December 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Stegno and DAT and digital music...
by Peter Wayner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In this week's Sunday NYT, Hans Fantel, their music guy, writes at length about the new "dithered" CD's and how the guys have improved the sound. He says that the original CD format was limited to 16 bits of sound because of costs. But many audiophiles reacted very negatively to the tinny, metalic quality to the music. For this reason, the companies have developed 20 bit DAT recording tape and then come up with ways to "dither" this into 16 bits. I am curious if anyone knows the details of these algorithms. Also, his point suggests that flipping the least significant bit of 16 bit music may not be imperceptable to some ears. If the classical music starts to sound tinny then there might be something subversive in the least significant bits. -Peter Wayner

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Remail: errors
by HFinney＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I have been out of town for the last week, so I missed some CP mail. It looks like some good things are happening with remailers, though. Kudos to Karl, Sameer, and the others for their work! I have received many messages to my remailer in the last week which came from remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu, which were PGP-encrypted apparently in an effort to get my remailer to send them. They did not work, though, because there was no "Encrypted: PGP" header to trigger the remailer's decryption. This can be arranged by creating the message something like this: ======================================================== :: Request-Remailing-To: hfinney(a)shell.portal.com :: Encrypted: PGP - -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- <rest of message> - -----END PGP MESSAGE------ ======================================================== This would then be sent to remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu. I don't know whether the multiplicity of such erroneous messages is just due to one person stubbornly re-trying, or whether there is an error in one of the new programs for creating chained remailer messages. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBLJaNuKgTA69YIUw3AQHrNwQAowMEQwuH6YyHoj6T7AqZFLNdTf+eqJ9L LhAatHS94nmC1smkfVNq0dZmigmkvBdMNEPlBZemmxALz+KJw6OSY/ULSBmuVNEq 5rJANh3XimoJWqLISy2lZiuC5Fw2R7UvRadcdM94pncSVvev92Fyf7CqEOOtrGAK PUzRds7BVNo= =FpLa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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more than spread spectrum
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are alternatives to spread spectrum, if we're threatened with loss of freedom to communicate. We could lay our own wires/fibers. We could set up a mesh network of infrared lasers through the air. Last time I looked, there were no laws against shining lights out your window as long as they didn't bother anyone. An infrared laser could hardly bother anyone. We could produce a line of cheap cards to plug into a PC which would do packet routing, using a variety of physical links -- our own wires, lasers, very low range radio, .... Each card would connect to three or more neighbors and become part of the global mesh. Adaptive routing with no global map would suffice for the card and would keep the whole system peer-to-peer with no need for central control and no chance for central tapping. Of course all of these solutions require a high density of users. A college campus might be the right place to start. We could then branch out to cities. I suspect that a place like Chicago or NYC with high rise apartments might be the place to start -- many options for line-of-sight communications. The benefit isn't just for Cypherpunks. It's a free network for the masses -- like the original USENET (with each user donating routing and store/forward) but with unrestricted, low-range, continuously operating physical links. I'll volunteer to do the software for the node card. Does anyone have hardware design/fab to donate to the effort? - Carl

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RE: FreeSWAN Release 1.93 ships!
by Anonymous 13 Jan '02

13 Jan '02

On Sunday 09 December 2001 07:32 pm, Lucky Green <shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to> wrote: > The big question is: will FreeS/WAN latest release after some 4 or 5 > years of development finally both compile and install cleanly on > current versions of Red Hat Linux, FreeS/WAN's purported target > platform? The latest releases of both Suse and Mandrake are both able to install kernels with Freeswan already integrated. It's a little newer addition to Mandrake, so you may want to use Suse. Suse makes it easy to set up encrypted file systems and other nice features. The major problem that holds back the development of FreeS/WAN is with its management. [Management that cares more about sitting on its pulpit, than getting useful software into the hands of people.] Unless things have changed recently, they still won't accept contributions from the US. This makes no sense. GPG is shipping with every Linux distribution I know of, and the German's take contributions from the US. The primary kernel developers have been willing to integrate crypto into the kernel since the crypto regs were lowered. It's the policy of no US contributions that's holding back Linux IPSEC. IMHO: If Freeswan had never been created, an alternate, more mature implementation would already exist in the mainline Linux kernel. --Anonymous

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Re: Fear and Trembling
by Anonymous 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

>Beheading the centers of information warfare would be the end >of Western culture. I had to read the whole thing to find the actual prediction. So you assume a simultaneous or at least closely-spaced annihilation of CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, BBC buildings ? With moles that have been planted there years ago, with penile implants, I assume. And then targeted execution of remaining key employees to the point where appearing on TV becomes really, really unattractive proposition ? Maybe. What would american sheeple do in the morning without TV ? I mean, you wake up, turn on the tube and there is just a station logo there, because even the weatherman was found shot in the back of his head. What do you do next ? There is NO TV in he evening. You must stare at your ugly family or even talk with morons. US would disintegrate within 48 hours.

