December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: microcurrency: Netscape vs. Microsoft
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:13 PM 1/20/97 -0800, Lucky Green wrote: >At 11:46 AM 1/20/97 -0800, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: >>1. an html tag that indicates how much a link costs, probably in >>the <a href="" cost=xx> type syntax > >This could be done, but is, IMHO, too inflexible. > Also, with tags, I could download the page with good old fashioned netscape 3.0 Gold, (possibly the last browser without this), allowing me to get the entire page, neutralize the tag either by hand or with a simple app. and view the site sans payment. The blocks that I see to this are server push upon receipt of cash and encrypted pages only accessable upon (automatic) payment, not unlike pay-per-view satellite television. The problem here is the patent that was stirring up trouble here a few months ago. The one that Compuserve stood up against involving the use of this on computer networks. I really think that a tag alone wouldn't be worth much, not without a CGI script to verify it or a JAVA app. to run it. Please correct me if I am in error.

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[NOISE] Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:35 PM 1/20/97 -0800, Toto wrote: > In short, I believe that if the issue of free speech is not one of >the central issues on the CypherPunks list, then the list is merely >one more heartless, unfeeling extension of the Great Machine which >is grinding inexorably forward toward the day when we will all have >its numbers tattoo'd on our forearms. That machine will be the SIXTH model made by a little firm on the thirteenth floor of an office building. It will operate on several thousand 6X86 processors. It will operate either on MSDOS 6.0 or UNIX V6R4, depending on how soon it is completed. And it won't be our forearms, we can cover those with sleeves. It will be our brow. (please excuse the spelling).

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[NONCRYPTO] speaking of ADSL
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ADSL fans may be interested to know that Ameritech has a 200 unit ADSL trial underway in Wheaton Il as I speak. It is going very well. The units are currently running 1.5Mbs, (T-1) but are scheduled to go to 3Mbs later this year. Next year rumor is 6Mbs. In an interesting example of "Brazil Effect", ADSL may first come to older areas, because they are all direct copper. If I could only get ADSL cards for my DMS100. ;) Brian Network Premise engineer Ameritech Data Center Chicago Extropian Cypherpunk

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Re: Newt's phone calls
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote: | >No, the real danger in weak crypto is that the poorly-informed will not | >think about it *at all*. If we had "poor crypto", Newt probably wouldn't | >have been embarrassed by this sort of casual interception, and the issue | >wouldn't have been raised in the public mind. But our communications | >still wouldn't be safe from more determined attackers. Brouhahas like | >these are good for the pro-(strong-)crypto agenda. | | Not the way we've being going on, Zero coverage of the | crypto issue, zip, nada. That points to EFF and CDT not | being on the ball on the crypto issue. Was on the NYT op-ed page on Monday. Something about scanners had a few closing paragraphs about the ITARs with a comment from (David Sobel)? Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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RE: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by Blake Coverett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto writes: > Just because an individual claims, rightly or wrongly, to be a > big defender of freedom, involving himself or herself in causes > like those of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, does not take > away their right to stomp on anyone who disagrees with them on > their own private list. Of course > To claim otherwise would be as ludicrous as denying the person > running the Anonymizer the right to expose the identities of the > people he feels might perhaps be abusing his private system, or > using it for nefarious purposes, such as hiding their identity > from others. I suspect you intended that to be sarcasm, but to be honest I wouldn't have caught it at all if I wasn't already aware of your views in this area. The person hosting the Anonymizer *does* have the right to do exactly this. I don't believe they would do so, but that is a reputation issue not a question of my rights. If I had entered into a contract with the provider of a service of this nature then I would have a 'right' to expect their contractual obligations to be fulfilled, but that is not the case with the Anonymizer and certainly not with toad.com. regards, -Blake (freedom of the press for those with presses)

