Re: Eggs at Customs (fwd)
At 11:36 PM 1/15/96, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
There has (fortunately!) been a big crackdown recently on the illegal pet bird import trade, something akin to the slave trade of the 19th century for those of us who like pet birds. One of the methods people use to import birds is to wear special vests full of pockets for rare bird eggs. If the person who wrote this was coming in from SE Asia, especially Australia, then this was very possibly the meaning of the question.
Yes, Cliff Stoll described how this plot was hatched in his book "The Cuckoo's Egg." (This was a yolk, folks. I stoll it.) P.S. I am persuaded that the importation of rare tropical birds into the U.S. is a GOOD THING, and that the attempts to ban such imports are misguided eco-fundie efforts. Diversity will be enhanced by having the birds in the U.S., and if left in their native jungles, most will die anyway. Better a pampered tropical bird in a gilded cage than lunch for some predator, or starvation as the jungles are cleared by slash-and-burn farmers. The same data transparency of borders, where truckloads of stuff come in easily, means that truckloads of birds, eggs, embryos, babies, etc. can also make it in. Most such shipments are only caught when surveillance yields a shipping schedule...such surveillance is becoming more and more difficult because of the technologies we push. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
On Mon, 15 Jan 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
At 11:36 PM 1/15/96, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
There has (fortunately!) been a big crackdown recently on the illegal pet bird import trade, something akin to the slave trade of the 19th century for those of us who like pet birds. One of the methods people use to import birds is to wear special vests full of pockets for rare bird eggs.
Yes, Cliff Stoll described how this plot was hatched in his book "The Cuckoo's Egg."
(This was a yolk, folks. I stoll it.)
For that you must be punished.
P.S. I am persuaded that the importation of rare tropical birds into the U.S. is a GOOD THING, and that the attempts to ban such imports are misguided eco-fundie efforts. Diversity will be enhanced by having the birds in the U.S., and if left in their native jungles, most will die anyway. Better a pampered tropical bird in a gilded cage than lunch for some predator, or starvation as the jungles are cleared by slash-and-burn farmers.
Scientifically invalid. Releasing non-native species can really wreck an ecosystem because of the lack of evolved countermeasures. See kudzu weeds in the South, or the Mediterranean fruit fly in California, or pigs and sheep on tropical islands, or humans with big brains and opposable thumbs anywhere but Africa. The better engineered solution would be to feed the slash-and-burn farmers some other way. Kind of analogous to an engineer like Paul Kocher taking a hard look at crypto systems that had only been analyzed by pure mathematicians. You need to feed the sniffers real entropy, not just highly evolved math. -rich
Well, who is a non-native? If it walked across the Bering Sea land bridge a few thousand years ago, does it have a higher moral value than if it hopped a ride on the bilges of a cargo ship in 1957? If you want to isolate the rainforest until mankind has had time to completely inventory all the species and test them to see if they are the next cure for malaria or an exploitable raw material, well, now you have my sympathy. Alan Horowitz alanh@norfolk.infi.net
On Mon, 15 Jan 1996, Alan Horowitz wrote:
Well, who is a non-native? If it walked across the Bering Sea land bridge a few thousand years ago, does it have a higher moral value than if it hopped a ride on the bilges of a cargo ship in 1957?
Morality has nothing to do with it. It's the speed of the evolution. If you walk across the straits, the system has the time to react and restore a dynamic equilibrium. If you immediately release a new species with no natural predators, the system is shattered, and it might not survive. This is not to say that ecosystems and societies are static -- they evolve constantly, displaying unpredictable punctuated equilibrium (Steven J. Gould was right, Edmund Burke and Karl Marx were wrong). Usually, the mutations (in biology or politics) are minor, and almost always, they are localized. Large-scale catastrophes like a meteor hitting the earth and killing all the dinosours (or whatever happened), or nuclear war, or whatever, are larger punctuation than normal. Sometimes the ecosystem recovers, sometimes a completely new ecosystem forms, sometimes all life but the cockroaches is wiped out. Politically and morally, I'm a follower of the realist school (Morgenthau et al). It is right for the US to dominate the world because it has the most power. On the level of international relations, it doesn't matter how it got that way; trying to reverse the power realities would be like trying to dam the Pacific Ocean. Of course, in specific cases in the present, we can make moral choices, and if we feel like it, we can help out the present victims of historical "immorality" (like the fact that the descendants of slaves weren't born into the same inheritance as the descendants of the Carnegies and Vanderbilts).
