December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Commerical applications (was: Development and validation (fwd)
by proff＠suburbia.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From terry(a)lambert.org Thu Jan 23 00:20:21 1997 Return-Path: <terry(a)lambert.org> Delivered-To: proff(a)suburbia.net Received: (qmail 11676 invoked from network); 23 Jan 1997 00:20:09 -0000 Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (198.17.250.211) by suburbia.net with SMTP; 23 Jan 1997 00:20:09 -0000 Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id RAA22488; Wed, 22 Jan 1997 17:04:17 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <terry(a)lambert.org> Message-Id: <199701230004.RAA22488(a)phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Commerical applications (was: Development and validation To: proff(a)suburbia.net Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 17:04:17 -0700 (MST) Cc: nate(a)mt.sri.com, terry(a)lambert.org, chuckr(a)glue.umd.edu, hackers(a)freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <19970122141820.16633.qmail(a)suburbia.net> from "proff(a)suburbia.net" at Jan 23, 97 01:18:20 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Length: 6273 > > Terry Lambert writes: > > > > > A weighted democracy would be one open-ended growth solution, as > > > > > long as parametric changes could be made within the system. I have > > > > > suggested this before. A trivial napkin drawing version: > > > > > > I have doubts about such a system. How are the weights chosen? By core team fiat. It is they who will be giving up power, it is they who have the power to enforce initial disbursement. After that, it *should* be metastable. If it isn't, it can be reigned in. > - Should all weights be votable - dynamically adjusted according > to votes * current weights? This one: yes. > - Which is more stable? w1+w2+w3+w4=1 or w1*w2*w3*w4*w5=1? +, if we are talking probabilities applied to strange attractors. > - How a new weights created? Constitutionally, there must be a method for doing this within the system. Mostly, the weight values are the time rate accumulation vs. the spend rate on voting issues. If you are actively positive, you affect change; the stronger you feel about something, the more likely you are to code it (which every direction the strength of your feeling goes. The catch is that positive votes are inherently more valuable than negative votes, since to obstruct progress requires a number of votes equal to the outstanding proposals, but to move forward a proposal only requires a number of votes equal to the proposal. Blind obstructionism (and blind advocacy) are uneconomical. That's the point of having more than one vote to potentially spend on an issue, with potentially more issues than you can vote on all of them. You will have to pick you battles carefully if you want to avoid being lost in the noise. > - How does one prevent factional deal making? It won't, really, if there are places for deals to be made, and there are accurate vote tallys published (promoting last minute bid frenzies, auction-like behaviour). > - Should weights decline over time in the same manner as > an infinitely trainable adaptive neural network? There is a limit on the amount of weight you can throw around in a given time because of the high water mark on the number of tokens it's possible to build up on account. Again, you have to pick your battles or you will be lost in the noise. > What about retrospectivity? On the one hand you entrench a > pre-democratic feudal power structure and end up like Mandela's > South Africa; a constitutionally reformed non-racially discriminatory > capitalist society in which the blacks have all the votes, but > the whites have all the capital. On the other (FreeBSD) hand the > whites did all the work. In the abstract, if you are willing to do the work, you are more likely to throw three votes than one for a given topic. If you are just being obstructioninst, you will likely throw only one vote so that you can keep being obstructionist later. For reciprocity, it's possible to charge off percentages in the win/lose case to bias the power concentration: if your side wins, it costs you one less token then you voted, etc.. Again, initial bylaws are established through constitution provision: "we have the power that is being shared, therefore, these are the weights". > Certainly a very interesting social engineering experiment; there > is room here for long excursions into probability theory, game > theory, cryptographic voting protocols (extending to protocols > not traditionally seen as voting protocols such as Rabin's m/n > secret sharing scheme), all excellent paper fodder. Heh. I was thinking more in terms of its value as a cascade trigger to increasingly complex social organisms in the Internet implementation space. Representational democracies (republics, really) came about because of rate limits on communication. The US could not elect a president by popular vote because there were no methods of verification, and communication rates were limited by travel time. Therefore, the US has an Electoral College. But a side effect of this structure is a bias for bipartite seperation of interests, instead of seperation into as many interest groups as it takes to do the job of mapping the interest space. This bias is not removed because the bipartite interests have (and must continue to have) the power concentration. This leads to continued "wasted vote syndrome", where people vote for the lesser of two evils instead of voting their conscience... an effect of mass psychology. Similar pressures prevent the polling times from being changed to opening at 8am EST and closing at 8am EST to prevent early returns from earlier time zones influencing the outcome of elections before people in later time zones have even voted. For example, Ross Perot got almost 20% of the vote in the 1992 election, but 0% of the electors. He would still have lost, given the actual values. There is actually a case in US history where the winner of the electoral vote lost the popular vote... the president was not chosen by the people, but by the electors. > It would definitely attract a lot of welcome attention to FreeBSD. It would be worth one or more articles in WIRED, actually, as well as more scholarly sociology journals. Maybe even "Wall Street Journal" would run "Multinational Democratic State Declares Independence in Cyberspace" or a similar silly headline. > When viewed strictly as an experiment this idea has a lot > of merit. If it actually pans out, then well and good, if not, > then it could be used as some kind of Sawick poll. Yep. The reason I went weighted, by the way, was the volunteer nature of the project. In theory, number of vote tokens spent should be proportional to willingness to actually volunteer. As you point out, there could be feedback here as well: for instance, if a proposal passes, if it is completed, the tokens spent on the vote could be refunded to those who voted for it. If it dies on the vine, the tokens could be refunded to those who voted against it. Being right would give you more license to participate, and being wrong would not, etc.. Again, a matter for the initial bylaws. Regards, Terry Lambert terry(a)lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.

