July 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

SF meet: future of feta, port, sherry, gorgonzola at stake
by Declan McCullagh 03 Jul '03

03 Jul '03

COMMERCE UNDER SECRETARY ROGAN TO OPEN USPTO/WIPO CONFERENCE EXPLORING USE OF GEOGRAPHIC NAMES TO DESCRIBE FOOD AND WINE Use of Terms Bologna, Parmesan, Chablis, and Burgundy Could Be Prohibited, Adversely Affecting U.S. Food and Wine Industry Wednesday, July 9, 2003 9:30 a.m. The Palace Hotel 2 New Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property James E. Rogan will make opening remarks at a three-day symposium (July 9-11) on the use of geographical indications (GIs) to describe food and wine. The symposium, which is being co-hosted by the Department of Commercebs U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), will feature an international array of experts in the field from WIPO member states and the food and wine industries. The symposium is being held in anticipation of a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting on GIs scheduled for Cancun, Mexico in September. It is expected that at the Cancun meeting, the European Union will call for terminating the use of certain generic terms to describe food and wine unless those products come from a specific geographic region. If the EU is successful, use of terms such as feta and gorgonzola for cheese, and port and sherry for wine - now considered generic in many WTO member nations - could be prohibited in the United States, resulting in consumer confusion and potentially injuring U.S. domestic and international commerce in food and wine. The symposium agenda is available at http://www.wipo.int/meetings/2003/geo-ind/en/program/.

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architecture as torture
by Major Variola (ret) 03 Jul '03

03 Jul '03

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/27/1043534004548.html

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Re: All quiet on the western front
by A.Melon 03 Jul '03

03 Jul '03

Hi, Tim, I'm glad that you have a bout of lucidity. The government essentially won the crypto battle, marginalizing crypto proponents, quietly getting media and corporations under control when crypto is concerned, and generally rising the stakes. Those of you who have access to corporate product development documents that relate to communications know what I am talking about. CALEA etcl. It's there, it's real and I think that about 5-10% of development resources are taken by it. Most cypherpunks were relatively highly paid engineers with comfortable lives and some time on their hands, so while crypto was fashionable it was cool to hang out at meetings and have pipe dreams about taking on the state. Even then, scum like del Torto started to bank ahead and sell to the "freedom fighters" and "good cops". But then it got much worse. After the WTC theater, being present at essentially anti-state meetings was not considered totally benign. And also the salaries were gone, so this beer and TV Saturday alternative suddenly stopped being alternative at all. So we're back to the fact that highly paid engineers in crypto field are really not automatically revolutionaries. On the contrary. There are very few in the general population that are cut to be true dissenters and act upon it. Now this age brings in the additional requirement: they have to also be decent engineers. As a result, there are very few left.

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Reporter writing article on proffr/mattd and threats
by Declan McCullagh 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

I received a phone call today from a newspaper reporter who's writing an article on mattd/proffr and wanted background on the cypherpunks group or movement, as he put it. The reporter -- who covers crime, law enforcement, and the courts -- wanted to know whether mattd/proffr was representative of the group or an outlier, and stressed that two other cypherpunks have been imprisoned for their actions in this area. Apparently mattd/proffr has been saying on cypherpunks that some federal prosecutors need killing. Then that post was indexed by Google, and now it is a prominent hit for the name of said prosecutor. (I say apparently because, thanks to the good graces of procmail, I haven't read any mattd/proffr posts in ages. This is what I gathered solely from the phone conversation.) Anyway, the Feds apparently are neither confirming nor denying that an investigation is in progress, except to say that they are "aware" of mattd/proffr's post. This is what I learned from the phone call. I have no firsthand knowledge. -Declan

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Re: All quiet on the western front
by Anonymous 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

Hi, Tim, I'm glad that you have a bout of lucidity. The government essentially won the crypto battle, marginalizing crypto proponents, quietly getting media and corporations under control when crypto is concerned, and generally rising the stakes. Those of you who have access to corporate product development documents that relate to communications know what I am talking about. CALEA etcl. It's there, it's real and I think that about 5-10% of development resources are taken by it. Most cypherpunks were relatively highly paid engineers with comfortable lives and some time on their hands, so while crypto was fashionable it was cool to hang out at meetings and have pipe dreams about taking on the state. Even then, scum like del Torto started to bank ahead and sell to the "freedom fighters" and "good cops". But then it got much worse. After the WTC theater, being present at essentially anti-state meetings was not considered totally benign. And also the salaries were gone, so this beer and TV Saturday alternative suddenly stopped being alternative at all. So we're back to the fact that highly paid engineers in crypto field are really not automatically revolutionaries. On the contrary. There are very few in the general population that are cut to be true dissenters and act upon it. Now this age brings in the additional requirement: they have to also be decent engineers. As a result, there are very few left.

