Proposed PATRIOT2 lets foreign govts wiretap americans
See p 19. http://www.privacy.org/patriot2draft.pdf USG to trap, trace, and tap Americans' communications on request of a foreign govt. The draft analysis *actually says* that this is done so that foreign govts will cooperate with US requests. --- Shuttle tile damage? Better put some ice on that -B. Clinton
Re: To Steve Schear, re Rome, Architects, Shuttles, Congress
(This is mostly ruminations on car hacks and adds little to the original thread about physically linking responsibility to effects.) First let me ack my sincere respect for folks like Eric C who work on (rather than tinker/hack/meddle, since he's still alive) their car's brakes or other life-critical systems. Second I should apologize for misspelling SS's name. Now then: From: Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] Back when the term hackers started to be misused by the press, as in scary teenage vandals breaking into computers, my usual comment was that teenage computer hackers were really no different from the teenage car hackers of our parents' generations. Another analogy might be HAMs --antennae hacks--, though they're more liscenced and don't get the babez either. During emergencies, they're useful, like the car-hack who fixes a stranded grandmother's car; at other times, they jam your radio or TV, like a car-hack running top speed, mufflerless, at 3 AM. At 08:27 PM 02/19/2003 -0500, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Hackers don't work on their own brakes for a reason: evolution. If I were planning to contribute directly to the future's gene pool, I've got better criteria to do natural selection on than skill at mechanical repair, and there are much more efficient ways to transmit those skills than killing off people who don't have them. Physics has selected those who fear screwing up personal-life-critical systems, and also those who have that rational fear that but are also skilled enough such that they don't have to worry (such as EC and your younger self). It's also evolution of cars and financial states. Back when cars had actual user-serviceable parts, I'd work on carburetors Carburetor? Didn't that connect to the phonograph through a cat's whisker? And evolution should be in scare-quotes. The trade off has been cleanliness vs. reliability/maintainability/cost/weight/power/etc, and so on some scales modern cars are regressions. and distributors and spark plugs and pollution-control widgets, Somehow you escaped the AQMD[1], EPA, DMV, DOT police? Step away from that oxygen sensor, and no one gets hurt. but except for my first auto mechanics class, I didn't mess with brakes - if I mess up an engine, my car might not go anywhere, but that's usually fail-safe, while making mistakes on brakes is fail-dangerous. Bingo. And hacking on production machines is a no-no. (Also, my next car had disk brakes, and I only knew how to do drum brakes.) D'oh! In some states, cars can't be registered without passing a safety inspection that tests for braking distance, etc. Not so in Calif. Selection is a little stronger here :-) I changed a couple of sets of valve cover gaskets myself, but when I was in grad school and the car I had then needed it, the local garage would do the job for $15, which was worth paying for, in part because there was a lot more pollution control equipment than on the earlier car, and a lot more hoses and vacuum lines to move around to get to the engine which would all need reconnecting later. Doncha wish there was a traceroute for hoses under the hood? Cars look like the hoses pipes and tubes in _Brazil_ nowadays. After several years of newer cars with electronic ignitions, I acquired my first van, which was old enough to have a distributor, but it was a Chevy so you adjusted it with dwell stuff instead of feeler gauges, which was too much bother. [Aside] I recently learned that back before you needed a license to drive (ca 1930) you would manually adjust the spark timing (!!) according to your engine speed. After handcranking the engine to start. Kinda like toggling opcodes into a Altair, eh? And these days you're supposed to recycle your oil instead of using it to patch the cracks in driveways, so that's another job to pay somebody else to do. Well you can drop off your oil and various places will take it, free. You're getting soft, Bill. :-) What's next, preinstalled Linux on a preassembled machine? Besides, you could collect your Kyoto tax credit for sequestering the carbon in your lawn. [1] Air Quality Management District, the pollution police in SoCal at least. They make 2-cycle engines and useful BBQ lighter fluid illegal here. Also won't let you register a car if you've modified the pollution controls in any way, since mods are officially bad and you can't register a car without a periodic smog check.
Re: To Steve Shear, re Rome, Architects, Shuttles, Congress
Back when the term hackers started to be misused by the press, as in scary teenage vandals breaking into computers, my usual comment was that teenage computer hackers were really no different from the teenage car hackers of our parents' generations. They did a lot of tinkering with machinery and hanging out with friends, some of them mostly obsessed about making their cars look really cool, some of them were trying to make Grandma's old junker into basic transportation, and some of them were drag-racing across your lawn with no mufflers. It was an obsession that was more introverted and individual than sports, some kids later turned it from a hobby into a paying job, and while it was a bit less intellectual than computing, it was also more real, and unlike computing, it was also a tool for getting girls... At 08:27 PM 02/19/2003 -0500, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Hackers don't work on their own brakes for a reason: evolution. Nah - hackers don't work on brakes because they're _avoiding_ evolution :-) If I were planning to contribute directly to the future's gene pool, I've got better criteria to do natural selection on than skill at mechanical repair, and there are much more efficient ways to transmit those skills than killing off people who don't have them. It's also evolution of cars and financial states. Back when cars had actual user-serviceable parts, I'd work on carburetors and distributors and spark plugs and pollution-control widgets, but except for my first auto mechanics class, I didn't mess with brakes - if I mess up an engine, my car might not go anywhere, but that's usually fail-safe, while making mistakes on brakes is fail-dangerous. (Also, my next car had disk brakes, and I only knew how to do drum brakes.) I changed a couple of sets of valve cover gaskets myself, but when I was in grad school and the car I had then needed it, the local garage would do the job for $15, which was worth paying for, in part because there was a lot more pollution control equipment than on the earlier car, and a lot more hoses and vacuum lines to move around to get to the engine which would all need reconnecting later. After several years of newer cars with electronic ignitions, I acquired my first van, which was old enough to have a distributor, but it was a Chevy so you adjusted it with dwell stuff instead of feeler gauges, which was too much bother. And these days you're supposed to recycle your oil instead of using it to patch the cracks in driveways, so that's another job to pay somebody else to do. My Cruiser was recalled last year - the main thing they had to do was upgrade the firmware, so now it accelerates a bit better...
