The Lenna (or Lena) picture is one of the most widely used standard test images used for compression algorithms.'lena' or 'lenna' is a digitized Playboy centerfold, from November 1972. (Lenna is the spelling in Playboy, Lena is the Swedish spelling of the name.) Lena Soderberg (ne Sjööblom)
by Alex Rest, describes some problems, bugs and technique solutions that correspond to using pointers. This article would be useful for beginners and programmers that are using other programming languages and are starting to study C and C++ now.
@ Ars Technica by Wayne "Hat Monster" Hardman "The BIOS is that dark, cavernous pathway to your computer's very soul that both beckons and repels the would-be performance seeker."
by Jon "Hannibal" Stokes "I've been writing on CPU technology here at Ars for almost five years now, and during that time I've done my best to communicate computing concepts in as plain and accessible a manner as possible while still retaining some level
Latest technology news; monthly journal; events, hot forum topics; top articles; viewpoints; links to papers and reports; career centre; dedicated C++ forum - some pages with hundreds of views; media centre with audio, video, netseminars to subscribe to
In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. 72 years later, the eighth drop is only just about to fall.
Almost every application with GUI needs icons. And they better be sexy. And stylish. And consistent. And small. Here are few tips for programatically creating icons using Java 2D features
Women who navigate around 3D computer-generated environments for a living - or even for fun - are having their style cramped by ultra-narrow computer displays and graphics software that favours men.
Sunlight can convert triclosan, a common disinfectant used in anti-bacterial soaps, into a form of dioxin, and this process may produce some of the dioxin found in the environment, according to research at the University of Minnesota.
The numbers that control your life. You're identified by dozens of numbers. Your phone number, your driver's license number, your social security number, your zip code, your license plate, your credit card numbers. I find these numbers fascinating. Who distributes them? What can they be used for? How can you use them? How are they issued?
by andy@nobugs.org, "I recently became interested in parsing C++. It's taken me quite a while to gather together various resources from the web, so I thought I'd share my findings with the world ..."
development of a real-time executive for PC applications. The executive developed is based on a pre-emptive round-robin queue, and supports multiple tasks within a global programs address/data space.
By Robert Matthews - Strangelets - sometimes also called strange-quark nuggets - are predicted to have many unusual properties, including a density about ten million million times greater than lead. Just a single pollen-size fragment is believed to weigh
"In many programming circles, the mention of C++ merits a big yawn. It's not that the language is retired, since some 38 percent of software developers use C++ at least part of the time, according to Evans Data, Inc. But it's no longer perceived as cool."
"...Norvig had written the program in Lisp in 2 hours, while the times for the C++ developers ranged from 3 to 25 hours." After I read that, I knew I had to try the problem.
If your windows installation has issues, or for some other unmentionable reason is unable to get updates from the windows server, this is what you need to do.
A Stanford Philosophy professor has developed a method for turning procrastination into productivity. "Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing
"Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest; but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest; it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level."
@ Scientific American, Mental exercises with neurofeedback may ease symptoms of attention-deficit disorder, epilepsy and depression--and even boost cognition in healthy brains
a Nigerian invention keeps food fresh without electricity, a large pot inside which fits another smaller pot with a clay lid. The space between the two pots is filled with sand, creating an insulating layer around the inner pot. The sand is then kept damp
Darwin is the Unix-derived core that provides the underlying foundation for Mac OS X. At Darwin's heart is the XNU kernel--a Mach 3.0-based microkernel that has been modified to include portions of FreeBSD for performance reasons.
by Scott Aaronson. I have an ingenious idea for a company... My company will be the one that packages ... in 25-cent cardboard boxes, then resells the boxes for up to $300 apiece.
"As any die-hard Trekkie knows, if you are wearing a red shirt and beam to the planet with Captain Kirk, you're gonna die. That's the common thinking, but I decided to put this to the test."
A single ant or bee isn't smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots.
None of us can know the answers for sure until our own time comes, but the few individuals who have their brush with death interrupted by a last-minute reprieve can offer some intriguing insights.
Israel as being the United States’ “cop on the beat” in the Middle East. - Why do you hate America? - Have you ever been to a Wal-Mart? - immediate withdrawal? (Iraq)
The age-old practice of turning the soil before planting a new crop is a leading cause of farmland degradation. Many farmers are thus looking to make plowing a thing of the past
a chimpanzee named Jerry. He and his wife Dorothy were raising Jerry as their baby. Little Jerry slept in a crib and wore diapers just like a human baby.
a different approach to image optimization, based on how image data is stored in different formats. Let’s start with the JPEG format and a simple technique called the eight-pixel grid.
First introduced by George Spafford in this article, the law states that the more the user is presented with false or erroneous alerts, the more they will ignore real alerts in the system.
Attributed to Bruce Beiser, the law states that every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffectual.
Sarcasm is usually innate; however, if you would still like to attempt developing this ability, your chances of success would be greatly increased if you are intelligent, or at the least not mentally incapable of detecting and reproducing sarcastic remarks.
Her sinking with the loss of almost 1,200 lives caused such outrage that it propelled the U.S. into the First World War. But now divers have revealed a dark secret about the cargo carried by the Lusitania on its final journey in May 1915. Munitions they found in the hold suggest that the Germans had been right all along in claiming the ship was carrying war materials and was a legitimate military target.
"It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought people would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a brain can see that object-oriented programming is counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient."
"Only one third of a search engine is devoted to fulfilling search requests. The other two thirds are divided between crawling (sending a host of single-minded digital organisms out to gather information) and indexing (building data structures from the results)." By George Dyson