December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Why Leahy is No Friend of Ours
by attila 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Addressed to: E. ALLEN SMITH <EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> Cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> ** Reply to note from E. ALLEN SMITH <EALLENSMITH(a)ocelot.Rutgers.EDU> 05/06/96 8:47pm = To: attila(a)primenet.com = = From: IN%"attila(a)primenet.com" "attila" 5-MAY-1996 21:36:54.93 = = > how many _truly_ "populist" presidents have we elected? = = SMITH: = Given the numbers of times that a democracy has done more harm than = good to civil liberties (Prohibition, the election of Islamic Fundamentalists = in Algeria, etcetera), we don't _want_ a "populist"/demagogue president. We = want someone in charge (to whatever degree that someone has to be in charge) = who will respect civil liberties. The masses aren't going to elect such a = person; they prefer protection to liberty and always will. = = ATTILA: democracy is _never_ the ideal government. the difference in the American government is that it is a _republic_. the problem with a republic in the techno age is that the press and/or advertising creates the images --and can be bought, stolen, coerced, etc. my intent is to "lament" that the American voters do not influence the choice of candidates --who are vetted my money, or money's interests. most mat not wish to consider the hidden importance of the CFR and related groups --it is not a conspiracy; it is just another group with an agenda --except they have the money and influence to _buy_ the agenda over time --amd on their schedule. = > ATTILA: = > "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little = > temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." = > --Ben Franklin (Historical Review of PA -1759) = > = > and, the bottom line is: = > = > "It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen = > from falling into error; = > it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government = > from falling into error." = > --Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Judge = = Quite. = -Allen -- Overseeing first-rate programmers is a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.

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Re: Arguments _against_ privacy, anyone?
by attila 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Sun, 21 Apr 1996 15:58:03 -0700 (PDT) ***where do some of these people get off the bus? >From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> Subject: Call for bad arguments against privacy * "We've lost so much of our privacy anyway." ***and that justifies stripping you of the rest, correct? * "Privacy is an obsolete Victorian hang-up." ***arrest that man for public nudity! * "Ideas about privacy are culturally specific and it is thus impossible to define privacy in the law without bias." ***let me ask you, boy, just what the fuck you mean? * "We have strong security on our data." ***yawn... * "National identity cards protect privacy by improving authentication and data security." ***you must like to mutilate your body when they insert the chip? * "Informational privacy can be protected by converting it into a property right." ***yes, if you not consider that the concept of property rights, i.e. title, must be defined byins contents? * "We have to balance privacy against industry concerns." ***what's good for General Motors is good for the country. * "Privacy paranoids want to turn back the technological clock." ***yes, number 4078956898346, your comment has been registered. * "Most people are privacy pragmatists who can be trusted to make intelligent trade-offs between functionality and privacy." ***yes, just like people are inherently good, unless the issue is money. * "Our lives will inevitably become visible to others, so the real issue is mutual visibility, achieving a balance of power by enabling us to watch the people who are watching us." ***yes, you do not throw stones at others who live in glass houses. * "Once you really analyze it, the concept of privacy is so nebulous that it provides no useful guidance for action." ***oh, it is better that government take no action??? * "People *want* these systems, as indicated by the percentage of them who sign up for them once they become available." ***dale carnegie: will you ever quit selling your ideas! * "Concern for privacy is anti-social and obstructs the building of a democratic society." ***aaaah, taxation by representation? * "Privacy regulation is just one more category of government interference in the market, which after all is much better at weighing individuals' relative preferences for privacy and everything else than bureaucratic rules could ever be." ***huuh? * "There's no privacy in public." ***no? try screaming 'rape' in NYC * "We favor limited access." ***to just the thought police? * "Privacy in these systems has not emerged as a national issue." -- Overseeing first-rate programmers is a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats. cc: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu>

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fixing netscape
by Alex Strasheim 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://reality.sgi.com/grafica/framefree This doesn't have any direct crypto relevance -- it's a program that improves navigator binaries by modifying them so they won't understand frames. I'm a little surprised that we didn't think of this when we were waiting for Jeff to allow us to turn off javascript. -- Alex Strasheim, alex(a)proust.suba.com

