December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Demonizing the Opposition: Bruce "The Toolman" Taylor
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:08 PM 4/12/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: >Bruce "Penis with a Blister" Taylor >abbreviated PWAB, or "Blister" I suppose Seems to me that "a penis with a blister on it" is a good description of a picture of active syphilis. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: RC4 improvement idea
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

<jamesd(a)echeque.com> wrote: > > Such keys are not weak. At 02:57 AM 4/9/96 -0700, David Wagner wrote: > No, the report was right: the weak keys are real. > > For one key in 256, you have a 13.6% chance of recovering 16 bits of > the original key. > > On average, the work factor per key recovered is reduced by a factor > of 35 (i.e. the effective keylength is reduced by 5.1 bits) by using > this class of weak keys. Why do you not just assume the last byte of the key is 0x4A Then for one key in 256 the effective keylength is reduced by a whole 8 bits instead of a measly 5.1 bits. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:14 PM 4/11/96 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: >Jim McCoy wrote: > What is >| Dennings fascination with building Big Brother? > > She read Snow Crash, and it scared her. > Snow Crash is a book about a future in which governments are >ineffective. Companies run things, and have complete local control. >The world has gone to hell, and as a result, life is nasty, poor, >brutish and short. Many people do not look forward to this world. >Thats an understandable reaction; when I first heard about anonymous >assasination markets, I thought it was pretty bizzare as a world to >look forward to. However, looked at from the standpoint of somebody who is not already steeped in it, OUR society is a "pretty bizarre world." Ostensibly we live in a society that loves freedom, yet it's controlled by a rather tiny number of people who wield an extraordinarily large amount of power. We can be beaten or killed by agents of the government, and the only time a ruckus seems to be raised is when there happens to be a camcorder nearby, one that the police do not notice in time. I haven't heard much speculation about why we never (actually, almost never) see such cases without recordings. > Then I heard Neal Stephenson speak. And he brought up a very >good point, which was Hitler killed more people than Charles Manson >because Hitler had a big country, and its large army. I look >forward to smaller, weaker government that can't put the Japs in >holding camps, surround and harras the Branch Davidians, etc. > > The debate, really, boils down to Hobbes v. Locke, or Plato v. >Aristotle. Its not going to be resolved anytime soon by a >philosopher. I think it will be resolved by a computer programmer. I am reminded of the scene in the TV show "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," when the two philosophers complained to the computer, "Deep Thought" (Assigned the task of answering the question of "Life, the Universe, and Everything"), something like "What's the point of debating the existence of God, when you're going to tell us his address?" There is precedent for this kind of frustration. I seem to recall that more than 10 years ago, or more, that the solution/proof for the 4-color mapping problem (The theory that all maps could be colored with at most 4 colors) was done by computer. It was accomplished, as I recall, by exhaustively testing "all" the various possibilities (having been narrowed down appropriately), and determing that they needed no more than 4 colors. Mathematicians, who were used to multi-page proofs that a human could actually comprehend and follow on a step-by-step basis, were unhappy that it all came down to a computer. Many of us have read Mill, Hayek, Freidman, Nozick, and >decided that we prefer that world view. That Dr. Denning has decided >that she likes Philosopher-Kings is not particularly unusual, except >in the computer business. Go read Leviathan. Think about what we're >talking about here. > > Its a scary new world that I expect will be created, by the >UNSTOPPABLE advance of technology. There is no weapon created that is >not used by someone who judges the cause to be worthwhile. Nukes, >chemicals, and biologicals have all been used against civilian >populations. I judge that stopping the advance of cryptoanarchist >technology will fail (in the long run), and not be worth the price. I >suspect Dorothy disagrees, and there lies her fascination with >building in Big Brother. I think the thing to remember is that the "worth the price" issue appears to depend substantially on who you are. If you're a powerful government official, who fears losing his cushy job and maybe even his life, it may appear to be worth an effort. From the standpoint of the ordinary citizen, however, if he understands what's at stake he'll recognize that it isn't. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: questions about bits and bytes
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:00 AM 4/10/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >At 09:33 PM 4/8/96 -0400, Jack Mott wrote: >>This may be a bit of a no brainer, but everything I have read sorta >>skips over this point. a bit is 1 or 0. 8 bits make up a byte (0-255). > >Be careful writing code - sometimes a byte is -128 to 127 instead of 0 to 255. >Also, there are machines (mostly old kinky ones) that use bytes of sizes >other than 8 bits. No, Bill, a "byte" has ALWAYS been 8-bits. One of the main reasons the term "byte" was invented was because the term "word" (as in, "word length") varied for different computers, especially in the 1960's. (In fact, many computers of that era used word lengths other than 8, 16, 32, 64 bits, as surprising as this may sound to the current crop of PC and Mac afficionados.) This made it inconvenient to talk about memory capacities unless you were referring to the same machine. The solution was to invent a new term, "byte," which conviently had about the same size as an ASCII character and was always 8 bits.

