Microsoft at CES

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/10-Things-Microsoft-Did-Right-Over-the-Past-Decade-602590/

Nexus One, caught in a controversy- Hindustan Times

The family members of author Philip K. Dick are complaining that the new Nexus One phone infringes on the writer’s sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — a work that was turned into the 1982 Harrison Ford film Blade Runner”

In the book, a bounty hunter named Rick Deckard is charged with a mission to eliminate rogue “Nexus-6? model androids.

Isa Dick Hackett, a daughter of Dick and the chief executive of Electric Shepherd Productions, an arm of the Dick estate devoted to adapting the late author’s writings, told the Journal’s Nathan Koppel that the connections between the book and the phone are highlighted by the fact that the Nexus One runs on Google’s Android operating system.

WSJ quotes the relevant description for those who haven’t read the book. Nexus-6 models are portrayed as having brain power that rivals that of humans. One page reads: “The Nexus-6 android types, Rick reflected, surpassed several classes of human specials in terms of intelligence. In other words, androids equipped with the new Nexus-6 brain unit had from a sort of rough, pragmatic, no-nonsense standpoint evolved beyond a major — but inferior — segment of mankind. For better or worse. The servant had in some cases become more adroit than its master.”

Nexus One, caught in a controversy- Hindustan Times