December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

UNSUBSCRIBE CYPHERPUNKS-ANNOUNCE
by Daniel K Engdahl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNSUBSCRIBE CYPHERPUNKS-ANNOUNCE

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Bruce Schneier, Sandia, FBI and the REAL WORLD
by bill payne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wednesday 1/7/98 12:57 PM Bruce Schneier wrote and a burglar willing to try all 10,000 is guaranteed to break into your house. This is posted at jya.com. Sandia employees Jack Hudson and Jack Menako, both in my division when Sandia transferred me to break electronic locks for the FBI/ERF [Engineering Research Facility, Quantico, VA], were TRYING to defeat combination locks on file cabinets. Menako built a frame to connect a stepper-motor to the combination dial. The stepper motor was wried to a PC. Hudson wrote the software to try all possible combinations. What happened, IN FACT, was that the combination lock wore-out before the combination which opened the lock was reached. Combinations locks are NOT ENGINEERED for such heavy use. The file safe had to be destroyed to open it! So Schneier's statement may be incorrect. No guarantee. Guys, this is the REAL WORLD. bill Title: Security Pitfalls in Cryptography Security Pitfalls in Cryptography by Bruce Schneier Cryptography Consultant Counterpane Systems e-mail: schneier(a)counterpane.com Magazine articles like to describe cryptography products in terms of algorithms and key length. Algorithms make good sound bites: they can be explained in a few words and they're easy to compare with one another. "128-bit keys mean good security." "Triple-DES means good security." "40-bit keys mean weak security." "2048-bit RSA is better than 1024-bit RSA." But reality isn't that simple. Longer keys don't always mean more security. Compare the cryptographic algorithm to the lock on your front door. Most door locks have four metal pins, each of which can be in one of ten positions. A key sets the pins in a particular configuration. If the key aligns them all correctly, then the lock opens. So there are only 10,000 possible keys, and a burglar willing to try all 10,000 is guaranteed to break into your house. But an improved lock with ten pins, making 10 billion possible keys, probably won't make your house more secure. Burglars don't try every possible key (a brute-force attack); most aren't even clever enough to pick the lock (a cryptographic attack against the algorithm). They smash windows, kick in doors, disguise themselves as policemen, or rob keyholders at gunpoint. One ring of art thieves in California defeated home security systems by taking a chainsaw to the house walls. Better locks don't help against these attacks. Strong cryptography is very powerful when it is done right, but it is not a panacea. Focusing on the cryptographic algorithms while ignoring other aspects of security is like defending your house not by building a fence around it, but by putting an immense stake into the ground and hoping that the adversary runs right into it. Smart attackers will just go around the algorithms. Counterpane Systems has spent years designing, analyzing, and breaking cryptographic systems. While we do research on published algorithms and protocols, most of our work examines actual products. We've designed and analyzed systems that protect privacy, ensure confidentiality, provide fairness, and facilitate commerce. We've worked with software, stand-alone hardware, and everything in between. We've broken our share of algorithms, but we can almost always find attacks that bypass the algorithms altogether. We don't have to try every possible key, or even find flaws in the algorithms. We exploit errors in design, errors in implementation, and errors in installation. Sometimes we invent a new trick to break a system, but most of the time we exploit the same old mistakes that designers make over and over again. Attacks Against Cryptographic Designs A cryptographic system can only be as strong as the encryption algorithms, digital signature algorithms, one-way hash functions, and message authentication codes it relies on. Break any of them, and you've broken the system. And just as it's possible to build a weak structure using strong materials, it's possible to build a weak cryptographic system using strong algorithms and protocols. We often find systems that "void the warranty" of their cryptography by not using it properly: failing to check the size of values, reusing random parameters that should never be reused, and so on. Encryption algorithms don't necessarily provide data integrity. Key exchange protocols don't necessarily ensure that both parties receive the same key. In a recent research project, we found that some--not all--systems using related cryptographic keys could be broken, even though each individual key was secure. Security is a lot more than plugging in an algorithm and expecting the system to work. Even good engineers, well-known companies, and lots of effort are no guarantee of robust implementation; our work on the U.S. digital cellular encryption algorithm illustrated that. Random-number generators are another place where cryptographic systems often break. Good random-number generators are hard to design, because their security often depends on the particulars of the hardware and software. Many products we examine use bad ones. The cryptography may be strong, but if the random-number generator produces weak keys, the system is much easier to break. Other products use secure random-number generators, but they don't use enough randomness to make the cryptography secure. Recently Counterpane Systems has published new classes of attacks against random-number generators, based on our work with commercial designs. One of the most surprising things we've found is that specific random-number generators may be secure for one purpose but insecure for another; generalizing security analyses is dangerous. In another research result, we looked at interactions between individually secure cryptographic protocols. Given a secure protocol, we show how to build another secure protocol that will break the first if both are used with the same keys on the same device. Attacks Against Implementations Many systems fail because of mistakes in implementation. Some systems don't ensure that plaintext is destroyed after it's encrypted. Other systems use temporary files to protect against data loss during a system crash, or virtual memory to increase the available memory; these features can accidentally leave plaintext lying around on the hard drive. In extreme cases, the operating system can leave the keys on the hard drive. One product we've seen used a special window for password input. The password remained in the window's memory even after it was closed. It didn't matter how good that product's cryptography was; it was broken by the user interface. Other systems fall to more subtle problems. Sometimes the same data is encrypted with two different keys, one strong and one weak. Other systems use master keys and then one-time session keys. We've broken systems using partial information about the different keys. We've also seen systems that use inadequate protection mechanisms for the master keys, mistakenly relying on the security of the session keys. It's vital to secure all possible ways to learn a key, not just the most obvious ones. Electronic commerce systems often make implementation trade-offs to enhance usability. We've found subtle vulnerabilities here, when designers don't think through the security implications of their trade-offs. Doing account reconciliation only once per day might be easier, but what kind of damage can an attacker do in a few hours? Can audit mechanisms be flooded to hide the identity of an attacker? Some systems record compromised keys on "hotlists"; attacks against these hotlists can be very fruitful. Other systems can be broken through replay attacks: reusing old messages, or parts of old messages, to fool various parties. Systems that allow old keys to be recovered in an emergency provide another area to attack. Good cryptographic systems are designed so that the keys exist for as short a period of time as possible; key recovery often negates any security benefit by forcing keys to exist long after they are useful. Furthermore, key recovery databases become sources of vulnerability in themselves, and have to be designed and implemented securely. In one product we evaluated, flaws in the key recovery database allowed criminals to commit fraud and then frame legitimate users. Attacks Against Passwords Many systems break because they rely on user-generated passwords. Left to themselves, people don't choose strong passwords. If they're forced to use strong passwords, they can't remember them. If the password becomes a key, it's usually much easier--and faster--to guess the password than it is to brute-force the key; we've seen elaborate security systems fail in this way. Some user interfaces make the problem even worse: limiting the passwords to eight characters, converting everything to lower case, etc. Even passphrases can be weak: searching through 40-character phrases is often much easier than searching through 64-bit random keys. We've also seen key-recovery systems that circumvent strong session keys by using weak passwords for key-recovery. Attacks Against Hardware Some systems, particularly commerce systems, rely on tamper-resistant hardware for security: smart cards, electronic wallets, dongles, etc. These systems may assume public terminals never fall into the wrong hands, or that those "wrong hands" lack the expertise and equipment to attack the hardware. While hardware security is an important component