Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants
On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 09:15:57AM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: On the other hand, if the US were following the traditional model for defense rather than having a standing army stomping around the world, it's highly unlikely that somebody like Al Qaeda would have attacked the World Trade Center, because they wouldn't have had their grievances about the US infidel forces stationed in the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia. They *might* have attacked Exxon headquarters because of Exxon mercs stationed in the Holy Land. Bullshit. First off, the same groups would have been torqued off that we were guilty of cultural imperalism by allowing (or assisting) american companies to push product over there. Secondly, other groups would have been just as pissed off at us for *not* helping them. This was one of those catch-22s. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal | Quit smoking: with are half-wits.--Chris Klein| 268d, 13h ago | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Pigs Kill Family Pet
On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 02:22:18AM +0100, Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer wrote: Instead, any cop who shows such blatant disrespect for life and property as the Tennessee cops in question should himself be shot in the face with a shotgun, and left on the side of the road to rot. We're talking about a state where a Senator does a give and go on a motorcyclist and managed to get a section of (nearby) highway named after him. http://www.ama-cycle.org/terrybarnard/ -- One cannot look at holding people accountable as a | Quit smoking: solution to these problems, | 268d, 14h ago -- Robert Mueller, Director, FBI.| petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 10:29:22PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 02:25 PM 01/13/2003 -0800, James A. Donald wrote: The hunting post was obviously a joke, as the final line made clear. The real joke was that some readers would fail to see that the first line was a joke, would believe that cypherpunks really do go hunting black people. Now, hunting black _helicopters_ is a different matter, you realize What is the recommened minimum caliber for taking one, and how does one get it to the taxidermist? -- As someone who has worked both in private industry and in | Quit smoking: academia, whenever I hear about academics wanting to teach | 268d, 13h ago ethics to people in business, I want to puke. | petro@ --Thomas Sowell. | bounty.org
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 10:22:12AM -0600, Jim Choate wrote: On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote: On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Bill Stewart wrote: Any time you post to a list of a bunch of people you don't know, you might be posting to a list of a bunch of people you don't like. Reading the archives sometimes helps. A (hopefully) helpful hint for the newcomers to this list: Bill is usually the voice of reason and of patience here. Pay attention when he posts. YMMV... Whereas Choate is usually the voice of unreason and impatience. Pay no attention when he posts. -- The difference between math and physics is the difference| Quit smoking: between masturbation and sex.| 268d, 13h ago --Paul Tomblin | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 10:29:22PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 02:25 PM 01/13/2003 -0800, James A. Donald wrote: The hunting post was obviously a joke, as the final line made clear. The real joke was that some readers would fail to see that the first line was a joke, would believe that cypherpunks really do go hunting black people. Now, hunting black _helicopters_ is a different matter, you realize What is the recommened minimum caliber for taking one, and how does one get it to the taxidermist? -- As someone who has worked both in private industry and in | Quit smoking: academia, whenever I hear about academics wanting to teach | 268d, 13h ago ethics to people in business, I want to puke. | petro@ --Thomas Sowell. | bounty.org
Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants
On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 09:15:57AM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: On the other hand, if the US were following the traditional model for defense rather than having a standing army stomping around the world, it's highly unlikely that somebody like Al Qaeda would have attacked the World Trade Center, because they wouldn't have had their grievances about the US infidel forces stationed in the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia. They *might* have attacked Exxon headquarters because of Exxon mercs stationed in the Holy Land. Bullshit. First off, the same groups would have been torqued off that we were guilty of cultural imperalism by allowing (or assisting) american companies to push product over there. Secondly, other groups would have been just as pissed off at us for *not* helping them. This was one of those catch-22s. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal | Quit smoking: with are half-wits.--Chris Klein| 268d, 13h ago | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 01:47:24AM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: Gore and Lieberman would have been no prize in office either, but they wouldn't have done much more damage to the economy The majority of the damage was done before the election, then again on 9/11/2002. Bush has done a moderate job of moderating the economic damage, but that's about all a president *can* do. or to civil liberties, probably much less, and would have been Ruby Ridge, Waco? Everything that was in the Patriot Act was shit that the feds had been lobbying for for 10 years. Gore would have been just as eager to sign that bill as Bush was. Hell, there was only what, *1* no vote against it? less gung-ho about getting us into a war and would have found Who bombed the Chinese embassy? An aspirin factory? Sorry Mr. Stewart, normally I've got a lot of respect for what you say, but history shows us that Democratic presidents generally have much worse war records than Republican ones, and Shrub is doing quite well on the Use Of Force scale. Yes, he's got some (lots) of issues on the Constitution scale. On the Speaking Well scale, and the Friend of Freedom scale. But Bore and Lierman would have been far, far worse. some kind of pork that's more productive than military hardware to spend our tax money on. The problem is that Congress keeps passing bills saying the pentagon will get this, and that pentagon keeps saying we don't need that much of it, and we really don't want it anyway. Somehow we've managed to get to the point where we've got a bunch of people in the DoD who are really much more interested in breaking things and killing people than in building a big military industrial complex. Wierd but true. -- The difference between math and physics is the difference| Quit smoking: between masturbation and sex.| 268d, 13h ago --Paul Tomblin | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Pigs Kill Family Pet
On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 02:22:18AM +0100, Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer wrote: Instead, any cop who shows such blatant disrespect for life and property as the Tennessee cops in question should himself be shot in the face with a shotgun, and left on the side of the road to rot. We're talking about a state where a Senator does a give and go on a motorcyclist and managed to get a section of (nearby) highway named after him. http://www.ama-cycle.org/terrybarnard/ -- One cannot look at holding people accountable as a | Quit smoking: solution to these problems, | 268d, 14h ago -- Robert Mueller, Director, FBI.| petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Subject: CDR: Re: QM, EPR, A/B
On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 06:07:40PM -0600, blah wrote: From: Jim Choate [EMAIL PROTECTED], crackpot: On Mon, 6 Jan 2003, blah wrote: From: Jim Choate [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not from the photons perspective, from a photons perspective there is -no- time. A photon has no perspective. Yes it does. It is a particle and it interacts with the rest of the cosmos. The cosmos views it, it views the cosmos. OK. I'm convinced that you are a crackpot. Now, could someone (else) tell me if this is really a troll? It's not a troll--at least not the kind you mean. -- By the time you swear you're his/Shivering and sighing, | Quit smoking: And he vows his passion is/Infinite, undying - | 267d, 14h ago Lady, make a note of this:/One of you is lying. | petro@ -- Dorothy Parker| bounty.org
Re: Bruce Schneier hullabaloo
On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 10:35:06AM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: onto the radar of U.S. legislators, who see the danger it poses to the traditional power structures. Unless all those free software programmers are prepared for armed rebellion when their right to share code is taken away, I'm not sure its all going to mean much. It's an absolute last resort that nobody really wants to get into. Nobody like the idea of getting shot at. So as long as they don't have to, they won't. Nobody? There are plenty of people *waiting* for the justification to start shooting. -- It is not the function of our government to keep the| Quit smoking: citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the | 242d, 9h ago citizen to keep the government from falling into error. | petro@ -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, | bounty.org
Re: BigBrotherWare
On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 12:50:57PM -0800, Michael Cardenas wrote: Tim May wrote: (Much has been made of how the Microsoft- and Intel-backed security regimes will be opt in or voluntary. This seems dubious. It is precisely the non-volunteers who these companies, and Hollywood, and the Nation States, will be most concerned about. So I would expect this opt in approach to not be the full picture.) Microsoft is pushing hard to get palladium into the silicon, with intel and amd happy to comply. It's hard to imagine how it will be voluntary after that happens. S. Jobs isn't all that hip on Palladium style stuff (although he'll do what he's told), and linux runs on anything. The Europeans will be incredibly dubious of any chip/os level security after what the NSA has done to them over the years, so they'll probably form a committee to design something similar but incompatible. Being that it'll come out of a committee, it'll take 10 years to get a spec, and drive development of single-die multi-cpu chip architecture, which will get us cheap SMP boxes. I'm not all that worried about it, after all, outside of graphic design software Linux already does everything I need, and more than most people need. Sure, it's not as polished, as integrated etc. But it's about at the level of Windows95, if you use something like KDE or GNOME. -- I stand on principle, because it's the only place where I| Quit smoking: don't get shit on my boots. | 242d, 9h ago | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Bruce Schneier hullabaloo
On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 10:35:06AM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: onto the radar of U.S. legislators, who see the danger it poses to the traditional power structures. Unless all those free software programmers are prepared for armed rebellion when their right to share code is taken away, I'm not sure its all going to mean much. It's an absolute last resort that nobody really wants to get into. Nobody like the idea of getting shot at. So as long as they don't have to, they won't. Nobody? There are plenty of people *waiting* for the justification to start shooting. -- It is not the function of our government to keep the| Quit smoking: citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the | 242d, 9h ago citizen to keep the government from falling into error. | petro@ -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, | bounty.org
Re: BigBrotherWare
On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 12:50:57PM -0800, Michael Cardenas wrote: Tim May wrote: (Much has been made of how the Microsoft- and Intel-backed security regimes will be opt in or voluntary. This seems dubious. It is precisely the non-volunteers who these companies, and Hollywood, and the Nation States, will be most concerned about. So I would expect this opt in approach to not be the full picture.) Microsoft is pushing hard to get palladium into the silicon, with intel and amd happy to comply. It's hard to imagine how it will be voluntary after that happens. S. Jobs isn't all that hip on Palladium style stuff (although he'll do what he's told), and linux runs on anything. The Europeans will be incredibly dubious of any chip/os level security after what the NSA has done to them over the years, so they'll probably form a committee to design something similar but incompatible. Being that it'll come out of a committee, it'll take 10 years to get a spec, and drive development of single-die multi-cpu chip architecture, which will get us cheap SMP boxes. I'm not all that worried about it, after all, outside of graphic design software Linux already does everything I need, and more than most people need. Sure, it's not as polished, as integrated etc. But it's about at the level of Windows95, if you use something like KDE or GNOME. -- I stand on principle, because it's the only place where I| Quit smoking: don't get shit on my boots. | 242d, 9h ago | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Photographer Arrested For Taking Pictures Of Vice President'S Hotel
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 08:15:37PM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, Tim May wrote: Frankly, millions of these fascists need a simple solution: a tree, a horse, and a rope. There aren't enough horses :-) Unlike bullets, horses and rope are reusable. More expensive up front, but reusable. -- To be born free is an accident. | Quit smoking: To live free is a responsibility.| 240d, 13h ago To die free is an obligation. | petro@ --Brigadier General Bill Halley | bounty.org
Re: Photographer Arrested For Taking Pictures Of Vice President'S Hotel
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 10:55:00AM -0800, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 9 Dec 2002 at 9:17, Tim May wrote: Anyone in the U.S. can be declared an enemy combatant and vanished away from lawyers, habeas corpus, the 6th Amendment, and any semblance of the system of liberty we sort of had at one time. So far this has only been applied to people who are obviously hostile muslim terrorist wannabees, How do you know? -- A vote is like a rifle: It's usefulness depends upon the | Quit smoking: character of the user. | 240d, 13h ago --Theodore Roosevelt | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Anonymous blogging and unlicensed medical advice.
