True.

However, I still think it is wiser to slowly increase the delay from 0ms to 500ms over several months, because that would prevent any shock waves going through the markets.

AFAICT, RepRap cannot print itself. It still needs external components like wires, printed-circuit-board, etc.

You are forgetting that once the existing cryptographic schemes are broken, we would probably need a replacement pretty fast. That's when this work could come in handy.

They should instead switch to an online format, where users (citizens) can provide feedback on the documents.

The internet can be a dangerous place too.

Just like religious services can put you in an "information bubble", so can the internet.

But this is something we can at least fight against, like net neutrality.

This assumes that the administrator for www.cuteandfluffy.com is a dumb*ss that just installs and runs any code offered by ad networks without thinking.
If I were an administrator, I would expect and require the use of clean APIs for showing ads.

But of course, the ad networks can still make their APIs such that the user can still be tracked. However, this approach would soon expose the dirty practices of ad networks (google included).

It's what Hollywood and music labels are good at too.
Essentially, the US has turned into one big propaganda machine.

One big problem with advertisements as it stands now, is that they are served from different servers than the content is being served from. This allows advertising networks to collect information about your browsing habits (through e.g., cookies, http referer header, fingerprinting, etc.) Ad blockers make this close to impossible, but they are not prevalent enough to be of a big threat to advertisers.

One solution would be to install ad-blockers in web-browsers by default (starting with e.g., firefox).

Of course, the reaction to this will be that advertisers demand their clients (websites) to show the ads in an "inline" fashion, one which the ad-blocker cannot block.
So this is not a solution against ads per se, but at least it will keep advertisers from snooping browsing behavior.

The problem is that this is still a "success story".

If the success story earns slightly above average, then you probably don't want to know what the average earnings are.

But computing a hash-value IS going through your files.

What if they use a hash that is computed like this:
1. compute md5sum of the data
2. make the last bit zero or one, depending on whether the file has some interesting property.

Suddenly, they can profile you based on "hash-value" alone.

That, of course, only makes it more painful to encounter a hash collision.

So we are living in a society where only a select bunch of "experts" know the laws.
Seems like a terrific idea!

So, if I get this correctly, Dropbox will prevent you from sharing a file that was blocked due to somebody else uploading it and getting busted?

What does somebody else's data have to do with your data?
And what if there is a hash collision?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...