December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: SOUP KITCHENS
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:39 PM 8/2/96, Sandy Sandfort wrote: >I find it amusing that the law is supposedly so concerned with >food purity for the "homeless." Hang out near a fast-food place >sometime and watch the street people dumpster dive for the >half-eaten remains of other people's Big Macs. That is the true >alternative to volunteer feeding programs. (That, or getting a >job.) I thought the point you were about to make when you said "Hang out near a fast-food place..." is that a _lot_ of "roach coaches" are much filthier than any "Food Not Bombs" soup kettle I've ever seen. (Fortunately, people survive all kinds of dirt and germs. If dogs and cats can eat stuff off the floor, and our ancestors did before hot water, soap, and autoclaves, then so can we. Not to mention children. But I digress.) The use of zoning and health code ordnances to harass certain classes of people is nothing new. Like I said, the Boy Scout Cookout and similar "good" events are not bothered by City Inspectors descending on them to shut them down. >The truth is that local officials are perverting the health codes >to harass these operations, not to "protect the homeless." At >it's core, it is a hypocritical abuse of power, not unlike the >invocation of the Four Horseman to keep strong crypto out of the >hands of average Americans. Further, in time past the operation of a "street food" service (hot dogs, ice cream, various knoshing items, etc.) was a way for otherwise poor persons to start a business. My own city, Santa Cruz, has no pushcart vendors, and only one officially-approved sidewalk hotdog vendor. A loss for us, a loss for would-be vendors, and with no gain in "food safety" that I can plausible see. I actually think this shows another side of the harassment of food giveaways and low-cost vendors: it cuts down on competition with the established food entities. While I tend to dismiss "corporate conspiracy" theories about how Giant Corporations are repressing and suppressing the Little Guys, there is little doubt that licensing, zoning, and other governmental restrictions are often used by established entities to keep out competition. Licenses get used for what economists call "rent-seeking" behavior. (Examples abound in other areas, too, such as where large chip companies like Intel actually relish the vast amounts of paperwork they are required to fill out, becuase this overhead and legal burden can be handled by their buildings full of paper pushers, but helps to keep small companies from entering the market. Intel has actually insisted that small companies file the same environmental impact reports, labor reports, etc., that they have to fill out. Understandable at one level, but also an example of using "the system" to put pressure on upstarts. Or, the rent-seeking of professional guilds, well-known to all of us.) As to Alan Horowitz's bizarre notion that "public streets" are not to be used for giving away food, does he believe the same to be true of giving away speech, giving away ideas, passing books to other people, etc.? "There are bookstores for selling or buying books, and anyone who engages in this sort of action on a public street will have his attitude adjusted with my billy club." "Public" areas cause problems for analysis of rights, I will grant. The "commons problem" is well known. But I think that the specific cases we've been discussing, of whacking bums with nightsticks for the crime of not maintaining "proper decorum," and of Food Not Bombs being shut down while the Boy Scouts are not, are clear cases where the law is being misapplied. (Were I a lawyer, and had the Food Not Bombs case come to trial, I would've collected evidence that a large number of other groups were not sanctioned for not having food preparation permits, and I would've argued it was a case of "selective enforcement" for political reasons.) --Tim May 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: A Libertine Question (fwd)
