December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Microsoft World 1.0 from the Netly News (and a funny response)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

********* http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1576,00.html The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/) November 13, 1997 Microsoft World 1.0 by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) If you're Bill Gates, the last place on earth you want to be today is 2500 Calvert St., Washington, D.C. That's the address of the "Appraising Microsoft" conference, where politicos and high tech leaders from around the country are teaming up to take a big swing at the richest man in America. It would be a slugfest -- if only Gates were around to defend himself. Ralph Nader, the conference's organizer, invited him, but Gates declined through his lawyers. "It appears that your conference will provide a forum for anti-Microsoft pundits and business competitors to raise their litany of tired allegations in an attempt to manipulate public opinion against our company," wrote attorney William Neukom, who is defending Microsoft from antitrust allegations. Which is only natural. Everyone Microsoft has ever pissed off (and Microsoft has pissed off a lot of people) seems to be here today. Who would pass up a chance to flame the Boy Billionaire -- especially when there's safety in numbers? [...] *********** Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 14:27:41 -0500 To: declan(a)pathfinder.com From: Steve Kremer <steve(a)jokewallpaper.com> Subject: Ralph Nader's Computer? I enjoyed your story about the conference. When I first heard about it I had a question to ask Ralph for my monthly humor newsletter...So I called his office. Here's the item.. Have Fun, Steve Kremer JAMES SPADER, DARTH VADER, RALPH NADER. WHICH OF THESE THREE OWN A COMPUTER?? In the month of November you will be hearing a lot about a media event called the "Appraising Microsoft Conference" held in Washington, D.C. and hosted by consumer gadfly Ralph Nader. If you visit their Web site at: http://www.essential.org/appraising/microsoft/ you can read about their plans to discuss Microsoft. They profess high intentions of seriously discussing Microsoft's influence on the future, but it looks to me like a "trash Microsoft festival". Not that Microsoft doesn't deserve to be trashed, but I thought the Nader folks and their "conference" was utterly transparent. I began to wonder...just how much does Ralph Nader know about computers and the World Wide Web. On their Web site they list their phone number and the name of their media contact Caroline Jonah. Armed with my trusty Sony integrated phone/recorder I gave her a call. Below is a transcript of a portion of our conversation. Steve Kremer: "Do you happen to know what computer system Ralph Nader uses. Is he a Windows or Mac guy?" Caroline Jonah: "Umm, I don't think, let me think, he doesn't even have a computer in his office to tell you the truth." Steve Kremer: "Oh really, he isn't one of those laptop toting people? Caroline Jonah: "In our office we have both, we use both, yeah." Steve Kremer: "O.K., so Mr. Nader doesn't even have a computer?" Caroline Jonah: "We have both in our office, so he can use either one, so. But in his office, I don't think he even has one in his office." I asked if she had actually ever seen Ralph using a computer and she said I would have to talk to him directly. She promised that she would have Mr. Nader give me a call later that day. He never called. So when you read the inevitable story coming out of Washington D.C. in the middle of the month about Consumer Crusader Ralph Nader taking Microsoft to task, remember it's being headlined by someone who has probably never had their hand on a mouse except maybe to take a dead one out of an OSHA approved trap.

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Re: Tim May's offensive racism (was: about RC4)
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:42 PM 11/14/97 +0900, Joichi Ito wrote: >Oh and by the way: > >Article 21 of the Constitution of Japan > >Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press >and all other forms of expression are guaranteed. >2) No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of >any means of communication be violated. > >"nya nya na nya nya..." Is that Japanese for "Wassenaar"?

