from:"R. A. Hettinga"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003976162830991rtmo=LxLdbLhdatmo=rrrqpg=/et/00/12/12/waus12.html

ISSUE 2027 Tuesday 12 December 2000

Outback killers tortured 10 victims
By Barbie Dutter in Adelaide

Magistrate gags bodies- in barrels case - [12 Dec '00] - News.com.au

Snowtown murders [9 Jun '00] - The Age

Snowtown: a bank vaults deadly math - The Crime Library

THE grisly details of Australia's worst serial killing began to unfold
yesterday as a court was told how eight mutilated bodies were discovered
dumped in barrels inside the vault of a disused bank in a tiny Outback
township.

snip

John Bunting, Mark Haydon and Robert Wagner are accused of murdering 10
people between December 1995 and May 1999. James Vlassakis is accused of
five murders. All four refused to enter a plea.

The killings were allegedly carried out as part of a macabre social
security fraud. Most of the eight men and two women killed had close
associations - including, in some cases, family ties - with those accused
of their murder. Elizabeth Haydon, was a mother of eight married to one of
the accused.

Wendy Abraham QC, opening the prosecution case, said the four had collected
the welfare benefits and disability allowances of their dead victims. They
even impersonated some of those they had killed to conduct banking
transactions or to deal with the social security office. Before being
murdered, some of the victims were made to repeat scripted phrases, which
were taped and left on the answering machines of their relatives and
friends to divert suspicion from their disappearance, she said.

snippage

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000. Terms Conditions of reading.
Commercial information. Privacy Policy. Information about
www.telegraph.co.uk.

--
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Geodesic Definition from a Mathematician (PhD, MIT, 197BLA) Re:Questions of size...


...who like most of us, agrees with Tim *lots* more often than he likes to
admit. :-).


Cheers,
RAH
Who won't wax (too) rhapsodic about how Tim, in his Amazonian example
below, described a "geodesic recursive auction" (digital silk road, Hughes
"piracy" market, whatever) ducking...

--- begin forwarded text


Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 08:02:26 -0700
From: Somebody
Subject: Re: Questions of size...
To: "R. A. Hettinga"  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Bob,

The distinction between geometry, topology, and, presumably, homology, begs
the question.

You, following Huber, have used the word geodesic to refer to connections
of minimal cost. In the economic manifold (surface) this is presumably the
only important metric (local distance function).  The analogy is
mathematically precise in all respects, and therefore correct.

I'd have flogged you into submission long before this if it were not so.

Geodesics, or more properly, geodesic paths, are locally defined.  There is
not necessarily a geodesic between two specific points.  In a
differentiable manifold with a sufficiently smooth metric, there are
geodesic paths in every direction through every point, however.  Whether
there is one of those paths going to some other given point is a question
of connectivity and other topological issues.  Two separate spheres are a
single differential manifold.  No great circle path -- the geodesics of
each surface -- connects any point on one sphere with any point of the
other.

Unfortunately, geodesics may also be the longest paths between two points.
Just go the wrong way on the great circle determined by two ends of the
Mass Ave bridge.  It's a path of stationary length: slight variations in
the path make hardly any difference in its length.  Unfortunately its
length is maximum rather than minimum.

By the way, have I mentioned that I HATE it when I agree with Tim?


Somebody's .sig

----
  From: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Subject: Re: Questions of size...
  Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 19:16:57 -0500
  To: Some People, Privately



--- begin forwarded text


Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 15:51:26 -0800
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Questions of size...
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED]

At 5:56 PM -0500 12/11/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
At 9:48 PM + on 12/11/00, Ben Laurie wrote:


  Chambers defines geodesic as "the shortest line on a surface between two
  points on it"

Thank you. It works in all dimensions, and, thus it's topological, right?


Topology is typically not concerned with distance metrics. Doughnuts
and coffee cups and all.

Geometry is what you're thinking of, presumably.

Not as sexy as saying something is "a topologically-invariant
geodesic fractally-cleared auction space," but that's what happens
when buzzwords are used carelessly.

By the way, one topological aspect of a geodesic dome, to go back to
that, is that each node is surrounded by some number of neighbors.
Applied to a "geodesic economy," this image/metaphor would strongly
suggest that economic agents are trading with their neighbors, who
then trade with other neighbors, and so on.

Tribes deep in the Amazon, who deal only with their neighbors, are
then the canonical "geodesic economy."

This is precisely the _opposite_ of the mulitiply-connected trading
situation which modern systems make possible.

So, aside from the cuteness of suggesting a connection with geodesic
domes, with buckybits as the currency perhaps?, this all creates
confusion rather than clarity.


--Tim May
-- 
(This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the
election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)

--- end forwarded text


-- 
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R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

---End of Original Message-

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Digital Economy Jargon Generator


At 4:04 PM -0500 on 12/12/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:


 http://www.mccullagh.org/cgi-bin/jargonizer.cgi

Great.

Now all we need is one of those translators, like the one that turns text
into something the Muppet's Swedish Chef would say...

:-).

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Digital Economy Jargon Generator


At 4:29 PM -0500 on 12/12/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:


 I've got an idea! How about one that would make text look like it was
 spoken by a Canadian!?!

:-).

Ooo! Oooo! A canadian *cryptographer*!!!

SouthPark-KylesMom Bomb Canada.../S-K

(Yes, I get the joke, and consider myself properly spanked. I'll go see
*myself* how the Swedish Chef thing works. It can't be that hard, right?)

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Digital Economy Jargon Generator


At 4:43 PM -0500 on 12/12/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:


 (Yes, I get the joke, and consider myself properly spanked. I'll go see
 *myself* how the Swedish Chef thing works. It can't be that hard, right?)

As Senior Wences(sp?) used to say, "Eeesy for jou to say, for me, ees
deeficult!)

Okay, so it does searches and replaces on *characters* and doesn't just
insert buzz words per se, which means, like the website of the same name
says, it does dialectizing, and not jargon per se.

From the Mac source (Chef 1.1) I found on info-mac, the Swedish Chef one's
pretty simple, with just a few character substitution rules. The hardest
one I found, from a quick perusal in Google, is Cockney, with something
like 600 rules, which I haven't actually looked at, yet.

Creating text which sounds like me -- much less John Young -- may (or may
not :-)) be "eesy". Though, it does remind me of the concordance
text-biometric stuff people around here used to fool around with to
identify anonymous cypherpunk messages from, um, various cranks...

:-).

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

DCSB: Chuck Wade; ACH in Internet Payment

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 19:11:34 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: DCSB: Chuck Wade; ACH in Internet Payment
Cc: Chuck Wade [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ted Byfield [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Scott Moskowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

[Note that the Harvard Club is now "business casual". No more jackets and
ties... --RAH]

  The Digital Commerce Society of Boston

 Presents

Chuck Wade,
 Senior Researcher, Internet Payments and Security,
CommerceNet

Legacy Electronic Payment Systems meet the Internet:
  Using ACH for Internet Payments

 Tuesday, January 2nd, 2000
 12 - 2 PM
  The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
One Federal Street, Boston, MA

Electronic payment systems have been around for more than a
quarter century, but are characterized by a legacy of private
networks and mainframe transaction processing systems. Recently,
there have been a variety of new schemes proposed and even
implemented to bring legacy epayment systems to the Internet.
This is especially true of the Automated Clearing House (ACH)
system, which is evolving rapidly to support new interfaces with
Internet-based payment services.

This talk will focus on some of the approaches being used to
adapt the legacy ACH system to new Internet payment services, and
will explore some of the positive and negative implications of
these developments.

Chuck Wade is a Senior Researcher for CommerceNet focusing on
Internet payments and information security. Prior to joining
CommerceNet, he was a Principal Consultant in the Information
Security Group of BBN Technologies. At BBN, he led Electronic
Commerce initiatives and client engagements, with most of his
consulting work within the Financial Industry. As one of the
original participants in the FSTC eCheck Project, Chuck has been
involved with over-the-Internet electronic payments since the mid
1990's. He also contributed directly to the architecture, design,
deployment and testing of various large, mission-critical
networks, including the trading floor network for the New York
and American Stock Exchanges.

In a career spanning a quarter century, Chuck spent all of the
'90s with BBN (now a part of Verizon) as a Consultant and Systems
Architect. During most of the '80s, he worked at Motorola
directing the Advanced Technology Group for the Codex division.
He has also worked in the minicomputer industry and university
research. He holds both Sc.B. and Sc.M. degrees from Brown
University in Electrical Engineering.

This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2000, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of
the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is
$35.00. This price includes lunch, room rental, A/V hardware if
necessary, and the speakers' lunch. The Harvard Club has relaxed its
dress code, which is now "business casual", meaning no sneakers or jeans.
Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be
unable to refund the price of your meal if the Club finds you in
violation of what's left of its dress code.

We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really*
know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by
Saturday, December 30th, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks
payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be
sent back.

Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston,
Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard
Club of Boston", in the amount of $35.00. Please include your e-mail
address so that we can send you a confirmation

If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've
had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance),
please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something
out.

Upcoming speakers for DCSB are:

February 6  Ted Byfield  Decentralized DNS Control
March 6 Scott Moskowitz  Watermarking and Bluespike

As you can see, :-), we are actively searching for future speakers. If
you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, are a principal in
digital commerce, and would like to make a presentation to the Society,
please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Committee, care of Robert
Hettinga, mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED].

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Re: Questions of size...

2000-12-11 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:48 PM + on 12/11/00, Ben Laurie wrote:


 Chambers defines geodesic as "the shortest line on a surface between two
 points on it"

Thank you. It works in all dimensions, and, thus it's topological, right?

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Anarchism vs. Right-Wing 'Anti-Statism'

2000-12-11 Thread R. A. Hettinga


http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos05508.html

Looks like the Wobblies live...

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: IBM Uses Keystroke-monitoring in NJ Mob Case (was Re:

2000-12-10 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 2:06 PM -0800 on 12/10/00, petro wrote:


 RAH whinged

...and in error. My apologies.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Gates to Privacy Rescue? Riiight! (was Re: BNA's Internet LawNews (ILN) - 12/8/00)

2000-12-08 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 8:30 AM -0500 on 12/8/00, BNA Highlights wrote:


 THOUGH TECHNOLOGY MIGHT HELP PRIVACY
 A meeting of business leaders in Redmond, Washington led to
 a frank debate over the insufficiency of North American
 action on consumer privacy and the potential for technology
 to play a key role in protecting such privacy.  For example,
 Bill Gates announced that the next version of IE would
 better allow consumers to ascertain Web site privacy
 policies.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/technology/08SECU.html

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Questions of size...

2000-12-08 Thread R. A. Hettinga


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

At 8:46 AM -0800 on 12/8/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:


 Just by the way, how widespread is this use of the word 'geodesic'?

Not especially. :-).

 Offhand, I'd refer to many of the things I've seen it used for here
 as 'distributed' or 'fractal'.  Is 'geodesic' an accepted term of art
 for a network or protocol in which all the parts work roughly the same
 way?

As with everything else I know of any use, I stole it. :-).

It comes from Peter Huber's 1986 "The Geodesic Network", containing
(Huber's?) observation that as the price of switches gets lower, like
with Moore's "law", the price of network nodes gets lower versus the
price of network lines, and the network changes from a hierarchical
network with expensive switches with the most expensive switches at the
top to a geodesic one, with most switches tending toward the same price
in the aggregate.

Huber stole "geodesic" from Bucky Fuller, who in turn stole it from
topology, where it means the straightest line across a surface. In three
dimensions it's a great circle, for instance, the straightest line across
a sphere, which is what "geodesic" translates to literally. Bucky called
his domes geodesic, because when you pushed on a point on the dome force
radiated out in all directions to the ground.

Of course, the internet is the mother of all geodesic networks, right?

:-).

I've expropriated the word "geodesic" in all kinds of outlandish ways,
like a cash settled auction-priced single intermediary (with lots of
competing intermediaries, of course, just one between each buyer and
seller) internet market is a geodesic market, like my claim that
societies map to their communication architectures and thus we're moving
from a hierarchical society to a geodesic one, and so on.

There's a collection of essays on geodesic markets on
http://www.ibuc.com, and pointers there to other rants of mine with the
"G" word in them, as well.

Cheers,
RAH



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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Re: Fractal geodesic networks

2000-12-08 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 5:49 PM -0800 on 12/8/00, Bill Stewart wrote:


 At 02:47 PM 12/8/00 -0600, Jim Choate emetted:
'fractal geodesic network' is spin doctor bullshit.

 Well, buzzword bingo output anyway.

:-). "Neological" is so much more... euphemisitic...

And the Internet is most certainly NOT(!) geodesic with respect to packet
paths.

 more like a geodesic dome filled with boiled spaghetti...

Depends on what dimension you're measuring. For fun, I pick time.

I leave a definition of fractal time to the more mathematically creative
out there.

Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

RE: Knowing your customer

2000-12-07 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:20 AM -0500 on 12/7/00, Trei, Peter wrote:


 Are you saying that a visiting foreigner can't open a bank account in the
 US?
 I'd be quite suprised if this is the case.

I would be surprised if you didn't need at least a tax ID number, myself.

I'm not sure, because I don't have one, but I think that people with Green
Cards have to have Social Security Numbers, right?

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

RE: Knowing your customer

2000-12-07 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:29 AM -0500 on 12/7/00, Trei, Peter wrote:


 Green carders, yes. Visiting foreigners who are not
 working, not neccesarily. Tourists certainly not.

 How about if James Higginsbottom opens an account
 in the London branch of Citibank? Does he need a US
 SSN to do so? (I don't think so). Can he use the account
 in the US (I suspect he can).

I think we're wandering off into the weeds a bit here.

The London branch of Citibank, is, of course, a bank in the UK, subject to
all banking laws there.

Our friend above uses his UK account in the US almost certainly at an ATM
machine, like I do from my US bank in the UK, and/or credit card, and no
other way. You can certainly get a dollar-denominated bank account in
London from Citibank, London is the currency capital of the world, but, and
on no real data here, I doubt you could write ACH cleared and routed checks
through it. NACHA is trying to do this better, but, in general, you need a
correspondent relationship, and/or account, or something, at a bank here in
order to write checks on that UK account.

My original point, possibly taken too literally at the outset here, is that
in most jurisdictions it is more or less impossible to get a US bank
account without a social security number, especially if you're a US
citizen. Duncan Frissell popped up here on cypherpunks with pointers to the
odd bank in South Dakota or somewhere, 4 or 5 years ago, where you could
get a bank account without a SSN. It was exceptional in its example, and I
would doubt it possible even now.

I am not, of course, a banking lawyer, but I certainly hang out with enough
of those folks these days, I've certainly had enough of this stuff shoved
into my head over the years, and, I expect that to get a bank account
without a Social Security number in most states of the US, you probably
need to prove that you are indeed a foreign national, *and* provide a valid
passport as proof of same, and that, frankly, the passport number would be
used *somewhere* as a proxy for SSN where possible.

There ain't no free lunch as far as identity and book-entry settlement
goes, anymore, folks, even in "tax-haven" jurisdictions, as we're now
seeing.

Modern nation-states have bound up so much of their regulatory and tax
structure into book entry settlement, that it is very hard, more probably
impossible, to get a bank account in this country without being completely,
positively, whatever that means, identified -- biometrically identified, if
it were cheap enough, and certainly with a state-issued identification
number.

To paraphrase Doug Barnes, "and then you go to jail" is the penultimate
error-handling step in book-entry settlement. That means that the
nation-state gets in your face, and gets your number, end of story.

That is a central fact of financial operations won't change until something
proves cheaper that book-entry settlement. Which, of course, lots of people
on cypherpunks, and elsewhere, are busy working on.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

RE: Knowing your customer

2000-12-07 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 8:59 AM -0800 on 12/7/00, James A. Donald wrote:


 Many years ago

Ah.

:-).

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: IBM Uses Keystroke-monitoring in NJ Mob Case (was Re:BNA'sInternet Law News (ILN) - 12/5/00)

2000-12-06 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:56 PM -0800 on 12/5/00, Greg Broiles wrote:


 On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 05:16:03PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
 The legal fight over whether the monitor was legal and whether the
 information so obtained are in fact records of criminal activity is a
 side-show.  It remains practical evidence of how insecure computer
 equipment / OS's and pass-phrase based identity authentication combine to
 reduce the effective security of a system.


 I fully support this comment that the whole issue of "legality"  is a
 "side show."

 Exactly - not every attacker represents law enforcement,

Right.

My own personal opinion is that the more *money* is controlled with
cryptography and moved/stored on the internet, the stronger those
technologies will become, and, unfortunately, not for any other reason.
Like Whit Diffie has said, "cyberwar" will be "fought" by businesses, and
not nation-states.

Government black-bag jobs are just one of many kinds of theft...

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Knowing your customer

2000-12-06 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:04 AM -0800 on 12/6/00, Greg Broiles wrote:


 Or am I thinking of something else?

You're thinking of something else, but you're close enough. For instance,
there are laws in most jurisdictions about requiring a social security
number to open a bank account, for any of a number of reasons including
credit checks, and checks on how many, um, negative-funded, bank accounts
you might have hanging out there before you opened this one. More to the
point, since interest is taxable income for individuals, and a tax
deductible expense for corporations, social security numbers are required
in order to pay you interest.

[And, yes, Duncan may be right, you might be able to spoof an SSN at them
somehow, but I don't know anyone who's actually done it, admitted it in any
public detail, and not been somehow razzed legally for it.]

Kind of reminds me of TEFRA, in 1993 or so, which outlawed bearer bonds by
making interest payable on them "non-tax-deductible" (taxable, for those in
Palm Beach County).

[The answer to this "lie to the government, don't get a bank account"
problem, which any persistent cypherpunk subscriber knows, is, of course,
to have payment systems which don't *need* physical identity for
non-repudiation of transactions and the subsequent requirement of the force
of a nation-state to make settlement risk manageable: bearer certificates
based on cryptographic protocols like blind signatures, which will,
frankly, only *really* be possible, soup-withdrawl to nuts-deposit, when a
bearer currency issue is *itself* reserved by other digital bearer assets,
instead of just a book-entry account somewhere.]

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: IBM Uses Keystroke-monitoring in NJ Mob Case (was Re:BNA'sInternet Law News (ILN) - 12/5/00)

2000-12-05 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 08:47:20 -0800
From: Somebody
To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: IBM Uses Keystroke-monitoring in NJ Mob Case (was Re:
BNA'sInternet
 Law News (ILN) - 12/5/00)

An instructive case.  Apparently they used the keystroke monitoring
to obtain the pgp passphrase, which was then used to decrypt the files.

The legal fight over whether the monitor was legal and whether the
information so obtained are in fact records of criminal activity is a
side-show.  It remains practical evidence of how insecure computer
equipment / OS's and pass-phrase based identity authentication combine to
reduce the effective security of a system.

"R. A. Hettinga" wrote:

 At 8:30 AM -0500 on 12/5/00, BNA Highlights wrote:

  KEYSTROKE MONITORING AND THE SOPRANOS
  A federal gambling case against the son of a New Jersey mob
  boss may provide the courts with the opportunity to weigh in
  on the privacy issues surrounding keystroke monitoring.  The
  FBI's surveillance included the use of such technology to
  reproduce every stroke entered on a computer.  The defense
  plans to challenge the FBI's surveillance methods at
  pre-trial defense motion.
  http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/12/04/front_page/JMOB04.htm

 --
 -
 R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
 "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
 [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
 experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: IBM Uses Keystroke-monitoring in NJ Mob Case (was Re: BNA'sInternet Law News (ILN) - 12/5/00)

2000-12-05 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 2:37 PM -0500 on 12/5/00, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:


 Very interesting, but what does IBM have to do with the case?  Did you
 mean to type "FBI"?

Absolutely.

God knows why I did it...

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Secure communications + Human rights

2000-12-05 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 22:02:18 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Secure communications + Human rights
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Technomads,

Good day from Western Australia!  I recently met with Peace Brigades
International (PBI) http://www.igc.org/pbi/ , and was asked how naive users
could use affordable secure communications from extreme remote
locations  I don't have experience with PGP or other privacy
technologies.  Is there anything like a "PGP net", listserv, or email-based
discussion technology available that incorporates security or privacy
techniques??  If this is not an appropriate topic for the Technomads group,
please email me directly with any suggestions, thanks!!

Peace on Earth,

 - Marcus Endicott
   http://www.mendicott.com

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Authenticate the adult field, go to jail...

2000-11-29 Thread R. A. Hettinga


I'm sure Mr. Obvious meant to say the following publically.

Frankly, I give up. Go read Brands and Chaum, though I bet you'd dispute
them, as well, on what I just said.

Yes, I do believe that, given small enough bearer cash transactions,
authentication of things like the "adult" bit will be sold, and for cash.

Finally, a payment system is, by definition, morality-neutral, or at least
orthogonal. Biblical imprecations of money being the root of all evil
aside...


Cheers,
RAH

--- begin forwarded text


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:48:36 -0800
Old-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Authenticate the "adult field", go to jail...

RAH writes:
 I don't think you understand how bearer credentials would work.

 With blinded bearer credentials, prosecutors wouldn't have much of a leg to
 stand on, since the authenticator is only validating the *existence*, or
 not, of a blinded age credential. With bearer credentials, authenticated in
 exchange, of course, for cash :-), the authenticator of those credentials
 has no idea *who* is asking for that proof of age.

You're saying that the customer comes to the porn merchant with a
blinded credential.  The merchant goes to the authenticator with the
credential, and pays for it to be authenticated.  The blinding is there
to protect the customer, as the credential is unlinkable to his credit
card which he used to prove his age.

 There's no direct sales contact with any particular content vendor.
 Validation of age would probably be done in somekind of graded auction
 market, anyway.

Actually there is direct sales contact with the content vendor.
The notion that he is going to come to the authenticator and pay CASH for
EVERY customer contact is absurd.  It's completely uneconomical until we
have a worldwide ecash infrastructure.  If that's what you had in mind,
shut up for ten years and speak up when you have something relevant
to say.

What will really happen is that the porn merchant will have an account
with the authenticator, and he'll pay every month or so based on how
many authentications have been done.  That's how business works.

This means that there IS sales contact, and the authenticator DOES KNOW
who his merchants are.  It is exactly the same business relationship as
exists today, except that the customers have the benefit of blinding to
protect their identities.

  Thomas Reedy, 37, and his wife, Janice Reedy, 32, of Fort Worth, are
  accused in an 87-count indictment of providing access to several
child-porn
  Internet sites by verifying subscribers' credit cards and assigning them
  passwords.
 
  The Reedys maintain that they did not know that some of the pornographic
  sites they provided access to contained illegal child pornography.
 
  In fact if anything this kind of prosecution is an argument *against*
  getting into the ecash/ecredential business, especially if it is focused
  on porn as some have proposed.  All you need is for someone to use it
  to sell or authorize access to kiddie porn, and you're going to jail.

 It would be interesting to see this tested in court. There is sizeable
 legal precedent for the issuers of bearer cash, say a nation-state, not
 being held liable for purchases using that cash. The same could be said for
 issuers of bearer credentials.

Somehow I doubt that the Reedys are going to get away with saying that
governments aren't held liable for misdeeds commited with their currency,
so they shouldn't be blamed when someone sells bad stuff using the
Reedy's own services.

Look at what they're accused of!  Providing access to kiddie porn by
verifying credit cards and assigning passwords.  That's exactly what
your bearer cert business will do except instead of passwords they'll
issue blinded tokens.

This is especially true when the de facto market for such a business
is only the worst porn, the porn that the customers really don't want
anyone to be able to find out they were involved with.  This kind of
information comes out in court.  You can't hide it.

Obvious.


Total Internet Privacy -- get your Freedom Nym at http://www.freedom.net

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Authenticate the adult field, go to jail...

2000-11-29 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 7:27 PM -0500 on 11/29/00, Steven Furlong wrote:


 Not a good comparison. The nation-states which issue the currency are
 also the nation-states which make the laws and have (or attempt to have)
 a monopoly on guns.

:-).

 How well are or were private currencies insulated from legal action?
 Say, in 19th-century United States?

Indeed.

We'll just have to see, I suppose. For IBUC so far I've met much more
regulatory enthusiasm for lower transaction cost than I have resistance to
potential anonymity.

As I'm fond of saying, reality, especially economic reality, is not optional.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Mulle kybernetiK releases the MulleCipher Cryptography Framework

2000-11-28 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 17:44:38 +0100
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Nat! [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Mulle kybernetiK releases the MulleCipher Cryptography Framework
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
List-Id: Developing applications for Mac OS X macosx-dev.omnigroup.com

...to an unsuspecting audience. Get it at

http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/software/MulleCipher

This is a small Framework that contains CRC32, MD5, SHA1, Blowfish and
Twofish implentations.  It's just the source and it should compile/work on
Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server w/o problems. It will probably not work out of
the box for Intel machinery, but should eventually with some some minor
tweaking.

Enjoy
Nat!

P.S.Feedback, Patches, Bug reports encouraged

___
MacOSX-dev mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-dev

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

DCSB: Win Treese; So, Where's All the Financial Cryptography?

2000-11-28 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 14:09:19 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: DCSB: Win Treese; So, Where's All the Financial Cryptography?
Cc: Win Treese [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ted Byfield [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Scott Moskowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[Note that the Harvard Club is now "business casual". No more jackets and
ties... --RAH]

  The Digital Commerce Society of Boston

 Presents

Win Treese,
   Fellow, VP Technology,
 Open Market, Inc.

