International

Long-suffering Mets fans don't like being lumped in with Yankees fans.

Remember playing something like TMNT arcade, and Bebop and Rocksteady would grow increasingly red, tempting you to throw in quarter after quarter because every moment seemed like the moment they would be defeated? This punching bag works under the same philosophy, though it turns from red to a sickly yellow, as if your opponent is leaking bile or slowly wetting all of their clothing. Also, it lights up where you punch it, making it appear* that you have lightning powers.

* Sorry, your mom wanted us to tell you that you never had lightning powers. Also, she said that you owed her $5 from that time you borrowed money to beat Rocksteady and started crying because your lightning powers weren't helping. [stefangross via boingboing]

Too much coupling of code within a system makes the system hard to understand, integrate, extend, and test. By managing dependencies via 3NF, for example, you can prevent such problems, as well as allow for agility. Kevlin Henney explains what dependency management is, why it's important, and how to do it. From our sister site SearchSoftwareQuality.com.

- In Part 3 of his SOA series Eric Giguere explores how to do SOA when the target device does not support Web Services (JSR 172). Dig in to learn what your options are.

All About N-Gage have the dirt on a game that looks like it has a lot of potential: Asphalt: Urban GT.  I can't say that I've played much more than some FIFA and other random stuff on the N-Gage, but a good racer can add a lot of value to a gaming platform.  Of course I'm still waiting to see if Call of Duty rocks as much as it should.