4chan's comment system is awful. I still don't really understand how it works. It seems like they could improve the design and pipe in new comments as they arrive, thus negating all the extra server load caused by browser extensions refreshing every second.
Of course, I have no experience dealing with ~1B page views/month.
What's not to understand? It's so simplistic it can't be simplier.
You just have a thread with no hierarchy (except for the opening post). You can "reply" on some post in some thread, but the "reply" is just marked by post ID.
Install the mentioned 4chanx extension. Hovering a quoted post ID will actually show the post, and you can also see/expand replies to a post in the top right.
Like the 20th century, with IBM and Ma Bell. Or else every industry will be just like the current monopoly and duopoly dominated electric utility, POTS phone service, and ISP industries. Once a company has staked a place in a new industry, every one else will barred from competing.
That's BTW an old Russian idea. The key concept of the space elevator appeared in 1895 when Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris to consider a tower that reached all the way into space, built from the ground up to an altitude of 35,790 kilometers (22,238 mi) above sea level (geostationary orbit).[6] He noted that a "celestial castle" at the top of such a spindle-shaped cable would have the "castle" orbiting Earth in a geostationary orbit (i.e. the castle would remain over the same spot on Earth's surface). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Well, yes, but with a liberal interpretation of the word "cruise", that would be 100% accurate. Indians were indeed the first to employ self-propelled artillery in a truly effective military capacity. Probably not in Vedic days, but certainly against the British: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysorean_rockets.
It's interesting to note that much of the tradition of western rocketry is descended from captured and reverse-engineered Mysorean rockets. And most of the rest of the western tradition of rocketry is descended from half-crazed Russian mystics and Egyptian ceremonial magicians. But that's another story entirely...
Did you read the Wikipedia article they linked to? It was experience fighting against rockets in India that led the British to develop the Congrave Rocket, which was made famous in the "Rocket's Red Glare" line in the US National Anthem. Britain might have had military rockets at some point before that, but they hadn't used them for at least a century before that point.
India wasn't as backwards as you might suppose, there were lots of areas of technology they were very good at such as chemistry and metalurgy. After the Battle of Plassey, I believe, the British captures a number of Indian cannons and found that they were better than the guns that the British had. Of course, they all had different bores and it was too logistically difficult to keep that many different kinds of ammunition, so the British just destroyed them. Which, I think, goes a long way towards illustrating the actual reasons the British ended up ruling India.
So long as you don't require the tether to be stationary and to meet up with a stationary point on the ground, you can have a space elevator with materials we already have.
> That made no sense. How you can have a space elevator if it's not geo-stationary?
Apparently, you didn't read. The tether rendezvous is with a pod carried by a hypersonic spaceplane, not the ground. The tether can be spun, to make the ground speed of the tether-end even slower. Rendezvous slows down the spinning tether and lowers its orbit, but it can be boosted between rendezvous using very high ISP motors like ion thrusters, which dramatically lowers the amount of fuel to be lifted.
You didn't actually say what materials are strong enough for this (that we can actually produce without bankrupting whole countries).
Spectra and Kevlar have the required tensile strength for many proposed configurations. There is the added complication of dealing with ions, free radicals, and radiation, however.
Apparently, you are pedantic with terminology. So call it a "Skyhook" and read the HASTOL links. Kevlar is strong enough for some configurations, but none we'd be anxious to use.
"If you can find a subtle way to segment your users by their sentiment towards your app, you can then ask one of those segments to write reviews and not the other, thus skewing the ratings."
It skews the ratings in your favor, deceiving future users about the actual quality of the app.
I don't think it's more deceptive than putting favorable reviews on the back of a book, or those any ads where they get actual customers to review a product. The app store is both a promotional channel and a marketplace.
Interesting point, however the main difference between a printed book and the app store is that the product on the app store can be constantly changing based on the user feedback. If reviews are inherently prejudiced in one direction, does that leave much incentive for developers to improve their app?
On the other hand, a private engagement directly with developers could prove to be more beneficial since it allows developers know of shortcomings/user-expectations without negatively affecting the overall ratings. This way, they can improve the app without having lingering negative comments affect the perception of their updates.
Not necessarily. Anyone who has had an app on the store knows that there are lots of reviews that are simply inaccurate. If unhappy users would contact the devs first, many "problems" can be easily solved.
For example, many people don't understand lots of apple's UI decisions that we take for granted. I had a user contact me and ask if our app did X. It does, I told him that, and he bought the app. Then I got an angry email saying it doesn't do that. (the thing was persisting data when "closing" the app with fast app switching.)
Well he thought all his apps were running constantly in the background draining battery so he force closed everything when he quit them. Obviously my app can't do the fast app switching persistant data if he force closes it. In no way does my app deserve an angry 1 star review when a simple email explanation can fix the problem.
Right, this is a very good point. Many one star app reviews are there because the user is frustrated and doing something wrong.
I have one review in which a person said my app only allows 10 entries (it allows unlimited entries). One-star review, and I can't contact them to fix the problem. If I had a system like this implemented, likely they would have gotten in touch with me, I could have figured out what they were doing and solved their problem.
In that case, it would have eliminated bias by preventing an incorrect negative review. And helped resolve that person's issue.
Of course, I have no experience dealing with ~1B page views/month.