   Fermi's Revenge:
Systems Thinking for Financial Cryptography

 Tuesday, December 5th, 2000
 12 - 2 PM
  The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
One Federal Street, Boston, MA

The technology of financial cryptography has promised many changes for
the way that individuals and organizations do business, yet little
progress has been made in real systems. In part, this is because the
technology proposals--the crypto, the protocols, and occasionally
code--are usually presented with little or no context for the total
system in which they play. This talk will look at some of the systems
issues, both technical and non-technical, that are critical for
successful implementations of financial cryptography.

Win Treese is a Fellow and Vice President of Technology at Open Market,
Inc. At Open Market, he has contributed to the architecture and
implementation of many of its products, with a particular focus on
security. Before co-founding Open Market in 1994, he was a member of the
research staff at Digital Equipment Corporation's Cambridge Research
Laboratory. In 1999, Win was named a "High-Tech All Star" by Mass High
Tech. He is co-author of the book "Designing Systems for Internet
Commerce" and chairs theTransport Layer Security (TLS) Working Group of
the Internet Engineering Task Force.

This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on
Tuesday, December 5th, 2000, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of
the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is
$35.00. This price includes lunch, room rental, A/V hardware if
necessary, and the speakers' lunch. The Harvard Club has relaxed its
dress code, which is now "business casual", meaning no sneakers or jeans.
Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be
unable to refund the price of your meal if the Club finds you in
violation of what's left of its dress code.

We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really*
know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by
Saturday, December 2nd, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks
payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be
sent back.

Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston,
Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard
Club of Boston", in the amount of $35.00. Please include your e-mail
address so that we can send you a confirmation

If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've
had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance),
please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something
out.

Upcoming speakers for DCSB are:

TBD Ted Byfield  Decentralized DNS Control
TBD Scott Moskowitz  Watermarking and Bluespike

As you can see, :-), we are actively searching for future speakers. If
you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, are a principal in
digital commerce, and would like to make a presentation to the Society,
please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Committee, care of Robert
Hettinga, mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED].
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
~
To unsubscribe from this list, send a letter to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In the body of the message, write:  unsubscribe dcsb-announce
Or, to subscribe,   write:  subscribe dcsb-announce
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R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,

Judge: Cyber-Anarchists (was Re: GigaLaw.com Daily News,November 17, 2000)

2000-11-17 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 4:37 AM -0800 on 11/17/00, GigaLaw.com wrote:


 Judge in DVD Case Calls Coders "Cyber-Anarchists"
  U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who sided with the motion picture
 industry in a landmark DVD-descrambling lawsuit this year, said the coders
 who crafted the DeCSS DVD-decrypting utility are "what might be called
 cyber-freedom fighters, or perhaps cyber-anarchists." "Little did I know,
 when I was scribbling away, that (the) decision would receive so much
 attention," Kaplan said at a "Beyond Napster" symposium organized by
 American University's Washington College of Law.
  Read the article: Wired News @
 http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40226,00.html
  Further reading on GigaLaw.com: "Is Hyperlinking Legally at Risk?" @
 http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/isenberg-2000-10-p1.html

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Atlanta Fed on a Theory of Financial Privacy

2000-11-17 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 17:52:53 -0800
From: Somebody
To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Atlanta Fed on a Theory of Financial Privacy

No, it doesn't use the "B" word, but it is fun to see someone _define_
money as "a technology that allows consumer A to anonymously conduct
a transaction with firm B."  I am stirred to view the referenced literature
in which record-keeping and credit are related to currency.  One of the
most common counter-arguments to bearer transactions has been to
point out that the cost of centralized bookkeeping is falling and our
ability to scale it is rising (e.g. DTC, FederalReserve, NSCC, CREST.
These, the argument goes, handle huge centralized bookkeeping and
credit scorekeeping chores with a very low per item cost.)  In fact this
argument is mentioned in this tract.  The insight here is to note that
transactions carry a "privacy right" with them, iff they can be conducted
anonymously, and this can affect the bargaining process.  For the time
being, it remains an intellectual/academic exercise whether anonymous
e-money is the most cost effective solution, or whether privacy can
be economically grafted onto huge bookkeeping data processing systems.
To some of us the answer is intuitive, but I'm sure it will come down to
"bits on the wire" before we have very many believers.

"R. A. Hettinga" wrote:

 Lions and Tigers and Coasian Microeconomics, oh, my...

 http://www.frbatlanta.org/publica/work_papers/wp00/wp0022.pdf

 No mention of the "B" word, but, then, they're not supposed to, yet, right?

 :-)

 Cheers,
 RAH

 Name: Theorytrxpriv.pdf
Theorytrxpriv.pdfType: Acrobat (application/pdf)
 Encoding: base64

   --------
 --
 -
 R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
 "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
 [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
 experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

While we're talking about the microeconomics of transactionprivacy...

2000-11-16 Thread R. A. Hettinga


http://www.frbatlanta.org/publica/work_papers/wp00/wp0022.pdf

Complements of the Atlanta Fed.

Lions and Tigers and Coasian microecon, oh, my...

No mention of the "B" word, but, then, they're not supposed to, yet, right?

:-)


Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

CBS De-Legitimizes the Florida Absentees

2000-11-15 Thread R. A. Hettinga


I just heard a CBS "Eye-on-America" spot doing an indignant "who *are*
these absentee voters, anyway" take.

We've been always at war with Oceania.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Lawyers leading in Florida!

2000-11-15 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:06 AM -0800 on 11/15/00, Tim May wrote:


 the same lawyers who got O.J. off will get Gore into
 the White House.

Yup.

We're going for the Nullification Trifecta here, boys and girls:

1. Jury Nullification -- O.J.
2. Legislative Nullification -- Cigar Willie meets the Blue Dress
3. Electorial Nullification --  Gore goes to Klaatu without a Baruda Nicto

The republic is over, welcome to the empire?

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Katz /. piece on improving political technology

2000-11-14 Thread R. A. Hettinga


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/09/2042224

While I understand the rubber-hose vote-coercion problem, My own opinion
still remains that we need to solve the voting problem for *business*
reasons, and that's how we'll get to use it first. You need secure voting
protocols in order to control equity, after all, and, frankly, I'm not
nearly as skeptical as others are about it. Without any reasons for my
intuition here, I think that some of the problems some cryptographic
experts have about internet voting are mostly bugbears, like "perfect"
kidnapping scenarios for digital cash itself, for instance.

And, of course, I think that the "problem" of selling votes is more one
of attitude adjustment. After all we sell votes in corporations all the
time, and, sooner or later, we're going to treat our force-control
structures as non-monopolistic businesses instead of monopolistic
nation-states. In the same way that religious freedom gave us religious
denominations with democratic governance, sooner or later economic
freedom will give us force-control that can be sold just like any other
asset. Voteauction.com is a pointer to that, frankly.


So, workable solutions for voting will happen first in *corporate*
governance, in shareholder voting, proxies and so on. After we solve the
problem of voting about *money*, mere politics will be a piece of cake.

Financial cryptography is the only cryptography that matters. Political
cryptography is a mere sideshow by comparison.

Cheers,
RAH





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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...

2000-11-11 Thread R. A. Hettinga


http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PKIMisFit.html


Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact Ill-Fitted to the Needs of the
Information Society

Abstract

It has been conventional wisdom that, for e-commerce to fulfill its
potential, each party to a transaction must be confident in the identity of
the others. Digital signature technology, based on public key cryptography,
has been claimed as the means whereby this can be achieved. Digital
signatures do little, however, unless a substantial infrastructure is in
place to provide a basis for believing that the signature means something
of significance to the relying party.

Conventional, hierarchical PKI, built around the ISO standard X.509, has
been, and will continue to be, a substantial failure. This paper examines
that form of PKI architecture, and concludes that it is a very poor fit to
the real needs of cyberspace participants. The reasons are its inherently
hierarchical and authoritarian nature, the unreasonable presumptions it
makes about the security of private keys, a range of other technical
defects, confusions about what it is that a certificate actually
authenticates, and its inherent privacy-invasiveness. Alternatives are
identified.
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

ip: REPUBLICANS CAN'T WIN THIS WAR By: Carole Ward

2000-11-10 Thread R. A. Hettinga

dicted to the drip system. Add a
desire for open borders so their friends and relatives can share the
spoils. [these are traditional Anti-Republicans who equate a brown man
voting Republican with chickens voting Colonel Saunders.]

4. Trial Lawyers. --they feed on the conflict between warring parasites. A
utopian police state guarantees that everyone is guilty of something,
sometime. It's a bonanza for defense attorneys and prosecutors as well.

5. Gays. --they cling to dems, the only ones who understand their pain.
["Heterosexuals probe each other's body parts on prime time TV. Why can't
we?"]

Depressed readers, there is an upside to this --really.

This grumpy libertarian offers that we need MORE socialism and MORE utopian
blather, not less, if we're going to have the knock-down-drag-out necessary
to regain the soul of our Jeffersonian Republic. It's the drip drip drip of
Utopianism in the first half of this century that left us in this
hazy-semi-conscious-lock-step, each time gubmint says "pay up" or else.

Why not say "Bring it on mutha!" Bring it all on - all of it. Utopians in
all three branches of government. Confiscate the guns. Photo cop in every
intersection. Breathalyzer and retina scans at freeway ramps. 70% death tax
[just to churn the economy for the benefit of the "needy".] Cradle to grave
healthcare will endure only until somebody discovers that certain
"behaviors" mean higher "costs". Utopians may be surprisingly niggardly
with public dollars when exponential demand by the "unfit", "imperfect",
and "unhealthy", drain the treasury of discretionary dollars which could be
used to rescue aging rock climbers and provide necessary paths for bicycle
riding city dwellers.

 We will make them hate each other as much as they hate us.

But wait, you say, we can't do this. It means the end of life as we know
it. Utopia requires a police state. And a police state ends constitutional
government. Constitutional government has already been reduced to what the
meaning of is - is. It's whatever they say it is so long as they deliver
the goods.

Election 2000 can only be described as 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what
to have for dinner. So whaddya think is cookin?

--
Carole Ward writes from Santa Fe and is a frequent contributor to Ether Zone.
Carole Ward can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 Published in the November 16, 2000 issue of Ether Zone.
 Copyright © 2000 Ether Zone. (http://etherzone.com)
 Reposting permitted with this message intact.

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Stars' bank details revealed on Internet

2000-11-09 Thread R. A. Hettinga


So, boys and girls, which do you think is safer, bearer cash and negotiable
securities stored anonymously all over the net in m-of-n hashes, or in a
single bank account -- regardless of jurisdiction, for the sake of argument
-- with web access?

See? I knew you could...


Cheers,
RAH



-

CNN

Stars' bank details revealed on Internet

Roger Moore, a victim of Internet error  

November 9, 2000
Web posted at: 7:22 AM EST (1222 GMT)

ZURICH, Switzerland -- The bank details of several show business stars,
including former James Bond actor Roger Moore, were posted on the public
Internet for a week as a result of an error by a Swiss bank.

A technical glitch revealed the stars' secret bank account numbers, private
addresses and money transfers on a Credit Suisse Group Web site, the bank
acknowledged on Thursday.

That meant that Internet users could get a rare glimpse into account
details of such stars as Moore, Swiss entertainer DJ Bobo and German pop
star Udo Juergens.

The Swiss Blick newspaper said in a front-page story that several stars
were affected by the inadvertent publication of details of 675 money
transfers, but did not say exactly how many.

Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second-largest bank, confirmed the report and
said it had shut down a test Web site where the details appeared.

'First-class scandal'

"We are investigating how exactly that could have happened and have closed
down the page," CS spokesman Georg Soentgerath told CNN.com.

"A third person put data in there which should never have gone in there.
Unfortunately it could lead to a loss of confidence in the bank."

The problem cropped up when a Swiss agency that coordinates royalty
payments sent the confidential data to Credit Suisse as a test of its
transfer system. But the numbers inexplicably appeared on the bank's
Internet banking Web site, Direct.net.

"This is a first-class scandal," Juergens told Blick. "How can I feel
secure at such an institution?"

"I am mad as hell. I am going to close my two accounts at CS," Swiss singer
Polo Hofer was quoted as saying.

Reuters contributed to this report.
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans

2000-11-09 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 10:13:26 +
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Fearghas McKay [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans
Reply-To: "Usual People List" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
List-Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/14562.html

BSA deploys imaginary pirate software detector vans
By: Kieren McCarthy
Posted: 08/11/2000 at 10:57 GMT

The Business Software Alliance aka The Pirate Busters is growing so
frustrated in its hopeless efforts to cut down on software piracy
that it has decided propaganda and misinformation is the way forward.

Visitors to Glasgow Central Station yesterday were surprised to be
confronted by a Ford Transit van with a small radar and rusty Sky
satellite dish mounted on top. What was this apparition? Why, the
BSA's latest weapon in the war against software-stealing scum.

A wise reader asked one of the "consultants" what exactly the dishes
were able to do and was informed they could detect PCs running
illegal software. When pushed a little further, she admitted the van
was "just a dummy" but the BSA still had a fleet of the real things
rushing around Scotland detecting and nabbing unsuspecting criminals.

