November 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Cell Phone Jammer?
by Tyler Durden 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

Anyone know from first-hand experience about cellphone jammers? I need... 1) A nice little portable, and 2) A higher-powered one that can black out cell phone calls within, say, 50 to 100 feet of a moving vehicle. -TD

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Re: The Values-Vote Myth
by John Kelsey 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

>From: Eric Cordian <emc(a)artifact.psychedelic.net> >Sent: Nov 6, 2004 5:57 PM >To: cypherpunks(a)minder.net >Subject: Re: The Values-Vote Myth ... >Also, voting is in some sense political manipulation to blame the population for the >actions of their government. Everyone who votes is a co-conspirator, and the >argument is made that those who don't vote have no right to dissent. Yep, I always get a kick out of this line. Alice says "if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the outcome." Bob says "if you don't volunteer for a campaign, man the phone banks, go door to door, and give till it hurts, you have no right to complain about the outcome." Carol says "If you don't stockpile weapons, organize into cells, and run a campaign of terror bombing and assassination, you have no right to complain about the outcome." Why is one of these people more obviously right than the others? [I know you weren't agreeing with the quoted statement either.] In practice, Alice's strategy has almost no impact on the result--nothing I did as a Maryland voter could have given Bush fewer electoral votes than he already got, and that's true almost everywhere for an individual voter. This is especially true if you're an individual voter whose major issues are just not very important to most other voters. Kerry spent essentially no time talking about the creepy implications of the Jose Padilla case (isn't he still being held incommunicado, pending filing in the right district?), or the US government's use of torture in the war on terror despite treaties and the basic obligations of civilized people not to do that crap. I see little indication that Kerry would have disclaimed the power to do those things, had the vote swung a couple percentage points the other way. Bob's strategy has more going for it, but it comes down to a tradeoff between alternate uses of your time. You could devote your time to the Bush or Kerry or Badnarik campaigns, or you could improve your ability to survive whatever ugliness may come in other ways--maybe by making more money and banking it against future problems, or improving your standing in your field, so you're likely to be employable even in a massive post-terror-attack recession. Maybe just spending quality time with your wife and kids, on the theory that the bad guys may manage to vaporize you tomorrow whichever clown gets elected Bozo-in-Chief. Carol's strategy seems doomed to fail to me--look how much damage has been done to the pro-life movement by the very small number of wackos willing to shoot abortion doctors and bomb clinics. I'm always amazed at the revolutionary talk from people on this list, as though libertarian/anarchocapitalist ideas weren't an almost invisibly small minority in the US, as though some kind of unrest leading to a civil war would lead anywhere any of us would like. (Is it the secular police state that comes out on top, or the religious police state?) >Eric Michael Cordian 0+ --John

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Collateral damage?
by Major Variola (ret) 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

>How does this change if I'm a child whose trust fund contains the stock? Or if I hold a >mutual fund I inherited with a little Exxon stock What part of "collateral damage" don't you understand?

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nyms being attacked by malware
by privacy.at Anonymous Remailer 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

I've noticed a very high increase of incoming virii and malicious code of various sorts to one of my nyms. Since the nym is not used anywhere publically I really wonder if these are deliberate attacks to try to compromise the machines of people using nyms to protect their identity. Is this something that's a known strategy somehow? Obviously it could also be that the nym was previously used by someone else online and that's partly why it would be interesting to hear other's comments on this.

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Arafat's last thoughts...
by Tyler Durden 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

"Damn! Just when this scrabbly beard was finally starting to grow in!"

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ADV: Staff Announcement
by Administrator 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

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Re: This Memorable Day
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

Eugen Leitl <eugen(a)leitl.org> writes: >On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 08:16:41AM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >><http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109936293065461940,00.html> >No cypherpunks content. Just local politics. And it's not even original, they've mostly just translated it into English, updated it a bit (e.g. League of Nations -> UN), and changed the Russian names and references to Middle Eastern ones. Peter.

