- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: <nettime> PlayFair > Sarovar
by proclus＠gnu-darwin.org 12 Apr '04

12 Apr '04

On 12 Apr, To: R. A. Hettinga wrote: > http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=6042 Ahh, that link just dropped ;-}. Here is another. http://www.advogato.org/article/764.html Regards, proclus http://www.gnu-darwin.org/ -- Visit proclus realm! http://proclus.tripod.com/ -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GMU/S d+@ s: a+ C++++ UBULI++++$ P+ L+++(++++) E--- W++ N- !o K- w--- !O M++@ V-- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP-- t+++(+) 5+++ X+ R tv-(--)@ b !DI D- G e++++ h--- r+++ y++++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type APPLICATION/pgp-signature]

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Re: On Needing Killing (Orwell was an optimist)
by Major Variola (ret) 12 Apr '04

12 Apr '04

At 07:20 PM 4/11/04 +0000, Justin wrote: >Major Variola (ret) (2004-04-11 16:42Z) wrote: > >> Blacknet is a robust archive for words, immune to force >> (by State or private actors), but merely words. > >With all due respect to the principle of freedom of speech and all that, >I think that cypherpunks, and people in general, give far too little >respect to words, as if words are a vague, unimportant, and remote link >in the chain of causation of acts or failure-to-acts. I don't see >anything wrong with Orwell's view that words control the future's view >of history. His certainly have. Language is how you manipulate people from a distance. Much more convenient than hitting them. Crypto *can* keep bits free. And so maybe language. But Men with Guns control physical reality, which limits what those bits can do. Read the archives on the problems with linking "credits" to dollars or physical merchandise. Note that the Saudis are organizing conferences on registering and recording hawala. Note that the US will kidnap (mexican MD for instance) if they can't extradite. And how many will run a prohibited node when the penalty is watching your family assets seized, family members raped, before your eyes are gouged out? --- "It can't happen here" -Suzy Creamcheese

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Re: BBC: File-sharing to bypass censorship
by Major Variola (ret) 12 Apr '04

12 Apr '04

At 06:48 PM 4/11/04 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: >http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3611227.stm >By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, >eliminating censorship of any kind. > >This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer >(P2P) file-sharing, Cambridge University's Professor Ross Anderson. Well duh. KaZaa carries news film clips that the media don't transmit. So does ogrish.com, but ogrish is not distributed and its name servers are run by the State of course. And then there's the indymedia (again, single point of failure) sites. There are censorship and authentication issues, of course, its hardly novel. >'Impossible to censor' > >To enable this, Prof Anderson proposes a new and improved version of Usenet, >the internet news service. > > If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography, >then it's possible to track it down and close it down First, that flavor of erotica is not well defined. E.g., A picture of one of your 15 year old wives? Your legally emancipated 16 year old lover? Second, Anderson, who should know better, forgets about stego.

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Afghan duty offers ultimate in unconventional warfare
by R. A. Hettinga 12 Apr '04