Re: Creeds and Thoughtcrime
On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 09:33:20AM -0800, Tim May wrote: Ashcroft is saying the group's creed rejects any peaceful solution (of the Palestinian situation). Right... http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/20/national/20CND-INDICT.html We make no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance, manage or supervise terrorist organizations, said Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington. Anyone got a copy of the indictment? Haven't seen it yet. -Declan
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless
On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: Capitalism would only work if people weren't ready to fuck others like communism would work too for the same reasons. Like anarchy. You're assuming a static agent model. Iterative interactions of smart mutually identifyable agents would trend towards increasingly benign cooperation. Different strokes for different folks.
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless
Yeah, and too much freedom is as bad as too much slavery. Right, bub. Capitalism would only work if people weren't ready to fuck others like communism would work too for the same reasons. Like anarchy. Like anything. Depending on the time, I tend to lean either towards anarchy or towards democracy. These days, I'm leaning towards for democracy. Yes, a state, though probably an unattainable chimaera. Flame on. Lack of state would just lead to morons with guns banding together, and that would be what ? A state, without the title of one, but one nonetheless. Point is, too much capitalism seems to lead to another form of power, with the people on top being the same people that are now on top of the state. We'd need to defend against both. BTW, mails used to be deMIMEd. I send in plain text but there's a server which reconverts to HTML along the way... -- Vincent Penquerc'h
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless
On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: But other people might be encline to tag along anyway. A reputation No, because unless someone signs your stuff of their free will they'd have to extract a secret (ideally) lodged in a tamperproof hardware token, or break the cryptosystem, or coerce the holder of the secret to sign for them -- assuming they can link the nym to the physical persona. If you care for anonymity, that's what traffic remixing is there for. system will identify nyms with bad reputation alright, but how will people *use* this system ? Favorable reputation is nothing per se, Depends on the scenario. In an online transaction I present my public key, you query the mana associated with it in a database. If I'm a homo novus, my trust level is around zero. If I've been glowingly endorsed by other nyms in good standing (check graph for circlejerk caveat) my reputation is positive. People with really bad mana would tend to camouflage as players with no transaction, so being a new player will always suck. You'll get rewarded by sticking to your nym, and engaging in mutual-profit transactions. My part of the interaction is symmetrical to yours. If we like what we see we make a deal, or go apart. This can be automated so that you see the mana cloud of a physically present or remote person who're not cloaking it as a size/color-coded tag rendered in a head-up display which you could inquire further. It wouldn't take a lot of work to hack a game server to allow tagged avatars, link game servers in a mesh, and use traffic remixing for avatar control. (Well, it _would_ take a lot of work, unfortunately). it only becomes useful by what others make of it, and reputation is not a single measure. People will have different reactions to the No, but you'll get a single scalar by integrating over your reference points. actions of another person. If someone advocates killing blacks, say, his reputation will grow to those who have the same opinions, but go You can look at a distribution of reputation. A single scalar is no enough. You can also change your reference points when computing that scalar. down with those who have the opposite opinion. What I'm coming at is that a reputation system only allows a nym to build up a reputation. People then react to it. only is good. There's no way currently how you can query the accrued mana of a face in the crowd. Single-round interactions/anonymity encourage defector behaviour. There's a regular food web of defectors and suckers in big cities. Your point, I believe, was that the ability to have knowledge of others' actions would lead to increased cooperation. That goes both Yes, assuming they care. While people usually evaluate these things at gut level they're not aware of it rationally, so they see little value in participating in such kind of social experiment. Try explaining this to an average Jane on the commute. It's hard. ways. Groups of people can cooperate to work against another group of cooperating people. People assess other's reputations on different Of course. grounds, so people would be attracted to different groups, based on the subjective assessment they make on the various traits displayed by a person/nym. Yes, so what? OK, that was my second possibility. I'm just not sure that it could work so well in a larger scenario. Reputation systems, AFAIK, have We're going to find out, once wireless and broadband takes off. only be used in small scenarios: you observe an agent which does one thing, then you extrapolate the probability of this agent's actions based on that knowledge. The observed actions are very narrow, and I'm unsure it would scale well, and unsure it would prevent people fucking other people over for power as happens now. Sure you'll get tribes, and strife. It is compatible with a more benign interaction overall, regardless of which social order you subscribe to.
