Re: Spy imagery agency watching inside U.S.
You don't even need the Hubble-scopes pointed down that the NRO/NIMA/whatever the fuck they're called today has. Check out globexplorer.com; my patio is more than several pixels and a friend of mine saw his Bronco. You could probably make out the glint in JY's eyes. OTOH its really easy to signal our colleages overseas should they have similar resolution, and we have patio umbrellas. At 12:28 PM 9/28/04 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Spy imagery agency watching inside U.S. By Katherine Pfleger Shrader, Associated Press BETHESDA, Md. - In the name of homeland security, America's spy imagery agency is keeping a close eye, close to home. It's watching America. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, about 100 employees of a little-known branch of the Defense Department called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency - and some of the country's most sophisticated aerial imaging equipment - have focused on observing what's going on in the United States.
Re: How to fuck with airports - a 1 step guide for (Redmond) terrorists.
At 8:28 AM +0200 9/29/04, Eugen Leitl wrote: The mind boggles. Even more interesting: how many heads have rolled due to this? None, of course. Microsoft is the new IBM. As in, Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft... 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: How to fuck with airports - a 1 step guide for (Redmond)
Personal aside. I've started working for a medical device company.
This is not so far from security programming, as checking your
inputs, robustness, and being able to justify time spent inspecting
and testing are all common to both domains.
But today I learned that a device that keeps you heart going, should
it forget how, has a field that rolls over in about 40+ days. But hey,
euthanisia
is underappreciated. Reboot that pacer!
--
People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are
pretty much standing on Darwin's mat, pounding on the door, screaming,
Take me, take me!--Cael in A.S.R.
Sunder wrote:
Q: How do you cause an 800-plane pile-up at a major airport?
A: Replace working Unix systems with Microsoft Windows 2000!
The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to
prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times.
That would be 49.71026961805556 days, or (curiously
enough) 4294967295 (0x) milliseconds. Known problem with Win95
('cept they call Win95 a server).
October meeting announcement for SV2600
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 This Friday is the October meeting of the Silicon Valley chapter of 2600. 2600 meetings are local gatherings to learn and discuss the information infrastructure of our society. This includes problems with the infrastructure and it's affects on our modern society. Chapters of 2600 are registered with 2600 magazine, http://www.2600.com/. Topics covered include: wired and wireless communications technology, secure computing platforms, open-source and free software movement, cryptography, how-tos, information security, and electronic civil rights. The Silicon Valley chapter of 2600 meets at 6:00PM on the first Friday of each month. We meet in the cafe patio at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library at 4th and E. San Fernando in downtown San Jose: 150 E. San Fernado St. San Jose, CA 95112 Our web site is at http://www.sv2600.org/. - -- T.R. Fullhart [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) Comment: Public key at http://genetikayos.com/contact.html iEYEARECAAYFAkFZ+m0ACgkQBkAwtOnCph3J/wCfQG6PZcZlaVpV6lAzLfRiJdIG mpsAmwQsPh+tb9oet2N7Uwjr8bh5JuMs =rAmt -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Federal judge rejects part of Patriot Act
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6131670/print/1/displaymode/1098/ MSNBC.com Federal judge rejects part of Patriot Act Provision giving FBI access to business records overturned Reuters Updated: 12:11 p.m. ET Sept. 29, 2004 NEW YORK - A federal judge Wednesday found unconstitutional a part of the United States' anti-terror Patriot Act that allows authorities to demand customer records from businesses without court approval. U.S. District Judge Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the power the FBI has to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorism investigations. The ruling was the latest blow to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects being held in places like Guantanamo Bay can use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement. That ruling was a defeat for the president's assertion of sweeping powers to hold enemy combatants indefinitely after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The ACLU sued the Department of Justice, arguing that part of the Patriot legislation violated the Constitution because it authorizes the FBI to force disclosure of sensitive information without adequate safeguards. The judge agreed, stating that the provision effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge. Under the provision, the FBI did not have to show a judge a compelling need for the records and it did not have to specify any process that would allow a recipient to fight the demand for confidential information. -- - 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'
More Convenient Use of Electronic Gold Payments
I've used E-Gold in the past, and found that the hardest part of the process is buying the stuff to put in your account - setting up an account and paying people with it are both easy, but to buy the gold, you need to find some way to give somebody some other kind of money so they'll give you electronic gold. If you want $1 worth, or want to transfer physical gold, it's not hard, but if you just want small quantities it was annoying. Jim Davidson's article talked about E-Gold and other currencies, and almost all of them operate under a model in which the gold service transfers gold credits between accounts, but buying the gold credits with other types of money is handled by third-party retailers, and almost none of the retailers will accept credit cards or Paypal without long delays, though they'll happily accept other gold currencies. There's now a much more convenient way to buy online gold - goldage.net. To pay them cash, you do an online form, then go to a bank they use, and fill out a deposit slip with their account number from the form, and hand the bank your cash, and then do another form to say you did it. They use banks in USA, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and South Africa. Their US banks include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and three or four others. You don't need to set up an account with them - they mostly do transactional business, though their fees are a bit lower if you're a large frequent customer. The gold currency payment isn't instant - it can take a couple of days for Goldage to see that the deposit was made. They seem to be a small operation, so they're very responsive to email. A couple of months ago, I wanted to pay for some services using an online gold currency, and the merchant accepts E-gold, Pecunix, and several other gold currencies. I didn't want to use E-Gold itself, because there are too many spammers phishing for people's e-gold account information the way they do for credit cards, and I didn't want to have to miss any _real_ email from them mixed in with the spam. Pecunix was one of the gold currencies that my merchant's online payment system Goldcart accepted, and they were easy to use. So I did the online form at Goldage, deposited the cash at the bank, checked Pecunix a couple of days later, and paid the merchant. I think the total fees were about $6-7 between the different service providers, mostly the $5 minimum fee at Goldage, and I may have a buck or two of round-off-error money sitting in Pecunix, but the percentage costs would be lower if I were using it more frequently rather than a one-shot transaction. It worked very well, and was much simpler than a few years ago.
