December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by holist 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I only subscribed to this list a few weeks ago. I break my silence in defense of Bernardo B. Terrado, who was viciously attacked by Adam Hupp and then rather more graciously advised by Jim Gillogly. Having read a significant amount of material on the ideological (rather than the technical) background of cypherpunks (Tim May's writings, mainly) it seems to me rather obvious that a relative newcomer to these circles would come to expect to find people who may not be "mannered intellectuals", but who are certainly not erstwhile defenders of intellectual property, particularly asthe concept is applied to software today. I understand that there may be other reasons why it is unwise to post requests for warez on these lists, but moral outrage at the thought of software piracy was not one I expected to read here. Especially as I hear nobody complaining about the advertisement for pornography that I receive every two days, regular as clockwork, from the cypherpunks list, not to mention the great deal of other entirely useless, automatically generated advertising. Unlike most of you lucky people in the States, I pay through the nose for on-line time. Perhaps priorities could do with rethinking. holist

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Forwarded mail...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 03:15:07 -0800 (PST) > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > From: holist <holist(a)mail.matav.hu> You should consider subscribing through one of the normal CDR nodes, the toad.com site is unreliable. > come to expect to find people who may not be "mannered intellectuals", but > who are certainly not erstwhile defenders of intellectual property, > particularly asthe concept is applied to software today. Now just exactly what makes you believe that I want other people deciding what happens to the results of my labor? I support Open Source software, however not to the extent I want somebody else to decide without my input whether any given piece happens to Open Source. > requests for warez on these lists, but moral outrage at the thought of > software piracy was not one I expected to read here. Then perhaps you need to work on your morality. > Especially as I hear nobody complaining about the advertisement for > pornography So what? How exactly does pornography map to stolen software? > Unlike most of you lucky people in the States, I pay through the nose for > on-line time. Sounds like a personal problem to me. > Perhaps priorities could do with rethinking. I agree, you need to do some rethinking. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Goldbach & two or more primes...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I'm aware of the Goldbach Reduction by Fermat. The problem is once this theorem is placed in the geometric domain the fact that n-prime factors can be reduced to 2 prime factors is critical and a hinderance. It simply isn't possible to tile a even aread triangle with two smaller congruent triangles whose area is prime. As a result Goldbach's older form is more applicable. If it can be shown that such a tiling is always possible then by extension of Fermat's conjecture the two prime supposition is proved. Reductionism can be a friend or an enemy, swords cut both ways. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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manners
by Richard.Bragg＠ssa.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are ways and means. If someone requests software that is NOT free then a simple NO will surfice. A list of contacts to purchase would aid income for the producer. An additional approach would be to suggest alternatives that are free. There is never any call to be rude.

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Piracy and cypherpunks
by Jim Gillogly 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

holist writes: > Having read a significant amount of material on the ideological (rather than > the technical) background of cypherpunks (Tim May's writings, mainly) it > seems to me rather obvious that a relative newcomer to these circles would > come to expect to find people who may not be "mannered intellectuals", but > who are certainly not erstwhile defenders of intellectual property, > particularly asthe concept is applied to software today. Hurm. Does Tim May advocate passing around unlicensed copies of an $895 Statgraphics program? I think I must have missed that post. In any case, cypherpunks are not a monolithic bunch. While many (like me) are wild-eyed libertarians of one flavor or another, others are feds, corporate shills, government apologists, prepubescent hackers, and (d'oh) working professionals in the computing industry. I, for example, do believe that the concept of intellectual property makes sense in some cases -- e.g. the inventions of public-key encryption and the RSA algorithm, which were important breakthroughs that merit substantial rewards, and I recognize that this is probably not a majority cypherpunk opinion. I do <not> appreciate patents on all the ticky-tack trivial modifications of every silly algorithm that nobody else thought was worth patenting. However, pirating commercial software is not a good way to make your protest. If you don't want to pay for it, write your own version and make it freely available. > Especially as I hear nobody complaining about the advertisement for > pornography that I receive every two days, regular as clockwork, from the > cypherpunks list, not to mention the great deal of other entirely useless, > automatically generated advertising. The difference is that the porn spammers don't read the lists they spam, so complaining on the list does no good. The piracy request came from a fairly regular poster to this list. Big difference. One kind of complaint might lead to a behavioral change, and the other leads only to more noise. If I <must> be mannered and intellectual when addressing wannabe software pirates, I'll quote Catullus: Pedicabo et irrumabo, Mentula! -- Jim Gillogly 29 Blotmath S.R. 1998, 15:12 12.19.5.12.12, 4 Eb 5 Ceh, Ninth Lord of Night