in many secure systems, we distrust systems whose security rests solely on assumptions about tamper resistance. We've rarely seen tamper resistance techniques that work, and tools for defeating tamper resistance are getting better all the time. When we design systems that use tamper resistance, we always build in complementary security mechanisms just in case the tamper resistance fails. The "timing attack" made a big press splash in 1995: RSA private keys could be recovered by measuring the relative times cryptographic operations took. The attack has been successfully implemented against smart cards and other security tokens, and against electronic commerce servers across the Internet. Counterpane Systems and others have generalized these methods to include attacks on a system by measuring power consumption, radiation emissions, and other "side channels," and have implemented them against a variety of public-key and symmetric algorithms in "secure" tokens. We've yet to find a smart card that we can't pull the secret keys out of by looking at side channels. Related research has looked at fault analysis: deliberately introducing faults into cryptographic processors in order to determine the secret keys. The effects of this attack can be devastating. Attacks Against Trust Models Many of our more interesting attacks are against the underlying trust model of the system: who or what in the system is trusted, in what way, and to what extent. Simple systems, like hard-drive encryption programs or telephone privacy products, have simple trust models. Complex systems, like electronic commerce systems or multi-user e-mail security programs, have complex (and subtle) trust models. An e-mail program might use uncrackable cryptography for the messages, but unless the keys are certified by a trusted source (and unless that certification can be verified), the system is still vulnerable. Some commerce systems can be broken by a merchant and a customer colluding, or by two different customers colluding. Other systems make implicit assumptions about security infrastructures, but don't bother to check that those assumptions are actually true. If the trust model isn't documented, then an engineer can unknowingly change it in product development, and compromise security. Many software systems make poor trust assumptions about the computers they run on; they assume the desktop is secure. These programs can often be broken by Trojan horse software that sniffs passwords, reads plaintext, or otherwise circumvents security measures. Systems working across computer networks have to worry about security flaws resulting from the network protocols. Computers that are attached to the Internet can also be vulnerable. Again, the cryptography may be irrelevant if it can be circumvented through network insecurity. And no software is secure against reverse-engineering. Often, a system will be designed with one trust model in mind, and implemented with another. Decisions made in the design process might be completely ignored when it comes time to sell it to customers. A system that is secure when the operators are trusted and the computers are completely under the control of the company using the system may not be secure when the operators are temps hired at just over minimum wage and the computers are untrusted. Good trust models work even if some of the trust assumptions turn out to be wrong. Attacks on the Users Even when a system is secure if used properly, its users can subvert its security by accident--especially if the system isn't designed very well. The classic example of this is the user who gives his password to his co-workers so they can fix some problem when he's out of the office. Users may not report missing smart cards for a few days, in case they are just misplaced. They may not carefully check the name on a digital certificate. They may reuse their secure passwords on other, insecure systems. They may not change their software's default weak security settings. Good system design can't fix all these social problems, but it can help avoid many of them. Attacks Against Failure Recovery Strong systems are designed to keep small security breaks from becoming big ones. Recovering the key to one file should not allow the attacker to read every file on the hard drive. A hacker who reverse-engineers a smart card should only learn the secrets in that smart card, not information that will help him break other smart cards in the system. In a multi-user system, knowing one person's secrets shouldn't compromise everyone else's. Many systems have a "default to insecure mode." If the security feature doesn't work, most people just turn it off and finish their business. If the on-line credit card verification system is down, merchants will default to the less-secure paper system. Similarly, it is sometimes possible to mount a "version rollback attack" against a system after it has been revised to fix a security problem: the need for backwards compatibility allows an attacker to force the protocol into an older, insecure, version. Other systems have no ability to recover from disaster. If the security breaks, there's no way to fix it. For electronic commerce systems, which could have millions of users, this can be particularly damaging. Such systems should plan to respond to attacks, and to upgrade security without having to shut the system down. The phrase "and then the company is screwed" is never something you want to put in your business plan. Good system design considers what will happen when an attack occurs, and works out ways to contain the damage and recover from the attack. Attacks Against the Cryptography Sometimes, products even get the cryptography wrong. Some rely on proprietary encryption algorithms. Invariably, these are very weak. Counterpane Systems has had considerable success breaking published encryption algorithms; our track record against proprietary ones is even better. Keeping the algorithm secret isn't much of an impediment to analysis, anyway--it only takes a couple of days to reverse-engineer the cryptographic algorithm from executable code. One system we analyzed, the S/MIME 2 electronic-mail standard, took a relatively strong design and implemented it with a weak cryptographic algorithm. The system for DVD encryption took a weak algorithm and made it weaker. We've seen many other cryptographic mistakes: implementations that repeat "unique" random values, digital signature algorithms that don't properly verify parameters, hash functions altered to defeat the very properties they're being used for. We've seen cryptographic protocols used in ways that were not intended by the protocols' designers, and protocols "optimized" in seemingly trivial ways that completely break their security. Attack Prevention vs. Attack Detection Most cryptographic systems rely on prevention as their sole means of defense: the cryptography keeps people from cheating, lying, abusing, or whatever. Defense should never be that narrow. A strong system also tries to detect abuse and to contain the effects of any attack. One of our fundamental design principles is that sooner or later, every system will be successfully attacked, probably in a completely unexpected way and with unexpected consequences. It is important to be able to detect such an attack, and then to contain the attack to ensure it does minimal damage. More importantly, once the attack is detected, the system needs to recover: generate and promulgate a new key pair, update the protocol and invalidate the old one, remove an untrusted node from the system, etc. Unfortunately, many systems don't collect enough data to provide an audit trail, or fail to protect the data against modification. Counterpane Systems has done considerable work in securing audit logs in electronic commerce systems, mostly in response to system designs that could fail completely in the event of a successful attack. These systems have to do more than detect an attack: they must also be able to produce evidence that can convince a judge and jury of guilt. Building Secure Cryptographic Systems Security designers occupy what Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz calls "the position of the interior." A good security product must defend against every possible attack, even attacks that haven't been invented yet. Attackers, on the other hand, only need to find one security flaw in order to defeat the system. And they can cheat. They can collude, conspire, and wait for technology to give them additional tools. They can attack the system in ways the system designer never thought of. Building a secure cryptographic system is easy to do badly, and very difficult to do well. Unfortunately, most people can't tell the difference. In other areas of computer science, functionality serves to differentiate the good from the bad: a good compression algorithm will work better than a bad one; a bad compression program will look worse in feature-comparison charts. Cryptography is different. Just because an encryption program works doesn't mean it is secure. What happens with most products is that someone reads Applied Cryptography, chooses an algorithm and protocol, tests it to make sure it works, and thinks he's done. He's not. Functionality does not equal quality, and no amount of beta testing will ever reveal a security flaw. Too many products are merely "buzzword compliant"; they use secure cryptography, but they are not secure. Home page - <a href="http://www.counterpane.com/cpaneinfo.html">Counterpane - Applied Cryptography - E-Mail Security - Crypto Links Bruce Schneier Bio - <a href="http://www.counterpane.com/blowfish.html">Blowfish - Publications - Contact Counterpane Bruce Schneier Copyright 1998 Counterpane Systems.

