June 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Analog thoughts
by Morlock Elloi 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

It seems that time has come to do some serious interface rethinking. The advent of WIPO/DMCA ideology and it's steady infiltration into actual technology is starting to render traditional protection-busting schemes ineffective. It is or will soon become illegal and also technically difficult to meddle with hardware/software itself. The demise of general-purpose PC will certainly not help. The last frontier is human interface - eyes, ears and fingers (for the time being and due to failure of www.fufme.com to attract capital these are the only ones.) All content control breaks at this point - if there is a way to see or hear, then analog capture cannot be foiled. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about quality of analog capture of picture and sound. That is to be expected when even dumb headphones are marketed as "digital" to stupefied public. My experience is that digitizing audio using standard mac h/w gives quality better than that of average .mp3 stream. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with going through analog stage with high quality components. And as long as there are wires going into speaker's amps, this will be doable. And after that hi-fi mic next to quality speaker will also do the job. Right now it all seems rather straightforward - even inferior peecee users should be able to set up things so that audio is digitized while being played and then converted to .mp3 or whatever. What I am interested in is how could this be prevented ? What would be the most effective way to disable analog audio recording and subsequent digitizing ? What are the signs to look for ? Is there open-source software for digitizing ? And on the legal side, how much spin would be required to make analog recording illegal under DMCA ? Thoughts ? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Spot the hottest trends in music, movies, and more. http://buzz.yahoo.com/

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Getting Out of Dot-Nowhere
by Jim Choate 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,44625,00.html -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ "...where annual election ends, tyranny begins;" Thomas Jefferson & Samuel Adams The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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EU elite 'is building a superstate'
by Jim Choate 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000114832908976&rtmo=3H3KrHYM&atmo=gggg… -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ "...where annual election ends, tyranny begins;" Thomas Jefferson & Samuel Adams The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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The Register - Data Protection Registrar on UK data swapping plans
by Jim Choate 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/19826.html -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ "...where annual election ends, tyranny begins;" Thomas Jefferson & Samuel Adams The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Slashdot | Phoenix BIOS Phones Home?
by Jim Choate 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/06/19/2039216.shtml -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ "...where annual election ends, tyranny begins;" Thomas Jefferson & Samuel Adams The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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BBC News | BUSINESS | Protest fear forces World Bank switch
by Jim Choate 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1396000/1396508.stm -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ "...where annual election ends, tyranny begins;" Thomas Jefferson & Samuel Adams The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Rental Cars Now Big Brother Enabled
by jdean＠lsuhsc.edu 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

Should we put dummy loads on our OnStar transceivers?

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Pap Smear
by John Young 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

The NY Times reports today on a leering virus which searches the Web for machines which might contain porno material, real or imagined as the virus decides, and then the little shit fingers the machine to one of various law enforcement agencies in its database. (Excerpt below) Anybody had this leerer rat their cave or know of a victim? ----- http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/11/technology/11VIRU.html June 11, 2001 Virus Searches for Pornography By Roy Furchgott A new rogue computer program, possibly intended to perform a public service, has raised thorny legal questions and seems sure to fuel the debate over computer privacy. The new virus, which is called VBS.Noped.a, searches the target's machine for what it suspects may be child pornography and reports the names of files to the police. There are no reports of police officials acting on such results, and antivirus software companies say it has not yet been distributed widely and is at relatively low risk of damaging computers. Technically a worm, the virus is of unknown origin and was spotted by computer security companies on May 22. It arrives as an attachment to an e-mail message titled, "FWD: Help us ALL to END ILLEGAL child porn NOW." When a recipient opens the attachment, child pornography statutes appear on screen. The program then searches the user's hard drive for picture files that have pornographic-sounding names and then sends an e-mail message and a list of suspect files to a law enforcement agency picked at random from the program's database. "Hi," the message sent to the police says: "This is Antipedo2001. I have found a PC with known child pornography files on the hard drive. I have included a listing below and included a sample for your convenience." The virus also sends out copies of itself to addresses in the victim's e-mail address book. Apart from the program's invasive nature, virus experts question the results the program sends out. Its search software is apt to falsely identify files as containing child pornography, said Stephen Trilling, director of research at the Symantec Anti-Virus Research Center in Santa Monica, Calif., which suggests that the results could cause irreparable harm to run-of-the-mill computer owners if the results are acted upon. While law enforcement agencies cannot search an individual's computer without a warrant, they can act on a tip. The F.B.I., one of the agencies on the Noped list, would not say if it had received tips from this virus program. A Justice Department lawyer said that law enforcement officials could legally conduct a search based on the tip, but added, "That's a very different question from `would law enforcement ever open an investigation based on that information?' " Perhaps most troubling, legal experts say, is the havoc that the virus could wreak on the reputation of people with no involvement in child pornography. "There is no telling how far this information might spread," said Stephen J. Davidson, a lawyer and spokesman for the Computer Law Association. Local news organizations could report that a parent was under investigation as a pedophile, he said, "all resulting from an unwarranted and illegal entry to your private computer." ...

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None
by Anonymous 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

>Thats easy. If ones purpose is to communicate to a given audience, it is >the responsibility of the communicator to find the words, images or whatever >that will have meaning to most members of that audience. This is not TV, Sandy. Or a public school, or politically correct town meeting. I, for one, enjoy JYA postings. It takes some intelligence to twist the tongue in the right way and also to understand the implied. It is fun, since thought process is revealed and much more info conveyed. It is called "language", and although 200-word pigeon english seems to be the standard these days, it doesnt mean that there are no sentient beings around that do not feel obliged to run the speech center in "lite" mode. Dont look around. Spontaneous group leering will not help you. Perhaps this is too complicated for you. Let me simplify: Even if "everyone" programs in visual basic, there is still beauty, style and efficiency to be done in C or assembly. And there are things which cannot be done in VB. You seem to exhibit standard american "culture" conditioning that denigrates everything which is not immediately understandable by complete idiots. Like genital action, for example. I understand that that is your expertise.

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Business Opportunity
by Nirav Vasavada 20 Jun '01

20 Jun '01

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