12 Apr '04

<http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-04-11-afghan-cover_x.htm#> USA Today Afghan duty offers ultimate in unconventional warfare By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY ORUZGAN, Afghanistan - Afghan fighters bristling with rocket launchers and machine guns pour into a government compound here to try to intimidate a small team of U.S. Special Forces soldiers in their midst. (Related graphic: A-Team in Afghanistan) Capt. Paul Toolan and District Chief Ubai Dullah walk off together after averting a showdown in Oruzgan. By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY The Green Berets, a long way from home and two days from their base, want to destroy 10 tons of weapons found in bunkers under the hilltop headquarters of the fighters' leader, a district chief here. The atmosphere is suddenly hostile. "If things go sour," Special Forces Capt. Paul Toolan tells a two-man sniper crew he quickly orders into position on a rooftop, "go for the head of the food chain." He nods at the white-turbaned district chief standing nervously a few feet away. In a nation raw from two decades of fighting, with remnants of the al-Qaeda terrorist network still a menace and with Osama bin Laden having eluded capture for 2 1/2 years, the front lines of war emerge and vanish like storm clouds. Elite teams of Special Forces soldiers see the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan as their classic fight. Many concede that they relish serving here. For a few recent weeks, Toolan and his 10-member team allowed rare and intimate access into their operations in the southern Afghan province of Oruzgan. They momentarily let slip the Special Forces mystique of super-soldiers in beards and baseball caps who conduct secret missions and are known only by their first names. They emerge as soldiers who carry their own set of contradictions and complexities: proud and embarrassed by the public perception of them as elite soldiers; both sympathetic toward and contemptuous of the Afghans; confident that this war is theirs to win, even if victory is years away. Finding bin Laden is unlikely here because the terrorist leader is believed to be hiding along Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan. Their job is to destroy Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, capture or kill fugitives such as Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, and bring security to the still-untamed Afghan countryside. In March, two GIs with the 10th Mountain Division were killed during a U.S. raid in Miam Do, a village in Oruzgan province. To operate in this region, Toolan and his men must coordinate with local leaders and militia, whose loyalties are sometimes unclear. The Green Berets exercise a certain independence in their actions. Many say this is the best time to serve in the Special Forces since Vietnam. They are the only American faces anybody ever sees in the vast, rugged stretches of formidable terrain about 200 miles from Kabul, the Afghan capital. Unshaven in their Oakley sunglasses, with 15-shot Beretta pistols strapped to their hips, they stalk a province the size of Indiana, gunslingers in an Asian frontier. But they also are health care providers, diplomats, combat instructors, roadside mechanics and crisis managers. In the course of one afternoon, Toolan will take steps aimed at killing District Chief Ubai Dullah and his armed minions for their belligerence. Then, after feverish talks, he and Dullah will walk arm-in-arm across the chief's compound in the local custom of male bonding, as tears well up in Dullah's eyes. "Let's discount for a moment my 5 1/2-month-old son, my wife, paved roads and a soft bed," says Toolan, a Rhode Islander with a razor-sharp wit. "Without all that, you can never beat this. It's got everything. It's got every single aspect of unconventional warfare you could ever possibly imagine." Muck and grease Like everyone else in this arid wasteland, the Special Forces troops find day-to-day conditions harsh. They suffer diarrhea from the local cuisine. Their faces cake with muck from hours bouncing atop a Humvee. Their hands blacken with grease as they repair broken-down U.S. vehicles. There's nothing elite about events that go wrong. For 45 minutes in a narrow mountain pass, Green Berets hold up frustrated local drivers because a four-wheeled Army ATV gets a clogged fuel pipe. A water tank on an Afghan National Army truck breaks loose in the middle of a Green Beret convoy. And when American and Afghan troops set up a human chain to load captured ammunition, they wind up standing in a field of human excrement that had been used as an open privy by the local militia. "Yeah, that was really glamorous," Toolan says later. Nor are they immune from troubles at home. The team sergeant, Kevin Patrick, frets over a 6-month-old daughter in the USA who is without her parents. He is in Afghanistan, and his wife, a civilian defense analyst, has been assigned to duty in Iraq. A woman caring for the infant e-mails photos. "She's starting to crawl," Patrick, 38, reports with a mixture of joy and regret. Staff Sgt. Jaison Eggleston, 29, a barrel-chested soldier who can bench-press 400 pounds and has a fondness for SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirts, is a victim of credit fraud at home. His wife, Sonya, seven months' pregnant, scrambles to salvage their family finances. But bureaucrats demand to speak with a husband who is away at war. "I am helpless," says her husband. "What I need is a lawyer." A team medic, Sgt. 1st Class Don Grambusch, 27, is a single parent who uses a satellite connection and a speakerphone to bond with his 5-year-old son. The boy is being cared for by the soldier's sister. "Basically, my private life back there is a mess," Grambusch says. "But work (here) seems to be excellent." Because they work roughly five months on and five months off overseas, these Green Berets spend as much time with each other as they do with wives or girlfriends. They heckle one other relentlessly but take pride in their close association. "They're not supermen," says Sgt. 1st Class Larry Hawks, a senior team member. "They're just guys who won't quit." Even though he's the commander, Toolan is just "Paul" to the men. He likes to fire war-movie lines at each of them for a rote reply. From Apocalypse Now: "Who's the commanding officer here?" Response: "Ain't you?" From