blog-j: Symbolizing, Coding, Objectifying, Processing

Konfabulator, that is. Available free for Mac and Windows, now that it’s been bought by Yahoo.

Download it. Now. @ konfabulator.com/download.

You can thank Jon for me posting this. I’m too lazy to just email him.

Got this handy little Firefox plugin from Chris Cummer. It’s really sweet - allows you to roll over pieces of the page, and it highlights the elements and displays it’s class and/or id. Add a few little keycommands (V to view the source of the currently highlighted section, W to widen the selection, etc), and you’ve got a very helpful plugin for viewing the structure of a page and it’s parts.

More info and download @ karmatics.com/aardvark/.

CNN.com - Atta’s father praises London bombs - Jul 20, 2005

He [Mohamed el-Amir, the father of one of the hijackers who commandeered the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 - ed.] passionately vowed that he would do anything within his power to encourage more attacks.

When asked if he would allow a CNN crew to videotape another interview with him, el-Amir said he would give his permission — for a price of $5,000.

That money, he said, would not be kept for himself, but would be donated to someone to carry out another terror attack.

El-Amir said that $5,000 was about how much it would cost to finance another attack in London.

CNN’s crew refused to pay for the interview and left after el-Amir’s request.

It is CNN policy not to pay people for interviews.

Note: the following is a highly political and emotional rant.
(more…)

and their dirty variables…

try { /* code */ }
catch( System.Exception SEx ) { /* code */ }

I didn’t know you could catch sex. Lucky for the programmer it wasn’t a VideoDisplay.

Code above is (loosely translated) from the Community Server forums.

This has got to be the slickest keyboard I have ever seen. The fact that it doesn’t as yet exist commercially is hardly an issue (looking like 2006 availability). My only question is whether there will be a matching mouse.

For all you that already saw this on /. or elsewhere…good for you. Sue me.

The difference between Expert Systems and AI is something I’ve been thinking about lately (especially since I’ve been building more and more games at work) - this article (and related education program) really sums up my thoughts. Granted, my thoughts on this are rather baseless, but you knew that, didn’t you? In other words, don’t take it from me…

“The computer just follows a recipe that has been given to it,” Genesereth said of Deep Blue’s highly specialized program. The applications for AI are limited in this case because the computer never has to “think” for itself. A program like Deep Blue demonstrates “the smarts of the programmer rather than the smarts of the program,” said Genesereth. In AI research, what is important is the intelligence of the program itself.

Read the whole article @ news-service.stanford.edu.