July 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "to outlaw general purpose computers"
by Harmon Seaver 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 03:17:52PM -0400, Sunder wrote: > > Sure, you can revive old hardware with Linux, but you'll find it runs KDE > 3.0 or GNOME slower than windows 95 did on the same hardware. So unless > you're willing to also go to older software (or at least less demanding > software) you've still got a useless machine. What? Your brand of crack must be particularly poor these days. A 200mhz cyrix cpu runs linux w/gnome fast enough for most anything. Slower than w95??? Come again? I've run 1ghz boxes and they really don't surf the net much faster, so what's your point? > > OTOH, if it does work well enough, and you don't care for swapping memos > in Micro$loth Word V283.23 with cow-orkers or don't care about watching > the latest 3d movie on XVD disks, then by all means, if you don't mind the > huge power consumption, use that old iron. power consumption?? my 200mhz box? -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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Lowest Priced Scooters on the Net
by MoreInks 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

1 0

I saw your email
by abcd4537r70＠yahoo.com 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

I saw your email on a website I visited yesterday, and thought you might be interested in this. A few months back I joined a program and then...promptly forgot about it. You may have done this yourself sometime...you intend to work the program but then get caught in your day-to-day activities and it's soon forgotten. The program was free to join so maybe I just didn't take it very seriously. Anyway, near the end of May I received a letter from my sponsor (Vic Patalano) informing me that I had more than 2000 PAID members in my downline! As you can imagine, I was very skeptical. After all, how could I have more than 2000 paid members under me in a program that I had never promoted? I took the time to check out the site...then wrote to Vic asking for confirmation that these were paid members and not just free sign-ups...like me :) Well, it was true...I had 2365 paid members in my downline. This in a program that I had never worked! All I had to do was upgrade to a paid membership before the end of the month and I would have my position locked in and a downline of 2365 people. You can bet I wasted no time in getting my membership upgraded! I can tell you, if I had known what was happening with this program, I would have become an active paid member months ago! With this program, you will get a HUGE downline of PAID MEMBERS. My sponsor's check, which is a minimum of $5,000, arrives every month...on time. How would you like to lock your position in FREE while you check out this opportunity and watch your downline grow? To grab a FREE ID#, simply reply to:codjig5@lycos.com and write this phrase: "Email me details about the club's business and consumer opportunities" Be sure to include your: 1. First name 2. Last name 3. Email address (if different from above) We will confirm your position and send you a special report as soon as possible, and also Your Free Member Number. I'll get you entered and let you know how you can keep track of your growing downline. That's all there's to it. I'll then send you info, and you can make up your own mind. Warm regards, Bruce Stevens P.S. After having several negative experiences with network marketing companies I had pretty much given up on them. This company is different--it offers value, integrity, and a REAL opportunity to have your own home-based business... and finally make real money on the internet. Don't pass this up..you can sign up and test-drive the program for FREE. All you need to do is get your free membership. Unsubscribing: Send an emailmarked Unsubscribe to gitrman(a)excite.com 8248MosG8-11l11