Platoon: "Don't drink that ... you're gonna get malaria." Response: "I hope so." There is an insularity created by their isolation. "We are, in every sense of the word, on our own out here," Toolan says. Building an Afghan force Their mission to this town is an important first for Oruzgan province, home to nearly a million Afghans and the area where Omar, the Taliban leader, was raised. They are introducing Afghan soldiers to this backwater region. For the past two years, coalition forces in Afghanistan have fashioned from ragtag fighters a multiethnic Afghan force of 9,000. The hope is that one day a 70,000-man Afghan National Army (ANA) will be able to tame a nation steeped in conflict. Some of the veteran Green Berets on Toolan's team helped train the new soldiers. Grambusch personally designed an Afghan National Army marksmanship badge. "You kind of feel proud - like, 'Hey, I helped build this,' " he says. The mission begins with a platoon of Afghan soldiers. They are taken across rollicking mountain roads from the Special Forces base near the village of Deh Rawood to the provincial capital in Tarin Kowt to meet Gov. Jan Mohammad, an appointee of President Hamid Karzai. In the convoy are Toolan and eight other team members, two dozen ANA troops, a U.S. Marine advising the Afghans, an Air Force combat air controller, two journalists and three other U.S. soldiers supporting the operation. A tenth member of Toolan's team, Chief Warrant Officer Bruce Defeyter, is back at a U.S. military installation in Kandahar providing logistical support. So arduous is the Afghan landscape that it takes another full day from Tarin Kowt to reach Oruzgan. Everywhere they go, the reception is positive. The ANA soldiers, in their green military fatigues and Russian-style helmets, are received with enthusiasm. "It's the first evidence of the central government that we have seen," says Majeed Akhand, a money changer in Deh Rawood. Children ogle the Afghan soldiers and tug at their uniforms. Adults crowd around in curiosity and shake hands with the officers. For Toolan, the Afghan troops are much more than a symbolic gesture. A seasoned Afghan fighting force could help U.S. forces navigate the crosscurrents of tribal rivalry, opium drug dealing and the still-lethal threat of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. "They'll be able to open up doors that we couldn't," Toolan says. That's exactly what happens here. An Afghan lieutenant, Mohammed Taher, finds the cache of weapons under the district headquarters by poking around and asking questions. The haul includes heavy machine gun ammo, land mines, hundreds of rockets and a thousand mortar shells. There are even 6-foot-long missiles. Special Forces teams had visited the compound before but were unaware of what was below. "I asked the district chief," Taher says of how he found the weapons. "He told me they were from Taliban time." The Taliban regime controlled much of Afghanistan from 1996 until it was driven out of Kabul by U.S.-led forces, including northern rebels, in December 2001. Confrontation Toolan and Taher have no reason to believe that Dullah, the district chief, has Taliban sympathies. He has close ties to the Karzai-appointed governor. But a tradition of harboring heavy weapons, emblematic here of power and survival, is a tough habit to break. But if security is ever to come to Afghanistan, Toolan says, weapons such as these can only be in the hands of the central government. He decides that the stuff has to be collected and destroyed. Dullah balks and trots out armed fighters to intimidate the GIs. Toolan sends the sniper team to the district headquarters roof. Dullah calls the governor on a satellite phone. Both leaders threaten to quit their posts if weapons are taken. Toolan, wearing no helmet or body armor as a measured counter-response to the growing tension, calls their bluff. Through an interpreter, he tells them: OK, go. He directs the Air Force combat controller to summon air support by radio. In 20 minutes, a B-1 bomber that was on close standby is crisscrossing the valley. "Nothing like flexing a couple billions dollars' worth of technology," Eggleston says with a grin as the supersonic jet roars overhead. Hawks chimes in: "That's going to change their politics." By phone, the governor relents: It's all a misunderstanding. Dullah and his men turn docile. The Green Berets agree to leave a few boxes of machine gun ammo and mortar rounds for the local police. The rest goes. Locals look on gravely as the weapons disappear into rented trucks, to be carted away and blown up. But by the end of the day, Dullah, seemingly relieved to have the burden of this confrontation lifted, is embracing Toolan and holding his hand. When they say their farewells, Dullah has tears in his eyes. The episode highlights an American frustration with Afghanistan's culture of violence that has, in the view of many Special Forces soldiers, left the country chaotic and backward. The night before the standoff, Americans and Afghans shared dinner on the floor of the district chief's meeting room. Shoes and sandals were left outside by custom. A wood-fired tin furnace warded off the mountain chill. Platters of rice, flatbread and bowls filled with freshly slaughtered lamb - the hunks of roasted mutton floating in grease - were devoured off mats on the floor. At one point, a young Afghan man, carrying apples into the room in his shirt, stumbles and spills them on the floor. Toolan can't resist. "First day?" he wisecracks. The ensuing laughter causes Dullah to ask for a translation. When he hears Toolan's joke in Pashto, he bursts out laughing, all the more pleased because the man who spilled the apples is one of his in-laws. It is a moment that cuts through two cultures. Later, Dullah goes to bed, and Toolan reflects on his conflicted feelings. "The Special Forces experience in Afghanistan is the ultimate emotional dichotomy," he says. "On the one hand, in your mind, you hold these people in contempt for the situation they have created for their country and themselves. And on the other hand, in your heart, you have sympathy for them, because you know that it's not their fault." -- ----------------- 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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Re: current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ??
by Poindexter＠SAFe-mail.net 12 Apr '04

