- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Active Attacks on DC-nets
by janke＠unixg.ubc.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I haven't read the paper on active attacks yet, but here is an easy example that I thought of, that others might find illuminating: When there is a round with no messages the server sends garbage to all but one of the participants so they think collisions occured. The other participant is sent zero so that he or she thinks the channel is open. The participants who think colllisions occured are then likely to back off for a number of rounds, so that if a message is sent it is most likely from the participant who wasn't lied to. What do people think of the idea of clients signing all input to the dcnet and the server signing all output and keeping logs so that it could be verified afterward (after the damage was done! :) ) whether or not everything was carried out properly or not. With Schnorr signatures and precomputation the clients could still be reasonably quick. The server will have to do alot of work, but the signature verifications could be done in parallel on a multiprocessor computer. Verification of the proceedings would also be long, but it could be done off-line. -- Leonard Janke (pgp key id 0xF4118611)

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

blanc writes: > > I suppose you don't understand what it might be like for someone to be > > unable to do their work no matter how heavy the threat against them if > > they don't, and no matter how easy it is. There are people out there > > who can't get themselves to pay a phone bill or throw out the > > newspapers for months on end -- they just can't get themselves to > > dance around into the task no matter how hard they try, no matter how > > great the threat (job loss, etc) to them is. [...] > There are times when people have been totally unmotivated to take care > of themselves or the mundane matters in life because they were not > involved in the pursuits which were of true value to them, and life > "lost its meaning". Blanc, you really aren't listening. There are people out there who are desperately unhappy. They can't concentrate at all. They love what they do for a living, if only they could actually manage to do it four days out of five. They are not in the least scared of cleaning their homes, except for the fact that they are frightened of the fact that they can't manage to do it no matter what they try. They'd like to pay the light bill -- really -- but every time they start they get distracted, or they get distracted before they start. Sometimes they get bursts of hyperconcentration and they can work for two days straight on some project, and they end it and realize that the phone's been cut off because they completely spaced dealing with it or anything else. Sometimes they feel very pissed off because people tell them to just "apply themselves" more or "manage their time" better or "get a more motivating job". Such people aren't upset that life has lost its meaning. They are often perfectly intelligent, capable of being happy in their pursuits, and not bad individuals. They suffer, however, from an inability to keep from twitching. They ritualistically play with common objects -- rubber bands, paperclips, etc, folding and unfolding them, winding and unwinding them, etc. You can spot them -- they're the people who even as adults can be placed in a nearly empty room and will find a small object to play with. Their workspaces are littered with small fidget toys they have purloined or created. These people aren't unhappy with their jobs except for the fact that they wish they could get their work done, they sit in front of their work for hours on end, and can't get anywhere. They don't need new pursuits. Even with newere and "better" jobs, most people on earth have to occassionally maintain their attention long enough to pay their landlord or what have you. > Putting one's priorities into perspective can do a lot towards feeling > motivated to attend to life's minor contingencies, while elevating the > lesser items to the top of the hierarchy can totally dissipitate one's > energies and interest. Look, quit trying to tell people who have ADD that they are in the wrong jobs, that they are unmotivated, that they are "lazy", or whatever. Calling them "nuts" is actually far better. It at least acknowledges that there is something wrong that isn't readily fixed by the nostrums of people who have no idea whatsoever what they are going through. Perhaps, of course, we can just get all the suicidal people on earth to quit wanting to kill themselves by intoning to them "don't be sad" over and over again. I doubt it, though. > Maybe Ritalin could make them forgot their true interest which was lying > dormant, pushed away by who-knows-what kind of arguments against it, and > help them to start paying attention again to those mundane, irrelevant > aspects of existence. Or maybe, when they take it, the noise in their heads stops, the world focuses and clears up, and suddenly it doesn't seem like its so hard to finish that two paragraph status summary after all. Maybe they take it and suddenly they can function long enough to finish their resume and get another job. Maybe you should quit telling other people how to get through life when you haven't lived inside their heads. > You're right, Perry, that no one should be making that decision for > others. I do think, though, that achieving self-command by a conscious > knowledge of what is right for one's nature is actually the most > beneficial (and less controversial). Its always better to not need to use chemicals to help yourself out. However, we acknowledge in our society that when someone has an infected leg we decide that they aren't being "bad" by taking drugs to stop the infection. Perry