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Re: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Robert Hettinga wrote: >At 7:45 pm -0500 on 11/11/97, Monty wrote: >> As Michel Foucault used to say, "The only guarantee of freedom is >> freedom itself." > >The world's foremost pseudomystical relativist cited to support an >absolutist position. The logic escapes me. But then, logic, much less >independent thinking, was never Foucault's strong point. Physician heal thyself! Much of your discussion consists of ad hominem attacks with little content such as the paragraph quoted above. The Foucault discussion quoted is worth reading. Unfortunately, it's been a long time and I cannot provide a reference. At any rate, the upshot of his argument was that there are often attempts to ensure freedom, but in reality it can only be assured through its exercise. He gave the example of a building in France which was designed to make people feel free. Instead of winding little corridors and small rooms where people would be locked away, it had a large open courtyard and it was designed so that when you entered the building, everybody could see you and you could see them. Foucault argued that in the context of people who are free, this building would have the intended effect. In the context of a fearful and oppressive society, the effect would be quite the opposite. Everybody would feel that they were being watched all the time. >> Put another way, "rights which are not exercised are lost." > >True enough, but it doesn't follow from your Foucault quote very >much. Besides, I'd rather say "because it can be done, it will be >done." Especially if it's better. If Tim believes that a judge has committed a capital crime, I want to hear about it. If Tim and others fail to exercise their right to say what they believe, then it is likely those rights will be suspended in due time. >So, by the same token, I would also say that if you're going to >threaten a federal judge with death on a public email list, it might >behoove you to use a nym and a remailer. Like you do, Monty. Using a >nym and a remailer, I mean, not threatening a federal judge. :-). It seems to me that Tim said "The judge in the Paladin case committed a capital crime" and not "The judge in the Paladin case committed a capital crime and should be gunned down in the streets like a dog." Tim is a good writer. If he meant the latter I am sure he would have written the latter. If anything, the term "capital crime" suggests a legal proceeding. Personally, I don't consider violation of oath of office a capital crime. But, the judge should be fired. He clearly isn't taking the Constitution very seriously. >> Just because free speech is a right guaranteed under the Constitution >> does not mean that is necessarily a safe right to exercise. Let us >> hope that Tim does not come to harm. But, let us also give him the >> credit he deserves for having the courage to speak his mind. > >Yes. Fine. Tim has courage. God bless him. Hope he enjoys his >firefight. I don't understand why you keep insulting Tim. Your first post was insulting and comments like these are likewise insulting. >> I've been reading about a newspaper called the "Aurora" which >> operated in the 1790s from Philadelphia. > >Yes. I read it too, when it came out. Franklin was my favorite >patriot. Aurora was founded by his grandson(?), if I remember. The >one who went with Franklin to Paris, as a kid, right? The book I am reading is called "The Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns" by Richard N. Rosenfeld. >> It made itself very unpopular with >> Washington by claiming he was not the "Father of the Country". It >> made itself doubly unpopular with Adams for other less than >> respectful, but astute, observations. > >Right. And then Adams passed the Alien and Sedition laws. And then >the Supreme court took him out. Game over. We must be reading different books. The Supreme Court did nothing while the Executive Branch ran rampant. My guess is that the members of the Court identified with the political faction represented by the Adams administration. Incidentally, it has only been during the 20th century that the Court has protected the Bill of Rights in any significant way. After the editor of "The Aurora" was publicly beaten by Federal troops, citizens of Philadelphia formed an armed militia and stood guard outside the offices of the newspaper. That's why it wasn't suppressed. Here's an example of what was going on (pp: 526-527): > In the midst of this campaign [for the House of Representatives], > the federal government indicted Matthew Lyon for sedition (October > 5), arrested him (October 6), tried him without legal representation > (October 8), fined him $1,000, and sentenced him to four months in > prison (starting October 9). His "seditious libel" was the claim > that President John Adams has demonstrated "a continual grasp for > power" and an "unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish > adulation, or selfish avarice," &c. Today, Vermont Congressional > Congressman Matthew Lyon is in jail." The Alien and Sedition Acts had a built in expiration period at the end of Adams's term so that they couldn't be used against the party that passed them. They also did not apply to speech against the Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, who did not belong to the Adams faction. When Jefferson was elected he pardoned everybody who was tried under these acts. Abigail Adams apparently wrote him about these pardonings. She had been quite enthused about the suppression of free speech in the United States and was upset that people who insulted her husband, in her view, would be allowed to go unpunished. Jefferson's reply (page 902): > I discharged every person under punishment or prosecution under the > Sedition law, because I considered and now consider that law to be a > nullity as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to > fall down and worship a golden image... [The discharge] was > accordingly done in every instance without asking what the offenders > had done or against whom they had offended but whether the pains > they were suffering were inflicted under the pretended sedition law. > It was certainly possible that my motives... might have been to > protect, encourage, and reward slander; but they may also have > been... to protect the Constitution violated by an unauthorized act > of Congress. Which of these were my motives must be decided by a > regard to the general tenor of my life. On this I am not afraid to > appeal to the nation at large, to posterity, and still less to that > Being who sees himself our motives, who will judge us from his own > knowledge of them, and not on the testimony of Porcupine or Fenno. The Constitutional mechanisms to preserve liberty all failed, except for the election of 1800. >> If they would only behave (i.e., go along with anything), then they >> wouldn't have to be censored. > >Hogwash. What the conventional wisdom held, back in the 1790's, was a >bunch of neoaristocratic justifications for the devine rights of the >state, reminiscent of the devine rights of kings, and that George >Washington, as the victor of the revolutionary war, deserved as much >power as he wanted. Abigail Adams (page 84): > Bache [editor of the "Aurora"] has the malice & falsehood of > Satin... But the wretched will provoke to measures which will > silence them e'er long. An abused and insulted publick cannot > tollerate them much longer. In short they are so criminal that they > ought to be Presented by the grand jurors. >Fortunately, a certain "nym" named Publius advocated the separation >of powers in the constitution, which created a supreme court, which >used Jefferson's Bill of Rights to shut all that crap down before it >went too far, modulo a little jail time for those who crash-tested >the idea. 1. Publius was John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Jay and Hamilton were leaders of the party attempting to subvert the Constitution. 2. The Federalist version of the Constitution was intended to have aristocratic elements - the Senate and the President. Adams even suggested privately that the Senators should have life long terms and that Senate seats should be hereditary. 3. The separation of powers failed completely during the Adams administration. The Federalists had control of the Congress, the Executive Branch, and, I suspect, the Supreme Court. 4. The rights and freedoms of Americans were protected only by the fact that the voters threw the bastards out. Something to keep in mind when people tell us that the voters are less trustworthy than career politicans. 5. The Supreme Court did nothing. 6. Jefferson did not write the Bill of Rights. He was in France at the time and was pleased to hear these amendments had been added to the Constitution. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNGtV2ZaWtjSmRH/5AQHeZQf/UiD0ctd+xy8CUE8ednsENDNNCrVWXvTy UxYuRm2KtRCYVZ4Yg7C5kPEqpHU3xAWgifB4ZYKHb22rmgYa1cz3U2ZDBluMl74h mgAgZU2Rry+tDRs2TtHJWFFgQfscgRjFBG7rRxWdD0n9G5KwBcR3ne60wU5KzPbs kR0FpXjh+Q0PFSKWJOfY65xs33Wn6auUBUXKZTUI4fPowt4DmQKaWPtsSzv4ojxE LOXEhvngMQl5Y729ZOmfIW1uQtGp3EUbDOheC1wb6szzFEgfr1TsZntHRnkiTqyJ ssOAvq7XzeDROEehhVlsXUfYCmCcNIq1UakDKSpouUAMhBrwYVCK9A== =MUMa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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No Subject
by Georg Josef Uphoff 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Robert Hettinga wrote: >At 7:45 pm -0500 on 11/11/97, Monty wrote: >> As Michel Foucault used to say, "The only guarantee of freedom is >> freedom itself." > >The world's foremost pseudomystical relativist cited to support an >absolutist position. The logic escapes me. But then, logic, much less >independent thinking, was never Foucault's strong point. Physician heal thyself! Much of your discussion consists of ad hominem attacks with little content such as the paragraph quoted above. The Foucault discussion quoted is worth reading. Unfortunately, it's been a long time and I cannot provide a reference. At any rate, the upshot of his argument was that there are often attempts to ensure freedom, but in reality it can only be assured through its exercise. He gave the example of a building in France which was designed to make people feel free. Instead of winding little corridors and small rooms where people would be locked away, it had a large open courtyard and it was designed so that when you entered the building, everybody could see you and you could see them. Foucault argued that in the context of people who are free, this building would have the intended effect. In the context of a fearful and oppressive society, the effect would be quite the opposite. Everybody would feel that they were being watched all the time. >> Put another way, "rights which are not exercised are lost." > >True enough, but it doesn't follow from your Foucault quote very >much. Besides, I'd rather say "because it can be done, it will be >done." Especially if it's better. If Tim believes that a judge has committed a capital crime, I want to hear about it. If Tim and others fail to exercise their right to say what they believe, then it is likely those rights will be suspended in due time. >So, by the same token, I would also say that if you're going to >threaten a federal judge with death on a public email list, it might >behoove you to use a nym and a remailer. Like you do, Monty. Using a >nym and a remailer, I mean, not threatening a federal judge. :-). It seems to me that Tim said "The judge in the Paladin case committed a capital crime" and not "The judge in the Paladin case committed a capital crime and should be gunned down in the streets like a dog." Tim is a good writer. If he meant the latter I am sure he would have written the latter. If anything, the term "capital crime" suggests a legal proceeding. Personally, I don't consider violation of oath of office a capital crime. But, the judge should be fired. He clearly isn't taking the Constitution