- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

[Remops] Comparison between two practical mix designs (Mixmaster vs. Reliable) (fwd from peter@palfrader.org)
by Eugen Leitl 30 Mar '04

30 Mar '04

----- Forwarded message from Peter Palfrader <peter(a)palfrader.org> -----

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UI expert?
by R. A. Hettinga 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

Telegraph. Telephone. Tell Hettinga. Ben Laurie, of Apache SSL, The Bunker, and Lucre fame, among other stuff, is looking for UI help on something, and I'm passing it along. Contact him directly. Cheers, RAH Who's been Pre-killfiled already. Blacklists? Blacklists??? We don' need no *steenkin'* blacklists... ------ At 3:26 PM -0500 3/29/04, Ben Laurie <ben(a)algroup.co.uk> wrote to his Orkut friends: > >friends of friends > > > > subject: > >UI expert? > > > > > message: > >OK, since the purpose of Orkut is to send spam without getting >blacklisted, here's my bit of spam - does anyone know a really good UI >person who'd like to work on free software (no, that doesn't mean its >unpaid)? > >If so, send 'em my way... -- ----------------- 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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[Politech] Judge dismisses John Gilmore's ID-required lawsuit [priv]
by R. A. Hettinga 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

--- begin forwarded text

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RE: Sttop Spreading Hatred
by Tyler Durden 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

Variola wrote... >What the fuck are you ingesting tonight? "extreme tolerance to >opinions"?? Its only because it would be self-parodying that >accusations of nazihood don't fly. Even with Tim gone, praise be unto >him. Uh, it was Spaten Octoberfest, ON TAP. Consider Tyler Durden justifiably bitch-slapped, though there was at least a WEE bit of trollin' mixed in there. As for May, I don't miss his "killing", but I definitely miss his edge and occasional insite. _________________________________________________________________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee. Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

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You can't hide your lying eyes
by R. A. Hettinga 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

