December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Randomness testing
by Clifford Heath 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

We have been asked by a customer if we have any tests that demonstrate the randomness of the SSLeay random number generator (augmented by some sound-card random number seeding that we wrote). I'd like to find some standard implementation for testing randomness, but Schneier offers no help (other than a reference to Knuth Vol 2), and I don't know where else to turn. I realise that cryptographic randomness requires unpredictability, and this quality depends upon closed-world assumptions about unknown individuals' predictive powers, but we have to live with that. -- Clifford Heath http://www.osa.com.au/~cjh Open Software Associates Limited mailto:cjh@osa.com.au 29 Ringwood Street / PO Box 4414 Phone +613 9871 1694 Ringwood VIC 3134 AUSTRALIA Fax +613 9871 1711 ------------------------------------------------------------ Deploy Applications across the net, see http://www.osa.com

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Increase Your Paycheck Next Week
by HyperReal-Anon 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Hello, asshole: I'd just like to suggest that you fuck yourself with a large metal hook in all bodily cavities. As you are bleeding out, pour 12M nitric acid in your wounds and feel the burn. If you are still conscious, superglue your little finger in a centrifuge and turn it on at maximum speed. If you are still conscious, stick your head into a liquid nitrogen bath. All your coworkers should repeat this procedure. As an alternative, you can tie any coworkers you have up and bathe them in concentrated nitric acid while you shower them in NH4OH. Place your penis in liquid nitrogen and then attempt to jack off. Finally, drink a concentrated hydrochloric acid solution followed by concentrated sodium hydroxide solution. In the unlikely event that you are able to do so, scream 'I AM THE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE!' over and over again while dancing until you pass out. I wave to Interpol. Hey Louis! What's shaking? 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RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
by Matthew James Gering 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: > > When I talk of a free market I mean Laissez Faire Capitalism, > > not Anarcho-Capitalism. > > What's the specific difference? I cannot claim to be an expert on anarcho-capitalism, but the fundamental difference is Laissez Faire Capitalists believes in limited government. The primary role of government being the abolition of coercive force, the protection of intellectual property, and running or overseeing of what can absolutely be justified as a natural monopoly (e.g. military defense, sewer, local roads, etc). Anarcho-capitalism on the other hand believes in no government (anarchy) and that social institutions and co-ops will assume any functions that a government would have had. Some believe that people and organizations will independently prevent force will others believe in a competitive free market for force and protection. In either case there is no government interference in free trade (except LF would prohibit Assassination Politics (AP) and similar). > In what way are the resulting markets different from > either the producers or consumers view? Views on intellectual property and the obvious marketplace changes due to an IP or lack of IP framework would be the major difference IMHO. I cannot currently justify no intellectual property rights taken to an extreme, and then you have the contradiction of force within the framework of commerce. > Explain further what you mean by abolition of force is a > prerequisite please. Basically no person (or entity) can use force (or its derivatives) against another person (or entity). Your long history of criminal law, except stripped of all victimless crimes. > And what specificaly do you mean by proper role of government? "What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right--from God--to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces? If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all." from _The Law_, by Frederick Bastiat Matt

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Re: IP: New ExecOrd: Computer Software Piracy
by Anonymous 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

> Source: US Newswire > http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1001-125.txt > > Clinton Issues Executive Order on Computer Software Piracy > U.S. Newswire > 1 Oct 14:10 > > Clinton Issues Executive Order on Computer Software Piracy > To: National Desk, Technology Writer > Contact: White House Press Office, 202-456-2100 > > WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released > today by the White House: > > EXECUTIVE ORDER > - - - - - - - > COMPUTER SOFTWARE PIRACY > > The United States Government is the world's largest purchaser of > computer-related services and equipment, purchasing more than $20 > billion annually. At a time when a critical component in discussions > with our international trading partners concerns their efforts to > combat piracy of computer software and other intellectual property, > it is incumbent on the United States to ensure that its own practices > as a purchaser and user of computer software are beyond reproach. > Accordingly, by the authority vested in me as President by the > Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is > hereby ordered as follows: > > Section 1. Policy. It shall be the policy of the United States > Government that each executive agency shall work diligently to > prevent and combat computer software piracy in order to give effect > to copyrights associated with computer software by observing the > relevant provisions of international agreements in effect in the > United States, including applicable provisions of the World Trade > Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual > Property Rights, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary > and Artistic Works, and relevant provisions of Federal law, including > the Copyright Act. I suppose this means the USG will decide to retroactively compensate Inslaw for their use of the Promis software all these years...

