Getting the J2EE Duke’s Bank Example running on JBoss-4.2.2.GA

And as this article Tech For and By Africa shows, ICT is rapidly developing and hopefully will realize its potential on the continent.  Something indeed is happening back there. Time to pack one’s bags? We’ll see.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8257153.stm

Now there’s  this Togolese student who has built a humanoid robot that works from old TV parts:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/humanoid-robot-built-old-tv-parts

Here’s the video:

So there is invention and innovation in Africa among the young. The question is this: can African governments (and societies) effectively harness such innovation and creativity to make a difference in the lives of their citizenry?

A few points:

1. The match showed the difference between buying and building a team as Barca played the more coherent football, stringing passes together seemingly at will, at the expense of the hapless Madridistas.
2. This should put to bed once and for all any argument as to whether CR9 is better than Lionel, as CR9 was a shadow of his former self. I guess he now realizes that ManUtd made him look much better than he is.
3. My most appropriate analogy wrt. these 2 teams is that Barcelona is the smart kid in the class who doesn’t need to study and always ends up with straight As, while Real is like the kid who’s studies and swots a lot, but tends to end up short…

Here the case is made the random numbers generated by computer programs are pseudo-random rather than true random numbers since they’re generated from an algorithm, a programming recipe, and the stream of numbers generated are entirely predictable and repeatble if the algorithm is known. The article then asserts that true random numbers can be generated by physical phenomena such as atmospheric noise or radioactive decay and that an appropriate definition of randomness is that which cannot be predicted by humans, which I tend to agree with.

This brings up a whole slew of philosophical viewpoints involving the correct definition of determinism. For one may claim that atmospheric phenomenon may also follow an algorithm known only to God or Nature.

After all chaos theory has been used to help explain atmospheric phenomena and posit that a butterfly effect does exist.

What makes this distinctive is the fact that it goes where no African movie to date has gone – science fiction. As an African whose favorite movie genre is sci-fi, this is definitely a must see.  Also, the attention to detail shows Nollywood how it can step up its game. Kudos to the African Film Festival in NYC for giving Wanuri Kahui some exposure.

http://www.africanfilmny.org/aff_fest.html

http://www.elearning-africa.com/

I realize now that Ajax is the secret behind Google’s ever so cool suggest feature where your Google search box magically comes up with suggestions as you input your query. Pure coolness. AJAX the acronym, for those of us who are techies stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. Go figure.

Here’s a link to the original talking about Ajax in 2005:

Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

Enjoy.