<http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Mar-28-Sun-2004/opinion/2341663…> Sunday, March 28, 2004 Las Vegas Review-Journal VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: You can't hide your lying eyes I see where the people of Haiti finally got sick of defrocked collectivist priest and all-around "necklace" killer Jean-Bertrand Aristide, took up arms, and kicked him out. So what are U.S. forces doing there now? About 1,800 of our guys have been sent in to -- in the words of Associated Press reporter Paisley Dodds -- "rid the nation of guns." Hey, good plan. In the great tradition of George Washington, Francis Marion, and young Jim Monroe, the Haitian people just used firearms to throw out a vicious tyrant, and the immediate goal of Big White Brother is to "rebuild a shattered police force and disarm militants who began the insurgency." At least back in 1994, when the freedom-loving Bill Clinton sent in 20,000 troops to install Aristide the murderous dictator, U.S. troops offered to buy these weapons of freedom in order to better enslave the natives. This time (Mr. Dodds reports) "Haitians ... are being asked to give up their guns with little or no incentive and in a very insecure environment." The only good news? U.S. forces, Mr. Dodds reports, have so far "recovered two shotguns. Their Chilean counterparts have confiscated three weapons." Washington City has no constitutional authorization whatever to spend our tax dollars sending troops into Haiti to disarm "uppity Negroes" who dared fight to win their own freedom. And also for the record, there were no organized police departments in this country until the 1850s. That's right: From 1776 until at least 1850 America was a nation of "armed insurgent militants" with no government police. And we got along just fine. How do you think the people of the proud, young, free United States of America would have reacted if some foreign army had arrived here in 1783 with the declared the goal of "ridding the nation of the guns" that had just been used to win America's freedom? Why does our Second Amendment say a well-armed citizen militia is necessary? That's right, it's "necessary to the security of a free state." After all, as early as 1785, our own Southern states were passing laws that "No slaves shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders from his master or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another." Whereas, in his proposed constitution for the state of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Notice the definitive difference there between "free men" and "slaves"? In 1788, debating the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, a great patriot and friend of Washington named George Mason stood in Richmond and recalled: "When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was Governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should do it not openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually. ... I ask, who are the Militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." And it was no less a freedom-fighter than Mohandas Gandhi who said, in 1927: "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of its arms as the blackest." And this conspiracy to attack and remove the very tools of freedom is not isolated. There isn't even any Second Amendment in the new Iraqi constitution, according to World Net Daily. In a March 10 piece bearing the sub-headline "Colin Powell hails prohibition on arms while emphasizing 'liberty,' " WND correspondent Ron Strom writes: "Iraq's new interim constitution sounds many of the same themes as the U.S. Constitution in guaranteeing freedom of the people -- with one stark difference: There is no right to keep and bear arms in the new charter." The document does indeed promise a whole bunch of freedoms. (So did the Soviet Constitution.) But when it comes to civilian ownership of military-style arms -- which our founding fathers warned us was the last and only real safeguard of the rest of our liberties? The only reference to individual ownership of arms is in Article 17: "It shall not be permitted to possess, bear, buy, or sell arms except on licensure issued in accordance with the law." And Article 27 further addresses the formation of militias: "Armed forces and militias not under the command structure of the Iraqi Transitional Government are prohibited, except as provided by federal law." America's leading gun-rights organization quickly registered strong opposition to this nonsense. "It's a very big mistake," said Erich Pratt, director of communications for Gun Owners of America. "What an interesting contrast to what our Founding Fathers thought." Not that any of this should come as a surprise. Aaron Zelman's Milwaukee-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership recently noticed our own federal naturalization folks now require incoming citizens to study a booklet which claims our Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms "subject to certain reasonable restrictions." When JPFO contacted our duplicitous federal masters to ask where in our founding documents they found this "subject to certain reasonable restrictions" language ... they received no answer. Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega." His Web site is www.privacyalert.us. -- ----------------- 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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Louisiana cops needing killing
by Major Variola (ret.) 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

NEW ORLEANS -- It's a groundbreaking court decision that legal experts say will affect everyone: Police officers in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business. Leaders in law enforcement say it will keep officers safe, but others argue it's a privilege that could be abused. The decision in United States v. Kelly Gould, No. 0230629cr0, was made March 24 by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in Denham Springs in 2000, in which a defendant filed a motion to supress information gleaned from a search of his home. The motion was granted by a district court, and the government appealed this decision. The March 24 ruling by the 5th Circuit is an affirmation of that appeal. New Orleans Police Department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said the new power will go into effect immediately. "We have to have a legitimate problem to be there in the first place, and if we don't, we can't conduct the search," Defillo said. But former U.S. Attorney Julian Murray said the ruling is problematic. "I think it goes way too far," Murray said, noting that the searches can be performed if an officer fears for his safety. Defillo said he doesn't envision any problems in New Orleans. "There are checks and balances to make sure the criminal justce system works in an effective manner," Defillo said. http://www.theneworleanschannel.com/news/2953483/detail.html

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Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
by Thomas Shaddack 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

Local cops busted somebody who threatened to derail some trains if he won't get paid. That's a common news. Less common, and more important, detail that the TV news reported confirms the suspicion I had from the beginning of deployment of the prepaid cards technology for local payphones. Each prepaid "Trick" phone card has its unique serial number. The payphone reads it from the card. The busted person (let's call him "target") used the same card for multiple phone calls, thus becoming the card's number known as the target's temporary identity. The interesting part was that the phone company knew in realtime when the card was used - enough in real time to dispatch a police patrol car to the location. Hence, the Trick cards can't be considered as anonymous as coins used to be; at best, they can be used only as pseudonymous-identity tokens. I strongly suspect the usage logs exist for individual cards, allowing to back-trace the phonecalls done with the given card, thus tracing the identity of the card's owner by the call patterns. Suggested countermeasure: When true anonymity is requested, use the card ONLY ONCE, then destroy it. Makes the calls rather expensive, but less risky. Make sure you can't be traced back by other means, ranging from surveillance cameras in the vicinity of the phone booths to the location data from cellphones (because, as it's well-known but often overlooked, the cellphone networks know the location of every active phone). Wondering if there are any records of the UIDs for the cards paired with the locations of the vendor outlets the cards were shipped to.