Expressing incredulity, things turned nasty and our loyal reader was
threatened. He'd "better watch out" because the BSA with its new
super software-finding equipment will "get him easily". He quickly
ran off and slid into the shadows before he was photographed and his
face wired to Interpol and the CIA.

Can you believe this? This has to be one of the most insane things
we've heard in years. The BSA needs to take a valium and lay down for
a bit. ®

Related Stories
BSA offers £10K bounty to catch software thieves

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: A very brief politcal rant

2000-11-08 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:36 AM -0500 on 11/8/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 If the citizens of Missouri chose to elect a deceased person as Senator,
I think
 that's exactly what they should get.

Would that we were all so fortunate. Imagine, a whole senate full of dead
people. Well... empty seats representing dead people. Or something.

Missouri, the show me state, indeed.


Let's see, somebody could go around and collect petition signatures for
famous  ex-sons-of-Massachusetts. *Lots* of those. John Adams? Sam
Adams?... HmmmWhat was the name of the first colonist killed at Concord?


Oops.

Wait a minute. That would not, in fact, get the result we desire. In fact,
we'd get the worst of all possible worlds.

If I recall correctly, dead Republicans *don't* vote.

Only dead *Democrats* can do *that*...

;-).


Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Jim Bell's House Being Searched

2000-11-06 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 2:55 PM -0800 on 11/6/00, Alex B. Shepardsen wrote:


 Hopefully we'll hear from Jim soon.

Here's hoping he doesn't plead this time, though to do that, he's going to
need some legal funds...

Cheers,
RAH
Whose ability to predict the outcome of these things is, historically,
abominable...
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

psst! wanna buy some anonymity, meester?

2000-11-03 Thread R. A. Hettinga



--- begin forwarded text


Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 08:41:55 -0800
From: Somebody
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: psst! wanna buy some anonymity, meester?

In which a skeptical eye is cast on various
privacy enhanced web shopping tools. Here's
one gem from the article:

"Anonymity works in the favor of fraudsters,"
  -- VP at Visa.

http://www.startribune.com/viewers/qview/cgi/qview.cgi?template=tech_aslug=tech03

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

While we're talking about income mobility... (was Re: ip: NCPAPolicy Digest 11-2-00)

2000-11-03 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:52 AM -0600 on 11/2/00, National Center for Policy Analysis wrote:


 UP AND DOWN THE INCOME LADDER

 Politicians addicted to class warfare rhetoric use the term "the
 rich" as though it were some permanent economic class. But more
 moderate analysts point out that individuals move up and down
 the income ladder with startling frequency.

 Are those individuals with higher incomes right after graduation
 from high school or college still on the top rung 10 or 20 years
 later? Anyone who has attended a school reunion knows that the
 end results are often surprising.

o   A Social Security-based study has documented that more
than 70 percent of male workers move significant
distances up or down the income ladder in a span of only
15 years.

o   Earnings histories tracked by Social Security show that
less than 50 percent of the people on the top or bottom
rung in any year are still on the same rung 10 to 15
years later.

o   On the bottom rung, the "stagnation rate" is only 35
percent.

o   Another study, using the National Longitudinal Survey of
Youth, has revealed that 60 percent of the young people
who start out working for minimum wages no longer work
for such low wages two years later -- and only 15 percent
have minimum-wage jobs three years later.

 Some observers point out that many academics fail to appreciate
 the dynamics of economic mobility because they work in rigidly
 hierarchical university systems where promotion must be granted
 by one's seniors.

 The evidence is overwhelming, however, that such immobility is
 the exception, not the rule.

 Source: Bradley Schiller (American University School of Public
 Affairs), "Who Are the Rich?" Washington Times, November 2,
 2000.

 For text
 http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2000112193044.htm

 For more on Income Mobility
 http://www.ncpa.org/pd/economy/econ7.html

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Bush Calls Administration Encryption Policy Outdated (was Re:GigaLaw.com Daily News, October 31, 2000)

2000-10-31 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 5:19 AM -0800 on 10/31/00, GigaLaw.com wrote:


 [POLITICS]
 Bush Calls Administration Encryption Policy "Outdated"
  Responding to a question about encryption technology in an ongoing
 Internet debate, Texas Gov. George W. Bush castigated President Clinton
 and Vice President Gore for what he called "outdated" technology policy.
 "The Clinton administration has repeatedly been slow to recognize the
 realities of the international market for encryption products regulated by
 our nationís export laws," Bush said in a written response posted on the
 Web White  Blue Web page.
  Read the article: Newsbytes @
 http://www.newsbytes.com/news/00/157435.html

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Susan Landau on crypto policy

2000-10-31 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 12:13:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Christof Paar [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: WPI Crypto Seminar: ;
Subject: Susan Landau on crypto policy
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: Christof Paar [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Please note the different day, time, and *building* of this seminar talk.
For those coming from outside: Fuller Labs is the large concrete building
next to Atwater Kent.  - Christof

***

ECE GRADUATE SEMINAR

TITLE:  Have the Crypto Wars Been Won?

PRESENTER:Dr. Susan Landau
 Sun Microsystems Laboratories

Place: Fuller Labs, Rm 320

Date and Time: Thursday, Nov. 9, 11 AM

ABSTRACT: Telecommunication has never been perfectly secure, as the
Cold War culture of wiretaps and international spying taught us.  Yet
many of us still take our privacy for granted, even as we become ever
more reliant on telephones and the Internet.  The security of these
transactions has become a source of wide public concern and debate.

Cryptography is a solution, but because cryptography can provide
perfectly concealable communications, over the last quarter century
the U.S. government has sought to prevent its proliferation. As a
result there have been numerous battles between academics and
industry on the one hand, and the U.S.  government on the other, over
the publication and deployment of strong cryptographic systems.  In
January of this year, in a major change, the U.S. government removed
a number of export restrictions on cryptography.

In this talk I will put current cryptography policy in the context of
decisions over the last twenty-five years, and I will discuss the
legal background behind the government controls, the purpose of the
export regulations, and the subtleties behind the remaining
restrictions.  I will examine: is the battle over, and have the
crypto wars been won?

BIOGRAPHY: Susan Landau is Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems
Laboratories. Before joining Sun, she was a faculty member at the
University of Massachusetts and Wesleyan University, and held
visiting positions at Yale, Cornell, and the Mathematical Sciences
Research Institute at Berkeley.  She and Whitfield Diffie have
written ``Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and
Encryption,'' which won 1998 Donald McGannon Communication Policy
Research Award.  Landau is also primary author of the 1994
Association for Computing Machinery report ``Codes, Keys, and
Conflicts: Issues in US Crypto Policy.''

--
DIRECTIONS:

The WPI Cryptoseminar is being held in the Atwater Kent building on
the WPI campus. The Atwater Kent building is at the intersection of
the extension of West Street (labeled "Private Way") and Salisbury
Street. Directions to the campus can be found at
 http://www.wpi.edu/About/Visitors/directions.html

ATTENDANCE:

The seminar is open to everyone and free of charge. Simply send me a
brief email if you plan to attend.

TALKS IN THE FALL 2000 SEMESTER:

9/27  Christof Paar et al., WPI
  Elliptic Curve Cryptography on Smart Cards without Coprocessors

10/11 Prof. William Martin, WPI
  Introduction to resilient and correlation-immune boolean functions

10/25 Prof. Berk Sunar, WPI
  Implementing New Public-Key Schemes

11/9  Susan Landau, Sun Microsystems Laboratories
  Have the Crypto Wars Been Won?

11/22 Seth Hardy, WPI
  Elliptic Curve Point Counting with the CM Method in Java

12/6  Scott Guthery, Mobile-Mind
  Who are You? Novel Means of Human Authentication

TBA   Adam Woodbury, WPI
  Public-key Cryptography in Constraint Environments
  (MS Thesis presentation)

See
  http://www.ece.WPI.EDU/Research/crypt/seminar/index.html
for talk abstracts.

MAILING LIST:

If you want to be added to the mailing list and receive talk
announcements together with abstracts, please send me a short email.
Likewise, if you want to be removed from the list, just send me a
short email.

Regards,

Christof Paar

! WORKSHOP ON CRYPTOGRAPHIC HARDWARE AND EMBEDDED SYSTEMS (CHES 2001) !
!  Paris, France, May 13-16, 2001 !
!   www.chesworkshop.org  !

***
 Christof Paar,  Assistant Professor
  Cryptography and Information Security (CRIS) Group
  ECE Dept., WPI, 100 Institute Rd., Worcester, MA 01609, USA
fon: (508) 831 5061email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
fax: (508) 831 5491www:   http://ee.wpi.edu/People/faculty/cxp.html
***

For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" with one line of text: "help".

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto:

Bush Gore On Crypto

2000-10-31 Thread R. A. Hettinga



--- begin forwarded text


Subject: Bush  Gore On Crypto
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 17:34:23 -0800
From: Mark Talbot [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Bush:
http://www.webwhiteblue.org/debate/2000-10-30/bush/question/

Gore:
http://www.webwhiteblue.org/debate/2000-10-30/gore/question/

MST

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Phil Agre on trusted intermediaries (was Re: [RRE]notes andrecommendations)

2000-10-29 Thread R. A. Hettinga




At 6:15 AM -0800 on 10/29/00, Phil Agre wrote:


 It is often held that Internet privacy problems will be eliminated by
 a new class of online third parties called "trusted intermediaries".
 The idea is that, instead of visiting Amazon.com directly, you would
 visit Trustme.com, and then you would go "through" that site to get to
 Amazon.  Now, this scheme can work at a basic level if Amazon doesn't
 have to know anything about it.  That's what Zero Knowledge Systems
 http://www.zeroknowledge.com/ is doing.  But that only works if the
 relationship between the customer and the vendor is relatively simple.
 A third party that requires Amazon's cooperation, for example because
 of its distinctive interface for processing pseudonymous requests for
 sensitive personal information, seems much less plausible to me.  What
 company is going to allow an intermediary to get between it and its
 customers?  Amazon?  Bank of America?  It doesn't seem likely.  They'd
 have to worry that the intermediary would add its own services or take
 money to redirect the customer to competitors.  Those firms could feel
 compelled to cooperate with an intermediary if the intermediary became
 well-established, but if most online marketplaces become monopolies
 or near-monopolies then this isn't likely.  Trusted intermediaries
 are not an entirely useless idea.  But like most companies pioneering
 new technologies they will have to establish themselves niches in the
 short term before they can even understand the nature of the problem
 in the long term.

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

paycash payment system ver. 1.xx

--- begin forwarded text

From: "Victor Dostov" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: paycash payment system ver. 1.xx
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 13:54:36 +0400
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: "Victor Dostov" [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Paycash, digital cash payment system, released production version 1.xx. It
can be downloaded at English section of www.paycash.ru. Current pilot
version has about 10,000 users what is about 1-2% of active Russian internet
users. Concerning current growth rate it is expected that in the next 6
month this number will increase five times. To the moment the system has
operating representative companies in Russia, Latvia, Ukraine and USA.

For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" with one line of text: "help".

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Dealing with Spam from Esther Dyson


At 6:47 PM -0700 on 10/27/00, Tim May wrote:


 So, Esther Dyson, whom I have never corresponded with, is spamming me
 with this crap.

Me too.

Maybe her people just learned about the majordomo "who" command...

Cheers,
RAH
Clueless is as, etc...
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Hard Shelled ISP?


At 7:51 PM -0700 on 10/27/00, Tim May wrote:


 But then you are tilting at windmills, as no one who is reputable has
 made such a claim, that anonymity will always cost more than
 non-anonymity.

Actually, Wei Dei, and others of reputation, used to say it here quite
frequently...

And, no, I don't think I tilt at windmills anymore than than the average
cypherpunk.

Finally, I think we're both saying the same thing, and you're the one
arguing the rather distinctionless difference.

viz,

At 10:38 PM -0400 10/27/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
 So, to put it another way, when privacy is *cheaper*, on a risk adjusted
 basis, than we'll have privacy, and not much until then.

 I expect most of us would agree to that, if they thought about it enough.

 The "risk adjusted" bit is, of course, the most important one, as noted
 quite comprehensively, in the above response to a fairly simple, albeit
 catchy, observation.

...which you seem to have conveniently ignored seemingly to perpetuate the
discussion, versus

At 7:51 PM -0700 10/27/00, Tim May wrote:
 As with the lock example, a lock almost always costs more than no
 lock. But the costs of having no lock may be much higher.


The cost of anything is the foregone alternative? Naww...

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Dealing with Spam from Esther Dyson


At 7:45 PM -0700 on 10/27/00, Tim May wrote:


 You didn't copy her (or the droids who read her mail for her) on your reply.

Actually, I did, but I accidently used the bcc field, in mis-copying same.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Gort in granny-shades (was Re: Al Gore goes cypherpunk?)

