December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: patents suck
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

jf_avon(a)citenet.net wrote: >>With patents, there is a problem of large companies owning them >>yet oing nothing with them except suing other companies or >>individuals. >If you reject that possibility, you imply that the result of >your work for yourself might not be your own property. It does >not matter if the idea patented was originated be the patent >holder of was purchased by the patent holder. Money is >equivalent to personnal work. Bullshit. Corporations do not work; their employees do. The creativity of employees is sat upon as net worth, but nothing is produced. Money is only worth something if it is circulating in an economy; a corporation only has worth if it produces something. Instead corporations produce nothing. They sit on resources, preventing anyone else from producing, because the current system favors non-production and an inflationary and wasteful economy based on speculation. Economic equivalent of people who sit around and talk but don't get off their asses and do something. >And the property rights *are* fundamentals (even if not No, they are not fundamental anything. They are taken for granted in the modern West as a rationale. It's a nice one, and I don't have too many arguments... except when people claim a false dilemma of either total private property or total socialism. Why not a form of property based on use? If you don't use your property, after a while you cease owning it. It was originally a rationale in Europe and early American colonies because so many people claimed to own land that they never saw, despire the fact that natives and settlers lived there. Extended to patents... corporations do a lot of R but no D, but legally no one else can make use of it either. Unisys didn't market LZW compression and let everyone else use it... then they decided they should have been making losts of mulah and wanted to pull the plug and get royalities. IBM has done negligable production on arithmetic coding, so a lot of independ developers ignore the patents. Similar arguments can be made about PK crypto. >You can not have your cake and eat it too... Huh? What does that have to do with this argument?

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Re: Using lasers to communicate
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:44 PM 2/17/96 -0500, SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N wrote: >> If you have a secure link you don't need encryption. Arguably, the >> converse is true; if you have secure encryption you don't need >> a secure link. Isn't the ability to transmit secure data over >> insecure channels one of the primary justifications for encryption? >> > >Of course. My point, though I seem to have failed to state it, >is that encryption is a cheap software thing while laser beams >are expensive, complicated, and still not secure. I tend to agree. But my position is a bit more "middle of the road": We _should_ use laser/LED links, but we should encrypt the link with encryption sufficiently strong (IDEA/1024-bit RSA key) to make interception of the beam pointless. I think what's needed from the IC companies is a chip somewhat analogous to the UARTS (TR1602/AY5-1013) (which were "new" in about the 1975 time frame), but one which maintains one half of a bidirectional link with NSA-proof encryption. It wouldn't matter what the physical medium was, it would "handle it." They'd be given "authority" over link signal amplitude, and would be able to monitor link integrity/error rate to anticipate incipient link failures. (caused by electronic/mechanical failure, growth of vegetation, corrosion, and other items.) (I know, I know, shades of 2001! "Open the pod bay door, Hal!") During periods of low usage, it would occasionally automatically engage in link margin testing, etc, and automatically generate/transmit extremely-long period pseudorandom data to prevent snoopers from doing any sort of traffic-density analysis on the working link. If the chip was given mechanical authority over beam-pointing, the chip could also do auto-align test functions to compensate for misalignment, etc. Alignment would be kept "perfect." While I'm no IC-design expert, considering the fact that chips commonly possess at least 1000 times as many transistors as they did in 1974, they SHOULD be able to implement such a chip easily enough. Lazy bastards. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSezPPqHVDBboB2dAQGu1gP+J1t3aagiHVoSE0ETiid2TPYw1wCBxi5H znvWIHbic9VNMnBo1ZkeSiR86Xi/C311CB526vRZnzNyUNuk8vF55MxGY7FRf1sn xGvH0n+b3Y4XR3NsJP0cazLhmDZocjTTjiRDGMSFt4wwLt0SqiLbrxQ/WkcB6ee+ /17ORpzAafk= =klc5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Turkey says: "But even the U.S. censors its Net!"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:46 PM 2/18/96, yesim ozben wrote: >Some news from Turkey. Up to now all connections to Internet were >established and managed by TR-NET the collaboration of a university >(METU) and the the national scientific research center (Tubitak). >Recently the phone company opened a tender for this task and I think the >same group or some company or foundation they were part of won it. Today >I read that they are trying to pass some law for the net to be controlled >by a monopoly and the reason is to be able to control things. So it's >spreading. I'm sorry to hear this, but it's predictable. One of the worst aspects of the Communications Decency Act is that it undermines criticism of similar acts in other countries. If Germany, Turkey, Singapore, or China censor their computer users and establish controls, critics will be met with a pointer to the U.S. policies. If even the country that spends the most effort bragging about its love of liberty is seen as censoring the Net, then surely it is a reasonable thing to do. (We've seen similar cases in other contexts, where the United States boasts about its free trade policies while forcing Canadians to reduce production, or limits the amount of crops grown, etc. Other examples are readily apparent.) If the U.S. sees the need to control thoughtcrime, so will other countries. --Winston Smith Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: True democracy in America.
