December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

The Great FAQ Hunt
by cassiel＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Several fellow newbies have written me asking to share the sources I received re: where to get the uncorrupted Cypherpunk FAQ (Cyphernomicon). You can get it uncompressed-- along with a lot of other cool stuff, like the Applied Crypto book--at Pat Farrell's Web Site (thanks, Pat!) http://www.isse.gmu.edu/~pfarrell/crypto.html However, when I tried to summon up this 1.2 MB tome with Netscape, my computer choked. Changing the cache settings didn't seem to help, so I wound up downloading it via FTP from ftp.netcom.com /pub/tc/tcmay where you can also get your hands on the shorter MFAQ (Most Frequently Asked Questions). Hope this helps. I'm on an info-diet, Cypherpunk Lite, so if you want to respond to this message, please be sure to "cc" me directly. Cassiel

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Re: e$: Mandarins, Lifers, and Talents
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It really did not happen because of cheerleaders. This is a recurring >belief of mine, notably in my occasional interactions with the nanotech >community, as a few members of this list can attest to. The "Rah, Rah"s--no >pun intended--play a minor role in adoption of new products and >technologies. Tim, you can't tell me that there weren't people who were just plain fired up about the prospects for any really serious technology. Where are you living, the Gernsbeck Continuum? Tim, those "cheerleaders" are the ones who either get fired up to do something themselves, or if they can't, they get people either fired up to buy stuff, or fired up to build stuff. Howard Hughes was one. Hell, the Wright brothers were. So are you, Tim, only your passion is strong crypto and cryptoanarchy. Mine is this geodesic market stuff... >One argument I am never persuaded by is the hackerish "Feh." (Does anybody >but hackers use this strange word?) Ah. Well, Tim, "Feh" is yiddish, actually. Just like "hacker" comes from electric trains. If you don't believe me on *that* one, ask Mr. Levy, who knows all about the MIT Model Railroading Club... >In any case, I'm not interested in "doing better than that." My support for >Chaumian e-cash goes back to 1987. As to why I didn't sign up for Magic >Money, or E-Purse, of Digibux, or whatever, well, I'm not a merchant. Just >as one could study flight, to use Bob's example, without operating a >passenger service or a flying school, so one can be interested in digital >cash without "opening an account." Right on, Tim. Just don't rain on my parade, or anyone else who's trying to make something happen, for that matter. >Ah, but I never claimed otherwise (perhaps this is what you mean by "your >nonexistant point"). My point was only that digital cash will happen mostly >when it fills a need, or is accepted by customers, not by cheerleading and >by urging people on this list to be pioneers. Cart before the horse, Tim. Most of the new people (say, for 2 years at least) on this list *are* pioneers. I've got 600 people over on www-buyinfo who are there primarily because 90% (!) of the traffic on it is my e$-filtered cross-posts from cypherpunks, and I don't know how many are over here because they like their whiskey neat. Those people are so fired up, they will find a need, or *create* one, if they have to. >The theories about mandarins, lifers, and talents I'll discuss at another >time, maybe. All I'll say is that I think it's too simple a categorization. >Maybe it's a Boston viewpoint. Damn Yankees. Born in El Paso, myself, by way of St. Thomas, Las Cruces, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Anchorage, St. Louis, Mid-MO, Chicago, and yes, Boston. Never knew I was one until you told me... >The folks I've worked with over the years >bear almost no resemblance to any of these categories. Typical Mandarin response. ;-). (just pulling your leg, Tim. Put the Glock *down*...) >In any case, people >will start using digital cash if and when it fulfills some need, or some >need they never knew they had, gets stimulated. Agreed. > >On a personal note--which is weird, since 1000 or more people may be >reading this message, though most probably haven't read this far--I think >it best not to get too emotionally attached to some particular outcome in >the introduction of a new technology. I bet they are, but I'm not attached to Mark Twain or even Digicash per se. It just seems to me, that if you want to get involved in this flying stuff, here's a plane that flies, even if its elevators are stuck on the front. Learn to fly now, and be able to fly the new stuff as it becomes available. If you want to fly, that is. Some people then couldn't help it. They *had* to do it. That's what's happening here, Tim. >I've seen many "prophets" wailing to the world that their >visions _deserve_ success. Not here Tim. I believe you might be projecting, or something. I just want to sell stuff for cash on the net. Then, I want to surfact the financial markets into little tiny pieces... >The technologies which hit the right chord rarely need, or benefit from, >the "evangelists" and "cheerleaders." The Macintosh did not Guy Kawasaki or >any of the other so-called evangelists to succeed. The microprocessor did >not evangelists. The airplane did not. The VCR did not. The