2000-10-25 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 4:17 PM -0400 on 10/25/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:


 The current version of majordomo allows for an authorized-poster file,

That's probably the way to do it, with all the anonymous remailers listed
in it, I bet.

Oddly enough, people who are clueful enough to use the current state of
remailer technology aren't clueless enough to spam with them. Or so it
seems from the content of remailer generated traffic I've seen, anyway.

Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Gort in granny-shades (was Re: Al Gore goes cypherpunk?)

2000-10-24 Thread R. A. Hettinga

not actual human beings. They're just
software.

Maybe, frankly, that's also why Albert, "Gort", Gore, Jr., a
died-in-the-hairshirt man-the-barracades Mailerian Crypto-Communist
disguised in a blue suit, white shirt, red tie, and, more recently, a
Ronald Reagan pomade -- when he's not disguised as a earth-toned
plaid-shirted pseudo-Gomer, or something else -- liked The Matrix so much.
He's just as much an ideologue as my friends and I are, and he objectifies,
and categorizes :-), his enemies as much as we do.

In his heart of hearts, "Gort" sees himself as Neo: donning his Virtual
Armani and titanium framed granny-shades every day in a never-ending fight
smash the forces of the Evil Capitalist Matrix.

Just wait, Al, until the financial cryptography of bearer transactions
teaches "capitalism", a Marxist name for what normal people should call
"economics", Al, to our very machines themselves.

Profit and loss on the device level. You ain't seen *nothing* yet, Komrade
"Gort". Klaatu Baruda Nicktoe, indeed.


In the meantime, the Matrix's supposedly masterful special effects, its
apparent main attraction, were, for the most part, pedestrian, and could
have been found in any music video -- or even commercial -- of the time.
Proof, to me anyway, that movies, and other filmed/taped media, will
continue to fall behind the technical curve in a world of emerging,
instantaneously-available, and, eventually, real-time programmable,
geodesic media. Sooner or later, things like internet games, and,
eventually, real-time immersive multi-role fantasy -- the *real* Matrix --
will relegate recorded film and video to the same status that painting, or,
better, grand opera now has: nice, even pretty impressive once in a while,
but too expensive, much less predictable and formulaic, to be useful for
anybody's actual entertainment.


Finally, the movie's preachy metaphysics was wheezing so badly -- in a
Kung-Fu-in-mirrorshades, "Listen to the Stones, Grasshopper", sense -- that
it needed Albuterol just to breathe.

That's probably because its entire premise, frankly, was so ancient even
its dust was heat-dead. As old and tired as Plato's cave, and, given that
both the Matrix itself, and the world proporting to be "real", had all the
implicit political repression and hierarchical social-stratification that
Plato himself wanted in his own _Republic_, it's no surprise that Albert
"Gort" Gore, Jr., a product of a private all-boys Epsicopalian education,
cured in marijuana-smoked socialism until college graduation and military
decommision, super-glued to 1980's born-again Baptist evangelicalism,
composted in "environmental" pseudoscience, and grafted onto the largest
cleptocracy this side of the Iron Curtain, liked it so very much.

As a much better philosopher, Bertrand Russell, noted once, communism
("Socialism", "Environmentalism", "Consumerism", whatever) is just really
feudalism, after all.

Enough, already, Al.

Gore: Klaatu Baruda Nicktoe!


Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Gort in granny-shades (was Re: Al Gore goes cypherpunk?)

2000-10-24 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:14 AM -0400 on 10/24/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:


 all depicted with
 deliberately cheezier CGIs to make it more "real" than the Matrix itself.

   *less*

Sheesh.

Edit twice, send once. Welcome to the net...

:-).

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

DCSB: Ramzan and Van Someren; Minting Millidollars for Streaming Cash

2000-10-24 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 19:13:50 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: DCSB: Ramzan and Van Someren; Minting Millidollars for Streaming
 Cash
Cc: Ted Byfield [EMAIL PROTECTED], Scott Moskowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Ron Rivest [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Adi Shamir [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

[Note that the Harvard Club is now "business casual". No more jackets and
ties... --RAH]

  The Digital Commerce Society of Boston

 Presents

  Zulfikar Ramzan,
  Financial Cryptographer,
 MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

   and

   Dr. Nicko Van Someren,
   Financial Cryptographer,
  Chief Technology Officer,
 nCipher PLC,

   "Aspen" vs. "Hancock":
  Minting Millidollars for Streaming Cash

 Tuesday, November 7th, 2000
 12 - 2 PM
  The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
One Federal Street, Boston, MA

Zulfikar Ramzan is currently a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology where he works with the Cryptography and Information
Security research group. At MIT, he works under the supervision of
Professor Ronald Rivest, co-inventor of the RSA public-key cryptosystem
and the Micromint micropayment protocol. He has authored a number of
publications in the field of cryptography and has presented his research
at various conferences in his field [including the International
Conference on Financial Cryptography --RAH]. He holds a number of patents
in data security, and some of his work is being considered for use in
several national and international standards in the wireless
communications industry. Mr. Ramzan has worked in cryptographic algorithm
and protocol design with the Wireless Secure Communications group at
Lucent Technologies. Upon graduation, Mr. Ramzan will join Lucira
Technologies.

Dr Nicko van Someren co-founded nCipher in 1996. As Chief Technology
Officer Nicko leads nCipher's research team and directs the technical
development of nCipher products. From 1993 to 1996, Nicko was Technical
Director and co-founder of ANT Limited, where he developed hardware
products and application software. Before that, he was employed as a
Researcher by Xerox EuroPARC and as a Software Engineer by Atari Research
and Perihelion Software Limited. Nicko has almost 20 years' experience in
cryptography, software and hardware product development, and holds a
Doctorate and First Class degree in Computer Science from Trinity
College, Cambridge, UK.

Zully Ramzan will talk about the proposed design of Aspen: a practical
Micromint implementation for IBUC, the Internet Bearer Underwriting
Corporation. In addition to going over the basic underlying protocols, he
will discuss the various design and parameter choices. He will also
examine the practical ramifications of these decisions. Thereafter he
will discuss potential modifications and extensions that may be of use
for future implementations of Aspen. The ideas he will present are based
on discussions with Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir, the two co-inventors of
Micromint.

Nicko van Someren will then talk about the practical problems surrounding
the implementation of a MicroMint. He will consider the engineering
issues along with the economic issues and look at how the nature of
MicroMint mandates various unhelpful deployment issues. He will also
consider alternatives to MicroMint which aim to solve these issues.
[Including a signature-based solution IBUC is calling, for lack of a
better moniker, "Hancock", which would be about 100 times cheaper to
prototype, much less get to market, and streaming cash on the wire in 3-6
months. :-) --RAH]

Want to know what IBUC's going to do *now*? Come to the November DCSB
meeting and find out.

Appropriately enough, this meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of
Boston will be held on Election Day, Tuesday, November 7th, 2000, from
12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One
Federal Street. The price for lunch is $35.00. This price includes lunch,
room rental, A/V hardware if necessary, and the speakers' lunch. The
Harvard Club has relaxed its dress code, which is now "business casual",
meaning no sneakers or jeans. Fair warning: since we purchase these
luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your meal
if the Club finds you in violation of what's left of its dress code.

We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really*
know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by
Saturday, November 4th, or you won't be on

Re: [spam score 10.00/10.0 -pobox] Re: A way to discourage advertising

2000-10-20 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 2:45 PM -0700 on 10/19/00, Bill Stewart wrote:


 "teergrube"

Cool.

An email version of the spider-trap somebody built at Sandia 4 or 5 years ago.

Teergrube means "tarpit", right?

Marvellous, just marvellous. Hang out on this list, you learn something,
even if everyone knows it before you do. :-).

Cheers,
RAH
Who can't wait to find a teergrube application for 0SX someday...
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Insurance (was: why should it be trusted?)

2000-10-19 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:11 PM -0500 on 10/18/00, Neil Johnson wrote:


 How does crypto-anarchy/libertarian/anarchy propose to deal with the
 "tragedy of the commons" where by doing what is best for each persons own
 interests they end up screwing it up for everyone (Overgrazing land with to
 many cattle is the example I've been given).

The tragedy of the commons is that nobody owns it.

:-).

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Re: Insurance (was: why should it be trusted?)

2000-10-19 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:20 PM -0600 on 10/18/00, Anonymous wrote:


 Crypto-anarchy is in fact not really anarchy, since it only addresses
 some kinds of authority, ie government, and only in certain situations.
 True anarchy involves the dissolution of other hierarchical relationships,
 including those that spring from private property. Get rid of private
 property and many of these problems disappear.

Actually, in "cypherspace" you can private property without law. If it's
encrypted and I have the key, it's my property.

No, Virginia, property is not theft.

:-).

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

London Anarchist Book Fair today?

2000-10-14 Thread R. A. Hettinga


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

Oddly enough, I'm in London today, I leave tomorrow evening, and, for no
reason I can personally fathom :-), I'm going to the Anarchist Book Fair
today, at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square (London, WC1).

The URL is here, http://freespace.virgin.net/anarchist.bookfair/, but
it doesn't say much more I already have.

Anyway, my mobile number here is 0777 364 1108, if you want to meet up
there.

I have a meeting later in the afternoon/evening, and I'm tied up tomorrow
until I leave in the evening, but I'm fairly sure I'll be back here in
London later on IBUC stuff, so we can probably arrange something then.

In the meantime, this afternoon anyway, I'll be, um, at the Fair. :-).

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

DCSB: Birthday Cake and Champagne -- DCSB's 5th Anniversary

2000-09-25 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 11:54:44 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: DCSB: Birthday Cake and Champagne -- DCSB's 5th Anniversary
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

   The Digital Commerce Society of Boston

 Presents

   well, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston, actually...

  "5 Years of Digital Commerce: An Anniversary Celebration"

Birthday Cake and Champagne will be Served
 Tuesday, October 3rd, 2000
12 - 2 PM
  The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
One Federal Street, Boston, MA
   The Club's Dress Code is Business Casual

At Noon, on Tuesday October 3rd, 1995, at the end of summer in a year
when all commerce on the internet was measured in mere tens of millions
of dollars, one year *after* the first book was bought over the net (not
on Amazon, but using a PGP-encrypted credit card between two people on
the cypherpunks list) the 29 folks below:

Richard BlattPierre Bouchard
Jeffrey Bussgang Travis J.I. Corcoran
John DeYoung Gerald Gold
Phillip Hallam-Baker Fredrick Hapgood
Steven Hecht Craig Heim
Robert A. Hettinga   Arthur Hutchinson
Owen D. Johnson  Howard Kaye, Jr.
John Kelly   Rohit Khare
Peter KrautscheidDavid Lash
Yezdi Lashkari   Norbert Leser
Richard Lethin   David Lindbergh
Peter Loshin Kevin B. McLellan
James O'TooleKen Rodrigues
Richard Salz Jeffrey Sutherland
Christopher Wysopal

...put on their suits and ties, went to Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
on the 38th floor of the once-Shawmut, then-Fleet, now-Sovereign Bank
Building.  They had lunch, signed a membership book, and formed Boston
Society for Digital Commerce, which, at the its next meeting, at the
suggestion of Donald Eastlake "to make it more instantiable", changed its
name to the Digital Commerce Society of Boston.

Since then, every first Tuesday of the month (yes, we were the *first*
first Tuesday, though not the First First Tuesday, :-)),with exactly two
exceptions, one an act of God and the other an act of the Harvard Club
and SailBoston :-), we've met, had lunch, schmoozed a bit, and listened
to various principals in the business of digital commerce talk about how
they do what they do.

At the end of this message is a very long list of those who have spoken
to DCSB so far. If we may say so, this list is indeed impressive, not
only for the quality of the speakers and who they became, or even were at
the time, but also for the prescience of their content.

A lot of things have happened since then. Commerce on the net will soon
be measured in trillions of dollars every year, and most people now
believe that *all* commerce of any consequence will happen on the net
soon enough.

Oh. And the Harvard Club doesn't require a jacket and tie anymore. Why?
Because of commerce on the internet, of course! :-).

This meeting, we'll do something of a reprise of the first. Everyone will
be given a chance to reminisce about the last 5 years, but more
important, to predict three things that they think will happen in the
next 5.  Plus ca change, and all that. See you next week!

This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2000, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of
the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is
$35.00. This price includes lunch, room rental, A/V hardware if
necessary, and the speakers' lunch. The Harvard Club has relaxed its
dress code, which is now "business casual", meaning no sneakers or jeans.
Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be
unable to refund the price of your meal if the Club finds you in
violation of what's left of its dress code.

We need to receive a company check, or a money order, (or, if we actually
know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by
Saturday, September 30th, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks
payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be
sent back.

Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston,
Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard
Club of Boston", in the amount of $35.00. Please include your e-mail
address so that we can send you a confirmation

If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've
had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance),
please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something
out.

