December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: poverty traps (Re: Sa
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Harka wrote: >A real-life example: Violins coming! ;-) Let's call the mother Janice. >A single (divorced) mother, 4 kids (3-12 years), working full-time >and making in theory $42 000/year. After taxes that comes down to >$2000 cash per month. Below you mention she receives $800 in child support, so she is seeing $2800/month in cash. The government is not Janice's friend. It takes away $18,000 from her each year and plunges her into poverty, sort of. If you are appealing to the government to assist Janice, first ask it to get the hell out of the way. (I realize you may just be saying that Janice's plight is unavoidable, not that she should be helped with government money.) >In order for her to be able to work her two youngest kids go to a >day-care-center. Wham! $1000 per month (hiring a baby-sitter would >amount to even more). Janice should be baby sitting. Were she to take in 4 kids at $500/month, she would make as much as her job and be able to watch her own kids during the same time. This income need not be reported. The parents of the other kids would be getting a good deal because their kids would get much more attention than at daycare. Some might even consider it a good deal to be able to hire someone with a Master's Degree in Education! >Her apartment costs $800/month excluding utilities. That leaves $200 >(+ $800 she gets in child-support) per month for _five_ people to >live on (clothes, food, utilities, school-books, gas for the car, >etc.etc.) Uh, doesn't this mean $1000/month for five people after rent has been paid? Telephone: $20/month Electricity: $40/month (?) Heat: $100/month (?) Food: $600/month (generous) Goodwill Clothes: $100/month (generous) Total: $860/month The food is generous because four of the five are kids, the oldest only being 12. Kids don't each much. The actual amount should be much lower. If Janice joins a food coop and optimizes her buying choices for cost and nutrition, the actual cost of food could be dramatically lower. If Janice does not practice vegetarianism, she should start. Clothing at the Goodwill costs next to nothing. $1200/year should be more than enough, not even considering that the younger kids can wear clothing cast off by the older kids. Janice should not be driving - she cannot afford it. The cost of schoolbooks is negligible. (Aren't they provided by the school, anyway?) >One thousand dollars per month for five people!! And that in New York >City! Of course, there is no law that requires one to live in New York City. >What efforts has she made to make "herself more marketable"? She has >been working ever since the age of 16, went 8 years to College (paid >by herself and paying rent at the same time) and now has a Masters >Degree in teaching. It seems pretty clear that making money was not her top priority. It's never been a secret that teachers are not top earners. I'm not seeing a description of somebody who really tried to make money in a serious way. Being "more marketable" does not mean "obtain a masters degree in a field which is renowned for low pay." >She made a calculation and (confirming your statement) came to the >conclusion, that she indeed would have _more_ money by not working at >all and simply going on welfare. >However, that is not a choice she wants to make. Good for her. It sounds like Janice may have the strength of character to turn her situation around. >Is she to be called "stupid" and "selfish" because she's poor despite >her efforts??? You should both read "Your Money or Your Life" from cover to cover. This book will help teach Janice and yourself how to live efficiently. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNFJ8f5aWtjSmRH/5AQHU+Af9HWEadTH/x62ZZ8E8XLhJLS9ZxZm8Jkvh LvtdKxq/xI4KHVehL6EqghjvbpndyEByaRNm1D18Hd0Ug3Iy/Ateq69ky2mV7MT6 tCKwaVJEMVH8FYE7HyVHSQs394ID8yGPEnNT79d+VHhaSsFnd349QvQlaHQom6Di ksdNqe+n8WD7ewj2xXaZcZCfE8ESlY2KQ62yHlO/qRR0h8AzOw75B4Vft75r/5Df XHZVSNx1UhP2B1P4rb3IV2XdD6m+xzqSARYO4p9aTCyH588/wS62tMfs8LT54hnu KOFcte8wavQlEdQPFX+JCkOr6woCdjqUeR3ZPrprh2iegq222Ql5Sw== =vyWR -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Doubts about Smith legislation (Falk & Allberry)
by Igor Chudov ＠ home 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In news.groups, Cipher <cipher(a)mindspring.com> wrote: * In article <62oshu$pov(a)news1.panix.com> Information Security, * The(a)NSA.sucks writes: * >To further rub in things, the UCENET II proponents are coming * >out with a "munging FAQ" that lists three times as many * >"reasons" not to munge versus to munge. * > * >What a bunch of assholes. * > * >On top of that, Mozena couldn't even state in plain English * >in the CFV for comp.org.cauce that it will require your * >real email address to post...it just kinda mumbles it * >while talking about robomoderation and tokens. * > * >Someone should give Mozena a hard kick in the balls. Let us give the anti-privacy, anti-munging, and anti-anonymity proponents a collective kick in the ass by voting against comp.org.cauce in its present form. To get a ballot and vote, send email to bostwick(a)cas.chemistry.gatech.edu and ask him for comp.org.cauce ballot. -- - Igor.

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[Fwd: Fwd: (Fwd) Fw: THIS IS MY KIND OF CHAIN LETTER!!! =)] (fwd)
by goddesshera＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> here you go! no need to thank me! ;-) > > Since We are ALL so Tired of those Chain Letters!!!!!!!!!! > > THE DEAL IS: THIS LETTER GIVES YOU THE POWER TO NEVER HAVE TO SEND > ANOTHER CHAIN LETTER EVER AGAIN. YOU SEND THIS TO 10 PEOPLE > WITHIN > 7 > DAYS OF > THE TIME THAT YOU READ IT, AND FROM THAT POINT ON YOU CAN IGNORE, > > OR > READ > AND DELETE, ANY CHAIN LETTER SENT TO YOU. THE BEST PART > OF > THIS > DEAL > IS, > YOU WILL STILL GET ALL OF THE LUCK, LOVE, OR GOOD SEX > GUARANTEED > TO > YOU > BY > ANY CHAIN LETTER YOU READ! > EVENTUALLY THIS WILL STOP THE CIRCULATION OF ALL CHAIN > LETTERS. > SO, > IT > IS > VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU SEND THIS OUT ON TIME!!! AND THE > CATCH > IS, > THAT > IF > YOU END UP NOT SENDING THIS ON TIME, OR NEVER SENDING IT > AT > ALL, > YOU > WILL > GET ALL OF THE BAD LUCK, NONE OF THE LOVE, AND NONE OF > THE > GOOD > SEX > FROM > ANY CHAIN LETTER YOU GET. THIS IS FOR ALL OF THE > SUPERSTISIOUS > PEOPLE > THAT > HATE CHAIN LETTERS, AND ALL OF THE EVIL PEOPLE THAT WRITE > THEM. > GOOD LUCK, LOVE AND SEX TO ALL OF YOU!!!!!!! > This message was automatically remailed. The sender is unknown, unlogged, and nonreplyable. Send complaints and blocking requests to <goddesshera(a)juno.com>.

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Re: Elliptic Curves
by semprini＠theschool.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found good online documentation. No need for further help. Just as a side note: TruthMonger's command of the English language is incredible. :) -- Dylan

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Re: poverty traps (Re: Sa (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 21:24:20 -0400 > From: Anonymous <anon(a)anon.efga.org> > Subject: Re: poverty traps (Re: Sa > >In order for her to be able to work her two youngest kids go to a > >day-care-center. Wham! $1000 per month (hiring a baby-sitter would > >amount to even more). > > Janice should be baby sitting. Were she to take in 4 kids at > $500/month, she would make as much as her job and be able to watch her > own kids during the same time. This income need not be reported. Wrong, this income not only must be reported but in every state that I am aware of you need a license to legaly do baby-sitting for hire. Many states, such as Texas, won't let you do it from your home. You even need one in Texas to baby-sit peoples pets, though you can do that from your home if your yard is big enough for the number of pets you are licensed to sit. Have Janice go to jail for tax-evasion and lack of a license isn't going to do her or her kids a lick of good. > >Her apartment costs $800/month excluding utilities. That leaves $200 > >(+ $800 she gets in child-support) per month for _five_ people to > >live on (clothes, food, utilities, school-books, gas for the car, > >etc.etc.) > > Uh, doesn't this mean $1000/month for five people after rent has been > paid? > > Telephone: $20/month Not counting long-distance to grandma and grandpa, other relatives. > Electricity: $40/month (?) > Heat: $100/month (?) Let's combine electricity and gas into a single bill, since this will cover both of these. You're probably looking at $150 - $200 a month with 6 kids. You're also leaving out water and waste-water which adds another $50-$100 considering 6 kids and their baths and such. > Food: $600/month (generous) Hell, I'm single and come close to this and food costs in Texas are a LOT lower than in New York. Though I do eat out at lunch every weekday. And no, I don't go partying regularly at all. Way too busy with work (>16hrs/day 5 days a week & 16-20 on weekends) to do that other than a couple of times a month. I went to the store today and bought enough food for 4 days and it cost me $30. So that comes to something like $250 - $300 for me not counting lunches, and that's for just a single person. Multiply that for 6 and the numbers are considerably higher. > Goodwill Clothes: $100/month (generous) > Total: $860/month > > The food is generous because four of the five are kids, the oldest > only being 12. Kids don't each much. Man, you must not know the kids I know. Not only do they eat a lot they waste a lot because they seldom finish 'adult' size portions. > Clothing at the Goodwill costs next to nothing. $1200/year should be > more than enough, not even considering that the younger kids can wear > clothing cast off by the older kids. Not exactly true. The hand-me downs are 1-gen old when the first kid gets them. By the 2nd or 3rd kid the clothes will be too worn out and soiled to wear. My parents were dirt poor and I got lots of hand-me-downs as a kid and can speak from personal experience here. They might last two kids. While we're at it let's not forget the various school supplies and other things the kids will need, medical and dental costs (my experience is that government agencies don't cover 100%), then there's toys, books, music, etc. Even considering buying everything used and using the public library this is going to be a very tight budget. You also left out auto costs such as gasoline, oil, normal maintenance, insurance, registration, etc. Birthdays, Christmas, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, movies with friends and such, hair-cuts (it's clear she won't have time to do that herself), pets, kids hobbies, life insurance, etc. Nope, your figures are WAY off. My guess is that you are either single or if married your wife has her own career and you each make at least $45k. Also, no kids or more than one pet. You don't raise good kids by sticking them in a closet wearing burlap sacks and feeding them scraps. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ 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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Buttfucking Bad BillyG
by TruthMonger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It looks like the DOJ is getting tired of bungholing the cold, dead carcass of Horatio Alger, and is now looking for a fresh, pink rim to act as a depository for the zygote of the Reptilian Nazis that they are bringing out of their secret underground bunkers to head the FBI Criminal Factory/Crime Laboratory and the IRS. I've spent more than my share of time on the front-lines of the computer industry, throwing rocks at the windows of the MS-DOS code-writers, but I also spent a fair amount of time searching out tools, such as 4DOS, which allowed me to route around the damage caused by a PC market base of end-users whose biggest concern was not chipping their nails while typing, so they would look good when flirting with the guys in suits who showed up to charge their bosses outrageous sums of money for making all of the dichotomous software enemies of the MS-DOS operating system play nicely with one another without leaving blood on the hard drive. As 'The World's Foremost Computer Expert', I tried to talk some sense into Unix and Xenix producers and vendors. "Give the shit away!" I told them, time and time again. "You're not going to go broke having everyone in the fucking world using your product, and counting on you for support." They wouldn't listen. Usually, they just bought a few copies of my Country Porno albums and sent me on my way. I wanted to provide my individual customers with UNIX/XENIX OS's and applications, but the producers and vendors didn't want my individual customers' business. They wanted a Grand to say 'hello' and a million bucks worth of software and support sales so that even their janitors could buy a new suit in this year's latest 'power color.' So I put my corporate customers into UNIX/XENIX and my individual customers into MS-DOS. And I am not interested in hearing Sun Microsystems or anyone else whining about Bad BillyG capturing the market that he was going after while they captured the market that they were going after. SCO finally came out with a single/double user GUI product (can't even remember it's name) which was years ahead of what Windows finally became after M$ legally ripped off Apple's face mask. I screamed at them to provide it at a price that was simply outrageous instead of totally outrageous, so that I could sell it to people who were willing to put off buying a second Ferrari so that they could work with a decent operating system. SCO told me to fuck off. The DOJ seems deathly concerned that M$'s customers are going to get an InterNet browser "basically, for free." Oh horror, oh horror. I got M$ Explorer for free. I use Nut$crape. I got Nut$crape for free too. ($19.95 with 100 hours of Net time on Sympatico) I installed it, and it worked for me. I installed M$ Explorer and didn't want to take the time and trouble to learn all the fancy shit it does, so I uninstalled it. (My ISP tweaked their version of Nut$crape so that it works fine out of the box) My lifelong dream is to have Bad BillyG show up on my doorstep to install all of the M$ products I have so that they will work without me having to pull out my hair figuring them all out, and to bring MickJ with him, so I can get a blow-job from those fat, sexy lips while I watch BBG at work. Now my hopes are dashed, because Nazi Cunt Reno, child-murderer, is afraid that I might be a lobotomized, brain-dead idiot with no free-will and she wants to protect me from the Bad Man. Fuck Nazi Cunt Reno (with _your_ dick, not mine)! At least Bad BillyG hasn't burned any children to death recently (though he did give a couple of them 2nd degree burns as a result of learning how to freebase from Richard Pryor). Even when doing all of my serious bid'ness on UNIX/XENIX OS's, I still did all of my writing with a PC, using M$ Word. Because I *like* it! When lying awake at night, plotting my armed assault on the Micro$oft Corporate office, for all of the pain and suffering they have put me through over the years, I always planned to let those working in the M$ Word division off with just a sound thrashing, for making the pain bearable. Now Janet Reno wants to jump my claim to revenge against the Big M$ and she likely wants to whack out my pals in the M$ Word division, as well. This means war! Fresh From the Clue Server!!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The upcoming Millennium is going to usher in a battle between Big Brother/Governments and Medium Brother/Corporations. Big Brother has control of most of the weapons, and the serious firepower is in the hands of their armed thugs. Medium brother has control of most of the electronic weapons, but the serious firepower is in *our* hands. We *ARE* the electronic armed forces. The Corporations can 'take' the government in the upcoming battle, and we can 'take' the Corporations if they decide they want to move up a notch, to Big Brother status. Reality is that M$ is a fraction of the size of other industry players such as IBM, etc. Reality is that if the Corporate Giants want to oppress us, we are in a much better position to tell them to go fuck themselves. We can use pirated software and pirated hardware. I can't give you a Nuke if the government wants to fuck you over, but I can give you a copy of Win2000 if M$ wants to fuck you over. Reality is that our best chance for getting the Government to fall into line with true freedom and democracy is to back the rise of Corporations in the Net World Order. Reality is that the Government doesn't really need our votes, but the Corporations need our bucks. Reality is that many more of us are in a postition to say "No" to Corporations than are in a postition to say "No" to Governments. Our power lies in the workplace. We can still rule our workplace. {We are all guerilla warriors, under the leadership of Che Dilbert.) The Millennial War is InfoWar. It will take place in CyberSpace and in MindSpace. We need to fight for control of our Virtual Reality. It is InterActive, and *we* need to *act* from our end of the Inter. Micro$oft/Nut$crape/$un Microsystems? Who do we 'back'? We 'back' anyone who will make our access to and control of information stronger, and the Governments' electronic contol of us weaker. Scream loud and long at the DOJ Fascists for their attack on M$, and then go out and buy Nut$crape. Scream loud and long at the DOJ Fascists for their anti-trust actions against Intel, and then go out and by an Apple/Mac. (And get M$ Word for Macintosh! Keep 'em confused!) InfoWarMonger "It's not InfoWar until *you* realize it's InfoWar!"

