Father of artificial intelligence dies
The creator of Lisp and arguably the father of modern artificial intelligence, John McCarthy, died last night. He studied mathematics with the famous John Nash, at Princeton, and, notably, held the first “computer-chess” match between scientists in the US and the USSR, according to Techcrunch.
McCarthy created Lisp to make 'Turning' machines in a limited computing environment at his disposal.
His work lives on in many systems, seen and unseen - that control the way we interact with computers and the Internet.
Oracle ups cloud offering
Oracle struck a deal to buy online customer service company RightNow Technologies for about $1.5 billion, sparking speculation of bids for other so-called cloud technology companies that deliver software, data and computing power over the Internet, reports Reuters.
Oracle is pushing into the cloud technology market, including sales force automation, human resources and databases.
Should RightNow accept a higher bid from another competitor, it may be liable to pay Oracle a termination fee of $60 million.
Groupon goes after Google employees
Groupon has sued two former sales managers it says took trade secrets to Google's competing venture when they quit the daily deals site, according to Cnet.
Michael Nolan and Brian Hanna left the Chicago-based company in January last month to join Google Offers, taking customer lists and marketing strategies with them.
The suit filed in the Chancery Division of the Circuit court of Cook County, Illinois, doesn't name Google as a defendant, and seeks to prevent the former Groupon employees from sharing the information with their current employer.
Fujitsu seeks supercomputer orders
Fujitsu said it seeks to receive most of the 200 billion yen ($2.6 billion) of supercomputer orders targeted by the Japanese government in the next five years, and is close to releasing its K supercomputer, writes Bloomberg Businessweek.
The supercomputer toppled China's Tianhe-1A as the world's fastest supercomputer in June.
The K supercomputer is equipped with 80 000 CPUs and has a target performance of 10 petaflops, mainly aimed at government-backed research centres and universities.
Share