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Re: OT: old hardware - was Re: "to outlaw general purpose computers"
by Harmon Seaver 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 10:30:13AM -0400, Sunder wrote: > On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Harmon Seaver wrote: > > > On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 03:17:52PM -0400, Sunder wrote: > > > > > > Sure, you can revive old hardware with Linux, but you'll find it runs KDE > > > 3.0 or GNOME slower than windows 95 did on the same hardware. So unless > > > you're willing to also go to older software (or at least less demanding > > > software) you've still got a useless machine. > > > > What? Your brand of crack must be particularly poor these days. A 200mhz > > cyrix cpu runs linux w/gnome fast enough for most anything. Slower than > > w95??? Come again? I've run 1ghz boxes and they really don't surf the net much > > faster, so what's your point? > > You missed the entire forrest of course by concentrating on a single pine > needle from a single branch of a single pine tree. No, the point is that a lot of fairly old machines won't be obsolete for a long time, at least running a decent OS. > > > Fine, have it your way: > > Yeah? Which gnome? 1.0? I wasn't concerned much about internet throughput > as much as display rendering of shit like rendering menus and such. > Nope, I run gnome 4.0, and, I should say, I run it with 4 workspaces -- first one always has 4 gnometerminal sessions going, second has the latest mozilla with at least 6 windows open, often acrobat reader as well, third one has three gnometerminals and opera, which usually has at least a dozen sessions open, and the fourth workspace usually has openoffice running. I don't notice anything particularly slow. Compared to a 700mhz AMD at work and a 1ghz I've played with, it's not bad. Oh, and also it's always running apache, postfix, and usually mysql. It would be nice to compile kernels faster. But even compiling them with all the above running isn't that bad, and doesn't seem to seriously slow down the rest. > Oh, what, did you expect me to use Lynx maybe? No, mozilla and opera. > > Let's also not forget that the older machines have limits on memory, which > also affect performance. I don't know about your hardware, but most of my > old 100-200Mhz machines don't have motherboards that can handle much ram. > I'd be lucky to get 128mb in there -- if I were to bother hunting down ram > for them and paying a lot more per megabyte for it than for say a pair of > 512M dimms for the newer boxes. And no, I'm not going to be spending $200 > on an accelerated 3d video card with 8mb for a piece of shit machine from > 10 years ago either. So yes, gnome is slow on old hardware. Well, this box (the tower case itself is about 10 years old) recently got upgraded from a 200mhz to a 266 (actually it a 350 but the mb won't go that fast, so one of these days I'll upgrade the mb, but I'm in no hurry), and it has 256 megs of RAM. DIMMS, of course. It also has a 16meg Matrox video card which helps. I suppose if you're a gamer or doing a lot of big graphics, you'd need more power, but for what I'm doing. Heck, I can recall running a web server for a fairly big library and a mail server for over 400 accounts on little 200mhz boxes. Worked fine -- still would. OTOH, if it looks like DRM is going to get mandated, I'll probably go out and buy a dual AMD mb and a couple of 2ghz cpus, just so I'll be set for the next decade. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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Highjacker's Banking Problems
by Duncan Frissell 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

Sept. 11 Hijackers Said to Fake Data on Bank Accounts Sayeth the New York Times: July 10, 2002 Sept. 11 Hijackers Said to Fake Data on Bank Accounts By JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON, July 9 The Sept. 11 hijackers were able to open 35 American bank accounts without having legitimate Social Security numbers and opened some of the accounts with fabricated Social Security numbers that were never checked or questioned by bank officials, a senior F.B.I. official said today. ... With no scrutiny from the financial institutions or government regulators, the hijackers were able to move hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Middle East into the United States through a maze of bank accounts beginning more than a year before their attacks. A spokesman for SunTrust, which is based in Atlanta, said the bank had been cooperating with the F.B.I.'s investigation. The spokesman said it was possible for foreigners without Social Security numbers to open bank accounts in this country, but he could not provide details of what forms of identification the hijackers used to open the SunTrust accounts. ... One of the first signs of a large infusion of cash coming into the United States for use by the hijackers appears in bank records dating from 2000, when $100,000 was deposited in bank accounts controlled by some of the leading hijackers, including Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, Mr. Lormel said. ... Note that it is as legal as church on a Sunday for non-residents to open financial accounts in the US or Switzerland or the UK etc. Many US banks don't accommodate foreigners but that is because of sloth not law. Certainly online brokers (who are quasi banks) do market to foreigners. One reason that SS numbers were not verified is that the SSA has traditionally refused to verify for privacy reasons and the alternative method involves doing a credit check which takes time and money. And in the case of non-interest-paying current accounts there are no tax issues. Banks located in the "red states" are not as bureaucratic as banks in the "blue states" and have been much slower to adopt the controls popular on the coasts. This is changing of course but there are still many social differences which make account transactions easier in the free states. But let's assume for a moment that Homeland Security shuts the banks down and requires verified DNA samples and licenses from 10 separate agencies to open a financial account in the US. So the middle class Egyptians and Saudis with no criminal records who attacked us are faced with the ultimate challenge of getting the $500K they needed into the US. By dint of heroic effort, the future highjackers manage to open bank accounts in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They receive ATM, debit, or credit cards to draw on those accounts. Perhaps they encourage their French or British co-conspirators to open accounts in those countries. They arrive in the US and withdraw the $500 to $1000 per day maximum (per account) from ATM machines. Assume they have only managed to open 5 accounts. That's $2500 to $5000/day. Or 100 to 200 days to withdraw $500K. Not much of a trick particularly since they are not limited to 5 accounts and can get cash advances at any bank with any credit cards they have. But then Homeland Security outlaws ATMs and credit cards (or at least the international connections of same). This is tantamount to imposing exchange controls which the US has never done. So the attackers have to fall back on Krugerrands. At $333 a pop, they have to get 1500 KRs into the country. Since bullion coins are not considered currency, they aren't covered by financial instrument import reporting laws. But you can just mail them one or two at a time. Most of them will get through. No big deal. The truth is that it's a bit tricky to block the movement of small amounts of money like this. -- Posted by Duncan Frissell to The Technoptimist at 7/10/2002 10:30:45 AM Powered by Blogger Pro

