Bob McGinley::J2Evolution

Off Topic: Bear Stearns bailout

Some very patriotic friends of mine recently went to New York to protest the $30 bn tax payer bailout of Bear Stearns.

These guys are heros in my book, so they get a shout out for standing up and being heard, even though this has nothing to do with AI or Comp Sci.

http://homepage.mac.com/scopix/iMovieTheater6.html

Check out FedUpUSA.org

Designing Intelligence

This topic is not to be confused with the creationist anti-theory of intelligent design. 

It might be because I'm more aware than most people on this subject, but I continue to hear more about the introduction of intelligent systems into business infrastructures and applications.  Simple straightforward data applications are no longer enough to feed the demands for metadata and analytics. 

I just got my copy of the latest The MIT Press Computer Science & Intelligent Systems catalog.  To me this is like the Sears catalogs I remember when I was a child.  The MIT press inventory is full of new tomes on programming, the internet, and the usual computer science periodicals.  But the content for intelligent robotics and complex adaptive intelligent systems is very impressive.  Here are some of the books on the way to my house.

 

Neural Feedback

I've been giving the concept of neural feedback a lot of thought lately, in fact I cant get it out of my head (a little neurology humor for you).  I have been contemplating several aspects about the flow of feedback, how our brains use it, and why it exists.  When thinking about it, it becomes hard to discern what is feedback and what is memory, or if in fact they are the same thing.

For example, I went to the dentist last week to have several old fillings replaced.  I hate going to the dentist.  I am an ardent anti-dentite.  But my dentist is actually a pretty caring guy, and does a great job of minimizing the stress and the pain.  That being said, the experiences and memories I have of having work done inside my mouth are vivid.

On Intelligence - A discussion

I recently had the pleasure of spending some vacation time with my very good friend Dr. Michael Nussdorfer.  Mike is the Medical Director for Radiology at Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe, California.  He is an expert on the anatomy of the human brain, diagnosing brain injuries, sleep disorders, and neurology in general.  He is also a technology buff like myself, who shares some of my interests in expanding our understanding of neural processes.

Mike and I typically measure the quality of our vacations by the number of books we read.  We often bring each other books we have recently read so we can discuss the ideas and predictions.  Fiction is rare, as we usually stick to science or history subjects.  For this trip I brought along Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence to share and get his opinion on some of the ideas presented.  The discussion made me realize some of the underlying challenges in trying to mimic the neural processes of the human brain.

Intelligent Traffic Systems

Just checking in.  Haven't been writing much lately because of my current workload and some side projects that have been stealing my time.

IBM made their top 5 technology predictions for the next few years, and Intelligent Traffic Systems made the list.  Not because of my influence I assume, but because we see a market there as traffic and congestion become more of an influence on worker productivity.  Gotta get the workers to the plant on time.

My work on intelligent traffic systems these days has been limited to some patent development.  I haven't had much chance to work on my simulation code, although I have done some work on my neural net design and my intelligent blackjack playing agent.  Helps pass the time on long flights.

Oracle is sucking up BEA.  We at IBM saw this coming a while ago, and were not that surprised.  One less competitor to knock off.  We'll see if Oracle can survive the coming economic turn down.

Intel missed earnings and warned they are not likely to improve much in 08.  Take this into account with AMD's demise, and writing couldn't be more clear.  We are headed towards recession with a serious consumer and business spending slow down.  Margins on processors are only going to decrease.  Intel needs to find a new line of growth.

Java is becoming the new Cobol if you didn't know.  I always like these articles that claim one language is falling out of favor for another. 

Simply put, developers are saying that Java slows them down. “There were big promises that Java would solve incompatibility problems [across platforms]. But now there are different versions and different downloads, creating complications,” says Peter Thoneny, CEO of Twiki.net

News flash for you programming prognosticators, you have been saying that COBOL is a dead language for the last 20 years, and every bank in the country is still running it, and will be for the coming future.  COBOL isnt even the new COBOL.

Here is the deal with Java, its a complex language, and it was not designed for HTML generation applications.  Try writing a 2D graphics program with geometric equations and real-time event management with Ruby/Rails.  You cant.  Cant do it with PHP either.  So this is not an apples to apples comparison.

By the way, the most popular programming language in the world is C, I wonder when it becomes the new COBOL, if it hasnt already.

Importance of Programming Language Popularity

I wrote my first programs while I was in high school during the early 1980's.  I copied a BASIC program out of a book and typed it into the school computers text editor.  Of course I had no idea that I would need to compile the program, I just thought you wrote them and expected them to run.

In college I learned PASCAL, the bind and compile processes, and it all came together.  But I wasnt enamored with PASCAL at the time, in fact I was hardly enamored with computers at the time.  This was the age of MS-DOS, and other than an occasional flight simulation, computers at the time were nothing more than typewriters and spreadsheet calculators.