December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[rant] Re: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:49 PM 8/20/96 +0000, Ross Wright wrote: >On Or About 20 Aug 96, 16:23, Jim Gillogly wrote: >> >> Vipul Ved Prakash <vipul(a)pobox.com> writes: >> >I don't know if there has been much discussion on the ethics of >> >spamming here? Is spamming free speech? >> > >> I oppose spamming because it's rude and inefficient, lowering the >> S/N everywhere it happens. Market droids > >Market Droids???? As a salesman I take offence at this slur. It is a mild term compared to some of the things that could be said about sales. I have dealt with far too many sales people. Few of them knew anything about the products that they were selling. (This is especially true of the computer field. "Do you know the difference between a computer salesman and a car salesman? The car salesman knows how to drive.") Many people have a bad view of sales. <rant> Mine is because of the times I have had to create the programs that sales had promised, but had no clue as to what could and could not be done, or was even practical. Getting time lines set by people who have no clue as to how long it will take or even if what they want is possible. (More than once I have received requests based on the pipe dreams of some idiot in sales that contained contradictory requirements and/or absurd time lines.) Most sales people do not care about what it takes to do something, all they care about is making the sale. What they tell the rube in the course of selling it does not matter. (Someone else will take care of it.) But then, rarely does truth enter into the matter of sales... Sales people have a bad reputation for a very good reason. If they actually had a basic understanding of what they were selling, and were not so untrustworthy as to not commit to things that are not deliverable, they would have that reputation. The only people I have more contempt for than salesmen are salesmen for multi-level companies. (Except maybe government officials, but that is on a case by case basis...) </rant> >> favor it because it's >> cheap, and no matter how many people they piss off bigtime, they >> make some sales. > >Even make sales to people who are pissed off at first... "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." The biggest problem I have had with spammers in the last month or so are the ones who insist on forging e-mail reply addresses. Of course, being from a sales background, they were too incompetent to cover up their tracks. (Remember: If you are going to post spam with a forged return address, DON'T do it from your own uucp address. The send path makes a great big arrow pointing back to you.) Spammers are more like the people who call you at home and try to sell you things you do not want over the phone with recorded messages. Sales on the Internet can be done and done without pissing off people. But what it takes is a shred of a clue. By violating netiquite, the spammer has shown that he lacks vital connection to anything resembling a clueserver. Furthermore, much of what is spammed is either illegal (variants on the "make money fast" idea of pyramid scheme) and/or posted to entire hierarchies of groups. (Most mail readers will not allow you to mark a message as read in all of the newsgroups it is posted to. And most of the Windows newsreader do not have killfiles or they are buggy to the point of unusability.) I certainly do not want to read this crap over and over again. It is this repeated abuse that gets spammers mailbombed, feeds killed, etc. (And I will not even go into the type of sales promoted by Canter and Siegal in their book on Internet sales. Of course, considering their background (i.e. lawyers for the Church of Scientology) it does not surprise me a whole lot...) --- 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 "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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No Subject
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Postal service is working on a new postage method, 2 key signature, which will be unique to each "postal unit" ( stamp ) the signature will be logged when you buy the stamps....No more anon. snail mail...... Just thought you'd like to know !

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20 year key ?
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there such a thing as a "20 YEAR KEY " would it be a 2048 bit or larger or what ?

