December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Unmetered Net Usage
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Science, August 2, reports on Net traffic jams and various schemes to ease the flow, including pricing correlated to speedier service. See: http://www.sciencemag.org/science/scripts/display/full/273/5275/585b.html The report is part of a special section on computer use in science, with three others on the Internet. For the full section see: http://www.sciencemag.org/science/scripts/display/full/273/5275/585.htm

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[NOISE] Re: Police prepare stunning e
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

pjn(a)nworks.com writes: Someone writes: >> The car stopper works by focusing an intense electromagnetic >> charge on the electronic systems that manage most modern >> engines, disabling them and paralysing the car. In the jargon >> of its inventors, the 150 kilovolt charge is a nemp, or non-nuclear >> electromagnetic pulse. Contractors are bidding to produce a >> police version. > Is there any dif between this and a HERF gun? Only that this is pretty real, while "HERF guns" have only appeared in science fiction novels, and in newspaper articles which seem to be from the 'Weekly World News' school of journalism. Go over the the amateur radio newsgroups, and you'll find that the interference of mobile ham radios with car ignitions is a well known issue. On a more speculative note, many years ago Harlan Ellison wrote an anti-statist short story entitled '"Repent Harlequin!" cried the Tick-Tock Man.' , in which the government required all adults to be surgically fitted with 'cardioplates', which allowed the state to turn off the hearts of uncooperative citizen-units by radio. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, plus lots of interesting links to remailer-related resources, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail. For more information, see: http://www.c2.org/~raph/premail.html For the PGP public keys of the remailers, finger pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{"extropia"} = "<remail(a)miron.vip.best.com> cpunk pgp special"; $remailer{"c2"} = "<remail(a)c2.org> eric pgp hash reord"; $remailer{"penet"} = "<anon(a)anon.penet.fi> penet post"; $remailer{"flame"} = "<remailer(a)flame.alias.net> cpunk mix pgp. hash latent cut post reord"; $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord ?"; $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"ecafe"} = "<cpunk(a)remail.ecafe.org> cpunk mix"; $remailer{"amnesia"} = "<amnesia(a)chardos.connix.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ksub"; $remailer{'alpha'} = '<alias(a)alpha.c2.org> alpha pgp'; $remailer{'nymrod'} = '<nymrod(a)nym.jpunix.com> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"lead"} = "<mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"nemesis"} = "<remailer(a)meaning.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"exon"} = "<remailer(a)remailer.nl.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"vegas"} = "<remailer(a)vegas.gateway.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"haystack"} = "<haystack(a)holy.cow.net> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"ncognito"} = "<ncognito(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> mix cpunk pgp hash latent"; $remailer{"lucifer"} = "<lucifer(a)dhp.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"jam"} = "<remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"winsock"} = "<winsock(a)c2.org> cpunk pgp hash cut ksub reord"; $remailer{'nym'} = '<config(a)nym.alias.net> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"balls"} = "<remailer(a)huge.cajones.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu is _not_ a remailer. usura(a)replay.com is _not_ a remailer. Groups of remailers sharing a machine or operator: (c2 alpha) (flame replay) (alumni portal) Use "premail -getkeys pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu" to get PGP keys for the remailers. Fingering this address works too. Note: The remailer list now includes information for the alpha nymserver. Last update: Mon 12 Aug 96 6:48:36 PDT remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- mix mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com -++--++-+--+ 2:22:53 99.96% haystack haystack(a)holy.cow.net *+*#*+*--### 21:59 99.95% balls remailer(a)huge.cajones.com *++# 6:01 99.95% lead mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu ++++++++--++ 1:59:31 99.94% replay remailer(a)replay.com *** **+***+* 5:07 99.91% nymrod nymrod(a)nym.jpunix.com #+** *####-# 23:23 99.90% penet anon(a)anon.penet.fi ------_.-- 14:43:28 99.55% jam remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca **** _.-**** 6:31:35 98.67% nemesis remailer(a)meaning.com **+ * **** 28:31 98.61% winsock winsock(a)c2.org ----..--_ - 18:19:17 97.80% amnesia amnesia(a)chardos.connix.com --- ------ 3:20:56 96.89% extropia remail(a)miron.vip.best.com __ ------ 10:03:23 91.52% ncognito ncognito(a)rigel.cyberpass.net -....----+ 7:57:35 89.83% alpha alias(a)alpha.c2.org +-+*+-_. 5:24:22 58.18% c2 remail(a)c2.org --+---.. 5:59:32 57.68% lucifer lucifer(a)dhp.com +--+++++ 53:57 56.99% History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. ek Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. mix Can accept messages in Mixmaster format. reord Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages. Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and haven't verified the reord info myself. mon Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email. filter Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages destined for public forums are subject to filtering. Raph Levien

