December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: anonymous remailers
by Jerry Basham 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know what you're talking about. Who is "cypherpunks," and who are you? Please don't answer...I'm just trying to figure out how I started getting these wierd e-mails from people I never heard about discussing something I never cared about. I truly want you to have a great life...but please leave me out of it. ---------- > From: Mark M. <markm(a)voicenet.com> > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: anonymous remailers > Date: Saturday, February 08, 1997 11:11 AM > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > On Sat, 8 Feb 1997, Jeremiah A Blatz wrote: > > > Ummm, if you run your own remailer, and don't get lots of people to > > use it, then traffic analysis will reveal that you are the sender > > quite quickly. It will pretty much make everything in the chain before > > your remiler useless. If you send your message through remailers a, b, > > c, and d like this: > > > > you -> a -> b -> c -> d -> alt.drugs.and-other-various-horsemen > > > > and only you use c, then your effective chain is: > > > > someone who could only be you -> d -> alt.drugs.and-other-various-horsemen > > This is assuming that it is a reasonable assumption that all traffic going > through remailer c originated from the owner. If there is one non-corrupt > remailer in the chain before c, then this would not be a valid assumption > because traffic from the owner would be indistinguishable from traffic sent > by anyone else. If the remailer has low traffic, the solution is, of course, > to make it higher traffic. Chain a bunch of messages that get sent to > /dev/null through the remailers, being sure to include c somewhere in the > middle of the chain. If Mixmaster is used, then it would be virtually > impossible to differentiate between "real" messages and messages destined for > /dev/null. It would be a little easier with Type I since the size of the > ciphertext decreases after each hop. This all assumes that encryption is being > used, of course. > > > Mark > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: 2.6.3 > Charset: noconv > > iQEVAwUBMvyzcCzIPc7jvyFpAQHRpQf+LusfAS8dhDczpYTHGjgIRo38gPHeDdVn > +qmmikRNravoEiPD9GIrZ4OeYKOs6zykvhWuMoTtsVi/a7p1HZyWzl5A5KkxofUv > nLOUoPriQ9Ps8fzc3B31G5nwj5d6Es7nnfZbGk1dV5KS5bN7fyu9umBeFiW7jNcj > eTf8GmFH7Rxi5aoUc0uMMR/YffMNl0fHo+wooPNnTBMppLouTIr9iQdCxDOJ7eJc > QAFyEXYWtRP8AqrnB0/pVAXUtrnui+Ev1waOkMYKbWuiQ8tkHbLAvcmpAVnD67jX > 4f3ZQkhXG6C4VbYF3fTlL0ujZgRal0csG0X4u6x/5ID4Blle9hwtIQ== > =BqMW > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >

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Re: POST: The Frightening Dangers of Moderation
by Jerry Basham 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok...this is the fourth junk e-mail I've received that I don't want. Your account is in jeapordy, and my advice is for you to just stop sending me this junk. Take me off your e-mail list, NOW. If this e-mail from me, being mad at you, is what makes you happy, and is how you have fun, then you just have a personal problem and I feel sorry for you. Do what you can to heal yourself...meanwhile, don't send me anymore...your isp provider is next on my e-mail list. ---------- > From: Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> > To: freedom-knights(a)jetcafe.org; cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Cc: Against Moderation <antimod(a)nym.alias.net>; InterNet Freedom Council <ifc(a)pgh.org> > Subject: Re: POST: The Frightening Dangers of Moderation > Date: Saturday, February 08, 1997 10:54 AM > > ??? wrote: > > [some text deleted] > > > > Before I explain what has happened, I want to make one thing > > > absolutely clear. Though I've thought the moderation of cypherpunks > > > was a terrible idea from the start and am even more convinced of it > > > now, I don't assign any blame to Sandy. I believe he offered to > > > moderate the list with the best of intentions, and I sincerely > > > appreciate his efforts to try to revive what was once a fantastic > > > mailing list, even if in my opinion those efforts have backfired. > > This is the fatal mistake, assuming it's really a mistake. > I've worked under several corporations where, at a certain > point in time, things just "went crazy", and the owners/ > managers were scrambling desperately to plug as many holes > in the dike as they possibly could, to no avail. > > People don't understand why things just "go crazy" at a particular > point, and so they accept the coincidence theory ruse, lacking any > other evidence. Use your head, folks. This is not a list made up > of sewing-circle nannies, these are security people, NSA, CIA, and > all the ugly things you shut out of your conversations because you > don't want to admit the truth. "Paranoia is a way of knowing". > > Today I saw an old picture of Albert Einstein in full Indian regalia, > smoking a peace pipe with some Hopi people. I thought of the Capone > mob and the "kiss of death", or Judas and Jesus, you get the picture. > > So Einstein puts his name and reputation and personal seal of approval > on the creation of the Doomsday Device, the atom bomb, knowing full > well that it will be used to murder millions of people. What does he > do for an encore? Plants the "kiss of death" on the Hopis, whose > environment is co-opted by the mad bombers and their Nazi-infested > thug "scientist" cohorts, for the experimentation and storage of > nuclear and other hazardous materials. You know, Nevada, Arizona, > New Mexico, all those "useless, desert lands" occupied by the > Indians. >

