title: Lanzarote

paragraphs: Lanzarote is one of the two islands in the east of the Canary Islands. It is located 100 km west of the Western African coast line and 11 km north of the neighbouring island Fuerteventura.

paragraphs: Its dimensions are from east to west coast 16.5 km, from north to south 60 km.

paragraphs: The island was created by volcano eruptions.

paragraphs: There is only limited natural vegetation on the island.

paragraphs: About 130,000 people live on Lanzarote. The largest town on the island is Arrecife.

paragraphs: Lanzarote has one international airport at Arreceife (airport code ACE). Lanzarote's economy is mainly supported by tourism.

paragraphs: Many tourist come to the island for sunbathing, swimming, windsurfing, walking or snorkeling.

paragraphs: There are a few agricultural producers on the island, and in particular there are some vineyards producing local wines.


title: McMahon Line

paragraphs: The McMahon Line is a demarcation line drawn on map referred to in the Simla Convention, a treaty between Britain and Tibet signed in 1914.

paragraphs: Although its legal status is disputed, it is currently the effective boundary between China and India.

paragraphs: This dispute was used a pretext in a war between China and India in 1962.


title: Muradabad

paragraphs: Moradabad () is a city and a municipal corporation in Muradabad District in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It was established in 1600 by prince Murad, the son of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. As a result the city came to be known as Moradabad. It is the administrative headquarters of Moradabad District. It is also the birthplace of the origins of the Urdu language.


title: Theodor Heuss

paragraphs: Theodor Heuss (31 January 1884 in Brackenheim - 12 December 1963 in Stuttgart) was a German politician. He was the first person elected to a regular term as President of the Federal Republic of Germany.

paragraphs: Heuss was born in Brackenheim, near Heilbronn. He studied art history and state studies in Munich and Berlin.

paragraphs: He received his doctorate in 1905 in Munich. In 1908 he married Elly Heuss-Knapp (1881-1952). He worked for a political magazine from 1908 to 1912, and then for a regional newspaper. In 1910 he joined the Progressive People's Party and stayed there until 1918.

paragraphs: Between 1923 and 1926 he published the magazine "Die Deutsche Nation" ("The German Nation"). Heuss became a member of the German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP) and was a member of parliament for two periods.

paragraphs: In 1933 Heuss voted for the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) against his personal beliefs, following his party.

paragraphs: After World War II Heuss was the first Minister of Culture in Baden-Württemberg. He was one of the founders of the Free Democratic Party of Germany after WW II.

paragraphs: In 1949 he was elected as first President of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was reelected once.


title: India-Pakistan maritime trespassing

paragraphs: India-Pakistan maritime trespassing refers to the frequent trespassing and violation of respective national territorial waters of India and Pakistan in peacetime. Most trespassing is common to Pakistani and Indian fishermen operating along the coastline of the Indian state of Gujarat and the Pakistani province of Sindh within the disputed region of Rann of Kachchh.


title: Indo-Bangladeshi barrier

paragraphs: The Indo-Bangladeshi barrier is a 4,000-kilometer fence that India is presently constructing to seal off the Indian-Bangladeshi international border from what was formerly East Bengal. East Bengal was a partitioned region of Bengal, called East Pakistan from 1956 to 1971. This obstruction will virtually isolate Bangladesh from the rest of India by the end of 2012.


title: Frank-Walter Steinmeier

paragraphs: Frank-Walter Steinmeier (born 5 January 1956) is a German politician. He was Foreign Secretary, Vice Chancellor of Germany and is currently the twelfth President of the Federal Republic of Germany.

paragraphs: Steinmeier was born in Detmold in 1956. After his "abitur" (secondary school exam) and his military service, he studied law in Gießen. In 1982, he passed his first exam. His second exam was completed and passed in 1986. Between 1986 to 1991, he worked as assistant to the Doctor of Public Law and Political Science at the Gießen University. He obtained his Doctorate of Law in 1991.

paragraphs: After 1991, he worked in the State Chancellory of Lower Saxony for the Minister-President, Gerhard Schröder. From 1998, he was Undersecretary of State in Gerhard Schröder's Chancellor Office after Schröder became Chancellor of Germany. In 1999 he became Secretary of State.

paragraphs: In 2005, he became the new Foreign Minister of Germany in the coalition cabinet of Angela Merkel. He became Vice Chancellor of Germany in 2007. In 2008 he was elected to be the chancellor candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) for the election in 2009. The SPD got their worst result ever in a German federal election (23.0%), and Steinmeier became leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

paragraphs: From 2013 to 2017 he was again Foreign Minister.

paragraphs: Since 19 March 2017 he has been President of Germany, succeeding Joachim Gauck.


title: Tipper Gore

paragraphs: Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson Gore (born August 19, 1948) is an author, photographer, former "Second Lady of the United States," and the wife of Al Gore, from whom she is separated. She is referred to as "Tipper." She and Al Gore separated in 2010. She is known for her role in the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), criticizing music with profane language and promoting Parental Advisory stickers (known as "Tipper Stickers") on record covers, especially in the heavy metal, punk and rap genres.

paragraphs: Gore was born as Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson in Washington, D.C.. She is of English, Scottish, German, and Swedish ancestry.


title: Second Lady of the United States

paragraphs: The "Second Lady of the United States" is the wife of the Vice President of the United States. The name took shape as late-20th-century and early-21st-century vice presidential wives took on public policy roles that attracted a great deal of media attention. Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee, was active in several campaigns to remove indecent material from popular American entertainment like movies, television shows and music, starting when her husband was a senator.

paragraphs: At this date, there are five living current or former Vice Presidents' wives:

paragraphs: As of April 2018, there are four living former Second Ladies.


title: Lynne Cheney

paragraphs: Lynne Ann Vincent Cheney (born August 14, 1941) is the wife of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and the former Second Lady of the United States. She is a novelist, conservative scholar, and former talk-show host.

paragraphs: Lynne Ann Vincent was born in Casper, Wyoming. Her mother, Edna Lolita (nee Lybyer), became a deputy sheriff, and her father, Wayne Edwin Vincent, was an engineer. She is a descendant of Mormon pioneers. She has family roots in Denmark, Sweden, England, Ireland, and Wales. She was raised Presbyterian and became Methodist after she married Dick Cheney.

paragraphs: Lynne Cheney is the author or co-author of several books:


title: Graphium sarpedon

paragraphs: The Common bluebottle (Graphium sarpedon) is a species of swallowtail butterfly. It is found in South and Southeast Asia and in parts of Australia. There are 15 subspecies with different geographical distributions.


title: Bama Boyz

paragraphs: The Bama Boyz (a.k.a the Bamaz) are a Grammy-nominated, Dove Award winning, American record production, songwriting, and artist trio, with Eddie “E-Trez” Smith III, Jesse J. Rankins, Jonathan D. Wells as members.


title: Swallowtail butterfly

paragraphs: Swallowtail butterflies are large, colorful butterflies which form the family Papilionidae. There are at least 550 species, and though the majority are tropical, members of the family are found on all continents except Antarctica. The family includes the largest butterflies in the world, the birdwing butterflies of Australia (genus " Ornithoptera").


title: Graphium

paragraphs: Graphium is a genus of swallowtail butterflies. They are commonly known as swordtails. They are native to Eurasia, Africa, and Oceania. The genus has over 100 species. These species are mostly tropical. Their coloration is variable. Their habitat varies from rainforests to savannahs. Some species have tails on their hind wings which may be long and swordlike. Others do not have any tails. "Graphium" species are often seen at mud puddles.


title: Sauerbraten (video game)

paragraphs: Sauerbraten (also known as "Cube 2" or "Sauer", German for "“sour roast”") is a cross-platform, "Quake"-like, first-person shooter computer game that runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X using OpenGL and SDL. The game features single-player and multiplayer game play and contains an in-game level editor, its main feature. The game engine is free and open source software, under the Zlib License, with commercial support available from the developer's own business counterpart, Dot3 Labs.

paragraphs: The game started as a redesign to the original Cube Engine, and its first release was made on May 6, 2004. The game gets updated quite regularly.

paragraphs: "Sauerbraten" was made out of the game Cube, but is much more advanced and a player can create new levels. "Sauerbraten" was not made to look very good, but to allow easy map making within the game without making a big download. "Sauerbraten CTF Edition" is less than 350 megabytes. The game "Crysis" is around 3,000 megabytes.

paragraphs: Maps are made out of cubes, which can be made longer or shorter and can be reshaped. These cubes can be mapped out easily, using the in-game editor. This means that both map-makers and players can make very big, detailed maps very quickly. This is not like other games such as "Quake", where you need a lot of effort and bugfixing work to even get the map to work.

paragraphs: This simplicity in editing has resulted in a lot of maps released by players and developers. They are available on the "Quadropolis" forums.

paragraphs: The game has singleplayer and multiplayer modes. Multiplayer can be with LAN and Internet connection. Online game types are deathmatch, last man standing,"Capture" (where teams fight for control of parts on the map), Quake-style Capture the Flag, also instant-shot games (Instagib, Insta-clan-arena, insta-capture) as well as online multiplayer map editing, which is one of "Sauerbraten"'s most interesting and popular features. In single player modes the computer controls monsters against you.

paragraphs: The game has been shown in a Burger King television commercial, it received four out of five stars in a MacWorld UK review, and the game was mentioned in Issue 3 of (as well as their 101 Free Games Article), where it was described as being "perfect for both stingy and creative gamers alike".

paragraphs: The CTF edition was given a long review by Phoronix, a website focused on Linux and software reviews, as well as Linux.com, a website providing news related to free and open source software.


