|
A lawsuit brought by the world's largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, and handled on appeal (as are all patent cases), by the notoriously awful Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) may have actually killed off software patents. A different report on a story that includes a copy of the appeal.
|
|
|
|
|
A prominent local media executive fired from Yahoo last year has filed a lawsuit accusing CEO Marissa Mayer of leading a campaign to purge male employees.
|
|
|
|
|
Indian police have arrested 70 people and are questioning hundreds more after uncovering a massive scam to cheat thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars by posing as U.S. tax authorities and demanding unpaid taxes, a police officer said Thursday. The scam brought in more than $150,000 a day
|
|
|
|
|
Bob Jung's team spent six years working with designers at Monotype to banish tofu from Google’s devices with a cohesive, pan-language set of fonts called Noto (short for “no more tofu”) !
|
|
|
|
|
No Klingon? Are you kidding me?
|
|
|
|
|
In 1614, when the telescope was new technology, a young man in Germany published a book filled with illustrations of the exciting new things being discovered telescopically: moons circling Jupiter, moon-like phases of Venus, spots on the Sun, the rough and cratered lunar surface. The young man was Johann Georg Locher, and his book was Mathematical Disquisitions Concerning Astronomical Controversies and Novelties. And while Locher heaped praise upon Galileo, he challenged ideas that Galileo championed – on scientific grounds. Science’s history matters.
|
|
|
|
|
Locher opposed Galileo based on his own scientific view and research, but those are declared his work 'heretical' came from the inquisition...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
|
|
|
|
|
... nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!
|
|
|
|
|
|
I suspect he cares not.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
|
|
|
|
|
Two students at Carnegie Mellon University have designed an artificial intelligence program that is capable of beating human players in a deathmatch game of 1993's Doom. Oh yea? Which humans?
|
|
|
|
|
Sean Ewington wrote: Which humans?
Yeah, they haven't played against me! 
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
Bring it on!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
|
|
|
|
|
I foresee a distant future where wars are fought on a chess-board by the two opposing AI players.
World-wars would be a bit more complicated though. How about Cluedo?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
|
|
|
|
|
After more than seven years of development, the company behind RethinkDB is shutting down. Don't worry, some of the team are joining Stripe.
|
|
|
|
|
We worked very hard to make RethinkDB successful, but in spite of all our efforts we were ultimately unable to build a sustainable business.
Oh, how the tiny fall.
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
Samsung has agreed to acquire Viv, an AI and assistant system co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham — who created Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. "Siri, are you going to be obsolete?" Siri: I don’t know, but maybe we should put paper bags over our heads or something.
|
|
|
|
|
“Statcheck” is a program that automatically detects errors in psychology papers. Statcheck made the results of 50,000 papers public. Was that wrong?
|
|
|
|
|
Quote: Was that wrong?
It is all right. We didn't believed those numbers anyway...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
|
|
|
|
|
In 1981, the year of this catalog, the TRS-80 earned the nicknamed "Trash-80." Computer designer and writer Adam Osbourne described Tandy and Radio Shack as "the number-one microcomputer manufacturer." TRS-80 Pocket Computer Only $249.00.
|
|
|
|
|
First time visitor to any mashable and all because of your (Sean's) post.
Sean Ewington TRS-80 Pocket Computer Only $249.00.
I saw it! I saw it in the catalogue. 
Also, TRS-80 is first computer I ever played a game on. It was checkers and I was 11 and I learned how to beat the stupid computer.
I know you are wondering so, here is how you do it.
Do not move any of your checkers that are in your bottom row. None.
Play the game without those pieces. You will ultimately get a king and be able to continue moving and the computer will admit defeat because it cannot move and you can.
That's entirely how my computer career started. 
|
|
|
|
|
Ah the good ol' days, when you actually used advertising space to educate the reader with "What is a computer?"
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
I still own (and it still works) a TRS-80 Model 100, possibly the very first affordable machine that faintly resembled today's laptops. I bought the 'fat' version, that had a whole 24K of RAM. I later bought an additional 8K to bring it to its maximum capacity. I also own the floppy drive that went with the machine, that used the RS-232 interface to pass data back and forth. The floppies stored an awe-inspiring 100K data each. My Model 100 saw its greatest use as an RS-232 device emulator. I wrote countless programs in BASIC to interact with RS-232 devices. If I still had to deal with RS-232, I would probably still be using it.
There was an apocryphal story going around that the Model 100 contains one of the last pieces of Microsoft code that Bill Gates actually wrote. Supposedly not long before the product was released Bill was using one and decided he hated the editor and rewrote it. Given the time period, it's at least plausible.
Hmm. That Model 100 is the first computer I purchased for my own use.
Software Zen: delete this;
|
|
|
|
|
My TI 99/4a from 1983 (I think) is out in the garage in it's original box. AFAIK the only the wrong with it is the cassette interface broke, so no more saving/loading programs from tape!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
|
|
|
|
|
Verizon has told its field technicians in Pennsylvania that they can be fired if they try to fix broken copper phone lines. Instead, employees must try to replace copper lines with a device that connects to Verizon Wireless’s cell phone network. Verizon: "Our first responsibility to a customer out of service is to restore service as quickly as possible." Uh huh.
modified 6-Oct-16 15:53pm.
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
