December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Net and Terrorism.
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:37 AM 7/5/96, vinnie moscaritolo wrote: >>There is no cure for the "revolutionary" terrorists .. >> If we do not even print their obit, there is no glory! > >Tim, you are asking for the liberal media to act responsibly.. what were >you thinking? I did not write that. However, I wouldn't think that "not printing their obit" is acting responsibly. As far as I'm concerned, I want the full news, or at least some reasonable approximation of it, not propaganda. --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: ecash thoughts
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

First, I'm not very convinced that probabalistic payments are needed. And I'm mostly convinced that most users of digital money will be skeptical too. A few comments: At 9:18 PM 7/4/96, Steve Reid wrote: >Suppose someone is surfing the web or whatever, and various sites are >charging, say, 0.1 cents per web page, via probabilistic payments. >Suppose there is a 1 in 10 chance that the person will pay 1 cent. > >The person wanders around the web, acting as though he's perfectly willing >to pay, and participating in the fair coin tosses. Except, he really has >no intention of paying. He will gain free access to 9 out of 10 sites, and >on the ones that he loses the 1/10 gamble, he just backs out of the deal >and doesn't pay anything. The end result is that instead of seeing all of >the web at 0.1 cents per page, he sees 90% of the web completely for >free. If everyone does this, the sites will go broke. I cannot imagine _any_ protocol for probabalistic payments which "allows" someone to back out of the deal once they've seen the outcome of the coin toss (or whatever). That just makes no sense. Exactly how the deal works to force completion is another matter (maybe escrow, maybe the symmetric payment scheme described here recently, etc.). >The obvious solution would be to require that the person pay the 1 cent, >then if he wins the 9/10 bet, he gets the 1 cent back. But that will just >move the problem from the user to the server- the site can welsh on the >bet and refuse to pay back the one cent. They will get ten times the >payment that they are supposed to get. Reputations matter, too, so sites or customers who renege will have their reps diminished, in the ways we talk about so often here. (Analogies in the physical world today: casinos who fail to pay off winnings, customers of casinos who fail to pay off their markers, etc.) I don't believe probabalistic payments have any special problems with renege rates. However, I also don't think this is a promising area. --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: Word lists for passphrases
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greg, >Are there any publically available word lists which contain just about >every word in the English language? It's not absolutley necessary, >but I'd also like the list to include english names. I would try this site out, It is very complete and should fill the bill. ftp://sable.ox.ac.uk/pub/wordlists/ Good Luck! -William Knowles erehwon(a)c2.org Finger for public key --

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Re: ecash thoughts
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:18 PM 7/4/96 -0700, Steve Reid wrote: >The person wanders around the web, acting as though he's perfectly willing >to pay, and participating in the fair coin tosses. Except, he really has >no intention of paying. He will gain free access to 9 out of 10 sites, and >on the ones that he loses the 1/10 gamble, he just backs out of the deal >and doesn't pay anything. The end result is that instead of seeing all of >the web at 0.1 cents per page, he sees 90% of the web completely for >free. If everyone does this, the sites will go broke. > >It's the equivalent of welshing on a bet. > >The obvious solution would be to require that the person pay the 1 cent, >then if he wins the 9/10 bet, he gets the 1 cent back. But that will just >move the problem from the user to the server- the site can welsh on the >bet and refuse to pay back the one cent. They will get ten times the >payment that they are supposed to get. If you're a store and I want to buy something that costs, say, $4.50, and we want to eliminate the need for change (for whatever reason) then I would pay $4.00 up front and we'll flip the electronic coin for the rest. At that point, you already have $4 so I'd have no reason to welsh on the remaining 50 cents. It obviously doesn't work this way if the minimum coin is larger than the current purchase... Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Libertarian Anti-GAK Platform
by Joey Grasty 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Y'all: Just got an e-mail from Jim Ray, who added the anti-GAK provision to the Libertarian Party Platform yesterday. So, yes, it WAS one of us. Good job, Jim! Regards, -- Joey Grasty jgrasty(a)gate.net [home -- encryption, privacy, RKBA and other hopeless causes] jgrasty(a)pts.mot.com [work -- designing pagers] "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." -- John Von Neumann PGP = A7 CC 31 E4 7E A3 36 13 93 F4 C9 06 89 51 F5 A7

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Re: Word lists for passphrases
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:12 AM 7/5/96 -0700, you wrote: :Greg, : :>Are there any publically available word lists which contain just about :>every word in the English language? : :I would try this site out. It is very complete and should fill the bill. : :ftp://sable.ox.ac.uk/pub/wordlists/ : :Good Luck! : : :-William Knowles : erehwon(a)c2.org : Finger for public key : I am not sure of your purposes, but I suggest you take a look at Arnold Reinhold's Diceware page. http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.page.html The list it contains certainly is not "every word in the English language," but the list he offers is large and well set up; I load mine from Wordpad. It is part of a randomness system he espouses. Alec