If you want to isolate the rainforest until mankind has had time to completely inventory all the species and test them to see if they are the next cure for malaria or an exploitable raw material, well, now you have my sympathy.
Sympathy is the wrong emotion for both politics and science, but then, what you're talking about isn't sympathy. Cute cuddly seals and frieldly dolphins and teddy bears get "sympathy" among mainstrean "environmentalists," and the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Federation calendars raise a lot of money, but it's the plants and bugs and bacteria that are really important. Elephants and blue whales look big and important to us, but they're really inconsequential in the larger scheme of biodiversity. They could go extinct and the planet doesn't really care. But kill the blue-green algae and the trees, and we're all dead. -rich
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - From the node of Timothy C. May: : : P.S. I am persuaded that the importation of rare tropical birds into the : U.S. is a GOOD THING, and that the attempts to ban such imports are : misguided eco-fundie efforts. Diversity will be enhanced by having the : birds in the U.S., and if left in their native jungles, most will die : anyway. Better a pampered tropical bird in a gilded cage than lunch for : some predator, or starvation as the jungles are cleared by slash-and-burn : farmers. Aside from the amusing belief that caged life is preferrable, let me point out that importation of species can be pretty nasty. Zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, Mongooses in Hawaii, those nasty snakes from Guam ... etc, etc. : : The same data transparency of borders, where truckloads of stuff come in : easily, means that truckloads of birds, eggs, embryos, babies, etc. can : also make it in. Most such shipments are only caught when surveillance : yields a shipping schedule...such surveillance is becoming more and more : difficult because of the technologies we push. All right! Horseman #5 ... the bird smuggler ;) PS -- Going to consolidate posts here. Can someone recommend a good text for an intro to Number Theory? - ----- Mark Rogaski 100,000 lemmings rogaski@pobox.com aka Doc, wendigo can't be wrong! http://www.pobox.com/~rogaski/ VMS is as secure as a poodle encased in a block of lucite ... about as useful, too. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMPs+AdT48ZIkMoEtAQEd0Qf7BPYNJJCqRXmrA76oEFZ0PJdaQ5A7YXRh bgvBlH1AwLTRCRooqR1lNdp1+Hc8Y2KuYu3GXWHKhttoVRVMkdnBqgzKv/9nZWw/ bCfUxmhDgdVbEBuxxg3Czpzov72g1rqDisFzr6v6ukz8Q9mJKzLI6lPuPMIP4Ebi HI58uDXokdCjp7atL6ubndX2TptHiz00qszPZp9NUphJJAtAqB4N0geTzK1JK1/B xSdhsDtYT4fVV2DbFZUu+K/0jPBDCRGDD5pOkATmR79utmspYCScTRAYlnumVoPS ALKME0ATPdbeSE1Kjn1Yf++20XxnSAb9JjSO19e3X9ZcMKeq7Vw/CQ== =iJzW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Tue, 16 Jan 1996, Mark Rogaski wrote:
PS -- Going to consolidate posts here. Can someone recommend a good text for an intro to Number Theory?
