December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Getting into MIT is impossible
by Clint Barnett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

wasn't Dolph Lundgren an MIT grad? I seem to remember something about him having a degree in Chemical Engineering or something along those lines. clint barnett lord of the cosmos emily carr institute On Wed, 29 Jan 1997, Anonymous wrote: > > > According to Rick Osborne: > > "I disagree and can speak from experience. I was denied admission to MIT > even thought I had a 3.82 GPA, 1440 SAT (one try), and had taken 9 AP tests > with two 5's, four 4's, two 3's, and one 2. As for being well-rounded, I > was on several academic teams, sang in Chorus, acted and stage managed in > Drama, and played Tennis." > > People get into MIT--or don't get into MIT--for lots of reasons. Most > intelligent people apply to several schools, knowing that admissions > practices are subject to the vagaries of reality. > > In my case, my SATs were about 1500, with some 800s in achievement tests. > And the usual bullshit high school clubs, political offices, etc. etc. I > was accepted by MIT, but not by Caltech. I didn't lose any sleep over the > way things turned out. > > And I decided not to go to MIT, either. > > "The only thing I didn't have that the next MIT applicant had was money. I > made the mistake of letting them know that I was dirt poor and would need > full aid/grants/etc, and to quote "The Great Escape" it was "Zzzt! To the > Russian front!"" > > My guess is that "other factors" were involved. > > I noted with some interest, but little surprise, that the guy claiming MIT > required a 4.0 GPA and a 1600 combined SAT score could barely spell, and > had major problems making a coherent point. Methinks this is why MIT > rejected him, not his lack of a "1600." > > ">For what it's worth, I wanted to go to MIT my sophomore year in high > >school, too > > "Lucky you. It had been a dream of mine since I was an annoying > overachiever of 6. Sux to be white trash, I guess." > > MIT offered me a substantial economic aid package, in the form of loans, > grants, and various campus jobs. What does this tell you? > > "MIT may be a great school, but they tend to be snooty assholes for the most > part. (DISCLAIMER: Not all MIT grads/attendees are necessarily "snooty > assholes", I'm just saying that I've yet to meet one that wasn't.) > > I've known about a dozen or so MIT grads, and only one of them was a snooty > asshole, and it was a _she_, one of the first MIT women grads (and she was > _very_ impressed by this). > > Most MIT grads are perfectly reasonable. > > Xanthar > > > > > -- >

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Re: GAK cracking?
by Thaddeus J. Beier 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TIS's press releases, and the article in the paper, imply that TIS has been approved for 128 bit (uncrackable, except by prior arrangement) cryptography...not just 56 bit. They say, and they should know, that you can export 56 bits now with just a "plan" of key escrow, and that you can export more if you have a system... which, what do you know, they have! thad -- Thaddeus Beier thad(a)hammerhead.com Visual Effects Supervisor 408) 287-6770 Hammerhead Productions http://www.got.net/people/thad

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RE: Govt & cyberspace
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Comments From: Steve Schear (in response to Vladimir Nuri-logical) Even better, this [govmt "tech envy"] is an opportunity to choke off all, or certainly increased, funding in order to hasten its [govmt] collapse. ...&... Don't improve it, remove it! ...&... Democracy is not without its significant shortcomings. If you doubt this read Tocquevelle. ........................................ Very pertinent suggestions. Anyone who knows his history on the list knows how Nuri-logical looks forward to the collapse of governments and is especially fond of reading Tocqueville. .. Blanc

