December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

TriSnakeoil questions
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm currently sitting in a booth at a Tandem user show directly opposite the Atalla one. If there's anything in particular which someone wants to ask them, let me know and I'll see how knowledgeable their salesdroids are. Dunno how reliable my access to mail will be in the next day or two, if you're local you could try calling me at the hotel I'm staying, which is the Fairmont in San Jose (although you've got a whelks chance in a supernova of actually catching me in my room, so you'll probably have to leave a message). Peter.

1 0

anonymous remailers, network computer, singles sites, etc.
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

well, nobody has commented on this a whole lot here from what I can tell, but the net is now *plastered* with anonymous remailers in various forms. it's definitely not going away. we now have mail.yahoo.com which can create an alias in a few minutes. also, www.hotmail.com and there are others. one could argue the Net PC (NC) is already here!! web TV allows much software to be run on it (btw, does anyone know if it runs java? if so, I'd say that's definitely a NC). the point is that sites such as games.yahoo.com etc. are essentially sites in which a web site is indistinguishable from software. "the network is the computer". larry ellison went home with his tail between his legs on the NC idea, but what he doesn't realize is that it is actually here en masse. (just not so much in the corporate arena as he envisioned) an interesting subset of anonymity is being used very intensely with online personals!! here's a sophisticated example http://personals.swoon.com/e_personals/static/help.html#e-mail they have a lot of info on how their site acts as a remailer for email messages. this is a very "slick" online magazine clearly showing huge amount of production cash which I personally haven't heard too much about. a bit risque for some peoples tastes, but very intriguing application of cyberspace one never would have dreamt up just a few moons ago. incidentally, there are bazillions of singles sites out there on the internet. its another application of the net one wouldn't necesarily have foreseen, but it really makes sense. hooking up people with people. a strange "killer app" of the net judging by how many there are. there's less "romantic" types of this thing too, for just hooking up people with similar interests, such as www.icq.com and www.cyberfriends.com one tasteful/decent place to start for singles sites is http://www.zdnet.com/yil/content/mag/9803/gurlsites.html ultimately the internet population is starting to discover that the key thing it does is related to *communities*....

2 1

capitalism run amuck by Korton
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

