Computer Visionary Dennis Ritchie Dead at 70

Professor aims 'to model how people make decisions'

(NEWSER) - Cheaters beware: A chess wiz has developed a program to catch you. Potential cheating has become a noted problem in chess, the New York Times reports. Alleged text messaging prompted a five-year ban on a trio of players in 2010; in 2006, a player was accused of using a computer in the bathroom in an incident dubbed Toiletgate. The controversy inspired an international chess master and University of Buffalo professor to develop a computer program to investigate cheating. More»

John McCarthy a computer visionary

(NEWSER) - John McCarthy, the computer scientist who coined the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955, died Monday, reports the New York Times . He was 84. McCarthy was teaching mathematics at Dartmouth when he organized the first Artificial Intelligence conference in 1956. Later he founded AI labs at MIT and Stanford, and created the computer language Lisp (for List Processing Language) that still underlies much AI programming. McCarthy predicted that creating an AI machine would require "1.8 Einsteins and one-tenth the resources of the Manhattan Project." More»

Logging onto guest accounts can cause massive data loss

(NEWSER) - A rare but extremely damaging bug is causing users of Apple's Snow Leopard operating system to lose huge amounts of data. Apple says it's working on a fix for the bug. The glitch wipes out personal data for users who have upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard and log on to their machines on a guest account. Users are advised to immediately back up all their data. More»

Move from XP may require external hard drive, patience

(NEWSER) - The latest Windows incarnation beats Vista and XP, but don’t expect a smooth transition: upgrading from XP to Windows 7 is an ordeal, writes Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal. “In fact, the process will be so painful that, for many XP users, the easiest solution may be to buy a new PC preloaded with Windows 7,” Mossberg notes. More»

Windows 7, open-source competition hold Chrome OS back

(NEWSER) - Microsoft needn’t stress about Google’s planned operating system, writes Joseph Tartakoff for paidContent. Five reasons why:

• Windows 7 will put Microsoft on firmer ground, having won great reviews so far—and it will have been out 9 months by the time Chrome OS appears.
• Google’s not the only behemoth that knows users are running apps inside their browsers more often: Microsoft is developing a new "browser-based OS" with that in mind.