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by Search n' shop 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

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Local Support for Jim Bell quoting Anarchists free speech trial.
by Matthew X 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=33127&group=webcast MELBOURNE URGENT SUPPORT free speech trial MATT TAYLOR 11 SEPT. Who's attending? by Joanna 10:53pm Sat Sep 7 '02 (Modified on 11:41pm Sat Sep 7 '02) article#33127 address: http://melbourne.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=32685&group=webcast bpossum(a)hotmail.com URGENT ACTION NEEDED IN MELBOURNE to support person facing potential extreme miscarriage of justice, and to uphold freedom of speech. "On sept 11 the police are charging a mentally disabled man with threats to kill them. One was a comment to a post made here on May 8 and another on june 1 of 01." Matt Taylor could be jailed for 20 years. MORE ON www.indymedia.org Melbourne au actually I just found out its 5 years max from my lawyer.

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Re: Wolfram on randomness and RNGs
by Eric Cordian 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

Steve Schear writes: > Stephen Wolfram's book, "A New Kind of Science," is nothing if not > interesting. This encyclopedia-sized volume traces how his fascination > with cellular automata, beginning in the 1970s, led him to spend decades > exploring the significance of complexity created from simple rules. I bought a copy the day it came out. It's an interesting read, but as far as I can tell, contains nothing of startling import. It contains not a single proof. It merely suggests that Cellular Automata are sufficiently rich to model any physical process, and maybe someone, someday, will use them for that purpose. Then again, so are Turing Machines. It's much like a book on Cosmology that goes on and on about how lovely Riemannian Geometry is, and presents lots of beautiful pictures of manifolds, but leaves it for others to actually figure out a way to use Riemannian Geometry to model the interaction of geometry and matter. The one test I usually apply to books is to ask what I can do after reading them that I couldn't do before reading them. After Wolfram's book, I can write the Rule 30 RNG in a couple of lines of the programming language of my choice. Not a massive skills increment, but the book does have some pretty pictures. Definitely worth $48 if it's in your interest area, but it's no "Godel, Escher, Bach." > But the remarkable fact is that none of these > methods seem to reveal any real regularities whatsoever in the rule 30 > cellular automaton sequence. And thus, so far as one can tell, this > sequence is at least as random as anything we see in nature. Yes, but... A cellular automaton consists of an array of cells in 1-1 correspondence with the integers, and does a potentially infinite amount of computation at each step. It is not particularly striking that we can generate a seemingly random sequence of bits using an open-ended amount of computation between emitting each of them. > But is it truly random? I get the impression Wolfram believes the universe is not random but pseudo-random. His measure of randomness is that there is no shorter method of computing the random sequence than by running the CA that generates it. This gets into the whole descriptional or Kolmogorov complexity idea of random strings being those that have no shorter description than themselves. As opposed to the type of randomness we imagine we get from things like radioactive decay, which Wolfram no doubt secretly believes are the result of small scale discrete processes as well. We hashed some of this around in sci.math when the book came out, and someone mentioned that Wolfram was peddling Rule 30 at Crypto '85. Article Reference: (Crypto '85) Article: Cryptography with Cellular Automata Author: Stephen Wolfram While "A New Kind of Science" contains lots of new and original things, what's new isn't original, and what's original isn't new. That Wolfram is less than candid in disclosing this, and according to some, does not credit colleagues for their ideas which he borrows, makes the book less than a stunning exposition of its subject matter. There's even a 1993 post by Bruce Schneier in sci.crypt commenting on Rule 30. [There is a known plaintext attack against these generators; see W. Meier and O. Staffelbach, "An Analysis of Pseudo-Random Sequence Generators by Cellular Automata," Advances in Cryptography--EUROCRYPT '91 Proceedings, Springer- Verlag, 1991, pp. 186-199. The attack is quite efficient on a PC with values of n (widths of th CA) up to 500. Additionally, Paul Bardell proved that the output of a CA is identical to the output of a linear-feedback shift register, and is hence no more secure. See: P.H. Bardell, "Analysis of Cellular Automata Used as Pseudorandom Pattern Generators," Proceedings of 1990 International Test Conference, pp. 762-768.] I'm also not convinced that the Rule 30 bitstream does not have a compact discription, merely because Wolfram has so far failed to discover one. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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What Kind of man has a pussy?
by Matthew X 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