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Re: Elliptic Curves
by Dylan N. Vitt 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 25 Oct 97 at 22:12, MJ S wrote: > > Could you send me this information too... thanks. > > Mark > > A good explanation of elliptic curves, their application, etc. can be found at http://www.certicom.com/ecc I found this site was mislinked in numerous places as http://www.certicom.com/html/ecc, for those of you with web-sites having links to this site. --Dylan

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$4370.00 a month for LIFE!!!!
by highxt＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To be removed from our list HIT REPLY and type "remove" in the subject. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ HOW TO EARN A MONTHLY INCOME OF $4,370.00 or MORE FOR LIFE JUST BY GIVING AWAY FREE CALLING CARDS! (YOU'LL EARN A COMMISSION EVERY SINGLE TIME A CARD YOU GIVE AWAY IS USED. WE NEED YOU!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And we are willing to pay you handsomely for your help. Listen, I know your time is valuable, so I'll cut right to the chase... We need enterprising people like you who are interested in earning a RESIDUAL MONTHLY INCOME just for giving away something of real value. **ALSO, MAKE $20.00 FAST START BONUS FOR EVERY DISTRIBUTOR YOU SIGN UP!!!*** This is truly a great opportunity. SKYCOM has made it easy for anyone to make money. ****THE INSIDE EDGE LETTER**** Thats right! WE WILL PAY YOU very well simply for helping us give away our FREE calling cards. And you will earn a great commission every single time the cards are used -- weeks, months , even years after you give them away! Of course the obvious question you must have now is.... How am I going to make money giving away something for free? Well that is a very good question, Fortunately, we have a very good answer. Actually, the answer is very simple... <HTML><PRE>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE!!! </PRE></HTML> (allow approx.10 seconds to load) OR Simply point your Web Browser to: http://www.mega-money.com/skycom2.htm

