Holy Crap I Want This

Commodore 64 Original Hardware Laptop

"This is a fully functional Commodore 64 laptop using actual hardware, specifically the C64C motherboard which was one of the last and smallest revisions. It uses a Gamecube power supply in place of the original power brick.

For storage there’s a device called the 1541-III DTV to “emulate” a floppy drive using an SD card. (Click here for more info) The SD card is formatted FAT-32 so you can dump disk images on it using a PC, and read it with the C64 - pretty cool!"

Demo Video:

Checkers Solved! Can Mouse Trap Be Far Behind?

19:00 19 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Justin Mullins

The ancient game of checkers (or draughts) has been pronounced dead. The game was killed by the publication of a mathematical proof showing that draughts always results in a draw when neither player makes a mistake. For computer-game aficionados, the game is now "solved"

Draughts is merely the latest in a steady stream of games to have been solved using computers, following games such as Connect Four, which was solved more than 10 years ago.

The computer proof took Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer-games expert at the University of Alberta in Canada, 18 years to complete and is one of the longest running computations in history.

In honor of his achievements, Mr. Schaeffer has been appointed to the University's prestigious Cracker Barrel Chair as Professor of Jes' Sitting on the Front Porch Playin' Checkers, Y'all.

In related news, how the heck do I get a job where I play checkers for 18 years?!

link via Boing Boing