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless
On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: You're assuming a static agent model. Iterative interactions of smart mutually identifyable agents would trend towards increasingly benign cooperation. That in turn assumes that the population is homogeneous. There is Not at all. Of course you have subpopulations engaging in more cooperative interactions; this is how the world works already. The nice thing is that with cryptography you have facultative strong authentication, and globally accessible databases (like a searchable p2p document store) to keep track of your interaction history with others. A nym who's lying too much will have accrue negative mana very quickly. overwhelming probability that a group will form around some people, who have charisma, or who can give others something, whether it is power, money (or ability to get stuff), or just about anything people would want. Some of these groups will want power. I don't see how this is relevant to our conversation. I'm not sure what you mean by mutually identifyable agents. If you mean that people seeking power by reducing other's freedoms, No, mutually identifyable means exactly that: ability to tell that you've interacted with that agent before. In human agents this means ability to recall some other monkey's biometrics. would be known, and others could react to that, then I'm not so sure it would work. Trouble is, even a very small amount of power grabbing people will fuck it all up. It's very nice to say that those who are ready to relinquish freedom for safety deserve neither, but a life of never ending combat against those who want to grab power is not something I strive for. If you mean, OTOH, that people would recognize honest people, as in a kind of reputation system, then it might have some merit The reputation system needs infrastructure to work. Basically it's about trustable (by the user) smart card crypto, traffic remixing (at IP level, preferrably) and distributed anonymous p2p store with a distributed search. to it, but would require these people to build a structure to be able to react. This structure would be, as I see it, kind of a distributed democracy. Is that what you had in mind ? Or am I completely off :)
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless
You're assuming a static agent model. Iterative interactions of smart mutually identifyable agents would trend towards increasingly benign cooperation. That in turn assumes that the population is homogeneous. There is overwhelming probability that a group will form around some people, who have charisma, or who can give others something, whether it is power, money (or ability to get stuff), or just about anything people would want. Some of these groups will want power. I'm not sure what you mean by mutually identifyable agents. If you mean that people seeking power by reducing other's freedoms, would be known, and others could react to that, then I'm not so sure it would work. Trouble is, even a very small amount of power grabbing people will fuck it all up. It's very nice to say that those who are ready to relinquish freedom for safety deserve neither, but a life of never ending combat against those who want to grab power is not something I strive for. If you mean, OTOH, that people would recognize honest people, as in a kind of reputation system, then it might have some merit to it, but would require these people to build a structure to be able to react. This structure would be, as I see it, kind of a distributed democracy. Is that what you had in mind ? Or am I completely off :) -- Vincent Penquerc'h
Re: To Steve Schear, re Rome, Architects, Shuttles, Congress
At 8:32 PM -0800 2/20/03, Major Variola (ret) wrote: [Aside] I recently learned that back before you needed a license to drive (ca 1930) you would manually adjust the spark timing (!!) according to your engine speed. After handcranking the engine to start. Yes, and you got a broken arm if you didn't retard the spark before you cranked the car. (Hand crank of course) And these days you're supposed to recycle your oil instead of using it to patch the cracks in driveways, so that's another job to pay somebody else to do. Well you can drop off your oil and various places will take it, free. Yes. Our curb side recycling will pick it up. Free too. That's the way to avoid the toxic waste fee at the local oil changers. (I find it takes less time to do it in my driveway too.) And, I still am willing to work on my brake systems. Replacing pads on a disk brake unit is a lot easier than replacing drums. I'm even dumb enough to have replaced bearings in a couple of my transmissions. And had one lock into high gear because I put the parts back on the main shaft in the wrong order. Set a new personal record for removal, disassembly, reassambly, and installation of a transmission after I slipped the clutch to get the car home too. Always get the service manual when you get the car. Just like, always get the source to your security dependent code. Cheers - Bill - Bill Frantz | Due process for all| Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | used to be the | 16345 Englewood Ave. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | American way. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
FYI: ScanMail Message: To Sender, sensitive content found and action t aken. (fwd)
Tee-hee. -- Forwarded message -- Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hydrogen.leitl.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 213501267FD for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Fri, 21 Feb 2003 17:36:43 +0100 (CET) Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Received: from mail.leitl.org [64.29.16.27] by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.9.0) for [EMAIL PROTECTED] (single-drop); Fri, 21 Feb 2003 17:36:43 +0100 (CET) Received: (qmail 1911 invoked from network); 21 Feb 2003 16:34:58 - Received: from unknown (HELO mail1.uspto.gov) (63.71.228.70) by venus.phpwebhosting.com with SMTP; 21 Feb 2003 16:34:58 - Received: from uspto-mta-2.uspto.gov (mailer.uspto.gov [10.96.26.47]) by mail1.uspto.gov (8.9.3 (PHNE_18546)/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA19109 for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:35:06 -0500 (EST) Received: by mailer.uspto.gov with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2656.59) id 1Q8VQPHJ; Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:35:06 -0500 Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ScanMail Message: To Sender, sensitive content found and action t aken. Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:35:04 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2656.59) Content-Type: text/plain Trend SMEX Content Filter has detected sensitive content. Place = [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Sender = [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject = RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless Delivery Time = February 21, 2003 (Friday) 11:35:03 Policy = Dirty Words Action on this mail = Quarantine message Warning message from administrator: Sender, Content filter has detected a sensitive e-mail.