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InfoWar Epilogue 7 / TEXT
by Philip R. Zimmermann 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The True Story of the InterNet Part III InfoWar Final Frontier of the Digital Revolution Behind the ElectroMagnetic Curtain by TruthMonger <tm(a)dev.null> Copyright 1997 Pearl Publishing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWar Table of Contents * Epilogue * I Broke PGP! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- * When ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Epilogue ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discoveries of any great moment in mathematics and other disciplines, once they are discovered, are seen to be extremely simple and obvious, and make everybody, including their discoverer, appear foolish for not having discovered them before. It is all too often forgotten that the ancient symbol for prenascence of the world is a fool, and that foolishness, being a divine state, is not a condition to be either proud or ashamed of. Unfortunately, we find systems of education today that have departed so far from the plain truth that they now teach us to be proud of what we know and ashamed of ignorance. This is doubly corrupt. It is corrupt not only because pride in knowledge is to put an effective barrier against any advance upon what is already known, since it makes one ashamed to look beyond the bounds imposed by one's ignorance. To any person prepared to enter with respect into the realm of his great and universal ignorance, the secrets of being will eventually unfold, and they will do so in a measure according to his freedom from natural and indoctrinated shame in his respect of their revelation. In the face of the strong, and indeed violent, social pressures against it, few people have been prepared to take this simple and satisfying course toward sanity. And in a society where a prominent psychiatrist can advertise that, given the chance, he would have treated Newton to electric shock therapy, who can blame any person for being afraid to do so? To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not an activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions that are being continually thrust upon them. In these circumstances, the discoveries that any person is able to undertake represent the places where, in the face of induced psychosis, he has, by his own faltering and unaided efforts, returned to sanity. Painfully, and even dangerously, maybe. But nonetheless returned, however furtively.-G. Spencer Brown.* * The Laws of Form, London: Geo. Allen & Unwin, 1969. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -Mahatma Gandhi ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I Broke PGP! by RTFM How to Protect Public Keys from Tampering In a public key cryptosystem, you don't have to protect public keys from exposure. In fact, it's better if they are widely disseminated. But it is important to protect public keys from tampering, to make sure that a public key really belongs to whom it appears to belong to. This may be the most important vulnerability of a public-key cryptosystem. This whole business of protecting public keys from tampering is the single most difficult problem in practical public key applications. It is the Achilles' heel of public key cryptography, and a lot of software complexity is tied up in solving this one problem. You should use a public key only after you are sure that it is a good public key that has not been tampered with, and actually belongs to the person it claims to. You can be sure of this if you got this public key certificate directly from its owner, or if it bears the signature of someone else that you trust, from whom you already have a good public key. Also, the user ID should have the full name of the key's owner, not just her first name. No matter how tempted you are-- and you will be tempted-- never, NEVER give in to expediency and trust a public key you downloaded from a bulletin board, unless it is signed by someone you trust. That uncertified public key could have been tampered with by anyone, maybe even by the system administrator of the bulletin board. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SECONDS: What is the hysteria to protect children from so-called obscene stuff? GINSBERG: It's a demagogic political issue that can be used to divert attention from deeper corruption's like the S&L scandal or the rape of the planet by the post-industrial nations. Although we conquered literary censorship in books between the years '58 and '62 when, through a series of trials, Henry Miller , Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, Naked Lunch and Howl were all cleared and declared to be protected by the Constitution. That same kind of censorship which was used on literature and film now only applies to the main marketplace of ideas, electronic broadcasting. SECONDS: Why do they want to censor things? Why don't they want people to become sexually excited? GINSBERG: As Plato pointed out, "When the mode of music changes, the walls of the city shake." So when you have modern free speech in idiomatic language that people can understand and are interested in, immediately it becomes a political issue. Demagogues want to hush it up because people get to know too much. If you can get people by the balls you control their most deep-seated emotions, which are erotic. Once you control that you control all the other emotions. You take emotional control, blank out the Eros, and substitute a lot of violence. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vulnerabilities =============== No data security system is impenetrable. PGP can be circumvented in a variety of ways. In any data security system, you have to ask yourself if the information you are trying to protect is more valuable to your attacker than the cost of the attack. This should lead you to protecting yourself from the cheapest attacks, while not worrying about the more expensive attacks. Some of the discussion that follows may seem unduly paranoid, but such an attitude is appropriate for a reasonable discussion of vulnerability issues. Compromised Pass Phrase and Secret Key Probably the simplest attack is if you leave your pass phrase for your secret key written down somewhere. If someone gets it and also gets your secret key file, they can read your messages and make signatures in your name. Don't use obvious passwords that can be easily guessed, such as the names of your kids or spouse. If you make your pass phrase a single word, it can be easily guessed by having a computer try all the words in the dictionary until it finds your password. That's why a pass phrase is so much better than a password. A more sophisticated attacker may have his computer scan a book of famous quotations to find your pass phrase. An easy to remember but hard to guess pass phrase can be easily constructed by some creatively nonsensical sayings or very obscure literary quotes. For further details, see the section "How to Protect Secret Keys from Disclosure" in the Essential Topics volume of the PGP User's Guide. Public Key Tampering A major vulnerability exists if public keys are tampered with. This may be the most crucially important vulnerability of a public key cryptosystem, in part because most novices don't immediately recognize it. The importance of this vulnerability, and appropriate hygienic countermeasures, are detailed in the section "How to Protect Public Keys from Tampering" in the Essential Topics volume. To summarize: When you use someone's public key, make certain it has not been tampered with. A new public key from someone else should be trusted only if you got it directly from its owner, or if it has been signed by someone you trust. Make sure no one else can tamper with your own public key ring. Maintain physical control of both your public key ring and your secret key ring, preferably on your own personal computer rather than on a remote timesharing system. Keep a backup copy of both key rings. "Not Quite Deleted" Files Another potential security problem is caused by how most operating systems delete files. When you encrypt a file and then delete the original plaintext file, the operating system doesn't actually physically erase the data. It merely marks those disk blocks as deleted, allowing the space to be reused later. It's sort of like discarding sensitive paper documents in the paper recycling bin instead of the paper shredder. The disk blocks still contain the original sensitive data you wanted to erase, and will probably eventually be overwritten by new data at some point in the future. If an attacker reads these deleted disk blocks soon after they have been deallocated, he could recover your plaintext. In fact this could even happen accidentally, if for some reason something went wrong with the disk and some files were accidentally deleted or corrupted. A disk recovery program may be run to recover the damaged files, but this often means some previously deleted files are resurrected along with everything else. Your confidential files that you thought were gone forever could then reappear and be inspected by whomever is attempting to recover your damaged disk. Even while you are creating the original message with a word processor or text editor, the editor may be creating multiple temporary copies of your text on the disk, just because of its internal workings. These temporary copies of your text are deleted by the word processor when it's done, but these sensitive fragments are still on your disk somewhere. Let me tell you a true horror story. I had a friend, married with young children, who once had a brief and not very serious affair. She wrote a letter to her lover on her word processor, and deleted the letter after she sent it. Later, after the affair was over, the floppy disk got damaged somehow and she had to recover it because it contained other important documents. She asked her husband to salvage the disk, which seemed perfectly safe because she knew she had deleted the incriminating letter. Her husband ran a commercial disk recovery software package to salvage the files. It recovered the files all right, including the deleted letter. He read it, which set off a tragic chain of events. The only way to prevent the plaintext from reappearing is to somehow cause the deleted plaintext files to be overwritten. Unless you know for sure that all the deleted disk blocks will soon be reused, you must take positive steps to overwrite the plaintext file, and also any fragments of it on the disk left by your word processor. You can overwrite the original plaintext file after encryption by using the PGP -w (wipe) option. You can take care of any fragments of the plaintext left on the disk by using any of the disk utilities available that can overwrite all of the unused blocks on a disk. For example, the Norton Utilities for MSDOS can do this. Even if you overwrite the plaintext data on the disk, it may still be possible for a resourceful and determined attacker to recover the data. Faint magnetic traces of the original data remain on the disk after it has been overwritten. Special sophisticated disk recovery hardware can sometimes be used to recover the data. Viruses and Trojan Horses Another attack could involve a specially-tailored hostile computer virus or worm that might infect PGP or your operating system. This hypothetical virus could be designed to capture your pass phrase or secret key or deciphered messages, and covertly write the captured information to a file or send it through a network to the virus's owner. Or it might alter PGP's behavior so that signatures are not properly checked. This attack is cheaper than cryptanalytic attacks. Defending against this falls under the category of defending against viral infection generally. There are some moderately capable anti-viral products commercially available, and there are hygienic procedures to follow that can greatly reduce the chances of viral infection. A complete treatment of anti-viral and anti-worm countermeasures is beyond the scope of this document. PGP has no defenses against viruses, and assumes your own personal computer is a trustworthy execution environment. If such a virus or worm actually appeared, hopefully word would soon get around warning everyone. Another similar attack involves someone creating a clever imitation of PGP that behaves like PGP in most respects, but doesn't work the way it's supposed to. For example, it might be deliberately crippled to not check signatures properly, allowing bogus key certificates to be accepted. This "Trojan horse" version of PGP is not hard for an attacker to create, because PGP source code is widely available, so anyone could modify the source code and produce a lobotomized zombie imitation PGP that looks real but does the bidding of its diabolical master. This Trojan horse version of PGP could then be widely circulated, claiming to be from me. How insidious. You should make an effort to get your copy of PGP from a reliable source, whatever that means. Or perhaps from more than one independent source, and compare them with a file comparison utility. There are other ways to check PGP for tampering, using digital signatures. If someone you trust signs the executable version of PGP, vouching for the fact that it has not been infected or tampered with, you can be reasonably sure that you have a good copy. You could use an earlier trusted version of PGP to check the signature on a later suspect version of PGP. But this will not help at all if your operating system is infected, nor will it detect if your original copy of PGP.EXE has been maliciously altered in such a way as to compromise its own ability to check signatures. This test also assumes that you have a good trusted copy of the public key that you use to check the signature on the PGP executable. I recommend you not trust your copy of PGP unless it was originally distributed by MIT or ViaCrypt, or unless it comes with a digitally signed endorsement from me. Every new version comes with one or more digital signatures in the distribution package, signed by the originator of that release package. This is usually someone representing MIT or ViaCrypt, or whoever released that version. Check the signatures on the version that you get. I have actually seen several bogus versions of PGP distribution packages, even from apparently reliable freeware distribution channels such as CD-ROM distributors and CompuServe. Always check the signature when you get a new version. Physical Security Breach A physical security breach may allow someone to physically acquire your plaintext files or printed messages. A determined opponent might accomplish this through burglary, trash-picking, unreasonable search and seizure, or bribery, blackmail or infiltration of your staff. Some of these attacks may be especially feasible against grassroots political organizations that depend on a largely volunteer staff. It has been widely reported in the press that the FBI's COINTELPRO program used burglary, infiltration, and illegal bugging against antiwar and civil rights groups. And look what happened at the Watergate Hotel. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security just because you have a cryptographic tool. Cryptographic techniques protect data only while it's encrypted-- direct physical security violations can still compromise plaintext data or written or spoken information. This kind of attack is cheaper than cryptanalytic attacks on PGP. Tempest Attacks Another kind of attack that has been used by well-equipped opponents involves the remote detection of the electromagnetic signals from your computer. This expensive and somewhat labor-intensive attack is probably still cheaper than direct cryptanalytic attacks. An appropriately instrumented van can park near your office and remotely pick up all of your keystrokes and messages displayed on your computer video screen. This would compromise all of your passwords, messages, etc. This attack can be thwarted by properly shielding all of your computer equipment and network cabling so that it does not emit these signals. This shielding technology is known as "Tempest", and is used by some Government agencies and defense contractors. There are hardware vendors who supply Tempest shielding commercially, although it may be subject to some kind of Government licensing. Now why do you suppose the Government would restrict access to Tempest shielding? Exposure on Multi-user Systems PGP was originally designed for a single-user MSDOS machine under your direct physical control. I run PGP at home on my own PC, and unless someone breaks into my house or monitors my electromagnetic emissions, they probably can't see my plaintext files or secret keys. But now PGP also runs on multi-user systems such as UNIX and VAX/VMS. On multi-user systems, there are much greater risks of your plaintext or keys or passwords being exposed. The Unix system administrator or a clever intruder can read your plaintext files, or perhaps even use special software to covertly monitor your keystrokes or read what's on your screen. On a Unix system, any other user can read your environment information remotely by simply using the Unix "ps" command. Similar problems exist for MSDOS machines connected on a local area network. The actual security risk is dependent on your particular situation. Some multi-user systems may be safe because all the users are trusted, or because they have system security measures that are safe enough to withstand the attacks available to the intruders, or because there just aren't any sufficiently interested intruders. Some Unix systems are safe because they are only used by one user-- there are even some notebook computers running Unix. It would be unreasonable to simply exclude PGP from running on all Unix systems. PGP is not designed to protect your data while it is in plaintext form on a compromised system. Nor can it prevent an intruder from using sophisticated measures to read your secret key while it is being used. You will just have to recognize these risks on multi-user systems, and adjust your expectations and behavior accordingly. Perhaps your situation is such that you should consider running PGP only on an isolated single-user system under your direct physical control. That's what I do, and that's what I recommend. Traffic Analysis Even if the attacker cannot read the contents of your encrypted messages, he may be able to infer at least some useful information by observing where the messages come from and where they are going, the size of the messages, and the time of day the messages are sent. This is analogous to the attacker looking at your long distance phone bill to see who you called and when and for how long, even though the actual content of your calls is unknown to the attacker. This is called traffic analysis. PGP alone does not protect against traffic analysis. Solving this problem would require specialized communication protocols designed to reduce exposure to traffic analysis in your communication environment, possibly with some cryptographic assistance. Protecting Against Bogus Timestamps A somewhat obscure vulnerability of PGP involves dishonest users creating bogus timestamps on their own public key certificates and signatures. You can skip over this section if you are a casual user and aren't deeply into obscure public key protocols. There's nothing to stop a dishonest user from altering the date and time setting of his own system's clock, and generating his own public key certificates and signatures that appear to have been created at a different time. He can make it appear that he signed something earlier or later than he actually did, or that his public/secret key pair was created earlier or later. This may have some legal or financial benefit to him, for example by creating some kind of loophole that might allow him to repudiate a signature. I think this problem of falsified timestamps in digital signatures is no worse than it is already in handwritten signatures. Anyone may write a date next to their handwritten signature on a contract with any date they choose, yet no one seems to be alarmed over this state of affairs. In some cases, an "incorrect" date on a handwritten signature might not be associated with actual fraud. The timestamp might be when the signator asserts that he signed a document, or maybe when he wants the signature to go into effect. In situations where it is critical that a signature be trusted to have the actual correct date, people can simply use notaries to witness and date a handwritten signature. The analog to this in digital signatures is to get a trusted third party to sign a signature certificate, applying a trusted timestamp. No exotic or overly formal protocols are needed for this. Witnessed signatures have long been recognized as a legitimate way of determining when a document was signed. A trustworthy Certifying Authority or notary could create notarized signatures with a trustworthy timestamp. This would not necessarily require a centralized authority. Perhaps any trusted introducer or disinterested party could serve this function, the same way real notary publics do now. When a notary signs other people's signatures, it creates a signature certificate of a signature certificate. This would serve as a witness to the signature the same way real notaries now witness handwritten signatures. The notary could enter the detached signature certificate (without the actual whole document that was signed) into a special log controlled by the notary. Anyone can read this log. The notary's signature would have a trusted timestamp, which might have greater credibility or more legal significance than the timestamp in the original signature. There is a good treatment of this topic in Denning's 1983 article in IEEE Computer (see references). Future enhancements to PGP might have features to easily manage notarized signatures of signatures, with trusted timestamps. Cryptanalysis An expensive and formidable cryptanalytic attack could possibly be mounted by someone with vast supercomputer resources, such as a Government intelligence agency. They might crack your RSA key by using some new secret factoring breakthrough. Perhaps so, but it is noteworthy that the US Government trusts the RSA algorithm enough in some cases to use it to protect its own nuclear weapons, according to Ron Rivest. And civilian academia has been intensively attacking it without success since 1978. Perhaps the Government has some classified methods of cracking the IDEA(TM) conventional encryption algorithm used in PGP. This is every cryptographer's worst nightmare. There can be no absolute security guarantees in practical cryptographic implementations. Still, some optimism seems justified. The IDEA algorithm's designers are among the best cryptographers in Europe. It has had extensive security analysis and peer review from some of the best cryptanalysts in the unclassified world. It appears to have some design advantages over the DES in withstanding differential and linear cryptanalysis, which have both been used to crack the DES. Besides, even if this algorithm has some subtle unknown weaknesses, PGP compresses the plaintext before encryption, which should greatly reduce those weaknesses. The computational workload to crack it is likely to be much more expensive than the value of the message. If your situation justifies worrying about very formidable attacks of this caliber, then perhaps you should contact a data security consultant for some customized data security approaches tailored to your special needs. Boulder Software Engineering, whose address and phone are given at the end of this document, can provide such services. In summary, without good cryptographic protection of your data communications, it may have been practically effortless and perhaps even routine for an opponent to intercept your messages, especially those sent through a modem or E-mail system. If you use PGP and follow reasonable precautions, the attacker will have to expend far more effort and expense to violate your privacy. If you protect yourself against the simplest attacks, and you feel confident that your privacy is not going to be violated by a determined and highly resourceful attacker, then you'll probably be safe using PGP. PGP gives you Pretty Good Privacy. Copyright Anonymous <prz(a)acm.org> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Son, if you think it appropriate, you might tell your mom: The Aztecs were extremely clean. The Spanish conquistadors were extremely dirty. The Spaniards won. LMBoyd Web Site ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" "WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs" "InfoWar (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet') Soviet Union Sickle of Eunuchs Secret WebSite ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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InfoWar Epilogue 7 (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet')
by Philip R. Zimmermann 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1 0

No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It was a dark and misty night.

