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Re: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Or About 21 Aug 96, 4:07, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote: > I don't know if there has been much discussion on the ethics of > spamming here? Is spamming free speech? > > - Vipul The way I see it: if you narrow your targeting, by research, you can send SPAM to people who may really have a need for your products and services. I send spam. I am very apologetic, but I send only to software manufacturers. I sell software media and duplication, so most software makers can relate to a request for me to quote on their needs. BUT I OBJECT to spamming of usenet, and my mailing lists that I read. Ross =========== Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: 415-206-9906

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PreRFD: comp.org.cypherpunks
by qut＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Subject: line says it all. My suggestion number #1: No moderation. -- Skip, OBC

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Pappieren, bitte! (and Taxes, National Debt)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:38 PM 8/20/96, Stephen Cobb wrote: >At 05:32 PM 8/19/96 -0400, you wrote: >>It sounds unfair, for sure. However, the whole thing is a fraud based >>upon a myth. FICA witholding is NOT credited to an individual's account, >>or even to Social Security benefits in general. By statutory law, all >>such receipts go into the Treasury's general fund. >> >>So, they are NOT "social security contributions". Period. >> >Very true...what I am saying is that, as far as my reading goes, LEGAL >aliens are going to be required to pay social security "taxes" while not >having any "entitlement" in return. They pay income taxes and get certain >things, like law and order, in return. They will be paying soc sec money to >the government without getting anything in return. This sounds not only >unfair but wrong, part of an isolationist, "we killed the natives so this >land is our land and the rest of you f@*k-off" revival that includes the >recent posting about requiring proof of citizenship before issuing drivers >licenses. Not only will they not be legally able to drive, but as we all have been discussing, driver's licenses are the de facto forms of identification demanded by most merchants, most airlines, etc. I think the "no driver's licenses to illegal aliens" makes a certain kind of sense, though. (Not that I don't have some compassion for them, being an open borders advocate.) If the State gives official documents to illegal aliens, what's the point of their being classified as illegal aliens? Ditto for the various taxes, income or SS or property or whatever. If the State says to someone, "OK, you don't have to pay taxes because you're an illegal alien," the chaos that would follow is clear. Employers cannot withold taxes (income, state, SS) from some employees and not from others. (Of course, employers are expected to get a SS number from all employees, so, in theory, illegal aliens would be unable to work without one....) One final note on the Social Security mess. Not only is it not a true insurance plan, with contributions being invested in a fund of some sort, it is much worse than this. Contributions are sent immediately into the "general fund," to be spent on B-2 bombers, new administrative buildings, salaries of government workers, pork for Congressvarmints, Seawolf submarines, space stations, welfare payments, foreign aid to Israel and Egypt, and so on and so forth. What the govenment does is to send an "I.O.U." to the Social Security people, promising to someday make good on the money already spent. Distressingly, but not surprisingly, these I.O.U.s are *NOT* counted as part of the National Debt. Thus, the national debt is much worse than the $5 trillion or so it is officially estimated to be. One estimate I have seen places the overall national debt, counting obligations and promised payments, at $20 trillion, or four times the official number. And it is still increasing every year. To see how large this is, there are 100 million taxpayers in the U.S., roughly. This means each of these taxpayers has an average indebtedness of $200,000. Most American households do not have this amount of money in total net worth, obviously. Thus, they "owe" much more than they are worth. Obviously enough, the portion of this debt is not distributed uniformly amongst households, or won't be if it is ever collected. But you get the drift. The country has been spending far more than it has been taking in for many years, and is far worse shape than "official" figures about the National Debt would tend to suggest. Neither Dole nor Clinton appear to want to talk about this, both having done their parts to make the situation what it is today. --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."

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Re: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Or About 20 Aug 96, 16:23, Jim Gillogly wrote: > > Vipul Ved Prakash <vipul(a)pobox.com> writes: > >I don't know if there has been much discussion on the ethics of > >spamming here? Is spamming free speech? > > I oppose spamming because it's rude and inefficient, lowering the > S/N everywhere it happens. Market droids Market Droids???? As a salesman I take offence at this slur. > favor it because it's > cheap, and no matter how many people they piss off bigtime, they > make some sales. Even make sales to people who are pissed off at first... Ross =========== Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: 415-206-9906

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[NOISE] Airport legal question
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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? TIA,