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at least we have some friends...
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- +New encryption bill on way +By Alex Lash +January 22, 1997, 8:45 p.m. PT +see http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C7236%2C00.html?nd +Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Montana) next week will reintroduce legislation +aimed at wiping out most Commerce Department restrictions on the +export of software encryption, his press secretary said today. +The new version of the so-called Pro-Code bill, which died in the +Senate Commerce Committee last year after a series of high-profile +hearings, will be unchanged and should have the same support it +gained in the 1996 session, Burns's press secretary Matt Raymond said. +"The language was not something that was arrived at lightly," Raymond +said. "We should have time for a more robust and considerate debate" +compared with last year's unsuccessful rush to get the bill passed, +he added. +Burns, a leading figure on the Senate Commerce Committee, is set to +appear via satellite Tuesday at the RSA Data Security Conference in +San Francisco to announce the bill's reintroduction. +Foes of the Clinton administration's current encryption regulations, +which became effective on January 1, are looking for Congress to +legislate more liberal export guildelines. Last year, the Pro-Code +bill won the support of many key members of Congress who remain in +office and want to modify Clinton's encryption plan. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: Encrypted with 2.6.3i. Requires 2.6 or later. iQCVAwUBMucJKr04kQrCC2kFAQGcjwP/cjxEQcxixtx1nEg5lC6cBXK85Ff8FIkn 4x176KJokc4RSD1fNWhJkeHUYi1HCrp6nD4VsNP9Ud3c9rC2XNcGtnTEDAwZ0ikS 03kz9fUqptU6GE+Mrjl/FLhcDfSYlTUsFrFKYcTuge2nVJUAz2+kbaFg4qT9njyO 1vro9FplgIw= =ktMy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Do You Want to Make Money On-Line?
by davesbox＠smtp.miraclestar.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Keywords scanning/speech recognition
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Amanda Walker wrote: > John Kelsey <kelsey(a)email.plnet.net> wrote: > This may or may not be relevant, but I was a math major during an NSA college- > recruitment drive in the early 1980s. As part of the "come work for the NSA" > packet they were giving out, they had a sample issue of the NSA internal > linguistics journal. One of the articles concerned a system called DYPTRACK, > which tracked the pitch of a digitized voice signal to an impressive degree of > accuracy. This would imply that the NSA, at least, had invested considerable > resources into digital speech analysis as early as the late 1960s or early > 1970s (since by 1980 DYPTRACK was un-sensitive enough to be described in > college recruitment material). I have a CD today (used to be an LP in the late 1970's) of Enrico Caruso arias, digitally processed thru something called Stockham/ Soundstream digital process, circa mid-late 1970's. They took a number of samples of a modern (1970's) tenor's singing (someone whose voice had similar characteristics to Caruso's) and had the computer run it against the original Caruso recordings in an attempt to subtract out extraneous noise, resonances, and so on. The process helped somewhat, making the voice seem closer intead of somewhere a couple of rooms over, but the essential quality of the mechanically-recorded sound was still there, i.e., very dull and not at all life-like. They were supposed to release a lot more of this stuff, and they did some, but major interest was never there, and I haven't heard any more about further research in the intervening years, although I'll bet it's gone way beyond where it was.

