December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by David Loysen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[CHOMPED] > Close, but not quite: >S/A is an ADJUSTABLE variable, not on/off. it can reduce accuracy to >10 meters or 100 meters or whatever. It's a DoD term, not NWO term. > The "this is where you really are" percision location (forgot >the designation off hand) is ENCRYPTED (yes, there is crypto >revelance here...) in the data stream from the satellites. The >difference S/A makes is on the order of magnitude, therefore not >"useless." It should be pointed out that different regions of the >earth can have different degrees of accuracy based on the S/A system. > I doubt S/A will ever be turned off, but this is my opinion. I >know Jim's opinion. Discussion of this point is pointless. > DGPS transmission are made from a multiple single points, which >(to the best of my knowledge) are not networked. > glenn Does anyone else get a little upset at the thought of one Government agency (DoD) spending money to install the GPS system, then making it less accurate than it should be, and then a second Government agency (US Coast Guard) spending money to improve the system by installing DGPS stations. Plus, in order to get the real accuracy of GPS right now I have to spend more money on a much more expensive DGPS unit. Pisses me right the F### off.

1 0

Demonizing the Opposition: Bruce "The Toolman" Taylor
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At CFP96, Bruce Taylor, Brock Meek's "lawyer with brass balls", and Declan McCullagh's "architect of the CDA" (who seems like a Pretty Stand-Up Guy, except he wants to tell us how to think), sat on the dias and made repetitive inflamatory references to a picture of "female genitalia nailed to a board", and others to a picture of "a penis with a blister on it", citing them as examples of the Rampant Filth and Corruption We Find on the Internet Today, Brothers and Sisters, Say Haleluja. Unfortunately, as hard as I tried to remain true to the Spirit of CFP, and not Demonize the Opposition, I couldn't help but come up with a spiffy new moniker for Mr. Taylor, which I will try to remember to use from time to time, viz., Bruce "Penis with a Blister" Taylor abbreviated PWAB, or "Blister" I suppose Of course, the CDA-able version of this proposed new handle would be, Bruce "The Toolman" Taylor shortened to "Toolie"? "The Tool"? "Toolboy"? ;-). Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/

1 0

Mardi Gra Cash Card
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WSJ 4-12-06 reports that England's "Mardi Gra" bomber is demanding of Barclays "access to the bank's cash reserves through the use of a special cash card, although details could not be confirmed." Police are communicating with the bomber through cryptic notices in personal columns of newspapers, the latest stating: "MARDI GRA We are ready to help and give value. Contact us on the verification number." Barclays says 25 bombs have been sent to its branches. The bomber -- who has been compared to America's Unabomber -- may be a former employee among those 18,500 laid off during the past 5 years, or a small businessman with a grudge. [Or ...]

1 0

Re: questions about bits and bytes
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:17 PM 4/11/96 -0500, Sten Drescher wrote: >>>>>> jim bell writes: > >jb> At 06:29 PM 4/10/96 -0700, Simon Spero wrote: >>> No, bytes are no always 8 bits - some machines use(d) 9-bit bytes. > >jb> I notice you gave no examples. Why is that? > > As I recall, the Honeywell H6000 used 6-bit bytes and 36-bit >(6 byte) words. Here's the problem with this kind of counter-example: You do not explain whether or not these data structures were actually called "bytes" by the manufacturer, or whether the term "byte" was inflicted later on by people who didn't know better. Remember, in the absence of any name for a "6-bit data object" I'm sure the temptation was probably very strong to misuse a term, especially in hindsight. See, I do not challenge the fact that there were plenty of data objects of length other than 8-bits. The issue is whether or not the people back then actually believed that a correct, official usage of the term "byte" included lengths other than 8. Dmitri Vulis at least acknowledged that when he looked back into the documentation, he discovered that the term used for his counter-example was "character", not byte. How many other of these counter-examples would show this kind of thing?

4 4

Re: On computer face recognition:
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:14 PM 4/11/96, David Loysen wrote: >Take a peak at http://www.neci.nj.nec.com/homepages/lawrence/papers. One of >Lawences papers is on using Neural networks to recognize faces. Methinks >that the state of the art is advancing rapidly and such problems as not >looking at the camera or changing your expression are rapidly being overcome. One system I read up on a few years ago relied heavily on ear shape....it seems that the profile of ears varies tremendously and ear profiles are fairly easy to get a kind of hash of, assuming the ear profile is not obstructed by hair. "Get a haircut" may once again return to favor. --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, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

