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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by JR＠ns.cnb.uam.es 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> says: >Timothy C. May writes: >> At 1:14 PM 7/7/96, Simon Spero wrote: >> >On Sat, 6 Jul 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: >> >> >> >> When the mother (a single mother, as this is California) drops her son off >> >> with my friend (also single, of course), she includes several "Ritalin" >> >> capsules with instructions on how to dose her son with this >> >> depressant/behavior modification drug. >> > >> >Er... Tim... Ritalin is an amphetamine. >> >> Whatever. It acts as a calmant/tranquilizer/depressant on many. > >Only those who have ADD, which you claim doesn't exist. > >> (As with many drugs, there are apparently paradoxical effects. Alcohol is a >> downer for some, and upper for others.) > >Alcohol is a CNS depressant for all. Lowering inhibitions tends to >make people relax and "party", but it doesn't have particularly >paradoxical effects. > >.pm > Sorry, but that's wrong. There must be some understanding of what's actually going on. Brain is not just a simple linear device. It's complex. And that goes to Tim's original point: Society is made by humans with brains that are complex but which try to use simple models to understand reality. Let me show with your own example. Alcohol *is* a depressant. But it doesn't act equally on all the CNS. It acts faster on one part of it whose role is to depress all the rest of the CNS. So, first alcohol depresses a depressor and therefore acts as a stimulant. If you maintain your levels of alcohol there the rest of your brain will be above its threshold and keep stimulated. Only if you pass that threshold the rest of the brain will be depressed. That's what alcohol drinking cultures like mine call "knowing how to drink". But then we don't know about taking cocaine (like some centroamerican cultures do) for instance. Same happens when you take other drugs (in their own context). It's only when you simplify or make a generalization that it gets dangerous. And same goes for society. If you have a society that teachs people how to drink you'll have less problems than one that doesn't. Or that teachs how to eat coca leaves avoiding the pure drug. Or that teaches you that curare is OK eaten -as it is- but letal in the blood (which allows survival for many tribes). That's were Tim's argument comes into cypherpunkish arena. If you teach people that it is easier to calm down hyperactive people, or solve all problems by increasing mind control and surveillance you can't complain of a police state. OTOH if you can teach people were to stop (as with alcohol) and that simple models just don't work you'll be on the road to a better system. I agree there is people that can benefit from drugs. But being a MD PhD myself too, I also know that the amount that really needs them is a minuscule proportion. Most times it is just a convenience for doctors, family, fathers or society. Though good doctors agree it would be better if they could avoid the drugs at all in most cases of mental disease. Same happens with surveillance: we benefit from some control to stop those few, exceptional, deep criminals that are better stopped in advance, but we don't really need as much as we have. There are better solutions, but it's far more convenient for power-holders to increase surveillance than to really address the underlying problems. But, IMHO, as long as we keep allowing many people to use simple and "convenience" models to quickly fix symptomps instead of addressing the real problem (like, e.g. making a greater effort in the education of their children), we are stating the basis for a future, more restrictive, controlling and "convenience" system. We need both, to educate people on a more responsible course of action, and develop tools to stop or make more difficult or less convenient the easy and fast solution of increasing surveillance instead of addressing the underlying problem. And that's where cryptography comes to help equate the balance and increases presure on power-holders into worrying more by decreasing the convenience of surveillance. That is, all in my most very humble opinion. jr

