- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: more about the usefulness of PGP
by Steve Reid 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> make sure that you are protected from replay attacks. > a good idea would be to make the server to send cookies by request of > the remote user (you can limit the number of people to whom the server > sends cookies) and make sure that messages without the latest cookie > will NOT be executed. A simpler solution would be for the user to number each message. He would send message #1, then message #2, then #3, etc... Skipping some numbers should not be a problem. The server would just have to keep track of the most recently recieved message number, and only accept messages with a larger number. The user would also have to keep track... It would be very easy to do; the user could number each message based on date and time. ===================================================================== | Steve Reid - SysAdmin & Pres, EDM Web (http://www.edmweb.com/) | | Email: steve(a)edmweb.com Home Page: http://www.edmweb.com/steve/ | | PGP (2048/9F317269) Fingerprint: 11C89D1CD67287E68C09EC52443F8830 | | -- Disclaimer: JMHO, YMMV, TANSTAAFL, IANAL. -- | ===================================================================:)

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:02 PM 7/7/96, Robert Hettinga wrote: >Like a lot of pop-psychopharmacology, "syndromes" frequently get defined by >whether the right drug has the desired effect. If prozac works, you're >depressed, if Ritalin does, you're an ADDer, and so on. By Tim's anecdotal >evidence, the little hellion (hey, *I* was one...) must be ADD because >Ritalin works. Probably so, and I think I recall my friend mentioning that this was the kid needed the dose. Whether it's an upper or a downer or whatever is immaterial: it acts as a downer for this kid. A zombie drug, at least on this kid. (And I gather that this is the main effect on the many California schoolchildren who are getting their school-administered doses of mind control drugs.) >You can actually see ADD with a PET scan, but the proper way to get a >diagnosis of ADD is to get tested for it, which, in the case of ADD, is an >expensive man-day or two with with some clinical shrink in your face, and a >bunch of frustrating (if you're ADD) tests of your attention and ability to >focus in the presence of a lot of distractions. Oddly enough, *another* >pop-psychologist from Harvard was on "20/20" this week talking about >"emotional" intellegence, and one of the determinants was inability to >understand delayed gratification. Like most kids with ADD, I must have been >a drooling idiot, in that case. >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.) >However, I practically agree with Tim on all of his screed. (A good one, I >might add. He probably only reread it once for punctuation and spelling >before he did a command-e to send it on its way. After wiping the foam >from his mouth, that is. ;-)) It seems to me that the very *last* person to Au contraire, I almost _never_ rework my posts. They are sent out as I write them, just as conversation is not reworked and edited. For an informal list, the conversational mode works best for me. (I get a kick out of John Young's obscure stuff, but if he _talks_ this way, whoah!) >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. How many easily distracted knee-jiggling >wunderkind hackers do *you* know? Care to guess how many ADDers there are >on cypherpunks? BTW, I saw a comment that Bill Gates is almost certainly an ADD person...or maybe the comment was that he is borderline autistic? (I think it was the latter, based on his focus on things, his physical mannerisms, etc. Perhaps growing up in rainy Seattle made him a kind of "rain man.") --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: Style gettting in the way of clear reporting
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:40 AM 7/8/96, James A. Donald wrote: >When news media were concentrated into fewer and fewer hands during >the twentieth century, the appearance of neutrality, objectivity, >and authoritativeness became a major selling point, and so media >adopted a tone and manner of neutrality, with an accompanying >"just-the-facts" style, though in reality they became far less neutral An interesting point. You are probably right that journalism is becoming more florid as "amateurs" flood the market. However, I don't quite buy the concentration argument, as things were pretty concentrated in the Hearst era, and the explosion of magazines in the past few decades has not been as concentrated. (In any case, these are hard things to quantify without more research, which I for