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Re: GAK cracking?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:45 AM 2/3/97 -0500, tmcghan(a)gill-simpson.com wrote: >But under a controversial new Clinton administration policy that took >effect Jan. 1, companies may receive permission to export stronger >programs. > >"I'm happy that we've been able to do this within the first month >without rancor or difficulty," Under Secretary of Commerce for Export >Administration William Reinsch told Reuters in a telephone interview. > >To export stronger programs immediately, companies must agree to >incorporate features within two years allowing the government to >decode encrypted messages by recovering the software keys, however. This ought to be challengeable. (equal-protection violation?) And while the government's actions are normally phrased in this way, another way to describe them is to argue that the government is: 1. Wanting a product or service to be developed. 2. Wants private companies to do this. 3. Wants to do so without Congress appropriating the money. (And they're doing it by, in effect, "paying" for it by allowing certain companies to export freely, with the requirement that the company does the work "gratis".) 4. Wants to do so without any sort of competitive bidding process. (The terms of the contract have not gone through any of the normal procedures.) I assume there are laws and/or rules which prohibit exactly this kind of behavior. Would it be possible to file a lawsuit, and then file for an injunction to prevent this de-facto deal from going through? Might this constitute an anti-trust violation, because multiple companies are acting in concert to restrict access to the foreign crypto market by agreeing to develop ONLY A CERTAIN KIND OF ENCRYPTION, namely GAKked encryption? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I agree with two of Tim's points. I express no opinion about the others, except that I think these are the two most important. (1) I agree with Tim that as a matter of principle, it would be preferable to create a new moderated list, with a similar but distinguishable name, and leave the existing list as it was. I happen to think less turns on this than does Tim, given the opportunity to exercise truth-in-labeling, but it seems to me that because the cost of this approach is zero, and it has real benefits in the eyes of some, it's a no-brainer. I expect that I would subscribe to the filtered version. If someone is really worried that the new list will be too low traffic (please, G*d), they can send an automatic ballot to all subscribers, USENET style,asking what list(s) they want to be on. My own view is that if you are not ready, willing or able to read and follow a periodic posting explaining how to sign on/off various lists (and I assume there should and would be one), I am willing to take the risk of missing your input. (2) Much to my surprise, so far moderation is a failure. I think it is a failure because it achieves neither of the moderation "sweet spots". No moderation is one "sweet spot". Strict moderation -- the kind you get on RISKS, where you know nearly every post is on-topic or at least worth your time -- is another. This is neither. My clumsy procmail filters are almost as busy as ever. What slips through is largely duplicative of what I get from other lists, or is not to my taste. (NB *my taste*.) And it gets here slower. It's true that the venom from anonymous remailers is gone, and that is a plus, but even so little of what slips through is of interest modulo other lists. I happen to think that *stricter* moderation might lure back some of the better content-providers, but it would help to set it up in a manner that offends the smallest possible number. As Oscar Wilde either said, or should have said, the worst crime is to be boring. PS. New members of the list may justly ask, where does he get off calling the posters he doesn't killfile bores? I stopped posting a lot to the list some time ago, back when I decided my energies were better spent writing long stuff (see my web page) and playing with my kids. I kept reading the list primarily to read the work of about six people -- and Tim was one of them. A. Michael Froomkin | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) Associate Professor of Law | U. Miami School of Law | froomkin(a)law.miami.edu P.O. Box 248087 | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | It's warm here.

