December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Your Web Site location
by poc＠searchengine-secrets.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Would you like to improve your web site's position on the Search Engines? Over the past two years we've been acknowledged by Internet Experts as the definitive source for information on how to obtain top placement on the major search engines. My name is Stephen Mahaney. I am the president of Planet Ocean Communications. My web marketing company has literally "written the book" on how to position your website on the front page -- the Top Ten -- of each of the major search engines... and we … [View More]

1 0

Re: charity at the point of a gun (Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 13:28:11 -0700 (MST) > From: Jim Burnes <jvb(a)ssds.com> > Subject: Re: charity at the point of a gun (Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone) (fwd) > (1) Social transfer payments at the point of a gun are involuntary > compassion. > > (2) Involutary compassion is usually called rape. No, thats' lust not compassion. Involuntary lust is called rape. > Combine this with the US Govt defining a … [View More]

1 0

Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 15:57:04 -0500 > From: Michael Hohensee <mah248(a)nyu.edu> > Subject: Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd) > > Without some government the Bad Guys will be the only ones with anything. > > It is only with the threat of losing their power that leaders do good. If > > they had no power which could be lost or taken they will always do what's > > best for them in the short term, … [View More]which is usually to shit on the peons. > > Dictators (like Pinochet and Gates) do their dirty deeds because they feel > > no need to placate the masses. > > If they wield no real power, and proceed to do whatever is best for them > in the short term, they will be screwing themselves over in the long > term (or short term, if doing what they want results in someone shooting > them in self defense). If they have that kind of power they will have the shooter shot, look at the history of leaders and assassinations. The reality is that the vast majority of them fail. There is the other aspect that if one is willing to assassinate (murder in plain english) simply because somebody else murdered then we are in fact trading one tyrant for another. > And precisely what dirty deeds has Mr. Gates ever done? Every un-fair market practice he could get away with (why is it that anarcho-whatever types always leave that 'fair competition' out of their discussion?). Why do you believe the Halloween documents are so enlightening? Because they demonstrate without a shadow of doubt that Billy wanted to exist as the sole market force, not a force limited by fair competition. The concept of fair-competition is anti-thematic to the world-domination memes that are currently making the rounds. > Excluding those > actions in which the judicious use of state regulation was involved. Hell, if we just look at the business practices within the context of a market with fair competition it's clear he's so far out in left field he's playing by himself. > Yah, and then somebody else points a gun at Mr. would-be warlord and > goes Bang, Bang, he's dead (it's unsafe having warlords about --sorta > like scorpions). That is, if Mr. would-be manages to shoot me without > being shot himself. Well I'd say if you're running around shooting people for any reason other than immediate self defence you deserve what you get. > > Try to lift yourself out of the bullshit of your theory and give us at > > least one REAL example (current or historic) of a large scale, long lasting > > anarcho-capitalist society. Hippie communes are too small, and make sure > > it's capitalistic. If you can't think of one in the next year or so then > > come back and tell us. > > It hasn't happened yet. But then, neither had the USA, before 1776. > The above is not a reasonable argument. It is at least a start, there was ample evidence historicaly that democracy (you ever hear of the Dutch?) was tried to varying degrees. It seems to work out better than any other system we've developed. If you want to see a discussion of democracy prior to the US check out: On the improvement of the understanding; The Ethics; Correspondence Benedict de Spinoza ISBN 0-486-20250-x $7.95 (Dover) They were written in the mid to late 1600's (shortly before the birth of the founding fathers). > You can, of course, as me how it *could* happen. And unfortunately, > you're partially correct, it couldn't happen under current conditions. > The amount of personal firepower that is easily accessible by everyone > is not sufficient to back up the soverignity of each individual. So, in your mind the only way to defend oneself is to have a bigger dick..um I mean gun than the other guy.... I've a couple of quotes for you to ponder: Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% persperation. T.E. Edison If Mr. Edison had though smarter he wouldn't have had to perspire as much. N. Tesla ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

1 0

Re: most of what govts do can be done by business, and done (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 18:00:44 -0500 > From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> > Subject: Re: most of what govts do can be done by business, and done > better (Re: How to solve the tax problem w/o anarchy or force) > Roads are the easiest (assuming a government model) things to apply > road use taxes to, simply tax gasoline, oil, and tires. Scale your tire tax > based on weight and apply it to bicycles as well, then everyone (execpt > peds) who … [View More]

3 2

most of what govts do can be done by business, and done better (Re: How to solve the tax problem w/o anarchy or force) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 20:39:05 GMT > From: Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> > Subject: most of what govts do can be done by business, and done better (Re: How to solve the tax problem w/o anarchy or force) > Even when government does sub-contract, the inefficiency is usually I > think pretty horrendous by industry standards: The same can be said for business in general as well (especialy if there is no competition). … [View More]

1 0

RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 12:33:04 -0500 > From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the (fwd) > Theft, violence and extortion are already legitimate, not only does > the government use them all the time, but corporations and indivuduals do > as well. True, at least under a democratic system we can prevent some of the more gross abuses by government and can address the inter-personal issues … [View More]with something besides a nylon jacketed .357. Your anarcho-whatever doesn't even provide that. > There is no (or little) justice under the current system. When was > the last time a cop went to jail for a murder that he/she committed while > on duty. Is OJ behind bars? Several cops in Houston were fired (they got no-billed by the Grand Jury) just last week because of a similar issue. There are two cops here in Austin who went to jail because of a murder (they held a kid down on a water bed and he suffocated) charge. The current public overwatch group was the result of a police call that got out of hand last year and the police had two choices - either give the people what they asked for or end loose the civil rights case. The two cops who beat Rodney King ended up doing time. Nobody proved to the jury beyond a shadow of a doubt he was guilty. It is far better to let a dozen guilty men go free than to imprison a single innocent one. Our legal system may have its problem but I guarantee that a lot more guilty people get off scott free than innocent people end up in jail. There is more than a little justice under the current system (OJ being the perfect example - like it or not). > We have courts of Law, Justice is ashamed to show her face. Somehow I doubt that. If justice is ashamed of anything its that citizens of this country don't participate more and express their views with more conviction. > We recognize that these interactions exist, but guess what, for any > sort of anarchy to exist, it has to happen globally. We are as concerned > about the people on the other side of the planet as we are about the people > in the next city over. Just not much. Which, considering that anarchic systems permit murder, theft, rape, extortion, etc. without reprisal or limits, means that the vast majority of people are probably going to sleep a sounder sleep knowing they don't have to go out and buy a tank tomorrow just to make sure they have a home to come to in the evening. > No, we assume the opposite, that nothing works for large numbers of > people, and everyone should be free to find their own level. If nothing works for large numbers of people then why should this? Anarchy isn't freedom, it's opportunity to make huge profits with no responsiblity and at the expence of others (who are treated as a market commodity and not human beings). ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

2 1

Re: Off Topic But Truly Beautiful (fwd )
by Petro 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:11 PM -0500 11/10/98, Michael Motyka wrote: >> In the summer of 1984, 10th-grader Irwin Nanofsky and a >> friend were driving down the Apalachee Parkway on the way >> home from baseball practice when they were pulled over by >> a police officer for a minor traffic infraction. ... >> As policy analysts and hemp advocates alike have been >> quick to point out, the apparent legality (for now) of >> Nanofsky's "pot orange" … [View More]

1 0

Question about insurance managed fire services...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How does company A guarantee that company B won't begin to burn down the customers of company A so that the economic impact on A is sufficient they can't participate in the market? ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx … [View More]

1 0

Re: Strange brew (was Off Topic But Truly Beautiful)
by Frederick Burroughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael Motyka wrote: > Clyde wrote: > > > > Long but fascinating... > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > 9 November 1998 > > > > DATELINE--Tallahassee, Fla. > > Oranges that get you high > > =========================== > > > > A Florida Biochemist designs a citrus tree with THC. [savagely pruned] > > Copyright 1994-98 San Francisco Bay … [View More]

1 0

Question about anarchic systems and natural disasters
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What would be the responce of a anarchic system that was based on profit in regards something like Mitch's impact on Ctl. America and their plea for food and aid? ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'//… [View More]