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Re: "Swiss bank in a box"
by Eric Cordian 07 Jan '02

07 Jan '02

Tim wrote: > ...gold can be melted and all traces of origin lost, save for some > expensive tinkering with isotopic ratios, maybe. Gold, last I looked, had a single stable isotope which accounted for 100% of its natural abundance. 79-Au-197. One piece of pure stable gold is indistinguishable from another. So if your gold is pure and isn't radioactive, it hasn't been tagged by isotopic ratio tweeks. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Re: cell phone guns
by Faustine 06 Jan '02

06 Jan '02

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 06:54 PM 12/28/01 -0500, Faustine wrote: > >Not surprising, since cell phone holster decoys have been around for ages. >Why settle for a .22 when you could be packing a Glock 30? >Better stealth. >I like the NAA .22 belt buckle. Can also fit inside a beeper case. >Mossad prefers suppressed Berretta .22 which doesn't need racking. Hm, whatever works, I guess. Sheer stealth isn't as much a factor for me as is accuracy, reliability and being able to avoid the "woman with a peashooter" image. All rhetoric aside (but with all that in mind) I've actually been thinking of getting a 9mm, something along the lines of a Glock 26, a Kahr P9 or maybe a Sig-Sauer P239. Any thoughts? I know there's no substitute for getting out there and firing them at a range to see what I'm comfortable with, but if anyone has any recommendations, better suggestions, which 9mm to avoid, etc. I'd appreciate it. ~Faustine. *** Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would. - --John Adams -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPC5LIfg5Tuca7bfvEQKIyACbBmjXCMeeeYVRJyKZXX1RVM3kUskAoM2S QBFXBjlKLqElf9F9VhRYuReW =82tr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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What is a 'right'?
by Jim Choate 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

A 'right' is an activity that any individual could engage in (at least in principle) while 'in a state of nature'. So what does 'in a state of nature' imply? It implies human activity a priori to the concept of 'civilization'. What are the limits of such activities? Isolation, sharing, and force. The concept of 'force' is required because not all individuals want to share. Isolation allows an individual to engage in any desired activity for the simple reason there is no potential interference. Sharing, such as in a family group, such that resources are distributed but at the same time have more persons active in its 'management' (I draw a distinction here becuase of such things as Clovis Point behaviour). And finaly, force. The ability of one individual to significantly impact anothers physical being directly. Why do people institute 'civilization'? Because we can't live in isolation. There are groups greater than families. And finaly, because not all individuals will use force in the same manner. The concept of 'right' is intimate and irremovable from the concept of 'coercion through physical force'. Why? Because one can't have a 'right' unless one also has the ability to use force to defend it. What does it take to use 'force'? Existance and motivation/desire, irrespective of whether we talk of 'a state of nature' or 'civilization'. One can not remove the concept of 'right' from 'force'. They are not seperate concepts or entities (similar to momentum). The only way to mitigate the use of 'force' is to mitigate 'desire'. The only way to mitigate 'desire' is to use 'force' (or at least make it clear that if a behaviour is engaged in force will ensue). To do this we institute a (hopefully) common system whereby the inter play between 'force' and 'desire' are hopefully balanced. Note that there is nothing in nature which implies that force and desire will be mitigated in and of themselves (so much for CACL philosophy). In fact, if one looks at game theory it becomes abundently clear, even given the utility of game theoretic concepts, that the best strategy is not to play by the rules given a choice (this helps explain why non-sentient biological activity conforms to game theory in many cases). This of course destroys any concept of 'utopia' where everyone plays by the same rules all the time without exception. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Saudi Violence in the US
by Khoder bin Hakkin 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

Saudi Princess Charged With Beating ORLANDO, Fla. A Saudi princess has been charged with beating her servant and pushing her down a flight of stairs. Princess Buniah al-Saud, the niece of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, was held without bond at the Orange County Jail for allegedly beating Memet Ismiyati, her Indonesian maid. Al-Saud, 41, could get 15 years in prison if convicted of felony aggravated battery. Neighbors called 911 Friday after Ismiyati, 36, ran crying from the apartment she shared with the princess. She told deputies al-Saud beat her, hit her head against a wall and pushed her down a flight of stairs, leaving her unable to walk. "When we talked to her (Ismiyati) through an Indonesian interpreter and saw the extent of her injuries, we upgraded the charges to a felony," said Orange County Undersheriff Malone Stewart. Ismiyati was treated at a hospital and released. When deputies went to the princess' apartment Friday, she denied striking or pushing the maid, the Orlando Sentinel reported in Tuesday's editions. The Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., said the princess had diplomatic immunity. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service said al-Saud failed to follow proper procedures by not notifying them of her itinerary in America, thereby leaving her without diplomatic immunity. The princess has been living in Orlando while studying English at the University of Central Florida. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58468-2001Dec18.html

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Re: : Re: How do you sleep?,
by mattd 03 Jan '02

03 Jan '02

>>Libertarians like the folks at the Cato Institute are hardly conservatives.<< My beef with them is the money they take to lie.Ive given some examples in the last few days that you may have been to busy to respond to.Many so called 'libertarians' are social conservatives.See...http://ri.xu.org/arbalest/alembic2c.html >>Getting rid of laws prohibiting prostitution, gambling, obscenity, indecency, prostitution -- these are conservative positions? << There are 2 prostitutions? The worst prostitution is not bodily,its taking money to tell lies.The kind jamesd tells.The kind the cato institute retails and many intelligent people such as you get suckered by.Larry flynts probably done a million times more than the cato shills ever did in these areas.Plus they are practically unenforcable online.Window dressing. You > are either with us or with them.<me.> >>Yeah, you and George W. Bush. Good example to follow.<< Polarisation is a nasty business,yet sometimes shit happens.This list may have to choose soon between use of the words anarchy and punk and some others more in line with the circle of eunuchs approach of the CALCers. Lenin stole anarchist slogans and rode them to absolute power,a dictatorial murderous terror state,based on lies,no anarchist can ever let that happen again.Will ever let happen again.And getting back to your libby pals... http://world.std.com/~mhuben/cato.html where theres smoke...

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