My school's using Elementary Number Theory and Its Applications 3rd edition (I think it is just out) by Kenneth H. Rosen, Addison-Wesley, it seems to cover a bit of crypto and the latest improvements in factoring. For more crypto orientation, Schneier recommends A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography 2nd ed, Neal Koblitz, Springer-Verlag, 1994. The intro to number theory is more of a review, but the crypto part kicks in after page 54 and spans the rest of the book. Getting your Num Theory from Rosen and your crypto from Koblitz is a good bet, as your local university library's likely to have both (mine had both 2nd eds, just picked 'em up as a matter of coincidence). Rosen seems to be one of those "standard textbooks" (we're using his Discrete Math text too) and as for Koblitz, books by Springer have extremely high chances of turning up in universities. (It's in the yellow Grad Texts in Math series, not the familiar silver Lecture Notes in CS series)
PS -- Going to consolidate posts here. Can someone recommend a good text for an intro to Number Theory?
I've been reading "Number Theory and it's History" by Oystein Ore (1948, reprinted by Dover books, $9.95). It's old, but it's understandable to a computist like me, and if it's in print after 58 years, it can't be bad :) Simon
[ Dear Perry, this is CYPHERpunks, not WHINERpunks. Please resist the temptation to flame me for being off-topic since flaming for being off-topic is just as off-topic as this is. ] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: Mark Rogaski <wendigo@pobox.com> cc: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com> Subject: Better diversity through cages (?!) In-reply-to: Mark Rogaski's message of "Tue, 16 Jan 1996 00:58:49 EST." <m0tc4Px-000jQZC@gti.gti.net> Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 00:58:49 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Rogaski <wendigo@pobox.com> - From the node of Timothy C. May: : : Diversity will be enhanced by having the birds in the U.S., and : if left in their native jungles, most will die anyway. Better a : pampered tropical bird in a gilded cage than lunch for some : predator, or starvation as the jungles are cleared by : slash-and-burn farmers. Aside from the amusing belief that caged life is preferrable, let me point out that importation of species can be pretty nasty. Zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, Mongooses in Hawaii, those nasty snakes from Guam ... etc, etc. Good point. If you view nature as a market system of survival capital, trying to seriously alter it rather than just living off of it is asking for trouble. This is true for command economy governments, slash-and-burn farmers, and species importers. Nature (the market) will continue, but the meddlers (humans) are risking their chance to be players. Two more reasons why the better-diversity-through-cages is weak: - many (most?) species tend not to reproduce in captivity. - most illegal imported animals die in transit. The tropical bird has better odds of survival against the predator and starvation than it has against smugglers and gilded cage operators. If you consider the odds of reproducing, they're *much* better with the predator and starvation than with the smugglers and cagers. Rick -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMPvhVJNR+/jb2ZlNAQHIvQQApvMNs63M5XRtMvvpKlG7kR6PSF3xUI1r 6yGn6KtMAJKY5vW/bbF7EIo7azakiMein8QGlNdpBXjXfuvBs2RM/oPTq2qcKPQH 7f3DdLYcCmbXwElE35KpowJbqRG7cXpzV426W7YJi3ZuUCBA/uUaISyDMrgCPIVI aquISSze6ko= =fHbg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Rick Busdiecker Please do not send electronic junk mail! net: rfb@lehman.com or rfb@cmu.edu PGP Public Key: 0xDBD9994D www: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/rfb/http/home.html send mail, subject "send index" for mailbot info, "send pgp key" gets my key A `hacker' is one who writes code. Breaking into systems is `cracking'.
Rick Busdiecker writes:
[ Dear Perry, this is CYPHERpunks, not WHINERpunks. Please resist the temptation to flame me for being off-topic since flaming for being off-topic is just as off-topic as this is. ]
Sorry, but no. If you know that your posting is off topic, you shouldn't be posting it, period. Reply in private or some such. The S to N ratio in these parts is dropping rapidly, and its largely the fault of people who think "just one more off topic post can't hurt". One person doing it causes little damage, but unfortunately dozens upon dozens feel the urge every day. I usually just reply to such posts in private and note that they are off topic, but since you insisted on bringing it up in public... Perry
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 12:45:03 -0500 From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> Rick Busdiecker writes: > [ Dear Perry, this is CYPHERpunks, not WHINERpunks. Please resist > the temptation to flame me for being off-topic since flaming for > being off-topic is just as off-topic as this is. ] Sorry, but no. Then either you must think that this *is* WHINERpunks, or you are a hypocrit. I usually just reply to such posts in private and note that they are off topic, but since you insisted on bringing it up in public... Well, you sure post a hell of a lot of them to the list. Rick
(Sorry Perry, I just couldn't resist :-> ) On Tue, 16 Jan 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Sorry, but no.