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An Essential War
by R. A. Hettinga 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Figuring out what happens after the state is probably the most important thing to work on in the coming century, I figure. Sooner or later, the state, that is, politically controlled transfer-priced geographic force-monopoly, isn't going to work anymore. Given Moore's Law and its effects on communications networks and resultant social structures, the first step, which is already happening, will be more, and not fewer, states. As price discovery costs fall, this will probably result in non-geographic control of force, and, most likely, non-monopolistic markets for same. With sufficiently lowered transaction costs, the end-state, if you will :-), will probably be the complete commercialization of force. Not in monopolistic competition using laws for control and organization, using incorporation, patents and brands (Ford vs. Diamler-Chrysler) but in perfectly competitive auction markets, like those for graded fungible commodities, using network and financial cryptography protocols for transaction execution and proof of performance, and much more focused applications of force than modern warfare entails. We live in interesting times, with interesting problems to solve. In the meantime, the ability to fight distributed violence rests with nation-states, who are finally getting the idea that it is, in fact, a military problem, and not something to leave to lawyers. The threat of terrorism and other geodesic forms of warfare is just that, a permutation of war, and, though now can and should be fought at the level of the state, ultimately, it must be fought at a scale much smaller than that. Ultimately, terrorism is a form of individual violence, and will be fought individually. Think of it as a form of responsible anarchy, informed more by markets at the device layer of a society's architecture than by ideology at the human. Cheers, RAH - -------- <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB108052892146167601,00.html> The Wall Street Journal March 29, 2004 COMMENTARY An Essential War By GEORGE P. SHULTZ March 29, 2004; Page A18 We have struggled with terrorism for a long time. In the Reagan administration, I was a hawk on the subject. I said terrorism is a big problem, a different problem, and we have to take forceful action against it. Fortunately, Ronald Reagan agreed with me, but not many others did. (Don Rumsfeld was an outspoken exception.) In those days we focused on how to defend against terrorism. We reinforced our embassies and increased our intelligence effort. We thought we made some progress. We established the legal basis for holding states responsible for using terrorists to attack Americans anywhere. Through intelligence, we did abort many potential terrorist acts. But we didn't really understand what motivated the terrorists or what they were out to do. In the 1990s, the problem began to appear even more menacing. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were well known, but the nature of the terrorist threat was not yet comprehended and our efforts to combat it were ineffective. Diplomacy without much force was tried. Terrorism was regarded as a law enforcement problem and terrorists as criminals. Some were arrested and put on trial. Early last year, a judge finally allowed the verdict to stand for one of those convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Ten years! Terrorism is not a matter that can be left to law enforcement, with its deliberative process, built-in delays, and safeguards that may let the prisoner go free on procedural grounds. Today, looking back on the past quarter century of terrorism, we can see that it is the method of choice of an extensive, internationally connected ideological movement dedicated to the destruction of our international system of cooperation and progress. We can see that the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 2001 destruction of the Twin Towers, the bombs on the trains in Madrid, and scores of other terrorist attacks in between and in many countries, were carried out by one part or another of this movement. And the movement is connected to states that develop awesome weaponry, with some of it, or with expertise, for sale. What should we do? First and foremost, shore up the state system. The world has worked for three centuries with the sovereign state as the basic operating entity, presumably accountable to its citizens and responsible for their well-being. In this system, states also interact with each other -- bilaterally or multilaterally -- to accomplish ends that transcend their borders. They create international organizations to serve their ends, not govern them. Increasingly, the state system has been eroding. Terrorists have exploited this weakness by burrowing into the state system in order to attack it. While the state system weakens, no replacement is in sight that can perform the essential functions of establishing