December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Interesting Egghead freebee
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:37 AM 3/15/96 -6, Peter Trei wrote: >Spry Mosaic really does support SHTTP - you can use it to connect to the >SHTTP test pages at Terisa and Commercenet without difficulty, once you've >doped out how to generate and get signed a low-assurance RSA persona >certificate. After I posted about it, I did a little more digging and checked out the S-HTTP portion of the code. Seems to work pretty well. (I was a bit surprised to see that the Personna cert generation saved the information off in a text file, instead of using the bundled e-mail client. The docs on this process were pretty sketchy as well...) >I just performed an altavista search for references to "shttp://" (the SHTTP >prefix) and "https://" (the SSL prefix). The results were 1,000 SHTTP >hits, and 20,000 SSL hits. > >SHTTP may be technicly superior to SSL level 2.0, but as a commercial >software developer, I know on which side my bread is buttered. My reasons for installing it had little to do with S-HTTP (but it was a nice bonus) and more to do with the lack of table support. (I needed something to check out how pages would look on non-table supporting browsers.) My concerns with S-HTTP are with the lack of server (and browser) software support for it, as well as the difficulty of maintaining a site that uses it. (Having to change every single page on a site can become a bit of a chore, as well as introduce unintended security holes due to in improperly updated page.) --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon

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The Diamond Age (was Re: E$: Neal...)
by s1018954＠aix2.uottawa.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*Mild spoiler warning* Asgaard wrote: >No. From this excerpt, I draw two conclusions: >1) The author is keeping up with some well known (at least >to longtime readers of the cp list) concepts of future >consequencies of information technology. He is. Stephenson's an occasional programmer and mentions a few cpunks from Communities.com at the end of Snow Crash. He also throws in tasteful renditions of old hat stuff like Turing machines (hardly the pinacle of high tech processing power), and does a great job with an example of parallel processing stolen from A Fire Upon the Deep (but *so* much spicier!). Who would have thought sex orgies would be a model for computation? Or ritual drumming as IPC...? I can just imagine a unix kernel for such a machine...(or beast?) >2) Around these, he weaves a boring, artless plot. Actually the plot is rather well done and does not focus nearly as much on tech Snow Crash did. It's more of a story-telling novel with some very cute literary devices. It's got to be the only children's book I'd recommend to anyone, especially people you'd like to interest in basic CS concepts or crypto-anonymity issues and who wouldn't be caught dead reading sci-fi, much less cyberpunk. I don't consider it to be a thriller (though it has more sex and violence than your average kid's book.). It was even a bit sentimental. Those of you who enjoy conclusive story resolution, will not like Stephenson's open-ended finale (though *I* think he got it right this time, unlike in Snow Crash). It has me wondering was what a real "Young Lady's Primer" complete with gentle cartoonesque intros to CS, crypto (recreational crypto maybe?) and chaumian concepts would invlolve. I do remember Phil Z. mentioning on the list that his original exposure to crypto was as a child by just such a book (he announced this the day the author died). I have heard of the occasional video game that teaches assembler or typing, it might be interesting to create and release such a thing on the net for the topics discussed among us (for all age groups). Anyone for a crypto-anarchy game .wad?

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Source of Cryptanalysis Materials
by Mark Aldrich 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Some folks (this was awhile back) were looking for texts on cryptanalysis and related cryptographic topics. Today, I ran across some stuff published by an outfit called "Aegean Park Press." With such titles as "Manual for the Solution of Military Ciphers," "Elementary Military Cryptography," and "Cryptanalysis of Shift-Register Generated Stream Cipher Systems," they sound like a source of potentially interesting material. A lot of what they are publishing are now-declassified military manuscripts, and they specialize in military-related historical stuff and crypto-related mathematics, etc. A Web resource for them is at http://www.halcyon.com/books/ Otherwise, contact them at: Aegean Park Press P. O. Box 2837 Laguna Hills, CA 92654 VOX 714.586.8811 TF 800.736.3587 (US & Canada only) FAX 714.586.8269 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Liberty is truly dead |Mark Aldrich | | when the slaves are willing |GRCI INFOSEC Engineering | | to forge their own chains. |maldrich(a)grci.com | | STOP THE CDA NOW! |MAldrich(a)dockmaster.ncsc.mil | |_______________________________________________________________________| |The author is PGP Empowered. Public key at: finger maldrich(a)grci.com | | The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author | | and my employer gets no credit for them whatsoever. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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RE: Tim's friend's mildly retarded son
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: tcmay(a)got.net (In response to my sig statement): >>>I hope I'm not the only one here who thinks so. > >How could you be? Since I was the one who cited the example, I clearly >am >opposed to the current monopoly on judgment the FDA enjoys. .................................................................... Yes. I know. I am on the infamous Anarcho-Capitalist Cypherpunk List. But I am sending mail from my place of work, and I intended it as a sort of "disclaimer". Ha-ha. I wasn't clear about that. BTW, vis-a-vis the Tijuana Free Market qua government involvement with addicting substances, I think your precision statitics below are apropos, Q.E.D. :>) * > .... Tobacco, which kills an estimated 400,000 a year is the > winner. (The statistics I saw a few years ago were easily memorizable: > tobacco: 400,000, alchohol: 40,000, drugs: 4,000.) .. Blanc * you would have had to read my "How to Win an Argument" post to appreciate this one. >

