December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Cypherpunks as a Terrorist Organization (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 20:38:06 -0700 > From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> > Subject: Cypherpunks as a Terrorist Organization > It's what the Founders expected. Get used to it. > > If crypto anonymity tools were available to the Founders, they'd have used > them against the British. Uh, it was called a printing press and the pseudonym was 'publius'... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Participation requires more than just bitching! | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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[Fwd: Your newsgroup post ...]
by David D.W.Downey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

blackjack(a)hotmail.com wrote: > Saw your post in the newsgroups. > > Check this out! > > http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Plaza/1022 Ya know, this shit really pisses me off. I understand that we have to protect everyone's rights if we wish are own to be protected. This is a classic case of what is causing the mainstream public to hash so hard about porn and such. I did nothing to solicit this beyond posting to a news group. This troller comes along, scarfs my email address and then sends me this email. If you click on the link it sends you to a place to sign up for accessing a hard porn site. This is what feeds the initiated Johnnie Q.Public's desire to control the net, and endangers all of our rights on the net. I understand that we have to protect the enemies' rights too, but can't we just shoo a few of them first? Lowers the numbers needing protection and might help us out in the end. Grrrrrrr!!!! David Downey [ If we, as humans, are so omnipotent how come we scurry like rats when a tornado hits? ]

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Re: Bell, etc
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, Mike, you've called for someone to take up the responsibility to go through the trouble to set up a web page with stories on Jim, numerous links to other Jim Bell info, and constant updates on his situation, plus almost glorified him in your assessment of what happened to him. Your signature declares "{Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}". Yet you haven't emailed your interest in visiting Jim, nor did you volunteer to do any research, like I did, to find out where he is, how to contact him, when to visit, etc. - and you live around here, you told me. What's the deal? .. Blanc

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Re: Cypherpunks as a Terrorist Organization
by Trevor Goodchild 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 18 Aug 1997, Tim May wrote: > First, the rise of search engines, archives, and employers routinely > running DejaNews and other search engine checks on potential employees and > consultants to see what sorts of folks they are. (Whether being active on > the Cypherpunks list will nix a job is pretty unlikely, but it's still a > worry to some.) Hey Tim, speaking of DejaNews, how soon do you think it will be before there is a Ministry of Truth (minitru) in place to correct incorrect postings of the past, to update them a bit and airbrush out those who, um, never existed? > of sorts. But many have been investigated, and, as John Young noted > recently, the IRS treats membership in certain organizations as a threat. > And there is Clinton's Anti-Terrorism Act, which explicitly makes certain > kinds of financial and other activities illegal, even by Americans, which > involve support of "terrorist" organizations. It is not inconceivable that, > following outlawing of strong crypto in various countries, that the > Cypherpunks group gets classified as an organization or group which > supports terrorist goals, which is almost certainly true.) No bigger a threat than the HUAC saw those who didn't believe the Hoover vision. Nothing's really changed since then other than the faces and the names. The issues remain. > Fourth, the arrest and prosecution of Jim Bell, with tax evasion and a > minor stink bomb case turned into a "federal case" because of his > controversial views. This has obviously angered and radicalized many. Some > of us have stocked up on more asault weapons and shotguns, placed alarms > around our property, and we are expecting a "raid." As I have said, if > black-clad ninja raiders try to hit me, I'll assume they're "home invaders" > and will open fire. (A Sheriff's Deputy once told me that even saying