Who let the cats out? and what's with the Merc? Wasn't it in the 60's you had a small German car,the 70's you had a small German gun and the eighties, a small German boy? Hang on to something long enough I guess... Has Mongo been hanging on to his sausage too long? Searching for the perfect man, Kathy Lette takes a butcher's at what's on offer. http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/06/1031115934706.html Throw another shrimp on the barbie for me mate.

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Plea Bargain Blackmail rejected in Hartford.
by Matthew X 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/09/05/7640999 They're not in quite as much danger as Camilo but still in need of support -- people should at least be aware of them, as well as the Long Beach folks and Camilo. ================== "And then there were three... Hartford 18 holdouts prepare for trial" By Chris Harris Published 09/05/02 in the Hartford Advocate Last October, more than 300 anti-war demonstrators took to Hartford's streets, in opposition to United States military actions against Afghanistan. But what started out as a peaceful demonstration at Bushnell Park -- its participants students from UConn, Central Connecticut State University, Yale, and Wesleyan, as well as several local activists -- ended in front of Constitution Plaza, with pepper spray, beatings, and the arrests of 18 people, seven on charges of inciting to riot. Nearly a year later, three of those 18 demonstrators have yet to plead out, and say they will take the matter to trial. Dave Bonan, 24, Jason Cappell, 23, and Max Greene, 19, were in Hartford Superior Court last Tuesday, represented by New Haven attorney Norm Pattis. Each has appeared before a judge several times since the protest. Bonan, Cappell, and Greene -- all wearing pins that read "Defend the Hartford 18" -- told the Advocate they've been offered numerous chances at a plea bargain but have refused. The charges against them range from interfering with police and inciting to riot, a felony, to disorderly conduct and trespassing. A date for their trial has been set for October 15. "These boys," says Pattis, "refuse to buckle." Accepting the plea bargain would mean admitting blame, something these three holdouts don't want to do. They say the worst crime they committed on October 25 was blocking traffic, staying in the street when ordered by police to get out, and marching without a permit. The demonstration marched along various streets, and approached Sen. Joe Lieberman's office at One Constitution Plaza on Market Street. Throughout, police in cars and on foot tried to divert the demonstration off the streets and onto the sidewalks. Police patience had worn thin by the time the mob made it to Lieberman's office. Police bumped, elbowed, and shoved some of the demonstrators onto the sidewalk. Then, police started blasting the crowd with pepper spray. The Hartford 18 were grabbed in choke holds, and dragged off to patrol cars. At the time, a police spokesman described the crowd as "rowdy," claimed they were banging on police cars and chanting "anarchy now" and "attack the police!" The arrests began only after marchers had ignored police orders for 45 minutes, police say. This reporter, who was present from start to finish, saw no such provocation. "I didn't do anything," says Greene, a sophomore at Wesleyan. "If I accepted a diversionary program, it would be admitting guilt." All three say they feel more like victims in this case, not criminals. They're confident a jury will rule in their favor. "It's kind of difficult to comprehend that 18 of us got arrested at a peaceful protest," says Greene. The rest of the Hartford 18 accepted the state's plea offer for accelerated rehabilitation -- a brief form of probation that results in a dismissal of the case. If they're able to stay out of trouble during that probationary period, the charges will be cleared from their records. Pattis says his clients could see some jail time if found guilty. How much jail time depends on the judge, he says. No minimum period of incarceration is associated with the charges pending against his clients. While he wouldn't comment specifically about his plan of attack for this case, Pattis did say he'll introduce video footage of the demonstration shot by Greene as part of his defense. This evidence, he suspects, will be "pivotal" to the outcome of the trial. "It shows this was a police riot," says Pattis. "These were people engaged in protected speech, and it would be a disaster for them to be convicted of anything." Pattis says his clients "represent the very best of what this country is all about," and added that any witness "the state puts up will become our witness on cross-examination." None of the three would comment on whether or not he is planning to sue the city or its police department. Greene says he's experienced psychological trauma as a result of the police riot and still has recurring nightmares about the experience. ### Posted for fair use. http://www.newmassmedia.com/nac.phtml?code=har&db=nac_fea&ref=21900 Comment www.infoshop.org

