- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Cryptography banned in the Netherlands....
by mrs＠tinac.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I wrote: > >But now the government is proposing a law that totally outlaws the use > >of encryption methods. > > >Any comments???? And hughes(a)ah.com (Eric Hughes) replied: > Yes. Find the coalition that has repeatedly prevented the imposition > of national identity cards, and educate them about cryptography. It's > much the same issue. Well, first of all, it seems that the identification requirement seems to have passed anyway. But it's not as strict as it was proposed. But you do have a point, it's the same issue, although I believe that completely banning the use of cryptography is an even bigger violation of civil rights than requiring the people that they should be able to show some ID at any time of the day. It's exactly the same coalition that argued against national identity cards that now just says that banning cryptography is not an interesting matter so they will not even join the debates. It looks like the biggest hope comes from the industry. Companies in the Netherlands really feel threatened by this ban on cryptography and I hope that they will be powerfull enough to stop this law. For once, the corporate lobby seems to be on the side of the people! Mike

2 1

Traceable Digicash?
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Magic Money digital cash system, which is based on one of the earliest papers on electronic cash, is traceable. That is, the payer can collude with the bank and together they can recognize when the payed-out cash is turned in. In some situations, this could be beneficial. If people have bank accounts in their True Names, or are otherwise physically traceable when they turn in money, then if someone steals cash or otherwise uses coercion to acquire it, then they will not be able to turn it in without being caught. Virtually all of the digital cash proposals that I am aware of have this property. They protect the payer's privacy very strongly, but they don't offer much protection to the payee. Technically it is difficult to protect the payee because the cash would have to be changed while in his hands so that it is not recognizable to either the bank or the payer. This would require two re-blinding operations, one by the payer and one by the payee, and it is hard to have a system which could do this and still detect double- spending. People might want to think about the pros and cons of traceable cash. It could limit some possible applications. On the other hand, it may be good to help prevent coercion. One of the cash papers (I can't remember which one) mentioned this as an explicit advantage of the cash that was proposed. Does anyone know of any cash systems which protect the payee's privacy? Hal

1 0

Anonymous phone calls.
by GRABOW_GEOFFREY＠tandem.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I know how to suppress the transmission of your phone number (caller id) with *67, but I've heard that there is a way to force the routing of call through multiple long distance companies. Since the LDCs don't talk to one another, this should increase the difficulty of tracing and/or tapping a call. Does anybody know how to do this? G.C.G. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | Geoffrey C. Grabow | "What we demand are rigidly defined | | Oyster Bay, New York | areas of doubt and uncertainty!" | | | -------------------- | | grabow_geoffrey(a)tandem.com | Clipper, SkipJack & Digital Telephony | | | JUST SAY NO!!! | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | PGP fingerprint = C9 95 0F C4 E9 DD 8E 73 DD 99 4E F5 EB 7A B6 1D | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1 0

How Many Games of Chess?
by kkirksey＠world.std.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is tangentially related to crypto. I've been reading A.K. Dewdney's _The New Turning Omnibus_ recently to refresh my memory of all that stuff I learned in undergrad that I'm going to see again on the Comp Sci GRE shortly. :-) Anyway, I was glancing through the chapters on complexity, computabilty, and minimax trees, and I got to wondering something: how many possible games of chess are there? I know that it has to be a finite number, but I'm not sure how to go about finding this number. Any pointers would be appreciated. Ken ============================================================================= Ken Kirksey kkirksey(a)world.std.com Mac Guru & Developer ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table. -Edmund Blackadder

2 1

Re: Cryptography banned in the Netherlands....
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>C'punks, > >Hey, remember, we're all on the same side. > >On Fri, 1 Apr 1994, David Mandl wrote after quoting John Kreznar's rant >about "liberals": > >> Right, as opposed to conservatives, who are happy to have people "threaten >> the effectiveness of government and other large institutions." [and so >on in this vein for several more paragraphs.] > >Whoe, lighten up fellows. You both agree! *Neither* liberals nor >conservatives are automatically our friends. People who are PRO CRYPTO >are our friends regardless of what political camp they put themselves >in. Please, lets not bring extraneous political, posturing onto this >list. Liberals or conservatives who want to ban or regulate crypto are >our enemies. Liberals or conservatives who support strong crypto are our >friends. It's as simple as that. Yup, that was exactly my point. Knee-jerk generalizations like "all liberals are evil and want to take our freedom away" are simplistic and silly and betray a gross misunderstanding of the way things are. Personally, I prefer to stay away from "good cops" AND "bad cops." --Dave. -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com

1 0

PHILIP ZIMMERMAN ARRESTED [NOT!]
by gnu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is an April Fools' Day prank. I spoke personally to Phil and he is sitting comfortably in his own house (with the phone ringing off the hook). John ------- Forwarded Message From: Tommy the Tourist <nobody(a)soda.berkeley.edu> Newsgroups: alt.security.pgp Subject: PLEASE READ: PHILIP ZIMMERMAN ARRESTED Date: 1 Apr 1994 14:25:30 GMT Organization: Cypherpunks Message-ID: <2nhasq$ltb(a)agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu Originator: hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu Philip Zimmerman, writer of the popular encryption program PGP, has been arrested! He is being held on $1,000,000 bail. The charges against him are as follows: 1) Violating PKP's patent on RSA. 2) Allowing PGP to be distributed outside of the US. I have just heard about this, since I work for the FBI (which is why I am posting this anonymously), and will post more information when I can get it. You may wish to set up a fund to help pay Zimmerman's bail. ecodefence nitroglycerin uzi detonate - -------- For more information about this anonymous posting service, please send mail to hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu with Subject: remailer-info. Eric Hollander takes no responsibility for the contents of this post. Please, don't throw knives. ------- End of Forwarded Message

