April 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Anarchy Gone Awry (fwd)
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This post is a perfect example why the two lists should be kept seperate and not merged. This sounds to me like it belongs on alt.politics.data- highway. -uni- (dark)

2 1

Re: CHAUM CHIMES IN
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: 08 Sep 93 16:30:55 EDT >From: Sandy <72114.1712(a)CompuServe.COM> >Subject: CHAUM CHIMES IN >Message-Id: <930908203054_72114.1712_FHF95-2(a)CompuServe.COM> ..From: > SANDY SANDFORT Reply to: ssandfort(a)attmail.com [ . . . ] >Of course, the next letter to the editor calls for the adoption >of systems to track every vehicle at all times. The genius who >wrote the letter, thinks it would be a good way to prevent >nuclear, biological or chemical terrorism. Geeeeez. It was signed by Dorothy Denning, right? Actually, they should take that to its full conclusion. We need implants in every individual, broadcasting to the local surveillance agency, giving not only location but also every word spoken in the vicinity. It could also do a chemical analysis of the air in the neighborhood. It should also have a radiation counter. It should also monitor the host body, looking for signs of anger or sexual arousal? How else will we be guaranteed safe from mad bombers, rapists and child molesters? How else will our big budget LE agencies be able to protect us? I know. When it's finally adopted, worldwide, they'll call it the Ellison Plan. :-( - Carl

2 1

Stegno and DAT and digital music...
by Peter Wayner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In this week's Sunday NYT, Hans Fantel, their music guy, writes at length about the new "dithered" CD's and how the guys have improved the sound. He says that the original CD format was limited to 16 bits of sound because of costs. But many audiophiles reacted very negatively to the tinny, metalic quality to the music. For this reason, the companies have developed 20 bit DAT recording tape and then come up with ways to "dither" this into 16 bits. I am curious if anyone knows the details of these algorithms. Also, his point suggests that flipping the least significant bit of 16 bit music may not be imperceptable to some ears. If the classical music starts to sound tinny then there might be something subversive in the least significant bits. -Peter Wayner

2 1

Remail: errors
by HFinney＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I have been out of town for the last week, so I missed some CP mail. It looks like some good things are happening with remailers, though. Kudos to Karl, Sameer, and the others for their work! I have received many messages to my remailer in the last week which came from remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu, which were PGP-encrypted apparently in an effort to get my remailer to send them. They did not work, though, because there was no "Encrypted: PGP" header to trigger the remailer's decryption. This can be arranged by creating the message something like this: ======================================================== :: Request-Remailing-To: hfinney(a)shell.portal.com :: Encrypted: PGP - -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- <rest of message> - -----END PGP MESSAGE------ ======================================================== This would then be sent to remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu. I don't know whether the multiplicity of such erroneous messages is just due to one person stubbornly re-trying, or whether there is an error in one of the new programs for creating chained remailer messages. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBLJaNuKgTA69YIUw3AQHrNwQAowMEQwuH6YyHoj6T7AqZFLNdTf+eqJ9L LhAatHS94nmC1smkfVNq0dZmigmkvBdMNEPlBZemmxALz+KJw6OSY/ULSBmuVNEq 5rJANh3XimoJWqLISy2lZiuC5Fw2R7UvRadcdM94pncSVvev92Fyf7CqEOOtrGAK PUzRds7BVNo= =FpLa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

2 1

more than spread spectrum
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are alternatives to spread spectrum, if we're threatened with loss of freedom to communicate. We could lay our own wires/fibers. We could set up a mesh network of infrared lasers through the air. Last time I looked, there were no laws against shining lights out your window as long as they didn't bother anyone. An infrared laser could hardly bother anyone. We could produce a line of cheap cards to plug into a PC which would do packet routing, using a variety of physical links -- our own wires, lasers, very low range radio, .... Each card would connect to three or more neighbors and become part of the global mesh. Adaptive routing with no global map would suffice for the card and would keep the whole system peer-to-peer with no need for central control and no chance for central tapping. Of course all of these solutions require a high density of users. A college campus might be the right place to start. We could then branch out to cities. I suspect that a place like Chicago or NYC with high rise apartments might be the place to start -- many options for line-of-sight communications. The benefit isn't just for Cypherpunks. It's a free network for the masses -- like the original USENET (with each user donating routing and store/forward) but with unrestricted, low-range, continuously operating physical links. I'll volunteer to do the software for the node card. Does anyone have hardware design/fab to donate to the effort? - Carl

4 3

Re: Quarantines may be justified
by Harmon Seaver 07 May '03

07 May '03

On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 09:03:43AM -0400, Sunder wrote: > (more idiotic bullshit deleted) > > > Should we really be able to make up our own definitions and turn things > which merely annoy us into crimes? Think about it a bit longer before > you reply again. > "merely annoy"? Excessive noise, or smoke, or chemical pollutants are not mere annoyances, they are detrimental to health and safety and are physical assaults, and anyone has a moral right, at least, to use force to protect themselves from such. If it weren't for the fact that I'd get arrested, I'd certainly have no moral qualms whatsoever about blowing away a smoker on the street, or the guy with the loud stereo, or the farmer next door whose ag chemicals ended up in my well water. People who are that inconsiderate of others don't belong in the gene pool. And what I'm seeing a lot of lately are people who profess to be libertarians who see nothing wrong with forcing others to smoke along with them, or listen to their choice of music, or disturb other people's peace and quietude, or even forcefully poison other people's land and water. Especially when it's done in the name of profit, eh? The LP's stance on the Iraq war was more or less the last straw for me, but certainly the attitudes of people like yourself have helped me to see the error of my ways, i.e., voting libertarian the last 15 years or so. And, of course, the statements from idots like Hettinga rejoicing in the looting of Iraq's museums so "it can all go to the highest bidder" helped a lot. It's really funny how many people I've talked to recently who were all excited about the libertarian freestate movement until I told them that those people would sell off all the public parks to the highest bidder, not to mention trash all the environmental laws. But it's all pretty irrelevant anyway, as is the LP. Just another dead horse that very few people will ever vote for. Crypto-anarchy might actually get somewhere, but the LP won't. > > On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: > > > Being assaulted by others smoke, noise, chemical pollutants or whatever is no > > different than being assualted by their fist. I find it more than a little > > amusing that most of the so-called "libertarians" I come across haven't the > > slightest clue that their "freedom" ends at my personal space. One of the main > > reasons I no longer contribute to the LP and probably won't vote for any more LP > > candidates, since most libertarians seem to express the attitude of "Fuck > > everybody else, I can do whatever I want." > -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