1 0

secF9.html
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

F.9 IS MEDIEVAL ICELAND AN EXAMPLE OF "ANARCHO"-CAPITALISM WORKING IN PRACTICE? Ironically, medieval Iceland is a good example of why "anarcho"-capitalism will not work, degenerating into de facto rule by the rich. It should be pointed out first that Iceland, nearly 1,000 years ago, was not a capitalistic system. In fact, like most cultures claimed by "anarcho"-capitalists as examples of their "utopia," it was a communal, not … [View More]individualistic, society, based on artisan production, with extensive communal institutions as well as individual "ownership" (i.e. use) and a form of social self-administration, the thing -- both local and Iceland-wide -- which can be considered a "primitive" form of the anarchist communal assembly. As William Ian Miller points out "[p]eople of a communitarian nature. . . have reason to be attracted [to Medieval Iceland]. . . the limited role of lordship, the active participation of large numbers of free people . . . in decision making within and without the homestead. The economy barely knew the existence of markets. Social relations preceded economic relations. The nexus of household, kin, Thing, even enmity, more than the nexus of cash, bound people to each other. The lack of extensive economic differentiation supported a weakly differentiated class system . . . [and material] deprivations were more evenly distributed than they would be once state institutions also had to be maintained." [Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland, p. 306] Kropotkin in Mutual Aid indicates that Norse society, from which the settlers in Iceland came, had various "mutual aid" institutions, including communal land ownership (based around what he called the "village community") and the thing (see also Kropotkin's The State: Its Historic Role for a discussion of the "village community"). It is reasonable to think that the first settlers in Iceland would have brought such institutions with them and Iceland did indeed have its equivalent of the commune or "village community," the Hreppar, which developed early in the country's history. Like the early local assemblies, it is not much discussed in the Sagas but is mentioned in the law book, the Grágás, and was composed of a minimum of twenty farms and had a five member commission. The Hreppar was self-governing and, among other things, was responsible for seeing that orphans and the poor within the area were fed and housed. The Hreppar also served as a property insurance agency and assisted in case of fire and losses due to diseased livestock. The Hreppar may have also have organised and controlled summer grazing lands (which in turn suggests "commons" -- i.e. common land -- of some kind). Thus Icelandic society had a network of solidarity, based upon communal life. In practice this meant that "each commune was a mutual insurance company, or a miniature welfare state. And membership in the commune was not voluntary. Each farmer had to belong to the commune in which his farm was located and to contribute to its needs." [Gissurarson quoted by Birgit T. Runolfsson Solvason, Ordered Anarchy, State and Rent-Seeking: The Icelandic Commonwealth, 930-1262] However, unlike an anarchist society, the Icelandic Commonwealth did not allow farmers not to join its communes. Therefore, the Icelandic Commonwealth can hardly be claimed in any significant way as an example of "anarcho"-capitalism in practice. This can also be seen from the early economy, where prices were subject to popular judgement at the skuldaping ("payment-thing") not supply and demand. [Kirsten Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland, p. 125] Indeed, with its communal price setting system in local assemblies, the early Icelandic commonwealth was more similar to Guild Socialism (which was based upon guild's negotiating "just prices" for goods and services) than capitalism. Therefore Miller correctly argues that it would be wrong to impose capitalist ideas and assumptions onto Icelandic society: "Inevitably the attempt was made to add early Iceland to the number of regions that socialised people in nuclear families within simple households. . . what the sources tell us about the shape of Icelandic householding must compel a different conclusion." [Op. Cit., p. 112] In other words, Kropotkin's analysis of communal society is far closer to the reality of Medieval Iceland than David Friedman's attempt in The Machinery of Freedom to turn it into a capitalist utopia. However, the communal nature of Icelandic society also co-existed (as in most such cultures) with hierarchical institutions, including some with capitalistic elements, namely private property and "private states" around the local godar. The godar were local chiefs who also took the role of religious leaders. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica explains, "a kind of local government was evolved [in Iceland] by which the people of a district who had most dealings together formed groups under the leadership of the most important or influential man in the district" (the godi). The godi "acted as judge and mediator" and "took a lead in communal activities" such as building places of worship. These "local assemblies. . . are heard of before the establishment of the althing" (the national thing). This althing led to co-operation between the local assemblies. Therefore we see communal self-management in a basic form, plus co-operation between communities as well. These communistic, mutual-aid features exist in many non-capitalist cultures and are often essential for ensuring the people's continued freedom within those cultures (section B.2.5 on why the wealthy undermine these popular "folk-motes" in favour of centralisation). Usually, the existence of private property (and so inequality) soon led to the destruction of communal forms of self-management (with participation by all male members of the community as in Iceland), which are replaced by the rule of the rich. While such developments are a commonplace in most "primitive" cultures, the Icelandic case has an unusual feature which explains the interest it provokes in "anarcho"-capitalist circles. This feature was that individuals could seek protection from any godi. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it, "the extent of the godord [chieftancy] was not fixed by territorial boundaries. Those who were dissatisfied with their chief could attach themselves to another godi. . . As a result rivalry arose between the godar [chiefs]; as may be seen from the Icelandic Sagas." It is these Sagas on which David Friedman (in The Machinery of Freedom) bases his claim that Medieval Iceland is a working example of "anarcho" capitalism. Hence we can see that artisans and farmers would seek the "protection" of a godi, providing their labour in return. These godi would be subject to "market forces," as dissatisfied individuals could affiliate themselves to other godi. This system, however, had an obvious (and fatal) flaw. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica points out: "The position of the godi could be bought and sold, as well as inherited; consequently, with the passing of time, the godord for large areas of the country became concentrated in the hands of one man or a few men. This was the principal weakness of the old form of government: it led to a struggle of power and was the chief reason for the ending of the commonwealth and for the country's submission to the King of Norway." It was the existence of these hierarchical elements in Icelandic society that explain its fall from anarchistic to statist society. As Kropotkin argued "from chieftainship sprang on the one hand the State and on the other private property." [Act for Yourselves, p. 85] Kropotkin's insight that chieftainship is a transitional system has been confirmed by anthropologists studying "primitive" societies. They have come to the conclusion that societies made up of chieftainships or chiefdoms are not states: "Chiefdoms are neither stateless nor state societies in the fullest sense of either term: they are on the borderline between the two. Having emerged out of stateless systems, they give the impression of being on their way to centralised states and exhibit characteristics of both." [Y. Cohen quoted by Birgit T. Runolfsson Solvason, Op. Cit.] Since the Commonwealth was made up of chiefdoms, this explains the contradictory nature of the society - it was in the process of transition, from anarchy to statism, from a communal economy to one based on private property. The political transition within Icelandic society went hand in hand with an economic transition (both tendencies being mutually reinforcing). Initially, when Iceland was settled, large-scale farming based on extended households with kinsmen was the dominant economic mode. This semi-communal mode of production changed as the land was divided up (mostly through inheritance claims) between the 10th and 11th centuries. This new economic system based upon individual possession and artisan production was then slowly displaced by tenant farming, in which the farmer worked for a landlord, starting in the late 11th century. This economic system (based on a form of wage labour, i.e. capitalistic production) ensured that "great variants of property and power emerged." [Kirsten Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland, pp. 172-173] During the 12th century wealth concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and by its end an elite of around 6 wealthy and powerful families had emerged. During this evolution in ownership patterns and the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few, we should note that the godi's and wealthy landowners' attitude to profit making also changed, with market values starting to replace those associated with honour, kin, and so on. Social relations became replaced by economic relations and the nexus of household, kin and Thing was replaced by the nexus of cash and profit. The rise of capitalistic social relationships in production and values within society was also reflected in exchange, with the local marketplace, with its pricing "subject to popular judgement" being "subsumed under central markets." [Ibid., p. 225] With a form of wage labour being dominant within society, it is not surprising that great differences in wealth started to appear. Also, as protection did not come free, it is not surprising that a godi tended to become rich also. This would enable him to enlist more warriors, which gave him even more social power (in Kropotkin's words, "the individual accumulation of wealth and power"). Powerful godi would be useful for wealthy landowners when disputes over land and rent appeared, and wealthy landowners would be useful for a godi when feeding his warriors. Production became the means of enriching the already wealthy, with concentrations of wealth producing concentrations of social and political power (and vice versa). Kropotkin's general summary of the collapse of "barbarian" society into statism seems applicable here - "after a hard fight with bad crops, inundations and pestilences, [farmers]. . . began to repay their debts, they fell into servile obligations towards the protector of the territory. Wealth undoubtedly did accumulate in this way, and power always follows wealth." [Mutual Aid, p. 131] The transformation of possession into property and the resulting rise of hired labour was a key element in the accumulation of wealth and power, and the corresponding decline in liberty among the farmers. Moreover, with hired labour springs dependency -- the worker is now dependent on good relations with their landlord in order to have access to the land they need. With such reductions in the independence of part of Icelandic society, the undermining of self-management in the various Things was also likely as labourers could not vote freely as they could be subject to sanctions from their landlord for voting the "wrong" way. Thus hierarchy within the economy would spread into the rest of society, and in particular its social institutions, reinforcing the effects of the accumulation of wealth and power. The resulting classification of Icelandic society played a key role in its move from relative equality and anarchy to a class society and statism. As Millar points out: "as long as the social organisation of the economy did not allow for people to maintain retinues, the basic egalitarian assumptions of the honour system. . . were reflected reasonably well in reality. . . the mentality of hierarchy never fully extricated itself from the egalitarian ethos of a frontier society created and recreated by juridically equal farmers. Much of the egalitarian ethic maintained itself even though it accorded less and less with economic realities. . . by the end of the commonwealth period certain assumptions about class privilege and expectations of deference were already well enough established to have become part of the lexicon of self-congratulation and self-justification." [Op. Cit., pp. 33-4] This process in turn accelerated the destruction of communal life and the emergence of statism, focused around the godord. In effect, the godi and wealthy farmers became rulers of the country and "the old form of government became modified in the course of time." This change from a communalistic, anarchistic society to a statist, propertarian one can also be seen from this quote from an article on Iceland by Hallberg Hallmundsson in the Encyclopaedia Americana, which identifies wealth concentration in fewer and fewer hands as having been responsible for undermining Icelandic society: "During the 12th century, wealth and power began to accumulate in the hands of a few chiefs, and by 1220, six prominent families ruled the entire country. It was the internecine power struggle among these families, shrewdly exploited by King Haakon IV of Norway, that finally brought the old republic to an end." This process, wherein the concentration of wealth leads to the destruction of communal life and so the anarchistic aspects of a given society, can be seen elsewhere, for example, in the history of the United States after the Revolution or in the degeneration of the free cities of Medieval Europe. Peter Kropotkin, in his classic work Mutual Aid, documents this process in some detail, in many cultures and time periods. However, that this process occurred in a society which is used by "anarcho"-capitalists as an example of their system in action reinforces the anarchist analysis of the statist nature of "anarcho"-capitalism and the deep flaws in its theory, as discussed in section F.6. As Miller argues, "[i]t is not the have-nots, after all, who invented the state. The first steps toward state formation in Iceland were made by churchmen. . . and by the big men content with imitating Norwegian royal style. Early state formation, I would guess, tended to involve redistributions, not from rich to poor, but from poor to rich, from weak to strong." [Op. Cit., p. 306] David Friedman is aware of how the Icelandic Republic degenerated and its causes. He states in a footnote in his 1979 essay "Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case" that the "question of why the system eventually broke down is both interesting and difficult. I believe that two of the proximate causes were increased concentration of wealth, and hence power, and the introduction into Iceland of a foreign ideology -- kingship. The former meant that in many areas all or most of the godord were held by one family and the latter that by the end of the Sturlung period the chieftains were no longer fighting over the traditional quarrels of who owed what to whom, but over who should eventually rule Iceland. The ultimate reasons for those changes are beyond the scope of this paper." However, from an anarchist point of view, the "foreign" ideology of kingship would be the product of changing socio-economic conditions that were expressed in the increasing concentration of wealth and not its cause. The settlers of Iceland were well aware of the "ideology" of kingship for the 300 years during which the Republic existed. However, only the concentration of wealth allowed would-be Kings the opportunity to develop and act and the creation of boss-worker social relationships on the land made the poor subject to, and familiar with, the concept of authority. Such familiarity would spread into all aspects of life and, combined with the existence of "prosperous" (and so powerful) godi to enforce the appropriate servile responses, ensured the end of the relative equality that fostered Iceland's anarchistic tendencies in the first place. In addition, as private property is a monopoly of rulership over a given area, the conflict between chieftains for power was, at its most basic, a conflict of who would own Iceland, and so rule it. The attempt to ignore the facts that private property creates rulership (i.e. a monopoly of government over a given area) and that monarchies are privately owned states does Friedman's case no good. In other words, the system of private property has a built in tendency to produce both the ideology and fact of Kingship - the power structures implied by Kingship are reflected in the social relations which are produced by private property. Friedman is also aware that an "objection [to his system] is that the rich (or powerful) could commit crimes with impunity, since nobody would be able to enforce judgement against them. Where power is sufficiently concentrated this might be true; this was one of the problems which led to the eventual breakdown of the Icelandic legal system in the thirteenth century. But so long as power was reasonably dispersed, as it seem to have been for the first two centuries after the system was established, this was a less serious problem." [Op. Cit.] Which is quite ironic. Firstly, because the first two centuries of Icelandic society was marked by non-capitalist economic relations (communal pricing and family/individual possession of land). Only when capitalistic social relationships developed (hired labour and property replacing possession and market values replacing social ones) in the 12th century did power become concentrated, leading to the breakdown of the system in the 13th century. Secondly, because Friedman is claiming that "anarcho"-capitalism will only work if there is an approximate equality within society! But this state of affairs is one most "anarcho"-capitalists claim is impossible and undesirable! They claim there will always be rich and poor. But inequality in wealth will also become inequality of power. When "actually existing" capitalism has become more free market the rich have got richer and the poor poorer. Apparently, according to the "anarcho"-capitalists, in an even "purer" capitalism this process will be reversed! It is ironic that an ideology that denounces egalitarianism as a revolt against nature implicitly requires an egalitarian society in order to work. In reality, wealth concentration is a fact of life in any system based upon hierarchy and private property. Friedman is aware of the reasons why "anarcho"-capitalism will become rule by the rich but prefers to believe that "pure" capitalism will produce an egalitarian society! In the case of the commonwealth of Iceland this did not happen - the rise in private property was accompanied by a rise in inequality and this lead to the breakdown of the Republic into statism. In short, Medieval Iceland nicely illustrates David Weick's comments (as quoted in section F.6.3) that "when private wealth is uncontrolled, then a police-judicial complex enjoying a clientele of wealthy corporations whose motto is self-interest is hardly an innocuous social force controllable by the possibility of forming or affiliating with competing 'companies.'" This is to say that "free market" justice soon results in rule by the rich, and being able to affiliate with "competing" "defence companies" is insufficient to stop or change that process. This is simply because any defence-judicial system does not exist in a social vacuum. The concentration of wealth -- a natural process under the "free market" (particularly one marked by private property and wage labour) -- has an impact on the surrounding society. Private property, i.e. monopolisation of the means of production, allows the monopolists to become a ruling elite by exploiting, and so accumulating vastly more wealth than, the workers. This elite then uses its wealth to control the coercive mechanisms of society (military, police, "private security forces," etc.), which it employs to protect its monopoly and thus its ability to accumulate ever more wealth and power. Thus, private property, far from increasing the freedom of the individual, has always been the necessary precondition for the rise of the state and rule by the rich. Medieval Iceland is a classic example of this process at work. [View Less]

1 0

Re: IP: Clinton Wants Loophole In U.S. Free Speech Closed (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 19:25:40 -0800 (PST) > From: b!X <bix(a)geekforce.org> > Subject: Re: IP: Clinton Wants Loophole In U.S. Free Speech Closed > Yeah yeah all very well and good parody except that the 2nd amendment > contains the word "well-regulated" and the 1st doesn't. > > (And yes I know I'm asking for a shitstorm of trouble saying that on THIS > list of all places). ARTICLE I. Congress shall make no law respecting an … [View More]

2 1

More on blind signal demodulation
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's at least one firm which makes this stuff commercially, their products are available via http://www.appsig.com/prods/index.html. This looks like a one-stop ECHELON shop: you take one or more of their products (pick your type, intended target, and budget), plug as many E1's or E3's or whatever into one side as you can handle (the most impressive one does 16 E3's or 7680 voice/ data channels) and all modem, fax, and voice comms going through the circuit are available on the other side. … [View More]

1 0

Elder Kennedy ordered to tesify to Grand Jury (if you can call it that) [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > X-within-URL: http://www.cnn.com/US/9811/10/kennedy.testimony.ap/ > STAMFORD, Connecticut (AP) -- A Florida judge on Tuesday ordered the > elderly brother of Ethel Kennedy to testify before a Connecticut grand > jury investigating a 1975 slaying in which his two sons are suspects. > > Rushton Skakel, 74, of Hobe Sound, Florida, was ordered to testify > about what he knows about the slaying of Martha Moxley, a 15-year-old > … [View More]

2 1

Important news from DAVOC (-flash3 site-)
by jake 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greetings from the Underground...... this message is presented to you by the U.S. http://www.DAVOC.com

1 0

GOST still used?
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can anyone report whether GOST is still used anywhere?

2 1

Re: IP: Clinton Wants Loophole In U.S. Free Speech Closed (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 05:27:11 -0800 (PST) > From: b!X <bix(a)geekforce.org> > Subject: Re: IP: Clinton Wants Loophole In U.S. Free Speech Closed > And notice also that the 1st begins with "Congress shall make no law" while > the 2nd begins with "a well regulated militia". > Becos the attempted paraody was lame in the same ways that all attempts to Hey, can I use that spelling of 'because'? I want to irritate a particular wanna-be-english-… [View More]

1 0

Re: charity at the point of a gun (Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymous writes: > > Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> wrote: > > > What is annoying is "charity" (social security) at the point of a gun. > > Our "conscience" is being decided by government which is acting as a > > broker for those lobby for their "need" and for your assets to be > > stolen and redistributed to them. > > > > What people aren't willing to pay for shouldn't happen. Period. If > > that means people starve well those … [View More]

1 0

Re: Question about anarchic systems and natural disasters
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate writes: > > What would be the responce of a anarchic system that was based on profit in > regards something like Mitch's impact on Ctl. America and their plea for > food and aid? `Their plea for food and aid' is just that: a plea; it no more creates an _obligation_ to help them than my plea for your money to help rebuild my burned-down house should. Still, in an anarcho-capitalistic system, Mitch would be responded to by private individuals through charitable aid … [View More]

2 1

Re: IP: Clinton Wants Loophole In U.S. Free Speech Closed (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 05:30:22 -0800 (PST) > From: b!X <bix(a)geekforce.org> > Subject: Re: IP: Clinton Wants Loophole In U.S. Free Speech Closed (fwd) > > I'd say that 'shall make no law' is a clear as 'shall not be infringed' and > > pretty equivalent in meaning. > > Same comments as before. Utiizing the text of the 1st to defend one's > approach to the 2nd is nonrational, which is what the lame parody attempted > to do, and what … [View More]

1 0

Re: Question about insurance managed fire services...
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate writes: > > How does company A guarantee that company B won't begin to burn down the > customers of company A so that the economic impact on A is sufficient they > can't participate in the market? How does it do so now? Fucking idiot. Do you imagine that the customers of company A (and their police, security force or other guardian) will stand idly by while their homes (the implied target) are burned?