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Lessig on antitrust and government regulation
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lessig is the special master appointed by the judge in the Microsoft consent decree case. He once wrote: >Whether a regulation is >rational turns on the facts, and what counts as "the facts" turns on the >theory that animates inquiry into the facts. Wow. How do we know what theory is the right one, and when we should change it? -Declan

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a good example of bad crypto hype
by David Honig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

at http://www.meganet.com/explain.htm you can test your critical thinking skills... ------------------------------------------------------------ David Honig Orbit Technology honig(a)otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu "How do you know you are not being deceived?" ---A Compendium of Analytic TradeCraft Notes, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

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Re: The Digital Society Group
by Information Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: jalonz(a)openworld.com > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 18:07:24 -0500 > Subject: The Digital Society Group > > Hi all, Hi, stranger. > Openworld, Inc. is a company which sets up free enterprise zones around the > world. The "free zones" are akin to Hong Kong and Singapore and are > self-governing, independent entities as recognized by the parent country. [snip] > A division of Openworld, Inc., The Digital Society Group, has been formed > to apply technology to the infrastructure of the free zones and essentially > mirror them in cyberspace <argh, the cyber word again>. > > Without getting into too much detail, The Digital Society Group is > constructing a pure-technology infrastructure to provide for the operation, > governance and existence of a complete digital society within a free > enterprise zone. [snip] > Locations are planned for Africa, Southeast Asia, Russia, etc. > > We are already coding... > --------------------------------------------------------------- > Jalon Q. Zimmerman, Director > The Digital Society Group > A division of Openworld, Inc. Firing up the DejaNews traffic analysis tool... Jalon Q. Zimmerman: sneaker(a)powergrid.electriciti.com jalonz(a)compuvar.com jalon(a)ix.netcom.com jalonz(a)datacore.compuvar.com jalonz(a)morava.com jalon(a)hermesnet.net # Subject: I need a challenge!! # From: "Jalon Q. Zimmerman" <sneaker(a)powergrid.electriciti.com> # Date: 1995/06/19 # Newsgroups: misc.jobs.resumes # # I'm bored with the usual run-of-the-mill jobs and am looking for a # challenge. I want to solve problems, find solutions, and create # things with computers. # # My background is in programming/computer security and I have a # strong creative talent. # # My dream is to work in the R&D environment where I can be given # a problem/idea and turned loose. Good boy. Good boy. Stop slobbering on the carpet... % Subject: ENTERTAINMENT: The CyberGuy Project % From: jalonz(a)compuvar.com (Jalon Q. Zimmerman) % Date: 1995/10/23 % Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.announce % % Follow the crazed wanderings of a technomad. Announcing the CyberGuy % Project. The first fully functioning guy, with a real job, and a real % life, living with a laptop, a duffel bag full of stuff and the wide, % wide world as his home... % % <URL:http://zgroup.compuvar.com/cyberguy/> [defunct] Word: "Technomad". Like it. # I am moving. 1995/09/27 Moving from San Diego to... # Subject: Columbus, Ohio - webheads netnerds arthackers wanted! # From: jalon(a)ix.netcom.com (Jalon Q. Zimmerman) # Date: 1996/04/08 # Newsgroups: oh.general,alt.cyberpunk,alt.rave,alt.2600 # # I'm looking for webheads, netnerds and arthackers in the Columbus area # to form an unstructured group and get a hangout going somewhere in a # Columbus coffee-house or something like that. # # The idea is to throw a bunch of people and some resources together and # see what happens. # # I have just moved to Columbus from San Diego where this type of thing # is a necessity for modern cyberpeople. Since I can't find anything # here, I thought I'd get it going myself. # # If you are interested, mail me and we'll make it happen. Columbus "4DeadIn" Ohio. % Subject: Looking for investor wishing to start an internet provision company in Columbus % From: "Jalon Q. Zimmerman" <jalon(a)ix.netcom.com> % Date: 1996/01/16 % Newsgroups: cmh.general % % I am looking for an investor wishing to start an Internet presence or % service provision company in the Columbus, Ohio area. I have just % relocated from San Diego, Ca. and am interested in contributing the % "technical" element to a start-up venture. % % Please contact Jalon Zimmerman at: 614-873-4250 % % Serious inquiries only. Mooer. # From: "Jalon Q. Zimmerman" <jalonz(a)morava.com> # Date: 1996/10/20 # Newsgroups: alt.mud.moo # # Hello, # # We are looking to sponsor a moo or some variation thereof as well as a # rather serious Mxx-related website for the sheer coolness of it. Headhunter: Date Scr Subject Newsgroup Author 1. 96/07/19 020 Corporate salespeople wanted sdnet.jobs Jalon Q. Zimmerman 2. 96/07/19 020 Interns wanted - marketing/P sdnet.jobs Jalon Q. Zimmerman 3. 96/07/19 020 Corporate sales - Internet r sdnet.wanted Jalon Q. Zimmerman 4. 96/07/19 020 Corporate salespeople wanted sdnet.jobs.offered Jalon Q. Zimmerman 5. 96/07/19 020 Re: Corporate salespeople wa sdnet.jobs Jalon Q. Zimmerman 6. 96/07/19 020 Re: Corporate salespeople wa sdnet.jobs Jalon Q. Zimmerman 7. 96/07/19 020 Interns wanted - marketing/P sdnet.jobs.offered Jalon Q. Zimmerman ...moved to DC/Maryland... # Subject: Exciting Internet jobs in growing DC & MD business: Programming, # Graphics Design, Web Page Design, Customer Service, and More! # Full-Time and Contractual positions saught. # From: Cool Internet Jobs <jalon(a)hermesnet.net> # Date: 1997/03/13 # Newsgroups: dc.jobs,md.jobs,balt.jobs,misc.jobs.offered,us.jobs.offered, # biz.jobs.offered,prg.jobs,comp.jobs.contract,misc.jobs.contract # # On May 1, 1997, Hermes Internet Service, Inc. will be opening a second # office in Landover, Md., which is located at the intersection of US 50 # and the DC Beltway and walking distance to the New Carrollton Metro # (Orange Line). # # We will continue to use our current location as well, near 7th Street # and Maine Ave., SW, DC, near the waterfront. # # We have openings for four additional people, the first immediately, the # other three on May 1: Resume (snipped): # Subject: html/CGI/db online inet apps - VB/MS Access - Linux/Postgres95 # From: "Jalon Q. Zimmerman" <sneaker(a)powergrid.electriciti.com> # Date: 1995/06/25 # Newsgroups: misc.jobs.resumes # # DIGICOM # # Developing an HTML interface to telephone conferencing hardware for Logicon, a # defense contractor. Group telephone conferencing can be managed from any HTML # browser via a LAN or the internet. The system incorporates user accounting, # document sharing within a conference, graphical icons and elements including # photographs of the group participants, secure html interfacing, support for voice # encrypted lines. Each server handles 32 simultaneous queries and 32 phone lines. # The application is written in Visual Basic using Winsock 1.0 sockets, MS Access # database tables, HTML 3.0, and MS Visual C++ DLLs. # # # CREDIFAX INFORMATION SERVICES # # Designed and implemented an automated credit information retrieval and analysis # solution. The system automated the office workflow, paper trail, billing, and # communications. The final solution utilized an in-house client-server scheme for # communications, a Paradox for Windows database platform, and an automated credit # retrieval and analysis application in C++. Communications servers were run on OS/2, # database platforms on Windows, and high-speed credit analysis under DOS. This was # the second generation of the system developed at Credit Depot earlier. # # SAN DIEGO COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT # # Designed a statistical analysis solution to track the usage of learning resources on # campus. Authored several encryption and security applications. # # SAN DIEGO DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. # # Computer Security - Provide computer security assistance in criminal # investigations. Tasks include data decryption, recovering erased data, # password retrieval, data line monitoring, and protected system entry. Isn't that last item special? ---guy And a possible reason for heading the other way.

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Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality
by Jim Gillogly 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: > scientists who agree to government secrecy to develop > their inventions are agreeing to a lot more than > mere secrecy. they are committing to a paradigm that > is at odds with science itself, which only advances through > the open literature. Why limit your annoyance to government scientists? Scientists in private industry are in the same position, developing (e.g.) algorithms and analytical methods protected by trade secrets. Society recognizes this tendency and tries to advance science anyway by offering patent protection. You don't make money by giving away your intellectual capital. Seems to me that schools and independently wealthy scientists/foundations are the only ones who don't merit your censure on this count. -- Jim Gillogly Trewesday, 17 Afteryule S.R. 1998, 13:04 12.19.4.14.17, 1 Caban 15 Kankin, Ninth Lord of Night