I > would defend my home against unwelcome intruders constituted a "threat" and > that he might order a detachment to visit my compound. So far, two years > later, he hasn't made good on _his_ threat. And now I'm more ready for him > than ever.) A theat to him perhaps. What ever happened to self defense I wonder? > So, "B.," stop apologizing for reading the list. You're already a marked > man in their eyes...and search engines can already identify the True Name > who is posting the last year or two as "Zooko Journeyman." In a couple of > years, all search engines will have "known aliases" macros to automatically > ferret out the web of pseudonyms linkable to a poster. You can run, but you > can't hide. Not unless he joins the book people in the woods. :) > And "democracy" is spinning out of control, being used by authoritarians to > convert the world into a security state. Restrictions on travel, new drug > laws, laws against images and words on the Net, and thousands of new laws > every years. Congress was indeed a horrid idea. We need no laws other that "do what you will as long as you don't physically injure, or steal." All else is congressional bullshit paid in bloody tax money. > A frontal assault, using strong crypto to aid in the attacks by freedom > fighters and to destablize authority, makes more sense. When a government > official decrees that citizen-units may no longer do certain things which > were once quite legal and quite common (such as owning a gun for defense), > that official must expect certain repercussions. A few years back when the anti-gun crap started in NYC, they had all sorts of save the kids propaganda stories and projects: such as trade your gun for a toy, and stories like 8 year old shot dead by drug deal for threatening to use water pistol. > We're in a state of war with the statists and tyrants. It's what Jefferson > and the other Founders expected to happen, and now the watering with the > blood of patriots and tyrants is happening. Some war. We've already lost. The Big Brother machine is already in place and has been since Hoover. Jim Bell was arrested for thinking differently than is allowed. No different than being declared insane and sent to the Gulag for "re-education" for disagreement with the party, the glorious party. Not having lived in communist or fascist countries, the sheeple are asleep. My parents having left a socialist state (read fascist) for freedom, I find freedom fleeting. The same scum that ran the communist block are here running our country. Sure they were born here, but their spirit and beliefs are the same as the scum that were in power in the old country. How much money are we to bleed to them in taxes (read plural, as in income, realestate, hotel, parking, gas and electric, telephone, taxes on tax returns, etc.)? How soon before breathing taxes? Fucking Taxes? Living Taxes? Speaking Taxes? Let's not pretend. We work for them. It's mandatory work. Our work pays their goals. Doesn't matter if you work for Mickey D's or Mickey Soft. You pay Big Uncle. You work for Big Uncle's benefit. It's not enough to fear Big Uncle. You must love big uncle. One may not even hold anti-government views for fear of being in contempt of court and be judged against. > It's what the Founders expected. Get used to it. How soon before they stop teaching highschool kids about the revolution for fear it will happen again? How soon before they edit the constitution and pretend it was always that way? How soon before we'll need passports to travel between one part of the country and another? Between one 'burb to another? How soon before we have to register every computer out there? How soon before we have to register every phone and phone card? Every pencil and knife and fork and other sharp objects? How soon before night curfews? How soon before Victory Coffee and Gin? How soon to food rations? How soon to electricity rations and water rations and net access rations? How soon before ex-communist Russia has more freedom than we? They've already silenced us, they've already taken our guns, they've already thrown us in jail for feeding others, for speaking, thinking and protesting, and demanding privacy, they've already stripped our privacy, they've already murdered us, they've already licensed everything we can do and can't, they've already filled the streets with jackbooted gun and nightstick toting thugs who wear blue and use bathroom plungers as means of interrogation. What next? And how soon? --- Trevor Goodchild

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It's Official...
