- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

MTTF expressions for K = 1
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry -- I left out the K=1 expressions from that paper. They're a little more mundane (for Stratus) but of obvious interest here. These are the most likely to be interesting to us. Consider, for example, \lambda = 0.5 failures/year and \mu = 52 repairs/year for the kind of machines we're talking about (as opposed to Stratus machines). The resulting MTTF would be in years. - Carl ==================================================================== N = 2 ; K = 1 \begin{equation} \frac { 3\lambda + 1\mu }{ 2\lambda^2 } \end{equation} N = 3 ; K = 1 \begin{equation} \frac { 11\lambda^2 + 4\lambda\mu + 1\mu^2 }{ 6\lambda^3 } \end{equation} N = 4 ; K = 1 \begin{equation} \frac { 50\lambda^3 + 18\lambda^2\mu + 5\lambda\mu^2 + 1\mu^3 }{ 24\lambda^4 } \end{equation}

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Digital signatures to be required?
by greg＠ideath.goldenbear.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My C-punks feed comes over a UUCP connection, and I only poll once or twice per day, under normal circumstances. I'd likely never notice a 6-hour delay, and hence wouldn't give a shit one way or the other. Delaying message posting seems likely to exacerbate the "ask a question, get the same answer 8 times" problem. If we're going to reward some behaviors and punish others, I'd prefer to see something that'd create exponentially increasing delays for > 1 post per person per 24 hours; of course, remailers make that impractical. Imposing a digital signature requirement strikes me as an arbitrary exercise of authority which would be largely without benefit. I doubt that people interested in the C-punks list are the folks who need to be dragged kicking & screaming into the 21st century; at least not in terms of personal use of technology. :) Count mine as a "NO" vote; let's talk about the delay thing again when we come up with a filter that can spot "what is [anarchy|libertarianism] anyway?" or bogus pseudo-economic jibberish. -- Greg Broiles greg(a)goldenbear.com Baked, not fried.

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Re: pseudospoofing survey
by an41418＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know the value of such a survey. I am not inclined to answer these questions to someone who I don't really know over a communication system that is inherently untrustworthy. I agree that this information would be valuable could it be collected, but I figure since I don't feel like revealing this information, especially not under my true identity, then others, (who may even be malicious at times) will be less likely to. What is your intention in posting such questions? Do you really expect to learn anything from the responses? Wonderer ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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bye for now...
by swc＠uc1.ucsu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The last couple of weeks have been interesting and fun (and have provided me with useful information upoin which I will act shortly), but I can't keep up with the volume. Thanks, and see you later (when I have more time). I will remain on the -announce list and will still be available via direct e-mail. bye for now... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stuart W. Card, Consultant, Card & Associates -- Research & Development Box 153 RR 1 Newport Rd Utica NY 13502 315-735-1717 / FAX -8469 swc(a)uc1.ucsu.edu or cards(a)top.cis.syr.edu "Who is John Galt?"

