December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [Noise] Hettinga Sees Colors...
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:20 PM 7/22/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: >Anyway, I was standing there at the monument to the British war dead ;-), >and said to the kids (ages 15, 13, and 11), "Guys, right here, on this >spot," (they looked down) " is were America [sic] started. If you could >imagine the ground here painted red, white and blue, and then the colors >radiating out from here in all directions", (they looked around) "from the >Atlantic to the Pacific, to Alaska and Hawaii, and bunch of islands in both >oceans. Oh, yeah. Even the Moon." Then they looked up. By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmer's stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. See also: http://www.inc.net/~fhs/littour/bridge.html Relevant to cypherpunks because to steal from Nelson Thall of some Marshall McLuhan Institute in the latest Wired: "Ultimately, the power of the Internet is that it makes you think like a North American. It allows the entire world to think and write like North Americans. This is the agenda of the Internet. It goes along with NAFTA." An *why* is it vital that the world become like 'North Americans' (or, as we non-Canadians would say 'Americans')? See my follow-up message. DCF

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A Global Village; an open letter to Bill & Hill and also Mr. & Mrs. Dole, from Asim at Molecule One. Cypherpunks, please excuse this note.
by molecul1＠molecule1.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Honourable wishes, I write about Mrs. Clinton's concept of Global Village and wholeheartedly, pledge my support to such an important concept. The world is everchanging and Mrs. Clinton is correct in that the industrialized countries have lost, most, of their extended families. This makes children vulnerable to danger. If in need of help, such children are commonly abused due to their vulnerability. I want to take this moment to express some understandings. Firstly, it was never in my plan to locate where I have been over the last while. Probably, if it hadn't been for many malicious encounters, I probably would of gone to a remote island, as I hold so dear to my heart. A close friend was severly violated and I had to witness a war being fought against civillians. When an insurance policy becomes more valuable than the human life, something must be wrong with social ethics. To live through many of the experiences I had to, while living here, made me realize high technology is dangerous in many peoples lives. To manipulate peoples decisions using brute force seemed terribly wrong to me. Many of the people controlling the situations are also stressed out. Abuse results from stress. Concerning the old man. I knew of this man since childhood. I always considered him one of the greatest neuroscientists on the planet earth. Even his friends hold him with a greatest respect. What he accomplished, very few could match his accomplishments. I send much thanks to Point Communications for allowing me a long interview about my social concerns. I wanted to personally thank all the K12 students that partook in my interview. I was never able to attend the requests of some of those students, that asked me to review some of their essays, as my time was occupied with endless other obstacles. I want those students to understand that I just couldn't. I want to thank all those cool students that let me participate at their, private, dance parties. They know I attended endless dance parties, researching technological requirements, so they are happy and socially satisfied. I also got to know what kind of social threats they are faced with, both, underground and official. Stress does tend to corrupt some people. I want you to understand that I came up with Molecule One as a means to address the needs of a culture. Even though many plots were directed at me for proposing this project, I always knew I spoke the truth and my intentions were pure. Neurosciences has always been a lifelong inspiration to me. Standards, to improve the quality of life in society, seemed a noble goal. I want the students to know that Molecule One was created for their benefit first. They are the future. When a child remains innocent, that innocence should be protected. Far too often, children loose their innocence to hardend people, who's primary motive is malicious intent. Naivete and innocence is purity and lack of ethical standard is rampent. I knew that acceptance of truth is difficult for some people, especially those ignorant and those conditioned to believe otherwise. I always chose positive as an outcome for motive. I want to thank all of you, Republican, Democrat, and families, friends and which other political inspiration. I respect all life and those standards that can increase the health standard of all people. There are many important factors that must be considered to insure a safe and healthy society, of the future. To work together, to attain this standard, is important for all people, irregardless of color. Care and courtesy, toward our fellow people, is another social characteristic that is becoming lost, with the loss of the extended family. I also want to thank all those cool computer folk that let me play upon the info highway, as it was being developed. I want to thank all those cyberfolk that recognised the import of all topics covered. Understand well, visions of tropical islands have floated through my mind, probably, everyday I've been here. It was my concern for the youth and for the elderly that made me stay and attempt to create a project that could bring happiness and harmony, to the society, for a long time to come. It is a challenge. Thanks for the cyber inspiration, acknowledgement and being allowed the opportunity to create a work of art that can benefit so many. To the 1'st family & 2 Mr.& Mrs. Dole, all friends and families. Peace and best wishes, Sincerely, Asim molecul1(a)molecule1.com