by Sean Morgan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Isaac Hopkins <Isaac.C.Hopkins-1(a)tc.umn.edu> wrote: >A truly Democratic society is only feasible when you have an educated >society that can act outside of their own self interest [...] A democracy >is just the tyranny of the majority. Democracy works because it recognizes the power of a majority. If a leader's policies are at odds with the will of the majority, sooner or later they will rise up against him/her. If you will allow me to throw a cliche back at your "tyranny of the majority", how about "might makes right"? Or as Churchill said (more or less), "Democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the others." Notice that "might makes right" does not imply that any education is necessary. -------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Sean Morgan (sean(a)lucifer.com) | Let me tell you a few bits about myself: | CACTTGCCGGGTAACACTCCATGAAATTCTTCTCAGCC http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/ | AGGTGTCGACGCTAGGATCAACCTTTAAGTGAACT...

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Re: Science News - article on Quantum Crypto
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 04:01 PM 2/18/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 9:28 PM 2/18/96, jim bell wrote: > >>I love to be picky about such things. Yes, I think bosons _DO_ interact >>with each other. Before all you physics nerds flame me, hear me out: > >I won't "flame you," just correct you. Hmmmm. Last thing I saw, you claimed you put me in your "killfile." Glad to see I'm off. (This makes me wonder why...) Hope I don't do anything else to offend you. B^) >It is well-known that photons are affected by gravitation...from the >Mossbauer effect Hey, you're a sharp guy! Not too many people are aware of the Mossbauer effect. I'll bet you read the same Scientific American article I did, decades ago. Here's a question: How hard is it to make a gamma detector? I'd like to experiment with the Mossbauer effect, but aside from the difficulty of obtaining the radioactive nuclides, I don't know to make a crystal detector. And is that the best an amateur could do? > to the bending of light by the sun (seen in eclipses) to >the gravitational lensing effects. > >.... >>Thus, presumably photons self-gravitate, and thus, SOME bosons "interact," >>although admittedly this kind of interaction is a few dozen orders of >>magnitude lower than what you probably intended when you said "Bosons don't >>interact with each other at all." > >What is being referred to is a term of art related to Bose-Einstein >statistics (the origin of the term boson, as contrasted to fermions, which >are affected by the Pauli Exclusion Principle, while bosons are not). Yes, yes, yes, I know this stuff. But my pickiness was based on the fact that the term "interact" can vary over many orders of magnitude. For example, as I recall the ratio of the electrical repulsion between two protons exceeds the gravitational attraction by a factor of about 10**40. I just object to the use of the term "interact" in a cavalier way, as if quantum mechanical "interaction" was the only kind of interaction that "mattered." (no pun intended...well, maybe just a little.) >No list relevance that I can see, but then neither do nuclear triggers have >anything to do with the list. Okay, maybe not, but my idea is substantially better than anything I've heard published in the open lay press. I just heard from a friend that even that hack Clancy used krytrons and capacitors; my system would use _trivial_ components to do the timing. Jim Bell, N7IJS jimbell(a)pacifier.com Klaatu Burada Nikto -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSe8AfqHVDBboB2dAQFUQwP/fcsCsqydcEFdxnBqWuFeFrqoumUtg5NR 5SSTPs1dX7SZ2A1eBNo1Up9JodqShnJtce464rrW7kleX5bHSGG5mY327D1X9+Nw O/UcI7yfKdHidUK7Z7YUn5zeBnZzVqsTStXPX4SECg8bfvo9Ey/OjEQ/bVi0Qi4C fiwJD8skIE4= =DaGm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: CDA outside US (Including Indian Reservations)
