- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Reputations
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

gregburk(a)netcom.com (Greg Burk) writes: > mccoy(a)communities.com (Jim McCoy) writes: > > Greg Burk writes: [...] > > Go read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (a good book to read anyway :) > > and examine the nature of the computer network "discussion groups" he talks > > about: a classic example of reputation markets in many-to-many discussions. [...] > I have read it, a long time ago. Frankly, it's a spectacularly bad > example. He writes of the two child-protagonists gaining reputations as > great philosophers on a sort of Usenet. (At the time I believe OSC was a > member of Delphi, UNCLEORSON) > > Look around on the real Usenet. OSC could not have been more wrong. If you look closer you would probably be surprised to see things starting to move in this direction. As the number of participants has grown the "noise" in most newsgroups has grown to an unmanageable level. Now most newsreaders allow you to score authors or article threads so that you can keep individual reputation and interest files. I am actually an anomoly at my company, a collection of very net-savvy people, because I actually still participate in a few newsgroups; most of the interesting net discussions now take place on mailing lists which allow further reputation filtering (most mail agents have better and more flexible filters than news agents) and most bleeding-edge traffic happens in private mailing lists where one cannot even participate unless they have already established their reputation. If these lists were gatewayed to read-only newsgroups you would have what Card was talking about. > > > As an "asset", it is extremely non-liquid: > > > > > > How exactly would you "convert" your reputation into other capital? > > > Would you accept bribes and tell lies? Seems to me you would only get a > > > one-shot "conversion" and it couldn't possibly hope to equal your > > > investment. > > > > Tell that to Walter Cronkite, Siskel & Ebert, Moody's and others who have > > converted reputation capital into large piles of money [...] > > You don't seem to realize you are actually including at least one major > example of a counterfeit reputation here. > > I speak of Siskel & Ebert, whom I have caught at least once giving a > strikingly dishonest review. I had seen the movie (See You In The > Morning) on opening day, before they reviewed it. It stunk. No, this is just an example of how reputations are not global values, each reputation is modified by the perspective of the user. _You_ disagreed with the review and have probably used your experience to weight the values of future reviews by those particular reviewers. This is why there are hundreds of different sources of reviews for movies, people weight the recommendation given by the reviewer with > Conclusion: They knew it stunk, but for some reason I won't speculate on > they wanted to say they liked it so they misreported it, and covered > their butts with a review that would look mixed later but sound like a > rave now. I see a counterfeit reputation. Incorrect. One thought it was a good film and the other disagreed. You did not find it to be a good film and have since modified your weighting of the Siskel & Ebert reputation value to reflect this. It is highly improbable that there were any behind-the-scenes machinations between the movie backers and the reviewers: such a person has a value which is directly proportional to being viewed as impartial and once they have established a reputation the value in maintaining the reputation outweighs the value a potential briber could gain by trying to influence the review (nothing will drop the reputation faster than getting caught cheating, and a single reviewer does not have enough influence on the public to impact a films box office returns enough to make the bribe worthwhile.) It is more likely that you just disagreed with the review and you have since learned your lesson and now seek multiple review sources or else switched to a different source for movie review information (dropping your personal weighting of Siskel & Ebert down below other sources.) > > No, I think that you just don't understand the mechanics of reputations and > > how they interact with the most important resource in most people's lives: > > time. > > I'm tempted to tit-for-tat, but I will not refute your points by telling > you you just don't understand. I guess I could have been more diplomatic, but it seems that you just do not understand that reputations are not a global value, rather they are a weighted value which is modified over time as the user seeks to determine a balance of raters and reviewers which most closely represents their particular viewpoints, interests, and experiences. There is no one single reputation which a given person has, all reputations are dependant upon the source of the reputation and the context in which that particular reputation is used. > > time. Instead of thinking of "reputation" look at it from the other end and > > consider the "attention marketplace." > > Fine, but resolving good vs counterfeit reputations takes time too. *Sigh* There is no such thing as a "counterfeit" reputation. When someone joins a network with a particular set of interests they will start off by finding a reputation service(s) which they think, though various channels ranging from advertisement to word of mouth, closely matches their interests and views. This is the only time that outright deception can influence a person and it is also the point at which deception is least profitable (because the deceiver will be easily revealed once the user compares the reputations with what they expect to see and because most new users will choose multiple services to perform comparison shopping.) There may even be reputation services which rate other reputation services to let people know how the service compares to its stated viewpoints and advertisements. A reputation service gains income by establishing a long-term replationship with the customer, so it is in the services interests to maintain credibility with its users. If they do not then that reputation service will have a negative weighting depending on what the user is interested in, so the problem of correct vs. incorrect reputations will itself be handled by reputation services. An individual will have multiple reputations depending on which service is providing the reputation and the context in which the reputation is being used. "Tim May" may have a relatively high reputation in most services on cryptography and crypto-anarchy issues but this reputation will not apply to football predictions or articles posted to soc.culture.swedish. Someone may try to burn a reputation to pass off a false statement as truth, but this is as unlikely to work as it is for Peter Jennings to tell all of his viewers that this afternoon Bill Clinton appointed me his senior domestic policy advisor; people now have a wide variety of news and information sources to use for comparing the veracity of the statement, getting caught diminishes his reputation and this has a monetary value to him, and because his audience is larger due to his increased reputation there is a greater chance that others will investigate the matter and so his chance of getting caught is higher. > > Right now reputation markets have a > > limited presence on the internet (mostly through killfiles) because the > > tools required are not integreated into the tools used to browse the > > information. In time this will change. > > How? I ask for something more specific than In The Future Everything > Will Be Done Right. Version 0.1 (coming to a news server near you by the end of the year) will take the form of a service whereby you can subscribe to a usenet filtering service which will present your newsreader with a database of articles which have already been filtered by the reputation service to remove off-topic and "me too" posts (or perhaps based upon other filtering criteria.) The agency making this service possible will also sell to individuals or groups the ability to start their own service on this news host and perform whatever filtering they want, this will also include adaptive filters (if I can ever get the little bastards to use an internal weighting function which does not converge too quickly) which will attempt to learn the general weighting criteria are so that the people running reputation filtering need only update the filters occasionally and not score each and every posting. The hard part, and the part which is slowly gaining enough momentum to make this possible, is the integration of cryptographic signatures into messages so that one can determine the authenticity of a message and thereby assign a reputation value to a real identity instead of an easily forgeable email address. jim