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The ganglia, as they say, twitch... Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 10:20:16 -0400 From: rah-web <rah(a)shipwright.com> Reply-To: rah(a)shipwright.com MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: It's Official... http://www.techweb.com/wire/news/aug/0813addict.html <snip> August 19, 1997 It's Official: Net Abusers Are Pathological (08/13/97; 7:00 p.m. EDT) By Evan Schuman, TechWire CHICAGO -- Another yardstick of success will be achieved by the Internet community on Thursday: It will be awarded its first official mental health disorder. For Related Stories: The newly identified disorder will be dubbed Pathological Internet Use Fatal (PIU) and will be christened during Distraction? -- the presentation of a major medical Learning The paper at the annual convention of Signs Of Online the American Psychological Addiction--HomePC Association in Chicago. We're Becoming The term is being coined by Dr. Cyber Kimberly Young, an assistant Junkies--Electronic professor of psychology at the Engineering University of Pittsburgh at Times Bradford, in Bradford, Pa. With her paper's presentation, the APA will classify excessive Internet use as addictive, in the same way that drugs (including alcohol), gambling, video games, and some types of eating disorders are today officially considered addictive. Like those other ailments, Internet addiction starts when the rest of the person's life starts to fall apart, the paper stated. The Internet is a fine hobby or work tool, until it causes problems with social partners, work, or school, Young said. Young studied 396 cases of PIU-afflicted people and drew some overall conclusions. Net marketers need not fear, as traditional Web surfing accounted for only 7 percent of the Internet addicts and even more information-oriented tools (gophers [Image] and FTP[Image] sites, for example) represented only an additional 2 percent. "Upon examination, traditional information protocols and Web pages were the least utilized compared with more than 90 percent who became addicted to the two-way communication functions: chat rooms, MUDs [Multi-User Dungeons], newsgroups, and E-mail," Young said. "This makes the case that database searches -- while interesting and often time-consuming -- are not the actual reasons Dependents become addicted to the Internet." Young said one surprise in the results was the lack of high-tech people among the addicted. "While it is a common perception that those addicted to the Internet are computer savvy individuals, these demographic results show that only 8 percent came from high-tech jobs," she said. "Compare this to the 42 percent who indicated having no permanent jobs and the 39 percent who worked in low-tech fields. It is typically newbies who become excessive Internet users." Among the jobs that she classified as low-tech were secretaries, bank tellers, teachers, advertising executives, and journalists. The report said that the attraction of the Internet revolves around its perceived anonymity, where people feel comfortable acting out in ways they would never consider in real life. "The ability to enter into a bodiless state of communication enabled users to explore altered states of being that fostered emotions that were new and richly exciting," Young said. "Such uninhibited behavior is not necessarily an inevitable consequence of visual anonymity, but depends upon the nature of the group and the individual personality of the online user." "For those who felt unattractive, it was perceived easier to pick up another person through cybersex than in real life," she said. But beyond sexual issues, newsgroups and chat lines allow people to literally create and secretly test new personalities before trying them out in the real world. "Beyond amusement, reinventing oneself is a way to fulfill an unmet need. The loss of a social identity online allows one to reconstruct an ideal self in place of a poor self-concept," Young said. "Those who suffer from low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, or frequent disapproval from others are at the highest risk" of becoming Net addicts. She quoted one participant in the survey as telling her, "By day, I am a mild-mannered husband, but at night I become the most aggressive bastard online." The addiction can become a problem when the new emotional creation makes inroads into real lives or when the time spent in the virtual life takes away from responsibilities in the real life. The addicted Internet user will spend an average of 38 hours per week online dealing with nonemployment/nonacademic efforts, compared with "nonaddicts" in the survey who averaged eight hours. Almost half of the participants diagnosed with PIU reported that they get less than four hours of sleep per night due to late log-in sessions. Another reason for some of the addictions is the sense of community that some newsgroups create. "With routine visits to a particular group (chat area or newsgroup, for example), a high degree of familiarity among other group members is established. Like all communities, the cyberspace culture has its own set of values, standards, language, signs, and artifacts, and individuals adapt to the current norms of the group," Young said. "One can easily become involved in the lives of others almost like watching a soap opera and thinking of the characters as real people," she said. Young's report said that this is especially attractive to people who might find it difficult to establish other social circles. "Homebound caretakers, the disabled, retired individuals, and homemakers have limited access to others," she said. Internet addiction centers have already been created at facilities ranging from the University of Maryland at College Park to Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Ill., to Harvard affiliate McLean Hospital. The test group broke down into 157 men and 239 women; the average age for the males was 29, and the average age for the women was 43. [end] WHAT CONSTITUTES PATHOLOGICAL INTERNET USE? Do you: 1. feel preoccupied with the Internet (i.e., thinking about the Internet when offline)? 