January 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

SSL to replace IPSec in VPNs
by Tyler Durden 31 Jan '03

31 Jan '03

>From the Lightreading newswire feed... Any comments? Impact statement anyone? -TD SOMERSET, N.J. -- More than 75 percent of survey respondents believe that browser-based SSL (secure sockets layer) VPN (virtual private network) technology is somewhat to highly likely to replace IPSec-based VPNs for remote access to enterprise resources over the next two years, according to the latest survey on enterprise network security trends from The Tolly Group, a premier IT testing and consulting firm. Netilla® Networks, Inc., a leading provider of SSL VPN solutions for secure Web-based access to any corporate application, co-sponsored the survey along with Check Point Software, Nortel Networks, Ingrian Networks and Enterasys Networks. Survey respondents also projected that the most likely future uses for SSL VPNs will be for securing Web services (67 percent), followed by securing extranets and e-business services (54 percent), providing remote access for business partners (50 percent) and enabling remote access by mobile and teleworking employees (48 percent). SSL-based VPN appliances use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption engineered into todays Web browsers to provide simple, browser-based remote access to centrally hosted corporate applications. Unlike traditional remote access solutions based on the IPSec standard, SSL-based VPNs do not require application or VPN client software to be configured and maintained on remote PCs, which reduces IT support costs while increasing usability. Overall, respondents demonstrated a significant surge in the usage of SSL-based VPNs, said Kevin Tolly, president and chief executive officer of The Tolly Group. Just two years ago, SSL VPNs were nowhere on the map, but now interest in the technology is starting to mature. However, these same users also cited a lack of general understanding on how to deploy SSL VPNs as a potential roadblock. Vendors must step up SSL education to help users better understand the benefits of this technology. Tolly Group _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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RE: Meeting notice
by Collins, Senator (Collins) 31 Jan '03

31 Jan '03

Thank you for your e-mail message. I appreciate having the benefit of your views. This response is an acknowledgement that we received your message and will make note of your comments. If you are from Maine and included a postal address in your message, you will receive a reply via U.S. mail as soon as possible. If you are from Maine and have not included your postal address, please resend your original message and include your complete mailing address with zip code. If you are interested in more information about me or the State of Maine, please visit my Web site at: www.senate.gov/~collins Thank you again for contacting me. Sincerely, Susan M. Collins United States Senator

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Re: Palm Pilot Handshake
by Steve Mynott 30 Jan '03

30 Jan '03

From: "Tyler Durden" <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com> > I'd like to be able digitally "shake hands" using a Palm Pilot. Is this > possible? I think you mean public key based authentication. > Is this possible within the memory constraints of a Palm device? What about > with a booster pack of memory? If not, is some sort of "Public Key Masking" > possible so that a 'less secure' handshake is possible using a subset of the > public key? I doubt memory is likely to be an issue with this since decade old DOS handhelds ran PGP 2.x fine and if you google for "palm pilot crypto" you will find 2000 vintage ports of OpenPGP and OpenSSL. The Palms do have fairly slow processors so checking keys may take a while and generating them probably quite a long time. More modern PDAs such as the Zaurus or iPaq have processors which are an order of magnitude faster and run linux so PGP (or GPG or whatever) should work. Also the new generation of mobiles which run Java are probably the future once the standards settle down and the phones become more reliable. I can see little point in trying to use shorter keys which would be a very broken solution to a probably non-existent problem. People should be using longer keys rather than shorter ones, since most of the news about short key lengths isn't good (google "DJB RSA"). > And for extra credit, when might the chipsets be available for incorporating > this functionality into, say, a wristwatch so that the protocol runs > automatically (giving you a beep, for instance, only if there's a mismatch)? It's more a software issue than a hardware issue. It's not much of a software problem since RSA can be written in a few lines of code. If you have a high level language running on (or compiler) for the hardware then you can easily port open source crypto. This is probably a safer solution from a security aspect than relying on potentially backdoored or legally restricted chipsets. Suitable hardware has been available for 10 years or longer with a lot of publicity for the Java ring and iButtons about 5 years back. > (This I'm sure the feds must already have.) It's possible the US Govt. uses iButtoms but I would very much doubt it's used much in production. State agencies tend to be *very* conservative with authentication and rely on physical identity cards, individually issued (and revocable) PIN numbers and the like. They are run by grey men rather than techno-fetishist computer geeks. -- 1024/D9C69DF9 Steve Mynott <steve(a)tightrope.demon.co.uk>