On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 04:27:42PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 08:43 AM 12/11/2002 -0800, Tim May wrote: On Wednesday, December 11, 2002, at 01:31 AM, Morlock Elloi wrote: In a way, Mathew's and Choate's attack upon the list has done us a favour. The list is now effectively restricted to those with the will and ability to use filters, which raises the required intelligence level. Does this vindicate homeopathy ? No, it vindicates the vaccination approach, the antigen-antibody approach. Or, more pedestrianly, simple learning. Those who learn to filter do so. Others drown. A central tenet of homeopathy is the bizarre and acausal notion that dilution of the agent by 100x, by 1000x, even by one billion times, makes no difference. If there is just one atom of arsenic, maybe just one quarter of an atom, in this liquid, your body will learn to later tolerate arsenic! Homeopathy is a bogus quack theory backed by 200 years of trial-and-error experience. Just remember that when Homeopathy *started* it was less likely to kill you than the alternative. Of course, the scientific method eventually caught on in Medical Circles, an rapidly advanced to the point where they claimed they could tell if you were a criminal or not by how far apart your eyes were... -- We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech.| Quit smoking: --Dr. Kathleen Dixon,| 240d, 13h ago Director of Women s Studies, | petro@ Bowling Green State University | bounty.org
Re: Extradition, Snatching, and the Danger of Traveling to Other Countries
On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 11:44:28AM -0500, Trei, Peter wrote: For the Russians, 'a few' was over 70. I hope for a non-violent restoration - this sort of thing could give the Libertarian Party legs, if they handled it right. ROTFLMAO. You a funny man, you ever considered standup? if they handled it right... Ha! -- The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. | Quit smoking: -- Richard Buckminster Fuller| 240d, 13h ago | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Suspending the Constitution
On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 03:18:09PM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Tim May wrote: Lincoln's notion that the Constitution is suspendable during a war, or other emergency conditions, was disgraceful. Nothing in the Constitution says that it is suspended when a President declares it to be suspended. Power is what power does. He got away with it, that's all that counts. Then the consitution is meaningless babble. Don't stand out, don't protest policy, don't write letters, don't meet with hackers, and Washington won't interfere with your so-called constitutional rights. This is where we are. Almost, but not quite. There's definitly a protest movement already - http://www.notinourname.net is a national one there are 2 in my city http://www.mindspring.com/~wnpj and www.madpeace.org. There's plenty of people using words to change things. The Not in Our Name people are only running off at the mouth because it's a Republican in the white house. The didn't speak up when the Sodomizer in Chief bombed a pharmacetuical plant, nor a dozen or so other armed interventions during that period. No, those people aren't against the government taking away our rights by force, they're just against *THIS* government taking away our rights by force. The thermonuclear cleansing of Washington, D.C. cannot come soon enough. Allah willing, by next Ramadan. While I can't say I disagree, I think a more subtle approach may be more permenent. There is no approach that can be permanent, other than sterilizing the entire planet. Freedom, like security, is a process, a process you cannot stop or you lose it, and when you lose it, it's a lot harder to get back. -- They can attempt to outlaw weapons but they can't outlaw| Quit smoking: the Platonic Ideal of a weapon and modern technology makes | 240d, 13h ago it absolutely trivial to convert a Platonic Ideal of a | petro@ weapon into an actual weapon whenever one desires. | bounty.org
Re: Suspending the Constitution
On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 03:18:09PM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Tim May wrote: Lincoln's notion that the Constitution is suspendable during a war, or other emergency conditions, was disgraceful. Nothing in the Constitution says that it is suspended when a President declares it to be suspended. Power is what power does. He got away with it, that's all that counts. Then the consitution is meaningless babble. Don't stand out, don't protest policy, don't write letters, don't meet with hackers, and Washington won't interfere with your so-called constitutional rights. This is where we are. Almost, but not quite. There's definitly a protest movement already - http://www.notinourname.net is a national one there are 2 in my city http://www.mindspring.com/~wnpj and www.madpeace.org. There's plenty of people using words to change things. The Not in Our Name people are only running off at the mouth because it's a Republican in the white house. The didn't speak up when the Sodomizer in Chief bombed a pharmacetuical plant, nor a dozen or so other armed interventions during that period. No, those people aren't against the government taking away our rights by force, they're just against *THIS* government taking away our rights by force. The thermonuclear cleansing of Washington, D.C. cannot come soon enough. Allah willing, by next Ramadan. While I can't say I disagree, I think a more subtle approach may be more permenent. There is no approach that can be permanent, other than sterilizing the entire planet. Freedom, like security, is a process, a process you cannot stop or you lose it, and when you lose it, it's a lot harder to get back. -- They can attempt to outlaw weapons but they can't outlaw| Quit smoking: the Platonic Ideal of a weapon and modern technology makes | 240d, 13h ago it absolutely trivial to convert a Platonic Ideal of a | petro@ weapon into an actual weapon whenever one desires. | bounty.org
Re: Anonymous blogging and unlicensed medical advice.
On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 04:27:42PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 08:43 AM 12/11/2002 -0800, Tim May wrote: On Wednesday, December 11, 2002, at 01:31 AM, Morlock Elloi wrote: In a way, Mathew's and Choate's attack upon the list has done us a favour. The list is now effectively restricted to those with the will and ability to use filters, which raises the required intelligence level. Does this vindicate homeopathy ? No, it vindicates the vaccination approach, the antigen-antibody approach. Or, more pedestrianly, simple learning. Those who learn to filter do so. Others drown. A central tenet of homeopathy is the bizarre and acausal notion that dilution of the agent by 100x, by 1000x, even by one billion times, makes no difference. If there is just one atom of arsenic, maybe just one quarter of an atom, in this liquid, your body will learn to later tolerate arsenic! Homeopathy is a bogus quack theory backed by 200 years of trial-and-error experience. Just remember that when Homeopathy *started* it was less likely to kill you than the alternative. Of course, the scientific method eventually caught on in Medical Circles, an rapidly advanced to the point where they claimed they could tell if you were a criminal or not by how far apart your eyes were... -- We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech.| Quit smoking: --Dr. Kathleen Dixon,| 240d, 13h ago Director of Women s Studies, | petro@ Bowling Green State University | bounty.org
Re: Extradition, Snatching, and the Danger of Traveling to Other Countries
On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 11:44:28AM -0500, Trei, Peter wrote: For the Russians, 'a few' was over 70. I hope for a non-violent restoration - this sort of thing could give the Libertarian Party legs, if they handled it right. ROTFLMAO. You a funny man, you ever considered standup? if they handled it right... Ha! -- The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. | Quit smoking: -- Richard Buckminster Fuller| 240d, 13h ago | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: Short story?
Permanently behind on my email: On Sat, Nov 23, 2002 at 03:22:41PM -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: I'm trying to remember details (author, title) of a short story that I read once. Its main feature, or the one that's standing out in my mind, is the obsessive hacker who studies a target to figure out his password, at which he only has one guess. The zinger is that the very security concious target has selected that password as a booby trap, and there's a second password which our hacker doesn't have. Does this ring a bell for anyone? Yes--except that the password wasn't a booby trap, what the user did was to aways enter a wrong password first, then the right password. In the story the password guesser was an adult in (IIRC) a 5 year olds body, and his partner in this crime had his brain burned out by certain Organized Crime individuals who were not happy with the passports the password theft made possible. It was either in an anthology of William Gibsons work, or in an anthology of cyberpunk stuff from the 80s or early 90s. Sorry I can't remember any more. -- Fear of death will not prevent dying - but it may prevent | Quit smoking: living. | 238d, 13h ago --Anonymous | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 01:20:28PM +0100, David Howe wrote: at Tuesday, October 01, 2002 3:08 AM, Peter Gutmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] was seen to say: For encryption, STARTTLS, which protects more mail than all other email encryption technology combined. See http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/usenix02_slides.pdf (towards the back). I would dispute that - not that it isn't used and useful, but unless you are handing off directly to the home machine of the end user (or his direct spool) odds are good that the packet will be sent unencrypted somewhere along its journey. with TLS you are basically protecting a single link of a transmission chain, with no control over the rest of the chain. Well, it's a start. Every mail server (except mx1 and mx2.prserv.net) should use TLS. There should be nothing but noise on the wire. For signing, nothing. The S/MIME list debated having posts to the list signed, and decided against it: If I know you, I can recognise a message from you whether it's signed or not. Signing has a limited application - I wouldn't use it routinely other than to establish an association (key--poster) early in a conversation, and then omit it except for things whose source *I* would want verified if I was receiving it. Once you start using it, it becomes part of hte pattern by wich other people identify you. -- This could be the last day of the rest of your life. | Quit smoking: | 162d, 10h ago | petro@ | bounty.org
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 12:53:36PM -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote: - Original Message - From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] The chief barrier to use of outlook's email encryption, aside from the fact that is broken, is the intolerable cost and inconvenience of certificate management. Actually the chief barrier is psychological, people don't feel they should side with the criminals by using encryption. Certificate management is Um. No. Most people do no assocaite encryption with criminals. There are 4 reasons people don't use encryption in email: 0) Encryption, that's that SLS thingy, right? (Ignorance, stupidity) 1) Why bother? I am not a *target*. (apathy) 2) It's too much hassle. (BAD tools) 3) 95% of the people *I* send email to wouldn't know what to do with a message in S/MIME, much less PGP. (AKA the Fax Effect). -- Johnny had four truckloads of plutonium. Johnny used four| Quit smoking: truckloads of plutonium to light New York City for a year. | 161d, 11h ago Then how many truckloads of plutonium did Johnny have? Six! | petro@ -- Breeder reactor ad from the glory days of nuclear power | bounty.org
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 12:53:36PM -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote: - Original Message - From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] The chief barrier to use of outlook's email encryption, aside from the fact that is broken, is the intolerable cost and inconvenience of certificate management. Actually the chief barrier is psychological, people don't feel they should side with the criminals by using encryption. Certificate management is Um. No. Most people do no assocaite encryption with criminals. There are 4 reasons people don't use encryption in email: 0) Encryption, that's that SLS thingy, right? (Ignorance, stupidity) 1) Why bother? I am not a *target*. (apathy) 2) It's too much hassle. (BAD tools) 3) 95% of the people *I* send email to wouldn't know what to do with a message in S/MIME, much less PGP. (AKA the Fax Effect). -- Johnny had four truckloads of plutonium. Johnny used four| Quit smoking: truckloads of plutonium to light New York City for a year. | 161d, 11h ago Then how many truckloads of plutonium did Johnny have? Six! | petro@ -- Breeder reactor ad from the glory days of nuclear power | bounty.org
Re: Sheeple Land With Hands on Heads
On Monday, February 11, 2002, at 09:50 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote: (Yes, I'm a few days behind in my mail). The ominous trend here is increased docility. The state cannot afford to acknowledge that there is no defense from attacks by people who are ready to sacrifice their lives. That makes state weak and unfit. Crap. There are plenty of defenses against idiots who are willing to sacrifice their lives. There are few defenses against *intelligent* people willing to sacrifice their lives. Odd as it may seem, several more real attacks would probably make the air travel go back to normal - the absurdity of current make-believe would come into the spotlight. The anti- No, it wouldn't. We live in a mad world, all several more real attacks would do is get everyone to the point where they'd be willing to wear state-issued paper jammies while they flew. -- Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.--Tim May
Re: spam attack on cpunks list
On Tuesday, February 5, 2002, at 07:36 PM, Jei wrote: On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Tim May wrote: (Yeah, if anyone spots a truly relevant item, commenting on it is welcome. Or posting a URL. But simple game theory says that it's best that people don't just bounce things they read to our list, something Choate, mattd, and Jei seem to not understand.) Would you care to elaborate on that? I don't see how game theory would prove your assertion. The only party who would benefit of this not posting would be the government. For them it is best that you don't connect to other than government approved Truth sources. Bullshit. I'd have less of your passed-along drivel in my mailbox, 5 or ten less items to delete, a few more seconds to spend on *worthwhile* articles. Here's a good rule of thumb, if you can't think of 2 or 4 paragraphs to say about an article you're referencing by URL, there's probably no need to post it. My logic tells me it is best to ensure the widest coverage to issues you care about, get as many sources as you can, and simply ram down the facts as many people's troats as you can, and eliminate the PR your opposition You're logic is lying to you. Because if your idiot posting policy, I usually delete your crap site unseen, meaning not only do the articles you want distributed not get a wider audience not get wider coverage, much of what you may have to say about them gets trashed as well. The only reason I'm reading this is because it was a followup to something May wrote. That's how reality works. That's why and how the Israeli control the US media and the reporting is so biased there every time it comes to the Palestinians and Israel. Popularity polls for the US president and congress are all that matter in directly deciding the whole of US foreign policy. Nothing else matters. Isreal does not control the US media, if anything, the Palestinians are winning over here. That much is painfully clear to the rest of the world. Much of the rest of the world is as ignorant and full of shit as most Americans. Breaking the rosy one-sided picture of Israeli behaviour in the American media is one way of effecting those polls. Huh? Spoken like a true ignoramus. -- Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.--Tim May
Re: Cypherpunk agenda succeeding
On Saturday, February 2, 2002, at 10:58 PM, Dr. Evil wrote: Encrypted disks are still rare, but that is because raids that seize people's computers are rare. Of course it is regrettable that disk encryption is not part of the operating system -- but if Microsoft put it in before we had a strong, widely adopted system, they would doubtless muck it up. Even if they do it after they will still muck it up. Microsoft does support encrypted disks. They do in Windows XP and I think they may have had it earlier too. Who doesn't support encrypted disk? The open source guys. There is only _one_ open source OS that Encrypting disks on server type systems is of really marginal utility. You have 2 choices of when to mount a volume, on boot, or on demand. For a system that runs for long periods of time: example01: uptime 9:51AM up 292 days, 23:46, 22 users, load averages: 0.09, 0.09, 0.08 [iso:~] petro% uptime 10:41AM up 12 days, 9:12, 7 users, load averages: 0.81, 0.58, 0.44 [petro@lists petro]$ uptime 10:29am up 45 days, 18:37, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 Mounting a file system, especially the OS/Application parts (as opposed to user or home directories) is, quite frankly silly. Once the disk is mounted an attacker has plenty of access to the volume, and the disk is likely to stay mounted for weeks at a time. To have to enter a password to boot the machine can really be a pain in the ass, especially if the one or two people who know the password aren't around when you need the machine restarted. Mounting home directories makes more sense, and the proper way to do that is when the user logs in, but you still have the issue of the contents being exposed while they are logged in. Allowing the user--any user--to mount and unmount encrypted filesystems at will *is* the proper way to do this, and that is, on Unix, best done via some sort of loopback filesystem It allows for all of the things that Admins want to be able to do with their systems, back them up, move files from one disk to another, volume management (like LVM) etc. *and* allows the end user to *control their own level of privacy*. currently supports encrypted disk in a non-kludge way (loopback FS counts as a kludge). That is Mandrake Linux in their 8.2 beta No, Blazes local NFS is a kludge. Some sort of Loopback is the *right* way to go about this for most needs. version. That's it. OpenBSD with its crypto everywhere? No, it should be crypto everywhere except on the disk. The upcoming Funny, aren't they the ones that allow the use of an encrypted swap partition? Now *that* is the right way to do it. versions of ResierFS for Linux will support plugable modules which will allow easier encryption, so eventually it will be availbe for Linux. I just wish OpenBSD would get this in there so they could actually live up to their reputation. I'd prefer they get dual processor support working first. For that much encryption, they're going to need it. -- Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.--Tim May
Re: INFO: Intricate Screening Of Fliers In Works
On Sunday, February 3, 2002, at 06:41 PM, Tim May wrote: On Sunday, February 3, 2002, at 01:22 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote: Theoretically, the system could be calibrated to watch for people with links to restaurants or other places thought to be favored by terrorist cells. It might also note phone calls and match individuals against First they will just have to talk the terrorist out of using cash for non-ticket purchases or into using cash for ticket purchases. Otherwise, some really devious terrorist may use traceable payment instruments only for benign purposes (see Creating a profile chapter) and for that final ticket purchase, while paying with cash everything else. Could it just be that this current War on something will be used, as all previous Wars on something, to eradicate cash ? And how will they get the records from restaurants? (Ditto for the other data mining inputs, most of which are from private persons, companies, or organizations.) Subpoena of specific person records will not generate the data mining raw data they want. Simply make it a requirement of the business license, after all every business in the US is involved in interstate trade, which means the Feds have the responsibility to regulate them. Even in our headlong rush to a surveillance state, I don't see restaurants and bookstores turning over information on this kind of scale. Bookstores, maybe. Restaurants? They'll fight this tooth and nail as many of them take, well let's just say in a business that generates a lot of untraceable paper money, not all of it get reported. (Which leaves us with the credit card companies. Maybe FINCEN and DOJ can get specific records, but, again, the kind of terabytes per day of raw data to feed the data harvesters will not be easy to get. Unless the several credit reporting agencies elect to help Big Brother on a massive scale. We should be on the watch for this.) All BB has to do is modify the Credit Fair Use Reporting Act (or some such nonsense) and offer the CC Companies money for the data. Afterall, the CC Companies own the data, and they can sell it to whomever they want, modulo restrictions put in place by Men With Guns. -- Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
Re: Cypherpunk agenda succeeding
On Thursday, January 31, 2002, at 08:44 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Encrypted disks are still rare, but that is because raids that seize people's computers are rare. Of course it is regrettable that disk encryption is not part of the operating system -- but if Microsoft put it in before we had a strong, widely adopted system, they would doubtless muck it up. Even if they do it after they will still muck it up. Email, IM, and voice communication. remains entirely in the clear and that is extremely bad. It seems to me that it should be possible to sell a decent mail system to corporations provided that the mail system provides forward secrecy, thus guaranteeing that the only copies of possibly inconvenient email are those in the computers of the First we need to get to the point where everything between firewalls in encrypted. -- Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.--Tim May
Re: PGP plugin for Eudora considered excellent
On Monday, January 28, 2002, at 09:20 PM, David Honig wrote:
Someone (Eric *) posted recently that there are problems
with Eudora and PGP (tm) plugins. This is not the case.
