December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Economic assumptions
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>F >There's a piece by Kevin Kelly called "Network Economics" in the >F >latestWhole Earth Review, about how better communications tech and >F >changed business practices lower transaction costs and (along with >F >competition and the pace of things these days) are pushing down the >F >optimum size of businesses. >F > >F >-fnerd >F >quote me > >Likewise "The Incredible Shrinking Company" from THE ECONOMIST of DECEMBER >15, 1990. > >"Computers were supposed to centralise decision-making and produce >ever, bigger firms. They seem to have done just the opposite > >Peering into its crystal ball in 1958, the Harvard Business >Review said that computers would revolutionise American business. >By the end of the 1980s they would ensure that American business >would be concentrated as never before. The economy would be >dominated by a few giant firms. Within each firm important >decisions would be made by a handful of executives with access to >the firm's single, big computer. > >The exact opposite has occurred. In America the average number of >employees per firm has been falling since the late 1960s; but >more and more of those employees have a computer on their desk." > >DCF > > > >--- WinQwk 2.0b#1165 > > I think we should be careful here. Yes, the big companies are getting smaller, but that doesn't mean that we're not seeing centralization. You might argue the exact opposite: The economy is becoming _increasingly_ centralized and the computers and automation are allowing the large companies to cut out even more people. Consider some facts. Microsoft and Intel dominate the microcomputer market. The auto market in the US expanded over the last several years because more imports started arriving, but now the global auto capacity is really much too large. That's why Jaguar, Lotus and many of the other brands are now just divisions of the large companies. This will continue to happen as the auto companies merge and cross purchase shares. In the airplane market, Boeing is considering pooling resources with one of its two major competitors, Airbus, so the two can design the next big plane. Yes, there are many small, new companies, but I think this is largely because of other considerations. It is much cheaper for companies to hire contractors than employees. The high cost of benefits makes it easier to shed the people and make them fend for themselves. Plus, the affirmative action and other discrimination laws makes it difficult if not impossible to fire anyone but a young, straight, white man without worrying about a discrimination suit. These are the principle reasons why the corporations don't have many employees.

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Headline News
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[My apologies if you see this twice. I think the first attmpt got lost when our system went down earlier today.] At around 9:45 AM Central DST today, Headline News displayed the following "Factoid": [from memory] -------------- Two-thirds of US residents say cell phone privacy is more important than police ability to wiretap phones. - source: Yankelovich Partners -------------- Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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Sen. Kennedy Uses Code to Disguise Personal Data!
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fellow 'punks - This comes from the National Journal and it sure as hell ain't an April Fools Day joke. Read the last line carefully! -----No. 5 of 40------------------------ 04/02/94 -- (C) 1994 National Journal (LEGI-SLATE Article No. 201346) Inside Washington - Here's a Real Weighty Matter "National Journal" Saturday, April 2, 1994 Page 759 Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., used the recent death of Senate gym attendant Troy Brown as an opportunity to discuss his own much-noted waistline problems. Brown, Kennedy told his colleages in late March, helped him monitor his tendency "to gain a few pounds on occasion." While reassuring the Senator that it had been OK to graze on eggs Benedict that morning, Brown discreetly recorded Kennedy's weight in the back of the gym book so that no other Senator could see them. "I knew he was on my side," Kennedy added, "when he volunteered to keep my numbers in code." -- Best regards, Curtis D. Frye - Job Search Underway!!! cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org or cfrye(a)mason1.gmu.edu "Here today, gone ?????"

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Headline News
by jim＠bilbo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At around 9:45 AM Central DST, Headline News displayed the following "Factoid": [from memory] ------------- Two-thirds of US residents say cell phone privacy is more important than police ability to wiretap phones. source - Yankelovich Partners ------------- Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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Re: VISA Electronic Purse
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At *Visa* International, the answer is: Replace cash with plastic. > > Last month, the giant association of card issuers announced >it had formed a coalition of banking and technology companies to >develop technical standards for a product it dubbed the >"Electronic Purse," a plastic card meant to replace coins and bills >in small transactions. Gosh, how many Real Men are going to carry an electronic "purse?"