title: Speaker of the House of Commons

paragraphs: Speaker of the House of Commons can refer to:


title: Town crier

paragraphs: A town crier is a person who is employed by a town council to make public announcements in the streets. The crier can also be used in court or official announcements. Criers often dress elaborately, a tradition known from the 18th century, in a red and gold robe, white breeches, black boots and a tricorne hat.

paragraphs: They carry a handbell to make a loud noise and they shout the words "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!" before making their announcements. The word "Oyez" means "hear ye," which is a call for silence and attention. "Oyez" is from an Anglo-Norman word for "listen". Some town criers announcements are recorded in books called a Proclamation Book The proclamations book in Chester from the early 19th century records the town criers call as "O Yes, O Yes!"

paragraphs: In Medieval England, town criers were the most important way of spreading news with the people of a town. Many could not read newspapers. Royal proclamations, local bylaws, market days, advertisements and even selling loaves of sugar were all proclaimed by a bellman or town crier for centuries. During Christmas 1798, the Chester Canal Company sold some sugar that was damaged in their packet boat and this was advertised by the town crier.

paragraphs: Chester's first 'belman' was in 1540. His was paid one (old) penny for 'going for anything that is lost' and 4 old pennies for leading a funeral procession. In 1681, a fire safety law that all houses should have tiled roofs, not thatched, was to 'be published throughout the city by the day bellman. In 1553, the crier was paid 13 old pennies for 'ridunge the banes' (reading the banns or adverts) for the Chester Mystery Plays. In 1598, bellman Richard Woodcock must have been dressed in a similar way to the London bellman, for he had 'a tymber mast typt at both endes and embellished in the middest with silver' (a wooden stick with silver decorations).

paragraphs: In 1620, there was a fight at the crossroads between the butchers and the bakers where the 'Cryer brake his Mace in peeces Amonge them'(broke his silver stick among them). In 1607, one public notice read by George Tunnall, the bellman, that putting rubbish in the river was illegal.

paragraphs: In 1656 the parish register of St Mary le Crypt in Gloucester records banns of marriage as being "published by the Bellman".

paragraphs: In 1715, a local man recorded that the 'Belman at the Cross ... Reads publicly a proclamation in the Mayor's name, commanding all persons in the City to bee of peaceable and civil behaviour, not to walk around the Streets or Rows at unreasonable hours of night'. In 1743, John Posnitt took over as 'Day and Night Bellman'.

paragraphs: In 1792, Chester had a day-time and night-time bellman, John Yarwood and a crier, William Ratcliffe, but by 1835 there seems to have been only one position. It was not until 1998 that Chester had both a crier and a bellman again.

paragraphs: Town criers were protected by royalty, as they sometimes brought bad news such as tax increases. To this day, any town crier in the British Commonwealth is protected under old English law that they are "not to be hindered or heckled while performing their duties". To injure or harm a town crier was seen as an act of treason against the ruling monarchy. The term "Posting A Notice" comes from the act of the town crier, who having read his message to the townspeople, would attach it to the door post of the local inn.

paragraphs: The same as England, town criers were the most important way to deliver news to the people of the town because many people could not read newspapers or write. Proclamations, local bylaws, market days, adverts, were all proclaimed by a bellman or crier.

paragraphs: Criers were not always men, many town criers were women. Bells were not the only way to make noise - in Holland, a gong was often used, and in France a drum was used, or a hunting horn.

paragraphs: The best dressed town crier and escort at the last World Championships (date of entry 2008) are Peter and Maureen Taunton from the county town of Stafford, UK. They also hold the title of the best dressed town crier in Britain 2008 Competition held at Alnwick for the Loyal Company of Town Criers. They are also the Best Dressed Crier at the National Town Crier Competition in Hastings 2007.

paragraphs: Peter Moore has been The London Town Crier for more than 30 years. He is Town Crier for The Mayor of London, The City of Westminster, and London Boroughs. He is also Freeman and Liveryman of The City of London.

paragraphs: Alan Myatt holds the world record as the loudest town cryer at 112.8 decibels.

paragraphs: The need for town criers has disappeared and they became part of the local folklore. There are European and World Championship competitions for modern town criers.


title: Plague of Justinian

paragraphs: The Plague of Justinian was a pandemic in the Byzantine Empire in the years 541–542. It was the first recorded plague pandemic. It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 100 million people across the world, because it returned about every twelve years until 770 when it stopped for about 500 years.

paragraphs: It caused Europe's population to drop by around 50% between 541 and 700. It also may have contributed to the success of the Muslim conquests.

paragraphs: Its social and cultural impact is comparable to that of the Black Death.

paragraphs: The plague may have come from Ethiopia or Egypt, and it was eventually carried north to the large city of Constantinople. Ships carrying grain, which the city imported, had many rats that carried the plague.

paragraphs: At its height, the plague killed 10,000 people in Constantinople everyday. It eventually killed 40% of the city's population. In all, about 25 million people died because of the plague. It is said to have contributed to the fall of the Byzantine Empire, because it killed farmers and caused famine. The empire relied on tax money, and the plague killed many taxpayers.


title: Zlib License

paragraphs: The zlib License is an open source software license.


title: Plant cutting

paragraphs: Plant cutting, also known as striking/cloning, is a technique for vegetatively (asexually) propagating plants. With this method, a piece of the source plant containing at least one stem cell is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil, potting mix, coir or rock wool. The cutting then grows new roots, stems, or both, and becomes a new plant independent of the parent.


title: Ferdinand Lassalle

paragraphs: Ferdinand Lassalle (11 April 1825 — 31 August 1864) was a German jurist and socialist politician.

paragraphs: Lassalle was born in Breslau. His father sent him to a business school in Leipzig. Lassalle changed to the University of Breslau. He later studied in Berlin.

paragraphs: He studied Philosophy, Philology (Latin and Ancient Greek) and Law.

paragraphs: Lassalle took part in the revolutions of 1848-49. He was put into prison and later banned from Berlin. He lived in Düsseldorf that time. In 1859, Lassalle returned to Berlin.

paragraphs: Lassalle was a liberal politician in the early 1860s. The liberals had some struggles with Otto von Bismarck. Lassalle thought about the living conditions of the working class. He found that the idea of self-help would not help the working class people. This led him to become a member of the Communist league. There he was in opposition to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

paragraphs: Lassalle founded the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein (General German Workers' Association, ADAV) in 1863. This party later became the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).


title: Hans-Dietrich Genscher

paragraphs: Hans-Dietrich Genscher (21 March 1927 – 31 March 2016) was a German politician.

paragraphs: Genscher was born at Reideburg, near Halle. Genscher served in World War II from 1943 to 1945. He joined the Nazi Party at the age of 18. After the war, he studied economics and law in Halle and Leipzig. He joined the East German Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD) in 1946.

paragraphs: In 1952, Genscher fled to West Germany. There he joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP). He passed his second state examination in law in Hamburg in 1954. After that, he became a solicitor in Bremen.

paragraphs: In 1965, Genscher was elected to the Bundestag, the West German parliament for the first time. From 1969 to 1974, he was Federal Minister of the Interior under Chancellor Willy Brandt.

paragraphs: Genscher was Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1982 under Helmut Schmidt. Two weeks later, he began to serve in the same positions under Helmut Kohl. He served the second time from 1982 to 1992. He was Germany's longest serving Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor.

paragraphs: Genscher died at his home in Wachtberg, Germany from heart failure on 31 March 2016, aged 89.


title: Jonny Kennedy (rugby union)

paragraphs: Jonny Kennedy (born 16 February 1990) is an English rugby union player for Sale Sharks in the Guinness Premiership. He was born in Leighton, Cheshire. He plays as a centre or on the wing.


title: Franz Müntefering

paragraphs: Franz Müntefering (born January 16, 1940) is a German politician. He used to be Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

paragraphs: Müntefering was born in Neheim-Hüsten near Arnsberg.

paragraphs: After his school time he was taught to became an industrial salesman.

paragraphs: He joined the Social Democratic Party in 1966.

paragraphs: He was member of the Bundestag (Federal Parliament) from 1975 to 1992 and again from 1998 to 2013.

paragraphs: 1998 he was a member of the Landtag (state parliament) of North Rhine-Westphalia.

paragraphs: From 1992 to 1995 he was Secretary of Social affairs in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

paragraphs: From 1995 to 2001 Party Chairman in that state.

paragraphs: From 1995 to 1998 he was Bundesgeschäftsführer (federal executive director) of the SPD.

paragraphs: In 1998 he became Secretary for Transport and Infrastructure of Germany under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

paragraphs: From 1999 to 2002 he was Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party.

paragraphs: From 2002 to 2005 fraction leader in the Bundestag.

paragraphs: He was Party Chairman of the SPD from 2004 to 2005.

paragraphs: Uo from 2005 to 2007 he was Secretary for Working and Social Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany under Angela Merkel in her Grand Coaltion.

paragraphs: In 2007 he gave up all his jobs - excepted the mandate in Federal Parliament - for caring his ill wife.

paragraphs: After the death of his wife he returned.

paragraphs: From 2008 to 2009 he was Party Chairman of the SPD again.


title: Nick Royle

paragraphs: Nick Royle (born 1983) is a current England Rugby Sevens International rugby union player. He plays as a winger.

paragraphs: He has played for Warrington, Widnes Vikings, Sale Sharks and Fylde.


title: Carl Fearns

paragraphs: Carl Fearns (born 28 May 1989 in Liverpool) is an English rugby union player for Sale Sharks in the Guinness Premiership. He plays as a back-row.


title: James Gaskell

paragraphs: James Gaskell (born 20 May 1990) is a rugby union player for Sale Sharks in the Guinness Premiership. He was born in Crewe, Cheshire. He plays as a lock.


title: Martin Halsall

paragraphs: Martin Halsall (born 25 December 1984 in Blackpool, England) is a rugby union player for Sale Sharks in the Guinness Premiership. He plays as a prop.