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by Clay.Olbon＠dynetics.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:20 PM 5/6/96, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >From: IN%"frissell(a)panix.com" "Duncan Frissell" 6-MAY-1996 16:04:24.96 > >>Actually, as a percentage of income, tax evasion is probably more prevalent >>among the poor than the rich. Because they are less exposed. Studies of >>spending show that the poorest 20% of Americans spend twice their reported >>income. > > Quite. The poor can get away with this for multiple reasons, including >being on more of a cash-based economy. But the largest reason is probably >that the IRS doesn't care nearly as much about each individual at the low >end of the income ladder as they do about any evasion involving a lot of money. >Now, the low end tax evasion probably costs the government a lot more than >the rich does... but it's also a lot harder to pursue. > -Allen There are a couple of main reasons that the poor spend more than their reported income. First, many of the elderly are included in the "poorest 20%", since this is based on income alone and not net worth. Many of the elderly are spending down their retirement savings. Another factor, of course, is that welfare, food stamps, free/subsidized housing and other transfer payments are not included in income calculations. I have seen reports that show that in many states, this is equivalent to a full-time job paying ~$9/hr. Not showing these as income helps keep the "official" poverty rate high. I'm not sure if social security is included in income calculations for "poverty rate" purposes, anyone know? Clay --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clay Olbon II | Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer | ph: (810) 589-9930 fax 9934 Dynetics, Inc., Ste 302 | http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html 550 Stephenson Hwy | PGP262 public key: on web page Troy, MI 48083-1109 | pgp print: B97397AD50233C77523FD058BD1BB7C0 TANSTAAFL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by Clay.Olbon＠dynetics.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:34 PM 5/6/96, Timothy C. May wrote: >Also, the effect of inflation has been to inflate salaries and thus inflate >people into higher tax brackets, even when their "real wages" have not gone >up. This used to be true. A bill passed during the Reagan administration indexed the brackets to inflation to remedy this situation. I don't know how succesful the bill was in eliminating "bracket creep", but that was the stated purpose. >If we ever get really bad inflation again (>10% per year, as we had in the >late 70s, early 90s), or, God forbid, hyper-inflation, the tax system will >likely not survive in anything near its current form. Hopefully the system won't survive no matter what the inflation rate is. Clay

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:05 PM 5/6/96, Duncan Frissell wrote: >> However, are you controlling for level of income? The IRS is a lot >>more worried about TCMay committing tax fraud than they are about me >>committing >>tax fraud; my income taxes are a lot closer to 0 than his. >> -Allen >> > >Actually, as a percentage of income, tax evasion is probably more prevalent >among the poor than the rich. Because they are less exposed. Studies of >spending show that the poorest 20% of Americans spend twice their reported >income. Indeed, I am extremely limited in how I can avoid complete traceability of my major income sources. Not rich enough to shelter income in a really big time way (and even these shelters are harder and harder to find...near-billionaire Justin Dart renounced his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of Belize to avoid huge U.S. taxes). And too rich to "forget to report" income from mowing lawns, tips, freelance car body repair, etc. Caught right in the middle where the computers file reports automatically with the IRS."You can run, but you can't hide." By the way, as long as I've added another comment to this not-very-relevant thread (but one which has generated a lot of comments, so it's hard to hard folks aren't interested), I should mention that I left out the effects of INFLATION in my "60%" figure. To wit, imagine buying an asset (stock, real estate, etc.) for, say, $10,000 in 1982, selling it for $20,000 in 1995, and having to pay $3600 in taxes on this "gain," much of which was erased by the effects of inflation. (I don't have a convenient chart of the cumulative inflation over this period, but I'd guess it's between 60% and 90%. Meaning, a 1995 dollar is worth about half to two-thirds of a 1982 dollar.) Also, the effect of inflation has been to inflate salaries and thus inflate people into higher tax brackets, even when their "real wages" have not gone up. If we ever get really bad inflation again (>10% per year, as we had in the late 70s, early 90s), or, God forbid, hyper-inflation, the tax system will likely not survive in anything near its current form. --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: PGP, Inc.
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"raph(a)cs.berkeley.edu" "Raph Levien" 5-MAY-1996 13:47:16.83 > "Observers say SMIME's capabilities will let it replace software > based on the PGP code, which is widely used. Unlike SMIME, which uses > a structured certificate heirarchy, PGP relies on pre-certification > of clients and servers for authentication, a limitation SMIME doesn't > face." Can one use a web-of-trust for S/MIME, for the cases when a structured hierarchy is exactly the _wrong_ thing to use? I'd think so, but I don't know anything about it. > Thus, it's a reasonable guess that almost all S/MIME messages that >pass through the wires will offer "virtually no protection," to quote a >phrase from a paper co-authored by the principal designer of S/MIME's >encryption algorithms >(http://www.bsa.org/policy/encryption/cryptographers.html) A public breaking of some S/MIME messages would work to discourage this unsafe mechanism. One wonders if PGP Inc. could sponsor some variety of contest? -Allen