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manners (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Richard.Bragg(a)ssa.co.uk > Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:14:44 +0000 > Subject: manners > There are ways and means. If someone requests software that is NOT free > then a simple NO will surfice. A list of contacts to purchase would aid > income for the producer. > An additional approach would be to suggest alternatives that are free. > > There is never any call to be rude. Agreed, just be sure you can recognize the difference between rude and simply uncomfortable directness. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a question about prime sums of odd (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 11:01:31 -0500 > From: Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)brainlink.com> > Subject: Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a question about prime sums of odd > numbers... > Bullshit: 7+5+(-1)=11. Last I heard, negative numbers weren't excluded from > being primes. 7 is different from 5, -1 is different from 7 and from 5. Shit! I wasn't even thinking of negatives.... Thanks. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a question about prime sums of odd numbers... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Subject: Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a question about prime sums of odd numbers... > Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 09:26:56 -0600 (CST) > From: ichudov(a)Algebra.Com (Igor Chudov @ home) > > All even numbers greater than two can be represented as the sum of primes. > > Do you mean a sum of DIFFERENT primes? None of the references that I've looked at state it clearly but I assume that it must be or else we could just use 1 for everything. > > Is there any work on whether odd numbers can always be represented as the > > sum of primes? > > Well, take 11, for example, it cannot be repsesented as a sum of different > primes. It cannot, pure and simple. Sure it can, 1 + 3 + 7. It can't be the PRODUCT of two lower primes since it wouldn't be prime then. This sum by the way CAN'T be reduced to two primes so Fermat's Conjecture applied to odds is clearly false. The only proviso is the number we want to sum TO must be greater than 2. ALL numbers can be represented as sums of primes, the question is whether you allow repeats or not. > > This of course implies that the number of prime members > > must be odd and must exclude 1 (unless you can have more than a single > > instance of a given prime). Has this been examined? > > Why, let's say 5 = 3+2, it is a sum of an even number of primes. In the number theory realm, I agree. In the geometric real (in particular using equilateral triangles) those constraints hold. Note that the smallest number of sums for your example above is odd. The reason that you must exclude the problem becomes trivial if you aren't required to sum the 1's. > I suggest that first "examination" should always include playing > with trivial examples. No kidding? > If multiple instances are allowed, it is an enormously boring conjecture > for 5 grade school students. > > any number above 1 may be represented as a sum of some 3s and some > 2s. Big deal. Actualy they are simply sums of 1's, its actualy first grade math. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a question about prime sums of odd numbers
by Jim Gillogly 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ray Arachelian wrote: > "Igor Chudov @ home" wrote: > > Well, take 11, for example, it cannot be repsesented as a sum of different > > primes. It cannot, pure and simple. > Bullshit: 7+5+(-1)=11. Last I heard, negative numbers weren't excluded from > being primes. 7 is different from 5, -1 is different from 7 and from 5. If this is boiling down to a definition of primes, I'll haul out my Hardy & Wright, page 2: A number p is said to be prime if (i) p > 1, (ii) p has no positive divisors except 1 and p. ... It is important to observe that 1 is not reckoned as a prime. My number theory class at college (admittedly that was three decades ago) also started the prime series at 2 and went up from there. The term "odd primes" always meant 3 and above, not 1 and above. YMMV. -- Jim Gillogly 29 Blotmath S.R. 1998, 16:29 12.19.5.12.12, 4 Eb 5 Ceh, Ninth Lord of Night

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Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a question about prime sums of odd numbers (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 12:18:26 -0500 > From: Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)brainlink.com> > Subject: Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a question about prime sums of odd numbers > So I guess I have to take back 7+5+(-1) and go with Jim's 1+3+7, but fuck, > that won't work either since 1 isn't a prime... So I guess Igor is right on > this one. Sorry Jim... A prime is defined as *ANY* number (note the definition doesn't mention sign or magnitude nor does it exclude any numbers a priori) that has no multiplicative factors other than itself and 1. 1 * 1 = 1 so it is clearly prime. Now, if a particular branch of number theory wants to extend it and make it only numbers >=2 that is fine, I'm not working in that branch anyway. ____________________________________________________________________ Lawyers ask the wrong questions when they don't want the right answers. Scully (X-Files) The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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