December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: PGP fanatacism (Cost-benefit analysis)
by blancw＠pylon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by nobody(a)ds1.wu-wien.ac.at Interesting. I wonder what this says though... cypherpunks promote encryption, digital cash, dc nets, data havens... but wouldn't ever be caught actually using any of the above. .................................................. I think this says is that it is important to apply the appropriate tools when it is apropos and the situation calls for it, but not when there isn't sufficient cause to warrant the time & trouble. Blanc

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Crypto Panel at Rocky Mtn. Inet User's Group
by Richard Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Just a short announcement culled from the minutes of the last RMIUG meeting. It's of greatest interest to those of us in CO. I suppose the panelists on the list already know about it (but one can never be completely sure). || The next RMIUG meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, September 13th. || We will have a "Crypto-Fest" panel discussion organized by RMIUG || member Duane Thompson (ak351(a)freenet.hsc.colorado.edu) || including Phil DuBois, lawyer for Phil Zimmerman, author of the || encryption program Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), Mike Johnson, || encryption expert, engineer, software programmer, inventor of || the Diamond encryption algorith, and Phil Zimmerman himself, || speaking to us about encryption technology, the benefits and || uses of recent versions of PGP, and issues surrounding || encryption technology. The RMIUG meetings are held at the NCAR mesa facility in Boulder, CO at 7pm on the 2nd Tuesday of the month. To get there, find Table Mesa (yeah, stupid name) or South Boulder Road, and head West on it 'till you reach the end and find the building Woody Allen rapelled out of in Sleeper. The auditorium is just inside the main entrance. Show up at 6:30 for schmoozing. Rich -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLl8EMfobez3wRbTBAQE26gP9GAjrnb/dxCP3XBKtZipjWtFE18AM7C0V t/e45SwqDXRBsn4r/5O4MEuEJUbQ0dmgBK1VvXHgwP+suPf+KbKYHi6ASFG02Ecw Mo9ZiFSUE1KHwwoiK28GrLMRBAYP5lOAKV2jyLckDfeSRmb+4fTgQB7baHH4qa7k emyKs+hlH+I= =8Rk8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Online cash, Internet, Pizza Hut
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, Has anyone got any idea how Pizza Hut is handling their new real-time online pizza ordering service? As I understand it you can now order pizza over the internet if you are in the right locations. Any info? Thanks.

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Re: Anon fanatacism (Cost-benefit analysis)
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by sq0nk(a)alt.anonymous.messages (Random Factor) on Sat Aug 27 >> Responding to msg by nobody(a)ds1.wu-wien.ac.at ?ohW nhoJ

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Re: FCC Regulation (fwd)
by Phil Karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This particular spoof is best appreciated by a radio ham -- it was clearly a parody of the FCC licensing system for ham radio. It also points out the substantial cultural similarities between the Internet and (traditional) ham radio. Unfortunately, one year's joke often has a nasty habit of turning into next year's reality. >From personal experience, I can say that the current staff at the FCC Private Radio Bureau (which regulates ham radio) is surprisingly enlightened. In recent years they've worked hard to remove obsolete licensing requirements like morse code for VHF/UHF and many (but not all, unfortunately) of the more onerous restrictions on "acceptable use" of the ham bands. In these proceedings it became clear that the hams themselves are the real problem. Some hams still want a big benevolent FCC to protect them from people who personally offend them, and many of these people have a following. Although this phenomenon is by no means qualitatively unique to ham radio, it does seem to have grown quantitatively beyond anything seen elsewhere. It really gives one pause. Is government really the enemy of personal freedoms, or does it merely reflect an intolerant and unenlightened general population? It's easy to make a government that responds to the will and whim of the majority, but how can one create a government that rises above the petty illiberalism of the people it governs to protect the rights of the individual? Phil

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This month's High Times
by L. Todd Masco 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This month's High Times includes a bunch o' articles on the Internet, mailing lists, alt.drugs, John Perry Barlow, etc. There's an article that's pretty reasonable called "Cyber-Hydroponics" [by "Bucky Dave and Garbled Uplink"], discussing anonymous remailers (PGP is discussed in another article) and schemes that remind me of the "Little Brother Inside" idea. Included in the article is a list of anonymous remailers: it's very interesting to note that the list includes the cypherpunks remailers but *not* the penet.fi one. Somebody has a clue. The article is primarily about controlling systems through anonymous remailers: setting up a space to grow pot in and controlling and monitoring it remotely entirely untracably through remailers. A very interesting application. If there's sufficient interest, the article could be send to cypherpunks. I'd recommend picking up the issue, even if you have no interest in psychoactives. It's also got an article on erosion of constitutional rights, something that the readership of High Times is in a particularly good position to appreciate. This should be interesting: this is reaching a wide audience of folks who have a very real need for secure communications, who have good reason to be paranoid. I can easily envision a mailing list based upon the PGP-majordomo mechanisms discussed earlier dedicated to growing pot (Did anybody do any coding on that?), the subscribers being totally anonymous. Open the floodgates wide... -- L. Todd Masco | "Large prime numbers imply arrest." - Previously meaningless cactus(a)bb.com | grammatically correct sentence. Now...