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nsa digital cash?
by tmp＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ok, so the nsa looked at commercial cryptography and said, `we need to control it'. and out pops clipper (quite an ugly baby, eh?) this makes me wonder. i bet that they see that announcement by visa for `digital cash' and go crazy. they are already thinking of how to put clipper into a nationwide digital cash system, don't you think? this brings up some serious issues. i doubt it will be long before there are some official government agencies developing the official u.s. digital cash system. in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if there are divisions in the nsa dedicated to doing it *this moment*. if there are any non-nsa agencies, too, the nsa will probably `pull an nist' and dominate their development. how? send in a few austere-looking spooks and speak in phrases like `imperative to national security' and `presidential directive' and *boom* the flimsy bureacrats are putty in their hands. so would anyone like to wager? i'd say that we have an official government group dedicated to digital cash standards in say, 4 years, with an official agency in say, 7 years. cpunks, are you going to be ready by then with your own cash? <g> btw, could someone tell me how the proposed visa cash system is different than debit cards (which exists today)?

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Re: Sen. Kennedy Uses Code to Disguise Personal Data!
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>So, just how is this to be taken? Just as a bit of humor, not meant to be taken seriously. I left out the smilies where I guess I shouldn't have :-). -- Best regards, Curtis D. Frye - Job Search Underway!!! cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org or cfrye(a)mason1.gmu.edu "Here today, gone ?????"

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CRYPT
by Ryan Snyder--Consultant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am trying to crack a textfile which has been encrypted with a program (for the IBM) called CRYPT. Can anyone help me with a method, a program which will break it, or a pointer to more information on how I might go about it? Thanks in advance. Ryan Snyder, Consultant | --->Finger me for my PGP public key.<--- ___ University of Montana CIS| |\ /| CS000RRS(a)SELWAY.UMT.EDU | Copyright 1994 by Ryan R. Snyder. | 0 | RYE(a)ILLUMINATI.IO.COM | |/_\| RYE(a)CYBERSPACE.ORG |

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Re: CYPHERPUNK CRIMINAL shirts (?)
by cfrye＠mason1.gmu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phillipe- Yep - I received my order last week. The shirts look great, though I would have made the "Safety in large numbers" banner bigger.

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Re: The AntiCash -- was: Electronic Purse Press Release
by nobody＠soda.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Will I be able to buy these cards with (real, physical) cash at local stores? Will I be able to swap them with strangers?