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Creative Insecurity The complicated truth behind the rise of Microsoft By Virginia I. Postrel Back in 1983, Forbes ran an article called "If they're so smart, why aren't they rich?" It was about how inventors rarely reap big financial rewards from their creations, and it started like this: "Here are some names you are not likely ever to see in The Forbes Four Hundred [list of the richest Americans]: Franklin Lim. Gary Kildall. Bill Gates...." Oops. The world's richest man wasn't always so. During the last round of high-tech excitement--the personal-computer boom of the early 1980s (which was followed by a traumatic shakeout)--Gates looked like a smart programming geek whose business savvy was dwarfed by the marketing whizzes at Apple: "Their Apple Corp.," wrote the anonymous Forbes author, "has been among the most successful at packaging a product that sells and then selling it at an attractive price." Therein lies a tale. As the Justice Department and a half-dozen state attorneys general push forward antitrust actions against Microsoft, it's worth considering how the company got where it is and what that suggests about the strengths and limitations of markets. There are two main fables told about Microsoft: It has become the dominant, standard-setting software company, and made Gates a multibillionaire, because a) it makes wonderful products and expresses all that is good about a capitalist system or b) it cheats. Both fables turn up especially strongly in statements by people who lack deep knowledge of the industry, and each serves the interests of an industry faction. The truth, however, is more complicated. Considered without regard to price, ubiquity, or compatibility with inexpensive hardware, many Microsoft products are mediocre at best. I am happily writing this article using an obsolete Macintosh operating system and WordPerfect, both of which I find superior to even the latest versions of Windows and Word. Great products did not make Microsoft number one. Good-enough products did. That uncomfortable truth offends moralists on both sides of the Microsoft debate. The company's fans (and its spin doctors) want to tell a simple tale about virtue triumphant--with virtue defined, Atlas Shrugged-style, not only as astute business decision making and fierce competition but also as engineering excellence. Its critics use the same definition. If the products are less than great, they suggest, the only way to explain the company's success is through some sort of sleaze. Or, alternatively, through the innate flaws of the market. So what really happened? How did Microsoft end up ruling PC operating systems and, through them, software in general? At the risk of simplifying a complex story (if only by reducing it to two players), the bottom line is this: Apple acted--and continues to act--like a smug, self-righteous monopolist. Microsoft acted--and continues to act--like a scrambling, sometimes vicious competitor. That pattern shows up most clearly in pricing strategies. Microsoft's approach, throughout its history, has been to charge low prices and sell an enormous amount of software. True to form, the company is currently in trouble with the Justice Department for charging too little--nothing--for its Internet Explorer, by including it in Windows. (The technical legal dispute is over whether Explorer is a "feature" of Windows, as Microsoft maintains, or a separate product that is an illegal "tie-in" and thus violates a consent decree Microsoft signed in 1995.) The low-price strategy makes sense on two levels: First, it approximates marginal-cost pricing, since software, once written, costs very little for each additional copy. Anything above that incremental cost, however small, is profit. Second, and more significantly in this case, lower prices mean more customers. And the more people who use a particular kind of software, the more desirable it is for others to use it too. Although translators help, switching formats is messy and inconvenient. This "network externality" is particularly important for operating systems and Internet browser formats, since software developers and Web site designers have to pick a standard for which to optimize their products. As Gates toldWall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton in an interview for Carlton's new book Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders, "Momentum creates momentum. If you have volume, then people write apps. If people write apps, you have momentum." But if you think you already have a monopoly, you don't worry about momentum. While Apple executives theoretically knew they had competition, they acted as though they didn't. Back in 1983 Apple may have been "selling [its computers] at an attractive price." But the coming of the IBM clones made Apple's prices look downright hideous. In the face of ever-stronger competition, the company insisted on pricing the Macintosh to maintain at least 50 percent profit margins; its "50-50-50 rule" told managers to keep margins up to maintain the stock price. Customers who paid their own personal money for Macs might be able to justify the high price simply because the computers were fun and easy to use. But business managers who paid Apple prices for any but the most specialized applications, notably graphics-intensive work, were either fiscally irresponsible or just plain dumb. Apple's pricing strategy handed the vast business market to computers running Microsoft operating systems, first DOS, then Windows. Microsoft, of course, doesn't sell computers. It's in the software business. You can get its operating system (and run its applications) on all sorts of different machines, whose manufacturers compete intensely. That competition drives down consumer costs, even as machine features get better all the time. Apple didn't want that sort of competition. It not only kept its own prices high but refused to license its software to any other computer maker. That meant even fewer people used its operating system, which further dampened its momentum. Apple, in fact, acted like the ultimate "tie-in" monopolist. You not only couldn't buy parts of its software separately; you couldn't buy them at all without forking over thousands for an Apple-made machine. And Apple has never been particularly good at manufacturing. After the company tepidly began licensing a couple of years ago, Mac clone makers did what Apple had feared: They cut into its revenue. But they also expanded the market, and they made the fastest computers ever to carry the Mac operating system. They gave Apple money for its software, even as they bore the costs of manufacturing and distributing their machines. And they gave consumers more choice, more alternatives to Windows. If I were an antitrust regulator looking for conspiracies, I'd be wondering just how coincidental it was that Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple just about the time Steve Jobs announced that the company was ending the clone program. Such explanations aren't necessary, however. Apple screwed Mac lovers all by itself. Far from the marketing whizzes of 1983 conventional wisdom, its executives were enamored with the cult of the machine, too hung up on the beauty of their product to understand that consumers actually cared about many other things: price, plenty of software, and compatibility with other systems. Quality is not one-dimensional. Apple's arrogance left computer users with less choice than they might have had--or, perhaps, with more. After all, if Apple had slashed prices early on and taken the business market seriously from the start, it could well have ended up in a Microsoft-like position, but without having to share its market with clones. Microsoft would then have been mostly an applications company, selling Excel and Word to Mac users, and we'd be hearing about the evil, anticompetitive actions of Steve Jobs. That seems unlikely, however, and the reason is revealing. Apple's all-in-one-box strategy was inherently brittle. It offered too many margins of error and too few margins of adjustment. The same company wrote the software and made the machines. So if the computers caught on fire, as they sometimes did, or the manufacturing plants couldn't keep up with Christmas demand, there was no alternative outlet for the Mac operating system. Software sales dropped too. No competitive sales force could go after business users while Jobs and company were chasing public schools. All new ideas had to come from within the same closed system. (For a discussion of related issues, see my Forbes ASAP article "Resilience vs. Anticipation". While Apple is based in Silicon Valley, its self-sufficiency strategy more closely resembles those of the minicomputer companies based around Boston.) Microsoft's partner-dependent system proved far more resilient as the industry changed. The company didn't have to do everything itself, and it could reap the benefits of innovations by others, whether in manufacturing, assembly, distribution, or applications software. Instead of the best minds of a single company, it enlisted the best minds of hundreds. And while Microsoft depended on its partners to build the market, in time they came to depend on Microsoft. The irony is that by making alliances and competing furiously--by not acting like a monopolist--Microsoft wound up reaping the benefits of a near-monopoly on its operating system. It is emphatically not true that "when you buy a computer, you already are without any choice as to the operating system," as Microsoft critic Audrie Krause said on Crossfire. Both REASON's production department and I personally will be buying new Macs in the next few months. Translation software makes it relatively easy to go from one operating system to another. Nowadays, it's possible to function reasonably well with an operating system that controls only 5 percent of the new-computer market. The great fear of Microsoft's critics is that the company will wind up controlling everything, foisting mediocre-to-poor products on an unwilling public at ever-higher prices. It's impossible to disprove that hypothetical scenario. But history, and Microsoft's own intense paranoia, cast doubt on it. Just when its quasi-monopoly looks secure, something new--Netscape's Web browsers, Sun Microsystems' Java programming language--pops up and makes Microsoft scramble to maintain its position. So far its resilience has served it well, but the critics' scary scenario relies on more than successful scrambling. It requires absolute security, no future challengers. And that looks unlikely. Consider the smoking gun memo cited by Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein at the press conference announcing the Justice Department suit. An internal Microsoft document, it told marketing managers to "Worry about the browser share as much as Bill Gates does, because we will lose the Internet platform battle if we do not have a significant user-installed base. The industry would simply ignore our standards. At your level, that is at the manager level, if you let customers deploy Netscape Navigator, you lose the leadership on the desktop." I will leave it to the attorneys to divine what it means not to "let customers deploy Netscape Navigator," but one thing is clear: This is not a company that thinks like a monopoly. It is always running scared. There's always the possibility that something new could come along and destroy its franchise. Microsoft didn't get where it is by creating perfect products. It benefited as much from its competitors' mistakes as from its own considerable acumen. And it isn't shy about leaning on suppliers and intermediate customers, such as computer makers, to get its way. In the eyes of its critics, its success is therefore proof that something is amiss in the marketplace. But the market doesn't promise perfection, only a trial-and-error process of discovery and improvement. The fallible human beings who create products make mistakes. They let their egos and preconceptions blind them to what people really want. Or they just don't know enough, or adjust fast enough, to produce the right goods at the right time. That some of Microsoft's strongest current competitors--Sun and Oracle--are gripped by an anti-PC ideology, when customers love the independence and flexibility of personal computers, does not bode well for them. What is striking about the story of Microsoft is how adaptable the company has been. Gates's original vision of "a computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software" didn't specify what sort of software or who would make the computers. It was an open-ended, flexible idea that built a resilient company. What Microsoft has delivered is pretty much what most people want: a way to use computers easily, for many different purposes. Its software isn't always elegant, but that's the criterion of programming elites, not everyday users. And though Microsoft is clearly the big kid on the block, it has enabled, and encouraged, lots of other software developers. Microsoft accounts for a mere 4 percent of industry revenue. As Eamonn Sullivan of PC Week notes, "A lot of companies are making a lot of money on the ubiquity of Windows, providing users with a lot of choice where they want it--on their desktops. That isn't the expected result of a monopoly." From 1969 to 1982, the Justice Department carried on a similar trust-busting crusade against IBM, which had behaved in many ways just like Microsoft. (An earlier antitrust action against IBM had been settled by a consent decree in 1956.) Millions of dollars were transferred from the taxpayers and stockholders to lawyers and expert witnesses. Enormous amounts of brain power were dissipated. Having to monitor every action for possible legal ramifications further constipated IBM's already-centralized culture. The suit was a complete waste. Whatever quasi-monopoly IBM had was broken not by government enforcers but by obscure innovators, working on computer visions neither IBM nor the Justice Department's legions of lawyers had imagined. Big Blue is still big, though it's smaller than it once was. But nobody thinks it could control the world. The world, it seems, is beyond that sort of control.

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Re: cypherpunks and guns
by Brian B. Riley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On 1/7/98 3:16 AM, Kent Crispin (kent(a)songbird.com) passed this wisdom: >On Wed, Jan 07, 1998 at 01:25:45AM -0600, snow wrote: >>I am fairly certain that as an irregular army soldier I could >>inflict a substantial amount of damage upon an occupying military. >>With maybe $20k in equipment and several hundred hours of training, >>you could make >> >> If you were smart, you could do it for a lot less. > >That presumes the enemy is dumb. An amusing fantasy. ... not so .... the US Military has very few really experienced combat soldiers left and most of those are in places where their experience isn't available to the grunt on the line. Most RVN vets are retired ... look just recently at what happened to the Russians troops sent to Chechnya ... all these brand spanking new, highly trained proud young 19 and 20 year old troops went romping off to fight 'a bunch of old men' in the Chechyn Republic ... there was one little problem ... a big hunk of those old men had spent two to seven years in that same Russian Army fighting the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan ... and that 'bunch of old men' kicked their young asses! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNLRAvD7r4fUXwraZAQHv5wf/S8j1et/Rf0LQu8eH4koWLjmSduaxggsY VMGcY7z2OfLdSrtVAGIcLpfPPdrOk0utmH317xwKIL9SIQIqGYvm7pCdYSv0A4Vx KD49W3pQjhvrhTHZldd8EFrd7Z2thfR1EJL9Vowsnyr4QHt5FvXrBs6k5531iNtN TURAhCzVgpKuMruwwaKMVc+P72mYJl7OM2I2j6ZdEkZOPNxoCVS/0xO8UTlWpLUO 9Suxvi+rJSa4k/HKRsGUrRO/LaFK7abTs/AwLioJlyd5ukXjdPuyY2wza8h1GvC2 fowHb8WGYdcwc45FBhpz3bEiS/PU5t2xHQ9p+/mEkLDknfBSNk01zw== =hiEs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Brian B. Riley --> http://members.macconnect.com/~brianbr For PGP Keys <mailto:brianbr@together.net?subject=Get%20PGP%20Key> "In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature." -- Edmund Burke

