Correct, his type is an endocrine tumour that is quite rare and not the usual type. However, we know that Jobs' cancer has spread, he required a liver transplant for it, that he's on immunosuppressive drugs following the liver transplant, etc... He's a sick boy whichever way you look at it. (Doctor) Richard Cavell

In my experience (I'm a doctor), almost all cancer patients go into denial and will downplay the severity of their symptoms. Steve Jobs is a billionaire, a tech guru, and all that, but he's also a human being. Based on what's publicly known, I'd say that his pancreatic islet cell cancer spread to his liver and that his liver tumour was non-resectable, and now he's ended up with a new liver by way of getting rid of the metastases. He describes his situation as a 'hormone imbalance' because that's one of the consequences of his condition, but the underlying diagnosis is far worse than that. Bottom line is that he's a very sick man... a cancer patient with a liver transplant has a limited life expectancy, and his role is now going to be figurehead/part time inputter of ideas more than being the day-to-day boss. Richard

The original CNN story mentions that sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can spot something that the first pair didn't see. Coders and authors will be familiar with the idea. Sometimes you've looked over something and worked on it so much that you can no longer analyse it from the beginning, and it takes someone else to verify one's work. That's why nurses aren't allowed to dispense medicine unless they get another nurse to check that they have selected the right medicine and the right dose and the right patient. Also, the fact that this patient had a vested interest in making the diagnosis means that she would have examined the slide thoroughly. (Doctor) Richard Cavell

Perhaps one day there will be a finite number of 'perfect' games which cannot be improved upon, and a computer that is set up to play perfectly is compelled to play one of them.

However, chess is nowhere near played out. The computers in this tournament are still making mistakes that cannot yet be identified as such.

There are two different chess engines in each match-up, so there's enough pseudo-randomness, as you call it, in the differences between the engines, to ensure that these games will be relatively unique.

Richard

Apple has found a way to give people what they ought to have - the functionality of a multibutton mouse - while not actually building a mouse with multiple buttons. Is this a silly attempt to not appear to 'give in'?