by Cerridwyn Llewyellyn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:42 PM 8/2/96 -0500, you wrote: > >Forwarded message: > >> Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 16:50:01 -0500 (CDT) >> From: snow <snow(a)smoke.suba.com> >> Subject: Re: A Libertine Question >> >> As long as you are enforcing it on everyone, I don't think you'd have a >> problem, but to force some one from cooking food for homeless people, and >> allow a family barbeque, is IMO wrong. > >Not at all. Businesses have no rights, individuals do. Businesses have a <snip> >Blueberries they bought at the local HEB). Individuals have a right to >privacy, that includes cooking themselves food without harrassment. Business >on the other hand are selling products of potentialy questionable quality. A I disagree with your sentiments about Business and rights, however, in this instance, even that wasn't the issue. Food Not Bombs is NOT a business, it's a not-for-profit organization that gives out (not sells) food. They are the same as, I think Tim May pointed out, a Boy Scout picnic, except for the homless, not the boy scouts. //cerridwyn//

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Re: A Libertine Question (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 23:36:37 -0700 (PDT) > From: Sandy Sandfort <sandfort(a)crl.com> > Subject: Re: A Libertine Question (fwd) > On Sat, 3 Aug 1996, Jim Choate's dog wrote: > > > Really? Then would you mind explaining why costs rise over time > > instead of going down? > > Gladly. Prices rise over time because of inflation of the money > supply. While it is possible for private actors to temporarily > inflate the money supply (e.g., extension of credit by banks), > only the government can increase the money supply indefinitely. > Inflation is the most insidious form of "taxation." It steals > silently and punishes the savings in favor of consumption. Then why didn't the costs rise at the same rate as the general inflation rate instead of tens of times faster? If the cost of airline tickets matched the rise in milk then my gallon of milk would cost over $10 instead of the $2 (this x5 factor I got from a news show the other nite, I have not verified it) it costs now (and it has remained pretty constant over the last 10 years or so arguing that something has been balancing that inflation rate). Since the inflation rate on a dollar is flat across the board in our economy simple inflation does not account for this rise in prices in a niche market. I guess it could be in the case of airlines because they have had to increase the fairs to pay for the increase in aircraft loss due to crashes and fatigue (airlines are not replacing their aircraft as fast now as they did in the regulation days, one of the reasons Beoing and other commercial companies are having such a hard time.) over the last few years as well as the rise in the price of their insurance premiums since deregulation to compensate for the increased payouts both due to increased frequency of crashes since deregulation and the increase in the payouts to the victims and their families. I would guess that insurance companies don't like paying for a multi-million dollar plane unless they have to. They are in the business of not paying off after all. > > Insurance has become involved in the medical industry, what > > happened? The cost has gone through the roof. The airplane > > industry was deregulated in the late 70's, what happened? The > > price of a ticket went up...yada yada yada. > > Technically, Jim's logical fallacy is called /post hoc, ergo > propter hoc/, after this, therefore on account of this. If it was a single case I would agree, the reason that I put several unconnected fields which share one thing, the loss of government regulation. What we are looking at is a inflation rate for unregulated commodities like milk (for example) and compare them to the difference in operating costs between a regulated versus a unregulated role. It is clear that with a increase of x5 in this area and something like < x2 in the commodities area that something is at play here other than pure inflation. > > If this is so then by your own argument, business are operated > > by people therefor they are people... > > Nope, that's not what I said. This fallacy is called a "straw > man." It is a weak or mistated opposing argument set up by a > politician or debator, etc., in order that he may attack it and > gain an easy, showy victory. A straw man is where I take one situation and compare it to another. I am taking your supposition and applying it to a economic model that fits both cases. Both businesses and individuals survive by trading their outgoing products for incoming products. The issue is whether the rules that apply to one should apply to another. If you look at the gross cash flow between a business and a individual they are identical. Since we are talking about gross cash flow in both cases it does not qualify for straw man status. > > Is your contention that because I own and > > operate a computer it should be given rights? > > Nope. Whatever gave you that idea? Your contention was that a business should enjoy some of the same