December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The EFF
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto wrote: > Timothy C. May wrote: > > At 9:36 AM -0800 2/14/97, Declan McCullagh wrote: > It is my (limited) understanding that the EFF has discovered that > the support that comes with private philanthropy from will o'wisp > Bay Area 'liberals' doesn't carry the terrible burden of having to > compete for the petty contributions of the UnRich. > I have a brother-in-law who gives seminars to the Nouveau Riche in > the Bay Area, teaching them how to give their money away to 'good' > causes. I believe that one of the prime considerations in separating > the 'good' causes from the 'bad' causes has something to do with the > the proper wine being served with the cheese and cracker offerings > during their cocktail parties. Wine and cheese are the key. You hit that one on the head. I tried those Mensa parties in Beverly Hills a few times, but the girls want you to kiss their hands like some kinda princesses or something, whereas I think a simple handshake would suffice. So I just quit going. Maybe this has something to do with why there are no c-punks meetings in the L.A. area.

1 0

Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Kent Crispin wrote: > Dale Thorn allegedly said: > > If I understood the last several hundred messages correctly, they have > > tried to make the point that the cypherpunks mailing list (unedited) > > was more ideal than a newsgroup. If this is what Dave is offering, > > I'm surprised if more people don't jump on it. Then again, they > > took their good ol' time jumping onto cypherpunks-unedited. > Dave is offering a single mailing list, which, while I am sure Dave is > a great person, still represents a single point of control and a > single point of failure. A distributed mailing list has a potential > for being much more robust, and for supporting a wide range of > viewpoints. Furthermore a distributed mailing list is an interesting > minor technical problem, and a good solution could have wide > applicability. > So I think that people would like to get the distributed list going... I hope this doesn't duplicate the earlier message - if someone were tracking all this activity and kept the lists informed about what was available where - and particularly if the downloading could be automatic as in the subscription lists - that would be ideal. I wanted to spend some time on alt.cypherpunks, but I haven't got thru the subscription mail for the last few days yet. If there's a scheme that works better than just ad-hoc looking, I'd sure like to know.

1 0

Re: More on digital postage
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:33 PM 2/15/97 -0600, snow wrote: >Mr. May wrote: >> At 11:40 AM -0600 2/15/97, snow wrote: >> > That is a ridiculous argument. The door to my home is connected >> >to the street,m and I know full well that that makes it easy for anyone >> >to come wandering in to my home. Is it legal, just because I have my >> >home hooked to the street, for someone to come in and help themselves to >> >a beer out of my fridge? >> >> The proper parallel is to _knocking on the door_. Talking about "unwanted >> phone calls" or "unwanted faxes" as being equivalent to entering a house >> and wandering around is incorrect. > > With phone calls, yes. With unwanted faxes no. With Phone Calls, >and knocks on the door I have the option of simply not answering. Faxes >(in certain enviroments) you can't do that with. That's a technlogical problem, and deserves a technological solution. > >> Our society fairly reasonably allows tort relief for, say, having one's >> doorbell rung frequently or at odd hours. On the fax issue, similar tort >> relief could be obtained if a person or business was truly "under attack." >> (Purists, like me, would probably prefer technological solutions even in >> these cases. Leave a phone on answering machine mode, only switch on the >> fax mode when a fax is expected, etc.) > > Or simply a societal acceptance of retaliation(sp?) Someone who >constantly wakes you up in the middle of the night, well you just arrange >it so they get no sleep. Well, I've proposed such a system before... >> These tort actions are a far cry from proposals that anyone whose knock on >> the door, or phonecall, or e-mail, or fax is subject to criminal >> prosecution under proposed new laws. >> (I think the courts are already clogged enough, and I have faith that no >> court in the land will accept a case where no real harm was done. A friend >> of mine got mailbombed with 25,000 e-mail messages in one day, shutting >> down his account until the mess could be cleaned up, and it's not even >> likely he'll ever get any relief.) > > I (I think like you) feel that almost no one will get convicted >of these "crimes" unless the attacker simply goes too far. Which is why my first choice is, uh, and alternative method of "justice." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Where is the reorg FAQ?
by Anil Das 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I saw a reference to an FAQ by Adam Back, explaining the mailing lists that are being set up to replace cypherpunks(a)toad.com, but I didn't see the FAQ itself, on either cypherpunks-unedited or cypherpunks(a)toad.com, which I read as mail.cypherpunks. Maybe it fell through the cracks. Could Adam or somebody else repost it? Thanks. Btw, one of our many news servers has alt.cypherpunks, but it has very low traffic. I doubt people are not posting. Must be alt.cypherpunks missing from some upstream sites. -- Anil Das

1 0

cypherpunks@toad.com
by Sheldon Glass 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm a very long term lurker writing to thank you for hosting the mailing list. It was surprising that the list, if not the community, was as vulnerable to twits like Vulis as it appears. It's a valuable lesson. When cypherpunks rise from these ashes I hope that designers of alternatives will remember the Alamo so to speak. -- sheldon glass | Plauger's Dogma sglass(a)mail.sdsu.edu | No program may leave its sanity #include <std.disclaimer> | at the mercy of its input.