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Deliverable Mail
by 89726768＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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I Broke PGP!!!
by Jon Callas 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry... Jon ----- Jon Callas jon(a)pgp.com Chief Scientist 555 Twin Dolphin Drive Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. Suite 570 (415) 596-1960 Redwood Shores, CA 94065 Fingerprints: D1EC 3C51 FCB1 67F8 4345 4A04 7DF9 C2E6 F129 27A9 (DSS) 665B 797F 37D1 C240 53AC 6D87 3A60 4628 (RSA)

3 2

Re: Secure envelopes
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The only `culture' Timmy May possesses is that cultivated from his foreskin scrapings. \|/ (*,*) Timmy May _m_-_m_

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Re: poverty traps (Re: Sa
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jonathan Wienke wrote: >that socialist cesspool New York City. This is true, NYC is an SC. My pinko nose is barely above the surface, for it's a hump treading the globe's shipped in effluvia with concrete boots made of the NIMBYs' unpaid share. And you never get used to it, for sure the waves caused by tens of thousands of NIMBYs cannonballing in for X-rated sin lacking IMBY.

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Re: Orthogonality and Disaster Recovery (fwd)
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: kent(a)bywater.songbird.com > On Sat, Oct 25, 1997 at 04:28:52PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote: > > Any idea how a term meaning 'at right angles' came to hold all the various > > interpretations it now does?... > > > > I see this word in a lot of my reading and it almost never implies any sort > > of 'indipendent multi-variant reference system'. > I can't believe that you haven't studied vector spaces, Jim. In that > particular niche of mathematics, the meaning you quote is precisely the > meaning of 'orthogonal'. Vector algebra underlies a very large part > of mathematics, and modern physics would not exist without it. I believe that is Jim's point. The dictionary definition and "one task, one tool" seem to have quite a gap between them. -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################

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Flag ban in Mississippi [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > FLAG BAN TUGS ON OLE MISS TRADITIONS > > Students wave Confederate flags > > Confederate banner impedes athletic recruiting > > October 25, 1997 > Web posted at: 10:44 p.m. EDT (0244 GMT) > > From Correspondent Brian Cabell > > OXFORD, Mississippi (CNN) -- On any given football Saturday, when > the Ole Miss Rebels find the end zone and the crowd explodes, you > can see Confederate flags being waved. > > But there are not nearly as many rebel flags as in years past -- and > there will soon be even fewer if the University of Mississippi's > chancellor has his way. > > This week, chancellor Robert Khayat ordered a ban on all sticks at > athletic events, starting next week. It's ostensibly for safety > reasons, but no one is fooled -- it is clearly an attempt to keep > out the Confederate flags attached to those sticks. CNN's Brian > Cabell reports > icon 2 min., 1 sec. VXtreme streaming video > > At Ole Miss, tradition is grudgingly giving way to the political and > social reality that the rebel flag is perceived by some people, > particularly African Americans, as a racist symbol. > > "We're tired of the attention, the negative publicity that we're > getting," said athletic director Pete Boone. "I mean, we've got a > great university here, a great academic program, and we're being > held back from a national perspective because of this Confederate > flag." > > Saturday's football game against Alabama was the first since Khayat > ordered the ban. And while the student senate this week also > recommended that the rebel flags be left home, they were > particularly visible in the student section. > > "Other people can do things and wave things and it's fine, but if we > do it, it seems like it's racist," complained one student. "But it's > not racist. We're proud of our Southern heritage." > > Ironically, many of those who have forsaken the flag are older Ole > Miss fans, who express fears about what the Confederate flag in the > stands does to the quality of the team on the field. > > Indeed, Ole Miss football coach Tommy Tuberville has told fans that > the university is losing black recruits because of the flag. He says > he's gratified that flags are disappearing. > > "I'm proud of our students and our fans, and I think they understand > the situation," he said. "Hopefully, we can continue to make > progress."

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G7 to meet in Amazon [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > G7 TO MEET IN AMAZON TO REVIEW DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM > > G7 graphic October 25, 1997 > Web posted at: 8:03 p.m. EDT (0003 GMT) > > BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) -- Brazil and the Group of Seven > industrialized nations meet in the Amazonian capital of Manaus next > week to agree on the next stage of a program promoting sustainable > development in the rain forest. > > The annual meeting of G7 donors to the so-called Pilot Program > (G7-PP), administered by the World Bank, begins formally on Tuesday, > with Monday dedicated to presentations by Brazilian government > officials of projects in the Amazon. > > "When we speak of the future, that means completing and > consolidating current projects and thinking about Phase Two of the > G7-PP," Brazilian Environment Minister Gustavo Krause said. > > Starting six years ago, the program has given out $181.3 million of > a total of $250 million pledged to fund projects such as the > demarcation of Indian reserves and protecting fishing communities > from large-scale competitors. > > The rest is budgeted, one of the aims of the three-day meeting will > be to identify new sources of money and coax fresh funds out of the > participants -- Germany, the United States, the European Union, > Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain and Canada. > > Germany has financed the bulk of projects, contributing 35 percent > of the total and even more as the principal economic power in the > European Union. > > The United States, despite spending pledges made by President > Clinton on a visit to Brazil earlier this month, lags in fourth > place, behind the EU and Japan. > > Environmental pressure groups said the most important aspect of the > meeting is a proposal to establish zones in the gigantic Amazon > river basin. Map of Brazil > > They say Pilot Program managers are resigned to the fact Brazil will > pursue large-scale infrastructure projects in the rain forest, > including paving a road from Manaus to Venezuela and river-widening > projects to boost soybean exports. > > "It seems important that the realities of the Amazon region and of > its political weight and significance must be taken into account if > effective conservation of at least a good part of the Amazon are to > be achieved," the World Bank's Rain Forest Unit said in a memo. > > The infrastructure projects basically correspond to what the bank > calls "development corridors" where the "objective is to increase > and geographically concentrate economic activity." > > Such corridors would be counter-balanced by "conservation corridors" > where biodiversity would be protected. > > In between, in so-called inter-corridor spaces, the Rain Forest Unit > suggests policies should make sure economic activity that preserves > as much of the forest as possible becomes more attractive than > clearing land for agriculture. > > A concrete task set by the officials meeting in Manaus is to decide > when Phase Two of the program will begin. > > They must also decide what type of transition is needed to blend > Phase One projects into a broader, cohesive program that fits into > the Brazilian government's plans for the region. > > Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Orthogonal
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I believe the first definition for orthogonal is not the vector or Cartesian definition but rather from geometry. Where, for example, polygonal means a closed shape made up from many line segments, orthogonal means a closed shape made from line segments at right angles to each other. The simplest being the square. DeCarte used the concept of ortho- to describe the relationship between the axis of his measurement system, hence orthogonal. Strictly speaking orthogonal is a misnomer and should be orthometric or 'measurements at right angles'. I am interested in how orthogonal obtained its variety of other meanings. I run across it in linguistics, computer science, philosophy, etc. In most of them it means some sort of pure or simple relationship. Unfortunately I can't find any sort of description of how it got expanded this way. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

2 1

Re: poverty traps (Re: Sa
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- -=> Quoting In:anon@anon.efga.org (Monty Cantsin) to Harka <=- In> The government is not Janice's friend. It takes away $18,000 In> from her each year and plunges her into poverty, sort of. If In> you are appealing to the government to assist Janice, first In> ask it to get the hell out of the way. (I realize you may In> just be saying that Janice's plight is unavoidable, not that In> she should be helped with government money.) Hmm, we all agree, that the government is not somebody to be trusted to be your friend. However, we also know the amount of laws possible to "violate" and the consequences that would have. And one of the worst things you can do is evading taxes. At least when they clamp down on you. Not something, I'd recommend to a mother of four kids (that she really doesn't want to give up to government-so-schill-workers). Jim Choate commented on that already, so I save further words. In> Janice should be baby sitting. Were she to take in 4 kids at In> $500/month, she would make as much as her job and be able to In> watch her own kids during the same time. True in short-term. But after 8 kids have been rummaging around in your apartment every day (even without licence and off-the-books and all that stuff) you can definitely expect to spend a couple of grands on repairs in a matter of a month. In> Telephone: $20/month In> Electricity: $40/month (?) In> Heat: $100/month (?) In> Food: $600/month (generous) In> Goodwill Clothes: $100/month (generous) In> Total: $860/month You obviously don't live in NYC (and don't have kids). It costs her alone six bucks a day just to get to work and back (with public transportation). In> The food is generous because four of the five are kids, the In> oldest only being 12. Kids don't each much. You're confirming my suspicion about not having kids :) In> Of course, there is no law that requires one to live in New In> York City. As a matter of fact there is. At least for her. She's _required_ by the divorce-court to live within a 60-mile-zone of her ex-husband and father of her kids (he's in the City too). For visitation-rights and all that (i.e. she can't move out of state without his approval or be charged with kidnapping, if she does it anyway). A thing applicable to probably hundreds of thousands of people (women mostly) in the US. And that alone limits one's "free choice of employers" quite severely. In> It seems pretty clear that making money was not her top In> priority. It's never been a secret that teachers are not top In> earners. I'm not seeing a description of somebody who really In> tried to make money in a serious way. Talking about freedom at the same time then is an oxymoron and you're confirming my "criticisms about the free market" (Yes Tim, I have re-considered my position without changing my perspective in the end). Capitalism in it's current form does not allow for individual freedom for most people (exceptions apply), because they have to make the money to be free (independent). If that requires doing for years, what you don't want to do (working in computers, although you hate them and all you really want to do is paint and live as an artist but can't afford to, for example), then that means by definition, that freedom has to be given up. At least temporarely and as mentioned before, that can be a _very_ long time for most people (who have been born into the "wrong" families, for example). In> Good for her. It sounds like Janice may have the strength of In> character to turn her situation around. Btw., I'll forward her all of the advice and suggestions everybody gave. Thanks for everybodies effort and consideration of the (for her personal) matter. Also, (violins or not :)) : It was not my primary intention to cause tears of compassion for Janices personal situation (a lot of people on and off the list have a rough time too to get on in life), but to introduce some realism into the discussion of "free choice of employers". Cypherpunks sometimes tend to become somewhat theoretical about things, neglecting the possibility, that it may not apply on a larger (real-life)scale. Pointing such things out I regard as a very important thing to the effectiveness of Cypherpunks-discussions and subsequent influence. The argument of an (for everybody) existing "free choice of employers", for example, should by now be seen as rather relativ, if not completely negated. Further it is a social issue of importance also for Cypherpunks. Obviously we don't want governments "taking care of people", but desire individual freedom, self-determination and independence instead. However, as proven such things are possible in the "free market" only to a limited degree, i.e not applicable by default to everybody, IMHO. Do I have a solution? Honestly, I don't and I wish I had. That doesn't prevent me from seeing (and pointing out) things, that I don't agree with when looking out the window or talking with friends, who are in a very different position than I might be in. If anybody _does_ have a solution, that enables _all_ people (regardless of background) to become truly free and also provides a realistic way to achieve that (for everybody), then I'll be more than happy to listen and to adjust my own perspective. Ciao Harka /*************************************************************/ /* E-mail: harka(at)nycmetro.com (PGP-encrypted mail pref'd) */ /* PGP public key available upon request. [KeyID: 04174301] */ /* F-print: FD E4 F8 6D C1 6A 44 F5 28 9C 40 6E B8 94 78 E8 */ /*<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>*/ /* May there be peace in this world, may all anger dissolve */ /* and may all living beings find the way to happiness... */ /*************************************************************/ ... "It is better to die on our feet than to live on our knees." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAgUBNFNs/jltEBIEF0MBAQFfYwf9FthPQH1q3A66xWtMf/9NGfOf4Vn6JaY9 Gt/6nVCQ+nZJIRPP//9NwowOm7DcbEYMCKASHVEIGNyUtGuWpcf1wZxywlHJ/AEs d34/XwCYe9y/L/pIwk7RfN9aqr5pALw5FGAVPWQZiCyom8XuWSMcPrkEQxsctp99 Qs9cQ33fgBfvpydkM7l9ugkPs5eynycv/pHLvwym9BMl2jQxe4IiUqs1tNbjW8Er A3qM39bmU599GHF3kyvRy+w8ATC1oFg3qvFVx8DvH/856VgD0jRW0rAPhC2jOcYb NbgHADbw469uG7hVFQSY8ghN1aXCgGDJAI8Fih3OGfsgfm/ttdIU0Q== =r2F2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- If encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption...

