Stories related to: computer programming

Microsoft celebrated Bill Gates’ last day as a full-time employee today, the Seattle Times reports. More than 800 employees, family members and friends shared memories at the company’s corporate conference center in Redmond, Wash. CEO Steve Ballmer bid a tearful farewell to his longtime friend: "We've been given a enormous opportunity, and Bill gave us that opportunity," he told the audience. More »

Intel and Microsoft will fund researchers at two universities working on new programming techniques for multicore chips, sources told the Wall Street Journal . The companies will reportedly provide $2 million annually for five years, to speed the development of chips that can contain dozens—or even hundreds—of microprocessors of multiple types. One of the grants is expected to go to UC Berkeley. More »

The Information Age has been bad news for O'Connors, D'Angelos, Al-Husseins, and Van Kemps everywhere. Apostrophes in Irish, French, Italian, and African last names; hyphens in Arab names; and spaces in Dutch ones cause their owners endless headaches when computer systems reject or mis-record them, reports the AP, blocking them from voting, booking flights, and taking college exams. More »

A growing number of computer programmers aren’t content to be anonymous code monkeys: Today’s most talented tech nerds are paid exorbitantly well to turn out brilliant code, and can even earn a small amount of fame doing it, ComputerWorld reports . “ Some developers base their careers around eventually becoming rock stars,” while others “practically worship” at their “virtual altar,” said one writer who rates programmers. More »

Wouldn't it be nice if your computer could figure out what you wanted it to do? That dream just might be approaching reality, thanks to a project called CALO that aims to teach computers to understand users' intentions, according to the MIT Technology Review. "If CALO succeeds, it'll be quite a revolution," says one researcher. More »

Kevin Ham rules the shadowy Internet domain name market, having amassed an online real estate empire worth over $300 million, Business 2.0 reports. The doctor-turned-tech tycoon began buying and selling URLs in the nascent days of the web; today he trades hundreds of addresses a day, sometimes for as much as $350,000. More »

The latest programming language to come out of MIT's cutting-edge labs has an unusual audience: sixth-graders. “Scratch” replaces the technobabble of Java and C++ with simplified, jigsaw-shaped pieces of code, which budding programmers can arrange into customized sequences. A test group of 12-year-olds in Massachusetts is already at work designing programs in the new language. More »