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On July 8th, 1996 Herr Doctor Duvos wrote: >Medicating a disease is fine. Recreational uses of relatively >harmless intoxicants and are also fine. It is the inappropriate >use of strong medicines with serious side effects by clueless >people for vague criteria like "reaching his or her potential" >that I have a problem with. I have a problem with people like Mike Duvos who think that folks like myself and others on this list with ADD use having ADD as a crutch for being fidgety, not getting their work done on time, or worst yet, Fired. I wish people like Mr. Duvos could walk a mile in my shoes before making off the cuff remarks, I wish I could get jobs done on time, I wish that I could finish one project before starting three more! My office looks like someone tossed a hand grenade in it, Proposals to the left, Job quotes to the right, jobs is various states of completion, Lost jobs to my inattentivness to my clients, Lost good clients because of having ADD and not knowing it! I wish I would have known about ADD eariler than now, I might not have been the complete fuck-up that I was in school, and worst than that, The nearly ten years after high school. One of my wishes did come true, and that was finding out that I do have ADD. Ritalin has been a godsend, I am able to dialin when I have to. Ritalin is not the only drug for treating ADD, Prozac works for some. There are times when I need the boundless energy to find time to be creative and I stop taking my meds, but its only for short periods, I remember all too well what I was like without knowing what the problem was with work, love, and life in general. Below is a list of famous people with Attention Deficit Disorders and/or Learning Disorders, and I'd be willing to bet that Perry Metzger either has, or knows someone with ADD. Albert Einstein, Galileo, Mozart, Wright Brothers, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruce Jenner, Tom Cruise, Charles Schwab, Henry Winkler, Danny Glover, Walt Disney, John Lennon, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, Stephen Hawkings, Jules Verne, Alexander Graham Bell, Woodrow Wilson, Hans Christian Anderson,Beavis, Nelson Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Gen. George Patton, Agatha Christie, John F. Kennedy, Whoopi Goldberg, Rodin, Thomas Thoreau, David H. Murdock, Dustin Hoffman, Pete Rose, Russell White, Jason Kidd, Russell Varian, Robin Williams, Louis Pasteur, Werner von Braun, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robert Kennedy, alberto Tnmba Prince Charles, Gen. Westmoreland, Eddie Rickenbacker, Gregory Boyington, Harry Belafonte, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Steve McQueen, George C. Scott, Tom Smothers, Lindsay Wagner, George Bernard Shaw, Beethoven, Carl Lewis, Jackie Stewart, "Magic" Johnson, Weyerhauser family, Wrigley, John Corcoran. One can only wonder how much more great some of the people on this list would be today if they knew ADD back then. William Knowles erehwon(a)c2.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMeI+wgURbnwsNLz5AQHM6AP/Zln3eu50jKdhkER4Go3uBp0a4zlVUYti pW71AHLR8VydFaMM7iJFhYmv7vgFeuA1cAo27Hq1Pb8LZ/uucPRACKI8ku/XsVHh 9wdPsEKXMo0pHftnVHmuFb3dVtAA9jYKfGw3SwpktNkACQMvGHU2Z5+DkbetvSZm xrMSjCpxlvM= =ucXF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- 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 --

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RE: What remains to be done.
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:32 AM 7/9/96 +0100, Andy Brown wrote: >On 09 July 1996 02:04, John F. Fricker[SMTP:jfricker@vertexgroup.com] wrote: > >> One of these days Microsoft will officially release NT's IFS SDK. A few >> "preliminary" and incomplete copies of a 1993 beta release do float around >> but for a mere $50K there's a company that will sell you the complete source >> for an IFS. It's a crime that Microsoft hasn't shipped this SDK yet as the >> Installable File System is one of the great powers of NT. > >You can do this with the existing device driver kit since they supply the >entire source code to the AT hard disk driver. I took a look and decided >that it would be too much work for me alone. They also seem to suggest that >you can write "filters" that extend the capability of existing drivers. > >> So, if someone is interested in coughing up the $50K I know a couple NT >> programmers just chomping at the bit to build cool IFS's like PGPDrive, etc. > >I'm one of them, but this low level device driver stuff makes me shudder! > > >- Andy > > That's why the IFS SDK is so important. Writing device drivers is one thing and nasty at that but the IFS is higher level and exactly what is needed to create a PGPDrive that could exist on scsi, ide, tape, network drives, floppies, cd-roms, etc. A device driver implementation would be married to a particular controller type. --j

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by gdunn＠sciborg.uwaterloo.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:32 96.7.9 -0700, William Knowles wrote: >Below is a list of famous people with Attention Deficit Disorders >and/or Learning Disorders, and I'd be willing to bet that Perry Metzger >either has, or knows someone with ADD. > >Albert Einstein, Galileo, Mozart, Wright Brothers, Leonardo da Vinci, >Bruce Jenner, Tom Cruise, Charles Schwab, Henry Winkler, Danny Glover, >Walt Disney, John Lennon, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, >Stephen Hawkings, Jules Verne, Alexander Graham Bell, Woodrow Wilson, >Hans Christian Anderson,Beavis, Nelson Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, >Gen. George Patton, Agatha Christie, John F. Kennedy, Whoopi Goldberg, >Rodin, Thomas Thoreau, David H. Murdock, Dustin Hoffman, Pete Rose, >Russell White, Jason Kidd, Russell Varian, Robin Williams, Louis Pasteur, >Werner von Braun, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robert Kennedy, alberto Tnmba >Prince Charles, Gen. Westmoreland, Eddie Rickenbacker, Gregory Boyington, >Harry Belafonte, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Steve McQueen, George C. Scott, >Tom Smothers, Lindsay Wagner, George Bernard Shaw, Beethoven, Carl Lewis, >Jackie Stewart, "Magic" Johnson, Weyerhauser family, Wrigley, John Corcoran. > >One can only wonder how much more great some of the people on this list would >be today if they knew ADD back then. > > >William Knowles >erehwon(a)c2.org OTOH, one could argue that their lack of attention to daily matters was what allowed them to be 'great' in the first place. Picture a Mozart on Ritalin. Boss - "Hey, Wolfgang, thanks for getting that presentation together so quick, it really impressed our client. And that was a really snappy jingle you wrote for the opening slide show, too ..." So, he's a 'great' worker at the office, and undoubtably undergoes nowhere near the mental stress he would off Ritalin. But I cannot, for the life of me, imagine _this_ man writing the music that the non-medicated Mozart did. So should the medication you take be decided by the area in which you want to be successful ? (or even better, vice versa: Personality engineering, here we come). Regards, Graham Dunn --- No PGP signature. Who would _want_ to impersonate me ?

