August 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

President Bush rests comfortably after surgery to implant pacemaker in brain
by Steve Schear 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

President Bush rests comfortably after surgery to implant pacemaker in brain Posted on Friday, July 13 @ 09:34:24 EDT By Tom McNichol, Salon WASHINGTON -- In the second White House health scare in little more than a week, doctors Wednesday night implanted a sophisticated pacemaker in President Bush's brain. The device, known as an implantable cranial defibrillator, or ICD, continuously monitors and records the president's brain waves. When Mr. Bush's brain activity becomes dangerously slow for a chief executive, the device delivers a mild electric shock, jolting the president back to a relatively active mental state. "I feel good," the president told reporters several hours after the operation. Bush then twitched noticeably. "I mean, I feel well," he said. Doctors say the implant is performing flawlessly, although they're trying to limit the number of shocks Bush receives to fewer than 100 a day. The surgery came barely a week after Vice President Dick Cheney was fitted with a device to regulate his irregular heartbeat. The White House portrayed last night's medical procedure as an "insurance policy" against further problems for the president. At a news conference at George Washington University Hospital, where the operation was performed, doctors downplayed the seriousness of Bush's condition. The periodic electric jolts from the implant, physicians say, will have minimal effect on the president. "His hair is not going to stand on end," said chief surgeon Dr. Alan J.Thayer. "Well, maybe a little." The president, looking tired but fit after his operation, said that the device will help him function better as a world leader. "The American people need to know that their president is equipped to handle a trouble spot like Slovenia," Mr. Bush said. "Serbia, I mean Serbia," he added, his head jerking violently. Bush has an extensive medical history of moderately impaired thinking and reasoning, dating back to the 1970s. Doctors have long noted that the president's thoughts easily become confused, and that his public pronouncements often deteriorate into a tangle of mispronunciations, faulty logic and bad grammar. Although Bush's condition wasn't serious enough to prevent him from running for president, or from winning the state of Florida, doctors say his condition has deteriorated significantly in recent months. The president's brain wave activity dipped dangerously low during his recent trip to Europe, and stopped altogether at one point during a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader was unaware of any change in Mr. Bush's condition, officials say. Yesterday, the president's doctors subjected him to a battery of mental tests to assess his risk of developing a potentially fatal "zero brain wave" pattern. Once the risk was confirmed, surgeons decided to implant the electronic device, which acts both as a pacemaker and a defibrillator. The pacemaker component is programmed to speed up the president's thinking when it becomes abnormally slow. The defibrillator can shock his brain back to a normal state if Bush's thoughts become "too fast," although doctors say that the chances of that happening are remote. The device that doctors sutured to the base of the president's cerebellum is known as a Medtronic Gem IV DR model. (There were some problems with an earlier model, which had to be recalled by the manufacturer.) Such devices, once the stuff of science fiction, have become an increasingly common tool in modern neurology. Hundreds of prominent Americans have been fitted with so-called mental pacemakers in recent years, including actor Adam Sandler, TV personality Mary Hart, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, singer Britney Spears, Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., former vice president Dan Quayle, and the entire board of directors of the now-defunct Pets.com. Some of those who wear a mental pacemaker expressed hope that the president's condition would raise public awareness about their circumstance. "This may turn out to be a blessing in the skies for all of us," said talk show host Maury Povich, who was fitted with one of the first Medtronic devices four years ago. Mr. Povich trembled violently from head to toe before adding, "I mean disguise, disguise, for God's sake, turn it off." Bush has been advised to avoid deep thoughts for a few days to give the device a chance to settle in place. Doctors say the president so far has cooperated fully with the recommendation. Bush has also been told to alternate holding his cell phone against his right and left ear so the implant receives equal doses of radiation from each side. And the president will have to run at full speed whenever passing through White House metal detectors. Several congressional leaders privately expressed concern about the president's medical procedure, coming barely a week after Cheney was fitted with a device to regulate his irregular heartbeat. But Bush dismissed the worries, stating that the Bush-Cheney team is "more fit than ever" to lead the country. "You'll find no healthier duo than Dick Cheney and I," Bush said. The president hesitated, as if waiting for a signal, and when none came, broke into a toothy grin.

