- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Phoneco vs X-Phone
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:02 AM 8/21/96 +0000, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote: >Now lets see, you say we have enough capacity out there, alright, but then >why is everyone raving about "a slow internet". We all know in IT 640K >is never enough, niether is 640Mb. At some point in time, new cables >_have_ to be laid. Moreover you seem to be considering a static growth rate, >but we all know the Internet is nothing short of a big-bang. > >I am trying to debate a model rather than numbers and in which case its >important to to consider a long-term scenario. Well, okay, here's some numbers: First, I've recently found out that in large quantities, it costs 10 cents per meter for bare fiber. Assume 30 cents per meter per fiber for cabled fiber, or about $10 (US) per meter for 36-fiber cable. Each fiber pair should be able to handle approximately 1 million conversations at current data rates, or a total of 18 million conversations for that 18-pair cable, or 9.5 trillion conversation-minutes. Multiply this cost by 10 for right of way, trenching, repeaters, and other auxiliary hardware, or $100 per meter. This is probably just a ballpark estimate, but... Let's assume that the average phone call goes through 5000 kilometers of fiber, which is approximately the width of the US. (yes, I realize this is vastly over-inflated. But my estimate is attempting to be conservative, on the "safe" side.) A cable the width of the US costs $500 million. Assume that if it is to pay for itself, it must provide gross revenue of at least this amount to make a profit. (It would probably be more accurate to say that the cable needs to actually profit by 10% of its value per year. If it grossed 100% of its value, per year, then that would provide up to $450 million per year in maintenance and other costs per year, and still be a profit of 10%. But again, I'm trying to be CONSERVATIVE in how I account for costs.) Assume an average of 1/10th of its capacity is used, or 950 billion conversation-minutes. Do the division, dividing $500 million by 95 billion, and this works out to 1/20 of a penny per conversation-minute. At this point, your jaw should drop. Despite my dramatically over-inflated cost estimates for the fiber and installation and maintenance, and vastly underestimated utilization, I've still managed to justify only 1/20 penny per minute of cost. >This reminds me of a survey on a "proposed Rural Telecom Network" back in >India, which finally decided that ROI will not justify the project >even in 20 years time. I've read that estimates show that it would probably be cheaper to provide cellular-telephone service in China to everyone than to wire the country up with copper lines. This isn't particularly surprising. Cell-phones solve the "last few hundred yards/mile or two" problem quite well. Since nearly all of the actual connections in a copperline telephone system are switch-to-individual-phone lines, going cellular saves a bundle of installation costs. >> In the US, the current telephone company infrastructure is ALREADY PAID FOR. >> It was paid for by over-inflated rates during a monopolized era. If >> anything, the locals have an "unfair advantage" over the rest of the >> companies: Only they have a copper pair into every home. > >Alright, once again I try to show what exactly I am pointing at. Alice uses >the phone 23 hrs a day, Bob uses 10 mins, both get their connections >from ABCTel. The bandwidth with ABCTel saturates and it has to buy more >bandwidth (if ABCTel is a babybel, it will be buying it from a BigBell, >and whether or not bandwidth exists is quite besides the point here) >Its because of subscribers like Alice ABCTel is buying more bandwidth, >and the flat rate revenues generated by addition of a couple of members won't >justify the new bandwidth. >Flat rates are based on the assumption that a subscriber will use the service >for X amount of time. Since the phoneco has no control over user behaviour, >more that reasonable number of Alice-type clients will screw up the phonecos >economics. Re-read my estimate, above. Apparently, POTS-level "bandwidth" in a national fiber network should "cost" about 1/20 cent per minute, or maybe even less than that. Your commentary just above shows that you are assuming a far greater cost. For example, even your "23-hours-per-day" exaggeration should only cost 23x60x$0.0005, or $0.69 per day, or $21 per month. High, but that usage is unrealistic, of course. However, assuming one eighth of this usage, or 3 hours per day, that would be a daily cost of approximately $0.08, or about $2.75 per month. Also, you need to remember that if the telephone usage (in for example, the US) was so high as to get a substantial fraction of the population on the phone, LD, for as long as 12 hours per day, the average utilization of the fiber cable I've projected would rise from the highly-conservative figure of 10%, up to perhaps 25% or so. Since this increased usage wouldn't increase the cost of the cable itself or the installation or maintenance, the corresponding cost estimate would drop from 0.0005 dollars per minute to 40% of this or so, which is about $0.0002 per minute. At that rate, a "12 hours per day" usage would cost only $4.32 per month, which is well in line with current phone plans. But again, remember that most of these "costs" are really merely the result of allocating some proportion of an existing, fixed cost. Make that cost small enough (as fiber optics does) and spread it over enough users, and it becomes ignorable. >With explosion of Internet, people have found a new way of using their phone >line, and all these companies are already in trouble. To top all that we >are loudly professing the Internet (ultra-low-cost) solutions to LD Calls >with phoneco. I don't see any problem at all! You're just (falsely) assuming that LD should, somehow, be more expensive than local calls. Maybe it should be VERY SLIGHTLY more expensive, but LD fiber is basically a one-time investment with little maintenance costs. In order to determine how much more expensive LD should be over local, all you should have to do is figure out how much the additional equipment and fiber costs, and then consult an telephone engineer to figure out usage rates, and then go to an economist who can tell you how many more dollars you're going to have to charge. (Based on typical ROI tables,etc.) I've done enough of the numbers already to convince me that the amount is so tiny as to be ignorable. The fact is, LD phone is a business that, like it or not, is going to shrink drastically _in_terms_of_dollars_, simply because the cost of that service will likewise, go down. That's life. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

