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On The Daily Show there is/was a segment hosted by comedians Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert.

My brother sent me a link to an older (yet still funny) one involving the time honored debate of which god is the right one, Allah or Jesus.

In this month’s issue of IEEE Spectrum there is a discussion about a recent survey conducted of over 700 IEEE Fellows as to where they see the tech world heading.

Computer engineer Geordie Rose calls into question their willy-nilly predictions regarding quantum computing, suggesting that their timeline is way off the mark, by 50 or so years.

The other article is somewhat older, but I was reminded of it during the A&M tailgate earlier today (I go to tailgates and not the actual game). It is an overview of J. Craig Venter’s latest escapade across the Seven Seas. According to Wired, he is trying to sequence the genome of every living creature found in the matter that comprises 70% of the planet (I mentioned it briefly here).

I wonder if that really is worth the time and effort to do, seeing as you may one day be able to use genetic programming to sequence all possible iterations of any genome that could have existed (see the dynamic procedural generation used in Spore, as well as the machinations of John Koza, combined with Seth Lloyd’s Computational Universe).

I also wonder if Venter would ever want to track down some of our extremophile friends in the deep abyss.

Middleware is one of the latest buzzwords used in press releases and around the water cooler.

As its name suggests, it is in between at least two things — and in the case of software, it enables (connects) two or more applications to exchange information.

Two popular middleware applications in computer games are SpeedTree and Havoc. In the case of SpeedTree, game developers can use the SpeedTree SDK (kind of like an API) to render foliage in real-time. In theory this cuts development costs and allows each firm to specialize on what they do best (e.g. develop games, or create algorithms which accurately simulate tree growth).

According to a recent report from News.com, this has been taken to the world of massively-multiplayer online games; in the form of Multiverse Networks.

It is an informative read and worth the minute or so it takes to peruse.

It should also be noted that a couple of hardware-based solutions are attempting to fill the middleware void in two markets: physics and AI. The two in particular are AGEIA, which has developed an SDK that simulates life-like rag doll physics in an accelerated fashion through a product called PhysX. The other is a contentious entrant from a firm called AIseek, that is focusing on improving computer-game AI — though it is hotly debated whether the hardware can improve an area that has traditionally been seen as software-sided issue.

Then a pet in the form of a virtual ant farm might be just what the doctor ordered.

See also Digital pets.