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Re: Orthogonality and Disaster Recovery
by David Sternlight 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dunno why I got this since I'm not on the cypherpunks list, but I found it interesting and worth responding to. (Tim--please repost to the list if my attempt to do so fails.) Robert Hettinga wrote: > > --- begin forwarded text > > X-Sender: tcmay(a)mail.got.net > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 13:52:05 -0700 > To: cypherpunks(a)algebra.com > From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> > Subject: Orthogonality and Disaster Recovery > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net > Precedence: bulk > Reply-To: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> > X-Loop: cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net > > One of the themes of modern computing I strongly support is that of > "orthogonality," or clean functionality. A browser should not also try to > be a money management program. A word processor should not also try to be > an accounting program. This is a sensible criterion when the functions are indeed independent. There are small leakages even there--thus an on-line money management program which can send inquiries about incomplete transactions to a bank and receive replies needs a small e-mailer and certainly an Internet interface. The argument has, however, become polarized for self-serving purposes by Microsoft. They have linked their Internet Explorer with the OS, claiming the desktop as the place of commonality. That permits them to require bundling of the two. They have apparently threatened vendors who don't bundle THEIR browser on the desktop with pulling their Windows license. They have refused to allow vendors to remove their browser icon from the desktop on grounds it then "doesn't present the complete 'Windows experience' to the user". What's next-integrating Word with the desktop to drive out competing word processors; integrating Access to drive out competing data bases. The matter is currently under challenge by the Federal government, whose definition of orgthoganality seems to be that a particular application has (in practice) or has had a separate market--been sold separately. > > Failure to observe this rule of thumb has led to spreadsheets which can run > MPEG movies in spreadsheet cells (I'm not kidding), and to Web browsers > which take 20 MB of free memory to run reliably because they also contain > mediocre news readers, mediocre mailers, and lots of bloatware cruft. Under the Federal definition as long as a news reader or a mailer have been sold separately they are separate product. But in this case there is important common functionality. Netscape Communicator integrates not only the mailer and newsreader, but provides a near-identical interface to the two and lists newsgroups as a continuation of your list of mail folders. The model feels a little artificial (and their newsreader doesn't yet have filters so it's inconvenient), but one can see some sense in it. Similarly, one often wishes to mail pages one is browsing. Integration of the mailer and the browser are thus quite convenient. It is true one can use the passing of events and the clipboard to do it with separate applications but that's both inelegant and a source of inefficiency and problems. The fundamental problem with the modular approach is configuration control and that is a big enough mess as it is with control panels and extensions, as any user can attest. A small industry has sprung up which reports inconsistencies there, and programs which test for such incompatibilities (and are quite time-consuming) also exist (at least on the Mac), illustrating the reality of the problem. In such cases strong central control and integrated operation is best. It is, in fact, the root of the Mac metaphor, where Apple's Human Interface Guidelines have forced a common user interface on all "Mac-like" applications, making for a short learning curve and the famous lack of a need to RTFM for most Mac applications. Windows has a long way to go but is heading in a similar direction (one hopes). Meanwhile, the "modular" approach of many Windows applications leads to remarks like anything other than changing a file name wiil likely require a reboot. (There's a grain of truth in every satire.) >Much of the strenght of Unix has obviously come from the > philosophy that a function or utility should do some small set of things > well and cleanly, with chaining of these clean tools to accomplish more > complicated tasks. It is also the reason why Unix is arcane, complex, and difficult for most novices and why poor imitations of Mac windowing and the Mac finder have sprung up. The value of Unix isn't that modularity. It is the robustness of the kernel. In fact modern operating systems use a Unix Kernet under a Mac-like user interface (Rhapsody, Be, etc.). > > A crypto program like PGP is intended to encrypt messages between a sender > and a recipient, or to provide authentication through signatures, or to > encrypt files on a storage medium. These are the classic, well-documented, > oft-discussed functions of crypto. Look in textbooks under "crypto" and > there won't be much talk of how to supply MIS with emergency backdoors, or > ways to monitor employees. This seems to be a defense of a major failing of PGP. Rather than being a complete package for a user function (encrypting and signing mail, for example) it is a pre- and post-processor which requires a separate mailer and newsreader. In fact this whole argument may be viewed as an attempt to defend that failing of PGP. The failing is understandable since Phil wanted to get something out there quickly and hadn't (and probably still doesn't have) the resources and talents available to do a complete PGP mailer/newsreader--much less be able to compete successfully with those who DO do such mailers and newsreaders. By the way, if one's world-view is PGP-centric there's another argument for combining a mailer and a newsreader--both need to be able to sign traffic and process signed traffic; to pass signed and perhaps encrypted files. > > If properly modularized and orthogonalized (so to speak), such crypto > programs can then be used as building blocks for other tasks, like > remailers, data havens, and so on. A defense of the obsolete, in my view. Like most "bright ideas" I believe this notion of modules and plug-ins will eventually collapse of its own interface management weight except in cases of both very tightly defined sandboxes, and open-ended/niche needs (such as in an OS or a do-everything text editor such as BBEdit) which the vendor hasn't the personnel and time to fill. Don't be misled by the need for such niche tweaks into thinking there's a fundamental principle at work here. > > But there is a growing tendency, as seen in the bloatware examples of > browsers and spreadsheets mentioned above, to throw in all kinds of "wish > list" and "wouldn't it be nice" stuff. PGP is headed for bloatware. ("It's > not just a crypto program, it's also a tax preparation and disaster > planning program!") Netscape has really been moving toward a multi-purpose Net/Web OS for some time. That's why it has a browser, mailer, newsreader, web page maker, conferencer, and push-traffic channel handler. If done well (there's the rub) it is both more convenient, more consistent of user interface, and more integrated, providing user benefits. It is true there are those who prefer some other module (Eudora or Claris e-mailer; Newswatcher) either out of habit or desire. To accommodate them Netscape has unbundled the browser. But that's simply an accomodation to a sub-market of relatively sophisticated users and not a mainstrem strategy. Remember that Netscape is used by about 25 million out there (give or take), and most of them haven't the time, patience or expertise to manage several non-integrated modules. They want another of the Mac's basic philosophical principles (regardless of OS platform)--plug and play. Here, too, Microsoft is just beginnning to catch up but that's the clear direction they're going in. > > I'm quite certain that the Security and MIS directors at various companies > asked PGP, Inc. to include message recovery features. Not so much to handle > the very rare (almost nonexistent) cases where a piece of mail sent at some > time in the past has to be recovered because Alice was hit by a truck, or > similiar unlikely events (*), but because Security and MIS folks would like > the option of "monitoring" e-mail traffic. Anyone who has been exposed to industrial espionage knows that one needs such features in a corporate environment, not only for micro-disaster recovery but also for investigatory purposes. > > (* I have heard no plausible scenarios under which transient > communications, which are presumably stored in the form composed > (plaintext) on the sender's machine or in the for received and read (also > in plaintext) on the receiver's machine, need to be recovered from the > *transit* state. We know why the FBI wants access to communications > keys--because access to the transit state is what they get when they > wiretap or sniff a communications line--but there is no plausbile > explanation of why a company would not simply ask Alice for the plaintext, > or ask Bob if for some reason Alice is unavailable. The idea someone > floated, that he needs to go in and decrypt his employee's mail in > emergencies is far-fetched. Not in any real company where much daily design, negotiation, and dynamic interaction exists only in e-mail until things are finalized by the attorneys or a design review board. > > But are such bloatware crypto programs even good for disaster recovery? I > say they are not. I say e-mail will be a tiny, tiny portion of the recovery > strategy if Alice gets hit by a truck, for example. Far more important will > be recovery of her hard disk and related files. And if Alice is a contract negotiator doing it via e-mail? There are many other examples where your assertions break down. > > (No, I am _not_ proposing anything be added to PGP to deal with this > disaster planning. Nor am I proposing that PGP enforce plaintext storage, > or anything else for that matter. These are all matters _orthogonal_ to the > basic function of a crypto program, and a crypto program cannot enforce > crypto hygiene any more than a spreadsheet can enforce good tax planning > hygiene.) A better example would be a money management program with a tax module. They are linked and one's money management strategies have tax consequences and vice-versa. You can always find inappropriate examples where little synergy exists, but there are plenty of examples where strong synergy DOES exist. See also my examples above. > > I am also not terribly interested in convoluted, byzantine schemes for > building "CDR" and such into crypto programs, as some are proposing. Again, > this is trying to make a crypto program into a disaster preparation > product, and trying to (partly) solve backup and disaster problems best > solved in other ways. Not something PGP should worry about (either the > program or the company). You are trying to refute a valid argument by labelling. The issue isn't labels such as "disaster recovery program" but functionality and synergy. You can always create distinctions that would try to make your case, but you do so only by ignoring other, important distinctions. I think this is enough to deal with the fundamental issue, so I'm going to pass on the rest of the side-issues such as "What if Alice forgets her key." The main issues dominate such side issues. David

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Another David Bohm book [non-crypto]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I know this isn't crypto related but several times David Bohm has come up in discussions relating to physics and various interpretations of Quantum Physics. Check out the essay collection: Quantum Implications: Essays in Honour of David Bohm ed. B.J. Hiley, F.D. Peat ISBN 0-415-06960-2 $19.95 Hiley collaborated with Bohm in his physics and co-authored The Undivided Universe, while Peat co-authored with Bohm the book Science, Order, and Creativity. 30 essays by: B.J. Hiley & F.D. Peat David Bohm E.P. Gross D. Pines A.J. Leggett R. Penrose T.D. Clark B. d'Espagnat J.P. Vigier, C. Dewdney, P.R. Holland A. Kyprianidis I. Prigogine, Y. Elskens Y. Aharonov, D. Albert J.S. Bell R.P. Feynman G.F. Chew H.P. Stapp C.W. Kilmister F.A.M. Frescura, B.J. Hiley D. Finkelstein P.R. Holland, C. Phillipidis H. Frohlich R. Rosen B.C. Goodwin M.H.F. Wilkins A. Ford K.H. Pribram G.G. Globus M. Ullman D. Shainberg J. Briggs R. Weber ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ 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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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, plus lots of interesting links to remailer-related resources, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail. For more information, see: http://www.c2.org/~raph/premail.html For the PGP public keys of the remailers, finger pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{'cyber'} = '<alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord ?"; $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"jam"} = "<remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek"; $remailer{"winsock"} = "<winsock(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> cpunk pgp pgponly hash cut ksub reord ?"; $remailer{'nym'} = '<config(a)nym.alias.net> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"squirrel"} = "<mix(a)squirrel.owl.de> cpunk mix pgp pgponly hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{'weasel'} = '<config(a)weasel.owl.de> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"reno"} = "<middleman(a)cyberpass.net> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek reord ?"; $remailer{"cracker"} = "<remailer(a)anon.efga.org> cpunk mix remix pgp hash ksub esub latent cut ek reord post"; $remailer{'redneck'} = '<config(a)anon.efga.org> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"bureau42"} = "<remailer(a)bureau42.ml.org> cpunk mix pgp ksub hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"neva"} = "<remailer(a)neva.org> cpunk pgp pgponly hash cut ksub ?"; $remailer{"lcs"} = "<mix(a)anon.lcs.mit.edu> mix"; $remailer{"medusa"} = "<medusa(a)weasel.owl.de> mix middle" $remailer{"McCain"} = "<mccain(a)notatla.demon.co.uk> mix middle"; $remailer{"valdeez"} = "<valdeez(a)juno.com> cpunk pgp pgponly hash ek"; $remailer{"arrid"} = "<arrid(a)juno.com> cpunk pgp pgponly hash ek"; $remailer{"hera"} = "<goddesshera(a)juno.com> cpunk pgp pgponly hash ek"; $remailer{"htuttle"} = "<h_tuttle(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> cpunk pgp hash latent cut post ek"; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu is _not_ a remailer. usura(a)replay.com is _not_ a remailer. remailer(a)crynwr.com is _not_ a remailer. There is no remailer at relay.com. Groups of remailers sharing a machine or operator: (cyber mix reno winsock) (weasel squirrel medusa) (cracker redneck) (nym lcs) (valdeez arrid hera) This remailer list is somewhat phooey. Go check out http://www.publius.net/rlist.html for a good one. Last update: Thu 23 Oct 97 15:48:06 PDT remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- hera goddesshera(a)juno.com ------------ 5:03:45 99.86% nym config(a)nym.alias.net +*#**#**### :34 95.82% redneck config(a)anon.efga.org #*##*+#**** 2:00 95.44% mix mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com +++ ++++++* 19:18 95.27% squirrel mix(a)squirrel.owl.de -- ---+--- 2:34:19 95.16% cyber alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net *++***+ ++ 11:26 95.11% replay remailer(a)replay.com **** *** 10:06 94.93% arrid arrid(a)juno.com ----.------ 8:50:34 94.41% bureau42 remailer(a)bureau42.ml.org --------- 3:38:29 93.53% cracker remailer(a)anon.efga.org + +*+*+*+ 16:32 92.80% jam remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca + +*-++++ 24:14 92.79% winsock winsock(a)rigel.cyberpass.net -..-..---- 9:59:18 92.22% neva remailer(a)neva.org ------****+ 1:03:02 90.39% valdeez valdeez(a)juno.com 4:58:22 -36.97% reno middleman(a)cyberpass.net 1:01:28 -2.65% History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. ek Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. mix Can accept messages in Mixmaster format. reord Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages. Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and haven't verified the reord info myself. mon Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email. filter Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages destined for public forums are subject to filtering. Raph Levien

