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Copyright violations
by alzheimer＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Agence France Presse: Tuesday, December 10, 1996 Visa to Launch Trial Electronic Money Services in Tokyo Visa International said Tuesday it would experiment with electronic money services in central Tokyo [Shibuya district] for about 18 months from June 1998 with Japanese commercial banks and credit card companies. The US-headquartered international credit card firm said it would be the world's largest experiment in terms of the size of participating companies and cards to be issued. The project will be joined by five Japanese commerical banks -- Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank Ltd., Fuji Bank Ltd., Sumitomo Bank Ltd., and Tokai Bank Ltd. Five Japanese credit card companies, including Credit Saison Co. Ltd. DC Card Co., Sumitomo Credit Service Co., Million Card Service Co. and UC Card Co., will also take part in the trial. Visa said it hoped to use the experiment to assess commercial feasibility and customer affordability before introducing full electronic money services. Visa plans to install its electronic money terminals and issue more than 100,000 cards, including those with built-in integrated circuits, for the experiment. Visa said it had already conducted an electronic money experiment in Atlanta during the Summer Olympic Games. The company is also preparing to try similar systems in Hong Kong and Australia. American Banker: Thursday, December 12, 1996 REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK Home Financial Network Offers Web Software By DREW CLARK The house lights dimmed and music started blaring. Smoke billowed out from the stage and red-and-white lights flashed onto an audience of thousands. Despite the rock-concert atmosphere, complete with an emcee peering out from giant video screens like a live-action "Max Headroom," most of the audience in the Dallas Convention Center Arena was in suits. Welcome to Retail Delivery '96, the new-wave Bank Administration Institute conference covering all that is new and exciting in financial services technology. Having grown into banking's biggest convention, with more than 7,000 people and some 350 exhibiting companies, Retail Delivery made bold promises. Promotional brochures said it would go "beyond the buzzwords." Frank Feather, the Canadian banking consultant in the Max Headroom role, said the event would "unlock the secrets of how to make real money off technology." When the "virtual" Mr. Feather introduced Robert W. Gillespie for the keynote speech last Wednesday, the KeyCorp chief executive officer drew a laugh from the audience by declaring: "This may be the way to start shareholder meetings." Mr. Gillespie and the master of ceremonies were the first of a parade of speakers referring to the dramatic change the industry is undergoing. Mr. Gillespie captured the spirit by describing how his company, the "New Key," is evolving in three directions: national consumer finance, corporate banking, and community banking. His multimedia computer presentation took the audience through a virtual branch and displayed video clips of KeyCorp executives including Steve Cone, its renowned marketing strategist. Mr. Gillespie showcased a marketing campaign so unified that the voice of Anthony Edwards, the company's star ad spokesman, is also heard when consumers dial into KeyCorp call centers. Branding is big in retail banking, nowhere more than at Banc One Corp. The point was reinforced by Kenneth T. Stevens, chief executive of Banc One Corp.'s retail group, who previously worked at Pepsico and its Taco Bell subsidiary. "Strong brands get winning price-earning multiples," he said, which translate into easier entry into new markets and the ability to resist competitive attacks. "Historically, banks didn't need branding because of location," Mr. Stevens said. "With the leveling of competition, the control of brand names will be essential." He said banks' problems are typified by the jumble of logos on automated teller machines -- a stark contrast to the clarity of Coke and Pepsi. Despite such doses of high-level retail strategy, technology held center-stage. The enthusiasm about it was palpable, fueled by the appearances of executives from the Silicon Valley companies Intel Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Generally admonishing the audience to get on the highway before it's too late, both spoke to banking issues. Intel executive vice president Frank Gill demonstrated remote banking with interactive video; Sun CEO Scott McNealy was critical of bankers' willingness to turn technology management over to others. "I can see a forestry company outsourcing information systems because their assets are in the ground," Mr. McNealy said. "But a bank's assets are information. Outsourcing (for banks) is a self-imposed lobotomy. It's like Budweiser outsourcing beer manufacturing." At the closing session Friday, Mr. Feather came out from behind the big screens to discuss his own keys to the future. Foremost, he said, is the Internet -- "the biggest thing ever in human history. It is not a technology, but a socio-economic system changing the way we live." Yet some bankers still "don't get it," Mr. Feather said. They prefer to think of the Internet as a passing fad, like the videophone, or an important but slowly evolving technology. Referring -- though not by name -- to Citicorp chairman John Reed and his prediction that full electronic banking would not be mainstream for 50 to 75 years, Mr. Feather dismissed it with a barnyard epithet. He suggested Citicorp is just trying to throw its competition off-balance. Mr. Feather's counterprediction: Within 25 years, there will be no full- service branches or tellers in North America. "Tens of thousands of branches will be closed, the entire distribution system will be rationalized," he said.

