December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Culling the proles with crypto anarchy
by Jeff Ubois 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The numbers quoted in the press were based on a study by the Cato Institute, "The Work Welfare Trade-Off: An Analysis of the Total Level of Welfare Benefits by the State" by Michael Tanner, Stephen Moore, and David Hartman, September, 1995. It's at <http://www.cato.org/research/pr-nd-st.html>. Extracts: * To match the value of welfare benefits, a mother with two children would have to earn as much as $36,400 in Hawaii or as little as $11,500 in Mississippi. * In New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Alaska, and Rhode Island, welfare pays more than a $12.00-an-hour job--or more than two and a half times the minimum wage. * In 40 states welfare pays more than an $8.00-an-hour job. In 17 states the welfare package is more generous than a $10.00-an-hour job. * Welfare benefits are especially generous in large cities. Welfare provides the equivalent of an hourly pretax wage of $14.75 in New York City, $12.45 in Philadelphia, $11.35 in Baltimore, and $10.90 in Detroit. * In 9 states welfare pays more than the average first-year salary for a teacher. In 29 states it pays more than the average starting salary for a secretary. In 47 states welfare pays more than a janitor earns. Indeed, in the 6 most generous states, benefits exceed the entry-level salary for a computer programmer. At 01:27 AM 12/3/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 4:06 PM -0500 11/27/96, Clay Olbon II wrote: >>At 12:46 PM 11/27/96 -0800, Dave Kinchlea <security(a)kinch.ark.com> wrote: > >>>I am not in a position to argue with you, I simply don't have the facts. >>>My question is, do You? can you cite where this figure came from, it >>>sounds like Republican rhetoric to me. Of course, I will point out, that >>>minimum wage is simply not enough to feed a family. It is (or at least >>>it should be) reserved for single folks just starting out. >> >>Can't give you the exact date, but it was an article in our local paper (The >>Detroit News). The $10 figure is not exact, as the actual number varies >>from state to state, I remember that number as being about average. > >I can confirm the gist of Clay's point: I saw a table listing "effective >hourly welfare pay" for the 50 states and D.C. This was in the "San Jose >Mercury News," at least 8-10 months ago (and presumably elsewhere, as it >was a major story). I used it in one of my articles, and gave the reference >then (sorry, not handy, and my own welfare rate does not pay me enough to >spend hours sifting through past articles for something so minor, an old >cite, that is). >

6 6

Re: Logos here
by logos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM <dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com> wrote: > LOGOS <logos(a)c2.net> writes: > > > Sovereign collegues, > > You already sound like a jerk. Perhaps you should suspend judgment until you have the opportunity to evaluate the content of my posts. What are you antagonistic to the use of honorifics? > > I am Logos. I have adopted this pseudonym to conceal my > > 'true name'. I want the ideas which I shall be espousing > > to stand or fall on their own merits and not on the basis > > of biases that my name, sex, ethnicity, etc. might otherwise > > sexual preferences... Yes, that and other catagorizations which are irrelevant to the primary focus of this list. > That's right. You lack the decorum to spell either my > first name or my last name correctly. 'Decorum' has to do with polite behaviour. While I was certainly remiss in my hasty spelling of your name, it was not intentional, therefore not a lack of decorum. I do apologize for my negligence. I shall endeavor to spell you name correctly in the future. > "Cypher punks" are a gang of uncouth juveniles I'm not sure I understand the relevance of this comment. Was it made in response to my error in spelling? In any case, it is a good example of the informal logical fallacy of 'over generalization'. As I understand it, there are circa 1000 people subscribed to Cypherpunks. To paint an entire group with such a characterization is both illogical and unfair. I also question your use of the word 'uncouth'. I have seen no posts on Cypherpunks that were any more 'uncultured; crude; or boorish' than those posted by you. I am not saying that uncouth posts have not been made by others, but it is disingenuous for one to judge others by a standard that one does not apply to one's self. > What logic? "Cypher punks" such as Paul Bradley are incapable of > discussing a technical topic (such as Don Wood's IPG proposal) without > putting "(spit)" after Don's name I could be wrong, but I believe this was done as an intentional parody of your own similar posts. If it is illogical for Paul Bradley to do this, does it not follow that is was illogical when you did it as well? It is obvious to me that you are an intelligent person. I am concerned, however, with your apparent intellectual dishonesty. It would appear that you know perfectly well that your posts serve no purpose in the cause of promoting privacy through the use of cryptography. It is hard to draw any other conclusion then that you are intentionally being provocative for the purpose of disrupting the work of this list. If this is not so, I apologize, but how else can we judge your actions? Please step outside of yourself for a moment and give us an honest self-assessment of your behavior and the motives behind it. Respectfully yours, Logos out

2 1

PRIVACY: X-No-Archive and mail.cypherpunks
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, This is primarily addressed to the person who supports cypherpunks mail-to-news gateway. If you know who such person is, please send his/her address to me. Dear gateway maintainer, Please modify your reposting program so that it does not remove the X-No-Archive: yes header line from email messages. This particular header line is an indication to USENET search engines that the author of the message would not like it to be stored in these engines. It preserves the author's privacy and enforces the copyright protection. I am opposed to seeing my articles showing up in DejaNews and other search engines. All my emails and usenet postings have this header line. However, when cypherpunks-to-newsgroup gateway reposts all articles, it strips this header line. I believe it to be a mistake and hope that it will be corrected. Thank you. - Igor.