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by CV Communications 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Keyword scanning/speech recognition
by Rick Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

pgut001(a)cs.auckland.ac.nz wrote: : I was talking to someone recently about the feasibilty of keyword-scanning : phone conversations.... My first "real" job in the computer industry was for a garage shop doing speech recognition. We did a demo system in 1977 for Rome Labs that did exactly what you're asking about: scanning a stream of continuous speech over a telephone line looking for key words. It was tolerably effective: I forget the success rate but it was above 90%. But we were never asked to go past the research prototype. We did it the "hard way" in that we were trying to solve the "talk to the computer" problem which is harder than the "look for something suspicious worth looking closer at" problem. I expect they were looking for something to cut down on their false positives and perhaps we weren't significantly better than what they were already doing. : "Discrete Utterance Speech Recognition without Time Alignment", John Shore : and David Burton, IEEE Trans.Information Theory, Vol.29, No.4 (July 1983), : p.473. : :This generates a feature vector every 10-30ms from input speech which is :compared to pre-generated reference sequences. It also has references to many :other papers covering the same area. When I worked in the field "discrete utterance" was the buzz phrase for talking with - pauses - between - each - word. Ecch. Our commercial systems at the time (late '70s) used discrete speech without time alignment since we could process 8 input channels simultaneously. Ahhh. The joys of microcoding for a 74S181 ALU. Rick. smith(a)sctc.com secure computing corporation

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

17 Dec '03

At 12:35 AM 1/21/97 -0500, Jane Jefferson wrote: >Governments, however, are made up of the very same people who claim >to require these rights to privacy. Those people create, codify and >enforce the laws. The problem is that the people who find themselves in >this position of power are not always the most moral or concerned with >the best interest of the majority. > >And fiendishly, it is the very chaos and anarchy and random chance >espoused by proponents of the cypherpunk philosophy that allows these >people to gain this power, unchecked! > >Thus, the real problem ends up being not "how to control the government >so that the government doesn't control us", but "how to deal with the >government when it goes into control-freak mode". That it will go into >such a mode is a given -- based on human nature and history. This is >a fundamental cycle of evolution and human behavior. We have to face >the fact that humans are predators, and as long as we are, the >cycle of this behavior will continue. Also, remember, that those people willing to put up with the responsibility of leadership are more often more extreme control freaks than the rest of the population. Persons asked on the street if they wanted to be president of the United States have often said no way, yet every four years we have at least two people willing to put up with the hassle in order to be the most powerful man in the country. What we need is a leader who is willing to put up with it for h[is/er] people/cause, but has no desire to stay any longer than absolutely necessary. Then we need another just like h[im/er] for the next term.

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Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering "experiment"
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:22 AM 1/21/97 -0800, Toto wrote: >Bill Campbell wrote: > >> I feel we at a *critical* crossroads in this debate, and one of the >> more important voices has *very* effectively been silenced. > > Dr. Vulis? There was an 'attempt' to silence him, but it hasn't >worked, to date. > I believe he is referring to silencing the list, not Vulis. As long as the members of this list are argueing over semantics, the government has one less challenger in the fight over our rights. Remember, one of the oldest tactics of war is to turn the enemy against itself.

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Re: "Technical data" exemptions in new crypto regs
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:17 AM 1/21/97 -0500, Richard L. Field wrote: ... > I read the new regs as permitting: (i) publication of source code in >paper form (including publications reproduced on microfilm or on prerecorded >phonograph records), or in the form of a motion picture film and soundtrack >(section 734.3(b)(2)); and, separately, (ii) teaching or discussion of >information "about" cryptography (section 744.9). The export of other >encryption materials (including the distribution to non-US persons of source >or object code on diskettes) is restricted, even if the materials are >publicly available "educational information" for release by instruction in >catalog courses and associated teaching laboratories of academic >institutions (section 734.9). ... This has often reminded me of something that occurred around 1776. I can't remember if it was before or after. Remember how the colonies got sophisticated spinning gear? I believe it was spinning gear. Great Britain had a ban on the export of functional models, diagrams or manufacturing instructions to one particular class of equipment. This was so that they could maintain the monopoly on cheaply made cloth, holding the outlying colonies in line by maintaining a dependancy. One man memorized the structure of one of these machines and then came to the American shores, where he reproduced it workably. I can't remember the name of the man or the machine, just that it was used in the manufacture of cloth, the "spinning jenny" i think. Nor can I remember the date.

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