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Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
by Mike Rosing 30 Jan '03

30 Jan '03

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: > Actually, VW has a plant making synfuel out of biomass. And we won't have to > wait long before oil is $50-100 a barrel, it's at $35 right now and world oil > production will peak this decade. In the '80's it was "obvious" that oil production would peak around 1995. We've already burned up all the solar energy collected from 140 to 250 million years ago - the dinosaur model does not fit the amount of oil we're actually finding. There's a lot more oil in the ground (most of it may be under the oceans) so the price isn't going to rise that much for the next 100 years. That doesn't make "biomass" a bad fuel, but if it's gonna compete it will have to get down to $20/barrel to be a clear winner. > That's a pretty easy decision to make, eh? Ethanol is renewable, oil isn't. > Ethanol doesn't pollute, oil does. Ethanol doesn't require troops in the Middle > East, wars, and resultant terror attacks, oil does. Quite simple. Ethanol pollutes, any hydrocarbon is going to be mixed with N2 and make NOx, there's no getting around it with any kind of Otto engine. Oil doesn't *need* to make wars either. It's just that people with guns also happen to be oil sellers, and stealing oil is cheaper than buying it. We could just buy Iraqi oil and solve a lot of problems all around. > Yes, but importing sugar isn't the answer either. Sugar beets and sorghum > grow fine in the US. The best crop, however, is cattails. However, diesels are > still a better solution, running on a biodiesel/ethanol mix, perhaps. > The main problem is corporate welfare. Farm subsidies and oil > subsidies. Until that problem is solved, I don't think we'll see any real > solutions, and, unfortunately, the way the world is going, I don't think that > will happen in any of our lifetimes. Like I've said before, the key to corruption is to make it work in your favor. The Romans, Spanish, French and American empires are all the same, corruption eventually causes them to collapse. But people still live there, with entrenched corruption. I think our best solution is to escape. Mars might be far enough away that we can start a nice civilazation. But it'll turn corrupt eventually because that's how humans work. So we'll need to leave the keys for future escapes :-) Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike

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Who feigned Roger Rabbit?
by Tim May 30 Jan '03

