- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

RE: RIAA turns against Hollings bill
by Trei, Peter 15 Jan '03

15 Jan '03

> John Gilmore[SMTP:gnu@toad.com] writes: Nomen writes: > > How does this latest development change the picture? If there is no > > Hollings bill, does this mean that Trusted Computing will be voluntary, > > as its proponents have always claimed? And if we no longer have such > > a threat of a mandated Trusted Computing technology, how bad is it for > > the system to be offered in a free market? > > The detailed RIAA statement tries to leave exactly this impression, > but it's the usual smokescreen. Check the sentence in their "7 policy > principles" joint statement, principle 6: > > "... The role of government, if needed at all, should be limited to > enforcing compliance with voluntarily developed functional > specifications reflecting consensus among affected interests." > > I.e. it's the same old game. TCPA is such a voluntarily developed > functional spec. So is the "broadcast flag", and the HDCP copy > protection of your video cable, and IBM's copy-protection for hard > disk drives. Everything is all voluntary, until some competitor > reverse engineers one of these, and builds a product that lets the > information get out of the little "consensus" boxes. Consumers want > that, but it can't be allowed to happen. THEN the role of government > is to eliminate that competitor by outlawing them and their product. > > John > "enforcing compliance with voluntarily developed functional specifications" appears to be NewSpeak for: "Let the RIAA, not Congress, write the laws, and then send in Men With Guns to enforce them." Peter Trei --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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Strange spam
by Peter Fairbrother 15 Jan '03

15 Jan '03

I just got this spam, and I was wondering if it was a honey-pot. Anyone? The site exists, and advertises games and movies for download. -- Peter Fairbrother > > Frank > > You've gotta see this website: http://209.132.227.38/lotr/index.htm > > I just downloaded Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and I'm now watching it on > my computer. Picture quality is great and it was tottally free. > They've got a whole bunch of other games and movies as well. Take a look.

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Re: Indo European Origins
by Steve Furlong 14 Jan '03

14 Jan '03

On Tuesday 14 January 2003 15:23, Bill Stewart wrote: > ...You might as well argue that Esperanto** is just > a rapidly evolved Indo-European. > ** You probably _can't_ argue that about Logban; hacking the grammar > to make it yacc-parseable is pretty radical surgery. Allow me to introduce myself: coi rodo mi'e stivn. (Lojban: Hey, all, I'm Steve.) I might have something to contribute to this subthread. Lojban (not Logban; that's a conflation of the names Loglan and Lojban) isn't LALR-1. The grammar can be parsed by yacc only through creative use of the error-catching mechanism. It's a very impressive feat of yacc-hacking, don't get me wrong, but it's a hack nonetheless. And the grammar was indeed crafted to fit in a hacked yacc parser. A real parser which can properly handle grammatical errors in a chunk of Lojban text needs a more powerful language. Given that, Bill's point is correct: Lojban's gammar has practically nothing in common with any natural language. co'o rodo stivn. -- Steve Furlong Computer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged. --Michael Shirley

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Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
by Tyler Durden 14 Jan '03

14 Jan '03

Holy shit! I could done better than this! (ie, I THOUGHT this would be outrageous and amusing but it kinda sucked black prison dick.) -TD >From: Sleeping Vayu - Vayu Anonymous Remailer <noreply(a)cyberjunkiez.de> >To: cypherpunks(a)minder.net >Subject: Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary >Date: 12 Jan 2003 20:55:51 -0000 > >At 09:33 PM 01/10/2003 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > > For all I know, I've been posting on a list haunted by a bunch of > > crypto-white supremists (crypto, as in secret, hidden). And if that's > > the case, then I want to know. Figured I'd ask for clarification on > > this issue. (And from some of May's comments in the past, it wasn't > > clear to me.) > >As a matter of fact, I and Tim May regularly go nigger >hunting in the hills, me with my SKS. Tim May is not so >keen on those commie guns, and usually has a good old >American AR15 > >Of course, in the hills around here there usually are no >damned niggers, but sometimes we get a pig. Niggers are >pretty rare. To catch a nigger, you need the right bait. > >The tricky thing is to lure a nigger out of his native haunts, >to someplace far away and lonely with no one knowing where >he went. Fortunately a friend of ours sometimes hires some >nigger pussy to give him a good time in his house out in the >woods. Then of course the lady tells her numerous boyfriends >about all the good stuff he has, and pretty soon there are >some niggers out to rob him. They usually get caught in one >of his traps, and if a couple of days pass and it seems that >no one is missing that nigger, I and Tim May have a it of fun >killing it. It is not really as sporting as finding one in >hills, so usually we torture it a bit then give it a short >head start, track it through the hills by bloodstains, and then >shoot it. > >There are quite a few entertaining ways of torturing a nigger >before you kill it. Books are one of the best -- they have the >same effect on a nigger as kryptonite on superman. _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Re: Chad Gore wants a chance to vote a second time!
by Steve Schear 14 Jan '03