1 0

Re: Question about insurance managed fire services... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 14:50:12 +0100 > From: Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> > Subject: Re: Question about insurance managed fire services... > Jim Choate writes: > > > > How does company A guarantee that company B won't begin to burn down the > > customers of company A so that the economic impact on A is sufficient they > > can't participate in the market? > > How does it do so now? Insurance regulatory agencies who … [View More]

1 0

Re: DCSB: Risk Management is Where the Money Is; Trust in DigitalCommerce
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Subject: Re: DCSB: Risk Management is Where the Money Is; Trust in Digital Commerce Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 23:40:49 -0500 From: Dan Geer <geer(a)world.std.com> Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Dan Geer <geer(a)world.std.com> <per several requests> -----------------8<----------------cut-here----------------8<----------------- Nominal delivery draft ------------------------------------- … [View More]Risk Management is Where the Money Is ------------------------------------- Digital Commerce Society of Boston 3 November 98 Daniel E. Geer, Jr., Sc.D. Senior Strategist, CertCo, Inc. 55 Broad Street, NYC, and 100 Cambridgepark Drive, Cambridge geer(a)certco.com Given my biases, I am going to describe where the future of the security marketplace is and where it is not. I will argue that the financial community is and remains the place to look for "first light" for new security technology. I will give you a rundown of what's new while I predict what little time is left for many of today's products, purveyors and regulators. I will argue that, in many ways, the party's over for the security field as we know it now. I will range broadly because security, as a concept, is universal. "Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come." For security technology, that time is now. IBM calls the three requirements of the "e-business" future as: #1 security, #2 scalability, and #3 integration. Forrester, Gartner, META, Yankee and all the other analysts agree -- the most important enabling technology for electronic business, besides network connectivity itself, is security. AD Little estimates that security, privacy and the legal issues of digital signature together constitute over half of the quantifiable barriers to electronic commerce. There are whole venture funds whose investment focus is around security. Security startups are everywhere; so are security books. The word "security" is hardly rare in employment advertisements. You cannot walk a trade show and not see the word "security" in screaming big type. The number of security meetings is preposterous. Presidential Commissions are busy spending real money on security for the information systems that run the country. "In the future, everyone will each get 15 minutes of fame." That applies to security,too. Today's security specialty companies cannot all survive; they can be eclipsed by the platform vendors too easily. Only platform vendors can deliver security that is integrated enough to scale and invisible enough to ignore. Even the Justice Department knows that once something is in the operating system, any independent market for it collapses. Yes, security's time may well have come, but in a Warhol world, that would mean that it is about time to go. The focus of "security" research today is the study of "trust management" -- how trust is defined, created, annotated, propagated, circumscribed, stored, exchanged, accounted for, recalled and adjudicated in our electronic world. This is natural because security is a means and not an end. This is mature because all technology differentiates along cost-benefit lines. All the security technology that you can buy today enables some aspect of trust management and novel variations show up daily. You can walk out of this hall and buy systems that use passwords that get local machines to trust you enough to let you in. You can buy smart cards that can do your cryptographic calculations for you, respond to challenges, hold your keys inviolable or, more interestingly, have identities of their own and serve merely to introduce you on their own terms. You can buy biometric devices that look at your voice, your face, your retina, your fingerprint, or even the idiosyncrasies of how you learned to type and so say, "Yep, that's the guy." You can get systems that are sufficiently hardened that you can rely on them if for no other reason they are so nearly useless no one would want to break in. You can still get your hands on security systems in the raw and roll your own directly from source-code. You can, anywhere, anytime, spin-up virtual private networks that are trustworthy protectors of your confidentiality however hostile the intervening wires are. You can even deliver privacy between strangers -- nearly a matter of creating trust in order to propagate it. You can put a document into the Eternity Service and trust that it can never be erased or you can put it into a cryptographic file system and trust that it can never be found. Simple? Yes; academics and entrepreneurs alike are busy supplying ways to propagate trust. They have it all wrong. If you ever took a course in probability then you know that many problems are solved by calculating their dual -- the probability of "not X" can be a whole lot more tractable than figuring Pr(X) directly. If you're in a security-based startup company, then you'll know that making money requires making excitement, even if the excitement is somebody else's public humiliation. And all of you can agree that the more important something is, the more it must be managed. Trust management is surely exciting, but like most exciting ideas it is unimportant. What is important is risk management, the sister, the dual of trust management. And because risk management makes money, it drives the security world from here on out. Every financial firm of any substance has a formal Risk Management Department that consumes a lion's share of the corporate IT budget. The financial world in its entirety is about packaging risk so that it can be bought and sold, i.e., so that risk can be securitized and finely enough graded to be managed at a profit. Everything from the lowly car loan to the most exotic derivative security is a risk-reward tradeoff. Don't for a minute underestimate the amount of money to be made on Wall Street, London and/or Tokyo when you can invent a new way to package risk. The impact of Moore's Law on the financial world is inestimable -- computing has made that world rich because it has enabled risk packaging to grow ever more precise, ever more real-time, ever more differentiated, ever more manageable. You don't have to understand forward swaptions, collateralized mortgage obligations, yield burning, or anything else to understand that risk management is where the money is. In a capitalist world, if something is where the money is, that something rules. Risk is that something. Security technology has heretofore been about moving trust around as if risk is definitionally undesirable and reliable trust management simply obviates the issue of risk. It does not come close. In two years time the "trust-hauling" market will be somewhere on the down-slope between legacy and dead. Risk management is going to take over as the dominant paradigm because risk management can subsume trust, but trust management cannot subsume risk. The Internet has made this so. The Internet is irresistible because it lowers barriers to entry on a global basis -- global in both space and time. Ever more important parts of the world's economy exist only in cyberspace, and lead times have entirely collapsed. Every professional fortune teller is bidding geometric increases in the dollar volume of electronic commercial activity. But when there is enough booty available, even absurdly difficult attacks become plausible. This is the world we are in. It will never be possible to really do the job of trust management any more than it is possible to really win an arms race or really preclude your car from being stolen. But risk management -- that is doable and it is doable at a profit. The proof is all around us. We are a score of years down this road. 1978 was a vintage security year; the remarkable papers by Rivest, Shamir & Adleman and Needham & Schroeder were published, both in CACM as it happens. The former introduced public key ideas and the latter created Kerberos. The counterpoint between these two technologies is instructive. Both symmetric cryptosystems, like Kerberos, and asymmetric cryptosystems, like RSA, do the same thing -- that is to say they do key distribution -- but the semantics are quite different. The fundamental security-enabling activity of a secret key system is to issue fresh keys at low latency and on demand. The fundamental security-enabling activity of an asymmetric key system is to verify the as-yet-unrevoked status of a key already in circulation, again with low latency and on demand. This is key management and it is a systems cost; a secret key system like Kerberos has incurred nearly all its costs by the moment of key issuance. By contrast, a public key system incurs nearly all its costs with respect to key revocation. Hence, a rule of thumb: The cost of key issuance plus the cost of key revocation is a constant, just yet another version of "You can pay me now or you can pay me later." Because of the tradeoffs between who pays for what part of the systems cost and who gets the benefit, secret key systems and public key systems have different fields of use. Secret key systems are fast and offer revocation at no marginal cost. Public key systems are slow but they enable digital signature and thus enable proof of action, non-repudiation as it is called. Secret key systems are the default choice within an organization while public key systems are the default choice between organizations, i.e., secret key for where security is an intramural concern intramurally arbitrated, and public key for where security is extramural thereby requiring recourse to a third party judge in cases of dispute. The relentless blurring of what is intramural and what is extramural will favor public key over time. Because a trust management paradigm says that a digital signature is only as valid as the key (in which it was signed) was at the moment of signature, it is only as good as the procedural perfection of the certificate issuer and the timely transmission of any subsequent revocation. **These are high costs.** In fact, the true costs of general public key infrastructure are so extraordinarily high that only our collective ignorance of those costs permits us to propel ourselves toward a general PKI as if it were a panacea. When, not if, the user community at large realizes this, we "security people" will have but two choices, compromise on (gloss over) the quality of trust that public key can deliver or back off from the claims of full trust cheap. In other words, we'll have to fit the benefit to the endurable cost or fit the cost to the requisite benefit. Since, as a rule of thumb, to halve the probability of loss you have to at least double the cost of countermeasures, any finite tolerance of cost means an upper bound on how much security you can get. In the fullness of time, security technology will be evaluated on the same cost-benefit-risk tradeoff on which other technologies are evaluated. This is the price of maturity; this is the price not yet paid. Do not misunderstand me; public key technology, secret key technology, security technology in general are daily reaching new levels of protective capability. What they cannot protect against is being over-sold, and they are being over-sold. Why is that? The days when the Internet was a toy are gone even if a high percentage of its new investors are still coming in merely to avoid looking dowdy. The real question on the table is: When does the Internet become more like the data center. And what does making the Internet more like the data center mean? At a minimum, it means metered use. Discussions are already widespread about requiring Internet postage; large ISPs will probably demand it, existing postal services would love to sell it and data centers, such as the financial giants, will get a better handle on what goes in and out the door. At least one Wall Street bank already does charge-back for network bandwidth consumption and their internal electronic security regime plays a role in assigning those costs just as, in turn, their security group manages the user database via incremental updates rather than fresh full copies so as to minimize their bandwidth charges. That's not postage, but it is close and it is now. Incremental use charges are but one example, interesting mostly because they are a near term step toward making the Internet into a data center. The fundamental value of the data center is the information it holds. The past few years have seen data warehousing, data mining and now connection of the data center to the Web, data publishing if you will. MVS, for example, has a really good web server and someone in the audience will have to convince me that there is a difference between a 1970's central time-share machine and an MVS web server in a swarm of "thin clients" on fast networks. It certainly isn't the direct wire connection -- SSL simulates that well enough. It surely isn't the management model; the MIS director who had declared defeat in desktop configuration management will, you can be sure, rejoice at getting control back. In the mainframe world, you move the computation to where the data is. In a client server world, you move the data to where the computation is. Web servers front-ending corporate databases attached to virtual private networks full of some universal client like a web browser sure sounds like a resurgence of the data center to me. The IBM 390 is a good machine and the Wintel cartel has pretty much ensured that no upstart will enter their space. From Wintel's point of view, using all those desktop cycles for display functions is just fine. Could it be that simple? Financial markets made SUN what it is today and vice versa -- SUN's first big win, the first big demonstration that computing power had risen to such a degree that moving the data to where the computing is made sense, "the network is the computer" and all that. Financial markets, in the sense of traders going head to head, used that power to replace whom you knew with what you know and set off a technology-as-weapon metaphor that has overtaken most of the business world. Financial Markets, in the sense of Exchanges, now rely on a dense spread of computing that exceeds what most of us have to deal with; more than one major bank has 15,000 FTP jobs a night just moving data to or from its data center. Plenty of staff at the NYSE lose $1000 apiece for every 15 minutes the Exchange is late opening due to IT unavailability. No computing equipment is too expensive when trumped with "I can make that back on the first trade." No small country runs its currency anymore. There was once no question that the fundamental purpose of an exchange was to provide "an advantage of time and place" to those who would trade on it and, in so doing, establish efficiency and liquidity baselines against which others would be judged. Beginning first with the "Paperwork Crisis" in the 60's and reaching a crescendo after the "Crash of '87," the Exchanges have been fully committed to electronic commerce before that phrase meant anything. But since the Internet, time and place are meaningless and the Exchanges know it. They are working hard to make oversight, fair play and quality of service into new baselines. Clearly, security technology is #1 in their list of requirements followed closely by scalability and integration. Security in a financial world market that is both nowhere and everywhere is a difficult thing to define well enough to solve, but if there is anything to engineering as a discipline then it is that the heavy work is in getting the problem statement right. So, to return to my central premise, if new security technology is a result of investment and if the investment in security technology is naturally centered within the financial community, what is the problem statement? ** If we get that right, we can predict the future. ** I submit that the problem statement is how to bring a transactional semantic to the Internet. This is not a new problem, but it is an as yet unsolved one. The existing financial markets want transactions because transactions are what they are about and transactions are what they know. Upstarts like the payment vendors want to be the first to deliver transactions and disintermediate the financial firms. Technical legal beagles reason that there is no transaction without recourse, no recourse without contract, no contract without non-repudiation and no non-repudiation without digital signature. Anyone who wants to do business on the Web needs transactions. Hal Varian, an economist and Dean of the Information Management School at Berkeley, taught me that what the Internet changes more than anything else is that it brings the efficiency of auction to markets that never had that option. This is a cover story in this week's "The Industry Standard." Auctions need security technology because what makes an auction an auction is the ability to conclude a transaction which, by its own execution, "discovers" a price. In other words, the nature of the world's economy is changed by the existence of the Internet, but only on the condition that electronic transactions are up to job. So what do I mean by "transaction?" I mean a non-repudiable communication between two parties who can each verify the time-, value- and content-integrity of that communication, who can presume confidentiality of that communication, who can verify the authenticity and authorization of their counterparty and who can present all these evidences to third party adjudication should there be a need for recourse at any arbitrary time in the future. **Every single part of that definition begs the question of security mechanism.** It is on that basis I claim that the security technology of tomorrow will be crafted in response to the unmet needs of financial markets today. As an example, your handwritten signature on a check is what, in principle, authorizes that funds move from A to B. In truth, from a bank's point of view, actually verifying handwritten signatures is a transaction cost that is not worth bearing unless the cost of verification is less than the risk of loss. At the largest banks, the threshold dollar amount below which verification does not really happen is a closely guarded number, but it generally exceeds $20,000 and still they have platoons of people doing this all day, every day. Converting the means of signature verification from a manual process into a machine-able one would radically change the economics of check processing. It would add billions to lines and do it from the cost-avoidance side of the ledger. But that is not all. Some $300B of U.S. payments are made every day of which only $60B are in the form of checks; the balance is largely in cash transactions of $5 or less. From both the merchant's and the bank's perspectives, getting rid of cash would be a huge win because handling costs for small dollar amounts often exceed the profit margins on the underlying sales. While the consumer may well adopt cashless payment out of some sense of convenience, the financial side of the house will enable it to avoid costs. Only this morning, Frost & Sullivan released a study that defines e-commerce as "commercial transactions taking place over the Internet with exchange of value in real time." Web payment sparked numerous startups with numerous different mechanisms. It is too late for you to enter this market, but it is not too late for those payment-systems vendors to rethink what they are trying to do. All of them are suffering because the volume of Web-based retail business has not picked up as fast as their business plans had presumed. For the retail customer, the main thing the Web offers is product discovery; a good print catalog and an 800 number are otherwise hard to beat. It is clear that the real money in Web commerce is in business-to-business commerce, but there the supply chain has a lot more complication and the kinds of security mechanisms need to be better than those for buying a toaster oven. Whereas retail commerce is about small dollar amounts and stranger-to-stranger transactions through a financial intermediary like a credit-card company, business-to-business is more about relationships, the dollar value of the sale is much bigger, and banks play a direct role (through letters of credit, collateralized bills of lading, etc.) B2B commerce does not have a good solution yet. If you want to sell into this market, be aware that the customer will buy either to avoid costs he has now or to make revenue he doesn't have yet. In the case of saving costs, you'll have to sell him the technology on a turnkey basis -- he will not cut you into the transactional revenue stream. If you can really show that your technology will make him revenue he did not have a chance to make otherwise, you may be able to get a piece of the revenue stream, but do not underestimate the cost-avoidance focus of big buyers and sellers. As far out as 2005, over half the Internet-transactions will be transactions converted from paper and credit/debit cards, not new transactions. **When selling into a cost-averse market you automate rather than revolutionize, and you do not get a piece of the action.** Everyone likes to talk about "disintermediating the banks," that is making the intermediary role of banks in commerce less essential by performing that service in some other way. Bill Gates is widely quoted as saying that "Banks are dinosaurs." At the highest end, they are not dinosaurs and they are not about to be disintermediated. Whilst the banks have a natural affection for their income streams, that doesn't prevent disintermediation. Most wiseguys trying to disintermediate the banks misunderstand what banks do. This is what they do: They interpose their balance sheet between the expectations of the counterparties to a transaction and the risk of default on either of their parts. They undertake stop-loss protections against credit risk, insolvency, operational failure, currency fluctuation, diversion of funds delivery, etc. In other words, they manage risk because they can absorb loss. **Electronic commerce payment technology cannot absorb loss, so it cannot and will not disintermediate the banks.** Think of this this way: All public key technology is driven to make a digital signature verifiable, i.e., it is about quality control and guarantee on the signature itself. This is a stunning thing, but it is not the whole equation. The intermediation role that banks play is to guarantee the transaction, i.e., it is broader than just the verification of a signature. The bank's know-how and its balance sheet are not something that can be replaced by a cryptographic calculation. The ability to avoid loss never makes up for the ability to absorb loss. The cryptography guarantees the signature; the bank's capital guarantees the transaction. **Risk control encapsulates trust.** In the midst of this, you might say "What are the standards?" in the sense of "What do the formal standards groups have to say?" The banking world is regulation rich and standards rich, too, which begs the question -- "Which standards matter?" The world of the Internet is making some of the banking-centric standards passe' but, unlike the combination of standards and regulations the banks are familiar with, the standards groups of the Internet cannot take on accountability for the implications of conformance/non-conformance though they continue to define it for others. This makes Internet standards substantially difficult to swallow because there is no accountability, nor can there be. The absence of enforcement guarantees that the only Internet standards that will really get attention are those that promote interoperability across jurisdictional boundaries. Ironically, this is all the pioneers of the Internet ever wanted. What the banks want, and I assure you they will get, is a set of cryptographically sophisticated tools that move the risks of the Internet from open-ended to estimable. In a sense, this is like insurability. It is probably apocryphal, but the story goes that a major investment firm with a Web commerce idea went to a big insurance company to seek stop loss protection. The conversation supposedly went like this: "How big is the potential loss?" "We don't know." "How likely is a loss to occur?" "We don't know." "How much is your company worth?" "This much." "That's the premium; send it in." Whether true or not, it illustrates the point -- the issue is getting a handle on the risk such that it can be priced. Every one of you who has tried to sell security technology has discovered that the only willing customers are those who either (1) have just been embarrassed in public or (2) have just learned that they are facing an audit. Everyone else is an unwilling customer. We've been dumb about this; we've tried to sell security as a means to establish trust but we've done it by railing about threats. It's no damned wonder that we haven't sold much. I know I have often wondered if my market might not explode were I to get just one of the big loss-prevention insurers to make good security practices and technology into an underwriting standard. Then, just like "Do you have sprinklers?" everyone is forced to confront whether they want to pay for security or pay for non-security. I am confident that the insurers could soften up my targets a lot better than I can. Let me tell you, they are about to. Insurability of Web commerce is essential, and no insurer is going to accept "We don't know" as an answer. They will say "Send it all in" and they'll mean it. The demand side for security technology is exploding but it isn't quite the security technology we have on hand. If a digital signature has the uniquely irreplaceable property of providing proof to a judge, then the role of a "trusted third party" is going to become more important over time, not less. Think of it this way: when I get a certificate issued to me by a certifying authority, I do have some risk around whether the CA is well operated or not. This includes the probability they will issue a certificate with my public key but someone else's name and whether when I tell them that my key has been compromised they will spring into decisive action. Most of that risk I can handle by a combination of due diligence and contract. However, when I give my certificate to you and say "Hi, I'm here from Central Services to fix your system" it is you that's in a risky position. You have to say "Is this certificate valid?" That means you have to check that the certificate is not listed as revoked, that the signature on the certificate is well formed, that the certificate authority which issued this certificate itself has an identity certificate that is itself validly signed, that the certificate authority is itself not in any trouble with revocation, and and so forth, ** recursively. ** The full cost of revocation testing is proportional to the square of the depth of the issuance hierarchy. In other words, this exceeds the intellectual capacity of most certificate recipients. This means that most recipients cannot themselves rely on the security technology to establish trust beyond the shadow of doubt. Instead, if recipients are smart, they will turn again to the insurance world just as risk holders have done whenever they cannot afford to carry on their books the consequences of a remotely unlikely event. For the insurer, he will underwrite a guarantee on the transaction for a fee that will reflect his experience with the CA's practices, the kind of transaction undertaken, the dollar amounts involved, etc. This will seem sensible to all parties because it is so familiar. This is risk management underwritten by financial intermediaries. This is where we will shortly be. This is the card eight major banks and CertCo played ten days ago -- the formation of "a global network of compliant businesses that use a common risk management framework." **This is where we securitize the transactional risk of electronic commerce.** There is one potential fly in this ointment, and I do not intend to dwell on it, but I cannot get this far and not mention the threat to strong security apparati of having them undermined by key escrow. Corporate policies and laws alike have always been defined in a territorial way that relies on clearly identifiable borders, physical locations where the policy or the law come to an end. But in the electronic world borders are meaningless. In some sense, sovereignty, based as it was on the idea of a border, is less meaningful now than for some centuries. In its place is a different kind of sovereignty, because the only borders in an electronic world are cryptographic ones. As such, the debate over who may or may not have a key known only to themselves is a proxy discussion for who may or may not have sovereignty within a cryptographically defined space. There are hard questions yet to answer. Compromised keys are revoked effective not to the moment of suspicion of compromise but rather retroactively to the last known time when the key was safe. In the case of escrow, should not a key's owner retroactively revoke it to the moment of its seizure from escrow should the owner later discover that it has been so seized? Or if a revoked key is only revoked by the action of the certifying authority signing a revocation notice in a special key, can that revocation-signing key itself ever be revoked? If it could, would that not invalidate (reverse) any revocations signed in it and what does that mean? I only offer these so that you do not equate my argument about the near-inevitability of investment in public key technology and digital-signature-dependent activities with some presumed infallibility of the technology or our understanding of it. These questions will be settled one way or another, but they remain open as we speak here today, and there is money to be made. I have tried to lay out my estimation on which way the tide is running and which moon's gravity matters. I could be completely wrong, or merely overstating what my biases bring me, but I think not. I think that just as the best estimate of tomorrow's weather is today's, the best estimate of how the Internet and the financial behemoths will interact is for the Internet to be driven, as a side effect, by the cost-reduction and profit-incented strategies of those financial behemoths. They already transcend national boundaries and their investment decisions do run the world. Were this to get enough investment, it might make security a solved problem at least as I define "solved" to mean "consistent with risk management in the insurance style." Since that would collapse the market for novel security add-ons, I strongly suggest that as you prepare your business plans you figure out how to be, as Tom Lehrer would say, a doctor specializing in diseases of the rich. This is a very exciting time and it is a privilege to be a part of it. When we are all relics in rocking chairs, we will still know that we were present at the creation. I know that I will count myself particularly lucky, including for your close attention these past few minutes. Thank you for the honor of speaking with you. END For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' [View Less]