very seriously. >> Just because free speech is a right guaranteed under the Constitution >> does not mean that is necessarily a safe right to exercise. Let us >> hope that Tim does not come to harm. But, let us also give him the >> credit he deserves for having the courage to speak his mind. > >Yes. Fine. Tim has courage. God bless him. Hope he enjoys his >firefight. I don't understand why you keep insulting Tim. Your first post was insulting and comments like these are likewise insulting. >> I've been reading about a newspaper called the "Aurora" which >> operated in the 1790s from Philadelphia. > >Yes. I read it too, when it came out. Franklin was my favorite >patriot. Aurora was founded by his grandson(?), if I remember. The >one who went with Franklin to Paris, as a kid, right? The book I am reading is called "The Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns" by Richard N. Rosenfeld. >> It made itself very unpopular with >> Washington by claiming he was not the "Father of the Country". It >> made itself doubly unpopular with Adams for other less than >> respectful, but astute, observations. > >Right. And then Adams passed the Alien and Sedition laws. And then >the Supreme court took him out. Game over. We must be reading different books. The Supreme Court did nothing while the Executive Branch ran rampant. My guess is that the members of the Court identified with the political faction represented by the Adams administration. Incidentally, it has only been during the 20th century that the Court has protected the Bill of Rights in any significant way. After the editor of "The Aurora" was publicly beaten by Federal troops, citizens of Philadelphia formed an armed militia and stood guard outside the offices of the newspaper. That's why it wasn't suppressed. Here's an example of what was going on (pp: 526-527): > In the midst of this campaign [for the House of Representatives], > the federal government indicted Matthew Lyon for sedition (October > 5), arrested him (October 6), tried him without legal representation > (October 8), fined him $1,000, and sentenced him to four months in > prison (starting October 9). His "seditious libel" was the claim > that President John Adams has demonstrated "a continual grasp for > power" and an "unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish > adulation, or selfish avarice," &c. Today, Vermont Congressional > Congressman Matthew Lyon is in jail." The Alien and Sedition Acts had a built in expiration period at the end of Adams's term so that they couldn't be used against the party that passed them. They also did not apply to speech against the Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, who did not belong to the Adams faction. When Jefferson was elected he pardoned everybody who was tried under these acts. Abigail Adams apparently wrote him about these pardonings. She had been quite enthused about the suppression of free speech in the United States and was upset that people who insulted her husband, in her view, would be allowed to go unpunished. Jefferson's reply (page 902): > I discharged every person under punishment or prosecution under the > Sedition law, because I considered and now consider that law to be a > nullity as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to > fall down and worship a golden image... [The discharge] was > accordingly done in every instance without asking what the offenders > had done or against whom they had offended but whether the pains > they were suffering were inflicted under the pretended sedition law. > It was certainly possible that my motives... might have been to > protect, encourage, and reward slander; but they may also have > been... to protect the Constitution violated by an unauthorized act > of Congress. Which of these were my motives must be decided by a > regard to the general tenor of my life. On this I am not afraid to > appeal to the nation at large, to posterity, and still less to that > Being who sees himself our motives, who will judge us from his own > knowledge of them, and not on the testimony of Porcupine or Fenno. The Constitutional mechanisms to preserve liberty all failed, except for the election of 1800. >> If they would only behave (i.e., go along with anything), then they >> wouldn't have to be censored. > >Hogwash. What the conventional wisdom held, back in the 1790's, was a >bunch of neoaristocratic justifications for the devine rights of the >state, reminiscent of the devine rights of kings, and that George >Washington, as the victor of the revolutionary war, deserved as much >power as he wanted. Abigail Adams (page 84): > Bache [editor of the "Aurora"] has the malice & falsehood of > Satin... But the wretched will provoke to measures which will > silence them e'er long. An abused and insulted publick cannot > tollerate them much longer. In short they are so criminal that they > ought to be Presented by the grand jurors. >Fortunately, a certain "nym" named Publius advocated the separation >of powers in the constitution, which created a supreme court, which >used Jefferson's Bill of Rights to shut all that crap down before it >went too far, modulo a little jail time for those who crash-tested >the idea. 1. Publius was John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Jay and Hamilton were leaders of the party attempting to subvert the Constitution. 2. The Federalist version of the Constitution was intended to have aristocratic elements - the Senate and the President. Adams even suggested privately that the Senators should have life long terms and that Senate seats should be hereditary. 3. The separation of powers failed completely during the Adams administration. The Federalists had control of the Congress, the Executive Branch, and, I suspect, the Supreme Court. 4. The rights and freedoms of Americans were protected only by the fact that the voters threw the bastards out. Something to keep in mind when people tell us that the voters are less trustworthy than career politicans. 