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Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:35 AM 2/6/97 -0600, snow wrote: >> At 09:05 PM 2/4/97 +0000, Attila T. Hun wrote: >> >on or about 970204:0312 Greg Broiles <gbroiles(a)netbox.com> said: >> >+ Is the desire for an anarchic community at odds with a desire for >> >+ good use of resources? >> Actually, it is quite possible that an "anarchic community" is _more_ >> efficient in the use of resources than some sort of organized community. >> It is explained, for example, that the reason there are so many different >> kinds of life on earth is that there are so many ecological niches to fill. > > Good does not necessarily mean efficient, and efficient does not >necessarily mean good. Since the definition of "good" above wasn't specified, I substituted "efficient." > Picture--if you can--the "perfect" centrally planned economy where all >possible market conditions, wants and needs are taken into account. Factories >are placed optimally for access to natural resources and distribution to >consumers etc. Also assume that the people running this society _are_ intersted >in efficient production methods, and activly look for new and better ways of >getting things done--benign facism/socialism if you will. This would (assuming >perfect people, but bear with me) be the _most efficient_ method of producing >and delivering goods, but it would introduce certain "choke points", one >natural disaster or war could cripple production of necessary items. Let me suggest, however, that in addition to the "choke point" problem, it is also impossible, maybe even theoretically so, for a similar reason "Maxwell's Demon" is. Maxwell's Demon, for those unfamiliar with thermodynamics, was a gate which was postulated to allow the passage of molecules of energy greater than average, and stop the passage of molecules of energy less than average. The net result would have been, theoretically, a separation of a gas into two halves of dramatically different temperatures. However, given such a heat separation, it should be possible through some heat engine to extract energy from this difference, and return the gas to its prior statistical distribution of energies. Was this "something from nothing"? Obviously this appeared to be a serious contradiction, given the various laws of thermodynamics, and it was. It turns out that the source of the contradiction is the false presumption, implied above, that it is possible to identify and thus separate molecules without using appreciable amounts of energy. Perhaps not surprisingly, the amount of energy needed to do the separation is at least as great as whatever amount of energy you could theoretically extract from the system, almost magically balancing the books. I suggest that centrally-planned economic theory may fail for a very similar reason: Implicit in that analysis it is assume that it is possible to do a "cost-free" plan, where in reality costs do occur. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: ISPs vs Bells - Email FCC
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:26 AM 2/7/97 -0500, Derrick Storren wrote: >By Michelle V. Rafter >LOS ANGELES - Regional phone companies and Internet service providers >are waging a war of words over Internet traffic on the nation's local >telephone network and who should pay for upgrades as the online boom >continues. [snip] >In one corner, Pacific Bell, Bell Atlantic and other regional phone >carriers say the growth of Internet traffic is pushing local telephone >networks to the breaking point. > >Pacific Bell, for example, says Internet surfers use its phone lines an >average of 45 minutes a day -- more than twice the amount the network >was built to handle. Heavy Internet use in Silicon Valley led to brief >service outages in that area earlier this year, the company said. This is an "excellent" example of lying with statistics. Contrary to the implication above, telephone switches aren't designed to handle a certain amount of telephone traffic per day; Rather, they are designed to handle a certain peak amount of traffic. This, and the knowledge about the typical usage patterns that communities generally see in their telephones allows a statistician to estimate how much traffic that switch will actually see per day, in the real world. However, change the pattern of usage, perhaps by adding usage to previously-underused time periods, and you could dramatically increase the daily traffic statistics for a given telephone switch. If, say, 