- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

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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RE: Iris scanning
by Trei, Peter 07 May '03

07 May '03

> Harmon Seaver[SMTP:hseaver@cybershamanix.com] > > 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? > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3003571.stm > Iris scanning does not use lasers. It uses a high-definition TV camera to image the iris (the colored ring around the pupil). Retinal scanning sometimes uses lasers, but does not have to. There are some HUD displays which paint an image directly on the retina with low powered lasers, but they're pretty rare. Biometrics seems to be in a bit of a lull right now. Many people noted the *absence* of many biometrics at the RSA conference this year; I myself saw nothing besides fingerprint readers. Peter Trei

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RE: Why are there so many statists and communists here on this li st now?
by Trei, Peter 07 May '03

07 May '03

> On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 08:12:15AM -0400, John Kelsey wrote: > > This is the interesting question: Would the anarchocapitalist society > have > > and keep an advantage? I don't think you can answer it except by > > experiment, but it's at least as feasible to me that the right kind of > > authoritarian state might be pretty damned good at keeping up with an > > anarchocapitalist one for technology, and would be better at some > > technology. > 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. Peter Trei

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Sleeper Cells
by Tyler Durden 07 May '03

07 May '03

Variola wrote... > >At 10:55 AM 5/6/03 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: > > > >Speech is speech. I'll worry about May when he actually tries to bring >the > >"hoped for" nuke into downtown DC. Until then, he's a "sleeper cell". > >Tyler, we'll excuse you for your relative newness. We are *all* sleeper >cells. >Its an obligation. Quoth the bubblehead: You're either with us, or against >us (tm). Can't fully agree with you here, Variola. Anyone who doesn't keep up with CNN's agit-spew (and believe it) is a sleeper cell. -TD _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

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Private meeting on privacy
by Declan McCullagh 07 May '03

07 May '03

COMMERCE National Academies Meeting on Privacy in the Information Age, May 7-9. Closed session summary posted after the meeting Location: National Academies, 500 5th St., NW, Washington, D.C..

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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.

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Re: Crypto-making vs Crypto-breaking
by Ben Laurie 07 May '03

07 May '03

Anonymous wrote: > In order to avoid this, the bank can prove that it operated correctly > (that is, it raised its input to the same k power that g is raised to > in the public g^k value) using a zero-knowledge proof. I believe the > latest version of the Lucre software does this. 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. There is an implementation of the ZK proof included in Lucre just for fun, though. Cheers, Ben. -- http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html http://www.thebunker.net/ "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff

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