December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: airline id
by Brown, R Ken 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Various anonymes and Joel O'Connor discussed sabotaging trains - presumably in order to force >>you flew to. Even with trains, all's it will take is one bomb and >> youbetter believe security will be pumped up as high as it is >> with airlines. > Naaah, you pull rail-spikes to get trains, no big ba-da-boom required. > And it does happen. > > Actually you just put something on the line. It happens all the time. If a fast train hits it there can be big problems. Even a small obstacle (like a plastic rubbish bag with rubbish in it) will cause a train to stop if it is seen. (Trains can't swerve). That just causes inconvenience, unless of course you put something conductive down that shorts out the power - that has a (small) chance of causing a serious accident and a (big) chance of disrupting all rail traffic for miles around for hours. A sort of occasionally fatal denial of service attack. It appeals to 14 year olds. You too can make 75,000 people late for work, cause 30,000 pounds worth of damage and possibly kill a train driver. In fact it is so easy to do (all you need to find is a bridge over the line & a time when no-one is looking, and heave over a stolen supermarket trolley or an old fridge door from a dump, or any other bit of metal rubbish) it is almost surprising that it doesn't happen more often. IIRC, the IRA never tried to disrupt train traffic into or out of London by putting things on the lines, always by bomb scares in stations. There was one real bomb on a train, went off just after it arrived at Victoria, killed a couple of people. It was a train I regularly used, although I usually travelled later in the day. It got much harder to put bombs on trains, or in stations, after that. The main fixes were removing the litter bins from around stations (it took the IRA to teach the messy English to clean up after themselves) and getting people to report unclaimed packages and then evacuating trains when they were found. If you leave yout bag on the train they stop the train. This makes people angry. So there is social pressure to not leave packages lying around on, or near, trains. So if you want to plant a bomb on a crowded train and not get blown up yourself you have a problem. On trains, unlike planes, you keep your luggage with you. Also people *like* trains. They are cute. Even in America you have hordes of trainspotters and steam enthusiasts and model-builders and all the rest. It always amazes me that bookshops have more shelves of hobbyist books about trains than about cars, but only about 15% of the population regularly travel by train and about 60% by car. (In England - I guess in the USA that's more like 5% and 85% - and before you say that that last figure is too low remember there are an awful lot more disabled, vey old, very sick or imprisoned people than most of us notice - I guess that car users in the USA include just about everyone capable of using a car, with the possible exception of the inhabitants of some parts of very big cities) Back to the point - the reason you need id to travel on a plane is because people are scared of planes. Especially they are scared of them falling out of the sky, depressurising or catching fire. When something goes wrong with a plane everybody can die very quickly. When an accident happens to a train it usually just comes to a halt. They don't have heaps of fuel on them (except if you are on an line that is still back in the diesel age - and even then the fuel is usually all in one location, separated from the passengers) You mostly don't die whan a train crashes, or even blows up. Repressive laws get popular support from people who are scared. People are scared of plane crashes so they put up with -no, they mostly applaud or even demand - treatment they wouldn't stand for anywhere else. People aren't scared of trains. Nobody's scared of cryptography - well, nobody wh hasn't received the NSA corporate injection - but some peope are scared of drugs/paedophiles/terrorists etc, so thats the way in for the jackboots. To oppose it we need to reduce fear. Ken Brown (who prefers bicycles to trains but had to use the train to get to work today because of a broken spoke he is incapable of fixing. He only does software) > ---------- > From: Anonymous[SMTP:nobody@replay.com] > Sent: 28 October 1998 17:36 > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: airline id > > At 12:43 PM 10/27/98 -0800, Joel O'Connor wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

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RE: airline id
