January 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Sources and Sinks
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

At 08:07 AM 1/2/04 -0500, Michael Kalus wrote: > >And how much money does she get back by services? Say: >Homelandsecurity? Put the crack pipe down, Michael. Colonial empires need fatherland security when the conquered start sending feedback. Moral states bordered by Mexico, Canada and oceans don't even need a standing army a tenth of the size of the US's at any point in the last 100 years. And strict libertarians do accept taxation for police & defense, little else. Not progressively increasing taxes, not punitive taxes, but the (only) legit function of government is protecting against coercion (incl. fraud & pollution). Some (currently small) fraction of police work / law actually does this.

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Re: Education Be For Whitey
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

At 04:58 PM 1/2/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >Nah nah Variola...I don't think you're getting me here. Or maybe you are... We're not talking about the same thing. I'm talking about the importance of culture in valuing education, and how important education (aka personal capitalism) is. You're talking about different things -schools not removing disruptives, and differences in this policy in poor districts. >Now if you're saying that public schools shouldn't even exist...well...OK, >whatever. I don't know where you got that from, unless you're simply applying libertarian ideals (albeit a reasonable extrapolation for me). I would destroy publicly administered schools tomorrow, and put the money into competitive private schools, aka "vouchers". In the long term libertarian utopia, govt isn't involved in funding (even lower) education of course, but I would put that last on my list of reforms, and note that eventually education can be funded in other ways. In the short term, no govt employee should teach; a few govt accountants can write the vouchers. They shouldn't teach because of 1. conflict of interest (in teaching history, civics) 2. govt shouldn't be in the business of running schools, even if taxpayers continue to fund it 3. govt (and uncompetitive school bureaucracy) is inefficient whatever it does 4. govt curricula are swayed by politics, whereas with vouchers you can decide how you want Columbus et al. portrayed. (This distinct from 1.) 5. 1st amendment conflicts (ie compelled speech, compelled reading) Obviously religious curricula cannot be payed for by vouchers. And practically, the state would have to assure that vouchers paid are getting something for their money, esp. for home-schoolers, who should get voucher $ too. That doesn't mean a fixed curricula, just that you are literate and numerate by a reasonable age.

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Education Be For Whitey
by Tyler Durden 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

Nah nah Variola...I don't think you're getting me here. Or maybe you are... The problem with inner city school systems where there are large numbers of african american students are, first of all, with notable exceptions (ie, some areas around Atlanta, St Albans Queens, etc...) crime rates are high, and African American students, on average, seem to be 'problems' more than Asians or Jewish kids (certainly), and probably more than whites. The next problem, and here is where the notion of "storage" comes in, is that administrators in those districts do practically ZERO to keep disruptive, dangerous students out of the classrooms. They also seem to feel that if reasonable standards of behavior were applied throughout these districts, "all the bad kids would end up on the streets", which is true. Meanwhile, good black students must therefore tolerate high numbers of disruptive, dangerous, and armed delinquents in the schools, and so classes begin to turn into baby-sitting sessions. All of this pretty much comes from tolerating bad behavior, because "they" can't help themselves. What I'm saying is that, as long as there are public schools (and I still think public schooling could be a good idea, albeit in a highly modified form), they need to be completely color blind in the standards, and damn the consequences to society at large. What they'll find is that a suprising number of African Americans will rise to the challenge, and do as well in college as other ethnic groups. Now if you're saying that public schools shouldn't even exist...well...OK, whatever. But as long as they DO exist, its best we run them in a way where they are what they are supposed to be. And if they're supposed to be storage facilities, then put gaurds and watercannon into armories and send the Scoops around to collect up the "students" off the streets every morning. -TD >From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> >To: "cypherpunks(a)lne.com" <cypherpunks(a)lne.com> >Subject: RE: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey >Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 08:34:03 -0800 > >At 11:51 AM 1/1/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > >"Stay In School!" > > > >In other words, schools keep the crime rates down, as is a well-known > >statistic. They are basically storage facilities. For real schools we >white > >folks with $$$ can move out to the suburbs or send our kids to private > >school. > >Right. And the value of an uneducated result of an unaborted fuck 18 >years ago >is so useful that schooling is unnecessary, just part of the Man (tm) >keeping the People (tm) down. >Ayup. > >Plenty of grubs to be dug if that's what you prefer. > >The rest of us prefer personal capitalism, ie investment, ie education. > >There's a reason the Jews and Asians (etc) suceed and other --often more >fluent-- cultures don't, and it has to do with the value some cultures >put on education. > >The truth will set you free, or not. Your choice. _________________________________________________________________ Tired of slow downloads? Compare online deals from your local high-speed providers now. https://broadband.msn.com