rights that a person does because it was owned and operated by a person or persons. Since I own and operate my computer and it is an inanimate object like the system of rules and procedures used by a business they are comparable in this case, as is comparison to any other inanimate object. The key points here are that people have rights and your contention that because businesses are owned and operated by people they should have rights as well. My goal is to determine your litmus test (if you will) as to how you determine that a business is eligible for such right but a automobile is not. Simply saying they are different is not sufficient in this case. > > > > Businesses are a system of rules and procedures... > > > > > > Made and enforced by PEOPLE. Jim is begging the question. > > > > Which question would that be? "Should businesses be considered > > people with the same rights and priviliges?" > > Nope. You just don't get it, do you? I get it, it just doesn't make sense when looked at the way you are looking at because you have still failed to elucidate your litmus test. Obviously it is more complicated than simple ownership or else anything owned would qualify. I am simply requesting clarification of the remainder of the test. It is hard to evaluate a theory if you don't have access to the whole thing. Sorta similar to analyzing a crypto algorithm via public peer revue. Generaly considered a bad thing. Jim Choate

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TrustBucks
by TrustBuckFella 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- An alternative model of electronic money. Every model of electronic money I know of except one retains some degree of centralization. There is always a central "mint", usually a bank. If you can't find a bank that acts the way you want, you're SOL. And the only thing that enforces non-abuse (inflation, etc) by the bank is the equivalence of electronic money to some form of "real" money. The sole exception is Digicash. Unfortunately, Digicash has no restraint on infinite spending-into-debt. I want to present an alternative model I call "TrustBucks". TrustBucks is decentralized but zero-sum and needs no assistance from "real" currency. Its central idea is a "web of trust": Local, trusted contacts are linked in a web that at some remove can extend everywhere. I'm not going to try to develop the cryptographic protocols for TrustBucks. I haven't got the requisite paranoia and pickiness (compliments both) for that. TrustBucks also has nothing in the way of anonymity and restraint on double-spending right now. If you can see how it could be anonymous or restrain double-spending and still work, please feel free to add. The basic rules of TrustBucks: - ----------------------------------------------------------------- Each individual using TrustBucks has their own individual variety of currency, notated here as TrustBucks( <name> ). Each individual is considered to have an infinite supply of their own TrustBucks. Each individual accepts payment only in their own variety of TrustBucks. There are only two fundamental operations with TrustBucks: A and B swap TrustBucks, of any two varieties. A pays B in TrustBucks( B ) for something external to the system. - ----------------------------------------------------------------- Examples: Say Alice wants to pay Bob in TrustBucks, and Bob agreed to accept payment in this form. Alice has several options for paying him. * Alice already has some TrustBucks( Bob ). Alice pays Bob. * The amount is small enough that Bob trusts Alice directly. Alice and Bob swap TrustBucks( Alice ) for TrustBucks( Bob ) Alice pays Bob. I know this looks like an extra piece of complexity, but it's really not. By insisting that only TrustBucks( Bob ) are payment to Bob, we insure that Bob can't manipulate what currency he will accept to his advantage, which would otherwise be a problem. For instance, Bob cannot refuse to make good on his debts while accepting other people's money. * Alice doesn't have enough TrustBucks( Bob ), but does have TrustBucks( Carol ), and Bob trusts Carol directly for that amount. Alice and Bob swap TrustBucks( Carol ) for TrustBucks( Bob ) Alice pays Bob. * Alice doesn't have enough TrustBucks( Bob ), but does have TrustBucks( Carol ), and Carol has some TrustBucks( Bob ). Alice and Carol swap TrustBucks( Carol ) for TrustBucks( Bob ) Alice pays Bob. * Alice doesn't have enough TrustBucks( Bob ), and Carol has some TrustBucks( Bob ), and Carol trusts Alice directly. Alice and Carol swap TrustBucks( Alice ) for TrustBucks( Carol ) Alice and Carol swap TrustBucks( Carol ) for TrustBucks( Bob ) Alice pays Bob. Using some combination of the above methods, Alice can pay Bob as long as there are accessible parties in the system who, in total sum, trust Alice for the amount of the payment, and there are accessible parties in the system whom, in total sum, Bob is willing to trust for the amount of his credit. Which gives the scheme its name: TrustBucks. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Disadvantages: Lots of overhead. Third-party traders must be perpetually available. Not anonymous. Not clear how double-spending can be avoided. Not a true disadvantage: It could "stall"; that is, there could be catch-22 situations where if only some people trusted to begin with, the system could continue, but not enough people trust each other to get it started. I say this is not a true disadvantage because the same thing happens in other currency-schemes, to an equal or larger degree. If it's merely more visible with TrustBucks, that should not be called a disadvantage. In practice, I think the threshhold of trust neccessary to start the system would be considerably with TrustBucks than with other systems. Advantages: Decentralizable. It is not neccessarily decentraliz_ed_, but can become so as needed. Nobody controls the "mint". Few conceptual parts. When counting the parts in other schemes, don't forget to count the parts neccessary to fix or ameliorate problems that don't occur in TrustBucks, like deciding who "prints money", keeping them from abusing the role, stopping others (IE counterfeiters) from assuming the role, and so forth. I don't claim that the above neccessarily adds up to a positive rating, but it's worth hashing out, especially if it inspires more secure protocols along the same decentralized lines. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not the first person to notice that decentralized ideas tend to take off more abruptly and firmly. For instance, PGP vs. Kerberos, or the internet vs. AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve. Especially Usenet and the WWW. That's why I thought a long time about bringing this idea out. Once it's out, it and its successors are beyond my control or anyone else's. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBMgLz8pi7GCxryNrZAQEfAAQApDzHN9PSpARe/MUZgDDk8F+eFLlKNAHZ 5H6KaX3SlWxL9itM8aFMoudpnBU2gAO7Kn9YHV+dFS1l/tE+NJDhSpTRL1EMKVw9 rGrL8lypX9bLsuw0+thMl1djJjQhc3To6qaLhJvZVji7TRXlKYuVMFW5D6Sm988a Zg8nRsCQrIo= =EOKl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Stealth cookies
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:10 AM 8/6/96 -0700, you wrote: >John F. Fricker wrote: >> Solution? >> >> 1) Don't put your name in the netscape configuration (d'oh) > > No, no, no. Netscape navigator does not reveal your name or >put it into cookies. The only way to get your name or other >personal information about you into a cookie is for you to type >it into a web site, and have that site send you back a cookie. > > The only time we reveal your name is in e-mail headers, and >when doing anonymous FTP when you have manually disabled the default >of sending 'mozilla@' as the anon ftp password. > > --Jeff > Oh I was just being paranoid I guess. There used to be JavaScript that would automatically send email from a page. something like <html> <body onLoad="document.mailme.submit()"> <form method=post name="mailme" action="mailto:john@vertexgroup.com?subject=user address"> <input type=hidden name="userAddress" value="done"> </form> </body> </html> But even if that still works it would be a good trick to associate it with a cookie.

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Mac Crypto/ internet commerce workshop registration
by Vinnie Moscaritolo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----BY SAFEMAIL 1.0----- Attention: I have setup a webpage to handle registrations for the Mac Crypto/ internet commerce workshop. http://webtuff.apple.com/~opentpt/crypto.html please signup and book your airlines and hotel as soon as you can. I am still looking for presenters, if you plan to talk, please drop me an outline, pronto ciao -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----BY SAFEMAIL 1.0----- Version: 2.6.i iQCVAwUBMggHRfMF2+rAU+UdAQEocwQAi347wC62qlgoV0E8nL2E57beK0Uo3fjo 0ZYSYSwu0zOdF9gqGyBfM0ZEHFGh9CEiJik3JCKww4B4Pl6HVWjm9Ay1DN4IqdOo fvanrRRJXcBi00HnyaJmjq9jIrsGoH6nZ3sxM58yaldm/6iVuKezhgBprPF0WwOr aq9NPOZaePg= =Zm8+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Vinnie Moscaritolo Apple Developer Tech Support http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A

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F2 hash?