14 22

Re: what moral obligation? (Re: DRM technology and policy)
by Major Variola (ret) 07 May '03

07 May '03

At 02:23 PM 4/29/03 +0100, David Howe wrote: >Yup. and copy protected audio "non cds" such as the more recent album releases are actually >an attempt to prevent you using your fair use rights, which are of course legal, without >performing an illegal circumvention of the protection under the terms of the DMCA. Actually, non-standard CDs sold with the CD logo are fraudulent, since they violate a published standard which the logo implies. I'm surprised this avenue hasn't been taken legally. The non-CD publishers are of course free to sell what they wish, but they can't claim standards-compliance, which they do.

10 11

Re: Making Money in Digital Money
by Anonymous 06 May '03

06 May '03

Robert Hettinga writes: > So, how do you do this? Easy. For software, the first copy is > auctioned for cash. Then the second copy, wherever it is on the > network, is auctioned for cash, and so on, until nobody's buying any > more copies, across the whole network. This is the oldest model of > trade there ever was. It's how red ochre from Maine ended up in > Neolithic tombs in Ireland. It's how Homo Habilis traded raw rocks > for finished hand axes across hundreds of miles of African savanna. > The Agorics guys called it the "digital silk road" for obvious > reasons. I hate to get into this, because I tried to educate you on this last year and you were totally impervious. As usual you started firing invective in all directions in an attempt at misdirection. Let me explain it so simply you can't miss it. This system does not work, because by the time the content is in the hands of just a few people, they will be bidding against each other to sell it on the net. Such a state of competition will quickly drive the prices down to the cost of reproduction, which is effectively zero. Therefore you can't sell more than a dozen-odd copies of the software at a non-zero price. If most of the people buying this software are doing so with the expectation of recouping their costs by re-selling, then no one will buy after the first few, since they will not be able to make any money selling at zero. But this means that even those first few buyers won't be able to sell at non-zero, since these second-wave potential buyers were their customers. Try to follow the logic here, Bob. The inability to make a profit after there are a dozen sellers *implies*, logically, that even the very first seller can't make a profit, because his potential buyers will see that they have no profit opportunities. Therefore the only motivation anyone would have here is to buy the software for what it is worth to them, and not to redistribute it. So we are talking about a private-contracting, custom-built software model. But it's not a software sales model. > For most digital goods, you just need to digitally sign the copies, > and you're done. Look Ma, no lawyers. Okay, no legislators and > regulators. No intellectual property attorneys. No "is a person", or > "know your customer", or other mystifications of identity. Funny > thing about this is, you'll notice the people who make the most new > stuff the most often get the most money in a single product's value > chain. Which is, oddly enough, exactly what we do now -- ask a movie > star -- only we'll be doing it cheaper. This is even more stupid. So someone signs the software. What difference does that make? It doesn't stop redistribution, it doesn't stop piracy, it doesn't keep it from being used in any way. It's irrelevant.

2 1

Re: Fake News for Big Brother
by Tim May 03 May '03

03 May '03

On Tuesday, April 29, 2003, at 07:16 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: > I'm not sure how I feel about this. Problems would arise if there > *were* a > law against > news media presenting false information. The question becomes 'What is > truth?', and > 'Who decides". Laws of this type are used in many tyrannies (recently, > Zimbabwe) to > persecute reporters on the grounds that they were 'libeling the > government'. > > 'Truth in media' is a sword that cuts both ways. I don't see any basis for supporting a "law against lying." Unless a contract is involved, lying is just another form of speech. Should a church which claims that praying to the baby Jesus will save one from going to Hell be prosecuted for lying? Should a newspaper be prosecuted for publishing a claim that the Sumerian prediction that Nibiru, aka Planet X, will stop the earth from rotating on May 15, 2003? Should someone be prosecuted for saying the Holocaust never happened, or was exaggerated greatly by the Jewish lobby? The answer to all libertarians, and the answer embodied in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, is "No." Of course, the idea of reputation matters. And--Declan can correct me or clarify things--newspapers and perhaps even reporters have professional organizations and other "standards and practices" type of seals of approval. Something like "This newspaper is a member of the National Assocation for the Advancement of Uncolored Journalism," or somesuch. Probably the Weekly World News ("Baby Eats Own Hand, Aliens Suspected") would not be a member in good standing of the NAAUJ. And the newspaper which published the deliberately false arson story should at the least face suspension. Were someone to kill the reporter who wrote the false story, I would only chuckle. This doesn't mean government should be involved in deciding the answer to Pilate's famous question, "What is truth?" --Tim May "The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat

6 11

Mike Hawash
by Tyler Durden 02 May '03

02 May '03

OK, aside from the obvious problems with being held without charge until now, there are some other major issues here. Apparently, the guy is only being charged with traveling to China in an attempt to enter Afghanistan and fight US forces. This counts as terrorism? I thought it was good old fashion treason. -TD _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

9 15