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minoritie s
at Friday, February 21, 2003 4:44 PM, James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] was seen to say: Highly capitalist nations do not murder millions. but their highly capitalist companies sometimes do. is this a meaningful distinction?
Re: FYI: ScanMail Message: To Sender, sensitive content found and action t aken. (fwd)
At 6:15 PM +0100 on 2/21/03, Eugen Leitl wrote: Tee-hee. Tentacle. ;-). Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: To Steve Schear, re Rome, Architects, Shuttles, Congress
On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 11:32:43PM -0500, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Carburetor? Didn't that connect to the phonograph through a cat's whisker? Carburetor is French for leave it alone. While only one of my cars is old enough to have a carb, all but one of the 10 or so motorcycles in the garage do. So I work on carbs a lot. They are a marvel of applied physics and they work pretty well. And if you are careful and keep things clean (carbs hate dirt), they are easy to work on. but except for my first auto mechanics class, I didn't mess with brakes - if I mess up an engine, my car might not go anywhere, but that's usually fail-safe, while making mistakes on brakes is fail-dangerous. Bingo. And hacking on production machines is a no-no. It was a bit tough for street cars for a while, but these days there's a lot you can do and be 100% legal. Many aftermarket manufacturers get EPA approval for their bits (not difficult to do). Fuel-injection has made automotive systems both simpler and more readily modified. It's a lot easier to plug a laptop in and diddle the fuel mapping than it is to take the carb(s) off and change jets. I prefer motorcycles to cars as they are much easier to work on and there are fewer regulations and less enforcement, even in California. And many of the bikes I have worked on have been competition bikes, not road bikes. Doncha wish there was a traceroute for hoses under the hood? Cars look like the hoses pipes and tubes in _Brazil_ nowadays. Not nearly as bad as they did in the 80s. I have an early 80s Toyota 4x4 farm truck and it's got probably 40-60 different Little Black Hoses plus assorted Mystery Boxes. New cars just have an FI computer and a throttle body and a few wires. Some vehicles (i.e. Ducati 999 motorcycle) use a digital network instead of dedicated circuits. Making it even more amenable to hacking, at least until the factory figures out DRM... The future is in a few powerful networked computers per vehicle instead of many dumb microprocessors on seperate circuits. This will make vehicles even more hackable. The other place that computer tech is changing things for the home vehicle haxor is in machining. There are a lot of cheap CNC setups available now. Most use PCs. One of the better CNC programs runs on Linux and was developed by/for NIST, who distributes it free. [1] Air Quality Management District, the pollution police in SoCal at least. They make 2-cycle engines and useful BBQ lighter fluid illegal here. Also won't let you register a car if you've modified the pollution controls in any way, since mods are officially bad and you can't register a car without a periodic smog check. You're not supposed to paint your own vehicles in SoCal either, automotive paint being a VOC. But a back room or garage can be made into a dandy hidden paint booth. All you need is a fan and some plastic sheeting and duct tape. The fumes will disperse enough that the neighbors probably won't notice, and if they do they'll just think that you're running a meth lab. Eric
Re: To Steve Schear, re Rome, Architects, Shuttles, Congress
On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 10:31:45PM -0800, Bill Frantz wrote: At 8:32 PM -0800 2/20/03, Major Variola (ret) wrote: [Aside] I recently learned that back before you needed a license to drive (ca 1930) you would manually adjust the spark timing (!!) according to your engine speed. After handcranking the engine to start. Yes, and you got a broken arm if you didn't retard the spark before you cranked the car. (Hand crank of course) My first motorcycle, a '47 Harley, had the spark advance on one hand grip, throttle on the other. BTW, the concept that people would be afraid to work on their own brake system is laughable. I've been doing my own mechanics for 40 years. Unless it's under warranty, I won't let anyone else touch my vehicles. Why anyone would feel safer letting a garage do it is beyond me, there's one heck of a lot of incompetent mechanics out there, and even more crooked ones. That's why I started doing my own -- because I'd had auto shop in highschool and knew when I was getting bs'd by the mechanic. Got ripped off really bad by one shop a long, long time ago and figured as much as I hate turning wrenches, watching an engine destruct shortly after the 90 day warranty for the rebuild and knowing you got burned is a lot worse. And yes, I do the new cars too. Electronic fuel injection is really pretty simple once you figure it out, there are cheap ($150) meters to check the engine codes when your check engine light comes on, and, of course, you need a good manual. Even better, get a diesel. The older ones are pretty simple and bulletproof, the newer ones like the VW's are awesome and you can get cool computer tools like Vag-Com to customize the ecu. Very, very hackable. Besides which, when you're crawling around under the car it's a good time to check for those GPS monitors. 8-) -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: Creeds and Thoughtcrime
It's becoming more and more apparant that this is indeed a religious crusade. Seems to me that anyone in the gov't, whether elected or hireling, who utters any sort of religious sentiments is guilty of a hate crime. Dubbya needs to be hauled off to the Hague for his rhetoric alone -- especially his refusal to allow Wiccan ceremonies on military bases and his pronouncement that Wicca was not a real religion. First amendment freedom of speech is one thing, but perhaps we need a new amendment which proscribes any gov't official from any sort of proselytizing, prayers, or even any mention of anything relating to their personal religous beliefs. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Citibank Tries to Suppress ATM Hacks