raygun shielding
by grad 96 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

not being an authority on the uses of X-Ray technology, I have no idea how useful tinfoil or gold lamme would be for shielding. As a professional photographer, I do know that one can purchase lead lied bags to protectect one's film from being ruined by the X-Ray machines at the airport. They do not work. When the customs people come to an object in your bag that they can not see into, they turn up the power until they can. I have ruined film and customs officer testimony to back this up, that's why I have them do a visual inspection of my film. If you have a lot, they don't look very hard, which has it's own bundle of opportunity right there. Not that I am advocating that kind of behavior. clint barnett lord of the cosmos emily carr institute

1 0

Re: Hackers invade DOJ web site
by P. J. Ponder 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

keywords: Crypto-policy, digital signatures, Anti-Horsemen, secure-DNS, DOJ-web-prank, Ayn Rand, hydrazine Will Day <willday(a)rom.oit.gatech.edu> responed to Frank Stuart's cogent and insightful posting on the DOJ hack and a possibility of using the tawdry event to some advantage.... If you missed Frank Stuart's original message, much of it is in Will Day's response. I have made some tedious reformatting here with prepended 'Day' and 'FS' marks to separate the two and clipped some ephemeral lines. Will Day signed his message with Pretty Good Privacy, but I clipped the signature from that off, also, having already hosed it up with my editing of line lengths, &c., so that you couldn't check it anyway, even if you wanted to. The gist of Will Day's question is how can an argument be made that supports the greater availability of strong crypto from the fact that someone swapped spoofed-up (and inane) pages for the DOJ's own on the DOJ's own web site? Let's start by trying to imagine a future world of geodesic networks based on robust strong protocols that are ubiquitous, easy to use, and embedded in the chips of even the most mundane devices. In this world, authentication of data, such as web pages, is required (or at least it could be) for every packet we receive. For data retrieved from remote sites we may require multiple signatures, and certificates signed by someone in whom we have placed a high reputation value. When (or if) freely available legal authentication technology becomes ubiquitous and transparent, we will be able to use it for even low risk, trivial, applications - like remote controls for televisions. We sure as hell won't have to stay up at night worrying that some punk is going to change any of the bits on our web server and that such changes might go undetected by our code-signed auto-gunsel. We are a long way from crypto-Chaumian-utopia, and it appears as though the US federal government wants to make it harder for us to get there. (As an aside, I think the Clinton administration gets more of the blame for this than they should, since it was entrenched policy before they got out of Arkansas. I think the roots of Clipper and GAK are back in Reagan's stint, about the time of NSDD 145. But then, the current leaders aren't doing much to develop meaningful *public* cryptography policy, so they have to take the heat now.) Strong crypto helps people protect what is theirs. That is part of what Frank Stuart is saying, and he's right. That is a good point, and it deserves some attention. Strong crypto can help big powerful organizations like the DOJ, and it can help regular folks, too. Frank Stuart's next point is a beauty - at least the DOJ site that was attacked didn't have copies of everyone's secret keys stored on it. We all may know that even if GAK were ever passed, no one would be stupid enough to store the keys on a web server sitting out on the big bad Internet, but the cleverness of this spin-vector is that it raises the issue of GAK-riskiness in the context of DOJ's computer security. The last point is that another law on the books isn't needed, and wouldn't be effective anyway. I have gone on way too long already, but to sum up, the DOJ being abused may serve to help the cause, if the proper angle can be seen - and Frank Stuart is off to a good start. The specific answer to Will Day's question, which is a good one - how does crytpo protect your poor little Linux box in the corner that serves up web pages? - is left up to the student as an exercise. -- Day>A short time ago, at a computer terminal far, far away, Frank Stuart Day>wrote: FS> however, I think those in a position to do so should start with FS> the spin control. Some suggestions: FS> FS> The fact that even the U.S. Justice Department is unable