Binary Data to Go: Using XML-RPC to Serve Up Charts on the Fly:

"Where SOAP is a generalized, object-oriented, messaging protocol that is designed to carry arbitrary XML payloads across any network protocol, XML-RPC is a simple procedural protocol designed only to make remote function calls. Lest you get the impression that XML-RPC is inferior to SOAP, there are a good number of everyday problems that XML-RPC can solve adroitly."

"For instance, XML-RPC can transport binary data as base64-encoded messages, much the way email clients send attachments. Because this feature is somewhat rarely used in XML-RPC applications, it's worth taking a look at a Web service that creates simple charts for client programs using this technique."

i've been contemplating switching from blogger to greymatter, if for no other reason than it's a bit easier to do a few niceties like greymatter, rss, and syndication:

"Greymatter is an excellent web content management system. After you install it, you can begin to syndicate your content using XML. This article gives you an explicit step-by-step overview of how I created RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.92 files using Greymatter. It is assumed that you have some knowledge of HTML and XML, and that you have already installed Greymatter. Many examples and references are provided to help you along the way."

but then again, it's not like blogger has done me wrong and there are other ways to syndicate content with blogger. i'll probably waffle in indecision for a few more months.

i started to get hits from blogdex a little while ago and wasn't sure what to make of it - but from the sounds of it, if they add the features they're talking about it could be a nice little resource:

"Marlow also plans to soon add tools that allow a particular link's popularity to be tracked over time."

""It's a way of looking at Internet memetics, the way memes evolve and develop over time," he said."

Marlow also hopes to add the ability to automatically analyze who's putting what on their weblogs and which weblogs are linking to each other."

lambda is a nice weblog that i just discovered that proclaims itself to be "The Programming Languages Weblog" and is where i found A Software Engineering Perspective on Algorithmics:

"An algorithm component is an implementation of an algorithm which is not intended to be a stand--alone module, but to perform a specific task within a large software package or even within several distinct software packages. Hence, the design of algorithm components must also incorporate software--engineering aspects. A key design goal is adaptability. This goal is important for maintenance throughout a project, prototypical development, and reuse in new, unforeseen contexts. From a theoretical viewpoint most algorithms apply to a range of possible use scenarios. Ideally, each algorithm is implemented by one algorithm component, which is easily, safely, and efficiently adaptable to all of these contexts. Various techniques have been developed for the design and implementation of algorithm components. However, a common basis for systematic, detailed evaluations and comparisons in view of the real practical needs is still missing."

speaking of soap::lite, i also had cedant install the frontier-rpc modules.

and wouldn't you know it - freenet now sports an xml-rpc interface. i now have way too many fun side projects. i need to focus.

oh, and i bought Programming Web Services with xml-rpc. now you know what's been sucking-up great gobs of my spare [sic] time.

kumo has been on an rdf tear of late and found Automatic RDF Metadata Generation for Resource Discovery:

"Automatic metadata generation may provide a solution to the problem of inconsistent, unreliable metadata describing resources on the Web. The Resource Description Framework (RDF [10 ]) provides a domain-neutral foundation on which extensible element sets can be defined and expressed in a standard notation. This paper describes how an automatic classifier, that classifies HTML documents according to Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC [8 ]), can be used to extract context sensitive metadata which is then represented using RDF. The process of automatic classification is described and an appropriate metadata element set is identified comprising those elements that can be extracted during classification. An RDF data model and an RDF schema are defined representing the element set and the classifier is configured to output the elements in RDF syntax according to the defined schema."

the Automatic RDF Metadata Generator is online but non-functional due to "copyright" reasons, whatever that means.

last week, my i had cedant install the soap::lite collection of modules [ editor's note:cedant's customer service rules. they've always get back promptly and usually have my request for this-or-that customization done within eight hours. ] because, well, this sort of thing looks like my idea of a good time.

at the time, i didn't look closely enough at the new features, but it looks like soap::lite now supports the jabber transport. cool.

good compilation of Web Design Patterns. i agree with christina that it would be nice to see more links to commentary on the patterns. i wonder if there's a small topical weblog focused solely on design pattern issues? you'd think that xblog would be all over that type of thing. [ via lgf via elegant hack ]