Two Cambridge University researchers, Mike Bond and Piotr Zielinski, have devised a way to hack the hardware security modules used in ATMs and Point of Sale terminals, in order to recover a PIN in 15 tries. These sealed units read the strip on the card, do something with the account number using single DES, and get the PIN. The idea is that someone tapping the wire between the card reader/keypad and the computer will not see the user's credit card info in readable form. Now this gets even more interesting. There is a lawsuit in the UK over a South African couple who experienced 190 fradulent Diner's Club charges totaling $80k in the UK while they were in South Africa. The bank is trying to make them pay the bill, claiming the credit card system is foolproof and cannot be hacked. Bond is testifying at the trial, and Citibank wants a gag order over the ATM vulnerability issue. Ross Anderson has written the court, opposing the gag order. For your further reading enjoyment. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,899796,00.asp http://cryptome.org/pacc.htm http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/21/1045638471679.html http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-560.pdf http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2130897,00.html -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
At 11:04 AM -0800 2/21/03, John Kelsey wrote: Social programs in general work this way. It was a goodie being handed out once, but now, it looks to the people involved like a necessity, and they'll fight hard to keep it. This is just as true of social security and farm subsidies as of welfare. Listen to a Republican-voting farmer justify farm subsidies some time. You ought to have to *pay* for that kind of entertainment. (Oh, wait, I *am* paying for it.) In fact, smarter and better educated people will tend to be a lot more effective at fighting for their benefits than less intelligent, poorly educated people. So welfare reform, for all its weirdness, seems to be working much better than the attempts to reform farm subsidies, say. And even with Republicans in control of everything, I'll bet we don't see any major cuts to NEA, say. And now that my mortgage is almost paid off, I can start railing against the mortgage interest deduction. Cheers - Bill - Bill Frantz | Due process for all| Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | used to be the | 16345 Englewood Ave. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | American way. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless
But other people might be encline to tag along anyway. A reputation No, because unless someone signs your stuff of their free [...] I'm not looking at this on a crypto POV, but from a human nature POV. my trust level is around zero. If I've been glowingly endorsed by other nyms in good standing (check graph for circlejerk caveat) my reputation is positive. People with really bad mana would tend to This doesn't address the point that what people do with that is not something that crypto can solve. Crypto only solves the authentication bit. My claim about whether a political sytem can work was based on human reactions, not on the relations they have with each other, with or without crypto. But I see your point, it's just that I'm not convinced that it is workable. Cooperation takes work, and time, and can be destroyed by small things. -- Vincent Penquerc'h
Re: [more car-trivia] Re: To Steve Schear, re Rome, Architects, Shuttles, Congress
--- Adam Back [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as evolutionary pressures, aggressive and fast driving is far more dangerous, however adrenaline inducingly fun that may be. Depends on one's strategy. When riding a motorcycle, there are two aggressive driving principles I observe at all times (in addition to the usual precaution of keeping track of the vectors of all nearby vehicles at all times): (a) Remain ahead of car `packs' at all times. From stoplights, I will tend to accelerate aggressively to put distance between myself and the other cars waiting at the light. (b) Drive five to ten kilometres per hour faster than the average traffic speed so that in most cases, I am approacing vehicles from behind, and can therefore plan my maneuverings appropriately. Particularly on the highway, I think it is stupid to stay in the right lane at a speed where most of the car and truck traffic is passing you, and where people entering and exiting the highway are constantly changing in and out of your lane. It is not always pleasant driving in the `fast' lane on a 550 c.c. bike, but it tends to be the safest place. In my opinion, this sort of aggressive driving has its place as a valid defensive driving strategy. (ke =1/2.m.v^2). Also exposed or unduly light vehicles -- motorbikes, light built cars like citroen 2cv or such. motorbikes have very bad accident statistics. This is true, and the reason that I tend to prefer driving my car when I have to commute any great distance, or in marginal weather conditions. That said, individual skill plays a part, as does equipment. I believe I have better than average reflexes and driving skill, and I don't ride a crotch-rocket; which I like to think improves my odds somewhat. This may be wishful thinking, but I've only dropped the bike twice in four years of riding, and on both occasions it occured at very low speeds when my wheels skidded on a tiny bit of loose gravel. Set a new personal record for removal, disassembly, reassambly, and installation of a transmission after I slipped the clutch to get the car home too. I had a clutch cable snap on me when I was moving -- car was jam packed