December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

1984 Shirt--Entrepreneurs Wanted!
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Blair wrote: > 1984 NSA T-shirt ordering information: > > The shirt will be printed in white ink on a dark colored shirt. The > shirts are 100% Cotton. Available sizes are L, XL, and XXL, and available > colors are black, navy, dark green, and maroon. > > The price is $15, which includes postage and handling. Make your check or > money order out to "John Blair" and send it to: Speaking of such things, what I'd love to see is some entrepreneur out there buying and selling "Cypherpunks 1994 World Tour" t-shirts, decals, coffee mugs, secret decoder rings, etc. I neglected to order one of the "Big Brother Inside" t-shirts, or one of the "Cypherpunk Criminal" shirts, so now all I've got is my EFF t-shirt. (Hey, maybe that's another t-shirt idea: "The other Cypherpunks went to federal prison for encrypting and all I got was this lousy EFF t-shirt.") Here's my serious point: An entrepreneur can buy up some number of these items (3 t-shirts now, stickers) and then sell them at a markup to folks like me, who forget or neglect to place their orders at the right time. Capitalism at its finest. It also spreads the word at EFF events, Libertarian Party events (or whatever your politics are), those "rave" things Crunch is always talking about, and so on. Sort of a Cypherpunks Store. P.S. If anybody has any of those previously done t-shirts they want to sell, I'm interested. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

1 0

bumperstickers
by nates＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have found a source for paper to print bumper stickers on. It's a thin plastic that is *very* sticky on one side, and made to go through laser printers. I have been tossing around some ideas for stickers to make, and I have come up with a few... what so you think? The WIRED ist icon, with and without text "CYPHERPUNK CRIMINAL" the "Warning: Strong Crypto" logo from the Tshirts "1984: We're behind schedule, NSA" and others. Who would be interested, and does anyone have more ideas. I would be selling individual stikers for between $0.50 and $1.00 each, depending on their size (some may be 3" square, some may be "8x3", etc...) -nate -- +--------- | Nate Sammons <nates(a)netcom.com> PGP Key and fingerprint via finger. | Clipper == Big Brother Inside. Question Authority. Encrypt everything. +---------

2 1

(fwd) Re: RSA Broken by the Russians?
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

That April Fool's Day joke I did about RSA being broken by the Russians has generated 25 responses on sci.crypt and sci.math (where I posted it after sending it out to this list). (Someone added soc.culture.soviet to the dist list.) Here's a recent one, which indicates I guessed fairly accurately that Kolmogorov was involved, or his methods were. The Wolfram hypothesis, noted to me by Eric Hughes and confirmed by Wolfram, is also supported. --Tim Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.math,soc.culture.soviet Subject: Re: RSA Broken by the Russians? Message-ID: <1994Apr7.163939.31350(a)husc14.harvard.edu> From: verbit(a)coolidge.harvard.edu (Misha Verbitsky) Date: 7 Apr 94 16:39:38 EDT Distribution: world Organization: Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv In article <GENE.94Apr6161116(a)insti.physics.sunysb.edu> gene(a)insti.physics.sunysb.edu (Eugene Tyurin) writes: >>>> "MV" == Misha Verbitsky <verbit(a)widder.harvard.edu> writes: > >MV> This secret city probably exists, but the mathematical quality of >MV> Soviet secret cryptography is extremely low. First of all, KGB >MV> did not try to recruit graduates of Universities (at least as far >MV> as I know). >Well, may be I'm awfully wrong, but in the Moscow University there was >a special "Department of Structural Linguistics" (or something like >this) which was rumoured to be a KGB crypto-college. I remember (from >the time I was studying for the admission exams) that their math tests >were as hard as the ones for Math, Physics departments. I can guess >from this that the quality of students was the same. Well, dept. of Structural Linguistic was a section of philology department. It was organized by the famous logicist V. A. Uspensky who was friendly with Tartu (and Moscow) school of structural linguistic. The intent was, Lotman and Co. used (or believed they use) Kolmogorov's notions of entropy and complexity in philology, so philologists who wanted to study structuralism needed to learn some mathematics. For a while, MSU Str. Ling. dept. was the best philology school in the country. Now, after a serie of pogroms it still remains one of the best school (mostly because after those pogroms all MSU philology department went awry). Since I was friendly with some of Uspensky's students I know the situation firsthand. The students of Str. Ling. dept. were 80% girls, they did't know (or like) math, and most of the math lecturers (after Uspensky) were Jews and/or dissidents. I doubt strongly KGB would use many people connected with Str. Ling. dept., though I know some whom they offered cooperation. Anyway, Str. Ling. dept. have had no classified courses, unlike most of other MSU depts. The funny sci.math related detail: Uspensky read calculus on Str. Ling. dept. for years. After a while he became bored and instead of usual calculus program offered the non-standard analysis course. Poor girls, who naturally hated mathematics, were completely distressed, because now they could not even make they boyfriends to do their problem sets. Misha. P. S. I apologise for Vulis reposting every second article that I post to sci.math. I hope you stay amused. There is no way to make Vulis stop this practice, as far as I understand. I think he developed a crash on my net.personality.