to FS> adequately protect it's own site from intruders underscores the FS> need for widely-available strong encryption. FS> FS> While this is certainly a major embarrassment for the Justice FS> Department, at least the mandatory "key escrow" program the Clinton FS> administration is insisting upon has not yet been implemented; FS> no private citizens' data appears to have been compromised this time. FS> FS> It's doubtful that a new law or government bureaucracy would have FS> prevented this from happening but it's entirely possible that tools FS> such as strong encryption could have. It's ironic that the U.S. FS> Government is focusing on the former while fighting use of the latter. Day> I understand how it affects their claim for the security of escrowed Day> keys, but I'm afraid I don't follow the other argument. How would Day> the wide availability of strong encryption have helped prevent the Day> breakin? How would encryption in general prevent breakins? I'd Day> love to use this as an argument for strong encryption, but I Day> don't see how it really applies.

1 0

Re: phoneco vs x-phones
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:21 PM 8/20/96 -0700, Brian D Williams wrote: > >Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own, I do not speak for >Ameritech or it's alliance partners. >Jim Bell replies: > >>If that is the main difference in costs, then we should abandon >>those regs. Another big cost is billing, which could be eliminated >>if usage were unmetered. In any case, I tend to agree: Make >>these changes, eliminate the LD/local subsidy, and the LD >>companies would have no problem (at least domestically) competing >>against Internet phone. (International may be a different story, >>because foreign telcos tend to be owned by countries.) > >Yes compliance costs are a sore subject. Billing costs are actually >very cheap,(the mainframes are on the floor above me) the >difference between sending a metered bill or a flat rate bill is >tiny. Really tiny (NDA). The local/long distance subsidy was >eliminated at breakup, but long distance companies do have to pay >to use local networks, "the king is dead, long live the king!"??? The long distance companies are not "using local networks," your customers are...to connect to those long distance companies. And any payments LD companies make to you are, indeed, a subsidy. Tell me, how much is this _subsidy_, exactly? BTW, in case you doubt this assessment, let's do a fair comparison, shall we? Let's suppose, for the moment, that the amount of the subsidy is 3 cents per minute. (a figure I heard around here, recently.) As an alternative, the phone company would presumably be entitled to be served by phone lines, at say $30 per month or so, through which their customers reach them. $30 per month is $1 per day or 4 cents per hour or about 0.07 cents per minute. 3 cents doesn't equal 0.07 cents, now does it?!? Tell me again how "the local/long distance subsidy was eliminated at breakup." Tell me another one, daddy... >but as competition heats up these rates are >dropping and new players (competitors) join the table, Or they can >build their own. ;) How has this remaining SUBSIDY dropped over time, assuming it has? When is it scheduled to drop to zero? >One of the fun turns of events might be that the threat of x-phones >might lead the RBOC's to actually turn into an ISP's! We could pull >this off at amazing speed. (if you can't beat them, join them!) We >are after all one of the four major nodes of the Internet...... First, you need to figure out how to supply ISDN for a REASONABLE charge, like "no extra charge!" to customers. It's been over 16 years after I first heard of ISDN. At the time, it seemed like a wonderful idea...against the 300 baud modems then in use. Against modern 31K modems that you only have to pay for...ONCE...ISDN seems mighty lame. Face it, ISDN used to be a good idea. But it's just barely shown up the moment it's hit the end of its marketing window. ISDN will have a marketing lifetime for maybe a couple of more years, and only then because you can't put more bits through a 3.4 khz passband. Not to mention all the bullshit propaganda that claimed that with ISDN, you wouldn't have to buy any modems. Well, maybe that's just because they didn't CALL them modems, but they charged way more for an essentially indistinguishable function. Can you say, "Fraud"? I knew you could! Okay, go ahead, charge a little extra for ISDN. How much more? Well, let's see: 31K modems sell for $99. ISDN is four times faster, so let's say it's worth four times more, or $400. Amortized over 10 years, that's about $3.60 per month. Fair enough? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

