December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Thank You Anonymous Source
by Jeff Davis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I recieved your white # 10 envelope with the Oakland post mark 15 April. Thank you for its contents, "another urgent activist," whom ever you are. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLbMrjl/ScHuGXWgVAQEmxwQAyXh4sn3CZryVtf1gc1YD7BU/aTFF88v7 yABLaqxzSGRIHt3L6AFRG0+zVe47P2jDgfNQh2YFrWhsJ+jteZ9JSN3klRS/E4/O eCPI7SLt3+mZSZTjQvykI66Ux0kS77zamFNlu6pTxkljYS0ZvLuyGehFC4ClOjyr u5BH8rNnhVQ= =VcIV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- PGP PUBLIC KEY via finger! JAFEFFM Speaking & Thinking For Myself! * eagle(a)deeptht.armory.com email info(a)eff.org * *** O U T L A W S On The E L E C T R O N I C F R O N T I E R **** ***** Committed to Free Public Internet Access for World Peace *****

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More mail-to-usenet gateways
by Matthew J Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

group.name(a)paris.ics.uci.edu group.name(a)cs.dal.ca group.name(a)ug.cs.dal.ca I'm sure there must be many, many more such gateways out there, if you know of any, send them my way so I can put them in the listing. If you think you have one, but aren't sure, try this: post a message to alt.test via your mail software (configured to your local machine) and CC: it to me, so I can see the name to the mail-to-news gate. Thanks!

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Science fraud
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phil Fraering writes >Uh, Gary, the reason noone's started more research into getting >oil from coal is that it's cheaper to get oil from oil. While we >are too dependent on foreign sources right now, the price of oil >has never been cheaper than now and could go up probably a lot and >not raise the price of gas much compared to how much taxes and >inflation have raised it since 1972. Phil, currently a barrel of oil is a little under $17. That would make a gallon of gas less than 40 cents if it could be refined, distributed, & retailed at no cost. I realize that is just about "dirt cheap". Still, the Fischer-Tropsch reaction is over 90 years old & Germany fueled its part in World War II with it. By now, you would think that we could squeeze oil out of coal "dirt cheap". Its been more that 50 years ago that Germany ran its war effort on this process. I agree with you that it would be very hard to beat the price of oil. Still, the world handles its war machine as though oil were quite precious. You should cure the world of this illusion! Ok - admittedly, an oil embargo that was differentially placed on some nations & not on others would raise the manufacturing & shipping costs of the embargoed nations & put them in a bad trade position. >Look, I'm tired Phil, if I had known my article would just tire & annoy you, I never would have writ it! > and this is cypherpunks. Agreed. My article is not well coupled with the official topic of cypherpunks & it would not be a good thing to tie up too much of cypherpunks bandwith with it. I had hoped to do a quick hit & run with it with cypherpunks & post it on other lists as well. I must give you credit, Phil. It was a damd cagey move on your part to do a bad review on a part of my post & say nothing good about my post at all. As we all know, nothing kills a thread faster than that! And then to give me shit about wasting Cypherpunk bandwith - the ICING ON THE CAKE! Phil is on top of things. I am admonished! Unless someone says something to provoke or encourage this thread, I'm dropping it from Cypherpunks. > I'm willing to discuss >energy policy, etc., over on extropians(a)extropy.org anytime you're >willing to fork over the money to access it (if I have time; I >often don't). I've dropped out of the Extropian's list. Its all I can do to keep up with just this list. Also, I don't want to pay the money & I don't approve of the way the fools hounded Tim May. Phil, I must also disagree with the way you handled your criticism of my post. You panned part of it & then seemed imply that you had fully reviewed it with that. >But anyway, you might want to check out that recent NOVA episode, >"The World Is Full Of Oil." Thanks for the tip. You & NOVA are probably right. The world is probably up to its ass in oil. There is some speculation that oil was not derived from fossilized plant life. On a more serious note, I value the time & bandwith of the Cypher- punks. I posted the post here because I believe that it has rare & valuable information that Cypherpunks would be interested in. Hopefully, I have not wasted much of many Cypherpunks time. Yours Truly, Gary Jeffers

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NARA e-mail standards (fwd)
by Jeff Davis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message:

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Laundering money through commodity futures
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry for adding to this arguably non-cp thread: There is some ambiguity in the discussion of martingales and double-your-bet schemes in general. Most people think in terms of doubling when they *LOSE* their bet. This puts them in the ludicrous position Tim Werner described of having to bet $320 to win $5. How could this strategy break a bank? Your bets will average far larger than your winnings. If the table had a bank limit of $10,000, you'd have to have many times this in your suitcase. A more efficient strategy would probably be just to bet $10,000 at the beginning. If you really want to "break the bank", a more likely strategy would be to double your bets when you *WIN*. Most of the time you will eventually lose, and so you will see a steady loss. But eventually you will exceed the table "bank" limit, and the casino will not be able to pay off your bet - you will have broken the bank. Of course, this was stupid of you, since statistically this will only happen as often as your total losings add up to what your total winnings would have been. If there is some "bank" limit on how large the bets are that the casino will pay off, then you will actually get less than you should have. Hal