one am unlikely to pursue.) >Now that everyone can grab the megaphone, people are not so worried >about objectivity. If something is unfair to Nazis or blacks or evil >polluting capitalists, they know they will hear about it from the >Nazis, the blacks or the evil polluting capitalists. > >As a result, people no longer value the superficial appearance of >neutrality and objectivity. Suddenly colorful and openly biased >reporting has become popular. I still think of "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Economist," two of my favorites, as being _careful_ in their reporting (careful is different from unbiased). But my main focus in this thread was on the _styles_, and this I think is more explained by faddishness. And advertising. To get "mind space," as with "shelf space," the packaging must entice, fool, and trick the reader. >This has led to some people engaging in florid excesses of colorful >style and concocting totally phony attitudes., just as when word >processing programs first gained the capability to handle a wide >variety of fonts, some people produced memos that looked like >ransom notes. Yes, and many of the newsletters we're seeing--as many are cc:ed or forwarded to our list--are the kissing cousins of "zines." Same faux style, same emphasis on "flash" over substance. (Not all of them of course.) --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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Style gettting in the way of clear reporting
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:28 PM 7/7/96, Raph Levien wrote: >Declan McCullagh wrote: >> >> "We are writers, not crytographers." >> >> -Declan > > Well done. Very well done. I'm not sure why Brock is constructing >this hard-drinking bad-boy persona (perhaps he's trying to become the >Trent Reznor of crypto journalism), but the piece was great. I found it unreadable. No doubt some fine reporting, but the "faux Chandler" touches made it unreadable for me. "The last gin joint in cyberspace, and I had to to be the one to break it the babe, a thirty-two bit floozy with gams as long as, well, let's just say they made me forget about the Feds waiting to send me up the river for the long one..." With no _personal_ criticism of either Brock or Declan, I find that most modern cyberspace journalism--much more so than the mainstream press--is this kind of "performance piece" stuff, where pastiches of Chandler, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, and all the like are lathered all over the articles. The clearest and most extreme examples of this trend are the columns by Spencer S. Katt, Robert X. Cringely, and the other rumor-mongers of the trade weeklies, where a few morsels of actual reporting are buried in vast amounts of phony stuff. Such as endless crap about "Pammy," a dingbat--and utterly fictional--Valley Girl who one of these columnists uses to pads his columns with. This New Journalism kind of stuff is also rampant in "Wired." I suppose some people like it. I call them easily impressed. Or as Raymond S. might put it, "She was the kind of dame impressed by a paint by numbers Mona Lisa." Sadly, simple expository prose must be considered to be too boring, too banal. (Actually, were only a few writers doing this, it might be mildy tolerable. Speaking for myself, that is. But so _many_ "cyberspace journalists" are doing bad pastiches of famous stylists that the reportage is being lost in the noise. "A screaming comes across the screen." Wake up, Brock and Declan! And all the other too clever by half New Journalists. I'd like to read some of your stuff, not hit the delete key as soon as see the style-laden ersatz Chandler larding up the article. --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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EYE_son
by David K. Merriman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: DEA Intercepts
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:19 PM 7/7/96, John Young wrote: >Would anyone know more about the DEA "process the intercepts by computer" >in the excerpt below from today's Wash Post? Any connection to Peter >Neuman's remarks at the CRISIS press conference about LEA training and >technology as alternatives to breaking strong crypto? > and process the intercepts by computer. The FBI is plowing > millions into developing new intercept techniques for > digital lines and expanding its cadre of agents who use the > bureau's high tech surveillance gear. I have no way of knowing (and I doubt anybody knows and can also speak publically about it), but my informed speculation would be that the FBI is continuing its cooperation with the NSA (as noted by Ken Bass at last week's SAFE