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CRACKING DOWN ON MICROSOFT The Justice Department has a long history of mistaking innovators for monopolists BY LAWRENCE J. SISKIND THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE has painted its assault on Microsoft Corp. as a campaign against tying. Microsoft, the government says, should not be allowed to force manufacturers who load Windows95 onto their computers to include the Internet Explorer Web browser. Close inspection, however, reveals that the DOJ is not guarding against tying -- it is guarding against change. And while the Justice Department has won the first round against the software giant, the question of whether that change is good or ill should be left to the market to decide, not the government. When the DOJ charged Microsoft with violating their 1995 consent decree, it cited Sec. IV(E)(I), which bars Microsoft from conditioning the licensing of any one product on the licensing of another. Microsoft's Windows95 operating system includes the Internet Explorer -- IE -- Web browser. Microsoft openly forbids PC manufacturers licensed to load Windows95 from removing the browser. To Joel Klein, head of the DOJ's Antitrust Division, this is unlawful tying, plain and simple. "We think the evidence will show unmistakably that these are two separate products," he said. "Everybody knows you have an operating system and you have a browser." Everybody also knows that whenever a lawyer begins a statement with the phrase "everybody knows," the consequent proposition will be questionable at best. Mr. Klein's statement was not flat-out wrong. But it was flat-out nearsighted. The only thing "everybody knows" about operating systems is that they are constantly changing. Mr. Klein's statement was not flat-out wrong. But it was flat-out nearsighted. The only thing 'everybody knows' about operating systems is that they are constantly changing. An operating system program controls the operation of the computer, determining which programs run and when. It also coordinates the interaction between the computer's memory and its attached devices. When the world's first PC, the Altair 8800, appeared in 1975, its operating system didn't have much to operate. The product was a do-it-yourself kit, without display screen or printer. Operating systems became more complex as personal computers became more versatile. FAR-FLUNG PERIPHERALS Contemporary operating systems are as far removed from the early operating systems as Cape Kennedy is from Kitty Hawk. They have evolved to manage a growing array of peripherals: keyboard, monitor, disk drives, printer, fax, modem and more. They have also embraced new features and capabilities: data compression, disk defragmentation, multimedia extensions and data transmission technology. All of these features, by the way, once existed as separate programs. Yet no one views their inclusion in modern operating systems as any kind of tying. Which brings us to the Windows95 operating system. When Microsoft began to develop Windows95, then code-named "Chicago," it decided to build Internet technology into it. The early elements of this technology included a Web browser and were code-named "O'Hare." The very first commercially available versions of Windows95 included Internet Explorer as a component. Since then, IE has been repeatedly upgraded, with each successive version more tightly intertwined with the rest of the operating system. The most recent version, IE 4.0, is ubiquitous, and allows the user to explore World Wide Web sites from anywhere on the computer. One can connect to the Web without even opening the browser, and one can view Web sites (called "channels") without connecting to the Internet. What is true about Windows95 also holds true for rival products. Brit Hume recently observed in the Weekly Standard: "The distinction between browsers and operating systems has blurred to the point where it's not clear where one ends and the other begins." Every major contemporary operating system now contains Internet technology. Designing an operating system to access the Internet represents a quantitative, rather than a qualitative, change. The intermeshing of operating systems with Internet capabilities is eminently logical. These systems have always been designed to access information. In the early days, that meant accessing hard drives and floppy-disk drives. With the advent of the CD-ROM, they were designed to access data from that source. As businesses brought PCs into the office, computers became linked together into networks; operating systems were designed to access information from local area networks. The Internet, for all its unimaginably vast dimensions, is just another repository of information to a computer. Designing an operating system to access the Internet represents a quantitative, rather than a qualitative, change. MICROSOFT SLACKING Ironically, this is not a change sponsored or spearheaded by Microsoft. If anything, Bill Gates has been a laggard in this area. His rivals are far ahead and he is playing catch-up. The great proponents of Internet-driven computers have emerged from Silicon Valley, not from Redmond, Wash. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp., has long championed the idea of the "network computer." Consider computers as underwater divers. Equipping each diver with his own tanks is wasteful and inefficient. It imposes severe limits on how long and how far the diver can explore. Instead, let every diver be connected to a surface mothership. The connection frees the diver from the limitations and burdens of carrying his own tanks. Similarly, loading millions of PCs with their own copies of software programs is a waste of resources. Instead, let every computer be networked and draw its software needs from the vast store of the Internet. The result, Ellison says, would be high-quality personal computers retailing at about $500. In line with this thinking, Sun Microsystems has developed Java, a language that allows programmers to create Internet-based applications capable of running on any computer, regardless of operating system. Sun's CEO, Scott McNealy, notes that 400,000 programmers (including 2,500 at IBM) are currently writing programs in Java language. The libertarian journalist and futurist George Gilder believes Java will revolutionize personal computing and render proprietary systems like Windows obsolete. If the future of personal computing is indeed linked to the Internet, then weaving Internet technology into Windows95 (and even more intimately and pervasively into Windows98) is not a grab for power. It is a clutch for survival. Which brings us back to the DOJ's decision to prosecute Microsoft for tying. Some have suspected a political bias, noting that in 1992 and 1996 Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were among Clinton's best friends in the business community. Microsoft, on the other hand, has always remained aloof from politics. 'INSTITUTIONAL MYOPIA' But I believe the attack on Microsoft stems from institutional myopia rather than political bias. The DOJ's Antitrust Division may understand the law and may be sincerely dedicated to enforcing it fairly. But it has no way of knowing where the economy is headed or how fast it is heading in that direction. Instead, the division views the economy as static. An operating system will always be an operating system. A browser will always be a browser. Just like timber, coal or oil: Products do not change. Because of this institutional myopia, the DOJ has a history of marching down wrong roads. In 1969, it prosecuted IBM. Fifteen years passed before the department finally understood what every high school techno-geek already knew: The computer industry was dynamic, and Big Blue was not dominant. If the Internet is the future of personal computing, then weaving Internet technology into Windows is not a grab for power. It is a clutch for survival. The hapless campaign against IBM probably did no harm. Other Antitrust Division missteps have. In the 1960s and '70s, long after most Americans had abandoned the neighborhood Mom-and-Pop store for the national chain, the DOJ was prosecuting Topco Associates, a cooperative association of small grocery chains. The DOJ wanted to protect the association's small regional members. It failed to notice the dynamic changes already apparent to the average shopper. The days of the Mom-and-Pop grocer were over. And while the DOJ was successfully squashing Topco, its much more powerful rivals -- The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. Inc. (A&P), Safeway Inc., the Kroger Co. -- were assuming dominance over the grocery business. The same myopia underlies the decision to prosecute Microsoft. Enslaved by its institutional myopia, the DOJ simply cannot understand that operating systems change. Thus, it sees tying when in fact there is transmutation. Internet-oriented operating systems may be the wave of the future. Or they may be a detour to nowhere. Not everyone likes or needs the endless waits, the superfluous graphics and the flood of irrelevant and unwanted information that always seem to accompany excursions onto the Internet. Nothing is certain in high tech; business empires rise and fall with stunning rapidity. Confronting this sometimes creative, sometimes destructive turmoil, a wise government would recognize its limitations and restrict its role. Whether Windows95 should include Internet Explorer is a question best left to the millions of jurors who make up the marketplace. AUTHOR LAWRENCE J. SISKIND is a San Francisco attorney who specializes in intellectual property law. Mr. Siskind owns stock in Microsoft Corp. He hopes that his pro-Microsoft opinions, once published, will influence the price of his stock favorably. The expectation of financial gain has colored, if not dictated, the opinions expressed in his article.

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Just Released! 16 Million!
by busadmn＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

IT WAS JUST RELEASED!! INTRODUCING...MILLIONS VOL. 1 We took a total of over 92 million email addresses from many of the touted CD's that are out there (bought them all - some were $300+)! We added the millions we had in storage to those. When we combined them all, we had in excess of 100+ million addresses in one huge file. We then ran a super "sort/de-dupe" program against this huge list. It cut the file down to less than 25 million!!! Can you believe that? It seems that most people that are selling CD's are duping the public by putting numerous files of addresses in the CD over and over. This created many duplicate addresses. They also had many program "generated" email addresses like Compuserve, MCI, ANON's, etc. This causes a tremendous amount of undeliverables, and for those that use Stealth programs, clogs up servers quickly with trash, etc. We then ran a program that contained 150+ keywords to remove addresses with vulgarity, profanity, sex-related names, postmaster, webmaster, flamer, abuse, spam, etc., etc. Also eliminated all .edu, .mil, .org, .gov, etc. After that list was run against the remaining list, it reduced it down to near 16 million addresses! So, you see, our list will save people hundreds of dollars buying all others that are out there on CD and otherwise. Using ours will be like using the 100+ million that we started with, but a lot less money and alot less time!! We also purchased Cyber-Promos ($995.00) CD. We received it just prior to finishing production work on the new CD. We had our people take a random sample of 300,000 addresses from the touted 2.9 that they advertised. We used a program that allows us to take a random sample of addresses from any list. We were able to have the program take every 9th address, thus giving us a 300,000 list of Cyber's email addresses from top to bottom. We did not clean these, but we did create 3 seperate files named cyber1.txt, cyber2.txt, & cyber3.txt of 100,000 addresses each. This will give all people that use the list a opportunity to send mail to the list before deciding if their CD is all it's hyped to be. We also included a 2+ million "Remove/Flamer" file broke into seperate files for ease of extracting and adding to your own database of removes. "You can buy from the REST or you can buy from the BEST. Your choice. _____________________________ What others are saying: "I received the CD on Friday evening. Like a kid with a new toy, I immediately started bulking out using the new email addresses. Over the course of the weekend, I emailed out over 500,000 emails and I received less than TWENTY undeliverables!! I am totally satisfied with my purchase!! Thanks Premier!!" Dave Buckley Houston, TX "This list is worth it's weight in gold!! I sent out 100,000 emails for my product and received over 55 orders! Ann Colby New Orleans, LA **************************************** HERE'S THE BOTTOM LINE Here is what you get when you order today! >> 16 Million Email Addresses... 1 per line in simple text format on a CD. Files are in lots of 100,000 (no codes needed to open files). All files are separated by domain name for your convenience. PLUS you receive a tremendous REMOVE list! AND the a sampling of CyberPromo's HOT list. >>> NOW ONLY $149.00! This price is effective for the next seven days, thereafter the price will be $199.00 so ORDER NOW! All lists are completely free of any Duplicates. We also on a continual basis, add New Names and Remove Undeliverables and Remove Requests. The result is the Cleanest Email Addresses Available Anywhere to use over and over again, for a FRACTION of the cost that other companies charge. Typical rates for acquiring email lists are from 1 cent to as high as 3 cents per email address - that's "INFORMATION HIGHWAY" ROBBERY!. Don't even hesitate on this one or you will miss out on the most effective way to market anywhere..PERIOD! If you have any further questions or to place an order by phone, please do not hesitate to call us at: 908-245-1143 To order our email package, simply print out the EZ ORDER FORM below and fax or mail it to our office today. We accept Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Checks by Fax and Mail. _________________ EZ Order Form _____Yes! I would like to order MILLIONS Vol. 1 email addresses for only $149.00. *Please select one of the following for shipping.. ____I would like to receive my package OVERNIGHT. I'm including $15 for shipping. (outside US add an additional $25 for shipping) ____I would like to receive my package 2 DAY delivery. I'm including $10 for shipping. (outside US add an additional $25 for shipping) DATE_____________________________________________________ NAME____________________________________________________ COMPANY NAME___________________________________________ ADDRESS_________________________________________________ CITY, STATE, ZIP___________________________________________ PHONE NUMBERS__________________________________________ FAX NUMBERS_____________________________________________ EMAIL ADDRESS___________________________________________ TYPE OF CREDIT CARD: ______VISA _____MASTERCARD CREDIT CARD# __________________________________________ EXPIRATION DATE________________________________________ NAME ON CARD___________________________________________ AMOUNT $____________________ (Required) SIGNATURE:x________________________ DATE:x__________________ You may fax your order to us at: 1-908-245-3119 CHECK BY FAX SERVICES! If you would like to fax a check, paste your check below and fax it to our office along with all forms to: 1-908-245-3119 ****************************************************** ***24 HOUR FAX SERVICES*** PLEASE PASTE YOUR CHECK HERE AND FAX IT TO US AT 1-908-245-3119 ******************************************************* If You fax a check, there is no need for you to send the original check. We will draft up a new check, with the exact information from your original check. All checks will be held for bank clearance. If you feel more comfortable sending payment through the mail, please send all forms and Check or Money Order to: Rapture Marketing Inc. P.O. Box 616 Kenilworth, NJ 07033

