<daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU> (Wei Dai) writes:

I don't understand why there is so much talk about guns here lately. Unless someone comes up with a weapon that has some very unusual economic properties, individuals cannot hope to compete with governments in the domain of deadly force. If we have to resort to physical violence, we've already lost!

Think about it: if we can defend ourselves with guns, why would we need crypto?

I am fairly certain that as an irregular army soldier I could inflict a substantial amount of damage upon an occupying military. With maybe $20k in equipment and several hundred hours of training, you could make life very difficult for any luckless squad that happens your way. Multiply that by 100 million armed citizens and you see that armed civilian resistance *can* defeat an occupying army. Certainly in times of "peace" information/infrastructure warfare is much more cost effective for the guerilla -- but once they start sending armored patrols around armed with 600 surplus M-16 rifles and having [un]official rules of engagement which include sniper fire on the wives and children of citizens not convicted of any crime, burning tens of people alive for their religious beliefs, forcibly sodomizing suspects with wooden rods, and passing laws which cripple the 1st by making it a crime to read, it's perhaps worth looking at other methods of resistance. (wow, that approached Hettingan length while having little in common with his style :) Plus, I honestly believe certain people who lacked the foresight or desire to use anonymity have increased the chances of illegal unconstitutional government action against them. It'll be a lot harder to quietly kill someone and keep it out of the news if they're prepared to fight back to the extent that I gather Tim May and others are prepared. Even if being armed does nothing more than let the world know they have declared war against the constitution, it's worth it. Me, I still plan to get out before high powered riflery becomes anything other than a sport. The Seychelles are looking remarkably tempting... (I still say steel core ammo is the way to go, especially in 5.56 NATO and 7.62 Soviet. There exist plenty of vests which have rifle hardplate to stop those rounds -- even 7.62 NATO rounds. 7.62 NATO AP/API, though, is a bit tougher, buying you substantial time) Hacking on Eternity DDS, Ryan [Not actually a gun toting lunatic, nor does he play one on TV, but rather keeps them in a safe, and carries knives instead. Yay Massachusetts. I hope this does not spark a discussion of how to stop a government assault force armed with only a knife (hint: the answer is not "in parallel")] [*ObCrypto* (it's getting really hard to do this every time): AOLserver (a nice web server formerly from GNN/navisoft) punted their 128bit SSL module distribution *EVEN TO US CITIZENS* due to commerce department fuckedness. Anyone know where I could get a copy? It would really suck to have to patch the 40bit one into a 128bit version, since they do not distribute source. Sigh. But I've started to use it for insecure stuff because it's cheaper than Stronghold (read: free) and does some cool database stuff easier than apache. And (cool db stuff + free) is more important than (secure) or (secure and easily configured and supported) for this.] -- Ryan Lackey rdl@mit.edu http://mit.edu/rdl/