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No Subject
by Michael Reusch 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

is now doing internet telephony (www.von.com) Who isnt? They have developed a set of voice morphing tools (www.voxware.com/meta.htm) and I quote: Morph-It offers an alternative. Morph-It allows multimedia developers and users to actually change, in real time, the character of encoded speech by altering resonance, pitch, timbre and other voice personality elements. With Morph-It, pitch and resonance can be altered independently. All these changes can be made and saved using a simple editor, and transformed voices can be stored as easy-to-apply VoiceFonts. Morph-It can be used for a variety of purposes: Multiple voice personalities can be created from a single voice recording. Users in "real-time" applications can disguise or alter their voices to enhance game- and role-playing. Vocal character can be easily transformed into virtually any form, whether from male to female, or from a child's to an adult's. End quote. I have not heard it work. Imagine drunken suits, in karioki bars, sounding like drunken Pavarottis, disk jockeys whose true voices are nasel whines, talking-heads and telemarketers using highly tuned voice-clones, home-alone children answering the phone as John Wayne.

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Re: India, Productivity, and Tropical Climes
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim writes: >Arun Mehta writes: > [huge snip] > >My prediction is that with the blessings of the Internet, the > >next generation of multiracial programmers, even those that were > >born in the USA, will be more likely to be found on the beaches > >of tropical islands than in the fog of San Francisco. When you > >can work in the shade of a palm tree, even if you should earn > >less, it's worth it :-) > As attractive as this sounds, historically this has not happened. And as > many will tell you, the climate of the Bay Area in particular and > California in general is extremely benign and delightful. The average > winter temperature is only about 10C cooler than summer temperatures. > Evenings are not balmy, but neither are they oppressively hot. 'Oppressive' is a subjective term, and is largely defined by what one is used to. Personally, I find the Bay area's climate very boring, too dry, and usually too hot (and yes, I've been there many times, at all parts of the year - I'm speaking from experience). Due to the lack of rain, the whole country side also seems much dirtier than a place where everything, both natural and artificial, gets a regular washing. > Interestingly, and not really related to CP themes, the fact is that is > that most technological developments have come out of cooler climes. Not a > lot of stuff from tropical and island climes. Maybe they realize life is > too good eating roast pig at the beach luau, maybe they are too lethargic > from the heat, maybe tropical diseases and mosquitos have taken their toll, > maybe.... The last time I heard this argument was in a documentary film about South African mining and agriculture, produced by South Africans, during the height of apartheid 'these great natuaral resources lay untapped until the arrival of a more industrious people, tempered by a colder climate...' While there *is* some truth that people living in environments where survival does not depend on long-term planning have less pressure to develop sophisticated industry, to claim that average temperature is the main determinate is betrays an ignorance of history. The technological pre-emminence of Northern Europe and derivative cultures is a very recent phenomenom. Civilization was invented in hot climates, and for most of history the more sophisticated cultures were in locations where you could sweat any time of the year - the Mediterranean basin, Mesopotamia, India, coastal China, Central America - in fact, in the classical period you could have mapped out a 'civilized belt' surrounding the globe in a distinctly sub-tropical climate. > I know an awful lot of folks who could easily affort to move to almost > anywhere in the world, and yet they stay in California. (I also know folks > moving to even cooler climes, in the U.S., especially less-crowded areas.) In any place you can name, most of the people who can afford to move to other areas do not do so. By your argument, Kuwait should be totally depopulated by now. > --Tim May Peter Trei trei(a)process.com Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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Re: Rumors of death of Anguilla Data are greatly exagerated.
by an584514＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Vince says: > And Anguilla is first and foremost a taxhaven. But it tries hard to be a > very clean taxhaven (does not want drug money etc). I think that "clean" > corporations operating here tax free is a potentially huge market. This is an illusion. There ain't no such thing as a clean corporation operating in a clean tax haven. Every overseas corp that is doing something they can't do without interference back onshore, is running the gauntlet. Remember, its my moral choice as to whether its dirty, and if I am sitting in some Washington quango office, and I decide its dirty, then it is. Plus its my job to fight it, and I'm not afraid of a dirty fight. And I got a list of contacts who've got friends who've got favours to call in... But you must know this, don't you follow the machinations that USG pulls in the region to try and close down the arbitrages? > Anguilla and OIS are not the data haven of cypherpunks wet dreams. Neither > Anguilla nor