cellular phone >did not. I don't believe that for a minute, and on reflection, you probably don't either. Jerry Sanders at AMD. Hell, Tim, you knew Moore, for god's sake. Think about, oh, the Sony guy, whatever his name is, Morita. The people who built the Mac were *possessed*. So was Kawasaki. I'm *still* possessed. What about the *entrepreneur's* reality distortion field. I bet you've seen more than a few, and probably more than a few who were right, or you wouldn't be thrashing your Mac on the net and clipping coupons... >And I can think immediately of several >technologies that had active proselytizers--Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart, >Marty Lepselter, Steve Jobs, Eric Drexler, fusion enthusiasts, space ^^^^^ >enthusiasts--but in which progress has been stalled or proceeded along ^^^^^^^^^^^^ >different paths for different reasons. I resemble that remark. Sure, Tim some of them didn't make it. But for every one of those (strange you should mention Jobs, right after I mention the reality distortion field, and don't count him out yet, rumor has it Ellison wants him to run Apple when Oracle buys it, god help us all), there are others who did exactly that. Von Braun, or Porsche, or, hell, all I can think of are germans, uh, okay, Bill Gates. >This is a very interesting area for me, and I used to write extensively >about it. Nick Szabo and I had several debates about this, a couple of >years ago. However, no time now to discuss the full implications here. Having been hammered by Nick myself, once or twice, I think I understand this... So. I'm enthused. My enthusiasm is demonstrably contagious. If someone gets enthusiastic about all this on my account, and puts up the king-hell, world-beater, financial-cryptography-killer-ap that's cool by me. Otherwise, it's only bandwidth, which I've wasted enough on for this thread. If you want to make the rubble bounce, go for it. Besides, I usually stay in my cage, these days. Which is where I'm going to go and lurk for another month or so... Cheers, Bob Hettinga PS: Feh ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 958-3971 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The e$ Home Page: http://www.webstuff.apple.com/~vinnie/Rah >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: e$: Mandarins, Lifers, and Talents
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lots of different issues here.... At 9:02 PM 11/16/95, Robert Hettinga wrote: >Reputation... It has been ever thus, for those of you who've been around >here since I showed up a year ago last April. I just can't seem to color >inside the lines, as far as Dr. May is concerned. Unfair, unfair! I don't plan to dig up old posts where I said good things about Bob's posts, but I know I have. His style differs from mine, of course, but I usually avoid critiquing mere styles. On to some other points in Bob's post: (quoting me) >>2. I wish Mark Twain Bank well, but the success of the kinds of digital >>cash we hope to see will not likely hinge on the success of one particular >>operations, such as MTB. > >Nope. But if people completely ignored the Wright Brothers, would Curtiss >have entered the market? (An interesting example, as the Wrights sued >Curtiss for patent enfringement and lost, I think.) "Flight" is a very interesting example to consider. Flight happened for a lot of reaons, including technological feasibility, relatively low entry costs, willingness of customers to pay for faster travel, etc. It really did not happen because of cheerleaders. This is a recurring belief of mine, notably in my occasional interactions with the nanotech community, as a few members of this list can attest to. The "Rah, Rah"s--no pun intended--play a minor role in adoption of new products and technologies. >>I have more interesting things to do, personally, than to be a pioneer so I >>can then have nothing to sell, and little to buy....when "interesting >>markets" start to appear, I'll look at it again. > >This is a straw man, Tim. Actually, it's post hoc. "If we had some ham, we >could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs." or, "If we lived here, >we'd be home now." Feh. You can do better than that. I've seen you do it. One argument I am never persuaded by is the hackerish "Feh." (Does anybody but hackers use this strange word?) In any case, I'm not interested in "doing better than that." My support for Chaumian e-cash goes back to 1987. As to why I didn't sign up for Magic Money, or E-Purse, of Digibux, or whatever, well, I'm not a merchant. Just as one could study flight, to use Bob's example, without operating a passenger service or a flying school, so one can be interested in digital cash without "opening an account." >But, to answer your nonexistant point, yes, people *are* starting to sell >things on the net. We know that the best way to do that in the long run is ... Ah, but I never claimed otherwise (perhaps this is what you mean by "your nonexistant point"). My point was only that digital cash will happen mostly when it fills a need, or is accepted by customers, not by cheerleading and by urging people on this list to be pioneers. (And actually I have nothing against urging people to be pioneers. Or cheerleading. It doesn't consume much list bandwidth and it may actually help get someone started. Which is why I didn't call for an end to