5. The Supreme Court did nothing. 6. Jefferson did not write the Bill of Rights. He was in France at the time and was pleased to hear these amendments had been added to the Constitution. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNGtV2ZaWtjSmRH/5AQHeZQf/UiD0ctd+xy8CUE8ednsENDNNCrVWXvTy UxYuRm2KtRCYVZ4Yg7C5kPEqpHU3xAWgifB4ZYKHb22rmgYa1cz3U2ZDBluMl74h mgAgZU2Rry+tDRs2TtHJWFFgQfscgRjFBG7rRxWdD0n9G5KwBcR3ne60wU5KzPbs kR0FpXjh+Q0PFSKWJOfY65xs33Wn6auUBUXKZTUI4fPowt4DmQKaWPtsSzv4ojxE LOXEhvngMQl5Y729ZOmfIW1uQtGp3EUbDOheC1wb6szzFEgfr1TsZntHRnkiTqyJ ssOAvq7XzeDROEehhVlsXUfYCmCcNIq1UakDKSpouUAMhBrwYVCK9A== =MUMa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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FC: CEI says Nader's anti-Microsoft campaign hurts consumers (fwd)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 16:50:45 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship-announce(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: FC: CEI says Nader's anti-Microsoft campaign hurts consumers [CEI (http://www.cei.org/) is a free-market nonpartisan think tank here in Washington, DC. --Declan] ******* Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 16:11:36 -0500 From: Emily McGee <emcgee(a)cei.org> To: "'declan(a)well.com'" <declan(a)well.com> Subject: Posting for fc Competitive Enterprise Institute For Immediate Release Contact: Wayne Crews CEI (202) 331-1010 Ralph Nader's Anti-Microsoft Campaign Hurts Consumers WASHINGTON, DC, November 12 , 1997 - The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) suspects that Ralph Nader does not speak for all consumers in his current crusade against Microsoft. Nader is hosting a November 13-14 conference in Washington, D.C entitled "Appraising Microsoft and Its Global Strategy." Designed to elicit public support for federal antitrust action against the company's expansion of computer services, "Appraising Microsoft" features speakers prominently drawn from the ranks of Microsoft's rivals. According to Nader and some competitors, Microsoft's offering of its web browser free with the Windows 95 operating system is only the latest in the company's long line of "offenses." Yet consumers consistently benefit when more and better features are added to computers. As noted in the Washington Post, the computing power of today's $2,800 "Wintel" would have required a multi-million-dollar Cray supercomputer a decade ago. Indeed, "voting" with their mouse button, consumers have voluntarily downloaded millions of copies of Microsoft's new web browser. "The Competitive Enterprise Institute hopes the media covering 'Appraising Microsoft' will maintain a healthy skepticism and explore who really gains if the government substitutes its will for the free choices of individuals in the marketplace," CEI fellow Wayne Crews noted. "Antitrust authorities must guard against Microsoft's rivals' efforts to 'compete' in court to achieve what they couldn't by consumers' voluntary consent. "Ralph Nader's brand of 'consumer advocacy' is confusing," Crews noted. "When outside crusaders and government forcibly limit consumers' free choices and slam the brakes on a torrent of low-cost features, they increase consumer prices and prop up less-efficient competitors." Crews continued, "This is not pro-consumer behavior, it is merely anti-Microsoft behavior." "Consumers have spoken, and there is nothing amiss in their having chosen an operating system standard that some happen to despise," Crews concluded. "Let's hope Ralph Nader hears consumers more than the complaints of competitive also-rans." To address some of the common complaints against Microsoft, CEI today also released the attached two-pager "Five Myths About Microsoft." CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to free markets and limited government. For more information contact Wayne Crews at 202-331-1010. -30- The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Five Myths About Microsoft* (Note: The following "myths" apply to many of today's supposed examples of "lock-in" of allegedly inefficient technologies. Microsoft happens to be the most prominently cited example of the phenomenon.) Leveraging Windows to Dominate the Browser Market Represents Unfair Competition: A popular myth today is that a savvy company can routinely leverage a "monopoly" in one product to force on consumers a product that they do not want. Companies lack this ability. Microsoft was unable to sell consumers on its Microsoft Network rival to America Online -- even though MSN had been "bundled" with the Windows 95 operating system. Similarly, Microsoft Money still lags behind Quicken. And as Netscape learned the hard way by bundling its Navigator browser with its Communicator suite, and as Apple leaned by bundling its entire computer with its operating system, bundling products doesn't work unless consumers want the bundling. In any case, Netscape, not Microsoft, dominates today's browser market, and retains every opportunity to maintain dominance by satisfying customers. In a sense, browser competition could hardly be more perfect: Because downloading Netscape's Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer is equally simple, either firm will have to win on the basis of superior features. Microsoft Illegitimately Dominates Operating System Software: Microsoft's rivals tend to imply that Microsoft's operating system is utterly impervious, seemingly as if it dropped out of the sky unbidden. Rather, rivalry among operating systems for desktop dominance has been and still is intense. Microsoft's operating system dominance was not pre-ordained. Nothing prevented Sun, whose UNIX operating system was developed ten years before MS-DOS, from transferring that technology to the early PC marketplace. Nor did anyone force Sun to wait until 1991 to finally introduce a version for the Intel x86 platform. No one forced Apple back in 1984 to take the course it chose in not licensing its operating system to others as Microsoft did. There is nothing unseemly about