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Re: moving money laundering to Extropians list
by greg＠ideath.goldenbear.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Phil Fraering writes: > I just thought I'd interject that the discussion here on laundering > money on the futures market might be a lot more appropriate over on > the extropians mailing list than here on cypherpunks. I'm finding the thread interesting and educational, apart from my suspicion it's about to turn into a flamewar about who [doesn't] want to bet $10K to back a particular position. I seem to remember the list being about "technological defenses for privacy", or some such - money laundering (e.g., anonymized transactions) seems close enough for me. If the Extropians' list is dry these days, perhaps some commerce-oriented Cypherpunks ought to sell them a copy of this thread. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLbM3k33YhjZY3fMNAQFrvwQAgLMkQOj6Z6zQDzj+duiBonu1md5RGeuq VjJzNCIRI45HMiY0qzjptJm/mK5it9OAXTTrsQGjxLrPmT6fmyiH/N4g/NGXhNJV 620fbmTOKDvQXTcy8IPcP+yxlTUtdvKIztQvs5yyDtTmRkcL5RSkeRSYpZp/6HNC Dt+8DntfHzM= =/wHA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Sudaplatov book, McNeil-Lehrer TONIGHT (Monday)
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It may be too late for the East Coasters, but tonight's McNeil-Lehrer Newshour devotes 30 minutes to the just-released book, "Special Tasks," by Sudaplatov. Sudaplatov was effectively head of SMERSH, which many people think was Ian Fleming's fabrication...it was real, meaining "Death to Spies." Soviet MVD Counterintelligence. His actual title was head of Special Tasks, responsible for spy rings in the U.S. and Germany, assassination of people, etc. Important stuff! Revelations about Oppeheimer, Fermi, Bohr, and Gamov giving assistance to the Soviets, about the death of Trotsky, and about the sabotage of U.S. military bases. I happened to be reading the book today in a local bookshop, and when I got hope Harry Bartholomew, of our list, had left a message alerting me to the McNeil-Lehrer report. Check it out tonight, if you can. Consult your local listings. Many stations air it at 10, others at 11 (the late airings, that is). --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."

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biometrics
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Another authentication problem to ponder. Eric ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- WEIRDNUZ.320 (News of the Weird, March 25, 1994) by Chuck Shepherd Lead Story * In February, the Royal Bank of Scotland announced that it would begin to issue extra check-cashing ID cards to its transvestite customers who request them -- so that they might have separate cards depicting themselves dressed as male and female in order to "avoid embarrassment or difficulties," according to a Bank spokesman. [Globe and Mail-Reuter, 2-25-94] Oops!

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No Subject
by anonymous＠extropia.wimsey.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Any cypherpunks building encrypted phone? >I am working on that exact problem. It is not really that trivial. The >encryption has to handle a lot of data real time. I have a license >agreement for IDEA and am working on RSA. I am thinking of using triple >DES rather than IDEA because of the cost of the IDEA license. That seems reasonable to me. While there is some controversy in the community, I haven't heard anyone I respect say that 3DES is not reasonably secure (i.e, comparable to IDEA). But perhaps I've missed those comments! I think that even a straight DES phone would provide Pretty Good security, provided that it generated a new DES key for every call and swapped that key with the other phone via some type of public key encryption. Whether you use DES or 3DES, I suggest putting a button on the phone that force immediate generation and exchange of a new key. The truly paranoid can then press the button as often as they like. >How much would you pay for a good encrypted phone? At $100, I would probably buy one for myself and several more as gifts for friends I'd like to talk to who would be unlikely to buy them themselves. Above $100, I'd still be willing to buy my own, but there would have to be a significant user community for me to talk to. I suspect it will be difficult to persuade the average non-cypherpunk to pay >>$100 for an encrypted phone that hardly anyone has compatible equipment for. You know, we should really spend some time deciding what kind of exchange protocols would be appropriate here on the list. Wouldn't it be nice if all the various groups out there building hardware and software phones could talk to each other? If we can agree on a spec, this can happen. One other thought--the *TRULY* paranoid will want to build their own phones from a schematic, and they may not want to use custom chips that **might** have a backdoor in them. The ideal phone might be based on CPU's, RAM, and DSP's, with no DES chips or anything like that. Lady Ada

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No Subject
by anonymous＠extropia.wimsey.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Any cypherpunks building encrypted phone? >I am working on that exact problem. It is not really that trivial. The >encryption has to handle a lot of data real time. I have a license >agreement for IDEA and am working on RSA. I am thinking of using triple >DES rather than IDEA because of the cost of the IDEA license. That seems reasonable to me. While there is some controversy in the community, I haven't heard anyone I respect say that 3DES is not reasonably secure (i.e, comparable to IDEA). But perhaps I've missed those comments! I think that even a straight DES phone would provide Pretty Good security, provided that it generated a new DES key for every call and swapped that key with the other phone via some type of public key encryption. Whether you use DES or 3DES, I suggest putting a button on the phone that force immediate generation and exchange of a new key. The truly paranoid can then press the button as often as they like. >How much would you pay for a good encrypted phone? At $100, I would probably buy one for myself and several more as gifts for friends I'd like to talk to who would be unlikely to buy them themselves. Above $100, I'd still be willing to buy my own, but there would have to be a significant user community for me to talk to. I suspect it will be difficult to persuade the average non-cypherpunk to pay >>$100 for an encrypted phone that hardly anyone has compatible equipment for. You know, we should really spend some time deciding what kind of exchange protocols would be appropriate here on the list. Wouldn't it be nice if all the various groups out there building hardware and software phones could talk to each other? If we can agree on a spec, this can happen. One other thought--the *TRULY* paranoid will want to build their own phones from a schematic, and they may not want to use custom chips that **might** have a backdoor in them. The ideal phone might be based on CPU's, RAM, and DSP's, with no DES chips or anything like that. Lady Ada

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