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🔗 Computing

The Canon Cat was a task-dedicated, desktop computer released by Canon Inc. in 1987 at a price of US$1,495. On the surface it was not unlike the dedicated word processors popular in the late 1970s to early 1980s, but it was far more powerful and incorporated many unique ideas for data manipulation.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 History 🔗 Computing 🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science

In cryptography, the EFF DES cracker (nicknamed "Deep Crack") is a machine built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 1998, to perform a brute force search of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) cipher's key space – that is, to decrypt an encrypted message by trying every possible key. The aim in doing this was to prove that the key size of DES was not sufficient to be secure.

🔗 Numismatics

The EURion constellation (also known as Omron rings or doughnuts) is a pattern of symbols incorporated into a number of banknote designs worldwide since about 1996. It is added to help imaging software detect the presence of a banknote in a digital image. Such software can then block the user from reproducing banknotes to prevent counterfeiting using colour photocopiers. According to research from 2004, the EURion constellation is used for colour photocopiers but probably not used in computer software. It has been reported that Adobe Photoshop will not allow editing of an image of a banknote, but in some versions this is believed to be due to a different, unknown digital watermark rather than the EURion constellation.

🔗 BBC 🔗 Libraries 🔗 Education

The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips, Logica and the BBC (with some funding from the European Commission's ESPRIT programme) to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It has been cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.

This new multimedia edition of Domesday was compiled between 1984 and 1986 and published in 1986. It included a new "survey" of the United Kingdom, in which people, mostly school children, wrote about geography, history or social issues in their local area or just about their daily lives. Children from over 9,000 schools were involved. This was linked with maps, and many colour photos, statistical data, video and "virtual walks". Over 1 million people participated in the project. The project also incorporated professionally prepared video footage, virtual reality tours of major landmarks and other prepared datasets such as the 1981 census.

🔗 Food and drink

Portable soup was a kind of dehydrated food used in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was a precursor of meat extract and bouillon cubes, and of industrially dehydrated food. It is also known as pocket soup or veal glew. It is a cousin of the glace de viande of French cooking. It was long a staple of seamen and explorers, for it would keep for many months or even years. In this context, it was a filling and nutritious dish. Portable soup of less extended vintage was, according to the 1881 Household Cyclopedia, "exceedingly convenient for private families, for by putting one of the cakes in a saucepan with about a quart of water, and a little salt, a basin of good broth may be made in a few minutes."

🔗 Plants 🔗 Sweden

Old Tjikko is a 9,550 year-old Norway Spruce, located on Fulufjället Mountain of Dalarna province in Sweden. Old Tjikko originally gained fame as the "world's oldest tree." Old Tjikko is, however, a clonal tree that has regenerated new trunks, branches and roots over millennia rather than an individual tree of great age. Old Tjikko is recognized as the oldest living Picea abies and the third oldest known clonal tree.

The age of the tree was determined by carbon dating of genetically matched plant material collected from under the tree, as dendrochronology would cause damage. The trunk itself is estimated to be only a few hundred years old, but the plant has survived for much longer due to a process known as layering (when a branch comes in contact with the ground, it sprouts a new root), or vegetative cloning (when the trunk dies but the root system is still alive, it may sprout a new trunk).

🔗 Extinction

Breeding back is a form of artificial selection by the deliberate selective breeding of domestic animals, in an attempt to achieve an animal breed with a phenotype that resembles a wild type ancestor, usually one that has gone extinct. Breeding back is not to be confused with dedomestication.

It must be kept in mind that a breeding-back breed may be very similar to the extinct wild type in phenotype, ecological niche, and to some extent genetics, but the original gene pool of that wild type was eliminated with its extinction. A breeding-back attempt cannot actually recreate the extinct wild type of the breeding target, as an extinct wild type cannot be resurrected through it. Furthermore, even the superficial authenticity of a bred-back animal depends on the quality of the stock used to breed the new lineage. As a result of this, some breeds, like Heck cattle, are at best a vague look-alike of the extinct wild type aurochs, according to the literature.

User:Diikiw/Wiikid, formerly Wikiid, is an article that was created on the web site Wikipedia in 2008. It is notable in its attempt to become the first Wikipedia page to gain notoriety solely for the fact that it was a page on Wikipedia; this was intended to spark a debate as to whether or not Wikipedia could be considered a source notable enough to allow a page’s permanent entry on the site. It can be looked at both as metahumor and as a piece of postmodern art.