February 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Transport, the near future
by Peter Fairbrother 05 Feb '03

05 Feb '03

Steve Schear wrote: > > My preference is the space elevator. In simple terms, the space elevator > is a ribbon with one end attached to the Earth's surface and the other end > in space beyond geosynchronous orbit (35,800 km altitude). The competing > forces of gravity at the lower end, and outward centripetal acceleration at > the farther end, keep the ribbon under tension and stationary over a single > position on Earth. This ribbon, once deployed, can be ascended by > mechanical means to Earth orbit. If a climber proceeds to the far end of > the ribbon and releases, it would have sufficient energy to escape from > Earth's gravity and travel to the Moon, Mars, Venus and the asteroids. > > http://www.highliftsystems.com/ > > > "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be > fooled." > -- Richard P. Feynman It's a nice idea, but it needs a tensile-strength-to-mass ratio equivalent to holding a girl and her mother up by a single thread of her 10 denier stockings. Not easy to achieve. You'd need carbon nanotubes or the like, and at the moment we can't build it. You also need 45,000 km or so of tether. Expensive. Huge investment, fragile. Unrealistic, imo. Rotating tethers on the other hand can use hi-test fishing line. Really, no kidding. You only need a few hundred km, or at most a few thousand km, of tether. Cheap. There are two types, landing takeup and hypersonic takeup. They work a bit like this (here goes a try at some ascii art...) [] orbiting mass--> \ \ rotating tether \ \ <-\ space -------------------- atmosphere ________________________ earth (on this scale a space elevator cable would be roughly six feet long) The tether, whose centre of gravity is in a fairly low orbit, dips it's end into the earth's atmosphere every so often. Hypersonic takeup tethers catch a 'plane flying at hypersonic speeds in the upper atmosphere, and landing takeup tethers reach the surface. The energy/momentum is replaced by sending current through the tether as it passes through the Earth's magnetic field. Hypersonic takeup tethers are better studied, even the rendezvous techniques apparently work, and can use fishing line except for the short length that enters the upper atmosphere (it would melt). They use a mesh-like tether structure to avoid catastrophic damage from meteorites etc (a patented, but IMO obvious, idea). Landing tethers sort of cast the line a bit ahead, like a fisherman; it hits the ground, is tied on to the spaceship (good knots!) and then the line and the spaceship are dragged up. No-one really has studied them much (except me, and I'm not telling yet), but the strength (and length) of line needed is _much_ (order of mag+) less than a space elevator. And you don't need a hypersonic 'plane. You can also fling things away from the tether when they're going away from the Earth. Can get any (reasonable) speed you like. -- Peter Fairbrother

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Re: Putting the "NSA Data Overwrite Standard" Legend to Death... (fwd)
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 05 Feb '03

05 Feb '03

Thomas Shaddack <shaddack(a)ns.arachne.cz> writes: >Second, where did the number 7 really come from? >From the OSI 7-layer model, which took it from the fact that the number 7 is sacred to a certain tribe in Borneo (see "The Elements of Networking Style", by Mike Padlipsky). Peter.

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Re: Tiny whiskers make huge memory storage
by Dave Emery 05 Feb '03

05 Feb '03

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 09:10:39AM -0500, Sunder wrote: > > My question is what's a reasonable order of magnitude of overwriting data > now, assuming you're not trying to hide data from, say the NSA. > This raises a question I've long had. ARE there actual systems for reading overwritten disk data in existance out there ? Are they in daily use or merely laboratory curiosities ? I know, of course, that there are companies that supply disk recovery services, but as far as I have ever heard they mostly work with non overwritten data on disks that have bad electronics, bad motors, bad head actuators, damaged formating, bad servo tracks, bad heads, damaged surfaces and so forth. The most I have ever heard of being routinely done is reading data off a platter with a special external head positioned by special mechanics and servo systems. And of course most of what data recovery companies do is work with disks with corrupt filesystems but largely or entirely intact information content on the platters. This includes partially erased filesystems and file systems with key information blocks that cannot be reliably read or that have been overwritten by garbage. None of this involves reading the ghosts of previous data in sectors that have been overwritten once or multiple times. So what is the actual threat ? Are there any papers describing practical production systems and proven techniques for retrieving overwritten data ? How good are they - what BERs are obtainable for what percentage of data ? Clearly a cryptographer legitimately worries about being able to infer that a particular bit a of key has a slightly greater than 50% chance of being a 1 or 0, but for most users retrieving email or documents with even one or two corrupt characters in them per page may not be very interesting even if it is possible. And good lawyer should be able to plant doubt in the minds of a jury if the data is really garbled, even if it seems incriminating. So it would seem that for most normal recovery purposes (business data recovery and evidence) any multi-layer ghost data recovery would have to be pretty good to be worth investing in. The NSA/CIA, however might be interested in anything at all under some circumstances - without those limitations. So how real is the threat - what does it cost to have it done and how expensive is the gear ? Who actually has working setups in use ? And how many layers down can they really read ? And with what BER ? -- Dave Emery N1PRE, die(a)die.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18