by Sean Morgan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ed Carp <erc(a)dal1820.computek.net> wrote: >Another problem - if you ever want to get into the US, you can kiss that >chance goodbye. They might not even let you into the country as a >visitor. Stupid. This is not an idle threat. When Pierre Trudeau was elected prime minister of Canada (1969?) there was some scrambling in the US to get him off the _persona non grata_ list. Seems that in his student days he had been busted for trying to kayak from Florida to Cuba. Canadian author Farley Mowatt (sp?) was turned back at the border for imagined pinko associations (best guess was that it was because he had traveled to the USSR to research _Sibir_). Such a blacklisting would really hurt me in my current job. I made about 15 business trips to the US (from Canada) last year. >A fair number of Western countries have laws that say, >in effect, that if you do something in your country that isn't illegal in >your country but is in country X, then country X can bar you entry or PR >status or citizenship based on the fact that is *is* a crome in country X. That makes no sense. "Country Y would pass a law saying that country X may bar you for something country X doesn't like"?? That's unnecessary on two counts: Country Y has no jurisdiction in X, and X doesn't need Y permission anyway. Example, so called "sex tourist" from western countries travel to the far east to have sex with minors. You can't do it back home, but there nothing to stop you from doing it abroad. Or if you want an example closer to home, how about Californians traveling to Nevada to gamble? -------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Sean Morgan (sean(a)lucifer.com) | Let me tell you a few bits about myself: | CACTTGCCGGGTAACACTCCATGAAATTCTTCTCAGCC http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/ | AGGTGTCGACGCTAGGATCAACCTTTAAGTGAACT...

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(DaveMail Fwd) Today's Proposal: Webmasters
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 09:09:07 -0800 To: malcolm(a)interval.com, ginas(a)hooked.net (Gina Smith -- SF Examiner), mark(a)wired.com (Mark Frauenfelder), RayHeizer(a)value.net (Heizer Software), davenetworld(a)wired.com, louise.link(a)applelink.apple.com (Louise Velazquez -- Oracle), Dan_Scherlis.ZIFF-DAVIS%LNGATE(a)zdmis.ziff.com (AT&T), Roz_Ault(a)bmugbos.org (Roz Ault), CummingsBu(a)aol.com, 280-0309(a)mcimail.com (Tim Bajarin), CHAHIL(a)applelink.apple.com (Chahil, Satjiv) From: dwiner(a)well.com (DaveNet email) Subject: Today's Proposal: Webmasters Sender: owner-davenetworld(a)wired.com Precedence: bulk --------------------------------------- Amusing Rants from Dave Winer's Desktop Released on 2/18/96; 8:58:20 AM PST --------------------------------------- ***I'm not too proud If I have to beg and plead for sympathy. I don't mind because it means that much to me. If I have to sleep on your doorstep all night and day. Let my friends laugh -- even this I can stand! I'm not ashamed to come and plead with you baby. ***I ain't too proud to beg! The Temptations. Motown. The Internet. Now. What goes around. No, I ain't too proud to beg. Here's why! ***Why am I working on a Sunday morning? We're at a crossroads for the Internet medium. Will it be a narrow-channel one-way medium as the east coast people glibly claim it will be? Soap commercials, sensationalism, imitation friendship -- a continuation of the suburban culture of isolation, lies, dysfunction and unhappiness? Or will it be the medium of "Great Hair"? Of speaking and being heard? They're telling us to shut up! The chill is real. What are you prepared to do about it? ***I've made a proposal I decided to do something about it. I believe every voice makes a difference. I believe in the power of the Internet. It just needs a bit of organization. It needs someone to stick his or her neck out first. I listened to Howard Rheingold when he asked what we will tell our children ten years from now. I listened to Howard and I heard him. It gives me a chill! What *will* we tell them? Speaking for your kids, Mom and Dad -- what were you doing the week of February 18, 1996 that you couldn't spare some space on your home page, or spare a few hours to write down your own thoughts about freedom of speech? If not for the rest of us, do it for your kids. Write them a letter and put it in a time capsule. Show them later what you stood for today. People want to be spoon-fed. They're looking for mommy! I think the kids have more guts than us adults do. It's their future we're fighting for. Do you care enough to get involved? It's time to grow up. The opportunity is great, but so is the threat. No one spoon-fed the founders of our country. They fought a revolution for our right to free speech. You don't have to die for freedom, at least not yet. You just have to say you're in favor of it. A right that's not practiced is lost. Once it's gone, you *will* have to die to get it back, or worse, your kids will have to die! It's really simple. On February 22, everyone who cares about freedom, write an essay so everyone can see it. I don't care if you agree with me. It isn't a Dave Winer fan club. It's about numbers and voters. This is a two-way medium. We need to demonstrate that before it's too late. Companies like Microsoft