by Joel O'Connor 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Interesting, I like that. It makes sense. Bill Clinton knows all about putting things in fromt of trains, like the two kids who found his secret cocain dumping ground in Arkansas when he was governor, so he dumped their two bodies on a train track and the train (spotting them, like you said Ken) tried to stop but hit them. Further investigation found that they had died of a massive hemorage, but Clinton's honest people told the public that they had "fallen asleep on the railroad tracks and were accidently hit by a train." Convenient, if I've ever noticed. I guess the thing with trains is that they are fun and a nice ride, but modern societies push to get there quickly escalates about as fast as inflation, so the demand to fly is becmoming more popular as time goes on. I think in the future, the only need for trains will be for shipping us cpunks off to the concentration camps, seeing as most are only accessible by train or helicopter anyway. We'll see though. ---"Brown, R Ken" <brownrk1(a)texaco.com> wrote: > > Various anonymes and Joel O'Connor discussed sabotaging trains - > presumably in order to force > > >>you flew to. Even with trains, all's it will take is one bomb and > >> youbetter believe security will be pumped up as high as it is > >> with airlines. > > > Naaah, you pull rail-spikes to get trains, no big ba-da-boom required. > > And it does happen. > > > > > Actually you just put something on the line. It happens all the time. > If a fast train hits it there can be big problems. > > Even a small obstacle (like a plastic rubbish bag with rubbish in it) > will cause a train to stop if it is seen. (Trains can't swerve). That > just causes inconvenience, unless of course you put something conductive > down that shorts out the power - that has a (small) chance of causing a > serious accident and a (big) chance of disrupting all rail traffic for > miles around for hours. A sort of occasionally fatal denial of service > attack. It appeals to 14 year olds. You too can make 75,000 people late > for work, cause 30,000 pounds worth of damage and possibly kill a train > driver. > > In fact it is so easy to do (all you need to find is a bridge over the > line & a time when no-one is looking, and heave over a stolen > supermarket trolley or an old fridge door from a dump, or any other bit > of metal rubbish) it is almost surprising that it doesn't happen more > often. IIRC, the IRA never tried to disrupt train traffic into or out of > London by putting things on the lines, always by bomb scares in > stations. There was one real bomb on a train, went off just after it > arrived at Victoria, killed a couple of people. It was a train I > regularly used, although I usually travelled later in the day. It got > much harder to put bombs on trains, or in stations, after that. The main > fixes were removing the litter bins from around stations (it took the > IRA to teach the messy English to clean up after themselves) and getting > people to report unclaimed packages and then evacuating trains when they > were found. If you leave yout bag on the train they stop the train. > This makes people angry. So there is social pressure to not leave > packages lying around on, or near, trains. So if you want to plant a > bomb on a crowded train and not get blown up yourself you have a > problem. On trains, unlike planes, you keep your luggage with you. > > Also people *like* trains. They are cute. Even in America you have > hordes of trainspotters and steam enthusiasts and model-builders and all > the rest. It always amazes me that bookshops have more shelves of > hobbyist books about trains than about cars, but only about 15% of the > population regularly travel by train and about 60% by car. (In England - > I guess in the USA that's more like 5% and 85% - and before you say that > that last figure is too low remember there are an awful lot more > disabled, vey old, very sick or imprisoned people than most of us notice > - I guess that car users in the USA include just about everyone capable > of using a car, with the possible exception of the inhabitants of some > parts of very big cities) > > Back to the point - the reason you need id to travel on a plane is > because people are scared of planes. Especially they are scared of them > falling out of the sky, depressurising or catching fire. When something > goes wrong with a plane everybody can die very quickly. When an > accident happens to a train it usually just comes to a halt. They don't > have heaps of fuel on them (except if you are on an line that is still > back in the diesel age - and even then the fuel is usually all in one > location, separated from the passengers) You mostly don't die whan a > train crashes, or even blows up. > > Repressive laws get popular support from people who are scared. People > are scared of plane crashes so they put up with -no, they mostly > applaud or even demand - treatment they wouldn't stand for anywhere > else. People aren't scared of trains. > > Nobody's scared of cryptography - well, nobody wh hasn't received the > NSA corporate injection - but some peope are scared of > drugs/paedophiles/terrorists etc, so thats the way in for the jackboots. > To oppose it we need to reduce fear. > > > Ken Brown > > (who prefers bicycles to trains but had to use the train to get to work > today because of a broken spoke he is incapable of fixing. He only does > software) > > > ---------- > > From: Anonymous[SMTP:nobody@replay.com] > > Sent: 28 