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You Are Invited To Thanksgiving Dinner At Bill's House
by sonofgomez709 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

Instructions for Microsoft's New TV Dinner Product: You must first remove the plastic cover. By doing so you agree to accept and honor Microsoft rights to all TV dinners. You may not give anyone else a bite of your dinner (which would constitute an infringement of Microsoft's rights). You may, however, let others smell and look at your dinner and are encouraged to tell them how good it is. If you have a PC microwave oven, insert the dinner into the oven. Set the oven using these keystrokes: mstv.dinn.//08.5min@50%heat Then enter: ms//start.cook_dindin/yummy\|/yum~yum:-)gohot#cookme. If you have a Macintosh microwave oven, insert the dinner and press start. The oven will set itself and cook the dinner. If you have a Unix microwave oven, insert the dinner, enter the ingredients of the dinner found on the package label, the weight of the dinner, and the desired level of cooking and press start. The oven will calculate the time and heat and cook the dinner exactly to your specification. Be forewarned that Microsoft dinners may crash, in which case your oven must be restarted. This is a simple procedure. Remove the dinner from the oven and enter: ms.nodamn.good/tryagain\again/again.crap This process may have to be repeated. Try unplugging the microwave and then doing a cold reboot. If this doesn't work, contact your oven vendor. The oven itself is obviously on the blink. Many users have reported that the dinner tray is far too big, larger than the dinner itself, having many useless compartments, most of which are empty. These are for future menu items. If the tray is too large to fit in your oven, you will need to upgrade your equipment. Dinners are only available from registered outlets, and only the chicken variety is currently produced. If you want another variety, call Microsoft Help and they will explain that you really don't want another variety. Microsoft Chicken is all you really need. Microsoft has disclosed plans to discontinue all smaller versions of their chicken dinners. Future releases will only be in the larger family size. Excess chicken may be stored for future use, but must be saved only in Microsoft approved packaging. Microsoft promises a dessert with every dinner after '98. However, that version has yet to be released. Users have permission to get thrilled in advance. Microsoft dinners may be incompatible with other dinners in the freezer, causing your freezer to self-defrost. This is a feature, not a bug. Your freezer probably should have been defrosted anyway. CJ Parker <sonofgomez709(a)yahoo.com> http://profiles.yahoo.com/sonofgomez709 http://members.w-link.net/~sog/INDEX.HTM ICQ 138724628 "The True Story Of The InterNet" The Xenix ChainSaw Massacre http://www.technopagan.org/politics/xenix/ WebWorld & The Mythical Circle Of Eunuchs http://www.technopagan.org/politics/webworld/ InfoWar: Final Frontier Of The Digital rEvolution http://www.technopagan.org/politics/infowarriors/ Space Aliens Hide My Drugs http://www.technopagan.org/politics/sahmd/

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John Dean: The Problems With Bush's Executive Order Burying Presidential Records
by Steve Schear 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

