Darknet market

A darknet market or cryptomarket is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor or I2P. Most function as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms,weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals,steroids, other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular content on Tor were darknet markets.

Following on from the model developed by Silk Road, contemporary markets are characterised by their use of darknet anonymised access (typically Tor), bitcoin payment with escrow services, and eBay-like vendor feedback systems.

Vendor product breakdown 3 June 2015

History

1970s to 2011

Though e-commerce on the dark web only started around 2006, illicit goods were among the first items to be transacted using the internet, when in the early 1970s students at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology used what was then called the ARPANET to coordinate the purchase of cannabis. By the end of the 1980s, newsgroups like alt.drugs would become online centres of drug discussion and information, however any related deals were arranged entirely off-site directly between individuals. With the development and popularization of the World Wide Web and e-commerce in the 1990s, the tools to discuss or conduct illicit transactions became more widely available. One of the better-known web-based drug forums, The Hive, launched in 1997, serving as an information sharing forum for practical drug synthesis and legal discussion. The Hive was featured in a Dateline NBC special called The "X" Files in 2001, bringing the subject into public discourse.

Avatar (2009 film)

Avatar (marketed as James Cameron's Avatar) is a 2009 Americanepic science fiction film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron, and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the mineral unobtanium, a room-temperature superconductor. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi – a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The film's title refers to a genetically engineered Na'vi body with the mind of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.

Development of Avatar began in 1994, when Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for the film. Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, for a planned release in 1999, but according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available to achieve his vision of the film. Work on the language of the film's extraterrestrial beings began in 2005, and Cameron began developing the screenplay and fictional universe in early 2006.Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million. Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for production and at $150 million for promotion. The film made extensive use of new motion capture filming techniques, and was released for traditional viewing, 3D viewing (using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats), and for "4D" experiences in select South Korean theaters. The stereoscopic filmmaking was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic technology.

Pandora (daughter of Pyrrha)

In Greek mythology, Pandora (Ancient Greek: Πανδώρα, derived from πᾶς "all" and δῶρον "gift", thus "all-gifted" or "all-giving") was a daughter of King Deucalion and Pyrrha who was named after her maternal grandmother, the more famous Pandora.

According to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (fr. 5), she was the mother of Graecus by the god Zeus.

Her brother was Hellen.

References