1 0

Re: [NOISE] Airport legal question
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky, >I know that it is a violation of federal law to joke about explosives at >the X-ray machine. Would an "I love Explosives" sticker on carry-on >luggage violate any laws? Dunno, But you might get a kick out this from The Chicago Reader that published a list of the "bomb threats" made at O'Hare International airport a few weeks back. 7/18: "I have nothing other than the bomb I am going to put on the plane." 7/18: "I have a bomb that's going to go off in 30 seconds." 7/18: "You mean the bomb I have in my bag?" 7/19: "I don't have an ID, but I have a bomb." 7/21: "There's a bomb in the bag in my hand." 7/23: "I don't have a bomb in the bag." 7/23: "I got a bomb in my bag to kill everyone here." 7/24: "Well no, I left my pipe bomb at home." 7/25: "The one that looks like [there's] a bomb in it." 7/26: "I have a bomb in my bag. Boom." 7/27: "Where should I put the bomb?" 7/27: "No, nothing but a bomb." 7/31: "Are you checking for bombs? I've got a bomb in my bag." 7/31: "I have some explosives to transport." 8/1: "It's not as if we were Swedish and here to blow up the airport." 8/2: Offender: "It's a bomb in the bag." Witness: "That's not funny." Offender: "I'm not playing." 8/3 "I have a bomb." -- William Knowles erehwon(a)c2.org -- William Knowles <erehwon(a)c2.org> PGP mail welcome & prefered / KeyID 1024/2C34BCF9 PGP Fingerprint 55 0C 78 3C C9 C4 44 DE 5A 3C B4 60 9C 00 FB BD Finger for public key -- Vote for Harry Browne in November -- http://www.HarryBrowne96.org

1 0

Re: Hackers invade DOJ web site
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:31 PM 8/20/96 -0500, Frank Stuart wrote: >Since we don't know how the intruders broke in, we can only speculate. I >can think of several scenarios where cryptographic techniques could help. >I can also think of several where they wouldn't. When you've only got 20 >seconds to explain to a non-technical audience, I don't think it's dishonest >to say that it might have prevented it. > >Off the top of my head, here are a couple examples: > > 1. It's possible that a DOJ employee logged in from a remote site while > the intruders were snooping somewhere along the way. If the link had > been encrypted, that would have made things much more difficult or > impossible for the attackers. > > 2. Perhpas the intruders used IP spoofing and .rhosts to break in. If > machines had to be cryptographically authenticated, a rsh from the > wrong machine wouldn't work. One of the best comments I have seen (from another list) was: "These are the people who want us to escrow our encryption keys with them and yet they can't protect their own web site." I think this can be used as a very valid example as to why they are untrustworthy to be in charge of keeping anything private and/or protected, let alone private encryption keys. --- | "Remember: You can't have BSDM without BSD. - alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com "| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