1 0

Re: Where is the reorg FAQ?
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike Duvos wrote: > > Anil Das writes: > > > Btw, one of our many news servers has alt.cypherpunks, but it has very > > low traffic. I doubt people are not posting. Must be alt.cypherpunks > > missing from some upstream sites. > > To spam propagation islands, it might be a good idea to crosspost to > alt.privacy when posting to alt.cypherpunks. It will probably take a week > or two before everyone who is going to create the group on their news > server gets around to it. > Better yet, crosspost to misc.misc. - Igor.

1 0

Re: Mirrors and replies-to
by Lance Cottrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:24 AM -0800 2/15/97, Robert Hettinga wrote: <SNIP> >However, I would like it if the mirror operators would reinstantiate a >feature of the original list for me. The reply-to field on the mirrors is >currently set to cypherpunks(a)toad.com. On the original list, this was set >to "sender", both to keep people from replying to the list unnecessarily >(hah! :-)) but also to keep mail loops from forming. Mail loops could be a >big problem, especially when you guys put together your neo-netnews >mailring. (a little jyaism, that... :-)). After some discussion, the reply-to: cypherpunks(a)toad.com was a deliberate choice. I wanted to ensure that the list at cyberpass did not become an island. Once the main list expires, the reply-to will be changed to the sender. -Lance ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. http://www.obscura.com/~loki/ "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: > How can this be enforced? The RSADSI DES challenge is open > to all comers, and how do you prove that someone who finds > the key found it through this group effort? > I have a suspicion many people would be tempted to fill in > the RSA challenge form and email it in themselves. $10,000 > is a fair amount of money. Of course they will. If the unsearched portions of the keyspace are published, you can just sit back until the odds go up and then throw some CPU power at it. There is no obligation on the part of the individual who finds the key to not claim the prize personally. The issues of random keyspace assignment to protect against sabotage and centralized monolithic server vs autonomous client have been debated on the "muffin" list, where I have been lurking, but the people in charge seem to like explicit keyspace partitioning and servers a lot. Should be an interesting effort. By the way, does anyone know if des-challenge(a)muffin.org is alive? I haven't seen any messages from it in over a day and majordomo is not responding to inquiries. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

1 0

Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Mark Newton 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May wrote: > The organizer of the coordinated search must then, I surmise, keep the > assignments secret and dole out keyspace securely. Perhaps they should DES-encrypt the list of assignments :-) - mark -------------------------------------------------------------------- I tried an internal modem, newton(a)dotat.org but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton ----- Voice: +61-4-1155-2401 ------------- Fax: +61-8-83732527 -----

1 0

Re: More on digital postage
by omegam＠cmq.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter J. Capelli writes: > I pay for my phone service; I assume you pay a flat rate and not by the incoming fax! > I pay for my fax, toner, and > paper. If they use my property without getting permission first, So, if a person uses a computer fax-modem and, therefore, paper, toner, etc. aren't used, does this change the situation? Suddenly we're very close to the situation of junk-email. (Except that the sender of the junk fax incurs long-distance charges, if there are any, not to mention he pays for the phone service the same as you do) > I believe > that *is* ( or should be ) illegal. "There should be a law!" 5 of the ugliest words in the English language when put together. Look. I understand your sentiment and junk faxes piss me off as well, but the cost of government regulation is too high in my opinion. As I'm sure you're aware, government does a *great* job of creating sensible and useful regulations. Unfortunately, fax machines can't distinguish the text of messages, so you can't do filtering or bounce messages, etc. (Although I have been known to send a nasty reply fax or two. And I never fail to call the send of the fax to complain and have the junk faxes terminated) > Your argument that my plugging a fax > machine itno a phone line I know it will answer, even if it is unauthorized, > is tantamount to saying that if I leave my keys in my car, anyone can take > it, and legally so! While it may be foolish to do that, being > foolish is not > a crime You purchased the fax equipment. Why should the government regulate its usage for you? Ideally, the manufacture of fax machines which are able to authenticate a sender in some manner before permitting the actually permitting transmission of the fax out to paper would likely eliminate junk faxes. Of course, this would involve strong encryption. And -- wouldn't you know it! -- that's covered by a range of confusing and threatening federal regulations -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Omegaman <mailto:omegam@cmq.com>|"When they kick out your front door, PGP Key fingerprint = | How are you gonna come? 6D 31 C3 00 77 8C D1 C2 | With your hands upon your head, 59 0A 01 E3 AF 81 94 63 | Or on the trigger of your gun?" Send email with "get key" as the| -- The Clash, "Guns of Brixton" "Subject:" to get my public key | _London_Calling_ , 1979 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0