14 Jan '03

At 12:28 PM 1/14/2003 -0800, Tim May wrote: >On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 08:29 AM, Steve Schear wrote: >>> >>>Everything the Supreme Court did in the 2000 election was fully >>>justified. The Dems lost, then tried to change the rules. >> >>Perhaps its my lack of depth in understanding the Constitution and its >>Amendments, but it seems to me that the robed ones were applying the >>Equal Protection Clause in a way that could de-legitimize virtually every >>election in American history. Their intervention and they way it was >>decided sets a very bad precedent. > >Some old Jews and some negroes screwed up their ballots and accidentally >voted, they claimed, for Pat Buchanan instead of who they claimed to >interviewers they "intended" to vote for, namely, Al Gore. (A ballot >designed by a Democrat precinct, by the way.) > >It was proper that they were neither given a chance to vote over again nor >given a chance to have incorrectly punched ballots altered to give the >votes to Gore. All true, but you didn't address my concern about the nature of the SC intervention. In the book, 'The Accidental President,' by Newsweek writer David A. Kaplan--challenges statements by some justices in the aftermath of the decision that they had put the matter behind them and were once again enjoying cordial relations. It describes Souter and the three colleagues who joined him in dissent--Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens--as angered and baffled by the majority opinion. Kaplan's book excerpt reveals that the animosities within the Court spilled over at a gathering of the Justices while they were hosting six visiting Russian judges. ``'In our country,' a Russian justice said, bemused, 'we wouldn't let judges pick the president.' The justice added that he knew that, in various nations, judges were in the pocket of executive officials -- he just didn't know that was so in the United States,'' Kaplan writes. ``Stephen Breyer was angry and launched into an attack on the decision, right in front of his colleagues. It was 'the most outrageous, indefensible thing' the Court had ever done, he told the visiting judges. 'We all agree to disagree, but this is different.' Breyer was defiant, brimming with confidence that he'd been right in his long dissent.'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was more baffled than annoyed, attempting to rationalize the legitimacy of the ruling. ``'Are we so highly political, after all?' she said. 'We've surely done other things, too, that were activist, but here we're applying the Equal Protection Clause in a way that would de-legitimize virtually every election in American history','' Kaplan writes. steve

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Re: Brinworld: Samsung SCH-V310 camcorder phone
by A.Melon 14 Jan '03

14 Jan '03

Bill Stewart said: > At 12:31 PM 01/14/2003 -0800, Tim May wrote: > >I saw mention on the Yahoo news site that some health clubs and > >gyms are already taking steps to limit the types of cellphones > >allowed in the changing areas (and maybe elsewhere). > > Hey, some people get their privacy by going to places that > have Rules about the kind of video-broadcast technology that's allowed, > some people build it using Technology like cell-phone jammers, > while others of us accomplish it by having figures that > nobody's going to bother photographing :-) Unless you are being rebirthed by a home applicance. http://pics.nikita.ca/artificial-gravity/bill.jpg

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Re: Indo European Origins
by Michael Motyka 14 Jan '03