30 Jan '03

On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 11:14 PM, James A. Donald wrote: > -- > On 29 Jan 2003 at 21:08, Tyler Durden wrote: >> Meanwhile, regulations and governments can give some >> industries a head start, particularly if a "jungle" already >> holds a nice warm niche for the output of those industries. >> Thus Sematec helped US semiconductors to roar back from the >> brink of extinction, > > Sematec was a boondoggle and complete failure I discussed Sematech in my last post. It was, as James says, completely unnecessary. As witnessed by the fact that no significant technologies or methods came out of it...and as evidenced by the fact that no technology startups are being spun out of Sematech. It existed mainly as a "jobs program" for Texas, which was suffering in the 1980s from the Oil Patch downturn (the so-called "neutron buildings" of Houston being a symptom: the people are destroyed but the skyscrapers remained standing"...the joke took on a second wind when the Enron/Dynegy/etc. problems hit recently). As befitting any jobs program, now there is a "Sematech II" being set up in depressed upstate New York. All the usual pork barrellers are saying it's just what's needed to help terminally ill Kodak! Do the math. > and the buying up (and >> subsequent dismantling) of lite rail systems in the LA basin >> in the 30s and 40s apparently had a major impact on the >> rollout of vehicles Might we have seen much better public >> transportation in that area if this capitalist coup-d'etat >> hadn't occurred? > > Public transport received, and continues to receive enormous > subsidies. What can be said to "Tyler Durden," a made-up movie character name who gets his economic theory from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Mass transit is usually the first thing given up by those with money. It's a form of the demographic transition which is the same reason Malthus was wrong. Sometime I take a bus when my car needs to be repaired. From my house to Santa Cruz, a total of 13 miles, it takes a minimum of 80 minutes by bus. For a working person, if their time is worth very little or if they just cannot raise the $500 to buy a car and the $800 a year to insure it, then taking the bus is their only choice. But as soon as they can raise the money, they buy cars. Then that 80-minute each way trip drops to 20 minutes. And they can go when they wish, not when the bus schedule permits. And they can go other places the buses don't go (which is nearly everywhere in nearly everyplace I have lived). And so on. In some dense urban areas, or in certain grid layouts, buses make sense. In which case they don't need to be subsidized. But in nearly all places they ARE subsidized...and they are filled with drooling retards, the halt and the lame, kids, oldsters too feeble to drive, and more drooling retards. In an area as large as LA, freeways were the only way to let people (with money, which was nearly everyone) get from Point A to Point B. A series of bus transfers would have made for 2-3 hour bus trips in each direction. The Red Line was in only a stretch in the downtown, and pushing out to the recreational areas near the beaches. It was fine for its time, e.g., the 1920s, but of little use once the city expanded in all directions. The newer forms of mass transit in LA are better-suited than the Roger Rabbitt-famed Red Line was, but are still massively subsidized and mostly filled with drooling retards. > >> The moon shots did apparently accelerate the development of >> semiconductors. > > No they did not. I have written so many pieces trying to disabuse people of this notion about going to the moon that I cringe at the thought of writing another one. The Apollo spacecraft had as its MOST ADVANCED CHIP TECHNOLOGY a technology called "DTL," standing for "diode-transistor-logic." This is the technology which came after RTL (resistor-transistor-logic) and before TTL (transistor-transistor-logic). It is the technology of circa 1961-2, when the specs were frozen and the contracts let out. It did absolutely nothing to push chip technology in the slightest way. This bullshit by statists about how the moon landing helped technology has got to stop. >> (A side note should be made here about the fact that some >> technologies have a very high activation energy >> barrier...without a very intensive amount of capital, they >> can't happen. Indeed, aren't we nearly at that point with >> sub-0.13um technology? It is possible that further advances >> just won't be possible without direct or indirect government >> funding.) >> Utter bullshit. Intel is very far along on 90 nm, 300 mm technologies, none of it funded by Big Brother. You will see products based on this before summer. --Tim May

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Re: [DIGRESSION] RE: the news from bush's speech...H-power
by Tim May 30 Jan '03

30 Jan '03

On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 07:59 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote: > On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 06:38:11PM -0800, Tim May wrote: > > (snip) > >> Since my life and my safety is vastly more valuable to me than saving >> $350-$600 a year in gas, I'll be keeping my 3500-pound S-Class. > > Ah, yes, the old "big cars are safer" arguement. I've seen studies > that went > both ways, yes, bigger crushes smaller if it hits it, but smaller cars > dodge > better. "Dodging" may be important for motorcycles (yes, I have one, a BMW R1100R), but not for any of the accidents I have seen or been in. These usually happen when someone makes a sudden lane change, turns in front of another, runs a red light, fails to negotiate a curve, fails to stop/merge/etc., and so on. The laws of physics are what they are. A 3500-pound vehicle colliding with a 2000-lb vehicle will have the expected effects, all other things being equal. They are not, of course, but even in the "other things" the larger vehicle usually has advantages. My 300 SE has a long hood, with lots of crush length, lots of steel to absorb energy. And a steering column safely ahead of me. And dual airbags. The roof is strongly reinforced. The Volvo folks got most of their know-how in building strong cars from the Mercedes-Benz data "open sourced" in the late 50s, early 60s, and later. > Personally, I don't believe there are many "accidents", just a lot of > inattentive people. I've made it to age 60 driving a lot of small cars, > motorcycles, and bicycles, somehow managed to survive. Haven't had an > "accident" in a long, long time, although I've seen a lot of people > doing pretty > stupid things on the highway. > OTOH, when I was younger and wilder I managed to smash up quite a > few cars, > some of them quite badly, one head on at 75, another one spun out a > 110. A bad > bike spill racing another guy put in a wheel chair for 6 weeks. Fate, > I think, > also has a lot to do with it. I have witnessed three accidents, but only have been in one. This was a motorcyclist running a red light and smashing into the front of my compact car, a 1972 Mazda RX-2. It did substantial damage to my engine compartment. Either my Mercedes or my Explorer would have absorbed the impact better. So, just one accident in my 51 years, not caused by me, compared to your 3 or more, caused by you. So I suppose you have earned the right to explain to me why I should squeeze myself into a Honda Lupo so I can "save the planet." >> (Actually, the little golf car runabouts are slightly popular (maybe >> one car in 2000 is one of these golf carts) near the downtown beach >> area around here. But not on the California freeways, and most >> definitely not the on the highway which consumes most of my driving: >> the mountainous Highway 17 between Santa Cruz and San Jose, with >> 18-wheelers only a foot away. I wouldn't want to be sitting inside a >> golf cart "just over a meter high" when the wheels of an 18-wheeler >> are >> taller!) > > If a semi tries to kill you, driving your MB ain't going to do you > much > good. Believe me. I didn't speak of absolute safety, only relative safety. A 3500-pound steel Mercedes sedan is going to withstand a collision with a truck better than a carbon fiber golf cart riding no more than a meter high. > --Tim May "Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound"