title: Alex Shaw

paragraphs: Alex Shaw (born 31 March 1987 in Maidstone, Kent, England) is a rugby union player for Sale Sharks in the Guinness Premiership. He plays as a back-row.


title: Chris Leck

paragraphs: Chris Leck (born 21 May 1986 in Manchester, England) is a rugby union player for Sale Sharks in the Guinness Premiership. He plays as a scrum-half.


title: Secret Water

paragraphs: Secret Water is the eighth book in Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series of children's books. It was published in 1939.

paragraphs: This book is set in and around Hamford Water in Essex, close to the resort town of Walton-on-the-Naze. It brings the Swallows and the Amazons together and introduces a new group of characters, the Eels and the Mastodon. Ransome sailed to Hamford Water, an area of salt marshes and low lying islands in his boat "Nancy Blackett". He set the book in this tidal place which offered a new setting for his characters and chances to explore and map the area.

paragraphs: The Swallows mean to sail in the "Goblin" to Hamford Water and camp with their father, but he is called away on naval business. Instead he maroons them with a small boat (dinghy) on an island. Before he leaves, Father gives them a basic map of the area they call Secret Water and suggests they map the area before he returns to pick them up.

paragraphs: For a surprise, he has arranged for the Amazons to come down from the Lake District and join them with another dinghy.

paragraphs: They see some mysterious footprints which turn out to belong to the Mastodon, a local boy. He mistakes them for the Eels, another family who camp in the area regularly. Later the Eels arrive and are initially hostile before they settle down for a friendly war.

paragraphs: It seems that due to the distractions of war and being cut off by the tides, the chart will not be completed. However early in the last morning two separate groups of children complete it.


title: Gran Turismo (video game)

paragraphs: Gran Turismo is a driving simulation video game created by Polyphony Digital for Sony PlayStation console. The game was first sold in 1997. There are seven main games of "Gran Turismo" series and by late 2008 over 50 million "Gran Turismo" games have been sold by Sony. Each of the games simulate many different types of car including small, big, racing, old, new, Formula one and concept cars such as the Nike 2022. The cars look very realistic. Gran Turismo games were one of the first video games to include music from famous artists. Sony also released three Gran Turismo Concept versions. The game play is races similar to all real-life car racing including racing driver tests and everything from one short lap races in slow cars to 24 hour Le Mans racing challenges in prototype cars.


title: Aramid

paragraphs: Aramids are polymers. The name stands for "aromatic polyamide". Structurally aramids are similar to proteins.

paragraphs: Stephanie Kwolek developed aramids at DuPont in 1965. DuPont uses the trade name "Kevlar" for them..

paragraphs: Aramids are very present in security helmets, in splinter-resistant glass, in Ballistic vests, but also in other domains. They are used as a replacement for asbestos as a building material, for gaskets and other sealings, but also as helpers to make sails, parachutes and similar tools.


title: Brute force attack

paragraphs: A brute force attack is a term in cryptanalysis. It means trying to break a coded cyphertext by trying a lot of possibilities with fast computers. For example, a large number of the possible keys are tried in the key space. If successful , this decrypts the encrypted message.

paragraphs: The theoretical possibility of a brute force attack is recognized by the cryptographic system designers. They work to make the cryptographic system very difficult for computers to break using brute force attack. For that reason, one of the definitions of "breaking" a cryptographic scheme is to find a method faster than a brute force attack.

paragraphs: The selection of an appropriate key length depends on how difficult it will be to break it using a brute force attack. By obfuscating the data before encryption, brute force attacks are less effective and more difficult to determine.

paragraphs: The brute force attack can be used together with a dictionary attack.

paragraphs: For symmetric encryption, a key size of 128 bits is considered secure against brute force by traditional computers. 192 or 256 bits is considered secure against quantum computers. Many old ciphers, such as DES, used short keys which made them breakable by brute force.


title: Information theory

paragraphs: Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering. Information theory measures the amount of information in data that could have more than one value. In its most common use, information theory finds physical and mathematical limits on the amounts of data in data compression and data communication. Data compression and data communication are statistical, because they guess unknown values. The amount of information in data measures how easily it is guessed by a person who does not know its value.

paragraphs: A key measure in information theory is "entropy". Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process. For example, identifying the outcome of a fair coin flip (with two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a dice (with six equally likely outcomes). Some other important measures in information theory are mutual information, channel capacity, error exponents, and relative entropy.


title: Block cipher

paragraphs: In cryptography, a block cipher is a symmetric key cipher which operates on a groups of bits of fixed length, called "blocks", using an exact transformation. During encryption, a block cipher algorithm might take (for example) a 128-bit block of plaintext as input, and output a corresponding 128-bit block of ciphertext. The exact transformation is controlled using a second input — the secret key. Decryption is similar: the decryption algorithm takes, in this example, a 128-bit block of ciphertext together with the secret key, and output the original 128-bit block of plaintext.

paragraphs: One of the early block cipher designs was the Data Encryption Standard (DES), developed at IBM and published as a standard in 1977. A successor to DES, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES); also using block cipher, was adopted in 2001.


title: Authentication

paragraphs: Authentication (pronounced "aw-then-ti-keyt") (from Greek "αυθεντικός;" real or genuine, from "authentes;" author) is the actions taken to establish or verify something (or someone) as "authentic". It is the method of verifying claims made by someone about the thing. This might involve confirming the identity of a person, the origins of an object (or something), or to make sure that a computer program (or user) is a trusted one. People are usually authenticated by something they know (password), something they have (key), or something they are (biometrics).


title: DES-X

paragraphs: In cryptography, DES-X (or DESX) is an alternative to the DES (Data Encryption Standard) block cipher designed to increase the complexity of a brute force attack using a technique called "key whitening". As DES suffers from brute force attack DES-X was a trial to overcome such drawbacks.


title: Hostname

paragraphs: A hostname (also known as a sitename) is the unique name by which a network device (which may be a computer, file server, network storage device, copier, cable modem, etc.) is defined and known on a network. The hostname is used to identify a particular host in various electronic communication networks such as the World Wide Web, e-mail or Usenet.

paragraphs: On the Internet, the terms "hostname" and "domain name" are often misused interchangeably, but there are small technical differences between them.


paragraphs: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), is a measurement standards laboratory which is a non-regulatory (non-controlled) agency of the United States Department of Commerce. The institute's mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and Technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve quality of life.


title: Key size

paragraphs: In cryptography, key size or key length is the size (measured in bits or bytes) of the key used in a cryptographic algorithm (such as a cipher). Typical key sizes in modern symmetric ciphers are 128, 192, and 256 bits. Older symmetric ciphers used only 40, 56, or 64 bits, which can be broken by brute force. 128 bits is considered secure against brute-force by traditional computers, but not quantum computers. 192 and 256 bit keys are considered quantum-safe, and AES keys of these lengths are approved for protecting top secret information. Asymmetric (public key) ciphers such as RSA need a much longer key to be secure. RSA keys are typically at least 2048 bits. A large key size alone does not necessarily mean a cipher is secure - there are many insecure ciphers which have a large key size but have other design flaws that allow them to be broken.


title: Kandinsky

paragraphs: Wassily Kandinsky ( – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist.

paragraphs: He was one of the most important 20th-century artists. He was a major figure in modern art and painted some of the first modern abstract works. His art changed several times during his life. It was fauvist, abstract, expressionist and constructivist in turn.

paragraphs: Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow and chose to study law and economics. Quite successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—he started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

paragraphs: In 1896 he settled in Munich and studied first in a private school, then at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1914 after World War I started. He was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow and returned to Germany in 1921. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, and became a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

paragraphs: Later in life he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew. In 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In "Looks on the Past", he tells how the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that, on entering them, he felt he was moving into a painting. This experience, and his study of the region's folk art (particularly the use of bright colours on a dark background), can be seen in much of his early work.

paragraphs: He was interested in geometry in art and philosophy. The creative aspect of the form is expressed by a descending series of circles, triangles and squares.


title: Public-key cryptography

paragraphs: Public-key cryptography, also called asymmetric cryptography, is a communication where people exchange messages that can only be read by one another.

paragraphs: In public key cryptography, each user has a pair of cryptographic keys:

paragraphs: The private key is kept secret, while the public key may be widely distributed and used by other users.

paragraphs: Incoming messages are encrypted with the "recipient's public key" and can only be decrypted with their corresponding private key. The keys are related mathematically, but the user's private key cannot be easily got from the widely used public key. The most usual problem with this method arises when private key is accidentally leaked.

paragraphs: The two main branches of public key cryptography are:

paragraphs: They are often used together on the same message.


title: John Ashcroft

paragraphs: John David Ashcroft (born May 9, 1942) is an American consultant, lobbyist and politician. He was the 79th United States Attorney General. He served during the first term of President George W. Bush from 2001 until 2005. Ashcroft was previously the Governor of Missouri (1985–1993) and a U.S. Senator from Missouri (1995–2001). Ashcroft was born in Chicago, Illinois.


title: Muslim conquests

paragraphs: The first Arab Muslim conquests (632–732), (, Fatah, literally "opening",) also referred to as the Islamic conquests or Arab conquests, began after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He established a new unified political polity in the Arabian peninsula which under the following Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Arab power well beyond the Arabian peninsula in the form of a vast Muslim Arab Empire with an area of influence that stretched from northwest India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees.

paragraphs: The Arab conquests brought about the collapse of the Sassanid Empire and a great territorial loss for the Byzantine Empire. Though spectacular, the Arab successes are not hard to understand in hindsight. The Sassanid Persian and Byzantine empires were militarily exhausted from decades of fighting one another. This prevented them from dealing effectively with the mobile Arab raiders operating from the desert. Moreover, many of the peoples living under the rule of these empires, for example Jews and Christians in Persia and Monophysites in Syria, were disloyal and sometimes even welcomed the Arab invaders, largely because of religious conflict in both empires.