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Re:phoneco vs X-phone
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:00 AM 8/20/96 -0700, Brian D Williams wrote: > >Jim bell writes: > >>What do you mean, "doesn't really fit the facts"?!? What part of >>it was incorrect? Fiber-optic _is_ commonly used in inter-office >>trunks, right? It doesn't wear out, right? Higher usage doesn't >>entail greater costs, right? The capacity, while not strictly >>infinite, is high enough so expanded usage doesn't strain most >>links, right? Finally, modern phone switches have sufficient >>connect capacity so that they can handle usage which would have >>been considered "unusual" by yesteryear's standards. All >>of this points to an obvious conclusion: Telephone companies do >>not, in general, have increased costs as a consequence of >>increased telephone usage. > >Fiber does not wear out per se, but it does need replacing, partly >from the inevitable contractor accidents (landscapers) and >occasional entropic events. However, those events are generally uncorrelated with usage... > Mux cards and repeaters do go bad on a >regular basis, there is a correlation between usage and increased >maintenance, Well, technically that's true, but these devices are usually running continuously, not merely when a call is being made. In other words, more talk != more failures. For the most relevant (though minor) example that I can think of, consider the typical laser diode used to drive fiber optic cables. These devices have a finite wearout mechanism (as opposed to most IC's which generally do not wear out in normal usage), so they may be seen to have a limited lifetime. However, in use they are continuously transmitting data, even when portions of the channel are unoccupied, so they have a constant life regardless of individual phone usage. >and of course increased usage means increased electricity usage. This is an extraordinarily minor effect, as you might imagine. >One point that seems to be missed here is the very high cost of >compliance with government regulations. If the internet phone >people have to comply with the same regulations it will drive up >their costs dramatically, and if the regulations are lifted for >all, the RBOC's think they can out compete them. 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.) Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Justice Department stalls for time in CDA lawsuit, from HotWired
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 20:12:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)eff.org> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Justice Department stalls for time in CDA lawsuit, from HotWired [Read the complete column at the URL below... -Declan] http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/ HotWired, The Netizen 21 August 1996 DOJ Dodge by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) Washington, DC, 20 August The US Department of Justice is stalling for time. The Supreme Court yesterday granted the government an extra month to submit the next phase of its Communications Decency Act appeal, allowing the DOJ a few more weeks to coordinate the original ACLU lawsuit with a lesser-known suit filed by Joe Shea, editor of the American Reporter. [...] But in truth, the DOJ shouldn't need any more time to file this paperwork. The "jurisdictional statement" the department's been working on for seven weeks - and now has until 29 September to submit - must argue only that there's a substantial constitutional issue at stake in the CDA lawsuit, something transcendently obvious to anyone who hasn't been napping through the 14 months since Time magazine's cyberporn cover hit the newsstands. [...] While this is likely just normal legal skirmishing in a battle where the DOJ attorneys have few useful weapons and already have suffered one crushing defeat, the government's five-page application for an extension of time hints at why a delay would be to their advantage. [...] In other words, the CDA might be unconstitutional now, but _constitutional_ some months from now - depending on how labelling and blocking technologies such as PICS and SurfWatch evolve. Keeping kids out might have been a royal pain when the judges heard the case in March 1996, but by March 1997 it might amount to no more than the minor irritation of a constitutional hangnail. David Sobel, a lawyer for the Electronic Privacy Information Center and co-counsel on this case, said: "They could make the argument in the Supreme Court that the court in Philadelphia hasn't really completed its work on the case, and all that is entered is a preliminary injunction. They could argue that this case should go back to Philadelphia for further proceedings, since they're now prepared to answer the court's questions about what kind of technology may be coming down the pike." Whatever the reason for the DOJ's delay - summer bureaucratic slothfulness or malicious conniving - one thing is certain: we have the rest of the year to enjoy the government's lawyer tricks. ###

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Re: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Or About 20 Aug 96, 18:09, Rich Graves wrote: > On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote: > > > I don't know if there has been much discussion on the ethics of > > spamming here? Is spamming free speech? > > Yes. > > So is mailbombing the motherfucker, or more productively, virtually > picketing his ISP until they kick him off for net abuse That is the kind of self righteous crap that gives me the creeps!!! > > Ethically? We don't talk ethics much here, but I'd say it's highly > unethical to abuse a service paid for by the pooled resources of > many. I pay for my net access. I pay for my Sunday paper, it's full of ads too!! Ethics??? Let's rat out on the EVIL spammers!! Let's turn them into thier ISP!!! That's a load of CRAP!!!! Ross =========== Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: 415-206-9906

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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

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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

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