1 0

Re: Husband/Wife jailed for saying Clinton Sucks
by Z.B. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Alan Olsen wrote: > At 08:23 PM 8/20/96 -0700, you wrote: > > >A more detailed version of this story was posted on talk.politics.guns > >last week. I could dig it up and post it if anyones interested. > > Post it. I would like to see it at least... > You got it... Published in Washington, D.C. July 9, 1996 Insult to Clinton leads to 2 arrests ------------------------------------------------------ By Ruth Larson THE WASHINGTON TIMES ------------------------------------------------------ [A] Chicago-area couple were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and interrogated for more than 12 hours last week, simply because the woman told President Clinton exactly what she thought of him. Last Tuesday, Mr. Clinton made an impromptu stop at the "Taste of Chicago" festival in Grant Park at midafternoon. According to her husband, Patricia Mendoza, angered and upset by the recent deaths of 19 U.S. airmen in Saudi Arabia, told the president, "You suck, and those boys died!" Once the president left the area, Secret Service agents and Chicago police converged on Mrs. Mendoza and accused her of threatening the president, a charge her husband, Glenn, vehemently denies. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if my wife had threatened the president -- which she did not -- I can guarantee we wouldn't have been locked up on charges of disorderly conduct," the Westchester, Ill., man told The Washington Times in a telephone interview last night. Mr. Mendoza served in the Navy for 4 1/2 years, and he was on a ship off the Lebanese coast when the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 Marines and sailors. "I didn't sit on an aircraft carrier for four years to be railroaded by a bunch of Secret Service agents," he said. Secret Service spokesman Ar nette Heintze said: "People don't get locked up just for saying, 'You suck.' You could say that all day long and it's not a violation of law or local ordinances." Mr. Heintze insisted that Mrs. Mendoza "made a threatening statement" to the president, but he refused to elaborate, saying that the matter was under investigation. "It's a situation that happens from time to time, but it's something we take very seriously," he said. The incident sparked a media frenzy in Chicago but had yet to surface on the East Coast until radio talk-show host G. Gordon Liddy discussed it on his nationally syndicated program yesterday. Mr. Liddy told The Times: "I think it's outrageous. Everybody agrees that if there's a threat, the Secret Service clearly can detain the individuals and do an investigation. "But 'You suck, those boys died' is not a threat. It's an expression of anger, contempt or ridicule. It's wrong for the Secret Service to detain someone if there's no threat," he said. Mr. Mendoza, who owns a small electronics firm, and his wife were at the festival with their employees, unaware that the president was coming. Suddenly, he recalled, the Secret Service descended on the park, throwing up barriers and preventing anyone from leaving the area. A black car drove up, Mr. Clinton leaped out and began shaking hands with onlookers, and Mrs. Mendoza found herself face to face with the president, Mr. Mendoza said. Mr. Clinton shook her hand and she reacted by pulling it back and telling him, "You suck, those boys died," Mr. Mendoza said. He said the president looked at her, then motioned to an assistant as he moved along the rest of the line. "He wasn't pleased," Mr. Mendoza said. Soon afterward, Mr. Mendoza said, Secret Service agents began accusing his wife of threatening the president's life. At that point, he said, he began directing his wife: "Trish, don't say anything. We need a lawyer." An officer told him to shut up and he responded, "Screw you. I have a right to tell my wife to get a lawyer when she's getting interrogated by the Secret Service," Mr. Mendoza said. He concluded, "The fact is, I was arrested because I was swearing at my wife." Chicago police arrested the couple at the request of the Secret Service. The Mendozas were questioned until their release on personal-recognizance bond at 4 a.m. Mr. Mendoza denied any political ill will toward Mr. Clinton. "I'm apolitical. I was in the military, had a good record, have a wife and two kids, a small business," he said. But he fears the incident will be exaggerated because of election-year politics and the Democratic National Convention coming to Chicago next month. "They're making us look like Bonnie and Clyde, Republican poster children. And that's not who we are," Mr. Mendoza said. ------------ Published in Washington, D.C. July 10, 1996 By Ruth Larson THE WASHINGTON TIMES The U.S. Secret Service yesterday sought to distance itself from the arrest of a Chicago-area couple who "insulted" President Clinton during his visit to a festival there last week. Yet even as it was discounting its role in the arrests of Glenn and Patricia Mendoza, the Secret