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Re: Pi
by Anonymous 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

Eric Cordian wrote: > Of cryptographic interest. > > "While there may be no cosmic message lurking in pi's digits, if they are > random they could be used to encrypt other messages as follows: > > "Convert a message into zeros and ones, choose a string of digits > somewhere in the decimal expansion of pi, and encode the message by > adding the digits of pi to the digits of the message string, one after > another. Only a person who knows the chosen starting point in pi's > expansion will be able to decode the message." This would let us "whiten" entropy with confidence. Now we just assume without really knowing that feeding everything through SHA1 is a good idea; that is, the mapping of input strings to the resulting hash string is even. (This is different from the "can't find a collision" property. Even if that property doesn't hold, so long as the probability of each resulting hash is about the same, it will work fine as an entropy whitener.) The term "random" may be misleading. What they are likely close to proving is that the occurences of any given string of bits is evenly distributed. This does not mean it is a good encryption algorithm. For example, if it turns out that given a sequence of bits it's easy to find the places in pi where they appear, you have a good known plaintext attack. However, if in addition it was shown to be impossible to do this, we would have something neat and very important - a provably strong encryption algorithm. My guess is that this is a ways off, if it's even possible.

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Re: The real enemies of the poor
by Faustine 03 Aug '01

03 Aug '01

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Faustine wrote: Jim wrote: > Agh, not personality, it comes back to the matter of not wasting time: >Some > people seldom have anything to say that I find remotely interesting, so > I've learned it's in my best interest to skip them. >'wasting time' is 'personality'. In this context I meant "personality" as in demeanor and attitude, not scholarship and competence. Frankly I don't really care if someone is rude, cranky, disrespectful, flippant, etc. around here as long as they can put together a halfway decent argument more often than not. If they can't, too bad. And on the other hand, if people want to reasonably mull over something they find utterly fascinating that bores me to tears, more power to em. I can't see how my not going out of my way to involve myself in the discussion is indicative of some great moral failing. >Your waste of time is somebodies >jewel of the Nile (I have these images of Creationist books I've read >flashing through my mind, very unpleasant). So do you keep on finding more of the same or have you got on to something of more value to you? > >I'll make an observation, at the risk of offending sensibilities, from > >your past commentary you look for work that goes along with what you > >believe/want. > > Look for? There's reading and then there's recommending. ;) >And there's looking for corroborating evidence... :) Well we all do whether we intend to or not: no matter how much you try there's no getting out from under your experience. You wouldn't be "yourself" without it. If something interests you, it's only natural that you want to know more about it: not to ever accept anything blindly, but to avoid re-inventing the wheel. "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." you know? Recommending books, on the other hand, has to do with getting people to share an aspect of your mental context. Like that book I recommended on MOUT awhile back: it's not that I agree with its conclusions or the ideology behind it--it's just that it made a powerful impression on the way I think about some of the issues that are most important to me, and went a long way toward providing valuable information I didn't already have. Why wouldn't I be interested in spreading it around. > No, not at all actually. Believe it or not, I'm not so arrogant and self- > assured that I have to agree with someone to be able to admit when they've > got their opposition thoroughly outclassed in terms of sheer knowledge of > the subject. >That wasn't where I was going with my commentary. I was simply pointing >out that the way you had worded it made it look like you were choosing >reading/research material based on POV/personality instead of logic of >argument. That you chose reading material based on pleasant past >experience and familiarity rather than raw subject matter relevancy. Maybe it came across that way, but if you knew me you'd know I read a lot I don't recommend. And if I recommend what I find valuable and/or agree with? Anything less is wasting everybody's time. >As to the general commentary, now it makes more sense with >clarification...I even agree for the most part. I'll get around to issues in that other half sometime, it ought to be interesting... ~Faustine.