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Announcing Crypto Kong, Release Candidate Two.
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- Announcing Crypto Kong, Release Candidate Two. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/Kong please test. Crypto Kong, like PGP, provides digital signatures and communications encryption. The important difference between it and other products that provide digital signatures and encryption is that it is not certificate based. Instead it is signature based. This eliminates the steep initial learning and management curves of existing products. The user does not need use and manage specialized certificates except for specialized purposes Perhaps more importantly, it also eliminates the threat we saw in England, the threat of the government giving itself a monopoly in certificate distribution, potentially creating the Number-Of-The-Beast system, where you need a government certificate to log on to dirty picture sites, to buy, to sell, to put up web pages. The big complexity and user hostility in existing products is creating and managing certificates. For those who need contracts and certificates, (and with Kong one almost never needs certificates) Kong handles them in an easy and natural way. See the discussion in the web site in the chapters: Linking digital IDs with paper documents or physical presence and Certificates and contracts This aspect of Kong seems to have been insufficiently tested in the beta tests. The key feature of the proposed product is that any digitally signed document can be stored in the database, and itself performs the functions of a certificate, just as a normal handwritten signature does. The user usually does not need to check a document against a certificate to see if it was signed by the "real" John Doe. Instead he normally checks one document against other documents stored in the database that have the same signature. And similarly when he encrypts a document, he does not need to use a certificate to encrypt a message to the one *real* John Doe, he merely encrypts a message to the *same* John Doe who signed the letter he is replying to. At present people have to deal with certificate management problems regardless of whether they really need certificates. For example the most common usage of PGP is to check that two signatures that purport to be by the same person are in fact by the same person. Unfortunately you cannot check one signature against another directly using PGP or any of the other existing products. Instead you have to check both signatures against a public key certificate, even if the authentication information in that certificate is irrelevant to your purpose, which it usually is, which means that you have to download the certificate from somewhere, and the person signing it had to upload it somewhere. As PGP always checks a document against the certificate, rather than against any other document the user happens to feel is relevant to the question, the person signing the document needs to get his certificate properly signed by some widely trusted third party, which is too much trouble or too complicated for many people. The signatures and contracts in Crypto Kong are optionally tolerant of email munging The web pages contain a new web page "Business Vision" which discusses the widespread failure to adopt cryptography, the widespread reluctance to pay for cryptography, and the illiquidity of various products for transferring money on the net, and proposes a path to a solution. Clearly, PGP has had rather poor penetration for business uses, and by and large, people only need to encrypt or sign stuff when there is money at stake. I believe that this product will be more acceptable for the typical businessman than PGP is, because it is easier to use, and existing business practices translate more readily to the identity model it supports than does the PGP identity model. The web page also contains full source code. Crypto Kong is written in large part as ActiveX component, and the use interface and database management code is written in visual basic. The use of ActiveX should make it easy to quickly code products and web page that perform tasks involving encryption. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG AXOOTHyx0TpTLdyQsBnt7WmaVIo1l4WDGabHKK0Y 4Bxm/YWIEOTOK6zRVH57lP7PENFT5OFN+IR39Fcx8

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HAYEKWEB: Hackney on Law & Econ History & Hayek
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 14:56:33 EST Reply-To: Hayek Related Research <HAYEK-L(a)MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: Hayek Related Research <HAYEK-L(a)MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Gregransom <Gregransom(a)AOL.COM> Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) Subject: HAYEKWEB: Hackney on Law & Econ History & Hayek To: HAYEK-L(a)MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU >> Hayek on the Web << -- Law & Economics "Law and Neoclassical Economics: Science, Politics, and the Reconfiguration of American Tort Law Theory" by James R. Hackney, Jr. on the Web at: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/lhrforums.html >From "Law and Neoclassical Economics: Science, Politics, and the Reconfiguration of American Tort Law Theory" by James R. Hackney, Jr.: " .. C. The Antistatist Imperative: F. A. Hayek and the Road to Law and Neoclassical Economics The technique of analysis coming out of early twentieth-century Vienna was not linked to any particular ideological position. In fact, Janik and Toulmin illustrate that the fundamental position could be characterized as "apolitical." However, F. A. Hayek independently provided a distinct ideological position shaped by the Viennese experience41 that had a profound impact on ideological debates in post-World War II America and, by extension, on economic analysis. Hayek's migration to England influenced the LSE debates that are crucial to understanding the strands of economic thought that framed Coase's work in particular, and law and neoclassical economics in general. In addition, Hayek directly shaped the law and neoclassical economics project at the University of Chicago.42 Hayek stated his ideological position in The Road to Serfdom.43 He asserted that Serfdom "is a political book" and that "all I shall have to say is derived from certain ultimate values."44 Written while Hayek held a professorship at the LSE, Serfdom was conceived as a direct response to a socialist ethos that permeated the European continent and endangered the liberal underpinnings of English politics. The goal of the book was to sound a "warning to the socialist intelligentsia of England"45 that their program would lead to the very totalitarianism so many had fought against. Despite its focus on the English intellectual scene, the book had an enormous impact in the United States.46 In fact, it produced a more extreme reaction, both positive and negative, in the United States than in England. No doubt part of the consternation on the American left was due to the boldness and scope of Serfdom.47 While the argument that "hot socialism" would poison a society might not have unsettled leftists, Hayek made similar claims regarding the welfare state.48 The problem articulated in Serfdom was that some of the core beliefs of hot socialism had become so embedded in the conceptual framework of intellectual thought that they threatened to undermine liberal society under the guise of the welfar state or egalitarian rhetoric. This would come, for example, in the form of knee-jerk calls for state/bureaucratic intervention in the economy when "judicious use of financial inducements might evoke spontaneous efforts."49 The polemical force of Serfdom stemmed from its evocation of the dangers of totalitarianism, particularly the Nazi Germany variety, manifest in social approaches to the ills that befall society. Hayek boldly and flatly asserted that "[i]t is necessary now to state the unpalatable truth that it is Germany whose fate we are in some danger of repeating."50 The core of the antistatist stance as articulated in Serfdom grew out of the belief in the uniqueness of individual activity and thought ("ethical individualism"). It was unacceptable, in fact impossible, for anyone other than the individual to make decisions for the individual without imposing an alien set of values. At that point, seemingly benign policy prescriptions dissolved into naked, unjustifiable coercion. Thus, "individuals should be allowed, within defined limits, to follow their own values and preferences rather than somebody else's."51 In the antigovernment sentiment and proincentive policies articulated in Serfdom, we see the ideological seeds that helped influence, but were not determinative of, the American law and neoclassical economics movement. The ways in which the antistatist ideal set forth in Serfdom would be reflected in social institutions are clear in Hayek's discussion of the legal system and are fundamental in linking his intellectual project to the law and neoclassical economics movement. Hayek's views on the legal system were shaped by his core belief that "competition" is the central means of "co-ordinating human effort" and the "conviction that, where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other."52 Thus, in the effort to protect the individual, it is free market competition, not government intervention, that is presumed to be for the good. So, what of the law "[I]n order that competition should work beneficially, a carefully thought-out legal framework is required. ." In particular, some legal structure may be needed in order to accurately reflect the price of goods and services, which is the vital information for individuals.53 In sum, the law serves to facilitate competition, which is the system most conducive to individual freedom. It does so by setting the boundaries of competition. The law should "recognize the principle of private property and freedom of contract." In this regard, it acts as a neutral arbiter facilitating individual preferences and defining the "right to property as applied to different things." The rights associated with property, notwithstanding antistatist ideals, were not absolute, but contingent upon the particular situation. Efficiency was the criterion: the "systematic study of the forms of legal institutions which will make the competitive system work efficiently." Regarding legal rules specifically, Serfdom articulated a system in which "[t]he only question . . . is whether in the particular instance the advantages gained are greater than the social costs which they impose."54 Hayek's emphasis on legal rules, particularly as they affected social costs,55 is the link connecting him to the law and neoclassical economics movement. Hayek gave a detailed analysis of social costs and the limits of government intervention as a tool for minimizing such costs. However, to the extent that legal rules limiting property rights represent an activist role for government, Hayek stated that, though the scope of this permissible intervention on individual autonomy was not defined, "these tasks provide, indeed, a wide and unquestioned field for state activity."56 I argue below that the possibility of "state activity" within neoclassical economics provides the ground for progressive political appropriation of neoclassical economics. This discussion of postwar antistatism, as represented by Serfdom, and its logical progression to concrete neoclassical analyses of legal institutions, specifically property rights, begins to substantiate the first major claim of this essay: law and neoclassical economics is, at its core, about politics. It also shows how the conservative politics associated with neoclassical economics could be taken seriously if the dangers of progressivism articulated in Serfdom, including progressive ideals espoused by pragmatic instrumentalists, were heeded.57 Now we turn to the connections between neoclassical economics and the science of the analytic turn in order to begin establishing the other claim of this paper: law and neoclassical economics is, at its core, also about science. At the end, we find that there is a synthesis of the politics and science of law and neoclassical economics .. " >From "Law and Neoclassical Economics: Science, Politics, and the Reconfiguration of American Tort Law Theory" by James R. Hackney, Jr. Law and History Review. Vol. 15, No. 2, Fall 1997 >From "'Law and Neoclassical Economics': A Response to Commentaries 163-172" by James R. Hackney, Jr.: " .. I never identify Hayek as a "neoclassical economist" but I think it is (1) fair to say that Hayek, and Austrian economics generally, have had considerable influence on neoclassical theory;16 and, more importantly for my thesis, (2) Hayek has had a profound influence on the strand of law and neoclassical economics coming out of the University of Chicago.17 (footnote 17. Coase's recognition of his intellectual debt to F. A. Hayek and the institutional role Hayek played in establishing law and neoclassical economics studies at the University of Chicago is illustrative of this point. Hackney, "Law and Neoclassical Economics," 284, n. 42, 306, n. 141.) .. " >From "'Law and Neoclassical Economics': A Response to Commentaries 163-172" by James R. Hackney, Jr. _Law and History Review_ Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 1998. Hayek on the Web is a regular feature of the Hayek-L list. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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Re: System
by kozmo killah 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