with household effects. Just drove it for 10 miles without a clutch. To start: switch engine off, put it in first, start engine; gear change match engine speed to road speed pull out of gear, reduce engine speed to match road speed at higher gear ratio put into new gear; and plan ahead to not have to do a hill start on 1 in 6 hill on way home :-) You can change down also, but it's harder because there's less tolerance for error in the engine speed. This is called power-shifting. The transmission on my bike is particularly well suited for this and I have found that acceleration is *much* better when you don't have to worry about that pesky lever. Downshifting is tricky, but with a little practice it becomes managable. When I don't care about making noise, it's a lot of fun to ride around, going up and down the gears without needing touching the clutch at all except for stoplights. I think it frightens some drivers when I do this, but that probably has something to do with the holes I drilled at the back of the pipe for those few extra HP. :) Now that I think of it, the noise on the highway at 5500 RPM probably alerts drivers as to my approach, contributing to my safety. It helps to have practised this a bit first, otherwise you'll grind the gears or even break something. I was glad I had practised it when the cable broke. Never had a clutch-cable break, but it's a good skill to have. I've blown a few shifts though, and was Informed of the fact by the very unnerving feeling of the clutch-plates slipping while at full-throttle. Some transmissions are better than others for power-shifting, too. My VW 4-speed will power-shift, but it wasn't designed for it. Consequently, shifting normally with the clutch tends to be faster and more comfortable. There are aftermarket shifters for many cars that will do wonders for your quarter-mile. Only recommended for the truly anal. Regards, Steve __ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless
At 09:48 PM 02/18/2003 -0500, Major Variola (ret) wrote: MEChA is mostly about keeping college admission standards lower for South American-derived wannabe students[1]. [...] [1] Not hispanics; they don't care about Iberians A number of years ago, a friend of my boss had been passed over for admission to some affirmative action program for Hispanics. He was a Puerto Rican whose native language was Spanish (he was bilingual), but his name was something like Fred Mueller, so he failed the Spanish-Surnamed definition used by the bureaucrats. Exactly how Spanish Surname was officially defined is obscure; Aztec-surnamed or Inca-surnamed or Maya-surnamed people generally seem to pass. Mexico and South Texas also had a lot of German immigrants in the 1800s, so there are German-Mexicans with names like Jose Mueller, and I don't know if they pass, or if they're insufficiently part of La Raza. (There are towns in the area with names like New Braunfels, Texas. Some of you will recognize the connections from Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather.) One German immigrant who moved to Mexico's west coast instead of the Texas area was Johan Hussong, who built Hussong's Cantina in Ensenada; I don't know if they'd pass, depending on whether the burons recognized Hussong as a German name or if they'd decide that since the bar mostly sells drinks to gringos it doesn't count...)
US Intel is shit, shit, shit
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/18/iraq/main537096.shtml So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've been getting as garbage after garbage after garbage. In fact, Phillips says the source used another cruder word.
psycho-social sim: bombing Al Jazeera 'accidentally'
General Anthony Zinni, a former head of the US Central Command, says: I wouldn't get sucked into the cities. There would be a lot of casualties on our side, we'd kill a lot of civilians and destroy a lot of infrastructure, and the images on Al Jazeera [television] wouldn't help us at all. One of the cockier supporters of great US expectations is a retired army general, Barry McCaffrey, who was in charge of the 24th Mechanised Division in the 1991 war. He predicts: If we decide to employ force, in 21 days it'll be all over. They're not going to believe what we do to them. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/21/1045638489015.html ... Cockier? Cock-sucking fascist traitor, I'd say McCaffrey is, just from what he did to the US, never mind his war crimes. But he's too much a DC insider to have any relatives who'll be drooling and defecating bigeyed in their rubber suits.. Though perhaps he might be close enough to a neutron surprise when the swamp is sterilized... --- How do you say Blame it on NIMA in Mandarin?
spook infiltration, deception, diplo meltdown, Germans, Yemenis, US
One wonders how much of the US spook-infiltrator's skills/cover were provided by Lindh to save his butt: WASHINGTON The sheikh was a devout Muslim whose lifelong ambition was caring for the poor in Yemen, one of the world's most underdeveloped nations. Yet now he needed help himself. His health was deteriorating, and no facilities in his country were sophisticated enough to treat him. So he turned to his new friend, Yussef, a wealthy but disillusioned young African-American. Yussef had converted to Islam and traveled to Yemen to become more devout, like the now infamous John Walker Lindh. The young convert suggested a trip to Germany, where the sheikh could both visit experienced doctors and raise money for his causes. But Yussef wasn't the person he seemed. As an American undercover agent, he was trying to trap the Muslim leader, who is alleged by the US to be a key financier of terrorism. What followed is a tale of deception, betrayal, and intrigue - and of the clashing international interests and viewpoints that make the pursuit of terrorists so complex. snip http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0219/p01s01-usju.html Undercover arrest stirs terror rift --- Got Body Bags? Sure you have enough?