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NASDAQ Market
by OTS 02 Aug '01

02 Aug '01

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OPT: perl OpenPGP posted at CPAN (fwd)
by Jim Choate 02 Aug '01

02 Aug '01

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 20:32:43 -0700 From: Paul Harrison <pth(a)ibuc.com> To: cryptography(a)wasabisystems.com Subject: perl OpenPGP posted at CPAN Benjamin Trott <mailto://ben@rhumba.pair.com> has posted the Crypt::OpenPGP module (v0.11) at CPAN: <http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Crypt-OpenPGP-0.11> because "Of *course* the world needed a pure-Perl PGP implementation." According to the ReadMe "including support for all versions of PGP and GnuPG." --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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Re: The real enemies of the poor
by Faustine 02 Aug '01

02 Aug '01

Jim worte: On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, Faustine wrote: > What argument from authority? Barring the sudden onset of senility or > insanity, familiarity with past work gives you a general indication of > whether or not you want to read something. >>Your question is your own answer. Your belief in their consistency, and >>it's acceptability by your sensibilities, is an 'authority'. You've given >>them trust a priori. I prefer they earn it each and every time anew. No, that's not it: the only "trust" you give them comes with getting you on the first page in the first place, not what you come to think of it afterward. Surely you dont mean to say you never make choices of what to read based on something's potential value to you. Haven't you ever picked up a book because you anticipated enjoying it, started reading it, and put it down when you realized the methodology was flawed or the scholarship was poor after all? If not, maybe you need to be more discriminate... I bet you have though, and aren't quite the non-judgemental tabula rasa your comments indicate. >>A personal note, I hate sequels. > Even reading this list, I'm sure there are people you read first and >people you skip totally...And how likely is it that the first 15 essays are excellent but they saved the crappy ones for 16 on? ha! >>Actualy I read just about every submission to the list, I don't in general >>pick viewpoints based on personality. The whole 'cult of personality' crap >>makes me queezy. Agh, not personality, it comes back to the matter of not wasting time: Some people seldom have anything to say that I find remotely interesting, so I've learned it's in my best interest to skip them. On the other hand, some people put really put some effort into their contributions and write in a relevant and thoughtful way--so when I'm pressed for time, (as I usually am) I read them first. If the subject is important enough I'll read all the comments, but otherwise it gets prioritized, like everything else. And none of this has the slightest thing to do with whether or not I agree with or like someone. Jeez, who haven't I argued with here... >As to essays, I find it a rare author who writes 15 pages, let alone 15 >essays, I don't find problems with. If you can read a >book and go through an entire chapter without saying "wait just a damn >minute..." then you're either not absorbing what is being said, you are >reading material that is already in line with your views/expectations, or >else it's 'fluff'. Absolutely. I just happen to think you can have the highest degree of respect for someone's work you don't agree with, and that people you do agree with shouldn't get a free pass. Check the archives, that's basically what I've said all along. >I'll make an observation, at the risk of offending sensibilities, from >your past commentary you look for work that goes along with what you >believe/want. Look for? There's reading and then there's recommending. ;) > Myself, I tend to go places where I'm the minority (this >mailing list being an example) because the dialog is much more >invigorating than sitting in a bunch of people who already agree with me. Oy vey, that's what I've already said... I don't think anyone would exactly characterize my views as representative of the list as a whole either. Or maybe you don't see it, being focused on your own "me versus the list" dynamic, eh? > All I'm saying is that his background credentials and published work was > every bit as impressive the performance at the meeting...and that one of > his essays is on the list. :) Now with a backstory like that, you > actually mean to tell me I don't have a good reason to look forward to > reading it? HA! >Actually it demostrates my thesis above. You had a view, you found his >view to be complementary (you agreed with everything he said), No, not at all actually. Believe it or not, I'm not so arrogant and self- assured that I have to agree with someone to be able to admit when they've got their opposition thoroughly outclassed in terms of sheer knowledge of the subject. Unlike other people in the room, the topic wasn't something I was heavily invested in in terms of reputation, career etc: anyone who tries to deny that makes a difference in how open-minded they are is fooling themselves. But everthing about the way he conducted himself presenting his arguments merited respect. If you can't change your mind in the face of new evidence, you're too dogmatic, not intellectually flexible enough. Sure, he influenced me, where's the shame in admitting that. Learning from someone doesnt mean you gave up your own independent judgement. And I'd rather change my mind than be an ignorant blockhead stuck in an ideological rut. Like far too many I'm sure we both could name. >and now you pursue that. Me, I'd hunt for the holes in his theory/argument >(and I guarantee they are there). Of course. And if it were my main area of interest, you can bet he'd be the first person I'd go to to argue with and sound my own theories out on. I'll save the second half for tomorrow... ~Faustine.