forum) and is using COMINT processing gear and programs developed at the Agency. It has been widely reported, from Bamford on, that much of the Agency's computer power is devoted to keyword analysis from audio intercepts. While computer translation programs may not have progressed much beyond "The vodka is strong, but the meat is rotten" stage, it is quite reasonable to assume that computers can mark for later analysis vast amounts of audio surveillance material, based on words said, voiceprints of known targets, etc. The trend of the next few decades is likely to be the turning of the government's Big Ears and Big Eyes on its _real enemies_, namely, the people. > "I don't think J. Edgar Hoover would contemplate what we > can do today in terms of technology," Reno testified during > a Senate hearing in May. Actually, I think Hoover could well imagine the capabilities. Minaret and such programs were in place while he was alive, and his use of confidential dossiers as an instrument of power predated the current use by the Clintons by several decades. > The total number of federal wiretaps is just one measure of > the rise in federal surveillance. The build-up also is > evident in the increased use of electronic devices that > record the numbers dialed by a target telephone, and the > origin of calls to it. > > These devices allow agents to identify a person's > associates. Beginning in 1993, Justice agencies began using > the court-authorized monitors more often and leaving them > installed for longer periods of time, according to a > Justice Department report. Needless to say, key escrow is quite useful in compiling contact lists. A virtual pen register, as it were. --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: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by AwakenToMe＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim, You have a very good point about what goes on in this thread. I wasnt speaking about you yelling at me.. some of the members decided to write me 'personal' memos..one idiot being 'AOL SUCKS KILL ALL AOL SUCKS' or some stupid idiotic undereducated statement like that. Thanks for the response though..it was appreciated. :) Adam

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Re: Style gettting in the way of clear reporting
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Believe it or not, this has some very slight cypherpunk relevance. (Gasp) At 10:06 PM 7/7/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > Sadly, simple expository prose must be considered to be too boring, too banal. > > (Actually, were only a few writers doing this, it might be mildy tolerable. > Speaking for myself, that is. But so _many_ "cyberspace journalists" are > doing bad pastiches of famous stylists that the reportage is being lost in > the noise. When news media were concentrated into fewer and fewer hands during the twentieth century, the appearance of neutrality, objectivity, and authoritativeness became a major selling point, and so media adopted a tone and manner of neutrality, with an accompanying "just-the-facts" style, though in reality they became far less neutral Now that everyone can grab the megaphone, people are not so worried about objectivity. If something is unfair to Nazis or blacks or evil polluting capitalists, they know they will hear about it from the Nazis, the blacks or the evil polluting capitalists. As a result, people no longer value the superficial appearance of neutrality and objectivity. Suddenly colorful and openly biased reporting has become popular. This has led to some people engaging in florid excesses of colorful style and concocting totally phony attitudes., just as when word processing programs first gained the capability to handle a wide variety of fonts, some people produced memos that looked like ransom notes. Soon enough they will settle down. English prose was at its greatest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when many voices could be heard, and some of them were on the florid side. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Cypherpunk Enquirer