October 1998 17:36 > > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > > Subject: airline id > > > > At 12:43 PM 10/27/98 -0800, Joel O'Connor wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > == Ogre bounces like sonar. . .Peace. Ogre _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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Re: Shuffling (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 22:10:08 -0800 > From: Alex Alten <Alten(a)home.com> > Subject: Re: Shuffling > The concept of swapping to get a random string of bits is very interesting. > >From what I understand when one shuffles a deck of 52 cards 7 or more times > the card order becomes unpredictable e.g. random. Only if it is a 'fair' shuffle. There are poker players I've met who could put a given card anywhere in the deck after 4-5 shuffles. > The shuffle must be > what is called a "near perfect" shuffle. Perfect for who? Idealy the 'perfect' shuffle (if I understand your meaning of perfect) would be for each card in each deck-half to interleave 1-to-1. This does not produce random anything, it does make it very hard for people to count cards, which is why you shuffle - not to create a necessarily random ordering of the cards, just so mis-ordered nobody can remember what the sequence was and predict reliably what the sequence will be. This is incredibly important in games like poker or rummie where the cards pile up and players can see the sequence (and if they can remember it use it). This is also the reason that all games involving shuffled cards strictly call for a neutral party to shuffle and deal, falling back to the players only for 'friendly' games. Really smart 'amateur' players as you call them also make sure that he who deals is not he who anties first. I've never quite understood where this 'shuffle equal random' theory so many people have comes from (historicaly). But it is fun to play against them because they also (usualy) only shuffle the cards once to twice before a deal. Even un-even shuffles aren't prevention from short-sequence card counters. I impliment this when I play poker, it's helpfull to figure out how many cards to draw because it's possible to estimate the 'distance' between a short set of cards (eg a royal flush) after the shuffle. > In other words the cards can't > strictly alternate from each hand (with a half deck each), but must be > slightly random, in the sense that sometimes 2 or 3 cards may drop from a > hand before a card drops from the other hand. Unfortunately, professional croupie's don't practice for this. They practice for a perfect inter-leave. > An amateur shuffle, like > the one I perform, where the cards clump as they drop, may require 100's > of iterations before the order becomes totally unpredictable. BTW, if > I remember correctly the number of people in the world who can execute a > perfect shuffle at a professional rate (about 8 times a minute?) > consistently is somewhat less than 30. 8 time a minute? That's a pretty slow shuffle. Where did you get this number from? A really quick proffessional shuffle doesn't take 3 seconds. ____________________________________________________________________ To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Confucius The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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update.399 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 10:48:06 -0500 (EST) > From: physnews(a)aip.org (AIP listserver) > Subject: update.399 > NONLOCALITY GETS MORE REAL. "Bell's Inequalities," the > set of mathematical relations that would rule out the notion that > distant quantum particles exert influences on each other at > seemingly instantaneous rates, have now been violated over record > large distances, with record high certainty, and with the elimination > of an important loophole in three recent experiments, further > solidifying the notion of "spooky action at a distance" in quantum > particles. At the Optical Society of America meeting in Baltimore > earlier this month, Paul Kwiat (kwiat(a)lanl.gov) of Los Alamos and > his colleagues announced that they produced an ultrabright source > of photon pairs for Bell's inequality experiments; they went on to > verify the violation of Bell's inequalities to a record degree of > certainty (preprint at p23.lanl.gov/agw/2crystal.pdf) Splitting a > single photon of well-defined energy into a pair of photons with > initially undefined energies, and sending each photon through a > fiber-optic network to detectors 10 km apart, researchers in > Switzerland (Wolfgang Tittel, Univ. Geneva, > wolfgang.tittel(a)physics.unige.ch) showed that determining the > energy for one photon by measuring it had instantaneously > determined the energy of its neighbor 10 km away--a record set by > the researchers last year but now demonstrated in an improved > version of the original experiment. (Tittel et al., Physical Review > Letters, 26 October 1998.) A University of Innsbruck group > performed Bell measurements with detectors that randomly switched > between settings rapidly enough to eliminate the "locality loophole," > which posited that one detector might somehow send a signal to the > other detector at light or sub-light speeds to affect its reading. > (Weihs et al., upcoming paper in Phys. Rev. Lett., website at > http://www.uibk.ac.at/c/c7/c704/qo/photon/_bellexp/) > TUMOR GROWTH CAN BE FRACTAL. A curve is fractal if when > CORRECTIONS. Update 397---Among nuclei for which gamma ____________________________________________________________________ To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Confucius 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: IP: Crypt Wars, UK-Style