an orderly and lawful society, protecting essential freedoms, providing a framework for fruitful economic activity, contributing to effective international cooperation, and providing for the common defense. * * * I see our great task as restoring the vitality of the state system within the framework of a world of opportunity, and with aspirations for a world of states that recognize accountability for human freedom and dignity. All established states should stand up to their responsibilities in the fight against our common enemy, terror; be a helpful partner in economic and political development; and take care that international organizations work for their member states, not the other way around. When they do, they deserve respect and help to make them work successfully. The civilized world has a common stake in defeating the terrorists. We now call this what it is: a War on Terrorism. In war, you have to act on both offense and defense. You have to hit the enemy before the enemy hits you. The diplomacy of incentives, containment, deterrence and prevention are all made more effective by the demonstrated possibility of forceful pre-emption. Strength and diplomacy go together. They are not alternatives; they are complements. You work diplomacy and strength together on a grand and strategic scale and on an operational and tactical level. But if you deny yourself the option of forceful pre-emption, you diminish the effectiveness of your diplomatic moves. And, with the consequences of a terrorist attack as hideous as they are -- witness what just happened in Madrid - -- the U.S. must be ready to pre-empt identified threats. And not at the last moment, when an attack is imminent and more difficult to stop, but before the terrorist gets in position to do irreparable harm. Over the last decade we have seen large areas of the world where there is no longer any state authority at all, an ideal environment for terrorists to plan and train. In the early 1990s we came to realize the significance of a "failed state." Earlier, people allowed themselves to think that, for example, an African colony could gain its independence, be admitted to the U.N. as a member state, and thereafter remain a sovereign state. Then came Somalia. All government disappeared. No more sovereignty, no more state. The same was true in Afghanistan. And who took over? Islamic extremists. They soon made it clear that they regarded the concept of the state as an abomination. To them, the very idea of "the state" was un-Islamic. They talked about reviving traditional forms of pan-Islamic rule with no place for the state. They were fundamentally, and violently, opposed to the way the world works, to the international state system. The United States launched a military campaign to eliminate the Taliban and al Qaeda's rule over Afghanistan. Now we and our allies are trying to help Afghanistan become a real state again and a viable member of the international state system. Yet there are many other parts of the world where state authority has collapsed or, within some states, large areas where the state's authority does not run. That's one area of danger: places where the state has vanished. A second area of danger is found in places where the state has been taken over by criminals or warlords. Saddam Hussein was one example. Kim Jong Il of North Korea is another. They seize control of state power and use that power to enhance their wealth, consolidate their rule and develop their weaponry. As they do this, and as they violate the laws and principles of the international system, they at the same time claim its privileges and immunities, such as the principle of non-intervention into the internal affairs of a legitimate sovereign state. For decades these thugs have gotten away with it. And the leading nations of the world have let them get away with it. This is why the case of Saddam Hussein and Iraq is so significant. After Saddam Hussein consolidated power, he started a war against one of his neighbors, Iran, and in the course of that war he committed war crimes including the use of chemical weapons, even against his own people. About 10 years later he started another war against another one of his neighbors, Kuwait. In the course of doing so he committed war crimes. He took hostages. He launched missiles against a third and then a fourth country in the region. That war was unique in modern times because Saddam totally eradicated another state, and turned it into "Province 19" of Iraq. The aggressors in wars might typically seize some territory, or occupy the defeated country, or install a puppet regime; but Saddam sought to wipe out the defeated state, to erase Kuwait from the map of the world. That got the world's attention. That's why, at the U.N., the votes were wholly in favor of a U.S.