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Re: Prosecutors' Contention That Hotmail E-mail Is "Extremely Difficult To Trace"
by Matthew X 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

> > > >>: Always make erasing unneeded data a regular practice, if you want to > keep your computers. --digsig James A. Donald << > >http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2374/reign.html > >Eraserhead. > >http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2374/bait.html > >Switch hitter > >http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/jamesd.html > >The sea will tell

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Worry about Kinko Rats.
by Matthew X 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

"...I'm less worried about bin Laden's gang attempting to bring down the Internet than I am about these rats finalizing their next plot via instant messages sent from rented computers at Kinko's...." http://news.com.com/2010-1071-956823.html?tag=fd_nc_1 "...Considering how panicky this nation can become during times of crisis--remember the Palmer Raids of the early 1920s and the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War?--this isn't an idle concern..." Anniversary of Palmer raids yesterday,see Daily Bleed. "Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures" Up to now, all strategies have failed if we are determining their success as achieving an anarchist social revolution that completely wipes out the state and capitalism forever across the globe.APster; who do you want to kill today?

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Re: Wolfram on randomness and RNGs,
by Matthew X 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

I KNOW WHAT YOU'LL DO NEXT SUMMER What do galaxies, stockbrokers and style gurus have in common? A set of numbers that describes everything they do. Does nature's hidden program mean we're all deeply predictable, asks John Casti Cover story dead tree New Scientist magazine.31 August 02. Wolframs patterns,fractals,elliot waves,fibonacci waves,all working against 'free will'. And the sheeple looked up... http://www.newscientist.com/inprint/previous/20020831.jsp A proposal was floated in 2000/1 of pulling random bursts off various broadcasts just prior to sending message,system would rely on satellites and be quite expensive,its since been superceded as an expensive technical proposition by http://www.idquantique.com/ NATURE REPORTS ON QKD AND id QUANTIQUE "Quantum cryptography: Can you keep a secret?" In its issue of July 18, Nature reports on the first steps towards commercializing Quantum Key Distribution systems.Bitch slap me if you look like Jessica Stern.

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[labs@foundstone.com: Foundstone Labs Advisory - Remotely Exploitable Buffer Overflow in PGP]
by Gabriel Rocha 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

----- Forwarded message from Foundstone Labs <labs(a)foundstone.com> -----

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War Games Gulf style.
by Matthew X 07 Sep '02

07 Sep '02

Wake-up call Article based on an interview with retired Lt Gen Paul Van Riper, the 'wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran' who 'sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf' during a recent war game organised by the Pentagon - ' "You're going to have to use cellphones and satellite phones now, they told me. I said no, no, no - we're going to use motorcycle messengers and make announcements from the mosques," he says. "But they refused to accept that we'd do anything they wouldn't do in the west." ' ( Guardian ) See also this Army Times article from last month, and this transcript of a US Defense Dept briefing from last month.LINKS http://www.hullocentral.demon.co.uk/site/anfin.htm The Troubling New Face of America 'We have ignored or condoned abuses in nations that support our anti-terrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as "enemy combatants," incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal counsel. This policy has been condemned by the federal courts, but the Justice Department seems adamant, and the issue is still in doubt. Several hundred captured Taliban soldiers remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay under the same circumstances, with the defense secretary declaring that they would not be released even if they were someday tried and found to be innocent. These actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by American presidents' ( Jimmy Carter via Washington Post ) 'Donahue' for Sept 5 Transcript of yesterday's edition of Donahue, a US public affairs programme, during which investigative reporter Greg Palast was interviewed about the electoral assistance George W Bush is giving his brother Jeb in Florida ( MSNBC ) The Florida state pension fund is heavily invested in Enron, apparently (for the record I can't stand Donahue/Carter but we are in a 'kingdom of fear.')

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