by enquirer＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I finally lost the tail somewhere around the docks, and slowly worked my way into Chiba, watching my back all the way. I dumped the chip in the saddlebag of a bike messenger who almost ran me down in front of the Jarre, figured he'd get a good scare out of a midnight visit from the NSA goons who'd been using it to follow my tracks out of Tokyo. They weren't going to like the way I rearranged the facial features of their buddy who tried to waylay me outside of the pachinko parlor. One last glance behind me, and I ducked into the Chatsubo. She was waiting for me there, a vision of pure lust in a red mini-dress with cleavage all the way down to her waist and legs all the way down to the floor. I tried to stay casual as I sauntered over to the bar next to her. "Vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred," I said to Ratz, the regular bartender. Ratz slammed the drink down on the counter in front of me. "Shaken enough for you, Dick?" he said. "Dick. Nice name." She had a voice that sounded like wind blowing through pine trees on a hot summer night. Low. Breathy. Wet. "He's being an asshole. Dick's American slang for a PI. Mind if I join you?" "Suit yourself." I pulled up a stool, surreptitiously slipping her PGP signature into my PDA. It checked out. Good. Now if she just had the merchandise. I hadn't come 5,000 miles just to check out her pectoral development. I leaned over close, trying not to stare at that pair of 38Ds. "You got anything else you'd like to show me?" Her emerald green eyes bored into mine, and then slowly dropped down to the level of my zipper. She slowly slid the hem of her dress up her creamy thigh, just high enough so that I could see that she wasn't wearing any panties. And there it was. Tucked into the top of her silk stocking, just next to the black lace garter. "That floppy's got the source to Declan McCullagh and Ian Goldberg's crack of the Surfwatch database. Worth a small fortune to anyone with the cojones to spam a sample to K12." She licked her lips like she was getting ready to go down on a double dip of Cherry Garcia. "Would you like to come up to my room and take a closer look?" (OK, Nobody, knock it off. You got rid of Tim May three paragraphs ago. Let's get on with it, huh?) (Shit, boss, just trying to have a little fun ... ) THE CYPHERPUNK ENQUIRER "Encyphering minds want to know." Fresh on the heels of the Chicago Bull's triumph in the NBA finals, Michael Jordan has announced the release of his new signature Internet encryption product, Michael Jordan's Awfully Good Snake Oil. Based on a tried and tested but proprietary algorithm, AGSO is guaranteed to provide superior 40 bit encryption of all important Internet traffic. Michael himself personally guarantees that AGSO will integrate perfectly with the Eudora mailer, and used no 14 year old Nicaraguan programmers like that inferior Kathy Lee Gifford shit, and no feminine frou-frou like with Liz Taylor's Black Perl. Jim Bell was injured today when a mail exploder went off in his hands. Doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital reported that the mail exploder had been upgraded from critical to stable condition and was resting comfortably in a private room. After a visit from fellow patient Louis Freeh, the mail exploder commented, "It's surprising how well he's learned to talk through that proctoscope." Matt Blaze has finally come clean, and agreed to provide a partial transcript of the NSA's famous "If you knew what we know, you'd support key escrow" presentation, which according to Mr. Blaze starts out, "If you knew about the video tapes we have of you with that 16 year old blonde at the Motel Six ... " Due to continuing controversy over the Michael Jackson case, and bowing to extreme election year pressure from the religious right, President Clinton today announced a new policy to prevent child abuse in the music industry. The Rock Musicians Penis Escrow Bill would require all musicians selling more than 10,000 CDs to file photographs of their (presumably tumescent) genitals with the FBI so that they could be examined and identified in the event of accusations of lascivious behavior with minors. Leon Panetta was reportedly flying to Chicago for discussions with the presently retired Plaster Casters, hoping to garner their support for the bill, while the Wall Street Journal announced an investigation into rumors that Chelsea has a standing request with the FBI for multiple copies. The Libertarian Party immediately announced its whole-hearted support for the plan after Jim Ray snuck the plank into the party platform when no one was looking. Tim May's experimental plan to reduce the noise level on the Cypherpunk Mailing List was declared a resounding success after massive doses of Ritalin actually caused Perry Metzger to apologize for flaming a clueless AOLer. In related news, AwakenToMe has finally figured out protected mode, and has announced the first Pentium condom that actually fits over the cooling fan. Sameer Parkesh announced that c2.org is now hosting an "Unanimizer" web browser, which makes web servers think that the entire population of the WhoWhere search engine has just accessed their pages. Next in the Enquirer: Bob Dole on the dangers of the abacus virus.