-led military operation -- Desert Storm - -- to throw Saddam out of Kuwait and to restore Kuwait to its place as a legitimate state in the international system. There was virtually universal recognition that those responsible for the international system of states could not let a state simply be rubbed out. When Saddam was defeated, in 1991, a cease-fire was put in place. Then the U.N. Security Council decided that, in order to prevent him from continuing to start wars and commit crimes against his own people, he must give up his arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction." Recall the way it was to work. If Saddam cooperated with U.N. inspectors and produced his weapons and facilitated their destruction, then the cease-fire would be transformed into a peace agreement ending the state of war between the international system and Iraq. But if Saddam did not cooperate, and materially breached his obligations regarding his weapons of mass destruction, then the original U.N. Security Council authorization for the use of "all necessary force" against Iraq -- an authorization that at the end of Desert Storm had been suspended but not cancelled -- would be reactivated and Saddam would face another round of the U.S.-led military action against him. Saddam agreed to this arrangement. In the early 1990s, U.N. inspectors found plenty of materials in the category of weapons of mass destruction and they dismantled a lot of it. They kept on finding such weapons, but as the presence of force declined, Saddam's cooperation declined. He began to play games and to obstruct the inspection effort. By 1998 the situation was untenable. Saddam had made inspections impossible. President Clinton, in February 1998, declared that Saddam would have to comply with the U.N. resolutions or face American military force. Kofi Annan flew to Baghdad and returned with a new promise of cooperation from Saddam. But Saddam did not cooperate. Congress then passed the Iraq Liberation Act by a vote of 360 to 38 in the House of Representatives; the Senate gave its unanimous consent. Signed into law on October 31, it supported the renewed use of force against Saddam with the objective of changing the regime. By this time, he had openly and utterly rejected the inspections and the U.N. resolutions. In November 1998, the Security Council passed a resolution declaring Saddam to be in "flagrant violation" of all resolutions going back to 1991. That meant that the cease-fire was terminated and the original authorization for the use of force against Saddam was reactivated. President Clinton ordered American forces into action in December 1998. But the U.S. military operation was called off after only four days - -- apparently because President Clinton did not feel able to lead the country in war at a time when he was facing impeachment. So inspections stopped. The U.S. ceased to take the lead. But the inspectors reported that as of the end of 1998 Saddam possessed major quantities of WMDs across a range of categories, and particularly in chemical and biological weapons and the means of delivering them by missiles. All the intelligence services of the world agreed on this. - From that time until late last year, Saddam was left undisturbed to do what he wished with this arsenal of weapons. The international system had given up its ability to monitor and deal with this threat. All through the years between 1998 and 2002 Saddam continued to act and speak and to rule Iraq as a rogue state. President Bush made it clear by 2002, and against the background of 9/11, that Saddam must be brought into compliance. It was obvious that the world could not leave this situation as it was. The U.S. made the decision to continue to work within the scope of the Security Council resolutions -- a long line of them -- to deal with Saddam. After an extended and excruciating diplomatic effort, the Security Council late in 2002 passed Resolution 1441, which gave Saddam one final chance to comply or face military force. When on December 8, 2002, Iraq produced its required report, it was clear that Saddam was continuing to play games and to reject his obligations under international law. His report, thousands of pages long, did not in any way account for the remaining weapons of mass destruction that the U.N. inspectors had reported to be in existence as of the end of 1998. That assessment was widely agreed upon. That should have been that. But the debate at the U.N. went on -- and on. And as it went on it deteriorated. Instead of the focus being kept on Iraq and Saddam, France induced others to regard the problem as one of restraining the U.S. -- a position that seemed to emerge from France's aspirations for greater influence in Europe and elsewhere. By March of 2003 it was clear that French diplomacy had resulted in splitting NATO, the European Union, and the Security Council . . . and probably convincing Saddam that he would not face the use of force. The French position, in effect, was to say that Saddam had begun to show signs of cooperation with the U.N. resolutions because more than 200,000 American troops were poised on Iraq's borders ready to strike him; so the U.S. should just keep its troops poised there for an indeterminate time to