Service was consulting with the U.S. attorney in Chicago about criminal charges against the couple. And Secret Service and Chicago police spokesmen differed on several details of the incident, which is triggering growing outrage on talk radio and even from a prominent Republican member of Congress. The Mendozas were at the Taste of Chicago festival in Grant Park on July 2 when Mr. Clinton dropped by to shake hands in the crowd. Mrs. Mendoza, upset over last month's bombing deaths of 19 U.S. airmen in Saudi Arabia, told the president as he took her hand: "You suck, and those boys died." Mr. Mendoza said the president looked at her, then motioned to an assistant as he moved along shaking hands. After the president left, Secret Service agents accused Mrs. Mendoza of threatening the president. Her husband stepped in and ordered her not to say anything until they called a lawyer. "That is not accurate," Secret Service spokesman Arnette Heintze said yesterday of the Men dozas' version. "A direct threat was made, but I'm not going to elaborate. Mrs. Mendoza has a right to fair representation of her case, as does the prosecution, and the newspaper is not the proper place to air this case. "We were there because a verbal threat was made to the president, and the Secret Service is responsible for the physical safety of the president." Rep. Robert Livingston, Louisiana Republican, is among those angered by what he called Secret Service overreaction. "Is this going to be the norm? If you criticize the president, are you going to be arrested by a bunch of federal agents and thrown in jail overnight? That's a frightening thought." "I think on the heels of this FBI investigation, with these FBI files in the White House, this kind of symbolizes an appalling lack of respect for human rights and for the rights of people to speak out in this country," Mr. Livingston said in a C-SPAN interview. Mr. Heintze, who complained about continuing media interest in the Mendoza matter, said the Secret Service thought there was no need to arrest the couple at the festival because Mr. Clinton had moved on. He said Chicago police arrested the Mendozas because of their conduct after the president left. "The Mendozas refused to follow police directions, and so they opted to arrest them. We supported them in their action, but it was an independent act by the police. "The arrest was separate and incidental to our questioning of the Mendozas," Mr. Heintze said. The Mendozas were charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and were interrogated for 12 hours before they were released. No federal charges have been filed. The case has been complicated by conflicting details from the principals: The Chicago Police Department says it is handling the matter. Department spokesman Patrick Camden said yesterday, "There's no Secret Service involvement, to my knowledge." The couple are scheduled to appear in misdemeanor court Aug. 27. But Ralph Grayson, special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Chicago office, said his agency has an "ongoing investigation" into the matter. The Secret Service said Mrs. Mendoza made a "threatening statement" to the president that was far more serious than the one Mrs. Mendoza says she made, but it declined to say what the threat was. Mr. Camden said Mrs. Mendoza had hinted at "blowing up the president." "She said something to the effect that 'He [Mr. Clinton] should have been blown up instead of the 19 servicemen.'" Mr. Heintze said emphatically, "That is not accurate, and don't try to find out what the threat was." A Chicago police spokesman said yesterday that the Secret Service had not asked them to arrest the Mendozas, as was previously reported, but that the couple were arrested for creating a disturbance. The extent to which alcohol contributed to the incident is also in question. Mr. Camden said: "Sure, there was alcohol. They both had been drinking. A rational person doesn't act that way. This was a family event, there were kids around, and these people were saying a lot more than 'You suck.' In fact, it rhymed with 'suck.'" Mr. Mendoza acknowledged that when Secret Service agents accused his wife of threatening the president's life, "I was screaming at the top of my lungs. Granted, I was angry, scared, upset, and if that's disorderly, I guess so." He said he was not drunk. Mr. Mendoza said he repeatedly demanded that he be given a blood breath test, but the police refused. "We wouldn't do a Breathalyzer test, even if he asked," the police spokesman said. "We are so sensitive about First Amendment rights," said the Secret Service spokesman. "I can assure you that if the Secret Service was doing anything contrary to the Constitution, the president would not tolerate it, and he would make big changes," he said. * Joyce Price contributed to this report. --- þ KWQ/2 1.2i NR þ Friends don't let friends run Windows. --- Zach Babayco zachb(a)netcom.com <----- finger for PGP public key http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/4127