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Humor: The day is coming...
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

Operator: "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut. May I have your..." Customer: "Hi, I'd like to order." Operator: "May I have your NIDN first, sir?" Customer: "My National ID Number, yeah, hold on, eh, it's 6102049998-45-54610." Operator: "Thank you, Mr. Sheehan. I see you live at 1742 Meadowland Drive, and the phone number's 494-2366. Your office number over at Lincoln Insurance is 745-2302 and your cell number's 266-2566. Which number are you calling from, sir?" Customer: "Huh? I'm at home. Where d'ya get all this information?" Operator: "We're wired into the system, sir." Customer: (Sighs) "Oh, well, I'd like to order a couple of your All-Meat Special pizzas..." Operator: "I don't think that's a good idea, sir." Customer: "Whaddya mean?" Operator: "Sir, your medical records indicate that you've got very high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol. Your National Health Care provider won't allow such an unhealthy choice." Customer: "Damn. What do you recommend, then?" Operator: "You might try our low-fat Soybean Yogurt Pizza. I'm sure you'll like it" Customer: "What makes you think I'd like something like that?" Operator: "Well, you checked out 'Gourmet Soybean Recipes' from your local library last week, sir. That's why I made the suggestion." Customer: "All right, all right. Give me two family sized ones, then. What's the damage?" Operator: "That should be plenty for you, your wife and your four kids, sir. The 'damage,' as you put it, heh, heh, comes $49.99." Customer: "Lemme give you my credit card number." Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay in cash. Your credit card balance is over its limit." Customer: "I'll run over to the ATM and get some cash before your driver gets here." Operator: "That won't work either, sir. Your checking account's overdrawn." Customer: "Never mind. Just send the pizzas. I'll have the cash ready. How long will it take?" Operator: "We're running a little behind, sir. It'll be about 45 minutes, sir. If you're in a hurry you might want to pick 'em up while you're out getting the cash, but carrying pizzas on a motorcycle can be a little awkward." Customer: "How the hell do you know I'm riding a bike?" Operator: "It says here you're in arrears on your car payments, so your car got repo'ed. But your Harley's paid up, so I just assumed that you'd be using it." Customer: "@#%/$@&?#!&?#!" Operator: "I'd advise watching your language, sir. You've already got a July 2006 conviction for cussing out a cop." Customer: (Speechless) Operator: "Will there be anything else, sir?" Customer: "No, nothing. oh, yeah, don't forget the two free liters of Coke your ad says I get with the pizzas." Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but our ad's exclusionary clause prevents us from offering free soda to diabetics.

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Re: [camram-spam] Re: Microsoft publicly announces Penny Black PoW postage project
by Scott Nelson 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