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Re: All quiet on the western front
by James A. Donald 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

-- On 2 Jul 2003 at 9:45, Tim May wrote: > But things have been quiet for months now, except for > occasional bursts of Unix-related security cruft. The technology is known, it has become depressingly apparent that imminent world change by means of this technology is not in the cards right now, what is left to say? The cypherpunk agenda is in fact making progress in boring routine ways -- increasing real world use of encryption, various complicated boring routine measures to improve security. Digital currencies have plateaued by some measures, but I think uptake will continue. At present, digital currencies do not give you any privacy from the currency issuer, but in practice monitoring is expensive, and low monitoring issuers tend to out compete high monitoring issuers. No issues of Chaumian cash have succeeded, but Chaumian cash is the ultimate in low monitored, irreversible transactions, so as Hettinga is fond of arguing, the trend is in its favor, but immediate change is not in sight. With americans, and the english speaking west in general under attack, the tendency is to rally around the state. Anarchism is not as popular as it was, not as cools as it was, when enemies are trying to kill us, and the state is trying to kill our enemies. > Every day brings new reports of surveillance plans, > suspensions of the Constitution, more statism. It is war. > Side note, worthy of a longer article: It may be literally a > generational thing, as libertarianism tended to be. The > anti-state "activists" of the 70s and 80s were influenced by > the antiwar movement > of the 60s, but were still somewhat libertarian. Many had > read > Heinlein, Rand, Rothbard, Hayek. The early Cypherpunks folks > were generally conversant with the ideas, and receptive. I > conjecture that the "new crop" is more into body piercings, > skin art, and anti-globalism (when it comes to corporations > and trade, but not when it comes to world government). In > other words, Cypherpunks is like several other Baby Boom > "degenerating research program.") You are suffering from old fogyism. "Ah, teenagers today are so rotten and selfish, not like we were." This reminds me of the indignant complaints about the fact that at the recent woodstock, so many young women were naked and semi conscious on GHB. Do you remember the original woodstock? If you do remember, you were not there. You think the "reefer madness" hysteria was laughable? They recently gave some poor sucker a sentence of several hundred years for "raping" girls by giving GHB, although his home movies seem to show the alleged rape victims enthusiastically jumping him. The fact is that our generation turned into the generation we were revolting against, only ten times worse. That is what went wrong. Four times the hypocrisy, ten times the jail sentences. It started when those boring puritan Leninists took over SDS (Students for a democratic society) in 1963, 1964. All that terribly solemn do gooding in the 1962 Port Huron statement, and the next thing you know instead of "Sex drugs and rock and roll", we hear that heterosexuality constitutes sexism and Andrew Luster is being abducted from a foreign country as if he was general Noriega. If he had jumped out of the bushes, sawed a nine year old's arms and legs off, and then raped her, the government would not have had him kidnapped in order to get him. Teenagers have not changed, instead we have become those old fogies we revolted against. We did not realize that the port Huron statement turned us into young fogies, the doddering senile washed up old bolsheviks. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG zM6pUlk6ZJ3PNi5XRMFqgmuU2xj28x3t55x+IgFu 46aIWX5lC5VdjpVgTOT5JiMBx1VdJYnsZT/eVKQ2t

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test please ignore
by Bill Stewart 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

Is it really quiet in here, or does the fact that I've been playing with procmail this evening have something to do with it? Thanks; Bill

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Are the filters too restrictive on some CDRs?
by Trei, Peter 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

> Gabriel Rocha[SMTP:gabe@seul.org] wrote > > On Wed, Jul 02, at 10:55AM, Trei, Peter wrote: > | I have 9 real messages from July 1. > > What node do you subscribe to? I have three messages from July 1st. I > use lne. > I use minder.com, which does no filtering. The count is after throwing out spam, duplicates, and Professor Rat. Peter

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RE: test please ignore
by Trei, Peter 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

> Declan McCullagh[SMTP:declan@well.com] > > > Pretty quiet. I'm going through back messages now and only saw I think > three from July 1. > > -Declan > > > On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 02:04:28AM -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: > > Is it really quiet in here, or does the fact that I've been > > playing with procmail this evening have something to do with it? > > > > Thanks; Bill > Don't top post! I have 9 real messages from July 1. Peter Trei

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RE: Is Hatch a Mormon or a crypto Satanist?
by Trei, Peter 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

> Declan McCullagh[SMTP:declan@well.com] > > To go back to the Subject: line of this thread, I recall that Hatch is > a former Mormon bishop. > > -Declan > In the LDS church, the title 'Bishop' is handed out pretty freely - I think it's roughly equivalent to 'lay preacher'. ...and it's not the only title subject to inflation. Those 17-year-old missionaries are properly addressed as 'Elder'. Peter Trei

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