Kenamea's "Application Network":

"What people find interesting about Kenamea, says Pasker, makes for "a Rorschach test as to where they are feeling pain." Sometimes the pain reliever is the ability to log in just once to the desktop component. Sometimes it's encryption, which Kenamea does always and automatically, keying each user individually. Sometimes it's the ability to run apps offline, which is supported by automatic message queueing and the local datastore. Sometimes it's access control, which Kenamea abstracts from applications and centralizes in the message switch. Sometimes it's scalability, which Kenamea addresses by multiplexing network connections. Sometimes it's just the ability to have more responsive and interactive web-style applications, which react and refresh in real time."

[ via scripting news ]

better template engine:

" BTE uses a processing directive format that is similar to that used by web scripting languages such as asp, jsp, and php. Tags for BTE start with "<%bte." or "<%/bte." and end with "%>". Tags are similar to html tags and can have name value pairs.

The following tags are bte tags:

• <%bte.doc  %>
• <%/bte.doc super=hello.bte %>
• <%/bte.doc super= "hello.bte" %>
• <%/bte.doc super='hello.bte' %>
• <%bte.doc     %>"

[ via cam ]

complete coverage of the O'Reilly Open Source Convention completely taunts me, saying, "you're not here! you're not here!"

today is not a good day.

there's a semi-interesting thread on metafilter regarding The Googlematic AIMBOT in particular and "chat agents" in general.

my 2 cents? jabber + alice with a little help from the artificial intelligence mark-up languge for providing roster bots with a narrowly defined knowledgebase could be interesting:

"AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) is an XML-compliant language that's easy to learn, and makes it possible for you to begin customizing an Alicebot or creating one from scratch within minutes."

"The standard A.L.I.C.E. distribution includes a knowledge base of approximately 30,000 categories. Here's an example of one of them:

<category>
    <pattern>WHAT ARE YOU</pattern>
    <template>
        <think><set_topic>Me</set_topic></think>
        I am the latest result in artificial intelligence,
        which can reproduce the capabilities of the human brain
        with greater speed and accuracy.
    </template>
</category>"

oh yeah, well. sure. but can it be used in a beowulf cluster?

Home Monitor on a Cell Phone:

"David Fox won the Motorola-Nextel Developer Challenge at JavaOne by whipping up a program that lets you control lights and appliances at home via cell phone, and stream webcam images to its tiny screen. Oh, and, he did it in six hours, and drove away in a BMW Z3 for his efforts. Here's how he did it."

i'm surprised that i didn't see it more widely commented on the news that hp labs has opened sourced pieces of the cooltown project as coolbase :

"The coolbase project offers a coherent framework for bringing together all the elements necessary to build a cooltown service or application. It includes software for enabling smart, connected web devices; software for representing people, places and things and their contextual relationships and some supporting hardware elements."

i'm confident enough in the photo gallery that i've put it on the "nav bar". i need to put some more work into the theme, but it's coming along.

i have had the pleasure of caring for a 1975 martin d35 for the better part of 11 years. unfortunately, i've ever-so-slowly started to drift into playing less and less. maybe i can combine two passions into one with the help of rockin' in the free software world :

"I've been playing the guitar much longer than I've been playing with Linux, so it was only a matter of time before I'd take a closer look at the software available to the Linux guitarist. I was happily surprised by what I found, and I'll share some of my discoveries in the course of this article."

theyrule is cool. [ via metafilter ]

every so often, in the midst of the flurry of my daily activity on the web, i stumble upon something so direct and honest that it hits me upside the head with a big cluestick. hard.

ned gulley does just that by being brave enough to write about his son jay's pervasive developmental disorder:

"So this is what happened: my wife and I are lucky enough to have a little boy. He is not a normal boy. I can add quotes: he is not a "normal" boy. Or perhaps I should say he is not an ordinary boy. Or: he is not common. It's easy enough to play with the language. But it's damn near impossible to see past everything to the child. Behind the thicket of words, behind the jargon, the diagnoses, programs, forms, appointments, doctors, therapists, and speech pathologists, behind the adjustment to new realities, behind it all there is a boy, a little man, two years four months old. He is not a cute drooling toddler. He is Jay. He is not a darling angelic lost little boy. He is not autistic or developmentally disabled. He is Jay. Then again, he is not Jay. He is the one we mean when we say "Jay". He is himself. He is... well, there he is. He is the one I love. He is my son."

i wish ned well and - at the risk of trivializing the situation - thank him for proving the quote in the sidebar, "In our culture, we're suspicious of strangers. They're a threat. They lurk in shadows. On the Web, however, strangers are the source of everything worthwhile. Strangers and their utterances are the stuff of the Web."

well. i guess i've got another project to play around with straight out of programming web services with XML-RPC:

"The following sections explore using PHP to integrate two web applications into one interface. The first section demonstrates how to create a complete PHP XML-RPC server application, in this case a discussion server. The web application to which this server will be connected is a database called Meerkat, the brainchild of Rael Dornfest and O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. (who also happen to be the publishers of this book). Meerkat is a storehouse of news about technological developments. After a subsequent section that gives an overview of Meerkat, the chapter demonstrates how to integrate the database with the custom XML-RPC discussion server."

speaking of web services, there was a great discussion regarding Which Web services are the most bestest ones? on FoRK a bit ago sparked by the seemingly simplest of questions from clay shirky:

"So someone asked me an obvious but hard to answer question today: What are the best examples of web services currently running?"

and i guess while i'm at it, i might as well throw in the recent proposal from big blue for Metering and accounting for Web services

"In this article, the authors describe a generalized pricing model for commercial Web services that can be implemented by service providers for service requesters. The solution they propose shows how the use of Web services can be metered, and the resulting data used for subsequent accounting and billing processes. By way of example, the solution presented in the article is itself implemented as a Web service."

hmmm. what would jabber and dotGNU look like?

i might not always agree with joel, but this time he's spot on with Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To It.:

"This is a chart showing the number of installed seats of the Lotus Notes workgroup software, from the time it was introduced in 1989 through 2000. In fact when Notes 1.0 finally shipped it had been under development for five years. Notice just how dang long it took before Notes was really good enough that people started buying it. Indeed, from the first line of code written in 1984 until the hockey-stick part of the curve where things really started to turn up, about 11 years passed. During this time Ray Ozzie and his crew weren't drinking piña coladas in St Barts. They were writing code."

"So, it takes a long time to write a good program, but when it's done, it's done . Oh sure, you can crank out a new version every year or two, trying to get the upgrade revenues, but eventually people will ask: "why fix what ain't broken?""

the real question is this - are the truly successful opensource projects those that only try to copy software that is in the later stages of this adoption curve?

i agree with charles - the latest mozilla builds "rock". rendering speed has really picked-up and for all those people that think that it doesn't launch as fast as explorer - the turbolaunch preference has been in the builds for awhile. select it and mozilla launches nearly instantaneously.

if you are familiar with doc searls' mantra then you won't be too surprised by whose hand is that in your pocket?. nonetheless, it still provides a concise summary of Important Things That Shant Be Neglected:

"The problem here isn't that Hailstorm cuts out competitors, or intermediaries, or anybody else. It's that it cuts out markets. It bypasses the bazaar. It embraces and extends what producerism has succeeded in doing ever since John Wanamaker invented the price tag in the late 1800s.

"The challenge for the rest of us is to do with markets what we did with the Net in the first place: create ubiquitous conditions that make matrix-building impossible. That requires something many of us are not accustomed to doing: thinking about commerce. Specifically, thinking about markets as places, as environments, rather than as targets for stuff shoved down through the industrial distribution matrix."