this guy is really brilliant. the essay is brillant. the pro-capitalist elements here should read this very carefully and read his book. very well researched. impeccable credentials. the real "truth behind the scenes and events" of what's going on in the world ------- Forwarded Message Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:04:39 +0000 To: uk-anti-maif(a)iirc.net From: Paul Swann <pswann(a)easynet.co.uk> Subject: Your Mortal Enemy Your Mortal Enemy Faceless bankers now move two trillion dollars around the world every day, searching for quick profits, breaking national economies and putting ever more pressure on natural wealth. What's to be done? Slay the beast of capitalism, says David C Korten, and return money to its proper role. An edited and ammended extract of David Korten's Schumacher Lecture in Bristol on October 17 1998. Published in The Guardian, October 21 1998. For those of us who grew up believing capitalism is the foundation of democracy, market freedom, and the good life it has been a rude awakening to realise that under capitalism, democracy is now for sale to the highest bidder, the market is centrally planned by global mega-corporations larger than most countries, denying one's brothers and sisters a source of livelihood is now rewarded as an economic virtue, and the destruction of nature and life to make money for the already rich is treated as progress. The world is now ruled by a global financial casino staffed by faceless bankers and hedge fund speculators who operate with a herd mentality in the shadowy world of global finance. Each day they move more than two trillion dollars around the world in search of quick profits and safe havens sending exchange rates and stock markets into wild gyrations wholly unrelated to any underlying economic reality. With abandon they make and break national economies, buy and sell corporations, and hold the most powerful politicians hostage to their interests. When their bets pay off they claim the winnings as their own. When they lose, they run to governments and public institutions to protect them against loss with pronouncements about how the poor must tighten their belts and become more fiscally prudent. In the United States, the media keep the public preoccupied with the details of our president's sex life and calls for his impeachment for lying about an inconsequential affair. Meanwhile, Congress and the president are working out of view to push through funding increases for the IMF to bail out the banks who put the entire global financial system at risk with reckless lending. They are advancing financial deregulation to encourage even more reckless financial speculation. And they are negotiating international agreements such as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment intended to make the world safe for financial speculators by preventing governments from intervening to regulate their activities. To understand what is happening we must educate ourselves about the nature of money and the ways of those who decide who will have access to it and who will not. As a medium of exchange, money is one of the most useful of human inventions. But as we become ever more dependent on it to acquire the basic means of our sustenance, we give to the institutions and people who control its creation and allocation the power to decide whether we shall live in prosperity or destitution. With the increasing breakdown of community and governmental social safety nets, our money system has become the most effective instrument of social control and extraction ever devised. The fact that few of us think of the money system as an instrument of control makes it more powerful and efficient as an instrument of wealth extraction. What of capitalism, the self-proclaimed champion of democracy, market freedom, peace and prosperity? Modern capitalism involves a concentration of wealth by the few to the exclusion of the many; it is more than a system of human elites. It has evolved into a system of autonomous rule by money and for money that functions on autopilot beyond the control of any human actor or responsiveness to any human sensibility. Contrary to its claims, capitalism is showing itself to be the mortal enemy of democracy and the market. Its relationship to democracy and the market economy is now much the same as the relationship of a cancer to the body whose life energy it expropriates. Cancer is a pathology that occurs when an otherwise healthy cell forgets that it is a part of the body and begins to pursue its own unlimited growth without regard to the consequences for the whole. The growth of the cancerous cell deprives the healthy cells of nourishment and ultimately kills both the body and itself. Capitalism does much the same to the societies it infests. One reason we fail to recognise the seriousness of our predicament is because we fail to see how capitalism is destroying the world's real wealth. It destroys social capital when it breaks up unions, bids down wages, and treats workers as expendable commodoties, leaving society to absorb the family and community breakdown and violence that are inevitable consequences. It destroys institutional capital when it undermines the function of governments and democracy by weakening environmental health and labour standards, and extracting public subsidies, bailouts and tax exemptions which inflate corporate profits while passing the burdens of risk to governments and the working poor. We arejust beginning to wake up to the fact that the industrial era has in a mere century consumed a consequential portion of the natural capital it took evolution millions of years to create. It is now drawing down our social, institutional and human capital as well. Democracy and markets are wonderful ways of organising the political and economic life of a society to allocate resources fairly and efficiently while securing the freedom and sovereignty of the individual. But modern capitalism is about using money to make money for people who already have more of it than they need. Its institutions breed inequality, exclusion, environmental destruction, social irresponsibility and economic instability while homogenizing cultures, weakening institutions of democracy and eroding the moral and social fabric of society. Though capitalism cloaks itself in the rhetoric of democracy and the market, it is dedicated to the principle that sovereignty properly resides not in the person, but rather in money and property. Under democracy and the market, the people rule. Under capitalism, money rules. The challenge is to replace the global capitalist economy with a properly regulated and locally rooted market economy that invests in the regeneration of living capital, increases net beneficial economic output, distributes that output justly and equitably to meet the basic needs of everyone, strengthens the institutions of democracy and the market, and returns money to its proper role as the servant of productive activity. It should favour smaller local enterprise over global corporations, encourage local ownership, penalise financial speculation, and give priority to meeting the basic needs of the many over providing luxuries and diversions for the wealthy few. In most aspects it should do exactly the opposite of what the global capitalist economy is doing. Most of the responsibility and initiative must come from local and national levels. Supporting nations and localities in this task should become the core agenda of the United Nations, as the protection of people and communities from predatory global corporations and finance is arguably the central security issue of our time. The first positive step would be to dismantle the World Trade Organisation on the ground that there is no legitimate need for a global police force to protect global corporations from the actions of democratically-elected national and local governments so that the richest one per cent of humanity can become even richer at the expense of the rest. The WTO is a powerful, but illegitimate and democratically unaccountable institution put in place through largely secret negotiations with little or no public debate to serve purposes largely conltrary to the public interest. The 99 percent of the world's people whose interests it does not serve have every right to eliminate it. Addressing the real need to police the global economy requires an organisation very different from the WTO - an open and democratic organisation with the mandate and power to set and enforce rules holding those corporations that operate across national borders democratically accountable to the people and priorities of the nations where they operate. It should as well have the power to regulate and tax international financial flows and institutions. And it should have a mandate to make speculation unprofitable and to help protect the integrity of domestic financial institutions from the financial markets and the predatory practices of international financial speculators. There are obvious questions as to whether such proposals are politically feasible given the stranglehold of corporations and big money over our political processes. Yet we could use this same reasoning to conclude that human survival itself is not politically feasible. Global corporations and financial institutions are our collective creations. And we have both the right and the means to change or replace them if they do not serve. Dr David Korten is president of the People-Centered Development Forum in Washington State, USA <http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf> and the author of 'When Corporations Rule the World' and the forthcoming 'The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism'. - - --------------6FBCF3F02DF50E9512DB50EB-- - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- End of Forwarded Message