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Re: Another fascist
by Remo Pini 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Tue Jul 23 14:13:43 1996 It's kind of childish... (And clumsily done, or else David would never have known) - --------< fate favors the prepared mind >-------- Remo Pini rp(a)rpini.com PGP: http://www.rpini.com/remopini/rpcrypto.html - ------< words are what reality is made of >------ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMfTB+BFhy5sz+bTpAQGCGAgAvbFSYoLn1aogjB4fIu8RRrCiSVo8zAl+ 9ilpfYQ7jaKnzO8kJsz40NWu4jPTYbgqw7wYbw4e37XYGCLdBAqUT/0SSwCF/id2 nyVLU09vGiAtjZUsLTQRjTd2qF89CwcxcEWtEu3LjTKI8z5QD5L+O8yeh444dXbH Jhu42Cho0gGfAqK8SvzZzX7LDh4N0tQox2s9lc4XqisioBRRI0f4MOEqrOfGz+2/ MWOxaySADXJJ2Xp+yRLhFuH2n92VIenH4lzU2r8dmnGD4/PYoZsE+GSeO5dyohdl cn4gmB57S5aBsu235eCatqMEtk3auqAJfDCaIInX2rlaZS/47TpTQg== =iyK1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Another fascist
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:26 PM 7/22/96 -0700, David Sternlight <david(a)sternlight.com> wrote: >One of the great friends of free speech on this list sent a forged cancel >message to the listbot to try to cancel my subscription. >The listbot, being reasonably well designed, ignored him and told me about >it, though I have no doubt less of a dunce could bring it off. >What a piece of slime! What do others think of this practice? Yeah, it's slimy. If somebody wanted to be rude to you personally, they could have sent you flames telling you to go away; if they wanted to be rude to you publicly, they could have imitated many others (:-), and if they simply wanted you to not exist they could have installed procmail or used a killfile-capable mailer like Pegasus or Commercial Eudora and defined you out of existence. If the listbot sends you their name, you could always, umm, escrow them or something..... (In a killfile, no one can hear you flame...) (I have tried to remove people from the list, if they've sent it mail asking to "Unsuscrive" or whatever, but at least for the last long while that's failed; you at least need a half-way attempt at forgery.) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs # Confuse Authority!

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Re: Question
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:25 PM 7/23/96, pjn(a)nworks.com wrote: >OK...A question for you all: > > If it is illegal (by our governments standards...) to export programs >like PGP, etc., and you can send the whole source code in a message >because that is also considered illegal, then could you send the code, >broken up into many pieces, and send THAT in Email, would that be >illegal? I don't think this has been spelled-out clearly in the ITARs, much less tested in court, but the intent is clearly to subvert the ITARS. Isomorphic to shipping out a piece of military hardware in pieces, wouldn't you say? And don't forget the "structuring" laws regarding the reporting of cash transactions over $10K. I don't think this has much promise. --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: Brute-forcing DES
by koontz＠netapp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>At 3:06 AM 7/23/96, Steve Reid wrote: >>Did you consider the possibility of DES chips in your back-of-the-envelope >>calculations? They are hundreds of times faster than PCs. I don't know >>where to get them or how much they cost, though. I would expect they >>wouldn't be too expensive. The cash might be better spent on DES chips >>than on a prize. >Specialized DES-cracker chips have of course been considered. Actually hardware DES can be thousands of times faster than PCs. The problem with using commercially available DES chips is that you need to load keys, do encrypts and XOR the output with the ciphertext looking for all 0's or all 1's, in a serial fashion. Commercial DES chips don't have the facilities for doing comparisons or loading a new key while encrypting with the previous, not to mention the ability to increment the key value. >The advantage of the cracks done last year, the French and Australian >cracks, and the MIT cracks, were that the "entry costs" for joining the >project were low. >--Tim May The lowest cost entry for hardware crackers would probably be FPGA based (lower NRE). I could design one that would do say 2 - 4 million DES ops per second and cost less than 60 dollars (a PCI interface and cheap card). Anyway, hardware cracking can be done on a smaller scale than Wieners 30 Million DES ops/second, and it could still prove valuable. The good news is that software and hardware efforts are no more incompatible than using different performing machines. If someone steps forward with 1728 Giga DES ops machine, they can have as much of the key space as they can handle. I could probably manage a 100 M DES ops hardware machine before my wife wondered what I was spending the money for the new driveway on (and I would use reprogrammable FPGAs). I would also be inclined to run software on a couple of workstations at home, and an incidental PC or Alpha at work.