[ via cam ]

Complete transcript of interview with Eben Moglen: The Encryption Wars, Part I:

"One is, how long does it take the current user base to get to free software, and the other is how long does it take the current user base to be replaced by another user base. It's a transitional issue. In 1979, when I was working at IBM, I wrote an internal memo lambasting the Apple Lisa, which was Apple's first attempt to adapt Xerox PARC technology, the graphical user interface, into a desktop PC. I was then working on the development of APL2, a nested array, algorithmic, symbolic language, and I was committed to the idea that what we were doing with computers was making languages that were better than natural languages for procedural thought. The idea was to do for whole ranges of human thinking what mathematics has been doing for thousands of years in the quantitative arrangement of knowledge, and to help people think in more precise and clear ways. What I saw in the Xerox PARC technology was the caveman interface, you point and you grunt. A massive winding down, regressing away from language, in order to address the technological nervousness of the user. Users wanted to be infantilized, to return to a pre-linguistic condition in the using of computers, and the Xerox PARC technology's primary advantage was that it allowed users to address computers in a pre-linguistic way. This was to my mind a terribly socially retrograde thing to do, and I have not changed my mind about that. I lost that war in the early 1980s, went to law school, got a history PHD, did other things, because the fundamental turn in the technology - which we see represented in its most technologically degenerate form, which is Windows, the really crippled version. I mean, I use Xwindows every day on my free-software PCs; I have nothing against a windowing environment, but it's a windowing environment which is network transparent and which is based around the fact that inside every window there's some dialogue to have with some linguistic entity."

funny. not too long ago, i decided against posting a longish discussion on annotea and it's relationship to smartags.

the technology review has a new article on annotea and e.commerce :

"Annotea's concept itself is not new. A commercial application called Third Voice attracted attention two years ago with a similar but proprietary technology. With no clear revenue plan, Third Voice became yet another dot-com casualty in April.

The W3C hopes that by pushing the technology as an open-source solution, Annotea will take root as a useful "metadata" application--a way to provide information about online information online."

note to self: check-out annozilla.

intrigued by peterme's reference to touchgraph [ and encouraged by the recent open sourcing of the code ]. i've gone ahead and begun to put together a topic map page.

i've been interested in topic maps for awhile and this is as good an excuse as any to get more intimate with the issues of using them for knowledge organization:

"The exciting Topic Maps (TMs) are an ideal catalyst for mutual learning experiences for proponents from the partially overlapping communities of Knowledge Organization (KO), Knowledge Management (KM) and Information Technology (IT). A long-term goal would be a tutorial white paper on the relationship between KO, KM and TMs, together with free reference software. KO is interested in optimizing the organization (the conceptual access structure) of knowledge repositories to support easier retrieval, creation and sharing of knowledge for user communities. TMs can indeed play an important role within KO: Together with related technologies, they have made it easier to provide innovative KO services. With TMs you can define arbitrarily complex knowledge structures and attribute them as metadata to information resources. Decentrally creating, maintaining and exchanging even more heterogeneous metadata is a powerful basic service of high interest for a broad range of applications. However, sooner or later you have to cope with the new semantic heterogeneity and come up with strategies to achieve better semantic interoperability. How could TM-based services alleviate the pressing KO problem of how to reorganize, enhance and semantically integrate heterogeneous subject data? Dedicated to this question, this talk takes a KO perspective: By sketching three typical scenarios in which heterogeneous metadata occur, it shows how classical KO challenges reappear with TMs, but also that TMs may be of value. Because the authors of the TM standard were right in not prescribing the application semantics of the structured link network, the widespread use of large-scale TMs will aggravate the well-known problem of the comparability and compatibility of KO schemata. A closer co-operation between the communities could aid the potential of TMs for KO/KM. Fortunately, the TM community has already started the fruitful exchange by discussing KO-relevant topics. Because of the flexible orientation of TMs towards usage contexts, especially user-oriented indexing should benefit from TMs. Approaches for achieving semantic interoperability within a layered model of decentral information provision are briefly presented as background against which further directions of KO with TMs can be discussed. One consequence for KO is that its methodology must be partially redesigned to take collaborative knowledge building activities on distributed resources more into consideration. This article also asks about the relationship between TMs and other means to computationally handle semantics in next-generation ontology- and agent-based knowledge services. In the end, possible further research towards this vision is suggested."

i also want to play around with the relationships between rdf and topic maps. maybe i'll even work on a mindmap-ish tool for groove.

there's not much there now and the applet doesn't work on all browsers, but check back every so often and you should see some progress.

i've been using groove for as long as you've been able to download the builds. i've found it adequately useful out-of-the-box for fostering lightweight collaboration and file sharing between work and home, but it desperately needs customized applications before any real uptake is going to occur. beyond what's at the groove devzone, it's disconcerting that i haven't seen more "hello world" style articles that introduce the groove programming model to independent developers.

maybe using xml to configure groove is the start of more exposure:

"This article examines the use of XML to configure custom applications for Groove, a peer-to-peer groupware platform."