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PolicyMaker paper available
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A number of people have been asking me about some work I've been doing (with Joan Feigenbaum and Jack Lacy) on alternatives to traditional (X.509, PGP, etc.) identity-based certificates. We've just finished up our paper on the concept, "Decentralized Trust Management", to appear at the Oakland Security Conference in May. A PostScript pre-print is available in ftp://research.att.com/dist/mab/policymaker.ps -matt [NB: I no longer read the cypherpunks list with any regularity, so please cc me directly on any comments or discussion. Thanks.]

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RE: Tim's friend's mildly retarded son
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:16 AM 3/16/96, Timothy C. May wrote: >(I'll spare the usual stuff about how the Founders smoke a pipe of cannabis >now and then, how "canvas" comes from the Dutch word for this herb, how >special interests got hemp and "reefer" outlawed, and how the effects fell >mainly on the poor and inner-city folks.) I meant "and how the effects of criminalization fell mainly on the poor and inner-city folks." Just thought I should make this clear, because many who advocate drug laws do so out of some notion that by illegalizing some drug they are _helping_ the poor folks. In fact, they are helping to destroy inner cities by making illegal drugs a profitable thing to trade. And since people living in cities are more likely to come in contact with police than are folks living in suburban areas, the implications of illegality are even more strongly felt. Far removed from crypto, except the the sort of thinking that says the FDA and DEA know best what people ought to be allowed to buy and ingest is very similar to the thinking that government agencies know best what codes and ciphers people ought to be allowed to use. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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: Kid Gloves or Megaphones
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:11 PM 3/14/96 -0800, Eric wrote: > The debate which must be taken to the public >is whether we want payee anonymity or not. I am confident that people >want their privacy and are willing to let others have theirs as well. My initial impression of Chaum's work, from his 1985 CACM paper, was that the technology gave you strong anonymity; I was surprised when I first saw references to payees _not_ being anonymous (subject to the usual limitations of getting the digicash to them anonymously and getting the service you want from them anonymously.) We've had discussions on this list about topics like kidnap ransom, which need payee anonymity to make sense at all; we later had discussions about how to provide it given that it wasn't a standard feature. So first we need to tell people that the technology _won't_ provide payee anonymity unless used carefully, and then we need to tell them that it _can_ provide anonymity if you want it.... Depending on the details of Ian's method, I don't think the debate needs to be taken to the public, or even done - it may simply be a done deal once the technology's out there. If Mark Twain Bank or Merita Bank or the Federal <Exonive-Deleted> Reserve wants to offer Digicash(tm) with Payee-Non-Anonymity, they can always make it a contractual requirement that their payees not use anonymity techniques in return for being paid. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissable." - US government statement on China...

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Free News access
by Alexey Boldyrev 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone know, how to get free online (not through FTP) Usenet News access?

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Re: Jump Start ecash With IPhone
by eggplant＠inlink.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Jim McCoy wrote: >| Two problems: >| >| 1- Chaum did not have the clue to pick up on this when two >| cypherpunks (who shall remain nameless...) pitched this >| and several other ideas to involve ISPs in jump-starting >| ecash almost two years ago, so why would he figure it out >| now? > > But now we don't need no stinkin' license. We just use Mark >Twain ecash. > > The big problem with this is that net phones can be subject to >delay & drop out, and I don't want to deal with that when I'm talking >on the phone. > >Adam > >-- >"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." > -Hume One thing to remember, this is still a developing program. With the increasing of bandwith and the development of new and better compression algorithyms, this will slowly fade. This is only the begining. In a couple years, the transmision and reception could be as good, if not better than the normal telephone, you never know. -- "... In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me-and by that time no one was left to speak up..." Pastor Martin Niemoller ++++++++++++ ************************************** * Matthew Murphy ------------ eggplant(a)inlink.com * ---------- * http://www.inlink.com/~eggplant * The Web page is under construciton at this time though.. * Please don't mind the mess.... * ************************************** ++++++++++++ finger eggplant(a)inlink.com for my PGP key.

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Re: FCC-type Regulation of Cyberspace
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:18 AM 3/15/96 -0800, you wrote: >Timothy C. May wrote: >>>Mr. Frantz, unless you can prove your claims here, forthwith, I must inform >>>you that they are in violation of the Truth in Speech Act of 1996. Please >>>retract them, now. > >Bill Frantz wrote: >>Political speech, not commercial speech. The act doesn't apply or is >>unconstitutional. > >I see: The bill of rights reads: >"Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of *political* >speech". >Never knew that until now. Non-election-related political speech only, of course. And excepting support for Communism or opposition to Prohibition or to approved wars, or to anything the military does to get them approved. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissable." - US government statement on China...

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