December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Netscape
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:27 PM 7/20/96 -0700, Tom Weinstein wrote: >> Do you Seriously Believe that Netscape would prefer foreigners >> to develop and use competing products? Of course not. They are >> probably secretly applauding the brave exporters. > >You are wrong. We are worried that our permission to provide these >products will be withdrawn. As far as I can tell, you need no "permission" to "provide these products", at least domestically. The only restrictions that have been implied have been over the delivery of encryption over the 'net, and even that is questionable. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

3 2

Re: [Noise] was Re: Giving 6 year old kids [guns]
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- After a conversation with a well-respected cypherpunk in private email, I have been convinced to reveal publicly that at age 6 [first grade] I had access to a .22 semiautomatic rifle and a 12GA shotgun, with good safety instruction and accuracy in each (though the 12GA's kick took a bit of getting-used-to). I was instructed to shoot any burglar, and I feel lucky that we never had any. The thought of taking these (or any!) guns to school _never_ entered my mind. I drove a car (on private land) when I was only a bit older. There are certain 6 year olds who are quite capable of taking proper responsibility with firearms, and there are also certain 26 year olds who probably should reconsider gun ownership. That's life. The reason I posted this non-cryptography stuff (sorry, Perry!) here is that many non-US citizens may not understand the strong "gun culture," (which is actually more a gun-safety culture, IMO) in this country. Gun-grabber-hypocrites like syndicated columnist Carl Rowan are provably the *least* safe gun owners, and the evidence also proves beyond any doubt the good old bumper-sticker saying: "Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun." [Any replies to private e-mail, please.] JMR Regards, Jim Ray -- DNRC Minister of Encryption Advocacy "It is long past time to end the laughable presumption that voters who can easily cope with the choices offered at Burger King are somehow 'confused' by more than two choices at the voting booth." -- me, in the Miami Herald, June 24, 1996, p. 10A. Defeat the Duopoly! Vote "NOTA," not Slick/Dull in November. Harry Browne for President. Jo Jorgensen for Vice-president. http://www.HarryBrowne96.org/ ___________________________________________________________________ PGP id.E9BD6D35 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 <mailto:liberty@gate.net> http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray Coming soon, the "Pennies For Perot" page. Keep billionaires off welfare! ___________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh. iQCVAwUBMfGbIm1lp8bpvW01AQG0fgP+LWV9lprYEWahaIhsyLHvMSnc6fjbpDF+ eeTac9Wb1+j78KzT8zxpmnw7I5/nuVZqJRFkZCSjKIclWf2/uzxbi+vRLwf7HWgn iIrnZgv3ozmYZUfCoYx31PbpjT0JYUTxsDvPO+TGwQYuLeYwBH865V3JAXGc7FDO KFB49zbWvnE= =GHZ8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Re: Snake Oil FAQ
by Jean-Paul Kroepfli 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Very good idea, and nice implemantation of the idea. Please, let us know of the new version. Would be a minimal information about cyphering vs scrambling, secret vs public key system, useful for the newbies and not redondant with the large classical FAQ. Best regards, Jean-Paul ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- Jean-Paul et Micheline Kroepfli (our son: Nicolas and daughter: Celine) eMail: JeanPaul.Kroepfli(a)utopia.fnet.fr Also Compuserve and MSNetwork Phone: +33 81 55 52 59 (F) PostMail: F-25640 Breconchaux (France) or: +41 21 843 27 36 (CH) or: CP 138, CH-1337 Vallorbe Fax: +33 81 55 52 62 (Switzerland) Zephyr(r) : InterNet Communication and Commerce, Security and Cryptography consulting PGP Fingerprint : 19 FB 67 EA 20 70 53 89 AF B2 5C 7F 02 1F CA 8F "The InterNet is the most open standard since air for breathing"