2. feel a need to use the Internet with increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction? 3. have an inability to control your Internet use? 4. feel restless or irritable when attempting to cut down to stop Internet use? 5. use the Internet as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a poor mood (i.e., feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or depression)? 6. lie to family members or friends to conceal the extent of involvement with the Internet? 7. jeopardize or risk the loss of significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of the Internet? 8. after spending an excessive amount of money on online fees, often return another day? 9. go through withdrawal when offline (e.g., increased depression, anxiety, etc.)? 10. stay online longer than originally intended? Individuals who met four or more of these criteria during a 12-month period were classified as dependent. Take the full survey, and find out if you're addicted to the Net. source: the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford Search for more related stories: [Techsearch] Search TechWire & CMP Archives [Image] C M P n e t S P E C I A L R E P O R T S · Can't find a 56-Kbps Internet service provider? [Image] Here's help for you. · Internet Explorer 4.0 got you perplexed? Ask Dr. 4. [Image] [Image] · There's an intranet for every company, but not the same one for everyone. [Image] · How come Internal users don't like Sun's JavaStation NC? [CMPnet] [Image] [Click Here To Visit Canon!] [Image] --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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THE UNIVERSE
by Rlavelle7＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

THE UNIVERSE 2 E=MC The equation for the atom bomb. It says that matter and energy are the same thing. So then what is that? Matter, look at a brick. Its in a three dimensional form. Its made of electrons, protons and neutrons (atoms) and they are moving so the brick is moving. Energy,sunlight. Its in a three dimensional form. It comes to us from the sun therefore it is moving. 3D and moving Both matter and energy are 3D and moving. I outproduce Einstein. We already know all matter has gravity. The bending of light shows that energy has gravity also. So matter and energy are 3D moving with gravity. The universe is made of matter, energy, time and space. That just stated is the matter and energy part. Time and space. Take everything in the universe and stop it. Does time progress? No. Therefore time is the motion and the understanding of all the motion is the understanding of all of time. Space, it ends. Space does not go on forever. Space is in a three dimensional form. It moves but does not have gravity. Space moves like this. O /\ + \/ O And that is the understsanding of all of time. O This is what was first in the beginning. /\ This is the old kings and queens. + This is democracy. \/ This is socialism. O This is when the Lord Jesue Christ returns. And that is the understanding of the universe. Glory be to the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost. Revelation chapter 10 & 11; 15 - 19. It is very important the people receive this information. You may tell someone about this. Thank You Robert Lavelle

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DO YOU WAGER/ GAMBLE ON SPORTS ???
by 03169083＠c-corp.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

if you are not a sports bettor ... just delete this message DO YOU WAGER ON SPORTS ?? If you WAGER on Sporting events MR ACTION would like to send you a free pick everyday!!! That's right!!! EVERYDAY During the next four months MR ACTION will email you information on a key game being played that night. FOOTBALL usually, sometimes BASEBALL, and sometimes BASKETBALL. MR ACTION IS CORRECT ABOUT 70 % of the time!!!! HOW DO YOU GET THESE SELECTIONS ??? EASY..... JUST HIT REPLY TO THIS LETTER AND PUT SUBSCRIBE IN THE MESSAGE BODY!! THAT'S IT!!!! .... OR CLICK HERE NO MONEY TO SPEND .... NO NAME OR PHONE NUMBER REQUIRED .... NO CREDIT CARD ASKED FOR!!!! IF YOU WAGER ON SPORTS I WANT TO HELP YOU WIN BIG $$$$ >>>> JUST REPLY TO THIS EMAIL AND SAY "SUBSCRIBE" ... OR ... CLICK HERE

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Waco FU-CU
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim's mention of cypherpunks reaction to Waco savagery at the time prompts an offer of the NYT firebrand today on nationwide reaction to the film, "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," which is revealing an upsurge in anti-government questioning of the official story, and "not just from the wacko right" says one of the leftist filmmakers: http://jya.com/waco-rules.htm Audience members boo Attorney General Reno and "any other figure of authority in the film." For the officials' growing record of the "still smoldering story," see the Treasury Deapartment's file on the Waco Administrative Review Group Investigation: http://jya.com/treas-do-waco.txt It's fair to guess that FBI has a similar cache on deer-killing dissidents in the national interest, but it's not flaunted to wolf-freak the sheep in the feebs "privacy" file, unlike Treasury's baiting of "for law enforcement use only" -- Tim's aptly acronymed FLEUO replacing FU-CU.

