December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Internet, Countries, Nationalism, etc.
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, blanc has put forth an interesting assertion relating to nationalism and the Internet. If he is correct then we will have a one world government (ie technocracy) whether we like it or not. I agree with this assertion, which is why I hold that it is a waste of bandwidth trying to 'control' the Internet or access thereof by citizens of such countries as Singapore. Let them cut themselves off, it does us all a service, and themselves a dis-service. If the citizens have as much dissatisfaction as some members claim they will take care of it themselves. When they get hungry for ideas, materials, and food they will change. You can take a horse to water, you can't make him drink. You can drown him however. Then you are walking, not riding. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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RE: Internet, Countries, Nationalism, etc.
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim Choate blanc has put forth an interesting assertion relating to nationalism and the Internet. If he is correct then we will have a one world government (ie technocracy) whether we like it or not. ................................................................... When your little company grows up to become a big World Leader in robotics, will you then be a member of this technocracy, participating in a one-world government, whether we like it or not? Will you sit on the Board of Honchos making important decisions about net access for all, perhaps active in the Chamber of Borgs? :>) .. Blanc p.s. I be femme

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WinKrypt
by Frank Willoughby 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Out of curiosity, is anyone familiar with WinKrypt by Syncronsys? I picked up a copy & there is no mention in the documentation which encryption algorithm it uses & what the key lengths are. FWIW, my impression is that the documentation seems to deliberately avoid mentioning the algorithm/key lengths. Hmmmm. (food for thought) I was curious how it compares to McAfee's PC Crypto which uses 40-bit DES or 160-bit Blowfish (user-chooses) & other PC/laptop encryption products. BTW, I would also appreciate your input on any crypto products which you believe to be robust, easy-to-use & secure. (I know I can only have 2 out of 3, but it's worth a try anyway). 8^) Please send marketing info to me directly at: frankw(a)in.net and **NOT** to the entire mailing list. (BTW, I mentioned WinKrypt & PCcrypo because they are the only two which are available at many computer stores as COTS s/w). TIA for your help. Best Regards, Frank

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Toto's database
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto writes: >My database seems to indicate a direct co-relation between the >number of postings criticizing moderation and the number of >UCE/Spam postings showing up on the list. An interesting assertion. Is your database available for others to draw their own conclusions from? I'd appreciate seeing at least a first-level abstraction of the data, e.g., the number of messages posted in opposition to moderation and the number of "spam" messages posted, listed by date. The possibility that other factors caused the correlation you mention suggests that other categorizations (e.g., total # of messages, # of messages which are not spam nor related to moderation, and # of pro-moderation messages) would also be useful, although I notice you do not mention those statistics. Of course, correlation alone doesn't tell us much. If it really exists, it suggests that the two phenomena observed are related in some way, but it doesn't tell us the nature or the cause of the relationship. (All serial killers drink water; but are all water-drinkers serial killers? Does drinking water cause a person to become a serial killer?) One explanation would be the link you suggested, that a moderation proponent is sending (or causing to be sent) the spams as a way to make moderation seem more attractive, or to detract attention from the anti-moderation arguments. (If that really worked - e.g., if spam had the effect of reducing the effectiveness of certain arguments, or of being harmfully "diversionary" - wouldn't that suggest that moderation was, in fact, necessary or at least useful? Hmm.) Another explanation would be that a moderation opponent is sending the spams as a way to punish the proponents of moderation. It's further conceivable that you don't have a big enough data set to draw meaningful conclusions from. The moderation decision, implementation, and associated arguing have taken place within three weeks (John Gilmore's original announcement was sent Sunday 1/5/97); it's hard to see how you're going to be able to distinguish signal from noise in such a small data set. I think this is especially true given the relatively inexact nature of the "spam" weapon; as far as I can tell, apart from Dmitri's ASCII art/cocksucker messages, the spams we've received have been from real live spammers (not pissed-off listmembers) who harvested the "cypherpunks(a)toad.com" address from messages sent to Usenet as spam bait. Inherent in the "spam bait" attack is a lack of precise control over when messages will be sent, or how many will be sent; so I'm curious about the reliability of a correlation you've found between the actions of distributed third parties (who are pursuing their own, cypherpunk-ignorant, goals) and messages sent to the list. Yet another explanation might identify external factors (like the recent storms in the American midwest) which caused people to send more messages independent of their ideology or content. My ISP, io.com, recorded much heavier mail flow recently (to the point that it created problems for delivery) during the storm; speculation is that people were stuck at home for several days and turned to the Net to amuse themselves. Such an event might cause otherwise independent-minded groups (spammers and moderation opponents) to act in similar ways, like sending more messages than usual. Of course, one would expect to see a rise in all message traffic, were this the case. Perhaps you'll be good enough to make your database available so that we may each draw our own conclusions. I'm looking forward to hearing more about how you derived this correlation. (If you have trouble finding a server from which to make the data available, just say so; if nobody else has a handy server, I'll add it to my web page.) >Has anyone actually 'seen' John Gilmore, lately? He was at C2Net's party last Friday night (1/24), being interviewed by some folks from a Japanese TV program. -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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Re: S/KEY (was: 2 Questions)
by Steven M Orrin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to Bill and Peter for your help. Steveo