by Alex de Joode 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <199810290400.UAA14769(a)netcom13.netcom.com> some1 wrote: : CRYPT WARS, UK-STYLE : UK's Privacy International has awarded the Department of Trade and : Industry a Big Brother award for its contribution to invading privacy. The : DTI wants all companies offering encrypted services to be licensed, which : means using a third party holding keys to the user's encryption code. : Encryption licensed outside the UK will not be recognised, and thus would : not be protected by law. And only the recommendation of senior police is : needed to get a key - users aren't allowed to know if their key has been : given to the police. More Big Brother awards at http://www.privacy.org/pi/ Hmm would like to see on which EC directive/law they base this exclusion of 'foreign' (ie EC) TTP's. -- Alex de Joode | International CryptoRunners | http://www.replay.com 'A little paranoia can lengthen your life'

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IP: A nationhood under seige: Is the nation obsolete?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Holy shit. The Fourth Estate figures it out. Of course, the answer to the question, "Omigawd! There's gonna be no nation-states, dude!", is, the same answer to the question "Egad! The Church has no more earthly power!" Which is, "So?". :-). Mort a le infame, as Voltaire used to say... Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 06:41:34 -0500 From: Richard Sampson <rjsa(a)sprintmail.com> Organization: Unknown Organization MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com" <ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com> Subject: IP: A nationhood under seige: Is the nation obsolete? Sender: owner-ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com Precedence: list Reply-To: Richard Sampson <rjsa(a)sprintmail.com> A nationhood under seige: For 350 years, the world has been governed by the pri A nationhood under seige: For 350 years, the world has been governed by the principle of national sovereignty, but the new global economy respects no national borders, laws, or interests. Is the nation obsolete?< Three and a half centuries after the nations of the world won the power of self-rule, a new force has come along to erode that power and undermine the democratic rights of their citizens. That force is the global economy, which is relocating the economic decisions that frame the lives of citizens far beyond the reach of the voters and their voice. There's a sort of cruel historical irony here, that at the very moment when liberal democracy has finally triumphed over all rival systems of government, the power of markets - the other half of the post-Cold War triumph - has come along to leech that democracy of much of its meaning. This weekend is the 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia, a treaty signed in 1648 by the Holy Roman Empire with France and Sweden and, especially, with the princes of the various German principalities. This treaty not only ended the Thirty Years' War, but also severely limited the ability of the Empire and the church of Rome to intervene in the affairs of the German principalities. In other words, Westphalia proclaimed the sovereignty of the principalities, the right of the princes to rule their territories without outside interference. This idea of sovereignty has echoed down the three and a half centuries since then and is the basis both of self-government and of international relations. Considering all the massacres, pogroms, persecutions, gulags and holocausts of the past 350 years, this principle of sovereignty leaves something to be desired. But it's what we have, the magnetic pole of the international system. More important for those lucky enough to live in democracies, Westphalia is the basis of democratic self-rule, the idea that the average citizen has a say in the decisions that affects his or her life. Somebody else may make the decisions, but citizens have the right to cast their votes and state their opinions, confident that these vote and opinions will be heard by the decisionmaker who, one way or another, must pay attention. It's this right and this confidence that are vanishing in the face of the global economy, which is the one really new thing under the sun. The reason is that democracy is national and so are its institutions. Governments are national and their power to make and enforce laws is national. The power of the vote is felt at national levels, but not