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Cypherpunk Enquirer
by enquirer＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I finally lost the tail somewhere around the docks, and slowly worked my way into Chiba, watching my back all the way. I dumped the chip in the saddlebag of a bike messenger who almost ran me down in front of the Jarre, figured he'd get a good scare out of a midnight visit from the NSA goons who'd been using it to follow my tracks out of Tokyo. They weren't going to like the way I rearranged the facial features of their buddy who tried to waylay me outside of the pachinko parlor. One last glance behind me, and I ducked into the Chatsubo. She was waiting for me there, a vision of pure lust in a red mini-dress with cleavage all the way down to her waist and legs all the way down to the floor. I tried to stay casual as I sauntered over to the bar next to her. "Vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred," I said to Ratz, the regular bartender. Ratz slammed the drink down on the counter in front of me. "Shaken enough for you, Dick?" he said. "Dick. Nice name." She had a voice that sounded like wind blowing through pine trees on a hot summer night. Low. Breathy. Wet. "He's being an asshole. Dick's American slang for a PI. Mind if I join you?" "Suit yourself." I pulled up a stool, surreptitiously slipping her PGP signature into my PDA. It checked out. Good. Now if she just had the merchandise. I hadn't come 5,000 miles just to check out her pectoral development. I leaned over close, trying not to stare at that pair of 38Ds. "You got anything else you'd like to show me?" Her emerald green eyes bored into mine, and then slowly dropped down to the level of my zipper. She slowly slid the hem of her dress up her creamy thigh, just high enough so that I could see that she wasn't wearing any panties. And there it was. Tucked into the top of her silk stocking, just next to the black lace garter. "That floppy's got the source to Declan McCullagh and Ian Goldberg's crack of the Surfwatch database. Worth a small fortune to anyone with the cojones to spam a sample to K12." She licked her lips like she was getting ready to go down on a double dip of Cherry Garcia. "Would you like to come up to my room and take a closer look?" (OK, Nobody, knock it off. You got rid of Tim May three paragraphs ago. Let's get on with it, huh?) (Shit, boss, just trying to have a little fun ... ) THE CYPHERPUNK ENQUIRER "Encyphering minds want to know." Fresh on the heels of the Chicago Bull's triumph in the NBA finals, Michael Jordan has announced the release of his new signature Internet encryption product, Michael Jordan's Awfully Good Snake Oil. Based on a tried and tested but proprietary algorithm, AGSO is guaranteed to provide superior 40 bit encryption of all important Internet traffic. Michael himself personally guarantees that AGSO will integrate perfectly with the Eudora mailer, and used no 14 year old Nicaraguan programmers like that inferior Kathy Lee Gifford shit, and no feminine frou-frou like with Liz Taylor's Black Perl. Jim Bell was injured today when a mail exploder went off in his hands. Doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital reported that the mail exploder had been upgraded from critical to stable condition and was resting comfortably in a private room. After a visit from fellow patient Louis Freeh, the mail exploder commented, "It's surprising how well he's learned to talk through that proctoscope." Matt Blaze has finally come clean, and agreed to provide a partial transcript of the NSA's famous "If you knew what we know, you'd support key escrow" presentation, which according to Mr. Blaze starts out, "If you knew about the video tapes we have of you with that 16 year old blonde at the Motel Six ... " Due to continuing controversy over the Michael Jackson case, and bowing to extreme election year pressure from the religious right, President Clinton today announced a new policy to prevent child abuse in the music industry. The Rock Musicians Penis Escrow Bill would require all musicians selling more than 10,000 CDs to file photographs of their (presumably tumescent) genitals with the FBI so that they could be examined and identified in the event of accusations of lascivious behavior with minors. Leon Panetta was reportedly flying to Chicago for discussions with the presently retired Plaster Casters, hoping to garner their support for the bill, while the Wall Street Journal announced an investigation into rumors that Chelsea has a standing request with the FBI for multiple copies. The Libertarian Party immediately announced its whole-hearted support for the plan after Jim Ray snuck the plank into the party platform when no one was looking. Tim May's experimental plan to reduce the noise level on the Cypherpunk Mailing List was declared a resounding success after massive doses of Ritalin actually caused Perry Metzger to apologize for flaming a clueless AOLer. In related news, AwakenToMe has finally figured out protected mode, and has announced the first Pentium condom that actually fits over the cooling fan. Sameer Parkesh announced that c2.org is now hosting an "Unanimizer" web browser, which makes web servers think that the entire population of the WhoWhere search engine has just accessed their pages. Next in the Enquirer: Bob Dole on the dangers of the abacus virus.

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