Charles told me about this book last night.

Quoted: In each of the six Apollo landings, the astronaut in command seized control from the computer and landed with his hand on the stick. Mindell recounts the story of astronauts' desire to control their spacecraft in parallel with the history of the Apollo Guidance Computer. From the early days of aviation through the birth of spaceflight, test pilots and astronauts sought to be more than "spam in a can" despite the automatic controls, digital computers, and software developed by engineers. Digital Apollo examines the design and execution of each of the six Apollo moon landings, drawing on transcripts and data telemetry from the flights, astronaut interviews, and NASA's extensive archives.

Really insightful article about the difficulties of writing correct software - particularly in the realm of numerical calculation.

Also references an Excel 2007 calculation (display) error where the formula 850*77.1 is displayed as 100,000 (instead of 65,535)!

refaving darrellp

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Checkers is now a "solved" problem. This computer player cannot be beat by any strategy. To build Chinook, the developers started at the end of the game, and calculated the best strategies for every position involving 1 piece, 2 pieces, and so on up to 10 pieces.

At that point, they proved that they cannot be beat, no matter how you arrive at the 10 piece configuration.

Every game of checkers is a Draw if played by two perfect players. It has taken 18 years to do the development and computation to prove this result.

There could still be improvements made to Chinook in the sense that against an imperfect opponent, Chinook will sometimes Draw, where a improved algorithm would achieve a Win.

Quoted: Chinook is the World Man-Machine Checkers Champion.

See also:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/07/20/computer.checkers.ap/index.html

I had a few of these...cool graphic history of the Apple product line from Apple I to iPhone.

I have an IBM 5100 in my garage. It still works! This $20,000 personal computer was something I drooled over when I was in high school in 1977.

Quoted: IBM Archives: Exhibits: IBM Personal Computer: IBM 5100 Portable Computer

click to play

Ridiculous anti-piracy video from 1992.

Quoted: Extra special HIGH QUALITY version of the 1992 anti-piracy video we all know and love! Exclusive to YouTube! You've tried the rest, now try the ...