December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: > How can this be enforced? The RSADSI DES challenge is open > to all comers, and how do you prove that someone who finds > the key found it through this group effort? > I have a suspicion many people would be tempted to fill in > the RSA challenge form and email it in themselves. $10,000 > is a fair amount of money. Of course they will. If the unsearched portions of the keyspace are published, you can just sit back until the odds go up and then throw some CPU power at it. There is no obligation on the part of the individual who finds the key to not claim the prize personally. The issues of random keyspace assignment to protect against sabotage and centralized monolithic server vs autonomous client have been debated on the "muffin" list, where I have been lurking, but the people in charge seem to like explicit keyspace partitioning and servers a lot. Should be an interesting effort. By the way, does anyone know if des-challenge(a)muffin.org is alive? I haven't seen any messages from it in over a day and majordomo is not responding to inquiries. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Mark Newton 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May wrote: > The organizer of the coordinated search must then, I surmise, keep the > assignments secret and dole out keyspace securely. Perhaps they should DES-encrypt the list of assignments :-) - mark -------------------------------------------------------------------- I tried an internal modem, newton(a)dotat.org but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton ----- Voice: +61-4-1155-2401 ------------- Fax: +61-8-83732527 -----

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Re: More on digital postage
by omegam＠cmq.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter J. Capelli writes: > I pay for my phone service; I assume you pay a flat rate and not by the incoming fax! > I pay for my fax, toner, and > paper. If they use my property without getting permission first, So, if a person uses a computer fax-modem and, therefore, paper, toner, etc. aren't used, does this change the situation? Suddenly we're very close to the situation of junk-email. (Except that the sender of the junk fax incurs long-distance charges, if there are any, not to mention he pays for the phone service the same as you do) > I believe > that *is* ( or should be ) illegal. "There should be a law!" 5 of the ugliest words in the English language when put together. Look. I understand your sentiment and junk faxes piss me off as well, but the cost of government regulation is too high in my opinion. As I'm sure you're aware, government does a *great* job of creating sensible and useful regulations. Unfortunately, fax machines can't distinguish the text of messages, so you can't do filtering or bounce messages, etc. (Although I have been known to send a nasty reply fax or two. And I never fail to call the send of the fax to complain and have the junk faxes terminated) > Your argument that my plugging a fax > machine itno a phone line I know it will answer, even if it is unauthorized, > is tantamount to saying that if I leave my keys in my car, anyone can take > it, and legally so! While it may be foolish to do that, being > foolish is not > a crime You purchased the fax equipment. Why should the government regulate its usage for you? Ideally, the manufacture of fax machines which are able to authenticate a sender in some manner before permitting the actually permitting transmission of the fax out to paper would likely eliminate junk faxes. Of course, this would involve strong encryption. And -- wouldn't you know it! -- that's covered by a range of confusing and threatening federal regulations -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Omegaman <mailto:omegam@cmq.com>|"When they kick out your front door, PGP Key fingerprint = | How are you gonna come? 6D 31 C3 00 77 8C D1 C2 | With your hands upon your head, 59 0A 01 E3 AF 81 94 63 | Or on the trigger of your gun?" Send email with "get key" as the| -- The Clash, "Guns of Brixton" "Subject:" to get my public key | _London_Calling_ , 1979 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Cynthia H. Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk wrote: <earlier discussion excised> > Not my point, I didn`t say I would refuse, as in my example, to have > my car serviced by a woman, rather, that I would not feel comfortable > doing so. This is not prejudice, it is a statistical judgement based > on the fact that, as a percentage, I know few women who are competent > car mechanics but I know a number of men who, by the same criteria, I > would call competent. Acknowledged, agree to disagree :-). (Very few of my male friends can do more than sew on a button, but that doesn't weight my choice of a *professional* tailor.) It did, however, sound like you were agreeing with the previous poster's (more extreme) position. > Very much so, I did not intend, even though my post may have appeared > that way, for one minute to suggest that women were *unable* to carry > out certain tasks, just that they seem less suited to certain > vocations that others. For example, I know a number of good female > History or English students but very few good female mathematics > or computer science students. This is not, I believe, because women are > not "suited" to computer science rather that they have never been encouraged > at high school etc. to learn about such subjects which are seen as male preserves. > I wholeheartedly believe this should not be the case, and my original > post may have been misleading, I just believe that in the current > system very few women do become good at science/technical subjects. Agreed (sadly) that there is a dearth of role models like Mme. Curie or Roberta Bondar. There is also an unfortunate "geek stigma" often attached to those who are good at math or science (male or female). Whether this stigma discourages more girls than boys is questionable (psychology thesis, anyone?), but it has probably resulted in good-math-potential brains taking economics (or whatever) instead. Fewer competitors for the 56-bit prize, but also fewer brains thinking up better PRNGs. Cynthia =============================================================== Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng. E-mail: cynthb(a)iosphere.net | PGP Key: See Home Page Home Page: http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/ Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received. Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.