1 0

Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd)
by Albert P. Franco, II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> Without some government the Bad Guys will be the only ones with anything. >> It is only with the threat of losing their power that leaders do good. If >> they had no power which could be lost or taken they will always do what's >> best for them in the short term, which is usually to shit on the peons. >> Dictators (like Pinochet and Gates) do their dirty deeds because they feel >> no need to placate the masses. > >If they wield no real power, and … [View More]proceed to do whatever is best for them >in the short term, they will be screwing themselves over in the long >term (or short term, if doing what they want results in someone shooting >them in self defense). > I re-read my original sentence and it seems that your interpretation is possible. I would like to clarify that the power I refer to is only that part of their power which might be lost or threatened. Clearly if they have no power they can't lose it. I want to say that if some or all of their power could be placed in jeopardy they would tend to better behaved. Why do you suppose Clinton spent so much time licking everybodys' boots and repeatedly embellishing his "apologies" to the "public". >And precisely what dirty deeds has Mr. Gates ever done? Excluding those >actions in which the judicious use of state regulation was involved. You obviously think that anything goes in business. Frankly Gates is a perfect example of why you anarcho-BS is doomed to failure. He will do anything (and has) he can to be the only player in every market he touches. He has destroyed otherwise perfectly good businesses and products just to increase his profits. He has violated workers rights to increase his profit. In short he has demonstrated that if you let him murder wouldn't be to far a step to reach his goals. He is the monster that proves that your ideas are actually very very old (caveman days) and are doomed by progress and civilization. Injecting capitalism (investment oriented markets) into barbarism doesn't change the fact that it is still barbarism, which in facts negates the ability to have investment oriented markets, or capitalism. Who would invest if someone with a gun could come and take it without out fear of retribution. > >> This anarcho-capitalist spew is so much crap that the bullshit indicators >> are blaring at top volume. If the people can't control a constitutional >> government, known for having peacefully free elections for over two hundred >> years, then how the hell do think you can convince somebody that the people >> are going to be able to control warlords and monopolies. It's called, "You >> don't like it? Bang, Bang, you're dead!" > >Yah, and then somebody else points a gun at Mr. would-be warlord and >goes Bang, Bang, he's dead (it's unsafe having warlords about --sorta >like scorpions). That is, if Mr. would-be manages to shoot me without >being shot himself. > And so everybody's so busy shooting each other that nobody is investing, and I have to ask, "What happened to the capitalism part of anarcho-capitalism?" >> Try to lift yourself out of the bullshit of your theory and give us at >> least one REAL example (current or historic) of a large scale, long lasting >> anarcho-capitalist society. Hippie communes are too small, and make sure >> it's capitalistic. If you can't think of one in the next year or so then >> come back and tell us. > >It hasn't happened yet. But then, neither had the USA, before 1776. >The above is not a reasonable argument. WRONG!!!! Parliaments and representative governments did exist in somewhat other forms. 1776 was NOT a revolution it was evolution. It comes from among other things the Magna Carta of England as well as many other concepts astutely compiled by the "forefathers". Your propositions emanate from a basis which existed before there were nations and well before investment and economic development began. In fact, anarchy had to be overcome before consistent development could occur. Once we organized our societies and brought long (relatively) periods of peace to the general populace economic and scientific development began to grow. Certainly you will find it impossible to site any anarchic or nearly anarchic "society" (oxymoron) which has brought sustained significant development. > >You can, of course, as me how it *could* happen. And unfortunately, >you're partially correct, it couldn't happen under current conditions. >The amount of personal firepower that is easily accessible by everyone >is not sufficient to back up the soverignity of each individual. It's >all linked to whether weapons technology is such that individuals can >operate weapons which are just as effective as those wielded by highly >trained and specialized groups. The pendulum of weapons tech. swings >back and forth over time. During the American Revolution, the pendulum >was on the side of individuals, as can be shown by the fact that the >revolutionaries were carrying better weapons than those carried by >professional soldiers, and could use them to equal or larger effect. > You whole thesis is based on violence, the exact opposite of what's required for sustained economic growth. You lose! Consistently wrong answers. You just don't get it. War does not produce wide spread economic growth in those zones affected by the war. It destroys the infrastructure that only an organized government is capable of maintaining. Granted, if you can be the one selling the weapons you might profit for a while. But eventually, those same weapons will be turned on you. The real answer is to keep the government focused on keeping the peace and maintaining the infrastructures using as light a hand as possible--which is never going to be an easy task. But no government is NO GROWTH. The libertarians have at least part of the equation correct. They go a little too far to one extreme. But this is good, they're mostly just extreme enough to pull a wondering government back into the middle where it should be. Your anarcho-spew is rubbish, poorly thought out, and without any real validation. I bet most of the most fervent defenders of gun ownership on this list actually hope never to have to make use of their tunnels, guns, and survival rations. War is simply not good economics, and anarchy is war--constant, festering, sometimes small scale, sometimes large scale, but always war. APF [View Less]

1 0

Re: Question about insurance managed fire services...
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate writes: > > From: Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> > > > Jim Choate writes: > > > > > > How does company A guarantee that company B won't begin to burn down the > > > customers of company A so that the economic impact on A is sufficient they > > > can't participate in the market? > > > > How does it do so now? > > Insurance regulatory agencies who monitor the behavior, investigation by a > reasonably … [View More]impartial fire dept after every fire. That's at least two. You really are naive, Jim. Do you think that insurance regulatory agents follow around after all of the insurance companies' employees to ensure they aren't starting fires? Or do you suppose that in an anarcho-capitialistic society (unlike the current sainted `democratic' society), company A would be so stupid as to make the burning of competitors' houses an official company policy which would be found out `if only' there were a government regulator watching it? How long do you suppose that company A can get away with burning down the homes of its competitors before its agents are caught in the act (by company B's investigators if no one else)? No, Jim, such behavior would clearly not be in the best interests of company A's stockholders (that is, it would not be `profitable'). Any why, in a private contractual situation, would the `fire department' not be impartial? How does the government-provided fire department have any advantage in impartiality? > > Fucking idiot. Do you imagine that the customers of company A (and > > their police, security force or other guardian) will stand idly by > > while their homes (the implied target) are burned? > > What police and security forces? The police or security force that the customer contracts with to protect their home of course. Idiot. These exist now in cooperation with government-provided police (though some might naively imagine them to be redundant). Either you are simply being disingenuous or you really are this stupid. > You mean the ones the same insurance > company co-oped? Context, Jim, context. This makes no sense whatsoever without more context. What insurance company are you talking about? And why does an insurance company necessarily have a direct relationship with a security service provider? Or did you mean `co-opted' (a different word altogether)? > What makes you thing that Company A or B will even advertise their actions? > > Who says the homes will be burned when the residents are even home? It isn't > like anyone is going to ask their permission. Indeed. So what prevents anyone from doing this now? I suggest you pretend you had a brain and try to think this through for yourself. There simply isn't anything magical about government-provided services. (While you are doing so, it might be instructive to remember that prior to the late 18th century, there was no such thing as a government-provided police force. Yet, people were still able to have houses without insurance companies burning them down.) > And I'm the 'fucking idiot'. This you have amply and repeatedly demonstrated. [View Less]