come, until presumably France would instruct us that we could either withdraw or go into action. This of course was impossible militarily, politically, and financially. Where do we stand now? These key points need to be understood: * There has never been a clearer case of a rogue state using its privileges of statehood to advance its dictator's interests in ways that defy and endanger the international state system. * The international legal case against Saddam -- 17 resolutions -- was unprecedented. * The intelligence services of all involved nations and the U.N. inspectors over more than a decade all agreed that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to international peace and security. * Saddam had four undisturbed years to augment, conceal, disperse, or otherwise deal with his arsenal. * He used every means to avoid cooperating or explaining what he has done with them. This refusal in itself was, under the U.N. resolutions, adequate grounds for resuming the military operation against him that had been put in abeyance in 1991 pending his compliance. * President Bush, in ordering U.S. forces into action, stated that we were doing so under U.N. Security Council Resolutions 678 and 687, the original bases for military action against Saddam Hussein in 1991. Those who criticize the U.S. for unilateralism should recognize that no nation in the history of the United Nations has ever engaged in such a sustained and committed multilateral diplomatic effort to adhere to the principles of international law and international organization within the international system. In the end, it was the U.S. that upheld and acted in accordance with the U.N. resolutions on Iraq, not those on the Security Council who tried to stop us. * * * The question of weapons of mass destruction is just that: a question that remains to be answered, a mystery that must be solved. Just as we also must solve the mystery of how Libya and Iran developed menacing nuclear capability without detection, of how we were caught unaware of a large and flourishing black market in nuclear material - -- and of how we discovered these developments before they got completely out of hand and have put in place promising corrective processes. The question of Iraq's presumed stockpile of weapons will be answered, but that answer, however it comes out, will not affect the fully justifiable and necessary action that the coalition has undertaken to bring an end to Saddam Hussein's rule over Iraq. As Dr. David Kay put it in a Feb. 1 interview with Chris Wallace, "We know there were terrorist groups in state still seeking WMD capability. Iraq, although I found no weapons, had tremendous capabilities in this area. A marketplace phenomena was about to occur, if it did not occur; sellers meeting buyers. And I think that would have been very dangerous if the war had not intervened." When asked by Mr. Wallace what the sellers could have sold if they didn't have actual weapons, Mr. Kay said: "The knowledge of how to make them, the knowledge of how to make small amounts, which is, after all, mostly what terrorists want. They don't want battlefield amounts of weapons. No, Iraq remained a very dangerous place in terms of WMD capabilities, even though we found no large stockpiles of weapons." Above all, and in the long run, the most important aspect of the Iraq war will be what it means for the integrity of the international system and for the effort to deal effectively with terrorism. The stakes are huge and the terrorists know that as well as we do. That is the reason for their tactic of violence in Iraq. And that is why, for us and for our allies, failure is not an option. The message is that the U.S. and others in the world who recognize the need to sustain our international system will no longer quietly acquiesce in the take-over of states by lawless dictators who then carry on their depredations -- including the development of awesome weapons for threats, use, or sale -- behind the shield of protection that statehood provides. If you are one of these criminals in charge of a state, you no longer should expect to be allowed to be inside the system at the same time that you are a deadly enemy of it. Sept. 11 forced us to comprehend the extent and danger of the challenge. We began to act before our enemy was able to extend and consolidate his network. If we put this in terms of World War II, we are now sometime around 1937. In the 1930s, the world failed to do what it needed to do to head off a world war. Appeasement never works. Today we are in action. We must not flinch. With a powerful interplay of strength and diplomacy, we can win this war. Mr. Shultz, a former secretary of state, is a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. This is adapted from his Kissinger Lecture, given recently at the Library of Congress. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQGg2u8PxH8jf3ohaEQIhsACfeecKJ/jMS+uFyh13mJiwlw6Qs3AAoKU/ ElxEXBs3CRz6PwPGbCQnM6kU =sVKK -----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'