12 Apr '04

At 04:10 PM 4/11/2004, Tyler Durden wrote: >So...how many years before it's possible for an online group to anonymously fun, order up and drop-ship weapons on a besieged people trying to maintain their national sovereignty? Why not join http://www.ideosphere.com and wager some play money (a real money version is underway). JP

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Geodesic markets for nuclear secrets
by Bill Stewart 12 Apr '04

12 Apr '04

The price of nuclear secrets has been dropping rapidly: http://theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4014 WASHINGTON, DC- Top-secret information about the design, construction, and delivery of nuclear weapons has never been more affordable than it is today, CIA Director George Tenet announced Monday. (ok, ok, so it's the Onion... It's still geodesic markets at work, even if it's all made up :-) --- Bill Stewart bill.stewart(a)pobox.com

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current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ??
by Joe Schmoe 12 Apr '04

12 Apr '04

I wasn't paying attention when the lne node went away, and was a bit lost in my CP mailing list subscription for a few months... I subscribed to minder, but it was a _joke_ in terms of spam and bounces and all sorts of lameness in my cypherpunks folder _and_ my inbox. Further, I noticed I was no longer seeing any posts by Tim May - I might have been missing others as well, but he was conspicuously absent. So, I have unsubbed from minder and subbed to al-qeada.net - hopefully they will be closer to LNEs level of anti-spam excellence ... questions: 1. any comments on this level of spam and bounces, etc., I saw from minder - does al-qeada use a more LNE-like processor ? 2. Was tim may being filtered from minder, or is he just gone now ? thanks. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

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Re: current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ??
by Tyler Durden 11 Apr '04