"While secrecy is necessary to fight a war, it is not necessary to run the country. I can assure you from firsthand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead." Hiding Past And Present Presidencies: The Problems With Bush's Executive Order Burying Presidential Records http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20011109.html By JOHN DEAN Friday, Nov. 09, 2001 On November 1, President George W. Bush signed his latest effort to govern by secrecy - Executive Order 13233. For good reason this Order has a lot of historians, journalists, and Congresspersons (both Republican and Democratic) upset. The Order ends 27 years of Congressional and judicial efforts to make Presidential papers and records publicly available. In issuing the Order, the President has pushed his lawmaking powers beyond their limits. The Secret Presidency As President watchers know, we have a President who likes secrecy. He has hired only tested leak-proof and loyal staffers, effectively sealing the Bush White House. He has had his records as the Governor of Texas hidden, shipping them off to his father's Presidential library, where they are inaccessible. He has stiffed the Congressional requests for information about how he developed his energy policy - refusing to respond. No President can govern in a fishbowl. But not since Richard Nixon went to work in the Oval Office has there been as concentrated an effort to keep the real work of a President hidden, showing the public only a scripted President, as now. While this effort was evident before the September 11th terrorist attacks, the events of that day have become the justification for even greater secrecy. The mystical veil of "national security" has been cast over much of the Bush administration. There were the secret arrests of terror-related suspects (currently over 1000 publicly unknown people). There was the expansion of the wiretap granting powers of a secret federal court hidden within the Department of Justice. There was, and continues to be, an apparent policy of precluding news organizations and congressional leaders from access to anything other than managed and generic news about the war in Afghanistan. With all these moves, President Bush is brushing aside one historical tradition of openness after another. It is in this context that the President's latest action must be viewed. The Executive Order suggests that President Bush not only does not want Americans to know what he is doing, but he also does not want to worry that historians and others will someday find out. Certainly that is the implicit message in his new effort to preclude public access to Presidential papers - his, and those of all Presidents since the Reagan-Bush administration. There is, however, no justification whatsoever for this latest effort to hide the work of past, present, and future Presidents. What Bush's Executive Action Means There has been some confusion about the meaning of the President's actions in addressing Presidential papers. He has not repealed the existing law, as some have asserted, because he does not have that power. But he has sought to significantly modify the law, and made its procedures far more complex, cumbersome and restrictive. In doing so, he has exceeded his executive powers under the Presidential Records Act of 1978. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has tried, unsuccessfully, to spin Executive Order 13233 as doing nothing more than implementing the existing law, but in fact, the Order does much more. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when pressed during his briefing, Mr. Fleischer dodged the tough questions, or said "that's a matter for the lawyers." Fleischer contention that the Order is innocuous would not hold up under close scrutiny, and so he avoided that scrutiny. Attorney Scott Nelson's Testimony Against the Order One lawyer who appreciates exactly what has been done is Washington attorney Scott L. Nelson, who represents Public Citizen, the public advocacy group that flushed out the Nixon papers during several decades of litigation. Mr. Nelson knows these laws well because Richard Nixon was his client for 15 years ironically, much of that time fighting Public Citizen. Indeed, Scott Nelson has been involved in the litigation that has shaped the body of law that President Bush has ignored in issuing his Executive Order. On November 6, Nelson appeared before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Stephen Horn, to address the new Bush Order. He explained in detail its flaws - which I have only summarized below, by highlighting a few examples of how the Bush Order ignores, or seeks to change, the law. The Presidential Records Act Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, virtually all of a former President's records are to be made publicly available by the Archivist twelve years after that President leaves office. There are narrow exceptions for papers that still must be withheld for national security reasons. But the 1978 statute specifically states that among the material to be released by the Archives twelve years after a President leaves office are his confidential and private communications with his advisers (White House staff and Cabinet Departments). The existing law does not provide an exception for withholding "attorney-client" or "attorney work product" materials. The New Executive Order: Adding Presidential Privileges to Those in the Act Through Executive Order 13233, President Bush has sought to re-interpret the 1978 law. To put it briefly, the Order adds and enumerates privileges upon which a former or incumbent President can block release of a former President's materials. In claiming that the Order does not contradict the Records Act, Bush relies on a clause in the Act that states that it does not "confirm, limit, or expand constitutionally-based privileges which may be available to an incumbent or former President." Bush's lawyers read this clause as bringing into play all of the privileges the law has precluded. They cite specifically the Supreme Court's 1977 holding in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, which says that a former President can exert executive privilege. The 1978 law only recognizes the enumerated privileges set forth in the Freedom Of Information Act. Nevertheless, Bush's Executive Order makes clear that he reads the law as entitling a former or incumbent President to assert a laundry list of privileges: the state secrets or national security privilege; the communications with advisors privilege, the attorney-client and attorney work product privileges, and the deliberative process privilege. Shifting the Burden, and Adding Extra Procedures President Bush has also shifted the burden from the former President to the person seeking the material. Under the Executive Order, the person seeking material must show that he should be given it; it is no longer necessary for the former President to show why material must not be disclosed. Bush's Executive Order also takes the Archivist of the United States out of the role of deciding if a former President's invocation of privilege should or should not be honored. That role is now assigned to the incumbent President. And obviously, it is likely that Presidents - wanting successors to honor their own invocations of privilege - might tend to accept former President's claims. The new Executive Order also creates an elaborate procedure for an incumbent President to block his predecessor from releasing documents. In addition, under Bush's order, a former President can indefinitely block release of his material, which is not possible under existing law. Another added benefit for former Presidents is this: When the incumbent President agrees with the former President about his decision to not release records, the incumbent President (through the Department of Justice) will defend the privilege against attack. That saves the former President what can be significant legal expenses for attorney's fees to contest the case in court. A New Power for Vice Presidents While Scott Nelson did not mention it in his testimony, the most remarkable change the Executive Order effects is that it gives not just a President, but also a Vice President, the power to invoke executive privilege over his papers. The Presidential Records Act includes Vice Presidential records. But it does not give a former Vice President the right to invoke executive privilege - for Congress does not have the power to do so. Indeed, under the Constitution, the executive privilege is unique to the President. Bush's Order is nothing less than absurd in purporting to grant the power to invoke this privilege to the Vice President, (and may only feed suspicion that Dick Cheney's role is more Presidential than may be appropriate to his office). The Effect of The New Executive Order President Bush has not stated why he revoked the existing Executive Order (Number 12667) addressing Presidential Records. President Reagan issued the Order in 1989 after studying the law for almost eight years of his presidency. Many believed Reagan's Order went beyond the law. Yet President Clinton did not challenge or change it during his eight years in office. Ironically, if President Clinton - not President Bush - had been the one who issued this new Executive Order, Republicans in Congress would no doubt have called for his impeachment for failure to execute the laws (that is, failure to abide by the Presidential Records Act.) Just as Clinton's assertions of privilege in court were repeatedly questioned - and even argued by some to be abuse of process or even obstruction of justice - Clinton's extension of Presidential privileges through an Executive Order would have faced heavy criticism. But when Bush takes the same action - especially now, with his new popularity - the criticism is highly modulated in tone. Why Bush Apparently Issued the New Executive Order What appears to have provoked President Bush's action is the fact that some 68,000 documents from the Reagan presidency were waiting at the White House when Bush arrived, ready for release by the National Archives. These documents passed the twelve-year deadline for public release on January 12, 2001, but their release has been stalled by the Bush White House until now. The documents are believed to contain records that Papa Bush, as Reagan's Vice President, is not happy to have made public. They also contain papers of others now working for Bush, who might be embarrassed by their release. Look for either Papa Bush, or someone designated by former President Reagan, to object to any of these 68,000 documents' release pursuant to the new Executive Order. If that happens, it will confirm my guess as to why the Order was written at this time. The effect will be to tie the release of those records up for years. The most certain effect of this new Order will be litigation. The Order will be tested in court, if the President does not withdraw it as requested by both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress. And should the Order not be overturned by the courts, I believe Congress will act. In fact, Congress could act even before the courts resolve these matters. In short, the prospects for Bush's Executive Order 13233 remaining the law of the land is slim to none. A Troubling Penchant For Secrecy More troubling than the Order's throwing a monkey wrench into the process of releasing Presidential papers, however, is the President's penchant for secrecy. Secrecy provokes the question of what is being hidden and why. If President Bush continues with his Nixon-style secrecy, I suspect voters will give him a Nixon-style vote of no confidence come 2004. While secrecy is necessary to fight a war, it is not necessary to run the country. I can assure you from firsthand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead. The Bush administration would do well to remember the admonition of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his report on government secrecy: "Behind closed doors, there is no guarantee that the most basic of individual freedoms will be preserved. And as we enter the 21st Century, the great fear we have for our democracy is the enveloping culture of government secrecy and the corresponding distrust of government that follows." John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former Counsel to the President of the United States. His most recent book, The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court, was just published by the Free Press.