At 01:43 PM 12/29/03 -0500, Eric S. Johansson wrote: >Bill Stewart wrote: > >> At 09:37 PM 12/26/2003 -0500, Adam Back wrote: >> >>> The 2nd memory [3] bound paper (by Dwork, Goldber and Naor) finds a >>> flaw in in the first memory-bound function paper (by Adabi, Burrows, >>> Manasse, and Wobber) which admits a time-space trade-off, proposes an >>> improved memory-bound function and also in the conclusion suggests >>> that memory bound functions may be more vulnerable to hardware attack >>> than computationally bound functions. Their argument on that latter >>> point is that the hardware attack is an economic attack and it may be >>> that memory-bound functions are more vulnerable to hardware attack >>> because you could in their view build cheaper hardware more [....] >> >> >> Once nice thing about memory-bound functions is that, >> while spammers could build custom hardware farms in Florida or China, >> a large amount of spam is delivered by hijacked PCs or abused >> relays/proxies, >> which run on standard PC hardware, not custom, so it'll still be slow. The Microsoft Penny Black system (not to be confused with the IBM Penny Black paper) is supposedly limited by memory /speed/ not memory size. The only nice thing about that is that memory speed doesn't vary as much between machines. About 5 to 1 vs. 100 to 1. > >do the math. > >d*b >--- > s > >where: d = stamp delay in seconds > s = spam size in bytes > b = bandwidth in bytes per second > I don't understand this equation at all. It's the rate limiting factor that counts, not a combination of stamp speed + bandwidth. Assuming 128Kbps up, without a stamp it takes about .6 seconds to send a typical 10K spam. If it takes 15 seconds to generate the stamp, then it will take 15 seconds to send a stamped spam. It won't even take 15.6 seconds, because the calculation can be done in parallel with the sending. >assuming unlimited bandwidth, if a stamp spammer compromises roughly the >same number of PCs as were compromised during the last worm attack >(350,000) at 15 seconds per stamp, you end up with 1.4 million stamps >per minute or 2 billion stamps per day. When you compare that to the >amount of spam generated per day (high hundred billion to low trillion), > Not according to the best estimates I have. The average email address receives 20-30 spams a day (almost twice what it was last year) and there are only 200-400 million email addresses, which works out to less than 10 billion spams per day. But there's a much easier way to do the math. If 1% of the machines on the internet are compromised, and a stamp takes 15 seconds to generate, then spammers can send 50-60 spams to each person. (86400 seconds per day / 15 seconds per stamp * 1% of everybody = 57.6) You can reduce that by factoring in the average amount of time that a compromised machine is on per day. I fully expect that stamps will rise in "price" to several minutes, if camram actually gets any traction. >they are still a few machine short of what is necessary to totally >render stamps useless. Yes, maybe one spammer could muster a few >machines to be a nuisance but that's the extent of it. > >When dealing with hardware acceleration, it becomes a hardware war. If >they can make a custom hardware, Taiwan can make us USB stamp >generators, postage goes to a period of rapid inflation, and the world >goes back to where was before with no advantage to spammer's. > Custom hardware? I can buy a network ready PC at Fry's for $199. If it takes that machine 30 seconds to generate a stamp, and I leave it running 24/7, and replace it after 5 months, then the cost of a hashstamp is still less than 1/500 of a snail-mail stamp. Granted it's a significant increase in costs over current email, and therefore potentially a vast improvement, but it's still not expensive. Scott Nelson <scott(a)spamwolf.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com

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RE: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

At 11:51 AM 1/1/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >"Stay In School!" > >In other words, schools keep the crime rates down, as is a well-known >statistic. They are basically storage facilities. For real schools we white >folks with $$$ can move out to the suburbs or send our kids to private >school. Right. And the value of an uneducated result of an unaborted fuck 18 years ago is so useful that schooling is unnecessary, just part of the Man (tm) keeping the People (tm) down. Ayup. Plenty of grubs to be dug if that's what you prefer. The rest of us prefer personal capitalism, ie investment, ie education. There's a reason the Jews and Asians (etc) suceed and other --often more fluent-- cultures don't, and it has to do with the value some cultures put on education. The truth will set you free, or not. Your choice.

