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MIME
by Don Henson 31 Jan '93

31 Jan '93

One stupid question, please? What is MIME? Don Henson PGP key available on request

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Re: randomness
by Tom Libert 31 Jan '93

31 Jan '93

Yes, I have heard of using diodes for white noise production. Hoewver, I am conserned as to the nature of this noise. Is it some property of the silicon or is it just amplified radio noise that is bringing the diode above threshold?? Fundamental property of the switch. If you bias a diode near the knee, random events at the quantum mechanical level can cause readily observable changes in the output potential. Recall that the diode does not conduct below the switch threshold, and conducts readily above it. But what happens AT the threshold? Thermal noise produces dramatic changes in the output. This approach has been used for years to produce "white" (or "pink") noise. I also believe (but am not certain) that electronic poker and bingo games also use this technique.

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party...
by shipley＠merde.dis.org 31 Jan '93

31 Jan '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- (This is not my house warming (yet).. so don't trash it) Deiodre Williams if having her B'day at my place. she would like to have ner and intresting people attend she is barrowing my house to throw a party. she is throwing this party on Jan 30th. she would like to see some new faces at this party (not just the berkeley regulars) Please call (510) 849-2230 if you have any questions map info: 2341 Spaulding Ave Berkeley Ca 94703-1627 the cross street is Channing Spaulding is one block above Sacramento Ave. and only gos between Dwight and Allston (it does not connect to Univ. Ave) ^ MLK way/Telegraph/Shattuck ave | <- university ave | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | /-------+ +--- --------+ +--------------+ +-----+ _ _ _ California - - - - +--- --------+ +--------------+ +--------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 3241 | | | | | | X |C | | | --------+B +--------------+h +--------------+D | a Spaulding a w | --------+n +--------------+n +--------------+i | |c | |n | |g | |r | |i | |h | |o | |n | |t | |f | |g | | | |t | | | |w | | | |w | |a | --------+w +-------------- a +--------------+y +---------- _ _ _ a _ _ _ _ _ _ y _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ y Sacramento --------+ +--------------+ +--------------+ +---------- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | . | ^ | . | My Place -> Take your favorite freeway to | | . | 580/Berkeley and get off at the U.C. | . | University ave off ramp and drive Campus | . | up toward U.C. Campus (stay in the | . | Gas right lane to be safe). 7/11 | . | Station +--------------+ +-------------- The Second major intersection should _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ be Sacramento ave (~1 mile). Take a Sacramento right on to Sacramento and get into +--------------+ +-------------- the left lane (see map to the left) Gas |U . | Video Station |n . | Store At the next light take a left and |i . | drive one block then make a right <-- North |v . | onto Spaulding ave. Berkeley |e . | Bart |r . | I live at 3241 Spaulding, it is the Station |s . | 580 third house from Channing way, with |i . | | a red cracked drivway. (see other map) |t . | V |y . | In case you get lost my home number | . | is (510) 849-2230 - ------- End of Forwarded Message -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.1 iQBFAgUBK2sEL8hmn7GUWLLFAQHIQAF9FDQgyAvmf5bJVT6FWLlVI3BVYDB5a025 mGAOFlXJInUi7tmkGJavqu1enJ/g3MFE =IgCI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: randomness
by Tom Libert 31 Jan '93

31 Jan '93

For a cheap truly random number generator, bias a diode near the switch voltage (around .7V for silicon, if my hazy memory serves.) Take the result through an A/D converter. Should be Gaussian (or Poisson, I forget); you could generate a good approximation to a uniform distribution by inverting the source function (see e.g. Knuth, "Seminumerical Algorithms" for an algorithm for producing Gaussian variates from a pair of numbers drawn from a uniform distribution.)

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Re: Radioactive sources
by George A. Gleason 31 Jan '93

31 Jan '93

Radioactive sources: if you're interested in thorium, it can be found in Coleman lantern mantles: the little cloth bags you tie over the apertures in the lantern where the flame appears. These are apparently saturated with the stuff. I got the word from an engineer at a nuclear plant some years ago, and was able to verify it at least partially: a geiger counter held next to Coleman lantern mantles at the store got a very clear reading in the range of 20mR/hr. The counter I was using was not sensitive to alphas, so I presume it was getting betas. The thorium in the lantern mantles could presumably be extracted with hydrochloric acid or by some other means. Clearly not for the amateur, but something which could be done in a lab with appropriate precautions. -gg

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Remailer abuse
by nobody＠alumni.cco.caltech.edu 31 Jan '93