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Re: The Crypto-Financial Paradox
by Steve Schear 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

At 09:22 AM 11/22/2001 -0800, you wrote: > -- >On 21 Nov 2001, at 2:02, R. A. Hettinga wrote: > > This is nothing new for long-time subscribers to this list. > > As Eric Hughes kept saying when I first got here in 1994, > > it is immediate and final settlement that attracts the > > capital and payment system markets to cryptographic > > protocols like Chaum's blind signatures, and not > > particularly anonymity. > >People want immediate and final settlement when purchasing >rights over assets. They do not want immediate and final >settlement when purchasing services, or goods that must be >physically delivered. Rather, for physical delivery, they >want the final settlement to be as closely tied to actual >delivery as possible --they want the arbitration provided by >the credit card companies. > > > So, as has ever been the case, whoever builds a robust, > > instantly-settled, identity-independent, > > internet-ubiquitous transaction mechanism that actually > > works in production for assets people want to trade in > > large quantity is going to do quite well for themselves by > > saving the entire economy a whole lot of money > >In such a system, the digital certificates must ultimately >reflect control over assets, in other words they must be >functionally equivalent to bearer bonds and, more >importantly, bearer shares. > >Needless to say, bearer shares are illegal almost everywhere. > >Any system that does what you describe must be located in a >haven, and will be met by great wrath. Nah.. bearer shares are legal for any common Nevada corporation. steve