2 1

Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Roger Williams <roger(a)coelacanth.com> > >>>>> Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> writes: > > > Note however that Denning did not mention the Internet in her > > spiel. > > Well, assuming that she wrote *any* of the spiel, she does: > > "Where it works > > ... Location-based > authentication could facilitate telecommuting by countering the > vulnerabilities associated with remote access over dial-in lines and > Internet connections..." She wrote it. The original of the paper may be found at http://all.net/journal/csi/csi-96-01.html Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

1 0

Re: On computer face recognition:
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:48 PM 4/11/96, Alan Horowitz wrote: >How do _people_ recognize faces? Still an open question, last I heard. It may be unknowable, at least in a formal sense. That is, we know that babies can recognize the faces of their mothers in fractions of a second (no, I don't have a reference for this, but I remember the number from my days as an AI person at Intel). There may be no simple description that is used, such as angles between eye line and mouth, convexity of chin, whatever. What is important is that face recognition happens in about 30-100 "cycles" of the brain, implying massive parallelism (hardly surprising). There are, of course, very few recognition algorithms that run on conventional computer architecures in so few cycles. By "unknowable" I don't mean "supernatural," merely not practically describable as an algorithm runnable on conventional von Neumann-type machines. "Neural net" is the buzzword usually associated with this. --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, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

2 1

Re: why compression doesn't perfectly even out entropy
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:36 AM 4/11/96, jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: >At 10:36 PM 4/9/96 -0400, JonWienke(a)aol.com wrote: >> Would anyone like to propose a means of measuring entropy that we can all >> agree on? I haven't seen anything yet that everyone likes. > >Nor will you: To measure entropy is a deep unsolved philosophical >and physical problem. Indeed. That there can be no simple definition of entropy, or randomness, for an arbitrary set of things, is essentially equivalent to Godel's Theorem. (To forestall charges that I am relying on an all-too-common form of bullshitting, by referring to Godel, what I mean is that "randomness" is best defined in terms of algorithmic information theory, a la Kolmogorov and Chaitin, and explored in Li and Vitanyi's excellent textbook, "Algorithmic Information Theory and its Applications.") Think of it this way: when can a set of things, a string, etc., be _compressed_. Answer: whenever a compression is found. Most things have no real compressions, that is, they have no shorter description than themselves. But they _might_ have a shorter description, a compression, and we can never say for sure that they do not. Thus, even a set which we think is of "high entropy" (roughly, "high randomness" or "no order" or "not compressible") may actually have some hidden order, or compressibility, not apparent at first glance. That we can never know when we have achieved maximum compression is a profound result of modern mathematics and information theory. --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, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

2 1

[NOISE] Why there are so many cluless people
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Today, I heard a commercial on the radio. Some company wants to help you make $1k+ per day as an Internet expert. Simply listen to their one week audio tape course and you know everything you need to work as an Internet consultant. Sigh, -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

3 2

Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[ Dorothy - there's been substantial discussion on cypherpunks about your position escrow proposal; the paper that's on your web page was posted here.] At 03:01 PM 4/11/96 -0400, perry(a)piermont.com wrote: >Paul_Koning/US/3Com%3COM(a)smtp1.isd.3com.com writes: >> Suppose I want to pretend that I am 1000 feet closer to satellite 4 than >> I really am. Simple, I take the signals from all the other satellites >> and delay them by 1 microsecond. That looks like a 1 microsecond >> local timebase error together with a 1 microsecond delay reduction >> to satellite 4. >Aren't things even worse? Since the satelite signals are not >authenticated with anything like public key methods, couldn't I just >synthesize a signal appropriate to any spot on the planet, knowing the >positions of the satelites relative to that spot? No, you can't. One problem is that the Selective Availability coding isn't predictable, since it uses some kind of secret military code - so you don't know what its values are until you hear them. So as long as you share any satellites with the recipient, you need to be sure to output the correct codes for that satellite, which means you need to either be in range or have access to some internet "position remailer" site that's making them available. As far as predicting relative timing between satellites to fake your position, if that's sufficiently unpredictable that you can't fake it, as Denning and MacDoran say, then it should also be equally unpredictable to the verifier who wants to know if you're telling the truth or faking it. And if you require systems to respond to requests for "Where are you now?" or especially "Where were you on the night of April 13th at 8:37pm?", the spoofer can request that information just as easily as the verifier. One method that could be used to prevent faking is GPS receivers with "tamperproof" digital signature capability, which would not only receive the location information but sign it; that's not much more secure than just having a "tamperproof" token in the first place. As far as the multipath issues that some people have brought up, I searched for "MacDoran" on altavista, and found several papers on GPS multipath, so they're aware of the issue, though I don't know how they're planning to address it. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215

1 0