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Re: In Defense of Anecdotal Evidence
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:54 AM 12/13/1996, Rob Carlson wrote: >This doesn't make studies or statistical evidence true. Just more >reliable than anecdotal evidence. Humans who will lie about their >observations will also produce flawed studies. Again the former >(anecdotal) is unverifiable, but I can check the latter (statistical) >independently. One other point I forgot to make: It is expensive to verify a long statistical study. Not only does it require extensive knowledge of statistics, but you may actually need to reproduce much of the work. The only people who can afford to pay for such verification work may not be the same people that I would trust. Anecdotal evidence is inexpensive to collect. In many circumstances the cost benefit analysis favors it. Red Rackham

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Re: In Defense of Anecdotal Evidence
by Rob Carlson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 12 Dec 1996 14:12:23 -0800, Huge Cajones Remailer wrote: >Statistics are a useful tool, but they have their problems. Their >accuracy is often in doubt. Most scientific data comes with an error >analysis so you can tell what the figure means. For some reason >statisticians never do this so we cannot tell whether their numbers >are accurate to within 0.1%, 1.0%, 10%, or even worse. > >There are many other problems. For instance, users of statistics >assume they have a random sample, even in cases where that is far from >clear [ List of other problems deleted ] Of course, anecdotal evidence also suffers from all of these problems. And in greater magnitude. This is true since it is a special case of statistical evidence. With a non-random sample set of one and no controls for observer bias. >The advantage of first hand experience is that it is primary evidence. >You know it's true because you were there and saw it. I have seen women cut in half and rabbits made to appear in an empty hat with my own eyes. I'm quite sure neither of these is true. Humans are poor observers. The data processing unit is easily fooled. Many people make a living off of this fallability such as magicians and politicians. The observer is also tainted by previous experience(or lack of) and individual needs. This leads to bias unavoidable in even the most honest and reliable observers. Statistical methods are used to control for this. Double-blind techniques are one example. Humans also have a need to make conclusions when insufficient evidence is available. Witness the number of people who have an opinion on the innocence of OJ Simpson based on <2 minutes/day condensation of the evidence. >The advantage of anecdotal evidence (in the sense we have been using >it) is that the person who is telling you the anecdote was there and >saw it. You can cross-examine them and get a full understanding of >the evidence provided. The reporting of evidence involves different issues. If you want to believe that women are actually cut in two or that politicians are telling the truth anytime their lips are moving, thats one thing. If you want to tell me its true because you personally observed it, thats quite another. Given the failures of humans as observational tools, your story is unverifiable by me. Perhaps through effective cross examination I can prove you wrong, but I can never prove you right with such a technique.That will require other evidence outside the control of the observer ( statistical is just one available ). Evidence that can be verified independently by many observers increases the reliability. Experiments and polls can be done by me thus eliminating your bias. Independent verification can also check for errors and check the parameters under which the evidence is true. Studies are done with certain assumptions and controls. The evidence loses its reliability when removed from this context. This doesn't make studies or statistical evidence true. Just more reliable than anecdotal evidence. Humans who will lie about their observations will also produce flawed studies. Again the former (anecdotal) is unverifiable, but I can check the latter (statistical) independently. I also don't believe polls can be used to determine the truth. They can only tell what a mass of people believe. And then only if done correctly. To make this on topic, how does this apply to cryptography and crypto-politics? This issue is a foundation of our discussions here. Shall we accept anecdotal evidence such as the "If you only knew what we knew" arguments? What is more reliable: IPG's claims that their product is an OTP because they say it is or Bruce Schneier's book that can be used to point out the fallacy's in their claims? Relying on anecdotal evidence makes you susceptible to the magicians of the world. The honest ones use mirrors and their need is to entertain you enough to get your money. The rest use anecdotal evidence and emotional arguments (verbal misdirection?). Their needs are left as a test of the reader's naivete. Rob Carlson <robc(a)xmission.com>