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Offshore Information Services is Back after Bertha
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hurricane Bertha hit Anguilla just perfectly to do the most damage. Just north of the storm the counterclockwise spin and westward movements add for maximum destructive power, and we were just north of it. Don't know of any people or houses that were hurt, but a bunch of power and phone lines have been damaged. We lost power, ran for about 10 hours on battery, and then shut down. But about 24 hours later we are back online to stay. We are temporarily located in the Cable and Wireless building in town. Thanks Cable and Wireless! And thanks to everyone for your patience, Vince Cate Offshore Information Services Ltd Anguilla, Eastern Caribbean http://online.offshore.com.ai/

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by mike＠fionn.lbl.gov 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Jul 9, 9:21am, Rick Smith wrote: > >Seems like if your child needs drugs to go to school than perhaps school is > >the problem not that your child's body lacks Ritalin. One thing we need to remember is that life, not just school, is full of boring, repetitive tasks, even for the hi & mity. You have to figure out how to do them. This is one very difficult *lifetime* problem for those with add-like behaviors. Also, add people need credentials & good jobs like everyone else, so they have to be able to perform well enuf in school to get good recs & good marks in subjects that interest them. They didn't make this system, but they do have to adapt to it somewhat.

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by JR＠ns.cnb.uam.es 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I bet you go up to people in near suicidal states and tell them "hey, >get a life", don't you. > Sorry, Perry, but that's a cultural matter. Here we consider one has right over his/her own life up to decide to suicide. And so it is not ilegal here. What that reflects is that I respect their right to dispose of their lifes. I do care though, and if I can help I'll do my best. That's why I studied Medicine in the first place. Just as I try to convince people to learn, increase their political awareness, overcome their limitations and get better. That's why I defend defensive use of crypto against technological mind-control. I still won't force anyone into using this or that algorithm or taking this or that drug. As long as they have a free will. Then comes disease, when one is not able to decide by him/herself. If I were to make a blood transfusion to someone refusing it on religious grounds I wouldn't be much different from the gov't imposing some crypto scheme on the basis of its own moral grounds. Is it that what you are proposing? It would be quiet another thing if I saved the life of someone who can't tell me at all his/her religious beliefs. Not to say I wouldn't 'cos I'd. But I don't think goverments can say we are not able to express our preferences, do they? In short, I may think otherwise and try to convince people not to suicide, even do my best. But in the end it's their choice. Just the same I believe the gov't can try to convince us, but it should be in the end our choice to chose how we live (or what crypto we use). So, are you saying that to avoide the society collapsing by terrorism and go to its suicide we should give the government total control? jr

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Re: Moviepunks
by Chris Adams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 4 Jul 96 20:44:14 -0800, frissell(a)panix.com wrote: >"Somehow, I doubt William Jefferson Blythe Clinton would fly an F-15 against >a monster alien craft." He'd wait to finish shredding those files before leaving... // Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> - Webpages for sale! Se habla JavaScript! // Automatically receive my resume or PGPKEY by sending email with a subject // of 'send PGPKEY' or 'send resume'. Capitalization counts so be careful!

