December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Theory Behind USA v. Microsoft
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Cassidy writes in the January 12 New Yorker mag of the controversial economic theory which undergirds DoJ's antitrust action against Microsoft. He cites a seminal 1984 paper by Brian Arthur, "Competing Technologies and Lock-in by Historical Small Events: The Dynamics of Choice Under Increasing Returns." After years of disparagement the theory seems to have caught on, at least at Justice and with others who oppose the theory of free market determination of winners and losers. Arthur argues that market dominance by inferior products is possible, and cites MS-DOS as an example. Arthur is now a scientist at the Santa Fe Institute. He says his theory "stands a great deal of economics on its head." One critic said to Arthur, "If you are right, capitalism can't work." For those unable to get the magazine, we offer a copy of Cassidy's essay: http://jya.com/arthur.htm (33K) A side note: the same issue has a short piece noting that the early charges of militant conspiracy behind the OKC bombing have disappeared from the trials of McVeigh and Nichols, and proposes that an apology is due militants, militia and other paranoiac targets.

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Anger Crimes Up 442% In Bay Area
by Bezerkeley Nutly News 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Bezerkeley Nutly News: Special Report by Defcon McCullagh Chainsaw] AT AN EMERGENCY CYPHERPUNKS PHYSICAL MEETING AT THE W&S TAVERN AT 5 a.m. in south Berkeley this morning, a lone gunman held police at bay for several hours before escaping with a carton of cigarettes and several bottles of cheap scotch. While W&S Tavern owners explained to reportwhores that they had no plans to seek charges against the unknown gunman, since he used to be a regular customer and a good tipper, a police spokesperson told the same reportwhores, under promise of UnAnonymity, that they would be seeking the death penalty for the gunman, if caught, under the recent Criminal Emotions legislation passed last week by the Politically Correct Peephole's Party at a recent Bezerkeley City Council meeting. "Although the PCP leaders have only had time to train and deploy a few hundred volunteers trained to recognize the signs of the new Criminal Emotions," said Anonymous Badge #356, "it has already become apparent that Anger and Negative Attitude crimes are skyrocketing out of control in the Bay Area." "The physical gunshot wounds suffered by several officers tonight will heal, with time," the gender-neutral individual continued, in a monotone voice, "but the anger expressed toward them by the gunman will remain with them forever, or until the gunman apologizes, if caught." Several hundred Postal Workers have already been detained and sent for pschological testing in the Berkeley area under the strict new laws governing restriction of expressions of disgruntlement within 500 feet of a mailbox by federal postal employees. A US Postal Service spokesperson told reportwhores, "I'm certainly not happy about this..." and was immediately arrested and whisked away by a group of homeless people helping to enforce the new legislation in return for Bezerkeley City Council's promise to add shopping cart lanes next to the current bike lanes on city streets. A member of "The Disgruntled Postal Workers", a Tucson-based muscial group exempted from the new legislation under the "artistic license" provisions, said, as he went through the pockets of the dead fans who failed to escape during the climax of the performance, "I think the gunman at the W&S Tavern was a member of 'The Angry Young Men' who opened for us, so it is unlikely any charges can be laid in the incident, unless he actually smoked some of the cigarettes in the bar during the shooting spree." The owner of the W&S Tavern, when asked by reportwhores if he was unhappy with the damage done to the bar during the shootout, consulted briefly with his attorneys regarding the new Criminal Emotion laws in the Berkeley area, and replied, "No. I'm perfectly happy with the situation." A nearby Berkeley policeman immediately shot down the bar owner, saying, "He looked a little *too* happy, if you ask me." The attorneys merely shrugged as the man lay dying on the sidewalk, telling reportwhores, "The laws are clearly written not to allow deviation of emotionally legal expression too far in *any* direction, and we find that to be... uuhhh...acceptable." Every bar owner contacted by this reportwhore in regard to the new law prohbiting drinking, as well as smoking, in Bay Area bars, said that they were "cautiously optomistic" that their business would not suffer as a result of the legislation. "What we lose in volume, we can make up with lower overhead costs by not needing to stock any of the products we sell." said one bar owner as she placed a 'For Sale' sign in the front window.