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No Subject
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since people are talking about new remailer features, can I suggest another one - how about single-use (or limited use) anonymous return addressess (ARAs) ? There are quite a few situations I can envisage where I might want to give an anonymous return address to someone that could only be used a limited number of times, or for a limited period of time (e.g. in the medium term, buying something over the network from a company with digicash, but not wanting to receive junk mail from them afterwards). How I'd see it working is this : You'd send a message to a remailer requesting an anonymous address token, along with the email address to send to, the number of uses you want and the time period (perhaps up to some maximum set by the operator of the remailer). In the future, you'd also send some digicash in payment for the token, the value based on the number of uses and time limit. The remailer would then create an encrypted token containing an id number and the address, either signed or with an attached random number. The id, number of uses and expiry date would be stored in a database, along with the random number if you were using that for authentication. The remailer would then mail the token (probably using an anonymous return address) to the requester. The database shouldn't need to be very large if only details of the outstanding tokens are stored. BEGIN NOTES I'm not sure whether it would be better to store the address in the token or in the database, but I suspect that storing it in the token is better since it avoids the possibility of anyone getting hold of a copy of the database and reading all the addresses stored in there. However, if it's in the token then if all keys of all remailers used are compromised, you can follow the entire chain even after the token is used up, whereas if it was deleted from the database the chain would be broken forever. Perhaps a mixture of mechanisms in the remailers would be best. Another option might be to keep the address completely seperate, so the token would merely indicate whether the message should be sent to the address specified in the ARA, not for a specific address that the token was requested for. END NOTES After the ARA had been sent to someone and they used it to reply to the sender, the remailer would recognize the token, and decrypt it to get the real address, database id and authentication. If the authentication was valid and the time/usage limit not exceeded, then it would forward the message to the email address enclosed (which presumably could be another ARA), otherwise it would just ignore the message. Obviously using only a single remailer would require you to trust the operator to limit usage correctly, however chaining several limited use addresses will solve any problems if one remailer is trustworthy. Example: Message to remailer might be something like (comments in {}, -- shows begining and end of messages) : -- Request-Token 5 {uses} 14 {days} ARA {or email address} { standard PGP-encrypted ARA goes in here } Request-Token-End :: Request-Remailing-To: remail(a)foo.com {ARA to send token to via remail(a)foo.com goes here} -- The remailer would create something like : -- Limited-Use-Token: 00000001/F4870921 (ID/random authentication) {ARA or Request-Remailing-To: goes here} -- This would then be encrypted with the remailer's public key, attached to the end of the original message (after the Request-Token line was stripped off), then fed into the remailer as usual. The sender would create the ARA using this token, and forward it to whoever they wanted to communicate with. When a message using the ARA came back, it would be decrypted as usual, and if the token line was valid the database would be checked for timed expiry, updated to indicate another use, then if valid, after the token line was stripped off the message would be remailed as usual. If noone else does this in the next few months then I may hack it into a remailer once I have my own machine to run one off.

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Re: VISA Electronic Purse
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>Gosh, how many Real Men are going to carry an electronic "purse?" > >Probably the same number of Real Women that are going to carry an >electronic "wallet". > >Eric Most women I know carry a "wallet" in their "purse".

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re: CRYPT
by werner＠mc.ab.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 13:25:38 -0600 (MDT) >From: Ryan Snyder--Consultant <cs000rrs(a)selway.umt.edu> >I am trying to crack a textfile which has been encrypted with a program >(for the IBM) called CRYPT. Can anyone help me with a method, a program >which will break it, or a pointer to more information on how I might go >about it? Thanks in advance. This reminds me of cwb, I think, or else it's cbw (stands for codebreaker's workbench), that is supposedly a tool for breking crypt-ed text. I tried to make this tool work a couple of times, and never got it working. One fellow I corresponded with said it worked for him right out of the box. I eventually decided that it didn't work for me at least partly because it was too dependent on the vt220 display. I never actually ran it on a vt220. Did anyone ever do any work to improve cbw (or cwb)? Everyone is always saying what a joke crypt is, but I've never been able to crack it with anything I got on the net. What do people really use to break (BSD) crypted text? tw

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Re: VISA Electronic Purse
by jamiel＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:08 PM 04/05/94 -0400, Peter Wayner wrote: >Most women I know carry a "wallet" in their "purse". Most people who don't have hormone problems don't worry about it.

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Re: PGP mail disabled ???
by danisch＠ira.uka.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Well, email can only transfer ASCII data, so my first guess would be that > you forgot the '-a' option to apply ASCII armour. No, of course they were using the -a option and the mail was normal ASCII armoured. Hadmut

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Re: Bekenstein Bound (was: Crypto and new computing strategies)
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > > > >You made the assertion in your rebuttal about area -v- volume in relation > >to black holes and event horizons about the entire universe not being > >containable in a volumn, if you accept this premice then you have to accept > >the premice that the universe is unbouded and hence not containable. This > >leads the bounds on the B-equation to be infinitly large number of possible > >states. > > > > > > > > > So what's wrong with that? > > Jay > > -- > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > I am an attorney, seeking a position in the area of Computer Law. If you > know of such a position available, or of someone who may know of such a > position, please send e-mail! Thanks. > If you accept the universe as unbounded then you have to throw out the Big Bang and much of conventional physics, including large parts of what you are trying to prove.