Upcoming speakers for DCSB are:

NovemberZully Ramzan and
   Nicko van Someren  "A Micropayment Shootout"

As you can see, :-), we are actively searc

FC'01 Final Call for Papers

2000-09-23 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Resent-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Resent-Date: 23 Sep 2000 18:14:31 +0200
Resent-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 17:08:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Syverson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: FC'01 Final Call for Papers
Resent-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

   Final Call for Papers

 Financial Cryptography '01

 February 19-22, 2000
  Grand Cayman Marriott Beach Resort
 Cayman Islands, BWI

Original papers are solicited on all aspects of financial data security and
digital commerce in general for submission to the Fifth Annual Conference on
Financial Cryptography (FC01). FC01 aims to bring together persons involved
in the financial, legal and data security fields to foster cooperation and
exchange of ideas. Relevant topics include

Anonymity Protection   Infrastructure Design
Auditability   Legal/ Regulatory Issues
Authentication/Identification  Loyalty Mechanisms
Certification/AuthorizationPayments/ Micropayments
Commercial TransactionsPrivacy Issues
Copyright/ I.P. Management Risk Management
Digital Cash/ Digital Receipts Secure Banking Systems
Economic Implications  Smart Cards
Electronic Purses  Trust Management
ImplementationsWaterMarking

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS: Electronic submission strongly encouraged.
(Instructions available at http://www.fc01.uwm.edu).  Alternatively,
send a cover letter and 15 copies of an extended abstract to be
received no later than October 13, 2000 (or postmarked by October 6,
2000 and sent via airmail) to the Program Chair. The extended abstract
should start with the title, names of authors, abstract, and keywords
followed by a succinct statement appropriate for a non-specialist
reader specifying the subject addressed, background, main
achievements, and significance to financial data security. Submissions
are limited to 15 single-spaced pages of 11pt type and should
constitute substantially original material. Panel proposals are due no
later than November 27, 2000 (or postmarked and airmailed by November
20).  Panel proposals should include a brief description of the panel
and a list of prospective panelists.  Notification of acceptance or
rejection of papers and panel proposals will be sent to authors no
later than December 8, 2000.  Authors of accepted papers must
guarantee that their papers will be presented at the conference and must
be willing to sign an acceptable copyright agreement with Springer-Verlag.
Use the above address for electronic submissions or send hardcopy to:

Paul Syverson, FC01 Program Chair
Center for High Assurance Computer Systems  (Code 5540)
Naval Research Laboratory
Washington DC 20375  USA
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: www.syverson.org
phone: +1 202 404-7931

PROCEEDINGS: Final proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag in
their Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.  Preproceedings
will be available at the conference, but final versions will not be
due until afterwards, giving authors the opportunity to revise their
papers based on presentations and discussions at the meeting.

Program Committee

Matt Blaze, ATT Labs - Research
Yair Frankel, Ecash
Matt Franklin, UC Davis
David Kravitz, Wave Systems Corp.
Arjen Lenstra, Citicorp
Philip MacKenzie, Lucent Bell Labs
Avi Rubin, ATT Labs - Research
Jacques Stern, Ecole Normale SupÈrieure
Kazue Sako, NEC
Stuart Stubblebine, CertCo
Paul Syverson (Chair), Naval Research Laboratory
Win Treese, Open Market, Inc.
Doug Tygar, UC Berkeley
Michael Waidner, IBM Zurich Research Lab
Moti Yung, CertCo

Important Dates

Extended Abstract Submissions Due: Oct. 13, 2000
Panel Proposal Submissions Due: November 27, 2000
Notification: Dec 8, 2000

Electronic submission information:
See http://www.fc01.uwm.edu

General Chair
Stuart Haber, InterTrust STAR Lab

Electronic Submission chair
George Davida, UWM

Further Information about conference registration and on travel, hotels, and
Grand Cayman itself will follow in a separate general announcement. FC01 is
organized by the International Financial Cryptography Association.
Additional information will be found at http://fc01.ai

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Chaumian cash redux

2000-09-23 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 5:37 AM + on 9/23/00, Anonymous wrote:


 what it needs is some
 organisation (a suggestion Bob) to provide demos, business
 presentations and offer suit friendly support and legal
 interpretations of the protocol's patent unemcumberedness,

Suggestion noted about a year and a half ago. :-). See the url in my .sig,
below, which is *slowly* accreting new(er) stuff besides the pretty boat
picture...

 and it
 could perhaps itself compete head on with Chaum I patents now held by
 ECashTechnologies, and to some extent with Brands/Zero-Knowledge.

As an actual financial intermediary, IBUC would rather licence than
compete, thank you very much. :-).

In the meantime, some interesting stuff is afoot. Some of it can even be
made public pretty soon, I think...

Cheers,
RAH



-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Chaumian cash redux

2000-09-22 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 09:11:35 -0700
From: Somebody's .sig
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Chaumian cash redux

At the EFF end-of-RSA ball in SF last night David Chaum stood up and
said a few enigmatic words:  "Great to be here, and what's really
important now is that we all come together and have a common approach.
I've looked at the old ecash and, (wry smile) there were a few
problems.  But I've got some ideas about how to fix it and make it
available in a way which avoids the kind of wars we've had in the past.
I had wanted to make more of an announcement tonight, but the legal
stuff is (as always) taking longer than I'd anticipated.  So,  thank
you."  [applause]

Personal bits snipped

I have to believe that he's trying to "do the right thing".  After all,
he showed up at a patent-expiry party at the invite of cryptorights.org
and eff and was pal-ing around with the leadership.  My impression in
watching [...] him is that he is quite a lonely guy.  People
treat him with deference as a demi-god, but he's not really engaged with
the current "scene".

Snippage

Somebody's .sig
--- end forwarded text

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

nettime Rebirth of Guilds

2000-09-20 Thread R. A. Hettinga


Speaking of the devil...

Cheers,
RAH

--- begin forwarded text


From: "Ben Moretti" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 01:27:40 GMT
Subject: nettime Rebirth of Guilds
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: "Ben Moretti" [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[the actual report is well worth reading. i have held privately that the mutual
benefit societies and groups that played an important role in south australia
in the 19th century arose due to the inherent weakness of the state in the
colony, and that these groups would re-arise due to the same reasons. i know
adecdotally that there is a long line of these stretching back -- freemasons,
mechanics institutes, mutual benefit funds, etc -- so it only seems logical as
we move into a weak state mode of history, it would happen again. b.]

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/news/releases/2000/guilds.html

Rebirth of guilds-MIT Sloan researchers see a shift in workers'
organizations


CAMBRIDGE, Mass., September 1, 2000 -- Two researchers from the MIT Sloan
School of Management predict that over the next decade or so, there will be
a rise in guild-type organizations to serve the needs of workers who no
longer have traditional jobs.

"For workers to enjoy fully the opportunities this new economy presents,
they will require institutions to help blunt the greater risks they face,"
said MIT Sloan Professor Thomas Malone, who co-authored the working paper
along with Sloan Research Associate Robert Laubacher.

Guilds could provide to contractors and temporary and part-time workers the
financial security, benefits, career education, and social opportunities
that traditionally were provided by long-term employers.

"We are in a significant period of transition in how work is organized,"
said Malone. "The choices we make now will create the world in which our
children and their children will live."

Over one-quarter of American workers currently do not hold traditional,
full-time jobs, but instead work as independent contractors or as part-time
or temporary employees. Some of these people want full-time jobs but can't
get them; others, many of them working parents, have voluntarily chosen the
freedom and flexibility of working independently. Researchers Malone and
Robert Laubacher, believe that the most mobile of these flexible workers,
e-lancers-electronically connected free-lancers-will grow in number, as the
new economy becomes more dynamic, and teams of individuals come together for
projects and then dissolve when the work is completed.

The guild approach doesn't rely exclusively on the "usual suspects"-employers
and government-to provide traditional job benefits and support. Instead, it
relies on a rich ecology of other organizations to look after the needs of
mobile workers, as they move from assignment to assignment.

"This guild model is a description of what we already see beginning to
happen, a prediction what we think will become more common, and a
recommendation for policy makers, employers, and others to consider," said
Malone.

"Nascent forms of these guilds have already begun to appear," said
Laubacher. "For example, Working Today, a non-profit in New York, provides
low cost health insurance and other services to freelance technology workers
in Silicon Alley. These organizations are coming in to fill the gap."

In addition, existing groups such as professional societies, unions,
community organizations or temporary staffing firms could expand their
offerings to meet more of the needs of their members.

Another added benefit of guilds in this decentralized economy, "Guild
membership might provide the sense of identity that many of us get from
positions in large organizations," said Laubacher.

This research is an outgrowth of the MIT initiative on "Inventing the
Organizations of the 21st Century which explored the new forms of companies
and work settings as we move into this new century. The research is also
based on findings from surveys and interviews conducted by CDI, a
Philadelphia-based Management Recruiting firm, published in "CDI at Work:
21st Century Thinking." For a copy of the complete Malone/Laubacher working
paper, go to: http://ccs.mit.edu/21c/21cwpmain.html and click on working
paper #033.

For nearly a half-century, the MIT Sloan School of Management, based in
Cambridge, Mass., has been one of the world's leading academic sources of
innovation in management theory and practice. With students from more than
60 countries, it develops effective, innovative, and principled leaders who
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Re: CueCat tells tales...

2000-09-20 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:01 AM -0700 on 9/20/00, Tim May wrote:


 The whole news stand looks like a ransom note.

 --Tim May

Definitely one for my .sig file...

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"The whole news stand looks like a ransom note." --Tim May

Preliminary Outline of a Proposed Micromint Specification

2000-09-19 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 16:52:34 -0400
From: Zulfikar Ramzan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Organization: MIT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Preliminary Outline of a Proposed Micromint Specification
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Hi,

Based on conversations and ideas due to Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir, I've
prepared a manuscript proposing some of the parameter and algorithm choices
for an actual implementation of their Micromint scheme.

The manuscript is still more of a preliminary design spec as many issues
associated with a Micromint implementation are not addressed (though a good
number of the issues are).

The manuscript was prepared with the sponsorship of the Internet Bearer
Underwriting Corporation (http://www.ibuc.com).

It is available at:

http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~zulfikar/papers/mm-spec-outline.pdf

and a pointer to it can be found from:

http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~zulfikar/MyResearch/homepage.html

Comments and criticisms are welcome.

Thanks,
-- 

--Zully

---
Zulfikar Ramzan  (AKA Zully)
Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT
NE43-311, (617) 253-2345
http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~zulfikar/homepage.html

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Amex supports CARNIVORE enabled Anonymity System

2000-09-18 Thread R. A. Hettinga


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

At 1:59 PM -0400 on 9/18/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 A Yahoo wrote [about AMEX's "anonymous" credit card technology]:
 % What a load of shit.

 That market dwarfs what ZKS/Anonymizer will ever get.

Again, boys and girls, barring unforeseen events, like repeals in the
laws of physics, and/or human behavior, :-), the *only* thing that
matters in financial operations is transaction cost, and certainly *not*
financial privacy.


The *only* way to get ubiquitous financial anonymity is for a technology,
like internet bearer transaction protocols (blind signatures, MicroMint,
small signed coins, whatever), to be *cheaper* than the alternative,
which, for the moment, is internet-executed and proprietary
network-settled book entry transactions: credit cards under SSL, cleared
by VISA and MasterCard, settled by FedWire and/or SWIFT, modulo the odd
ACH "check" transaction, bla, bla, bla...


Book-entry transactions can *not* be anonymous, folks, because, of
course, you couldn't send someone to *jail* if they lie about a
book-entry, otherwise, right?

I mean, if everyone could lie about a given book-entry transaction, and
get away with it consistently, *without* going to jail, could you imagine
that *any* book-entry transaction of that type would clear, much less
settle, ever again? I thought not...

Unlike internet bearer financial cryptography protocols, the
non-repudiation "technology" of book-entry settlement is non-existent.
Unless you count ballistic technology, anyway. :-).


More to the point, a given inherently-private technology, like Chaum's
blind signatures for instance, must be *waaay* cheaper, on a risk
adjusted basis, ceteris paribus, whatever, than a public one, like
SSL-encrypted book-entries.

Like a thousand times cheaper, say.

Which is, oddly enough, about the cost differential right now between
book-entry transactions (like stock and bond trades going through DTC or
CREST, or credit cards, or checks) and physical delivery of paper/metal
bearer instruments (like "my Brinks to your Cage" delivery versus
payment, or dollar bills, or coins or stamps).


So, until people actually *do* get bearer financial cryptography
protocols onto the net, and cheap enough (and believe me, people are
working on it :-)), it is important to remember that *any* book-entry
transaction is, almost by definition, a "public" transaction and not a
private one.  A "public" transaction "guaranteed" to be "fair" by a
*government*, at the point of a gun.

So, you shouldn't be surprised at all when, horrors, there's *no*
financial privacy in the "mainstream" markets. None in the least.
Moreover, that diminishing financial privacy will, um, increase, as
Moore's law increases that cost-differential between automated
book-entry, and its only current extant competition, which is, at the
moment, *not* internet bearer transactions, but, in fact, *paper* bearer
transactions. Paper bearer transactions which, if you'll notice, *nobody*
wants to do anymore. :-).

