December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Clipper and the "Christian Right"
by Jim Huggins 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Owen Rowley <owen(a)autodesk.com) writes: > > From: Clark Reynard <clark(a)metal.psu.edu> > > I think it would be very important if we could attempt to > > sway the Christian right into this; it is certain we > > probably don't agree on many issues, and the "700 Club" > > anti-Clipper piece was very effective, good video. > meanwhile, don't forget for a second that the christian right > *will* toss your anarchic ass on the pyre where they *will* roast > pagan faggots like myself after they've squeezed you for your > support. > Religion has it's protection clearly enumerated in the constitution, > and a clear agenda to keep everyone elses freedom from being similary > enumerated. > Caveat emptor, and carry a loaded flamethrower, because the first > chance they get to cut you out of the deal you will need it. Oh, come on now. You give the "Christian Right" (and I still don't know what that means) far more power than they have. There is this popular notion that the "Christian Right" has some master agenda that all conservative Christians buy into blindly. That simply ain't so ... just as there isn't a single master cypherpunks agenda agreed on in this list (complaints by Mr. Detweiler notwithstanding). Clark Reynard has rightly pointed out that some in the Christian Right agree with the cypherpunks on the need for legal cryptography and that they might be able to help in the fight against things like Clipper. Why that should bring out deep-seeded hatred against the Christian Right for unrelated offenses or differences of opinion is beyond me. Isn't it enough that we could agree on this one issue? Let's try to make this issue non-partisan, OK? --Jim Huggins

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Re: Should we oppose the
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why did virtually all the railroads in the northern U.S. use the same rail gauge BEFORE regulation of the railroads? Ah -- you specify the ``northern'' U.S. The situation in the south was very different. And even in the north, the Pennsylvania Railroad was so large (they're the ones who billed themselves as ``the standard railroad of the world) that other folks had to follow if they came near the PRR. It was near-monopoly that created that situation, not any desire for co-operation. In Europe, there are still a variety of different gauges, electrical standards, loading gauges, etc. (Actually, the latter two are problems in the U.S. as well.)

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Re: Should we oppose the
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com M >Just so. If you really believe that merely stopping regulation, M >*without anything else*, would restore competition to a market that's M >been dominated by a government-supported monopoly or duopoly, then we M >simply must agree to disagree. You mean to tell me that if the Feds just said -- the Local Loop monopoly no longer exists, we'll auction all the frequencies and get out of the business of regulating telecoms, no market would spring up. Right now, there are 6 count them 6 possible suppliers for the Local Loop: 1) TPC 2) Cable 3) The Electric Company (yes the Electric Company) 4) Cellular 5) PCS 6) Digital Mobile Radio (you all saw the stories about Nextel?) There are probably others I haven't heard of. Looks like tons of suppliers to me. M >Untrue. The cable providers often are putting up obstacles of their M >own, as are telco providers. The impossibility of Tim May's X-rated M >cable channel illustrates this point. The market can't function It seems to me that many of the alt.sex.whatever subscribers are using the PSTN to satisfy their desires. As long as we have a switched network to the home or office, we can switch whatever we like over it. How can a provider stop a porno enterprise network from supplying encrypted signal to subscribers. It won't even be able to tell it's going on. M >Telling every would-be X-rated cable viewer to build his own cable M >system is not a solution. That's just what we do every day on the PSTN or Internet. DCF --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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Re: Should we oppose the
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This has gone on too long -- I'm writing a last reply here in public and then I would ask that we take this to private mail. smb(a)research.att.com says: > Why did virtually all the railroads in the northern U.S. use the same > rail gauge BEFORE regulation of the railroads? > > Ah -- you specify the ``northern'' U.S. The situation in the south > was very different. Yes, the south had fewer railroads and they followed a different gauge -- this is to be expected in such situations. > And even in the north, the Pennsylvania Railroad > was so large (they're the ones who billed themselves as ``the standard > railroad of the world) that other folks had to follow if they came near > the PRR. It was near-monopoly that created that situation, not any > desire for co-operation. I once read a wonderful account of how enraged J.P. Morgan was one day when, while relaxing at his country home on the Hudson in upstate New York, he heard the sounds of a railroad construction gang driving through a railroad competing with the Penn Central line which he effectively controlled via the Vanderbilts. No attempt to set up a railroad cartel or monopoly worked until the ICC was formed, you know -- a government agency created largely so monopolists would have a legal way of enforcing rate fixing. > In Europe, there are still a variety of different gauges, electrical > standards, loading gauges, etc. Yes. Such things typically occur for a while when people aren't geographically proximate and don't interact much -- the north and south were such an example. However, in regions where people do interact standards quickly enforce themselves. Look around you at the computer industry for example. Perry