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Click HERE for Boy Sex
by secret＠nsa.fbi.cia.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An interesting anti-censorship experiment is currently taking place on Usenet. It's ingredients: One Libertarian-minded California ISP named InterBBS which provides a variety of services to various pay XXX Web sites, for resale to their customers, including an uncensored, unfiltered, and unexpurgated newsfeed, which InterBBS is protected by Common Carrier status from liability for the contents of. A nifty piece of software, recently added to InterBBS, which runs something called "newspix", a web-based interface to Usenet binaries pictures groups, pre-decoded and cross-referenced for your instant point-and-clicking pleasure. A guy named "Dave", a customer of InterBBS, who is reselling the services of InterBBS through a pay boy pictures site, including web access to a number of boy-related erotica newsgroups, whose content neither Dave nor InterBBS controls. Dave is very careful to tell us that it is imperative that we not download anything which would be illegal according to our community standards, and that if we "unknowingly" do so, we should delete it immediately. InterBBS, and its lawyers, maintain that their decoded neatly indexed web-accessible Usenet pictures service enjoys the same immunity for its content due to their Common Carrier status as the raw newsfeed does, and of course, they wouldn't think of keeping records on which customers read which Usenet articles. The owner of InterBBS is Marlin Schwanke, who also runs *CENSORED*.com, and is well known for giving bandwidth to persecuted causes. The net effect of all of these things coming together is that there now exists convenient pseudoanonymous web access to all boy-related child porn pictures posted to Usenet, for a small fee you may bill monthly to the credit card of your choice. This new service has caused a huge rift amongst Net Boylovers, who believe that even if this operation is technically legal, and protects the confidentiality of its customers, that such conspicuous promotion of locations on Usenet where illegal material is very likely to be found, and facilitating its easy access to the non-technically minded for profit, is not in anyones best interests. For Further Reading: http://boypics.com/newspix.html (Dave's Naughty Pix) http://www.ivan.net/bc/messages/38850.htm (Marlin Answers His Critics) http://www.interbbs.com/ (InterBBS home page) Surely the Feds are not going to take this lying down. :) Will Marlin and Dave be dragged to Tennessee or Utah to face trial in front of a bunch of inbred jurors? Will yokels from the cast of "Deliverance" in the courtroom audience squeal like pigs when the words "10 year old erect penis" are mentioned? Will Dave get a cell next to Robert Thomas of AA BBS fame? Will Reno and Freeh engage in unnatural sex and have a deformed cow? Is this the technology that will finally drive Officer Mike "Sewer Site" Paladino to take his own life? Stay tuned for the next episode of "Boy Pics from Dave." --BoySexMonger

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FUTUREWEAR (fashion, clothing and clubwear)
by daniel＠relaxed.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FUTUREWEAR (fashion, clothing and clubwear) by Daniel Eder FUTUREWEAR T-SHIRTS NOW AVAILABLE: http://www.futurewear.com/ -------- wholesalers, resalers and promoters: contact me at daniel(a)futurewear.com

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Choices
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Both Monty Cantsin and WHGIII have commented upon current personal conditions being the result of one's past choices (leading up to it). While I agree from a mere causal viewpoint, on a personal level I would like to point out a few things nevertheless: We can take as given, that everybody's life is a stream of decisions or choices. We make 'em to the best of our ability as we go along in life. However, having a choice in matters does not imply the guarantee of making the _right_ choices. In fact, even society acknowledges that fact by making certain choices available only after a certain point in life, such as voting, marriage, driving, drinking etc.etc on the ground, that making such decisions requires a certain level of insight and maturity. But there's _still_ no guarantee for making right choices even after the "magical" age of 18 (or 21). The only thing one can do is to gather enough information in order to make the best choice based on available information and conditions _known_ to you _at that time_. And here's also the catch. By making a certain choice, one does usually _not_ choose the consequences of his/her actions consciously! In fact, the possible consequences may not even be foreseeable, predictable or expected in any way! One does not drive a car with the previous conscious knowledge of crashing it and living in a wheelchair ever after. One does not climb Mt. Everest with the expectation of perishing in a snow-storm. One does not start using PGP based on the prediction, that your key will be GAK'ed at some point. Let's take the example of Janice one more time (violins for Monty:)) : certainly her decision to get married and have 4 kids was her personal and free choice at that time. But it was not foreseeable nor expectable for her, that her husband would take off after a while for another chick, leaving her with the kids and a bunch of bills to pay! Thus she married him and later did what every wife would do: supporting him while he went to school instead of keeping the money for herself as a backup-cushion in case he leaves. Is that really so out of the ordinary a choice?? But even if one is able to make fairly good decisions overall in life: you may not have previous conditions necessary to make certain choices. If you're born into a poor family, who just can't afford to send you to College, how much of a choice to study will you have in that event? More likely is, that you'll have to work and aid in the support of the family instead of going to College. But are you to be held responsible for the conditions that you are born into or grow up under? Clearly not. As you go along in life, one's personal ability to influence your surroundings, conditions and overall life increase (with right effort). But to expect everybody to be able to make certain choices in a certain (right) way, or even expecting those choices being available, is not based on the realities of life but a mere projection from _your_ reality onto "theirs". So is the statement of "screw 'em all" (if they weren't able to make certain choices for reasons we don't know about). Not only does it lack basic notions of humanity, such as caring for other people, but also devalues the human ability to learn and change. Just because you were young and careless (out of lack of understanding at that time) or you were born in a slum in Rio de Janeiro (or NYC) shouldn't mean, that you should still get "screwed" for it when you're fifty or you now deserve the dis-respect of society and no chances anymore. You may have never had them... While technically it is probably correct to say, that current conditions are caused by previous actions (different people have different expressions for that: karma, choices, fate etc.), there's no justification for suffering and certainly none for watching it passively and saying "they deserve it", IMHO. But then this is also a valid choice one can freely make. You just have to live with the consequences of it :) Ciao Harka /*************************************************************/ /* E-mail: harka(at)nycmetro.com (PGP-encrypted mail pref'd) */ /* PGP public key available upon request. [KeyID: 04174301] */ /* F-print: FD E4 F8 6D C1 6A 44 F5 28 9C 40 6E B8 94 78 E8 */ /*<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>*/ /* May there be peace in this world, may all anger dissolve */ /* and may all living beings find the way to happiness... */ /*************************************************************/ ... "Of course I care about other people...I watch CNN!" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAgUBNFOmJjltEBIEF0MBAQHsKwf/Sh6IWC0UCvSiWAQsTcmDqyw4k6v7AuIg z0IlsrcSbpkBA0c3q2ghaq2TfqFIfOgSIIFr8FKK2Za3erIp6yPfcvc8V+7Lwg70 r7tnBM0janv/3j9asehV4PxiXtghQIZOxqL+14yzKgCHGzYkDglIzMmOBOcz2xrQ lziiPMirHzOii06PJ0daBwhxhqva4zw2m6fWnqdkMfr2/mNZ8/39Y8juCqG6AeSs /WP4D4cpXP581ldHskRMkTvYZEEN6IjnRU9PwWbYvSikU61Y7LXTaD4H39N4Xr2V LYx0AdvAmaOC4H3f/8tU29AkAMFgsVGn3moKzG2FE6frFlbG3L1HPg== =XB87 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- If encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption...

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Choices
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You are What you do When it counts The Masao ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ 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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Ohio registers Trick-or-Treaters [CNN] [Politics]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > OHIO TOWN REQUIRES TRICK-OR-TREATERS TO BE LICENSED > > Graphic October 26, 1997 > Web posted at: 4:29 p.m. EST (2129 GMT) > > BRIDGEPORT, Ohio (CNN) -- The Bridgeport City Council, fearing too > many out-of-town children would descend on the community for > Halloween, is requiring trick-or-treaters to have a license to ask > for candy this year. > > Kids age 14 and under who register with the city will be given an > orange sticker to wear in order to receive goodies. Bridgeport has > also moved Halloween celebrations from Friday to Thursday to avoid > busy Friday night traffic. > > While Police Chief William Fraser is going along with the sticker > plan, he and his officers won't be out looking for unlicensed > goblins. After all, there won't be a penalty for not having a > sticker. > > The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Re: Click HERE for Boy Sex
by Eric Cordian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

secret(a)nsa.fbi.cia.org writes: [And to think I almost deleted this without reading it, presuming it was SPAM] > InterBBS, and its lawyers, maintain that their decoded neatly indexed > web-accessible Usenet pictures service enjoys the same immunity for > its content due to their Common Carrier status as the raw newsfeed > does, and of course, they wouldn't think of keeping records on which > customers read which Usenet articles. Didn't the feds raid some company right here in Texas a while back, called NetPics, for providing decoded Usenet pictures via a Web interface? As I recall, NetPics got raided even though they tried to filter out child porn, and had all of their equipment seized. One hesitates to even think of what the feds will do to someone who is deliberately offering only decoded boysex newsgroups over the Web, but it will undoubtedly involve sharpened castration shears and lots of really bad publicity. > The net effect of all of these things coming together is that there > now exists convenient pseudoanonymous web access to all boy-related > child porn pictures posted to Usenet, for a small fee you may bill > monthly to the credit card of your choice. Providing the Feds haven't already taken it over, killed everyone associated with it, and decided to run it as a sting. Of course, this is an interesting legal question. Clearly, offering raw Usenet content the ISP doesn't originate absolutely shields the ISP from responsibility for the material, under current telecommunications law. The unanswered legal question is whether processing the raw news feed in some way, such as would be needed to provide web access to decoded pictures, also enjoys the same protection. It would seem that automatic transcoding of Usenet, in a way which is not content sensitive, should not be considered the origination of new content. On the other hand, the Feds are hardly going to sit still for a URL which, when clicked upon, fills ones browser screen with hundreds of thumbnails of blond pre-teen Scandinavian boys in mid-orgasm, with a legend which reads - "Click on thumbnail to get full-sized picture." And all for only $6 a month. > http://www.ivan.net/bc/messages/38850.htm (Marlin Answers His Critics) This guy has elephant-sized balls. I wish him well in his quest to push the envelope. Certainly a lot more interesting than Prof. Bernstein and that Snuffle thing. :) > Surely the Feds are not going to take this lying down. :) "If it saves only one child..." -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Re: NAMBLA embattled -- mirror sites?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan writes: >Folks on f-c and cypherpunks have mirrored holocaust revisionist web >pages, banned books, and censored newspapers. Now I understand that NAMBLA >is in danger of losing its home on the web. Anyone up for mirroring the >(text-only) publications of perhaps the world's most controversial >organization? Nah, I'll pass on this one. If the membership list is included, I'd be glad to forward it to my local police, though... I'm not sure the right to free speech includes the right to endorse guys fucking little boys, whether they give it a moniker like "transgenerational love" or not. Any sex with a minor is rape, since they can't legally give consent. All Hillary Klinton's "It Takes A Village" bullshit aside, I can't see giving NAMBLA the same kind of protection as someone like Zundel. Ratbert