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The end of The Netly News
by Declan McCullagh 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 09:24:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: politech(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: The end of The Netly News http://www.freedomforum.org/press/presswatch.asp Declan McCullagh is ending his longstanding "Netly News" column and leaving Time magazine today because of the magazine's recently restructured technology coverage. He will join Wired Oct. 12 as chief Washington correspondent. His agreement with Wired lets him continue to run the Politech e-mail list, a popular industry source of breaking news and analysis on technology and politics. (By Adam Clayton Powell III) http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/15373.html Time Warner on Thursday quietly shut down Netly News, melding the operations of its Internet-beat news service and the online version of Time Digital.

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RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
by Matthew James Gering 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: > See above examples. Hell, take a look at the wet pet food > market now for a perfect example of why non-regulation is > a bad thing and why liability and other such buzz words > don't work in the real world. One thing that has changed fundamentally in the Information Age is the ability for the consumer to get informed -- the ease if information publishing and retrieval and the inability to control it. Reputation has more value then ever. If anything the government should insure information disclosure (and enforce laws against fraud). Don't prohibit transactions, let the consumer decide. For example the market will place a value on FDA approval, whether individuals will pay more for or only consume FDA approved items, whether insurance will cover non-approved items, etc (and the FDA should be funded fully by evaluation fees, it simply becomes a sort of brand, it sells reputation). Government cannot protect people from their own decisions, and should not have the right to take those decisions away. I wouldn't eat at McDonalds even with all the regulation. More often than not regulation is a false sense of security, and often protects companies from legitimate liability (although god knows our liability/tort system is completely out of whack). Matt

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RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
by Brown, R Ken 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