"Programmers with a solid understanding of XML will have less trouble than others making the transition to building Groove tools. XML plays is a significant part of the Groove architecture. Though most of the work required to develop Groove tools involves writing code in JavaScript, VB, or C++ to control the tool application logic, there are four XML files that developers have to configure to allow users access to their custom tools. The rest of this article will examine these files and their roles."

the new photo album is great opportunity to dig through all the pictures sitting in shoe box upon shoe box upon shoe box. this one was taken almost a year ago up in the UP [ ed: for those of you not from the midwest - UP refers to the upper penninsula of michigan and is pronounced "you pee" ].

i think this was the first time harper [the pointer] was really able to cut loose. he's spied a bird and has obviously succumbed to the forces of instinct. it makes me smile.

sweet jesus! i am not cut out for small plumbing jobs. my small plumbing jobs turn to big plumbing jobs. you know what happens when you try to solder a shut-off valve on to a pipe that still has some water left in it? pressure build-up that's what. know what happens when the pressure builds-up too much? the partially soldered shut-off valve rockets off the pipe and nearly takes the better part of your head. jeez, louis.

you know that little voice in your head that says maybe you shouldn't start a plumbing job because maybe you don't know what the hell you are doing and you might end up with a much larger problem than the one you started with? you know that voice? well, maybe you should listen to it.

someone stole our glass recycling container today. it's not one of those little, blue pansy recycling containers - it's a medium-sized, metal trashcan that was dinged and danged from abuse. not exactly the cream of the recycling container crop. strange. even more bizarre is the fact that they appeared to have taken it when it was full. maybe the market for recycled beer bottles has gone through the roof? one can only imagine.

i've been thinking of setting-up an online photo archive for awhile, but have been doing my best to procrastinate for as long as possible. but intrigued by ev's discovery that ids is integrated with shutterfly, i decided to get motivated and play around with it.

the preliminary results can be found in the new photo section. i haven't actually posted any pictures yet, but ids looks worthwhile enough to bang out some more themes and post a few photos.

i gave morpheus a whirl and was underwhelmed with the speed of the downloads. nice selection of content though :-)

RPC-JIG is a new mailing list for discussing jabber and remote procedure calls:

"The problem this mail list will tackle is using Jabber to transport remote procedure calls.

The goal is to plug into existing SOAP and XML-RPC toolkits with the minimum of fuss."

it might just be me but there seems to be a run on comparisons of filesharing systems lately?

i think i might have to check out morpheus, given the oreilly overview:

" Unlike Napster, which only supports the sharing of MP3 audio files, Morpheus provides support for the full gamut of audio, video, image, document, and software files. Morpheus' judicious use of metadata to describe the contents of a file (derived automatically from the file if possible, or user-provided via the application's file import wizard) means that files can be searched by such attributes as title, artist, category, language, resolution, and user rating. While Morpheus is largely a decentralized system, the speed of its query engine rivals that of centralized systems like Napster. "

jabber.com just keeps plugging along with new partnerships:

"Commercial instant messaging and presence management software provider Jabber.com Inc. scored a coup Monday as it secured a partnership with the Walt Disney Internet Group.

"The Walt Disney Internet Group is one of The Walt Disney Company's five business units, and is charged with operating the company's portfolio of Web sites, including Disney.com, ESPN.com, ABC.com and ABCNEWS.com. The Group licensed the Jabber Commercial Server for its instant messaging, real-time content delivery, alert and multi-user gaming capabilities."

i wonder what they have up their pr sleeve as we get closer to jabbercon.

a plethora or responses to mono.