1 0

Re: Question about insurance managed fire services... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 15:59:32 +0100 > From: Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> > Subject: Re: Question about insurance managed fire services... > You really are naive, Jim. Do you think that insurance regulatory > agents follow around after all of the insurance companies' employees > to ensure they aren't starting fires? No, and exactly how you managed to derive that is truly humorous. > Or do you suppose that in an anarcho-capitialistic … [View More]society (unlike > the current sainted `democratic' society), company A would be so > stupid as to make the burning of competitors' houses an official > company policy which would be found out `if only' there were a > government regulator watching it? How long do you suppose that > company A can get away with burning down the homes of its competitors Until somebody either squeels (not likely since they're dead shortly afterward or let loose and nobody will hire then from then on, not in the business' best interest.) or they do get caught and a connection is made (not very likely since the perp won't be carryin an employee badge). And since company A is the company that will be prosecuting (their own under-the-table employee) the consequences are pretty predictible. How commen is it now for business' to partake in illegal activities in order to further their business ends? How often do you suppose, given that rate, they are caught? I'd say not a lot. I see no reason to suspect that in a anarcho-whatever society that rate will be one whit better. > before its agents are caught in the act (by company B's investigators > if no one else)? Oh, they'll get caught occassionaly but then again, the strategy of forcing company B to keep investigators on call and monitoring their customers property is a good strategy to raise their cost of doing business and as a result their coverage rates. This increase will help convince user of B's service that A looks like a better bang for the buck. > No, Jim, such behavior would clearly not be in the > best interests of company A's stockholders (that is, it would not be > `profitable'). Sure it would, it decreases the cost of doing business and increases the potential market for future consumers of the services. It happens all the time now, it won't go away. > Any why, in a private contractual situation, would the `fire department' > not be impartial? How does the government-provided fire department > have any advantage in impartiality? Because their funds and income is from a known source. Ask yourself this, what happens if a police officer or a fire inspector suddenly starts driving a Porche around and moving out into the uppity neighborhoods and doesn't have a good explanation for it? > The police or security force that the customer contracts with to > protect their home of course. Idiot. These exist now in cooperation > with government-provided police (though some might naively imagine > them to be redundant). Either you are simply being disingenuous or > you really are this stupid. > > > You mean the ones the same insurance > > company co-oped? > > Context, Jim, context. This makes no sense whatsoever without more > context. What insurance company are you talking about? And why does > an insurance company necessarily have a direct relationship with a > security service provider? Or did you mean `co-opted' (a different > word altogether)? Apparently I've strained your short-term memory here, go back and read it again. Which insurance company is obvious - all of them. I'm done now, this isn't about anarcho-anything, this is about you getting your jollies off trying to take cheap shots at me personaly. Whoopie. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

1 0

ebanking - What's up with that?
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Anyone got a pointer other than the CNN article on the announcement by Excite Inc. and Bank One about their offering a full line of banking services online? I'd be interested in anything on the particulars of the services and he protocols they intend to impliment. Danke. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (… [View More]

1 0

Re: IP: Clinton Wants Loophole In U.S. Free Speech Closed (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 00:06:22 +1000 > From: Reeza! <howree(a)cable.navy.mil> > Subject: Re: IP: Clinton Wants Loophole In U.S. Free Speech Closed > Notice how, in each of the amendments below, the 1st is the only one with > the text "congress shall make no law". > > This is implied, understood to be implied, accepted as implied and supreme > court ruled to be implied as applicable to each of the rest of the bill of > rights, and later … [View More]

2 1

100S OF FREE PICS'N'LINKS EVERY DAY!
by STUFFED THU NOV 12 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

+ 30 SUPERB, HI-RES, HOT PHOTOS + 5 SUPER SEXY STORIES + NAUGHTY LADY + PORN MIX + SEXY BLACK BABES + VERTICAL SMILES + WILD WORLD OF SEX + 4 PUSSY + ADULT WEB CIRCUShttp://www.znd2.net/karpo/AAA/ + SEX HAPPY + HORNY HEATHER'S CUM SHOTS + JACK'S HOUSE OF SLUTS + BONUS PIC 1 -> http://www.stuffed.net/home/3843.htm + BONUS PIC 2 -> http://www.stuffed.net/home/3985.htm + BONUS PIC 3 -> http://www.stuffed.net/home/25033.htm + BONUS PIC 4 -> http://www.stuffed.net/home/27786.htm + … [View More]

1 0

Cylink Sued for Stock Fraud
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Business Wire reported yesterday that Cylink has been sued in US District Court of New Jersey for securities fraud through a class action. It alleges misrepresentation and false financial statements. http://jya.com/cylink-suit.htm On November 5 Cylink announced revised revenues for the first half of 1998. The day before William Crowell, ex-NSA, was appointed president in a house sweep of the executive team, apparently after discovery of book cooking. William Perry, ex-DoD, is still … [View More]

2 1

RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 10:49:23 -0500 > From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone > (fwd) > And the system protects them. Pinochet wasn't handed over to spain > now was he. > > It's the system. No, it's the British system. And to be honest it should be the American system also. A country should have jurisdiction only within its own borders. Other countries should have … [View More]agreements about how persons accussed of crimes should be extradited. In the anarcho-whatever system this is all eliminated because we've eliminated crime in the first place by legitimizing any and all strategies. > In N.C, Tennesee (IIRC), Illinois, and North Carolina (especially > N.C.) it's the state. Then have the law changed in those states or you could move to Texas. > Crap. Pure B.S. What lead to it's regulation was a bunch of broads > who didn't want ANYONE drinking, so they pushed for abolition, which was a > total disaster, and lead to repeal. No, that was prohibition. The taxation of alcohol goes back equaly far in the history of this country. To before the articles of confederation even since Britian required taxes on rum and related items - espcialy if they were from non-British ports - if you would stop knee-jerking responces and think back the Tax Acts were one of the reasons we had a revolution in the first place. Tea, rum, and whiskey were one of the primary motivations. > Ever heard of "Muckraking"? Yellow Journalism? Could it have been > that that lead to some of this B.S. regulation? Nah, the press never would > have done something like that. Actualy, the fact that you admit that the press can be in colussion with the government and the businesses goes a long way toward demonstrating that anarcho-anything won't work because it will be even harder for whistle-blowers and 'social do-gooders' to get their message out (unless they're well heeled and don't mind loosing it all in the process). > Remember the movie "Reefer Madness", and the Jim Crow drug laws of > the early 1900's? Couldn't be that people in positions of power at the time > had certain agendas and used lies to further them could it. People always have agenda's (this is segues nicely into what Blanc was saying about attitudes), that's my point and one of the reasons that anarcho-whatever won't work is because it doesn't recognize this nor does it put any sort of limit on its expression. > Nah, people in government NEVER behave like that. People always behave that way, it's the way people are. Being in government is only another mechanism it gets expressed through. Business is another. > No I didn't, EVEN IF I GET THEM LEGALLY, if I turn around and sell > them, it's black market, that was muy fucking point, I'm sorry if you can't > comprehend that sort of thing. If the doctor gives them to you without a valid medical reason then you didn't get them legaly. Techicaly the doctor is in violation for trafficking and you would be in violation for possession and use of a controlled substance. If you knew full well that you weren't going to use them and took them anyway then you in effect stole them because you misled the doctor into giving them to you. Now if you simply sold them because you didn't like their side effects then only you are legaly culpible. Now, your point that not everything on the black market is stolen is well take as I've said before (you just didn't read it, it at least explains why you keep going over the same issue until you think I'll be badgered into agreeing with you). The exception I take, and am still waiting for refuation of, is that the *majority* of goods on the black market including drugs are related to the theft of material or services from legitimate parties. That you don't seem to grasp (and I'm not so obsessed with making you see it that I'm going to discuss the issue farther). As a history teacher once said: The nice thing about America is anybody can believe anything, whether they know what they are talking about or not. I respect that sentiment. > I hated the shit, and didn't take it after the 2nd day, leaving me > clear headed, but in pain. No big deal, I've been in pain before. I traded > the rest of those drugs for an old computer. I certainly hope that no DEA agents are watching *and* you're not in the US. Admitting to a crime in a public venue, whether in a public park or a mailing list isn't the brightest strategy. If you're not in the US you should probably hope that the NSA (or whomever) is too busy to pass along this to the requisite authorities. I would suggest strongly that for future such public admission you should use a pseudonym or an anonymous remailer. > Either way, my point is still that the black market is about more > than just if the _product_ is illegal, it also relates to the trade. It has to do with something being illegal or not acceptable otherwise you could just open up a store and start trading the items directly. In the vast majority of cases it involves the theft of services or property from the valid rights holder. > Yeah, like anyone really knows for sure. Well that pretty much shoots a hole in your point as well if that is your position. However, since the manufature of vehicles is accounted far to at least the 10's place by auto manufacturers and the sale of legitimate cars is traceable through tax and title I'd say that it is possible to make educated guesses about the scale of the market. > Because I know a lot of people who've bought drugs, and for the > most part it was with money they earned or receieved thru legal means. No, you know some people who have bought drugs, just as I do. However, claiming that the small set you know of personaly qualifies as a lot is an invalid hyperbole. There are millions of drug users in this country, and in your entire life you've only met a few thousand at best. > Your question is ignorant and irrelevant, but to answer it: Brokers. Oh, you mean fences... > I have something to sell, but I don't want to hassle with finding a > buyer. Joe has a lot of connections, but no goods to sell, and you are a > buyer. I let joe know I have product, he makes the deal, and I hire Omar to > deliver it to you. Joe never even sees the merchandise, but is effectively > the seller. You have to have possession in order to pass possesion to Joe so that he can sell it and pass you possession of the receipted funds (minus Joe's cut). Whether that possession is measured in immediate physical control (ie in your pants pocket) or more general (eg stored in a rent-room under an assumed name) is irrelevant. There is also the fact that if you don't produce the item(s) at some point Joe is likely to take his frustration out on you because you tried to take him and his money. The fact that you can produce them is clear evidence that at some point they were in your possession. How many middle-men is between there is irrelevant, since you are driving it and paying the costs you are in possession. > No, and for you to even say it in that manner is complete > disingenious. Your the one who said shoot them, what's the matter find your baby to ugly to look at? You and I are having and "inter-personal dispute", and would > never suggest that you be shot for disagreeing with me. Nor would I if, Yeah, well unless you can convince everyone that anarcho-whatever will also convince the Kennedy boys, OJ, et ali. then it's pretty irrelevant since it will occur whether you or I are involved and the issue is that it occurs, not that you or I are involved. I suspect that the emotionaly challenged will continue to shoot each other irrespective of the political system implimented. If you take guns away they'll knife each other and if you take knives away they'll beat each other to death. Which raises an interesting point, more people are killed by physical assault according to the FBI crime stats than guns each year. > say, we had a car accident and were resolving that (unless you had done > something like driving drunk and blatantly violating common sense rules of > the road like running a stop sign or a red light, in which case you are a > threat to me and others). Ah, I see. So your position is that if somebody runs a stop light then that is grounds to shoot them. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