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Re: Doing away with govt. people
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:13 PM 9/6/96 -0700, Dale Thorn wrote: >Gee, if we could just prosecute "the govt." under auspices of the >"three strikes" legislation: > >Gehlen Deal MK/ULTRA >"That 'Bay of Pigs' thing" ZR/RIFLE >Watergate MH/CHAOS >Iran/Contra Phoenix Program >BCCI/BNL COINTELPRO >INSLAW Waco, etc. You've probably heard of the "RICO statute," or "Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations" law. It's both criminal and civil: You're supposed to be able to bring a RICO lawsuit against an organization and get triple damages. Maybe somebody should try it and name the federal government as defendant...There's certainly plenty of evidence. >Just say "Three strikes and you're (what?)" "Dead," preferably. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Job for netescrow ? (was Secure anonymouse server protocol...
by peter.allan＠aeat.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In the talk about replyable nym-mailers I haven't yet seen netescrow mentioned. You DID all read this ? > Oblivious Key Escrow > Matt Blaze AT&T Research > mab(a)research.att.com > 12 June 1996 > > Abstract > We propose a simple scheme, based on secret-sharing over large-scale > networks, for assuring recoverability of sensitive archived data e.g., > cryptographic keys. In our model any one can request a copy of the > archived data but it is very difficult to keep the existence of a > request secret or to subvert the access policy of the data owner. This all hinges on a policy to be followed by archive holders defining the conditions under which they release their shares. This could be receipt of a signed request from the owner (remailer). Maybe the table relating nyms to reply addresses could be stored in netescrow style so that captured remailers reveal nothing. The problem of operator coercion is not addressed by this. Police investigations might apply "angry mob cryptanalysis" to find a sender - convincing a sizable number of operators that a crime had been committed with some particular piece of traffic. Anybody want to estimate traffic + storage requirements ? Or number of participants needed for a viable scheme ? -- Peter Allan peter.allan(a)aeat.co.uk

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GAM_lin
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

8-8-96. Wash Tech: "Internet Betting Spurs Regulatory Interest." A new commission to investigate the nation's $40 billion gambling industry will initiate Congress' latest effort to curb the fast-growing gambling industry, and may open up additional efforts to regulate the burgeoning Internet industry. Extra legislation is not needed to suppress on-line gambling, said Bernie Horn, National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. "If the Justice Department wanted to, it could make things unbearable for companies offering on-line gambling from outside the country," he said. ----- http://jya.com/gamlin.txt (5 kb) GAM_lin Thanks to BC.

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Re: Junk Phone Calls, Metered Usage, and Cellphones
by Martin Janzen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) writes: >I am about to start worrying about "junk phone calls" more so than I have >been. I just bit the bullet and bought a digital cellular phone, with a >nifty rate plan called Digital Flex: I get unlimited free airtime from 7 >p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays, and unlimited free airtime all weekend. From south >of Salinas to north of Santa Rosa and as far east as the Central Valley. In >other words, the entire Bay Area and outlying communities. I can send and >receive calls over this entire region, from anywhere in the region (of >course), without any charges. > >The downside is that calls _from_ or _to_ my phone during "business" hours >are charged 42 cents a minute, airtime (tying up a channel and all), plus >whatever other fees may be applicable at each end. Thus, every "junk call" >I get trying to get me to buy aluminum siding, or to vote Democratic, or to >switch my long-distance carrier (!), costs me a minimum of 42 cents, >depending on how fast I can realize who they are and get rid of them I have a similar plan. My cell phone company includes call forwarding in the package, so I deal with the possibility of junk calls by forwarding calls from my cell phone to my regular number (which has voicemail) during the day, then turning off the cell phone. This way, the calls are intercepted right at the switch (I assume), so no airtime is used, and no charges are incurred. Works for me... -- Martin Janzen janzen(a)idacom.hp.com

