immune system diseases, TSA, false positives
An immune system is a great thing until it attacks the self. In part this can be due to the limited size of recognized motifs. For instance, the string David Nelson triggers the TSA goons. If you add the phonetic-similarity recognition (required when you transcode arabic names), the matching string-set grows even larger. Any reports from Dave Nelsohns out there? At work the IT-dept-installed AV software on my PC found a virus. Only it was an object file I had just cross-compiled, for an obscure Freescale (nee Motorola) CPU. It promptly notified me and moved my binary. Breaking my build. Costing the company my time, and another engineer's to resolve it. By suppressing the immune system, at least in one region; the cornea is readily transplanted because the immune system can't touch it. I suppose anyone who's pregnancy has been endangered by Rh incompatability knows the dangers of friend or foe vigilance. Interesting security parable, I thought, anyway. ... Another case: Bush campaigning in FLA. His security parade prevents my folks, living there, from voting, that day. (One of many states with early voting, now.) The irony overwhelms. Terrorists are the only true avant-garde artists because they're the only ones who are still capable of really surprising people. ---Laurie Anderson (official artist of NASA..)
Re: Give peace a chance? NAH...
-- James A. Donald wrote: ... but Bin Laden's indictment not only mentions US troops in Saudi Arabia, but also the reconquest of Spain, the massacre committed by the crusaders in Jerusalem, and the failure of Americans to obey Shariah law. J.A. Terranson Whats good for the goose is good for the gander, right? The US can go after BL for not following US [constitutional] law, so why can't he come after us for not following Shariah (or any other) law? James A. Donald: But these laws are not as like as geese and ganders. The US goes after Bin Laden for murdering people. Bin Laden goes after us for not accepting second class citizenship under Muslim rule. J.A. Terranson No. He goes after us for the very same reason: for [our] murdering of *hundreds of thousands* of people, both directly (Iraq) and by proxy (Israel). James A. Donald: What then is the reason for the murder of Afghans and Sudanese? J.A. Terranson My enemy's friend is my enemy. But Al Quaeda and like groups were murdering Afghans in large numbers long before the US renewed their old alliances. * --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG VeAfgPXsu8hMd159ebYkMe4IMwec2ScP1h/9frn/ 40jZWcrteGmlLGXGPABh60Da4xPqu9PUZow53bsJs
RF stories
Read a story about some college student whose plasma TV was emitting quite a lot of 121.5 MHz. He got a nice visit from SR Sheriffs types telling him to shut his TV off. Or else. 121.5 is a satellite-received distress freq. Toshiba will send him a new TV for free. Chatting with an Aussie from work. He was surprised that I knew what Pine Hills, where his dad worked, was. He told me a story about working there as a kid, painting a fence. The wind took his and his friend's hats flying towards some antennae, he went chasing. The Italian supervisor was very distressed when he returned to the fence. Gesticulated towards the antennae, then the ground, went boom. Nice field there, apparently, when it was on. I wonder if it was a 'roo or a staffer who first found this out. I explained that the NSA was the Adversary, so We monitored Them; he was surprised, thought it was the Russkies. But he's a bit of a republican-yokel. I explained Little Sister vs. Big Brother; who had the $ and acres of computers (etc), and that Technical Means is Technical Means, regardless of your politics. Also mentioned that terraserver.microsoft.com recently added urban area pix, so you can see in full color the cars in your 'hood early morning last spring. Why UBL doesn't use his sat phone, fibre optics hurt but WiFi is great, or not, and in any case if the CounterIntel folks at the FBI and CIA go for under $2mill it really doesn't matter much anyway. Got Keyloggers?