cheerleading and pioneer-recruiting.) The theories about mandarins, lifers, and talents I'll discuss at another time, maybe. All I'll say is that I think it's too simple a categorization. Maybe it's a Boston viewpoint. The folks I've worked with over the years bear almost no resemblance to any of these categories. In any case, people will start using digital cash if and when it fulfills some need, or some need they never knew they had, gets stimulated. On a personal note--which is weird, since 1000 or more people may be reading this message, though most probably haven't read this far--I think it best not to get too emotionally attached to some particular outcome in the introduction of a new technology. Most product and technology successes are essentially unpredictable, and many things thought to be sure things are failures. I've seen many "prophets" wailing to the world that their visions _deserve_ success. The technologies which hit the right chord rarely need, or benefit from, the "evangelists" and "cheerleaders." The Macintosh did not Guy Kawasaki or any of the other so-called evangelists to succeed. The microprocessor did not evangelists. The airplane did not. The VCR did not. The cellular phone did not. In fact, I can't think of an example of a major technology that _did_ depend critically on cheerleaders and evangelists. Some examples may exist, but they seem to be rare. And I can think immediately of several technologies that had active proselytizers--Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart, Marty Lepselter, Steve Jobs, Eric Drexler, fusion enthusiasts, space enthusiasts--but in which progress has been stalled or proceeded along different paths for different reasons. This is a very interesting area for me, and I used to write extensively about it. Nick Szabo and I had several debates about this, a couple of years ago. However, no time now to discuss the full implications here. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: The Great FAQ Hunt
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I answer questions about my megabyte-long "Cyphernomicon" FAQ every few months, so I guess it's that time again. At 11:19 PM 11/16/95, Cassiel wrote: >Several fellow newbies have written me asking to share >the sources I received re: where to get the uncorrupted >Cypherpunk FAQ (Cyphernomicon). You can get it uncompressed-- >along with a lot of other cool stuff, like the Applied >Crypto book--at Pat Farrell's Web Site (thanks, Pat!) > >http://www.isse.gmu.edu/~pfarrell/crypto.html > >However, when I tried to summon up this 1.2 MB tome with >Netscape, my computer choked. Changing the cache settings >didn't seem to help, so I wound up downloading it via FTP >from > >ftp.netcom.com /pub/tc/tcmay > >where you can also get your hands on the shorter MFAQ (Most >Frequently Asked Questions). My "Cyphernomicon" FAQ, and various shorter and compressed versions, are available, actually, in several places. The site I tell people about most often is Jonathan Rochkind's excellent HTML version at the URL: http://www.oberlin.edu/~brchkind/cyphernomicon/ I recommend that people use their browsers to read it at this URL. To those who want to download the whole thing and print it out, I have one question: "Are you on drugs?" (I have gotten complaints from people who tried to print it out and gave up after 200 pages, somehow blaming me for it being too long. Use computerized search tools!) Searching for "Cyphernomicon" with InfoSeek, Excite, Lycos, or other search tools will show numerous places it may be found. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: COE Recommendation No. R (95) 13
by smithmi＠dev.prodigy.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>MS> However, if I have a wall safe and >MS> they get a warrant to search it, can I be jailed for contempt if I >MS> don't give them the combination? > > Well, IANAL, but yes, I believe that you can be. Or, worse, >obstruction of justice. Especially if they cut it open and find that >the knife was in the safe. So presumably the same would apply to the password that unlocks my PGP private key. But there's an interesting twist. Once they open up the wall safe, they can see for sure what is and isn't in it. This ain't necessarily so for an encrypted file. Suppose my software has the fiendish sophistication to disgorge different keys depending on what password was given, and different pieces of cleartext depending on what key was used. (Again, I apologize if this notion has already been extensively discussed.) Is there a way to set it up such that the cops couldn't be sure -- even using a logic analyzer -- that I hadn't given them the complete set of keys, so as to read all the cleartexts in the file? Assume that cyphertext files are guaranteed to be larger, by some random factor, than the sum of all the cleartexts in them, so the mere fact that a smaller quantity of cleartext was disgorged than cyphertext supplied would tell them nothing. I guess this is a kind of steganography, isn't it? Or at least something similar -- the point would be that they couldn't tell genuine cyphertext from camouflaging noise, without the key that tells them where to look. Which brings us, in turn, to the bottom line: the only things we can be certain the bad guys _won't_ do, are the things they _can't_ do. --Michael Smith smithmi(a)dev.prodigy.com

