December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Plan 9 ordering info [rather expensive]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you're interested in getting Plan 9 in CD format: Harcourt Brace & Co. 800-782-4479 Plan 9 (full distribution on CD w/ source) ISBN 0-03-017143-1 $367.50 + 8% s/h + state tax (8.25% in Tx) Usualy takes 24 hours to setup an account with them. Apparently they don't ship this through retailers. When I called this morning for up to date info the #3 selection for individuals and professional didn't work. Just select the operator option and be done with it. I advised them their VRU didn't work correctly. If you talk to EJ tell her thanks again. If you just want to play then go to plan9.att.com and get the disk set they offer for playing around. It lacks all source but it will install a minimal system on an Intel box. Should work on most systems though I do suggest that you use a SCSI based system. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: (eternity) autonomous agents
by Ross Anderson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ryan Lackey: > A "datahaven country" would have > to be immune to such tactics -- either having its own strong military > (China as datahaven) to defend its national interests, political > connections (Israel?), or enough trade with the US that shutting off > data commo would be impossible for economic reasons (Singapore?). A virtual datahaven could be constructed eaily provided you knew how to index controversial matter. Publish the rude things about the Prophet Mohammed on a server in Israel, the anti-Serb rants in Croatia, the kiddyporn in Sweden, the violence in America, the Nazi hate speech in Syria and the anti-scientology stuff in Germany. If someone wants to curse and swear at the whole world at once, then there is this amazing new invention called hypertext ... Ross

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Don't shoot the messenger (Re: 1 Question to Dr. Froomkin...) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 18:38:43 GMT > From: Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> > Subject: Don't shoot the messenger (Re: 1 Question to Dr. Froomkin...) > It appears to me that your comments to Michael are based on your views > on the undesirability of the way the US judicial system operates in > practice today. Michael is merely offering his expert opinion on how > various questions would likely be interpreted by the current legal > system. Ok. It's not just the US judicial system, include the executive and legislative branches as well. > Screams of "and you think this is a good idea?" and "but what about > the constitution" are misdirected; I strongly suspect each of the > three posters I mention above share your distaste for the redefinition > of meanings and blatant disregard for the fairly clear meanings of the > constitution. You propose speaking softly will resolve the issue? If so why speak at all since that is the softest speech of all. Your position seems to be that if a question is hard then it should be avoided because it might offend the sensibilities? You propose that justice would be better served if it were all masked in innuendo and euphamism? Perhaps, that is no reason not to take them to task when they expound a position using fallacious arguments. Further, Dr. Froomkin is a law professor who *trains* future lawyers. If anyone should be held to task for their actions and views it is those who are deciding what tomorrows world will look like and the people charged with those decisions. There is a fundamental ethical responsibility for conservatism and literalism in those enterprises that simply isn't present in most other 'jobs'. We aren't playing horseshoes or handgrenades - close enough is not good enough. There is a fundamental difference between Lawyers, Doctors, & Soldiers and the vast majority of other human endeavours. In short, they are given the lattitude to decide events that directly and immediatley impact human life. Engineers, Pilots, hamburger flippers, etc. are seldom in a position as a matter of course of their practicing their vocation to decide whether a person will live or die. Because of this exclusion from commen behavioral limitations they should receive *less* latitude and trust in their actions instead of more (which is what is happening today). Ulitmately, when a lawyer fails in their duty to use *every* legal recourse a person sits in a room and gets to listen to the hiss of cyanide drop into the acid. When these people make a mistake there is no 'fixing' it. Sometimes "I'm sorry" just doesn't cut it. It is entirely too important to be complacent or trust without verification (thanks to Pres. Reagan for that one). The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We'll just have to agree to disagree here. If they take the job they take the responsibility to answer for their actions to any and every citizen that asks for it. However inconvenient, uncomfortable, or rude the question may be posed because the *next* citizen they ask to trust them may be the one asking the question. Never forget that but by the grace of God there go you. If you want to trust your future to somebody who 'shuts down' because somebody says "spin doctor bullshit" or strenously defends their views be my guest. Me, I want a MUCH more mature and determined individual handling me and my decendants future. I want to experience that strength of conviction from them not a yellow streak. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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autonomous agents (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 19:25:53 GMT > From: Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> > Subject: autonomous agents > A canonical way to do implement things like remailers, eternity > servers etc. is to build a distributed computation system to allow > autonomous agents to be distributed across the internet. Create a > market for CPU resources, bandwidth and disk-space so that the agent > can pay it's way. Charge per CPU/hour, Mbit comms at given data rates > and Mbyte/year storage, base it on Java as a portable network based > language with code distribution support. Then let people fire off > what ever they like, so long as they are paying. Has anyone done any work that you are aware of under the Plan 9 os? With it's fundamental seperation of i/o, process, and file servers along with it's inherent bidding/scheduling mechanism it seems to me that a lot of this work has already been done. In addition there are programs that allow Linux boxes to participate as Plan 9 compliant file servers. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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1 Question to Dr. Froomkin...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sir, Do you accept that the Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the land and therefore the ultimate legal authority within its borders? ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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1st sign of a closed mind...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"I won't listen to that because ...." ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: (eternity) autonomous agents
by Thomas Womack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ross Anderson wrote: >A virtual datahaven could be constructed eaily provided you knew how to >index controversial matter. > >Publish the rude things about the Prophet Mohammed on a server in Israel, >the anti-Serb rants in Croatia, the kiddyporn in Sweden, the violence in >America, the Nazi hate speech in Syria and the anti-scientology stuff in >Germany. I suspect you will still run into things which are illegal anywhere; national-security stuff can be handled provided you've got a complete list of pairs of unfriendly nations, but I don't think (eg) the more extreme sort of kiddyporn is legal *anywhere*. Tom