and Netscape have a stake in the two-way-ness of this medium. Microsoft has FrontPage and Netscape has Navigator Gold. Both products are based on the assumption that lots of people will speak thru the worldwide web. Is it safe to do speak in this medium if the community standards of Memphis US apply to the writing of people in Paris FR? Judges in the US are deciding that every community's standards apply to every bit of writing on the web! Man. Talk about a chilling idea. How much do French people know about Tennessee? How much do they *want* to know? That's not a joke! They say it can't happen here. Over and over. It can. It's happening! Look, I'm angry with Bill Clinton for putting us in bed with the bible-thumpers. I feel very strongly about this. You may think Clinton did the right thing. Say so. Thanks to the work of some very fine people, it's easy to get your ideas on the web -- this week. Take advantage of this opportunity to really speak your mind. You may not get another chance. ***Today's proposal: Webmasters As the week goes by I will have more proposals. Today's message is directed at webmasters -- people who manage websites. Please learn about the 24 Hours project. It's totally non-commercial. We will share all the software we've developed for the project. There won't be any ads on this site. Browse around the website. Listen to me, then listen to your heart. Does free speech belong on your home page? Does your site support democracy? If so, link to the 24 Hours website so your users know where you stand. If you decide to link in at the last minute, say February 21, your users will complain that they didn't have enough time to prepare their essays. And they will be right! Honestly, right now, Sunday morning, the project looks like a failure. We've attracted some honest hardworking people who really care. The site you're looking at is a group effort. We had fun doing it. It was hard work for a good cause. I will be able to sleep knowing that I did everything I could for the cause of free speech. What about you? Dear webmaster, if you have to sell this inside your company -- sell it! Your president will thank you later, as Bud Colligan of Macromedia thanked me a few days ago. You can't afford to not stand up for free speech on the Internet. Your future, my future, their shareholder's future, the next generation's future -- they all depend on what you do right now. No, I'm not too proud to beg. So webmasters, I'm down on my hands and knees, begging -- get behind the 24 Hours of Democracy project! Today. Put a link on your home page. Give us a chance to organize free speech on the Internet. <http://www.hotwired.com/userland/24/iwantyou.html> Dave Winer PS: The next message is to reporters and editors, leaders and celebrities. It's the right time to write! --------------------------------------------------------------- Webmasters: <http://www.hotwired.com/userland/24/iwantyou.html> --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/

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Re: patents suck
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

nobody(a)REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) wrote: >Bullshit. Corporations do not work; their employees do. The >creativity of employees is sat upon as net worth, but nothing >is produced. Money is only worth something if it is circulating >in an economy; a corporation only has worth if it produces >something. > >Instead corporations produce nothing. They sit on resources, >preventing anyone else from producing, because the current system >favors non-production and an inflationary and wasteful economy >based on speculation. Mmmmmhhh. Although the state of affairs you point out in the above paragraph unfortunately exist, your first paragraph denotes your vision of the world... In today's economy, with a monetary system not backed by a physical standard, it is true, in a sense. Unfortunately. >>And the property rights *are* fundamentals (even if not >No, they are not fundamental anything. They are taken for granted >in the modern West as a rationale. It's a nice one, and I don't >have too many arguments... except when people claim a false >dilemma of either total private property or total socialism. So, what other dilemna do you have to oppose to my false one? >Why not a form of property based on use? It is a contradiction in term. >It was originally >a rationale in Europe... <snip> ...despire the >fact that natives and settlers lived there. The fact that they might have rationalized thugish behaviour 400years ago is not relevant to the discussion. Would you rape the next village's girls? After all, it was certainly