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Re: Netscape
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:52 AM 7/23/96 -0700, David Sternlight wrote: >At 5:09 PM -0700 7/22/96, Ted Anderson wrote: >> >>I must agree with Lucky. I am quite sure that even if Netscape was not >>begin distributed over the net, copies would still be uploaded to >>international sites by folks practicing Civil disobedience. > >To call simple lawbreaking by cowards working in secret "civil >disobedience" is to defame the name of Gandhi, King, and all the legitimate >protesters of modern history. Civil disobedience must be seen publicly, and >must be done by observable individuals. Masked men throwing stink bombs is >not civil disobedience--it's hooliganism. As usual, while you have at least the hint of a truth there, you manage to warp it just enough to be difficult to recognize. Historically, the the government has had nominal control of the media. The only civil disobedience that was _seen_ to be successful were the examples that made the news. And the "only" examples which made the news were the ones the government wanted to publicize. And the "only" examples the government wanted to publicize were the ones in which government "successfully" made examples of those doing it. And the "only" examples where the government achieved this were the ones where the perpetrator allowed himself to be caught. (my usages of the word, "only," are somewhat hyperbolic, of course. In practice, they are strong probabilities.) Your usage of the word, "legitimate" is quite slick (in the worst sense of the word, "slick"): The only ones you're going to want to acknowledge were "legitimate" are the ones that either are already successful, or the few you approve of and are still waiting to be successful. So, in a certain odd sense, it has been correct to say that the only "successful" (and thus, by your standards, "legitimate") civil disobedience has been that in which the perpetrator did it openly. And not surprisingly, anyone who does anything in such a way that he's not caught (and therefore, is also not subject to government-sponsored publicity) is a "coward" by your standards. How convenient! A rather sophisticated self-fulfilling prophecy. No wonder you've got some people fooled into believing you're a good debator. Fast-forward to 1996. Today, the traditional news media is beginning to be seriously bypassed by the computer networks, and this process is accelerating. No longer can the government keep enough control of the news media in order to help ensure that civil disobedience stays covered up unless they catch the protestor. Since everything else seems to be changing, it's no surprise that civil disobedience is, too. Today, civil disobedience still needs publicity, but to achieve that it now DOESN'T need the cooperation of the mainstream media, or implicitly the government. So a person doesn't need to be "caught" in order to win. The _results_ must be publicized, the person or people who did it doesn't. This represents a rather enormous change in the whole issue of civil disobedience, a change which is extraordinarily unwelcome among governments and statists alike. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Intel, Microsoft doing Internet Phone Software
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:47 AM 7/23/96 -0400, W Lee Nussbaum wrote: > > >On Mon, 22 Jul 1996, jim bell wrote: > >> If these people REALLY wanted to promote the use of Internet telephoning, >> what they'd do is implement a system where an Internet ISP could be "called" >> over the Internet by a person wanting to place an LD telephone call to that >> area, and (presumably using A/D and D/A techniques) rather than generating >> and receiving modem tones, woudl generate and transmit the audio over the >> telephone line. That way, the target of the call would simply need to pick >> up the telephone and talk, as he would ordinarily do: He wouldn't even need >> a computer. He might not even know the call was going over the Internet. > >...see IDT's Net2Phone product, at http://www.net2phone.com/; it does >what you describe. Two notes: (1) I haven't used it yet; (2: disclosure) >I'm now employed by IDT, though in a different area. Excellent! It seems that the one remaining piece in the puzzle is financial motivation. Many ISP's might hesitate to install a "feature" on their systems which has the prospect of tying up some of their lines, with no payback. As much as it pains me to face it, at this point what is needed is some system to pay the ISP's for maintaining and even upgrading their systems to make this whole thing practical. Currently, Sprint is proud to announce that they charge 10 cents a minute for off-peak calls. Could an ISP make money charging, say, 2 cents a minute for a similar service? The main marginal cost is that of an extra phone line, which is probably about $30 per month or $1 per day. Assuming the line is occupied 8 hours per day, that's 480 minutes, which means that the phone line costs 0.2 cents per minute. Even if other costs increase this by a factor of 5 or so, there should be nothing to prevent an ISP from making money off a 2 cent per minute charge or even less. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Flaws of Thinkers (Jefferson, Rand, Nietzsche, Voltaire, etc.)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:40 AM 7/23/96, bryce(a)digicash.com wrote: >I know a lot about Rand, and about her deep flaws as an >individual, especially in terms of treatment of her supporters, >but this is the first I've heard of this one. Perhaps Tim is >thinking of a play by Murray Rothbard called "Mozart Was a Red" >in which the Ayn Rand caricature insists that her followers >smoke. > >As for smoking being "proof" of man's dominance over nature, >Rand _did_ believe that in the sense of "demonstration" or >"symbol" but she did not believe that in the rigorous sense of >"proof". This was well-known to a bunch of us in the early 70s who were interested in Rand (and her extreme followers, known widely as "Randroids"). I think some of her essays in her Objectivist Newsletter had explained why smoking was essentially de rigeur. (By the way, at the time Rand was writing this stuff, doctors were recommending smoking as a digestive and health aid, and nearly everyone smoked. I don't condemn Rand for smoking, or for falling into the all-too-common practice of using "logic" to justify one's beliefs and practices.) Rothbard was a source for the smoking example, but not in a play (although he may have also used his knowledge in a play...I wouldn't know). Rothbard wrote an article for "Liberty," circa 1986-8, which is where I read the details. Also, I believe Barbara Branden's biography of Rand dealth with this, but I haven't read it in many a year. And there is this comment, from an admittedly off-beat source (http://www.zonpower.com/zonpower/book/chapters/chapter29.html) "Whatever the root of his irrationality, Dr. Peikoff's persona shrinks with his advocating force-backed intolerance as he expressed during his 1995 Ford Hall Forum lecture. Recall how Ayn Rand's life wastragically diminished by her irrational, deadly, "dot-of-light" glamorization of smoking. Her emotional, irrational denials of the narcotically addictive, physically destructive nature of tobacco smoking led her and some of her "caped" followers to the grave." --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: Digital Watermarks (long, getting off-topic)
by Alex F 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Easy enough. > > - Unless somebody reversed-engineered it, filtered it, and re-stamped it. Never said that it would be fool proof :) > - The entertainment industry has a reputation of being paranoid Sometimes with good reason, just like software producers are paraniod about piracy. Though, the Ent. Ind. does tend to overreact. IMO the copyright laws that are currently in place are enough to protect against the forms of piracy that they are trying to protect themselves against. I really don't think that there is need for new legislation or potentially privacy invading practices at this point. The forgers of the copyright laws (at least as they relate to music) had incredible foresight. Basically, from the laws that were originally drafted (30's maybe? Then revised in the early '70's at least as far as public domain goes) both videos and CDs are protected. These were written when there were no CDs or videos. > Some of you may recall > the flap over DAT, which significantly reduced the consumer market > penetration (the industry itself uses them all over the place). The Ent. Ind. got what they wanted though. There are taxes, etc. (some sort of import restrictions anyway) that keep DAT player/recorder devices at around $700 per unit. By this time normally the prices *should* be down to like $200 (using the CD industry as a guide) DATs are used all over the industry because they are cheap (see below), and because going from analog tape to DAT for CD mastering is a million times easier then sending off reels of analog tape, even if the tape is a properly mixed down duplicate of the master. There are still track times, numbers, etc., etc. A HUGE pain in the ass for CD manufacturers, but easy to do on a one-off basis in the studio where the producer & artist can sit there and help mix, fix tracks, select times, indexes, etc., etc. It can all be done to a single DAT )(which would then be copied for safety) and set along with a time code sheet. > (you still > have the even-less-effective argument of the associated cover art not > being included or being scanned and duplicated with reduced signal > quality, unless