Re: More Convenient Use of Electronic Gold Payments
Dear Bill, First, let me thank you for your excellent message. I've copied a few people on bcc and I've included [EMAIL PROTECTED] since your endorsement of their excellent services is one I'm sure they would appreciate. I've used E-Gold in the past, and found that the hardest part of the process is buying the stuff to put in your account - setting up an account and paying people with it are both easy, but to buy the gold, you need to find some way to give somebody some other kind of money so they'll give you electronic gold. There are a number of decent exchange providers both foreign and domestic. You mention one that is very good, goldage.net. Others that I like to work with are Cambist.net and EzEz.com. In this latter case, qualified individuals simply write a check or send a money order to EzEz's parent company and get e-gold within hours after the mail arrives. Cambist has a service called MerchantGold which allows merchants to have payments sent in and receive their funds in e-gold or other online gold. If you want $1 worth, or want to transfer physical gold, it's not hard, but if you just want small quantities it was annoying. Everyone's experiences differ. I certainly have had no difficulty getting small quantities of gold, buying or selling. Jim Davidson's article talked about E-Gold and other currencies, and almost all of them operate under a model in which the gold service transfers gold credits between accounts, but buying the gold credits with other types of money is handled by third-party retailers, and almost none of the retailers will accept credit cards or Paypal without long delays, though they'll happily accept other gold currencies. There are retailers who accept credit cards. GoldNow.st works with these quite often, though their rates are pretty high and I don't have much else good to say about them. Nobody wants to accept PayPal, even from known customers, because PayPal has had a policy of shutting down exchanger accounts. It has happened so many times that I've lost track. There is an interesting essay on the subject, actually a set of essays, about the May Scale of Monetary Hardness which helps to explain why it is so hard to buy gold or silver with credit cards or PayPal. http://www.interestingsoftware.com/mayscale.html PayPal happens to have survived whereas beenz and flooz and other experiments in online payments have failed. I think the relationship between PayPal and eBay has much to do with that survival. I do sometimes wonder if the persistent difficulties of merchants and consumers with PayPal may ultimately threaten its existence. The typical out which I'm anticipating is for PayPal to demand that online payment systems be regulated. PayPal would then likely dominate the regulatory agency through the typical revolving door and campaign contribution forms of corruption, in my estimation. There's now a much more convenient way to buy online gold - goldage.net. Yes, that's certainly true. They are very convenient. They seem to be a small operation, so they're very responsive to email. GoldAge.net was founded by my great friend Parker Bradley who has gone off to New Mexico to run Heron Aerospace. It is now managed by a small and very competent team of friends in New York. One of them, Ragnar, is also responsible for LibertyImpact.com which is a great little newsletter on liberty topics. I didn't want to use E-Gold itself, because there are too many spammers phishing for people's e-gold account information True. E-gold also keeps its servers in the USA, so you have to expect that all transaction records are in the hands of government agencies now, or will be as soon as a subpoena is issued. (Great news: the National Security Letter has been effectively challenged in the courts.) Pecunix was one of the gold currencies that my merchant's online payment system Goldcart accepted, and they were easy to use. Pecunix is truly excellent, I feel. You can set up the Pecunix log-in to require a PGP message test/response. You can also set it so that all your communications from Pecunix about your account activities are received in PGP encrypted form. Their log-in system is a very tough hack, and I've never heard of anyone losing their log-in details or account balance. Also, the automation interface for Pecunix is outstanding. GoldCart, by the way, is from the same programming team that handles Pecunix, PVCSE.com, and Garzoo.com. So I did the online form at Goldage, deposited the cash at the bank, checked Pecunix a couple of days later, and paid the merchant. I think the total fees were about $6-7 between the different service providers, mostly the $5 minimum fee at Goldage, and I may have a buck or two of round-off-error money sitting in Pecunix, but the percentage costs would be lower if I were using it more frequently rather than a one-shot transaction. Sure. I think the network of exchangers, of which GoldAge.net is certainly a leader, is making it