2 2

Re: Securing Internet mail at the MTA level
by droelke＠rdxsunhost.aud.alcatel.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > It's also clear to me that for E-mail, you don't want transport level > > security for the system; you want "object" security, that is, digital > > signature and encryption of the mail message. > > Yup. This is a frequently missed point. Link security and object > security have different uses at different times -- and people confuse > them way too often. > With the question of "Do you want object security or link security for email?" The answer is (as with all security questions) "What is your threat model?" For example: Your company does not have mailreaders capable of doing encryption (at least not easy enough for average users). Your supplier has the same situation. You have accepted this fact for the time being, and trust that your employees won't tinker with the email if they want their job for long. However, the email you send to your supplier and vice-versa should not go over the Internet unencrypted as it potentially contains sensitive information. So, a link-level encryption that the two co-operating sys-admins can set up would be a good solution. This would be easier to set up and maintain than a encrypted router tunnel through the net, and solve your problem. Of course, I'll submit that object security on email would be preferable, but that might not be pratical right now. Dan ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dan Oelke Alcatel Network Systems droelke(a)aud.alcatel.com Richardson, TX

1 0

Re: Post Office restrictions
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 19 Aug 1996 10:18:42 -0400 (EDT"), Arley Carter wrote: >> I've told some people about a few of the loopholes mentioned on the list >> about the new post office restrictions on airmail packages. What's >> disturbing is that none of the people I'd talked to, all of whom are >> at least reasonably intelligent, had thought or heard, for instance, >> that PanAm103 only took 12 ounces or that someone could just send two >> packages. How does the news media justify its existence? (Down here, it >> seems to be serving as a propaganda arm for the Republicans) > ************ > >Where are you that the news media serves as a lapdog for the Republicans? >The local media, esp. the print media around here, Winston-Salem, NC >leans so far to the left the letters fall off the page when you up the >newspaper. :-) I'm talking about the San Diego Union-Tribune, the paper that posted huge billboard welcoming the RNC around the area, the paper that paid for the biggest fireworks display ever west of the miss, the paper that had a 6-20 page RNC insert daily, the paper that "spammed" the opinions page with pro-RNC articles. Are we starting to see what's it like? By the end, I was something like "I don't care if Bob Dole gets raped to death by a donkey, I don't want to hear about it!" >As for the national media, esp. the (C)linton (N)ews (N)etwork, need I >say more? Agreed |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 |AcuCOBOL-85: Migrate the easy way - 100% legacy compatible, |easy GUI, ODBC, 650+ platforms w/o recompiling (like Java).

1 0

Re: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:16 AM 8/21/96, Paul S. Penrod wrote: >On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Ross Wright wrote: >> Market Droids???? As a salesman I take offence at this slur. Sales droids are subservient to market droids...sort of like R2D2, a sales droid, getting his marching orders from C3PO, a market droid. >As for spamming, I get enough of it via snail-mail, I don't want to see >it in my Inbox too. And, for the record, there are lots of people out >there who pay on the bulk charge, not by time. Sending advertising or >junk mail to these folks costs them money, maybe not much for the one >message you sent, but several thousand over a month of a quarter add up >to real money. > >There is a time and place for legitimate advertising. I am sure that >given time and impetus, a number of clear channel venues will open up to >allow precision marketing and sales to happen electronicly. > >At the moment, it's bad nettiquette... The basic problem is that, unlike paper mail, it costs a sender essentially nothing to send nearly any size file to as many people as he wishes. This is the basic economic fact of the Net at this time. Until this eventually changes, spamming will be with us. (I understand experts in the field of "spamming" have various names for various flavors: spam, velveeta, jerky, etc. I'll call them all "unwanted messages.") The problem is one of economics and allocation of costs. Other industries have the same issues: * fax machines: costs of paper are borne by receiver, leading to high bills when "junk faxes" are received (and hence some laws restricting such faxes) * cellular phones: receiver of calls usually is charged air time. Thus, "junk calls" cost money. (My physical mailbox probably gets about $1 a day of junk mail, in terms of postage paid. More, in terms of costs to print catalogs, fliers, freebies, etc. It takes me about 20 seconds, tops, to decide what to discard immediately and what to save, so at this point "their costs" > "my costs.") In my view, attempting to legislate what is "junk" and what is not junk is misguided. (And I suspect it rarely works in halting junk mail.) Junk is in the eye of the beholder. There are technological fixes which I would favor over attempts to ban unwanted messages. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

7 9