3 3

RE: Modulating the FM noise spectrum considered infeasible
by Charley Musselman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:38 AM 12/3/96 -0500, Bob Hettinga wrote: >At 9:52 am -0500 12/3/96, James A. Tunnicliffe wrote: >> At 2:55 am -0500 12/3/96, Timothy C. May wrote: >>> [...]Having said this, Johnson noise makes a superior noise source, > ^^^^^^^ >>> if a physical source is desired. ><snip> >>Yours makes NOISE? Impressive... >> >>In this case, I guess entropy is preferable to atrophy, though. :-) > >Indeed. > >I've found that my Johnson only makes noise with the proper, er, >peripheral, though... Geez, guys, what's this? Pound the physicist day? Johnson noise is the Brownian motion of electrons in an electronic circuit. It is the irreducible noise, often measured in temperature (obvious?) Cheers, Charley "We accomplish what we work at." | Rules from "We get better at what we practice." | childhood.

2 1

No Subject
by logos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dimitri Vulis wrote: > Lame losers who call themselves "cypher punks" and bend > over for John Gilmore. It is obvious that you, Dimitri Vulis, intend to be disruptive to the operation of this list. I have politely asked you several specific questions about your motives. I am politely asking you again, Dimitri Vulis, why are you unwilling to rationally and politely discuss whatever grievances you have with specific Cypherpunks? I believe you are capable of rational discourse, you allegedly have some academic credentials so you must have a passing familiarity with formal debate. Why are you unwilling to join this discussion with anything other than immature insults? If the facts are on your side, a reasonable demeanor can only enhance your arguments. If the facts are not on your side, why can you not graciously admit you are wrong and withdraw your accusations. I have been unfailingly polite to you. Do you have it within your character to respond to me in kind? Thank you for your attentions to this matter. Logos out

4 4

Go to my website
by Wolf 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Games,links,and a hacking page under construction http://members.tripod.com/~wolf16

2 1

DES/IDEA In Linux loopback devices...
by The Deviant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Does anybody know where the archive for this kernel patch is? --Deviant PGP KeyID = E820F015 Fingerprint = 3D6AAB628E3DFAA9 F7D35736ABC56D39 "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true." -- Spock -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMqOj+zCdEh3oIPAVAQF50gf+OA4aDrXpFSTUcpeHRzJC0xIu+TsOi7NI w0qWAK6V9c7olJLqzvUwPt1JkvsihSr8z12JUtGrRjuYUW+Zq4rueX1iwmPmt0EZ HUTZ1Ky6j0L/Ewn5YDjL6QV++zZuLNCCqVXkMee0ezrwi4GwyMMB1cKfbsnkprzu 2oQyDcEJvFXmkEKFv+u54DDB9viOEyBfVJoEHZtzaFrVFtf/QqY9KEY8JuJC6s67 FK4i5ltS4vzCu2cL4EmmWyJDvhPycdOBksU+yrPci4vB1PFzlQJ9I+Vz8Pr/fY6m BwLDu2Ptd9ZfOG51oSI4MaUxeD/Suxt9hPFVe5aU7xCMQ8f5UUbGtA== =R2Xk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

3 2

Re: more IPG and random numbers
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:24 PM 12/3/96 -0800, Eric Murray wrote: >I did some more experiments with the IPG stream-cipher >algorithim and random number tests. Since IPG claim that their >algorithim passes chi-square tests of randomness, I found >a chi-square test program. It's written by Peter Boucher >and was posted to sci.crypt in '93 (<2bum8sINN98j(a)roche.csl.sri.com>). Eric, The chi-square test is fairly easy to implement. Understanding the alogrithm and interpreting what the test results mean is as important as a proper implementation. An excellent text that covers testing PRNGs (including, chi-square, KS, runs (up, down, above & below the mean), and autocorrelation) is Simulation Modeling & Analysis, by Law & Kelton. >> Does the 'runs up' (or 'runs down') test with run-length equal to two >> get me anything over the standard chi-square test? I left it in. Yes. It tests yet another aspect of "is the data truly random?" >First I ran the output from my version of the IPG algorithim that I >posted a couple days ago : > >% ./boucher < ipg.out >Occurances: n = 12000000, V=-8375833.71 >Character occurances non-random >Successions: n = 46875, V=62287.82 >Character successions non-random Unless the V is a typo, there is an error in the code. The chi-square statistic can never be negative. >Then I ran output from a test RNG that's basically a loop around random(): > >% ./boucher < myrandom/out >Occurances: n = 3414720, V=213050.62 >Character occurances non-random >Successions: n = 13338, V=1143.41 >Character successions non-random I did considerable testing on random() a while back. It is actually quite good at producing a uniform distribution. There were other problems however (notably autocorrelation in triplets). >Eric Murray ericm(a)lne.com ericm(a)motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm >PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF I suggest you take a look at the chi-square program and check it for errors. Based on the above observations, I am a little suspicious of your results. As a side note, I tend to test PRNGs using stream lengths that are similar to what I will need in a real use of the generator. I also test multiple seeds, because statistically, some seeds will fail. Of course, testing multiple seeds has its own problems (see the bonferroni inequality) of which most non-statisticians are unaware. I have been curious for a while about developing a statistical test that would examine the expected number of failures of a repeated statistical test. Haven't had the time to look into it yet though - not enough hours in the day. ******************************************************* Clay Olbon olbon(a)ix.netcom.com engineer, programmer, statistitian, etc. **********************************************tanstaafl