PGP plugins interoperate *fine* with Eudora (e.g., 3.05)
and require very few extra mouseclicks, even with folks
still using 2.6.2. In addition,
the GUI is intuitive. *Kudos* If there are interop problems
with GPG I have to blame them on GPG. I work with
legacy and other keys transparently with PGP plugins under
Eudora. Encrypted attachments also work fine.
As long as you have the right versions of everything, and as soon as
you want to upgrade things break.
BTDT.
\begin{author_thrashing}
I'd suggest the hardest part is explaining how PK works
to your parents.
The hardest part is explaining *why*.
--
Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about
building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be
built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the
structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it
belongs.--Tim May
Re: Thinking outside the box, deviously
On Thursday, January 24, 2002, at 05:20 PM, Michael Motyka wrote: Jim Choate [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Michael Motyka wrote: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Appendix: A math puzzle. Imagine a solid sphere. Maybe the sphere is made of plutonium. A drill bit is lowered onto the sphere, going right through the center, centered on the center (that is, the drilled-out core is not off-center in any way. What is left is a sphere with a cylindrical section (and the two end caps) removed. The height of the remaining part of the sphere is 10 centimeters. What is its volume? Which volume, the sphere remnant, or the cylindrical section that ya removed? I can only read it as that which remains after the end caps and cylindrical section are removed. But you're not Jim. If the sphere is 10cm in height does that mean it's sitting on the round part of the sphere or the removed end caps (these two 'diameters' are not equal)? If you want to pick nits it's not explicit about the orientation but Isn't that kind of what Mr May is taking about? Picking at Nits, or rather pulling at little threads (asking questions) until the whole thing unravels? based on the phrase lowered onto I assume it was drilled out vertically. I also assumed that a measurement of height is a measurement of the thing as it would sit after being drilled and without any pitch or roll added. I'm no freaking good at math, but I suspect that the volume of a sphere with a core removed is equal to a an uncored sphere of the same height. Hm. I don't have the formulas handy to figure this out, and I'm probably wrong. -- Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.--Tim May
Re: [DMCA_discuss] Re: Buy DVDs and games abroad - and break the law (fwd)
On Sunday, January 27, 2002, at 05:36 AM, Mikko Särelä wrote: On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Jei wrote: Copyright holder in fact is the same as a publisher (in general terms), and is just a business entity, which tries to exploit author (it works even in those cases when author and publisher is the same person). Author, generally speaking, does not depend on businessman in order to create. Author is the only one,who needs protection. And the only danger he or she needs to be protected from is a publisher, which intents to still name. This talk about exploitation is purely Marxist dogma that has been refuted many times. What happens between the business man and the author is voluntary contract that benefits both. Not always. While I agree that exploitation is not the correct term, and that yes the contract between Publisher and Author is voluntary, there are certain areas where legislation has created functional monopolies whereby a creator has, if they wish their creation to be widely available, little or no choice but to turn over their copyrights to a small number of companies (I'm thinking of the music publishing biz. in the US.) But this is usually the government sticking it's nose into private dealings of individuals. -- Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.--Tim May
Re: Backscatter X-ray system.
On Monday, January 21, 2002, at 10:51 AM, Tim May wrote: On Monday, January 21, 2002, at 08:19 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: http://www.as-e.com/technology/imagebank/Images/ase_10b_b.jpg Some of you concealed-carry afficianados might like to look at this image. It's a backscatter X-ray photo, showing a concealed (plastic) Glock 17 clearly turning up on a detection system There is an interesting image gallery at www.as-e.com The Glock 17 is mostly metal, like nearly all other handguns. Only part of the frame is polymer, a design move also seen with some HKs (before Glock, actually), some SIGs, and so on. IIRC, the VP-70. Interesting design. Awful, Awful trigger. The slide, barrel, and various other parts show up on x-ray systems very easily. In this photo, you can clearly see the whole outline, although the polymer parts are much fainter. Anybody know what that bit in his left calf is? -- Amendment II, Revised: A well-regulated population being necessary to the security of a police state, the right of the Government to keep and destroy arms shall not be infringed. --Sten Drescher --
Re: Responsibility.
On Thursday, January 17, 2002, at 10:55 AM, Tim May wrote: On Thursday, January 17, 2002, at 10:14 AM, Aimee Farr wrote: And your insinuation that we are using mattd, for example, as a cat's paw for violent political action (?) while obtaining plausible deniabilty is pernicious. It wasn't an insinuation, just saying that it happens. I would not like to see this forum further mischaracterized as being associated with certain activities in the press. I don't care what you would like this forum characterized or mischaracterized as. Fact is, many of us support replacing the current U.S. Government with something much closer to the intent of the Founders. I'm reminded of a cartoon from the back of a punk-rock flyer from the mid-80s. When you cut out a cancer, do you stick another in it's place? Personally, I think it would be a _good_ thing if a massively violent event were to cut the head off the snake. This would speed up the process. Unfortunately, I don't believe that the current government would be replaced by the one described in the constitution. Too many people wouldn' t like that. -- Interfaces matter. You need mathematical bones; engineering muscle; but you won't replicate without beautiful skin. Bits, transistors, wires, code, gummint velveeta is free. Will is expensive. Gutenburg. Smith. Ford. Moore. Postel. Steam engines were neat. Steam engines pulling trains were amazing. Computers were neat. Computers networked were amazing. Warning grunts are useful. The ability of a charistmatic speaker to fuck with your head is disastrous. --Blank Frank(anonymously)--
Re: One arms violent people with weapons
On Wednesday, January 16, 2002, at 06:20 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote: German Minister's Interview Rips 911 Case Open Rumor Mill News Reading Room Forum Von Buelow: I can state: the planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secretapparatuses of the state and industry. Utter crap. The attack was simple minded and executed badly. A 25 minuted delay to the time on target for the first plane to hit the WTC would have doubled the loss of life (after 9 AM as opposed to before). A couple of bored psychotic high school students with a smidgen of algebra could have planned this and carried it out in a month or two. This was neither sophisticated, nor complicated. All it was was effective. -- Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.--Tim May
Re: CDR: Rogue terror state violates Geneva Convention
On Monday, January 14, 2002, at 04:27 AM, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote: What's good for the goose should be good for the gander, ya? Nonsense. No reasonable definition of criminal conduct would put the US government and al-Quaeda in the same category. How about Criminal Conduct meaning Actions violate the laws. The USG *HAS* done that from time to time you know. Maybe not as baldly as al-Quaeda, but it has done so. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: CDR: Rogue terror state violates Geneva Convention
On Monday, January 14, 2002, at 07:53 PM, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote: Petro wrote: On Monday, January 14, 2002, at 04:27 AM, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote: What's good for the goose should be good for the gander, ya? Nonsense. No reasonable definition of criminal conduct would put the US government and al-Quaeda in the same category. How about Criminal Conduct meaning Actions violate the laws. The USG *HAS* done that from time to time you know. Maybe not as baldly as al-Quaeda, but it has done so. Okay, let's try a concrete example: A commits the offense of blocking another's driveway with his automobile. B commits murder. Is A in the same category as B? If yes, then I have to concede the argument, because as you say the US government is not Simon-pure. I do, however, make a distinction. If A is actually a crime (instead of an infraction), then yes, both are in the set called criminal. It is a large set and includes most of the people in this country. What is the difference between murdering 50 people and murdering 3000? -- Crypto is about a helluva lot more than just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.--Tim May
Re: tree huggers as terrorists
On Friday, January 11, 2002, at 09:58 PM, Mark Henderson wrote: On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 08:02:16PM -0800, Petro wrote: destroy this (America) country and our way of life, while the eco-facists *do* want to destroy this country and our way of life, but don't come right out and say it. If they (the eco-fascists) had their way, they would wind up being the cause of a lot more than a measly 3k dead. If the tree huggers had their way, this planet might actually be inhabitable a few hundred years from now. What makes you think that the current American way of life is actually sustainable? Things like air and water quality in London being better than they have been since the late 1500s. Things like the inflation adjusted cost of metals, energy and food *AROUND THE WORLD* are lower than at any time in history (meaning that while they may be more expensive in real terms than last year, they are significantly lower than they were in my grandfathers time). Life is better for the vast majority of the world than it's ever been, largely due to Americas excessive consumption and desire for cheaper goods. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: tree huggers as terrorists
On Thursday, January 10, 2002, at 11:26 AM, Major Variola (ret) wrote: While even the harshest critics acknowledge that there is no proportionate comparison between Al Qaeda and groups like the Earth Liberation Front -- particularly because these radical environmental and animal rights groups have avoided taking lives -- they say that terrorism is terrorism. Nonsense. There is no significant difference between the two, other than maybe Al Qaeda being a little more honest. They admit they want to destroy this (America) country and our way of life, while the eco-facists *do* want to destroy this country and our way of life, but don't come right out and say it. If they (the eco-fascists) had their way, they would wind up being the cause of a lot more than a measly 3k dead. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: more on procmail is not mattd's friend!