31 Jan '93

Thanks for the many suggestions posted here and sent privately to me about ways to deal with the possible use of my remailer to send abusive messages. I have taken two steps, and I could fairly easily take a third. First, I sent a letter to the girl who complained explaining that the message was not actually from me, that it was from an experimental remailing software package, and telling her to let me know if she got more objectionable messages. Second, I changed the header line inserted by my remailer to what you see above. (This message is being forwarded by my remailer.) Hopefully this will clue people in to what is happening. I didn't want to mess with the message body based on the discussion we have had here on that issue. I'd appreciate comments about the wording and appropriateness of the header line, if anyone can offer improvements. (As an unprivileged user of this system, I do not have the ability to create new accounts so that the message would appear to come from "remailer". The best I could do is get it into the From: line in the header, but my name still shows in the "out of band" From line which precedes the header.) What I could do, if more "problem" messages come through, is create a list of people _not_ to forward mail to. Some people have suggested the creation of a list not to forward mail _from_, but that is more difficult in an environment of chained remailers (since I can't always determine the message source). It should be pretty easy to check to see whether the destination of a remail request is on the list of people "not to be bothered", and to not send it in that case. We could even share this list among the various remailer operators. That does not require any collusion or message logging, and it seems like it should largely address the problem. Hal 74076.1041(a)compuserve.com

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Remailer Abuse?
by Don Henson 31 Jan '93

31 Jan '93

--> Is someone using my remailer to send trash to innocent young girls? I am uncomfortable to be facilitating this kind of activity. Can anyone offer suggestions for the ethical thing to do in this situation? Hal <-- You didn't say but I assume from the context that your remailer is anonymous. If that is the case, then you have a decision to make. You can either keep your remailer anonymous and not be concerned about what goes thru it or you can make it a moderated list so that you become responsible for everything that is posted. Which way do you want it? Don Henson PGP key available on request

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Radioactive sources
by Douglas Sinclair 31 Jan '93

31 Jan '93

Yup, the 3 microcurie source makes sense. With a pair of diodes we could make the detector 4 pi, but no big deal. 3 microcuries is not a problem health-wise as long as you don't eat it. As it's an alpha source, any shiledingor even a few centimeters of air will stop the rays. Howerver, I just encountered a new angle on it. According to my father, that's on the order of $100 worth of radium :(. If we're willing to go with a much slower source, we can use thorium which is only $2 per gram or so. Alternativly, anyone have an old clock with a radium dial? <grin> BTW: Cosmic ray background is only 1 event per square foot per minute. Plus, they occur in showers. So that isn't going to work. -- Vercotti: I was terrified of him. Everyone was terrified of Doug. I've seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than see Doug. Even Dinsdale was frightened of Doug. Interviewer: What did he do? Vercotti: He used sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire. -- Monty Python, Episode 14 PGP 2.1 Key by finger

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Re: OTP Generators
by Marc.Ringuette＠GS80.SP.CS.CMU.EDU 30 Jan '93

30 Jan '93

Hal> Also, relying on a half-life calculation in which we wait a certain time Hal> interval, and see if there is a decay or not, won't be that accurate. Hal> If your time is off a little, it could bias the results. Hal> Tim May posted the best (IMO) fix for this. You collect bits in pairs; Hal> discard 00 and 11; for each 01 output a 0, for each 10 output a 1. This is better than nothing, but it doesn't completely fix the biased bit stream. For instance, if your detector typically has some runs of zeroes, then after a 10 sequence, a 01 sequence is more likely than another 10. I think that all schemes which rely on _single_ random events from a radioactive source are going to be very sensitive to tuning errors which will make their random bit streams biased and thus useless. Better is the following: select a time interval in which 100-1000 random events will occur. Count events in one of these time intervals and output the parity of the count. Repeat. If you ever detect fewer than 10 events in an interval, quit with an error. This method has the advantage that no "tuning" of the randomness source is necessary; you must only ensure that your time interval contains a lot of random events, so that there is no chance of a small drift in the random number source causing a corresponding failure in randomness. Another useful technique, if you're willing to trust crypto technology, is to compute MD5 hashes or DES encryptions of the bit stream. This will do a lot, actually. If your bits are already random, then applying a pseudo-random permutation can't hurt; but if you've been brain-dead somehow, it's a great insurance policy to apply a well-known scrambling algorithm to your bits. I wish we weren't just discussing hacks, though. I think I'll hunt for some theoretical results to make this more solid. -- Marc Ringuette (mnr(a)cs.cmu.edu)

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Is this true???
by Phiber Optik 29 Jan '93

29 Jan '93

That last message containing info on purported phone company monitoring activities was the biggest load of propagandist bullshit I think I've seen in a long time. I'm sure it generated the expected fear and paranoia amongst more ignorant people.

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