GNOME's Miguel de Icaza on .NET:

"He feels that the design goals behind .NET and Bonobo were very similar, but he thinks the .NET component model is better. "One problem is that Bonobo has a lot more overhead than .NET. .NET is pretty slim when it comes to the size of the components and things that you can expose." When asked if he would see himself moving away from Bonobo, de Icaza replied: "Bonobo's interfaces are okay for what they do, which are compound documents and embedding of controls. There are better ways of defining components and writing components than writing them in CORBA IDL. If I can write a component by implementing an interface in C#, I would much rather create the component in C# than with existing Bonobo." Nonetheless, he can see both approaches being compatible."

davenet:Miguel de Icaza:

"The first clue should be that Microsoft is not protecting the source of the .NET runtime, in fact they're publishing it, under some constraints, but if you want to see how they do it, they say there will be no mysteries and no poison pills. So they're making it not impossible to clone. Why are they being so generous? (A little sarcasm, sorry.) "

" Further if you can get all the services by coming to Miguel or you or me, plus freedom of choice, some part of the market is going to go for that. I'd argue it's the most important part -- independent developers."

Redirection and Beyond:

"Freedom of choice is good for everybody. (Forced freedom is the same as no freedom). Things go faster and spread more quickly when a lock down from a single vendor is thwarted. Redirected vendors are helpless to stop it. Because the vendor being redirected makes money-or in the case of AOL continues to spread their client around-and there isn't a damn thing they can do about somebody redirecting the data flow. Redirection is tough to thwart by the most litigious vendor. A vendor really serious about stopping redirection will end up damaging themselves the most. This usually keeps litigation to a minimum."

Miguel de Icaza explains :

".NET seemed to me like an upgrade for Win32 developers: they had the same problems we had when dealing with APIs that have been designed over many years, a great deal of inconsistency. So I want to have some of this new "fresh air" available for building my own applications. "

Basic XML and RDF techniques for knowledge management:

"Columnist Uche Ogbuji begins his practical exploration of knowledge management with XML by illustrating techniques for populating Resource Description Framework (RDF) models with data from existing XML formats. As shown in the three code listings, RDF can be used as a companion to customized XML, not just as a canonical representation for certain types of data. This column, with code samples included, demonstrates how easy it can be to jump-start knowledge management with RDF even relatively late in the development game."

o.k. class. raise your hand if you get excited when you read the following blurb from antenna on the cheap (er, chip) which outlines how to get a faster, farther, cheaper 802.11 link from a pringles can:

"By using PVC, all-thread, washers, some cheap copper tubing, a Pringles can, and some scrap cardboard, we were able to make a prototype shotgun yagi in a matter of hours. Having a couple of other excited alpha geeks around can help move construction projects along very quickly."

"In about 45 minutes, we had the collector rod built, the locknuts on, and the whole thing in place. The result: A Pringles can that pulls about 12db!"

"Over a clear line of sight, with short antenna cable runs, a 12db to 12db can-to-can shot should be able to carry an 11Mbps link well over ten miles."

the article is was based on - Yagi Antenna Design - For 802.11b Wireless Application - looks equally interesting. i'll bet there's an rf engineer or two at the ol' workplace that would love to help me put something like this together. looks like another fun weekend project to keep me distracted from all those other supposedly important things that are vying for my attention.

i've never spent much time thinking about the "things are getting speedier" criticism of modern life, but coming back after an ever-so-brief break feels bit like i'm stepping on the accelerator. i mean, there's mono, and the disassembly of assembler and messenger's been down for about a week. and that's just for starters.

google zeitgeist may be old news, but i've been gone so cut me some slack:

"On a monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily basis, this Google Zeitgeist page will be updated to reflect lists, graphs, and other tidbits of information related to Google user search behavior."