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Fwd: Re: CP meet at H2K2?]
by Greg Newby 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

Sounds like a plan....someone try to remember to put a sign up on-site for this. An actual address for the bar would be nice - is this the one on 33rd? ----- Forwarded message from dmolnar <dmolnar(a)hcs.harvard.edu> -----

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by matchnews＠match.com 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

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RSA vunerability.DUMP RSA STOCK.SELL LIKE HELL!
by Matthew X 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

Bidzos bails and now this...Abstract: We present a theoretical model for breaking various cryptographic schemes by taking advantage of random hardware faults. We show how to attack certain implementations of RSA and Rabin signatures. An implementation of RSA based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem can be broken using a single erroneous signature. Other implementations can be broken using a larger number of erroneous signatures. We also analyze the vulnerability to hardware faults of two identification protocols: Fiat-Shamir and... (Update) from http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/boneh97importance.html

1 0

I saw your email
by abcd4782x71＠yahoo.com 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

I saw your email on a website I visited yesterday, and thought you might be interested in this. A few months back I joined a program and then...promptly forgot about it. You may have done this yourself sometime...you intend to work the program but then get caught in your day-to-day activities and it's soon forgotten. The program was free to join so maybe I just didn't take it very seriously. Anyway, near the end of May I received a letter from my sponsor (Vic Patalano) informing me that I had more than 2000 PAID members in my downline! As you can imagine, I was very skeptical. After all, how could I have more than 2000 paid members under me in a program that I had never promoted? I took the time to check out the site...then wrote to Vic asking for confirmation that these were paid members and not just free sign-ups...like me :) Well, it was true...I had 2365 paid members in my downline. This in a program that I had never worked! All I had to do was upgrade to a paid membership before the end of the month and I would have my position locked in and a downline of 2365 people. You can bet I wasted no time in getting my membership upgraded! I can tell you, if I had known what was happening with this program, I would have become an active paid member months ago! With this program, you will get a HUGE downline of PAID MEMBERS. My sponsor's check, which is a minimum of $5,000, arrives every month...on time. How would you like to lock your position in FREE while you check out this opportunity and watch your downline grow? To grab a FREE ID#, simply reply to:codjig5@lycos.com and write this phrase: "Email me details about the club's business and consumer opportunities" Be sure to include your: 1. First name 2. Last name 3. Email address (if different from above) We will confirm your position and send you a special report as soon as possible, and also Your Free Member Number. I'll get you entered and let you know how you can keep track of your growing downline. That's all there's to it. I'll then send you info, and you can make up your own mind. Warm regards, Bruce Stevens P.S. After having several negative experiences with network marketing companies I had pretty much given up on them. This company is different--it offers value, integrity, and a REAL opportunity to have your own home-based business... and finally make real money on the internet. Don't pass this up..you can sign up and test-drive the program for FREE. All you need to do is get your free membership. Unsubscribing: Send an emailmarked Unsubscribe to gitrman(a)excite.com 2371CNye0-084YvpE1748baXQ0-343oZCl1870gqeY5-244jdNp3140pvnz3-609Hjgy2694l68