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OMNI CARD
by Matthew J Miszewski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With re to Root's comments: The OMNI Card appears to be the incarnation of D. Chaum's SmartCardComputers. If its what it sounds like it is a public key encryption/digital signature computing device. DigiCash...er...Digital Cash (Im not good at avoiding a pseudospoof) is on its way boyz. --Matt ______________________________________________________________________________ In defense of liberty, encrypt for all purposes, civil and professional. In defense of privacy, encrypt all correspondence, personal and professional. In defense of sanity, do not encrypt your dry cleaning invoice! ++++++++--------mjmiski(a)macc.wisc.edu (c)1993

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Dinkelacker II
by an12070＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WHO is ARTHUR CHANDLER?! <g> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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tel news
by abootch＠sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FYI ---- (sorry if this is re-hash) Today's SF CHRON reports: Pac's Baby Bell will spend 15 billion installing fiber optics throughout California. ATT will supply ATM switchers to convert the video signals... And PacTel Cellular will offer Bay Area cell users CDPD - faster and more efficient cell data transmittion - it transmits the data in packets during "the idle milliseconds of voice conversations carried on cell. phone systems". So its compressed and.... -- -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQBNAizdNhgAAAECAKYlJfK4YQoaRYtiywdgR7OQmsS23oRFr3QYZf4mE1pQTvPg DGB7xVx2mfRjsqUdQsar4vdWyNZmXLMmHNdez9UABRG0K0FuZHkgSS4gTWF0aW5v ZyA8YWJvb3RjaEBzZnN1dmF4MS5zZnN1LmVkdT4= =KJFP -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Re: Should we oppose the
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com M >First, I wasn't talking about the local-loop competition. I was M >talking about cable. I don't doubt that in *some* monopoly situations, M >mere reduction or elimination of regulation can allow markets to spring M >up. I just don't think this is true with regard to telcos and cable. Hasn't it occurred to everyone that the local loop is cable and cable is the local loop. There's no difference. Any way of squishing gobs of zeros and ones down a channel to you is the Local Loop and the Trunk and the Cable and everything. M >Secondly, and as I mentioned, there are non-market tactics that a M >supplier can use to prevent competition from arising. For example, why M >should a local telco decide on its own to be interoperable with, say, M >the Electric Company? In this Age of Open Systems? Anyway if they won't connect each other, I will with my own switch just like International Discount Telecommunications and the other companies are smashing the ITU monopoly pricing of international phone calls. M >It's always a mistake to confuse technical feasibility for M >competition. What's to prevent the dominant one or two providers (TPC M >and Cellular, let's say) from closing out the others by refusing to be M >interoperable? M >--Mike Sweden approved 5 national cellular franchises by far the most of any country. Sweden has the most market penetration of cellular by any country. No coincidence. Duncan Frissell --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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MATH: new number
by strick -- henry strickland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

And now for something completely relevant: Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written From: daveb(a)harlqn.co.uk (Dave Berry) Organization: Harlequin Ltd, Cambridge, UK Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 19:15:59 GMT > It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered > recently is four times bigger then the previous record. > -- John Blasik Mathematicians at Cambridge University announced today that they have discovered a new whole number between 27 and 28. "We don't know much about its properties", said a spokesman, "but it is causing lots of bother in equations. However, we do know that it's divisible by 6 - but only once". -- "On the hour", BBC Radio.

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CUD 5.84
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The following was recently posted to sci.crypt. I would like to get a copy of the referenced issue of CUD and check out the "DES: Broken!" article. I looked in the EFF ftp site, but they only have CUD up to issue 5.76. Anybody know where I can get CUD 5.84? Thanks, Jim_Miller(a)suite.com ------------- From: pwilk(a)reed.edu (The Cannibal) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Computer underground Digest Sun Nov 7 1993 Volume 5 : Issue 84 Message-ID: <2bn1u8$gt0(a)scratchy.reed.edu> Date: 9 Nov 93 03:14:16 GMT Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon Lines: 29 Thought you might like to know: Computer underground Digest Sun Nov 7 1993 Volume 5 : Issue 84 ISSN 1004-042X Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2(a)NIU.BITNET) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Copy Eatitor: Etaoin Shrdlu, III CONTENTS, #5.84 (Nov 7 1993) File 1--Computers, Freedom, and Privacy '94 Conference File 2--CFP '94 Scholarship Announcements File 3--Korea 94: Call for Papers File 4--CPSR NII Paper File 5--DES: Broken! <----------------------------- File 6--NAFTA mandates software patents (fwd) File 7--Phiber Optik Sentenced to One Year in Prison read it. check it out. -- The _O_ "Darkness may cover me: midnight may steal along my living veins; Cannibal | yea and the ultimate futility, the ghastly nothing on which all things play may break ice-thin crust and freeze my soul" pwilk(a)reed.edu -=public key available on finger=- - John Cowper Powys

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