Article 6 only forbids cracking tools if they can show you intend to use them for cracking:
a) the production, sale, procurement for use, import, distribution or otherwise making available of:
1. a device, including a computer program, designed or adapted [specifically] [primarily] [particularly] for the purpose of committing any of the offences established in accordance with Article 2 - 5;
2. a computer password, access code, or similar data by which the whole or any part of a computer system is capable of being accessed
with intent [emphasis added] that it be used for the purpose of committing the offences established in Articles 2 - 5;
The child pr0n article (9) includes drawings.
Communications fall under the juristriction of the countries of all communicating parties footnote 21). From the definition of "computer system" and from footnote 23 it is clear that a router is considered a communicating party.
There are provisions along the lines of ECHELON, Carnivore, RIP and the DMCA, but states are free to uphold civil liberties and free use if they want.
Astronomers estimate [Tunguska]-sized events occur every one to three centuries.
According to a documentary I saw recently, two similar 20th-century impacts have been tentatively identified in Arabia and Brazil. With 3 on land, we can estimate about 6 or 7 happened at sea, giving a frequency of one every ten years. Of course, even if a Tunguska-sized bolide hit Mexico City or New York it would still be just a local disaster.
I doubt that a micro black hole would do any harm (but see David Brin's Earth, which also includes war, biotech, aliens, and mad scientist for good measure). It would probably immediately evaporate into Hawking radiation. There are some theories that such an object could be stable, but they pretty much prevent it from growing.
The article claims:
Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new resistance to antibiotics.
As measles is caused by a virus, there's nothing new about its resistance to antibiotics, which only affect bacteria.
Mental illness is indeed a serious issue, though not, as you claim, more serious in industrialised nations. But it is not obvious how a high suicide rate among the elderly is going to cause the extinction of our species, unless they choose to do it with weapons of mass destruction. Mass hysteria seems a much more promising candidate. Imagine The Crucible in the context of global cooperation against terrorism (which governments & the media usually equate with rebellion).
In fact bipolars have the highest mortality rate of any disease, it eventually forces you to take your own life by your own hand, just like depression.
Higher than AIDS? Ebola? Rabies? I agree it's very serious, but there's no need to exaggerate. Even without treatment, people can survive bipolar disease for decades before dying of unrelated causes. Winston Churchill, for example.
> Our money isn't worth anything, and is supported purely by irrational belief in its value.
And gold-based currencies are supported purely by the 'irrational' belief that the bank might choose to act against its own interests by giving you some precious metal for a piece of paper. Gold is valuable purely because of the 'irrational' belief that other people will exchange useful goods for a useless lump of metal. Even bartering for food depends on the 'irrational' desire to eat rather than starve to death.
Money can be very powerful even when nobody believes in its value or uses it as a medium of exchange. When Cecil Rhodes conquered what is now Zimbabwe (he modestly named it Rhodesia, of course), he introduced a currency. At first no-one used it to buy and sell, but they needed it to pay their taxes. And the only way to earn it was to work in Rhodes' mines. Thus he obtained a vast amount of labour effectively for free.
Incidentally, gold coins could easily drop to 1% of their value in a few months if someone found a practical way to purify the gold in seawater. (JBS Haldane wrote an interesting novella on the subject.) Or simply if people believed that someone could do it...
Rubbish. If a big corporation is going to illegally copy a patent application which has been published but not yet granted, it will not shrink from illegally copying a patent once it has been granted.
While the US patent system is fairly effective, it is not as fair and does not encourage innovation as well as the patent law in almost any other industrialised country. The most prominent difference between patent law in USA and in Europe, Australia, etc. is that outside the US, a patent must make something patent which is not already patent. If the idea has already been published, or used in public, it is unpatentable. In the USA it is possible to patent an invention which is already in common use, provided you can show you developed it first.
