Berlin Brown and Software Development

Overview The field of artificial intelligence in computer science focuses on many different areas of computing from computer vision to natural language processing. These top-down approaches typically concentrate on human behavior or other animal functions. In this article we look at a bottom-up approach to artificial life and how emergent cell behavior can produce interesting results. With this bottom-up alife approach, we are not interested in solving any particular task, but we are interested in observing the adaptive nature of the entities in our simulation. We also wanted to introduce those more familiar with software engineering to biological systems and evolutionary theory concepts. Life is all around us. Even with inorganic material it is possible that microscopic organisms are covering that surface. Moving forward if we want to study, analyze and work with artificial agents, we might consider systems that have evolved behavior over a series of steps. We shoul...

Overview - Playing the Game Of Life When most computer users upload a profile image from their desktop to Facebook's website they don't stop to think about the simple binary math rules that are fundamental to most digital devices. We realize that 4 gigabytes of RAM is more memory than 512 megabytes but we don't visualize the logic chips that are involved in an xor $0x100, eax operation for a 32-bit CISC processor. Software developers have to consider memory management or how a computer's operating system loads their programs into memory. They don't normally consider VHDL logic circuit designs, the data paths, arithmetic logic units or the millions of transistors that make up a modern CPU. Those low-level details have been intentionally hidden from the user application developer. The modern CPU may have changed dramatically over the last decade but at the heart of early digital computing were simple Boolean operations. These simple rules were combined togeth...

I don't know if it is because I am getting older but I am starting to record my thoughts online or digitally so that I can easily go back to that record. I do this by posting blog posts on blogspot and through other subversion code repositories. One task that I have long neglected is creating a list of common developer tools. The toolkit suite contains a list of common software applications that a developer of any language or environment would need. Most of the software is open source of freely available. Obviously, different developers want or need different tools. Here is the list of packages that are essential for what I need. Yes, the list is bias with a emphasis on Java development. I marked the critical applications in bold. I would typically install of all of these tools on one machine over a long time period. Some of the tools seem similar in nature, for example, I do install Netbeans and Eclipse on the same machine. I may swap between the IDEs if there are tools ...

Overview Jeff Hawkins of Numenta and previously the creator of Palm Inc has shifted his focus from mobile computing to developing a sophisticated AI system. He has always been passionate about artificial intelligence. Jeff knew early on that the trends in AI research weren't very promising. He had concentrated his AI interest in human biology and neuroscience. Numenta has patented HTM (Hierarchical Temporal Memory) technology. According to Jeff Hawkins, you cannot mimic brain functions without including a hierarchical system of memory. The lower level has more input/output nodes than the level above it. According to Jeff, you must also take into account "temporal" memory. For example, the human brain has many parts of the brain that handle visual information. The brain may be able to detect a particular object but also factor in the time that the visual event occurred. If you are at the zoo, your brain predicts that you will see animals and animals in cages at the zoo...

Practical AI: Machine Learning and Data Mining with Weka and Java Most people tend to think of Artificial Intelligence with depictions of autonomous bipedal robots speaking and greeting humans in a monotone voice. The computer science field of Artificial Intelligence is far from that science fiction world that we see portrayed in the movies. The most prominent past AI research seems more like it would fit under a branch of mathematics and not computer science. AI research sub-fields include machine learning, data mining, computer vision, string match and indexing, search algorithms and neural networks. There is a new focus on not just faster search algorithms and pattern recognition, but building a relationship between computer science, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, biology. AI is branching out beyond the algorithms and merging with those other general science and medical fields. Marvin Minsky, a prominent researcher in the AI field, called some of the previous interest...

What is Anime? Google it. Anime is Japanese animation. Animation that is not necessarily targeted for kids. In fact, some Animation can be pretty rough and make a 40 year old squirm. Basically, Anime has characters and culture, stories, plots. If you like interesting stories, then you will like most of the popular Anime. What is the difference between Manga and Anime? I am American and usually just refer to anything that moves and is from Japan as "Anime" or Japanimation. But that isn't entirely accurate. There are some Anime TV series/movies that were Manga comic books in Japan and then made into movies. Manga to Anime. Manga is Comic Book in Japanese. If someone says, "Fullmetal Alchemist is a great Manga". I guess they could refer to the comic book version of Fullmetal or the TV adaptation. But normally they are referring to the comic book. Anime can be an animated series derived from a Manga. Popular Adult Stuff There are many genres o...

**Contains Spoilers** I rated this film a little lower than the movie review sites and user ratings on IMDB. The film suffers from two problems. First problem: It is a basic, very obvious thriller movie. In the beginning of the movie, when a character tells you, "One of these persons in the picture killed her". And the movie leads towards one of the people actually killing that person. Who cares, you already know what is going to happen. And there are only two or three suspects. So, the thriller aspect of the movie isn't that interesting. It is unfortunate that they spent all of this energy to build up the suspense of the potential killer, when we already know it is either that guy, that guy or that guy. And to be honest, the older killers aren't even that interesting anyway. I don't care if any of them were the killers. They were Nazi's and/or Nazi sympathizers. So, the thriller elements in the movie weren't that interesting to me. Sec...