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Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Kevin L Prigge wrote: >. The purpose of this list was > and should be discussion of cryptography and related issues. Your view seems to be contradictory to that of Sandy. Sandy has stated that s/he does not censor the list according to crypto- relevancy. Toto

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RE: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:04 PM 1/27/97 -0800, Sandy Sandfort wrote: ... >Eric, would like to require a deposit ($20 was the example he >gave) from subscriber/posters. Non-subscribers would not be >allowed to post. Subscribers who voluntarily left the list, >would get their deposit back. Subscribers who flamed twice >(every dog gets one bite) would be kicked off the list and their >deposit would be forfeited (or perhaps turned over to the flame >victim). I know that this wasn't your idea, and am not critisizing you. This idea would be great if everyone had an equal access to funds. Persons willing to part with funds could flame people indiscriminately. Persons with more money, meaning no bills or very few in relation to capitol, would be more willing to part with funds. Suddendly, the rich control the press again, at least to the extent that they would be able to say anything. The rich would be more equal. The plan could be hacked. With several accounts, perhaps stolen, forged, etc. a person submits the $20, flames h[is/er] victim, unsubscribes, collects h[is/er] deposit, resubscribes under a new name, and repeats the cycle. Plus, as has been said before, the definition of a flame is subjective. It has been shown that children with more symettrical faces get along better with teachers. It has been shown that even uncorrupted babies know what physical beauty is. If there is any ability to pre-judge a persons character before reading the post, than the post is more likely to be judged accordingly. I hope that you will be fair in your determinations, and I assume that you will do your best. But I still worry, only because that you are human. And humans make mistakes. At least the current moderation doesn't cost any one twenty bucks.

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Re: OTP security
by Rick Osborne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Paul replied: >Depends on how that 16th bit is related to the other bits and whether >these predictable bits give any information about the other bits on >the disk. Yes, I had figured that if the bits depended on eachother, then it would blow the whole system. [Yet another case of my fingers lagging behind my brain.] What I was thinking was more along the lines of something like: 1.You've got 16 hardware devices that each generate random noise. 2.One of the devices fails (or is sabotaged) and emits a predictable stream (10101...) 3.The other 15 devices are just fine, and the stream generated by one device does not effect the stream of another. 4.You do not know of the (failure/sabotage) until *after* you've generated your encyrted documents and they are out of your hands. So the revamped question is: How secure are those documents now? _________ o s b o r n e @ g a t e w a y . g r u m m a n . c o m _________ Good evening... as a duly appointed representative of the city, county and state of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place or origin, or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension.

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Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list (fwd)
by Daniel Harter 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Dale Thorn wrote: > Actually, it is a certifiable fact that the list subscribers can > jump to the unmoderated list whenever they want to. It is also a > certifiable fact that they (97% or so) have *not* done so. Has anyone compiled a summary of the difference of volume of posts to the lists? I'd be interested to find out. > Because of these facts, I must conclude that either: > > 1. The subscribers have spoken by staying put, or, > 2. The subscribers are so lazy and unaware of what's going on that > they've just left things as is. > > Now, in my opinion, we've come to this: Some people here will hold > the optimistic view of the bulk of the subscribers, and others will > hold the pessimistic view (the bulk will presumably be in-between). I just started subscribing to the list near the time it started, so I have not noticed a difference. If the unmoderated list is not much more (~10%) I think I'd prefer the unmoderated list. Regards, Dan Harter dharter(a)harter.pg.md.us

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<<Vitamin B>>(January 27, 1997) Affirmative Anonymity
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text To: DAILY DOSE <DAILY_DOSE(a)smtpgw.worldcom.com> From: VitaminB <VitaminB(a)maxager.com> Date: 27 Jan 97 15:44:12 Subject: <<Vitamin B>>(January 27, 1997) Affirmative Anonymity Mime-Version: 1.0 Vitamin B: Your Daily Dose of Bionomics January 27, 1997 Affirmative Anonymity In response to the January 24th Vitamin B ("Anonymity and Reputation"), Greg Waddell, Policy Coordinator for U.S. Senator Connie Mack (R-FL) and 1996 Bionomics Conference Speaker, made the following comments, which we'd like to share. "There are aspects of the anonymity paradigm that relate to a whole host of social issues that Machine Age liberals usually seek to remedy with strong and heavy hand of government. Namely, these are issues of discrimination by race, gender, disability, etc. etc. After the Joint Economic Committee's hearing on the 21st Century Economy, held in summer of 1995, I suddenly realized (better late than never!) that communicating via computer over the Internet forces each of us to deal with others without regard to physical attributes. Neither color, race, gender, disability, religion, nationality, nor any "class" markers are apparent over the Net. The Information Age economy, if left to evolve freely, could bring us closer to our American ideals of equality for all than any law, affirmative action program, diversity training, or anything else. I think that is the most compelling aspect of what we identify as the anonymity of the Net." --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://www.ai/fc97/ "If *you* don't go to FC97, *I* don't go to FC97"

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