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RE: Net and Terrorism
by talon57＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >Again, the Sarin attack in Tokyo had nothing to do with former >U.S.S.R. CBW weapons. Chemical and biological agents are cheap to >make, especially in the quanties needed to kill only a few >thousand people, and in the non-battlefield delivery environment. Actually Tim, the Aum Supreme truth cult was using a Russian formula for it's production of sarin, and was spending vast amounts of time and money trying to obtain Russian NBC expertise. They supposedly had an estimated 30,000 followers in the former Soviet union. I recently finished an excellent book "The cult at the end of the world" about all this and highly recommend it to my fellow cypherpunks. Brian

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Re: Lack of PGP signatures
by geoff＠commtouch.co.il 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: bshantz(a)nwlink.com, markm(a)voicenet.com, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Fri Jul 05 17:10:11 1996 On 7/3 Brad Shantz Wrote: > Once upon a time last year or the year before, Tim May posted why he > doesn't use PGP very often. And I have always stood by that same > sentiment. Yes, it is a good encryption product, but it is not > integrated seamlessly into other applications. Tim, feel free to > whack me if you think I'm speaking for you. If, as cypherpunks, we > want to spread the use of strong crypto, we need to have a better > interface than what currently exists on PGP 2.6.2. I strongly urge anyone who uses PGP on a regular basis to take a look at Pronto Secure. It is a fully featured Windows e-mail client with complete & seamless PGP integration in its native implementation. Security features include: Single click for encrypt sign or decrypt, on the fly authentication, key management, talks to the keyservers, intuitive & flexible certification / trust management, automated key exchange between Pronto Secure clients & more. The product is in final beta & this will probably be the last opportunity to get a free registered copy. We believe that we have a pretty secure e-mail client. However before releasing Pronto Secure to a less security aware public, we would like to submit the product for additional scrutiny by the members of this list. With this objective in mind, we have decided to extend our special offer to beta testers: Any tester providing us with feedback on the product will automatically be eligible for a free copy of the soon to be released Pronto Secure 1.0. For a detailed specification see http://www.commtouch.com/s-mail.html To check out what our existing beta testers have said about Pronto Secure: http://www.commtouch.com/testers.htm To apply for the beta send signed mail to secure(a)commtouch.com. Also please attach your PGP key. I take this opportunity to thank all members of the list who have up to now assisted in beta-testing the product. Your input has helped make Pronto Secure into what we believe is a truely usable secure e-mail client. - --------------------------------------------------------------- Geoff Klein, Pronto Secure Product Manager; www.commtouch.com My PGP public Key 1814AD45 can be obtained by sending a message to geoff(a)commtouch.co.il with "Get Key" as the subject. - ---------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMd0iTELv5OMYFK1FAQG8dQQAo2pgG+JIyHFLT/g6stvFnb+MAIpr8Ut7 43uPtRP6xSCztG1T48V/a4jIHzCYcXiYOrGdalJSRc+alpndFfehD+Ky+nzAsgKu WZPISfieWb0wQDUygi1DFkKTddzhjlStAdtwZ0J0E4fHHrZgc3NpzfoRvyVUvdtS cgmH6neWNjs= =yUlH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Net and Terrorism.
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:43 PM 7/4/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >Anyway, I should point out that Mormons (or Latter Day Saints, I guess) are >spreading quickly around the world...all WITHOUT using "conversion by the >sword," as some other well-known religions are wont to do. Perhaps you've read this before (or it's even been mentioned here before) but an excellent book exists that discusses some of the points you touch upon (suicide, martyrs, religion (meme) propagation). See Bloom, "The Lucifer Principle." _______________________ Regards, He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened. Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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Re: What remains to be done.
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:58 PM 7/4/96 +0000, Deranged Mutant wrote: >Another need is for file/disk-encryption utilities. I'm not familiar >with what's out there for Macs, but for PCs there's SFS and ASPICRYP >for SCSI drives (with no source!) and SFS, SecureDrive and SecureDevice >for HD (or FD). The latter won't work on Win95. AFAIK, SFS and >SecureDrive aren't 100% friendly with Win95 either, though they'll work. I'll just add that Jetico puts out BCrypt, which works perfectly with Win95. Of course it costs, but one can try out the software only version, then upgrage to hardware encryption! _______________________ Regards, He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened. Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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