beyond. But the nation-based industrial economy that underwrote the growth of democracy is being replaced by a global economy, powered by global capital markets and global communications, answering to the needs and demands of global corporations and investors who can and do ignore frontiers. In short, an extremely important part of public life _ the economy _ is going global in a way that politics and government have not, and so is moving beyond any kind of democratic control. As Americans and the rest of the world have learned in the past year, impersonal global markets can and do cast instant judgments on entire societies, dictate the spending decisions of government and unravel the social contracts that used to bind corporations with their employees and their societies. Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management, has written that we are in an ''age of social transformation,'' one of those historical eras that happen ''every few hundred years,'' when, ''within a few short decades, society rearranges itself _ its worldview; its basic values: its social and political structure: its arts: its key institutions.'' Such transformations, like the global economy itself, are not innately evil forces. Instead, they are amoral but immensely powerful movements that change civilizations. But all such movements are created by humans and potentially controllable by humans, for good or for ill. A century after the Industrial Revolution, societies tamed the economic forces generated by this revolution and turned them into the market democracy that enhanced the past 50 years of Western history. No such taming of the Global Revolution _ or even a debate on how to do it _ has begun yet. The old economy was built on a national consensus that economies exist for societies, not the other way around. Over the past half-century, the democracies created social markets _ capitalist structures that insisted the companies share the cost of citizenship. Tax laws required companies to pay their fair share to the places where they made their money. Other laws gave rights to unions, protected worker safety and the environment, and mandated good health and pension plans. Companies accepted these laws, however grudgingly, if only because it cost them no competitive edge: all their rivals, subject to the same laws, faced the same costs. Now, not only capital markets have escaped into cyberspace, beyond the reach of national regulations. There are about 50,000 global corporations who see the globe as a single market and ignore national borders and regulations. These are no longer multinationals, with most of their operations in one country but with a few foreign branches. The global economy is being driven by global corporations who see the globe as a unit. They have their headquarters in one country, research and development in others, accounting in still another, manufacturing scattered across the world, with sales wherever there are customers. These companies have gone global because, with the advent of global communications, they can. But in the process, they have left behind their old home and its laws. Too often, companies now pay taxes and wages where the rates are lowest and the laws loosest. In many countries, environmental or benefits regulations are nonexistent. Many other countries are willing to waive them for companies that will invest there. In this atmosphere, businesses argue they can no longer afford the social costs imposed on them by society, when their rivals may be operating halfway around the world, in a place where the average wage is $1 per day and environmental laws don't exist. Either, they say, they must be allowed to break the social contract, busting unions and negotiating easier regulations and dumping health and pension plans, or they must go abroad themselves. Often they do both. Good jobs go away and the ones that are left somehow pay less, are more unstable and are less likely to come equipped with pension or health plans. Wolfgang Reinicke, a senior economist at the World Bank, has written that this is an attack on ''internal sovereignty,'' the ability of an elected government to really govern. The laws remain intact, but the ability to enforce them disappears. Government exists but its effectiveness and efficiency are eroded. The economy rolls on, but the public's ability to insist that it benefit society is eroded. Elections are held and votes counted, but the power of that vote to promote particular policies wobbles and wanes. The economic rights won by citizens over the centuries, from collective bargaining to decent wages to job stability to pensions, often depending on the power of national governments to enforce them. As this power withers, so do the rights. Small wonder that government is held in such low esteem these days and politics derided. A government that cannot enforce its own laws is a government fit only for scandals and other sideshows. The main event is going on somewhere else, and neither Washington nor its subjects knows where it is. There oughta be a law, a global one replacing the national laws and bringing