paragraphs: Some of the individual conquests are mentioned here:

paragraphs: The Byzantine-Arab Wars were between the Byzantine Empire and at first the Rashidun and then the Umayyad caliphates.

paragraphs: Under the Rashidun there were the conquests of Syria (637), Armenia (639), Egypt (639) and North Africa (652). Under the Umayyads the continuing conquest of North Africa (665), the second Arab siege of Constantinople (717-718) and the conquest of Tbilisi (736). In 827 there followed the conquest of southern Italy (827).

paragraphs: The last ruler of the Sassanid Empire in Persia was defeated by the Rashidun in 633 and 636, but the final military victory didn't come until 642 when the Persian army was destroyed.

paragraphs: During the seventh century the Umayyad fought successfully against the early Rajput in north India and in Central Asia.

paragraphs: In 711, a Muslim expedition defeated Raja Dahir at what is now Hyderabad in Sindh and established Umayyad rule by 712. The Umayyad brought under control the whole of what is modern Pakistan, from Karachi to Kashmir and reached the borders of Kashmir within three years. But rather soon afterwards semi-independent Arab ruled states developed.

paragraphs: The conquest of the Iberian Peninsula began when the Moors (mostly Berbers with some Arabs) invaded Visigothic Christian Iberia (modern Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Andorra) in the year 711. They landed at Gibraltar on April 30 and worked their way northward. This territory, under the Arab name "Al-Andalus", became first an Emirate and then an independent Umayyad Caliphate after the overthrowing of the dynasty in Damascus by the Abbasids. In 1031 the Christian kingdoms started the Reconquest up to 1492, when Granada, the last kingdom of Al-Ándalus fell under the Spanish Kings.

paragraphs: In Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahelian kingdom expanded Muslim territories far from the coast. Muslim traders spread Islam.

paragraphs: The modern era saw the rise of three powerful Muslim empires: the Ottoman Empire of the Middle East and Europe, the Safavid Empire of Persia and Central Asia, and the Mughal Empire of India; along with their contest and fall to the rise of the colonial powers of Europe.

paragraphs: The Mughal Empire declined in 1707 after the death of Aurangzeb and was officially abolished by the British after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.


title: Key space

paragraphs: In cryptography, the key space of an algorithm refers to the set of all possible keys that can be used to initialize the cryptographic algorithm. For example, if an algorithm works using a key that is a string of 10 bits, then its key space is the set of all binary strings of length 10 bits; i.e. we have key space of size 2 = 1024.

paragraphs: To avoid attackers from guessing the key using a brute-force attack, the key space is usually designed to be very large. Another needed attribute is that the key space designed to be "flat", having no or very few weak keys.

paragraphs: The block cipher Rijndael/AES uses a key of up to 256 bits, resulting in a key space containing about 2 which is over 1.1579 × 10 keys. This makes it "computationally infeasible" to check each possible key by brute force.

paragraphs: In the DES block cipher, a 56-bit key is used, resulting in a relatively small key space of size 2.

paragraphs: The ROT13 cipher is only designed to prevent people from accidentally reading messages (e.g. movie plot details). As there is no key, the key space is therefore empty.


title: Roger Williams (theologian)

paragraphs: Roger Williams (December 21, 1603 – April 1, 1683) was an English-American Puritan, and a Calvinist-Baptist theologian. He was widely known as a supporter of religious toleration and separation of church and state. He also supported fair dealings with Native Americans. In 1644, he received a royal charter creating the colony of Rhode Island, named for the main island in Narragansett Bay. He is believed to have started the first or second Baptist church in the United States. He is known to have left the church soon afterwards, saying, "God is too large to be housed under one roof."

paragraphs: These are some famous descendants of Roger Williams:


title: Unitarianism

paragraphs: Unitarianism is a term that describes some forms of Christianity. Unitarianism can be described as the belief that God is just one person. This is different from what most other Christians think, which is that God is three different people all in the same person. That belief is called Trinitarianism. Unitarian Christians believe in Jesus of Nazareth. They think that Jesus was a great leader and prophet, but they generally do not think that Jesus is part of God himself.

paragraphs: The "Son of God" is a being that existed before Jesus' human life. It is called the Logos who dwelt with God in the beginning and then was born as the man Jesus. However, he is not eternal, but had a beginning of existence. God created him. This theology is commonly called Arianism, but there are many varieties of this form of Unitarianism. They range from the belief that the Son, before he came to earth, was a divine spirit of the same nature as God to the belief that he was an angel or other lesser spirit creature of a wholly different nature from God. Arius' views are only one variation of this theology.

paragraphs: Whatever the case, in this belief system, Jesus is beneath God, but higher than humans (and has always been so). This concept could be referred to as "elevated subordinationism." It is associated with early church figures such as Justin Martyr, Lucian of Antioch, Eusebius of Caesarea, Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Asterius the Sophist, Eunomius, and Ulfilas, as well as Felix, Bishop of Urgel and others who believed that Jesus was God in his divine nature but his divinity in his human nature was through adoption. Arian forms of Unitarianism remain among Unitarians in Transylvania, Hungary, France, and several countries in Africa. Famous Arian Unitarians include Isaac Newton, Andrews Norton and Dr. William Ellery Channing.Ralph Waldo Emerson's father was a Unitarian pastor.

paragraphs: Since the 19th century, several Evangelical or Revivalist movements also used an elevated subordinationist theology. This can be best described as Nontrinitarianism, rather than Unitarianism. Important figures include Barton W. Stone and Charles Taze Russell. Theologies among Evangelical Unitarians are sometimes classed as Arian, and sometimes Sabellian (Jesus is God in the flesh, the manifestation of God, who exists as a single person) and the Chinese-based sabbatarian True Jesus Church. Other modern non-trinitarian churches, such as the Filipino-based Iglesia ni Cristo, may also be included, although they reject the "unitarian" name to avoid confusion. Jehovah's Witnesses also have a nontrinitarian theology with specific traits. The Christian Churches of God (CCG) is another Unitarian Church with a World Conference. It has a lot of material on Unitarian theology and history and holds the doctrine of the Pre-existence of Jesus Christ. CCG like other Sabbatarian Churches of God trace their ancestry back to the early church and follow biblical law. The CCG and Sabbatarians are sometimes erroneously called Arians due to the pejorative Trinitarian use of that term and also that of Subordinationists (see Bibliography).

paragraphs: This theology ranges from the belief that Jesus was merely a great man filled with the Holy Spirit (sometimes called Psilanthropism or, more commonly, Socinianism) to the belief that he is the incarnation of God's "impersonal" Logos. It is associated with early church figures like the Ebionites, Theodotus of Byzantium, Artemon, and Paul of Samosata in the early Church, Marcellus of Ancyra and his pupil Photinus in the 4th century AD, and Michael Servetus, Ferenc Dávid and Faustus Socinus in the Protestant Reformation. It is from the latter that we get the word "Socinianism," but the teaching of Socinus is unique in more than just its Christology, and so the name is best not used as merely a Christological term.

paragraphs: In modern times we see the psilanthropist view manifested in Rationalist Unitarianism, which emerged from the German Rationalism and the liberal theology of the 19th century. Its proponents took a highly intellectual and humanistic approach to religion. They rejected most of the miraculous events in the Bible (including the virgin birth.) They embraced evolutionary concepts, stated that man was good by default and abandoned the doctrine of biblical infallibility. Rationalist Unitarianism is distinguished from Deism (with which it nevertheless shares many features) by its belief in a personal deity who directly acts on creation, while Deists see God as holding aloof from creation.

paragraphs: Notable Rationalist Unitarians include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker in theology and ministry, Joseph Priestley and Linus Pauling in science, Susan B. Anthony and Florence Nightingale in humanitarianism and social justice, Charles Dickens in literature, and Frank Lloyd Wright in arts. Many Hungarian Unitarians embrace the principles of Rationalist Unitarianism—the only Unitarian high school in the world, John Sigismund Unitarian Academy in Cluj Napoca (Kolozsvár, Klausenburg), Romania, teaches Rationalist Unitarianism. The psilanthropist concept of the nature of Jesus is similar to the viewpoint held by the Islamic faith, which regards Jesus as a non-divine and human Prophet. The Christadelphians, the Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith and the Biblical Unitarians are Evangelical Unitarians.


title: United States National Security Council

paragraphs: The White House National Security Council (NSC) in the United States is the principal forum used by the President for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the President's Executive Office. It began under President Harry S. Truman.


title: Stephen Hadley

paragraphs: Stephen John Hadley (born February 13, 1947, in Toledo, Ohio) is the current (21st) U.S. Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (commonly referred as National Security Advisor) for President George W. Bush. He had been Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor from January 22, 2001. On January 26, 2005, he replaced Condoleezza Rice as National Security Advisor, upon Rice's confirmation as Secretary of State.

paragraphs: Hadley served as a senior foreign and defense policy advisor to then-Governor Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign and worked in the Bush-Cheney Transition on the National Security Council.


title: Deputy National Security Advisor

paragraphs: The Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the Deputy National Security Advisor, is a member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, serving as deputy to the President's National Security Advisor.

paragraphs: Among other responsibilities, the Deputy National Security Advisor serves as Executive Secretary to the National Security Council Principals Committee, and as Chairman of the National Security Council Deputies Committee.


paragraphs: Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) serves as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, which is part of the United States Intelligence Community. He/She reports to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

paragraphs: The Director is assisted by the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Director is nominated by the President, with the concurring or nonconcurring recommendation from the Director of National Intelligence and must be confirmed by majority vote from the Senate.