2% of the population were to suddenly decide to make 6-hour phone calls daily between 12 midnight and 6am, a time of very low usage, you might increase the average daily usage by 50%, but with absolutely no increase in the peak usage during the daytime hours nor need for new switches. While that's a fanciful example, a similar effect occurs, I think. I've seen a set of graphs showing the typical usage level for the Teleport ISP, and it appears that while usage reaches a level of about 70% between about 8 am and 4 PM, it continues to increase after 4pm, solidly peaking between 8 pm and 11 pm at about 98% usage. This is long past the time that most humans make voice phone calls. The implication is that easily 3/5 of Teleport's traffic occurs after 4 pm and 6 am next morning, a time frame which is definitely post-peak hours. (Traditionally, pre-Internet, telephone usages peaks at about 11 am and 3 pm.) Since modern telephone switches don't wear out, unused call capacity is simply wasted. It makes no sense to charge people more for services which cost the supplier no more to provide. >If, for example, Internet providers passed through an access fee of 1 >cent a minute, a subscriber spending 10 hours online a month would pay >an extra $6 -- hardly a deterrent, said David Goodtree, an analyst with >Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. Even that is unacceptable. If an average ISP's phone line was busy 50% of the time, with "only" an extra charge of 1 cent per minute, that would be an average charge of $7.20 per day, or $216 per month, as compared to a typical business line which might cost, say, $40 per month. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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RRE: Proposed satellite monitoring of car movements in Sweden
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In reply to Dr. Agre's comment, I'd point out that one normally has more than one insurance company to choose from... not the case with governmentally-imposed road taxes. -Allen From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 9-FEB-1997 02:12:23.32 To: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" CC: Subj: Proposed satellite monitoring of car movements in Sweden [If it wasn't taxes, it would be insurance.] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 19:04:07 -0800 (PST) From: risks(a)csl.sri.com Subject: RISKS DIGEST 18.81 RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 6 February 1997 Volume 18 : Issue 81 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 20:39:29 +0100 (MET) From: Feliks Kluzniak <feliks(a)carlstedt.se> Subject: Proposed satellite monitoring of car movements in Sweden The new issue of "Dagens IT", no. 3, dated 28 Jan - 3 Feb 1997 (a Swedish paper aimed at information technology professionals), contains an item that might be of some interest to those RISKS readers who followed discussions about automatic highway toll booths in the US and related subjects. My (probably imperfect) translation follows. Car users will be be put in "feetcuffs" (written by Margaretha Sundstroem) With the help of a new satellite system car users might pay different taxes, depending on when and where they drive. This is what the State communications commission is said to be discussing. According to (the newspaper) "Dagens Politik", the State communications commission is discussing a proposal to use satellites for determining car taxes in the future. It is proposed that all of Sweden's 3.5 million cars should be equipped with a little reader fastened to the instrument board. Car users would then buy cards that can be inserted into the reader. The card would communicate with a satellite that would register where you drive and for how long. The car tax would then be withdrawn from the card. The proposal has been put forward by the State institution for communication analysis. They estimate that just the Stockholm (tax) authorities would be able to earn six billion crowns by using this system. The costs for car users would thereby increase. - - - - The reference to "feetcuffs" (by analogy to "handcuffs" - ankle shackles?) is an allusion to radio transmitters that are irremovably fastened to the ankles of some criminals in this country so that the authorities can monitor their compliance with the rules of house arrest. The word "communication" is meant to include car traffic etc. The word "billion" is given in its US meaning: a thousand million. The risks? Apart from the risks of having very complex systems automatically determine how much you have to pay, there are the usual privacy considerations. Some cry out "big brother". Others say you are already in this situation if you carry a cellular phone. Feliks Kluzniak, Carlstedt Research & Technology, Gothenburg ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 18.81 ************************ Standard Risks reuse notice: Reused without explicit authorization under blanket permission granted for all Risks-Forum Digest materials. The author(s), the RISKS moderator, and the ACM have no connection with this reuse.