this economy back under democratic control. In fact, there are laws, lots of them, with more being written every day, but the voters aren't being asked to help write them. Around the world, bureaucrats, experts, lawyers and lobbyists are writing a new web of global regulations, on stock markets, accounting, banking, investment, even auto safety and drug trials. These talks aren't exactly secret but the government isn't going out of its way to publicize them. They are highly technical and, frankly, pretty boring. But they're important. They're writing the rule book for the 21st Century. New global tax laws haven't been written yet, and environmental or labor regulations are barely a gleam in a bureaucrat's eye. But they'll be written someday, if only because the global economy otherwise will be a jungle. But when they are written, they'll look a lot like the regulations already framed. That is, they will be technical exercises, focused on efficiency and the well-being of corporations, not on democracy or the public health. Nations and corporations have different interests. Nations want to raise the living standards of their citizens, while corporations want to raise their profits. The glory of the past 50 years rests on the creation of the social market, with the drive of capitalism tempered by the needs of society, enabling both to thrive. This 20th-Century thrust has focused on the rights of citizens, as individuals or as classes. The new rule-making focuses on the safety and efficiency of markets and corporations. They are making the world more secure and predictable for investment and trade, which is vital for the creation of an honest market. But it caters to the needs of global actors, not the folks at home. De-regulation nationally is being replaced with re-regulation globally. But in the process, governments are giving away power from national bodies to global institutions. But governments exist by democratic sufferance. These global bodies do not. The growth of the global economy requires global governance. But increasingly, as Reinicke has written, this is turning into ''governance without government,'' public functions wielded by bodies with no public control. Pat Buchanan, the commentator and onetime presidential candidate, has called for a ''new economic nationalism'' that, essentially, calls for derailing the global economy with barriers on trade, limits on immigration and an all-around isolationism that, apart from its basic selfishness, is a national solution to a global problem and, hence, futile. The right answer is to recognize that the global economy exists and won't go away, and to tame and temper it with a new social market, composed of new laws and rules in which the public, for a change, has a voice. For a start, the government should never negotiate new global rules that supersede national rules without making a sort of democratic impact statement on what this will mean to the rights of citizens. This is a ''new economic internationalism'' in which American democratic institutions would cooperate with the democratic institutions of other countries to recapture the sovereignty of both. (This is an adaptation of the Richard W. Leopold Annual Lecture that R.C. Longworth, a Chicago Tribune senior writer, delivered at Northwestern University this month.) KRT PERSPECTIVE is a forum for essays by staff writers from contributing papers. (c) 1998, Chicago Tribune. -0- Visit the Chicago Tribune on America Online (keyword: Tribune) or the Internet Tribune at http://www.chicago.tribune.com/ Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. AP-NY-10-28-98 0611EST< -0- By R.C. Longworth Chicago Tribune News provided by COMTEX. [!COMMUNITY] [!FINANCE] [!WALL+STREET] [ACCOUNTING] [BANKING] [BOOK] [CONTRACT] [DEMOCRACY] [ECONOMY] [ENVIRONMENT] [FRANCE] [GOVERNMENT] [HEALTH] [IMMIGRATION] [INVESTMENT] [KNS] [LABOR] [MANUFACTURING] [MARKET] [MONEY] [NEWS] [NEWSGRID] [POLITICS] [RATES] [REGULATIONS] [RESEARCH] [SALES] [STANDARDS] [SWEDEN] [TAXES] [TRADE] [TREATY] [UNIONS] [USA] [WAR] [WASHINGTON] [WORLD+BANK] -- ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- **************************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address **************************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **************************************************** --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Two ISPs Seized Over Usenet Content