I want "hit men for hire" advertising here. Sorry Tim. And I > think the loss in clean business would outweigh any money from such by a > long shot. Nobody's talking about things that every body agrees are no-go. Shooting people is generally considered not acceptable. So please don't change the subject. What we are talking about is a fairly harmless concept. An obviously "fake" passport that is designed to fool the supposedly ignorant peasant terrorist when they wave grenades on the some flight from Miami, now going to Havana. It's a laughable concept, and one that most western governments have sniffed at and not lifted one finger to even warn about. OK, so there is a chance that a dumb clerk in a bank could be fooled. Still, opening a bank account with such a person could be done any number of ways. It's equally possible to imagine the Honduras passport being used to escape some sudaka warzone, without being shot for a gringo. Remember PGP? It was used for liberty, crime and freedom, all at once. > One simple example is that OIS was given a project Gutenberg CD-ROM and > may sell online copies of old books. Some countries are extending > copyrights back further into the past. Anguilla is not. So we could sell > books that have expired copyrights in Anguilla but not expired in USA etc. > Think regulatory arbitrage. Crap. It's obvious what book your talking about, if you get Europeans down there. It's about as harmless, or harmful, as "kill the Queen" rants, again its my moral choice. If a phone call from your lawyer causes such good responses, then there is no problem about getting this one made out-of-stock. Do you have a lot of tourists then from *that* place? What's the GDP take for the holiday trade anyway? > Taxhavens are a huge and well understood market. Datahavens are still > new. Not counting gambling, they may only be $0/year rounded to the > nearest million. The distinction is irrelevant. What are you going to do to protect my business? Now I know. SFA. I may be asking you for data protection, but my profits, which (might) pay you, come from a long line of other businesses. We're not all geeks. Tim makes good points, especially as he is not (as far as I can see) in the trade. When my company does business with such a jurisdiction, we look for the list of things allowed and the list of no-nos (which we respect). Then we look at the history of how that country stand up to its word. One thing is what they say, then another is what they do. It's surprising how easy it is to see just how much a place really wants your business for the long run. I will say this, it ain't really your fault that this happened. The webshop was too bright, too blatent. He talked to toublesome scam reporters. That sort of thing is going to bring in trouble. Softly softly catchee monkey is what is needed. Then when the phone rang my guess is it all happened to quickly. You win some you lose some. Lets not make a bad story get worse. Even though this is not a happy post (Anguilla was on our list) we still would like you to suceed. Our advice, worth what you paid, is don't advertise this event, one bad storm doesnt sink a ship. Take a look at all your webpages and tone down the noisy ones. Tell them to camoflage their location, no pun intended. Then, get down to your lawyers office and sit down over a beer and work out how your going to handle this thing next time. Properly. Publish (quietly but definatively) your list of no-nos (ok, that's already said). Think about what new shops want to do and talk it over with your man down at the bar (so you can predict the attacks). Learn some negotiating skills, soften the blow from both ends. Nothing I'm sure you hadn't thought of. Cheers, sorry for anonymity, but as I say, its softly softly in this game. Wish you luck. --****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--***ATTENTION*** Your e-mail reply to this message WILL be *automatically* ANONYMIZED. Please, report inappropriate use to abuse(a)anon.penet.fi For information (incl. non-anon reply) write to help(a)anon.penet.fi If you have any problems, address them to admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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Re: Fun with M$
by Dan Siemon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- > From: Rich Graves <llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu> > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: Fun with M$ > Date: Friday, August 09, 1996 8:46 PM > > On Fri, 9 Aug 1996, Jeremey Barrett wrote: > > > Information page with a link to a page which loads the control: > > > > http://www.halcyon.com/mclain/ActiveX/ > > > > Quote from the page: > > > > Exploder is an Active X control which demonstrates security problems with > > Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Exploder performs a clean shutdown of > > Win95 and will turn off the power on machines that have a power > > conservation BIOS (green machines). I don't see how anyone can call this a bug. Microsoft has chosen what Sun should have: leave the security to the user, don't take it away from everyone. Java has been sverly crippled by the removal of features that would have made applets truly usefull, like local disk access. By leaving these abilities and allowing the user to choose whether or not to run the object, leaves the trusted objects to be truly usefull. Microsoft has even designed a system of trust verification for these objects throught the trust chain and the MS download service. For details on the MS download service look at the july 96 issue of Microsoft Systems Journal. Security should be a user/parent decision not a general ban to protect a few.

