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The Real da Vinci Code
r.jimenezz writes "This month's Wired magazine has a fascinating article about an American roboticist and an Italian scholar who apparently have demonstrated that one of Leonardo's creations, a three-wheeled cart, is actually a 'physically programmable robot'. Very interesting reading."
"Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history," says art historian Kenneth Clark, "whom each of us must re-create for ourself." Da Vinci has been credited with inventing just about everything but the Internet."
It's a shame that we had to wait until Al Gore came along for that one.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Bender!!
AFAIK, da Vinci (and other inventors of the time) placed errors and flaws in the schematics of their inventions on purpose.
I'm a software engineer, and I've been doing this for years. I didn't realise da Vinci also had job security issues.
"Bite my shiny metal ass"
Translates to:
"Morda il mio asino lucido del metallo"
Its even funnier when I translate it back to the Queen's English:
"It bites my ass I polish of the metal"
This should be a game... me thinks!
In other news, apparently every time the invention didn't work as intended, DaVinci would hide it behind a blue canvas screen so that onlookers couldn't see him working on the mechanics - hence the term "Blue Screen of DaVinci" (BSoD) came in to common use during that era for any mechanical device failure.
In later years, a manufacturer of popular computer operating systems adapted this 'blue screen' imagery for their own use and programmed their applications to displaye a blue screen on a regular basis in honour of the famous inventor and his work on early 'computing' devices.
AT&ROFLMAO