14 Jan '03

Harmon Seaver <hseaver(a)cybershamanix.com> wrote : > You don't even have to read 14th Cent. lit to experience that. Read > "A > Clockwork Orange" -- most folks find they read about 1/3 to 1/2 before > they go back and start over. Gibson, at least the earlier stuff, like > "Neuromancer", is a bit like that, but Burgess really almost invented > a new language. > I read a few Burgess novels as a teenager - A Clockwork Orange, The Eve of St. Venus, One Hand Clapping, The Wanting Seed and I don't remember them that way. I remember them reading smoothly and clearly without a great struggle. Probably time to revisit one or two just to double-check my old brain. > Language evolves more rapidly than the yours (and Tim's) examples > tho -- look > at innercity blackspeak, especially Chicago. Forget the ebonics jokes > -- this is a genuine language change. Or look at other areas of the > country with older language evolution -- Gullah in So. Caroline, for > instance, a much earlier language specialization. When I was at the > Univ. of So. Alabama in Mobile, I came across a group of country > blacks in a grocery store whose language was totally incomprehensible, > at least to me. I asked black friends about it, and they could mimic > it a bit, but confessed that they too had a lot of difficulty > understanding it, and they were native Mobilians. > I was raised, for the most part, in the deep South, but I've also > come > across many whites there whose speech was very difficult to > understand, and which, I'm sure, if one tried to read an accurate > phonetic rendition, without benefit of body language, would seem be > essentially a foreign language. > I know the experience - in the southern US, in Scotland - it's all English. Really? People are probably creating language constantly like a software evolutionary experiment. Much of it probably dies out. What remains appears to be "speciation". Write much Forth lately? Mike

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Re: Indo European Origins (language mutability, efficiency)
by Michael Motyka 14 Jan '03

14 Jan '03

"Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> wrote : >On Ken's >> > All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are >> > the same age. > >At first this parsed because I was thinking in the sense of >"all organisms have ancestries going back the same amount of >time". (And humans aren't the 'goal' of evolution.) Not sure >if non-bioheads got this. Anyway others' complaints clarified >"speciation" --if you are willing to identify a bifurcation point >then you *can* age a species or any other fork --Linux 2.4, >Latin, Corvettes, etc. > I guess bifurcation points and speciation seem very clear because of the aliasing problems in our sampling methods. The speciation exists but is prolly ( probably ) often fuzzier than we think. Almost everyone would say that an American Bison and a Scot's Highland are two different species but they can hybridize. Maybe we non-Biologists measure the distance between "species" inaccurately. >At 10:36 AM 1/14/03 -0800, Michael Motyka wrote: >>An interesting question that arises out of the observation that some >languages >>are relatively static and others - like English - have been changing >steadily. Is >>there any connection between the evolution behavior of the language and >the >>vitality of the culture? I think so. > >"Vitality" is fuzzy. > Choose your measure : population? power? innovation? environmental impact? rate of change? The US seems more vital by some measures. Less so by others. More dangerous to the species by others. >Clearly America admitting everyone (cf Japanese) helps. >Clearly not having an Acadamie Anglaise helps (cf surrender-monkeys). >Electronic media probably help. > >There's an even more interesting technical evolution: >English is also undergoing "entropic refinement" or Hamming-like coding, >as speakers prune or invent for efficiency. > >As it is, it takes fewer letters in English to say something than every >other common language. >Look at the instruction manuals for your domestic appliances. > That is interesting. >Forms (memory requirements) get simpler ---can you believe that the >surrender-monkeys retain >a gender-bit for every friggin object-- and phonetically simpler too. >The sounds get more orthogonal. >Also the influence of immigrants and children and lazy native speakers >who can't tell a "v" from a "w" or "d" from "th", >or remember the 150 irregular verbs. > >Some of this is natural. I've adopted the southern "y'all" because >English has no plural third person and this >ambiguity is annoying when you're emailing to several people. Note also >the efficiency of the contraction. >You hear "data" used as singular enough times, you say fuck it, I'll >have a beer, or several beer [sic]. Talk to >Eastern Europeans long enough, you'll start dropping your articles, >though you may miss the FEC/prompting >and flash back to Boris & Natasha cartoons... > Is the evolution towards a more efficient language an active or passive process? Is it driven by an internal inclination towards expansion, freeing up system resources as it were, or is it a coping mechanism for sensory overload? Mike

