December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote: > I'm afraid you have been a charter member of my killfile. Any comments > you may have made, I missed. Since they weren't about crypto anyway, but > about list moderation (a dull topic, IMHO), I can accept that. I never commented about crypto? Why, I even wrote a crypto program, which few on this list have done, BTW. I hope Sandy allows this on the big list, since Michael has penned a message about me, but said that he won't allow my reply to him. Nobody has to tell me (or probably anyone else either) that they have killfiled me (or anyone else). All they have to do is ignore me (or anyone else), and there's no further problem, plus, as a bonus, it makes for less noise on the list. What say, Michael?

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Silly Americans
by Rick Osborne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

________________________ R i c k O s b o r n e ________________________ I was reading through the news when I stumbled across a thread that made a very good point. The original poster was talking about the UniSys GIF patent, and this was the reply: >Broaden your view. I can do anything I want with the GIF format without >asking _anyone_, and so can almost everyone in the world - except those >poor americans who chose to live under a "broken" patent law which >allows protecting _algorithms_. Totally silly. It brings up an interesting point, especially when applied to ITAR/EAR. On a philosophical note, why *do* we allow the government to regulate algorithms? (Implementations, I can understand, but *algorithms*?) _________ o s b o r n e @ g a t e w a y . g r u m m a n . c o m _________ "A poem: a story in meter or rhyme." 'Ahh. `There once was a man from Nantucket ... `' "You've been talking to Garibaldi again, haven't you?"

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Unofficial DES Challenge Clearinghouse
by Joel McNamara 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Until someone comes up with an automated method of keyspace allocation for the DES challenge (and maybe even after), I've decided to run the Unofficial DES Challenge Clearinghouse. This Web page will list keyspace that's already been searched (or is planned to be searched) with links to any brute force utilities. If you clear part of the keyspace, e-mail me the range, and I'll update the page. http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/des.html Yes, I agree that a trusted, verifiable method of keyspace allocation and reporting needs to be put in place, but in the meantime, this rather simple page will hopefully reduce some duplication of effort. Joel

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Re: Govt & cyberspace
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan McCullagh wrote: > Steve writes: > >Democracy is not without its significant shortcomings. If you doubt this > >read Tocquevelle. > Or Hayek. Democracy, after all, is majoritarian rule. Living under a > homogenous majority, with its whims and desires as law, would be more > oppressive than living under a benign dictatorship. I wish for once and for all someone would delineate this "democracy" thing from a true, distributed democracy, where every individual is required to participate equally, and no narrow interests can co-opt the vote the way they do in the kind of "democracy" Declan mentions. Wouldn't it be better when people mention a one-word political philosophy such as democracy, that they make the definition more precise by using two or three words instead?

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Re: Moderation [Tim,Sandy]
by Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> writes: > > What Vulis and the rest (whom I killfiled long ago) have done is polluted a > > common resource, making it unusable for the rest. It's the tragedy of the > > commons. When all can speak without limit in a public forum, the drunken > > boor can shout everyone else down. > > The drunk can be excluded, but when someone wants to use the drunk as > an example to escalate the exclusion to other persons who are not in > fact drunk, watch out! If I get really really drunk, which happens very seldom, then I'm too drunk to post. I don't mind an occasional beer, though. Oksas, have you ever tried beer? :-) --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: My Departure, Moderation, and "Ownership of the List"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:14 PM 2/3/97 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >Several people have also commented on this, that their filters are still >working overtime. As it should be, really, as no moderator can make the >list match any given person's preferences. > >(Personally, I'm not even convinced filters are essential. It takes no >longer than 5 seconds to glance at a message and know whether to scrap it >or not. Granted, it takes a bit of time to download, especially at slower >modem speeds. But whether Sandy's censorship is producing any significant >"savings" depends on how many messages he's sorting into each >pile...clearly if 20% or less of the total posts are being filtered out, >then the savings are ignorable. That might not be quite true, or at least not complete. Another effect is that the new structure of the list may deter some of the flamers from posting, when they don't think their notes will be seen on the moderated list. In any case, however, I agree that spam and trash are easy to filter out. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