yup, i'm back from four whole days without the 'puter, pager or phone camping in hayward, wisconsin. not much happened, which is exactly the point. actually, that's not exactly true. one of the straps that is supposed to keep the canoe firmly held firmly to the family sedan gave way to the forces of friction and snapped while driving 70-ish down the freeway. luckily the other two straps did their duty and prevented the canoe from wreaking havoc on the highway. although the canoe stayed on top of car it still managed to swing violently to the right and did a number on the paint job. there's actually much longer, more humourous story behind the strap snapping, but i don't have the time to document it here. maybe later. hi. ho.

i wonder why didn't i see the headlines - "canadians score big win for chomsky's "language module!"? hmmm.

sidestepping the fact that i haven't bothered to read the original paper, i'll still point to a blurb entitled, brain scans reveal the basis of language [requires "free" registration to view the entire article] that makes some big claims:

"These studies showed that two areas of the brain, the superior temporal gyrus and part of the inferior frontal cortex, are active in each group. Those regions were thought to be involved in processing sound, but it is now clear that they are dedicated to processing highly specific parts of natural language - the abstract symbols that make up both signed and spoken language."

""We wanted to know, 'is there any aspect of our mental world that is biologically programmed into specific neural tissue before birth?' The alternative view was that the brain is a great bowl of grey Jello in which environment factors shape the neural pathways during early development," noted Pettito."

""The answer to the question is, 'yes - there is part of the brain tissue that is dedicated to processing aspects of natural language.'"

i'll bet noam is pretty happy:

"The way to make the general assumptions less obscure is to discover the nature of the various specialized "learning mechanisms" -- the systems LT(O,D), in my terminology -- among them the "language organ" FL, the states it can in principle attain, the "neural circuits" involved, etc. That is also the way to arrive at one or another "position...in the domain-generality vs. domain-specificity debate," a very tentative position I would think, given the limits of current understanding. I concede that I don't really understand what this debate is about in the way it is usually waged (without my participation). There are very interesting questions about just what might be specific to human language (part of LT(Human, Language), the dedicated "learning mechanism" that is the "language organ"). These are the topics of inquiry in all study of language and other cognitive systems that I know of. But I do not understand the more general "debate" that seems to arouse much passion."

want to get paid to bring blogger.com and jabber together? jabber.com has apparently established a jabber grant program:

"The purpose of the Grant program is to sponsor development (either code, documentation, or website development) that will be shared by the entire Jabber community for the benefit the entire community. The Grants would target development in less glamourous areas (like updating whitepapers) or in more experimental areas (like integrating whiteboards). The overall intention of the program is to increase the number of projects and developers using Jabbber."

"There are a number of proposals we have already considered, specifically updates to documentation and integration with a blogging service."

it would be fun to see a design competition to determine exactly what "integration with a blogging service" could mean. IM alerts that certain blogs have been updated? trivial - just use spyonit. conference-style chats that are instantly blogged? maybe.

i'd like to see a service that alerts you that a topic has appeared in a resource that you may be interested in, gives you a summary of the basis for the alert and lets you blog it from the IM panel.

grin is a collection of superfine, copyright-free images that should satisfy the inner-space-geek in that everyone secretly harbors:

"The Great Images in NASA (GRIN) system provides a database of photos documenting NASA. Photos include: aircraft structures, aircraft design, aircraft models, wind tunnel tests, materials research, space programs, astronaut training, robotic planetary exploration and images taken by NASA spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope and Mars Global Surveyor. GRIN contains many, but not all of the most popular images from NASA's history. It also contains important historical images that you may not have seen before."

[ via lgf ]

Processing XML with Java:

"Welcome to Processing XML with Java, a complete tutorial about writing Java programs that read and write XML documents. This is an approximately 700 page book that will be published by Addison-Wesley in Spring 2002.

However, as I'm writing it I'm going to be posting the entire book here at Cafe con Leche. You can read every word of it, more or less as I write it. Right now Chapter 1, XML for Data, is available. I expect to be posting new chapters roughly weekly over the next several months."

[ via rc3 ]

Bookmarklets for Power Users:

"Bookmarklets are one of the best kept secrets of scripting and the browser. These tiny utility scripts reside in your browsers toolbar or bookmark list and are great for power surfing and development. Learn to create your own or use existing ones."

seen in the referer logs - ned gu