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Re: Duh, transport
by Harmon Seaver 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 01:56:22AM +0000, Peter Fairbrother wrote: > > Railways: > Euro railways are better than US - but in at least the UK there is > "compulsory purchase", when they grab your land and pay you very little for > it, in order to build them. And too much government is involved. Yeah, the same with highways (and airports, for that matter) here. The WI DOT is the states biggest boondogle, with prisons second. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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Re: mail weirdness
by Declan McCullagh 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 08:53:58AM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: > Declan's postings are usually either normal postings to cypherpunks > or else posted to his politech list (most of which have Subject: FC > something.) I'm subscribed to politech, so I haven't had any > weirdness when replying. Yep. I use Eudora and mutt and haven't changed my mail setup in quite a while. (For Politech, I use majordomo and have had FC: prepended since 1996 or so.) Suspect, self-defensively, that I'm not the source of any weirdness. :) -Declan

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RE: The Statism Meme
by Blanc 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

Harmon Seaver said: > Yaaas, yaass, yyaaasss -- and what about us half-assed libertarians, us >leftysized anarchistic earthfirsters, us gunslinging 2nd boys (and >WTF is this ".30-06" bullshit anyway, we ain't all that ancient?), >and other fringe/extremeist ufo/wacko pppeeeples? I mean -- I mean -- >WTF do you mean, Blanc, by signifyin' on all us folks thataway? ......................... It was Duncan, said this. As for half-assed libertarians, well, they're left to their own devices. But I expect you'd be twisting in the wind just the same. .. Blanc

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Re: Gullible Journalists
by Declan McCullagh 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 09:59:58AM -0800, Michael Motyka wrote: > The net effect is that by and large journalists have become a > cheerleading squad when what is needed is a vigorous and independent > critical facility. That is if we are to retain some degree of the > of, by and for philosophy. Maybe nobody wants that except for a few > malcontents. Right. See what I sent to Politech today: Does Richard Clarke know what he's talking about? http://www.politechbot.com/p-04403.html More on Richard Clarke and root servers misstatement http://www.politechbot.com/p-04405.html Richard Clarke misstates Canadian elections cancelled? http://www.politechbot.com/p-04404.html Anyone think that Clarke is going to return my phone calls anytine soon? It's human nature not to like criticism, and to shun (or, if sufficiently annoying, to attack) your critics. As another example, I got a call today from one of the popular Sunday morning talk shows. They wanted my advice on whom to invite on. I recommended someone, and they reminded me, "Um, didn't you watch the program recently? Our host has been critical of that [person]. There's no way we'll get someone from [that organization] on the program." Sigh. -Declan

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Re: The Statism Meme
by Harmon Seaver 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 06:55:26PM -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: > Yaaas, yaass, yyaaasss -- and what about us half-assed libertarians, us > leftysized anarchistic earthfirsters, us gunslinging 2nd boys (and WTF is this > ".30-06" bullshit anyway, we ain't all that ancient?), and other > fringe/extremeist ufo/wacko pppeeeples? I mean -- I mean -- WTF do you mean, > Blanc, by signifyin' on all us folks thataway? > > .30-06? geez -- he'd be too old to head fer the hills anyway. Uh, I meant fer that to say, "too old to head fer the hills anyhow."

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Re: mail weirdness
by R. A. Hettinga 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

At 8:53 AM -0800 on 2/4/03, Bill Stewart wrote: > as opposed to Bob Hettinga's practice of copying everything to > his usual sets of lists, most of which don't allow replies from > non-subscribers. Most of which I forward your answers on to, if that's any consolation. Yes, Tim, I know, I'm an idiot, get over it. :-). Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.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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The Statism Meme
by Tim May 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

OK, so I watch a lot of t.v., or at least have t.v. dramas on a lot. I'm struck by how many of them this year treat civil liberties as gone, either as old-fashioned or as just plain ignorable. * On the episodes of "Law and Order" (three different versions weekly, often repeated on other nights), the cops routinely roust citizens, shop owners, hotel clerks, etc. Warrants are the exception, and when they are produced, they are merely waved in front of the targets. Whether this represents reality is not the point--the point is that the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments are treated as technicalities to be violated at will. Cops, prosecutors, and judges violating the Constitution are not sanctioned. Those being violated never fight back, whether with shotguns or their own lawyers. * I just watched a new series called "Miracles." A planeload of passengers is held without charges, without arrest warrants. One passenger is simply taken away by the NSA because he may have information of use to them someday. Again, maybe not plausible, but this shows the meme Americans are becoming conditioned to accept. * On one often execrable show called "Judging Amy," "Child Protection" workers are shown bursting into homes and apartments, sans warrants of course. One memorable line was "Yes, we can enter your home without a warrant...because we're not the police." * Even t.v. commercials are spreading the meme that Big Brother is our friend. G.E. has one such commercial where doctors are told: "Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just type in a name and see every medical treatment your patient has ever received?...with G.E.'s new software, you'll be able to." (paraphrase of their actual commercial) * "Hate speech" is presented on these cop and lawyer shows as being ipso facto illegal. "These people think the Constitution gives them the freedom to spew hate." * Nearly all of the programs present the Internet as a place which needs government control. The lawyers and cops editorialize (actually, the script writers, of course) about how the "Wild West" atmosphere is a haven for terrorists, gun nuts, pornographers, and Islamic militants. Various plots on the court shows have involved ISPs being forced to spy on customers. * "9/11 changed everything" is heard at least weekly. The judges cite it to justify unconstitutional measures, the prosecutors use it to justify warrantless searches and coerced admissions. Yes, I understand this is all fiction. Well, some of the scripts are based on actual events, including coerced confessions, warrantless searches, "sneak and peek" wiretaps, concentration camps in Cuba, etc. That so many of these popular programs have themes as I've described tells us what to expect. The statism meme is growing under hothouse conditions. --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.

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