one competitor winning out over the others and setting a standard. That was the purpose of the nearly 20 years of protracted battle, during which consumers made their choice. Microsoft is Illegitimately Monopolizing the Internet: Some claim Microsoft's proprietary knowledge and policies on sharing information about its operating system are oppressive and geared toward helping Microsoft dominate the Internet with its own software. But on the other hand, it would appear that, while application developers do depend upon Windows 95, Microsoft in turn has a stake in nurturing developers' success rather than in undermining them. But for the sake of argument, take the critics at their word: If such dissatisfaction with Microsoft is indeed universal, then the market is ripe for moving to a new platform - just as we moved rapidly from vinyl records to compact disks. There's no need for government to step in if a problem really exists: If Microsoft ($9 billion in 1996 revenues) were untrustworthy, nothing prevents the formation of consortia between developers and (for example) Compaq ($18 billion), Sun ($7 billion), and Apple ($8 billion) and others to offer consumers their allegedly superior hardware and software alternatives. Indeed, competitors by their own account already have another option. Given their glowing claims about the superiority of Sun's Java programming language -- which allows programs to execute in Netscape's browser on any operating system -- competitors should simply issue applications programs in Java format and be done with it. Otherwise, consumers retain the right to deal unobstructed with Microsoft to secure the services that competitors cannot yet provide. (Moreover, nothing precludes the future creation of rival "Javas" that work better.) Longer term, particle physicist Michio Kaku in his book Visions anticipates a future of 1-cent microprocessors as plentiful as scrap paper, a world where desktop computers will be only one among myriad devices connected to the Internet. Additionally, as engineers approach the physical limits of silicon chips, revolutions in quantum computing and DNA computing will change the competitive landscape. Microsoft has no obvious advantage in such a world, though it should be free to offer services there. The Consent Decree with the Justice Department Should Preclude Bundling a Web Browser With Windows: A technical legal debate exists over whether the bundling of Microsoft's browser is an allowed enhancement to the Windows operating system, or whether it is a disallowed "separate product." One problem with the claim that Internet Explorer is not allowed under the consent decree is that the browser was offered with Windows 95 at the outset. But most relevant, such arbitrary distinctions interest only those with a stake in using government force to overrule customers' free choices. In a free market, products must evolve and be "bundled" as consumer demand and convenience requires. Making artificial distinctions between the retrieval of data on the hard drive vs. on the Internet is counterproductive, unfair and anti-consumer. Prohibiting Microsoft's branching out into the Internet artificially cripples the company, just as did a former consent decree with Sears prevent it from anchoring stores in shopping malls. Microsoft Borrows and Doesn't Innovate: Subjective criticisms about whether a company is an innovator are hardly grounds for police action and completely irrelevant to an antitrust proceeding. What matters as far as free markets are concerned is the ability to meet needs and market one's offering. The history of innovative business is one in which enterprising businessmen and engineers take the scientists' inventions out of the laboratory and make them practical for consumers. Thus innovation need not equate with invention. For example, Microsoft indeed didn't invent MS-DOS -- its key operating system during its early history -- but it purchased and owns it. Apple's graphical user interface, typically regarded as having been copied by Microsoft, was actually "borrowed" from Xerox PARC by both companies. Neither "innovated," strictly speaking. Nonetheless, it is disingenuous to argue that any company's ability to anticipate consumer needs in positioning and improving its operating system, word processing and spreadsheet software reflects a lack of innovation. A better definition of innovation is one that includes a company's ability to deliver new services cheaply and efficiently to consumers. # # # -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is public. To join fight-censorship-announce, send "subscribe fight-censorship-announce" to majordomo(a)vorlon.mit.edu. More information is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/

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Re: Some IDIOT called CRYPTO CZAR INTERNATIONAL
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Please forward to this coward that have no balls to put his real email >address on his emails (I using you guys as he put CC to you guys in his >letter, but by no means does this reffer to you). Well, you don't like anonymity. No hope scoring points there. >Dear CRYPTO CZAR INTERNATIONAL Idiot, Well, that was an ad hominem attack against the poster of a bit of satire. >4) Try to keep your pathetic self away from the court room, as next time >around you will face legal steps for alleging "fraud". Learn to use message authentication. A company which claims to sell such strong algorithms but doesn't employ message authentication makes one wonder. >Maybe you really should try and develop some future encryption algorithm >instead of mumbling with envy showing your stupidity and ignorance, But on >the other hand you're probably not capable of - you're too narrow minded >and busy sticking your long nose where it does not belong. >Do us and you a favour, keep yourself in your pathetic hole and shut your >mouth up. Another ad hominem. You're on a roll. >Thanks and worst regards, No problem. Don't mention it.

