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Metals USA Bankrupt!!!
by BuyStainlessOnline.com 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

www.buystainlessonline.com News Flash ------------------------------ Texas based Metals USA has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This comes after the United States largest service center consolidator delayed its quarterly earnings report last week. In September of 2000 BuyStainlessOnline, Inc. attended an AWMI (American Women in Metals) meeting where the speaker was Metals USA CEO Michael Kirksey. He shared his interesting (but highly flawed) opinions on how the future of Steel looked. We released this article at that time and it was well recieved all around the globe. Special thanks to David Center in Lake Success for retaining a copy! ----------------------------------------------- Metals USA CEO Clarifies \"Godzilla\" Ideal 9/13/2000 By Mason Fine (As found on www.BuyStainlessOnline.com) I was fortunate enough to attend an AWMI (Association of Women in Metals) dinner forum last night. The featured speaker of the event was Michael Kirksey, CEO and President of Metals USA, a newly formed company which has recently made waves in the Metals Industry. Mr. Kirksey, a 3 year veteran of the Metals Industry, discussed in detail how Metals USA plans on reaching profitability. For those unaware, the company (Metals USA) has been engaged in a quite active acquisition campaign. Mr. Kirksey elaborated last night on \"Godzilla\" (The Company) striving to reach a point where their supply chain management solutions will be so powerful that smaller service centers will either be swallowed up by \"Godzilla\" or forced into a smaller market segment. Metals USA\'s attitude towards this new \"Super Supply Chain\" solution drew varied responses from the fifty or more attendees of the forum. One highly interesting aspect of Mr. Kirksey\'s solution includes a service where mills and service centers will become more profitable through guaranteed ra! w ! material prices. How exactly Metals USA believes that there will come a time when Iron Ore will not fluctuate in price is lost to me. I asked Mr. Kirksey if Metals USA\'s projections for profitability coincided with the successful implementation of their integrated supply chain solution, his first answer was \"I don\'t understand the question\", followed by \"There are three Silos involved here\", after which Mr. Kirksey further elaborated on the Internet being involved, a guarantee on metal prices, and next day customer service. It is my opinion that if Metals USA can really pull this off, they stand to gain everything. On the other hand, if the price of metals can\'t be fully insured, Metals USA may have a big problem. www.BuyStainlessOnline.com Your Place for Stainless Today. P 215.604.5922 F 240.358.8483 Click Here to REGISTER! https://www.buystainlessonline.com/registration/registration.php Unsubscribe By clicking below: http://www.buystainlessonline.com/email/mail.php?action=delete&eval=2276&em…

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NetNews, Subscription to Motorbike Bob
by Bob 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

Greetings from www.motorbikebob.com, please read this message before deleting!!! We have recently acquired several web properties. You are receiving this as an opt-in subscriber of one of those properties in accordance with current SPAM guidelines. If you feel that you are receiving this in error, please follow instructions at the end this message. Failure to do so will result in regular receipt of our mailings - Thank you for your understanding. Q. OK then what or who is www.motorbikebob.com? A. www.motorbikebob.com is a UK based website for motorcycle enthusiasts run by motorcycle enthusiasts. Q. Where did you get my name and email address? A. According to "Market Share Recovery Inc" you were registered at a defunct US site called www.all-cycle.com. Q. What do you do and what do you sell? A. We keep our visitors up to date with all the news and views from the world of sport motor-cycling. www.motorbikebob.com has one of the largest catalogues of motorcycle clothing in the UK, with brands like Alpinestars, Axo, Joe Rocket, Arai, AGV, Rukka, The Hump, all delivered to you at less than you would normally pay. Q. Do you have any FAQ's that I could look at? A. Yes we do you can find them within the shop at www.motorbikebob.com Q. How often will you write to me? A. We aim to write to you once every 2 weeks giving you details on our special offers and interesting stories. Q Will you pass my details onto anyone else? A. ABSOLUTLY NOT. We value your privacy as we do ours. Q. OK what about a special offer to entice me now? A. Oh all right then, we will waiver any shipping costs on orders over the value of �250 ($375.00 approx) for any persons on this list until 28 Feb 2002. YES THATS FREE SHIPPING!!! Q. What do I do to stay on the list for the time being? A. Nothing at all. If we don't' hear from you we will keep you on the list. To unsubscribe from this newsletter please reply to allcycle(a)motorbikebob.com and place the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject box.