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Re: Husband/Wife jailed for saying Clinton Sucks
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:47 PM 8/21/96, Brian Davis wrote: >On Tue, 20 Aug 1996 Scottauge(a)aol.com wrote: > >> Rush Limbaugh reports: >> >> That a husband and wife are being jailed for yelling to Clinton "You Suck". >> >> The Secret Service states additional words (yet un-uttered to the rest of us) >> were mentioned that they deemed threatening. > > >"I hope you die." And the couple was arrestd for disorderly conduct by >Chicago police. Any possible federal charges for threatening a president >in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 871 await a determination of the >seriousness of the statement, in context with the wife's conduct, by >prosecutors. I predict no action. Well, I agree that saying "I hope you die" is a tad bit more serious than "You suck, and those boys died." If these additional words were spoken, why didn't the SS reveal them early on? (Or, if they did, why did the news reports not mention them?) Personally, I would never utter such words, even to Clinton. Or Dole. Tacky, even if one dislikes the Prez. But I agree that "no action" is pretty likely. "I hope you die" has been a time-honored insult at least since I was a kindergartner, and presumably for many decades prior to this. Hardly an active threat. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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: Canada Imprisons People For Human Rights Activity
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:33 PM 8/21/96, Igor Chudov @ home wrote: >jbugden(a)smtplink.alis.ca wrote: >> Nota: Quebec recently held a referendum on seperation from Canada.=20 >> Just talk about secession of a state in the U.S., and you'll quickly see wh= >> ich >> country makes political ideas illegal. >> > >OK, so what would happen if I organized a party with the proclaimed goal >of secession of Oklahoma from the United States? > > - Igor. Almost certainly nothing. I believe there is an active secessionist movement in Alaska, and nothing has happened to them. (This does not mean they would ever be allowed to succeed in seceeding, of course.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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: Ruritania
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:18 PM 8/21/96, Censored Girls Anonymous wrote: > The Legend of Ruritania > >There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in this land there was >a strange phenomenon -- all the trees that grew there were transparent. >In the old days, the people had lived in mud huts. But now, high-tech wood ....... >to stop the recent wave of people thinking obscene thoughts about tomatoes, >which Dorothy Quisling noted was one of the major problems of the new age >of plenty and joy. >Member Internet Society - Certified BETSI Programmer - Webmistress >*********************************************************************** >Carol Anne Braddock (cab8) carolann(a)censored.org 206.42.112.96 Carol, I see no attribution for this. Did you write it? It looks very familiar, like something that was posted to the Cypherpunks list a couple of years ago. (I seem to recall Perry Metzger writing a similar, or even identical, piece.) If you wrote it, great. But if someone else wrote it, you should definitely mention this, and give a name if you have it. If you know someone besides yourself wrote it, but the name was unattached to the copy you got, this should also be mentioned. Again, if you wrote it, great. And I apologize for even hinting that you did not. But it sure looks familiar. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:55 PM 8/21/96, Asgaard wrote: >On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > >> There are technological fixes which I would favor over attempts to ban >> unwanted messages. > >In the meantime, before these technological fixes are easily implemented, >what is the proper way to handle unwanted commercial mail? > >1) delete immediately > >2) reply with 'Fuck off, morons!' > >3) as in 2) plus an attachment of some 1Mb file > >4) as in 3) plus a CC to the postmaster of the sending site Well, this actually just happened to me. I got a long message from the "Computer Currents" folks, for Yet Another Net Newsletter, "Inside Currents," saying they had added my name to their list and that if I wished to be removed I should a) paste a certain reply form into a section at the end of the message, b) readdress the reply to a person handling unsubscribes, c) blah blah blah. Instead, I just hit "Reply" and sent the message back to them. I wasn't sure if the message would go out to the original list or not, nor did I care. I didn't ask to be subscribed to their list, I wasn't interested in learning their indiosyncratic procedure for removing one's name, and they should have set up their distribution list so as not to allow recipients to post to the entire list (it is, after all, not a mailing list intended for postings by recipients). Well, my message and dozens of similar reply messages from others went out to the "Inside Currents" list, provoking an avalanche of even more replies, bounces, etc. "Computer Currents" is now feeling intense heat over this episode. (My latest message, sent two days ago, was entitled "Fuck "Computer Currents,"" and included my "How to Make a Pipe Bomb" sig. It hasn't come back to me, so maybe CC figured out how to turn off their spammish features.) (Hey, "spammish" is a nice word. Hackers can say, "Yeah, I took Spammish in high school.") --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:04 PM 8/21/96, Gary Howland wrote: >I always send a quick one liner - "Please send me more information". >Often I'll ask a stupid question too ("Does your software work in >France?"). If more people did this, then they'd have to choose their >victims a bit more carefully in the future (assuming of course they're >trying to sell something). As I said in my last message, I don't even do this--I just bounce it back to them. I see no need to "ask questions" (such as "Does it work in France?") to, perhaps, "establish legitimacy." If they sent it to me, I can send it back. Simple. And if their software is set up in a brain-damaged way, so that my bouncing it back to them also sends it out to their list, so much the better...at least in terms of helping to anger their potential customers. --Tim May (By the way, some of you younger folks may not remember all the creative ways people used to have to deal with unwanted junk mail. For "return postage provided" replies, they would often attach the return forms to large packages of stuff (sometimes even organic, stinky stuff) and let the junk mailer eat the postage charges at his end. Or they'd fill out the "get free stuff" forms with the addresses of local officials.) We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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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RISKS: Microsoft Explorer security hole
by stevenw＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 13:12:59 -0400 From: felten(a)CS.Princeton.EDU (Ed Felten) Subject: Internet Explorer Security Problem We have discovered a security flaw in the current version (3.0) of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser running under Windows 95. An attacker could exploit the flaw to run any DOS command on the machine of an Explorer user who visits the attacker's page. For example, the attacker could read, modify, or delete the victim's files, or insert a virus or backdoor entrance into the victim's machine. We have verified our discovery by creating a Web page that deletes a file on the machine of any Explorer user who visits the page. The core of the attack is a technique for delivering a document to the victim's browser while bypassing the security checks that would normally be applied to the document. If the document is, for example, a Microsoft Word template, it could contain a macro that executes any DOS command. Normally, before Explorer downloads a dangerous file like a Word document, it displays a dialog box warning that the file might contain a virus or other dangerous content, and asking the user whether to abort the download or to proceed with the download anyway. This gives the user a chance to avoid the risk of a malicious document. However, our technique allows an attacker to deliver a document without triggering the dialog box. Microsoft has been notified and they are working on fixing the problem. Until a remedy is widely available, we will not disclose further details about the flaw. For more information, contact Ed Felten at felten(a)cs.princeton.edu or 609-258-5906. Dirk Balfanz and Ed Felten Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/ ------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steven Weller | Technology (n): | | A substitute for adulthood. stevenw(a)best.com | Popular with middle-aged men.

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Re: Husband/Wife jailed for saying Clinton Sucks
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, jim bell wrote: > Frankly, I'd rather have a president who didn't feel the need to be > protected by thugs. Makes it easier to implement 'Assassination Politics' if you have to. :) William Knowles erehwon(a)c2.net -- William Knowles <erehwon(a)c2.net> PGP mail welcome & prefered / KeyID 1024/2C34BCF9 PGP Fingerprint 55 0C 78 3C C9 C4 44 DE 5A 3C B4 60 9C 00 FB BD Finger for public key -- Vote for Harry Browne in November -- http://www.HarryBrowne96.org

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