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Re: Read; NOW
by Erle Greer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:29 PM 8/11/96 -0400, Unix_Code <unix_code(a)geocities.com> wrote: > Hi I'm Unix Code and have a few things to ask... Ok, go ahead... we're waiting... I thought you had a few things to ask? > (it may not go with >Cryptography but go ahead and read) Maybe I read it too fast. Not only did it have nothing to do with crypto, but I could not ascertain as to it's relevance to anything whatsoever. - I'm sorry, C-Punks; I couldn't resist, but I did keep it short. Vagab0nd<br> <a href="http://ww2.sd.cybernex.net/~vagab0nd/index.html">Visit web page for public key.</a>

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[NOISE] Re: Police prepare stunning e CUT_ags
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Trei <trei(a)process.com> Wrote: On a more speculative note, many years ago Harlan Ellison wrote an anti-statist short story entitled '"Repent Harlequin!" cried the Tick-Tock Man.' , in which the government required all adults to be surgically fitted with 'cardioplates', which allowed the state to turn off the hearts of uncooperative citizen-units by radio. -------- NYP reports today on the thriving market for Radio Frequency Identification (R.F.-ID) tags. And FiTi reports today on tagging cattle, tracking meat from cradle to abbatoir, to ward off mad cow assassination politics. Are these precursors of CU body-tags acoming from ARPA labs? E-Systems and a bunch of comp-conspirators just got supercalifrigalistic HPCC contracts. ----- For the NYT and FiTi reports, see: http://jya.com/cutags.txt CUT_ags

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Re: FCC_ups
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:58 PM 8/11/96 -0700, you wrote: >At 14:08 8/11/96, John Young wrote: >> 8-10-96. WaPo: >> >> "Phone Service Via the Internet May Slash Rates." >> >> Labs of Advanced Technology has developed a way for >> people to make long-distance calls over the Internet >> using only their telephones, at about half the price of >> ordinary toll calls. Customers would merely call a >> central number, then dial their long-distance numbers. >> The call is carried on the Internet, then put back onto >> the local phone system at its destination. The company >> plans to charge 5 to 8 cents per minute for all domestic >> U.S. calls, which represents a 50 to 75 percent discount >> off most domestic long-distance rates. > >I am glad to see some movement in this area. I designed a similar system >for a previous employer of mine. But the real choke point is the local >loop. As of this day, the local telos still have a de facto monopoly in the >local markets. The new competitors (the same old Phone Company) that we >will see in the near future seem to show no desire to deliver the really The real issue concerns the $0.03 per minute access fee that LD companies pay the local loop for voice communications. Seems there is difference between data bits and voice bits. VON has sparked this debate and the ISP's may end up paying the RBOCs the access fee. The way around that as well is through point to point wiring (and of course wireless systems). PairGain Technology is manufacturing a product that provides 384Kbps data and voice over a single pair of copper. Many RBOCs will sell you a LAD circuit which is point-to-point, unloaded, and unswitched. They go by different names : telegraph circuits, alarm circuits, Local Area Data Circuit. Ask a security company what kind of circuit they install. Your mileage may vary. --j

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