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Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
by Tyler Durden 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

Tim May wrote... >First, please stop including the full text of the message you are replying >to. Learn to use an editor, whether you ultimately top-post or bottom-post >to edited fragments. I actually do this for a reason. If I'm not doing a line-by-line response (or sometimes even if I am), I want the original post from which I am excerpting to be visible, so that it can be referred to and determined I am not taking this particular quote out of context. > >So if a kid in high school can't see the "benefit" of studying math, he >shouldn't be. It's as simple as that. Well, part of me doesn't entirely disagree. At least, high school teachers should be teaching and not babysitting. I actually consider it hard enough to develop true competence in math or science (enough to teach on the HS level), and then even harder developing the skills necessary to communicate the ideas effectively. A math or physics teacher can't be an effective babysitter, pal, AND guidance counselor. Or at least, not in the kinds of quantities liberals imagine the schools should be filled with. On the other hand, given the current state of world education in math and science, by 9th grade it's not necessarily too late for a kid to turn into a good mathematician (actually, I myself am an example: in 9th grade I was in a lame but famous private school pulling down low Bs and high Cs in math because I was bored. By 12th grade I was in what was and is regarded as THE top-notch school for math and science in the country, pulling down 100 in calculus...but don't get me wrong, I still know the difference between me and true genius in mathematics). However, the fact is that the school system sucks. It's a joke. Repeat offenders get bounced from school to school, wrecking classes and the environment everywhere they go. Teachers in most states have 25 classroom hours a week, a number matched nowhere in the world (as far as I've ever heard), and THAT'S in addition to homeroom and other duties. The cirriculum is a silly joke, watered down and watered down so that only someone who never shows up couldn't graduate. (And in black schools you'd be suprised how many times I've heard 'these kids can't learn...don't try'.) So your whole "burnoff of the eaters" theme misses one critical element: direct contact with kids. If you yourself had seen and met kids you KNEW might actually have quite a talent for math, YES EVEN YOU might be tempted to give a crap, and see if just one or two might somehow be inspiried merely to do some homework. This is particularly true when you realize that you actually LIKE some of these kids, which are as fully human as you are, by the way. Or, it might just make you even angrier...give your rage some real, practical real-world "fuel" rather than being the theoretical cloistered construct it at least appears to be. At least, 'talent' doesn't seem to be the problem. Inner-city black kids have proven that they can do extremely well in whatever they view as important (I'd argue that some of this is due to genetic superiority)...a well-run school system could easily produce the kind of math and engineering talent needed without brain-draining from other countries (and which is probably not a relaible long-term option). > >The parallel I like is one we developed (in Ted Kaehler's nanotechnology >study group in the early 90s) for looking at what a society and economy >might look like where the costs of material production are as close to zero >as one might imagine. That is, a society with full-blown general >assemblers, i.e., von Neumann replicators at the molecular, >mechano-synthesis, Drexler-type scale. How would goods be produced and >sold? How would markets exist/ I don't remember reading any von Neumann where he discusses the idea of "general assemblers"....I'm still not convinced the general physics of that idea works out, and I believe Freeman Dyson has had some similar doubts. But despite that there's a point here... >* Namely, Hollywood. Film stock is essentially free...bits even more so. >Cameras remain expensive, but are vastly less so than they were a decade >ago. Basically, everything material in Hollywood is nearly free. What is >expensive is the creative talent, the know-how, the ensembles of actors and >directors and writers and all. Hell, you don't have to go that far. Food is already cheap enough that we might regard it as being nearly free. I mean, for a couple of bucks you can buy enough beef to stuff a welfare family of five, and to feed a rural Chinese family for a friggin' week. (Well, at least in the US...) People from mainland China would still regard most welfare families as "rich" by Chinese standards. >* The society we are heading towards is one of an increasingly sharp >division between the "skilled and in demand" end of the spectrum and the >bulk of droids who have few skills in demand. I've also witnessed this trend, but I currently believe it only holds in certain segments. There are various "craft" industries (as I call them) where this equation seems to be held in suspension. Like it or not, hip hop is one of those, though I suppose you could argue that the number of hip-hop 'artists' that make it is tiny compared to the audience. But the point is that in a craft industry, we're really referring to specific and local tastes, as opposed to Darwinian selection (ie, the 'most fit'). In a craft there may be room for many to contribute. (Other examples of craft industries are US high-end audio, the wine industry, high-end marijuana, organic foods and cheeses, and the current German-centered board game renassaiance.) What's desired in such an envornment is not necessarily the best/fastest/brightest, but something with a particularly 'quality' that corresponds to local vagaries of culture and taste. (At least, there's no other way to explain the success of "Snoop Doggy Dog"...) > >(I argued this, circa 1991-2, to a bunch of people who basically bought the >line that technology would bring wealth to the masses, blah blah. I argued >that yes, the masses would have great material goods, just as the masses >today have color tvs in their cribs. But the big money would elude them. >Libertarian rhetoric about everybody being wealthy is only meaningful in >the sense that even the poorest today are wealthy by Roman or Middle Ages >or even Renaissance standards. But the split between those with talents in >demand--the Peter Jacksons, the Stephen Kings, the Tim Berners-Lees, etc. >and the "reading be for whitey" and "I don't see any benefit to studying >math" vast bulk will widen.) > >Much more could be said on this. I recall I wrote some long articles along >these lines in the early years of the list. This is certainly possible. On the other hand, depending on how technology unfolds we might all of a sudden find ourselves caught short and looking for talent. And certainly, the have-nots will actually have more and more as time goes on, though perhaps not much land or space. >In conclusion, your Bedford-Stuy student who doesn't see the point to >studying math will never be a math researcher, or a physicist, or a >chemist, or anything else of that sort. So no point in trying to convince >him to study his math. > >It's like convincing a kid to start writing so he'll stand a chance of >being the next Stephen King: if he needs convincing, he won't be. > >The burnoff of useless eaters will be glorious. Well, if they have access to general assemblers they'll be with us forever. And such a burnoff won't be glorious, it'll be a fuckin' shame. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Make your home warm and cozy this winter with tips from MSN House & Home. http://special.msn.com/home/warmhome.armx