11 Apr '04

"Tim regularly and thoroughly jumped up my ass about my various ideological impurities" Well, this was fairly annoying and I think made it harder to dig out the gold from Tim May's poop. And in a way, this was self-defeating from a topple-the-state point of view. My point was (and sometimes is) that our beliefs about Economics, capitalism, and politics are to some extent irrelevant in the light of a techno-determinist point of view (Riad Wahbi pointed this out a few posts ago). In that context, raising some questions about some of the accepted notions about capitalism wasn't (for me at least) necessarily an attempt to "fight" the crypto-anarchic view/goal/partyline May seemed bent on establishing, but rather to suggest that even groups or individuals with ostenibly very different goals might be able to embrace a crypto-approach towards achieving their aims. In other words, it should be considered a good thing if leftists or liberals or Jihadists utilize well-formed crypto...that can actually only accelerate whatever's down the pike. And opening the discussions up a bit for such not only keeps away the philosophical inbreeding of some lists, it might actually start something amongst adherents of that point of view. And hell, if there's a way to maintain a left-wing stance without that eventually resulting in me having to put in 14 hour days in People's Shoe Factory Number 14, then more power to 'em....I think it's probably too late even for some 21st Century hyper-Stalin to sieze control of both wireline and wireless internet now... but again, who gives a crap. Crypto's probably already passed the point of no return, no matter what kind of State George Dubya continues to unleash on us. -TD So...how many years before it's possible for an online group to anonymously fun, order up and drop-ship weapons on a besieged people trying to maintain their national sovereignty? >From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ?? >Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 15:40:50 -0400 > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Hash: SHA1 > >At 3:37 AM -0400 4/11/04, Riad S. Wahby wrote: > >Apparently he's still to be found posting on various Usenet groups. > >RAH knows more about this than I do. > >Obviously, Tim was on usenet long before he, Eric Hughes and John >Gilmore started this list on toad.com after the first physical >cypherpunks meeting 11 years ago last fall. > >Because some spam-defense techniques require the absence of usable >email addresses, and because Tim has changed his addresses more than >once over the last few years, you can go on groups.google.com and >just search for "Tim May" in the author field -- don't forget the >quote marks -- and see everything he's posting now. He's usually in >the local Bay Area groups, and on Misc.Survivalism, though I haven't >looked in about a month or so. As we just saw in a previous forward >from usenet, most of the stuff he posts there makes me cringe, like >his later stuff here, but, obviously, Tim's as smart and as creative >as he's ever been. > > >Even though when I showed up here, 10 years ago sometime in May to >learn how to do cash transactions on the internet, Tim regularly and >thoroughly jumped up my ass about my various ideological impurities >and deep flaws in my character :-) (it was ever thus, I got used to >it, and I hopefully learned to give back as good as I got), there >was, invariably, something useful in almost all of his posts here. > >This, in spite of, to me at least, the increasing preponderance of >deliberately provocative cruft he trolled around here, presumably in >boredom, just to piss people off. > >Obviously, though more civil, and, frankly, productive, this list >isn't the same since Tim left, not the least because this list was, >for all intents and purposes, his creation, by dint of the sheer >amount of time he put into it, if nothing else. > > >As most people here know, I've long been interested in influence and >reputation, and I once introduced Tim at a Mac_Crypto conference in >terms of the magnitude of his influence, which is, frankly, much more >considerable than people really understand. Tim thanked me for a >"nice introduction", and, while I was being quite cordial, this being >one of the few times we got along, "nice" was pretty orthogonal to my >point. > >Tim May, whether he likes it or not -- understands it completely or >not -- has literally invented, discovered, a new form of emergent >social order. More properly, in learning that property can be >controlled by cryptography in a manner *independent* of biometric >identity, he was the first person to understand that the control and >market-auctioned transfer of property could be achieved without the >need of the force-monopoly of the state. The result is something >which is, by definition, anarchy. > >Tim called it crypto-anarchy, since it required the use of strong >cryptography on public networks to happen, but I don't think even he >understood just how far the idea could go. His concern was more >immediate. Like freedom, privacy is an inherent good, and anything >that maximizes both privacy and freedom maximizes the good in the >world. All the structural possibilities that resulted were just >gravy. It's probable that his hatred of the state came first, long >before his discovery of cryptography as a means to that end, but the >effect is the same whether, like me, the crypto changed his opinion >of the state, or, as was probably Tim's case, his opinion of the >state led to his discovery of crypto as a means to get what he >wanted. > > >One way or the other, Tim and other early cypherpunks really did >discover a way to make physically real the yearnings of libertarians, >anarcho-capitalists, and other free people throughout the ages, by >using, for the first time in more than a thousand years, technology >and markets instead of manifestos, politics, philosophy, or, in the >case of libertarians, somehow-constrained government and monopolistic >force. > >I think that this didn't happen fast enough for Tim, and he devolved >to hoping for some disaster to force his new world into being, and >failing even that, he began to advocate more, I suppose, >"traditional", methods of getting what he wanted: those involving >force, without regard, unfortunately, to reason, much less economics. > >It was upsetting, infuriating, to watch, but, after a while, we >realized that Tim was, after all, a free man. He could do what he >wanted with his time and resources, and it wasn't our right to tell >him to do otherwise, no matter how negative our opinions were of his >behavior. > >As for the more personally repellant of his beliefs, we have to >remember that he advocated something that most of us have come around >to over time, something that many anarchocapitalists have talked >about before Tim May did, that discrimination in transactions and >hiring of *any* kind is a *right* of free people in markets, foolish >consequences or not, and that it's only wrong when governments force >that discrimination onto everyone, like they do in Jim Crow, Nazi >Anti-Jewry, or Apartheid laws. > > >Tim's collapse from that rationally-derived belief in the economic >necessity for freedom, including individual discrimination, into the >language of "Aryanism", and the advocacy of mob-violence, (something >that is guaranteed, paradoxically, to degenerate into >state-controlled force in in almost all historical cases, speaking of >chimneys), again paradoxically, only puts his original point into >even starker relief. > >Personally, like his coming to cryptography because of his hate of >the state, I think his now-overt racism emerges from his (*claimed*, >remember; he's said that "Tim May" is a pseudonym more than once here >;-)) Virginia upbringing, and that his adoption of anarcho-capitalism >as a political philosophy might have been the result of some inherent >racism, but that's just armchair psycho-babble voodoo on my part. The >point is, his opinions in that regard are now morally repellant, and >that's a shame, because before he got to this point where his anger >overtook his capacity to reason, he was, in fact, making sense. > > >So, to me, at least, whatever Tim and company did before or after >doesn't matter so much as what they did here on cypherpunks in the >early days. Lots of people's lives (mine, for instance... :-)) >auger-in after what others consider to be their most memorable and >productive accomplishments. Even a man's *own* opinions of the events >of his life change over time, so who knows what Tim thinks about his >time here, and whether it was worth it or not. > > >Nonetheless, as Phillip K. Dick said once, reality doesn't change >when you change your mind. > >If it all works, if it has a basis in economic fact, that people in >general get more stuff cheaper and live longer and happier by being >completely free of *any* government in their lives, and they get to >that point by using strong cryptography on public internetworks, Tim >May may well be remembered for the rest of history as having >discovered the substrate of a new society. Something, I believe, on >the order of the advent of agriculture and cities, and lots of us >here were around to watch the initial promulgation of those ideas, >even if we were not around (in my case, at least) to witness their >actual discovery. > >And, maybe, some of us will be around not just to *watch* it happen, >but to *make* it happen as well. > >Without sending a "bunch of useless eaters" "up the chimneys", as Mr. >May seems to fondly hope for, these days. > >Cheers, >RAH > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- >Version: PGP 8.0.3 > >iQA/AwUBQHmfPsPxH8jf3ohaEQJ78gCfeKTbsWbqcWS+ENaxpJx8HrJPduIAoOm7 >vN3XsdF+59pwEA1z6EOyzC/3 >=wVkf >-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > >-- >----------------- >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' > _________________________________________________________________ Watch LIVE baseball games on your computer with MLB.TV, included with MSN Premium! http://join.msn.com/?page=features/mlb&pgmarket=en-us/go/onm00200439ave/dir…