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Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible
by Omegaman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <199702051706.JAA01075(a)toad.com> "Attila T. Hun" <attila(a)primenet.com> writes: From: "Attila T. Hun" <attila(a)primenet.com> Date: Wed, 05 Feb 97 14:41:32 +0000 X-From-Line: attila(a)primenet.com Thu Feb 6 15:02:07 1997 X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil t nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2456" "Wed" "5" "February" "1997" "14:41:32" "+0000" "Attila T. Hun" "attila(a)primenet.com" "<199702051706.JAA01075(a)toad.com>" "57" "Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible" nil nil nil "2" "1997020514:41:32" "John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible" (number " " mark "U Attila T. Hun Feb 5 57/2456 " thread-indent "\"Re: John's: In anarchy -everyone responsible\"\n") nil] nil) Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk Lines: 57 X-Gnus-Article-Number: 23 Fri Feb 7 00:40:14 1997 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- on or about 970204:2343 jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> said: +At 09:05 PM 2/4/97 +0000, Attila T. Hun wrote: +> In a "popular" anarchy, Jim Bell's assassination politics make +> perfectly good sense; but, a "popular" anarchy is not an _anarchy_. +I guess I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make, +between a "popular anarchy" and an "anarchy." Maybe you were trying +to distinguish between "dictatorship of the few (or one)" and +"dictatorship of the many (perhaps a majority)" but it didn't come out +very understandably. +Put simply, "anarchy is not the lack of order. It is the lack of +_orders_." disagree. pure anarchy is not the lack of "orders" --pure anarchy implies that everyone is imbued with that perfect sense of responsibility. +> anarchy is only possible in an ideal world where _everyone_ +> assumes not only responsibility for themselves, but for the common +> good. no malice, no greed, no need for assassination politics.... +No, that's traditional thinking and that's wrong. See AP part 8. +Freud believed (as "everyone" else believed, even myself, before AP) +that anarchy was inherently unstable. But it ISN'T, if the tools of +AP are used to stabilize it. And no, no altruism is necessary for AP +to work as well; no individuals are being asked to sacrifice +themselves for the common good. Rather, they are given the +opportunity to work to achieve a reward offered, cumulatively, by a +number of citizens. aah, but that is the difference between a _pure_ anarchy and a _popular_ anarchy. A pure _anarchy_ is sufficiently idealistic in that _noone_ lacks the necessary resonsibility to keep society moving, each individual in their own niche. As long as there is perfect responsibility in a perfect anarchy, then there is no need for AP. AP is a negative, or _punative_, influence; I might liken it to the Catholic Church which is a religion of fear, and an instrument of political control. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBMvixAL04kQrCC2kFAQECsQQAlPSQRpEE2dAKkqrWSlPf79QhSBtYbjXa rEyAlOrmi8NOxgyb8hGF/VwVkURUKnPr4gGJW9JvwuPB2x/AQeT11ZEQyVqeFGNF 0W6WR7yv3XsOT9UM6JCP9hFLWU33BumcPd26w8f/Z5mx87qEUoXeJD4ApLv5QNI3 WlyL0xDT1PM= =sfD3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- _______________________________________________________________ Omegaman <mailto:omegam@cmq.com><omega(a)bigeasy.com) PGP Key fingerprint = 6D 31 C3 00 77 8C D1 C2 59 0A 01 E3 AF 81 94 63 Send e-mail with "get key" in the "Subject:" field to get a copy of my public key _______________________________________________________________

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Re: NETLINK_IPSEC
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 04:21 PM 2/7/97 -0800, Jeremey Barrett wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >When running 'make modules', NETLINK_IPSEC and IPFWD_NOTTLDEC are >undeclared. I added NETLINK_IPSEC to include/net/netlink.h, >but IPFWD_NOTTLDEC is not to be found. I'm running kernel 2.0.0, >the INSTALL.txt file in the ipsec distribution mentions 2.0.24, >is that the minimum kernel to run on? Is there any specific reason for staying with the 2.0.0 kernel? (I would think you would want to upgrade just for the "Ping O' Death" fix alone.) Has anyone tried IPSEC with the 2.1.x kernels? Are there a logcation that describes the differences between 2.0.x and 2.1.x? (I have not been able to find one...) Then again, I have yet to find a list of what was fixed from kernel to kernel... (Probibly in some directory of the tar file...) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQEVAwUBMvytcOQCP3v30CeZAQHL5gf/RVBzl8nunBPg7wCiS4qGSo+M/BsBrBNM bKowgWaZI5UNtMgmxnxadrd7O6uvQv15+U9XO5qhbXNKm0ZoDpBF1hLY4jk2sx4i AH3VQE2YQayIkMbYMvjA7A4tYyXEay8KwGKgqYLsVkhMQ2HDo7CFS6xwD3N5jJ7V Ln/GWLfhd6uK3sPtWYkX6BcM0gNs2l6gJOojcfwghqwgXGVc4ooY8SyWweJgT4OK lGQNmzEeNDDCRXfa6pE5BnSYeAgRPqPvltIwgutpcVGq3KPJ0UuiTHpiYt7A+GYa yT6r+IN9T6O/ws53dUAlIJZZ73cG1Me6Q15z/8uLbzD7WsAP6ifWVw== =pZed -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --- | "Mi Tio es infermo, pero la carretera es verde!" | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com|

