December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Admiral Inman
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:30 PM 11/21/94 EST, Jim Grubs, W8GRT wrote: >> It does amaze me that what can be a victimless activity is such >> a hotbutton. > >Drugs are victimless? What about crack babies, which cost a million >dollars EACH in medical care, btw. > Just as I could not sue my parents for being dumb commies who would send me to government schools (not that they are or did), I could not sue my parents for using crack. One takes one's parents as one finds them (at Common Law in any case). The medical care cost *can* be blamed on the government that exacts payments for it. DCF

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Re: NYT on MCI Net Shop
by habs＠warwick.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > > Interestingly, our MCI salesman has told us they cannot offer Internet > > Access.. e.g, we can't buy a T1 line (for example) from them... > > Ack, Pfft! Little Garden is in the process of getting about 3 T1s from MCI. Now they finallly admited to offering the service... We had a meeting last week where they claimed not to offer this service... /hawkk

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Re: Admiral Inman
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I recall hearing that Inman lost a tremendous amount of credibility in the > government and the media during the confimation; He lost even more during his rambling, almost incoherent "I'm withdrawing my name" speech, which apparently took the administration by surprise and wherein he sounded like a paranoid Perot as a victim of drug experiments. Followup articles explained things like "hey, MCC isn't such a sterling success as we all first thought." Even if he were willing to be a spokesman, it'd probably hurt the cause. /r$

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Re: Admiral Inman
by Connie Sadler (415)725-7703 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Re: Admiral Inman From: "Connie Sadler"@MR.STANFORD.EDU Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 07:58:00 PDT A1-type: DOCUMENT Posting-date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 00:00:00 PDT In list.cypherpunks, jgrubs(a)voxbox.norden1.com writes: > jamiel(a)sybase.com (Jamie Lawrence) writes: > >> It does amaze me that what can be a victimless activity is such >> a hotbutton. > > Drugs are victimless? What about crack babies, which cost a million > dollars EACH in medical care, btw. Exactly! And this is just one example of the victims. What about the extremely high rate of crime motivated by the need for drugs? I have personally been a victim twice (theft of my car and *nice stereo system* and a breakin to my house where much was taken) in crimes which appeared to be motivated by the the need for drugs. I don't see where legalizing drugs would motivate addicts to start working to legitimately pay for their habits. CJS

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NYT on DNA Compute
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If anyone wants to know the NYT has a longish article today on Leonard Adleman's experiment using DNA as a molecular computer. It amplifies the Science article mentioned here earlier and quotes several computer scientists who praise the work. To see it, send a blank message with subject: DNA_la

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Borenstein Speech
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Nat Borenstein is speaking nearby on Monday. OPEN PROTOCOLS FOR INFORMATION COMMERCE Nathaniel Borenstein, Chief Scientist First Virtual Holdings Inc. Traditional one-way payment mechanisms, such as cash, credit cards, and digital cash, presuppose the necessity of payment validation in advance of the completion of a transaction. In contrast, a "closed loop" protocol that verifies both payment information and customer satisfaction permits a far simpler payment engine in an open Internet environment, and is well-suited to a broad sub-class of Internet commerce applications. In this talk, I will present the underlying philosophy, design rationale, and specification overview for a recently-developed set of open protocols for information commerce. Send me questions :-)

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Wired Whitehall
by m5＠vail.tivoli.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone heard off or seen a report by a UK firm called "Kable" entitled "Wired Whitehall 1999"? I've just been looking at a summary of parts of it, and it seems scary: national ID cards and a concept called "Single Citizen's Account" for management of money flow from (and certainly to) the government. This fits with what Levy described as the low-resistance path most likely to be taken for online money schemes: more visibility, less privacy. | GOOD TIME FOR MOVIE - GOING ||| Mike McNally <m5(a)tivoli.com> | | TAKE TWA TO CAIRO. ||| Tivoli Systems, Austin, TX: | | (actual fortune cookie) ||| "Like A Little Bit of Semi-Heaven" |

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A Chance Encounter with Brad Templeton, of ClariNet
by blancw＠pylon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by Mike McNally: "Put yourself in his place. Mr. Templeton's attitude makes perfect sense. The entire fabric of his business is based upon state-supported protection of the "property" that's his stock in trade. I would think very little of him as a businessperson were he to simple roll over and give up." ........................................................ Businessmen must find a way to channel their goods & services so that they can reach their customers and receive the desired return on their efforts and their investments. It's a paradoxical quagmire, isn't it, to be both open, available, and accessible, while yet needing to be exclusive, particular, and restricted. Blanc

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re: Wired Whitehall
by m5＠vail.tivoli.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Duhh. Reading a little further, I find that Kable can be reached at +44 171 410 9046. I called and there's a two-tier pricing policy for the report: about L40 (that's a fancy "pounds sterling" sign) for public sector & university purchases, and about L200 for private-sector purchases. They can't do credit cards, ironically enough. | GOOD TIME FOR MOVIE - GOING ||| Mike McNally <m5(a)tivoli.com> | | TAKE TWA TO CAIRO. ||| Tivoli Systems, Austin, TX: | | (actual fortune cookie) ||| "Like A Little Bit of Semi-Heaven" |

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Re: Pentium bug and CRYPTO
by cwedgwood＠cybernet.co.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

chris.claborne(a)sandiegoca.ncr.com writes: [Will the following error (Re [Pentium Floating Point Bug ... cause problems with PGP key generation or] [any other normal operations with PGP or other crypto.] It shouldn't effect PGP in the slightest. Its a bug that effects only certain mantissa (23 are known so far) when doing a floating point divide (double precision). PGP doesn't use floating point for its big-numbers and it has no need for double precision. Since most version of PGP compiled for Intel platforms will be or the MS-DOS or Windows variety then it is very unlikely that even floating point instructions will be used - emulations libraries will be used instead for floating point. NT is a slightly different matter - but as I said PGP doesn't use floating point for the key generation or ANY of the RSA/IDEA code.... An interesting point about this rather obscure bug though. It won't effect over 99% of all Pentium machines in use. It won't effect word, windows or any of the other numerous programs that hold a large market share and high-usage stats.... but people making a big deal out of this and demanding fixes (I have heard new Pentiums don't do this and am going to test this next week) could cost Intel millions potentially..... and I doubt whether it would effect PovRay or whatever things people might actually use floating point for anyways.... Serious scientific work could suffer severely, and since Intel boxes are good power for dollar there are quite a few used in various places for intensive calculations.... (e.g. seismic ray-tracing - but that done of 486-DX2-66 machine because here is NZ they are about half the price of a Pentium so are even better value for money). Chris

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