anything to make money - like testing experimental drugs on African children, then using blackmail to worm their way out of trouble (I'm lookin' at *you*, Pfizer)

Apple can't obtain or act on search warrants. Apple can't charge or prosecute anyone for a crime.

Christ, is grammar flaming coming back? Sigh.. that's so 1990s, can't believe this got modded up.

Of course Apple is not a prosecuting agency (as the GP author no doubt understands), but you can be sure that state/county prosecutors are real tight with Apple's attorneys.

Apple have sworn out *many* complaints against bloggers and websites in the past, and will very likely continue to do so. That they don't "charge or prosecute" anyone doesn't discount the fact that they do in fact cause such actions to be taken on their behalf.

The lack of even the most basic knowledge of how our system of justice works is just appalling.

Nice pomposity there, newfag.

Historically, whenever a journalist has been jailed for not ratting out a source, the cops have pulled all their stuff right off their desks

I remember that movie! Where the cop break's the reporter's fingers one-by-one, til he tells him the source? "I make the laws in this town, mister." Friggin' awesome! 1938, right? Caught it on UHF when I was a teen.

There is no legal exemption just because you happen to work for a media outlet.

I know! Stupid reporters ain't got no rights, and it serves 'em right - who do they think they are, challenging the all-powerful gubbermint?!

disclaimer: sitting in a newspaper office right now

Me too! Just for fun, let's burn the printing presses! Then we'll set fire to the Reichstag! (Psst! Pass me the bourbon)

Maybe I've installed more apps w/background process than most Android users... the iPhone just doesn't allow background processes the way Android does. Android allows you to declare a background process, and it can spawn threads and basically keep running til the battery runs dry. The foreground, UI-attached process isn't allowed to hog the CPU - that's when you get the wait/kill dialog.

There's a kind of background update feature available on iPhone, but it doesn't run constantly the way some Android apps do. I'm not sure but think it's a kind of push notification, queuing updates until your mail or news or stock quote app is running again.

I suggest installing a task manager app on your HTC (search the Market for "task manager".) A decent one will list all apps with declared background processes... then you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about.

I've been developing for Blackberry and Android for the last two years, and Java for the last 15. I've had access to nearly every Android and Blackberry phone available in the U.S., and often take them home for testing. I also own an iPod Touch.

Here's why iPhone is a better experience than Android: Single-tasking. The UI is responsive and smooth. That's because the currently-running app has most of the CPU and GPU available to it.

Not so with Android. Until Nexus One (and Droid, to an extent), pretty much all Android phones have been a rough experience.

Press a UI control, and you expect your $500 smartphone to respond right away, correct? With Android phones, sometimes you wait seconds for a response! Worst case, the infamous "Kill or Wait" dialog appears, where you're given the opportunity to kill the foreground app!! The one you're waiting on to respond to your last click.

That's not just lame, it's stupid. At the very least, Android should nice up the foreground app, so it can be responsive to the user, right?

As an Android developer, I *HATE* that my app is at the mercy of whatever shitty-assed code is running in a background process, hogging up the CPU with its poor efficiency.

Also, the Android and Blackberry platforms encourage the use of default UI components, which are quite basic in appearance and behavior. And with Android, the API has been a moving target, with whole classes deprecated, events and handlers moved around ... very annoying. And don't let's not get into Blackberry, where nothing new has happened since I've been developing for it ... e.g. the latest BB phones have accelerated graphics hardware, but where's the OpenGL ES Java bindings?? Nowhere to be found (until very recently.)

In the meantime, I very much enjoy games and apps on the iPod Touch, and make my calls from a Nexus One. Here's hoping the hardware catches up to Android's prodigious CPU needs sometime soon.

That's an apple-oranges comparison. The video shows a GE-Honda HF120 turbine, a 2,000 lb two-stage, two-compressor turbofan designed for the light jet market. A very different design from...

Commercial airline engines are rated from 14,000 (old-school Boeing 737) to over 100,000 (Boeing 777) pounds.

Aside from that, the difference in scale of a fine volcanic ash particle compared with a grain of sand determines the melt rate. Volcanic ash passing through a turbine is essentially a fluid, one that melts at around 1000 C. Aggregate sand (in the video) melt between 1500-1700 C.

Turbofan combustion chambers burn at between 1500-2000 C. Grains of sand are too thick to melt, given the airflow rate through an engine (250-1400 mph.)

So far nobody has died because of the nuclear industry's negligence.

Chernobyl killed 31, with another 4,000 cancer deaths expected. Maybe you meant the American nuclear industry?

The jist of the issue is true, however: the NRC has turned into a rubber-stamp machine, in favor of the industry. That's probably the only way that many of the aging power plants will get recertified (remember, few reactors have been built in the last 20 years.)

Some plants have serious issues, for example the fire safety problem at Indian Point.

The NRC waived their own requirement that the conduit connecting the control room with the reactors be able to withstand fire for one hour. Instead, they granted an exemption to Indian Point's operator, allowing a conduit rated at only 24 minutes.

What's the problem, you say? Burning through that conduit means meltdown.

I agree that there should be more research dollars spent on nuclear, but the NRC and the industry must play it straight. No risking lives.

Excellent, this will be more fodder for the "electromagnetic harassment" nutters!