which system did you want? ---"Adrian J. Otto" <aotto(a)hangar.jetlink.net> wrote: > > Cosmos, > > Ok, I want to buy. Tell me more details. > > Adrian > _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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The hax0rz are at it again... check out www.unicef.org
by David E. Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Although I can't agree with their methods, I really love their motives. In case they fix it sometime soon, go to: http://bureau42.base.org/mirrors/ and click the "unicef" link. dave

1 0

[hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~!]]
by Tina (SingPing) Lai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: Airheadlin(a)aol.com, SWeeTpny98(a)aol.com, Tlai(a)mystop.com Subject: Fwd: hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~!] From: Alyse4112 <Alyse4112(a)aol.com> Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 21:06:34 EST Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) To: Alyse4112(a)aol.com, OhUSoSilly(a)aol.com, Ninavc@aol.com,swimgirl12@hotmail.com Subject: Fwd:hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~!] From: RayRay124 <RayRay124(a)aol.com> Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 03:01:18 EST Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) In a message dated 98-01-05 22:49:10 EST, DimplesF56 writes: << >> To: RayRay124(a)aol.com, VHSmile(a)aol.com, nail(a)home.com, Sak14@aol.com,AZNPL8YBOY@aol.com, ARISTO20(a)aol.com, JILTED76(a)aol.com Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: Fwd: hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~!] From: DimplesF56 <DimplesF56(a)aol.com> Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 22:49:10 EST Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) To: Helen Huang <Sweets637(a)AOL.COM>, Jenny Young <kbzxgqgirl(a)AOL.COM>, Jonathan Woo <JWoo516(a)AOL.COM>, Margery Lee <Marg(a)ucla.edu>, Musette Chan <Qui8cow(a)AOL.COM>, Steven Hu <Smartbeans(a)AOL.COM>, Thyda Chhor <thyda001(a)AOL.COM> Subject: [Fwd: Fwd: hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~!] From: Kwan <kwan887(a)jps.net> Date: Fri, 02 Jan 1998 09:09:45 -0800 To: Helen Huang <Sweets637(a)AOL.COM>, Jenny Young <kbzxgqgirl(a)AOL.COM>, Jonathan Woo <JWoo516(a)AOL.COM>, Margery Lee <Marg(a)ucla.edu>, Musette Chan <Qui8cow(a)AOL.COM>, Steven Hu <Smartbeans(a)AOL.COM>, Thyda Chhor <thyda001(a)AOL.COM> Subject: [Fwd: Fwd: hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~!] From: Kwan <kwan887(a)jps.net> Date: Fri, 02 Jan 1998 09:09:45 -0800 -------------------- Received: from imo18.mx.aol.com (imo18.mx.aol.com [198.81.19.175]) by dry.jps.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA16198 for <kwan887(a)jps.net>; Wed, 31 Dec 1997 19:15:10 -0800 (PST) From: Bar111bie <Bar111bie(a)aol.com> Message-ID: <2e2dd6f8.34ab0a14(a)aol.com> Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 22:14:26 EST To: kwan887(a)jps.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Subject: Fwd: hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~! Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_883624466_boundary" Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) X-Mailer: Inet_Mail_Out (IMOv11) This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_883624466_boundary Content-ID: <0_883624466(a)inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII --part0_883624466_boundary Content-ID: <0_883624466(a)inet_out.mail.aol.com.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline From: Babytimd13 <Babytimd13(a)aol.com> Return-path: <Babytimd13(a)aol.com> To: Bar111bie(a)aol.com Subject: Fwd: hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~! Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 03:42:58 EST Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part1_883624466_boundary" --part1_883624466_boundary Content-ID: <0_883624466(a)inet_out.mail.aol.com.3> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII --part1_883624466_boundary Content-ID: <0_883624466(a)inet_out.mail.aol.com.4> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline From: Babytimd13 <Babytimd13(a)aol.com> Return-path: <Babytimd13(a)aol.com> To: Rndy2(a)aol.com Subject: hey yall DO NOT delete this is the weirdest game....~! Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 03:56:13 EST Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 97-12-28 19:03:18 EST, you write: << Begin... > = > First, write 1-11in a column. > Then in the first and second spaces, fill any two numbers you like. > Write two males names in the 3rd and 7th spaces. > Write anyone's name (like friends or family...) in the 4th, 5th, and >6th spaces. > Write four song titles in 8,9,10 and 11. > = > Finally, make a wish... > = > = > And here is the key for that game... > = > = > > > > > > > >You must tell (the number in space 2) people about this game in (the = >number in space 1) days in order to make your wish come true. > = > The name in 3 is the one you love. > The person in 7 is the one you like but can't work out. > You care most about the person you put in 4. > Fifth is the one you knows you very well. > The name in 6 is your lucky star. > The song in 8 is the song that matches with the person in 3. > The title in 9 is the song for 7. > The tenth space is the song telling you about your mind. > And 11 is the song telling what you feel for sex....... > = >> --part1_883624466_boundary-- --part0_883624466_boundary--

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No Subject
by jalonz＠openworld.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

># SAN DIEGO DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE. ># ># Computer Security - Provide computer security assistance in criminal ># investigations. Tasks include data decryption, recovering erased data, ># password retrieval, data line monitoring, and protected system entry. > >Isn't that last item special? > >---guy > > And a possible reason for heading the other way. guy, tough noogies deal with it... Notice the words "criminal investigations"? God forbid talent could actually be used for a good cause. The incidents in question were actually quite serious (Chinese mafia money laundering via phony real estate deals) and not at all like the porno bbs confiscation crap you'd be thinking of. Besides the DA office reference (I can completely understand about that one), which was consulting work, what's your point in laying someone's life out on a page? Who cares? Yeah, its a lot of stuff, I just happen to work for start-up companies and thus I jump around a lot - given that most of them never make it due to one problem or another. :) jqz