1 0

RE: ABC news on Internet Telephony
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:37 AM 7/21/96 +0200, Remo Pini wrote: >>A single central office has many times the bandwidth of the widest >>part of the internet, and the average state has hundreds of CO's. >>If even a small portion of the Internets current users tried >>placing a call things would grind to a halt. A huge increase in the >>number of backbones and their bandwidth would solve this, but who >>will pay the bill? > >I guess Internet-telephony is one of the bandwidth killers. Potentially. However, there has been some mention of a new standard for voice compression that puts voice into 2400 bits per second, a factor of about 25 lower than the phone company normally uses. (They use 8,000 samples per second at 8 bits per sample, companded.) At that rate, a pair of modern, 2.4 Gb/s fibers could handle 1 million simultaneous phone calls. Since some of the newer fiber systems put 8 or more separate channels down a single fiber, that would work out to 8 million conversations. I have to conclude that we shouldn't even be close to running out of Internet capacity, _IF_ it were driven by state-of-the-art fiber and similar-speed switches. But it probably isn't. At best, Internet probably only gets a fraction of the capacity of a given fiber wherever it flows. This will have to change. >>TANSTAAFL >> >>Sometime ago the discussion was on the cost of laying new fiber, >>may I suggest the realworld heuristic of "a million dollars a >>mile." > >There are of course a lot of alternatives: In most cases, "new fiber" isn't needed, and will probably only be rarely needed on long-distance links. As I understand it, most cableways are laid with extra tubes, into which new fiber cables can be blown in (using compressed air) long after the trench is filled. The specific example I saw, there were three 2" diameter tubes in a larger tube, and according to the contractor (I asked...) only one of the tubes would be filled at that time. In addition, while he wasn't sure, he thought that at least some of the 36-fiber cable in that one tube would remain "dark," or unused until it was later needed. I don't know how expensive it is to add that extra fiber cable into an existing tube, but it would be VASTLY cheaper than the original trenching operation. Further, much of the improved transmission technology can be used on the older fibers to increase their capacity: A fiber now used to transmit a single 2.4 gigabit signal can be upgraded, simply using new channelized transmitters and receivers to increase the data rate to 8 or 16 times the previous rate. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

2 1

Re: Filtering out Queers is OK
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

David Sternlight (david(a)SternBot.com) writes: > There are many others who have come to similar conclusions > about the formation of independent judgement in children, > and lots of non-Piaget experiments. Your comments are > diversionary and in fact by the end of your post you come to > agree with my basic point. Every doctrine has its followers, and I will admit "Piaget-Speak" is still quite popular in certain circles, and its buzzwords are often heard in arguments promoting child inferiority and dismissing childrens' concerns. That hardly means I agree with your basic point, which is that parents should be able to do whatever they want in controlling their childrens' information sources without their children having any recourse against them. > That is also false in its implications. Librarians are in > loco parentis, This, of course, varies with local statutes, as does the legal definition of "In Loco Parentis." Generally it applies to teachers, people hired to care for children, and some relatives, such as grandparents. I am not familar with any locale where librarians are specifically mentioned, and most librarians will be more than happy to explain to you that a library is not a free babysitting service, and that they are not caregivers. > and most libraries are VERY careful about what materials > young children are exposed to and what is more, are > responsive to community pressure in the matter since most > libraries are community-based. Most libraries let "young adults" (read anyone who has hit their teenage years) read pretty much anything they want. "Parents on the warpath" have managed to apply pressure in recent years, and libraries are a bit less free than they used to be, but I think the American Library Association has done a pretty good job in standing its ground against agitators and pressure groups. > So after trying to refute my point, you come to agree with > it and want to shift the issue to the question of at what > age.... No - I stated in my original message that young children do need some reasonable constraints to guard them from exposure to material which might cause them emotional pain. This is far different from your assertion that minors (everyone under 18) should have no access to any information that their parents do not pre-approve. > I'm not competent to assess that nor, I assert, are you; I > suggest it varies with the child and it's up to the > individual parent to make those subtle distinctions, issue > by issue, child by child. Nothing subtle about it David. Once young people have passed through early childhood, the burden of proof is on anyone who suggests that they should be insulated from social and political reality to provide a convincing reason why. Parental capriciousness doesn't qualify. > As I parse the above sentence it says limiting is often > justified but it might not be. Parse the sentence again. What it says is that although "protecting children" is often the excuse used to limit older childrens' access to controversial material, the reality is that it is usually an effort to control their thinking on certain issues by making sure they have only one viewpoint, that of their parents. > If so, it's up to the parents to figure ou where THEIR kid > is on the scale--nobody else has as much time, motivation, > or opportunity to observe. As is usual with Statists, the argument is seen as a debate over who should be doing the controlling, the notion that everyone needs to be controlled being a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it's time to take Perry's pledge. :) -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

4 5

Re: pledge status
by Chris Adams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 20 Jul 96 23:12:20 -0800, alanh(a)infi.net wrote: >One recalls the Russian novelist (can't think of his name, the one who >wrote _Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch_), who stated that if even 1% Solzhenitsyn? (Spelling may be wrong) Very good, BTW. >of all of the Cheka/KGB's arrest-in-the-middle-of-the-night victims had >put up some resistance, and maybe have killed a Chekist before being >gunned down..... the whole damn system of Stalinist terror would have >unraveled, from the lack of police willingness to die for the greater >glory of Mr Stalin. >I think this has > relevance to the >black-ninjas-pretending-that-they're-in-a-Hollywood-script thread about >cops making unanounced search warrant services at 4am. > >I have tremendous admiration for my local LEO's. It's the federales that >are the problem, usually. I'm thinking of Waco, where, I've heard, more experienced SWAT-types tried to talk their bosses out of a certain infamous mistake... // Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> - Webpages for sale! Se habla JavaScript! // Automatically receive my resume or PGPKEY by sending email with a subject // of 'send PGPKEY' or 'send resume'. Capitalization counts so be careful!