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ADMIN: proposed new policy on the mailing list
by nobody＠soda.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I don't think the security problems of Eric's proposal are as bad as some have suggested. People could create a separate, "lower security," public key for use on multi-user systems, with a different pass phrase than for their "high security" key. Perhaps the key could have an appropriately small size of about 400 bits. It would still be far more work to break the security of such a system than to forge mail across the network (which is easy). So such a system does enhance security over the existing system of unsigned messages. As for the argument that people don't have access to signature systems - PGP illegal in the U.S., PEM/RIPEM unavailable outside the U.S. - just turn these around: PGP legal and available outside the U.S., PEM/RIPEM legal and available inside the U.S. Everyone has access to legal encryption and signature software. One problem I see with Eric's suggestion is that it is couched in terms which suggest our main business here is debate. Eric suggests that a delay in having your message appear is to your disadvantage because your opponent's arguments will stand unrefuted for a time. Recently the list has been pretty contentious, but historically there has been much less debate here than on many other lists, and I would hope that we could return to that approach. It would be better if we could exchange information, ideas, approaches for reaching the goals we share. In such an environment a delay in the posting of a good idea is to everyone's detriment and does not particularly harm the person whose ideas were slow to appear. Still, I support Eric's basic goal of encouraging more use of the technologies we talk so much about. I will remind people that I make an encrypted version of the cypherpunks list available to anyone who has a PGP public key which includes their address. There are only a few sub- scribers now but if you'd like to try it send me your PGP public key and I'll add you to the list. I'd suggest trying it for a few days before cancelling your regular CP subscription to make sure you can handle the encrypted traffic. Ironically, our anonymous posters, who have generated so much controversy of late, are at least using the technology. Maybe if we do implement some form of Eric's idea we should give the preferential treatment to anonymous posters as well as signed messages. People can post anonymously without having to expose any secret information, which should address the security concerns mentioned above. I'm sending this message with the following headers, which direct replies back to my address. This reduces the biggest inconvenience with using remailers, the inability to get replies: :: Request-Remailing-To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com ## Reply-To: hfinney(a)shell.portal.com One more point. I was the one who initially implemented the clear-sign feature in PGP. I copied the idea from PEM, but put the signature info at the end. (I still think that putting it at the beginning was a silly idea.) When I wrote it I didn't have the blank lines around the ----- separators. Branko added those and also add the Version: line (which is ignored by the software). I still like my format better, as I think the signatures should add as little as possible. But have you seen what these PEM signatures look like? I've seen a couple on sci.crypt and I almost fell out of the chair laughing. First, the guy had to _manually_move_ the signature from the beginning to the end to get it out of the way. But, worse, the signature is like thirty or forty lines long! I kid you not. The guy posts a message of about a (24-line) screenful then it has like two screenfuls of signature information. It looks ludicrous. No wonder he had to move the signature to the end - otherwise people would have given up before they even got to his message. (In fairness, these PEM signatures are self-checking; PGP signatures require you to get the key on your own. I'm not sure if a non-self-checking PEM signature mode exists.) Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLMnCI6gTA69YIUw3AQHs2AP5Ae64wUfiNa4/yborffvMry1MAt9chF05 9Bdz3NupXkWU1GNbmniFKDnU+GdGR+Tuu3HgwwV7N55EjLY7SclOaLBxKXySD25X sAlwlH1yDZO/ly5UxKakdaPKR4nzIZZjPZ8ZoCkDszoNcxERj/nF7l7zLYP3eXF+ GG+YBHenSL4= =/09p -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Mail delivery question
by peter honeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

well, i think bill overstates the case. but then, i'm from the slash/hack, no risk/no gain school of computer programming. peter

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Proposed policy: look like sig
by gwt＠eskimo.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric said, >Given the objections I've received, I now amend my proposal from "sign >your messages, or else" to "make something that looks like a >signature, or else". This has several consequences that I >particularly like. Wouldn't it "look like a signature" if I just copied at the end of an article the actual signature of some other, signed, article? That would be a true signature, just not mine and not for this article. It sounds as though it would meet the suggested requirement, but I don't see how it would accomplish the goals. I could do it with a macro, or maybe use a special .sig for posts to this list. It wouldn't add anything to my software. What am I missing? -George

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S.Box and LD SAME???
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject says it all... I think these 2 are the same person... bloody idiots sam hill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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pgp inforequest
by XXCLARK＠indst.indstate.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The PGP23a DOC_2 file says: "Info-pgp is moderated by Hugh Miller, and you may subscribe to it by writing him a letter at info-pgp-request(a)lucpul.it.luc.edu. Include your name and Internet address. If you want to know where to get PGP, Hugh can send you a list of Internet FTP sites and BBS phone numbers. Hugh may also be reached at hmiller(a)lucpul.it.luc.edu." As I presently have no newsgroup access, I attempted to mail to the request add above and the message bounced. Can anyone tell me if this address is still valid... or correct?

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Re: [NOISE] If the shoe fits, wear it [VULIS]
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > > I've pointed out already that apparently John is not, so far, > filtering out my submissions to the c-punks list. Correct. It's just a formal way of saying you're unwelcome, really. Shoo. > However I'd like to take exception with the two claims made in > the articles cc'd to me so far: > > A that only governments can censor; > > B that post-factum punishment for "inappropriate" speech is not > censorship. I agree with your objections, probably because you're attacking straw men. > Certainly Disney owned WABC and was within its rights to censor it. > Likewise John Gilmore is within his rights to destroy his own > credibility and to expose his own hypocricy. Yes, this gets to my point. Private censorship tells more about the censor than about the censored. In this case, John acted properly, and his credibility has only been enhanced. You are of course free to rant and rave about his hypocrisy, but expecially since you'll always be able to post to the list, at least under a nym (the only thing he's prevented is your reading the list under your own name), you're only proving yourself to be an idiot. - -rich - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMn+0UioZzwIn1bdtAQE+DwF/YHGRdPpQ3JqotsUWw303aYCmKn7d9il1 4sCKaEIMy7NHT1uvRR1DL8oBgZGsVUwH =acPs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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