Re: Printers betray document secrets
Simple way to test. Get two printers of the same make and model. Print identical documents on both printers, scan them, diff the scans. Some will be noise, repeat several times, see which noise repeats and you get closer and closer to the serial #'s. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Steve Thompson wrote: I seem to recall hearing a rumour that suggested that for years now, photocopiers have been leaving their serial number on the copies they produce. If true, and I am inclined to believe it, it follows naturally that something similar might happen with laser-printers and ink-jet printers. Ian Grigg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: R.A. Hettinga wrote: US scientists have discovered that every desktop printer has a signature style that it invisibly leaves on all the documents it produces. I don't think this is new - I'm pretty sure it was published about 6 or 7 years back as a technique. iang - Post your free ad now! Yahoo! Canada Personals
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 20 Oct 2004 at 21:27, Sunder wrote: I repeat: And you were there and kept an eye on each and every guard, interrogator, and prisoner to make sure that the POW's weren't tortured? We know torture did not occur, because lots of people have been released who were and are extremely hostile to the US, and who do not claim torture. And you were there and witnessed the attrocities that said prisoners committed in order to be placed in Gitmo? Why do you assert that the US must be guilty unless it can be proven innocent by extraordinary evidence, but the detainees must be innocent unless they can be proven guilty by extraordinary evidence? Doubtless there are some innocents in Gautenamo - but the usual reason they are there is for being foreigners in Afghanistan in the middle of a war with no adequate explanation. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PwxWpHJKrzapMUAE8Xc1hvpY0CWDO780ZY/6zW7b 4b9RBklMS97dzSSANw7jVcZlASDxbNnLMhwLptK+Z
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
As I said, an Islamic regime is objectionable if it tolerates terror against non islamic minorities, thus creating, perhaps unintentionally, an environment that facilitates terror against external infidels - that is to say, terror against me and people like me. You say a lot of wacky stuff, so it suprises me that I find this pragraph to actually make some sense. In this context a very strong case can be made that the US caused the Khmer Rouge to come to power, precisely by performing in a way similar to what you espouse. That case is a nutty rationalization put forward by the former fans of the Khmer Rouge to rationalize their bad conduct. No. You've got to do more reading. Sihoanouk was in power and loosely held a coalition together. In part because he believed it and in part because it was necessary to hold this coalition together, Sihoanouk did not spout particularly pro-American rhetoric. As a result, the US/CIA backed Lon Nol to overthrow Sihoanouk. Lon Nol could by no means hold things together , so in swept the Khmer Rouge, backed by Mao and the Chicoms. Let's remember some facts here: The US backed the ferociously corrupt Chiang regime, even helping them sack China's treasuries. The US fought China in Korea and was now occupying it. MacArthur threatened to make China a nuclear Parking Lot. The US was in Vietnam trying to fight their way up. So it would have been pretty evident to anyone watching that the US was trying to undermine the PRC. In fact, this was also a main motivation for the Cultural Revolution: Mao wanted to move heavy industry out into the countryside, away from easy bomb-ability by the Americans. (Of course, that idea was actually used by Mao for consolidating his politcal power which was always with the peasants, but that's besides the point). Mao did the reasonable thing and fought us (and won) in all 3 theaters. I'll agree with you pretty quickly if you say Mao was a fairly Stalinist butcher, but in any event he made use of the Khmer Rouge to push a US-backed puppet out of the peninsula. Note that only after Mao kicked our asses repeatedly did Nixon and Kissinger decide to make friends with Mao and the PRC (which was the smart thing to do all along after the Sino-Soviet split). What if the US had not followed such an aggressive policy towards the PRC? Chinese history gives us a clear indication: They would never have backed the Khmer Rouge. (Sihoanouk regularly traveled to China before and after that time, BTW, and was moderately friendly with Jong Nan Hai.) In addition, the notion of having to hide Chinese industry from the Americans could never have been used as a credible reason for lauching the Cultural Revolution. In the end, our policies in SE Asia likely caused millions to be killed, and in the end were self-defeating. A complete fiasco. And the same thing is happening in the Middle East. So even if one agrees that your goals are 'admirable' (and I question that), your methods would also be a complete, unmitigated disaster. -TD _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Printers betray document secrets