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RE: Tax consequences of becoming a US citizen.
by Trei, Peter 11 Jul '02

11 Jul '02

> Greg Broiles[SMTP:gbroiles@parrhesia.com] > > > At 11:52 AM 7/9/2002 -0400, An Metet wrote: > >What are the tax implications of a US resident green card holder, with > >substantial assets both in his original nation and in the US, of becoming > > >a US citizen? > > Take a look at <http://www.thetaxguy.com/faq.htm>. Non-US citizens may be > classified as residents, nonresidents, or as dual status aliens; they also > > frequently can choose whether they would prefer to file as residents or > nonresidents; this is an area where professional assistance is very > helpful. > > Subsequent replies to this question have, in an unproductive fashion, > confused US citizens living outside the US and former citizens living > outside the US; the 10-year rule applies to people who have given up their > > US citizenship. People who remain citizens while living elsewhere are > subject to US tax on their worldwide income (but, some income is excluded, > > and some income which is taxed by other jurisdictions won't be taxed again > > by the US) for as long as they're alive. > [I'm a US citizen who lived for many years abroad, so I have some awareness of the issue]. Greg's pretty well got it spot on, but I'd like to refine things a bit. If a US citizen lives abroad, the USG will try to extract taxes from both his US *and* foreign income, beyond certain minimums (the only other countries which do this are the Phillipines and Egypt, both of which have large numbers of citizens working in other countries (so they have an excuse, the US doesn't)). If you emigrate and give up your US citizenship, any assets you take with you above a certain limit (?? $400k ??) are subject to a sort of 'exit tax'. This is an idea the US adopted from the Soviet Union, where it was used to harrass Jewish emigrants. What is more, the IRS will still claim to be able to tax your non-US income for 10 years after you give up your citizenship (with caps, I think the same as an expat). This law was put in place not too long ago, after there was a brief storm in a teacup over certain multimillionaires giving up their citizenships for tax purposes. In a populist stunt, the USG put in place laws to punish these emigrants. In doing so they set the asset cap so low that many people leaving for perfectly legitimate reasons were caught up in it. The political rhetoric around the issue was very nasty - it was clear that the congresscritters could not conceive that any person could have a legitimate, above-board reason to want to give up US citizenship. Of course, at the moment the USG only occasionally chooses to flout the sovereignty of foreign nations on issues of non-US citizens, and it is still pretty rare for the USG to kidnap people abroad. Therefore, if you've given up your US citizenship, and are abroad, you have the option of telling the IRS to pound sand before the 10 year limit is up. If you do this, they will try to seize any US assets you may have, and will arrest you for tax evasion if you ever set foot on US soil. As Tim would say, check the archives. About 3 years ago, one or two list members said they were giving up their US citizenship, and taking up Mozambiquian (sp?) citizenship, to enable them to write and export cryptographic software without being subject to US control. There was an extensive discussion of the topic at that time. So, to the subject of the original question: I don't think taking up US citizenship, then retiring abroad, makes a hell of a lot of sense from a tax point of view, unless the Social Security payments are important, the total assets taken out are low, and the expected non-US income falls below the minimum the US allows expats tax-free. There are a lot of other effects of US citzenship vs US citizenship, but those are my non-lawyer speculations on the tax implications. Peter Trei

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