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"quitting havenco", not quite!
by Ryan Lackey 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

Two people appear to have forwarded communications from a semi-private chat system through two mailing lists to cypherpunks. ("gale" at this stage is semi-private, and this is the first time anything has been forwarded from it to public lists.) These people are no longer on my christmas card list, or whatever. I suppose I should now explain: 1) HavenCo is now making sufficient money and is stable enough to be "boring". This is a *good* thing. Over the past year we've completed most of the remaining engineering, and some of our other staff are taking over more and more of the operations, first and second level support, and administration. Nothing really breaks anymore; it's easy to add new switches and routers without changing the underlying architecture; it's all operations. 2) I'm hiring engineering and sales managers in the next 3-6 months to take over more day to day responsibilities. This is independent of anything else. 3) I'm working on sofware to automate more operations, and doing various conferences throughout 2002. We're also looking at other sites; when we actually move forward on one of those, it would be a good test for the software/hardware systems. (some of these have been deployed recently. I can now do an entire new customer install without ever even seeing the customer's hardware; comes pre-configured from the vendor with PXE and it just gets plugged in, racked, and auto-configures). This means regardless of anything else I will be spending more time elsewhere in the world. It is silly that I can do everything over ssh from wherever in the world and yet still sit in an office a few feet above the racks. If something breaks, we just flash to a hot spare machine remotely and then order a replacement. Worst case, someone pulls some drive carriers out of the front and puts them in a different machine; not exactly rocket science. 4) I'm working on a couple of side projects which may be ready in 2002. These include some book projects, an offshore open-source development framework with quality control, some papers to bring a couple of fields together (crypto to p2p, traffic analysis to finance), a comprehensive survey of Gerald Bull and engineering analysis of the supergun, and some ecash and tamper-resistance related projects. I hope to have "abstract" level work on all of them completed, and then finish one at a time when I have time. Right now, I'm finishing off the completely automated ISP, and 2 papers. 5) When such things are ready to deploy, I will either switch to just doing board things for HavenCo, or will stay on as CTO but have less day to day responsibilities. Some of them might be done by HavenCo, which would mean shifting from colo operations to that project. Some of them are pretty minor; they can be "trialed" without distracting from my day to day job. Most of them would want to be separate legal entities from HavenCo, but might involve the same people. The exact date of any transition is not fixed; I suspect it will be a gradual process from mid-2002 until mid-2003. 6) Even if I shift to working on something else, it's entirely possible I'd live on Sealand 1-2 weeks/month anyway. It's actually a decent place to get work done, just lacking in entertainment (which may be related) 7) The process of setting up additional secure colocation centers around the world is pretty slow -- even if we can do most of the technical things in 4 weeks, political negotiations with telcos, governments, etc. take a long time. They are also not something *I* am directly involved in. Also, various fiber projects elsewhere in the world have been delayed by the dotcom collapse, so the options are a bit more constrained as to where we can go. We can "cheat" by coloing with other people in those markets, with a common management interface and maybe network -- specialized offshore colo providers, telcos, or major colo providers who happen to be there. Motivations for this include: (I started thinking about this a lot more at HAL2001 in Holland, not entirely sober I guess...) 