At 05:23 PM 10/18/2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/3753886.stm It turns out that their techniques aren't all that useful. Changing laser printer cartridges changes the results. You might find that two documents were printed by the same printer, but it doesn't give you the options for tracking it down that manual typewriters did. And the differences don't identify a specific printer in a way that can be tracked, e.g. identifying a serial number that could be looked up from warranty records. It's not clear that they work at all with inkjet printers, and changing ink cartridges is even more common than changing laser printer cartridges. If you're sloppy, you've probably got a bunch of partly-used cartridges around, so even if you want to print out a bunch of ransom notes or whatever, you don't even have to go to Kinko's to get them to be different. If printer makers want to build in watermarking to make everything they print traceable, the way many of them check for documents that look like money and don't print them, they could hide patterns that survive cartridge changes (would you notice a few inverted pixels on a 600x600dpi printout?) But even then, inkjet printers are dirt cheap; when they're on sale, they're essentially a free enclosure in a box of overpriced printer cartridges, so even of the printer wants to rat out the user and it's not easy to change the serial number PROM, you can just replace the printer. Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Airport insanity
I made no claims, you did, rather I asked you sarcastically to validate your claims, after which you further assumed on top of other mistaken assumptions, that I made claims countering yours, which I did not. Perhaps you should examine your own words. IMHO, you are a misguided armchair general who sees yourself as equal to those scumbags that have risen in power to lead or enslave nations since you seem to constantly say they should have done X, and not Y and are constantly seeking to go against with reality with W should be the case, not X even though W cannot happen while X does. Yes, that is my unprofessional opinion. And yet, while impotent to achive your views of reality, you insist on sharing it, as if anyone gives a rats ass. It was entertaining, but it's getting old. I doubt that it would be long before you'll be sporting a tin foil hat. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 20 Oct 2004 at 21:27, Sunder wrote: I repeat: And you were there and kept an eye on each and every guard, interrogator, and prisoner to make sure that the POW's weren't tortured? We know torture did not occur, because lots of people have been released who were and are extremely hostile to the US, and who do not claim torture. And you were there and witnessed the attrocities that said prisoners committed in order to be placed in Gitmo? Why do you assert that the US must be guilty unless it can be proven innocent by extraordinary evidence, but the detainees must be innocent unless they can be proven guilty by extraordinary evidence? Doubtless there are some innocents in Gautenamo - but the usual reason they are there is for being foreigners in Afghanistan in the middle of a war with no adequate explanation. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PwxWpHJKrzapMUAE8Xc1hvpY0CWDO780ZY/6zW7b 4b9RBklMS97dzSSANw7jVcZlASDxbNnLMhwLptK+Z
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
Tyler Durden wrote: What if the US had not followed such an aggressive policy towards the PRC? Chinese history gives us a clear indication: They would never have backed the Khmer Rouge. (Sihoanouk regularly traveled to China before and after that time, BTW, and was moderately friendly with Jong Nan Hai.) In addition, the notion of having to hide Chinese industry from the Americans could never have been used as a credible reason for lauching the Cultural Revolution. In the end, our policies in SE Asia likely caused millions to be killed, and in the end were self-defeating. A complete fiasco. And the same thing is happening in the Middle East. I certainly wouldn't argue that US policy in Indochina was anything other than a fiasco, nor that the current misadventure in the Middle East will be spared the same fate, but the Chinese had another very important reason to back the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam - Russia. The Soviets supplied heavy military and financial aid to Vietnam, in return for an anticipated naval base through which they could extend their power into the South Seas. They never got the base - the Vietnamese played them like a fiddle - but the threat was enough for the PRC to view Vietnam as an enemy-by-proxy, and so to back the Khmer Rouge. In addition, the whole of Indochina was (and is) a clusterfuck of rivalries and feuds going back centuries. The (relatively) sudden appearance of a bunch of new regimes, all with revolutionary mindsets through which to apply their old vendettas, probably made the bloodshed inevitable - although US intervention undoubtedly made it worse. W