2 1

Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone(fwd)
by Michael Hohensee 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Albert P. Franco, II wrote: > > >> Without some government the Bad Guys will be the only ones with anything. > >> It is only with the threat of losing their power that leaders do good. If > >> they had no power which could be lost or taken they will always do what's > >> best for them in the short term, which is usually to shit on the peons. > >> Dictators (like Pinochet and Gates) do their dirty deeds because they feel > >> no need to … [View More]placate the masses. > > > >If they wield no real power, and proceed to do whatever is best for them > >in the short term, they will be screwing themselves over in the long > >term (or short term, if doing what they want results in someone shooting > >them in self defense). > > > > I re-read my original sentence and it seems that your interpretation is > possible. I would like to clarify that the power I refer to is only that > part of their power which might be lost or threatened. Clearly if they have > no power they can't lose it. I want to say that if some or all of their > power could be placed in jeopardy they would tend to better behaved. Why do > you suppose Clinton spent so much time licking everybodys' boots and > repeatedly embellishing his "apologies" to the "public". But how can you plausibly threaten the power of he who has the most power? That would imply that a greater power exists -if so, how do we control those who wield *it*? Checks and balances don't work if those in power aren't willing to check others in power (because, for example, they're on the same side). > >And precisely what dirty deeds has Mr. Gates ever done? Excluding those > >actions in which the judicious use of state regulation was involved. > > You obviously think that anything goes in business. Frankly Gates is a > perfect example of why you anarcho-BS is doomed to failure. He will do > anything (and has) he can to be the only player in every market he touches. So? As long as he doesn't initiate force against anyone, I see no reason why he should be physically prevented from doing what he does. I dislike the way he operates, but neither I nor anyone else has the right to initiate force upon him to stop him, so long as he doesn't initiate force himself. My solution to the problematic behavior of Mr. Gates is not to patronize him wherever possible, to within a certain level of convienience. For example, I do not run MS software on my system --it sucks compared to Linux. Other people hate microsoft even more, and actively work against it. These people either work for competing companies, agitate the public to shun microsoft, or write good open source software, in an attempt to remove microsoft's market. > He has destroyed otherwise perfectly good businesses and products just to > increase his profits. He has violated workers rights to increase his > profit. How? What rights have been violated? Did he at any time initiate force against any of these workers? Did he hire soldiers to storm into competitors' offices to murder and destroy everyone and everything? If he has, I certainly haven't heard of it. I suspect that any "rights" which you think have been "violated" turn out to be non-rights, if you're anything other than a socialist. (which you may very well be --in which case, you'd be irrational and very good at doublethink, making intelligent argument futile) > In short he has demonstrated that if you let him murder wouldn't be > to far a step to reach his goals. I do not agree with this appraisal, and do not care, as long as he doesn't initate force, or use the state to initate force. Until then, he has as much right to do what he does as you have to do whatever it is that you do. > He is the monster that proves that your ideas are actually very very old > (caveman days) and are doomed by progress and civilization. Injecting > capitalism (investment oriented markets) into barbarism doesn't change the > fact that it is still barbarism, which in facts negates the ability to have > investment oriented markets, or capitalism. Who would invest if someone > with a gun could come and take it without out fear of retribution. But my point all along is that anyone who takes a gun and tries to take something *is* likely to face retribution --either from those he steals from, or from others who don't wish to be robbed by him. This retribution can take many forms, ranging from death, to ostracism, to a lowering of his reputation, depending upon how severe his crime was. You just haven't been reading what I've been saying, have you? > >> years, then how the hell do think you can convince somebody that the people > >> are going to be able to control warlords and monopolies. It's called, "You > >> don't like it? Bang, Bang, you're dead!" > > > >Yah, and then somebody else points a gun at Mr. would-be warlord and > >goes Bang, Bang, he's dead (it's unsafe having warlords about --sorta > >like scorpions). That is, if Mr. would-be manages to shoot me without > >being shot himself. > > > > And so everybody's so busy shooting each other that nobody is investing, > and I have to ask, "What happened to the capitalism part of > anarcho-capitalism?" Such events would be rare, since it's pretty easy for all parties concerned to figure out the likely result of such an exchange. Mr. would-be-warlord will probably not act on his desires, since he knows that it would at best drop his reputation through the floor, and at worst, result in his death. Unless of course, he's a real lunatic -in which case, he'd have gone out and attacked someone anyway. It's actually better this way. At least we don't have to worry about intelligent would-be-warlords manipulating the state to do their dirty work for them. In sum, the possibility of getting killed tends to put a damper on the would-be-warlord population. > >> Try to lift yourself out of the bullshit of your theory and give us at > >> least one REAL example (current or historic) of a large scale, long lasting > >> anarcho-capitalist society. Hippie communes are too small, and make sure > >> it's capitalistic. If you can't think of one in the next year or so then > >> come back and tell us. > > > >It hasn't happened yet. But then, neither had the USA, before 1776. > >The above is not a reasonable argument. > > WRONG!!!! Parliaments and representative governments did exist in somewhat > other forms. 1776 was NOT a revolution it was evolution. It comes from > among other things the Magna Carta of England as well as many other > concepts astutely compiled by the "forefathers". Ok, then think of it this way. Instead of having one big, centralized state, where orders are given from on high, and are thus frequently inequitous to lowly individuals, let's go for a more evenly distributed model. Let's carry this distribution to the point where everyone governs himself and his property. Previous attempts at such things would have failed, since humaity lacked communications systems which were fast enough to link such a system together. Previous forms of government all reflect this fact. Communication was always very centralized, and thus governance had to be as well, to keep everyone up to speed on what's going on. As communications technologies improved, states have become more and more decentralized. (go from the mesopotamian warrior-kings, to Rome, to monarchy, to parliamentary government, to the US). And today, we are presented with the internet --the ultimate in decentralized, near instantaneous communications. We aren't very far from making it possible for anyone, anywhere, to communicate with anyone else, wherever they may be. Obviously, this makes it possible to progress even further by decentralizing things even more! The net result is indistinguishable from anarcho-capitalism. I'd be satisfied with it. Do you like it better from this angle? > Your propositions emanate from a basis which existed before there were > nations and well before investment and economic development began. In fact, > anarchy had to be overcome before consistent development could occur. Once > we organized our societies and brought long (relatively) periods of peace > to the general populace economic and scientific development began to grow. > Certainly you will find it impossible to site any anarchic or nearly No, but you couldn't have cited the United States before it existed either. > anarchic "society" (oxymoron) Only if you persist in confusing society with the state. > which has brought sustained significant > development. > > > > >You can, of course, as me how it *could* happen. And unfortunately, > >you're partially correct, it couldn't happen under current conditions. > >The amount of personal firepower that is easily accessible by everyone > >is not sufficient to back up the soverignity of each individual. It's > >all linked to whether weapons technology is such that individuals can > >operate weapons which are just as effective as those wielded by highly > >trained and specialized groups. The pendulum of weapons tech. swings > >back and forth over time. During the American Revolution, the pendulum > >was on the side of individuals, as can be shown by the fact that the > >revolutionaries were carrying better weapons than those carried by > >professional soldiers, and could use them to equal or larger effect. > > > You whole thesis is based on violence, the exact opposite of what's > required for sustained economic growth. Nope, it's based on *reality*. The only way to ensure that no one will inflict violence upon you is to be capable of inflicting at least as much violence upon any attacker. What I'm telling you is that if the above conditions exist, violence will become a very unhealthy trade, and will not be practiced by anyone aside from the occasional lunatic who wants to commit suicide in an interesting fashion. > You lose! Consistently wrong > answers. You just don't get it. I beg to differ. It would appear that *you* just don't get it. Re-read what I've said in the light of my above paragraph, and see if you come to the same conclusion. > War does not produce wide spread economic > growth in those zones affected by the war. It destroys the infrastructure I agree that war destroys infrastructure, and is not going to cause widespread economic growth. I never said otherwise. But lets look at war for a moment, hmm? Those who start wars usually do so because they think they can win them, am I correct? It would be insane to do otherwise. If conditions were such that nobody could be sure of winning, there would be very little incentive to start a war, don't you agree? Of course, in reality, wars are started between nations by their leaders, who supposedly act on the behalf of their people. It is currently possible for the leader of a nation to have an incentive to start a war which his country cannot win, so long as *he* profits by it -in terms of money, power, etc. As long as he doesn't lose personally, he can do whatever he likes (if he's sufficiently amoral, which we must assume that some leaders will be). This is not the same on an individual level, however. It is never in the interest of the attacker to attack someone unless he can be reasonably sure of winning. The attacker cannot divorce himself from the results of his actions, as the leader of a nation can, because he cannot separate his being from his body in any effective sense. That is, if his body loses the fight, he's screwed. The point you raise would seem to be yet another argument for anarcho-capitalism. It would appear that preople have even more incentive not to hurt each other under those conditions than under present ones. > that only an organized government is capable of maintaining. This is untrue. Organized government is not necessary for the maintenence of infrastructure. See my other posts, or "The Market for Liberty". > The real answer is to keep the government focused on keeping the peace and > maintaining the infrastructures using as light a hand as possible--which is > never going to be an easy task. It is an impossible task, as my discussions with Jim Choate have shown. > But no government is NO GROWTH. The > libertarians have at least part of the equation correct. They go a little > too far to one extreme. But this is good, they're mostly just extreme > enough to pull a wondering government back into the middle where it should > be. Your anarcho-spew is rubbish, poorly thought out, and without any real > validation. I've offered plenty of validation. You haven't bothered trying to invalidate these validations, which would be the only way you could logically disprove my arguement. Instead, you've deliberately or unconsciously misunderstood or misread my arguements until they fit in with what you wanted me to have said. At which point, you spewed forth whatever canned response you had ready for what you wished I'd said. > I bet most of the most fervent defenders of gun ownership on this list > actually hope never to have to make use of their tunnels, guns, and > survival rations. You would be correct. I like to count myself among them. I have no desire to hurt or be hurt, rule or be ruled. > War is simply not good economics, 100% correct. > and anarchy is war--constant, festering, > sometimes small scale, sometimes large scale, but always war. Incorrect, for the above reasons. We don't really disagree on the fundamentals. I suggest that you take a very close and unbiased look at the points where we seem to disagree. I suspect that upon closer examination, you will come to the same conclusions that I have. It all hinges on being able to think about *why* the state might be the only possible solution to various problems/required services. This is usually very difficult for most people, as they've had those beliefs drilled into their skulls since they were young. I've found that it's much like a religion, in some respects. At least, all the arguments I've ever had with religious people on the topic of their religion kept ending up much like our current discussion). I've since realized how pointless it is to have such religious arguments. I haven't given up on politial arguments, however, and I hope I never have to. The result is unpleasant to think about. Good luck, and watch out for doublethink! Michael Hohensee [View Less]

1 0

FW: RFC 2440 on OpenPGP Message Format
by Fisher Mark 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> -----Original Message----- > From: RFC Editor [SMTP:rfc-ed@ISI.EDU] > Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 1998 5:06 PM > Cc: rfc-ed(a)ISI.EDU > Subject: RFC 2440 on OpenPGP Message Format > > > A new Request for Comments is now available in online RFC libraries. > > > RFC 2440: > > Title: OpenPGP Message Format > Author(s): J. Callas, L. Donnerhacke, H. Finney, R. Thayer > Status: Proposed Standard > Date: … [View More]November 1998 > Mailbox: jon(a)pgp.com, lutz(a)iks-jena.de, hal(a)pgp.com, > rodney(a)unitran.com > Pages: 65 > Characters: 141371 > Updates/Obsoletes/See Also: None > I-D Tag: draft-ietf-openpgp-formats-08.txt > > URL: ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2440.txt > > This document is maintained in order to publish all necessary > information needed to develop interoperable applications based on the > OpenPGP format. It is not a step-by-step cookbook for writing an > application. It describes only the format and methods needed to read, > check, generate, and write conforming packets crossing any network. > It does not deal with storage and implementation questions. It does, > however, discuss implementation issues necessary to avoid security > flaws. > > This document is a product of the An Open Specification for Pretty > Good Privacy Working Group of the IETF. > > This is now a Proposed Standard Protocol. > > This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for > the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions > for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the > "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the > standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution > of this memo is unlimited. > > This announcement is sent to the IETF list and the RFC-DIST list. > Requests to be added to or deleted from the IETF distribution list > should be sent to IETF-REQUEST(a)IETF.ORG. Requests to be > added to or deleted from the RFC-DIST distribution list should > be sent to RFC-DIST-REQUEST(a)RFC-EDITOR.ORG. > > Details on obtaining RFCs via FTP or EMAIL may be obtained by sending > an EMAIL message to rfc-info(a)RFC-EDITOR.ORG with the message body > help: ways_to_get_rfcs. For example: > > To: rfc-info(a)RFC-EDITOR.ORG > Subject: getting rfcs > > help: ways_to_get_rfcs > > Requests for special distribution should be addressed to either the > author of the RFC in question, or to RFC-Manager(a)RFC-EDITOR.ORG. Unless > specifically noted otherwise on the RFC itself, all RFCs are for > unlimited distribution.echo > Submissions for Requests for Comments should be sent to > RFC-EDITOR(a)RFC-EDITOR.ORG. Please consult RFC 2223, Instructions to RFC > Authors, for further information. > > > Joyce K. Reynolds and Alegre Ramos > USC/Information Sciences Institute > > ... > > Below is the data which will enable a MIME compliant Mail Reader > implementation to automatically retrieve the ASCII version > of the RFCs. <<Untitled Attachment>> Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 18:11:07 -0500 ATT30256 [View Less]

1 0

Anonymizer developer positions available.
by Lance Cottrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Anonymizer Inc. <http://www.anonymizer.com> is looking for programers to work on various projects under development. We have two positions available, one short term contract work, the other full time. Contract programmer: Term: 1-2 months Skills: Visual Basic, Windows API, TCP networking Full time development team leader: Skills: C / C++ PERL UNIX TCP Networking / sockets For either position send email and resume to me at <… [View More]

1 0

DCSB: Mary Ellen Zurko; Jonah, IBM, Open Source, and Digital Commerce
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: rah(a)pop.sneaker.net Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 16:07:03 -0500 To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu, dcsb-announce(a)ai.mit.edu From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: DCSB: Mary Ellen Zurko; Jonah, IBM, Open Source, and Digital Commerce Cc: "Heffan, Ira" <HEFFAN(a)tht.com>, Roland Mueller <roland(a)secunet.com> Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> -----… [View More]BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Mary Ellen Zurko Security Architect, Iris Associates "Oh Jonah, He lived in a whale", or, How IBM decided to win in ecommerce by embracing standards and donating code Tuesday, December 1st, 1998 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA IBM was faced with the question a year ago of how to move from a slow starter to a leader in security infrastructure for ecommerce. Our traditional response to that sort of question had been "Hey kids, let's buy a company!" However, innovative internal forces recognized the power of the current standards and open source movements. We targeted the IETF PKIX standards as the most likely to move ecommerce forward, hired a team of experts in security and PKI and situated them in MA, drafted existing IBM experts in CDSA and smart cards, put together the first cross IBM/Lotus/Iris team and the first group with a charter to write freeware, and delivered the initial code drop to the MIT web site hosting it in September. The team and the freeware are called Jonah. This talk will cover the background, current status, and future of the Jonah effort. Mary Ellen Zurko is Security Architect at Iris, the folks who brought you Lotus Notes. She previously worked at The Open Group. She spent the four years before Jonah leading research in innovative and usable distributed authorization solutions, which posited the solution of the distributed authentication problem. Her current work on public key authentication and infrastructures is karmic revenge for such hubris. She has published papers in user centered security, roles based access control, WWW security and high assurance operating systems. She is an organizer of the New Security Paradigms Workshops and a member of the IW3C2, which runs the international WWW conferences. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, December 1, 1998, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate business attire" (whatever that means), for women. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, November 28th, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your e-mail address, so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Upcoming speakers for DCSB are: January Ira Heffan Internet Software and Business Process Patents February Roland Mueller European Privacy Directive We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, <mailto: rah(a)shipwright.com>. For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu> . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu> . We look forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.5 iQEVAwUBNkn8T8UCGwxmWcHhAQH/6wf9EAXIGyox0VsqMHbO23ONy8as3htAahM0 liUOC9nj3Djjz8TCU0RRv2KckdkpyVrt0jb36NgPvgPCrLOpK682o8Q2VBFqaqUB q3+gtrdhpLUYffAJ02PvK9DvOCeb/zyWTmZ6rti/3tgTCHAjuiaL41Ryvg8u6J+A DqFR1Adk+xhnVlpzzelGI1IIBrI9fjqdAza9oK1Ub5LZ9Cc5MaU3417XsnCVVL3j MJRs3BGPiUKwFSeMO6PTSs916wrIoXXiY4KoeFD2qjLqidJbgOQoGZamEkQd5TOJ 1C5cYslIcUsH95TEVWPhs1YjT04WnU964X8FRbxsQtfQ4zk/lSFPbg== =sRPk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe from this list, send a letter to: Majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu In the body of the message, write: unsubscribe dcsb-announce Or, to subscribe, write: subscribe dcsb-announce If you have questions, write to me at Owner-DCSB(a)ai.mit.edu --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' [View Less]

2 1

Nationalized Public Radio
by Frederick Burroughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

National Public Radio (NPR) today announced the appointment of Kevin Klose as the next President and CEO of NPR. His stint at The Washington Post included a position as Moscow Bureau Chief. He is currently Director of the US International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB). No need to hide your shortwave under the floorboards anymore, Voice of America is now on the FM airwaves. Story at: http://www.npr.org/inside/press/981111.klose.html

