May 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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

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Re: Sheeple Syndrome [was: Asperger's Syndrome]
by Adam Shostack 07 May '03

07 May '03

On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 04:24:15PM -0400, Trei, Peter wrote: | --------------------- | Sheeple Syndrome: | | Characterized by an uncritical acceptance of | mass media messages, the SS sufferer is easily | led. | | Poor long term memory is a secondary trait. | | ------------------------ Smith's Syndrome is where the sufferer demonstrates an inability to remember things that didn't happen, in contravention of official truth. O'Brian's syndrome is the inability to understand that things witnessed by a person may not be true. -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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RE: Capitalism and monopolism
by Major Variola (ret) 07 May '03

07 May '03

At 12:26 PM 5/7/03 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote: > >Is Bill Stewart starting the channel John Young? Anyone can get the John Young channel, you just need to know which satellite/transponder to point at.

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Sheeple Syndrome [was: Asperger's Syndrome]
by Trei, Peter 07 May '03

07 May '03

As long as as people are going to wall off particular personality types, and label them as "Something-or-other Syndrome", we ought to be able to have fun with this too. --------------------- Sheeple Syndrome: Characterized by an uncritical acceptance of mass media messages, the SS sufferer is easily led. Poor long term memory is a secondary trait. ------------------------ [more examples are invited] Peter Trei

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RE: Capitalism and monopolism
by Major Variola (ret) 07 May '03

07 May '03

At 09:51 PM 5/5/03 -0700, Steve Schear wrote: > >I gave a presentation at a conference a few years back in which I raised >the idea that since Intellectual Property (e.g., trademarks) aren't >(property), its really a lease, that our society should consider setting >limits on the market penetration (say 50%, which is already in excess of >the what many economists call the "friction free" point wherein companies >can continue to gain market share merely by dint of their already >considerable presence) of single companies in markets whose size (the >therefore probably importance) exceeds some minimum threshold of the >GDP. However, instead of enforcing these limits via the Department of >Justice, they would become a civil matter and one's competitors can use the >courts to strip a company of its sole lease on a trademark or patent >applied to this market. A few questions. First, could this be done under the US constitution, or is it fiddling too much with the intent of the prescription that the USG support these? Second, who would judge market penetration? Could PC vendors sue Apple for overpenetration in the graphics market? Also, I don't think you want to do this with trademarks ---they're merely for IDing a manufacturer for reputation purposes. They precede and transcend the US; cf bin Laden heroin. With patents, I suspect the best you could do would be to fiddle with the expiration policies ---something for which there is ample precedent. Of course, other nations are free fnord to alter their laws. And this of course assumes that one of Kim's nukular missiles takes out Hollywood before Hollywood takes over the USG. ----- "Naturally the common people don't want war...But, after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or parliament or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." --Hermann Goering, (1893-1946) Nazi Reichsmarschall, at the Nuremberg Trials, 4/18/46. From _Nuremberg Diary_ by Gustave Gilbert.

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All Microsoft needs is for good people to do nothing
by Major Variola (ret) 07 May '03

07 May '03

"If we don't get hardware I'm done" Microsoft's Biddle said. "I have no business wthout some fundamental changes to the PC architecture. And if people don't write software that takes advantage of those changes, I'm done" Peter Biddle, product unit manager in the Security Business Unit at M$ EWeek, 5 May 03 p 14 --- No lieutenant, your serfs are already dead. -Agent Smith

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Re: Asperger's Syndrome
by Morlock Elloi 07 May '03

07 May '03

> I don't see this as a disease that we'd need a new drug for. If anything, > the public's being dumbed down and exposed to repeated bullshit in the > form of advertising every few minutes, cheap TV programming, etc. I'm not It's a well-established fact that ADD is a very effective immune response to indoctrination ... "get the fuck out of my input bandwidth". ===== end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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Re: Crypto-making vs Crypto-breaking
by Nomen Nescio 07 May '03

07 May '03

Ben Laurie wrote: > Actually, Lucre uses the double-blinding method to avoid this. The paper > discusses the ZK proof as an alternate way of doing it, but I chose not > to use it because of its potential interpretation as a blind signature. Quoting from an anonymous post to coderpunks, around December 13, 1999: There is still a potential problem with the double blinding that the ZK proof would fix. The bank may intentionally produce a bogus coin by returning junk in the withdrawal transaction. While this is not as useful as being able to specifically mark coins and recognize them at deposit time, it could still be used in practice if people don't very often try depositing junk. After all, why should they do so, since it will never work. In that case the bank may be able to do a "sting" operation by producing junk at deposit time and then assuming that anyone who attempts to deposit a garbage coin is likely to have been the recipient of the junk coin. If such garbage deposit attempts are few, then this will allow the bank to effectively link the deposit to the withdrawal. The bank can even "eat" the cost of the bad coin and the depositor will never know he's been tagged. As a countermeasure there could be a band of cypherpunks who constantly attempt anonymous deposits of junk coins. These would all fail, but they would provide cover. They would make it much more difficult for the bank to issue intentionally-bad coins with the expectation that it could recognize them at deposit time. But lacking such organized activity, it would be better for the withdrawer to be guaranteed that the bank had behaved correctly. If the ZK proof is used then the original Wagner blinding using one factor should be adequate.

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Re: Iris scanning
by Major Variola (ret) 07 May '03

07 May '03

At 09:08 AM 5/7/03 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote: > An article on BBC mentions how little iris scanning has actually been tested, >and that China, for instance, is refusing to use it because of possible dangers, >or at least, perceived dangers. Which has me wondering, could there be actual >dangers from iris scanning, say a malfunctioning laser damaging the eye? Very interesting question. I wonder if the engineers who make the things consider a transient that blows the diode, and fries your fovea too. I'd like to see the technical argument that it "can't happen". 99.999 % still means a few cyclops a year. The laypeoples' (albeit largely irrational) fear of ionizing radiation keeps some domestic body-scans from happening (though not at the borders). There might be more serious cause for concern from lasers in eyes. A few stray lawsuits could obtain free publicity. Maybe from folks taking meds that make them photosensitive, folks with macular degeneration, or just plain HAARP-makes-me-crazy folks. Good question.

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Re: Why are there so many statists and communists here on this li st now?
by Harmon Seaver 07 May '03

07 May '03

On Wed, May 07, 2003 at 10:30:27AM -0400, Trei, Peter wrote: > > > An anarchocapitalist society is capable of much > swifter innovation than a centralized one - I think > we agree on that (see Cold War for many > examples). > > However, I don't think that a authoritarian society > can absorb and use innovations gleaned from a > decentralized one of similar size at a pace high > enough to keep up. > > The barrier is that the centralized society requires > some gating mechanism to decide *which* innovations > to adopt. This gating mechanism (presumably a > government ministry of some sort) has to vet innovations > not only for 'is it useful?' but also for 'in the long term, > will it undermine our central control?'. This mechanism > has a limited bandwidth, and acts as a limiting factor > in the centralized societies ability to absorb innovation. > > Examples are numerous; the tight restrictions on > Internet access in many authoritarian countries is > just one of the most recent. > Obviously -- it's like comparing M$ development with linux, there's just no way they can compete except thru repression. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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