aaron(a)herringn.com wrote: > John Gilmore wrote: > >I'm glad we're talking about some of the real issues here. > >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this > >month. I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are > >conclusive. There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today; > >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list. Forty people > >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted > >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email > >message. Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold. Re: the below. Easily the best and most intelligent suggestion so far. Why couldn't Sandy and John with all their experience think of this? > If I might make a suggestion: > Some people want moderation. That's fine, I've never been very big on > letting other people choose what I read, but some people want it. > For those who want it, let someone moderate the list for as long as > they care to do it. Approved messages get a "X-sandy-approved" > header. The responsibility for setting up a filter to toss everything > that doesn't have the header is the responsibility of the end user. > Toad will need to filter incoming posts to make sure they don't come > "pre-approved", but that's the only hole I can think of. > Everyone gets all of the Cypherpunks list. Those who want moderation > filter the unapproved posts, those who want all of it get all of it. > Hopefully, this will make (almost) everyone happy.

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Re: Moderation [Tim,Sandy]
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Declan McCullagh wrote: > Adam writes: > >The problem with censorship or moderation is that it waters down the > >absolutism of free speech. Free speech in electronic media, with > >cypherpunks type I, and type II remailers, is the closest thing to > >truly free speech yet. > I agree and disagree. Moderation often *increases* the value of speech. The > Wall Street Journal, or Time Magazine, or the JAMA have strict policies > regarding what information they print; these policies increase the > publication's value. Moderation is not necessarily censorship. Would you > criticize the National Coalition Against Censorship for not including in > their newsletter (to which I subscribe) off-topic rants by Jesse Helms? JAMA is an example of moderated (good) speech? Not from where I sit. Look at the "interview" they published in the spring of 1992 with the Kennedy autopsy doctors. Then read about how they twisted the whole thing (and really didn't interview the doctors) a la 60 minutes. > What Vulis and the rest (whom I killfiled long ago) have done is polluted a > common resource, making it unusable for the rest. It's the tragedy of the > commons. When all can speak without limit in a public forum, the drunken > boor can shout everyone else down. The drunk can be excluded, but when someone wants to use the drunk as an example to escalate the exclusion to other persons who are not in fact drunk, watch out!

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Re: Are cypher punks capable?
by Against Moderation 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Secret Squirrel <nobody(a)squirrel.owl.de> writes: > Against Moderation wrote: > > In general, unsubscribing and resubscribing to a mailing list is not > > completely trivial. > > Do you think that a cypher punk is not able to solve these problems? Read the rest of my message. I never said it wasn't pussible, it's just a question of how much effort I want to put in (which at this point, being roughly proportionaly to the quality of articles on cypherpunks, is close to zero). Whatever the difficulty or ease of fixing my mail filter, however, the fact that I haven't done it yet should not be counted as a vote in favor of moderation. This is what I am objecting to in John's article. John, if you are seriously interested in input from list members, then I have a proposal that I think is only fair. Why don't you create a new mailing list called cypherpunks-edited, which receives exactly the same filtered content as the current "cypherpunks(a)toad.com" list. Then encourage people to move from cypherpunks to either the -edited or -unedited lists to express their desires for the future of the list. In a another month, compare the subsription lists of the 3 lists. If there are considerably more subscribers to cypherpunks-edited than cypherpunks-unedited, then you can reasonably claim that a lot of list members want to see the list filtered. However, if, as I suspect, the number of people subscribing to the -edited and -unedited lists is statistically insignificant next to the people on the main cypherpunks list, then subscription counts are not a valid metric for judging the desires of list members. Of course, in the mean time I would like to see cypherpunks revert to an unmoderated list, but I'm not going to push my luck. I'd already be happe just to see the creation of a cypherpunks-edited list.

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Announcing ZDNet Exclusives!
by announce＠lists.zdnet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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