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Republic of Texas seperatist go on trial [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > TRIAL SET FOR REPUBLIC OF TEXAS SEPARATISTS > > > > ALPINE, Texas (Reuters) - Texas separatists who held off police in a > seven-day armed standoff in May before surrendering are to go on > trial this week on charges of engaging in organized criminal > activity. > > Republic of Texas "ambassador" Richard McLaren and three of his > followers could face up to 99 years in prison if found guilty of the > first-degree state felony charges. > > McLaren and his bodyguard Robert "White Eagle" Otto are facing trial > together, as are Gregg and Karen Paulson, a married couple who also > joined the Republic of Texas group. > > All four defendants claim that Texas was illegally annexed by the > United States in 1845 and that neither state or federal courts have > jurisdiction over them. > > Prosecutors allege McLaren and his followers are common criminals > who used the rhetoric of Texas independence as a cover for > fraudulent schemes aimed at taking property away from individuals > and businesses. > > McLaren, his wife and several other Republic members also face > separate federal fraud and conspiracy charges for allegedly issuing > $1.8 billion in bogus financial warrants. > > Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Re: Orthogonal (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 16:33:58 -0800 > From: Kent Crispin <kent(a)bywater.songbird.com> > Subject: Re: Orthogonal > The first context where I am aware of this use of the term orthogonal > is from language design -- it was promoted by Niklaus Wirth and other > purists, with languages like Pascal, Modula, CLU, and so on. Larry > Wall's "perl" language, with its slogan "there's more than one way to > do it", is a direct revolt against the language purists. > > The basic idea is that a computer language should have the minimum > number of constructs necessary to span the intended application. So > for example, you don't provide hyperbolic trig functions, because the > user can implement them using simpler math functions. On the other > hand, you do supply commonly used math functions that would otherwise > require iterative algorithms. > > I do believe the use of the term this way was inspired by the > notion of a 'basis' in a vector space -- a set of orthogonal > vectors that span the space, ideally, unit vectors. Can you better define the term 'basis'? I can see the union 'build complicated things out of basic building blocks' and the use of Occam's Razor (I'm as lazy as any other programmer) but fail to see how this maps to anything relating to the concept of orthogonal. Which clearly doesn't have any inherent minimalist cast. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ 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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cryptographic anecdotes
by Julian Assange 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm involved in producing a segment on cryptograpic issues for Radio National (ABC) to be aired latter this week. I have no problems with the technical issues but could use some (reliable) "colour" i.e small quirky or unusual anecdotes that will draw in and hold the larger order of listeners who don't otherwise have any cryptography/ cryptographic-policy background. e.g o RSA export-a-crypto-system .sig o algorithm tatoos (couldn't find any confirmation of this :() o if cryptography is arms, then US constitution right to bear arms o programming languages embody freedom of speech (patel) o (otoh) machine-understandable languages are not protected speech: as soon as a computer can understand Ulysses it's no-longer protected. (I'm not sure about Ulysses but Oracle and the computational linguistics groups at Edinburgh and MIT have code to perform summaries of the King James bible). Cheers, Julian. -- Prof. Julian Assange |"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your | Ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down proff(a)iq.org | people's throats." proff(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu | -- Howard Aiken

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Re: NAMBLA embattled -- mirror sites?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymous wrote: > I'm not sure the right to free speech includes the right to endorse guys > fucking little boys, whether they give it a moniker like "transgenerational > love" or not. Any sex with a minor is rape, since they can't legally give > consent. All Hillary Klinton's "It Takes A Village" bullshit aside, I can't > see giving NAMBLA the same kind of protection as someone like Zundel. > > Ratbert I am being in agreement with Mr. Ratbert, here. I am seeing the writing of women in your country who write about the showing of their bare legs and the uncovering of their faces and I am thinking that this also should not get the protection of being able to write about such abominations. And making the rape with minors is also an abomination, unless you have bought them from their families, and then it is OK that you should write about it. I am stoning to death just last week a man who raped a ten year old girl without paying any dowry, and people should not write about this either. I would like to meet some cypherpunks girls with their faces uncovered sometimes, but just for the evening, OK? Mr. Ratali

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17 Dec '03

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Re: Orthogonality and Disaster Recovery (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 18:03:16 -0800 > From: David Sternlight <david(a)sternlight.com> > Subject: Re: Orthogonality and Disaster Recovery > > Do all E-Mail vendors need to be cryptologist?? > > If the client's e-mail is to be secure, yes. But let's be accurate here. I absolute agree we need to be accurate. To that end, it is not the applications that need security but rather the network and session layers. > > Do all cryptologist need > > to be application vendors?? Obviously not. > > Now that IS nonsensical because cryptology is a wide and deep art only a small > part of which has to do with mail applications themselves. In contrast, mail > applications to be secure must use encryption. There's some very muddy > thinking going on in your post. He said 'application vendors', not just mail. Pay attention to the details of the argument and quit trying to change the subject without specificaly noteing the change, otherwise known as a strawman. His muddy thinking doesn't stand alone. > > PGP is a tool much like a > > database is. The majority of vendors who develop apps that require a > > database do not go out and write their own, rather they use a database > > engine that is suited to their needs. > > Except for the occasional password protection, databases don't need encryption > to the extent e-mail does. I work everyday with the NSA, CIA, Dod, Army, SAIC, all the phone companies, many of the major banks, Intel, Human Genome Project, etc. Every one of these folks would disagree with you. In fact it was one of the motivating factors behind Tivoli comming out with their new Security Management application because vendors required us to move away from our custom databases and toward industry standards (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, DB2, DBMX, etc.) *AND* at the same time requiring a better security mechanism than the existing one we use (DES & Kerberos based). The reality of the market does not support your thesis. > You miss the point here. And you miss the many worked examples. RSA is selling > lots and lots of toolkits for lots and lots of money for in-line integration > into applications, not for pre- and post-processing. The former is the way to > go; the latter a kludge until something better comes along. Are they involved with the new Cryptographic Standard projects of the government and Tivoli - IBM? I don't think so, at least I still haven't seen them involved in any of the work I have had access to so far; much to my own personal disappointment. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ 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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Webdeals! Less than wolesale
by SHOP＠netsteward.cm 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Orthogonal (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 19:13:12 -0800 > From: Kent Crispin <kent(a)bywater.songbird.com> > Subject: Re: Orthogonal (fwd) > > > I do believe the use of the term this way was inspired by the > > > notion of a 'basis' in a vector space -- a set of orthogonal > > > vectors that span the space, ideally, unit vectors. > > > > Can you better define the term 'basis'? > > This is basic linear algebra: > > V a vector space -- the set of all (s1,s2,s3,...,sn), where si is an > element of the set of reals. Actualy si (scalars) can be rational, real, or complex. It is also possible to use more general structures such as fields. [1] Note that complex numbers numbers may be used, in other words a vector can be used to multiply another vector. > A set of vectors {v1,v2,...,vm} in V is A vector of vectors, and you haven't even really defined vector yet...:( > linearly independent if there is no set of scalars {c1,c2,...,cm} with > at least one non-zero element such that sum(ci*vi) == 0 Are you saying: (c1*v1)+(c2*v2)+...+(cn*vn) <> 0 where at least one ci is <>0, is some sort of test for membership in a vector space? What about, (1/c1*v1)+(-1/c2*v2)+(0*v3)...+(0*vn) = 0, 1 -1 if so it should be clear that except for the case of c=0 there is always a way to take two, which is clearly more than one, of the scalars and cause the sum to be zero. Now if you have a single non-zero scalar multiplier then it seems reasonable that you can create such a structure that is always <>0. > A set of > vectors S spans In other words 'are expressible in'? > a vector space V iff every element of V can be expressed > as a linear combination of the elements of S. ^^^^^^^^^^^ Need to better define this one. The operations that are applicable to a vector space are: [1] 1. Associative law of addition: (x+y)+z = x+(y+z) 2. Commutative law of addition: x+y=y+x 3. Existance of zero: x+0=x for all x in V 4. Existance of inverses: x+(-x)=0 5. Associative law of multiplication: a(bx)=(ab)x 6. Unital law: 1*x=x 7. First distributive law: a(x+y)=(a*x)+(a*y) 8. Second distributive law: (a+b)*x=(a*x)+(b*x) where x is of the form 'asubn(x^n)+bsubn-1(x^n-1)+...+asub1x+asub0' This is a remarkably circular definition to present. In clearer wording; The set of vectors S is expressible in a vector space V iff S is contained in V. While this may be a requirement or test for membership in a vector space (as used below) it doesn't qualify as a definition. > Finally, a basis for > V is a linearly independent set of vectors in V that spans V. A > space is finite dimensioned if it has a finite set for a basis. The ^^^ set of what? > standard basis (or natural basis) for a vector space of dimension n > is th set of vectors > > (1,0,0,...0) > (0,1,0,...0) > (0,0,1,...0) In other words, any 'vector' can be expressed as the sum of the multiplication of unit elements by some set of scalars. Is this definition something you just wrote or would you be so kind as to give the reference if it isn't. This definition uses 'basis', doesn't define it. You can't use a term to define the term, it's called circular reasoning. My question still stands, can you please better define 'basis'. Or is your claim that basis is simply a way of stating 'elements of unit magnitude'? Furthermore, a definition of vector space has nothing to do with orthogonal measurement systems, it does have to do with polynomials. It just so happens that this sort of geometry shares the same sort of rules, that doesn't make them the same thing. There is nothing in your description, in particular the nifty little (*,*,*,...*)'s that implies any sort of measurement system based on line-segment axis that are 90 degrees apart, merely that there is more than one variable (ie x,y,z,...a) involved. Vector space - a vector space is a set of objects or elements that can be added together and multiplied by numbers (the result being an element of the set), in such a way that the usual rules of calculations hold. [1] ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________| [1] The VNR Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics Gellert, Kustner, Hellwich, Kastner ISBN 0-442-22646-2 17.3 Vector spaces pp. 362 [Hallowen Trivia] 'Dracula' is a word derived from 'dracul' meaning dragon and was given to Vlad Tepish, whose name means 'son of the devil', he was further known as Vlad the Impaler because he would impale people on poles and place them along the roads in Transylvania. When he died in 1496 his head was impaled on a stick as well.