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Pi
by Eric Cordian 02 Aug '01

02 Aug '01

Interesting article recently posted on the Nature Web site about the normality of Pi. http://www.nature.com/nsu/010802/010802-9.html "David Bailey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and Richard Crandall of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, present evidence that pi's decimal expansion contains every string of whole numbers. They also suggest that all strings of the same length appear in pi with the same frequency: 87,435 appears as often as 30,752, and 451 as often as 862, a property known as normality." Of cryptographic interest. "While there may be no cosmic message lurking in pi's digits, if they are random they could be used to encrypt other messages as follows: "Convert a message into zeros and ones, choose a string of digits somewhere in the decimal expansion of pi, and encode the message by adding the digits of pi to the digits of the message string, one after another. Only a person who knows the chosen starting point in pi's expansion will be able to decode the message." While there's presently no known formula which generates decimal digits of Pi starting from a particular point, there's a clever formula which can be used to generate HEX digits of Pi starting from anywhere, which Bailey et al discovered in 1996, using the PSLQ linear relation algorithm. If you sum the following series for k=0 to k=infinity, its limit is Pi. 1/16^k[4/(8k+1) - 2/(8k+4) - 1/(8k+5) - 1/(8k+6)] (Exercise: Prove this series sums to Pi) Since this is an expression for Pi in inverse powers of 16, it is easy to multiply this series by 16^d and take the fractional part, evaluating terms where d>k by modular exponentiation, and evaluating a couple of terms where d<k to get a digit's worth of precision, yielding the (d+1)th hexadecimal digit of Pi. Presumedly, if one could express PI as a series in inverse powers of 10, one could do the same trick to get decimal digits. Such a series has so far eluded researchers. -- 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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Slashdot | FDA Approves Swallowable Camera
by Jim Choate 02 Aug '01

02 Aug '01

http://slashdot.org/articles/01/08/02/161254.shtml -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend 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 - MS drops app blocking into XP
by Jim Choate 02 Aug '01

02 Aug '01

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20805.html -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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NASDAQ Market
by OTS 02 Aug '01

02 Aug '01

Do you trade the QQQ, NASDAQ, or OEX 100? Trade the NQ (Emini NASDAQ) completely electronically in seconds. Sell into falling markets with no up tick rule. Use the leverage of the futures markets to your advantage. E-mini NQ market specs: Each Point: $20.00 per contract Contract Value: $20.00 times the index: approx 1733.00 x $20 = $34,660 Day Margin: $3,500 per contract Scenario: Buy 10 Contacts at 1733.00 Day Margin: $35,000 Each point = $200 (10 contracts time $20 per point) Sell 10 Contracts at 1750.00 Profit / Loss = 17 points times $200 = $3400 Remember, the exact opposite can happen too. In other words, if you bought 10 contracts and sold them for a 17 point loss, your account would incur a loss of $3400. Email me more information At Online Trading Select Corp here in Chicago, we offer 5 different systems that allow users to trade directly into GLOBEX2. You can trade the emini NASDAQ 24 hours a day. For free information about the e-mini NASDAQ. http://www.onlinetradingselect.com/nq.asp OTS 111 W. Jackson Blvd. 17th Floor Chicago, IL 60604 Phone: 312-930-3950 Fax:413-375-2795 Toll Free: 866-244-1850 e-Mail: info(a)onlinetradingselect.com Web: http://www.onlinetradingselect.com There is a risk of loss in trading futures To be remove from this email list, please click here: mailto:info@onlinetradingselect.com?subject=Please_Remove

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