On Thursday, January 10, 2002, at 08:50 PM, Incognito Innominatus wrote: On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Anonymous wrote: Have fun mattd(as I am sure you already are!) this script allows anyone to return comments to mattd without effort. This, of course, is incredibly rude to the remailer operators. Cover traffic. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Spooky noises and things that go bump in the night
On Thursday, January 10, 2002, at 08:51 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Monday, January 7, 2002, at 04:11 PM, Tim May wrote: I think it is a moral necessity to kill anyone trying to steal anything (beyond the utterly trivial or confusable, e.g., one should not kill someone picking up a toy left out in the yard...might be a mistake, he might be trying to return it, etc.). Someone stealing a television or PC has certainly earned killing. On Monday, January 7, 2002, at 12:39 AM, Petro wrote: Given the legal hassle that one will face if one does that, it's just not worth it. Legal hassle depends on where you live. Most places, provided the burglar is inside, no problem. If lives long No, it doesn't. In the places where most people live, if you shoot a burglar in your home, you *will* call your lawyer if you've got half a brain in your head (talk to the cops about a shooting *without* one? Are you nuts?), you will probably go downtown, at least to get booked, and you might spend some time (measured in hours) behind bars. You've just shot (and if you're any good killed) someone--the fourth worst crime in the books (after using ethnic slurs, making sexist comments, and being mean to poor people by wanting to keep your hard earned money)--unless the police know you, they are likely to do it just to make sure you're not the burglar who got the drop on the home owner. Then there is the family of the deceased. You're a big fat target for a civil suit, and if the family cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to them by the Brady Campaign against Civil Rights. enough to get outside, drag the body back inside, and rinse away the blood. Police will not be interested in finding the evidence that he made it outside. Where do you live that the cops are that stupid and lazy? -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Spooky noises and things that go bump in the night
On Monday, January 7, 2002, at 04:11 PM, Tim May wrote: On Monday, January 7, 2002, at 12:39 AM, Petro wrote: On Sunday, January 6, 2002, at 06:37 PM, Bill Stewart wrote: Nor do I. If the neighbor's kid wants to steal my overweight television or 233-MHz PC, it's not worth killing him for, Bill is of course welcome to invite the neighbor's kids to steal his stuff. My mileage varies. I think it is a moral necessity to kill anyone trying to steal anything (beyond the utterly trivial or confusable, e.g., one should not kill someone picking up a toy left out in the yard...might be a mistake, he might be trying to return it, etc.). Someone stealing a television or PC has certainly earned killing. Given the legal hassle that one will face if one does that, it's just not worth it. A 500 dollar TV (well, it was probably worth 500 when purchased 15 years ago, we got it free in 1995) is not worth 20k in lawyers fees. A 1900 dollar Macintosh isn't worth 10k in lawyers fees. This is what strong crypto will make more possible: the deliverance of strong vengeance, untraceably. (Hint: This preceeded Jimbell by many years.) Fact is, many people have already earned killing. The only reason we cannot dispose of them is that liberal shits interfere with vengeance. Those that have earned killing didn't earn it by stealing TVs or the value-equivalent. There are only 3 things in my home worth killing to protect: (1) My wife. (2) My self. (3) My guns. Again, my mileage varies. And since I decide what is important to me, it' s my house, my rules. Understand this, that if someone breaks into my home when I'm there, I'll do my whatever it takes to nullify the threat because if they come in when I'm home I have to assume that they are after one of those three. Certainly nearly every member, with but a handful of exceptions, of Congress has earned the death penalty many times over. For a completely different level of theft. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Spooky noises
On Monday, January 7, 2002, at 07:05 PM, Anonymous wrote: Petro spoke: There are 3 cases why one would keep a loaded firearm in the house for self defense--well, at least three, but three general cases is all I can think of off the top of my head: Why wouldn't you keep loaded guns in the house? Guns should always be Convenience. In order to shoot them, I have to transport them to the range. It is illegal to transport them loaded, so to shoot them, I'd have to unload them, then load them. and always will be. If you raise your kids to be stupid about loaded guns, or any other dangerous tool -- well, I guess Darwin had a point. Who says I have kids living here? -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Choices of small handguns
On Wednesday, January 2, 2002, at 09:41 AM, Matthew Gaylor wrote: At 1:05 AM -0800 1/2/02, Petro wrote: The squeeze cock is activated as you draw/grasp the weapon. If the burglar is close enough to hear that he is going to notice your movement. Right...like in a darkened bedroom as you crouch down waiting for your attacker... Stop and think through this a second. First of all, the click is fairly quiet, much lower in volume than say--stroking a a pump shotgun, or racking the slide--along the lines of, say, opening a safe or gun locker? Second, what makes you aware that there is someone in your home? Usually it's noises they are making (I would assume). Have you ever listened to your house at night? Every place I've lived there are all sorts of mechanical noises off and on all night long. Refrigerator coming on, heating (or cooling) units kicking on and off, creaking from the wind blowing, the tick of a clock, the whirr of computers running (well, in my home). The subtle click of the cocker engaging will (a) be lost in the other noises and (b) is innocuous enough that they probably won't. If it was something I worried about (I don't keep a loaded firearm in the house for home protection at this point, I'm not high enough profile for the Feebs or the BATF to want to raid my compound, nor am I a sufficient irritant to the local Gestapo, and my neighborhood is relative free of home burglary/home invasion type crimes that I feel it is better to keep the guns in a locker than on my bedside table) I would simply put the gun under a pillow to muffle the noise further, engage the cocker and start hunting. There are other techniques that you can use to to either mask, or render irrelevant the click, you can wait until you're bringing the pistol online for firing to cock it (squeeze the cocker as part of the final presentation), or as Black Uni noted, one can squeeze the trigger first, then engage the cocker (although this would take a bit of practice). But you have a valid question in: The squeeze cocker is a solution for a non-existent problem. Do you really think a P7 is intrinsically safer than a Sig226 which has no operator manipulated safety? While I *like* the squeeze cocker for various reasons, It's not the #1 feature I like in that firearm. My reasons for choosing the firearm, from most important to the utterly trivial and pretty silly are: (1) It feels good it my hand, and seems to point much better for me (this is a function of ergonomics, and will vary for different people). (2) The barrel is fixed to the frame, and sits low in the frame reducing muzzle flip and allowing for *much* faster followup shots. (3) Reliable sturdy construction of both firearm and magazines (the factory mags are very sturdy and take a lot of abuse). (4) Compact size and relatively flat sides making for a more comfortable conceal carry piece, if I ever wind up doing so. (5) Nifty squeeze cocker that is much faster to access as a slide release than a frame or slide mounted release. Yes, that lever serves multiple functions, it cocks the weapon and serves as a slide release, you don't have to move your hand, change your grip on the weapon, or use your other hand to release the slide, just get a grip. (6) Nifty gas action (though subject to fouling). (7) Not very common. Everyone has a glock or a 1911 clone, bring. (yes, I said utterly trivial and pretty silly). Having a weapon that goes click clack is a detriment. All weapons go click clack, it's just a question of when. I'm not knocking the Sig, it's a great gun, but I'd bet with a little research and time I could come up with some minor nits about it to blow up all out of proportion to the weapons utility and ablities. -- I am sorry that some live in a fantasy world where guns are not appropriate. I only hope that your fantasy is not ripped to shreds when someone you love is killed and all you can do is offer the assailent another target. - dzimmerm, on kuro5hin
Re: Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts
(Yes, a late reply) On Wednesday, December 19, 2001, at 08:40 AM, David Honig wrote: At 11:47 PM 12/18/01 -0800, Petro wrote: That would be utterly pointless (no pun intended). The value of Postscript is that it *isn't* a set of pixels. No, it wouldn't be pointless. Postscript is not the only way to print. What I was responding to was talking about shipping fonts as bitmaps. Bitmaps are not functions, they are not line descriptions. You know this. It is the equivalent of using a function that approximates the sine() function to generate a table of trig values. The function's code is copyrighted, but the table of values isn't. And yes, there are still uses for tables of trig values. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: handgun carry
On Tuesday, January 1, 2002, at 06:18 PM, david wrote: The next step is to learn how to get your handgun into action as rapidly as possible without shooting yourself in the ass or the foot (which wastes ammo and and impairs your ability to survive a shootout). Ideally you should attend course where you can learn the correct skills and tactics from the start. I took personal handgun courses from the American Small Arms Academy and Front Sight. Other well known schools are Gunsight, Thunder Ranch, and Lethal Force Institute. If any body in the bay area is interested in taking these sorts of classes, I know a local instructor who is fairly good, and a lot cheaper than going to many of these. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: CDR: Re: cell phone guns
On Saturday, December 29, 2001, at 06:26 PM, david wrote: On Saturday 29 December 2001 05:00 pm, Faustine wrote: Hm, whatever works, I guess. Sheer stealth isn't as much a factor for me as is accuracy, reliability and being able to avoid the woman with a peashooter image. All rhetoric aside (but with all that in mind) I've actually been thinking of getting a 9mm, something along the lines of a Glock 26, a Kahr P9 or maybe a Sig-Sauer P239. Any thoughts? I have a Glock M17 and M21. They are both extremely accurate and reliable. Glocks are serious gun fighter's weapons because they have no extra bells and whistles like external safeties and hammer decockers. They also don't have Um. No, they are serious fighters weapons because they are simple, robust and reliable. But mostly robust and reliable. If you're looking for a firearm, after reliability the most important thing is ergonomics. I've owned a Beretta 92, a Tanfoglio (eaa witness) .45, and a HK P7. I've fired glocks, Sigs, Browning Hi-powers (and clones/redesigns) and a wide variety of 1911s. I can't stand the way the glocks and most of the 1911s fit my hand, they don't feel right, while the browning Hi-power, the HK P7, Beretta etc. all felt good. The P7 being the best IMO. Just about any contemporary pistol is going to be robust and reliable as long as you don't make too many modifications to it. I suggest that you consider a .40 instead of a 9mm. You should always carry the largest gun in the in the biggest caliber you can control and conceal. The real world energy difference between a .40 and a 9mm is not worth talking about. The most important thing with a pistol is accuracy. There are two ways to achieve good accuracy, one is to be born with a natural talent. The other is to practice practice, practice. With 9mm being significantly cheaper than .40, you can practice a lot more for the same dollar. 9mm has been killing and wounding people for many years. The bigger the gun the easier and faster it is to shoot accurately. The bigger the caliber the more stopping power. The reason the US military switched to .45 caliber handguns is becuause .38 caliber handguns were so ineffective against the Moros in the Phillipines. Then again, we don't have many scientific studies on the effectiveness of the .45 against them either. Since 9mm is .36 caliber, .38 the military has basicially returned to a caliber proven to be not up to the task. Glock offers .40 in each of the frame sizes it offers 9mm in. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Choices of small handguns
On Sunday, December 30, 2001, at 02:53 PM, Tim May wrote: * HK P7, the famous squeeze-cocker. I had wanted one of these since reading about them in 1980, so when HK was selling a bunch of reworked and remarket P7s at a good price ($550 or so), I bought one. Very elegant, very unusual. Mine is in 9mm. Very safe, but takes a bit of getting used to. It also takes some thinking about to transition out of. The squeeze cocker also acts as the slide release release, so you get real used to just squeezing and going. The Glock 26 would probably be a good choice for a woman, due to the smaller hands most women have. 9mm is more than adequate, especially when loaded with something like Hydra-Shok or Golden Saber or the like. My wife, who has small hands, has a CZ75, which is a wonderful mid-sized pistol. They are well made, reliable, and fairly inexpensive. I like my Kahr, followed by my HK P7, followed by my SIGs. I didn't much care for the Kahr I fired, the trigger was really stiff, and the recoil was a lot sharper. Of course, this was on one of their smaller products. (I also have a full-sized HK USP .45, and other handguns, of course.) --Tim May A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship. --Alexander Fraser Tyler -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Choices of small handguns
On Monday, December 31, 2001, at 12:01 AM, Black Unicorn wrote: Ancient German P7 secret: You can decock the pistol silently by disengaging the squeeze cock mechanism under the trigger guard and flush with the depressed squeeze-cocker with the thumb on your free hand and slowly releasing pressure on the cocker. It's pretty easy to engage the cocker silently as well, but why bother? I Could you elaborate on this please? I'm trying it right now, and I'm not understand how to make it any quieter than just letting go. As to the initial squeeze, it's actually so quiet as to be unnoticeable beyond arms length. consider it like a set trigger. It only gets cocked when the target is acquired, identified and in the sights anyhow. If you really need that I disagree, it gets cocked when it gets picked up. The finger doesn't get to the trigger until the sites are lined up. They are one of the few well manufactured pistols that have properly balanced tolerances with a fixed barrel and still aren't subject to a lot of One more point about the barrel--it sits a lot lower in the frame than most pistols, modifying the recoil to more of a push than a flip--this leads to a quicker followup shots. jamming or ammo pickiness. It loves being dirty and will shoot on and on regardless of what its been through. (Fluted chamber helps here). Combined with good ammo, like say Golden Saber, the gun, if not the user, will outshoot about anything that isn't designed specifically for competition (i.e. impractical for real use). However, do not get oil in the gas-tube. This will lead to problems. More importantly it is simply the fastest, most accurate handgun from draw to target to fire that I've ever used. Best concealed carry around, in my view. While I won't disagree, I will note that if you live in a cold climate, and use a very close to the body carry (IWB etc) the steel against your skin can get a little cold, while some of the polymer pistols won't have this problem (any metal bodied pistol will). Like I said, I don't bother with anything else anymore. Hell, they're all fun to shoot. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Choices of small handguns
On Monday, December 31, 2001, at 07:13 AM, Matthew Gaylor wrote: It loves being dirty and will shoot on and on regardless of what its been through. (Fluted chamber helps here). You bring up one of my other objections to the design- The fluted chamber is tough on the brass. If you don't reload it isn't a problem however, but the fluting puts striations on the brass that weakens it for subsequent use. I've heard that certain loads (Silvertips) foul up the gas system on the P7 quicker than other designs. If the P7 works and if your particular gun works for you and your happy with it that's great. Personally I'd stack up my Sig226 or Beretta 92FS against the P7 anytime. IMO 9mm is too cheap to bother reloading. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Choices of small handguns
On Monday, December 31, 2001, at 02:15 PM, Faustine wrote: Thanks to all for the excellent advice and recommendations. I'm sure it's worth taking the time to try them all before deciding, thanks again for a more solid place to start. How much time do you have? There are a *lot* of pistols out there. -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Applied Digital pushes microchip to plant in foreigners for tracking
On Saturday, December 22, 2001, at 04:18 PM, Jei wrote: Man today is more than ever converging with technology, said Sullivan, who is CEO of the Palm Beach-based tech company Applied Digital Solutions (Nasdaq: ADSX, 45 cents). I think the positives overwhelmingly ^^ Mostly just trying to boost stock price I'd imagine. Doesn't Nasdaq de-list companies who stay under a dollar for a certain length of time? -- Those without creative minds and agile fingers are of course welcome to hurry up with my fries. And they'll probably use a GUI to take my order, too. - Tom Christiansen
Re: Wired on e-gold
On Tuesday, December 18, 2001, at 04:30 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote: Criminals love privacy, they love anonymity. Remailer operators soon find that a substantial majority of the messages they send contain nothing but harrassment and threats. Just how would the remailer operators find this out? Are you implying that Remops read the mail passing through their machines? Few customers use anonymity services for positive purposes, to protect their privacy while engaging in legitimate activities. How do you know? With most people, if they have nothing to hide, they don't hide it. Everyone has something to hide. Everyone. Only paranoids and extremists will adopt anonymity technologies without nefarious purposes in mind. Anyone proposing to offer new services for privacy and anonymity should be prepared to deal with the onslaught of criminals who will use the system for bad ends. If you mean by Criminal One who breaks the law, well there are a lot of laws that have no legitimate purpose. If you mean by criminals One who regularly commits immoral acts, then you are in much more trouble. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Nazi dwarf,tom cruise,in singapore.Scientologist City.