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W3C on PICS
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.collegehill.com/ilp-news/reagle.html f r o n t p a g e | a b o u t | b a c k i s s u e s | s u b s c r i b e | a d v e r t i s e The ILPN discusses PICS with Joseph Reagle of the W3 Consortium August 18th 1997 Joseph Reagle Jr. joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in October of 1996 to focus on policy issues related to the development of global technologies and their relationship to social and legal structures. Specifically, how to promote "good" engineering when applied to a multifaceted and often contentious policy environment; one result of this activity is the W3C Statement on Policy. Mr. Reagle has also been working on filtering, digital signature, intellectual property rights management, and privacy capabilities on the Web. He has also been an active contributor to the development of the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3) project at the W3C. P3 will enable computer users to be informed and to control the collection, use and disclosure of their personal information on the Web.ÿ ILPN: How does PICS work? The Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) is an infrastructure for associating labels (metadata) with Internet resources. It was originally designed to help parents and teachers control what children access on the Internet, but it also facilitates other uses for labels, including code signing, privacy, agents, and intellectual property rights management. PICS allows organizations to easily define content rating systems, and enable users to selectively block (or seek) information. The standard is not a rating system (like MPAA or RSACi), but an encoding method for the ratings of those systems. Those encoded ratings can then be distributed with documents, or through third party label bureaus. ILPN: Can you summarize the origin of PICS as well as the coalition behind [Related Links] its development? What role is W3C playing in the The World Wide Web ongoing development and Consortium PICS Site promotion of PICS? Family Friendly During 1995, a number of activities occurred that Internet...The White were related to concerns House Internet Content of children accessing Filtering Plan. potentially inappropriate Web content: Australian Anti-PICS Site 1. The Senate Judiciary Committee heard Ratings Now, testimony regarding the "Protection of Censorship Children From Tomorrow...from SALON Computer Pornography Act of 1995" (S. 892) ACLU Press Release 2. The Information on the July White Highway Parental House Summit Empowerment Group (IHPEG), a coalition Foucault in of three companies (Microsoft Cyberspace: Corporation, Netscape Surveillance, Communications, and Sovereignty and Progressive Hard-Wired Censors ... Networks), was formed an absolute must read to develop standards article from James for empowering Boyle, a law professor parents to screen at WashingtonÿCollege inappropriate network of Law, content. AmericanÿUniversity. 3. A number of standards for content labeling were proposed including Borenstein's and New's Internet Draft "KidCode" (June 1995), the Voluntary Internet Self Rating by Alex Stewart and NetRate by Peter Wayner. 4. A number of services and products for blocking inappropriate content were announced, including Cyber Patrol, CyberSitter, Internet Filter, NetNanny, SafeSurf, SurfWatch, and WebTrack. By August, the standards activity was consolidated under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) when the W3C, IHPEG, and twenty other organizations agreed to merge their efforts and resources to develop a standard for content selection. The intent of the PICS project was to demonstrate that it was possible and better for individuals and families on the Internet to have control over the the information they receive, rather than creating a national framework for censorship. Today, the W3C believes PICS-based technology can fulfill the requirements of mediating access potentially offensive or illegal content. The next big step is educating the users on how to use those technologies. For the future, we are working on the Resource Description Framework as the basis for a richer metadata infrastructure. Applications such as our P3 privacy project will use it to enable sites to make privacy statements. ILPN: Can you describe the difference between 'labeling' 'filtering' and 'blocking,' and why this set of distinctions might be important? Paul Resnick's PICS Options FAQ has a very good answer to this question and some of the others that you ask. To summarize, labels are statements. They have the capability to describe a Web page, or to make any arbitrary assertion. Obviously, people can use such information to block, or select what they want to see. To generalize, one can use metadata to "rate" a Web page with respect to some rating system. Given ratings, a user applies a filter (her preferences about the ratings) to determine which pages are most