1) I have worked 7-day weeks for the last 18 months. I've had several trips to conferences, and 5 days of real vacation. I have slept on concrete floors and desks because we brought over a bunch of computer gear before furnishings. I have missed Burning Man twice, a bunch of interesting conferences, been woken up at 0300 and on dark boat rides, climbed around on ladders 300' above the ground attaching lights, given press interviews with impacted wisdom teeth and passed out at a pharmacy afterward waiting for a prescription for antibiotics, etc. I miss {girls, alcohol, sushi, ...}. SFBA really is one of the nicer parts of the world, and I've still not yet had a decent vacation in asia, australia, etc. It isn't that much fun to have a successful company if you can't actually enjoy the results (I have 5TB of mp3s, but haven't gone to a live concert since...1996) 2) That I really want to work on a software project. I have this lingering need to do something intellectually challenging -- HavenCo is certainly a feat of *something*, but it's not a huge scientific or technical challenge -- more an engineering, political, marketing, or integration challenge. Which is nice, but I'd like to do something which contributes to the scientific knowledge of mankind; I've taken advantage of amazing scientific advances made by people over thousands of years, but not really contributed much myself. 3) It's been 24 months since we started, and I'd like to something different at some point, just to see if it can be done successfully twice. And I can self-finance it this time, which is a definite plus. (having gone from about USD 30k in debt when I started HavenCo) 4) Doing sales and engineering at the same time is quite stressful. It really would be best to have two distinct people doing each role. 5) Good people are cheap to hire now :) (jobs(a)havenco.com, not me please) 6) It would be nice to work on something which isn't "man vs. mankind" but actually "man vs. nature". If the world's governments became reasonable overnight, and people stopped acts of terrorism, theft, or whatever, there would be no real need for HavenCo. Yet, there would still be motivation for doing things which actually contribute to man's knowledge, ability to conquer natural environments or other challenges, etc. HavenCo is a necessary precondition for a lot of those things, but is not the goal in and of itself. 7) The current market is actually a decent time to set up new projects; there's no competition since no one else is funded, there are much more reasonable expectations (HavenCo hasn't IPO'd for billions of dollars, but we're profitable about 6 months after we started selling stuff, and growing at a reasonable rate). Plus, now that HavenCo is up, it's entirely possible for an offshore-centric startup to get started with no real expenses; operate unincorporated or incorporate on some small caribbean island, accept payment in online currencies, have everyone communicate via PGP or ssh to the box, and colo initially one but then several boxes with us. Many of our customers operate exactly like that. For a sufficiently interesting project, we might even invest a box or two in it; so you could have zero startup or monthly costs during development. 8) I can. -- Ryan Lackey [RL7618 RL5931-RIPE] ryan(a)havenco.com CTO and Co-founder, HavenCo Ltd. +44 7970 633 277 the free world just milliseconds away http://www.havenco.com/ OpenPGP 4096: B8B8 3D95 F940 9760 C64B DE90 07AD BE07 D2E0 301F