On Tuesday, December 18, 2001, at 04:53 PM, mattd wrote: http://theage.com.au/entertainment/2001/12/19/FFXKJ94KCVC.html Tom Cruise says Hollywood will stop internet thieves Wednesday 19 December 2001 People who download movies off the internet are thieves who threaten the potential of the film industry, Tom Cruise said yesterday. If there is a God, please let this happen. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Wired on e-gold
On Tuesday, December 18, 2001, at 06:02 PM, Steve Schear wrote: At 01:30 AM 12/19/2001 +0100, Nomen Nescio wrote: snip Criminals love privacy, they love anonymity. Remailer operators soon find that a substantial majority of the messages they send contain nothing but harrassment and threats. Few customers use anonymity services for positive purposes, to protect their privacy while engaging in legitimate activities. With most people, if they have nothing to hide, they don't hide it. Only paranoids and extremists will adopt anonymity technologies without nefarious purposes in mind. Anyone proposing to offer new services for privacy and anonymity should be prepared to deal with the onslaught of criminals who will use the system for bad ends. One would assume then that most governments are paranoids, extremists and criminals since the use of privacy/secrecy and even anonymity technologies are stock and trade in some of their agencies. Yes, one would assume that. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts
On Tuesday, December 18, 2001, at 10:12 AM, David Honig wrote: At 07:35 PM 12/17/01 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: ATM is Adobe Type Manager. Linotype is a big font house. Intellectual Property laws for fonts are normally even stranger than for regular material, but if any of these are in Postscript, they're also programs, so there may be DMCA issues, and there's obviously some contractual relationship with Adobe that lets them copyright implementations. IIRC fonts are not copyrightable in the US, but are elsewhere, yes? The shape of the glyphs is not copyrightable, but the application of a specific name to that set of glyphs is. You can copy *exactly* the shape of a font, and just call it something else. Helvetica-Arial/Geneva/Swiss (actually *slightly* different, but that was more an artifact of the original technology for them, Arial is TT, Geneva was a bitmapped font from Way Back on the Mac etc.) Times-New York on the mac (as Helvetica is to Geneva, so Times is to New York, IIRC). Oh, but don't do it by just renaming the postscript, that's copyright infringement on the *code*, as is (probably) using some sort of Postscript-TT conversion that renames as it goes. Assuming that's correct, then an algorithmic font (eg Postscript) could be turned into an albeit large static set of pixels which wouldn't be copyrightable in the US. That would be utterly pointless (no pun intended). The value of Postscript is that it *isn't* a set of pixels. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Cypherpunk Ban
On Monday, December 17, 2001, at 10:30 AM, Nomen Nescio wrote: jyaI don't recall the rationale used by the USPO to forbid CJ from posting to cypherpunks. Anybody know the answer to that? Since when is it unusual to forbid parolees from associating with unsavory and immoral characters? Given the neighborhoods most parolees live in, forbidding them contact with unsavory and immoral characters is often impossible. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Uzbekistan Eyewitnesses See Dozens of US Casualties
On Monday, December 17, 2001, at 09:17 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James A. Donald: The dogs bark but the caravan moves on. In the US, unlike most other countries, there is still sufficient freedom of speech that soldiers cannot go missing without it becoming widely known. The US army does underreport wounded, and minimize the severity of wounds, but dead is dead. On 16 Dec 2001, at 22:48, Petro wrote: Of course, sometimes soldiers who die in a place they weren't supposed to be come up missing in training accidents somewhere else. The US, unlike the countries whose system so many prefer to impose on the US, has sufficient freedom of speech that that cannot happen without causing grave embarrassment. Recollect that dying in battle gives very different honors, compensation etc. If if the army falsified the circumstances of a soldier's death there would be mutiny in the ranks. Depends on the soldier and the war they are fighting. Not all soldiers fight for honors, and some units understand/believe that certain fights in certain places are worth not getting all that much attention. I'm not saying that in *this* war that would happen, there is no need. The American public knows we are in this war, and they understand that there will be some casualties. The low death rates in recent conflicts have made some people suspicious. How can the US army get casualty ratio of something like ten thousand to one, when fighting against people with comparable weapons? And if the US is made of supermen, why did it suffer heavy casualties in Vietnam and Korea? Because in Korea and Vietnam we were fighting the enemies fight with largely the the same level of technology (yes, we had better technology, but not *that* much better). We are also fighting smarter these days. In my judgment the big change is the change from a conscript army, a slave army, to a warrior army. Firstly this makes the soldiers more valuable to the officers, since deaths cost the army big money. Every casualty means that the pay and benefits have to be considerably higher. In a free market, the burden of hazardous employment falls on the employer, so the employer has an incentive to provide safe employment. Secondly, the apparatus of coercion that attempts to force conscripts to fight against their will frequently forces them into danger that a competent warrior would never have gone into, or would promptly have left. Not that I disagree much with this, but there is also the issue that the American public is much more sensitive to losses than in Korea or Vietnam. We are not as naive as we used to be, and we don't trust Uncle nearly as much. This makes those at the top more careful about objectives and methods. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: will the real capitalism please stand up
On Wednesday, December 5, 2001, at 06:58 PM, mattd wrote: Tim may or a pretender wrote The solution is obvious: capitalism. The real one, not the fascist version. Objectivism the real thing? How do you separate fascism from capitalism? If you have to ask, you don't understand either *at all*. But there is a simple test. Who owns the guns? -- Amendment II, Revised: A well-regulated population being necessary to the security of a police state, the right of the Government to keep and destroy arms shall not be infringed. --Sten Drescher --
Re: CDR: Declans testimony;Clone me!
On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 05:30 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, mattd wrote: As an entertainment journalist with a disability Talk about massive understatements... More like massively redundant. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: HDCP break and DMCA
On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 10:31 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote: But as I said, most professors are being much more careful about getting permission beforehand and most copy places are being more careful about what they sell. If I remember the results correctly, Kinko's keeps track of what they copy and sends the publishers a certain amount. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: CDR: Re: in praise of gold
On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 07:58 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Jim Choate wrote: On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Faustine wrote: Not all women are golddiggers. They're called 'old maids'. ALL women who are interested in a 'relationship' are 'golddiggers' in the sense they want to 'change' the other party. Nothing like a good across the board generalization, huh Jim? Well, I hate to be in the position of defending Jimbo, but he's right--in a sense, but not just about women. I'd be willing to bet (should there be a way of proving it to my satisfaction) that in every relationship, one party would like to change AT LEAST 2 things about the other party. Of course, this then makes every person who gets into any kind of relationship a gold digger. Who was she? It's nice to see you're not bitter ;-/ Why do you assume it was a she? -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: The Crypto Winter
On Saturday, November 24, 2001, at 08:56 PM, scum wrote: Atheists who claim to be anti-theism are either (a) not atheists, or (b) mis-understand what theism is. If we spend a quality minute in the real world, one or two things of what capitalism is and what anarchism is not will be evident. life without government vs. Texaco Would you like to attempt to make a meaningful argument out of that? Is this the result of you not knowing english well, or are you a bloody idiot? -- Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Re: Nuclear Pipe Bombs
On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 01:47 PM, Sandy Sandfort wrote: Ken Brown quoted Tim May (I think) saying: A way too expensive way to spread mere radiological terror, which could be done much more cheaply and easily by taking spent fuel rods and blowing them up, or just by grinding up spent fuel rods or other nuclear waste and then dumping it out of a plane over a city.) Won't work on Berkeley, though. The City Council declared Berkeley a Nuclear Free Zone. Guess that leaves only conventional weapons. What about night-sights on pistols and analog watches? -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Cypherpunk failures
On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 01:48 PM, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: On 19 Nov 2001, at 19:43, Ken Brown wrote: Much too 1990s. These times suit more loyal-sounding names. Programmers Rally Against Terrorism? I wonder how many non-Brits will get this... A few. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Farm Out!
On Tuesday, November 20, 2001, at 01:45 PM, Lou Poppler wrote: On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Tim May wrote: : On Monday, October 22, 2001, at 11:05 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote: : Ish! I'm getting bummed with NS, but wouldn't use IE on a bet. Why : use a : virus magnet? : The virii are typically executables for x86/Windows machines, not Macs. : You said you were using a Mac, so why do you think IE for the Mac : exposes you to virii? Other kinds of virii that IE will happily launch include VBscript, ActiveX, and Javascript, which probably work OK on a Mac too. The primary problem isn't IE, it's Outlook. And the Mac doesn't have the Right Stuff for ActiveX and VB, unless you also have Office installed as well, and even then I don't think the calling conventions are the same. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: CDR: Re: Rigorous and objective (if at first...)
On Saturday, November 17, 2001, at 07:36 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (in my perfectly humble hate-group inspired opinion :-). It's also great fun watching Jeff and company pretend to be even dumber than your average @home luser. What makes you think they're pretending? -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
On Saturday, November 17, 2001, at 09:50 AM, Eric Cordian wrote: No ones hair is falling out. Really. Well, not from radiation anyway. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: The Crypto Winter
On Saturday, November 17, 2001, at 05:49 PM, David Honig wrote:
At 03:15 PM 11/17/01 -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote:
on Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 01:36:32PM -0800, alphabeta121
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
what does C-A-C-L stand for?
Crypto-Anarcho Capitalist Libertarian, per archives. Shorthand for a
common, if not prevailing, political viewpoint among active
listmembers.
That label is
1. inconsistent (libertarian anarchy)
Not necessarily. It is argued both that Libertarians are
chicken-shit anarchists (afraid to take the last step) or that
Anarchists are just extreme Libertarians.
Also, keep in mind that there are many anarchist philosophies, in
fact almost as many as there are anarchists, and all of them (well most
of them) have rules or laws.
2. redundant ('capitalist' and libertarian)
No. Libertarians are for free markets, which are inherently
capitalistic in nature, but the reverse is not true. There are many
*wealthy* capitalists who are all for strongly regulated markets and
high barriers to entry. One could argue that they are not Capitalists.
3. nonsensical --cryptography is a neutral technology with debatable
social consequences
The Crypto- part of Crypto-Anarchist may in fact have nothing
at all to do with cryptography.
4. one poster's label; and anyone can post here
Your milage may vary.
Not by much. It's almost always between 48 and 51 MPG.
--
Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are
half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Rigorous and objective (if at first...)
On Friday, November 16, 2001, at 08:29 PM, Faustine wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Tim wrote: The list has only 5% of the content it had in its glory years, 1992-95. And perhaps only 10% of its content in its declining years, 1996-98. It's now at about half the level of its senile years, 1999-2000. This past year has been the worst. There are many reasons for this decline, discussed as early as 1994. Any newbies who think this list is now interesting or exciting has my sympathy. Bah. One can regret having missed the glory days while still feeling like there's a good handful of people worth coming back for. Maybe the upcoming legislation will have the same effect as Clipper and cause the list to reach critical mass again. I started reading this list back at the tail end of what Mr. May describes as the glory days, and it won't ever happen again--not in this area. Part of the energy in those days was people pushing in to vastly new territories, figuring out how to solve the hard problems--and there were a whole bunch back then. There are still lots of hard problems, but they come in dribs and drabs, and often one of these new problems can be reduced to one or two old problems--which isn't nearly as interesting. It's also the nature of the problems that has changed. Then it was easy to get money to try out a new idea. Now that is the problem--how do I take one of these ideas out of this big ass barrel and make *money* off it. Which really isn't nearly so interesting to a lot of the people who were hear before--they either had their money (Mr. May, Gilmore) or cared more about playing with ideas, philosophies and technology than getting rich. Which isn't exactly accurate. There really hasn't ever been any one thing that was true about every poster here, other than in some fashion or other they could use an email client (maybe not well, but they could). Today getting money is a bitch, and just about anything to do with crypto is going to be a huge risk--product liability, government regulation, etc. makes many of the really interesting projects a bitch and a half to even get off the ground, and the one thing that would make it all come together, the one thing that has generated more traffic than any other on this list is still virtually non-existent. Which is, I guess, why some of us still wander back through here every so often. It's kinda like going back to your childhood home. Look, there Mrs. Rice, she taught American Civics, And there's that crochety old man May, I bet he *still* has my baseball in his house somewere. Bastard chased me out of his yard with a FNFAL. You wander back looking for news of the people you knew (What ever happened to Sameer P? Perry? Is Karl Johnson still in the Big House?) or looking to see if things are any better, but it's a small town, and it's not on the main highway any more.
Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
On Friday, November 16, 2001, at 09:08 PM, Steve Schear wrote: At 11:20 PM 11/16/2001 -0500, you wrote: \Divide the U-235 into two five pound masses. Beat it evenly into the inside of one of your salad bowls. U-235 is malleable like gold so you should have no problem shaping it. Do the same with the other U-235 mass and shape it into the other salad bowl. My recollection is that all Uranium metal isotopes are much harder and denser than steel. That's why depleted uranium 238 its used for armor piercing ammunition. IIRC it's heavier, not harder (more mass for the size). Lead and Gold (as the !Dr mentioned) are both (cm^3 for cm^3) heavier than steel, and both are softer. Both also make (in the material sense) better bullets for certain types of targets, with the exception that gold is a lot more expensive than lead, and far more useful as bait for the things you want to shoot. -- For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
Re: The killing of Bill Cooper and Liquid Metal Embrittlement
On Wednesday, November 14, 2001, at 10:39 AM, Tim May wrote: An LME solution smeared along wing or panel sections could cause catastrophic failure during high stress flight phases, e.g., takeoffs and, to a lesser extent, landings. We ran a few scenarios about how easy it would be bring down an airliner, further spreading fear. Sounds like something Kissinger did in what, 1983? An Open Letter to the President published IIRC in Omni magazine. So what happened on Monday morning? From the reports I'm reading, it looks like the tail section broke off shortly after takeoff, during relatively high-g banking manouvers. CNN is saying this is an unprecedented failure mechanism for the A300. Airplanes crash with an unsettling degree of frequency. -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Rigorous and objective
On Wednesday, November 14, 2001, at 12:12 AM, Tim May wrote: Meanwhile, grey burrowcrats are burrowing into their burrows in D.C., busily writing rigorous and objective reports on the benefits of welfare and why gun control is cost-effective. Feh. I hope to see the day when millions of them are gassed. So did you discuss what was going to be done *after* the current government is destroyed? What sort of government will follow? Or was this just an exercise in later day bakuninism? I'm not (just) being a smart ass. If the necessary stuff was in place (fully anonymous digital currencies, blacknets, Bell's AP system etc.) the state would be gradually rendered ineffective, then die on the vine over a great enough time that people could adapt, institutions and attitudes could adjust. You can't just strike off a slaves chains and say You're Free, that slave has to understand how to deal with freedom, he has to have the skills and thought processes to live without his master taking care of him. The vast majority of the people in this country lack one or more of skills and thought processes to live w/out an effective government. What are you going to do about that? Or is your purpose, like those Russian Nihilists, just to smash the state? -- Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Unsecured Wireless/802.11b/Passwords
On Sunday, November 11, 2001, at 07:01 PM, Tim May wrote: The government agencies are filled with incompetents. Which many of us are thankful for.
Re: Sedition
On Sunday, November 11, 2001, at 08:35 PM, Anonymous wrote: How more noble can a man's life end, then to love his country, or his cause, his family, his friends -- more than himself? More noble to die in bed of old age, children raised to be self-sufficient and independent, bills paid up and burial money in the bank. Country and Cause are often masks, cover for hooligans and blackguards. It is not noble to die in defense of family and friends, to die in such cases is a failure, but at least it's a failure in the attempt to do ones duty than in the attempt to avoid it. Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are half-wits.--Chris Klein
Re: Star Chamber America
At 1:12 PM -0700 8/7/01, John Young wrote: ... For those unable to download the Sklyarov images, here is what the USA's request to seal said: ... and arrest warrant be placed under seal to avoid compromising the investigation or placing any of the agents involved in the investigation in danger during the completion of the investigation. Dated July 10, 2001Respectfully submitted, ROBERT S. MUELLER, III United States Attorney JOSEPH SULLIVAN Assistant United States Attorney be sealed. Dated: 7/10/01 Patricia Trumbull United States Magistrate Judge Hmmm... Agents in danger from a russian programmer who is charged with talking about illegal things and writing bad code. Yeah, He probably knows how to use an AK-47, and carries 4 with him at all times. One wonders whether Patty Trumbull really exists, or is just a squiggly line on a rubber stamp somewhere. -- http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.
Re: Advertisements on Web Pages
At 9:22 AM -0700 8/7/01, Tim May wrote: (I'm surprised no one has urged me to use Lynx. Is it still being used?) For very limited values of used, yes. Not often, and not by many, but I'd bet it will build under OS X. -- http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.
Re: Traceable Infrastructure is as vulnerable as traceable messages.
At 11:33 AM -0400 8/5/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: Last I checked, the vast bulk of remailers were in North America and Europe. Given sufficient provocation (Bush twins kidnapped, Osama talking biochemwomdterror in DC), I could easily see a coordinated set of pre-dawn raids to gather evidence and seize computers as part of a criminal investigation. Obviously the servers would have to be held as potential evidence for a trial - did they keep logs? our techs will find out - which could take a decade. This would cripple the current remailer network and generate almost no public outcry beyond the cypherpunks and such. Were that to happen, I'd bet a bunch of new remailers would be in place before the heliocopters were finished refueling. -- http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.
RE: Spoliation cites
At 7:22 PM -0700 8/2/01, Black Unicorn wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Harmon Seaver As others have stated, if you don't keep logs, or throw away all your reciepts, there's not jack they can do about it. Uh, no. And if you had been reading the many, many posts on this point you'd see that about every one of the 10-15 cases cited here say exactly the opposite of what you claim above. (I didn't see a legal background on your resume either but perhaps you have any cites that I don't know about?) I think Seaver meant that if if you don't have the stuff, you don't have the stuff and all the fines and jail time in the world won't produce the stuff, especially if it was never there to begin with. Although really, the most serious question everyone should be asking is why the court wants all copies. Asked and answered. Was it? I missed it in the other discussions.
RE: Gotti, evidence, case law, remailer practices, civil cases, civility
At 8:09 PM -0700 8/2/01, Black Unicorn wrote: value. (Revisit my IANAL discussion in posts a few days ago in which I wonder aloud why these posters are taken seriously while the I am not a doctor, but posters are not). Don't know where you've been reading the last 10 years, but it's the case all over the Internet that people give the most egregious medical advise (in one case a poster suggested someone break an addiction to ephedrine (taken as a diet aid/upper) with some ridiculous chinese herb that, you guessed it, contained ephedrine and caffine. (IIRC it was guarna). Similar nonsense abounds. At least most of the legal advice here will get you laughed at in court, not dead.
Re: Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs.
This is truely humorous. As BU said earlier You overestimate the average contextual awareness level of the typical cypherpunk reader I think. He's right. At 11:19 PM -0700 7/31/01, Tim May wrote: At 10:19 PM -0700 7/31/01, Black Unicorn wrote: I've seen more of this in the white collar world, where billing records, transaction records and such were destroyed but the principal holds. IBM instructed employees to destroy records. At Intel, we destroyed records--I did so as part of the Crush program (to drive several competitors out of business). So long as we were not being ordered to turn over evidence, not any kind of crime. Were these destructions ordered because investigations were *known to be* imminent, or because someone was looking ahead and figured that someday someone might start an investigation, and it would be better if that stuff was already gone. Context. In one case you have a reasonable assumption that someone *is* going to look for that stuff. In the other, you don't have that assumption. It's not whether you commit the crime, it's whether you assume you're going to get investigated for it. A bookstore is not spoliating for failing to keep records of who bought which books. Cop: We have a court order requiring you to turn over all records concerning who bought the book Applied Cryptography. Store: We don't keep records. Cop: Why not? Store: None of your business. (Interjection by Black Unicorn: The court is not amused.) Cop: We could charge you with spoliation! Store: Go right ahead. (Interjection by Black Unicorn: It's not nice to fool with Mr. Happy Fun Court.) That's not what he said at all. A book store owner has no expectation of being investigated for a selling a perfectly legal book, and no obligation to track the purchasers of it. However, if that conversation was between the State Board of Equalization (for those outside California this is the department that deals with state sales tax apparently): SBOE: We'd like to see your sales records for 1997-1999. STORE: Sorry, can't do that, see there was this *really* weird fire on my desk last night, and wouldn't you know, all those records are gone. You're going to be talking to a judge about this, and no, they won't be happy. Still, based on what you seem to have read me as saying we probably lost a good deal of the context of the discussion. The original question, as I understood it, was what an individual who was faced with a clearly pending court action (or an existing court order) could to do frustrate that order and prevent certain materials from being distributed- _without consequences_. My discussion was limited to that context, though I did not probably clarify that sufficiently. The discussion included claims that those who use remailers, or who run remailers, may be guilty of spoliation. And it included comments that using offshore/unreachable methods if one ever expects to be charged is spoliation. No, that is not what Unicorn said. It is not if one ever expects to be charged although it could be argued that be suspecting that you were going to be charged you knew you were committing a crime, but I suspect that is tangental. I say this is bullshit. By your vague (no plausible cites, just some 1L literatlisms), whispering is spoliation. Failure to archive tape recordings of conversations is spoliation. Use of encryption is spoliation. Drawing the curtains is spoliation. No, but destroying audio tapes, or blanking over bits of them *is*. They didn't get John Gotti for whispering, so I doubt spoliation is nearly the tool you and Aimee Farr seem to think it is. There is a singnificant difference between Gotti and your bog-standard CP. Gotti could afford *really* good lawyers, and was making *real* money doing what he did. Most of us here aren't making anywhere near what Gotti did. If the Feds come after one of us, it's either for harassment--in which case a spoliation charge is as good as any (it doesn't matter whether they win or lose, they've raised the cost of whatever joe CP is doing enough that he's going to take up a cheap hobby like Golf or Sailing instead), or it's for something in which they already have a good amount of evidence, and the spoliation will be a bargaining chip in the proceedings (cop to x and we'll drop a-v).
Re: Spoilation, escrows, courts, pigs.
At 3:34 AM -0700 8/1/01, Subcommander Bob wrote: At 01:31 AM 8/1/01 -0700, Petro wrote: I say this is bullshit. By your vague (no plausible cites, just some 1L literatlisms), whispering is spoliation. Failure to archive tape recordings of conversations is spoliation. Use of encryption is spoliation. Drawing the curtains is spoliation. No, but destroying audio tapes, or blanking over bits of them *is*. Actually if Giotti found a tape recorder (or keyboard bug) in his house I'm pretty sure he'd do more than blank its bits... Context and historical knowledge people. The reference was to Watergate, where Nixon ERASED BITS OF HIS OWN TAPE.
Re: Lasers and ICBMs
At 11:39 PM -0700 7/26/01, Alan Olsen wrote: On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Eugene Leitl wrote: On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Tim May wrote: A lot of the calculations being sketched out here, of watts/cm^2, dwell times, gold coatings, etc. are slightly off-base. We've known for 20+ years that the kill method is to use a short pulse to push (not from the photons' momentum) in the thin wall of an ICBM's fuel Explosive ablation sounds like giant pulses, and chemicals lasers (the only ones known to provide lasing output in the ballpark) don't do these very well. So either you have to fire synchonously from many platforms, or have a veritable Death Star out there in LEO. Several of them, in fact, to maintain an umbrella at all times. Why is this reminding me of some of the activities of local Law enforcement? All of this talk of multiple shots fired, but no mention of what happens to those that miss or continue on past the target after hitting it. I expect that if they ever do test this thing in low earth orbit or any other space bound platform, we may see a few accidents that were not counted on. Oops! Accidently hit that communications satilite. Sorry! Oops! Accidently hit that densely populated urban area! Oops! Accidently hit Tim May's house! Big sky, little bullet. Meaning those will happen, but won't be accidents.
Re: Mr. Wienke, help me out on this -- Re: FW: General Ashcroftmake his move
At 7:51 AM -0700 7/30/01, Richard Stevens wrote: --- Jonathan Wienke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I get the NRA's American Rifleman magazine. The July issue also has an article about Ashcroft's letter, which does not quote the rather lengthy footnote. However, it does contain a legible image of BOTH pages of the letter, including the ENTIRE text of the footnote. This is hardly the action of an organization bent on distorting Ashcroft's view on the Second Amendment. Stupid editing on the part of the America's First Freedom team, perhaps, but not an organization-wide conspiracy. Jonathan Wienke Mr. Wienke, I paged through the entire July 2001 issue of American Rifleman, and maybe I'm just blind as the proverbial bat, but I don't see the article to which you refer that quotes the entire Ashcroft letter. On what page is it? The July 2001 issue of First Freedom is the one featuring the Ashcroft letter -- that I have received thus far. On the point you raise: maybe it was merely a bad editorial decision for the one magazine. Fine, and we can forgive that. But, ask this question: in what kind of workplace environment could this kind of editing decision be made? I used to work for a mid-sized and rather famous magazine as technical support for the designers and editors, as well I was (by training and work experience) a graphic designer. To answer your question, the kind of workplace where something like this can happen is, for a magazine, a very normal kind of work place. Stories crop up late, or changes get made at the last minute. You're a bit under length so you scramble for filler, or you're a bit over, so you cut. Something happens to the server, so you're waiting to restore from backup and hope you haven't lost too much. Or one of a hundred different things. Remember that more than one editor had to approve the final copy. This is not just a typo. More than one person had to consciously decide to omit relevant material without telling the reader. No, only one person had to make the *conscious* decision. All the other people simply had to not notice the lack. I have to wonder if other sorts of editing decisions that massage the facts and distort the truth are being made ... and we readers don't know it. If you read First Freedom (and my copy is currently on the tank awaiting further perusal) with a critical eye, and have an understanding of the underlying issues and numbers, it's often quite obvious that that magazine, while it may tell the truth, it does not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But it's not supposed to. It's a propaganda rag for the NRA. All we should expect is that they don't deliberately lie. Maybe it was entirely innocent. Then NRA should promptly apologize, correct it and publish the full text in the following issue. Let's see if they do.