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Yeah, but you can do anything with statistics... / WAS: Troublemaking Bleeding Heart Liberals
by TruthMonger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

* In July, a group of lawyers and state legislators petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court to halt all executions immediately and appoint a commission to study why, in the 20 years since the state reinstituted the death penalty, more death row convicts have been subsequently been found innocent and freed (9) than have been executed (8). ~~~~~~~ To read these News of the Weird newspaper columns from the past six months, go to http://www.nine.org/notw/notw.html (That site contains no graphics, no photos, no video clips, no audio. Just text. Deal with it.)

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NISSC97 Papers
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The 113 collected papers of the 20th National Information Systems Security Conference, held October 7-10, 1997, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, are available in PDF format in a compressed file: http://csrc.nist.gov/nissc/1997/proceedings/nissc97.zip (6.2MB) Some subscribers here participated in the conference. We offer an HTML version of the Table of Contents: http://jya.com/nissc97.htm (31K)

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Internet Casinos
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Internet Casinos Find a Haven in the Caribbean Los Angeles Times ST. JOHN'S, Antigua and Barbuda-None of the 64,000 residents of this small, three-island Caribbean nation have complained about the latest international gambling boom to sweep their secretive little piece of paradise. In the past few months alone, more than a dozen casinos have opened here. But most Antiguans don't even know they exist. That's because you can't see them. Packed with games of roulette, blackjack, poker and craps, each gambling house is small enough to fit into the corner of a tiny room. Yet their owners say they're taking in millions of dollars a month from thousands of bettors, from Los Angeles to New York and beyond. It's Internet gambling - a wave of hot new Web sites set up as "virtual casinos" that enable you to win or lose real money from the comfort of your own home. And most of these sites originate in small villas or obscure offices on 108-square-mile Antigua, which is as famous for its secrecy and scandals as it is for its freewheeling tax laws and banking policies. There are no taxes on capital gains or income in Antigua and Barbuda. The government shuns outside scrutiny, even from its own citizens. During the past decade, it has licensed at least 57 offshore banks and at least two major sports-betting operations, and only it knows the names and assets of their owners. Under legislation passed earlier this year, Antigua has been charging just $100,000 a year for an Internet casino license that offers a similar promise of minimum regulation, maximum anonymity and tax-free profit. But all that soon may change. The Interbet boom comes amid a series of recent corruption and fraud scandals here, the biggest involving the world's first Internet bank collapse. From a base in Antigua and with the promise of "utmost privacy," two Russians allegedly used the Web to bilk wealthy customers in the United States and elsewhere out of tens of millions of dollars before closing the bank and fleeing in August. The virtual casino boom also comes at a time when off-island critics, among them U.S. law enforcement agencies and the State Department, say Antigua's loose regulatory track record and its secrecy laws have amounted to a recipe for disaster. Together, they offer organized crime rings and international drug cartels a haven to "wash" billions in illicit profits through Antiguan offshore businesses. "Antigua's offshore banking sector established in the mid1980s with only limited regulation-expanded rapidly in recent years.... Unfortunately, inadequate regulation and vetting led to a surge in questionable banking operations-a number with alleged links to Russian criminal elements," declared the State Department's most recent report on the international narcotics and money-laundering trades, issued in March. "The growing potential for money laundering has been a I increasing concern of both th l U.S. and Antigua governments," the report added. The U.S. report carefully praised Antiguan Prime Minister Lester Bird for tough new laws against money laundering passed last December and for his personal vow to crack down on the island's booming drug transshipment trade. His government also has promised tougher regulation of all offshore operations in the months ahead, the State Department noted. To play at an Internet casino, gamblers access a casino site on the World Wide Web through their personal computers, establish an account with a credit card or money order and collect their virtual "chips." The computer program ushers them into a fullcolor, multi-dimensional casino that looks remarkably similar to those in Las Vegas, and they can gamble at the table of their choice. Given that it is an industry where only the customers' credit cards and money orders are real - risked against software and humans they never $see- Bill Scott, one Web casino entrepreneur acknowledged that Antigua's latest cybercraze is technology to, as he puts it, "convert real money into virtual cash" quickly and safely. And all winners, he said, are paid off in a day. Although Scott said he welcomed the "big package of new regulations" that the Antiguan government recently sent him as I key to protecting the image of the new industry, he added, "I don't I think anybody has the knowledge of how to regulate this technology." U.S. officials say regulating gambling technology is especially tricky in Antigua, where the cash-strapped government has few resources and little resolve to become more open. "This island is operated