Contrawise, you should assume that almost *anyone* who offers you a
"private" book-entry transaction is, for lack of a better word, lying,
frankly -- okay, "marketing" :-) -- *especially* if they're promising to
do it over the net(1).

Hence the "safeguards" in just about everyone's "privacy" products, which
amount to no privacy at all.

Cheers,
RAH


(1) Okay, I *might* :-) excuse Mondex from this rule, I suppose, but only
because the smart-cards themselves are physically swappable, and thus at
the physical, card-to-card level, anyway, are bearer instruments, but I
would only say so under a regime in which those cards *contents*, the
balances therein, are exchangeable for, or better, denominated, in some
*other* internet bearer instrument like Chaumian cash, which may, I'm
afraid, defeat the economics of Mondex altogether. Obviously, Doug Barnes
has pointed this out more than once or twice here and elsewhere.

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Amex supports CARNIVORE enabled Anonymity System

2000-09-18 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:39 PM -0400 on 9/18/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:


 Someday, of course, you won't need the fiat bit, but pure commodities
 aren't the end-state. You probably need a mix of stuff, including financial
 proxies like debt and equity indices, and so on. But the core problem is
 measuring inflation. Fortunately, :-), Paul Harrison and I have this giant
 rant in the can about non-state bearer synthetic numeraires, using things
 like digital bearer warehouse receipts for the hard stuff, a proxy for the
 CPI...

By the way, the above isn't necessarily the end state, either.

A lot of people, probably me among them, subscribe to the theory advanced
by Eugene Fama (Efficient Market Hypothesis) and Fisher Black
(Black-Scholes option pricing formula) that if switching out of the
numeraire is cheap enough (insert Moore's Law here), it's probably better
to keep and price transactions in *appreciating* assets instead of assets
which don't earn a return.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Canada outlaws anonymous remailers (was Re: GigaLaw.com DailyNews, September 15, 2000)

2000-09-15 Thread R. A. Hettinga


I wonder what this does to Zero Knowledge Systems?

Cheers,
RAH



At 3:52 AM -0700 on 9/15/00, GigaLaw.com wrote:


 Canadian Ruling Could Unmask Anonymous E-mailers
  Canadian e-mailers can no longer hide behind a cloak of anonymity if
 reasonable grounds exist to show they've distributed defamatory statements
 over the Internet. The change in Canadian law came after a landmark court
 ruling this week when an Ontario Superior Court Justice ordered Internet
 service provider iPRIMUS Inc. of Toronto to reveal the identity of an
 anonymous e-mailer.
  Read the article: Wired News @
 http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,38734,00.html

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Noah's Flood

2000-09-15 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 8:57 PM -0700 on 9/14/00, Tim May wrote:


 the Mediterranean inundation was more than
 10 million years ago.

Oh, well.

Here I thought it was closer than that, historically.

I do remember that there were salt pans on the floor of the Med that only
could have gotten there if it was dry down there once, but I didn't realize
that it was 10 million years ago, which is several times as far back most
people could say we were even human...


Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Canada outlaws anonymous remailers

2000-09-15 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:52 AM -0700 on 9/15/00, Greg Broiles wrote:


 Now, when someone sues a remailer operator for operating a system which
 allows people to act anonymously, thereby causing harm to the plaintiff,
 that'll be an interesting ruling.

Frankly, I think that's exactly, what's going to happen.

But my predictions about legal cases on this list leaves something to be
desired, if I recall... :-).

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: RSA Patent Expiration Composite Party - Sept. 21

2000-09-14 Thread R. A. Hettinga


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

   The Big RSA Patent Expiration Composite Party
   A fundraiser for the Cryptorights Foundation
   (http://www.cryptorights.org/)
   September 21, 2000
   8PM-2AM

This is going to be great... In theory, at least, one could start in
Boston after work at 5:30 EDT on Wednesday, talk through your teeth while
munching canapes over evening cocktails at the Hahvid Club dahling, jump
on a plane, fly west all night, stay up all the next day, and party all
Thursday night in San Francisco. Ending up, of course, on the floor
somewhere with your feet in the sky and, um, Xes in your eyes, some 30(?)
hours later at 2AM PDT.

Riiight.

Of course, there *are* people threatening to come to Boston from Europe
on the 20th, and, having done something that crazy already, *they* might
be up for something as biochronically challenging, but not me, no

Cheers,
RAH
A tired old poop who's not at all jealous that *their* party's gonna be
waay cooler than *our* party, but who still can't help but observe that
*we're* raising money for a *sponsor* of *their* party, either.  It was
ever thus, though, and all for very good causes on both accounts,
certainly.


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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Noah's Flood

2000-09-14 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 1:19 PM -0700 on 9/13/00, Tim May wrote:


 The big news today was the announcement that human habitation remains
 have been found where the Ryan and Pitman theory predicted.

Evidently, there's oceanographic evidence that the Mediterranean itself was
dry at one time, with an equivalent event (well of type, it was by
definition, larger) at Gibraltar, though, it seems to me that it was
sometime very much closer to the last ice age than the events described in
today's news.

There was some discussion at the time that *that* was the cause of the
flood myth, but this recent discovery is clearly a much more memorable
event, in terms of human history and especially its closer proximity to the
advent of writing.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Imminent Lawless Action (was Re: GigaLaw.com Daily News,September 13, 2000)

2000-09-13 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 4:44 AM -0700 on 9/13/00, GigaLaw.com wrote:


 [FREE SPEECH]
 Antiabortion Activists Seek Reversal of Award Against Site
  Antiabortion activists are asking a federal appeals court to overturn
 a $109 million verdict by a jury that decided a Web site and posters
 listing the names of abortion doctors and clinics were threats that went
 beyond free speech. The case is widely seen as a test of a Supreme Court
 ruling that defined a threat as explicit language likely to cause
 "imminent lawless action" -- and a measure of how far antiabortion
 activists can go in harassing doctors and clinics.
  Read the article: The Wall Street Journal @
 http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB968782868719953428.htm

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Tipster voluntary payment protocol

2000-09-13 Thread R. A. Hettinga



--- begin forwarded text


Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 00:26:20 -0400
To: "Digital Commerce Soc" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Jeff Kandt [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Tipster voluntary payment protocol
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: Jeff Kandt [EMAIL PROTECTED]

I've just posted a new and improved description of my voluntary
payment protocol:

Tipster technical overview
http://tipster.weblogs.com/stories/storyReader$180

Comments are welcome.

Also, check out the front page which, if I do say so myself, is
becoming a pretty good chronicle of music business greed and the
search for better ways...

http://tipster.weblogs.com/

-Jeff
-- 
--
|Jeff Kandt |  Voluntary Payments: A Napster-friendly  business  |
|[EMAIL PROTECTED] |  model for musicians. http://tipster.weblogs.com   |
|[PGP Pub key: http://pgp.ai.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6CE51904 |
|  or send a message with the subject "send pgp key"]|
--

For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" with one line of text: "help".

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: GA-CAT-CA

2000-09-12 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:25 PM -0700 on 9/11/00, petro wrote:


including subpoenas for, apparently now, Snowball's fur...

   Funny you should mention Snowball...

   http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/elsi/forensics.html

Heh.

That was my *point*, I think...

:-).

Cheers,

RAH
Who admits to listening to National People's Radio on occasion...
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: WorldAudit.org home page

2000-09-11 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 10:50 AM -0700 on 9/11/00, Craig Brozefsky wrote:


 it's a bowel
 movement?

Grunts
 "Revolution begins by giving things and social
  relationships their real names". --  L. Trotsky
/grunts

Oh. *That* kind of movement...

;-).

Cheers,
RAH


-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: GA-CAT-CA

2000-09-11 Thread R. A. Hettinga


 But, again, I'm sure the thing was a spoof.

Nope not a spoof.

Heard it on NPR, and several other outlets the day it came out.

Remember, they use animal parts (bugs, plants, animal fur, whatever) in
forensics all the time.

The "request for fur" bit is probably a minor vamp of other requests for
the same kids of stuff, done all the time, viz, "May we take a foot print,
sir? We're just trying to exclude you from our investigation...", up to and
including subpoenas for, apparently now, Snowball's fur...

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

linux-ipsec: RSA released

2000-09-06 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

From: "Heyman, Michael" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: linux-ipsec: RSA released
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 06:40:09 -0700
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

In case you don't already know:

From http://www.rsasecurity.com/news/pr/000906-1.html

BEDFORD, Mass., September 6, 2000 -- RSA® Security Inc. (NASDAQ: RSAS) today
announced it has released the RSA public key encryption algorithm into the
public domain, allowing anyone to create products that incorporate their own
implementation of the algorithm. This means that RSA Security has waived its
rights to enforce the patent for any development activities that include the
RSA algorithm occurring after September 6, 2000.

-Michael Heyman

--- end forwarded text

-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Internet Driver's License: Et tu, Brutus?

2000-08-31 Thread R. A. Hettinga


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

At 11:46 AM -0700 on 8/31/00, sunder wrote:


 This is the same arguement I have against the DeCSS injunction.  Once I
 have the media, no matter what format it is in, I should be able to do
 *ANYTHING* I wish to do with it

Quoted deliberately out of context for brevity ;-).

Agreed, but I would also add, "including selling it".

As I like to say, in paraphrase of what others(1) have said many times
before me, if it's encrypted, and I have the key it's my *property*.

Plug that, and internet bearer cash transactions, into Coase's theorem,
and everyone makes more money, including, oddly enough every intermediary
between the artist and his markets on the internet.

Just about the only people who get "hurt" are the lawyers, or, more
properly, legislators...

Bits for sale on the net shouldn't require a "license", period. In fact,
eventually, "should" will not have anything to do with it, the economics,
not to mention the physics, of digital commerce being what it is...

Cheers,
RAH


(1) See many people on this, not just my "geodesic recursive auction"
glossalalia :-), but, certainly before that, Eric Hughes' "universal
piracy", the Agorics' folks "digital silk road", and probably many before
those even...

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Strange Bedfellows

2000-08-29 Thread R. A. Hettinga



--- begin forwarded text


Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 19:38:05 -0700
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Somebody
Subject: Strange Bedfellows

How about this - Stewart Baker, ex-NSA General Counsel, and Doug Barnes,
ur-Cypherpunk, at the same company.  http://www.mercury2.com/team.htm.  I
don't think Stewart has quit his day job, but it's still interesting.


Somebody's .sig

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Blood in the Gears of the Machinery of Freedom?

2000-08-25 Thread R. A. Hettinga

nation-state. That, ultimately, is where large
empire-scale nation-states like China, the old Soviet Union, and the US
come from, or for that matter, mostly non-agressive states like Canada,
or even Brazil.  (The European Union, oddly enough, is probably doing it
too late for it to be much use, and, though I would hate to cite the
current state of the Euro as proof of that, I'll take any port in a storm
on that point. :-).)

Moore's law changes all that. Switches are falling by half every one or
two years, or at least they have for the last 35+ years or so. When
switches become relatively cheaper than lines, you get a geodesic network
instead of a hierarchical one. More to the point, you end up with, in the
presence of strong financial cryptography, cash-settled auction markets
for resources, instead of force-settled transfer priced ones.

[the 20%-ers can come back, now :-)]


In light of all the above, I think a ubiquitous geodesic network, strong
cryptography, internet bearer transactions, and so on, create an
environment where individuals are more *likely* to protect themselves, to
become *more* self-reliant, because it will be *cheaper*, economically,
than relying on a government transfer-priced force monopoly for the same
result. It will be cheaper, if those technologies work as promised, to
have direct auctions of resources on the net, than to transfer-price them
backed by, or explicitly using, the force of a nation-state. Competition
in such an environment is not "ruinous", in Morgan's sense of the word,
it's "virtuous", it's more profitable. Firms become increasingly cheaper
to operate as stand-alone entities, and so more of them, and smaller
ones, proliferate.

In other words, if financial cryptography technology and bearer
transactions can get financial *intermediaries* -- much less
proprietorship -- down to the size of devices, boards in a machine, which
they should do next year sometime :-), then certainly individuals will
become more "sovereign", to lift a little from Rees-Mogg, or whatever his
name is...


That's where Friedman would probably come down as well. I'd point to his
price theory book, for starters. Or, maybe, some hypothetical revision of
the "Machinery of Freedom", which I quoted above, though it came out in
the 1970's and was last revised in the late 1980's sometime.

I can say that mostly because he has said a bunch of cypherpunk-driven
stuff in the recent past, and he's certainly talked to lots of
once-and-future cypherpunks about the effect of strong internet
cryptography on freedom, economic and otherwise: Perry Metzger that I
know about, and possibly Declan McCullagh too, at various Cato
conferences they both attended. plug The fact that I sicced a Forbes
reporter on him for cover story on financial cryptography in 1997 might
have had something to do with it, as well, I think :-)./plug


On my own, I would say that the lower transaction costs caused by the
above technologies should, at the very least, reduce the size of
nation-states themselves in the aggregate, which would, in turn, one
would hope, make them less likely to have time to do that kind of thing
to their citizenry. A parasite not killing a scarcer population of hosts,
as it were.