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Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
by Tim May 29 Jan '03

29 Jan '03

On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 02:24 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Feds are sure inefficient, but the random dispersal of funds does tend > to > hit the far shots now and then. The private sector tends to ruthlessly > optimize on the short run (because the long shot doesn't pay if you go > broke before you can reap the possible benefits). > > It's about the single most powerful reason for federally funded > research > to exist. > I should have mentioned in my first reply that you need to spend some time looking into evolutionary learning and markets. For example, the importance of quick feedback and correction, with profits determining which markets are explored. I have strong views on this, having studied the electronics/semiconductor market for many years, having studied carefully the role of intermediate products (such as RTL --> DTL --> TTL --> op amps --> MOS RAMs --> 4-bit microprocessors --> etc.). Products introduced in 1963, say, were generally making the bulk of a company's profits by 1965-66, paying for the 1965 R & D and the 1966 product rollouts, which then paid for the 1967-69 cycle, etc. I know this was true of the earlier technologies and it matched everything I saw in my years at Intel and thereafter. The "2-4 year payback cycle" in the electronics industry, from roughly 1955 to the present, was terribly important. Each generation of technology paid for the next generation, and costly mistakes resulted in companies ceasing to exist (Shockley Transistor, Rheem, Precision Monolithics, and so on...the list is long). Successful products led to the "genes" (or memes) propagating. Phenotypes and genotypes. This same model gave us, basically, the commercial automobile and aviation industries. "Moon shots," on the other hand, distort markets, suffer from a lack of evolutionary learning, and have almost no breakthroughs ("But what about Tang?"). "I am proud to announce, as your President, the goal of creating our national mechanical brain, a machine which will be built with one million relays and vacuum tubes. I am committing one billion dollars to this noble endeavour. We expect to have the mechanical brain operating by 1970." --President Dwight Eisenhower, 1958. Really, Eugene, you need to think deeply about this issue. Ask your lab associate, "A. G.," about why learning and success/failure is so important for so many industries. Read some Hayek, some von Mises, some Milton Friedman. And even some David Friedman. Ask why the U.S.S.R., which depended essentially solely on "federal funding," failed so completely. Hint: it wasn't just because of repression. It was largely because "picking winners" doesn't work, and command economies only know how to pick winners (they think). Think deeply about why this list is what it is.

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Re: [DIGRESSION] RE: the news from bush's speech...H-power
by Tim May 29 Jan '03