1 0

RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 14:23:43 -0500 > From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone > (fwd) > So leaders should be able to do whatever they want within their own > borders w/out the possibility of being held responsible for what they do to > citizens of other countries who just happen to be visiting? Absolutely. It's what is meant by indipendent nation. It's between the … [View More]leaders and the citizens. > What about rule by law? What about it? I don't believe in one world governments, it's a bad idea. Within the confines of a given country there should be a rule of law, that rule should not necessarily be the same as any other country. And other countries should most definitely NOT have a say in it. Do you want Germany having a say in our laws (for example)? > That was not the point, the point was about black market goods. No, the point was about freedom of choice. > So then you admit you were lying about the deaths and blindness > being the cause of regulation, since you claimed it happend in the late > 1800's & early 1900's, but the regualtion and taxing went all the way back > to the middle ages? Taxing went on, the regulation of alcohol production didn't occur in this country until after the Civil War. Taxing alcohol is a whole different issue than regulating the quality and methods of production, and is most certainly not equivalent to regulations on where it might be sold and under what conditions. > It prevents businesses from using the Press to manipulate the > government into doing something about a problem that doesn't exist. No it doesn't. The press is a business, and if you don't think they don't try to manipulate more than the government you're in for a surprise. There are cases of the press being manipulated because of the impact of certain story presentation lines on their income. > >whistle-blowers and 'social do-gooders' to get their message out (unless > >they're well heeled and don't mind loosing it all in the process). > > That is already/still the case. You piss off the wrong people, you > die. Actualy not, there are a variety of whistle-blower laws on the book at every level. Also the number of whistle-blowers who are killed currently are pretty small (name 3). A lot of them loose the jobs they blew the whistle on but that is many cases is to be expected (after all if the issue is important enough the business will cease to exist). > >put any sort of limit on its expression. > > It INHERENTLY recognizes it, and inherently limits it. No it doesn't, it does not in any way prevent abuse and further provides no mechanism for the restitution or correction of that abuse. > No one has the power. > > THAT'S THE POINT. No, the point is that whoever is the most ruthless will get ahead. If you don't think that is power then you should sit and think. > Some agendas can't be pushed thru business, or at least not the > same way. Such as? Greed and profit always can be pushed through business, it's what they do. > If I got them legally, they were a legal commodity, if I dispose of > them legally, they move from the "white" market, to the "black" market. Which requires that yot mislead the doctor as to why you want them. > The fact that not everything on the black market was stolen ISN'T > the point, the point is that there can be things on the black market that > aren't stolen, and aren't inherently illegal (tomatoes, vicadan, alcohol) > but are still part of the black market because of the nature of the market > and the legal system. Why would anyone buy a commenly available item on the black market when they could go to the corner store and purchase it? They won't. People who are involved in the black market are there for profit. If they go down to the store and buy say tomatoes at $2/lb. whey would they sell them to you at $1.75/lb? They wouldn't. The alcohol and cigarettes you buy on the black market lack tax stamps are have bogus stamps. Why? Becuase the cost is much lower without the added tax and legitimate distribution expenses. > FUCKING BULLSHIT. YOu JUST brought introduced your thesis that even > if most stuff isn't actually stolen, then it is bought with money gained by > theft in your last post on this issue. Before that you were maintaining > that everything on the black market had to be stolen, and in fact this No, go back - I never said that. I have continously said that the majority of items on the black market are related to a stolen service or product. I stand by that statement. I'd go on but it's been a long day and I'm in no mood for this petty bickering. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

2 1

Re: "social responsibility" was (dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect) (fwd)
by Jim Burnes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

** forwarded as requested ** ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:04:57 -0600 (CST) From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)einstein.ssz.com> To: Jim Burnes <jvb(a)ssds.com> Subject: Re: "social responsibility" was (dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect) If you want a responce post it publicly. > > On Mon, 9 Nov 1998, Jim Choate wrote: > > > > I am willing to pay for fire protection. I am not willing to pay > > > for "universal health … [View More]care", "welfare", and other such nonsense. > > > > The Constitution happens to mention that the federal government is detailed > > with taking care of the general welfare. If you don't like that sort of stuff > > then get a Constitutional amendment passed. > > > > Wow. He said it. This proves that Jim hasn't really read any history > since public high school. > > Actually this is the central fallacy of those that haven't bothered to > actually read the federalist papers, the anti-federalist papers or the > constitution, much less say how it should be amended. > > If a constitutional amendment had to have been passed it would have been > to give the federal government unlimited power to do what they believe is > in the interests of our general welfare. Madison explicitly addressed > the issue of unlimited federal power emanating from the welfare clause. > > Had the supreme court bothered to read the founder's writings on this > they would have found it in a week or two. That's assuming their > conclusion was not already decided. > > The constitution is a document that enumerates the powers of the federal > government. It is very specific. As Madison stated, if the general > welfare clause meant what the socialist engineers wished it meant, there > would have been no need to enumerate the specific powers of the federal > government. In fact, it would have been as if the founding fathers had > said: > > "The federal government has unlimited power to do whatever it > feels necessary." > > "The powers of the federal government are as follows" > > (1) > (2) > (3) etc > > Which would be ridiculous on its face. > > The reality of the situation is that Roosevelt kept trying to stack the > Supreme Court. He eventually suceeded in appointing his socialist > crony judges to "reinterpret" the constitution. The first result > of this was that Social (in)Security was ruled constitutional because > it was in "the general welfare". > > This was probably the last nail in the coffin of the Republic. The first > nail was imposing huge export duties on cotton in order to limit demand > outside the country -- in effect driving down cotton prices so it could be > had cheaply by the northern industrial (clothing/textile) markets. > Southern states saw this as blatant price controls. In their inability to > change the taxes they sought to leave the union. A prime example of the > old adage -- "the power to tax is the power to destroy". In this case it > was destroying the union itself. Only after the war was on did the north > use the anti-slavery propaganda to peddle their cause. And use it to good > advantage they did. I'm glad the slaves were emancipated, but I wish > it were done with less blood and more foresight. > > Bear in mind that as a libertarian I view slavery as one of the ultimate > evils. However, the northern industrialists had no leg to stand on > because they were one of the prime beneficiaries of cheap labor and thus > cheap cotton prices during the era of westward expansion. Never mind that > only the wealthy in the south owned slaves. If that was so, why was the > opposition to the feds so virulent? > > By 1913, Jekyl Island was a done deal. The income tax and the federal > reserve banking system were unleashed. A concise discussion of this is > beyond the scope of this posting. Needless to say centralized federal > power was on the move. The system of institutionalized fiat currency was > one of the main causes of the 1929 crash that put Roosevelt in power. It > was that "government breaks your leg, government hands you a crutch, > government becomes savior" mentality that resulted in the endless cycle > of market distortions and power grabs that put us where we are now. > > Does this mean that Roosevelt was "evil". No. Just that, as one > playwrite once said, "the conflict of good against good is much more > interesting". Well-intentioned "good people" have contributed more to the > misery of the human race that any other factor alone. I'm sure that > Roosevelt felt he was doing "good" when he undid the Republic. His > crowning achievment was his stacking of the Supreme Court and the > resulting unlimited expansion of federal power. If this country survives > Y2K it will have to contend with the issue that the scope of the federal > government's power is not unlimited. Something has got to give. Y2K > seems as likely a bifurcation and surfaction point as any. > > Maybe Hettinga is right. Economics, like physics obeys the "reality is > not an option" rule. When centralized bureacracy becomes too expensive > the invisible hand will select something more efficient. > > jim > > > > > > [View Less]

1 0

Re: Elder Kennedy ordered to tesify to Grand Jury (if you can call it that) [CNN] (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 20:59:11 -0500 (EST) > From: Rabid Wombat <wombat(a)mcfeely.bsfs.org> > Subject: Re: Elder Kennedy ordered to tesify to Grand Jury (if you can call it that) [CNN] > Why would this be "unconstitutional?" Juries are to be composed of your peers taken from the community in which the crime occurred. A single judge doesn't make a jury of ones peers. > Are you at all familiar with the case? There seems to be a fair amount of > … [View More]

2 1

Re: "social responsibility" was (dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 19:27:21 -0700 (MST) > From: Jim Burnes <jvb(a)ssds.com> > Subject: Re: "social responsibility" was (dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect) (fwd) > > Actually this is the central fallacy of those that haven't bothered to > > actually read the federalist papers, the anti-federalist papers or the > > constitution, much less say how it should be amended. That's an easy way to brush aside having to prove your point. … [View More]Especialy after having drawn a completely illogical and incorrect conclusion like this. > > If a constitutional amendment had to have been passed it would have been > > to give the federal government unlimited power to do what they believe is > > in the interests of our general welfare. This sentence makes no sense, mind rewording it so I know specificaly what it is your talking about. No amendment has to be passed. > Madison explicitly addressed > > the issue of unlimited federal power emanating from the welfare clause. Would you mind explaining where providing for the *general* welfare equates to unlimited powers? No government has unlimited powers and providing for the general welfare can't honestly be extrapolated to that conclusion. Within the context of the Constitution general welfare is in reference to building a framework for the expression of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. > > Had the supreme court bothered to read the founder's writings on this > > they would have found it in a week or two. That's assuming their > > conclusion was not already decided. Found what? Whose conclusions, the founding fathers or the sitting supremes? > > The constitution is a document that enumerates the powers of the federal > > government. It is very specific. And prohibits the enumeration of individual liberties by the same government. Rather handy little situation that, since it completely blows holes in any move to derive totalitarian control (which by the way is not democratic). As Madison stated, if the general > > welfare clause meant what the socialist engineers wished it meant, there > > would have been no need to enumerate the specific powers of the federal > > government. Well to be accurate there was no enumeration of the specific powers in the original Constitution, it's why Jefferson (who was in France at the time), Madison, and others fought and supported the Bill of Rights. Because of the 9th and 10th such moves are inherently doomed to failure. In fact, it would have been as if the founding fathers had > > said: > > > > "The federal government has unlimited power to do whatever it > > feels necessary." > > > > "The powers of the federal government are as follows" > > > > (1) > > (2) > > (3) etc > > > > Which would be ridiculous on its face. This entire section is ridiculous. To say on one hand the powers are unlimited and then to proceed to list them weakens the argument, this was also the reason for the 10th. It prevents such extrapolations as this. > > The reality of the situation is that Roosevelt kept trying to stack the > > Supreme Court. Wow, I didn't realize Roosevelt was even alive to participate in the original Constitutional debates. I'm going to stop here since we are obviously off on one of your pet peeves that isn't related to the discussion at hand. To jump 150 years in one fell swoop is pretty extraordinary. The reality is, as Jefferson himself said, that the laws of one generation aren't the laws of another. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

2 1

ANNOUNCE: SATURDAY Bay Area Cypherpunks Meeting - Stanford University
by Hugh Daniel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The November Cypherpunks Meeting will be Saturday 11/14 from 1-5pm at Stanford, at the tables outside Tresidder Union, near the bookstore. The tables are on the west side, which is the inside of the U-shape. Coffee and food are available in the building. If the weather is uncooperative, we will also be inside the building. Lucky Green will be talking about his latest work. Hugh Daniel will update us on the new alpha of Linux FreeS/WAN. Bagels and Bagel Parephrenalia will be provided. … [View More]

1 0

Re: Elder Kennedy ordered to tesify to Grand Jury (if you can (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 20:52:06 -0500 > From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> > Subject: Re: Elder Kennedy ordered to tesify to Grand Jury (if you can > call it that) [CNN] (fwd) > Jim, "Grand Jury", a jury to see if there is enough evidence to > warrant a full trial. > > >Irrelevant, one doesn't throw away the justice system because it might have > >been abused. One wrong does not justify another. > > Correct, but this isn't … [View More]a guilty or innocent trial, this is a "is > there enough evidence to try this person" type trial. > > This judge can't throw the perp in jail, only throw another trial > where there will be 12 to judge. ARTICLE V. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. ARTICLE VI. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have Assistance of Counsel for his defence. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- By definition a jury is more than one, it's the reason they are implimented; to moderate the biases of the individual. Secondly, a judge is not impartial when acting in the stead of the state in two capacities at one time. Especialy when by their very nature they are at least to some degree confrontational. Dem's da rules bubba. The Kennedy lawyers should be throwing civil right shit fits about now. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

2 1

Re: Elder Kennedy ordered to tesify to Grand Jury (if you can (fwd) [a couple of other comments]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > ARTICLE V. > > No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise > infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, > except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, > when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any > person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of > life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a … [View More]witness > against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without > due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, > without just compensation. It's important to read that part about depriving life, liberty, or property within the context of forced medication, deprivation of social contacts, etc. before a trial has even been held. A person is innocent until proven guilty, and that means you can deprive him of geographic freedom if they can't pay bail. Outside of that any interruption or loss of income is the responsibility of the state to recompensate. It should also guarantee that if found innocent the incident won't have an impact on current or future career and life opportunities. They're sworn to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with their lives if necessary. That's why their called PUBLIC SERVANTS. Note that property may be taken by the state through due process, private property (my home, personal savings, papers, etc.) can't be siezed for *ANY* reason without just compensation. Businesses and shared accounts (such as 401k's perhaps) are fair game. I break the law and you want to take my house? Fucking get your check book out. Otherwise it's theft and that's a crime in principle and practice. This means that *EVERY* confiscation law on the books yesterday, today, or tomorrow are completely illegal if they allow confiscation of private property in relation to crime. If the LEA's, courts, politicians, etc. really, really, really believe that the people of this country want to allow them to confiscate their property in relation to criminal activity then they should parent an amendment to that effect immediately. I'll tell you now, it ain't got a hope in hell. And when the reckoning day comes on this particular issue it's going to be a doozie. > ARTICLE VI. > > In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right > to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and > district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district > have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the > nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses > against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his > favor, and to have Assistance of Counsel for his defence. Note that the right to have *ASSISTANCE* of counsel is guaranteed. This means the state must provide you an attorney to assist in the correct process documentation *EVEN* if you represent yourself. Because it uses the term assistance there can be no implied power of attorney without direct and unconstrained and willing complicity by the accussed. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

