December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

alt.religion.your.operating.system.sucks
by daleh＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You wrote: >so your point, basically, is that the public will settle for whatever >it can get, and get easiest and cheapest, when it comes to software and >operating systems in particular. I think you've grasped the fundementals! You'll soon make VP of Marketing. <g> >This may be the case, but there is certainly a growing market for >internet-capable systems, and the most internet-friendly OS around is, >of course, UNIX. OS/2 comes internet-ready and pre-installed and it's still an almost complete failure in the market. >In that fact, and in the growing importance of having an OS that >utilizes the full capabilities of increasing powerful personal >computers, lies the future of UNIX. In any mature market, technical superiority above some baseline level of sufficiency has no market value. The auto market is a classic example of this. Look how long tail-fins and chrome have dominated technical superiority as the prime focus of marketing. These are all marketing issues not technical issues! Dale H.

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Re: alt.religion.your.operating.system.sucks
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:39 PM 1/29/95, anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com wrote: >Some people on this list swear they never have to drop to a command >line with the cool tools they use with their SLIP accounts (except to >change their password). If that's true, then any "advantage" unix has >is washed away. How will the unix market grow (relative to other more >popular OS's) if internet access tools run the same on Windows and >OS/2 and Mac's as they do on unix? It is true, I swear <g> I am a Mac person. UNIX is pretty far from the Mac OS. Nonetheless, I am about to buy a cheap 486 (any recomendations?) on which I will install FreeBSD to run an Internet server. Once Apple will officially relase their dirt cheap multi-processor servers that run A/UX only, I'll probably buy one of those. Why am I getting a UNIX machine? Because there is nothing out there in world of operating systems that does the job as well as UNIX when it comes to networking. -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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Re: alt.religion.your.operating.system.sucks
by Michael Sattler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perhaps it's just me, but I thought the header that was substituted a few days ago was designed to be a subtle hit to the flamers. Since it seems not to have worked, allow me to be a bit more explicit. HEY, MORONS! THIS IS AN ASSEMBLAGE OF PERSONS INTERESTED IN THE FURTHERANCE OF CRYPTOGRPAHY. While it is true that to persons not familiar with a particular operating system, it may appear cryptic, this really isn't what cryptography is all about. TAKE IT ELSEWHERE! Thank you. Have a nice day. Teco rules! -----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Michael Sattler <msattler(a)jungle.com> San Francisco, California | Digital Jungle Consulting Services http://www.jungle.com/msattler/ | | And so these men of Indostan/ disputed long and loud/ each in his own | opinion/ exceeding stiff and strong/ though each was partly right/ and | all were in the wrong! - John Godfrey Saxe |

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UNIX bashing?
by daleh＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You wrote: >Microsoft hasn't really made any attempt to enbrace the UNIX community. >Why should we embrace Microsoft? Gravity has made no attempt to embrace me, why should I embrace gravity? Because it's a force-of-nature bigger than any of us. It's not a matter of embracing (or not embracing), it's a matter of recognizing the obvious. Also, just as an historical note, the offical internal policy at Microsoft until about 1986-7 was that DOS was a stopgap measure that would eventually be replaced by a 16-bit version of Xenix (M/S's proprietary Unix variant) that would ship with the 286 based systems. It was the MARKET's rejection of Xenix that forced Microsoft to reluctantly look towards OS/2 and Windows rather than Unix as its future flagship OS. Again, this has nothing to do with Unix's obvious technical merits, but the triumph of social, market and economic forces over technical forces. Look at the fact that the existing global code-base consists overwhelmingly of Cobol closely followed by dBase with C/C++ trailing way down in the noise. The realworld is a messy and complex place. Dale H.

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Video walls have ears
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Electric Dreams #44 is on the futility of videoconferencing; e-mail focuses and will reign supreme. Anonymous videoconferencing is touched upon. Tim May would approve. #45, the latest, is on Boolean algebra and Being Analogue - analogue VLSI, bio-chips, optical and quantum computing etc. ObCypherpunk: we all _do_ realize, of course, that serious violations of privacy will continue for some time to be in the _analogue_ domain - from RF interception and laser eavesdropping to thumbscrews. Perhaps some solutions lie there too - the quantum anti-interception communication idea for example. And lead walls. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For Electric Dreams subscriptions and back issues, send a mail to rishab(a)arbornet.org with 'get help' as the message Subject. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in rishab(a)arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410 Voxmail 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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PFF's Magna Carta and the new netserfs
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