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Calif. settles electronic voting suit against Diebold for $2.6M
by R.A. Hettinga 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/11/10/financial1…> Ths San Francisco Chronicle Calif. settles electronic voting suit against Diebold for $2.6M RACHEL KONRAD, AP Technology Writer Wednesday, November 10, 2004 (11-10) 15:31 PST SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced Wednesday a $2.6 million settlement with Diebold Inc., resolving a lawsuit alleging that the company sold the state and several counties shoddy voting equipment. Although critics characterized the settlement as a slap on the wrist, Diebold also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to partially reimburse Alameda, San Diego and other counties for the cost of paper backup ballots, ink and other supplies in last week's election. California's secretary of state banned the use of one type of Diebold machine in May, after problems with the machines disenfranchised an unknown number of voters in the March primary. Faulty equipment forced at least 6,000 of 316,000 voters in Alameda County, just east of San Francisco, to use backup paper ballots instead of the paperless voting terminals. In San Diego County, a power surge resulted in hundreds of touch-screens that wouldn't start when the polls opened, forcing election officials to turn voters away from the polls. According to the settlement, the North Canton, Ohio-based company must also upgrade ballot tabulation software that Los Angeles County and others used Nov. 2. Diebold must also strengthen the security of its paperless voting machines and computer servers and promise never to connect voting systems to outside networks. "There is no more fundamental right in our democracy than the right to vote and have your vote counted," Lockyer said in a statement. "In making false claims about its equipment, Diebold treated that right, and the taxpayers who bought its machines, cavalierly. This settlement holds Diebold accountable and helps ensure the future quality and security of its voting systems." The tentative settlement could be approved as soon as Dec. 10. The original lawsuit was filed a year ago by Seattle-based electronic voting critic Bev Harris and Sacramento-based activist Jim March, who characterized the $2.6 million settlement as "peanuts." March, a whistle blower who filed suit on behalf of California taxpayers, could receive as much as $75,000 because of the settlement. But he said the terms don't require Diebold to overhaul its election servers -- which have had problems in Washington's King County and elsewhere -- to guard them from hackers, software bugs or other failures. The former computer system administrator was also upset that the state announced the deal so quickly. Several activist groups, computer scientists and federal researchers are analyzing Nov. 2 election data, looking for evidence of vote rigging or unintentional miscounts in hundreds of counties nationwide that used touch-screen terminals. Results are expected by early December. "This settlement will shut down a major avenue of investigation before evidence starts trickling in," March said. "It's very premature." A Diebold executive said the settlement would allow the company to spend more money on improving software and avoid "the distraction and cost of prolonged litigation." Diebold earnings plunged 5 cents per share in the third quarter because of the California litigation, which could cost an additional 1 cent per share in the current quarter. Diebold shares closed Wednesday at $53.20, up 1.22 percent from Tuesday in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. "We've worked closely with California officials to come to an agreement that allows us to continue to move forward," Diebold senior vice president Thomas W. Swidarski said in a statement. "While we believe Diebold has strong responses to the claims raised in the suit, we are primarily interested in building an effective and trusting relationship with California election officials." -- ----------------- 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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Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks
by Tyler Durden 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

Oh No!!!! Way overly simplistic. Also, you are comparing apples to bushels of wheat. >However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what >you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what >you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with >nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine >conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism >somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied >themselves with pagans and wiccans... WOW! I'll skip the obvious comments and ask, In which centuries are you suggesting this applies? Now? If so, you are clearly NOT talking about mainland China. Please re-define the centuries/epochs during which you believe this to have been true, and then maybe I'll bother responding. -TD

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The Full Chomsky
by R.A. Hettinga 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