Re: Ashcroft Targets U.S. Cybercrime
At 10:29 AM -0700 7/30/01, Black Unicorn wrote: - Original Message - At 7:20 AM -0500 7/26/01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Petro wrote: You are confusing civilians and LEOs. Only civilians are held to the personal knowledge standard. Leos are held to profoundly lower probablity models. In order to arrest someone they have to have some sort of evidence that not only was a crime committed, but that the person they arrested has some reasonable probability of actually having committed that crime. Uh, no. If I were a duly appointed law enforcement official I could arrest you for the kind of shoes you were wearing. You'll have recourse eventually, but it will be after a 24 hour (or so) stay in the pokey and posting bail and hiring an attorney, and As a lawyer (and I strongly suspect based on your writing here over the years that you're not this kind of lawyer) if someone came to you wanting to sue the NYPD over whatever the legalese is for false imprisonment and had documents to prove that they'd been arrested for wearing purple oxfords on blue flue tuesday, would you buy a new BMW or a Mercedes? Maybe know is a little strong, suspect is probably a better way of putting it. You're reaching for the criteria by which the legitimacy of the arrest will be judged ex post. The terms you are grappling to find are reasonable suspicion and probable cause. The point you are missing is that typically the only downside for the officer in making an illegal arrest is that the case will get tossed. Big deal. I was trying to stay away from terms of art where possible, since while I know what the english words reasonable suspicion mean, I know they are also used in a lot of cop and lawyer shows, as well as by cops and lawyers, therefore they are overloaded terms and not always in scope. I suggest you attend 3 years of law school or otherwise educate yourself in the matter before presenting yourself as an authority on the issue and blathering off for paragraphs on end about nothing in particular. Sheesh, at least invest in a copy of black's law dictionary or something. It's common respect for the rest of the list members. I am seriously thinking about Law School, and several times during this conversation I have made it clear that (1) I am not a lawyer. (2) I am not speaking from a position of educated authority. I am speaking from *my* reading of the Constitution and discussions with lawyers and Cops, as well as other stuff I've read and thought about over the years. I've made it evident that I do not believe this is the way things *are*, but rather what *I* believe would work better. Other than said 4th amendment issues, street cops *rarely* get involved in constitutional issues. If you honestly believe this, then someone needs to beat the shit out of you with a clueclub. By definition, LEOs are [daily] involved in all issues, from 1-ad to no-ad... Nonsense. In a LARGE percentage of the stuff a police officer deals with, there are no constitutional issues (other than the 4th). Robbery, murder, drunk driving, and the vast majority of traffic violations there aren't many constitutional issues involved in the laws the enforce, there may be some issues in *how* they enforce them (4th, 5th, and 6th) but little on what they enforce. There are constitutional issues in every interaction with police and citizens. The question is if they are raised or significant enough to be regarded in the judicial system. Probable cause to make an arrest is but one of the issues that is triggered on every arrest or other police action. In any interaction between the long arm of the law and the citizenry, there is the how, and the why. You are talking about how the police interact with the citizenry, which is mostly 4th (search, seizure, cause for warrants etc), 5th (due process, double jeopardy), 6th (speedy public trial etc). These all come into effect (usually) after there is suspicion that a crime has been committed (absent fishing expeditions). We were talking about the why of the interaction, whether LEOs should decide for themselves what laws were constitutional and should be enforced. Rarely will you find a street cop, on his on initiative, making arrests in questionable areas (1st and 2nd). To you the only questionable areas are the 1st and 2nd amendments? Interesting. Within the constraints of the discussion, yes. There are constitutional questions in law enforcement about the 4th, 5th, and 6th, but these are procedural issues, and procedural laws. I see many laws that are questionable under the 1st and 2nd (via the 14th) but I see few laws that can be violated outside the court system that are questionable under the 4th, 5th, and 6th. To my limited knowledge there has been very few cases (I've heard of one, but I admit to not having done the research) dealing
Re: Re: Ashcroft Targets U.S. Cybercrime
At 7:20 AM -0500 7/26/01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Petro wrote:
a great majority of an LEO's education time is spent instructing them on
how to determine [decide] what is and is not constitutionally protected
{speech, action}. If they did not use this ability, they would have to
arrest *everyone*, and let the courts sort out the mess.
KNo, they would have to arrest everyone they witnessed (or
knew) committed an act that violated the law.
You are confusing civilians and LEOs. Only civilians are held to the
personal knowledge standard. Leos are held to profoundly lower probablity
models.
In order to arrest someone they have to have some sort of evidence that not
only was a crime committed, but that the person they arrested has some reasonable
probability of actually having committed that crime.
Maybe know is a little strong, suspect is probably a better way of putting
it.
Other than said 4th amendment issues, street cops *rarely* get
involved in constitutional issues.
If you honestly believe this, then someone needs to beat the shit out of
you with a clueclub. By definition, LEOs are [daily] involved in all
issues, from 1-ad to no-ad...
Nonsense. In a LARGE percentage of the stuff a police officer deals with,
there are no constitutional issues (other than the 4th). Robbery, murder, drunk
driving, and the vast majority of traffic violations there aren't many constitutional
issues involved in the laws the enforce, there may be some issues in *how* they
enforce them (4th, 5th, and 6th) but little on what they enforce.
Rarely will you find a street cop, on his on initiative, making arrests in
questionable areas (1st and 2nd).
And if you are at all familiar with the history of 2A case law, you
will understand why the SCOTUS has been so meticulous in avoiding a
ruling. Of course, our friends [hrmmm... Never thought I'd say THAT] in
Texas may well put an end to the charade soon.
Still waiting to hear about the Emerson case (and the 5th is in
New Orleans IIRC).
Interesting rumor on this front. Don Kates spoke to a group of us on
Thursday. He wrote an amicus brief for the Emerson case, and I asked him what if he'd
heard anything about what was going on. According to him, rumor has it that one of the
judges in that case is writing a long (150 pages was mentioned) decision.
Well, no. See, the same constitution also grants Congress the
power to regulate interstate trade, so as long as they don't infringe
on the right, they have a wide latitude to set standards etc. Or do they?
What are the limits of that particular clause?
Virtually the entire 2A ablating federal infrastructure is based on a
truly scary finding that *any* firearm is the product of Intertate
Commerce, regardless if it has been out of the state in which it was
Well, no. Only about 1/2 of the ablating. The other half is
Congresses power to tax. (At the federal level a good number of
firearms cases are on charges of failing to file and or pay the class
2 or 3 weapons tax stamp).
Please document this assertion. 1/2 is just plain *wrong*. The tax
issues are restrictive, but not ablating, i.e., if you can afford the tax,
then, *in theory*, you have no problem. I am talking about totally [2A]
destructive laws, such as felons losing their RIGHT to ownership of
firearms, civilians losing their RIGHT to own assault
weapons (interesting note: it is still legal to collect missiles, but not
certain types of rifles - the idiocy continues).
Here's how it works (and there is a case going on right now about this). The
government says you have to have a tax stamp to own x. Then doesn't provide you
any mechanism to actually *get* that stamp.
A portion (and I don't have the percentages, this comes from discussions with
a local attorney active in Firearms Rights) of the firearms cases prosecuted at the
federal level are prosecuted as tax violations. It is (allegedly) done this way to
avoid second amendment issues. Since the Government has the constitutional power to
tax, there is no problem.
It may not be 1/2 of all cases, but it's 1/2 of all justifications, and a
signigificant number of cases.
Further
more, what is *constitutionally* an infringement?
Als at the risk of going Choation, what part of Shall not be
infringed don't you understand?
I understand shall not, it's the infringed I'm asking about.
Is it *really* an infringement on your rights to require
firearms manufacturers to meet reasonable standards of functioning?
Yes. Period.
Now who's being Choatian?
Whether the free market can provide this or not is orthagonal to
the question.
No it is not: it is directly on point. There is NO constituional basis
for the government to be able to regulate firearms. Period. Whether for
good, bad, or indifferent
RE: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers self defence
At 11:35 PM -0700 7/26/01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- On 24 Jul 2001, at 1:20, Petro wrote: And what is the primary responsibility of a soldier? Well, in Basic Training I was informed that my basic task was to seek out the enemy and destroy him. Whch is why using Soldiers in peace keeping missions is a really, really boneheaded move. But not however as bone headed as throwing a fire extinguisher at a soldier, missing, then picking up the fire extinguisher to have another go just after one guy has whacked the soldier with a two by four, and another has whacked him with a four inch steel pipe. You'll find no disagreement from me on that.
Re: Attention to detail lacking
At 8:35 PM -0700 7/24/01, Tim May wrote: At 8:24 PM -0700 7/24/01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think Choate is much like this tech of mine: Have you ever seen the two of them together? (Not that college physics is needed. I should hope not, I've got a Fine Art degree with a smattering of philosophy and English. Which is why I work with computers for a living. When I was in high school I knew enough about physics and math not to have made some of the boners Choate has come out with.) I don't know enough math, but I know that I don't, so where I get confused I ask.
Re: Re: Ashcroft Targets U.S. Cybercrime
At 7:39 AM -0500 7/24/01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
At the risk of going Choatien and stepping far beyond any
degrees I may have, the position that each and every LEO in this
country *should* (as opposed to does) decide for himself whether a law
fits his understanding of the constitution before enforcing it is not
only unworkable, but--if the LEO truly believes in the concepts of
Rule of Law, wrong headed.
Wrong headed or not, LEOs are manufactured out of human beings, and
because of this, the spend a considerable amount of time in the Maggot
Academy (tm) being taught the fine points of this very issue. In fact,
No, they don't. Spoke with an officer this evening about it.
The cover (at least the academy he went to here in SillyCon valley) 4
amendment issues, and only from the practical standpoint, not the philosphical
standpoint, and mostly was scenario based.
a great majority of an LEO's education time is spent instructing them on
how to determine [decide] what is and is not constitutionally protected
{speech, action}. If they did not use this ability, they would have to
arrest *everyone*, and let the courts sort out the mess.
No, they would have to arrest everyone they witnessed (or knew) committed an
act that violated the law.
Other than said 4th amendment issues, street cops *rarely* get involved in
constitutional issues.
As a further disclaimer, let me say that I don't think The
Legal Community agrees with me. They're agreement or not isn't a
factor in my thinking. I already know (as Declan points out) that Reno
doesn't agree with me, but from her actions it's quite clear she
doesn't believe in the Rule Of Law--at least not in the sense I've
been using it.
Actually, she is the perfect example: she interpreted the constitution her
way. The Rule of Law has to be implemented at the individual [enforcer]
level: therefore, each enforcer is putin the position of having to make
and act on their [constitutional] opinions on a moment to moment basis.
Uh. No.
From her *ACTIONS* she did not believe in the Rule Of Law, but believed
strongly in the long arm and mailed fist of the law.
Witness her actions, and the actions of departments under her. The FBI was, in
direct violation of the brady law, retaining the information about firearm purchases.
Witness how quickly the Waco crime scene was bulldozed. Witness DOJ lawyers arguing in
the Ruby Ridge case that Lon H. was not touchable by state law because he was a Fed
acting under orders.
The fact that you [and in this rare case] I agree that Reno is a fascist
sack of shit is completely irrelevent.
Well, it's nice to see we agree about something.
Now, in an ideal world the constitution would be clearly worded
and the semantics would be clearly understood by the people who live
under it. However, It ain't like that. English is by no means an ISO
(or even ANSI) standard, and even reasonable people can disagree on the
complexity generated by the various articles and sections of the
constitution and the amendments.
Look for example to the issue of the Second Amendment. The
clearest plain word interpretation of that amendment is that the
no one has the ability to infringe on the right of the people to
keep and bear arms.
Fairly simple.
Does that then mean that just about every firearm law in the
country is invalid on it's face?
Yes.
No.
And if you are at all familiar with the history of 2A case law, you
will understand why the SCOTUS has been so meticulous in avoiding a
ruling. Of course, our friends [hrmmm... Never thought I'd say THAT] in
Texas may well put an end to the charade soon.
Still waiting to hear about the Emerson case (and the 5th is in New Orleans
IIRC).
Well, no. See, the same constitution also grants Congress the
power to regulate interstate trade, so as long as they don't infringe
on the right, they have a wide latitude to set standards etc. Or do they?
What are the limits of that particular clause?
Virtually the entire 2A ablating federal infrastructure is based on a
truly scary finding that *any* firearm is the product of Intertate
Commerce, regardless if it has been out of the state in which it was
Well, no. Only about 1/2 of the ablating. The other half is Congresses power
to tax. (At the federal level a good number of firearms cases are on charges of
failing to file and or pay the class 2 or 3 weapons tax stamp).
Further more, what is *constitutionally* an infringement?
Als at the risk of going Choation, what part of Shall not be
infringed don't you understand?
I understand shall not, it's the infringed I'm asking about.
Is it *really* an infringement on your rights to require firearms
manufacturers to meet reasonable standards of functioning? In fact, given the basis of
the second
Re: Vengeance Against Adobe
At 11:47 PM -0500 7/23/01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Tim May wrote: Adobe will be suffering for a long time to come. While it is a consummation devoutly to be wished, I predict that the backlash will be gone in a mere matter of weeks, if not days. Let's face it: the people most likely to be Adobe *customers* are anything but hungry. A fat customer is an apathetic customer... Let us also be honest and admit that the very people Adobe products target are also the least likely to understand this whole thing, and often even less likely to care--or if they do, they might even agree with Adobe. After all, they are (mostly) content producers (Illustrator, Photoshop etc) who have intellectual property interests themselves. Let's face it, many if not most of the Free Software types are going to use The Gimp over Photoshop. kIllustrator over Illustrator, and well, I don't know what they'll use in place of Pagemaker, but I'd be happy to find out.
