December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
by kkirksey＠world.std.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Mark Terka says: >> Not to mention the fact that without tritium, the "trigger" for nuclear >> weapons (and extremely expensive and rare at $ 100m a gram) all you have >> is a radioactive paperweight. > >This is sheer ignorance. First of all, tritium is not nearly that >expensive. Its quite cheap, in fact, and can be manufactured without >that much trouble. Second of all, tritium is not a necessary component >of non-thermonuclear (i.e. hydrogen) bombs. Third, tritium isn't a >"trigger". I remember reading an article recently (though I can't remember where) about making a pure fusion bomb without the need for a fission trigger. It involved using tritium and a class a VERY high velocity high explosives known as ballotechnics. According to this article, these bombs could be made as small or smaller than a simple fission bomb and would be much harder to detect, the upshot being that this kind of device was more of a concern than a fission bomb vis a vis terrorist useage. Does anyone have any more technical details on this type of fusion device? I'll have to see if I can dig out that article sometime. Ken = Ken Kirksey And the Clinton administration launched an attack on = = kkirksey(a)world.std.com people in Texas because those people were religious = = Mac Guru & Developer nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by = = religious nuts with guns. - P.J. O'Rourke = -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLlsSZesZNYlu+zuBAQHbxAP9HEFBKAyEgCGFdazub6WlGoqa9Kn/dX+1 LiwwNFA5i+ripKd9MaQbDBCqJOSNyy5Pj/4O7H8K0SBasWVkwzWNrmQ2tShnrFkm tDk9rsyhzbWKVNcJUxbpz/zlmuxtIAx8MYMW3LueqWCNDESUKQA46DWZ0owe8P1g JLHNADQgVHs= =eUAH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by dance＠cicero.spc.uchicago.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate says: >Can't speak for MIT but I can speak for UT Austin, they do have cells to hold >prisoners. The security forces at that school attend the Tx Dept. of Public >Safety training school and hold state law enforcement positions. The last >thing you want to do is really piss one of these guys, you would end up >in one of the state prisons for several years, Huntsville probably. > >Schools can use physical force against their students. I have personaly seen >assaults on the presidents office when a group of students took it over in >the late 80's because of UT Austin holdings in S. Africa. I have seen them >knock the holy shit out of students for nothing more than simply refusing to >move fast enough. The officers stormed the office in full riot gear with >M16 automatic rifles and smoke grenades. > >I suspect that MIT's security forces, even though it is a private school, >hold 'peace officer' ratings and this implies that they can carry weapons >at any time (though they don't usually). This holds for the small community >college that I work at now as well. The officers don't carry guns as a regular >part of their uniform except during registration when there are large amounts >of cash on campus or when important officials visit the campus(es). The University of Chicago's Security officers are sworn Chicago police; they are given full police powers, if only limited jurisdiction. Lucky for everyone here they choose not to exercise *any* authority. Trying to neither be foolish nor a lightweight.... _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ It's dangerous to be right _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ when the government is wrong. _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/ --Voltaire _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/

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Remailer-list pinging frequency
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, I believe that I am providing a useful service with my remailer list, but I have received one complaint about the frequency of pinging. I send hourly pings. This is helpful for quickly identifying remailers which have gone off the net. If you don't want me to do this, let me know. I apologize for not having brought this up before I started with the hourly pings. My pinging script can be configured to adjust ping frequency on a per-remailer basis. If you would like a greater interval between pings, I would be happy to do this. I already do this for penet. An anonymous poster from rebma criticized ping traffic as a way to improve remailer mix. It might be that the two goals (improving mix and collecting good statistics) are at odds, but I would be willing to modify my ping script to make the pings more like mix-improving traffic. Ideas include: 1. Encrypt the ping, so it looks like so much PGP traffic. 2. Pad it with a random amount of junk (but not _too_ much :-), so traffic analysis based on size will fail. 3. Chain it through other remailers. A good approach might be to choose two random remailers out of the "top five," and sandwich rebma between them. The drawback is that it penalizes rebma for their latency and failure rate, but this might be acceptable. 4. Randomize the time that the ping is sent. If the operator of the rebma remailer would be so kind, please let me know if and when I have been de-Detweilered, and whether you would like me to implement any of these suggestions. Also, I plan to autopost the remailer list every Monday, to both cypherpunks and alt.privacy.anon-server. This is my first experience with spamming the net, so if anybody has any objections or cautions, I would like to hear them. Raph Levien

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Re: Brands cash
by Rick H. Wesson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Wed Aug 24 08:20 PDT 1994 > Received: from relay2.UU.NET (relay2.UU.NET [192.48.96.7]) by ar.com (8.6.9/8.6.5) with ESMTP id IAA10560 for <wessorh(a)ar.com>; Wed, 24 Aug 1994 08:20:58 -0700 > Received: from toad.com by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP > id QQxeiv09436; Wed, 24 Aug 1994 11:15:13 -0400 > Received: by toad.com id AA11441; Wed, 24 Aug 94 08:08:47 PDT > Received: from newdaisy.ee.und.ac.za by toad.com id AA11434; Wed, 24 Aug 94 08:08:28 PDT > Received: by newdaisy.ee.und.ac.za (Smail3.1.28.1 #12) > id m0qdJvP-0007VlC; Wed, 24 Aug 94 17:07 GMT+0200 > Date: Wed, 24 Aug 1994 17:07:36 +0200 (GMT+0200) > From: Alan Barrett <barrett(a)daisy.ee.und.ac.za> > Subject: Re: Brands cash > To: Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> > Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset="US-ASCII" > Content-Length: 332 > > > Unfortunately, I don't think perl is suitable, as it has no facilities for > > multiprecision arithmetic. > > There is some multiprecision arithmetic in perl, but it's implemented as > user-level functions, not as a builtin feature. Look at the bigint.pl, > bigrat.pl and bigfloat.pl packages supplied with perl4. > > --apb (Alan Barrett) > > I'm in the process of adding the mpi library that comes with PGP in perl, Perl is fairly extensible... I just figured that it would be a good common ground for codeing... -Rick