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Re: poverty traps (Re: Sa (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Subject: Re: poverty traps (Re: Sa (fwd) > Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 23:40:15 -0600 (CST) > From: ichudov(a)algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) > Jim Choate wrote: > > > Food: $600/month (generous) > > > > Hell, I'm single and come close to this and food costs in Texas are a LOT > > lower than in New York. Though I do eat out at lunch every weekday. And no, > > I don't go partying regularly at all. Way too busy with work (>16hrs/day > > 5 days a week & 16-20 on weekends) to do that other than a couple of times a > > month. I went to the store today and bought enough food for 4 days and it > > cost me $30. So that comes to something like $250 - $300 for me not counting > > lunches, and that's for just a single person. Multiply that for 6 and the > > numbers are considerably higher. > > Oh my Gawd! And I thought I was spending too much on food! I guess the > prices in OK are the same as in TX. >From the times I have been in Oklahoma (my family is ensconced along the Red River - Murphies, Joneses, Peoples, etc.) I would say the costs are about the same. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ 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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DoS
by Robert A. Hayden 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was forwarded to me in house. Just FYI. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 09:38:28 -0600 From: Chris Silker <csilker(a)means.net> MCI RELEASES FREE DENIAL OF SERVICE TRACKER SECURITY TOOL MCI has released an interesting piece of software called the Denial of Service Tracker (DoS). The security program helps track the source of denial of service attacks, which aim to overload a target computer system to the point that it's unusable for anything else. According to MCU, the DoS Tracker works against SYN, ICMP flood, bandwidth saturation, and concentrated source attacks, and is currently being modified to detect other DoS-based attacks, including a new attack called the Smurf. The info, a free download, and all the technical information is at the site. A must have for sysops. <http://www.security.mci.net/dostracker> =-=-=-=-=-= Robert Hayden rhayden(a)means.net UIN: 3937211 IP Network Administrator http://rhayden.means.net MEANS Telcom (612) 230-4416

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PGP 5.5 available outside US
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems that unknown Cypherpunks have yet again shown their disrespect of US export laws by exporting the latest version of PGP. The Windows version of PGP 5.5 is now available for your downloading pleasure at ftp://ftp.replay.com/pub/crypto/incoming/PGP55.zip PGP 5.5 features superior LDAP keyserver integration, multiple signature categories, and automatic decryption (set Preferences -> Email -> Automatically Decrypt). "You heard the rumors. Now try it yourself." :-) -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to> PGP encrypted email preferred. "Tonga? Where the hell is Tonga? They have Cypherpunks there?"

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Mmphmmphmmmph! (WAS Re: I Broke PGP!!!)
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

That was the sound of me eating crow. Although I am a closet reader of the True Story of the Internet series I am generally perturbed by the many of the inane Truthmonger posts to the list. I had decided several days ago to make a small apology to Truthmonger for some of my more emotional attacks on him (or her) but I put it off and put it off. I decided not to put it off after reading the following: Six wrote: > Bonus Question: "Who is TruthMonger #1?" > Bonus Answer: "He's Randall Farmer's best friend." That is _exactly_ what I thought when I read Randalls whining post about how Truthmongers rudeness might necessitate Randall instituting security and identity procedures that would enable others to verify whether a digitally signed message was indeed from himself. When I saw Tokoyo Rose echoing my thoughts then I thought I should take the trouble to point out what I myself learned from Truthmonger. [Although I am not certain if it is the same one.] I made the mistake of informing several people that the exercise that was suggested in Epiloge 5? of Infowar was bullshit but when I tried it it spit out my secret key like a hot damn much to my surprise. So I owe Truthmonger an apology but it will not be a public one. [Very few of you would know me anyway since I am mostly a list lurker.] The reason I will not make a public apology is because I also had PGP spit out the secret keys of my boss and coworkers. Although I am not a bad person in general possession of these keys is making me begin to think like Truthmonger. I will probably just test whether I can indeed password break them and use them to decipher a few files and then erase my copy of them. [Maybe.] [Maybe I should make my .sig line "Beware of Truthmonger inside!"] I did a search for the post that Tokoyo Rose talked about Truthmongers nephew adding things to Truthmongers email and found: > Also, as a 'teaser', I would like to announce to one and all that > the quickly closing saga of 'InfoWar' will include an epilogue > chapter titled, "I Broke PGP," written by myself. > Believe it or not, I speak the truth, although not in a way that > it direct and obvious. > If you think I am bullshiting, then stop washing your asshole, > starting today, because if you can show me I am wrong, I will kiss > your ugly, hairy ass. > > Love and Kisses, > TruthMangler After looking at other posts that have Truthmangler in them instead of Truthmonger I think that it might be a sign that the nephew is messing with them since they seem to have things inserted in them which appear to come more from a childs mind than Truthmongers. [If that is possible.] (;>) I would be interested in finding out if other people have been able to get secret keys using the method described in the Infowar book. We are using PGP 2.6.3i. I wonder about other versions. Croweatingmonger

2 1

re: Hlep
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Misty Ed the incredible talking horse.

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Re: Singaporean control freaks & CMR (Re: puff pieces vs tough crypto issues)
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Harish Pillay wrote: >I don't think the "micro management" is at it's worst in Singapore - not by >a long shot. It is true that the Singapore government tries to do so and >in a lot of what they attempt, they somehow come out smelling roses. But >they have goofed up royally as well. ................................................................... If you don't mind my asking in front of everybody, how do you stand it, living there? Do you get very frustrated (it sounds as though you might), and want to leave for Anguilla? Do you remind yourself not to litter with those gum wrappers you're not supposed to have anyway, what do you think when you're being incentivized to find a sexual partner and produce children, or to Do This and Not do That or risk painful punishments? Do co-workers become critical of each other's petty "crimes", do you feel opressed all around, or is it not as bad as it seems from here? .. Blanc

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Re: poverty traps (Re: Sa
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

harka(a)nycmetro.com wrote: >Further it is a social issue of importance also for Cypherpunks. >Obviously we don't want governments "taking care of people", but >desire individual freedom, self-determination and independence >instead. However, as proven such things are possible in the "free >market" only to a limited degree, i.e not applicable by default to >everybody, IMHO. [. . .] >If anybody _does_ have a solution, that enables _all_ people >(regardless of background) to become truly free and also provides a >realistic way to achieve that (for everybody), then I'll be more >than happy to listen and to adjust my own perspective. .................................................. The concept of a free market is not that it will "make you" free, nor that it shall "provide you" ("you" being any one engaged in the exchange of goods/services) with a perfect life, free of worry and the work of thought and decision-making, creating the "perfect life" solution for everybody. A free market doesn't "do things" for a person in spite of themselves. In a free market scenario it is intended that any individual will be a free agent - free from government interferance, free from government compulsion - to create their *own* life's "solution", satisfactory to themselves (regardless of whether it agrees with, or is at variance to, any one else's standards of living). It is intended that an individual will be left to their own devices, to seek out the methods which they themselves calculate will lead to the achievement of their own goals, according to their own vision of success - that is, not the government's vision of success, nor the vision of their neighbor, or of their mother-in-law, or anyone else who wants to shape one's life for them and tell one what to do with it and how (no, Jim Choate, I am not discriminating against Mothers-in-law, I'm just using them as a stereotypical example of an interfering busy-body. Don't worry about it.). It is way too easy to say that if you don't like something (like working for a certain employer) you should change employers (easier to say than done). But the real aim of this argument is against the attitude of tolerance, of tolerating the unacceptable or uncomfortable; it is that when a person finds themselves seemingly trapped, they should not merely suffer the circumstance (or worse, whine about it to everyone within earshot), but should rather orient themselves towards finding a creative solution and never cease searching for a way out. Because nothing is created or advanced into improvement by merely tolerating the intolerable, by just "taking what was given", or from continuing to bear up under low standards of functioning. The "free market " is not for the purpose of freeing everyone from the work of solving their own problems; the idea is to leave them free to negotiate with others on the terms of their interactive business arrangements (you know - work/pay, hours/compensation, overtime/stock options, your place/my place, etc. Ideally, that is. As everyone knows, we do not live in a "pure" free-market economy, therefore these negotiations are presently all regulated, to force everyone into a standardized success & happiness). There are many obstacles to overcome in an imperfect world, in an imperfect society, in an imperfect economy, under imperfect governments, not to mention all the competition. It is very discouraging and sometimes you want to hug your Teddy Bear for comfort [ :>) ]. But sometimes the first, and largest, obstacle to overcome is one's own pessimism and negativity against mustering up the courage and creativity to "push the envelope". This fatalism is what is being criticized. .. Blanc

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Re: PGP Employee on MKR
by mark＠unicorn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to wrote: > OK, I must be missing something. How can it be more evil if the email > isn't automatically sent to the owner of the MK key than if the email is > automatically cd'ed? Uh, don't understand the question. The issue is that it's being encrypted to multiple keys for one recipient. > Agreed. And so did PGP 2.x and any version of PGP that allows for > encryption to multiple keys. Anybody can take the 2.6 source and hardcode > in a second recipient key. But, for the fifth or sixth time, _that isn't being shipped as standard by PGP_. > I read the recently proposed alternatives > and fail to see how they would prevent GMR any more than PGP's solution. > All I saw were convoluted and frequently hasty designs, many of which > lend themselves even more to GAK then what PGP did. Really? I seem to recall Jon Callas saying my system 'redesigned CMR' but was simpler than theirs. The mere fact that CMR requires an enforcer implies that it's a convoluted and hasty design. > Once, (as many of you know IMHO it is a "once", not an "if") GAK becomes > mandatory, it can be implemented with 2.6 just a easy as > with 5.5. But it can't; for a start 2.6-based GAK won't interoperate with international versions the way that CMR will. Cutting the US off from encrypted mail from the rest of the world would probably not go down too well. Lucky, one question: wouldn't you be complaining if Netscape or Microsoft were shipping a system which enforced encryption to snooping keys? Why should we feel any differently about PGP? Mark

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Re: CMR versus GAK?
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lutz wrote: >May be in your (poor) country. There is a world outside US. Good point, and note that there are many other worlds within the US besides the LOOD stud-employer-has-manifest-destiny-control version. But it is good marketing to sell fearful business owners gadgets and to perpetuate their sense of knowing what's going on behind their backs, as with frightened pols, spies, cops, parents and straights, leaky prophylactics supplemented with arms to bear when the hints of betrayal and inadequacy become unbearable. Not that the gadgets and arms work when you can't ID or crosshair the elusive backalley cats aprowl. Same goes for workers and youngsters who think the bosses and oldsters are duncemunge: WSJ, Dilbert and Phrack are funnies to avoid the admitting the deeper complicity of secret crossovers by your favorite peer group into the opposing camps, political, economic, legal, scientific, not to say no longer secure national and sexual borders. LOOD = Long Out Of Date

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Don't Worry, Be Happy
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Unix and other OSes were designed for Elite Techno-savvy Info Warriors like yourselves. Windows and the other MS apps are designed to appeal to the "common folk" who would still rather use a pc than a Mac in spite of psychological counseling against it (<g>). They have choices, there are many stores and vendors, they take their pick. As long as you can get what you want, what do youall care what other people use - why do you worry for everyone? .. Blanc

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Re: Orthogonal (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Mark Rogaski <wendigo(a)ne-wendigo.jabberwock.org> > Subject: Re: Orthogonal (fwd) > Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 01:36:06 -0500 (EST) > An entity claiming to be Jim Choate wrote: > > : I can see the union 'build complicated things out of basic building blocks' > : and the use of Occam's Razor (I'm as lazy as any other programmer) but fail > : to see how this maps to anything relating to the concept of orthogonal. > : Which clearly doesn't have any inherent minimalist cast. > : > > Minimalism is merely a by-product of orthogonality. Which orthogonality are you speaking of? > A language is considered > orthogonal if builtin functions do not provide overlapping functionality. Are you talking linguistics, philosophy, or computer? Consider, historicaly the point of 'orthogonality' was to indicate a *non-overlapping* or reducable structure, something which provides a reference to evaluate other things. > So the term orthogonal probably refers to the fact that there is no > point of intersection in the functionality of the language (or system, as > the thread started out). Orthogonal implies there is intersection, it's hard to have a closed geometric shape (-gonal) or a right angle (ortho-) axis system without them. > And I will not argue about vector spaces until I get bookshelves and actually > dig my Linear Algebra texts out of the boxes around my apartment. Good, I understand how it is used in vector spaces and don't really get my jollies off on arguing on unrelated issues. What I *would* like to know is how a mathematical term related to geometry and right angles got expanded *historicaly* to mean something completely unrelated. I don't think a linear algebra book is relevant to this question, despite the protestations of the techno-masturbatory ot the contrary. There are a whole host of users on this list who live by strawman arguments. I am glad to see you aren't one of them (apparently). ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ 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: CMR versus GAK?
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Young wrote, I think: >Same goes for workers and youngsters who think the bosses and >oldsters are duncemunge: WSJ, Dilbert and Phrack are funnies to >avoid the admitting the deeper complicity of secret crossovers by >your favorite peer group into the opposing camps, political, economic, >legal, scientific, not to say no longer secure national and sexual borders. .................................................. John, you should write a book. Light reading. haiku. .. Blanc

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