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Cornell Cracks Down on Private E-MAIL...
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by pcw(a)access.digex.net (Peter Wayner) on Fri, 17 Nov 9:47 AM ---------- The New York Times, November 17, 1995, p. B8. Penalties Decided in E-Mail at Cornell Cornell University has reached agreement with four students on punishment for a widely distributed E-mail message they wrote listing "75 reasons why women should not have freedom of speech." The university rejected harsh penalties like suspension because the students did not engage in sexual harassment, university officials said yesterday. The university had investigated complaints of sexual harassment and misuse of computer resources after the message made its way on the Internet last month, angering thousands of computer users who sent angry responses to the four students. The message included the lines, "If she can't speak, she can't cry rape" and, "Of course, if she can't speak, she can't say no." The university said the students had agreed to attend a program dealing with date and acquaintance rape, and would perform 50 hours of community service. ----- There was a somewhat longer NYT article a day or two ago; anybody want it, send your PIN_kie.

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Re: Java & Netscape security [NOISE]
by schampeo＠imonics.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

<plonk>! I'm so tired of listening to this no-researching, no-paying-attention, out-to-make-money freak I just can't stand it. Consider Mr. fc(a)all.net hereby removed from my mailbox by virtue of the autofiltering capability of my lovely mailreader. Fred: *RTFWP* and stop complaining about things you know nothing about. Feh. Steve -- Steven Champeon (919) 469-7833 Technical Lead, schampeo(a)imonics.com Imonics Web Services webmaster(a)imonics.com

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Security via Sounding Impressive
by szabo＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've notice an interesting pattern in how security mechanisms are named. On the one hand, we have some security features with very impressive sounding names: Certification *Authority* *Authorization* *Trusted* Server *Master* Key etc. These words fill most people (many on this list are exceptions) with awe and good will towards the feature so named. They also make good channel markers, pointing out the _insecure_ parts of the system. The effect is to cover up the lack or inadequecy of a mechanism with invocations that put your brain to sleep. This is quite lucrative for marketing purposes, but it works on many designers of security features as well! On the other hand, when we isolate the actual mechanisms of a system are in fact mathematically secure, we get names like: Encryption Blinding Message Digest Mix Capability These are just plain, boring words, with no connotation that we should trust them like we trust our big brother. They just work. Nick Szabo szabo(a)netcom.com Internet Commerce & Security consulting -- e-mail for details

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Re: e$: Come aaaannnndddd Get it!
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:20 AM 11/17/95, sameer wrote: >> >> 3. The success of BankAmericard (later renamed Visa) came when real >> customers and real shops started to use it, not when early pioneers set >> themselves up as clearinghouses and whatnot. > > I'm sorry, but Community ConneXion is a real shop, with real >customers, selling real services, and we accept ecash. You guys are getting way too sensitive about all this. I'm in favor of real shops selling real things or real services. My point was that there is no compelling need to get people to sign up just for moral support. Lighten up. --Tim Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Mark Twain Bank ecash scripts needed
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:25 PM 11/16/95 -0700, Bryce wrote: >I am in the process of setting up a shop using Mark Twain Bank >Ecash. Could someone please forward me the scripts to accept Ecash >(running on SunOS. On c2.org actually) and/or any advice you have http://www.digicash.nl/mt/ #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281

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