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"Batman" Read!--How to Unsubscribe
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:11 PM 4/11/96, Batman wrote: >Please PUT me OUT of YOUR cypherpunks AND other MAIL-LISTS > >Thankx I sent you instructions by private e-mail, and in a separate posting on the list. If you had read either of these messages and followed the "unsubscribe" instructions, you could remove yourself from the list. If, however, you are not reading messages that arrive in your mailbox, including messages on this list and personal mail, then you are likely not reading _this_ message either, and it is hopeless for you. You will be condemned to getting list traffic until you get a clue. On the off chance you read this message by either of the routes, instructions are included _again_ at the end of this message. (And I have retitled your thread name...the message name "Re:" is not terribly helpful, and indicates you took no time to compose a meaningful title.) How to subscribe to the Cypherpunks mailing list: send a message to "majordomo(a)toad.com" with the body message "subscribe cypherpunks". To unsubscribe, send the message "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to the same address. For help, send "help cypherpunks". Don't send these requests to the Cypherpunks list itself. And be aware that the list generates between 40 and 100 messages a day.

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Re: questions about bits and bytes
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:50 AM 4/11/96 -0400, Richard Martin wrote: > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >On Apr 10, 6:57pm, jim bell wrote: >> At 06:29 PM 4/10/96 -0700, Simon Spero wrote: >> >No, bytes are no always 8 bits - some machines use(d) 9-bit bytes. >> I notice you gave no examples. Why is that? >Perhaps he thought that most people who were interested could go look >it up themselves. > >- From a really quick web search, we find that the SGI Impact jams 9-bit >bytes [that's what it says] across the Rambus internally. I'm not sure >if the memory itself is 9-bit. Are you sure they're not referring to 8 bits of data and a parity bit? In any case, please give the address to the list so that it can be checked out.

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CDA Court Challenge: Update #6
by rodger＠interramp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 4/11/96 Declan McCullagh wrote: >+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ > WHO CARES ABOUT KIDS: WHO ARE THE ADULTS? >+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ > >The third way to answer the now-tiresome who-are-the-kiddies question >is to turn it on its head and ask: "Who are the adults?" > >Hardware to answer that question already exists. The March 25 issue of >Interactive Week reports that Livingston Enterprises, Inc. has >colluded with Senator Exon's staff to design an "Exon box" -- a router >that lets ISPs cut off unrated or "indecent" or unrated sites. To get >around the block, an "adult" enters a secret password that tells the >router to open a session and let the packets flow. > Whoa. Thanks for mentioning my article, Declan, but I think "colluded" is too strong here - as far as I know, Livingston never contacted Exon, even though Livingston's ChoiceNet can undoubtedly play into his hands. >Exon's staff is heralding this as an example of how easy it is to comply >with the CDA. Almost - Bruce Taylor is, actually, but he's not part of Exon's satff. The only problem is that, like many such >hamfisted censorship "solutions," it sucks, and it ain't going to >work. One of the original architects of the Internet, David P. Reed, >wrote: > > I do work to protect my children from inappropriate material, but > pressure from Senators to mandate technically flawed solutions, and > opportunistic, poorly thought-through technologies from companies > like Livingston are not helpful. > It should be noted that Livingston is promoting this as a voluntary solution a la PICS. PICS' own Web pages, after all, suggest software on routers could do the job as well as client products like NetNanny, CyberPatrol, etc. There are some distinct advantages to doing it that way, in fact. Livingston insists this is an alternative to mandatory censorship, but they're not being shy about admitting it can be used in other ways, too. All that said, you cypherpunks can speculate who's up to what in all this. Will Rodger Washington Bureau Chief Interactive Week