> Petro[SMTP:petro@playboy.com] wrote: > Sent: 01 October 1998 21:23 > >>I'm afraid sir, that your ingonorance is showing. Pick up any college >>(hell, high school) ecomonics textbook. Certain types of businesses are >>inheritly advantagious to monopolies. The electric company is the classic > >>example- their is no cost effective way for an electric company to > supply > >>power to a given area unless it is a monopoly. Certain types of > businesses > >>are suited to certain types of competition, and, unregulated, monopolies > >>are exactly what you get. This was exactly the situation that occured > at > >>the turn of the century and it happened because regulation was > >>non-existant! Your statement is wonderfully trite but I see no evidence > to > >>support it. > > I'd suggest you go back to school and think a bit.In most places >the "Electric Company" is a goverment sponsored and deligated monopoly. >Competition is prohibited by REGULATION. This also occurs with Gas, Water, >Telephone, especially Non-commercial, cable, and in some places Garbage >disposal. Nonsense. Most of those businesses became monopolies - or local monopolies - in the relatively unregulated 1880-1914 period. In some of them - like rail or oil in the USA - governments introduced regulation to *force* competition. In UK over the last 30 years government has used a thing called the "Monopolies and Mergers Commission" to investigate & (very occasionally) break up monopolies or cartels. Government introduced regulation to stop BT selling some products in order to allow competion to grow. Recently government has forcibly broken up gas supply monopolies in this country. I don't believe there are that many natural monopolies Where there *are* natural monopolies it is because the entry cost is higher than any likely profit. Obvious case is water. It would cost you a hell of a lot to guarantee water supply to my street in London without using the existing infrastructure. Probably hundreds of millions of pounds. I pay less than a hundred pounds a year for my water. Natural monopoly. What happens much more often is that one company becomes dominant and then uses money to undersell rivals. Or even buy them up. Maybe even pay more for them It seems to be a common personality characteristic of people who run big companies that they want to run even bigger ones. The worst enemy of small business is big business. Now, if you wanted to say that in most countries big business and government had their hands in each others pockets I'd agree with you. But sometimes governments realise that monopolies are bad - or the voters tell them that monopolies are bad - and they introduce regulation to enforce competition. Some other problems - in some businesses (like oil) the capital investment required is so large that although there is no natural monopoly the players ahve to be big. It might even be that there are some business (long-distance airlcraft?) where the natural number of players in the world market is 1 - there just aren't enough customers to justify 2 companies making the investment (which is maybe why European governments stepped in to create Airbus). Garbage (what we call rubbish over here) collection is different again. It's not at all a nutural monopoly and there is nothing stopping anyone offering to do it as a business. But it is a natural for social ownership, not private ownership. The trouble with rubbish is that I want my *neighbour's* rubbish to be collected as well as my own. I can pay for mine, but what if he can't pay for his? (Like what if he is an unemployable alcoholic, with severe Tourette's syndrome who stands on street corners for sometimes 24 hours at a stretch, singing old soul and gospel songs, yelling and screaming at anyone who comes close, and drinking can after can of cheap beer to calm himself down enough so he can get some sleep?). I don't want his rubbish on my street. The easiest way to arrange that is for the majority who want rubbish collection to band together to pay for it for everybody. And the easiest way to arrange that is through tax and local government. Same applies to education - I might be able to pay for my daughter to go to school but we want everybody else's kids to go to school as well because my life is better if they do. So we pay for it through tax. If I don't watch out this will turn into a list of the 6 reasons why, even though private business is nearly always more efficient, *some* enterprises need to be publically owned. Ken Brown (usual disclaimer - nothing to do with my employers) > -- > petro(a)playboy.com----for work related issues. I don't speak for Playboy. > petro(a)bounty.org-----for everthing else. They wouldn't like that. > They REALLY > Economic speech IS political speech. wouldn't like that. >

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Re: copyright at the point of a gun (fwd)
by mark＠unicorn.com 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Jim Choate <ravage(a)EINSTEIN.ssz.com> wrote: >> Judging by the state of software-piracy with PC software with 80-90%+ >> piracy rates, the market is already pretty much ok with ignoring >> copyright, and would be happy to have no copyrights. >So long as it isn't money your taking out of their pocket. There is an >obvious double standard at play in the piracy issue. Personally I get paid pretty well for writing software that's given away for free. Why? Because it sells our hardware, and hardware is much, much harder to copy than software (not to mention that the vast majority of sales are made in the first two or three months after releasing a new chip when a cloner would still be trying to get their silicon up and running). OTOH I just paid good money for a Linux CD. Why, when it's all free on the Web? Because it contains a full consistent set of software, ready compiled, and the time I'd spend hunting down all those packages by myself is far more valuable than the cost of the CD. The same could be said to apply to many of the other software packages I've bought in the past; yes, in theory I could copy them, but I don't know anyone who has a copy, so it would take longer to hunt it down for free than to pay for it up front. Software copyright really only benefits big companies like Microsoft. There are good reasons for buying software from other companies even if there was no copyright enforcement at gunpoint. Mark

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Re: copyright at the point of a gun (fwd)
by Jim Choate 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 04:12:29 -0700 (PDT) > From: mark(a)unicorn.com > Subject: Re: copyright at the point of a gun (fwd) > >So long as it isn't money your taking out of their pocket. There is an > >obvious double standard at play in the piracy issue. [irrelevent material deleted] > Software copyright really only benefits big companies like Microsoft. There No, it also protects the little guy who writes a nifty piece of code that lots of people want to use. > are good reasons for buying software from other companies even if there > was no copyright enforcement at gunpoint. If there was no copyright enforcement then the license agreements would be even more draconian than they are now. Not to mention that technology as a whole would be spread slower because companies wouldn't share it as easy as they do now because of the protection of copyright. ____________________________________________________________________ The seeker is a finder. Ancient Persian Proverb The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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18 Dec '03

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