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Re: VISA Electronic Purse
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Gosh, how many Real Men are going to carry an electronic "purse?" I suppose you'd have to hire some Virtual Man to carry it for you. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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I need a book: Applied Combinatorics
by collins＠newton.apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It goes for 84 bucks new. I'm looking for a used copy. Moe's is looking for it. Is there anyone out there who can sell or loan me a copy? Scott Collins | "That's not fair!" -- Sarah | "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis 408.862.0540 | for comparison is." -- Goblin King ................|.................................................... BUSINESS. fax:974.6094 R254(IL5-2N) collins(a)newton.apple.com Apple Computer, Inc. 5 Infinite Loop, MS 305-2D Cupertino, CA 95014 ..................................................................... PERSONAL. 408.257.1746 1024:669687 catalyst(a)netcom.com

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Jamie Lawrence
by dwomack＠runner.utsa.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I regret that I'm not able to read your metashell messages...would it be possible to send me your email address otherwise.. a plain text type perhaps? I think you're looking for a copy of Burn 2.0...but I can't send it until I can find an address! (Sorry for the waste of bandwidth...) Regards, Dave

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CYPHERPUNK CRIMINAL shirts (?)
by Philippe Nave 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hello all, Have the CYPHERPUNK CRIMINAL shirts been shipped out yet? I used to have Christian Void's e-mail address, but I blew up my mail file in a fit of incompetence.... We now return you to black holes, chess games, and the Bill of Rights. - -- ........................................................................ Philippe D. Nave, Jr. | Strong Crypto: Don't leave $HOME without it! pdn(a)dwroll.dw.att.com | Denver, Colorado USA | PGP public key: by arrangement. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLaHqpwvlW1K2YdE1AQHvsAQAhpGyfdknItqSzo35V4TOeusrHTNhlKNR M5HdGJ3M7dxfH4EVmQZqKRtaapjF2IjCnxsyAb1HAUbPmg4XzS+N6zN54zRGPCWY 7fseS5lBsCMNeDv1EIK4BjD7vI/VugdpkXGmFANtii0TIjXpKHo1lCWuJtplR2uE vWxyp1MuFcg= =/uF4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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PGP Tools bug fixed
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Several weeks ago someone mentioned a bug in the fifo_destroy function. At the time, I couldn't find it. The bug finally showed up. Fifo_destroy was freeing some memory and then immediately reading it. This caused problems on systems with fancy memory management, but not under DOS or most Unixes. I just sent an update to csn.org. fifo.c is the only program which has been changed. Pr0duct Cypher -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLaI4aMGoFIWXVYodAQGpRgP/YQZnwUt1o0DGuNWuTuSRK6W4GOapglc9 r7nnb73A2S5kahmSjPVOaaHcAkSg1KYdJiddJbooKW3ptenFaRujr8dEz4/bnbrE IqL0cBrPKBTUJ9ivjpyzktXfEhXbtDw+k1lA6ISQ1W3IadRQqUnqJ89aN2wiaqNW 3YjVm/nCbI8= =wdvG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: PHILIP ZIMMERMAN ARRESTED [NOT!]
by kafka＠desert.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <m0pneHy-0001W9C@ideath>, you write the following: GR> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- GR> GR> GR> > The Zimmerman prank---I'm sure not funny for him---hardens my line GR> > further against anonymity online. At its best, as here, it is an GR> > unholy nuisance. GR> GR> Interesting. The recent thread on alt.security re someone who mentioned GR> thoughts of suicide on Usenet and was held for 48 hours' psychiatric GR> evaluation hardens my line in favor of anonymity online. GR> [stuff deleted] GR> GR> How will we stop folks from setting up accounts with names other than GR> their "real names" .. or from stealing others' accounts .. or from GR> forging mail? A $1000 PC can run Linux and SLIP and look to the rest of GR> the net like any other IP-connected site; how will we enforce our rules GR> on those systems? You can run slip on a $200 vintage IBM-AT. Patrick :) --- "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 4 1994 == To get PGP, FTP /pub/unix/security/crypt/pgp23A.zip from ftp.funet.fi ==