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Perl interface to GNU MultiPrecision lib
by Rick H. Wesson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm putting the finishing touches on the perl <--> gnu (gmp) multi precision package. If any are interested in the source drop me a note and I'll fire off the source to you... I'm not going to implement the lowlevel functions or the Berkeley compatability routines, this is just the integer functions... While playing with this stuff I was wondering if transfering binaries in base 36 would offer any compression/mime enableing features, It was the first time I'd seen something in base 36. Allong these lines would base(ASCII) do me a bit of good? guess I've just had too much coffee... It's not too bad on the preformance thing and looks great for prototypeing some of these protocols that call for big int's. At anyrate I should expect my first version ready for public consumption on monday or tuesday if any are interested.... -Rick

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Re: Cash, cheaters, and anonymity
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:26 PM 8/26/94 -0700, Hal wrote: >With Observers you can have off-line cash that is as secure as on-line >but without the costs of on-line validation. As a vendor, which would >you rather accept: off-line cash where you rely on legal sanctions to >track down cheaters; on-line cash where you call the bank and verify it >for every transaction; or off-line cash where you can validate it right >there locally without checking with any bank? Depending on the costs >which the Observer adds to the digital wallet, that latter choice might >be the most attractive. It might be said that you haven't a digital wallet without an Observer, if it's not horribly computation-intensive... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: This month's High Times
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The lead article in the news section is an anti-Clipper piece by me. The news editor of High Times (Bill Weinberg) is a good friend of mine and an anarchist. He invited me to write the article. He definitely appreciates this stuff (though he's not a techie himself). --Dave. P.S.: Wednesday, I gave the first-ever Lower East Side schoolyard teach-in on crypto. The place where the talk was supposed to be held (ABC No Rio) got padlocked by the cops at the last minute (the city's been trying to evict them for years), so we just went across the street and held the event in a schoolyard. Basketball games and baby carriages all around us. It was a lot of fun. Sort of felt like I was in the TV show "Room 222." At 2:12 PM 8/27/94 -0400, L. Todd Masco wrote: >This month's High Times includes a bunch o' articles on the Internet, > mailing lists, alt.drugs, John Perry Barlow, etc. > >There's an article that's pretty reasonable called "Cyber-Hydroponics" > [by "Bucky Dave and Garbled Uplink"], discussing anonymous > remailers (PGP is discussed in another article) and schemes that > remind me of the "Little Brother Inside" idea. Included in the > article is a list of anonymous remailers: it's very interesting > to note that the list includes the cypherpunks remailers but *not* > the penet.fi one. Somebody has a clue. > >The article is primarily about controlling systems through anonymous > remailers: setting up a space to grow pot in and controlling and > monitoring it remotely entirely untracably through remailers. A very > interesting application. > >If there's sufficient interest, the article could be send to > cypherpunks. I'd recommend picking up the issue, even if you have > no interest in psychoactives. It's also got an article on erosion > of constitutional rights, something that the readership of High > Times is in a particularly good position to appreciate. > >This should be interesting: this is reaching a wide audience of folks > who have a very real need for secure communications, who have good > reason to be paranoid. I can easily envision a mailing list based > upon the PGP-majordomo mechanisms discussed earlier dedicated to > growing pot (Did anybody do any coding on that?), the subscribers > being totally anonymous. > >Open the floodgates wide... >-- >L. Todd Masco | "Large prime numbers imply arrest." - Previously meaningless >cactus(a)bb.com | grammatically correct sentence. Now... -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com

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RE: In Search of Genuine DigiCash
by p.v.mcmahon.rea0803＠oasis.icl.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >If there were already a fully identified digital money system, > Is there one? > > I don't think there is any digital money system at all, neither > anonymous nor fuly identified. > > There certainly are digital funds transfer systems, almost all fully > identified. These are not digital money systems, although they may be > precursors. Clearly there is existing practice in vendor-supplier EDI - but most financial service organisations have not yet even been able to cost-justify electronic processing of remittance information (for which the manually-shipped lockbox is deemed adequate ...) > Eric, for the last three months, you have said that there was no way to > prove whether digital cash was more cost effective than other forms of e$, > and thus potential efficiency was useless as an economic argument for its > adoption. > > I still agree that you cannot really _prove_ that it will be more > efficiently, at least not from armchair business planning. Given a > few million for a good study though, I'm sure answers might be > forthcoming. There has to be a business reason for change to any existing practice; a general infrastructure for electronic payments is not going to be adopted by banks just because there are available or emerging technologies. One agent for change *may* be threat to the banks through extension of existing EDI arrangements to include transmission of remittance data on a bilateral or hub-spoke basis. The attractions of a fast growing (albeit currently 500m USD) servide provider market, and real concerns about loss of business, have spurred the establishment by partnerships of banks of a number of check and remittance data clearing houses. With the increase in the number of trading partners, and the opportunity for the banks' commoditization of the electronic financial transaction, there may be benefit in marketing an electronic "cash" product - even if it's not transferable. But technology underlying this may be little more than an extension of existing solutions unless there are compelling countervailing business reasons to change. [Consider: who bears the cost burdens of the status quo with increasing use of EDI by business + (mostly) manual remittance mechanisms? What will drive this status quo to alter ...?] - pvm

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