rkmoore(a)iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) > Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age > Release 1.2 // August 22, 1994, Progress and Freedom Foundation > Analysis By: Richard K. Moore 20 January 1995 > [...] > It also spells the death of the central institutional paradigm of modern > life, the bureaucratic organization. (Governments, including the American > government, are the last great redoubt of bureaucratic power > [ Corporations, as a seat of bureaucratic power, > [ manage to escape notice here. Ah well, so many > [ details, so little time... I've never figured out why governments are made out to be so bad; guns, ok, but the problems of privacy we face on this list have little to do with that. Corporations can be at least as bad - extreme government leads to socialism, which often retains some form of citizen-participation in decision-making; the corporate state, though, is exemplified in fascism, inherently much less concerned about citizen's rights. > Clear and enforceable property rights are essential > for markets to work. Defining them is a central [...] > If this analysis is correct, copyright and patent > protection of knowledge (or at least many forms of it) > may no longer be unnecessary... As many of us have argued, in what is sometimes called a 'post-capitalist' economy, (intellectual) property rights will not be enforceable. They may be respected often - but then that requires no laws; after all no one had tried to rob Phil Zimmerman of his (only recently trademarked) 'PGP'. Those who depend too much on enforced rights will not survive. I've discussed in my column, Electric Dreams, and on this list the shift in economic structure that will have to take place - cooking-pot markets, knowledge exchanges etc; concept patents enforced by net.cops are most certainly 'Second Wave thinking!' > The current Administration has identified the right > goal: Reinventing government for the 21st Century Praise from Gingrich the Newt's pet think tank... > This said, it is essential that we understand what it really means > to create a Third Wave government and begin the process of transformation. 'Third Wave' is such a lovely phrase that it is all too easy to hand wave opposing beliefs and concerns - "that's Second Wave thinking." Reminds me of the Freudian defense against Jung - "Ah, Jung was sexually repressed as an infant and therefore jealous of his mentor's open emphasis on id..." - solipsism is great for argument, but does little to elicit the truth. > That is why obstructing such collaboration -- in the > cause of forcing a competition between the cable and > phone industries -- is *socially elitist*. To the FOL! That competition and distributed ownership is elitist has long been held true by communists; the reason we prefer it this way is that monopolies end up being elitist too - benefiting those within them. > [ There you have it. The American Dream and frontier > [ competitiveness lead us inevitably to the following > [ mandate for cyberspace: > [ (1) strong private property rights > [ (2) infrastructure to be owned by an > [ unregulated private monopoly > [ (3) investment to be written off rapidly Those who remember their history will note that the original Magna Carta was not a pact that distributed power from a King to the people, but to a feudal nobility - the rest of us, netSERF on! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For Electric Dreams subscriptions and back issues, send a mail to rishab(a)arbornet.org with 'get help' as the message Subject. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in rishab(a)arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410 Voxmail 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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GDRs
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

perry(a)imsi.com: > Not quite right. ADRs are receipts used to permit the trading of > *foreign* securities in American markets. The ADRs will have > properties that shield American investors from all sorts of evils like > getting warrant issues that aren't registered in the US. There is a > new breed of these things called GDRs that I've heard tell of, though > I know little about them. Bank of New York may be big in this business GDRs (Global Depository Receipts) can be traded worldwide. Lots of big Indian companies use them, issuing GDRs that represent split shares and are loosely linked to share prices on Indian markets. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For Electric Dreams subscriptions and back issues, send a mail to rishab(a)arbornet.org with 'get help' as the message Subject. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in rishab(a)arbornet.org Vox +91 11 6853410 Voxmail 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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ECO_do
by sghahn＠math1.kaist.ac.kr 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLyy4ASoZzwIn1bdtAQF1bgF/QaMqHAsZVan936Z8M6n76hyPhwMpypzr ijlcRqCv+c99aD19Y4NDGtWz/ES3dtpg =bLFx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Is the remailer crisis over?
by Nobody＠eniac.ac.siue.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Samuel Kaplin <skaplin(a)mirage.skypoint.com> wrote: > Well folks as of 11:30 on 1-30-94 there are 14 remailers with uptimes > greater than 99%. What's the consensus...Is the remailer crisis over? It'll be over when they are equally distributed across countries, not 90+% in the USA as is currently the case. However, 14 is a good start and perhaps the Rest Of The World will catch up.

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Re: Anonymity by mechanism ?
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The IETF "common authentication technology" working group (the folks behind GSSAPI and, now, basically, all application-level security protocols on the Internet) are looking at providing first-class support for anonymity. Here's a reent message. cat-ietf-request(a)mit.edu to join. /r$ ---------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------- Message 173: >From owner-cat-ietf(a)cam.ov.com Mon Jan 30 07:15:20 1995 Date: Mon, 30 Jan 1995 12:35:24 --100 From: danisch(a)ira.uka.de (Hadmut Danisch) Message-Id: <9501301135.AA29078(a)elysion.iaks.ira.uka.de> To: cat-ietf(a)mit.edu Subject: Anonymity by mechanism ? Content-Length: 1142 Status: R Currently there is a discussion about providing anonymity. To avoid the problems of recognizing the name string syntax for anonymous names and the necessity to implement the anonymous way into every gssapi mechanism I want to propose the following: - No anonymity within any gssapi mechanism except one special anonymous-only mechanism. - Allow to use distinct authentication methods for both sides. If an application accepts anonymous connections, it uses the anonymous mechanism. If it accepts non-anonymous connections also, it chooses both the anonymous and the non-anonymous mechanism and asks for negotiation. If only one peer wants to be anonymous, it can use the anonymous mechanism and the other side a non-anonymous mechanism (e.g. an ftp-server where the client wants to be sure to be connected to the requested server). This make programmers life easier and improves security: A context is anonymous if and only if it was generated by the anonymous mechanism. And the other mechanism don't have to be extended for anonymity. Anonymous mechanism doesn't mean no security. Just no authentication of the peer. Hadmut ----------- End Forwarded Message -----------

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