29 Jan '03

On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 04:23 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote: > On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:36:20PM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: >> On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: >> >>> Although canola oil is a much better source for fuel. And diesels >>> a much >>> better IC engine for hybrids. Even in non-hybrids, VW builds some >>> pretty nice >>> diesel cars, including the Lupo, on the market for a couple years >>> now, which >>> gets 80mpg. And the prototype that VW's CEO drives around in that >>> gets 280mpg. >> >> From >> http://www.used-volkswagen-cars.co.uk/volkswagenlupo.htm: >> >> "As befits a small car, the cheapest models come with a 1.0-litre >> engine >> that is decent enough, though finds it hard going on the motorway." >> > > Hard going on the motorway? It cruises at 80mph. And as much as I > love riding > bicycles, even in Winter, the Lupo certainly has a lot more practical > uses than > a bike. Even neater is their new one tho -- > http://www.vwvortex.com/news/index_1L.html > > It too will do 75mph -- fast enough for the likes of me. At 239mpg. > What's > that saying about muscle cars? Something about the size of their > motors is an > inverse ratio to the size of their dicks? It's an old and silly line. I value my life quite highly. I put about 8000 miles per year on my main car (and about 4000 miles per year on an older SUV I used to haul large items, etc.). My car gets about 20 mpg. This costs me about $700 per year in gasoline. Some of the leftie/environmentalists on another list I am on attempted to argue, strenuously, that I owed it "to the planet" and "to yourself" to start driving a Prius, a hybrid that the enthusiasts say averages around 40 mpg. Whatever the exact number, if it is 40 mpg it would "save" me about $300-400 per year in gas, depending on the grade of gas it takes. (Of course, my 1991 Mercedes-Benz is bought and paid for, and costs less than a Prius by about $6000-$9000, based on blue book comparisons of early 90s MBs to late 90s-early 00s Priusi. Saving $350 a year will take 15-25 years to amortize, modulo others costs.) Then there's safety, and personal injury insurance rates. If my 3500-pound S-Class hits a Prius, the laws of physics dictate what happens. And if I hit a golf cart, er, a Honda Lupo, I'd better yell "Fore!" (Here's a quote about the size: "Developed in the wind tunnel and built entirely from composite carbon-fiber reinforced material, it has a width of only 1.25 m (49.2 inches) and is just over a meter high (39 inches).") Since my life and my safety is vastly more valuable to me than saving $350-$600 a year in gas, I'll be keeping my 3500-pound S-Class. (Actually, the little golf car runabouts are slightly popular (maybe one car in 2000 is one of these golf carts) near the downtown beach area around here. But not on the California freeways, and most definitely not the on the highway which consumes most of my driving: the mountainous Highway 17 between Santa Cruz and San Jose, with 18-wheelers only a foot away. I wouldn't want to be sitting inside a golf cart "just over a meter high" when the wheels of an 18-wheeler are taller!) And then there's the issue of carrying passengers, cargo, plus the availability of repairs in small towns, etc. A lot of "theoretically good" solutions fail for market reasons, what someone correctly said is Metcalfe's Law, or the fax effect. Until fueling stations carry exotic fuels, or until all cars and trucks are reduced to golf cart sizes, the disadvantages outweigh the slight savings in fuel costs. I'm quite surprised to see, on this list and on other lists, the ignorance of basic economics. Markets clear. Gas costs what it costs. To argue that there is a "moral cost" to consider, as some on those other lists have been arguing, is silly. Prisoner's Dilemma and all the usual arguments apply. It's why I'll be safer when I run into Harmon on the freeways. His heirs will appreciate his savings in gasoline for the time he owned his Lupo. --Tim May

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Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
by Tyler Durden 29 Jan '03