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
Will Morton wrote... In addition, the whole of Indochina was (and is) a clusterfuck of rivalries and feuds going back centuries. The (relatively) sudden appearance of a bunch of new regimes, all with revolutionary mindsets through which to apply their old vendettas, probably made the bloodshed inevitable - although US intervention undoubtedly made it worse. Basically the way I see it. I've felt for a long time that the US (even while pursuing it's questionable goals) should have jumped all over the chance to buddy-up with China after the Sino-Soviet split, and knowing Mao's practicality I'd bet he could have been pursuaded (hell, not long after it was Mao and Zhou who initated contact with the US). Relations with Vietnam and Cambodia could have proceeded very differently in that environment. Would the cultural revolution still have happened? Probably. Would the Khmers have gotten into power...possibly but I actually doubt it. But of course, we were still in the middle of McCarthy-ism, so way too ideologically blind to see the obvious. As a result we continued to mindlessly pursue ideology rather than practicality and so ended really making things worse in SE Asia, in a place where Marxism was really a useful but temporary veneer over local politics (again we were too blind to see that Marxism was a western transplant that wasn't going to do too well in Asia). And we're doing it again...(eg, we had some chances with Iran recently that we passed up...that was really stupid, and the Iranians seem to know it). -TD _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Airport insanity
On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 09:43:16AM -0700, James A. Donald wrote: When people are under attack, you cannot tell them to suck it up, which is what you are doing. If we had no government, we I'm not under attack. Are you? The Ghengis Khan thing's been a while back. might well be doing pogroms against american muslims - and a good thing to. This ways lies much rotting severed heads on stakes, and screaming. We've been there before. No need for a repetition. War causes governments, and causes governments to gain power, but the US government was not the aggressor in this war. US Your reality model is rather unique. Given that what your alleged representatives are doing results in massive loss of prestige, you don't want to associate with defectors. That stink's going to cling for a while. government meddling in the middle east was unwise and unnecessary, but it did not provoke, nor does it justify, this war. The intent of a large minority of muslims was to start a holy war between the west and Islam, and the majority of muslims The only war there is was started by ShrubCo, and was tacitly approved by about half of your countrymen. This isn't Nuremberg, but I color your guilty. lack the will or courage to stop them, or even criticize them. That was not the intent of Americans, or the American government. They started it, they meant to start it. Americans Ha ha. tried to avoid it, some of them are still trying to avoid it. All Americans are still trying to conduct the war on the smallest possible scale, against the smallest possible subset of Islam, disagreeing only on how small that subset can be. Your reality distortion field manages to make bearded fanatics look good. Quite an accomplishment. Herr Reichspropagandaminister would have been proud. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgp6EplBncDIz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
-- On 21 Oct 2004 at 10:28, Tyler Durden wrote: No. You've got to do more reading. Sihoanouk was in power and loosely held a coalition together. In part because he believed it and in part because it was necessary to hold this coalition together, Sihoanouk did not spout particularly pro-American rhetoric. As a result, the US/CIA backed Lon Nol to overthrow Sihoanouk. This used to be a self flattering delusion, is now a lie. US records have been opened, we know that the overthrow came as a complete surprise to the US, and that initially the US did not know whose side Lon Nol was on. What happened was that Sihanouk's allies, the North Vietnamese, attacked him. This discredited Sihanouk's foreign policy, and Sihanouk himself, and led to those who sought to save Cambodia from Vietnamese domination, sought to avoid the installation of the (then seemingly puppet) Khmer Rouge, overthrowing Sihanouk. Shawcross, no friend of the US, reluctantly conceded this after doing a big freedom of information thing. The US was in Vietnam trying to fight their way up. So it would have been pretty evident to anyone watching that the US was trying to undermine the PRC. You live in a world of delusion. Your dates are all wrong, your events are all fiction. Mao did the reasonable thing and fought us (and won) in all 3 theaters. I'll agree with you pretty quickly if you say Mao was a fairly Stalinist