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Re: How Many Games of Chess: Exact answer given!
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > The natural conclusion is that the complexity of the problem depends on how > > much of the game you consider to be the `endgame'. Thus, the actual number > > of different chess games: 5 > > > > 2) White mates > > 1) Black resigns > > 0) Stalemate > > -1) White resigns > > -2) Black mates There are at least 3 others - there's - Black/White's clock runs out - game completion gets postponed for whatever reason and never resumed > i am not sure this is a very reasonable question without any > restrictions. while this answer is humerous, i don't think anybody has > addressed the fact that i can move a king back and forth between 3 > squares infinitely many times. You can't - after the board has been in the same position three times, the rules say it's a stalemate. This lets you calculate an upper bound which somebody did a few days ago.

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CHESS: max # of games
by Karl Lui Barrus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Chesspunks, Since this thread won't seem to die, I thought I might (hopefully) present an argument that will convince you who are interested that there are a finite number of chess games. A chess game may end by checkmate, resignation, statemate, or draw. The draw category is important: it can be agreed or forced. Draws are forced when: * the same position repeats three times. This is commonly used to end games by "perpetual check". * 50 moves pass and no pawn is moved, or piece captured I've never seen this invoked, but it could happen if say one player doesn't have enough material to checkmate the other. E.g. white has a king and black has a king and bishop. Checkmate is impossible so the game will eventually end. Or the players could be smart enough to realize no win is possible and draw the game right there. So, there are a finite number of moves in a game. In fact, the following is excerpted from the FAQ for rec.games.chess: > How long is the longest possible chess game? > The basic idea is a player may claim a draw if fifty moves elapse without a > capture or a pawn advance. Ignoring the special cases where more than 50 > moves are allowed by the rules, the answer is after Black's 5948th move, > White is able to claim a draw. The simple calculation is (<Pawn_moves> + > <Captures> - <Duplicates> + <Drawing_interval_grace_period>) * > <Drawing_interval>, or (16*6 + 30 - 8 + 1) * 50 = 5950; we're able to trim > two moves from this total by observing that sequences of Captures/Pawn_moves > must have (at least) 4 alternations between the two players. Now, as an EXTREMELY LOOSE upper bound on the number of positions possible, allowing illegal positions, not differentiating between the various pieces, etc.... chessboards have 64 squares, white has 16 pieces and black has 16 pieces. There are 64!/32! ways to place the pieces (1st piece gets 64 choices, 2nd gets 63, on down to the last which gets 33 choices). 64!/32! = 4.8222 10^53. (Right? No combinations or permutations here). Again, this allows ALL positions, even illegal positions and position which are othewise impossible. So I calculate the ABSOLUTE maximum number of games to be (4.8222 10^53) ^ 5048 = 1.0516 10^270993 I don't see how it is possible under the rules to have more; indeed the true number is FAR less. While this number is pretty big, it is less than infinity. And send followup questions to me and not the list. Karl Barrus <klbarrus(a)owlnet.rice.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLaIdN4OA7OpLWtYzAQFNawQAsemEdO6pQlbwDhiNboNp5pR2Xs54bfCe TCECI70wwtLToaQU76KSz0pRcZLrrkbOX9R4AfJlEWBF7Ae+TVs495xx8QzMHADs KgHej8Y7BIncTrUcE9Y76yH299tHEyB/5yJW+/mNB+8XYRivLpdpxZ+udXwcpeZX wo/AzrmkJvU= =T5rF -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: PGP mail disabled ???
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> No, of course they were using the -a option and the > mail was normal ASCII armoured. Some of the FIDO and FIDO-like networks have policies against sending encrypted email. I don't know if this means their operators actually read the messages that go by, or do pattern-matching to look for "BEGIN PGP" or whatever, but they at least have that policy.

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