2 1

Television Caller ID
by TVID 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The TVMessenger utilizes the powerful medium of Television to display Telephone Caller ID information. While watching your favorite movie or TV show, the TVMessenger will display incoming callers name and number in the upper left hand corner of your TV screen. This convenient easy-to-read caller display lets you make an immediate decision on how to handle the call. In addition, the TVMessenger keeps track of your calls while your away. The callers name, number, date, time, and the number of times they have called are stored in the callers log for future reference - Ideal for number retrieval! The TVMessenger also works with your voice messaging service - it provides a visual indication that a message is waiting. CONVENIENCE * SECURITY * CALLERS LOG * MESSAGE WAITING/NEW CALL INDICATOR REPLY to this email, visit our Website or CALL US for details TODAY!! _______________________________________________ http://www.promobility.net/tvid/ Tel. 888-632-1310

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Re: How about a Bay Area Cypherpunks meeting 1/17/98?
by Cindy Cohn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:03 PM 12/20/97 -0500, Simon Spero wrote: >On Sat, 20 Dec 1997, Bill Stewart wrote: > >The 17th also happens to be just after a W3C meeting in Palo Alto. I was >planning to spend the day hanging at the mall with Chelsea, but this could >be fun too... I'm sorry, I won't be available on January 17th. Cindy ************************ Cindy A. Cohn McGlashan & Sarrail, P. C. 177 Bovet Road, 6th Floor San Mateo, CA 94402 (650) 341-2585 (tel) (650)341-1395 (fax) Cindy(a)McGlashan.com http://www.McGlashan.com

1 0

Re: Question on U.S. Postal Service and crypto (fwd)
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>This is for a story for Time on the "new" U.S .Postal Service. I vaguely >recall the USPS trying to set digital signature standards and/or serve as >a CA. I'd like to mention this. > >Can't remember the details, though. Does anyone have 'em (or a pointer to >them) handy? See <http://www.parrhesia.com/po-ca.html> for information about the USPS' plan to act as a CA. -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | Export jobs, not crypto. http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | http://www.parrhesia.com

1 0

happy?
by cuajuazu＠prodigy.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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1 0

Eureka! Fri Jan 9 '98
by eureka＠eureka.abc-web.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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MS Server Gated Crypto: strong encryption w/ exportable browsers if the server is US-OK
by David Honig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The jist of http://eu.microsoft.com/industry/finserv/m_finserv/m_fordev_g.htm is, MS has US permission to export a DLL containing 128-bit SSL *worldwide* since the encryption is enabled IFF there's a Verisign "SGC certificate" on the *server*. This apparently will work with Netscape servers in addition to IIS. This facilitates gov't-trusted banks doing business with clients with generic MS browsers. And it facilitates MS's growth in the web world. Thoughts: Since US law (*) doesn't recognize digital IDs or the authority of Verisign, this implies the government has enforced some arbitrary judgement calls biassed towards this system, no? Additionally, the US would be seeming to trust the implementation in MS's new DLL which checks for and verifies signatures. All in all, some clever/cunning positioning by MS. This is set up for banks, and the certificates are strong. But they seem like the weak point --could a generic certificate be circulated amongst the Undesirables so they could enable this feature in IE browsers with the new DLL? (*) I understand that the government of Utah now recognizes some form of digital signatures. ------------------------------------------------------------ David Honig Orbit Technology honig(a)otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu "How do you know you are not being deceived?" ---A Compendium of Analytic TradeCraft Notes, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

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Re: Question on U.S. Postal Service and crypto (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 08 Jan 1998 10:45:28 -0800 > From: David Miller <dm0(a)avana.net> > Subject: Re: Question on U.S. Postal Service and crypto > I'm not so sure about this, Robert. I've heard the rumor that it is a crime, > but I have also heard that if something is delivered to your box, it is yours > and you are not required to send it back unopened if it is not addressed to > you. I tend to believe the latter, as it is the side of the story shared by > USPS employees. The way it works is if a company send you (ie addressed to you or your physical address) and *then* attempts to recoup costs for the product or item delivered *and* you did not request the item *then* it is yours. It must be either addressed to you or the occupant of that delivery address, it is important to note that the test in all this is whether you requested something from the company. If the item is specificaly addressed to a 3rd party it is a crime to open it. I haven't looked into what the requirements for re-delivery are, as far as I am aware you could either return it to the post office for dead-letter filing or dump it in the trash. > It certainly is a federal crime, however, for the indended recipient to get > into your mailbox to get a message which was incorrectly delivered to you, > however! Technicaly, it is a crime for *you* to put stuff in your mailbox. When the home pick-up was eliminated a few years ago (supposedly because of the drug and bomb threat) the mailbox on your house or in your apartment was turned into an *exclusive* delivery point for the USPS. When you or I ask somebody to drop it in the box because we are not home we are technicaly committing a crime. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality
by David Honig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:09 AM 1/8/98 -0800, Jim Gillogly wrote: >Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: >> scientists who agree to government secrecy to develop >> their inventions are agreeing to a lot more than >> mere secrecy. they are committing to a paradigm that >> is at odds with science itself, which only advances through >> the open literature. > >Why limit your annoyance to government scientists? Scientists >in private industry are in the same position, developing (e.g.) >algorithms and analytical methods protected by trade secrets. >Society recognizes this tendency and tries to advance science >anyway by offering patent protection. You don't make money by >giving away your intellectual capital. Seems to me that schools >and independently wealthy scientists/foundations are the only >ones who don't merit your censure on this count. >-- Nuri was obviously going through the angst of realizing responsibility as a creative technologist. You are adding antibusiness sentiments to this. The fact is, you choose who/what you work on. And face it, many government scientists think they're wearing white hats. As do those in industry and academia, as well as the independant investigator. The British scientist reporting on his discovery of PK was not *bitter* that others found it too. He was explaining the secretive context of its development in one closed shop. He undoubtably thinks his work was Good. It is only some readers who are thinking that the Brit is trying to usurp something. He's not. I thought the Brit's explanation was helpful for understanding PK beyond the confusing complexity of the RSA-implementation of it. It does not detract from the efforts (or patents) of anyone, that PK has been discovered multiple times. ------------------------------------------------------------ David Honig Orbit Technology honig(a)otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu "How do you know you are not being deceived?" ---A Compendium of Analytic TradeCraft Notes, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

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Journalism and the Internet conference at Freedom Forum
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 09:53:34 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: politech(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Journalism and the Internet conference at Freedom Forum [I'm on the "Online journalism, governments and the First Amendment" panel tomorrow. I expect rating systems will come up. --Declan] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 08 Jan 1998 10:48:22 -0500 From: Adam Powell <apowell(a)freedomforum.org> Subject: Journalism/Internet conf webcast Tomorrow's "Journalism and the Internet" conference will be webcast in its entirety, so those who cannot join us in person will be able to join sessions on line. Webcast listeners will also be able to submit questions and comments via e-mail for panelists during the webcast. Below is the schedule (all times EST): "Journalism and the Internet" conference Rooftop Conference Center The Freedom Forum 1101 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, Virginia 22209 8:30 a.m. -- Welcome and introduction Charles Overby, The Freedom Forum; Richard Sammon, National Press Club 9 a.m. -- Keynote address Speaker: Steve Case, America Online Moderator: Adam Powell 9:45 a.m. -- "Where are we/How did we get here?" Panelists: Llewellyn King, King Publishing; Sam Meddis, USA TODAY; Stephen Miller, The New York Times; Marc Weiss, Web Development Fund Moderator: Don Brown, QRadio 11 a.m. -- "Standards and ethics online" Panelists: Rajiv Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post; Steven Levy, Newsweek; John Markoff, The New York Times; Jai Singh, CNET Moderator: Lee Thornton, University of Maryland 12:30 p.m. -- Luncheon program -- "Sports journalism online: Special case or leading edge?" Welcome: Peter Prichard, The Freedom Forum Speaker: John Rawlings, The Sporting News Moderator: Gene Policinski, The Freedom Forum 2:15 p.m. -- "Online journalism, governments and the First Amendment" Panelists: Donna Demac, Georgetown University; Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation; Declan McCullagh, Netly News/Time magazine; Lynn Povich, MSNBC Moderator: Paul McMasters, The Freedom Forum 4 p.m. -- "Politics '98 online" Panelists: Farai Chideya, ABC News; Kathleen deLaski, America Online; Mike Riley, CNN/Time's AllPolitics; Omar Wasow, MSNBC Moderator: Robert Merry, Congressional Quarterly Newseum Broadcast Studio The Newseum 1101 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, Virginia 22209 1 p.m. -- "Journalism and the Internet" public program Journalist of the Day: John Markoff, The New York Times *** We will also have live webcasts of the Saturday programs: Newseum Broadcast Studio The Newseum 1101 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, Virginia 22209 1 p.m. -- "Journalism and the Internet" public program Journalist of the Day: Jai Singh, CNET 2:30 p.m. -- "Journalism and the Internet" public program Technology demonstration: John Pavlik, Center for New Media, Columbia University Discussion: Benjamin Davis, MSNBC Steve Geimann, Society of Professional Journalists Lisa Napoli, New York Times *** Adam Clayton Powell, III Vice President, Technology and Programs, The Freedom Forum 703-284-3553 fax 703-284-2879 apowell(a)freedomforum.org apowell(a)alum.mit.edu http://www.freedomforum.org/technology/welcome.asp

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