the distribution is all on-line). Cover art is pretty easy to duplicate if you have access to a color laser printer. Just scan the original in at 300dpi, and print it out at the same resolution/size and you have it. Just don't scan it in as a .GIF :) (too few colors) > Probably not done that way. My guess is that the disk ID is assigned > to the disk at the time of manufacturing. At the point of purchase > the customer is forced to give name, address, ID, whatever. This is > then stored in a database > > - Would YOU want to be responsible for maintaining that database? It's > like maintaining a hardware store trying to maintain an ID on every > single screw and nail in inventory. You would run into the same problems if it were done by CC. Hopefully the industry will do some sort of a cost-analysis (an accurate one) and realize that they would spend more on this than they lose (esp. since they still wouldn't eliminate piracy, just make it a little more difficult). > - Nobody's going to try and do a higher-frequency encoding (I HOPE). While > the human ear cannot hear those frequencies directly, we have found out > that those higher-frequencies interact in such a way to influence the > sound waves that influence what the user can hear. Yes, that's true. Anyone ever hear of HAARP? :) Certain frequencies can affect the brain in certain ways (a guy by the name of Robert A Monroe, while maybe a little eccentric, has been using this method since the 50's to do things like keep people awake when they are sleepy, vice versa, etc.). Also the body. Your body parts resonate a certain frequencies. For example, there is a very low note (I believe that it is a B) that vibrates at the same frequency as your bowels. Play that note, and you loose control... :) (If anyone knows this frequency, PLEASE let me know. I'm serious :) ). This is the reason > there's still a debate between digital and analog recordings, and is > still a big reason a lot of artists still record on analog equipment > (in musical "fuzzy" terms, it's equated with the warmth of the sound, > sort of like the tube-amp vs. solid-state amp debate among some guitar > players, etc.) If somebody deliberately played with such frequencies, > the journalistic media would probably have a field day. Yes, there are > audio cancelling and other tricks that could be deployed, but no matter > what, you're still deliberately introducing signal noise I touched on that in my other posting. The real difference between analog vs. digital is actually 2 things; static and musical "overtones" (used to produce various distortion effects and feedback, for example. ANyone who has listened to Robin Trower, Hendrix, Van Halen, etc. knows). People *are* playing with these frequencies. It's known as COSM or Composite Object Sound Modeling, and apparently is fuzzier (as in fuzzy logic, not fuzzy sound) than cold sampling is. Companies like Roland and Line6 are playing with such things. Roland is really doing some amazing things with this technology. > If I remember correctly, there is plenty of room in the design of the > audio CD protocal to embed such information, just like you can embed > the timing and track number information. Yeah, that's something else too. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but I *think* it's like a 1Khz or 1 hz signal that signals this. At least it is for the start of the first track on a cd. In the manufacturing process, at least > - Well, the MASS market piraters are exactly the point. Well, let's face > it, if the industry controllers got their way, there would be no > second-hand market like garage sales - there IS money involved here > (witness the bizarre dealings with CD-rental stores that have shown up The thing is, there is no money lost, really. Think about it. In order for one CD to be bought at a garage sale, someone else had to buy it at a retail store. If the record companies were in the used CD business then there may be money lost, but otherwise. The place where real money is lost is sale of promo CDs (many say "Promotional copy. Not for sale" on them). Here the record company loses nothing. The artist loses big time. With the exception of Sony records, most record companies will only pay artists royalties on 85% of records sold. The other 15% is said to be "promotional material" which is a huge scam run by the recording industry to take advantage of the artists. These 15% are still paid for (manufacturing, etc.) by the artist, and are given away to radio stations, etc. There is where the real money is lost. The rest is lieing with numbers. Getting off topic, Alex F =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Alex F alexf(a)iss.net Marketing Specialist Internet Security Systems =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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