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Re: Keep it Simple and the Cypherpunk Way
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- on or about 970215:1003 Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> said: +Vladimir Z. Nuri <vznuri(a)netcom.com> said: +> timmy, cpunks, etc. you are getting a lesson in REALITY. you are seeing +> the logical conclusion of your views playing out before you. acrimony, +> bitterness, resignation, chaos, confusion, cacaphony, anarchy. +Perhaps you should turn your talents to writing country songs. and if I play it backwards I get my dawg, my truck, and my gittar back. ___________________________________________________________attila_____ "Explain to me, slowly and carefully, why if person A, when screwed over on a deal by B; is morally obligated to consult, pay, and defer to, person C for the purpose of seeing justice done; and why person C has any legitimate gripe, if A just hauls off and smacks B around like a dead carp." ___________________________________________________________attila_____ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBMwaj+b04kQrCC2kFAQH0oAQA3pueKSWg2Fqvb6h3psP67rF18N/kwaMP nD6LE7DgzNYVTYwwKjk/eT8/i2kdSEAS8MqkmVc7KwZqsHWl4Ttj23A1GaTHzobL IWwfRAR6BJfcjyvQSzkG/Pq4R7FYvyLoSAqwsYLvlWvC35kiYwwjll9/zprLQbWq RHlrPaY54EU= =I9gB -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: More on digital postage
by Cynthia H. Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 Dale Thorn wrote: > jim bell wrote: > > > But having an address, and a walkway, and a doorbell is generally considered > > if not explicit permission, but at least toleration of the idea that > > somebody can walk up and knock on the door, etc. Having a telephone with a > > number that anyone can dial is going to result in some level of intrusion. > > Having a fax machine is a similar issue, unless technology provides a way to > > block unwanted faxes. > > There are some neato methods to deal with the door and the phone, > but I haven't investigated faxes since I don't run one at home. Boring but it works: There are plenty of fax-to-PC programs out there. Anyone can save *lots* of trees by viewing faxes on the screen before printing the useful page(s). Yes, I know, this means human intervention, but so does crumpling up the ***BUY NOW*** garbage, tossing it at the recycle bin, missing, cursing, etc. Here in Canada, the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Telecomms Commission) put out rules limiting the time of day, etc. for phone spam (voice or fax). Does anyone out there have the specifics of the CRTC regs? Cynthia =============================================================== Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng. E-mail: cynthb(a)iosphere.net | PGP Key: See Home Page Home Page: http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/ Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received. Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.

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Crypto code published in magazines
by Peter Gutmann 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm trying to find instances of crypto code published in computer magazines in the last few years. I know of Blowfish in DDJ, are there cases of more mainstream computer mags like Byte publishing crypto code (I know Byte did DES in 1977, I'm hoping for something a bit more recent)?. Please mail or cc replies directly to me, nntp.hks.net seems to have died :-(. Peter.

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Re: Where is the reorg FAQ?
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anil Das writes: > Btw, one of our many news servers has alt.cypherpunks, but it has very > low traffic. I doubt people are not posting. Must be alt.cypherpunks > missing from some upstream sites. To spam propagation islands, it might be a good idea to crosspost to alt.privacy when posting to alt.cypherpunks. It will probably take a week or two before everyone who is going to create the group on their news server gets around to it. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Dale: What a laff!
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 18:42:11 -0800 From: Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> Dale sagely wrote: :Wine and cheese are the key. You hit that one on the head. I tried :those Mensa parties in Beverly Hills a few times. Oh what a kidder this Dale is. At Mensa party no less!! Whatta farce! Still love you fella.

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(no subject)
by zac 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNSUBCRIBE CYPHERPUNKS lspeiel(a)lightspeed.net

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