On Intelligence

Just got myself a copy of Jeff Hawkins "On Intelligence", stay tuned for a review. I'm one chapter in and so far it seems an easy read. The main thrust of his ideas seem sound, we shall see what evidence he presents and how his argument develops.

I agree with him on his initial misgivings with 80's AI research. Basing AI on symbols and language parsing seems such a silly idea now.



I ran into it at the numenta web site and bought it from bookdepository in the UK. Free shipping!

Poem in chinese entirely made up of Shi

This is a poem entirely made up of the syllable Shi. Impressive.

Response to Google and Verizons Open Internet proposal

I feel I have to respond to this
open internet proposal by google and verzion.

For some reason they seem to have allowed wireless boradband not have net neutrality enforced. This seems to be a fundamental flaw. If it allows providers to make more money by throttling services then it will push incentive to develop further wireless brodband and disincentivise wired broadband development. In the longer term we will be threatened with a purely wireless internet that is dominated and controlled by corporations.

This could happen within 20 years given the pace of change of technology.

Verizon and Google have got to give this idea up and go full net neutrality for all types of providers.

The Kingdom and Quick Answers

Finally watching “The Kingdom” from 2007.  Gosh its bloody, violent and full of dodgy stereotypes.  Why would Islamic militants not manage to hit the broadside of a barn with 2,000,000 bullets and yet 4 FBI agents are all crack marksmen.

Not a great movie.

Anyway found a new thing on CodeProject the other day. Quick Answers. Its neat, but it doesn't seem to have the momentum yet of a StackOverflow or a ExpertsExchange. Time will tell

Avatar

Saw Avatar the other day, pretty impressive 3D graphics.  This seems to be the film of the summer.

And its not any one scene that is special, its the fact that the whole lot seamlessly works together.

Hooking into the windows message loop

Ive just been trying to figure out a way to hook into the windows message loop of a WinForm.

protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
{
Trace.WriteLine(m.Msg.ToString() + “: “ + m.ToString());

base.WndProc(ref m);
}

In an attempt to fix a form that hangs when you lock the computer. Haven't fixed the form yet but the message loop helps.

Update: In the end it was controls being created on a background thread which lead to the hang.

Predictably Irrational

Haven't posted for ages. I have been reading a book "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely about behavioral economics. Fascinating stuff in it, like how first impressions count on our later choices. A good read so far, I recommend it if you have the time.