»As early as 1951, a young 29-year old TV engineer named Ralph Baer worked at Loral, a TV company. His Chief Engineer, Sam Lackoff, asked him to Build the best television set in the world. Designing a TV set was an easy task for Ralph, and he wanted to add a new concept that his boss did not understand: playing games on the television set. The video game concept was born, but could not be implemented since the boss refused the idea. In September 1966, Ralph came back to his 1951 idea of playing games on TV sets and started building the first video game prototypes. Therefore, Ralph Baer is accordingly credited as the inventor of the video game.
1947, however, is believed to be the first year when a game was designed for playing on a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT). This very simple game was designed by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. A patent application was filed on January 25th, 1947 and U.S. Patent #2 455 992 issued on Dec 14th, 1948.« (via)
»John Schwartz reports in today's New York Times about the global community of "satellite spotter" hobbyists who track the heavenly motions of satellites -- some of which are secret government projects -- and share what they find online«
»If you’re looking for advice on giving a presentation, the Internet is chock full of endless advice. I’ve been here, too. If you’re looking for tips on writing the presentation, the Internet goes dark — for a fairly simply reason. To think about how to write a presentation, you need to think about how you speak, and that’s not what you’re doing when you read or write. I’ll demonstrate. Say the following out loud right now:
I am reading this out loud to no one in particular.
Were you surprised to hear your voice? I was. Did you actually read it out loud? No? Why not? Sitting in a coffee shop? Worried that the guy next to you will think you’re a freak? This basic discomfort is the reason it’s tricky to explain how to present in an article. The skills involved in writing a clever paragraph are completely different from those used for developing and delivering that clever paragraph to a room full of strangers.
You still haven’t read it out loud, have you?«