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minoritie s
-- On 20 Feb 2003 at 16:09, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: Ah yeah, the good old front against communists. Some people haven't learned that political views aren't what makes one a bastard. Commies *must* be bad, you see ? Too much capitalism is as bad as too much communism. Highly capitalist nations do not murder millions. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG LS0PPszrbHPaadDyv9OpkI1d4Tym+mjxMyowVUMa 4dEsfuHBg8G0mXDn/U8FBak0jzB4WFSXGPt/n1Lt9
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 11:10:11PM -, Tom Veil wrote: If you would trade Castro for Bush, you're either a totalitarian monster, or simply insane. Bush is obviously both. In any case, I've added you to my blacklist. Interesting that you have to speak from behind a remailer. Not that I'm even remotely opposed to remailers, I love them and use them all the time, but I also know that when someone uses one for converstations such as this, it's because of pure cowardice. Why don't you come out in the open so we can killfile you? You're sounding more and more like a LEO troll. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: CDR: Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless
Bill Stewart wrote: He was a Puerto Rican whose native language was Spanish (he was bilingual), but his name was something like Fred Mueller, so he failed the Spanish-Surnamed definition used by the bureaucrats. This reminds me of a black acquaintance of mine whose last name was Garcia. This entitled her to double-dip into both the black and Hispanic coffers of affirmative action. She was greatly in demand by employers desparate to balance the equation. (Think Like a Dinosaur springs to mind) -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
Tyler Durden wrote on February 20, 2003 at 12:24:40 -0500: As for quoting zmag (which I do), it's silly that this indicates a necessarily leftie/pinko/commie slant. Did you read my full paragraph? Quoting zmag was not the only criteria I mentioned. Chomsky, a frequent contributor, has described himself as basically anarchic in his political leanings. Noam Chomsky is no true anarchist. Chomsky is a commie pinko totalitarian. Chomsky denied the Cambodian holocaust, and is on record as having praised North Vietnam as some sort of democratic worker's paradise. He has defended, rationalized, and denied acts of terror, mass-murder and slavery. More importantly, however, is the fact that Chomsky often develops some very strong counter-arguments to US agit-spew. So does Kevin Alfred Strom. -- Tom Veil
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
The reality is even more weird, I think. Suppose there's some struggling-to-make-it new family down the street, and I start helping out by bringing them dinner every night. If I do it for a few days, e.g., while the mom is in the hospital or something, it's a genuine act of kindness. If I do it every day for five years, then they are more-or-less going to become dependent on me. Humperhaps some truth there. Now whatr if the mom in the hospital actually dies while your helping that family? You've got a problem on your hands! In this case a few things can happen: 1)The kids grow dependent on you, and when you stop providing they can't cope and so get mad at you and fight to move in with you. 2)You can keep supporting them forever. 3) You start thinking, Oh crap. These kids are going to depend on me forever unless I equip them for reality. Of course, if Option 3 is considered, the objection might be Hey! These aren't my kids, why do I have to do this? But the reality is that things are what they are. The only way out is to hope for some kind of war or armageddon that wipes out the kids, or just realize is going to be like this forever unless you accept the reality of the situation and start equipping them. Like any analogy, this is probably over simplistic. But it does represent one axis of truth methinks. Oh, and there's probably a 4) I missed that should be mentioned: 4) Recognize that those orphan kids are never going to be offered a job and think about how to tear the whole system down. -TD _ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
At 11:13 AM 2/21/03 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: ... However, one way to see the situation is more of a buy-off. Arguably, the government plunders in order to pay off welfare society, because if they didn't the masses would rise up and kill off the system that does not really do much to equip them for the opportunities that immigrant kids come in and sweep up. (The term Brain drain comes to mind.) The reality is even more weird, I think. Suppose there's some struggling-to-make-it new family down the street, and I start helping out by bringing them dinner every night. If I do it for a few days, e.g., while the mom is in the hospital or something, it's a genuine act of kindness. If I do it every day for five years, then they are more-or-less going to become dependent on me. The day I decide I have better uses for my time than bringing them dinner, they're almost certainly going to be mad and bitter at me. (If you don't believe this, observe the interaction between a parent and newly-independent kid asking for money, or between a rich uncle and his hoping-to-inherit nephews.) Social programs in general work this way. It was a goodie being handed out once, but now, it looks to the people involved like a necessity, and they'll fight hard to keep it. This is just as true of social security and farm subsidies as of welfare. Listen to a Republican-voting farmer justify farm subsidies some time. You ought to have to *pay* for that kind of entertainment. (Oh, wait, I *am* paying for it.) In fact, smarter and better educated people will tend to be a lot more effective at fighting for their benefits than less intelligent, poorly educated people. So welfare reform, for all its weirdness, seems to be working much better than the attempts to reform farm subsidies, say. And even with Republicans in control of everything, I'll bet we don't see any major cuts to NEA, say. -TD --John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, James A. Donald wrote: Highly capitalist nations do not murder millions. That's because they make better slaves than fertilizer. The real trick is to make the slaves think they have a great deal, then the controllers get more power and less trouble. Unfortunately, this requires some intelligence in the controllers, which is rare. Maintaining capitalism is harder than it looks. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