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Credentials without Identity--Racey Bits
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:30 AM 12/13/96 -0500, Jill heatedly wrote: :So white Boyz Club excludes women to, is that correct? By definition, you steaming dreamboat. Drop me a note, kitten. XXOO Snookums

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ASM vs portable code [WAS: Re: Java DES breaker?]
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry if this is a repeat - I got a rather opaque 'delivery failure' message when I first sent it. - pt Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)brainlink.com> wrote: > On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > > > I happen to have a Sparc 20 box and a Linux box and a SCO box, and ActiveX > > won't work on any of those. I also work with a bunch of other equipment > > that's much faster than a PC, but doesn't run browsers. (Most of it is not > > connected to the 'net for security reasons, but that's besides the point.) > > Right, and Active X, if those machies were on the web, would not be > supported. > > > If Bill's client is sure to run the platforms that MS IE runs on, then this is > > not a consideration. > > Correct, however there is one thing you have forgotten... (next paragraph) > > > Interpreted FORTH bytestream (which is what Java is) may be "doing quite well" > > when drawing GUI gizmos and widgets, but it can't get anywhere near the > > performance of hand-optimizer assembler that you can stick into ActiveX. > > While ActiveX does support hand optmized assembler, there are Java > JustInTime compilers which take JVM bytecodes and turn'em into raw > assembler. They aren't hand optimized, they are natively compiled code, > but they are native code non the less. A good optimizing compiler may > not be 100% as cool and as fast as hand optmized code, BUT it'll be > almost as fast. And Java will run on just about EVERY platform out there. > And that is a bigger, more important point than a 10%-25% increase in > power over non-optimized code. > > Besides, I'm not arguing AGAINST an ActiveX client, there's no reason > why there can't be both Java and ActiveX clients out there since there is > both a compatibilty issue and a speed increase with ActiveX. While I'm reluctant to ever find myself in the same corner as Vulis, he has a point. As one of the few folks on this list who actually writes code, I say that hand-optimized assembler will beat machine generated code every time. I have figures to back me up. As some of you know, I've been working on a DES key recovery tool. I'm have both portable C and x86 assembler versions. They are currently identical, except that the guts of the DES round is written in "C" in one, and hand-optimized Pentium assembler in the other. For this test, I modified the code to cut out the delays associated with incrementing the key schedule (this is not in assembler yet, and slows down the assembler version about 30%), leaving the of the crunching in the DES decryption. Both versions were compiled under Visual C++ 4.0, with Optimizations set to 'Maximize speed', and inlines to 'any suitable', and run on a 90MHz Digital Celebris 590 under WinNT 3.51. Averaging several runs: "C": 102,300 crypts/sec ASM: 238,000 crypts/sec With Java, it's possible to add native code methods to the interpreter, though it requires extra work by the user - it's harder than 'click on this link to run my reely kool applet'. This violates the Java sandbox, and requires the user to make trust decisions on the methods they are adding. ActiveX lets you add and run native code with a click, but again involves trust decisions. My philosophy is 'the more the merrier'. I'd like to see able to people work on DES Key Recovery on a large number of platforms and modes - we just need to standardize on the input and output formats. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com