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Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy hit a pothole in the moderation experiment when Mr. Nemesis submitted a posting containing nothing but libelous statements about Sandy's employer. He never anticipated that he wouldn't be able to follow his announced "post it to one list or the other" policy because to do so would make him legally liable (in his opinion; he's a lawyer, I'm not). His gears jammed, and the whole machine came to a halt for a few days. Sandy has agreed to continue moderation through the end of the original 1-month experiment (through Feb 19). And it's a good thing, too, because the "cypherpunks community" had better get off its whining butt in the next ten days, or it will no longer exist. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not willing to host the cypherpunks list any more. It's not the true assholes that brought me to this decision; it's the reaction from the bulk of people on the list: suspicion, flamage, and criticism with every attempt to improve things. I noticed few people volunteering some of their own time, money, or machines to help out. Almost all the suggestions were advice for *other* people to implement: One would have thought that had Sandy and John really been interested in hearing the views of list members, this approach would have eventually won out. a supposedly libertarian and anarchistic group of people has decided that censorship is the right solution to their problems. I'd prefer for the cypherpunks _name_ not be associated with a moderated/censored list. (I mean no insult to either Sandy or John in this, BTW... I simply think that they've gone about this the wrong way. If one is going to advocate free speech, I strongly suggest one learns to deal with one's own greed and one's own need for power first. 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 vast majority are still shipped out as 'Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com' (and the 'Received' chain as I pointed out in my original post). to me that is piss poor list management. however you slice it, censorship on a freedom of speech list just does not make it and we make fools of ourselves if we think otherwise. Now each of these posters will get their chance to do it "right" -- on their own time and with their own resources. A large fraction of the list seems to think that "freedom of speech" means that everyone is required to listen to everyone else at all times. That there can't be focused, topical conversations in a society that has freedom of speech. I would say the opposite; part of freedom of speech is the freedom to choose to whom we speak and to whom we listen. This is part of what cryptography does: lets us control who can receive our speech, and lets recievers determine who the speaker is. There also seems to be a misunderstanding that freedom of speech requires that people who want to speak already have a place, set up and maintained by someone else, for them to speak in. If someone who's set up a speech-place decides it isn't being used for its intended purpose, then they are a censor, stopping all possibility of conversations. Did you forget that there are millions of other places to speak in cyberspace, millions more in realspace, and that you can personally create more if you don't like any of the ones you know about? To paraphrase Zappa, you wouldn't know censorship if it bit you on the ass. You think you're being censored when you're just being excluded from a forum because what you're saying isn't interesting to that forum. So anyway, I'm tired of it all. I'd much rather focus on getting my crypto work done than babysitting majordomo, tracking down attempts to subscribe the entire US Congress to the list, and debating the seventy or eighty "obvious right ways" to handle the list. This is a "put up or shut up" to the cypherpunks community. Either you list denizens will, among yourselves, put in the energy to build a new home for the list (and run it in whatever way your volunteers want) by Feb 20, or the list will cease to exist on Feb 20. The next ten days of moderated discussion, through the end of the original experiment, will give the community a chance to discuss whether and where it plans to host the list after the experiment is over. My feeling is that the stalkers who have been trying to shut it down (Dimitri, etc) will be out in full force, trying to disrupt the process of finding a new home. It would be very hard to make progress along that line in an unmoderated list. Cypherpunks-unedited readers are welcome to try. Sandy reports that he's changing his criteria for moderation for the remainder of the experiment. It was his idea, and I approve. The criteria now are: * The topics of the list are: cryptography setting up replacements for cypherpunks(a)toad.com * On-topic, legal, posts will go to the list. * Postings with any hint of legal liability (in Sandy's opinion) will be silently ignored. * Legal but off-topic posts will go to cypherpunks-flames. Sandy will apply these criteria retroactively to the backlog (of about 140 messages), which means that most recent criticisms of the moderation (which don't invove someone volunteering to do things for the list) will go straight to the flames list. If you don't like it, I recommend that you start your own list. Soon. For me it's a sad thing that the community's willingness to pull together has degenerated to the point where I feel better off separating from the list. I hope that others in the community will create one or several alternatives that work better. John Gilmore

