December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Re: Chaum's cash: backup?
by Marcel van der Peijl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> wrote: >>if it was like "real" cash, then it really would be lost. >It is really lost. >Your disk drive contains information the bank *cannot* know. >If you do not know that information either, you cannot prove to >the bank or anyone else that you rightfully possess a legitimate coin. You seem to have different information than we have. Strange. Please reread the press release. I could give a hint: your random state initializer is not the too-often used srand( time( NULL ) ) but user-chosen during installation. Write that initializer down and you can re-generate all coins. The bank can check wether these coins were indeed signed, and, after revealing blinding factors, the bank can also check if they were used. The difference must have been on your disk. This system is not completely operational yet but will be used in the future. // Marcel van der Peijl, DigiCash bv, http://www.digicash.com/~bigmac/ // "If you had to tell the Whole Truth, you'd never shut up."

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No Subject
by Anonymous User 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Was at a party Friday night and ended up having a few beers with a friend who works at a medium-large software publisher. Turns out his company recently received a letter from Netscape to the effect that "we've noticed that there are 'x' copies of Navigator active at your site - you should remember that commercial use requires a license fee", etc. The friend didn't know if the count was per IP address or per "magic cookie installation" (see discussion of a few weeks prior) or some other metric. Not that getting paid for your work is evil, but it looks like Netscape's interest in the use of its browser goes beyond simple curiosity or the sales of advertising to third parties. Is the bean counter number sent to every site, or just to .netscape.com sites?

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Re: Netscape question transformed
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff Weinstein writes: >zoetrope(a)infinet.com wrote: >> Why would a compony like Netscape jeapordise themselves by even >> letting out a beta version so hackers have time to find bugs before the >> full version is released. Don't take me wrong I have only been on the net >> fer a little over a year and Love Netscape. And If I knew what I was >> Doing I would love to help them..... > > The reason we do it is that without wide exposure outside the > company, it is virtually impossible to get complete testing coverage. I see. Who has netscape retained to review its software. Can we have some public names who will vouch for the "partial testing coverage" before exposing it to the world?? Firms who will put their name on the line and say that Netscape meets all of the security guidelines say of the IETF -- the Internet Engineering Task Force?? Or does Netscape feel that International judgement will not matter?? > Given the incredible variety of machines, OS's, peripherals, etc. > that are available in the real world, there is no way we could > re-create every possible configuration in the lab. All the more reason I guess to stick to standard. Or don't you agree?? We're not asking you to re-create every possible configuration, but have you benchmarked Netscape against any standards at all?? And which ones?? > We also can't visit every web page, or think of every combination > of features that clever people in the real world come up with every > day. This is true. You can't visit every web page. So what assumptions did you start off with when you first started your code design?? Did you read the appropriate memorandums upon which the Internet is built? Did you assume that every server would be trustworthy?? That would be extremely negligent. That's like a bank trusting everyone who comes in and asks if the bank can cash a check for them. Any comments, Netscape?? Or are you still not making "official" statements. Alice de 'nonymous ... ...just another one of those... P.S. This post is in the public domain. C. S. U. M. O. C. L. U. N. E.

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Re: The future will be easy to use (fwd)
by Ed Carp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> To: stevenw(a)best.com (Steven Weller) > Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: The future will be easy to use (fwd) > Reply-to: perry(a)piermont.com > Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 08:29:10 -0500 > From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> > > Steven Weller writes: > > >Realisticaly, who in their right mind would buy a diskless workstation to > > >connect to Internet? > > > > The same sort of things could be said of the telephone compared with > > written correspondence. Why would anyone have one in their business or > > home? Anyone can overhear a conversation, people will just chat, the only > > thing you can do with it is talk, there is no record of the correspondence, > > why would anyone want to talk to people on the other side of town? etc. > > This is different. In an era of distributed processing, they are > returning you to the mainframe model. I don't see that this can work > very well. Considering how much more powerful a $1000 machine is, why > would you want something half that price that can do one hundredth as > much for you? I beg to differ. Even though Larry Ellison's idea is silly, I don't see it as returning us to the mainframe model. Rather, I see it as just a small step backwards. Right now, I've got a 486/DX2-66 with a paltry 50 MB HD on my desk at work. Most of its processing is done loading stuff off the LAN and running it locally. The fact that I have a local disk nakes not the slightest bit of difference except a boot-time. If the diskless workstation were to have *no* intelligence whatsoever, I'd agree with you. As to diskless workstations being of no value, again, I'd have to disagree. Diskless workstations, expecially X terminals that have a little NVRAM in them, have been rather popular for several years as a way to get graphical objects onto people's desks without having to shell out a ton of money in the process. The only reason that they're getting less popular is that PC prices have fallen dramatically for the past several years, so much so that it's cost-effective to put a DX2-66 with 8 MB of RAM and a little disk (or no disk at all) on someone's desktop as opposed to something from Network General. Me, I'm waiting for the day that someone gets clever and puts Linux into ROM. :) Java is starting to get really hot, so much so that I was telling my spouse that if she wanted to learn Java, she'd have steady contracts in the next year or so, even in the sticks of Dallas ;) The point is, the market for a cheap, fast PC that will run applets *is* there, or will be soon. I only hope that they make it upgradeable, so *I* can put that 5 GB array on it, and beef up the memory without having to take a second mortgage to do it.