appropriate; some action is associated with the result of the filtering. The common result is the blocking or selection of a page, but the user could also be presented with a list of sites sorted according to her preferences. ILPN: What do you make of the opposition by EFF, the American Library Association and the Electronic Privacy Information Center to PICS? Do you see PICS as a bulwark of free speech, or simply as the lesser of two evils (the other being government regulation)? I would characterize the response from each of those organizations differently, and of course my response is based on my own understanding of that position:ÿ 1. The ALA does not oppose PICS or filtering in general. I believe they acknowledge its usefulness as a means of parental empowerment, but do not feel it is appropriate for installation on every computer by default in their libraries. I respect this point of view while acknowledging that libraries may have requirements placed upon them by their constituencies or by the law with respect to illegal materials; it is up to the libraries, their constituencies, and governments to appropriately resolve these concerns. 2. I personally like the direction the EFF took in working on "Public Interest Principles for Online Filtration, Ratings and Labelling Systems" and hope to see such efforts continue. The W3C feels that metadata is necessary to the Web. Hence, I think it is somewhat naive to criticize the capability to support metadata. While I do not agree with every position in the EFF document, I liked it because I think it is more constructive to discuss how that metadata infrastructure can be best used (or how to prevent abuse) rather than trying to hobble the Web. 3. I, and my colleagues at the W3C, encourage rigorous discussion on the use of filtering technologies and how they affect individuals' rights. I do not buy the slippery slope argument that all technology which governments could use to do "bad things" must not be developed. I do not see PICS in grand terms; PICS is an application of metadata, as I explain elsewhere. To respond to the later question I do prefer the capability to exclude unwanted speech over the suppression of it at its source. Also, metadata itself is speech -- having the capability to laud, critique and criticize others is fundamental to a robust society. ILPN: How likely is it that PICS-based software will be mandated by governments at the level of ISPs? Unknown. Also, governments could theoretically do a number of things such as : * create rating systems * determine filtering criteria * require the use of filtering technology in servers or in clients * require the use of certain rating systems, etc. They can accomplish this by legislative action, by interpreting existing statutes, by promoting self-regulatory structures, or by providing incentives to comply with the policies by attaching liability, or removing it, to the players involved. Even with a specific question in hand, it would be a difficult task to predict the path of any nation. ILPN: Are you concerned with the potential abuse of PICS by governments and/or employers? Yes. I personally would protest or subvert my employer's or government's efforts in applying mandatory filters against my will; I do use filters to select content I am interested in and to get rid of spam and bozos. Regardless of my personal opinion, the W3C does not have the competency to tell other organizations what their policies should be. We can tell them about the technology and consequences of its use, but what they do with it is their choice obviously. ILPN: What about the possibility that a third-party labeling organization will obtain too much power? In terms of an independent third party? Let the market decide. If there are monopolistic concerns, a nation may wish to apply anti-trust laws. If it is a political entity, I hope it has some mechanism for being held accountable to its constituency. ILPN: We tend to think of PICS in terms of excluding materials deemed offensive. What are more 'positive' possible applications of PICS? PICS is merely one application of "metadata." Metadata means "data about data" and we are working very hard on this with our Resource Description Framework (RDF). This is a fundamental computer science concept and is essential to the future of the Web. Any time you wish to make a statement or an assertion, to rely upon a trusted opinion, it is "metadata." Our Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3) is another application of metadata. We wish to enable sites to make statements about their privacy practices so users are informed and can make choices about how they wish to interact with sites. A useful feature of metadata is that it is can be machine readable, so agents can act on behalf of the user, freeing the user to concentrate on higher order content and interactions. Hence, when I configure my agent, I should be able to search Web sites with the type of content I like, those which have privacy practices