December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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

17 Dec '03

At 05:28 PM 8/21/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >(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.) Return reply envelopes can be alot of fun. In "A Handful of Zen" by Camden Benares (a book on Discordian Zen) he suggests collecting them. When you have something sufficiently weird for a mass mailing, you just fill a bunch of them and drop them in the local public posting bin. An interesting way to releave the daily stress... --- | "Remember: You can't have BSDM without BSD. - alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com "| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Any CPs in D.C.?
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I will be in D.C. through Saturday. I'd like to meet some Cypherpunks that feel like getting to know what Lucky looks like :-) If you are in D.C., give me a call at my hotel. (202) 682-0111 x440 --Lucky

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Re: Canada Imprisons People For Human Rights Activity
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Or About 21 Aug 96, 22:15, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > Alaska rightfully belongs to Russia, as do California and Hawaii. > No way. We bought that stuff. Then we spent the USSR into the dark ages, winning the Cold War. Right? Huh? What? Ross (Boy do I Hate Those Pesky Spammers) Wright =========== Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: 415-206-9906

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[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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Re: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Or About 20 Aug 96, 18:09, Rich Graves wrote: > On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote: > > > I don't know if there has been much discussion on the ethics of > > spamming here? Is spamming free speech? > > Yes. > > So is mailbombing the motherfucker, or more productively, virtually > picketing his ISP until they kick him off for net abuse That is the kind of self righteous crap that gives me the creeps!!! > > Ethically? We don't talk ethics much here, but I'd say it's highly > unethical to abuse a service paid for by the pooled resources of > many. I pay for my net access. I pay for my Sunday paper, it's full of ads too!! Ethics??? Let's rat out on the EVIL spammers!! Let's turn them into thier ISP!!! That's a load of CRAP!!!! Ross =========== Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: 415-206-9906

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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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The grey lady puts on some boots and rides a horseman or two...
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm listening to the BBC's World Service at the moment, and they're doing a feature on pedophiles on the internet, complete with much knashing of teeth about encryption and anonymity, along with some lurid stuff about private holding cells, and sexual tourism, and slavery. And Lions. And Tigers. And Bears. Oh My. They even had a quote from someone at Wired (a Brit, didn't catch the name), who sounded like he was wringing his hands about unbreakable encryption. Probably spliced out of a larger quote which had more sense in it. Be afraid, be very afraid. They're coming for your daughters. The BBC says so. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Husband/Wife jailed for saying Clinton SucksHusband/Wife jailed for say
by John C. Randolph 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Frankly, I'd rather have a president who didn't feel the need to be > protected by thugs. Well, wouldn't that require a president who had a clear conscience? I don't think we've had one of those since Eisenhower! -jcr

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Re: Husband/Wife jailed for saying Clinton Sucks
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:47 PM 8/21/96 -0400, 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." Doesn't sound much like a "threat" to me. > And the couple was arrestd for disorderly conduct by >Chicago police. It sounds to me like the Chicops were just showing their "loyalty" by sitting on somebody, not that they believed any real crime had been committed. > 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. But it isn't even a "threat", regardless of how "serious" it was. The "I hope you die" part is, presumably, a statement of fact: She did, indeed, hope he dies. But I don't see how hoping this can be considered a threat, or even SAYING she's hoping this is, likewise. Makes me wonder whether visiting one of these appearances with a "Clinton Doll" and a bunch of pins, and visibly inserting those pins into the doll (while uttering various strange incantations), would constitute a "threat." Frankly, I'd rather have a president who didn't feel the need to be protected by thugs. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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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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