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Re: Singers jailed for lyrics
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

At 08:19 PM 12/31/03 -0500, John Kelsey wrote: >At 05:56 PM 12/30/03 -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >>If I were a neocon asshole, I would. Instead, I regard liberation as a >>local task, and interfering with sovereignty as the initiation of force, >>ie an act of war. > >Well, clearly bombing and invading them was an initiation of force, in the >most literal sense--we shot first. But while I can see that individuals >have a right that you violate by initiating force against them, I don't see >how that can apply to governments, especially governments whose main method >of keeping power involves terrorizing their citizens. (What, you mean like using the US police to deprive us of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?) My neighbors subject their offspring to a kind of abuse commonly called religion. Do I have a right to intercede? They are not harming *me*. Stay out of others family spats. Or as Gen'l W said, Trade with all, make treaties with none, and beware of foreign entanglements. (Mind you, as an reformed Objectivist, I do believe in absolute right and wrong; but does this give me the right to initiate force to clue you in? When do we start bombing Berlin?)

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Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

At 12:14 AM 1/1/04 -0800, Eric Cordian wrote: >Of >course, they still need one to determine who gets the shit-hauling jobs, >and the usual method of doing this is to hide the class system in the >education system. Now you don't get the shit-hauling job because you are >an untouchable. You get it because you "didn't do well" in school, or >you "dropped out, and "you could have been successful if you had just >tried harder." Seems that someone has a problem grasping natural variation. Perhaps you would prefer that the majority starve, or live in pre-agricultural poverty, rather than accept a comfy (if low-status) niche made possible by large foreheads. Tsk tsk.

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Re: Vengeance Libertarianism and Hot Negresses
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Jan '04

02 Jan '04

At 08:53 PM 12/31/03 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: You'd >dice and slice an African American population, but then again it's from >these inner cities that much of popular American culture has arisen (ie, >between pro sports, various forms of music and so on...). Is this supposed to be an argument *for* the AA pop? None of us, even TM, methinks, has anything against anyone for where their ancestors came. Many of us have much against various *cultures*, which are by definition voluntary, unlike albedo. Cultures being chosen sets of values, values being moral, ergo judgeable. Genes being inherited are largely irrelevant to the discussion. Trash is trash, it doesn't matter the color of the bag containing it. And noble metals come in many colors.

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