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Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"perry(a)piermont.com" 9-JUL-1996 07:29:49.72 >get on with their lives. Maybe you would prefer to "help" them by not >letting them get medication. Maybe its "unnatural". Could you explain >to me, however, how you are making their lives better by not giving >them their meds? I mean, what concretely is better about their lives? Quite. Besides which, what's wrong with something being "unnatural"? If you define doing something to modify how one naturally thinks/behaves/whatever as "unnatural", then all education is unnatural, child raising is unnatural, etcetera; all these modify neural patterns in the long run. All this is more in the area of transhumanism than of cypherpunks, BTW, although I can see some _possible_ relevance. Mike Duvos writes: >> Again, to return to the height analogy, doctors have to throw >> short parents seeking human growth hormone[...] >You miss the point. You spoke of involuntarily medicated kids. Most of >the kids aren't involuntarily medicated. I wasn't, and I won't be when I go back on it (shortly, I hope). I noticed the difference that it made (as did my teachers), and I preferred it. >> The price of giving the patient (or the patient's parents) >> everything they want is [...] classrooms full of obedient >> citizen-units in Soma-induced trances. >Ritalin does not induce a zombie-like trance, as the numerous people >on this mailing list who take it can tell you. Most definitely agreed. While on it, I found myself much better able to do what _I_ ultimately wanted to do. -Allen P.S. Thank you, Perry.

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MiddleMan comes out of the closet!
by John A. Perry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hello Everyone! After a lot of testing, I've come to discover that the middleman reliability problems are vastly due to the nymserver front-end. With this in mind, I've decided to drop the nym for middleman and announce it's actual presence. I am middleman and I wrote the patches to mixmaster to make it work with premail. I want to see the middleman remailer work as a viable remailer and I feel that having the nym front-end has caused a less than acceptable remailer in terms of usability. With this, I'm announcing the new email address for the middleman remailer. It is now middleman(a)jpunix.com. What does this affect? The middleman remailer can be used as a front-end remailer and you don't have to question who is running it. The middleman remailer will still NEVER be the remailer on the end, hence the problems with discovery and persecution by entities that wish to go after "the remailer on the end" hopefully will not occur. Of course anyone wishing to run a middleman remailer can still opt to use a nym, but at the price of a decrease in performance. I will continue to work with Matt Ghio to get the nymserver code to be more reliable. I admit, it needs a facelift. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me at perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com. Flames go to /dev/null. John Perry - perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com - PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome! WWW - http://www.jpunix.com PGP 2.62 key for perry(a)jpunix.com is on the keyservers. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMeLqZFOTpEThrthvAQGsggP9EQfhtEb3/ovlzt2gq/skK8YnqJvagisY 2NMYP6X3mL+AkDArDuEYoXwrFIk6fsg7l2a8kOk8FdxezpChTXczyvo85wvV3WSx SHEzGJelI8MIil0tT/noIfS/nrLJzVb5nG8r68tNV0lH5hmMqDC73StWL05xlouc 2NUPZURjIG8= =/0kY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: CWD -- Jacking in from the "Keys to the Kingdo
by Chris Adams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 5 Jul 96 12:41:54 -0800, wendigo(a)gti.net wrote: >: It would actually take less creativity to do the other things, bypass the >: config.sys, etc. The child would thus be perhaps a little TOO creative. :) >B) Forget the CONFIG.SYS ... what about kids using Macs or some future > "Kid Safe" system that has the filters in an eeprom? I'm talking > about bypassing the censorship on the client-server level. Relatively > platform independent. I doubt it will ever happen, for two reasons: 1) people always forget passwords and/or have system problems. There will always be a need for system disks or CDs. If parents don't trust their kids (and the ones most worred don't; if they trust their kids, they're not going to worry about what they're doing in the first place) chances are they're still not going to lock up the CD and keep the kid from borrowing one from a friend, etc. Also, most parents tend to be sloppy with passwords - it's easy to observe them entering it, etc. 2) Most parents need the kid to keep the computer working. They a) don't have the knowledge/skill to keep the kid out and b) need to give him access to repair things. If their kid is in fixing a problem, dropping the security software is trivial (better yet: "Mom. Guess what! The bug was in NetNanny"). // Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> - Webpages for sale! Se habla JavaScript! // Automatically receive my resume or PGPKEY by sending email with a subject // of 'send PGPKEY' or 'send resume'. Capitalization counts so be careful!

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Junk E-Mail
by sdirge＠mail.concentric.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I know that this is off topic but.. How can I stop these idiot's sending me junk E-mail. I am posting this here because this group sounds like one of the only intelligent groups of people on the internet. Whatever mailing list I got on is sure working I am getting 2-3 junk e-mail's per day. Thanks Steve

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