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Denning on Denning's Geo-crypto
by John Young 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

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Nov. 26: Barry Hurewitz, HIIP Seminar on Privacy...
by R. A. Hettinga 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

--- begin forwarded text

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Re: The Crypto-Financial Paradox
by R. A. Hettinga 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

At 9:22 AM -0800 on 11/22/01, jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: > People want immediate and final settlement when purchasing > rights over assets. They do not want immediate and final > settlement when purchasing services, or goods that must be > physically delivered. Rather, for physical delivery, they > want the final settlement to be as closely tied to actual > delivery as possible --they want the arbitration provided by > the credit card companies. Agreed, on all points, but it doesn't presuppose that credit card companies will always be necessary if there's a significantly cheaper alternative. For instance, we've kicked around lots of stuff like internet bearer title to assets in warehouses, or internet bearer bills of lading, which, among other things, allow the secondary trading of a given asset along its entire "chain of custody" until its delivered to the end user. The entire derivative/options/futures markets work this way, remember. A farmer sells his crop in the spring and delivers it to whoever holds the futures contract for the crop sometime in the fall, while the crop itself is re-sold many times in between. As a sidebar, one of the ways Paul Harrison and Mark Tenney (by way of Gene Fama and Fisher Black of course :-)) figured out you can get a completely "state-less" numeraire (currency to those in Palm Beach County) is with an index of various assets that includes assets in storage and transit. > In such a system, the digital certificates must ultimately > reflect control over assets, in other words they must be > functionally equivalent to bearer bonds and, more > importantly, bearer shares. > > Needless to say, bearer shares are illegal almost everywhere. Certainly laws for actual bearer ownership of equity exist in all major markets. Doesn't mean they have to stay that way if a digital bearer form in another market reduces risk adjusted transaction costs that the technology must be adopted in the capital markets as well. > Any system that does what you describe must be located in a > haven, and will be met by great wrath. As people here note all the time, you don't solve such a problem politically. It would be like asking religious leaders to enforce a given nation-state's freedom of religion laws. You solve it technically and economically. In fact, that's the only way to solve it. Regulatory arbitrage, using havens, is a pipe-dream in the long run, even though HavenCo seems to have done a fine existence proof of the canary in a coal mine. But, if transactions are cheaper when they're using an asset transfer protocol which is identity-independent, then even laws about bearer shares will have to change or governments will end up killing their host economies. More to the point, so much money has to be made that governments get *more* gross tax revenue with bearer transactions in their capital markets than they do with book-entries, or if revenue is reduced, that the operating cost of government falls so much (through a loss of pure transaction fraud) that the state has more to spend on other parts of the government, whatever that may be... In the meantime, it is possible, at least at the moment, to do a bearer transaction on the net even for assets that appreciate, using unsponsored depository receipts. The underwriter has to be the material owners of the shares and bonds in question, which is ugly, but, done that way, the bearer certificates on the net representing those assets can be instantly converted into a private holding belonging to someone else with a brokerage account at any time. Exchangeability is just about the most important thing there is in a financial instrument, and that, I believe, is why we don't have internet bearer transactions today. Like I said elsewhere, it isn't the law, per se, that is the problem so much. People have worked out the legal problems to their satisfaction. Or at least that was the case until September 11th, which, as I said, people are starting to turn the corner on. Even right now, as far as I can read the new legislation and regulations passed since WTC, you can obey all the laws about cash and securities and put something out on the net, that people can use to lower their transaction cost, to do instantaneous transactions, and so on, that incorporates blind signatures, and as secure as you want to make them, including good-enough two-way anonymity. Furthermore, the technical, even the legal, cost of doing so keeps going down, and, eventually, somebody's just going to do it to see what happens, if for no other reason to see what the economics of it all is. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- 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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I haven't heard from you lately.
by Mandy Byde 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

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MI5 Plan to detect terrorists
by measl＠mfn.org 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

