December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Continum of numbers and Turing Machines
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, Just a thought, Seems to me that a Turing Machine can't simulate a continous section of R for a simple reason, computers can only work on rational numbers and a continous section would have irrationals in it. Take care.

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(fwd) WWII Enigma traffic
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Newsgroups: sci.military Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!sundog.tiac.net!usenet.elf.com!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!news.duke.edu!godot.cc.duq.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!uunet!ncrgw2.ncr.com!ncrhub2!ranger!military From: lharnisch(a)delphi.com Subject: WWII Enigma traffic Message-ID: <CtMKns.J91(a)ranger.daytonoh.ncr.com> Sender: military(a)ranger.daytonoh.ncr.com (Sci.military Login) Organization: Delphi (info(a)delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 00:43:04 GMT Approved: military(a)ranger.daytonoh.ncr.com Lines: 13 >From lharnisch(a)delphi.com Does someone know the location of archives (or preferably microfilm) containing undeciphered German Enigma traffic? It isn't important whether it was cracked by the Allies during the war... am simply seeking some original German traffic to test computer program.... I have already gone through messages in the journal Cryptologia...... Pls E-mail me if you know of some sources... Thanks.... Larry Harnisch

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Patently Absurd?
by will＠thinkmedia.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I realize this may seem absurd, but for the sake of humor could there be any relationship between the Dept. of Justice near pardon of Microsoft on charges of Anti-trust and the potential adoption of a software encryption standard in Chicago with the blessing of NIST and some goverment agencies. Would it be ridiculous conspirancy theorizing to think that MS and Justice made a deal? I have nothing to back this up, just reading the news and cypherpunks. ______________________________________________________________________________ Opinion is a flitting thing, Thinking Media Research But Truth, outlasts the Sun-- will(a)thinkmedia.com If then we cannot own them both-- (408) 423 3720 Possess the oldest one-- Emily Dickinson

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RE: Questions about Microsoft and Software Key Escrow
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: I respect your ability to think clearly and with great foresight also, : Tim, but I really cannot think that Microsoft would "sell out" on this : issue. There are too many in the company who would are for privacy for : the individual, and remember they have their customers to think about. I think you're all forgetting something. Satellites. G

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I will Kill SKE for You
by nobody＠kaiwan.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

frissell(a)panix.com (Unverified) wrote: > "No racist - I support the permanent elimination of federal > income taxation for African Americans to compensate them for the > suffering of slavery." And if you find any ex-slaves alive in America, I'll support you on that. OTOH, at 130 years of age, I doubt that any of them are paying much in the way of taxes. But, maybe you're on to something here. Let's expand that to ANY AMERICAN whose ancestors suffered in any way. That would do away with the Federal Income Tax entirely. I LIKE THAT!!!

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Re: Voice/Fax Checks
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:43 AM 7/25/94 -0500, Jim Hart wrote: >Isn't this kind of like writing them a blank check? If I tell >them to make the check out for $20 and they make it out for >$100, how do I repudiate that? Not only that, how do I prevent >them from writing and cashing more checks by increasing the >sequence number? Nothing. Just like I can obtain your check info (by getting you to write me a check) and forging a physical check using DTP technology (Forbes cover story of several years ago). You can disavow the check though and demand a credit from your bank. If you don't complain, the transfer stands. If you do, you get your money back. I don't think they ever passed the Uniform Commercial Code proposal that would have made checks just like electronic payments where you are liable for $50 if you don't make a timely report of the problem. Traditionally, you *never* had to challange a check and you could get all of your money back if the bank paid a check on a "forged drawer's signature." DCF

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Re: LITTLE BROTHER INSIDE
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:47 AM 7/27/94 +0000, wb8foz(a)nrk.com wrote: >contempt to release her. More recently, Supreme Court ruling defining >limits of civil contempt (UMW vs. JOHN L. BAGWELL) may have an effect on >this.) I know a guy in SF who won the Irish Sweepstakes and refused to repatriate his winnings. Did 2 years for tax evasion and two years for contempt (I think). Contempt was for his refusal to repatriate. Do you know what sort of restrictions the Supremes put on contempt jailings? I always figured that you should shower the judge and other judges in these cases with letters stating in great detail why you will never purge yourself of your contempt. Serves as evidence that holding you is useless and hence illegal punishment not a "legal" attempt to coerce you. DCF "But your honor, I'm desperately trying to *conceal* my contempt for this court!"

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No Subject
by nzook＠math.utexas.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

nomath 5 19% discrete 7 27% algebra1 4 15% algebra2 3 12% grad 3 12% orals 1 4% orala 2 8% research 1 4% total 26

