January 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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

29 Jan '03

On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 03:18:44PM -0800, 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. > All bought up by oil companies? Hmmm -- maybe you should do some googling on solar panels, alternative energy, etc. Solar's been a growing industry for some time, being very widely installed around the world. You can even buy it a Home Depot. It's getting quite cheap, many people are finding it a better buy than paying an electric bill. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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

29 Jan '03

Mike Rossing wrote... "Just gotta kill off a few more arabs to extend the time when that happens is all." That gives me a damned good idea. Perhaps we can use Camp XRay to do some research on how to melt down Muslims and convert then directly into fossil fuels, bypassing all the middlemen...Muslim-powered vehicles could sport a cute lil' sticker proclaiming "Allah On Board". -TD _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. 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 02:24 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Tim May wrote: > >> Nonsense. What "political science" do you think was stopping Ford or >> Honda or Volvo or GM from introducing a hydrogen fuel cell car by >> 1980? > > What I meant is lack of lots of fat federal grants for research on fuel > reformers, hydrogen separation, proton membranes, alternative > catalysts, > and the like. The fund allocation (or, rather, lack thereof) was sure > politically motivated. Well, in your country (Germany, IIRC), perhaps such funding is permissable. In the U.S., it really is not. Constitutionally, that is. The government exists to do certain things, not to pick technology winners. Yes, I realize there was a space program..it was unconstitutional, IMO, as it had nothing to do per se with national defense or other constitutionally-specified purposes of collecting and disbursing taxpayer money. Other programs, like cancer research and diet studies, are even more unconstitutional. See also the next point, about the effects the "Moon Shot" had on alternatives. > > 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). The effects are much worse than you imply. Government picking winners means that competitors are undermined and "deprecated." Not only does the funding distort the market, but the government often finds ways to actually _ban_ alternatives. (Sometimes the ban is explicit, often it is implicit, in terms of universities and corporations only being allowed to compete in For example, the space program. The Moon Flag Planting cost about 100,000 slave-lives (about $125 thousand milliion in today's dollars) to finance. It distorted the market for things like single stage to orbit, which might have happened otherwise. And it created a bureaucracy more intent on spreading pork to Huntsville, Houston, Canaveral, and other pork sites. (Surprising that Robert Byrd failed to get WVa picked as the control center. He was too junior then, probably.) I don't have time/energy to explain in a lot of detail why you are so wrong here, why your "slippage into statism" is not only surprising given your subscription to this list, but is also dead wrong. I won't bother responding to your arguments in favor of national socialism. --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.

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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 10:53 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Tyler Durden wrote: > >> And don't forget his promise that we'll all be able to buy >> Hydrogen-powered >> cars by 2020 or so. Guess that's how long he thinks this war on >> terrorism > > Don't get it: onboard fuel reforming with methanol is almost done, fuel > cells with polymer proton membranes are already good enough (though > still > being optimized rapidly, particularly in terms of energy density and > platinum group metal content) and GM's on the right track with their > recent designs. Don't see why it shouldn't hit the markets by 2005. > > It's interesting that political science has witheld one of the oldest > technologies (Grove started it 1838, Mond and Langer in 1889 attained 6 > A/square foot energy density; Bockris publicized it in mid-70s again) > from > the general public. The interesting part is that we didn't use fuel > cell > technology on noticeable scale by 1980... > Nonsense. What "political science" do you think was stopping Ford or Honda or Volvo or GM from introducing a hydrogen fuel cell car by 1980? Do you think it was the lack of hydrogen storage technology? Not a Poly Sci problem. Do you think it was the lack of methane fuel at filling stations? Not a Poly Sci problem. Do you think it was the very high cost of fuel cell vehicles even today (in prototype form) compared to conventional fuel vehicles? Not a Poly Sci problem. And so on, for H2 storage tanks, reformers, etc. You are generally free to develop your idea of a fuel cell vehicle and to then try to sell it to customers, modulo some minor issues of safety tests, etc. Don't let weird ideological ideas get in the way of being able to evaluate technologies objectively. "Careful with that axe to grind, Eugene." --Tim May

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

29 Jan '03

On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > Oh come on. Its all economics. (With tech changing the params) > Fuel cells for cars are too expensive today. There is not enough > methanol > production/distrib infrastructure, which costs to create. [insert > Metcalfe's law (aka fax or network effect) blurb here] > And where do you get to strip-mine the coal for the methanol? Even H. Ford was figuring on using hemp for methanol. The problem is that you need a nuke plant to do the final distillation. That's politics, not economics. > The economics will make battery + capacitor + constant-rate Otto engine > (aka 'hybrid') keep petrol cheaper than alternative > energy carriers and sufficiently clean for a while. You'll see 42 volt > cars (soon) before you see fuel cells in cars. Yup, the ability to run the Otto at fixed speed maximizes it's efficiency. When the price of fuel for the 25% max efficiency runs into the 90%+ efficiency of more expensive motors, we'll see things start changing. Just gotta kill off a few more arabs to extend the time when that happens is all. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike

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Re: the news from bush's speech
by Michael Cardenas 29 Jan '03

29 Jan '03

How about this news? Last night in the State of the Union address, Bush repeated the lie that Iraq is creating nuclear weapons, stating the evidence of the aluminum tubes purchased, which he claimed were used to enrich uranium. These remarks were made despite the fact, discussed here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57632-2003Jan28.html that the International Atomic Energy Agency's report on Monday stated clearly that the tubes "cannot be used directly for [uranium] enrichment." So, Bush is either illiterate or just flat out lying, once again. On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 09:00:01PM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: > > And tonight, I am instructing the leaders of the FBI, Central > >Intelligence, Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense to develop > >a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to merge and analyze all threat > >information in a single location. Our government must have the very best > >information possible, and we will use it to make sure the right people > >are in the right places to protect our citizens. -- michael cardenas | lead software engineer, lindows.com hyperpoem.net | GNU/Linux software developer people.debian.org/~mbc | encrypted email preferred Listening to: KPFA-FM - Berkeley, CA "Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." - Oscar Wilde [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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

29 Jan '03

And don't forget his promise that we'll all be able to buy Hydrogen-powered cars by 2020 or so. Guess that's how long he thinks this war on terrorism will last (and its probability for ending!). -TD _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Re: the news from bush's speech
by Tim May 28 Jan '03

28 Jan '03

On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 06:00 PM, Declan McCullagh wrote: >> And tonight, I am instructing the leaders of the FBI, Central >> Intelligence, Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense to >> develop a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to merge and analyze >> all threat information in a single location. Our government must have >> the very best information possible, and we will use it to make sure >> the right people are in the right places to protect our citizens. > > The _real_ news was, of course, that no one delivered the Sato Solution to that den of statists. Granted, delivering a fully-loaded 767 through the roof of the Capitol dome has become harder than it was when Clancy first proposed it (ironically, Clancy remained a vaunted consultant while those on newsgroups who speculated similarly reportedly got visits from the SS). But each year I keep hoping that my CNN coverage will suddenly go blank and Aaron Brown and Judy Woodruff will say "We seem to have lost communcation with the Capitol...Judy, what's that bright orange glow over towards the Capitol?" Of course, a true nest-cleaning detonation would probably take out most of Crystal City as well, so Aaron, Lou, Dan, Peter, and Oprah would probably be "having the vapors." There's always next year... --Tim May "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." --John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General

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Re: the news from bush's speech
by Mike Rosing 28 Jan '03

28 Jan '03

On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Declan McCullagh quoted Bush: > > And tonight, I am instructing the leaders of the FBI, Central > > Intelligence, Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense to develop > > a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to merge and analyze all threat > > information in a single location. Our government must have the very best > > information possible, and we will use it to make sure the right people > > are in the right places to protect our citizens. Yeah, like Ames, Hanson and Pollard. Definitly the right people in the right places. A friend of mine had a sign in his office that said "I can't tell if the world is run by smart men bluffing or idiots who mean it." I think the latter is pretty obvious in this case. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike

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Re: Palm Pilot Handshake
by Mike Rosing 28 Jan '03

28 Jan '03

On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Tyler Durden wrote: > Yo! Anyone out there in codeville know if the following is possible? > > I'd like to be able digitally "shake hands" using a Palm Pilot. Is this > possible? Yes. > And now let's say there's some guy at a party claiming to be that very same > Tyler Durden, but you're not so sure (this real-life Tyler Durden is WAY too > much of an obvious chick-magnet to be the same guy that posts on the > Internet). BUT, you happen to have your Palm Pilot(TM), and so does he. So > you both both engage the little hand-shaking app on your PP (using Tyler > Durden's public key) and there's verification. Yep. Same dude. (You then > procede to prostrate yourself before this obvious godlet, stating "I'm not > worthy, Sire".) Or punch him in the nose :-) > 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? It's there. And you have lots of choices of algorithms too. Maybe too many choices... > 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)? > (This I'm sure the feds must already have.) It's there. Check out "smart cards". One chip does the job quite nicely. Way too many choices there too. Do a web search for "secure cryptographic hardware". Have lots of time to read :-) Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike

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