butcher, but in any event he made use of the Khmer Rouge to push a US-backed puppet out of the peninsula The Khmer Rouge were primarily backed by the Soviet Union at first. When it became apparent that they were not the puppets that those who organized them and initially armed them intended them to be, they subsequently received more backing from China, and less from the Soviet Union, but they were brought to power by support from both China and the Soviet Union. What if the US had not followed such an aggressive policy towards the PRC? The US never followed an aggressive policy towards the PRC. Chinese history gives us a clear indication: They would never have backed the Khmer Rouge. (Sihoanouk regularly traveled to China before and after that time, BTW, and was moderately friendly with Jong Nan Hai.) Sihanouk was friendly, indeed abjectly servile, to the North Vietnamese and the Soviet Union, yet the North Vietnamese created the Khmer Rouge and attacked Cambodia. Same thing happened with Laos, where the Americans never got involved at all to any significant extent. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG zb5a74rNSc9lJdS/j1FjUvRf0YLLcKMfJtnK+yY8 4vGyjijdoPOZR1s3LKxaVmjbOBleszE0W5/7pQmoR
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
-- On 21 Oct 2004 at 12:19, Tyler Durden wrote: Basically the way I see it. I've felt for a long time that the US (even while pursuing it's questionable goals) should have jumped all over the chance to buddy-up with China after the Sino-Soviet split, and knowing Mao's practicality I'd bet he could have been pursuaded But the US did try (enventually somewhat successfully) to buddy up with China after the Sino Soviet split. But of course, we were still in the middle of McCarthy-ism, so way too ideologically blind to see the obvious The Sino Soviet split occurred long, long, long after McCarthy-ism, and the McCarthyism you imagine never existed. As a result we continued to mindlessly pursue ideology rather than practicality and so ended really making things worse in SE Asia, in a place where Marxism was really a useful but temporary veneer over local politics (again we were too blind to see that Marxism was a western transplant that wasn't going to do too well in Asia) Marxism collapsed in IndoChina when the Soviet Union collapsed. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG tZmcZdj//R58tp4DiAG0IC4pOHohzacYZQvAALA8 4giYjxVqF5lKWmPpdSglZvGiAEMgB4qWZL08Rt4LN
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 21 Oct 2004 at 10:26, Sunder wrote: IMHO, you are a misguided armchair general who sees yourself as equal to those scumbags that have risen in power to lead or enslave nations since you seem to constantly say they should have done X, and not Y When people are under attack, you cannot tell them to suck it up, which is what you are doing. If we had no government, we might well be doing pogroms against american muslims - and a good thing to. War causes governments, and causes governments to gain power, but the US government was not the aggressor in this war. US government meddling in the middle east was unwise and unnecessary, but it did not provoke, nor does it justify, this war. The intent of a large minority of muslims was to start a holy war between the west and Islam, and the majority of muslims lack the will or courage to stop them, or even criticize them. That was not the intent of Americans, or the American government. They started it, they meant to start it. Americans tried to avoid it, some of them are still trying to avoid it. All Americans are still trying to conduct the war on the smallest possible scale, against the smallest possible subset of Islam, disagreeing only on how small that subset can be. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG YeXgmiDN23gKNejAXLPSgfGxzFPVqFa/9pEDbWNr 41sYVdSvXQCEQniQVEIYWhWw2HjtvpvuHtQ0QXUaI
Re: Airport insanity
No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack to suck it up? All I did was point out that you weren't there and therefore any comment you care to make about it is bound to be flawed. Please find yourself a clue store and open your wallet - wide. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 21 Oct 2004 at 10:26, Sunder wrote: IMHO, you are a misguided armchair general who sees yourself as equal to those scumbags that have risen in power to lead or enslave nations since you seem to constantly say they should have done X, and not Y When people are under attack, you cannot tell them to suck it up, which is what you are doing. If we had no government, we might well be doing pogroms against american muslims - and a good thing to. War causes governments, and causes governments to gain power, but the US government was not the aggressor in this war. US government meddling in the middle east was unwise and unnecessary, but it did not provoke, nor does it justify, this war. The intent of a large minority of muslims was to start a holy war between the west and Islam, and the majority of muslims lack the will or courage to stop them, or even criticize them. That was not the intent of Americans, or the American government. They started it, they meant to start it. Americans tried to avoid it, some of them are still trying to avoid it. All Americans are still trying to conduct the war on the smallest possible scale, against the smallest possible subset of Islam, disagreeing only on how small that subset can be. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG YeXgmiDN23gKNejAXLPSgfGxzFPVqFa/9pEDbWNr 41sYVdSvXQCEQniQVEIYWhWw2HjtvpvuHtQ0QXUaI
