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SPAMS
by Stephan Schmidt 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, please focus on the UPPER written text at the bottom. I think they take it _much_ to easy. -stephan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 17:55:57 +0000 From: Mailer <Mailer(a)aol.com> To: LISCIFI(a)AOL.COM Subject: Hi! Pardon the intrusion. Market study shows this may be of interest to you. If you have received this message in error, please hit delete. *********************************************************** A Personal Invitation Stop working for someone else! Put yourself in a position to leave the 9-5 grind behind!!! We invite you to listen to the most extraordinary and most powerful wealth building opportunity in the world and within a few minutes you will actually hear: * How you can make profits of $10,000 within the next 30 days! * You never have to leave your home! * A financial strategy 100 times more powerful than MLM or ANY OTHER BUSINESS! * Where you are paid directly and daily! (Don't wait for a company to pay you!) This is not MLM! This is not a pipe dream! This is a real business venture! 800-995-0796 Ext 9263. ************************************************************** ANY EMAIL ADDRESS PUBLISHED ON THE INTERNET THAT INVITES COMMERCIAL SOLICITATIONS IS DEEMED AS A COMMERCIAL ADDRESS, AND AS SUCH IS ELIGABLE FOR ETHICAL AND LEGAL EMAIL SOLICITATIONS FROM DIRECT ELECTRONIC MAIL MARKETERS. IF FOR ANY REASON YOU OBJECT TO RECEIVING THIS MESSAGE PLEASE POLITELY REQUEST REMOVAL FROM MY LIST BY CLICKING ON THE REPLY BUTTON AND ENTERING "REMOVE" IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU DO NOT DO SO, I MUST ASSUME YOU WISH TO RECEIVE FURTHER MAILINGS.

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Cognitive Bias and Software Development
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This reference was chopped from the bottom of a previous message. Communications of the ACM issue on Cognition and Software Development "Developers' thought processes are a fundamental area of concern. Cognitive scientists have discovered that people's intuitive inferences and probability judgments do not strictly conform to the laws of logic or mathematics, and that people are willing to provide plausible explanations for random events. This article examines the role these phenomenon might have in software development, ultimately concluding that what are cast as one-sided software development guidelines can be recast beneficially as two-sided trade-offs" Cognitive Bias in Software Engineering Webb Stacy and Jean MacMillian Communications of the ACM June 1995/Vol 38, No. 6 The article contains several good example of various classes of bias, including the representativeness, availability and confirmatory bias. While the article specifically adresses issues within the context of software development, all of these biases are general in nature and have correlates in other fields. Ciao, James Great minds think alike. Fools seldom differ. - Anonymous