1 0

RE: RMorality and Ethics (was Pseudonym's and Reputation)
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jeff Davis "McCandlish and I discussed morality and ethics early during our initial "handshake". Stanton said there is no morality, only ethics- what do you think?" I think one is the study of the subject and the other is the application of it, according to one's personal interpretation. *** Morality is the ablility to differentiate between right and wrong, without denotation. Thus, each situation defines an eidetic decision and implementation which would be the application of an ethical standard based on past experience. Therefore, endogenous morality is quite tangible, while exogenous morality is most likely unethical, and detrimental to the purity of being. *** I couldn't understand this paragraph very well, as it is too cryptic. Blanc

1 0

NSA T-shirt FTP site
by Jonathan Corbet 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

OK, the NSA T-shirt gifs are on ftp.atd.ucar.edu in pub/Crypto -- help yourselves. "Don't forget to use binary mode to fetch them." Jonathan Corbet National Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Technology Division corbet(a)stout.atd.ucar.edu http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rdp/jmc.html

1 0

NSA T-shirt FTP site
by Jonathan Corbet 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

OK, the NSA T-shirt gifs are on ftp.atd.ucar.edu in pub/Crypto -- help yourselves. "Don't forget to use binary mode to fetch them." Jonathan Corbet National Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Technology Division corbet(a)stout.atd.ucar.edu http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rdp/jmc.html

1 0

RE: RMorality and Ethics (was Pseudonym's and Reputation)
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Blanc Weber says: > >>*** Morality is the ablility to differentiate between right and wrong, >>without denotation. Thus, each situation defines an eidetic decision >>and implementation which would be the application of an ethical standard >>based on past experience. Therefore, endogenous morality is quite tangible, >>while exogenous morality is most likely unethical, and detrimental to the >>purity of being. *** > >I couldn't understand this paragraph very well, as it is too cryptic. > Attempted translation: Morality is both individual and situational, and must not be externally imposed as the imposition would violate individual sovereignty. -- Best regards, Curtis D. Frye cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org or cfrye(a)mason1.gmu.edu "Here today, gone ?????^H^H^H^H^HFriday, April 8th"

1 0

Re: NSA Security Manual
by grady＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

When I spoke to the NSA Security Officer for NSA he was very interested in Phrack (not having heard of it before). I gave him subscription information, etc. If you are listening Erik, I want a cut of the take. :-) Actually I speculate that someone who saw my reposting helpfully phoned the NSA about the security breach. But SDO10 didn't give me that information... Grady

1 0

Re: 1984 Shirt Ordering Info
by markh＠wimsey.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > 1984 NSA T-shirt ordering information: > A reminder: The shirt is available for viewing at > http://phoenix.aps.muohio.edu/users/jdblair/t-shirt.html >... > It will be available soon via anonymous ftp. I will post the address > when that is confirmed. available from ftp.wimsey.bc.ca:/pub/crypto/shirt

1 0

Re: NSA T-shirt FTP site
by Graham Toal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

OK, the NSA T-shirt gifs are on ftp.atd.ucar.edu in pub/Crypto -- help yourselves. "Don't forget to use binary mode to fetch them." Whoever designed these hasn't done a t-shirt before I suspect. The white on black may look pretty on your screen, but it's the worst thing for printing. The best thing to supply would be the graphic, trimmed to its border, as a single file, and the text as a postscript file. Ditto the reverse side should be postscript too. Gifs don't scale well for printing so the larger the original of the graphic, the better. G

1 0