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Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy hit a pothole in the moderation experiment when Mr. Nemesis submitted a posting containing nothing but libelous statements about Sandy's employer. He never anticipated that he wouldn't be able to follow his announced "post it to one list or the other" policy because to do so would make him legally liable (in his opinion; he's a lawyer, I'm not). His gears jammed, and the whole machine came to a halt for a few days. Sandy has agreed to continue moderation through the end of the original 1-month experiment (through Feb 19). And it's a good thing, too, because the "cypherpunks community" had better get off its whining butt in the next ten days, or it will no longer exist. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not willing to host the cypherpunks list any more. It's not the true assholes that brought me to this decision; it's the reaction from the bulk of people on the list: suspicion, flamage, and criticism with every attempt to improve things. I noticed few people volunteering some of their own time, money, or machines to help out. Almost all the suggestions were advice for *other* people to implement: One would have thought that had Sandy and John really been interested in hearing the views of list members, this approach would have eventually won out. a supposedly libertarian and anarchistic group of people has decided that censorship is the right solution to their problems. I'd prefer for the cypherpunks _name_ not be associated with a moderated/censored list. (I mean no insult to either Sandy or John in this, BTW... I simply think that they've gone about this the wrong way. If one is going to advocate free speech, I strongly suggest one learns to deal with one's own greed and one's own need for power first. 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 vast majority are still shipped out as 'Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com' (and the 'Received' chain as I pointed out in my original post). to me that is piss poor list management. however you slice it, censorship on a freedom of speech list just does not make it and we make fools of ourselves if we think otherwise. Now each of these posters will get their chance to do it "right" -- on their own time and with their own resources. A large fraction of the list seems to think that "freedom of speech" means that everyone is required to listen to everyone else at all times. That there can't be focused, topical conversations in a society that has freedom of speech. I would say the opposite; part of freedom of speech is the freedom to choose to whom we speak and to whom we listen. This is part of what cryptography does: lets us control who can receive our speech, and lets recievers determine who the speaker is. There also seems to be a misunderstanding that freedom of speech requires that people who want to speak already have a place, set up and maintained by someone else, for them to speak in. If someone who's set up a speech-place decides it isn't being used for its intended purpose, then they are a censor, stopping all possibility of conversations. Did you forget that there are millions of other places to speak in cyberspace, millions more in realspace, and that you can personally create more if you don't like any of the ones you know about? To paraphrase Zappa, you wouldn't know censorship if it bit you on the ass. You think you're being censored when you're just being excluded from a forum because what you're saying isn't interesting to that forum. So anyway, I'm tired of it all. I'd much rather focus on getting my crypto work done than babysitting majordomo, tracking down attempts to subscribe the entire US Congress to the list, and debating the seventy or eighty "obvious right ways" to handle the list. This is a "put up or shut up" to the cypherpunks community. Either you list denizens will, among yourselves, put in the energy to build a new home for the list (and run it in whatever way your volunteers want) by Feb 20, or the list will cease to exist on Feb 20. The next ten days of moderated discussion, through the end of the original experiment, will give the community a chance to discuss whether and where it plans to host the list after the experiment is over. My feeling is that the stalkers who have been trying to shut it down (Dimitri, etc) will be out in full force, trying to disrupt the process of finding a new home. It would be very hard to make progress along that line in an unmoderated list. Cypherpunks-unedited readers are welcome to try. Sandy reports that he's changing his criteria for moderation for the remainder of the experiment. It was his idea, and I approve. The criteria now are: * The topics of the list are: cryptography setting up replacements for cypherpunks(a)toad.com * On-topic, legal, posts will go to the list. * Postings with any hint of legal liability (in Sandy's opinion) will be silently ignored. * Legal but off-topic posts will go to cypherpunks-flames. Sandy will apply these criteria retroactively to the backlog (of about 140 messages), which means that most recent criticisms of the moderation (which don't invove someone volunteering to do things for the list) will go straight to the flames list. If you don't like it, I recommend that you start your own list. Soon. For me it's a sad thing that the community's willingness to pull together has degenerated to the point where I feel better off separating from the list. I hope that others in the community will create one or several alternatives that work better. John Gilmore

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Spamming the list
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

When Derogatory Virus K]ankersore[OfTheMoment's mother gave birth to him after fucking with a bunch of sailors, she didn't know who the father was but decided to tell him that he was a Russian as the Russian sailor was the one who satisfied her the most. o/ Derogatory Virus K]ankersore[OfTheMoment <| / >

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