paragraphs: What follows is a list of Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency (in chronological order).


title: Procopius

paragraphs: Procopius of Caesarea (, c. 500 – c. 565) was a prominent Eastern Roman scholar. He took part in the wars of the Emperor Justinian I, and was the major historian of the 6th century AD, writing the "Wars of Justinian", the "Buildings of Justinian" and the celebrated "Secret History". He is commonly held to be the last major historian of the ancient world.

paragraphs: The writings of Procopius are the primary source of information for the rule of the Roman emperor Justinian. Procopius was the author of a history in eight books of the wars fought by Justinian I, a on Justinian's public works throughout the empire, and a book known as the "Secret History" (Greek: "Anekdota") that claims to report the scandals that Procopius could not include in his published history.

paragraphs: A number of historical novels based on Procopius' works (along with other sources) have been written, of which the best, "Count Belisarius", was written by poet and novelist Robert Graves in 1938.

paragraphs: "This article is based on an earlier version by James Allan Evans, originally posted at Nupedia."


title: Porter Goss

paragraphs: Porter Johnston Goss (born December 10, 1938) is an American politician. He was the last Director of Central Intelligence and the first Director of the Central Intelligence Agency following the passage of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which abolished the DCI position. A CIA officer in Latin America during the Cold War, he served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 until he took up his post at the agency.


title: George Tenet

paragraphs: George John Tenet the son of Greek northern Epirus immigrants was born in January 5, 1953. He was the Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency and is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. Tenet held the position as the DCI from July 1997 to July 2004, making him the second-longest serving director in the agency's history — behind Allen Welsh Dulles — as well as one of the few DCIs to serve under two U.S. presidents of opposing political parties.


title: Peer Steinbrück

paragraphs: Peer Steinbrück (born 10 January 1947) is a German politician.

paragraphs: Steinbrück was born in Hamburg. From 1968 to 1969 he was training as a reserve officer of the Bundeswehr (German army). From 1970 to 1974 he studied national economy in Kiel. After that he worked in different ministries.

paragraphs: In 1969 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In 1993 he became Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure in the State of Schleswig-Holstein. In 1998 he changed to the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and became Secretary for Infrastructure, up from 2000 Secretary of Finance. In 2000 he was elected into the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.

paragraphs: He was Minister President (Ministerpräsident) of North Rhine-Westphalia from November 2002 to June 2005.

paragraphs: On the state election on 22 May 2005 Steinbrück failed to be reelected as Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia. His successor was Jürgen Rüttgers (CDU).

paragraphs: Since November 2005 he has been finance minister of Germany and Vice chief of SPD.


title: Beyblade

paragraphs: Beyblade (爆転シュート ベイブレード, "Bakuten Shūto Beiburedo", literally translates to Explosive Shooting Beyblade) is an anime and manga series about a group of kids battling with highly powerful spinning tops enchanted with sacred bit-beasts or spirits of mythical and powerful creatures.

paragraphs: Thirteen-year-old Tyson Granger (Takao Kinomiya), along with his teammates, Kai Hiwatari, Max Tate (Max Mizuhura), and Ray Kon (Rei Kon), strive to become the greatest beybladers in the world. With the technical help of the team's resident genius, Kenny (Kyouju), and with the powerful strength of their bit beasts, the Bladebreakers armed with their tops (AKA: blades) attempt to reach their goal.


title: Wolfmother

paragraphs: Wolfmother are an Australian rock band. They won a Grammy award in 2007 for their song 'Woman'. Musically they are similar to blues rock bands like Led Zeppelin.


title: Defense Intelligence Agency

paragraphs: The Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, is the central producer and manager of foreign military intelligence for the United States. As one of the principal members of the U.S. Intelligence Community, the agency works to answer national-level defense objectives for the President, the Secretary of Defense, and senior U.S. policymakers.

paragraphs: Although the DIA is designated a Department of Defense combat support agency, the majority of its 16,500 employees (65%) are civilian and its intelligence operations in support of U.S. national strategic planning extend far beyond the zones of combat. The agency has its own Clandestine Service, which conducts espionage activities around the world, particularly in countries where the military has better access or more specialized military experts than the Central Intelligence Agency. Further, DIA leads the Intelligence Community in collection and production of measurement and signature intelligence.

paragraphs: The agency was established in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency - who is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate - chairs the Military Intelligence Board, which coordinates activities of the entire defense intelligence community.


title: Makenna Cowgill

paragraphs: Makenna Cowgill (born 11 September 1998) is an American actress. She has provided voices for many animated movies.


title: African bush elephant

paragraphs: The African bush elephant ("Loxodonta africana") is the larger of the two species of African elephant. It normally weighs 13000 pounds and stands 11 feet tall at the shoulder. The population of bush elephants has drastically declined in the last thirty years.


title: Binda, New South Wales

paragraphs: Binda is a village in the Southern Tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia in Upper Lachlan Shire.

paragraphs: It is about 261 km south-west of Sydney and 19 km north of Crookwell. Other near-by towns or locations are:

paragraphs: In 2006, the population of Binda was 131 people.

paragraphs: The word Binda is thought to be from the Gandangara Aboriginal word for deep water.

paragraphs: The first Europeans in the Binda area were the explorers James Meehan and John Oxley in 1820. People began living in the area in the 1840s. Police were based at Binda in 1840 to protect local farmers from bushrangers. The town was begun in 1851. Blocks of land in the town were made ready for sale in 1852. It was the first town in the area to have a school, post office, police station and a courthouse. At Funny Hill, a sheep farm, a racing track for horses was made and the Binda Picnic Races began in 1848.

paragraphs: On Boxing Day, December 26, 1864, the bushrangers Ben Hall, John Gilbert and John Dunn rode into the town with 3 local girls. They robbed a shop owned by Edward Morriss. They locked all the local people into the Flag Hotel. They made everyone dance to celebrate Boxing Day. Morriss got out of the hotel at 2.00 a.m. and set off to tell the police. Hall set fire to Morriss's shop and burned it down.


title: Hollister Co.

paragraphs: Hollister Co. is a clothing company owned by Abercrombie & Fitch. The kind of clothing they sell is "casual", meaning that it is for informal use. It also has a theme based on the surfing cultural movement of Southern California. The first Hollister store opened in July 2000 in Columbus, Ohio. Even though Hollister opened in 2000, many of their items say it was created in 1922. This is based on a story that is not real. On October 25, 2008 Hollister opened the first store outside the U.S. and Canada in Brent Cross, London.


title: Ron Simmons

paragraphs: Ronald "Ron" Simmons (born May 15, 1958) is an American retired professional wrestler and American football player. He competed under his real name and the ring names Faarooq Asaad and Faarooq. He is currently signed to the WWE under a Legends program.

paragraphs: He competed in the National Wrestling Association (NWA), World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and World Wrestling Federation / Entertainment (WWF/E). During his time in WCW, he became the first African American to win the World Heavyweight Championship when he defeated Big Van Vader on August 2, 1992. In the WWF, he is known for being one-half of the Acolytes Protection Agency along with Bradshaw and was also a member of The Nation of Domination. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame by Bradshaw in 2012.

paragraphs: Simmons played college football at Florida State University. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008. He played one season in the National Football League (NFL) with the Cleveland Browns and one season in the Canadian Football League (CFL) with the Ottawa Rough Riders.


title: Fire services in the United Kingdom

paragraphs: The fire service in the United Kingdom operates under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

paragraphs: In England, there is a fire service for each county and large city, although some cover two counties. Wales is divided between three fire services. Scotland has had only one fire service since 2013. Northern Ireland has had only one fire service since 1973.

paragraphs: Fire services are known as "fire and rescue services", or "fire services" for short, or by the older phrase "fire brigades". Most of them now have the name "[Place] Fire and Rescue Service", e.g. Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service. There are a few that do not: London Fire Brigade, Cleveland Fire Brigade and West Midlands Fire Service.

paragraphs: There are two main types of firefighter:

paragraphs: Some fire stations are day-crewed, meaning they are covered by wholetime firefighters during the day and by retained firefighters at night. A few places have volunteer firefighters, who are like retained firefighters but are not paid at all.

paragraphs: Wholetime firefighters work as part of a 'watch'. This is a group of 5-15 firefighters who work the same hours at the same fire station. A fire station's watches are usually named with a colour (e.g. red watch, white watch, blue watch, green watch).

paragraphs: The fire service has ranks. In most fire services, these are, from lowest to highest:


title: Bleach (Nirvana album)

paragraphs: Bleach is the first album by the American rock band, Nirvana. It did not become popular when it was released, but when Nirvana's second album "Nevermind" was released in 1991, many Nirvana fans discovered "Bleach". It is the best-selling release ever on the Sub Pop label.


title: Zub

paragraphs: Zub is a computer game made for use on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum computers which was released in 1986 by Mastertronic. The code was written by John and Ste Pickford on the ZX Spectrum and Phillip Brian Allsopp on the Commodore 64, and the music was composed by David Whittaker.

paragraphs: Zub works for the Emperor Zub of the Zub galactic empire and must find the Green Eye of Zub. Zub has been permitted to use the Ancient Intergalactic Elevators which take him to other planets. The elevators can only be reached by jumping and riding on platforms to reach the top of the sky. The platforms and elevators are guarded by creatures (also known as Zubs) but each planet has a different sub-species - for example the first level's Zub resembles a gyroscope whilst he fourth level Zub is a fish. The Zubs can be shot and stunned. They will float to the top of the sky where the recover and return to attack Zub again. The Green Eye of Zub was located on the tenth planet and once the Eye is found, Zub has to return to the first planet to give the Eye of Zub to Emperor Zub.

paragraphs: There are seven difficulty levels, each one increases the number of enemy Zubs per planet.