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CasinoHopper Mega List!!!
by Webmaster 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

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Production Mini-plants in mobile containers. Co-investment Program
by The Financial News 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

The Financial News, November 2001 Production Mini-plants in mobile containers. Co-investment Program "...Science Network will supply to countries and developing regions the technology and the necessary support for the production in series of Mini-plants in mobile containers (40-foot). The Mini-plant system is designed in such a way that all the production machinery is fixed on the platform of the container, with all wiring, piping, and installation parts; that is to say, they are fully equipped... and the mini-plant is ready for production." More than 700 portable production systems: Bakeries, Steel Nails, Welding Electrodes, Tire Retreading, Reinforcement Bar Bending for Construction Framework, Sheeting for Roofing, Ceilings and Façades, Plated Drums, Aluminum Buckets, Injected Polypropylene Housewares, Pressed Melamine Items (Glasses, Cups, Plates, Mugs, etc.), Mufflers, Construction Electrically Welded Mesh, Plastic Bags and Packaging, Mobile units of medical assistance, Sanitary Material, Hypodermic Syringes, Hemostatic Clamps, etc. Science Network has started a process of Co-investment for the installation of small Assembly plants to manufacture in series the Mini-plants of portable production on the site, region or country where they may be required. One of the most relevant features is the fact that these plants will be connected to the World Trade System (WTS) with access to more than 50 million raw materials, products and services and automatic transactions for world trade. Because of financial reasons, involving cost and social impact, the right thing to do is to set up assembly plants in the same countries and regions, using local resources (labor, some equipment, etc.) For more information: <A HREF="mailto:reports@the-financial-news.org">Mini-plants in mobile containers</A> By Steven P. Leibacher, The Financial News, Editor Mini-plantas de produccion en contenedores moviles. Programa de Co-inversion "...Science Network suministrara a paises y regiones en vias de desarrollo la tecnologia y el apoyo necesario para la fabricacion en serie de Mini-plantas de produccion en contenedores moviles (40-foot). El sistema de mini-plantas esta diseñado de forma que todas las maquinas de produccion van instaladas fijas sobre la propia plataforma del contenedor, con el cableado, tuberias e instalaciones; es decir, completamente equipadas... y a partir de ese momento están listas para producir." Mas de 700 sistemas de produccion portatil: Panaderias, Producción de clavos de acero, Electrodos para soldadura, Recauchutado de neumaticos, Curvado de hierro para armaduras de construccion, Lamina perfilada para cubiertas, techos y cerramientos de fachada, Bidones de chapa, Cubos de aluminio, Menaje de polipropileno inyectado, Piezas de melamina prensada (vasos, platos, tazas, cafeteras, etc.) Silenciadores para vehiculos, Malla electrosoldada para la construccion, Bolsas y envases de plastico, Unidades moviles de asistencia medica, Material sanitario (jeringas hipodermicas, Pinzas hemostaticas, etc.) Science Network ha puesto en marcha un proceso de Co-inversion para la instalacion de pequeñas Plantas ensambladoras para fabricar en serie las Mini-plantas de produccion portatil, en el lugar, region o pais que lo necesite. Una de las características relevantes es el hecho de que dichas plantas quedaran conectadas al Sistema del Comercio Mundial (WTS) con acceso a mas de 50 millones de mercancias, materia primas, productos, servicios y las operaciones automaticas de comercio internacional. Resulta obvio que por razones economicas, de costes y de impacto social, lo apropiado es instalar plantas ensambladoras en los mismos paises y regiones asi como utilizar los recursos locales (mano de obra, ciertos equipamientos, etc.) Para recibir mas infromacion: <A HREF="mailto:reports@the-financial-news.org">Mini-plantas de produccion en contenedores moviles</A> Steven P. Leibacher, The Financial News, Editor ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you received this in error or would like to be removed from our list, please return us indicating: remove or un-subscribe in 'subject' field, Thanks. <A HREF="mailto:newsletters@the-financial-news.org"> Editor</A> © 2001 The Financial News. All rights reserved.

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Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
by mmotyka＠lsil.com 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