Right out of a Monty Python piece... http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/06/30/nger… MI5's secret plan to recruit gerbils as spycatchers By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 30/06/2001) MI5 considered using a team of highly-trained gerbils to detect spies and terrorists flying into Britain during the 1970s, Sir Stephen Lander, the service's director-general, revealed yesterday. The plan was based on the ability of gerbils to detect a rise in adrenalin from changes in the scent of human sweat. Sir Stephen said the Israelis had put the idea into practice, placing gerbil cages to the side of security checks for travellers at Tel Aviv airport. A suitably placed fan wafted the scent of the suspect's sweat into the cage. The gerbils were trained by Pavlovian response to press a lever if they detected increased adrenalin, receiving food as a reward. The system was never put into practice by MI5 because the Israelis were forced to abandon it after they found that the gerbil could not tell the difference between terrorists and passengers who were scared of flying. Speaking at a conference at the Public Record Office in Kew, Sir Stephen said MI5 archives contained a complete volume on the idea - which was based on Canadian research for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - written in the 1970s. Although Dame Stella Rimington made a practice of speaking publicly in an attempt to change MI5, yesterday's Missing Dimension conference was only the second occasion that Sir Stephen has done so. The conference marks a new PRO exhibition on espionage, Shaken Not Stirred, starting today, which includes exhibits on a number of spies including Mata Hari and a spy paid the equivalent of 6.5 million by King George I to spy on the Stuarts. The Missing Dimension refers to the fact that most histories are written before intelligence files have been released and so omit a crucial element of what occurred and why. Sir Stephen admitted that it would be a long time before MI5 would be able to release details of its Cold War activities. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: "Rigorous and objective" (if at first...)
by Faustine 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Gil wrote: Faustine writes: >Tim wrote: > > >Besides the above points, a "rigorous and objective analysis" is work > >for bean counters...and is only interesting to other bean counters. >So von Neumann, Kahn, Schelling and Nash are boring, huh. >I'd rather follow their examples than spend year after year chitchatting >on Usenet. Such an intelligent and creative man, what a waste. >>Then what the hell are you doing here, chitchatting on the list many >>critics have characterized as Tim's private cesspool? Good question. I guess it's just that I love to argue, and you could hardly ask for a better assortment of intelligent and colorful characters to mix it up with. I enjoy the back-and-forth; putting out documents people here might find useful and interesting--and most importantly, being able to give my unvarnished opinion without, well, worrying too much about being rigorous and objective. For instance, if anyone wants to tell someone here to go fuck themselves, they just come right out and tell them to go fuck themselves. How refreshing, positively theraputic! Expressing a little heartfelt hostility isn't always a bad thing...LOL Anyway, Usenet is an entirely different animal. Why anyone so intelligent would waste five minutes on that pack of pumpkin-headded "God Bless Amerikuh" drooling imbeciles is beyond me. It literally makes me want to puke just thinking about it--no wonder Tim always seems so dyspeptic. >Yes, Tim. Come on. Faustine will be doing Important Rigorous and >Objective Policy Analysis. Her work will have Real Impact. Members of >Congress and the Administration will invite her to come give them >briefings (at least those with sufficient clearance). Think whatever you please, it certainly suits me fine. >She just doesn't want to "show her hand" yet. You know, all those >paparazzi can be so annoying. And it's hard to get important Policy >Analysis done when you're being pestered by all those lightweights >in Congress. Actually Congress is chock full of lightweights. And all their ratty little undereducated staffers who soak up whatever lobbyists and their shoddy two-bit partisan "guess tanks" happen to be shilling for this week. I know plenty of quality analysts who loathe testifing before Congress--quite unlike the faceless horde of guess tank media whores scrambling for the spotlight. I'll say this much: getting pro-freedom policy analysts in positions where they don't have to scramble to be heard will be the real accomplishment. Not just knocking their heads against a brick wall as per usual. >Besides: Gosh! Just think: we'll be able to say that we knew her when. No comment. LOL Infuriatingly yours, ~Faustine. *** The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms. - --William O. Douglas, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBO/Wkdvg5Tuca7bfvEQJwzACfdbfJz/Xlre/j5ddSBWBsx5ai7NcAnA99 MaOCrYYU4incdfh5jmVZOjXU =t3OS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Our Socks are on Fire
by Support 23 Nov '01

23 Nov '01

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