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encrypted WinTalk/e-mails
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hi there, does anybody know about an encrypting snoop-proof version of WinTalk (or a similar ytalk-style program)? If so, please copy replies to my private e-mail, for I am currently not subscribed to the CP list... Thanks in advance for your help... Harka PS: Here is also a collection of free (anonymous?) e-mail account services for those, who are interested...(sorry about the html-tags). <li>NetForward <li>HoTMaiL <li>Trale <li>WWDG Free Email <li>MailMasher <li>StarMail Over 100 domains to choose from!! <li>iName Over 100 domains to choose from!! <li>Geocities <li>Juno <li>Net@ddress <li>Bigfoot <li>MailHost <li>POBox <li>POBoxes <li>PEmail <li>La Jolla Shores <li>From.Net /*************************************************************/ /* This user supports FREE SPEECH ONLINE * */ /* and PRIVATE ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS! * * */ /* * * */ /* E-mail: harka(a)nycmetro.com * * */ /* * */ /* Finger or E-Mail for PGP public key. * * */ /* Key Size: 2047 / KeyID: 04174301 * * */ /* Fingerprint: FD E4 F8 6D C1 6A 44 F5 http://www.eff.org */ /* 28 9C 40 6E B8 94 78 E8 */ /*<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>*/ /* May there be peace in this world, may all anger dissolve */ /* and may all living beings find the way to happiness... */ /*************************************************************/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAgUBMuRqMTltEBIEF0MBAQEKygf+KQEkQE/yH10cgly1aIJExAX+p2kPmcPb f/ro2ulaYrs4gklKff60HE0AD39SBmTGnCI4dUzOLy0UfgTyifQ/W8H+1b1GU0Bb UnFhvWCCc8KPOY6Kf4ZpdtdRsyJjqAKjyYthKAEIKmG/m/ZHI2uJ0+F1GYhtjyhO IE5RrCImncjLW3uaXxnktzy4+jDeoQEXCVRm6muIZj/TPgTvzabkMzK5Udy0Nm1n vjevvcAiA65PWnbAT+v+GNFPZq4bW//bEnzDYYXBD++QrC7bSGXe73iS2HbrVu3Y gQg7pseOdbS5bkudhw/pqcTl5zvcdvGoQfnXZpbp4VviSwWs045vjg== =jw27 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- If encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption...