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Calvin and Hobbes
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:14 AM 4/12/96, Adam Shostack wrote: > Snow Crash is a book about a future in which governments are >ineffective. Companies run things, and have complete local control. >The world has gone to hell, and as a result, life is nasty, poor, >brutish and short. Many people do not look forward to this world. Reminds me of a good joke I heard about the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" (Calvin is a little boy, Hobbes is his stuffed toy tiger, who only Calvin can see is alive). Why is Calvin so much like Hobbes? He's nasty, brutish, and short. (I heard this from Chip Morningstar...I don't know where he heard it, or if perchance he invented it.) --Tim Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: A MODEST PROPOSAL (fwd)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com" "Bill Stewart" 2-APR-1996 06:31:08.52 >This happens any time anybody signs up with an an######(a)anon.penet.fi address. >Ideally, someone could, in their copious spare time, hack majordomo >to automatically translate all subscription requests of that form to >na######(a)anon.penet.fi ; as an alternative, if majordomo has some sort >of subscription blocking list an*(a)anon.penet.fi belongs on it. In other words, majordomo is broken. I should have suspected as much, given the weird way headers turn up compared to all other mailing list programs. Can that be reconfigured by the list owner? I may be starting up a list (on c2.org) sometime (after I finish 3 papers, an oral presentation, and some finals), and what I've got available is majordomo. Curing this problem would be good. -Allen

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InfoWarCon: Call for Papers (Sept in Wash DC)
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's our chance to talk with, learn from, and educate the folks who are pushing the concept of information warfare and seeing where it goes. The conference itself costs $1000 to attend, but I bet it's free to speakers. So dig out some related concept you've been wanting to pin down on paper, write it up, and send it in. It'd be pretty silly to run or defend against an InfoWar without the cypherpunks, so let's introduce ourselves before the hostilities begin. I've got a paper in mind... John Excerpted from http://www.ncsa.com/iwpaper.html. Note that this "NCSA" is the National Computer Security Association, not the guys who wrote "NCSA Telnet". Fifth International Information Warfare Conference "Dominating the Battlefields of Business and War Sept 5-6, 1996, Washington, DC Call for Papers We are seeking forward thinking papers, demonstrations and interactive concepts for presentation to an audience of 1000+ attendees; representing civilian and military from more than 20 countries, all branches of the US Government and the top US corporations. The papers should offer new perspectives, attitudes, studies, and technologies that can be used for the advancement of the field. You are free to submit on any subject matter, including, but not limited to: <UL> <LI> Battlefield Dominance <LI> Industrial Espionage <LI> Military Perspectives <LI> Policy Quagmires <LI> Personal Privacy <LI> Denial of Service <LI> Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism <LI> Threats to Global Electronic Commerce <LI> Anonymous International Bankings <LI> The convergence of the commercial and the military in the Post Cold War World <LI> InfoWar Technologies <LI> Case Studies <LI> Your thoughts and ideas </UL> Please submit your 1-2 page concept white papers NO LATER than Sunday, May 5, 1996. The evaluation committee will let you know the results by Wednesday, May 15, 1996. We will need your complete submission no later than Monday, July 15, 1996. Send your papers to Betty(a)Infowar.Com. InfoWar Conference &copy Copyright, 1995, NCSA &#174.</H5>

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