"!Dr. Joe Baptista" <baptista(a)pccf.net> wrote : > > Where did this bullshit come from? Did someone take a ravioli recipe and do some search and replace? Is Dr. Joe Baptista really Jim Choate in disguise? My favorite short quote : "The trick is to bring the U-235 masses together at the same time." I'm slow, I know, so I'm still trying to figure out how to do it any other way when you have only two pieces. Could someone help me understand this part of the design? I would have to say, though, that my absolute favorite part is where one starts with a supercritical mass and subsequently divides it into two equal parts in order to prepare the device. ROTFL. Anyone gonna post fast neutron cross-section data for Pu and U isotopes? M >One thing that is bothering me these days are all the reports coming out >of Afganistan that nuclear bomb making plans were found. Big >deal. Anyone on the planet can make a nuclear device if they have the >appropriate materials. The hard part is staying alive due to exposure >while manufacturing the device. > >If however death is not an issue then the process itself becomes easy to >accomplish. > >Materials >--------- > > 4 stainless steal salad bowls (5 - 8 inch diameter) >10 pounds of U-235 (Plutonium) > 1 containment cylinder in which to fit the salad bowls > ? some explosives - C4 platic works best - but TNT or gun powder is >acceptable. > >Assembly >-------- > >10 pounds of U-235 is required to achive critical mass. However less will >work but you will get a sub critical mass on detonation. The difference >is taking out an entire city as opposed to a few city blocks. > >Divide the U-235 into two five pound masses. Beat it evenly into the >inside of one of your salad bowls. U-235 is malleable like gold so you >should have no problem shaping it. Do the same with the other U-235 mass >and shape it into the other salad bowl. > >Keep the two bowls apart - you don't want an accident to cause your >project to go critical. > >C4 explosives work best. You simply mold the C4 into the other two salad >bowls. This is the most dangerous part of the project. Improper handling >of C4 can cause an explosion. But gun powder is just as effective. > >Now fit the U-235 salad bowls into the C4 salad bowls and place them at >each end of the cylindrical containment. Connect your explosives to a >detonator and close off the ends of the cylynder. Make sure the detonator >sets off both explosives at the same time. > >The trick is to bring the U-235 masses together at the same time. > >And thats it. I would recommend some form of protection while building >the project. The aprons worn by dentists will work. They will protect >you to some degree from radioactive poisoning. However - your life is >only being prolonged by taking such measures - you still will end up dead >due to the U-235 radiation regardless of what you do. > >And thats it. > >Conclusion >---------- > >Anyone on this planet can build a nuclear device. So the only issue in >building the device is the will to die for a cause. And the only thing I >find unfortunate in all of this is that there are so many causes that >people are willing to die for. And war will not make those reasons go >away - it will only encourage them. > >regards >joe baptista >

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Re: Crypto Terrorists to be Tried in Military Tribunal
by Anonymous 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

Jei writes: > I thought this would be relevant to the list members. > > http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011113-27.html > > http://cryptome.org/pmo111301.htm > > http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/11/13/193921.shtml > > And what is a Crypto Terrorist, you ask? Of course, > it is someone who hides things with cryptography, > e.g. a potential Cyber Terrorist. ;-P > > At 9:07 PM -0500 11/14/01, Andrew C. Greenberg wrote: > >I saw the part in article III about one supreme court and subsidiary > >courts. Sorry, where, exactly, does it say that military tribunals have > >jurisdiction over civilians? Read the fucking order at cryptome: Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism See that? "Non-Citizens", you stupid fucks! What a barrel of retards we've got around here.

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Pricing spare resources and options?
by dmolnar 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

Hey, The recent comments on Mojo Nation prompted me to look at their site again. I don't see much guidance on how to set prices for network services. There's a mention someplace that business customers will build pricing schemes on top of Mojo Nation, but not much indication of what these schemes might be. So what is the "right" way to price resources? (Preferably beyond the obvious "supply and demand.") Fleet announced at Hettinga's DCSB that they were developing some kind of spare resource market. I couldn't make it. Does anyone know whether they addressed this point? A related question - I ran into a friend of mine who had just finished an internship in options trading. He suggested it might be worth looking at options on spare disk space or other resources, as a means of figuring out how to make Mojo-type systems eventually profitable in the real world. Now I have a copy of Natenberg's _Option Volatility and Pricing_ to look at... -David

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Re: The Crypto Winter
by georgemw＠speakeasy.net 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

On 18 Nov 2001, at 20:37, CDR Anonymizer wrote: > >Anonymous: > >> but why did governments engage in the vigorous and frequent > >> application of bayonets and batons to render their money > >> independent of precious metals? > > > >Because they could. > > This goes beyond gratuitous demonstration of power and ability, > there is an economic reason behind it all. > What is / their / economic reason? > > They wanted to be able to pay off their debts with devalued money. George

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I'm back.
by R. A. Hettinga 19 Nov '01

19 Nov '01

I've been looking at the archives every once in a while for the last few months. The archives have their feet in the sky, the last few days, so I decided to lurk for real. LNE's nice and clean, so far. 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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