Word: sec
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Chess-playing computers generally use a brute-force approach. Looking four to eight moves ahead, they examine every possible play and counterplay and choose the move that minimizes their opponent's gain. The Cray, scanning 100,000 chess moves per sec., can usually come up with a winner. Hitech lacks the Cray's huge memory and powerful processors, but it makes up for that with speed and clever play. Long-term strategy, for example, is controlled by a program named Oracle, which was created by Hans Berliner, an artificial- intelligence expert and former world correspondence-chess champion...
...device that contains 64 special-purpose microprocessors. Each is assigned & to one square of the chessboard. When a piece lands on a particular square, the microchip dedicated to that square determines the likely outcomes. Operating at peak speeds, the 64 chips can evaluate more than 175,000 positions per sec., or 30 million in the 3 min. allowed for each move of tournament play...
Demographics pay off. Last season Hill Street's rating was about 13% lower than that of its CBS competition, Knots Landing, yet both sold a 30-sec. commercial slot for about $200,000. And while viewing of all network programming declined by 4% in 1984-85, NBC increased its share of the 18-to-49 group by 10%. NBC also benefited from the shrinking of the network audience --15% since 1980. The threshold for ratings success was shrinking, thus giving shows with more specialized appeal a fighting chance for survival...
...down the runway on a taxiway, just 200 yds. from the fire station. By the time the call from the emergency control tower came in at 7:13 a.m., firemen were loading into five fire-fighting vehicles equipped with foam. They reached the burning craft within 30 sec...
...SEC alleged that Price Waterhouse, the fifth-largest U.S. public accounting firm, had failed to note discrepancies in AM financial statements and thus was "materially false and misleading." As a result, the SEC said, AM was able to report inflated revenues and profits. Price Waterhouse denied any wrongdoing in the audit and contended that the SEC was trying to blame it for the mistakes of AM management...