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PGP hooks for Pegasus Mail?
by Ed Carp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone done anything regarding PGP hooks into Pegasus Mail? I'm running it at home now (SLIPped into my Linux box), and I'd like to find a way to integrate PGP into Pegasus Mail. Thanks in advance for any replies... -- Ed Carp

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NAV_dat
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Zero Kelvin crypto but The NYPaper hisses 28 Nov: The US Navy is starting to release a treasure trove of physical data about the sea that was gathered in secrecy during the long decades of the cold war, exciting scientists who see it as a bonanza for understanding environmental change. Over the decades, the Navy deployed thousands of ships, airplanes, submarines and satellites to collect such data. Usually kept secret, the archival readings are seen as unrivaled yardsticks for judging long-term processes of global climatic change and planetary warming. A geophysicist said the value of that data for scientific and commercial exploitation is measured in billions of dollars. "Scientific Utility of Naval Environmental Data," a June, 1995, 52-page appraisal by the Medea scientific advisory group, is available for free by telephoning (703) 883-5265 voice or (703) 883-6190 fax. NAV_dat (13 kb)

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Re: PGP hooks for Pegasus Mail?
by Lynne L. Harrison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:52 AM 11/28/95 +0000, you wrote: >Anyone done anything regarding PGP hooks into Pegasus Mail? I'm >running it at home now (SLIPped into my Linux box), and I'd like to >find a way to integrate PGP into Pegasus Mail. > >Thanks in advance for any replies... Ed - I haven't heard of anything re: "PGP hooks into Pegasus Mail". At one time, Eudora and ViaCrypt were discussing it but, from what I heard, those discussions fizzled out. The easiest way to *integrate* is to use a front end program. Regards - Lynne ******************************************************* Lynne L. Harrison, Esq. | "The key to life: Poughkeepsie, New York | - Get up; E-mail: | - Survive; lharrison(a)mhv.net | - Go to bed." *******************************************************

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Re: The future will be easy to use
by Jonathan Zamick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:56 PM 11/26/95, James A. Donald wrote: >At 01:12 PM 11/27/95 -0800, Jonathan Zamick wrote: >> it >> means forming a group, made up of Cypherpunk members perhaps, but much >> smaller, and capable of working together. Also capable of handling not only >> the theory, but good solid code, GUI, PR, meetings, talking to the >> government, etc. > >Skip the talking to the government bit: Ignore, do not confront. I can't agree. The model of a successful enterprise includes feedback from different levels of participants. Regardless, the government will be taking a role in encryption. Thus even if they aren't a defining part of the development, bringing them to a limited extent into the loop, and finding even small areas which the government would support, helps provide better buy-in by the government officials who participate, helping the momentum. The point isn't to bring them into the design, but simply to use their feedback to optimize our PR approach. Jonathan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ..Jonathan Zamick Consensus Development Corporation.. ..<JonathanZ(a)consensus.com> 1563 Solano Ave, #355.. .. Berkeley, CA 94707-2116.. .. o510/559-1500 f510/559-1505.. ..Mosaic/WWW Home Page: .. .. Consensus Home Page ..

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Re: The future will be easy to use
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"raph(a)c2.org" "Raph Levien" 27-NOV-1995 17:11:37.38 It _is_ doable. I know the skill is out there. Wei Dai, Eric Young, Peter Gutmann, and others have proved themselves quit capable of writing good solid code. Sameer Parekh has done an incredible job with PR. Phil Karn, Dan Bernstein, and some others (who I'm not sure want to be named) are talking to the government. GUI I'm less sure about, but I'd hope that some cpunks would come out of the woodwork. ------------------ If you'd like a non-programmer user to test out the user interface, I'm available to some degree if it's usable on a VAX (and to a lesser degree for MS-DOS). Given the number of people like me who are interacting using a non-GUI interface for various reasons (including using a mainframe for email), I would suggest not making it specifically GUI-dependant. -Allen

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Re: Bitbux could eliminate some domestic currencies?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"frantz(a)netcom.com" 27-NOV-1995 02:55:15.66 Gresham's law says that the bad money drives the good money out of circulation. Does this mean that real cash is better than ecash ;-). ------------------ You may realize this (due to the smiley), but what Gresham's law says is that hard to distinguish bad money druves good money out of circulation. If something is distinguishable, then it works the other way around (see the replacement of the ruble by the dollar in pre-modern Russia, for instance). -Allen

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