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Re: Brinworld: Samsung SCH-V310 camcorder phone
by Bill Stewart 14 Jan '03

14 Jan '03

>>... and they lie about it being 3G (which doesn't exist yet.) > >It's a CDMA2000 phone which is 3G. > >3G networks exist in many parts of the world, although behind schedule in >other parts. The whole "Cell Phones - The Next Generation" thing has been a pure marketing scam from the beginning. It's a popular well-funded scam that got lots of mindshare because it promised lots of people marketshare dominance or other political advantages, that they haven't executed well. But it makes a bunch of assumptions that the world can, will, and should have the same cellphone standard everywhere, and that the marketing people coming up with the term know what it is because they work for the people who are [pick hackneyed phrase here: A: the powerful beings creating the One Ringtone To Rule Them All, B: inevitably, scientific-central-planningally historically destined C: The Phone Company which is really in charge of everything D: the capitalist oligopoly conning our democratic central planners ] which everybody in the world will buy into, including manufacturers, system operators, regulators, and last and certainly least, those enthusiastic customers, and we'll all make scandalously high profits while giving consumers what we _know_ they want to pay tons of money for, because we know that the technology developers are ready to ship this stuff Real Soon Now, at the right price point, And of course, it assumes that everybody will believe that the products _these_ marketing people are trying to sell are the ones that will win, as opposed to the other technology developers who are making obviously substandard products unworthy of becoming CellPhones: TNG, and if somehow one of those other developers gets deployed in some significant market, they'll not only be stuck with some hackneyed name like "2.5G", but consumers will realize that those competing technologies are just opportunists who'll be Left Behind By Progress, so they either won't buy it or at least the wireless companies will dump it for Better Stuff Real Soon, or at least if there's more than one cell-phone company in an area, if the first one buys the 2.5G stuff, anybody else coming in with 3G can steal their customers. They're also depending on it taking long enough for 3G to get deployed and paid for and achieve World Domination that nobody's going to sneak in and call _their_ stuff 4G..... In practice, the real issues seem to be how fast a data channel is available, with the interesting values being 9600, 56k, 384k, 2M, how much spectrum space gets burned supporting it, how much distance you get for the voice and data cells, which standards interfere with which other standards, whether voice gets handled as something special or as data, whether data gets handled as something special like WAP or left as open-standard IP with TCP or UDP and HTTP, with or without being forced through filters or able to be sent through optional filters, how to integrate data transmission with texting (e.g. texting using ad-hoc telco standards or internet standards), how much jitter the data has (low values make VOIP possible), who's in charge of each of these services, which is to say "who gets how much of the money, if any", and how to get teenagers to have to buy it to be cool. These aren't the kind of things that easily fit into one linear range of values, and doing so is marketing scam.

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3G Phones (was: Re: Brinworld: Samsung SCH-V310 camcorder phone)
by Meyer Wolfsheim 14 Jan '03

14 Jan '03

On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Steve Mynott wrote: > > ... and they lie about it being 3G (which doesn't exist yet.) > > It's a CDMA2000 phone which is 3G. > > 3G networks exist in many parts of the world, although behind schedule > in other parts. Hmm. I actually can't find any specs on that phone's max speed. The CDMA2000 service being offered by Sprint and Verison in the US does not meet the criteria for 3G. CDMA2000 1x as defined by the ITU is, a 3G standard. Keep in mind, however, that in order to be 3G by the ITU definition, a standard needs to deliver data rates of a minimum of 144 Kbps. The top speed I've seen advertised for CDMA2000 deployments is 70 Kbps. Is CDMA2000 being used outside North America? I thought GSM/GPRS was the dominant standard in Europe and Asia. (GPRS is never 3G.) -MW-

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