The intent is presumably to allow new inventions to be brought to market faster, without waiting for the patent. (But everywhere, it is common for products to be marketed 'patent pending' or 'patent applied for'.) There are two main practical effects: firstly it is possible for an unscrupulous company (e.g. Amazon.com) to introduce a product and practice, wait for its competitors to follow suit, and then file a patent. This can cost the competitors enormous amounts of time and money, and does not in any way promote science or the useful arts. Secondly, huge companies with research departments can fill in detailed lab notebooks and have them signed and dated, proving when they did such and such. The lone inventor is unable to do this, and foreign companies often don't know they have to, so both are strongly discriminated against. This is why patents by private inventors are extremely scarce in the USA, compared to Europe.
> you get three.wav files. File 1 has no watermark. File 2 is the same audio as file 1
> with a watermark applied. File 3 is a different song with a watermark applied. Your "challenge"
> is to remove the watermark from file 3
Assuming the wavs are fairly good quality PCM, just flip half of the least significant bits on file 3. That'll probably destroy the watermark, but it won't sound any different.
The 19th-century view of all-conquering Aryans is no longer considered accurate. There is no good evidence for a violent end to the Indus Valley's Harappan civilisation. It probably disintegrated after destroying its environment, as so many others did in the Middle East and North America.
The later 'Aryanisation' of the subcontinent's language & culture seems to have coincided with the clearance of new land for farming. Cities, writing, et cetera came with them. In this respect the Indo-European speakers were indeed successful (and probably aggressive).
Incidentally, the meaning of the Vedic term 'Arya' is very obscure, but it definitely did not denote a race, nationality or culture. A later Persian state did take the name, whence the modern 'Iran'.
14 Q Do you know who Mr. Schumann is? 15 A Schumann? 16 Q Yeah. 17 A What's his first name? 18 Q Robert? 19 A Great composer. I love his music. 20 Q Not this man's. He's an expert witness 21 who has been retained by the MPAA and Proskauer. 22 Do you know him at all?
So if I cast a vote, I must trust many employees of two companies, both hand-picked by the organisers. I have to be confident they won't conspire, nor compromise their keys. If my trust is misplaced, the organisers can both discover who I voted for and forge the count.
In practice, I wan't eligible to vote, and I do trust the various parties, and the electronic voting was probably more secure than most paper ballots. But there are schemes where you don't have to have 100% trust in the powers that be. See the relevant chapter in Applied Cryptography.
Why did the Arizona Democrats and Election.com choose a scheme which allowed them to cheat? Probably because a simple scheme is easier to implement & test.
Slashdot Mirror
The child pr0n article (9) includes drawings.
Communications fall under the juristriction of the countries of all communicating parties footnote 21). From the definition of "computer system" and from footnote 23 it is clear that a router is considered a communicating party.
There are provisions along the lines of ECHELON, Carnivore, RIP and the DMCA, but states are free to uphold civil liberties and free use if they want.
According to a documentary I saw recently, two similar 20th-century impacts have been tentatively identified in Arabia and Brazil. With 3 on land, we can estimate about 6 or 7 happened at sea, giving a frequency of one every ten years. Of course, even if a Tunguska-sized bolide hit Mexico City or New York it would still be just a local disaster.
I doubt that a micro black hole would do any harm (but see David Brin's Earth, which also includes war, biotech, aliens, and mad scientist for good measure). It would probably immediately evaporate into Hawking radiation. There are some theories that such an object could be stable, but they pretty much prevent it from growing.
The article claims:
As measles is caused by a virus, there's nothing new about its resistance to antibiotics, which only affect bacteria.
Higher than AIDS? Ebola? Rabies? I agree it's very serious, but there's no need to exaggerate. Even without treatment, people can survive bipolar disease for decades before dying of unrelated causes. Winston Churchill, for example.
David Brin covered it in "Earth". Not a particularly interesting theory, but the novel as a whole is excellent, if you like amusingly silly endings.
I agree with you completely about dividends.
> Our money isn't worth anything, and is supported purely by irrational belief in its value.
And gold-based currencies are supported purely by the 'irrational' belief that the bank might choose to act against its own interests by giving you some precious metal for a piece of paper. Gold is valuable purely because of the 'irrational' belief that other people will exchange useful goods for a useless lump of metal. Even bartering for food depends on the 'irrational' desire to eat rather than starve to death.