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Re: Is the network layer geodesic?
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Actually, MAE-WEST and much of the MCI net is now OC-3, and the remaining DS3 lines will be upgraded soon. And yes, it still doesn't take many T3's to fill that up, but don't forget that networks are designed with serious overbooking in mind, and IP's back-off algorithm seems to work real well in this situation. Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: rah cc: cypherpunks From: fair @ clock.org ("Erik E. Fair" (Time Keeper)) @ smtp Date: 05/06/96 07:58:46 PM Subject: Re: Is the network layer geodesic? The principle problem is that public exchange points do not scale beyond current LAN technology (i.e. half-duplex 100 Mb/s FDDI or Ethernet), and how many DS3 (T3; 45Mb/s full-duplex!) pipes does it take to fill that up? Two. Now, drop a DEC GIGAswitch in there (16 FDDI ports, 3.2Gb/s backplane), and now you can have sixteen peers on the exchange. Last count I saw, there are 1,800 ISPs operating in the USA alone, and *everyone* want to be at the exchange points. Oops. How many exchange points are there? Well: NSF Network Access Points (NAPs): New York (well, Pennsauken, NJ; Sprint), Chicago (Ameritech), San Francisco (Pac*Bell) MAE-EAST (D.C.), MAE-WEST (Mountain View-San Jose), MAE-LA, CIX (San Jose) FIX-EAST (D.C.), FIX-WEST (Mountain View; just for the Feds) SWAB (D.C., but almost no one left there). There are probably a few new ones that are forming that I am unaware of as yet, but the point is that they're small-fry. There are also probably exchange points outside the USA, but I bet they're being held up with PTT B.S. The Internet is amorphous. It ain't a star, exactly, but it still not too far from that. However, to get away from this situation into the rich and more fully amorphous connectivity we used to take for granted in the UUCP network, we're going to have to see a lot more cooperation on the part of the small ISPs in agreeing to talk *directly* to each other to exchange traffic, and more small exchange points, instead of the small number of large ones. Of course, this means that you, Mr. or Ms. Discriminating Internet Consumer, must educate yourself a little, and ask interesting questions like, "why do my packets have to go to California to get across town to the ISP my friend uses?" If the customers ask, the ISPs will serve. They just gotta know what you want (and you have to be willing, of course, to pay for it). Erik Fair

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WhoWhere Robot?
by Stephan Somogyi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My web server was just hit by a machine that reverse-resolved to a Japanese academic domain with an agent claiming to be "WhoWhere Robot"; this bot is not listed in the <http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/active.html> List of Robots. Does anyone know whether this has any relationship to the www.whowhere.com people? ________________________________________________________________________ Stephan Somogyi Mr Gyroscope Digital Media

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:17 PM 5/7/96, Clay Olbon II wrote: >At 5:34 PM 5/6/96, Timothy C. May wrote: >>Also, the effect of inflation has been to inflate salaries and thus inflate >>people into higher tax brackets, even when their "real wages" have not gone >>up. > >This used to be true. A bill passed during the Reagan administration >indexed the brackets to inflation to remedy this situation. I don't know >how succesful the bill was in eliminating "bracket creep", but that was the >stated purpose. No, it _still_ is true. One bill during one administration does not a major change make. Look at the actual rates, average salaries, increases, etc. (Sure, there have been all sorts of rate increases, decreases, changes, loopholes added, loopholes subtracted, etc. But the fact is that the average starting salary for an EE was about $12,000 a year in 1975 and more than 30,000 in 1995, with about the same buying power but with tax _rates_ dramatically higher.) --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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