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Re: Court challenge to AOL junk-mail blocks
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Or About: 6 Sep 96 at 23:16, Damaged Justice wrote: > > This is utter horseshit. AOL, like any private individual or organization, > has the right to refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason, or > even for no reason at all. Sure. I agree with that, no shoes no shirt, if you are on AOL you accept "internet-lite". > The gubmint isn't doing SQUAT, except forcing > AOL to allow the spammers access. Right now. Yet it has been apparent to me that many people are begging for restrictions to be put in place. Restrictions on spammers. The government saying anything about regulation of the internet is bad... Yet people still scream about a couple of unwanted e-mails. I'm saying that this spammer thing could be the "kink in our armour" that lets the government into our little playground here. Just suck it up and delete those messages. Jog it off. 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: What the NSA is patenting
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:50 AM 9/7/96, Jean-Francois Avon wrote: >A maybe usefull program would be a little tsr that constantly >overwrite unused sectors of the entire drive with random patterns >(maybe seeded with a fast keyboard interval timer). Like at the very >moment I am writing this, my HD has been idle for several minutes... > The NSA STM method is related to reading _very subtle_ variations in magnetic domain modifications. Jitter in read-write head positions can be thought of as a noise (N) added to some signal (S)l. Extraction of signals in low S/N ration environments is a well-developed science. Not to start another round of "thermite bomb" posts, but I would not trust n-pass erasures. Of course, this is about the least of my concerns. If the Feds are planning to use STM probes on your seized drives, you've got more serious problems. (The oft-discussed possibility of more secure dongles, or secret decoder rings. is still off in the future. Most of us just enter our various passwords, and our local disk drives reveal all.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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USF_avv MS's Martha Stewart
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For MSerfs and groupies: A NYC local rag has a salacious article, "Microsoft's own Martha Stewart," on Michael Goff, the newly appointed editor of Cityscape, MS's upcoming urban-slurp-fuck-and-vomit vanity. Excerpts: The key to why Bill Gates hired Mr. Goff may lie in the fact that Mr. Goff is a marketing maniac, a self-confessed "media whore." "He became more of an egotistical asshole overnight than anyone I'd ever seen when the magazine [Out] came out," said one prominent gay journalist and acquaintance. Mr. Goff is indeed a family man, of sorts: He confirmed that he is considering donating his services to two lesbian friends who want to raise their own child. He bristled at being pigeonholed for being gay, rather than being recognized for his creativity. "It has nothing to do with me being gay or not," he said. "I've always been focused on doing mass consumer media." Besides, he added, "They're not paying me like that. I don't have a jet or anything." ----- http://jya.com/usfavv.txt USF_avv

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Re: What the NSA is patenting
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 06 Sep 1996 11:59:18 -0500, John Deters wrote: >I hope some hardware hacker who knows their low-level stuff will be able to >write a secure disk wiper. They have: it's called a bulk tape eraser. <g> I'd just store everything sensitive on a floppy. Those are easy to erase with a heavy duty magnet (not a wimpy refrigerator magnet). I understand slagging one in the microwave is also effective <g>. - "'Anonymity is bad,' says a source who wishes to remain anonymous." - Nuff' said. * Home: Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp * Autoresponder: send email w/subject of "send resume" or "send PGPKEY" * Work: cadams(a)acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894 | (619)689-6579 * Member in good standing of the GNU whirled hors d'oeuvre

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Re: What the NSA is patenting
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>(Used to be they just kept stuff secret; now they patent some of it.) > >United States Patent Patent Number: 5264794 > Date of Patent: 23 Nov 1993 > >Method of measuring magnetic fields on magnetically recorded media using a >scanning tunneling microscope and magnetic probe > >Inventor(s): Burke, Edward R., Silver Spring, MD, United States > Mayergoyz, Isaak D., Rockville, MD, United States > Adly, Amr A., Hyattsville, MD, United States > Gomez, Romel D., Beltsville, MD, United States >Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Director, > National Security Agency, Washington, DC, United > States (U.S. government) That isn't NSA research, it was merely sponsored by the NSA. Those are all university people who have published their work on MFSTM in journals, papers, and theses (I used some of it in my paper at the Usenix Security Symposium, and two of the images in my talk were provided by one of Mel Gomez' students). What the NSA is doing in this area is still classified (although I suspect the techology isn't much different from what's publicly available), in this case all they were doing was protecting their investment (just like the various PKC patents originally assigned to universities). Peter.

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