Re: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers self defence
At 9:21 PM -0500 7/23/01, Jim Choate wrote: While it's true the hole would have reduced the cushion impact of breaking the glass it would not have eliminated it. NATO says it takes a transfer of approx. 85 Joules to kill. That's ridiculous. There are far too many variables involved in delivering a fatal wound for anyone to be able to reduce it to a single number. 85 Joules delivered where and how? That seems to come to about 62-63 foot pounds, about the muzzle energy of a .22 long rifle out of a 2 inch barrel (65 pounds) and more than the energy of a .32 short-colt (54 pounds). I would say that neither is adequate to reliably do the job, nor is either sub-lethal. Figure out the velocity that takes for 15 lbs.. Compare to the velocity possible in this incidence. Assuming that the protestor can achieve 20 FPS with a 15 pound weight, he's generating 93+ foot pounds at terminus. That's 13 miles per hour. I'd bet he could get closer to 25-30 miles an hour which would be over 300 foot pounds, which puts it around the energy delivered by a 9mm Parabellum. Check my math, I'm not good at it. Now, as I indicated above, just because there is adequate energy to do the job if well placed, doesn't mean there's enough to do the job if it falls on your foot. As well, it may be nominally inadequate, but still be lethal if delivered *just* right. The .22LR has killed a lot of people, and I'd bet the .32 short has done one or two. In addition the fact that a previous protestor had put a board through the window only goes to demonstrate the high level of emotional disruption these officers were exposed to. Panicking is not justification for making a wrong decision. Huh? When one is in a panic state, one by definition is not thinking clearly, otherwise one would not be panicking. Deadly force was not in any way justified. It most certainly was.
Re: A proletariat experiment...
The bottle is a little smaller than a 15 lb bottle, of course the 15 lb's refers to the weight of the bottle itself, it is closer to 50 lbs if it is fully charged with carbon dioxide (which we have no way to know whether it it was charged or what it was (once?) charged with). Well, memory may be playing tricks on me, but from what I remember from my fire fighting training in the Marine Corps, 15 pounds was the weight of the agent. A 50 pound bottle would really defeat the purpose of a portable fire extinguisher. There are many people who would have trouble holding the bottle in one had and pointing the nozzle with the other. Even a 35 pound (25 pounds agent, 10 pounds bottle) bottle is hard to manage at times. Depending on the construction of the container you could add another 5 to 10 pounds for the bottle etc.
Re: Vengeance Against Adobe
At 9:56 PM -0700 7/23/01, Eric Cordian wrote: Tim writes: Adobe's use of police state measures to have a minor critic (by their own later admission) yanked out of a conference is not likely to be forgotten quickly. I expect this will have consequences when they eventually resume college recruiting. Adobe will likely face sneers and derisive laughter when it shows up on college campuses next spring to recruit. Adobe's pulling back on Dmitry doesn't change the fact that the company lied in saying what was being distributed was copyrighted Adobe software. Despite the EFF's effusive praise of Adobe, I don't plan to use any Adobe software in the future. Is there a workable freeware alternative to Distiller?
Re: Vengeance Against Adobe
At 10:21 PM + 7/24/01, Dr. Evil wrote: Photoshop? We have the gimp. Illustrator? We have Kontour. These products are all as good as or better than the competing Adobe products, and they're all free. I won't argue about Kontour, since I haven't used it yet, but xpdf still doesn't render was well as Acrobat, and there is no *WAY* the Gimp, as good as it is, can compete in Photoshops markets. It may be nice for dinking around with web pages, but when it comes to pantone color and process color work, well, last time I checked, it didn't do 4-color at all, much less High Color (6 color process).
Re: Open 802.11b wireless access points and remailers
At 10:43 AM -0700 7/24/01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Several years ago, there was discussion on the list about creating headless or throwaway remailers (likely hidden in some institution where they could get power and net access for a long time until they were discovered)- I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about that, because I thought that the necessary Ethernet (or other network) connection which would be made between the hidden machine and the host network would make it easy enough to detect and disable that it wasn't a productive direction for exploration. (There are also any number of legal issues related to trespass, unauthorized network use, etc., which may apply.) However, that limitation may be withering away, with the spread of 802.11b (or similar) wireless networks - the attached email describes a Seattle-area system apparently set up by Microsoft in a shopping mall providing free network access to people within the reach of its radio units. An old laptop, a solar panel, some auxiliary batteries, and an 802.11 network card might be able to stay online for a long, long time in that sort of environment. There are several companies making embedded systems boards that use very little power and are capable of running linux. I don't know if any of them are quite low power enough to run off a solar panel yet, but some of the mips/arm designs might be. It would seem to me that if it's a box you don't expect to get back, it might be a better idea to build a special purpose machine--just the motherboard, 802.11 device and a reduced Linux installation running out of flash ram. And, if you're the sort that's worried about permission, etc., the nice thing is that these networks are explicitly intended for the use of guests on the premises, so at least the first level of concerns about trespass or unauthorized use are addressed. Depending on the area covered, you wouldn't even need to trespass. If it's in a mall area, coverage would probably extend to certain areas of the outside of the building where it might be feasible to mount a small enough box that it wouldn't get noticed. Epoxy your box to the wall next to some other sort of electrical equipment (if the interference won't get in the way) and it will probably remain undiscovered for a while. These days, remailers aren't as exciting as they once were - perhaps the next important tools are going to be Freenet or Mojo Nation nodes - but the combination of wireless access plus anonymous access provides an interesting opportunity for network participants which are physically within a jurisdiction yet unavailable for punishment. Another interesting possibility is Public VPNs (I'm sure someone else has come up with this concept and given it a different name) but use VPN software to establish a connection to a box as described above, and your home IP is lightly masked. It might, given a big enough network, be possible to do some sort of anonymous packet forwarder like remailers, only in real time. Well, no. I'm sure it's possible, it'll just take a lot of bandwidth.
Re: Adobe, EFF Call for Dmitry Release
At 5:25 PM -0700 7/23/01, Gabriel Rocha wrote: ,[ On Mon, Jul 23, at 07:44PM, John Young wrote: ]-- | Adobe Systems Incorporated and the Electronic Frontier | Foundation today jointly recommend the release of Russian | programmer Dmitry Sklyarov from federal custody. | | Adobe is also withdrawing its support for the criminal | complaint against Dmitry Sklyarov. | | We strongly support the DMCA and the enforcement of | copyright protection of digital content, said Colleen | Pouliot, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for | Adobe. However, the prosecution of this individual in | this particular case is not conducive to the best | interests of any of the parties involved or the | industry. ElcomSoft's Advanced eBook Processor | software is no longer available in the United States, | and from that perspective the DMCA worked. Adobe will | continue to protect its copyright interests and those | of its customers. `[ End Quote ]--- Sadly, this is but a small victory in a big war...The last paragraph makes it even more so. But it is a happy thing nonetheless. Perhaps the protests should/could continue? We are full steam ahead now, why not keep going? --gabe Not really. It's a victory for Dimitri, because he gets to go home, but the DMCA is still in effect, and until there are rulings from the courts, there will still be people harassed and arrested. And further, weak crypto will still spread commercially because people will be afraid to poke at it, and if they do poke they won't talk.
Re: Re: Ashcroft Targets U.S. Cybercrime
At 5:08 PM -0500 7/23/01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, Petro burbled upon us thusly: Another point you bring up is that a LEO should not enforce laws that clearly violate the constitution. A LEO cannot do that *and still be a LEO*. He can refuse by resigning, but if he simply takes the position that he will only enforce laws he thinks are constitutional he causes a violation of one of the fundamental underpinnings of the constitution, that all people are equal under the law, and that the law is supposed to be equally applied. Maybe you should look at the oaths that are sworn to by all public employees, of which LEOs are but a small maggot in a big sewer. All of I took one of those 16 years ago as a US Marine, and again 5 years later as a member of the National Guard. I've also spent a fair amount of time thinking about that oath, and the ramifications of it. them contain a provision whereby there swear to uphold the constitution. Not to follow orders which may or may not be chain-of-command valid, and *hopefully* constitutional. At the risk of going Choatien and stepping far beyond any degrees I may have, the position that each and every LEO in this country *should* (as opposed to does) decide for himself whether a law fits his understanding of the constitution before enforcing it is not only unworkable, but--if the LEO truly believes in the concepts of Rule of Law, wrong headed. As a further disclaimer, let me say that I don't think The Legal Community agrees with me. They're agreement or not isn't a factor in my thinking. I already know (as Declan points out) that Reno doesn't agree with me, but from her actions it's quite clear she doesn't believe in the Rule Of Law--at least not in the sense I've been using it. Now, in an ideal world the constitution would be clearly worded and the semantics would be clearly understood by the people who live under it. However, It ain't like that. English is by no means an ISO (or even ANSI) standard, and even reasonable people can disagree on the complexity generated by the various articles and sections of the constitution and the amendments. Look for example to the issue of the Second Amendment. The clearest plain word interpretation of that amendment is that the no one has the ability to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Fairly simple. Does that then mean that just about every firearm law in the country is invalid on it's face? Well, no. See, the same constitution also grants Congress the power to regulate interstate trade, so as long as they don't infringe on the right, they have a wide latitude to set standards etc. Or do they? What are the limits of that particular clause? Further more, what is *constitutionally* an infringement? Is it acceptable for Congress to set (legitimate) product reliability standards? (e.g. to require a pistol must be capable of firing x rounds between failures etc.) or certain safety guidelines (e.g. that every handgun be fitted with a safety device of some sort that keeps it from firing unless the trigger has been pulled). Let's get even finer. Do you *really* want your local beat cop to be making decisions on what does and doesn't fall into protected speech (or even whether there is a distinction there to be made?) Or how about certain laws of a very questionable nature that make it a crime for groups larger than x to gather without a permit. On it's face these are unconstitutional, but if the vast majority of police in a district *don't* enforce these laws, but one or two do (under the belief that the constitution only applies restrictions to the state and federal government, not the city governments (there are people who believe this, and absent the explicit incorporation by the 14th (which even by the appellate courts is applied non-uniformly so far) they may have a legitimate argument) then you have a case where you are just hanging out with some 5 or 10 of your closest buddies as you do every day, and the normal beat-cop, who doesn't enforce this law because it's unconstitutional doesn't say anything, but his fill-in on a sick day rousts you all and takes you to jail. It's happened in Chicago, and worse (see below). There are at least 3 states a law can be in vis-a-vis constitutionality: (1) Adjudged unconstitutional. (2) Adjudged constitutional. (3) Not adjudged relative to it's constitutionality. Now, things get a little less clear. In the case of (1) and (2) there is the question, not only of exactly what the court upheld or didn't (see the recent case of the Oakland Cannibis decesion, widely reported to have the SC declare Medical Marijuana unconstitutional, but actually simply said that No silly, of COURSE federal law trumps state law
RE: Air Force Turns 747 Into Holster for Giant Laser (washingtonp ost.com)
At 1:43 AM +0300 7/24/01, Sampo Syreeni wrote: But I also think the question Choate posed is a valid one: what happens when the target is *not* a ballistic missile, but people, equipment and vehicles on the ground, normal aircraft, or air-to-air missiles? One would think that the lower velocity differentials and expected distance-to-target make aiming much easier, and that effective counter-measures would be significantly more difficult to erect, considering that such conventional targets have properties very different from those of ballistic missiles (e.g. aircraft raise questions of aerodynamics and payload efficiency, wearable materials with albedos high enough are difficult to come up with, rotation and aerodynamic engineering cannot be used to dissipate the heat generated by a hit, people/cars/tanks/whathaveyou often need to be difficult to spot using aerial and satellite imaging, and so on). Such weapons capability could be *quite* useful, especially if the 747 can be effectively defended against anti-aircraft missiles, and the laser has a range and targeting capability on par with anti-ballistic missile applications. Hits on critical infrastructure, control over a nation's airspace, death-from-above FUD, that sort of thing. IANALS (laser specialist), but I am given to understand that with the high energy demands of these types of lasers, and the problems with getting good energy levels through airborne dust, clouds, etc (and especially in combat areas where dust and other airborne particles are rather common) make lasers less than ideal against ground or low flying targets. Against high flying aircraft, you may be right.
RE: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers self defence
At 7:18 PM -0700 7/23/01, Sandy Sandfort wrote: Not-a-lawyer wrote: No, the cops panicked... You really should become a lawyer or even a judge. You seem to already have figured this one out by ESP or something. Wow, I'm fucking impressed with your legal acumen. And then there is the point that at no time is the police officer relieved of their sworn duty to protect the citizens, including the rioters. Is THAT what cops swear to? I'd like to see a citation on that piece of bullshit. There is established case law in the US that says the police have no specific duty to protect anyone. The kid who fired was not a Cop. He was (near as I understand) the rough equivalent of a National Guardsman. Self-defence is NOT a sufficient release (there is a term for this policy but it escapes me, I know where to find it though and I'll share it tomorrow). How convenient. Now don't you forget to share that with us tomorrow Little Jimmie. This is a perfect example of why the standard police psych requirement of 'likes to be in charge'... Did you pull that out of your ass or someone else's? A police officers primary responsiblity is not to save their own life but to spend it to save another. No Jim, the primary responsibility of a Police Officer is to enforce the law, which really isn't relevant in this case, since the shooter apparently wasn't a cop. He was a soldier. And what is the primary responsibility of a soldier? Well, in Basic Training I was informed that my basic task was to seek out the enemy and destroy him. Which is why using Soldiers in peace keeping missions is a really, really boneheaded move. This guy is a laugh riot. Where does he dig this stuff up? What a moron. Tim calls it Choatien Prime.