title: Molly Hatchet

paragraphs: Molly Hatchet is a southern rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. They were formed in 1971 by Dave Hlubek and Steve Holland.


title: Northern Italy

paragraphs: Northern Italy ("Italia Settentrionale", "Italia del Nord", "Padania", "Alta Italia", "Norditalia" or just "Nord") is an area that is made up of two areas in Italy:

paragraphs: Northern Italy is more a business area compared to the south and is colder. People from the south sometimes emigrate to the north because of this.

paragraphs: This region has 26,835,082 inhabitants and an area of 46,301 mi² (119,921 km²). The largest city is Milan. It is generally seen as having a higher wealth than the southern regions of Italy. This is due to the 'North-South' Divide which is said to split the country in half in terms of means of development.


title: Thermosphere

paragraphs: The thermosphere is the fourth layer of the Earth's atmosphere. It is directly above the mesosphere (middle layer) and directly below the exosphere (top layer).

paragraphs: The name thermosphere is taken from the Greek word "thermos" which means 'heat'. This layer has high temperatures because it absorbs X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Even though it has temperatures of 2,000 °C (3,360 °F), the density of the thermosphere is so low that it doesn't feel hot. The absorbed ionizing radiation also creates the ionosphere. Shortwave radio waves can bounce off the Kennelly-Heaviside layer (ionosphere) and go to distant parts of the Earth. This layer is very helpful in radio communication.


title: Anaconda (installer)

paragraphs: Anaconda is the installer for Red Hat Linux and Fedora. It is written in Python and C, with a graphical interface using GTK+ 3 and PyGObject and a text inetrface using python-newt. A kickstart file can be used to automatically configure the installation, allowing users to run it without much supervision.

paragraphs: Anaconda is used by RHEL, Fedora and a number of other projects, Anaconda offers a text-mode and GUI mode, so users can install on a wide range of systems.

paragraphs: Anacondas are lizard-eating boas, and the Caldera installation program was called "Lizard", hence this name was chosen.


title: Canowindra, New South Wales

paragraphs: Canowindra (pronounced Can-noun-dra) is an historic town near Cowra in the central west of New South Wales, Australia. Canowindra is on the Belubula River.

paragraphs: A post office opened in 1847. The mail came through Carcoar. It was not part of the road to the Lachlan because it didn't have a bridge.

paragraphs: In October 1863, bushranger Ben Hall's gang took over the village for three days. Everyone was held hostage in the hotel. The gang held a big party for everyone in the hotel. A monument to Ben Hall was put up in 1951 on the site of Robinson's hotel, the "Travellers' Rest". New research shows that the events happened at an hotel on the other side of the river.

paragraphs: The Royal Hotel is on the site of another hotel owned by Robinson. A sign on the wall says this was where Ben Hall's gang had their party. Other important buildings include the nursing home, the Junction Hotel, Finn's Building, the Victoria Hotel, the former Bank of NSW and the former CBC Bank. The Trading Post is a homewares shop that won a tourism award for 2006.

paragraphs: Canowindra is also known as the Balloon Capital of Australia. One of the largest festivals in Australia used to take place here every April. This was called Marti's Fiesta, which is no longer held due to lack of money.

paragraphs: Australian country music star Captain Flange makes his home in Canowindra.

paragraphs: The town is the site of one of the world's great fossil discoveries. A road worker in 1956 found 360 million year old fish fossils. These were from the Devonian period in the Palaeozoic era. The "Canowindra slab" was taken to the Australian Museum, Sydney. The fish had been trapped in a pool of water that dried up. The fish found were two armoured antiarch placoderms, "Remigolepis walkeri" and "Bothriolepis yeungae." They also found "Canowindra grassi", a lobe-finned crossopterygian fish, with two rare young arthrodire placoderms, "Groenlandaspis" species.

paragraphs: More fossils were found in January 1993 using an excavator to dig down to the fossil layer. Many fish were preserved in detail. Specimens can be seen in the Age of Fishes Museum. This was built with support and funding from the Australian Museum. The Canowindra site has now been listed as part of Australia's National Heritage because of its international scientific importance.


title: Robert Cutler

paragraphs: Robert Cutler (1895 – 1974) was a U.S. administrator. He served as National Security Advisor between 1953 and 1955, and again from 1957 to 1958. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and attorney and bank executive in Boston, Massachusetts before taking public office, he was the person to serve in the newly created position of National Security Advisor during the Eisenhower Administration.


title: St. Anthony-Chapel

paragraphs: The St. Anthony-Chapel is a chapel in the district Kornelimünster of the German city of Aachen.

paragraphs: It was built in 1718 but destroyed by an earthquake a short time later. The abbot of the abbey at Kornelimünster ordered to rebuild the damaged building. It was completed in 1781.

paragraphs: The St. Anthony-Chapel belongs to a group of five chapels of Kornelimünster.


paragraphs: The United States Secretary of Transportation is the head of the United States Department of Transportation. The Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet. The current Secretary is Elaine Chao.


title: The Bushwackers (band)

paragraphs: The Bushwackers Band was first called the Bushwackers and Bullockies Band. It is an Australian folk and country music band. It was active from the early 1970s to 1984. The group started as a trio playing around Latrobe University, Melbourne. The players were Dave Isom, Jan Wositzky and Bert Kanahoff. Their first album, "The Shearer's Dream" was made in 1974 with Dobe Newton on lagerphone and vocals, Mick Slocum on accordions and vocals, Jan Wositzky on harmonica, bush bass and vocals, Tony Hunt on fiddle and viola and Dave Isom on guitar.

paragraphs: Recordings include "Faces in the Street", "Beneath the Southern Cross", "Bushfire", "Murrumbidgee" and "The Shearers Dream". some of these were made through Australian record label Astor Records. The album "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" was made with EMI records in 1976. It is regarded as one of their best recordings.

paragraphs: Many songs were settings of poetry written by Australian bush poets including Henry Lawson.

paragraphs: Other members and musicians who have played and recorded with the band over the years include:

paragraphs: In the 90's the band reformed with Newton and Corbett back in the lineup.


paragraphs: The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) is a federal Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with transportation. It was established by an act of Congress on October 15, 1966 and began operation on April 1, 1967. It is administered by the United States Secretary of Transportation. Their current mission statement is, ""The mission of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is to ensure our Nation has the safest, most efficient and modern transportation system in the world, which improves the quality of life for all American people and communities, from rural to urban, and increases the productivity and competitiveness of American workers and businesses.""""


title: United States Department of War

paragraphs: The United States Department of War, also called the War Office, was the department of the United States government's executive branch responsible for the operation and maintenance of land (and later air) forces from 1789 until September 18, 1947, when it became part of the National Military Establishment, renamed on August 10, 1949 the Department of Defense. The War Department also had responsibility for the young nation's naval affairs until the establishment of the Navy Department in 1798.


paragraphs: The United States Department of Commerce and Labor was a Cabinet department of the United States government.

paragraphs: The department was created on February 14, 1903. Later, on March 4, 1913 the name changed to the Department of Commerce. Then, its bureaus and agencies specializing in labor moved to the new Department of Labor.

paragraphs: The department was administered by the United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor.


paragraphs: The United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (also known as HEW) was a cabinet-level department of the United States government from 1953 until 1979. It was administered by the United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1979, a separate Department of Education (ED) was created from this department, and HEW was renamed as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

paragraphs: President Warren G. Harding proposed a Department of Education and Welfare as early as 1923, and similar proposals were also recommended by subsequent presidents, but for various reasons was not implemented. It was only enacted as part of "Reorganization Plan Number 1 of 1953", transmitted to Congress by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on March 12, 1953. HEW ran a Community Public Health Program, which was famous for its grants to cities like Chicago for rat control. It ran a Solid Waste program focused on municipal waste issues, like how to build sanitary landfills rather than dumps. It also had a radiation program under which it wrote standards on things like microwave ovens. When the EPA was created in 1970, it assumed a number of HEW’s programs that related to environmental protection, including its pesticides program and half of its radiation program.

paragraphs: To date, this was the only department of the U.S. government to be created through presidential reorganization authority, in which the president is allowed to create or reorganize bureaucracies as long as neither house of Congress passed a legislative veto. This power to create new departments was removed after 1962, but in the early 1980s, the Supreme Court declared legislative vetoes unconstitutional.


title: United States Post Office Department

paragraphs: The Post Office Department is the former name of the United States Postal Service when it was a Cabinet department. It was headed by the United States Postmaster General.

paragraphs: The Postal Service Act signed by President George Washington on February 20, 1792 established the Department. Postmaster General John McLean was the first to call it the Post Office "Department" rather than just the "Post Office." The organization became more important in the government when President Andrew Jackson asked his Postmaster General, William T. Barry, to sit as a member of the Cabinet.

paragraphs: During the Civil War, postal services in the Confederacy were provided by the Confederate States of America Post Office Department, headed by Postmaster General John Henninger Reagan.

paragraphs: The Postal Reorganization Act signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970, replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with the independent United States Postal Service. The Act took effect on July 1, 1971.


title: United States Department of Education

paragraphs: The United States Department of Education (also referred to as ED, for Education Department) is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. Created by the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88), it was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 17, 1979 and began operating on May 4, 1980.


title: United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

paragraphs: The United States Department of Housing, often abbreviated HUD, is a Cabinet department of the United States federal government. Although its beginnings were in the House and Home Financing Agency, it was founded in 1965 to develop and execute policy on housing and cities. It has largely scaled back its urban development function and now focuses primarily on housing.

paragraphs: The department was established on September 9, 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Department of Housing and Urban Development Act into law. It stipulated that the department was to be created no later than November 8, 60 days following the date of enactment. The actual implementation was postponed until January 13, 1966, following the completion of a special study group report on the federal role in solving urban problems.