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:55 AM 2/3/97 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >Moderation has been a failure. I'm pretty good at filtering and I >can sadly report that there is very little signal out there. I don't think it's reasonable to expect an increase in signal within 2 1/2 weeks of the start of moderation. Improvement in the s/n ratio, yes. But (at least if my speculation is correct), the good posts driven away by bad posts (because some good authors are too busy to wade through lots of crap, and some good authors are reluctant to publish their work amidst crap) would take a much longer time to return. (I'm working on a message re moderation and the list which will better explain what I think about that - but I'm not trying to argue, above, that we *must* have moderation for a long time - simply that it's too early to call it a failure for failing to significantly increase the number of useful messages.) >There are lessons to be learned here. One is that censorship does >not promote a stimulating and creative dialogue. No, that is a silly lesson to draw from this experiment. There are lots of useful and interesting "moderated" (on paper, it's called "editing") publications/lists/digests where the content is intentionally controlled for content and style. This particular implementation is imperfect. However, just as it would be overreaching to conclude from the relative uselessness of the pre-moderation list that "every list must be moderated, unmoderated lists cannot succeed", it overreaches to conclude from the current results that moderated lists cannot succeed. >Toad.com is a choke point, not just in terms of moderation but in >terms of the rate at which it can distribute messages. Let's >replace it. > >What we want are many machines carrying the cypherpunks list. A >message posted to any machine goes to all of the others. Each >machine sends messages to its subscribers only once. Some of >these machines should be across borders. > >The mail loop and multiple posting problems are solved by observing >the message IDs. I think you misspelled "Usenet". Hope this helps. Seriously, if you want a distributed no-choke-points "flooding" message distribution system, you're talking about Usenet. Robust software exists for clients and servers, and it's already supported worldwide on many operating systems. No need to write more software to graft that functionality onto E-mail. If the list is going to turn into Usenet (we've already got most of Usenet's better kooks), we might as well just move the damn thing over to alt.cypherpunks and be done with it. (Anyone care to guess who founded alt.* as a way to route around censorship?) (Of course, Usenet is a technical success and a spectacular failure, content-wise. So opponents of moderation will be forgiven for failing to mention this sparkling example of an unmoderated, anything-goes forum for discussion.) -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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RE: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Vladimir Z. Nuri, in his Ruskie disguise: hi timmy, a word to the wise: it amuses me that whenever I referred to a cypherpunk "community" my eyebrows were flamed off, by people who claimed there was no such thing. a community has certain properties, many of which I believe the cypherpunks "crowd" has always lacked. ...................................... LD, when you say "community" it means something else than when others do. When the cpunks said "community" they meant the camaraderie which develops in the company of people with similar interests. When you say it, it means a group of people stuck to each other by rules of order and socialization, with boundary lines predetermining the limits of their arena. The cpunks had intended that everyone would self-determine the extent or limits of their interactions, thus arriving at a sense of "community" from the decision to do so, rather than from being squeezed along through "proper" channels. == one aspect of the "crowd" that is lacking is LEADERSHIP. I have pointed this out again and again. the cpunks believe that leadership is no longer relevant in a digital society, somehow. the list is in the shape it is in because of POOR LEADERSHIP.. neither you nor EH care about what LEADERSHIP entails, or wish to exert the sacrifices that it requires. ............................... Typically, people who yell for LEADERSHIP are those who either need it themselves or are eager to supply it for others - i.e., to determine the course of events. Which one of these categories do you yourself fall into? == <<* The proper solution to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. ah, so everyone should post 5 messages to the list, instead of 1, and those that are quite should post 3. ........................................ I would more precisely say that the solution to bad speech is better speech, thus eliminating the need for 5 messages when 1 will do. YMMV. Do you think this would hold up in reality? == quite an elegant solution. do you see how the silly rhetoric fails to hold up in reality? when will you get a clue about where your own views are really leading you? ................................ You're starting to sound like Ayn Rand. (heh) .. Blanc

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RE: Filling Power Vacuums
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Vladimir Z. Nuri, filling in for Mother Theresa: timmy, I encourage you to understand that leadership is not inherently evil. there are enlightened ways to lead people that leave the group better as a whole. you just fell into the trap of "negative leadership", the dark side of the force as you write. imho, however, there is a light side of the force that still involves leadership. ................................................. Well, thank you, Master Yoda ! :>) Not speaking for Tim (I doubt he will answer you, anyway), but he *has* supplied leadership. Leaders can lead by example, and also by the clarity of thought & ideas which they present. I think he has quite often supplied such qualities in his posts, and this has contributed greatly to the atmosphere of anarchic "community". Speaking of leadeship, though, to "lead" implies that there is a place to go, and that the leader is the one at the head of the pack, indicating the proper direction (this would be the opposite of what anarchists want, since they would be going not toward, but away from, something). If leadership is defined to mean setting a course for people who lack direction, this implies the existence of followers who are willing to be led into places and to adopt methodologies when they don't know what else to do; that they will follow a leader who will supply structure and purpose to their indecisive condition. This does place a lot of responsibility upon a leader, then, for setting the goal, the course, and the methodology. That's a lot of formality to impose; too much, when you're only exchanging ideas rather than formally setting out to accomplish something specific (like by a particular time & date). Is it Time for the Revolution? .. Blanc

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[PCS] Fighting the cyber-censors
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dumbbell Vindictive styles his facial hair to look more like pubic hair. D\___/\ (0_o) Dumbbell Vindictive (V) ---oOo--U--oOo---

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Re: Dissolving Choke Points
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

pdh(a)best.com (Peter Hendrickson) writes: > What we want are many machines carrying the cypherpunks list. A > message posted to any machine goes to all of the others. Each > machine sends messages to its subscribers only once. Some of > these machines should be across borders. Ever heard of Usenet? It works exactly like that...

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