If you know that your posting is off topic, you shouldn't be posting it, period. Reply in private or some such. The S to N ratio in these parts is dropping rapidly, and its largely the fault of people who think "just one more off topic post can't hurt". One person doing it causes little damage, but unfortunately dozens upon dozens feel the urge every day. What is a toad machine?
In the spirit of John's evolutionary programming post, I submit that cypherpunks and all its components (on topic posts, jya's news reports, sheer paranoia, clueless newbies wanting to join or leave, Klaus! VFP, flamewars, perryflames...) constitute a dynamic and evolving optimizing computational (enough fuzzy words for you?) system of which we are the calculators. Think of toad.com as an input/output box to interface us cells(not to mention a strange attractor for every cook on the net). We have a topic (or goal) of cryptography and anonymity, codewriters to give us something other than politics to talk about, a persistent random noise function to increase diversity, and Perry as a factor of noise limitation. Obviously massively parallel. Is this a genetic algorithm, a semantic net, or some other model? I dunno. As I hear the *plonking* sound of killfiles closing in on me and my inane post, I wonder...where will it go? A topic for further study. ;-)
Can't we just solve the problem by making it a moderated list; and make Perry the moderator? -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
On Tue, 16 Jan 1996, David Lesher wrote:
Can't we just solve the problem by making it a moderated list; and make Perry the moderator?
SHIT NO! NO NO NO NO NO! NO WAY IN HELL NO! :) Cypherpunks will NOT be moderated. Filtered, spindled and stapled, but never moderated. ========================================================================== + ^ + | Ray Arachelian | Amerika: The land of the Freeh. | _ |> \|/ |sunder@dorsai.org| Where day by day, yet another | \ | <--+-->| | Constitutional right vanishes. | \| /|\ | Just Say | | <|\ + v + | "No" to the NSA!| Jail the censor, not the author!| <| n ===================http://www.dorsai.org/~sunder/=========================
On Tue, 16 Jan 1996, David Lesher wrote:
Can't we just solve the problem by making it a moderated list; and make Perry the moderator?
There are moderated versions of the list, I think cypherpunks-lite is one of them. You have to pay for the privilege. IMHO noise is self-regulating on mailing lists (as opposed to usenet). My preferred method of accessing cypherpunks is through news://nntp.hks.net/hks.* ,which also gets you a few other worthwhile related lists (like cyberia-l, ipsec, mixmaster...). All the benefits of being a newsgroup without having to be on usenet. I am only currently subscribed directly because it is the beginning of the term and I can afford the time. I subscribe and unsubscribe several times a year as time constraints permit. I think this is far preferable to having the raw master list edited according to someone's tastes. You get the flavour you prefer. Killfiles exist. It is a tribute to the usefullness of the forum and the flexibility of the medium that there are so many ways of accessing this source of info. Back to your regularly scheduled crypto. (Speaking of sublists, whatever happenned to the DC-net list mentioned in the cyphernomicon? Is this a figment of my imagination or was there any code written that I might partake of? Btw, why call it a DC network when it is really a ring? Maybe I haven't taken a good enough look at the protocol. Dinner calls. :> )
participants (10)
-
Alan Horowitz -
David Lesher -
Mark Rogaski -
Perry E. Metzger -
Ray Arachelian -
Rich Graves -
Rick Busdiecker -
s1018954＠aix2.uottawa.ca -
Simon Spero -
tcmay＠got.net