current practice 400 years ago, *somewhere* ... >Extended to patents... corporations do a lot of R but no D, but >legally no one else can make use of it either. Unisys didn't >market LZW compression and let everyone else use it... then they >decided they should have been making losts of mulah and wanted >to pull the plug and get royalities. IBM has done negligable >production on arithmetic coding, so a lot of independ developers >ignore the patents. Similar arguments can be made about PK >crypto. I won't comment on this one, since I do not accept that my morality be held hostage by the actions of others. I do not mean to absolve Corp. Inc that just tries to make money through speculation rather than production. But the argument does not even desserve an answer. I am not a psycho-epistemologist... >>You can not have your cake and eat it too... >Huh? What does that have to do with this argument? You cannot makes rules that protect a basic principle and at the same time have exceptions based on whims. Because the latter will destroy the first. **** NEW PGP 2.6.2 KEY ********* This key is actually suspended, as of Feb, 16 1996, was never distributed, and might be subject to deletion. Sorry for the trouble my mis-management might have caused. 2048 bits Key ID:24201BA1 1996/02/13 Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon(a)citenet.net> Key fingerprint = 23 B6 24 31 86 67 FB 35 C7 A7 AF 12 A1 61 E9 3D **** OLD KEY: DO NOT USE ANYMORE UNLESS FOR VERIFYING SIGNATURES **** 1024 bits Key ID:57214AED 1995/10/04 Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon(a)citenet.net> Key fingerprint = 84 96 76 AE EB 7C AB 15 88 47 87 B0 18 31 74 9F

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Books
by carson.chittom＠starnetbbs.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To all: I have a deep interest in my privacy, and, therefore, in cryptography. However, I do not know the slightest thing about encryption. Could anyone recommend any sources that would be understandable? Ideally, I'd like to have books, but I can bum off a friend's account if necessary (mine is an e-mail only deal). Many thanks. Carson Chittom -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSa83o+Yy0SubePBAQH0QQP/fC8w+IFsNF9azJ8NscZ02ET0Va3BBwKW NoO+Z6+xJ3dEwFp9IBfNksUXGZ8fEOYikgtXxl6+PBz8Uui1Tr2uvqix9JuaJ75e A5F6mGsj8kxXq/Q2gE6/AbDyAR21NqC6sNqr9q9sxXbGgcLy7h/G118bOW4foIK7 iPFnr9vTHRo= =3m8H -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ~~~ PGPBLUE 3.0 <NR> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Dulcene decorumque pro patria mori? Carson Chittom carson.chittom(a)starnetbbs.com "Tangerines?" The amazing place was a seething, fertile Joseph Heller, _Catch-22_ cornucopia of female nipples and navels. Joseph Heller, _Catch-22_ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ... 43% of all statistics are totally worthless !!! ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20 [NR]

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Re: A brief comparison of email encryption protocols
by amp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- [ From: amp * EMC.Ver #2.3 ] -- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- LL> The Key Distribution System LL> --------------------------- LL> A lot of components may go into this (protocols, client/server LL> architectures, local key stores) and it is probably the most complicated LL> part of any system. Some options are: LL> * distribution of keys manually via e-mail LL> * automatic non-interactive lookup of keys from a server LL> * interactive browsing of a key store for keys LL> * revocation lists or none LL> * online certificate verification via a secure channel LL> * certificate caching i would add, * key expiration LL> Probably the best thing to say, is that there's a lot of work to do LL> here. yup. amp(a)pobox.com PGP Key = 57957C9D PGP FP = FA 02 84 7D 82 57 78 E4 E2 1C 7B 88 62 A6 F9 F7 #!/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL $m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-^1[d2%Sa 2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length$n&~1)/2) February 18, 1996 17:28 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMSeoNYdTfgZXlXydAQGPQwf+IpKlmyt91gRtmdOcWeMZzX94qtppbiPB wm1Xb6prxDgzI0jxuh+SnHMgEuvSa/flW6kqAkGQkZd7TsyX/J5lKA6fZB0umH1M 0LNj/Y9pubwbquHsd2EVyCoPe+f9+WO0HLCTEjd4yUJsBU6DDWGf61vxAvsUCyMK F6Dpv7MPJBgNaHwsZOIgKR8yizkaFOzhgescm8a6FCVq/0iblTbZNDPr5EyMjIQC VuZCDefcP5xQW9ve9yTidGbVhvYP0rKvtrov+U028U0q0ch2pztodpB9LCpXKhAh /YFyqyTEqZLgNrwrhAE5N1qRpG7a34XJRLagMi5rIoMs+QAjps2k1w== =/nJw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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