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RE: dfloyd's faux pas :) :)
by Philippe Nave 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I composed the reply > that Tcmay so generously posted for everyone to marvel at. I signed it, > but re-read it, and DID found it to be as one would put it "nitrogenous > cow waste." Amazing how that happens sometimes, hmmm? The half-life of an e-mail message is about 10 seconds; after a few minutes have passed, the bogon flux density goes clear out of sight. > > To make a long story short, I mailed the wrong file. > My God! A member of the glorious CryptoReich made a MISTAKE ?!? By now, it should be obvious that Real Cypherpunks(TM) **never** make mistakes... [wheee, ha, ha! ROTFL] > I apologize to you, Mr. May, but I find it rude for you to take something > out of private mail, and onto this list. I agree; reposting personal mail without prior consent is terribly rude. > > Unless there is some major change in circumstances, consider this > the last mailing from me on this as I will NOT trouble this list, > and go on personal flamewars. What the hell - if you walk erect and sleep indoors, you're as qualified to 'trouble the list' as the rest of us. Philippe "Anarchy means never having to put up with shit from your 'leaders'"

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DSPs (was: Nuclear Weapons Materials)
by Jim Dixon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <9408241340.AA03320(a)snark.imsi.com> perry(a)imsi.com writes: > > I've been wondering recently, by the way, about what advantages doing > some of this stuff on DSPs might have. DSPs are not magical chips, but > they are optimized for a few tasks, including, typically, fast integer > multiplies. More precisely, fast integer inner products. > IDEA and modular exponentiation both require lots of fast > integer multiplies. Would it make sense to use DSPs as co-processors > to things like Pentiums to speed up these processes? -- Jim Dixon

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College Email Monitoring Refs?
by sw＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A friend relates how their college computer administrators "reserve the right" to keep all email messages and read them at will. Would someone send me some references to groups who are dealing with this sort of situation? Please mail to my home address: sw(a)tiac.net Thanks, --Steve

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Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This thread is just too interesting... Mikolaj wrote: > > This also depends on the type of bomb. In a two-stage fusion >bomb, you are quite correct - the tritium-deuterium/tritium fusion >reaction gives the boom. However, in a three-stage bomb, there is an >additional fission reaction, this due to the fact that the neutrons >produced by the fusion reaction have the precise energy required to >fission U-238. Since U-238 is vastly easier to obtain than enriched >U-235, there is no great problem with sticking in half a tonne of it. >Around that you can add cobalt jackets, etc, for more interesting >effects. > What does the cobalt jacket do? -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP public key by finger

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Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
by usura＠vox.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

khijol!erc(a)apple.com (Ed Carp [Sysadmin]) writes: :> In a fusion, or H Bomb, the tritium (which is just hydrogen with an :> extra two neutrons) is that which produces the boom -- the main fuel, :> as it were. Its a "neutron source" only in the weakest possible sense :> -- the same way dynamite might be considered to need nitroglycerine as :> a "neutron source". (I'm not sure that people outside of the bomb :> building industry really know *for sure* what the geometries used in :> the atomic weapon that sets off the fusion reaction.) : : I don't understand your point. The earliest devices used a pie shape : with a wedge cut out. The actual geometry is rather unimportant to : getting a fission reaction - but it *is* important if you want to : maximize your yield. One doesnot need to detonate the Uranium/Plutonium one can poison the watersuplies and make havoc with The Simple Bear Necessities of life. -- Exit! Stage Left. Alex de Joode <usura(a)vox.hacktic.nl>

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by Jim Dixon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408231846.NAA08977(a)zoom.bga.com> Jim choate writes: > You strike me as a person who trusts governments. Thank you. I am an American who has spent has most of his adult life outside the USA because (a) bureaucratic errors ruined my career prospects, (b) my involvement in the Indochina wars left me sickened by American stupidity and convinced for life of the futility of large-scale government enterprises, (c) [later] certain elements in the Federal Gov't had it in for me (they had me up in front of a grand jury at one point), (d) certain political bureaucrats at other levels of government felt the same way and sued me for millions, and (e) American blindness to the outside world is sometimes very hard to take. I trust the government to extort every penny they can from me and then to waste it on idle bureacrats and in the pursuit of votes. I trust government to be arbitrary and stupid. Need I go on? However, I also understand that government performs certain essential functions. Where I grew up in California, there were still people living who could remember Mexican bandits raiding across the border. And I teach my children that if they are in trouble they should look for a policeman. And they go to school to learn things that they can't or won't at home. But the discussion was about the use of certain words, including "government". There are people on the list who insist on using the word in an abnormal way and then attack those who use it in a normal way. My preference for clean and simple English does not make me a lackey of "the government". -- Jim Dixon

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