So, for instance, we would end up with a Hutu state, and a Tutsi state,
just like we ended up with Israel after World War II, and they would be
able to function because, using increasingly cheaper information
technology, they could expropriate their tax revenue just as well as any
combined entity would be able to now.

Hopefully, because title to resources in question, including the cash
required to protect meatspace assets, would eventually be held on the net
itself -- and, using m-of-n secret splitting, be distributed among as
many machines as possible instead of a single "point of failure" like a
modern nation-state-chartered bank -- state-sponsored control and defense
of borders, and the control of violence inside them, would become more
ceremonial than anything else in the long run.


Probably just whistling past a literal graveyard, that, but at least it's
a testable proposition, as opposed to the presupposition of a Jewish
afterlife, which, if I remember correctly, Jews don't even believe in
themselves -- or whether Friedman would take it upon himself to fly to
Rwanda, and defend himself by the mere "force" of a fairly accurate
economic joke...


Cheers,
RAH





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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto:

Re: Editorial: Liberals Packing Heat (fwd)

2000-08-18 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:42 PM -0700 on 8/17/00, Tim May trolled:


 Bob Hettinga, who used to practice this same kind of "why can't you
 write the kind of articles I _like_!" pressuring

Oh. Pressuring. *That's* what it was...

I stand corrected.

;-).

Cheers,
RAH
Who agrees with Tim more often than he'd like to admit, frankly...
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

DCSB: Hapgood and Johansson; Post-Napster Models for Digital Commerce (and a special announcement!)

2000-08-11 Thread R. A. Hettinga

--- begin forwarded text

Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 10:39:53 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: DCSB: Hapgood and Johansson; Post-Napster Models for Digital
 Commerce (and a special announcement!)
Cc: "Eric S. Johansson" [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Fred Hapgood" [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Zulfikar Ramzan [EMAIL PROTECTED],
Nicko van Someren [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

[Please note the special DCSB 5th Anniversary announcement at the bottom
of this message. --RAH]

  The Digital Commerce Society of Boston

 Presents

   Fred Hapgood
   and
  Eric Johansson

presenting

  "Post-Napster Business Models for Digital Commerce"

 Tuesday, September 5th, 2000
12 - 2 PM
  The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
One Federal Street, Boston, MA
   The Club's Dress Code is Business Casual

Fred Hapgood and Eric Johannson will examine various
ideas claiming to represent "online business models for the post-
Napster music industry."   These include paid admission to
interactive online performances, an "official Napster", and
systems based on voluntary payments.

Attention will be given to how systems based on voluntary payments
might work, what kinds of business models make sense in a
voluntary payment context, and the implications of voluntary
payment structures for other intellectual property issues.

Fred Hapgood is a free lance writer specializing in business
technology issues and trends.

Eric Johansson has over 20 years of high level system and software
design experience, with particular emphasis on Internet system design.
For the past five years, Eric has headed Internet Guide Services,
specializing in the design, configuration, and remediation of complex
Internet-based systems.  Among others, his clients have included EGG,
BBN, AllMedia Solutions, ZipLink, and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.  He
has extensive experience with UNIX systems, Internet server
configuration/design, and communication architectures.  Prior to
founding Internet Guide Service, Eric held senior-level engineering
positions with Polaroid Corp., Wang Laboratories, Ziff-Davis, and
Computervision.

This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on
Tuesday, September 5th, 2000, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of
the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is
$35.00. This price includes lunch, room rental, A/V hardware if
necessary, and the speakers' lunch. The Harvard Club has relaxed its
dress code, which is now "business casual", meaning no sneakers or jeans.
Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be
unable to refund the price of your meal if the Club finds you in
violation of what's left of its dress code.

We need to receive a company check, or a money order, (or, if we actually
know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by
Saturday, September 2nd, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks
payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be
sent back.

Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston,
Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard
Club of Boston", in the amount of $35.00. Please include your e-mail
address so that we can send you a confirmation

If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've
had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance),
please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something
out.

Upcoming speakers for DCSB are:

October Birthday Cake and Champagne   DCSB 5th Anniversary
NovemberZully Ramzan and
   Nicko van Someren  "A Micropayment Shootout"

As you can see, :-), we are actively searching for future speakers. If
you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, are a principal in
digital commerce, and would like to make a presentation to the Society,
please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Committee, care of Robert
Hettinga, mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED].

- 
Special Announcement!
DCSB Turns Five on October 3rd

When we started the Digital Commerce Society of Boston (originally the
Boston Society for Digital Commerce, we made the name more, um,
instantiable, a couple of months later) at lunch on Tuesday, October 3rd,
1995 it was barely proper to consider actually *selling* anything on the
internet at all.

In the beginning of 1995, most of us figured that *maybe* a few tens of
millions of dollars in transactions would be executed on the internet
th

e-gold: Needed: ISPs and WAP phones

2000-08-08 Thread R. A. Hettinga



--- begin forwarded text


Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2000 15:27:33 -0400
From: Bob [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Organization: ConstructionGigs.com
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: e-gold: Needed: ISPs and WAP phones
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 = Somalis thrive without government, contemplate minimal state
 Country: Somalia
"What many people here say they want is simple: a central authority
that provides basic services, but refrains from interfering in
business and in the lives of private citizens." (8/7/00)
 URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_somali000805.htm

 e-gold-list Information 

   For rules, subscribe/unsubscribe directions,
   and archive locations, please visit:

   http://www.e-gold.com/unsecure/lists.html

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Reno Promises Action on Carnivore (nytimes)

2000-08-05 Thread R. A. Hettinga


At 9:13 AM -0700 on 8/4/00, jeradonah wrote:


 Attorney General Janet Reno vowed Thursday to check on why it has taken
so long to begin the review of the FBI's Internet-wiretap system called
Carnivore, a program that has raised privacy concerns.

"I'm shocked, simply shocked, to find gambling going on here."

"Here are your winnings."

"Thank you."


Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Morgan, verbatim.

2000-08-05 Thread R. A. Hettinga


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

Finally, in what has become the most famous exchange in the [House
Banking and Currency subcommittee 1912 "money trust"] hearings' thousands
of pages of testimony, the two men returned to the question of
controlling money and credit. [Samuel] Untermyer [vocal critic of the
"money trust", committee counsel] said, "The basis of banking is credit,
is it not?"

Morgan: "Not always. that is an evidence of banking, but it is not the
money itself. Money is gold, and nothing else."

There was in 1912 a significant difference between actual metal coin and
loans represented by paper (banknotes, bonds, bills). When Morgan
repeated yet again that money could not be controlled, Untermyer asked
whether credit was not based on money -- that is, did not the big New
York banks issue loans to certain men and institutions "because it is
believed that they have the money back of them?"

Morgan: No sir. It is because people believe in the man."

Untermyer: "And he might not be worth anything?"

Morgan, with less than perfect regard for grammar: "He might not have
anything. I have known a man to come into my office, and I have given him
a check for a million dollars when they had not a cent in the world."

Untermyer: "That is not business?"

Morgan: "Yes, unfortunately, it is. I do not think it is good business,
though."

Untermyer did not, apparently, think much of this answer, for he repeated
his proposition: "Is not commercial credit based primarily on money or
property?"

Morgan: "No sir; the first thing is character."

Untermyer: "Before money or property?"

Morgan: "Before money or property or anything else. Money cannot buy it"
- -- and he elaborated, after a few more questions -- because a man I do
not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom."


- -- From _Morgan:_American_Financier_, by Jean Strouse. Random House, New
York, 1999



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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

ip: We will post anything that govts don't want published,'' Young said

2000-07-24 Thread R. A. Hettinga


Looks like JYA got APed, too... :-).

Cheers,
RAH

--- begin forwarded text


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:25:59 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: ip: "We will post anything that govts don't want published,''
  Young said

Capitol Hill Blue
http://chblue.com/a/ap.washington/2722/397a2917.5e64.2/ap.asp

Web Site Posts Secret CIA Papers

 Jul 22, 2000 7:07 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -Le Snippage

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

scuttlebutt

2000-07-24 Thread R. A. Hettinga



--- begin forwarded text


Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 01:18:08 -0400
From: t byfield [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: scuttlebutt
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i

hey, bob--

take a look at the column i've started writing for TBTF:

 http://www.tbtf.com/roving_reporter/

the latest entry might interest you.

cheers,
t

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Digital Commerce Society of DC list started...


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

Some people have started an email discussion list to talk about the
possible founding of a Digital Commerce Society of the District of
Columbia.

You might want to look at the URL, below, for details (such as they are
so far), and to sign up.

Cheers,
Robert Hettinga,
Moderator,
The Digital Commerce Society of Boston

- --- begin forwarded text


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 20:30:23 -0800 (AKDT)
Subject: Welcome To "Dcsdc"!
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
List-Id: Digital Commerce Society - Washington DC dcsdc.shmoo.com

Welcome to the [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list!

To post to this list, send your email to:

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

General information about the mailing list is at:

  http://www.shmoo.com/mailman/listinfo/dcsdc

If you ever want to unsubscribe or change your options (eg, switch to
or from digest mode, change your password, etc.), visit your
subscription page at:

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You can also make such adjustments via email by sending a message to:

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with the word `help' in the subject or body (don't include the
quotes), and you will get back a message with instructions.

You must know your password to change your options (including changing
the password, itself) or to unsubscribe.  It is:

  snarge

If you forget your password, don't worry, you will receive a monthly
reminder telling you what all your shmoo.com mailing list passwords
are, and how to unsubscribe or change your options.  There is also a
button on your options page that will email your current password to
you.

You may also have your password mailed to you automatically off of the
Web page noted above.

- --- end forwarded text



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-- 
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R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Guns, Germs, and Steel (was Re: It's called progress...)

they'll keep coming,
and we'll not be able to stop them."


Finally, we have to remember that the root of the word "civilization" is
"city", and we're a long way off from complete, geodesic
decentralization, if we ever get that far. There's not enough bandwidth,
yet, that's for sure, and Moore's "Law", would have to iterate a whole
bunch between now and then. But I bet when it will happen is an almost
calculable prediction, though.

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
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R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: mentality - interesting


-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

 The "disintermediation" effects
 insert blather about a "geodesic writing economy" as desired

:-). You rang?

Hold on, my Rapturous New Age Smile needs a little super glue to stay
put...

 may be
 very real, but the effect of widespread distribution of words is that
 Tom Clancy, Stephen King, and that Rowling woman ("Harry Potter") can
 earn tens of millions a year while even most _published_ novels never
 make any reasonable profit.

 Some call this the "best seller" effect.  Economists look to "flash
 crowd" and "winner take all" explanations. Several books have covered
 this recently.

Oddly enough, I agree. I think that what will happen, when we have
instantaneous cash settled auction markets for bits on the wire, code,
music, equity, debt, whatever, is that we'll have *more* volitility, and
the same thing will happen faster.  Frankly, there will be *more*
instantaneous economic rent effects for productive people who do the best
new stuff, and that, frankly, it'll be a good thing.

That is, the biggest transactions will be the *first* transactions in the
value chain, and not somewhere in the middle, and those kinds of
transactions will replace advances, or at the least, whatever loans that
will be made against those transactions will be by financial
intermediaries, instead of production production intermediaries (record
companies, publishers, movie production companies) who then
transfer-price those costs farther down the value-chain.

Finally, when someone stops being productive, they'll *stop* making
money, and faster, and, hopefully, they'll have investments to tide them
over until they do something new and useful, or at least in demand in the
market, once again.  To beat Mr. Kesey a bit, everyone will "star in
their own movie", or at least have the economic career of a movie star,
anyway.

This is, frankly, what America is about, anyway. The people who are very
rich, right now, usually don't stay that way for long, and the same thing
is true for the very poor. Their kids certainly don't tend to stay in the
same "class", no matter what the liberal press says, and it was that way,
historically, with or without inheritance laws. Rich people usually got
rich, and went broke, in a hurry, and rich kids usually didn't stay that
way very long.

So, I think we're going to get the same thing, only faster now that
information, and money, can move increasingly faster. Instead of
"Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations", it will probably
turn into "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three product cycles." Cool.
:-).

On the other hand, a lot of the things that we're paying people to do now
as some kind of perpetual sinicure, will, in fact, be done cheaper by
people and machines who will auction their services rather than get paid
as a matter of course.  The result is that all us mundanes :-) will do
more different kinds of stuff in our lives, and, correspondingly, we'll
will get more stuff cheaper.

Finally, If it doesn't work out that way, of course, it won't happen.
That being the peculularly circular definition of progress, after all...


Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Guns, Germs, and Steel (was Re: It's called progress...)