- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

ADMIN: cypherpunks went down
by hughes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This message counts as a test message. Please DO NOT respond to it. Hugh and I took the list down last night. This is the same list spewing problem that we had last week, only this time it's worse, because toad.com just got a CPU upgrade; it's four times faster now. Sorry. Please, Please, PLEASE in the future if this happens, DO NOT send more mail to the list; it only makes the problem worse. These messages were started to spew as well. Send urgent mail about list problems to me, hughes(a)ah.com, or postmaster(a)toad.com. Many thanks to Hugh Daniel for squashing sendmail processes like cockroaches. (He was laughing maniacally for a bit, there, "DIE!, DIE!") We managed to catch the problem before it went on for too long. I took everyone off the list after backing it up and left only me and Hugh on it, so most of the problem didn't go to the list. What happened was that the sendmails started spawning faster and faster. I got a megabyte and a half of repeated mail before we squished everything. Eric

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Banning of scientific information (re:FDA,etc.)
by ccat＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know if they are still doing it,but last year there was a discussion on sci.med about the FDA's pressure on certain medical journal publishers not to publish certain peer-reviewed medical studies here in the US. And,as far as I can see,their policy of supressing information is effectively suppressing an effective nutritional therapy that helps people quit crack..(L-Tyrosine) Why?,Who knows. But it's telling that they always seem to support the large corporate approach to global pharmaceutical marketing.. Shades of the Opium Wars. Remember,its ten years after 1984.

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Remailer Update
by Matthew J Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric Hughes wrote: > We managed to catch the problem before it went on for too long. > I took everyone off the list after backing it up and left only me > and Hugh on it, so most of the problem didn't go to the list. > What happened was that the sendmails started spawning faster > and faster. I got a megabyte and a half of repeated mail before > we squished everything. I'm glad you caught the problem. I'd hate to see what would have happened if it had gone on for too long. :) My remailer was off-line from midnite to about 18:00 hours (eastern time) today. I took it off-line so I could handle the toad.com mail bomb. I have restored the remailer and FAQ server to normal operation. About 15 messages piled up in the queue during this time, and I sent them out about an hour ago. Let me know if there were any problems. Also, let me know your opinions on overall functionability of the remailer, and any bugs/problems. To everyone who requested the source code, sorry I haven't gotten to it yet. I will... P.S. The remailer info I maintain at mg5n+remailers(a)andrew.cmu.edu has gotten quite popular. When I first set it up, I got at most 2-3 requests a day. The last couple of days I have been getting 10 to 15 remailer-info requests a day. I wonder where they're coming from...I guess some non-cypherpunks groups have gotten on the anonymnity bandwagon. Wow... there goes another one. (I have it display a message on my screen whenever a request goes thru.)

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Re: new remailer up!
by Martin.Greifer＠f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

* Reply to msg originally in CYPHERPUNKS Uu> Ok, is it Just me. or did Mr. Ghio send 10 copies of that letter Uu> saying his new remailer is up? He must be snubbing you. I've received 48 so far. X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X |--=[martin.greifer(a)f28.n125.z1.fidonet.org]=--{PGP Key 8248D5}--| |--=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=-| X "Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the X | SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns | | doesn't serve the State." - Heinrich Himmler (& Janet Reno?) | X--=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=-X | "JUST SAY NO TO BIG MOTHER GOVERNMENT AND THE CLINTON AGENDA!" | X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X----X ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 -- Martin Greifer - via FidoNet node 1:125/1 UUCP: ...!uunet!kumr!shelter!28!Martin.Greifer INTERNET: Martin.Greifer(a)f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG

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Gun conversion info banne
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: CYPHERPUNKS(a)toad.com S.> Duncan Frissell <frissell(a)panix.com> writes: S.>Then there's the time in the early '80s when the Consumer Products S.>Safety S.>Commission banned the "Button Book." S.> S.>Query: S.> What pray is the "Button Book". S.> Readers may recall that many years ago, their parents gave them this book that had, attached to its pages, all sorts of fastening devices. The Button Book had cardboard pages with shoelaces, zippers, buttons, buckles and all sorts of great stuff. Good training for fastening things. The CPSC felt that the buttons were too easy to remove. The old "oh no your book is dangerous it may kill my (stupid) kid." The publisher didn't try a 1st Amendment defense. I don't know if they've ever reissued. DCF Who survived to adulthood before the CPSC (as difficult as that may be to believe). --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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Re: ratings
by nobody＠rosebud.ee.uh.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Robert Hayden said: >Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this a lot of overkill? I mean, one >could simply set up a filter for subjects/people you don't want to see >or press the 'D' key. Well, a rating system like the one I think Eric is talking about would disassociate "people" (the authors) from their post... so for example in the future when everybody is using anonymous remailing services to participate here and elsewhere, you would be able to read messages from "people" (pseudonyms on digitally signed posts). Of course, the anonymous remailing services would prevent you from figuring out the true author, so you can't filter for people in the manner you describe. Then you could pay attention to mail from Pr0duct Cipher and Deadbeat, who have kept their identities secret, but filter out other "anonymous" messages. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLWp/s4OA7OpLWtYzAQEaowP9FVOSEFtOR2WNV4a5cjleR06BRTBB2eZd HB7cPwsiOzReufDJz9/i1PMeFBzd548DtC8AnyIriAY/c8zDAuK3ujMDgWM0FQ2+ W8khShw19GrFg0gsnuozHjorrivXw9OZzK3wOQQL5xx1BvWZ8kehM+YMjjKaq0vh 6Sjlt0RzKmM= =IWy1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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MacPGP
by fhalper＠pilot.njin.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can anyone give me a FTP site where MacPGP is available. i think the Ratings idea is brilliant. Frederic Halper (Reuben Halper) fhalper(a)pilot.njin.net

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RATINGS: Subject tags
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One issue is the purpose of the ratings system. I don't think it will help to solve the problem of intentional disruption. If the disrupter is really motivated, he could have multiple identities and give positive ratings to his messages, so they would get through. I think a good purpose would be filtering out uninteresting or lower-quality messages. Unless someone else vouches for a message, it would not appear for a subscriber to the filtered list. Eric asked that discussions on this topic use the "subject tag" concept, putting "RATINGS:" in the subject line. Subject tags are a good idea but are not widely used. If more people would use them it would help people to read those messages that interest them. My suggestion is that the ratings be based on subject tags. A rater reads a message, and if he endorses it as being worth reading he sends in one or more subject tags (keywords) which apply. Then someone on the filtered list could subscribe based on particular tags that interest them. The advantage is that this way even newcomers' messages are tagged with useful keywords, tags provided by old-timers on the list when they approve the messages. This also provides for the multi-dimensional aspect of approval, more useful than a simple "thumbs up". I won't try to suggest a syntax, but under this proposal a rating message would include some message identifier (perhaps the list should produce messages with an incrementing message number), along with a list of applicable subject tags. Hal

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RATINGS: say what?
by Panzer Boy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok a few things. To help me, and possibly others, understand this. (Replace the word "YOU", with your name if you think you understand the rating system...) You want two lists: (of sorts) 1. Current list, as is, anything in -> everyone out. 2. Rated List, anything in -> filtering/rating -> out. Now my question is, who's going to spend the time dealing with this. And how are you going to disallow stuffing the ballot, as we all know about spoofing. And who's actually going to spend the time wading through all the Cypherpunk mail, and rating it all? Are you planning on letter the general readers of "list 1" rate articles, and then people who subscribe to "list 2" will get anything that passes a certain "rating level" (or other criteria)? Are we looking for something that you run the articles through, and it will spit out a "reading level" like most PC word-processors. Then you could ask for just the articles that have <15 misspellings, and a reading level above 11th grade... Pardon me if this isn't quite what some people seem to have in mind, but this just looks like electronic version of filling out forms in triplicate. -Matt (panzer(a)dhp.com) "That which can never be enforced should not be prohibited."

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Re: REAL WORLD ENCRYPTION
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There are several factors that are probably leading people to ask about how digicash is valued. WHile digicash is basically a transaction technology, there are different categories of transactions it can support. One way for it to acquire value is the method that checks and bank notes use - somebody deposits real money in a bank, and writes requests to move it around. Since you're talkign about starting a bank, the obvious question is whether the accounts will be in dollars, yen, gold/silver, rubles, etc.; while much of the business may be in dollars or Swiss francs, supporting more than one currency increases your workload a good bit, and each additional currency adds a certain amount of work. The other way digicash is likely to acquire value is for it to represent requests for certain amounts of service, e.g. digital postage stamps, highway tolls, etc, where it's basically service-provider scrip. For some systems, this may be free and used just for resource allocation, or testing, or whatever. Bill

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