29 Jan '03

Tim May wrote... "Ask why the U.S.S.R., which depended essentially solely on "federal funding," failed so completely. Hint: it wasn't just because of repression. It was largely because "picking winners" doesn't work, and command economies only know how to pick winners (they think)." Well, there's some truth here but a lot of oversimplification as well. I'd argue that the US patent system (or at least the thoughtof it) had a lot to do with the ability of inventors to take risks, gather startup capital, and get a product rolling. There is first of all the perception that their "secret sauce" is to some extent protected (as are the time & $ investments), as well as the actual protection (litigation actually works once in a while, and the threat thereof has kept some from copying to soon and too closely). This environment has had a major effect on technological innovation. That's not to say it can't happen in other environments, but it seems to unfold very differently in, say, China or the USSR (which actually has contributed lots of technological and scientific ideas to the world). But none of them have benefited $$$-wise (nor has the pace been nearly as fast) as in the US. Meanwhile, regulations and governments can give some industries a head start, particularly if a "jungle" already holds a nice warm niche for the output of those industries. Thus Sematec helped US semiconductors to roar back from the brink of extinction, and the buying up (and subsequent dismantling) of lite rail systems in the LA basin in the 30s and 40s apparently had a major impact on the rollout of vehicles Might we have seen much better public transportation in that area if this capitalist coup-d'etat hadn't occurred? The moon shots did apparently accelerate the development of semiconductors. (A side note should be made here about the fact that some technologies have a very high activation energy barrier...without a very intensive amount of capital, they can't happen. Indeed, aren't we nearly at that point with sub-0.13um technology? It is possible that further advances just won't be possible without direct or indirect government funding.) The best technology does not always win. In fact, the concept of "best technology" is kinda shakey most of the time. There are sociological, political, and other factors than can alter the course of things for a while. That said, the technological "survival of the fittest" notion seems to be a fairly constant undercurrent that re-asserts itself periodically as the various sociological ephemera come and go. Like Kuhn or Popper, these aren't the only drivers, but they are certainly one of the axes. So the picking of technological winners is possible, but if the technology is actually a winner! -TD >From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> >To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com >Subject: Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power >Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:08:08 -0800 > >On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 02:24 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >>Feds are sure inefficient, but the random dispersal of funds does tend to >>hit the far shots now and then. The private sector tends to ruthlessly >>optimize on the short run (because the long shot doesn't pay if you go >>broke before you can reap the possible benefits). >> >>It's about the single most powerful reason for federally funded research >>to exist. >> > >I should have mentioned in my first reply that you need to spend some time >looking into evolutionary learning and markets. For example, the importance >of quick feedback and correction, with profits determining which markets >are explored. > >I have strong views on this, having studied the electronics/semiconductor >market for many years, having studied carefully the role of intermediate >products (such as RTL --> DTL --> TTL --> op amps --> MOS RAMs --> 4-bit >microprocessors --> etc.). > >Products introduced in 1963, say, were generally making the bulk of a >company's profits by 1965-66, paying for the 1965 R & D and the 1966 >product rollouts, which then paid for the 1967-69 cycle, etc. > >I know this was true of the earlier technologies and it matched everything >I saw in my years at Intel and thereafter. > >The "2-4 year payback cycle" in the electronics industry, from roughly 1955 >to the present, was terribly important. Each generation of technology paid >for the next generation, and costly mistakes resulted in companies ceasing >to exist (Shockley Transistor, Rheem, Precision Monolithics, and so >on...the list is long). > >Successful products led to the "genes" (or memes) propagating. Phenotypes >and genotypes. > >This same model gave us, basically, the commercial automobile and aviation >industries. > >"Moon shots," on the other hand, distort markets, suffer from a lack of >evolutionary learning, and have almost no breakthroughs ("But what about >Tang?"). > >"I am proud to announce, as your President, the goal of creating our >national mechanical brain, a machine which will be built with one million >relays and vacuum tubes. I am committing one billion dollars to this noble >endeavour. We expect to have the mechanical brain operating by 1970." >--President Dwight Eisenhower, 1958. > >Really, Eugene, you need to think deeply about this issue. Ask your lab >associate, "A. G.," about why learning and success/failure is so important >for so many industries. Read some Hayek, some von Mises, some Milton >Friedman. And even some David Friedman. > >Ask why the U.S.S.R., which depended essentially solely on "federal >funding," failed so completely. Hint: it wasn't just because of repression. >It was largely because "picking winners" doesn't work, and command >economies only know how to pick winners (they think). > >Think deeply about why this list is what it is. _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
by Tim May 29 Jan '03

29 Jan '03

On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 03:18 PM, Bill Frantz wrote: > At 2:24 PM -0800 1/29/03, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> Feds are sure inefficient, but the random dispersal of funds does >> tend to >> hit the far shots now and then. The private sector tends to ruthlessly >> optimize on the short run (because the long shot doesn't pay if you go >> broke before you can reap the possible benefits). > > Back a few years ago, probably back during the great gas crisis (i.e. > OPEC) > years, there were a lot of small companies working on solar power. As > far > as I know, they were all bought up by oil companies. Of course, only a > paranoid would think that they were bought to suppress a competing > technology. Some of the leading PV panels are those from BP (British Petroleoum). These can be ordered, along with those from Kyocera, Astropower, Siemens, and others, from many sites. Use Google to find them. My brother worked for one of these companies at their Simi Valley/Thousand Oaks site about 20 years ago. The issues are complex, but have zero to do with leftie fantasies about oil companies suppressing technologies. There is no way to control fundamental breakthroughs, whether PV conversion or "caburetors that violate the laws of physics!." Any of the above non-oil companies (and one can add Texas Instruments and others to the list) which develops a more efficient, cheaper to manufacture PV system will find success. --Tim May

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