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Re: Thoughts re moderation, filtering, and name changes
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn wrote: > hjk wrote: > > On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Dale Thorn wrote: > > > hjk wrote: > > > > Now whatever you think of your fellow citizens, or even those of the > > > USA (to name an example), I'm sure is OK on whatever basis you apply > > > your judgement. But I guarantee you that the people on the cypherpunks > > > list are no more or less intelligent than the people who vegetate in > > > front of their TV sets every day, right there where you live, in all > > > probability. If you believe that your fellow citizens vote intelligently, > > > then I respond that cypherpunks vote intelligently. What do you think? > > > Well, I thought cypherpunks claim to be elite. > > Most of the erstwhile elite types do the ordinary things in a quite > ordinary way. Get dressed, eat, collect and send e-mail, and so on. > > The un-ordinary things (for example) are the thought processes which > take place while typing out a post. Those thought processes don't > generally intersect directly with the mundane things such as operating > the computer, unless the operations themselves are unusual and demand > the full attention of the person involved. > So what? - Igor.

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Re: Encrypting ZIP drives?
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > I am looking for a transparent (strong) encryption of ZIP drives. Any advice would be appreciated. > For which OS, and SCSI or Parallel version?

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Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thorn: > Alec wrote: > The idea that "sin" and "evil" are abstract and somewhat arbitrary is > merely a human (and therefore faulty) perception. > If God can be perfect by definition (for sake of argument), then "sin" Somewhere in the above three lines, someone is making a hell of an asumption. See also "The Euthphro Question", plato. > A gentleman wrote to Southern Partisan magazine a few years ago and > said "Real freedom is not the license to do whatever you want, but > rather the liberty to do what you ought to do". No, real freedom is being able to decide for yourself what you ought to do--or--who the hell decides what I ought to do?

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Re: Keywords scanning/speech recognition
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Amanda Walker wrote: > John Kelsey <kelsey(a)email.plnet.net> wrote: > This may or may not be relevant, but I was a math major during an NSA college- > recruitment drive in the early 1980s. As part of the "come work for the NSA" > packet they were giving out, they had a sample issue of the NSA internal > linguistics journal. One of the articles concerned a system called DYPTRACK, > which tracked the pitch of a digitized voice signal to an impressive degree of > accuracy. This would imply that the NSA, at least, had invested considerable > resources into digital speech analysis as early as the late 1960s or early > 1970s (since by 1980 DYPTRACK was un-sensitive enough to be described in > college recruitment material). I have a CD today (used to be an LP in the late 1970's) of Enrico Caruso arias, digitally processed thru something called Stockham/ Soundstream digital process, circa mid-late 1970's. They took a number of samples of a modern (1970's) tenor's singing (someone whose voice had similar characteristics to Caruso's) and had the computer run it against the original Caruso recordings in an attempt to subtract out extraneous noise, resonances, and so on. The process helped somewhat, making the voice seem closer intead of somewhere a couple of rooms over, but the essential quality of the mechanically-recorded sound was still there, i.e., very dull and not at all life-like. They were supposed to release a lot more of this stuff, and they did some, but major interest was never there, and I haven't heard any more about further research in the intervening years, although I'll bet it's gone way beyond where it was.

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Re: Decision in Karn Case
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymous wrote: > > In light of the recent Executive Order transferring > > regulatory authority of non-military cryptographic computer > > source code to the Commerce Department, and the Commerce > > Department's promulgation of a new regulation under the authority > > of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. secs. > > 1701 et seq., we remand this case to the district court to > > consider the reviewability of and, if appropriate, the merits of > > appellant's claim under the Administrative Procedure Act. > > And when that review finally reaches the appeals court, > the administration can move the regulations to the state department. Look on the bright side. Maybe they'll move them around so much that they'll lose them. > The uniqueness of the anti-crypto regulations is that it is a law > against intellectuals and academics. These people will not be willing to > break the law and then challenge its constitutionality in the courts, > or engage in any kind of civil disobedience demonstration. That is why the thugs and the brown-shirts always start by attacking scattered individuals and those they can easily brand 'troublemakers.' (Only in rare instances, do they start with Doctors). The intellectuals and academics might, at best, utter a few tut-tut's, and by the time that the rule of force has become the order of the day, there is no longer anyone 'below' them left free to object to the attacks on themselves. Toto

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