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Re: Transforming variable- to fixed-length keys
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>For iteration-0, CFB (or some other feedback mode)-encrypt the passphrase from >the input buffer to the output buffer (assuming the library doesn't require >that the plaintext and ciphertext be in the same buffer) This doesn't work because the input and output buffer will almost always be of different lengths. >Questions: Are you using the previous chaining-variables/hash for each >successive chunk? No. Each chunk is a new hash with <whatever>, where <whatever> defaults to SHA1. Since (for SHA1) 64 bytes of input affect each 20 bytes of output, I don't think there's much need for chaining. I'm trying to keep the specification as simple and easy to check as possible (one of the problems with the PGP data management was that it was rather complex and hard to follow. I suspect it would be difficult to implement a compatible version going only from a written specification). >How do you pad passphrases that are smaller than the minimum input for a hash >function? The input wraps, just like the output, so for example the letter "a" would be hashed as: <length>a<length>a<length>a<length>a<length>a<length>a[...] >Hash the user's input, prepended with a 0x00. Use this for the first 0..160 >bits of key. If more than 160 bits is needed, write over the 0x00 with 0x01. >Hash again. This is much like your solution, but no wrapping. Note there is no >problem truncating hash output. That's another possibility. The only thing here is that you're only changing one byte for each pass, and I'm not sure if this is healthy. I'll see what the sci.crypt crowd (those who've survived the spamming) has to say about this - it may actually be stronger than my increment-by-one method if you're worried about related-key cryptanalysis. Peter.