by Eric Cordian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New York State Attorney General Dennis Vacco, who is running for re-election, is crowing and posturing this morning over having seized two ISPs, Dreamscape in Syracuse, and Buffnet in West Seneca, over the content of the newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.pre-teen, thus making a small dent in the distribution of "filth" to ignorant citizen-units. A running gag in abpep-t for the last several years has been for newsgroup posters to identify themselves as various faculty belonging to a mythical "Pedo University" when responding to trolls. Vacco believes this imaginary organization to be a "International Child Pornography Ring" which he has broken up. 13 individuals in various countries were also arrested on various child pornography possession, trading, and promotion charges, related to activity in the newsgroup, and 34 are still under "investigation", according to this morning's AP wire. alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen continues merrily onwards, and is presently discussing the arrests and seizures, minus a few of its regular participants. While the loss of two small ISPs and a dozen or so patrons is unlikely to bring the uncensorable worldwide Usenet to its knees, this appears to be a small first step towards eroding the legal notion that common carriers are immune from liability over Usenet content. exerpts... NEW YORK (AP) -- Authorities say they have broken up an international child pornography ring dubbed ``Pedo University'' in which suspects swapped sexually explicit information, pictures and video online. ... Thirteen people were in custody and more arrests were expected. As many as 34 people were still under investigation. New York state police seized two Internet providers, Dreamscape ISP in Syracuse and Buffnet.net ISP in West Seneca. ... Both allegedly carried Pedo University news groups, a type of electronic bulletin board similar to a chat room. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Re: Shuffling (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: iang(a)cs.berkeley.edu (Ian Goldberg) > Subject: Re: Shuffling (fwd) > Date: 29 Oct 1998 16:16:41 GMT > The "7 times" theorem uses the following model of a shuffle: > > o The deck is cut into two parts, with the number of cards in each piece > binomially distributed (with mean 26, of course). > o The resulting deck is then achieved by having cards fall from one or the > other of the two parts; a card will fall from one of the parts with > probability proportional to the number of cards remaining in the part. The only problem I see with this model, re real card decks, is that the probability for a given card to fall to the top of the shuffled pile isn't related in any way to the number of cards in either stack in a real-world shuffle. It also doesn't address the problem of 'clumping' where a group of cards (ie royal flush) stay together through the shuffling. This is the reason that real dealers try for a 1-for-1 shuffle each time. ____________________________________________________________________ To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Confucius 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: Interesting Articles... Micro jet engine for Wearable power?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Resent-Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 12:03:26 -0500 Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 09:50:40 -0500 Organization: Scientific-Atlanta MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Interesting Articles... Micro jet engine for Wearable power? To: "wear-hard(a)haven.org" <wear-hard(a)haven.org> From: Pete Hardie <pete.hardie(a)sciatl.com> Sender: phardie(a)sciatl.com Resent-From: wear-hard(a)haven.org X-Mailing-List: <wear-hard(a)haven.org> archive/latest/5435 X-Loop: wear-hard(a)haven.org Precedence: list Resent-Sender: wear-hard-request(a)haven.org Mark Willis wrote: > single spool turbojet > 12mm OD x 3mm long (Tiny!) Weighs 1 gram... > Rotor speed: 2.4 million rpm > Combustor temp: 1600deg K > Output: 13 grams thrust, or 16W electrical > Fuel: Hydrogen @ 7 grams/hr. > > Fuel for 2-3 hours would fit in a CO2 cylinder sized container or so > <G> They use air bearings, and a *silicon* spool, no nickel metal > sintered exotics here... This little puppy will run a wearable nicely > when it gets to production! (The original is for a small surveillance > aircraft, 16W power budget isn't bad though!) I imagine it puts out > some heat, of course... But that annoying roar and jet of flame..... -- Pete Hardie | Goalie, DVSG Dart Team Scientific Atlanta | Digital Video Services Group | -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" to wear-hard-request(a)haven.org Wear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.ml.org --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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by concerned＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Oct.30th,1998 Y2K Solution! 8 Pine Circle Dr., Silicon Valley, Calif. OTC Company "TCFG" 21 st. Century Frontier Group has through several members of their administrative research department leaked vital information about their companies efforts. Everyone was tight lipped and interviews were refused, and through un-named sources we have learned that the technology and software solution are in the process of being patented! In over 1640 trials, using various data systems the use of the new technology and software solved the Y2K problem 100% of the time. This small publicly traded company "TCFG" which is just 3 years old is through various sources now negotiating with the "Big Boys"! "TCFG" the letters to look for!

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