1 0

Re: Netscape
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:24 PM 7/19/96 -0700, Rich Graves <llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu> wrote: >On Fri, 19 Jul 1996, Anonymous wrote: >[on hacktic] >> netscape-fts2-hp10.tar.gz Fast Track Server 2.0 for HPUX10 >> netscape-fts2-nt.exe Fast Track Server 2.0 for WinNT >> netscape-hpus-30b5.tar.gz Navigator 3.0b5 for HP-UX >> netscape-linux-30b5.tar.gz Navigator 3.0b5 for Linux >> netscape-ssl30-src.tar.gz SSL 3.0 source code >> netscape32us-30b5.exe Navigator 3.0b5 for Win95/NT > >And thus it begins... I think it's a bad idea to provoke the TLAs like this, >but I suppose it's inevitable. (But doesn't anyone use Macs or Suns?) Appears that they don't use Windows 3.1 16-bit versions either. BTW, the executable is _huge_ - over 3MB, and that doesn't seem to include all the plugins from previous versions. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs # Confuse Authority!

1 0

Re: Netscape
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:10 PM 7/20/96 -0400, "Mark M." <markm(a)voicenet.com> wrote: >On Sat, 20 Jul 1996, Tom Weinstein wrote: >> Why not consider what the consequences will be? Do you seriously >> believe that this will make the government stop enforcing ITAR? > >The government has yet to enforce ITAR. The only thing they have been doing >is threatening companies who make products with strong crypto. If anyone was >ever actually put on trial for a violation of ITAR, it would almost certainly >be found to be unconstitutional. First of all, the goverrnment _has_ enforced ITAR; I've seen references (ummm, on the net...) to a few cases of things like exporting TV decryptors, as well as all the enforcement about illegal trafficking in guns and such. But second, if you're threatened with jail and large fines, and have to pay your lawyers lots of money to avoid being railroaded, that's enforcement even if it's not the full-scale due process type. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs # Confuse Authority!

1 0

Re: ITAR's 40 bit limit
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:45 PM 7/20/96 -0400, "David F. Ogren" <ogren(a)cris.com> wrote: >Another paradox of the US export regulations. >The NSA is allowing 40 bit crypto exports. So as a hypothetical example >assume that I write a crypto program that uses 40 bit RC4 to encode data >(licensing from RSA). I then get an export license using the accelerated >process for 40 bit RC4. ....... >However, what if she runs the program three times with three different >passwords. (Ignore the problems of Inner-CBC and Outer-CBC for now.) Now >the file is triple RC4 encoded with the equivalent of 80 bit security. Not always possible. The rule isn't just "40 bit crypto" it's "permission, which you won't get with over 40 bits unless you're very cooperative." Applications like Netscape's SSL don't give you the ability to feed your data through it three times; they process your stream of data and send it. Also, some 40-bit systems put known plaintext at the beginning of their output (e.g. a magic number saying that this file is in FooBar40 format) which means that even if you quintuply encrypt them, you still only have several layers of 40-bit encryption that you can peel one at a time. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs # Confuse Authority!

2 1

Re: Game Theory and its Relevance to Cypherpunks
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 21:57 20/07/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >Fortunately, the goal of MAD was to >not have to be used, and it appears now to have worked quite well (albeit >at high cost). My problem with applying game theory to complex situations like the competition between powerful nations is that it is too simplistic. IANAE, of course, though I have done some control theory, and know how complex the modelling of any system becomes if it contains non-linearities, delays, etc. In a closed-loop system, i.e. with feedback, trying to predict behaviour without the foggiest notion of how to quantify the impact of Kennedy's grandstanding on the Kruschev mind (for instance) is questionable. To suggest that MAD worked well on the basis of the limited tryout we gave it has little validity. If it hadn't, we wouldn't be here, would we? We are trying to draw general conclusions based on a biased sample of one. Reminds me of this committee of the British Royal Air Force, trying to find ways to protect its planes better against German anti-aircraft guns. Someone proposed putting an extra layer of armour on those areas that received the most shelling, and most people seemed to like the idea. One upstart suggested the exact opposite: putting extra armour on those areas which had received the least shelling. "Remember," he said, "we can only examine the planes that came back." I also have a problem with the cost you mention. What is "winning" in the context of nations? The arms race wiped out the Soviet Union, and arguably seriously hampered the competitiveness of American industry (which was No.1 at the end of the war), allowing countries like Japan and Germany, with far smaller defence budgets, to overtake industrially. >Useful sources: Thank you for the tips: I will check them out. Game theory is fascinating -- I'm just not sure how applicable it is in formulating policy. Didn't work too well in Vietnam... Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

2 1