Money can be very powerful even when nobody believes in its value or uses it as a medium of exchange. When Cecil Rhodes conquered what is now Zimbabwe (he modestly named it Rhodesia, of course), he introduced a currency. At first no-one used it to buy and sell, but they needed it to pay their taxes. And the only way to earn it was to work in Rhodes' mines. Thus he obtained a vast amount of labour effectively for free.
Incidentally, gold coins could easily drop to 1% of their value in a few months if someone found a practical way to purify the gold in seawater. (JBS Haldane wrote an interesting novella on the subject.) Or simply if people believed that someone could do it...
Hellman looks like a corporate professional & Diffie like an academic.
Rubbish. If a big corporation is going to illegally copy a patent application which has been published but not yet granted, it will not shrink from illegally copying a patent once it has been granted.
While the US patent system is fairly effective, it is not as fair and does not encourage innovation as well as the patent law in almost any other industrialised country. The most prominent difference between patent law in USA and in Europe, Australia, etc. is that outside the US, a patent must make something patent which is not already patent. If the idea has already been published, or used in public, it is unpatentable. In the USA it is possible to patent an invention which is already in common use, provided you can show you developed it first.
The intent is presumably to allow new inventions to be brought to market faster, without waiting for the patent. (But everywhere, it is common for products to be marketed 'patent pending' or 'patent applied for'.) There are two main practical effects: firstly it is possible for an unscrupulous company (e.g. Amazon.com) to introduce a product and practice, wait for its competitors to follow suit, and then file a patent. This can cost the competitors enormous amounts of time and money, and does not in any way promote science or the useful arts. Secondly, huge companies with research departments can fill in detailed lab notebooks and have them signed and dated, proving when they did such and such. The lone inventor is unable to do this, and foreign companies often don't know they have to, so both are strongly discriminated against. This is why patents by private inventors are extremely scarce in the USA, compared to Europe.
> you get three .wav files. File 1 has no watermark. File 2 is the same audio as file 1
> with a watermark applied. File 3 is a different song with a watermark applied. Your "challenge"
> is to remove the watermark from file 3
Assuming the wavs are fairly good quality PCM, just flip half of the least significant bits on file 3. That'll probably destroy the watermark, but it won't sound any different.
The 19th-century view of all-conquering Aryans is no longer considered accurate. There is no good evidence for a violent end to the Indus Valley's Harappan civilisation. It probably disintegrated after destroying its environment, as so many others did in the Middle East and North America.
The later 'Aryanisation' of the subcontinent's language & culture seems to have coincided with the clearance of new land for farming. Cities, writing, et cetera came with them. In this respect the Indo-European speakers were indeed successful (and probably aggressive).
Incidentally, the meaning of the Vedic term 'Arya' is very obscure, but it definitely did not denote a race, nationality or culture. A later Persian state did take the name, whence the modern 'Iran'.
How did he pronounce '00'?
'OO'?
Besides, there wasn't a year 00, or a year 0, although there should have been. But it would have been quite a while ago.
14 Q Do you know who Mr. Schumann is?
15 A Schumann?
16 Q Yeah.
17 A What's his first name?
18 Q Robert?
19 A Great composer. I love his music.
20 Q Not this man's. He's an expert witness
21 who has been retained by the MPAA and Proskauer.
22 Do you know him at all?
So if I cast a vote, I must trust many employees of two companies, both hand-picked by the organisers. I have to be confident they won't conspire, nor compromise their keys. If my trust is misplaced, the organisers can both discover who I voted for and forge the count.
In practice, I wan't eligible to vote, and I do trust the various parties, and the electronic voting was probably more secure than most paper ballots. But there are schemes where you don't have to have 100% trust in the powers that be. See the relevant chapter in Applied Cryptography.
Why did the Arizona Democrats and Election.com choose a scheme which allowed them to cheat? Probably because a simple scheme is easier to implement & test.
Dismissed with extreme prejudice.
That wasn't quick or simple. MS took a lot of effort to put a number of bugs in Windows. Read the emails in the DOJ case.
Correct.
Almost exactly the same amount emanating from the Earth, but at a lower temperature.