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Sun to fight MS w/ new workstations [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > New Unix workstations, lower pricing seen as bulwark against Microsoft > NT > > January 12, 1998: 1:11 p.m. ET > > Java goes to set-top boxes - Jan. 9, 1998 > > Sun cross-pollinates Intel - Dec. 16, 1998 > > More related sites... PALO ALTO, Calif.(Reuters) - Sun Microsystems > Inc. will launch a new line of workstations Tuesday, aiming to > challenge its rivals and blunt the spread into markets for > high-powered desktop computers used by engineers of PCs using > Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT. > [INLINE] The new workstations are the result of a two-year effort by > Sun to design products that greatly reduce the cost of the computers > used by power-hungry engineers, while still providing the blistering > performance they demand. > [INLINE] "This is really big. We think we can create an alternative to > [PCs running] NT," Ed Zander, president of Sun Microsystems Computer > Co., the company's largest division, said in an interview with Reuters > ahead of the announcement. [text deleted] ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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USPS loosing business to email [CNN]
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > U.S. POSTAL SERVICE LOSING BUSINESS TO COMPUTERS > > e-mail vs. snail mail January 12, 1998 > Web posted at: 3:25 p.m. EST (2025 GMT) > > NEW YORK (CNN) -- The U.S. Postal Service is facing stiff > competition from computers, according to an article in the January > 19 issue of Time Magazine. > > Electronic mail could replace 25 percent of conventional mail, or > "snail mail," by the year 2000, the article said. > > The Postal Service lags behind Federal Express and United Parcel > Service in shipping packages. The latter already moves 80 percent of > the country's packages, according to the article. [text deleted] ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: In God We Antitrust, from the Netly News
by Ryan Lackey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> [people disparaging the AMD/Cyrix Processors, as well as defending them] I have used a K6-200 overclocked to a K6-300 (83mhz bus speed) for some time now, mostly accomplishing the cooling issue by leaving it in my bedroom with the window open all winter. It's a great value -- for $200+$100 I got a processor and motherboard capable of PII-level performance in things like code compiles, etc. I've even hand-optimized some code for the K6 -- it's a great chip. If I find investors/customers/etc. by March-July 98 for Eternity DDS, though, I'm planning to buy 8 DEC AlphaPC motherboards with dual 21264 processors. Some pieces of Eternity DDS are now being implemented in Oracle for speed of implementation reasons, and other pieces are being prototyped in Scheme (maybe), so even my K6 is getting hammered. Plus, I'm now testing some kernel modifications, and having to reboot the only functional server, bring Oracle back up, initialize the world, bring up a web server and an encrypted filesystem, etc. all without disrupting service too much whenever I make a minor change, then do it every time I need to change one character in the kernel, is really annoying. Running the different services on different machines would be far more realistic and practical. [*Obcrypto*: I have gotten incredibly backed up with work of various kinds, and email. However, I still have time for silly web service questions. Here goes: Does anyone know of a way I can take a web server, say AOLserver, which does not support useful SSL, and also does not distribute source, and retrofit a useful 128-bit SSL implementation to it? It has a C API, but I haven't looked at the API enough to see if I could do it within the API. Are there any proxies which could be stuck between the insecure server and the user (preferably with an ssh link between the servers) which could provide SSL proxy service? It seems like this should be trivial to do, but I haven't tried yet, and I want to have some reedeming value for this post.] -- Ryan Lackey rdl(a)mit.edu http://mit.edu/rdl/

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