Tyler Durden wrote on February 17, 2003 at 20:53:14 -0500: Tim Veil wrote... Because the money that is given to them through these unconstitutional federal gravy-train programs was stolen from me, and millions of other taxpayers at gunpoint. Again, I'm not sure why this results in rancor towards those receiving such funds. What part of my above paragraph did you not understand? It's not like black folks are really running this show. Who runs the show is not at issue here. What _is_ at issue is that the money received by these welfare-suckers is money that was taken from _me_. (snipped) Want one piece of a solution? Excellent, no-bullshit schools. You're not going to get this with government schools. Better that schools compete for students in the marketplace. (snipped) -- Tim Veil Fucking with quoted text is _not_ cool. -- Tom Veil
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minoritie s
At 4:09 PM + on 2/20/03, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: Too much capitalism is as bad as too much communism. That's semantically equivalent to saying that too much economics is as bad as too much totalitarianism... Cheers, RAH Capitalism, being, of course, Marxist argot for economics... -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
- Original Message - From: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 9:47 AM Subject: Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil What part of my above paragraph did you not understand? The rancor part. Let's take your line of reasoning another step. Imagine you get robbed at gunpoint by some masked caucasian. He steals your Ventura watch as well as all your $$$. As you cry and bawl like a little bitch you see the guy take off and in the process toss the watch to some black dude walking up the street. Will you now yell: Die you scumyou stole my watch! (Well, YOU probably would.) Why are you mad at the black dude for being tossed a freebie? Thats a pretty poor analogy. Perhaps a better one is where the robber was first *asked* to steal my watch, (as I could obviously afford another one) and then gave it to someone else. And in fact, if this recipient kept the watch, knowing full well that it had been taken from me by force, he has stolen it from me. Contracting with someone else to steal from me is no different (in fact, its possibly even worse) than stealing it from me yourself. -p
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
Peter Capelli wrote... Thats a pretty poor analogy. Perhaps a better one is where the robber was first *asked* to steal my watch, (as I could obviously afford another one) and then gave it to someone else. And in fact, if this recipient kept the watch, knowing full well that it had been taken from me by force, he has stolen it from me. Well, let's just say I didn't spend a lot of time polishing that analogy! However, one way to see the situation is more of a buy-off. Arguably, the government plunders in order to pay off welfare society, because if they didn't the masses would rise up and kill off the system that does not really do much to equip them for the opportunities that immigrant kids come in and sweep up. (The term Brain drain comes to mind.) -TD _ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
Maybe they were working together. - Original Message - From: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 9:47 AM Subject: Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil What part of my above paragraph did you not understand? The rancor part. Let's take your line of reasoning another step. Imagine you get robbed at gunpoint by some masked caucasian. He steals your Ventura watch as well as all your $$$. As you cry and bawl like a little bitch you see the guy take off and in the process toss the watch to some black dude walking up the street. Will you now yell: Die you scumyou stole my watch! (Well, YOU probably would.) Why are you mad at the black dude for being tossed a freebie? -- Tim Veil Fucking with quoted text is _not_ cool. -- Tom Veil Guess you better learn how to use a hash function dude! (I guess you're not really Tim May after all!) -TD _ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
Harmon Seaver wrote on February 20, 2003 at 12:55:08 -0600: On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 12:13:45PM -, Tom Veil wrote: Harmon Seaver wrote on February 19, 2003 at 19:20:19 -0600: On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 11:19:11PM +0100, Anonymous wrote: After scanning hyperpoem.net, we've decided to blacklist you for your far left-wing, socialist views, the quote from Ayn Rand notwithstanding. -- Tom Veil What the fuck are you talking about? Neither you nor anyone else has the authority to ban anyone here, shitforbrains. Actually the site looks pretty good, lots of anti-war, anti-dubbyascum stuff -- right on! Idiot. I didn't mention a damn thing about banning anybody from the list. blacklist, ban, baaa baaa baaa -- what's the diff? I don't have the authority to ban anybody from the list. I do have authority in who I hire, and in my recommendations to others. I did mention using the good ol' 1950's style blacklists used by employers to keep pinkos and commies off their payrolls. You sound exactly like one of the morons from the fifties. No, being anti-war doesn't get you blacklisted. Bullshit like comments against corporate globalization and prominently linking to socialist Ten-Point Justice Agendas and sites like zmag.org and commiedreams.org gets you blacklisted, as it indicates that one is of the so-called progressive, leftist commie totalitarian persuasion. And you are obviously a political retard. Communism is dead, the enemy now is fascism. Do you know the difference? There isn't much of a difference, actually. In both cases, all property is subservient to the state. Can we say corporate welfare state??? I already told you that I'm staunchly against any and all forms of corporate welfare, as are all true capitalists. I also told you that expenditures for traditional socialist welfare programs currently dwarf all expenditures for corporate welfare. The mega-corps *are* the problem today, it's they who put and keep the fascists in power. The mega-corps are not the problem, the mega-state is the problem. Any real power big corporations have is the result of big governments giving it to them. Quite frankly, I'd trade Castro for Bush anytime, at least we wouldn't have all the goddam disgusting christian bullshit all the time. If you would trade Castro for Bush, you're either a totalitarian monster, or simply insane. In any case, I've added you to my blacklist. -- Tom Veil