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone have a descriptoin of the F2 hash? F2 is a secret hash from SecurityDynamics, and is used in their client software. (Its not the hash in the cards, but if anyone has a copy of that, it might be fun.) I'd be very interested in seeing source code in the public domain to try out a few hacks... Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

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Re: Digital Telephony costs $2
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:34 PM 8/5/96 -0800, you wrote: >What is unclear, however, is WHY they "had to" build a card that couldn't do >full-duplex. I mean, would there have been a problem implementing that? Or >was this just another one of those stupid design decisions which could have >been easily fixed if it had been realized in time? 1) Costs money - especially critical if you're trying to either - get a new product accepted by the market (when they were becoming popular) or - compete in a me-too market (after they became popular and costs came way down.) 2) DSPs tend to be really tight on resources, especially RAM, which you need to do multiple programs at once. $5-10 DSPs are especially tight. They're starting to come with mini operating systems. 3) They probably didn't think of Internet Telephony as a market - They were PC folks, and while _we_ all knew about the Internet, it was probably 1/4 as big as now and earlier on the hype curve - It's only been recently that soundcards have been ubiquitous enough for people to assume they're there for a product like Internet phone - 28.8 modems are fast enough. 14.4 are marginal. 9.6 is _really_ marginal. 4) Most of their market wants other things - MIDI, game noises, talking applications, occasional recording and sound processing. Voice crunching is mostly used for answering machines and fancy voice-response telephony units "Press 1 if you want to Press 2." >> It also has the advantage >>that the data is being moved through your CPU, so encryption is >>an easy add-on, rather than having one combined modem/voiceblaster >>card which doesn't have any hooks for crypto or other processing. >Well, I assume that if implemented as a new type of modem card, the >processor can be used to do the data transfer. If you're doing the voice crunching and A/D conversion and telephony all on the modem card, with everything tightly integrated to fit in your tiny cache, why put in hooks for the processor to intervene? >>Given that the "3KHz" is almost universally transmitted over 64kbps >>digital channels, there's really no point in pushing past 33.6 with >>analog-based coding; better to just do ISDN. > >The local phonecos still want to overcharge for ISDN, however. Major >bigtime problem. ISDN looked great back in about 1980 when the fastest >common modem was 300 baud, but it's lost much of its lustre competing >against 33.6 kbps. Maybe if ISDN were available at a premium of $5 per >month or so... Depends on the telco. Here in PacBell's fiefdom, home ISDN costs only a bit more than two voice lines, and you get two lines out of it. Local calls are a penny or four a minute daytime, free at night. This may change soon - the telco is appalled to find out that computer people think "it's free at night" means "it's free at night" :-) There's getting to be enough ISDN support that an ISDN-based phone program might find some market - especially if it can use higher sampling rates and ADPCM compression to get better sound out of 56-64 kbps than a regular phone can, and maybe you could support a shared-whiteboard program as well. Still need to do something about echo control, though. However, I wouldn't recommend writing a free encrypted ISDN telephone program, though - you wouldn't be able to export that on the Internet. But a phone program that lets users plug in their own algorithms for echo control, with an API that supports exchanging parameters - now _that_ would be a phone program. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: F2 hash?
by Cerridwyn Llewyellyn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:27 AM 8/8/96 +0300, you wrote: >As I have to deal with SecurID tokens in the nearest future, I would like >to hear more opinions about these cards. IMHO a proprietary algorithm like >used in those cards is a bad thing and I would like an open approach much >more, I still believe SecurID OTP cards are much better then usual >passwords. > >At Defcon this year they promised to tell about some security flaws in >SecurID tokens, anyone know more about that? > >Personally I believe that Security Dynamics should come out with some kind >of new systems in the nearest future, now that they own RSA. Have you seen Mudge's white paper on S/Key? It isn't specifically regarding SecurID, but many of the flaws he discusses are fundamental to the nature of both S/Key and SecurID (and other OTP schemes), so apply to SecurID as well... //cerridwyn//

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Re: SSNs (was Re: Interna
by pjn＠nworks.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(There is a really good joke in my response. Try to figure it out. Be the first one on your block to realize what the numbers mean) In> Anyone know what J. Edgar Hoover's SSN was? Yeah, 276-77-3737 P.J. pjn(a)nworks.com ... Hey, Worf! I hooked Data up to a modem... Wanna see? ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20 [NR]

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