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Re: Theory Behind USA v. Microsoft (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 23:13:28 -0800 > From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com> > Subject: Re: Theory Behind USA v. Microsoft > The total amount of actual capital was pretty small - about > 5000-6000 cars at $1000 each, back when that was still real money, Half a million plus dollars is real money now too. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 00:17:40 -0800 > From: Blanc <blancw(a)cnw.com> > Subject: Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality > I went to an exhibit yesterday of Leonardo da Vinci, where I saw the 400 > year old Codex Leicester. He was "a keen observer" of Nature, and from > his detailed studies he learned much which provided his inventive mind with > much material for creative works. The exhibit brings to mind not only his > work, but the methods of such a great mind in reaching those heights and > breadths. Which one was it? I had the privilege of working on the IBM Leonardo exhibit when it was in Austin at Discovery Hall about 10 years ago. Part of my duties was to repair two of his models (the 'turtle' tank & his composite ship hull design) and got a real appreciation of his skills. There was a show on one of the cable science shows about Leonardo week before last. You might want to review your schedule and catch it. I found it quite entertaining and educational. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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by 08145628＠usa.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Accounts payable
by Secret Squirrel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Timmy C[rook] May is just a poor excuse for an unschooled, retarded thug. > > (_) _____ (_) > /O O\ Timmy C[rook] May > ! I ! > ! \___/ ! > \_____/ Since when is Tim a government official?

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Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vladerusky: Your original post brought up several separate aspects which can be considered separately and may not necessarily coexist in the same place at the same time: 1) secrecy 2) responsibility for publishing 3) working for the government at the expense of unwilling payors 4) the motivations of "true scientists" 5) the requirements for the advancement of science 6) the need of science for the works of great minds Initially your argument had to do with secrecy and the need for scientists to publish their work so that the scientific community may benefit from it. I can't disagree that if a scientist is working for the public, that they should make their work publically available to them, since, after all, they are supposedly working for the public benefit. But you also said that "a key aspect of SCIENCE is publishing". I was only pointing out that, in the context of those who are working for their own purposes and not under the employment of a government agency, some scientists are not overly concerned about contributing to this advancement, as can be observed by their reluctance to publish (even if they eventually do, "under the extreme pressure of friends", for instance). It may be your conclusion that the advancement of science depends upon scientists publishing their works, but the fact is that some great scientists, and many others as well, are not as motivated to contribute as you think is proper for a "true scientist". I think you should distinguish between those scientistis who have joined some kind of "scientific community" and have established an obligation to share the results of their work with that group, and those scientists who are what they are, and do what they do, from motivations unrelated to such communities. .. Blanc

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openworld, inc.
by Ryan Lackey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone looked at these people? They seem to be selling turnkey systems for offshore digital commerce, among other things, which I believe is fundamentally interesting. However, they seem like they're involved in several traditional weird Government-affiliated international business startup/consulting group/etc. projects, like educational resources, and from what I remember of a Tim May response to them, they seemed to believe money laundering/thoughtcrime/etc. was morally reprehensible and the duty of technical people to prevent (I may be wrong, he may be wrong, they may be wrong...) [ObNonCrypto: I picked the 3-pin Medeco lock on the front of my IBM RS/6000 320 today. I was just kind of sitting here with my new picks and wrench and was bored and poking around, and I got it to go from Secure to Normal. Luckily the lock turns both ways, since I was picking it backwards :( I've been thinking about and off and on trying to pick it for several months now -- it's a pretty impressive lock for the case on a workstation. 3-pin Medecos are a pale comparison to the real ones, though. Guess what locks I will specify from now on...] -- Ryan Lackey rdl(a)mit.edu http://mit.edu/rdl/

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More on the DES II contest.
by Trei Family 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Douglas F. Elznic and Lucky Green have both written saying that www.distributed.net will not be devoting their full effort to the DES II challenge. This is incorrect. www.distributed.net is a highly centralized effort, in which clients are almost completely controlled by the central site, with which they are in frequent communication. Over the past few weeks, the clients have been upgraded to a version containing dual search cores - they can search either rc5-64 or an arbitrary DES key. On the morning of the 13th, as soon as the DES II challenge data becomes available, their servers will stop issuing rc5-64 blocks and start issuing DES II blocks. The clients will all switch over to the DES II contest without any action by the owners of the client machines. I too would like to see a serious effort made at a 512 bit RSA key. However, the infrastructure for this is quite a bit more complex than a simple bruteforce against a symmetric key, and the organizers of d.n don't seem to be ready for it. My greatest fear with DES II is that if d.n finds the key early in the search, they may decide to sit on it until just before the 540 hour deadline. If they are the only group with a credible chance of finding the key (as far as I know, this is the case), then their payback is maximized by by this tactic, since the time limits for the June contest are determined by the speed with which the key is found in January. My personal impression is that d.n seems more motivated by the money, which they want to further their research on distributed computing, than they are by ideology. The above represent my personal, private views, and should neccesarily be attributed to my employer. Peter Trei trei(a)ziplink.net ptrei(a)hotmail.com (more reliable next week)

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Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Subject: Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality (fwd) > From: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) > Date: Sun, 11 Jan 98 10:08:56 EST > David, you need to learn to read. > > "Art critic" != art, just like "lit crit" != literature. And you need to pay more attention as well. Being an art critic does not exclude the art in the act of critical review. The expression of emotional and intellectual consequence of the piece under review requires a creative act just as valid as the creation of the piece under review. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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