August 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

hello
by cypherpunks＠algebra.com 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

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Re: Chaum's unpatented ecash scheme
by Jason Holt 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

[...] >> Speaking of anonymous, you should give credit in your paper to Anonymous >> for discovering the possibility of marking Lucre coins, in a coderpunks >> posting at >> http://www.mail-archive.com/coderpunks@toad.com/msg02186.html, and for >> inventing the Type II Defence, both in the posting above and amplifed >> at http://www.mail-archive.com/coderpunks@toad.com/msg02323.html. >> >> It may seem pointless to credit anonymous postings, but it makes the >> historical record more clear. > > Anonymous _is_ creditted, but I can add the specific URLs. [...] I've got a paper ready to publish that uses this technique for digital credentials. It'll be nice to have it at least referenced in the literature, since Ben's paper is the only place I know of where it's really explained. I give a URL for it as well as credit to Anonymous, but it would be helpful to know who really should be credited with what. I'm listing it as Laurie's method since he wrote the Lucre paper, but I haven't been able to tell how much David Wagner had to do with the idea. Ben? David? The URLs to the Anon messages are handy; I'll see about including them too. -J

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E-Bay-Coase-Hi Fibre capitalism.
by Matthew X 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

http://theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/24/1030052995912.html Internet trading helps purge a blocked system By Charles Wright August 27 2002 Next No doubt it will take the Nobel Prize committee a decade or more to recognise the significance of the latest piece of research from The Edge laboratories, which has led us to the formulation of Wright's Theory of Economic Constipation. This theory assumes that the economy, like the human intestinal tract, can suffer from the equivalent of muscular dysfunction, which can result in irregular movement of material through the system, leading to unhealthy compaction and systemic failure. The Edge believes that we are going through precisely this painful interruption at the moment. The healthy movement of partially digested material through the system has been blocked, so that rather than being adequately, umm, processed, it has been backing up in the nation's attics, spare rooms and garages. Unfortunately, due to an inappropriate emphasis on intake and inadequate understanding of the importance of healthy digestion of previously ingested material - for the benefit of the lay person, we shall refer to this as "the second-hand market" - the system is placed under further strain by the ingestion of yet more new stuff. Although we have not yet identified all the causes of this painful disruption, we are pretty certain that the main irritant is advertising. Advertising produces an artificial need to consume new material but it does not stimulate the economic digestive processes that would move older material through the economic digestive tract. The situation has become much more critical, of course, because the nature of the modern economy has resulted in increased production without a corresponding increase in jobs. Jobs are the enzymes of the economic digestive tract and without them we risk total break-down of the financial system. No scientific breakthrough - not even those in the so-called dismal science - is made in a vacuum. And The Edge acknowledges a debt to eBay but we have concerns about some auction practices on the site. We first began to appreciate that eBay was not so much an online auction site as an economic, umm, bowel, when the owner of the local second-hand bookshop revealed that he was finding it increasingly difficult to find stock. "People have started selling them," he explained, "on eBay." "Good idea," we thought, and promptly logged on and bought some. What we discovered was that eBay has produced an entirely new industry, which is turning the contents of those attics, spare rooms and garages into gross domestic product and export earnings, providing income and employment for a growing number of people. Take, for instance, 13-year-old Aiden McIlduff. It would possibly be misleading to describe young Aiden as an Internet entrepreneur but, in a modest way, that's what he is. Better, perhaps, to call him an eBay entrepreneur. Aiden was introduced to eBay by one of his mother's friends who, like an increasing number of people, had developed a small, but healthy business selling second-hand clothing on eBay. Because his mother was able to source cheap books through her job as a sales representative for a publishing company, he started selling books. Then he bought some watches and auctioned them for a profit. He won a colouring competition. The prize went up on eBay. So did a digital camera. He did some wheeling and dealing on some Game Boy games, and sold them - and the Game Boy. These days, Aiden is saving to buy some shares and, later, real estate. He reads The Financial Review and the property section. Joshua Gans, professor of management and information economics at Melbourne Business School, sees eBay as an important breakthrough in the problems of transaction costs - the concept identified by a previous Nobel Prize winner, Ronald Coase - which inhibit social efficiency. Transaction costs are a key figure in the development of companies. According to Coase, firms are created because the additional cost of organising them is cheaper than the transaction costs involved when individuals conduct business with each other using the market. The development of eBay removes the firm's entrenched advantage over the individual, and Gans, who was astonished to be able to sell a Palm III on eBay for only slightly less than the value of a new unit, sees it as a promising step. "When you unlock all these things in people's closets, each one is real gross domestic product. It won't turn up in the GDP figures but it's really what it's all about. It's much better to unlock the value of an existing product than to manufacture a new one." The Edge sees it as the economic equivalent of eating fresh fruit and vegetables. We could end the global recession overnight. And if you have any second-hand mystery novels for sale, we'd be happy to buy them. cw(a)bleedingedge.com.au

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Do you have enough?
by Hui8420h53＠yahoo.com 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