paragraphs: HUD is administered by the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The former administrator of the US Small Business Association, Steve Preston, was nominated to the Position of Secretary of HUD by President Bush on April 18, 2008. He was confirmed by the Senate and his public swearing in ceremony was on June 6, 2008.


paragraphs: The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is responsible for administering programs of veterans’ benefits for veterans, their families, and survivors. The benefits provided include disability compensation, pension, education, home loans, life insurance, vocational rehabilitation, survivors’ benefits, medical benefits and burial benefits.

paragraphs: It is administered by the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs.


title: Particle accelerator

paragraphs: A particle accelerator, also called an atom smasher, is a machine that accelerates (speeds up) particles and makes them travel at very high speeds. Accelerators work by pushing particles like electrons, protons, or atomic nuclei (the centers of atoms) with electric fields and by steering them with magnetic fields. Their main use is to study particle physics.

paragraphs: The largest accelerators are used to study particles smaller than atoms; smaller accelerators are used to study atomic nuclei and make radioactive materials. There are two kinds of particle accelerators: linear accelerators and circular accelerators. Linear accelerators move the particles in a line, while circular accelerators move the particles in a circle. One example of a particle accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is very big, stretching through two countries. Another example is the Tevatron in the United States. The cathode ray tube, used in 20th century televisions and computer monitors is also a simple accelerator for electrons.

paragraphs: When accelerated particles hit other particles such as atoms, smaller pieces come out. This helps people see particles smaller than an atom. Normally those particles cannot be seen, but they can in the particle accelerator. This is because in some ways energy and matter are the same thing. At the high speed created in these machines, some of the movement energy is changed into matter. It is the opposite process that nuclear weapons use; nuclear weapons turn matter into energy. Small amounts of antimatter are also created during the process.

paragraphs: The particle accelerator at CERN was set up to search for the Higgs Boson particle, which would complete the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

paragraphs: Particle accelerators often use very advanced technology. This makes them cost a lot of money which is usually paid by governments.


title: United States Secretary of Education

paragraphs: The United States Secretary of Education is the head of the Department of Education. The Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet, and 16th in line of United States presidential line of succession. The United States Secretary of Education deals with Education.

paragraphs: In 1979, President Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education as a cabinet-level agency. Previously, Education had been handled by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, henceforth known as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

paragraphs: The current acting Secretary of Education is Betsy DeVos.


paragraphs: The United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare was the head of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The Secretary was a member of the President's Cabinet. In 1979, there was a division of the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare's position into separate secretaries of Health and Human Services and Education.


title: Oveta Culp Hobby

paragraphs: Oveta Culp Hobby (January 19, 1905–August 16, 1995) was the first secretary of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, first commanding officer of the Women's Army Corps, and chairman of the board of the "Houston Post".


title: Patricia Roberts Harris

paragraphs: Patricia Roberts Harris (May 31, 1924 – March 23, 1985) served as United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the last United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and the first United States Secretary of Health and Human Services in the administration of President Jimmy Carter. She was the first African American woman to serve as a United States Ambassador, representing the U.S. in Luxembourg under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the first to enter the line of succession to the Presidency.


title: Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing

paragraphs: The Assistant Secretary for Housing, who also carries the title Federal Housing Commissioner, is a position within the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Assistant Secretary is responsible for overseeing the $400 billion Federal Housing Administration insurance portfolio. He or she also oversees the Department of Housing and Urban Development's regulatory responsibilities in the areas of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, the housing mission of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the manufactured housing industry.

paragraphs: The Federal Housing Commissioner is appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate. The Assistant Secretary is third in the order of succession for the office of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The Assistant Secretary is paid at level IV of the Executive Schedule, meaning he or she receives a basic annual salary of $143,000. The incumbent Federal Housing Commissioner is Brian D. Montgomery, who was confirmed in February 2005. The previous Federal Housing Commissioner was John C. Weicher.


paragraphs: The United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is the head of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, concerned with "urban housing matters." The Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet. Ben Carson is currently serving as Secretary.

paragraphs: On January 13, 1966, Robert C. Weaver became the first African American Cabinet member by being appointed to the position.


title: Henry Paulson

paragraphs: Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson Jr. (born March 28, 1946) was the United States Treasury Secretary from 2006 to 2009 and member of the International Monetary Fund Board of Governors. He previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.

paragraphs: Paulson is co-chair with Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg for a report called "Risky Business" by a coalition of top U.S. political and economic leaders from the political left, right, and center on the dire economic consequences from climate change (global warming), from lost property to ruined crops.


title: Reconquista

paragraphs: The Reconquista (a Spanish and Portuguese word for "Reconquest"; Arabic: الاسترداد, "Recapturing") was a period of 800 years in the Middle Ages during which the several Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula expanded themselves (grew) by fighting the Muslim states of "al-Andalus" (Arabic الأندلس), the Muslim states on the Iberian Peninsula, and pushing them out of the peninsula.

paragraphs: The Reconquista began shortly after the Islamic conquest. Much of the ideology of the Reconquista was common to most Crusading: soldiers from all Christendom travelled to Iberia to fight the Muslims as an act of Christian repentance.

paragraphs: The Reconquista came to an end on the 2 January 1492 with the capture of Granada. The last Muslim ruler of Granada surrendered (gave up) his kingdom to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic kings ("los Reyes Católicos"). This event marked the end of Muslim rule in Iberia.


title: John W. Snow

paragraphs: John William Snow (born August 2, 1939, in Toledo, Ohio) served as the 73rd United States Secretary of the Treasury. He replaced Secretary Paul O'Neill on February 3, 2003 and was succeeded by Henry Paulson on July 3, 2006, in a move that had been anticipated for several weeks. Snow submitted a letter of resignation on May 30, 2006, effective "after an orderly transition period for my successor." To replace him, U.S. President George W. Bush nominated Henry M. Paulson, Jr.. Snow announced on Thursday, June 29, 2006 that he had completed his last day on the job; Robert Kimmitt served as acting secretary until Paulson was sworn in.


title: Paul H. O'Neill

paragraphs: Paul Henry O'Neill (December 4, 1935 – April 18, 2020) was an American businessman and politician.

paragraphs: He served as the 72nd United States Secretary of the Treasury for part of President George W. Bush's first Administration. He resigned in December 2002 under pressure from the administration and became a harsh critic.

paragraphs: O'Neill was chairman and CEO of Pittsburgh-based industrial giant Alcoa from 1987 to 1999, and retired as chairman at the end of 2000. In 1995, he was made chairman of the RAND Corporation.

paragraphs: O'Neill died of lung cancer on April 18, 2020 in Pittsburgh, aged 84.


title: Oliver Wolcott Jr.

paragraphs: Oliver Wolcott Jr. (January 11, 1760– June 1, 1833) was United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1795 to 1800 and governor of Connecticut from 1817 to 1827.


title: Samuel Dexter

paragraphs: Samuel Dexter (May 14, 1761 – May 4, 1816) was an early American statesman who served both in Congress and in the Presidential Cabinet.

paragraphs: Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to the Rev. Samuel Dexter, the 4th minister of Dedham, he graduated from Harvard University in 1781 and then studied law at Worcester under Levi Lincoln, Sr., the future Attorney General of the United States. After he passed the bar in 1784, he began practicing in Lunenburg, Massachusetts.


title: United States Secretary of the Army

paragraphs: The United States Secretary of the Army is a civilian office within the Department of Defense with statutory responsibility for all matters relating to the United States Army: manpower, personnel, reserve affairs, installations, environmental issues, weapons systems and equipment acquisition, communications, and financial management. Nominated by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the Secretary of the Army is a non-Cabinet position serving under the Secretary of Defense. This position was created September 18, 1947, when the Department of War became the Department of the Army and made a branch of the new Department of Defense.


title: Kenneth Claiborne Royall

paragraphs: Kenneth Claiborne Royall (July 24, 1894–May 25, 1971) was a United States Army general and the last person to hold the office of Secretary of War. That position was abolished in 1947, and Royall served as the first Secretary of the Army (a successory position) from 1947 to 1949.


title: Pete Geren

paragraphs: Preston M. Geren, III (born January 29, 1952 in Fort Worth, Texas) was the 20th United States Secretary of the Army from 16 July 2007 to 16 September 2009.

paragraphs: He had already been acting United States Secretary of the Air Force, between 29 July 2005 and position he served in until the confirmation of his successor Michael Wynne on 4 November 2005.

paragraphs: Geren was also a member of the United States House of Representatives from Texas.


title: Astor markhor

paragraphs: The astor markhor or flare-horned markhor ("Capra falconeri falconeri") is an endangered species of markhor. It is native to Kashmir and northern Pakistan.


title: Kabul markhor

paragraphs: The Kabul markhor or straight-horned markhor ("Capra falconeri megaceros") is a goat-antelope native to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is an endangered subspecies of the markhor. It is the 'Provincial animal of Afghania'.


title: Junagarh

paragraphs: Junagarh City () was the former capital of the former princely state of Junagadh, which was integrated into the Indian Union in 1948.


title: Nirvana (album)

paragraphs: Nirvana was a greatest hits album of songs by the popular American grunge band Nirvana, who disbanded in 1994 because the lead singer, Kurt Cobain died. The album was released on October 29, 2002. It was almost not released because of a lawsuit by Cobain's wife Courtney Love. This was because of a song on the album, "You Know You're Right", that Love thought would be wasted on a box-set album. She thought it would work better on one CD. Soon after the lawsuit was settled, the album was released.


title: India–Pakistan border

paragraphs: The Hindustan–Pakistan Border, known locally as the International Border (IB), is the international boundary between the Republic of India and Pakistan that demarcates the Indian states of Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat from the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Sindh except for Kashmir that is disputed (Line of Control). The border resulted from the Partition of India in 1947.