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All debtes public and private
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:36 PM 9/9/96, jbugden(a)smtplink.alis.ca wrote: >This may be a hopelessly naive question, but is it possible to refuse >payment in >cash? Is it really good for all debts public and private? > There is probably a FAQ on this, as it gets asked and debated so often. >From my reading of too many posts on too many lists about this issue, here are some misc. points: * First, anyone may specify what form of payment they want to be paid in, in advance of a transaction. Alice may demand payment in gold, in platinum, in barrels of oil, or in Blatislavan Yarts. Bob is free to decline her terms. (A common example is a sign saying "No bills over $20 accepted." Thus, if Bob fills his gas tank and then says "Here's a thousand-dollar bill...I hope you have change," he cannot escape his debt simply because the gas station does not make change for $1000 bills. If there is no sign, and the $1K note is offered....well, I don't know what would happen. Maybe there's been a case like this... Certainly the debt is not discharged merely because the payment cannot be accepted at the time....) * Second, once a debt has been incurred--as when a restaurant meal has been consumed, a gas tank filled, etc.--and absent any special arrangements for the payment to be in some special form, the debt is considered discharged if payment in legal tender (dollars) is offered. That is, the debtor can offer dollars. If the merchant demands Blatislavan Yarts, the State will not consider the debtor in default for not paying in Yarts. (Again, absent a contractual agreement.) * Third, a merchant is free to not let a transaction go to completion at the point of sale (e.g., the cash register, for physical goods being purchased) if the form of payment is not acceptable to him. (The case of a gas tank already being filled, a restaurant meal already being eaten is more complicated, with an "implied contract" being involved. Absent signs or agreements clearly announced, the assumption is that dollars are the means of settlement.) * Fourth, the main reason for the "legal tender for all debts public and private" statement appears to be linked to efforts to stamp out private, bank-issued currencies. * Fifth, there are various books on alternative currencies, denationalization of money, and such issues. Basically, trying to introduce a new currency is not likely to be strongly supported by the legal system. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: [WAS xs4all.nl] Terrorists
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:29 PM 9/9/96 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote: >At 01:49 AM 9/9/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >>And the net effect of crypto anarchy is to destabilize and marginalize >>central governments, which is a net positive effect. If some eggs get >>broken in the process, the biological imperative will generate more eggs. >>No big deal. > >Particularly since governments murdered 160 million in the last 100 years >while we civilians have only managed to murder a paltry 20 million or fewer. >A savings of 160 million deaths leaves a lot of room for a non-harmful >increase in private murder. We could increase the private murder rate by 8 >to 10 times and still break even. I think the analysis is even more attractive than these numbers would imply. Probably the victims of government were, on average, no more "worthy of death" than that of the average citizen. They were the soldiers killed in wars (many or most of whom were drafted), civilians bombed, the victims of oppression and holocaust, etc. More or less ordinary people, a cross-section of society. While it's harder to generalize about victims of private killing, probably a far higher probability were either the bad guys killed off by other bad guys, or the bad guys killed legitimately by the good guys. Even when they were "good guys killed by bad guys," in many cases it's due to fallout from drug laws, or people prevented from carrying guns for their own protection. >Note too that most terrorism is aimed at governments (even if practiced on >civilians). In the absence of government, terrorist incentives may be reduced. Normally efforts to reduce terrorism would be welcomed by the government. Wouldn't it be interesting to see their reaction to an organization which announces that there are too many innocent citizens who are becoming victims of terrorism, and publicly calls on these terrorists to direct their attacks to non-private individuals, possibly researching the matter and giving suggestions? I think the public would understand, after a little education, that the average terrorist doesn't really have any reason to want to kill a private citizen if a better alternative were presented. I don't suppose you'd ever see a conventional polling organization ask the public questions like, "would you prefer to see 200+ randomly-selected citizens die in an airplane bombing, or the deaths of 50 government employees most responsible for the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Crypto Anachy MUD
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:10 AM 9/10/96, Jon Leonard wrote: >Duncan Frissell wrote: >> Did anyone make the point (I gave up on the thread) that we already have a >> great Crypto Anarchy MUD with lots of the coding already done. We call it >> the Internet. Digital cash, strong crypto, remailers, everything. > >Tim May expressed doubt that it was worth the effort: Not much easier >than the real thing, and not as good. That's the closest to your point, >I think. .... >Finally, a MUD has the potential to spread crypto-anarchic ideas to people >who would not otherwise have considered them. > >It may be that I'm wasting my time, but I could come up with some useful >new crypto protocol too. Don't tar me with the "Tim said it was a waste of time" label. Rather, I said I thought it would be pretty tough to get a reasonable ontology, one with rich enough behaviors and reasonable incentives and disincentives. Simulations are an art...they were useful in nuclear war planning, where the degrees of freedom were constrained, and so on. I agree that various cryptographic and crypto anarchic constructs can be "faked" in a game (MUD) that cannot be reasonably implemented at this time in the real world. Note: Didn't Steve Jackson Games have something called "GURPS Cyberpunk" which was somewhat similar? Anyway, good luck and have fun. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: BoS: Can you trust your ISP ??
by Ben Camp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Any sort of Certificate authority based protocol is dumb. It's like RSAC charging 500 bucks for rating a web site. Nothing anyone does on the web is important enough to encrypt. Anyway, as far as SSL goes...we've all heard about how proactive Netscape is in preventing key comprimise. Its too late. Ben Camp At 06:49 PM 9/9/96 -0700, Eric Murray wrote: >I~nigo Gonzalez writes: >> >> Hello, >> I'm thinking about how can I get rid off this kind of attack *before* it >> happens. Can you please send me your comments about this? I don't know so >> much about the how SSL works, but I think this is something that can >> happen... > >[classic Man-in-the-Middle attack] > > >What you described is the Man In The Middle attack, often >abbreviated on these lists as MITM. The fact that there's >an abbreviation for it should indicate to you how often >it is discussed. However it's also one of the first >problems (besides the basic encryption) that protocol >designers think of. > >It's been taken care of in SSL3- the server's certificate >must be signed by a CA that the client trusts. Unless >the digital signature can be spoofed, and it probably >can't be, the client can be certain that the server certificate it got >is really from the server that it claims to be from. > >Assuming that RSA still can't be broken, the client can be sure >that the pre-master-key material that it sends to the server >(and which is the basis for the symmetric crypto session keys) >will not be compromised. > > >If you grab a copy of the SSL3 spec (from netscape's web site) >and read the appendicies there's more good stuff about possible >attacks and what's been done to counter them. > > > > >-- >Eric Murray ericm(a)lne.com ericm(a)motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm >Principal, LNE Consulting: SSL, crypto applications, Internet security. >PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF > > >

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Re: Test...sorry about this - Reply - Reply
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:07 PM 9/9/96 -0500, you wrote: >I subscribed just once, real name. Yep, the Welcome msg is ReallyTrulyFine[M]. > I reallytrulyread it. High-traffic, though, is relative. In light of >Z.B.'s post , I thought that maybe I , too, had a mail probem. Seriously, >thanks for the info. BTW, if it's too much of a flood, you can read it with a newsreader at nntp.hks.net # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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Re: China joins Singapore, Germany, ....
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:13 AM 9/10/96 -0500, Mike McNally wrote: >Declan McCullagh wrote: >> >> The revised Hatch "child porn" legislation criminalizes even >> *attempting* to download the forbidden data. > >What would it look like, exactly, when they went in to arrest the >AltaVista search engine? "Drop those bits! We've got you delimited!" Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 9 Sep 1996 10:51:04 -0400, kamml(a)secret.org wrote: >>> Try and pay cash in most Fedex offices. >>I always do and as long as I have exact change I have never been >>hassled. >Fedex will not accept cash in New York City. I have tried to pay cash and >been refused. I have talked to customer service and confirmed that they >will not accept cash in NYC although they will elsewhere. You could try the "Really? Could I borrow a phone book for a minute? I need to get UPS's number." approach. It has been known to work... <g> - "'Anonymity is bad,' says a source who wishes to remain anonymous." - Nuff' said. * Home: Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp * Autoresponder: send email w/subject of "send resume" or "send PGPKEY" * Work: cadams(a)acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894 | (619)689-6579 * Member in good standing of the GNU whirled hors d'oeuvre

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Re: Crypto Num Mum, Hmm
by red 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Are perfect numbers of any use in cryptography? I have yet to come across the usage or application, let alone heard of it, but has there been any proposals? Thanks. -rednax- red_naxela(a)geocites.com "smile and the mirror smiles"

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