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Remailer ideas (Was: Re: Latency vs. Reordering)
by jamiel＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was thinking some about remailers and means to create more effective ones. I think the idea of padding messages has been kicked around (has anyone implemented it?), but what about random compression? Some messages are compressed, others are padded, some are left alone, perhaps shooting for a median message size (everything coming from this mailer tries to be 9k, or as close as possible). Of course, this requires a standard so that other remailers downstream can make the message readable. Another thing that occured to me is the thought that if there were an organized web or remailers, remailers could bounce messages between them automatically- a header could identify the number of bounces perhaps, I haven't thought too much about the implications of doing so, but if every message through the web bounced around 30 times with reordering, padding/compression, PGP, etc. then traffic analysis would be pretty damn hard, I would think, even for someone monitoring the entire web of remailers' traffic. This all assumes that: - remailers can agree on a standard for the above needed features - a semireliable web of remailers can be maintained - some method fordealing with denial of service attacks can be found (a coredump sent to the web could play all sorts of hell, as could an 'evil' remailer that sneaks in and changes the how-many-times-through identifier). The third problem could be delat with by deciding on a size limit- if a message is over 65k (or whatever) it is bounced- if you're sending something big, split it. The first one could probably be done- if someone (grin- if I find any time soon, this is a project I'd like to do) wrote a nice package that was easy to install and use with a feature set that could be agreeable to most. The second one is the problem, but could be dealt with by the first by establishing automated communication- when someone installs the package, send a control message another remailer already part of the web which 'registers' it, and then the web consistently tries to maintain itself by checking on the others and dropping ones that go down off the list. Some sort of method would have to be found for ones that drop off then later come online again so that control messages didn't have to be manually initiated every time, but that shouldn't be that hard. What are the problems in the above? Would Perl be a good choice for doing this? I saw some code from a remailer some time ago, but lost my mailbox a while back (which could also mena that this is a dry rehash of an old discussion... apologies if I am rewriting someone elses thoughts). Anyone still have this? Am I talking out my ass? -j -- "Blah Blah Blah" ___________________________________________________________________ Jamie Lawrence <jamiel(a)sybase.com>

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One more time... us.*
by L. Todd Masco 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Very little c'punk content, just explaining why the us.* proposal is nothing like a movement towards censorship, but an attempt to resist it] First, you have to understand that nobody has any say over what newsgroups are created on a machine except for the news admin on that machine. Most news admins hand this authority over to Dave Lawrence, the current moderator of news.newgroups.announce, when they install their news software. However, *anybody* can decided to ignore anybody else's decisions on *any* newsgroup and issue a newgroups message (and someone else will usually issue an rmgroup message in response: it's an anarchy, and most of us like it that way). The us.* hierarchy "cabal" idea is *not* to determine what groups will get passed and what ones will not; In fact, the intent is to eliminate "no" votes, passing groups only on the basis of significant interest. If you know any USENET history, you'll know about fiascos like the soc.culture.tibet, soc.culture.macedonia, and soc.religion.islam.ahmadiya proposal -- cases where the newsgroups had a significant amount of interest, but were defeated due to large populations having some sort of grudge or religious/national interest in supressing a point of view. This part of the proposal will, in fact, reduce censorship, preventing organized campaigns from defeating newsgroups, effectively preventing people from discussing their subject on USENET (for the traditional definition of USENET that excludes alt.*). The other part of the proposal, the one which seems to have pushed people's "censorship" kneejerk buttons, is the concept of the "namespace cabal." Again, if you have any knowledge of USENET history, you'll know that there used to be a far stronger cabal than is proposed by the us.* idea: the backbone cabal controlled everything -- they were the news admins at the backbone sites and they had the last word. News admins at other sites listened to them because, well, they were the backbone cabal. They had the connectivity. When the set of newsgroups became too big for news admins to effectively manage them (and the connectivity model changed, there no longer being a real news backbone), a newer system for gaining consensus over newsgroup creation was created. Votes would be taken -- *NOT* on democratic principals or anything of that nature, but simply to gauge interest so that news admins would have some basis on which to approve group creation. Over time, the formula was tweaked in various ways when groups that people thought should never have passed (like the rec.acquaria, sci.acquaria, etc. groups) were created. Still, this is basically the system we have today. As I mentioned above, the current model allows large groups of people to squash newsgroups of interest to smaller (or even equal sized, since the current guidelines require 2/3 majority to pass) groups. THAT is censorship, the tyrany of the majority. There is also another thing that needs fixing. There is a problem with the current USENET namespace management strategy: it is damn near impossible to manage a namepsace by vote. In extreme cases, Dave Lawrence has simply refused to publish the newsgroup creation message, but nobody is very happy with this: it's too much like Dave is censoring the net, and it's wrong to stop the creation of a newsgroup on a subject simply because its proponent insists on a name noone likes. As a USENET volunteer votetaker, I have become embroiled in proposals for groups where a vast number of people wanted a newsgroup but had to wait months, sometimes missing the opportunity to discuss events important to them, because the newsgroup proponent was insisting upon a name that nobody agreed with or because no clear consensus (among users) appeared about the naming of the group. It is the namespace issue that the proposed "cabal" will cover. It's no different than the government refusing to take a vote on where every single book in a public library will end up on the shelves or where each document is stored. Namespace management is simply impossible to do by voting, especially when the "voters" have no understanding of the issues involved. We've squeeked by so far, but only barely -- and as the net grows, it become much more difficult to maintain the current voting scheme. That is why it is absurd to view the "namespace cabal" concept as an attempt to censor a democratic form. It isn't an attempt to censor (it is an attempt to stop censorship), and the current form isn't democratic. Please, before you try to argue this -- check out the facts about the proposal, the history behind it, and the real mechanisms in place before you spout off. -- L. Todd Masco | Bibliobytes books on computer, on any UNIX host with e-mail cactus(a)bb.com | "Information wants to be free, but authors want to be paid."

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