that I like, or that are referred to me by trusted third parties, and those that support the payment capabilities that I posses. ILPN: PICS seems to transform the web from an arena in which anything goes, and in which each individual must define his or her own participation, to an arena in which various 'cultures' can establish their own, separately designed comfort zones. Was this an intention of the PICS developers, or is it simply an unintended consequence of an effort to protect children? I donût know if this was an original, explicit intention of PICS, but it soon became apparent that this is what PICS was about: allowing people to create their own cultural boundaries on the Web. I look at a lot of what we do at the W3C as not only providing the basic infrastructure for exchanging hyperlinked documents, but we are providing the capability to have more sophisticated interactions with other users and agents on the Web -- homegrown cultures and societies. "Real world" entities may see these tools as ways of extending their own social structure onto the Web, and this is actually what a lot of the PICS debate is about in my opinion. We'll see how successful governments can be. In the meantime, the W3C does want to mitigate the possible fragmentation on the Web from either: 1) people dropping off it all together and creating their own, or 2) tearing it apart from fighting over whose cultural norms should prevail. I'll quote from the W3C Policy Statement on this point: ...This architecture must allow local policies to co-exist without cultural fragmentation or domination... http://www.w3.org/Policy/statement.html ILPN: Is W3C promoting the development of PICS into proxy server products? Yes. The PICS Options FAQ states that filter processing can be centralized at a proxy server while still permitting individuals to choose the filtering rules. I will qualify this by saying that it has never been the intent of the W3C to create technology for governments to use as a means of centralized control. Not that governments couldn't do such a thing (and there are other ways for them to do it if they wanted to), but that isn't our intent in working on this technology. ILPN:. What kind of legislation, and court cases, do you expect to see in the future regarding PICS? I expect to see continued activity in: 1. drawing the line between "illegal" and "inappropriate" content 2. determining what obligations services have in restricting illegal material 3. developing self regulatory structures for limiting childrens' access to "inappropriate" materialÿ (promoting a "family friendly internet.") ILPN: What should people maintaining web sites be doing regarding PICS and the various rating systems? Should people be rating their sites now? What might the consequences be for neglecting to rate one's site? Is it important for people to keep track of how their web sites are rated, and if so, how can they do this? Technologies, such as Microsystems Software's CyberLabeler, are being developed which follow the recommendations of the PICS specifications and make labeling sites much easier. Content creators that want to label should continue to demand such technologies and that such technologies be integrated into Web development applications. I expect that in the near future, many sites will be generated dynamically from databases; those databases will be indexed and structured by metadata. At which point, labels and rating will be integral to the creation of dynamic, customized sites. Search engines may also begin relying upon the useful information found in metadata to return more appropriate -- on "target" -- information to users. The consequence of not rating your site might be that if you have potentially illegal or offensive material you may draw regulatory attention upon yourself. Also, by not labeling you may be overlooked by those using filtering and content selection technologies. Most adult sites are more than happy to label and use filtering services, they want to attract those looking for the services they offerÿ while avoiding the difficulties associated with angry parents. ILPN:Thank you for your time. My pleasure. Send us your comments on this article Copyright 1997. All Rights Reserved f r o n t p a g e | a b o u t | b a c k i s s u e s | s u b s c r i b e | a d v e r t i s e

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Re: write up AP for FC++
by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A million monkeys operating under the pseudonym "Ian Grigg <iang(a)systemics.com>" typed: > > Zooko said: > > [ some mega-monkey drivel about all these ideas being the same ] > > More intellectual peasantry. There is more to an idea than who came > up with it first and whether it is related at some level or other to > another concept with a different name. Indeed there _is_ more to many ideas. Unfortunately, there is no more to this one. Regards, Zooko, Bane of Bogus Daydreams Posing As Ideas

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