December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Ben T. Moore "Mr. Anonymous"
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:33 PM 2/14/96 -0800, hochiminh(a)alpha.c2.org wrote: >So while you are off being a cool anonymous dude the rest of us are paying for >the AFDC you ex-wife has to use to feed the kids. No individual is responsible for the fact that AFDC exists and steals wealth from others. The government and its supporters are responsible for that crime. >This is a violation of Indiana Code but breaking the law is of no concern to you, huh? Hardly ever prosecuted. In addition, if you use a mail drop for a DMV address and the authorities ever "call" you on it, you can use the Homeless Defense. As far as I know, the homeless have the right to drive. Also, if your license/registration is in a jurisdiction other than the one in which you find yourself, your "lies" to the foreign jurisdiction do not violate local law. >This [opening a mail drop in a false name] is a violation of Indiana and >Federal Laws depending on how they are used. Has never been prosecuted. Very hard to prove in any case since the mailbox clerk is unlikely to remember the person who opened the box account and if you are really worried, you can just add a second phony name to the first name without any false ID having to be presented. You can then collect mail under the second name and ignore the name in which the account was opened. >Another violation of Indiana Code [opening utility accounts in false names]. I doubt that if there is no intent to defraud (hide bad credit for example). If you can later prove that your credit was good and the account would have been opened in any case, then there is no misrepresentation of a material fact and you can fall back on the common law right to call yourself by any name you choose. No prosecutions in any case. It never ceases to amaze me that people invoke never used laws to try and control the behavior of others. Did you know that sodomy is illegal in (circa) 22 states? Does this reduce the incidence of same. Use it or lose it. DCF

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Re: Science News - article on Quantum Crypto
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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. It is well-known that photons are affected by gravitation...from the Mossbauer effect 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). No list relevance that I can see, but then neither do nuclear triggers have anything to do with the list. --Tim May 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: Easy Nuclear Detonator
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I would have appreciated it if you'd sent this to me privately, or at least didn't enclose my message to you (which was sent in private email). Among other reasons, it is rather off-topic (unless one wants to count it among bomb information available on the net). -Allen From: IN%"jimbell(a)pacifier.com" "jim bell" 19-FEB-1996 00:58:39.66 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:25 PM 2/18/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: > I've been kind of busy recently (the reason I haven't responded to >the more recent Assasination Politics stuff), but I'm curious what your method >is for achieving simultaneous explosions. "Multiple very thin flexible hollow tubes (1 mm ID? teflon?) filled with a homogenous liquid explosive (for example, pure nitromethane), length accurately cut to produce the exactly desired delay. Kept separated from each other by foam spacers to avoid inter-fiber detonations. Detonated from a single cap, with an intermediary chamber of liquid explosive to stabilize the shock front, the detonation wave travels along each tube simultaneously at (presumably) identical velocity." It's a race, designed so that the detonation waves reach their targets (the foci) at the same time. If the detonation velocity was, say, 5,000 meters per second, an accuracy of 0.5 millimeter in length would produce a delay accuracy of 100 nanoseconds. Whatcha think? Now where did I put that pit... <G> Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com Klaatu Burada Nikto -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSgFwvqHVDBboB2dAQGzYAQAksCklKTJ80tr+YuASwzt6KRMVgqivydf wjYP9GL5Bo3HeXxEgOB8Xg6gnO9aOdDxMfMKiR0SdodE4V4kiy2y671jPofNz800 Y0YHzKnLcLuZzvnExGkhtLDQLigqDdNWSdPgFItkJ/5TVXHrEfL7+paOmo2hbYKO 5hbuG7wZ9Hg= =6qoY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Piracy Bests ITAR
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Economist, 17 Feb 1995, p. 17. Should foreigners' intellectual property always be protected? [Excerpts] Is it right to expect governments, especially poor ones, to honour new World Trade Organization rules on intellectual property? Some economists have made a good case that slack enforcement of such rules may sometimes do little harm. Local firms benefit by acquiring pirated technology more cheaply than the real thing; consumers acquire affordable high-tech products and close copies of branded goods. Although the original producers of the intellectual property lose out, it is sometimes hard to tell how much. They might anyway have sold nothing in a poor country at rich prices. And provided that counterfeiters make reasonably faithful copies, piracy is free publicity: how many Chinese would know about Microsoft's latest programs, or listen to Michael Jackson's new album, had they not been able to buy illegal imitations? ... It is not always obvious what theft is. Much in patent and copyright law is arbitrary. But who says American copyright law is correct? More to the point, why should China accept America's view of how a drug design, say, should be accorded patent protection? In some cases, the interests of rich and poor countries are clearly at odds: one side has all the property. There seems to be no objective standard to appeal to. Eventually, this may change: as poor countries produce more innovations themselves, their own inventors will demand greater protection. Meanwhile, the lot of many intellectual-property producers will not be a happy one.

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No Subject
by yesim ozben 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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. Yesim

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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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