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First person APster.
by Matthew X 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

newsmakers While the first wave of Internet hype is now but a distant memory, the video game industry is gearing up for its own mini-version of the great online land rush. Makers of the three main game consoles are all planning to allow gamers to connect their devices to the Internet for online play. Microsoft has made the biggest promises for Xbox Live, but Sony will actually get to the Internet first. The giant consumer electronics conglomerate will release on Aug. 27 a network adapter that allows its PlayStation 2 game console to tap into a broadband or a dial-up Internet connection. http://news.com.com/2008-1082-955155.html?tag=fd_nc_1 As the opening credits roll on State of Emergency the whole story unravels itself on the nightly news. A commercial runs for a Hamburger restaurant and it exclaims that one Corporation food coupon will get you two hamburgers on Thursdays. The feminine voice of the newscaster then interrupts and pronounces a State of Emergency and that police are doing everything to bring the matter to control, at which point the camera pans back to reveal a gang of rioters that smash the window of the store in which the T.V. is being held and steal it. The story almost tells itself. A major corporation calledwell, The Corporation is basically doing its part to destroy free speech and democracy among this fair city. So rioters ban together to oppose this cruel form of government and the peaceful demonstrations soon become violent ones. Anyways you start the game in riot mode and you have the option to choose between two characters the first being a disgruntled ex-cop and the other a female lawyer. The first level is based in a shopping mall. Now, I guess this is where people tend to think that the game resembles GTA3, you see, you have missions to run while the looting and rioting goes on around you, all of the missions of course involve rioting, killing or stealing, themselves. http://www.ps2w.com/reviews/EpEFlkuAEyVpnNnfTO.php

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1 if by space,2 if by sea.
by Matthew X 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

I've just advised the sheik of two attack on America tactics,anything to keep him away from us. 1) Fire missiles into satellite level orbits designed to blow up and spread space junk. Those GPS dirty birds are shitting all over you. 2) Build mini-subs,infect rats with various diseases and send them in.This is an old jap idea that should be ergonomic and with a good foot and mouth outbreak,devastating. Those seppo's love their rancid fatburgers.(eat your heart out jeff.) Summer jihadi's should get out in the woods with their firelighters again,The world is for warming and shrubs are for burning.

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right MTA for crypto support
by Eugen Leitl 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

I'm getting rather pissed at diverse wiretap legislations making the global rounds (lately EU is making noises towards storing a one year deep FIFO of all email and browsing traffic for all users), and would like to run my own MTA, with MX fallback to ISPs. I would like to have secure MUA-MTA (IMAP/SSL POP/SSL and MTA-MTA (if the other end supports it). If anyone knows of patches which automatically query keyservers and GPG/PGP encrypt emails to targets (this is not a deep paranoia setup, just a cheap measure to increase encrypted mail traffic) that would be nice to have, too. 1) Out of Postfix and Exim (no qmail, please), which is the MTA scoring highest on crypto support? 2) Can you give me pointers to suitable crypto patches for above MTAs? TIA, Eugen

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WPA is PALLADIUM!...Oh, and soylent greene is people.
by Matthew X 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26812.html MS to intro product key check in WinXP SP1 WPA By John Lettice Posted: 26/08/2002 at 16:38 GMT Microsoft has released details of the changes being made in Windows Product Activation (WPA) with WinXP Service Pack 1. As expected, SP1 will fail to install if either of "two well-known pirated product keys" has previously been used to activate the system, and such systems will also be denied access to Windows Update. But the changes will have a far wider impact than this, as Microsoft appears to be trying to cover all currently known holes in WPA security. ALSO http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/26814.html When fascist hackers attack.

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Anonymouse CC's downunder?
by Matthew X 27 Aug '02

27 Aug '02

ACCC welcomes credit card reforms August 27 2002 The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said today it welcomed the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) credit card reforms. "The ACCC has worked closely with the Reserve Bank since the designation of the credit card network in April 2001 and strongly believes that the reforms will lead to a more competitive and efficient credit card network in Australia," ACCC chairman Professor Allan Fels said. "Increased competition and efficiency will be to the benefit of both Australian businesses and consumers." Professor Fels said a system allowing new entrants to issue credit cards or provide merchant services will open up what is currently a closed shop. CREDIT CARD REFORMS RBA to slash hidden fees Australia's central bank will slash the hidden fees banks charge for credit card transactions by almost half, open up the system to new competitors and allow retailers to charge cardholders for the cost of accepting credit cards. more Key points in RBA credit card reforms ACCC welcomes credit card reforms Reform to cut cost of goods, services http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/27/1030053054440.html

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10 psychiatric facts.
by Matthew X 26 Aug '02

26 Aug '02

PSYCHIATRY IN THE AGE OF REASON (1750-1995): 10 FACTS 1. Black slaves who ran away from their "duties" were deemed by psychiatry to be mentally "ill". The psychiatric "illness" was known as "drapetomania". 2. Irascibility or impertinence on the part of a black slave was deemed by psychiatry to be a mental "illness". The psychiatric "condition" was known as "dysthaesia Aethiopica". 3. Psychiatrists were originally known in the 18th century as "alienists"; "mental patients" were originally known as "aliens". 4. Single mothers were once deemed by psychiatry to be "insane". As a result, single mothers were incarcerated for, in certain instances, a large number of years in psychiatric hospitals. 5. Girls who had sexual intercourse under the legal age of consent were once deemed by psychiatry to be mentally "ill". 6. Psychiatry in Nazi Germany in the 1930's and 1940's effectively killed more than 200,000 "mental patients" in the name of social and political progress. 7. Epilepsy was once regarded by psychiatric orthodoxy as a mental "illness". 8. In the communist Soviet Union, certain political dissidents were deemed by Russian psychiatry to be mentally "ill". These dissidents were incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals for their psychiatric condition. 9. Homosexuality was once regarded by western psychiatric orthodoxy as a mental "illness". 10. For psychiatric orthodoxy all voice hearing is a sign of "madness".

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