2 1

Re: The Science Generations
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If I may offer another opinion... I ran a BBS for about three years straight off of floppies on an Apple ][+, without any hardware failures or disk problems. Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: frantz cc: cypherpunks From: dthorn @ gte.net (Dale Thorn) @ smtp Date: 12/06/96 07:48:16 PM Subject: Re: The Science Generations Bill Frantz wrote: > At 1:12 AM 12/6/96 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote: > >I would guess that those who became and remained successful technically > >(as opposed to becoming "business people") were using HP computers and > >such in the 1970s. I for one was a heavy user then, and PETs, Apples, > >Radio Shack, etc. computers weren't reliable enough for serious work. > I guess those people using VisiCalc on the Apple ][ weren't doing serious > work :-). (Also the many small businesses using these early machines for > AR, Accounting etc.) Me, I was doing OS programming on IBM 370s. Let's talk about some real data processing. dBase II on CP/M computers (or certain proprietary hardware with adaptor cards), circa 1980-1982, would be a good example. If you had the right stuff, say, an HP-120 or HP-125, or even an 80 series with the adaptor, and HP floppy drives, you could process all day long for (years?) with scarcely a hitch. You try to put something like that on an Apple II with Apple floppies (using whatever software was available), and you couldn't do the job. The machine and/or drives would quit in a few days, if not the first day, and might even erase your diskettes in the process (a common occurrence in those days). In early 1985, just for fun, I had an HP-71 pocket computer hooked up to a LaserJet printer and a couple of HP portable floppies, and printed my store's databases on it. Multiple indexes, thousands of records, each index printed complete every day in separate copies for each salesman. I wouldn't dream of trying that with an IBM or Apple floppy system. Hard disks? I *never* heard of an HP microcomputer hard disk crash in those days, short of dropping the computer onto the floor while writing a file. We used to pull the wall plugs on our HP's while writing to a file, with no bad effect. Try that on an IBM or Apple circa <= 1985. Computer hardware? One thing I enjoyed doing for customers was pulling a RAM card out of an HP-86 while it was running a program, then forcing the card back into the slot. Usually pulling the card had no effect, then, putting it back in would generally reset the program. Surge protectors? Never sold one. Not needed with HP's then. An Apple II (like the other toy computers from 1975 to 1982) was a hobbyist computer, which required frequent cleaning and scrubbing internally to keep it running. A pencil eraser was a common tool... And let's not forget Apple and IBM attitudes: When I had HP's, if I ever needed service, HP did it themselves, professionally (using static mats etc.) and promptly. You wouldn't find Apple or IBM offering to repair their own microcomputers in those days (or ever). For good reason! Cost of service? HP's contracts were usually 3% to 5% of the item cost per year, compared to the "industry standard" of 15%. Not a bad deal.

1 0

Baran on Net Security
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

RAND has put on it Web site eleven "classics" on distributed communications, most of them by Paul Baran. They offer good background to current debate on secrecy, security and cryptography. Here are the contents of No. 9 on security. http://www.rand.org/publications/RM/RM3765/ Memorandum RM-3765-PR August 1964 On Distributed Communications: IX Security, Secrecy, and Tamper-Free Considerations Paul Baran Contents, Preface, Summary, Foreword I. Introduction II. The Paradox of the Secrecy About Secrecy The Assumption of a Clear Dichotomy Between Classified and Unclassified Subject Matter Cost and Result of Present-Day Cryptographic Equipment On Secrecy of Secrecy III. Some Fundamentals of Cryptography Digital Transmission Layers of Encryption IV. Implications for the Distributed Network System Link-by-Link Cryptography in the Distributed Network End-to-End Cryptography in the Distributed Network Genealogy of the Keys Generation and Distribution of Keys Protection Offered by Semi-Random Path Choice V. A "Devil's Advocate" Examination Appendix Use of a Function of N-Boolean Variables as a Second-Order Modifier for "Next-Key" Generation

1 0