2 1

RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 20:34:10 -0500 > From: Petro <petro(a)playboy.com> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone > (fwd) > There is an expectation that when one travels, one is protected by > certain laws, at least the laws of the country that one is traveling to. Absolutely, that concept does not proscribe them from making a law to recognize the laws of other countries. It doesn't make it right but then … [View More]again the freedom of choice implies the freedom to make mistakes. It figures that on occassion it'll be a whopper (TM). If Penoche didn't know that Spain could extradite him from England then he needs to hire a new lawyer. There is absolutely no expectation in the concept of freedom that prohibits one from walking into a police station and admitting a crime. This isn't even an issue, neither the British or the Spanish forced him to England. And the Spanish didn't force Britian to sign the treaty recognizing extradition. He got what he deserves. He was stupid to have treated anyone like that and he was stupid to go to England. He is a stupid man. My personal view is I don't care unless I am in that country. If I have an expectation to go somewhere I check on the laws before I'd go. > There are also certain types of crimes that are so morally > reprehensible that to allow them to continue is not possible. Absolutely, and each country should have it's right to choose it's own particular brand of reprehensibility recognized. > Or are you willing to go on record as stating that what Stalin did > to the Jews (or Hitler for that matter) was acceptable, since we shouldn't > have a say in their laws? Well, you have to understand I'm a pantheist. I know it's easy to shrug off and say "so what" but I can't answer this exactly unless you fundamentaly understand literal pantheism. But I'll try. I believe there is no transcendence. As a result everything is divine because that's all there is. To disrespect the uniqueness in anything is a disservice to self. However, concepts of literal sin to my view simply don't exist. The killing of a human by a human is not fundamentaly (think of it as outside of human society, it's close but not close enough) different than a human killing a rabbit, or crushing a rock, or painting a picture. It's an activity, in and of itself it is nothing more than a cold, cosmic event mediated by complete and utter indifference. The universe does not act with anthropocentric motives or mechanations. However, within the concerns of human biology, psychology, and society there is a very real distinction. As a matter of fact there are quite a few. Since they are all a construct of human existance they deserve some level of respect, the freedom of expression in speech and press, not necessarily in action. Because of the fundamental uniqueness of anything, to destroy or change it with willful intent (I wish I could express this better, all I can say is it isn't what normal English means by those two words exactly enough) except in self-defence or survival (eg killing an animal for food) is not moraly (permissible at the level of individual) or ethicaly (the range of permissible acts related to an activity, say a doctor or lawyer) supportable. I am willing to go on record stating that what they did from a national level should concern no nation that is not directly involved. Nations do not have the right to impose their will on other nations, period. Nations may of course dissolve and reform of their own free will and whim. From a personal level everyone should have run over there in about 1936 and kicked their stinking ass as volunteers (the fact that it is not in human nature to participate in mass exhibitions like this voluntarily is another reason that anarcho-whatevers won't work). From a fundamentaly cosmic perspective what they did is completely and utterly irrelevant and of no consequence. At the same time I'm horrified that human beings can do that to other people and live with themselves. The total lack of empathy I find utterly chilling. Poppy Z. Brite in carnate. Let me give you another example, unless the US is attacked directly by Iraq we have no business threatening, let alone initiating, violence. But I'll do what I did the last time we got in a scrap with the rag-head, whatever I can. To do any less might cost somebody their life through my negligent short-term unprincipled self-interest, a sin of ommission for a man of no sins, I won't stop bitching about it either. Does that help any better? Life is a contradiction in motion. > >Do you want Germany having a say in our laws (for example)? > > They do already, it's called international trade. Me selling apples to a German doesn't involve their having a say in my law making unless I'm an idiot in making the laws I operate under. There are treaties, but the assumption is that they are entered into freely and with comprehension. If they don't and do well that's their problem. > Also, if I were a Catholic in a death camp because Jesse Helms > ramed thru legislation blaming the Y2K bug on the Holy C, I'd hope someone > would intervine. Congress can't make laws respecting establishments of religion. Not only can't they support any, they can't prohibit any, they can't even constitutionaly decide what a religion is. Per the 10th that is left to the individual states and their respective representative constitutions. > But you claimed it started in the early 1900's in response to > deaths and blindness. The regulation of the manufacture and sales of alcohol started after the civil war, late 1800' and early 1900's depending on your geography. It's impossible to set a single date since the various laws were'not all initiated at the same time. I believe somebody else is the person who equated prohibition with regulation. In general the laws were put in place because either there was a problem with tainted alcohol (this was a real problem in the very early 1900's because of the use of lead pipes and other amalgams that don't treat people nicely) or excessive consumption by the youth usualy (ala The Great Gatsby). The laws got a lot more draconian after prohibition was renounced. This is when many states really jumped on the taxation band-wagon. The reasoning behind the taxation of alcohol is the same today as it was in Jeffersons day. He said that the taxation was intended to reduce the use because of its debilitating effects. Then of course there is the consideration of what a government can do with that money as well. This taxation is what started the Whiskey Rebellion in the late 1790's. Jefferson finaly repealed it after quite a string of violence in the early 1800's (sorry I don't remember the actual dates, a web search on Whiskey Rebellion would probably turn something up). During the whole thing Washington was riding his fat ass around buying cheap land and forceably moving people who had lived there, in general acting the little tyrant. He was involved in at least two related deaths and had invested in the business and supported the taxation. What's really interesting is that when these taxes were intiated in the early 1700's (originaly by the British) they were imposed on the manufacturer not the consumer even though they were to limit the consumption and not the manufacture. The history of alcohol is long and twisted. > It prevents the press from manipulating the government because > there ISN'T ONE, or if there is (in the case of extreme > libertarian/minarchist) it is so restricted and powerless it can't do > anything execpt try to gather more power. True, but then the news papers (they are not the same as the press - where that commen misconception is from is beyond my keen) would just pander to their extant major supporter, advertisers. How honest do you think that would make them? Not very. If given the choice between the truth or a fatter check newspapers (and their reporters) have in general chosen the way of the greenback. Jefferson said he would never write a line in a newspaper, and didn't. He thought them vile. He however held the free press (he meant unrestrained communication between individuals) in high regard (obviously). > Yes, businesses can manipulate the press, and do-gooders can always > start their own press and fight back. Who do they buy the press parts from? The ink and paper? The distribution channles? Etc. You might be able to start one up but you won't last long in a monotonicly profit driven free-market. If they rake muck too much they won't have a rake anymore. > Yeah, and there are laws against Drug Dealing which work real well. There's probably a lesson in there somewhere... > I wanna say Karen something or other as one case--Silkwood? That was one of the ones I was thinking of. > Point still holds, you speak out, you get in trouble, legal or no. > Laws don't prevent things from happening, they simply give society the > moral authority to say "We Warned You, Now Off With His Head" or some such. They moderate and mediate those actions and in fact do set a limit on what can occur at the social level. I'll say it again, government isn't for regulating individual interactions at the daily level. It's simply too fine grain. It will control trends and behaviours with a good deal of aplomb (if it's not abused) - and I'm talking specificaly of a republican democracy like the US has. Governments address the general parameters of a society. > When was the last time you _didn't_ kill someone just because it is > illegal? Every time. I can think of three times. Two accidents hunting and the third a crazy with a knife. On a personal level I felt my sense of justification from committing such an act didn't equate to me spending time in jail. They're still alive, and I didn't do time. Works for me. In all three times I could have shot them and walked off, I wouldn't have been found and there were no connections. All three times were completely random events, hapinstance. I quit hunting after the second hunting event. I also don't go for long walks on the other side of the tracks at 2am anymore when I can't sleep. Some junior high kid tried to rob me. > It's expected, but illegal? How can it be illegal if there are no bodies to create them, courts to ejudicate them, supposedly unbiased police to enforce them. Now if we agree that human nature isn't going to change then there is still the unanswered (but asked a few dozen times) as to what the exact mechanism is that prevents abuse. Simply saying that people will find out is not historicaly reliable, people just don't volunteer for those sorts of things. Their first reaction is to stay out of it. Even if they find out what do they do about it? Go to a similar business down the street that operates identicaly? > It prevents government abuse, it prevents systemic abuse of power > and authority. Rape is rape, the point is to prevent it. Not just prevent it from your father. > It also makes it easier to get people to resist abuse & to fight > back, since the abuse isn't built in, nor do the abusers have any sort of > "authority" to fall back on. People are more likely to suffer injustice as long as its sufferable. It's a rare event to incite a large population to violence. > Which is different from now HOW? At least now there are limits to how ruthless they may be. You don't see tanks on your street corner, there aren't troops of men running around dragging people out of their homes because they're catholic or read 'Catcher in the Rye' or 'Atlas Shrugged' and shooting them. And people (like us right now) get to bitch about it with as near complete impunity as is possible in a real world. Hell through the amendment process we can concievably bypass the federal government completely. All that is required is the calling of a convention, which the federal government have no authority over (especialy since the right to peaceably assemble is protected and it don't get much more peaceable than a constitutional convention). > Isn't Billy Gates one of your poster boys for being ruthless? Isn't > he so far head of the rest of us that he could be in court for the rest of > his life and not spend everything? What makes Bill Gates reprehensible is not what he did with Microsoft, though the company as a whole should suffer. They certainly made profit together, they should share the flip side of the coin. Why I hold Bill Gates in so low esteem is his moral standing. A perfect example is hurricane Mitch. The World Bank came up with a tad over $100M for releif. Bill makes that in a few days. Here is a man with the means to institute huge social, political, and economic change that at his level is a pittance and he does nothing. He is scum. He made his bed, let him lie in it. He didn't help others when they could have used it at little to no impact to him, why should they extend a helping hand in return? This is another excellent example of why anarcho-whatevers won't work. The psychology of the truly wealthy is so self-interested and goal-oriented instead of principled that they almost become pathological in their lack of empathy. The claim is that succesful business will be some sort of utopic, empathetic social force. It won't be, it isn't in human nature. > Greed is not an agenda, it is an emotion, Profit is an agenda. True, but there are many potential motives that drive profit, greed is the most base one and as a result drives the lower levels of human activity. I gotta stop now, I'm sleepy. If I didn't get around to answering all the questions it's because there are lots of you and only one of me...ask again in a few days and I'll answer it then. Good night. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- -------------------------------------------------------------------- [View Less]

2 1

update.401 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 14:30:13 -0500 (EST) > From: physnews(a)aip.org (AIP listserver) > Subject: update.401 > INFLUENCE OF COSMIC RAYS ON EARTH'S CLIMATE. Do > SUREFIRE QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT, the ability to > interlink two quantum particles with practically 100% certainty, has > been achieved by a NIST group (Quentin Turchette, 303-497-3328), > advancing hopes for ultrapowerful quantum computers. Previously, > physicists obtained entangled … [View More]

1 0

Fwd: GOST
by scoops 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 12:50:36 -0800 >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >From: scoops <scoops(a)quiknet.com> >Subject: GOST > >Jetico <www.jetico.com> a Finnish company (I believe) offers a number of encryption algorithms in its BestCrypt package, among which is GOST which it reports having a 256 key (it also sports Blowfish and DES as I recall). I also remember a few weeks ago reports in the press and on the List of a porn ring broken up and some agent involved saying … [View More]

1 0

Long Term Returns: Value vs. Growth
by 5se Investment Research 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Fellow Investor, Recently two professors from the University of Chicago, Eugene Fama and Ken French, published a study demonstrating the difference in long term returns of value and growth stocks. The study encompassed almost all stocks on every major US exchange. This celebrated study presented overwhelming evidence that market forces tend to overreact to past events, pricing growth stocks too high, and value stocks too low. Because of these reactions, as a group, growth stocks produce … [View More]below average returns for investors who purchase them at high prices, and value stocks produce above average returns for investors who purchase them at depressed prices. The professors used book to market value to correlate the long term returns. Value stocks having high book to market value and Growth stocks identified by a low book to market value. On average the stocks fitting the value criteria had average annual returns of 21.4% while growth stocks had only 8% average annual returns. Factoring in inflation, the real long term rate of return for value stocks is a bit over 15% but only 2.5% for the growth group. Essentially the study is a good reminder that, when it comes to investing, what goes around comes around. Good companies can experience bad times and be unfairly priced. Apple, IBM, Coke, American Express, and many other excellent companies have experienced the wrath of an unforgiving market, and yet, they are companies with a proven ability to persist in the face of large challenges. Identifying value is simple. All you have to do is look for Good companies experiencing temporary difficulties. This simple strategy will, if you are willing to wait out the storm, reward you with hefty long term returns and lower risk (as the F&F study also showed). Stocks that meet the F&F criteria for value and have solid management in todays market include: Callaway Golf Ensco Corp Reebok Advanta Corp To learn more about the F&F study read Robert Haugen's book "The New Finance" available at http://www.5se.com/5se1.htm Regards, Jeffrey Minich 5se Investment Research New at the 5se site ********************** PortfolioPower! Portfolio Management Model versions for both Excel 95 & 97. Special Upgrade price, only $19.95, for PortfolioPower! Trial Users. Includes a special single-issue online preview of the latest 5se Wealth Building Report. Instant online credit card payment processing and PortfolioPower! order fulfillment with your American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Diners Club, or Discover card. http://www.5se.com/secretproduct.htm [View Less]

1 0

Re: Nationalized Public Radio
by x 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Exceprts from: " Text of RFE/RL President Kevin Klose's Statements Prague, July 4 (RFE/RL) -- The following is a text of introductory remarks by RFE/RL President Kevin Klose today at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: .... On this Independence Day, 1996, the two-hundredth twentieth celebration of the United States, we are also celebrating the second anniversary of the decision to move Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty to the former federal parliament building here in Prague. We are deeply … [View More]honored that Mrs. Clinton has chosen our headquarters from which to make an historic, Indpendence Day address. .... History has taught that democracy cannot live in an information vacuum. indeed, a well-informed citizenry is essential for democracy and free-market economies to flourish. This powerful historic truth guides our radios each day. Our servces in 23 languages provide accurate, objective news and information to millions of people across 11 time zones. Citizens in newly-emancipated lands can be freed from the past by the power of information itself to establish civil societies. The stakes are enormous. Civil societies that guard human freedoms across our broadcast regions can guarantee a stable, peaceful future for all of Europe and the world. Our mission to assist democratic change, to combat nationalism and racism, must not falter. .... Here at the radios you will find 350 Czechs and Americans, and men and women from more than 20 other countries, working in harmony and partnership to broadcast truthful information for the sake of our homelands and the futures of our children. Thank you, one and all. Thank you, Mrs. Clinton, for joining us to celebrate our Independence Day. © 1996 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. All Rights Reserved. " ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------- Disclaimer: This is a review and fair use, thank you very much, or should I pack my prison garb now? Since freedom cannot flourish in an information vacuum this posting is probably illegal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------- At 06:51 PM 11/11/98 -0500, Frederick Burroughs wrote: > >National Public Radio (NPR) today announced the appointment of Kevin >Klose as the next President and CEO of NPR. His stint at The Washington >Post included a position as Moscow Bureau Chief. He is currently >Director of the US International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB). > >No need to hide your shortwave under the floorboards anymore, Voice of >America is now on the FM airwaves. Story at: > >http://www.npr.org/inside/press/981111.klose.html > > > [View Less]

1 0

acceptable user policies
by Duncan Licence 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

hey there, I am having to formulate an acceptable user policy for the users. Does anybody know of any online references, or examples of such policies. This would have to include specifications like email use, internet access, games over the LAN - anything that you can get your head around pertaining to such. This of course would have to weigh up between the rights of the users and protection of the network and PCs Your help would be greatly appreciated Duncan

1 0

acceptable user policies
by Duncan Licence 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

hey there, I am having to formulate an acceptable user policy for the users. Does anybody know of any online references, or examples of such policies. This would have to include specifications like email use, internet access, games over the LAN - anything that you can get your head around pertaining to such. This of course would have to weigh up between the rights of the users and protection of the network and PCs Your help would be greatly appreciated Duncan

1 0