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Re: Liquid Natural Flatulence
by Major Variola (ret) 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

At 06:44 PM 3/27/04 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >And, remember again, you have to *enclose* a burning gas to make it >explosive first place. Bob, stick with obfuscated economics and playing with boats. Many gases are explosive in certain ratios to air. Gasoline vapor, acetylene, in a wide range of ratios to air. Others have narrower ranges. But within these ranges you don't need enclosures. Except maybe for shrapnel. You don't need enclosures for explosive gas mixtures any more than you need an enclosure to get a boom from nitro. (This is the diff between a brisant, like nitro, RDX, PETN, TNT, even NI3, etc and something that merely burns fast like black powder or smokeless, which indeed must be enclosed to explode.) PS: if a diesel vehicle is tailgating, acetylene will nicely stop its engine in a rather expensive way. Can you say predetonation? A pound of calcium carbide and some water makes a nice vehicle stopper BTW, the .mil has looked into it. The non-exploding fireball from a refinery or storage facility will be sufficient to destroy the facility, and make nice video, which is sufficient. If Allah smiles, maybe you get a big bang too. The trick is to do more than one place in the same day, so it can't be written off as an industrial accident.

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RE: Sttop Spreading Hatred
by Major Variola (ret) 29 Mar '04

29 Mar '04

At 08:54 PM 3/28/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >Listen up. Cypherpunks is a cryptography list, and al-qaeda.net is a node. True so far Well, al-qaeda.net is a DNS record, and the list includes social issues related to crypto-related tech, but lets start off by giving you the point. >The subscribers to this list may or may not sympathize with the activites of >the "Real" "al-qaeda". Sorry, but the prefix "Real" is the intellectual property of an IRA (tm) spinoff in this context. Our lawyers will be contacting you. The name al-qaeda is, I suspect, more or less >tongue-in-cheek, Really? and at the least (or perhaps the most) a head-nod at some >of the gripes that real organization has with the US government, and those >that continue to support it's activites abroad. Getting pretty heavy there Tyler Ever consider that it might be a *reminder* that if isn't good enough for Osama, its not good enough for you? However, there does not >appear to be any regular posters to this list that are involved with >al-qaeda the "terror" network. (Actually, if there are, it would be >interesting to hear from them via the remailers.) Everyone, search your wallet for official Al Q membership cards. (I suppose female members may have trouble telling if its themselves under the scarves on the ID.. except for the Florida branch of Al Q) >Cypherpunks is an extremely diverse group of indivduals, and wanna-be individuals >that do not appear >to agree on a great many number of things. Really? What binds us together (if >anything) is the interest in cryptographic techniques that would appear to >offer the capability of secure communications, with "communications" meaning >any kind of transaction that can be transmitted by data over electronic or >optoelectronic networks. *Way* too specific dude. Also interested in opsec generally. (All your crypto is belong to us if I can get to your machine..) Communications can be smoke signals. (Would that be optical comms?) Or the positions of cards in a deck. Or the positions of hands in a shipment of watches. Another thing that seems to bind us (and again >"bind" is probably a poor choice of words) is an extreme tolerance to >opinions very different from that of any one subscriber. What the fuck are you ingesting tonight? "extreme tolerance to opinions"?? Its only because it would be self-parodying that accusations of nazihood don't fly. Even with Tim gone, praise be unto him. On the other hand, in our better moods we try to educate each other. >Therefore please get a fuckin' clue. If you want to discuss the role of >"Radical" Islam in contemporary world politics, I'm sure there are those >that would be interested in doing so. Not here. >Otherwise, please fuck off. If you've been getting this kind of cameldung *personally*, this is yet another reward of using a 1-way pseudonym. ---- There is no god and Murphy is his prophet.

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