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CERT Advisory CA-96.13 - Alien/OS Vulnerability
by stevenw＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: CERT Advisory CA-96.13 - Alien/OS Vulnerability From: CERT Bulletin <cert-advisory(a)cert.org> Newsgroups: comp.security.announce, rec.humor ============================================================================= CERT(sm) Advisory CA-96.13 July 4, 1996 Topic: ID4 virus, Alien/OS Vulnerability - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The CERT Coordination Center has received reports of weaknesses in Alien/OS that can allow species with primitive information sciences technology to initiate denial-of-service attacks against MotherShip(tm) hosts. One report of exploitation of this bug has been received. When attempting takeover of planets inhabited by such races, a trojan horse attack is possible that permits local access to the MotherShip host, enabling the implantation of executable code with full root access to mission-critical security features of the operating system. The vulnerability exists in versions of EvilAliens' Alien/OS 34762.12.1 or later, and all versions of Microsoft's Windows/95. CERT advises against initiating further planet takeover actions until patches are available from these vendors. If planet takeover is absolutely necessary, CERT advises that affected sites apply the workarounds as specified below. As we receive additional information relating to this advisory, we will place it in ftp://info.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-96.13.README We encourage you to check our README files regularly for updates on advisories that relate to your site. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Description Alien/OS contains a security vulnerability, which strangely enough can be exploited by a primitive race running Windows/95. Although Alien/OS has been extensively field tested over millions of years by EvilAliens, Inc., the bug was only recently discovered during a routine invasion of a backwater planet. EvilAliens notes that the operating system had never before been tested against a race with "such a kick-ass president." The vulnerability allows the insertion of executable code with root access to key security features of the operating system. In particular, such code can disable the NiftyGreenShield (tm) subsystem, allowing child processes to be terminated by unauthorized users. Additionally, Alien/OS networking protocols can provide a low-bandwidth covert timing channel to a determined attacker. II. Impact Non-privileged primitive users can cause the total destruction of your entire invasion fleet and gain unauthorized access to files. III. Solution EvilAliens has supplied a workaround and a patch, as follows: A. Workaround To prevent unauthorized insertion of executables, install a firewall to selectively vaporize incoming packets that do not contain valid aliens. Also, disable the "Java" option in Netscape. To eliminate the covert timing channel, remove untrusted hosts from routing tables. As tempting as it is, do not use target species' own satellites against them. B. Patch As root, install the "evil" package from the distribution tape. (Optionally) save a copy of the existing /usr/bin/sendmail and modify its permission to prevent misuse. - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The CERT Coordination Center thanks Jeff Goldblum and Fjkxdtssss for providing information for this advisory. - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you believe that your system has been compromised, contact the CERT Coordination Center or your representative in the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST). We strongly urge you to encrypt any sensitive information you send by email. The CERT Coordination Center can support a shared DES key and PGP. Contact the CERT staff for more information. Location of CERT PGP key ftp://info.cert.org/pub/CERT_PGP.key CERT Contact Information - ------------------------ Email cert(a)cert.org Phone +1 412-268-7090 (24-hour hotline) CERT personnel answer 8:30-5:00 p.m. EST (GMT-5)/EDT(GMT-4), and are on call for emergencies during other hours. Fax +1 412-268-6989 Postal address CERT Coordination Center Software Engineering Institute Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890 USA CERT publications, information about FIRST representatives, and other security-related information are available for anonymous FTP from http://www.cert.org/ ftp://info.cert.org/pub/ CERT advisories and bulletins are also posted on the USENET newsgroup comp.security.announce To be added to our mailing list for CERT advisories and bulletins, send your email address to cert-advisory-request(a)cert.org Copyright 1996 Carnegie Mellon University This material may be reproduced and distributed without permission provided it is used for noncommercial purposes and the copyright statement is included. CERT is a service mark of Carnegie Mellon University. -- Moderators accept or reject articles based solely on the criteria posted in the Frequently Asked Questions. Article content is the responsibility of the submittor. Submit articles to ahbou-sub(a)acpub.duke.edu. To write to the moderators, send mail to ahbou-mod(a)acpub.duke.edu. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steven Weller | Technology (n): | | A substitute for adulthood. stevenw(a)best.com | Popular with middle-aged men.

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by JR＠ns.cnb.uam.es 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>One can only wonder how much more great some of the people on this list would >be today if they knew ADD back then. > That a fallacy. First, there's no way to know what they suffered if anything at all. Second, there's no way to know what would have happened. Third, there's what they themselves said. I know of many people who has your same signs. Hey you should see *my* office. And you should have seen it when I could devote myself to interesting things instead of XXXX(whateverI don't like) crap. Someone said about a kid not concentrating on grammar. Hell, I couldn't stand half of my professors in class, though I would perfectly listen to the same subject with other people. I don't know about you and don't pretend to tell you anything. But there are lots of cases in which the problem is *on the other side* (society, teachers, work, parents, priests, erroneous expectatives). I wonder how can we know from the external manifestations that those people were ADD and not just brilliant guys with dull teachers. As for those people you mentioned. Maybe if they had prozac they would have been perfect, quiet and compliant citizens, concentrated on what the power-that-be asked them to do. Think of Einstein happily working for Hitler, not worried about other themes (like ethical implications for instance). Thing is, it's very easy to keep everybody uniform. Easier than giving equal opportunities to less-good workers or allowing one to attempt many projects lest one succeeds and changes the stablishment! Let's make everyone into a uniform clone, and those who can't be made -say Down syndrome people- be exterminated. Let's enterprising people be forced into non-creative jobs, and if they don't like, be given drugs. Yeah! Let's monitor what everybody says, detect those guys who spend too much time at work reading cypherpunks or worrying about politics (which is not their job) and control them. Let's tap all their conversa- tions and force them to fit our idea of a uniform world of mediocre wits who just work perfectly in what we tell them and never question anything. I also wonder how those people you mentioned would have been allowed to do such great discoveries and destroy the grounds of their societies under the society we are heading to. "The World turning around the Sun? C'mon! Everybody knows it is flat and the Center of the Universe. That Galileo guy is obviously sick. Let's calm him down with some drugs so he can concentrate on Theology as it should well be"... Sorry, I think we need unfitted people, feeling unhappy about the society to make it evolve. jr