paragraphs: Wagah, the ceremonial point of crossing between India and Pakistan lies along this border between the Indian city of Amritsar and the Pakistani city of Lahore.

paragraphs: The border between two countries is called an international border from Gujrat/Sindh to the Line of Control. The Kashmir region is divided by the 1949 UN ceasefire line into two parts and the de facto border dividing Pakistan-administered Kashmir from Indian-administered Kashmir has been called the Line of Control since 1972. On the south side of the border of the Jammu Division is Pakistan's Punjab border, and is called the "working boundary" by Pakistan (which is a recent term) but the "international border" by India.


title: Emblem of Afghanistan

paragraphs: The Coat of arms of Afghanistan has appeared in some form on the Flag of Afghanistan since the inception of that nation. The most notable absence was during the 1980s when a Communist regime ruled the nation, and in the late 1990s, during the rule of the Taliban.

paragraphs: The latest incarnation of the coat of arms has the added inscription of the shahadah in Arabic at the top. Below it is the image of a mosque with a mehrab that is facing Mecca with a prayer mat inside. Attached to the mosque are two flags, taken to stand for flags of Afghanistan. Beneath the mosque is an inscription that states the name of the nation. Around the mosque is a garland. It is white


title: USB hub

paragraphs: USB is an international standard of technology for connecting peripherals to computers and other devices that support it. An interface where a USB device can be connected is called a port. A USB hub is a special device which allows adding more USB ports. The additional ports share one USB connection to the computer; for this reason, each of them cannot carry as much data as a direct USB connection can.

paragraphs: A hub may be bus-powered, which means it gets all its electrical power from the computer. This makes simple wiring, but it cannot give full power to its peripherals. A self powered hub has its own power cord, and can give full power to peripherals that need it.

paragraphs: There are different versions of the USB standard; main difference between the version is the maximum speed that is supported. The USB standard also defines different types of USB plugs.

paragraphs: A USB hub is a normal USB device, which was built for a given version of the standard. Certain models may support different versions of USB, while others may not. As an example: USB 3.0 can transfer payload data at up to 4 GBits per second. USB 2.0 is limited to a transfer rate of 280 MBits per second. Connecting an USB 3.0 device to the computer using an USB 2.0 hub will limit the transfer rate to that of USB 2.0.


title: Digital signature

paragraphs: A digital signature or digital signature scheme is a type of asymmetric cryptography. For messages sent through an insecure channel, a good implementation of digital signature algorithm is the one that makes the receiver believe that the message was sent by the claimed sender, and trust the message.

paragraphs: Digital signatures are equivalent to traditional handwritten signatures in many respects; properly implemented digital signatures are more difficult to copy than the handwritten type. Digital signature are implemented using cryptography. Digital signatures can also provide acknowledgement, meaning that the signer cannot successfully claim they did not sign a message, while also claiming their private key remains secret. Digital signatures are regularly used in USA, European countries and India in government as well as private offices. In India certificate called Digital Signing Certificate (DSC) is widely used for e-filing the business related documents and income tax return filing etc.

paragraphs: Digital signatures are often used to implement electronic signatures, a broader term that refers to any electronic data that holds a meaning of a signature, but not all electronic signatures use digital signatures. In some countries, including the United States, and in the European Union, electronic signatures may have legal significance. In India electronic signature do not have any legal significance but digital signature does have legal validity and considered as legally valid signature as per the information technology act, 2000.

paragraphs: A digital signature system typically consists of three algorithms:

paragraphs: Two main properties are required by the digital signature system:

paragraphs: In 1984, Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, and Ronald Rivest became the first to strictly define the security requirements of digital signature schemes. They described a hierarchy of attack models for signature schemes, they also present the GMR signature scheme. GMR scheme was proven to be secure against adaptive chosen-message attacks — even when an attacker receives signatures for messages of his choice, this does not allow him to copy a signature for a single additional message.

paragraphs: In their foundational paper, Goldwasser, Micali, and Rivest lay out a hierarchy of attack models against digital signatures:

paragraphs: They also describe a hierarchy of attack results:

paragraphs: The strongest notion of security, therefore, is security against existential forgery under an adaptive chosen message attack.


title: Key generation

paragraphs: Key generation is the process of generating keys for cryptography. The key is used to encrypt and decrypt data whatever the data is being encrypted or decrypted.

paragraphs: Modern cryptographic systems include symmetric-key algorithms (such as DES and AES) and public-key algorithms (such as RSA). Symmetric-key algorithms use a single shared key; keeping data secret requires keeping this key secret. Public-key algorithms use a public key and a private key. The public key is made available to anyone (often by means of a digital certificate). A sender will encrypt data with the public key; only the holder of the private key can decrypt this data.

paragraphs: Since public-key algorithms tend to be much slower than symmetric-key algorithms, modern systems such as TLS and its predecessor SSL as well as the SSH use a combination of the two in which:

paragraphs: The simplest method to read encrypted data is a brute force attack–simply attempting every number, up to the maximum length of the key. Therefore, it is important to use a sufficiently long key length; longer keys take exponentially longer time to attack, making a brute force attack invisible and impractical.

paragraphs: Currently, commonly used key lengths are:

paragraphs: In computer cryptography keys are integers. In some cases keys are randomly generated using a random number generator (RNG) or pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), the latter being a computer algorithm that produces data which appears random under analysis. Some types the PRNGs algorithms utilize system entropy to generate a seed data, such seeds produce better results, since this makes the initial conditions of the PRNG much more difficult for an attacker to guess.

paragraphs: In other situations, the key is created using a passphrase and a "key generation algorithm", using a cryptographic hash function such as SHA-1.


title: Symmetric-key algorithm

paragraphs: Symmetric-key algorithms is a method in cryptography. It is when the keys for decryption and encryption are exactly the same shared secret. You can generate the secret randomly, or from a password, or through a secret key-exchange procedure like Diffie-Hellman.

paragraphs: Symmetric-key algorithms are very important because they are faster on computers than the other kind:public-key algorithms. In public-key cryptography (asymmetric-key cryptography) the key for encryption can be given to the public with no problem, and everyone can send you secret messages. The key for encryption is "open" because, in practice, it cannot be used to get the key for decryption. This is very useful, but public-key cryptography algorithms are very slow on computers, so they are only used to send a secret key. Then symmetric-key algorithms are used for everything else because they are faster.

paragraphs: There are two kinds of symmetric-key algorithms, called stream ciphers and block ciphers. Stream ciphers encrypt a message as a stream of bits one at a time. Block ciphers take blocks of bits, encrypt them as a single unit, and sometimes use the answer later too. Blocks of 64 bits have been commonly used; though modern ciphers like the Advanced Encryption Standard use 128-bit blocks.

paragraphs: Examples of popular symmetric cyphers include Twofish, Serpent, AES (aka Rijndael), Blowfish, CAST5, RC4, TDES, and IDEA.

paragraphs: In history, some cryptanalysis methods exploited symmetry, so symmetric systems were less secure. Some attacks are called known-plaintext attacks, chosen plaintext attacks, differential cryptanalysis and linear cryptanalysis.

paragraphs: Other terms for symmetric-key encryption are secret-key, single-key, shared-key, one-key and eventually private-key encryption. This last term does not have the same meaning that the term "private key" has in public-key cryptography.

paragraphs: Unlike symmetric algorithms, asymmetric key algorithms use a different key for encryption than for decryption. Meaning, a user knowing the encryption key of an asymmetric algorithm can encrypt messages, but cannot calculate the decryption key and cannot decrypt messages encrypted with that key. A short comparison of these two types of algorithms is given below:

paragraphs: Symmetric-key algorithms are generally much less "computationally intensive" than asymmetric key algorithms. In practice, asymmetric key algorithms are typically hundreds to thousands times slower than symmetric key algorithms.

paragraphs: One disadvantage of symmetric-key algorithms is the requirement of a "shared secret key", with both parties holding the same copy at each end.

paragraphs: In order to ensure secure communications between everyone in a group of n people a total of "n"("n" - 1)/2 keys are needed, which is the total number of possible communication channels.

paragraphs: To limit the impact of a potential discovery by a cryptographic attacker, they should be changed regularly and kept secure during distribution and in service. The process of selecting, distributing and storing keys is known as key management, and is difficult to achieve reliably and securely.

paragraphs: In modern cryptosystems designs, both asymmetric (public key) and symmetric algorithms are used to take advantage of the best of both.

paragraphs: Asymmetric algorithms are used to distribute symmetric-keys at the start of a session. Once a symmetric key is known to all parties of the session, faster symmetric-key algorithms using that key can be used to encrypt the remainder of the session. This simplifies the key distribution problem, because asymmetric keys only have to be distributed authentically, while symmetric keys need to be distributed in both an authentic and confidential manner.

paragraphs: Systems that use such a hybrid approach include SSL, PGP and GPG, etc.


title: John Marshall

paragraphs: John Marshall (September 24, 1755 – July 6, 1835) was an American statesman and jurist who shaped American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court more powerful. Marshall was Chief Justice of the United States, working from February 4, 1801, until his death in 1835. He worked in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1799, to June 7, 1800, and, under President John Adams, was Secretary of State from June 6, 1800, to March 4, 1801. Marshall was from the Commonwealth of Virginia and a leader of the Federalist Party.

paragraphs: The longest working Chief Justice in Supreme Court history, Marshall ruled the Court for thirty years and was an important part of making the American legal system. His most important addition was judicial review; the power to stop laws that violate the Constitution. Marshall has been called the one that made the judicial branch special and powerful. Marshall also balanced the power between the federal and state government. He made sure the federal law was more powerful than state law and agreed with an expansive reading of the enumerated powers.