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ASM vs portable code [WAS: Re: Java DES breaker?]
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)brainlink.com> wrote: > On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > > > I happen to have a Sparc 20 box and a Linux box and a SCO box, and ActiveX > > won't work on any of those. I also work with a bunch of other equipment > > that's much faster than a PC, but doesn't run browsers. (Most of it is not > > connected to the 'net for security reasons, but that's besides the point.) > > Right, and Active X, if those machies were on the web, would not be > supported. > > > If Bill's client is sure to run the platforms that MS IE runs on, then this is > > not a consideration. > > Correct, however there is one thing you have forgotten... (next paragraph) > > > Interpreted FORTH bytestream (which is what Java is) may be "doing quite well" > > when drawing GUI gizmos and widgets, but it can't get anywhere near the > > performance of hand-optimizer assembler that you can stick into ActiveX. > > While ActiveX does support hand optmized assembler, there are Java > JustInTime compilers which take JVM bytecodes and turn'em into raw > assembler. They aren't hand optimized, they are natively compiled code, > but they are native code non the less. A good optimizing compiler may > not be 100% as cool and as fast as hand optmized code, BUT it'll be > almost as fast. And Java will run on just about EVERY platform out there. > And that is a bigger, more important point than a 10%-25% increase in > power over non-optimized code. > > Besides, I'm not arguing AGAINST an ActiveX client, there's no reason > why there can't be both Java and ActiveX clients out there since there is > both a compatibilty issue and a speed increase with ActiveX. While I'm reluctant to ever find myself in the same corner as Vulis, he has a point. As one of the few folks on this list who actually writes code, I say that hand-optimized assembler will beat machine generated code every time. I have figures to back me up. As some of you know, I've been working on a DES key recovery tool. I'm have both portable C and x86 assembler versions. They are currently identical, except that the guts of the DES round is written in "C" in one, and hand-optimized Pentium assembler in the other. For this test, I modified the code to cut out the delays associated with incrementing the key schedule, leaving the most of the crunching in the DES decryption. Both versions were compiled under Visual C++ 4.0, with Optimizations set to 'Maximize speed', and inlines to 'any suitable', and run on a 90MHz Digital Celebris 590 under WinNT 3.51. Averaging several runs: "C": 102,300 crypts/sec ASM: 238,000 crypts/sec With Java, it's possible to add native code methods to the interpreter, though this requires extra work by the user - it's harder than 'click on this link to run my reely kool applet'. This violates the Java sandbox, and requires the user to make trust decisions on the methods they are adding. ActiveX lets you add and run native code with a click, but again involves trust decisions. My philosophy is 'the more the merrier'. I'd like to see people work on DES Key Recovery on a large number of platforms - we just need to standardize on the input and output formats. Peter Trei trei(a)process.com Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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[Privacy] Airline background checks...
by aaron＠herringn.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Under plans to overhaul the airline security system, making a plane reservation would trigger an instant profile of a passenger's background, including past travels and possible criminal history information. [...] Government should pay The committee, made up of 23 industry, government and public interest groups, suggested the federal government, not the airline industry, pay for the increased security measures. It estimated the proposals would cost $9.9 billion over the next 10 years. "It's not an airline or airport problem. It's a national security problem," Lally said. "Airports and airlines are surrogate targets. The real targets are the policies and government of the United States." [...] http://www.cnn.com/US/9612/13/airline/index.html

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THE CRYPTOCRACY'S PLAN TO PSYCHOCIVILIZE YOU
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.nwlink.com:88/~dbader/

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Wired Integrity
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The latest issue of Wired has a nice article about Sameer Parekh and C2Net. What is troubling is that it is written by Sandy Sandfort who works at C2Net. There is no indication of this in the vicinity of the Wired article. The Little Green Man

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From Houghton-Mifflin MIS regarding the ongoing self-mailbombing
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A lesson in stupidity. - -rich [Forwards from impeccable intermediate sources snipped; if you REALLY need to confirm, mail me.] - ------- Forwarded Message OK. I used to work in the MIS department of Houghton Mifflin, and still am good friends with the upper MIS people. In fact I had dinner with them last night. Although the promotion is/was real, PLEASE DON'T SEND THEM ANY MORE EMAIL. The mail gateway is throttling with the incoming mail - we had a long talk last night over how to aleviate this problem. They've gotten alittle over 100k messages in 1 week. The mail server is currently a SPARC 5 w/ 64MB RAM and a gigabyte of swap, and is so hosed that they're switching in an Ultra2 tonight to try to handle the load. The lesson here is: don't do a marketing ploy without first consulting your Tech people. Apparently, the whole thing was cooked up by one of the departments, who neglected to tell MIS. Also, for those of you who might possibly work in industry in the future and are looking for a way to gather email addresses or do some kind of promotion like this, USE WEB HITS. The average email coming in to HMCo is about 4kb, requires disk space, and requires a vfork() of sendmail to deliver. A typical Http hit runs less than 100bytes, is served by a threaded httpd server, and requires very little disk access. Anyway, this is just a note to please spare my friends at HMCo. The kids are going to get all the donations promised, and my friends have enough headaches. Thanks! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBMrHJDJNcNyVVy0jxAQH98wH/RA2dc5bLz3KbX0JoyVha5+XoppMSgNtB 8MvVemU5iOeBRrJTENo1bj6OYx8b7ie8E95OUsBy9Kx0RpFfpOmBSA== =QdmN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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