like a lodge. Its a secret society," said Winston Derrick, who publishes Antigua's only independent newspaper. "You have to fight and fight for information." The government's annual expenditures, for example, are published, but years after the money is spent-a deliberate effort to minimize public interest and scrutiny, Derrick said. He added that police officials say even the most basic crime report is confidential. Although the government permits Derrick to publish his feisty Daily Observer, he and his brother were arrested when they started the island's first independent radio station last December. The case is still in court, and the station hasn't reopened. The prospect of prison also looms for Leonard Tim Hector if the opposition leader and publisher writes another word about the island's latest scandal-this one involving the prime minister and his family-in Hector's biweekly, the Outlet. Bird, whose family has controlled Antigua's power and politics for half a century, sought and won an injunction against Hector after the opposition leader published a series of stories viciously attacking the prime minister for alleged corruption. One quoted a Venezuelan businessman, who was convicted of cocaine trafficking along with one of Bird's brothers two years ago, as saying that the prime minister took a $1 million bribe from Colombia's Cali cartel to permit drug transshipments through Antigua -a charge Bird flatly denies. The injunction hasn't stopped Hector from sharply criticizing Bird's government for its policies toward offshore business and its lax regulation. He blamed those factors for the recent Internet bank debacle and said they invite similar abuse in the virtual casino industry. "They simply do not intend to regulate these new Internet casinos," Hector said in a recent interview. "The prime minister doesn't see that in his best interest." None of the few government officials who oversee the new cyber-casino trade along with all other offshore businesses on the island could be reached for comment. In the aftermath of the Internet bank collapse, though, the official Antigua & Barbuda Government Internet Web page-an elaborate electronic magnet designed to attract all kinds of international businesses -has posted the new offshore rules and regulations for closer inspection. But a look at the rise and fall of the European Union Bank, which billed itself as the world's first, full-service Internet bank helps explain why U.S. officials are viewing Antigua's latest cyberboom with concern. Privately, many of those officials said the Antiguan government should have been suspicious of the bank's operations long before it closed its only door. shut down its Web site and laid off its half a dozen employees ih early August, leaving tens of millions of dollars in deposits missing in cyberspace. The Bank of England grew suspicious of the bank last October, It publicly warned investors that the bank, which the two Russians had opened in a small office above a St. John's bar two years before, was offering unrealistically high interest rates in an unsecured environment that is not policed. After a similar alert from U.S. banking officials in April, the state of Idaho issued a cease. and-desist order against the bank, barring it from offering its wide array of banking and credit card services to Internet customers in the state. But it wasn't until the day the bank shut down and its directors disappeared this summer that Antigua's new Office of National Drugs and Money Laundering Policy issued an official "fraud alert," which opposition publisher Hector called "closing the stable door after both thieves and horses have bolted." --end Antigua bookies not worried Los Angeles Times ST. JOHN'S, Antigua and Barbuda-The few owners of virtual casinos in Antigua who agreed tO be interviewed by the Los Angeles Times asserted that they would welcome the new Internet betting laws, insisting that their operations are not only legal and honest but also state of the art. American Bill Scott, who moved his offshore sports betting operation to Antigua from the nearby island of St. Martin two years ago, said his Intercasino Web site was a natural next step for his parent company, World Wide Tele Sports. Located in the heart of St. John's, the nation's capital-atop a modern five-story, glass-and-marble building that most Antiguans think houses a computer school-Scott's operation handles millions of dollars in U.S. sports bets via toll-free telephone numbers under a separate Antiguan gaming license, he says. Scott says he was drawn to Antigua by the efficient phone system and, of course, the fact that gambling is legal here in a tax haven where confidentiality reigns and where even the Internet casinos are not viewed askance. Surrounded by dozens of computer stations where young Antiguans in headsets were taking sports bets on every conceivable contest one recent Sunday afternoon, Scott said business in his new Internet casino-located in a tiny box in an adjacent office-is so good he plans to open two more this week. "It's like Vegas. If you lose in one casino, you can go down the street to another," he said. --end PGP mail preferred, see http://www.pgp.com and http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html RSA fingerprint: FE90 1A95 9DEA 8D61 812E CCA9 A44A FBA9 RSA key: http://keys.pgp.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=index&search=0x55C78B0D --------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Schear (N7ZEZ) | Internet: schear(a)lvdi.net 7075 West Gowan Road | Voice: 1-702-658-2654 Suite 2148 | Fax: 1-702-658-2673 Las Vegas, NV 89129 | economic and crypto dissident --------------------------------------------------------------------- The push by western governments for financial transparency and banning unrestricted use of cryptography is blatent politicial tyranny. Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell

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