<http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/c-e/chapin/2004/chapin111004.htm> MensNewsDaily.com The Full Chomsky November 10, 2004 by Bernard Chapin Question: How could a linguist working as a college professor have omniscient insight regarding the inner-workings of the American government and exclusive knowledge concerning the hidden motivations of every government official in our nation's history? Answer: There's no way he could. Yet, such common sense does little to refute the fact that Noam Chomsky is one of the ten most quoted figures in the humanities. He has published screed after screed deconstructing American foreign policy positions and never has given any indication that his insinuations may somehow be limited by lack of connections or first hand evidence (or, in some cases, any evidence whatsoever). Since the 1960s, he has fully played the role of Wizard Professor and created an entire library's worth of "pseudo-academic smog" . Until recently, there have been few antidotes for his morass of accusations and allegations, but now we have The Anti-Chomsky Reader, edited by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, which offers purchasers the service of deconstructing the deconstructor. Once you've finished reading it, you'll be highly grateful as Chomsky's lies are so pervasive and counter-intuitive that it's a wonder anyone but the paranoid ever read him in the first place. The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a compilation of essays outlining and refuting the travesties that the M.I.T. linguist has passed off as truth. It does not confine itself to politics alone. Substantial space is given to the analysis of his scholarly publications in linguistics. These are addressed in two chapters called, "A Corrupted Linguistics" and "Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me." In the area of his chosen field, many have given him an intellectual pass but this work does not. His linguistic ideas may be as spurious as his political tomes. All sources give him initial credit for his core academic assumption about the "biological basis of grammar," but it seems that he has engaged in little in the way of scientifically verifiable work over the course of the last fifty years. Chomsky's creative terminology dazzles admirers but his new theories inevitably amount to nothing Overall, the compendium leaves no region of his reputation left unexamined. Anti-Americanism is central to his worldview. He never sees this nation as being superior to any other. At best, we mirror the pathologies of totalitarian states. We can discern this clearly in Stephen Morris's "Whitewashing Dictatorship in Communist Vietnam and Cambodia." The author sums up Chomsky's fetish for defending the Vietnamese and Democratic Kampuchea aptly when he argues that, "As a radical political ideologue, he is crippled by an intense emotional commitment to the cause of anti-Americanism. Operating on the principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend,' he wholeheartedly embraced the struggle of two of the world's most ruthlessly brutal regimes." Chomsky's hopes for mankind are vested in murderous revolutionaries and not in his own nation. It is our nation, and never the Khmer Rouge, which gives its citizens the freedom to vote, the freedom to trade, and, most obviously, the freedom to spread the type of sedition that Noam Chomsky has been disseminating for close to 40 years. He does not limit himself to Asia, however. The professor has constantly minimized the acts of many totalitarian states. Chomsky regarded Soviet control of eastern Europe, when compared to the American presence in Vietnam, as being "practically a paradise" We see a man who cares far more about Holocaust deniers than the six million who were exterminated in gas chambers or desolate Russian ravines. After 9/11, he was more concerned about a fictitious famine in Afghanistan than about the nearly 3,000 incinerated in The World Trade Center attacks. He predicted that the toppling of the Taliban would result in 3 to 4 million famine deaths. When no such famine occurred, he did not issue an apology or retraction. He simply chose to say nothing. There is not much about this world famous ideologue that is genuine. He has ardently defended the right of free speech for anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying cranks like Robert Faurisson and Pierre Guillaume but chose not to say anything, or sign any petitions, supporting Soviet intellectuals relegated to the gulag due to their ideas. Chomsky's self-proclaimed political orientation is preposterous. He is enthralled with the socialist ideal but describes himself as a libertarian. If this were true he would be the first libertarian in history who hated capitalism and the free market. He also claims to be an anarchist but seems to love nothing more than strong governments which redistribute the wealth of its citizens and coerce its people into complying with the socialist ideal. He is so deeply repulsed by our nation, and so entirely lacking in perspective, that he holds Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Truman to be war criminals but Pol Pot, who murdered 25 percent of all Cambodians, as creating "constructive achievements for much of the population." He has an easy answer for those who dare argue with him. We do not understand as we have false consciousness . Only he, the magician, can know the true workings of the American state. Stylistically, Chomsky's works are written with an obfuscating hand and penned in the language of the opaque. The mechanics of his style: "As a strategy for creating a Potemkin village of intellectual authenticity, [are] brilliant; as scholarship it is charlatanism." Chomsky litters his work with footnotes yet the footnotes are a parlor game because they often lead to more footnotes citing other assertions he made in earlier works. The most egregious passage of them all occurs in John Williamson's essay, "Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me." It concerns Chomsky's interview with The New Yorker magazine where he is quoted as saying to one of his classes that Russian archives proved that Britain and the United States supported Nazi armies in the hopes of holding back the Soviet's eastern advance. When questioned about the quotation by Williamson, Chomsky dismissed the reporter as having manufactured his statement and that she had printed "a ridiculous gossip column." He then, even though he claimed not to have said what he did, referred Williamson to a source that did not support his assertion in the least. Chomsky's statement about the reporter turned out to be slanderous as the lecture that the reporter quoted from is available online via videotape. In it, the linguist says exactly what the reporter says he did. When confronted with his mendacity, Chomsky changed tactics and pronounced how absurd it was for someone to quote from his lecture. The real absurdity is that anyone should take him seriously at all. In case one thinks that this was an isolated incident, Chomsky appears to have learned nothing from The New Yorker scandal as he lied last month in a speech at the University of Michigan when he said that the United States had planned an attack on Japan before Pearl Harbor. No evidence was offered to support his claim as no evidence exists. What can one say about Chomsky? As a scholar and shaper of young minds he is deplorable. He is a Jew hating Jew who views the Israelis as Nazis and their behavior will result in "a final solution from which few will escape." His country has made him rich and famous although he discerns no good in the sea of prosperity around him. His is a most disturbed, jealous, and depressed mind. Chomsky has tied his life's disappointments to officials in Washington. If the linguist would merely be content to hate himself rather than project his feelings upon the government, we would all be much better off. Phrase from "Chomsky and the Cold War" by Thomas M. Nichols, p. 48. Nichols, p.61. Argument made by Eli Lehrer in "Chomsky and the Media: A Kept Press and a Manipulated People." p.82 Recounted by John Williamson in "Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me." pp. 236-241 Chomsky quoted on page 94 of Paul Bogdanor's "Chomsky's War Against Israel." -- ----------------- 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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