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by Rick Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim writes more about Ritalin: >From what I've read--and I'm no expert, having long had essentially the >_opposite_ of "attention deficit disorder," assuming it really even >exists!--most children getting Ritalin are just being sedated. Behavior >control in its purest form. While the kids stop their wandering attention >and constant physical motions, it's because they're in a mental fog, just >one step away from drooling. (The 8-year-old friend of my friend's son is >so zoned out he can't play video games well at all...until the drugs wear >off.) That's very interesting, especially the part about video games. It sounds like overdosing to me. My wife says that a Ritalin overdose can also affect your heart rate and ability to sleep. Regarding video games, we went through some elaborate assessment process before Alex ended up on Ritalin. The school people did an assessment declaring he wasn't "learning disabled" but may have ADHD. Then he saw a behavioral psychologist for a few hours of observation, yielding the diagnosis. Lastly a different psychologist measured his behavior using some computer based game/test. The actual dosage was calibrated according to his effectiveness on the game/test, which involved memory, coordination, and ability to concentrate on something fundamentally boring. The test was performed 3 times to compare his performance before and after dosage. The point of all this is that there are other ways of using Ritalin. I don't think I'd tolerate its use on Alex if I didn't trust my wife. She has a much better background in such things than I, as well as a family doctor's experience with seeing the results of drug abuse. >>BarelyObCrypto: ADD is more about lack of attention *control* than lack of >>attention itself. Hyperfocus is also a trait of ADHD, and computers tend to >>cause hyperfocus for a lot of ADDers. >BTW, I saw a comment that Bill Gates is almost certainly an ADD person...or >maybe the comment was that he is borderline autistic? This matches my own experiences with ADHD. That's the thing about the raw phenomenon and its overall lifestyle effect: you either find your niche and do OK, or you get sidelined. Rick.

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Put Uncle Sam in your Calling Circle
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey guys, I just got a really cool poster from RSA. It's a big circle split off into several sections showing people talking to each other, the upper right hand corner shows two NSA dweebs looking like Bevis & Butthead in suits, one smoking, the other seated infront of an old 60's reel to reel audio tape recorder, a sign on the wall behind them says "Key Escrow" There are several logos for various government agencies including our friends at No Such Agency and the FBI, a small quote next to the Copyright (C) RSA notice says "One of a series of public relations posters that never made it out of Fort Mede." Very very funny! Many many thanks to the cool person(s) at RSA who sent it my way. ========================================================================== + ^ + | Ray Arachelian |FL| KAOS KERAUNOS KYBERNETOS |==/|\== \|/ |sunder(a)dorsai.org|UL|__Nothing_is_true,_all_is_permitted!_|=/\|/\= <--+-->| --------------- |CG|What part of 'Congress shall make no |=\/|\/= /|\ | Just Say "No" to|KA|law abridging the freedom of speech' |==\|/== + v + | Janet Reno & GAK|AK| do you not understand? |======= ===================http://www.dorsai.org/~sunder/========================= Key Escrow Laws are the mating calls of those who'd abuse your privacy!

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:39 AM 7/9/96 -0500, Rick Smith wrote: >erehwon(a)c2.org (William Knowles) writes: > >>Ritalin has been a godsend, I am able to dialin when I have to. >>Ritalin is not the only drug for treating ADD, Prozac works for >>some. Prozac works on a different set of brain chemestry. (Prozac messes with the seretonin level of the brain and how it is reabsorbed.) There is a whole series of chemicals similar to Prozac that are prescribed. It takes a bit to determine just which one is best for the person involved. (I have far too many friends on variations of those drugs.) The reactions when they come off them is quite "interesting". Prozac is not a stimulant however. (Not in the usual concept of a stimulant.) >I use coffee, or else I just managed to grow out of the worst effects. >In any case, I drink more coffee than just about anyone I know, and it >doesn't "wire" me at all. "It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning. It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion." You can build a resistance to caffiene. (As well as one hell of an addiction.) So far I am up to a gram a day of the stuff. Mix that with the Seldane-Ds I take every morning (for hay fever) and you get more than a small amount of stimulants. (I have found that the Seldane-Ds have a positive psychoactive effect as well. They seem to allow me to focus better. Probibly because I am not sneezing.) The long term effects of any stimulant is problbiy not very good. What needs to be looked at is what the long term benifits and risks are, for the individual, not just for the society. What these sorts of chemicals do to small children 10-30 years down the road is pretty unknown at this point. (If any of the things i have seen so far are any indication, they are not good.) But then, I suspect the government of drugging our kids with school lunches laced with lead paint, not with mind control drugs. (Lead paint is cheaper.) ]:> Alan Olsen Minister of Forced Caffinization - DNRC --- |"Computers are Voodoo -- You just have to know where to stick the pins."| |"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 |

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