2 1

Re: Irony
by Richard.Bragg＠ssa.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The trouble is that most people think irony has something to do with metal! vin(a)shore.net on 24/10/98 16:16:12 To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com cc: (bcc: Richard Bragg/UK/SSA_EUROPE) Subject: Re: Irony At 04:19 PM 10/23/98 +0200, Mok-Kong Shen wrote: >>> Dear Friend, >> >>I don't know the English term but in my native language what is >>described is call 'chaining letters', supposed to be a method to >>become rich very rapidly. That was illegal, though. At 6:10 PM -0400 10/23/98, Anonymous wrote: >In my language we have something called humor, which some >taxonomize with terms like irony, sarcasm, wit, etc. In Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, we have this concept called charity, which some taxonomize with terms like tolerance and benevolance. Think of it as a reticence to be snide, petty, or sarcastic at the expense of others.

1 0

Postition determination
by Mok-Kong Shen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am told that GPS can only locate to about 100 meters but a refined technique can do that to 0.5 meter. There seems to be a practically useful method of somewhat different vein. See http://www.rfid.org M. K. Shen

1 0

I'm getting mail from people i never heard off...
by Jan Dobrucki 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a weird one. It had nothing in the body of the message... so what the heck can this all mean? JD Return-Path: <Mohammed_Lazhar(a)cch-lis.com> Delivered-To: s1180(a)qmail.pjwstk.waw.pl Received: (qmail 26032 invoked from network); 22 Oct 1998 13:46:38 -0000 Received: from ny1.cch-lis.com (firewall-user(a)208.203.201.2) by qmail.pjwstk.waw.pl with SMTP; 22 Oct 1998 13:46:38 -0000 Received: by ny1.cch-lis.com; id BAA16396; Wed, 21 Oct 1998 01:11:42 -0400 Received: from notes(165.181.145.8) by ny1.cch-lis.com via smap (4.1) id xmaa15665; Wed, 21 Oct 98 01:08:39 -0400 Received: by notes.cch-lis.com(Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) id 852566A4.001D343C ; Wed, 21 Oct 1998 01:18:59 -0400 X-Lotus-FromDomain: CCHLIS@LIS NET From: "Mohammed Lazhar" <Mohammed_Lazhar(a)cch-lis.com> To: Jan_Dobrucki_ <s1180(a)qmail.pjwstk.waw.pl> Message-ID: <852566A4.001CE903.00(a)notes.cch-lis.com> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 01:15:46 -0400 Subject: Mohammed Lazhar is out of the office. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 8003

1 0

Re: Child-Molesting Forger's Chilling Confession!!!1!
by Jay T. Lee 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

application/www-form-urlencoded

1 0

Re: Word choice
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> How does this differ from the motives of your ordinary politician? > > Post-revolution, will there be caliber limitations when hunting them? Hunt all you want. The post-revolution utopia will be administered by persons of the same mentality as those we have administering our Democratic Republic now. They will use the same if not more advanced techniques to acquire and maintain power. "Nature abhors a vacuum", right? Mike

1 0

Rendering ( was MIB Subponeas )
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Protective intelligence programs are based on the idea that the risk of > violence is minimized if persons with the interest, capacity and willingness > to mount an attack can be identified and rendered harmless before they > approach a protected person. I'm all for reducing the risk of violence but... Interest, capacity and willingness are insufficient when taken alone. Collecting real names and addresses is, apparently, enough of a concrete step to at least begin the "rendering" process. Through rendering we can provide many useful by-products including fertilizer, soap, glue and a horrible stink downwind from the plant. If an AP bot were renamed, for instance, a Collectively Rewarded Action Program would it be as obvious a target? One could then post Action Items and Action Rewards to it anonymously. Everything from cleaning the litter off Rt 680 in Fremont to hosing Monsanto ( the foul-milk, press-squashing, poison-cow BST boys ). Then what would be needed is some sort of Eternity Service for an active server - detect tampering and jump hosts. Mike

1 0

Cameras in Public Places
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Privacy is also needed on public places (e.g., violated by face > recognition systems) These early systems have got to have some major problems. The appropriate way of dealing with them is to wait for some people to be misidentified and then file suit against the municipality using the equipment. Harassment, false arrest, invasion of privacy, abuse of power, loss of reputation, loss of the ability to earn a living - take a few of the cities for $10 or $20 million and they'll get the message that they've been had by the SW vendors. However much I like technology, it looks more and more like politics is king. For now. Mike

1 0