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Keyring Camcorder to replace your Minox
by Bill Stewart 11 Apr '04

11 Apr '04

http://tech.tnir.org/archives/000540.html http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1559884,00.asp Tired of that old klunky Minox B Spy Camera? Want something newer, smaller, and more versatile? Need a speaking-engagement bribe for David Brin? Looks like there's finally something to do the job (or will be once they actually ship the things in commercial volume around May and not just review copies for magazines...) The Philips Key109 Key Ring Camcorder is a USB frob with 128MB of RAM, 2 megapixel camera for videos or stills, MP3 player, headphone jack, and remote control. I'm surprised they didn't give it more RAM, but perhaps they got into price problems. The user interface is apparently all in the remote control part, which is a bit odd but may be useful for some things. ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart(a)pobox.com

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BBC: File-sharing to bypass censorship
by Eugen Leitl 11 Apr '04

11 Apr '04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3611227.stm File-sharing to bypass censorship By Tracey Logan BBC Go Digital presenter The net could be humming with news, rather pop, swappers By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, eliminating censorship of any kind. This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, Cambridge University's Professor Ross Anderson. In his vision, people around the world would post stories via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs. They would cover issues currently ignored by the major news services, said Prof Anderson. "Currently, only news that's reckoned to be of interest to Americans and Western Europeans will be syndicated because that's where the money is," he told the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital. "But if something happens in Peru that's of interest to viewers in China and Japan, it won't get anything like the priority for syndication. "If you can break the grip of the news syndication services and allow the news collector to talk to the radio station or local newspaper then you can have much more efficient communications." 'Impossible to censor' To enable this, Prof Anderson proposes a new and improved version of Usenet, the internet news service. If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography, then it's possible to track it down and close it down Ross Anderson, Cambridge University But what of fears that the infrastructure that allows such ad hoc news networks to grow might also be abused by criminals and terrorists? Prof Anderson believes those fears are overstated. He argued that web watchdogs like the Internet Watch Foundation, which monitors internet-based child abuse, would provide the necessary policing functions. This would require a high level of international agreement to be effective. "The effect of peer-to-peer networks will be to make censorship difficult, if not impossible," said Prof Anderson. "If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography, then it's possible to track it down and close it down. But if there's material that only one government says is wicked then, I'm sorry, but that's their tough luck". Political obstacles Commenting on Prof Anderson's ideas, technology analyst Bill Thompson welcomed the idea of new publishing tools that will weaken the grip on news of major news organisations. Such P2P systems, he said, would give everybody a voice and allow personal testimonies to come out. But the technology that makes those publishing tools accessible to everyone and sufficiently user-friendly will take longer to develop than Prof Anderson thinks, added Mr Thompson. Prof Anderson's vision underestimates the political obstacles in the way of such developments, he said, and the question of censorship had not been clearly thought through. "Once you build the technology to break censorship, you've broken censorship - even of the things you want censored," said Mr Thompson. "Saying you can then control some parts of it, like images of child abuse, is being wilfully optimistic. And that's something that peer to peer advocates have to face." -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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