1 0

Re: How Many Games of Chess?
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>p.s. i wonder if there is a "irrational" game....one that goes on to >infinity but never repeats itself.....I would imagine not as there are >only a finite number of possibilities for peices to exist on the board >it was an interesting thought whie it lasted.... I can easily think of a trivial one. Get to a point where the only pieces left on the board are the two kings. Roll an eight-sided die to determine the next move for each king. If the move would place the king in check, roll again. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

1 0

Encryption banned in the Netherlands.
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

conservative liberal fascist left-wing right-wing statist minarchist anarchist SOME DEFINITIONS In the U.S. it is almost impossible to talk sensibly about politics since no one knows the definitions of political orientations. For instance: what is a conservative? Someone who resists change; someone who wants the old order. Conservative is a relative term & does not make sense without reference to time & place. In the U.S. a conservative would be vaguely a right wing statist. In Russia a conservative would be a Stalinist. Also take liberal: In the old days in the U.S., liberal meant libertarian. In Europe now, liberal means roughly libertarian. In modern U.S., liberal means left wing statist. So what is left & right? The dictionary is useless for this question. But, I think I have figured it out. Left & right is based on EQUALITY OF OUTCOME AMONG PEOPLE BY RULES. A left winger insists on rules that will insure equality of outcome & resists rules that might yield inequality. A right winger opposes rules that coerce equality of outcome & may favor rules that coerce inequality of outcome. In the modern U.S., the political majority is made up of right wing statists (fascists/conservatives/republicans) & left wing statists (socialists/liberals/democrates). There does not seem to be any name for left wing minarchists /or anarchists or right wing minarchists /or anarchists. This list seems to have a lot of left & right wing minarchists & anarchists. I am a right wing anarchist. Strange that right wing & left wing are not bluntly defined. A taboo maybe or doesn't the ruling class want the political discussions to make any sense? Maybe if it were made explicit, then the left & right would think they could be left & right & yet, not support the state. PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK! WWAAAYYYY BBAAACCCKKKK! BEAT STATE!!!! yours truly, Gary Jeffers

2 1

RE: How Many Games of Chess?
by Mike Markley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- | From: Robert M. Solovay <netmail!solovay(a)math.berkeley.edu> | To: Mike Markley | Cc: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> | Subject: How Many Games of Chess? | Date: Friday, April 01, 1994 11:06AM | | Received: from math.Berkeley.EDU by netmail.microsoft.com with SMTP (5.65/25-eef) | id AA02131; Fri, 1 Apr 94 11:04:58 -0800 | Received: by math.berkeley.edu (8.6.8/1.33(math)Ow) | id LAA28894; Fri, 1 Apr 1994 11:06:45 -0800 | Message-Id: <199404011906.LAA28894(a)math.berkeley.edu> | In-Reply-To: Mike Markley's message of Fri, 1 Apr 94 10:20:55 | TZ <9404011831.AA05066(a)netmail2.microsoft.com> | | | mmarkley(a)microsoft.com writes: | | I seem to remember from way back in high school that the number of | potential moves by the third set of moves is on the order of billions | of legal moves. | | The number of moves in a given chess position is less than 64 | (number of starting squares) times 64 (number of destination squares) | x 4 [number of ways a pawn can promote]. Thus we get the bound 16, 384 | [which can be easily improved] which is way less than "billions of | possible moves". The same computation shows that the number of | possible games of length n grows at worst expoentially pace mr | markley. | | The right way to think about this is to get sharp upper bounds rather | than attempt a precise calculation. A crude upper bound would be | longerst possible game is about 6000 moves [using the 50 move rule]. | At most 2**16 mves per position so at most 10**[192 * 10**6] games. | I'm sure that sharper estimates are readily available. | | I should have said billions of potential states for the board after each move. If you think of the number of initial moves for the starting player its only 16 potential positions for the pawns and 4 for the knights. If the first player takes one of these positions then the second player moves he has the same 20 potential moves giving an potential state of 400 different positions after the first move. After the second move there is on the order of greater than 160,000 potential states for the board. After 3 moves it is greater than 2.56 * 10^10 potential states. I was thinking in terms of states rather than valid moves. Mike. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mike Markley || The opinions here do not represent the mmarkley(a)microsoft.com || opinions of my employer. Attempts to || associate the two are pointless. "I want to look at life, In the available light" - Neil Peart -

1 0

Re: Anonymous phone calls.
by jamiel＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:25 AM 04/01/94 -0800, GRABOW_GEOFFREY(a)tandem.com wrote: > I know how to suppress the transmission of your phone number (caller >id) with *67, but I've heard that there is a way to force the routing of One point here- you are not actually suppressing the transmission of your phone number. It is transmitted *between switches* in any case- you are simply suppressing the transmission from a switch to the destnation phone. This is important in relation to the phone company recieving data, as well as the distinct possibility that a clever person could still get this. I got the above info out of Phrack Magazine (_Caller ID Technical Details_ by Hyperborean Menace #45-06, still being issued as I write this). >call through multiple long distance companies. Since the LDCs don't talk >to one another, this should increase the difficulty of tracing and/or >tapping a call. Does anybody know how to do this? Don't know, but from what little I know about the phone company, I would assume using the demand-dial numbers (like 102880) for ATT) from another long distance phone would be a start. jamie

1 0