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
Tyler Durden wrote: But of course, we were still in the middle of McCarthy-ism, so way too ideologically blind to see the obvious. As a result we continued to mindlessly pursue ideology rather than practicality and so ended really making things worse in SE Asia, in a place where Marxism was really a useful but temporary veneer over local politics (again we were too blind to see that Marxism was a western transplant that wasn't going to do too well in Asia). And we're doing it again...(eg, we had some chances with Iran recently that we passed up...that was really stupid, and the Iranians seem to know it). The US missed a real trick when Khatami got into power in 1997; he had a huge swell of popular support behind him, and with significant US backing he could probably have outmaneuvered the conservatives and made some real changes. A truly democratic Persian state would be a huge boost to stability in the Middle East, not to mention the psyops benefits of having a poster-child for moderate, tolerant Islam. Instead, we had the 'axis of evil' hogwash, and lo: the conservatives marginalise Khatami, and we're back to abayas, beards and jihad. Of course the more cynical might think that this lack of stability is entirely deliberate on the part of the US. Better to have pet tyrants who require American military aid to suppress dissent, and hence ensure ongoing access to oil fields, or else loonies who spit vitriol about The Great Satan and ensure their own irrelevance (in which case the oil stays underground, waiting for a more economically realistic owner). Stable regimes with the ability to sell oil on the world stage might start throwing their geopolitical weight around. Venezuela, anyone? W
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
Uh...wha? I said... The US was in Vietnam trying to fight their way up. So it would have been pretty evident to anyone watching that the US was trying to undermine the PRC. And you said... You live in a world of delusion. Your dates are all wrong, your events are all fiction. So there was no Vietnam war? The US was not involved? It didn't occur in the 60s? Are you saying that the cultural revolution didn't begin in approximately 1966? That the Sino-Soviet split didn't occur in the late 1950s? The US never followed an aggressive policy towards the PRC. Like I said: Uh...wha? Let's put it this way: Mao and China clearly interpreted US involvement around China (ie, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc...) as having a lot to do with containing the 'communist meanace' and restoring the Chiang regime to power (we had funded Chiang and the incredibly corrupt Soongs with billions of $ during the 30s and 40s). Whether you agree with this actually constituting aggression or not is almost irrelevant. Clearly, our involvement in all of those areas (along with the rhetoric along with MacArthur's words which got him fired) could easily be interpreted as such. But let's sidestep this and point out that it's the US that did this then and is doing this in the middle east. Almost no other countires can be said to be involved in a meaningful way. So is it your belief that the US is somehow more moral/courageous/godfearing than all the other countries in the world? Why is it always us (and not other countries) meddling in foreign affairs? Doesn't that strike you as odd? Is it merely a coincidence that we continue to be the focus of lots of international hostility? -TD _ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx
Re: Printers betray document secrets
| It turns out that their techniques aren't all that useful. | Changing laser printer cartridges changes the results. | You might find that two documents were printed | by the same printer, but it doesn't give you the | options for tracking it down that manual typewriters did. Actually, they say they can identify the make and model - which is about all you could do with a typewriter. Going further, in either case, means tying a particular piece of text to a particular writing instrument to which you have gained access. Changing printer cartridges will certainly work, but then again simply replac- ing the typewriter will, too. Any identification of physical objects can only work as long as the physical object isn't replaced. In practice, there's a great deal of inertia in replacing physical objects, for cost, convenience, and other reasons. So such identifications may still be useful. | And the differences don't identify a specific printer | in a way that can be tracked, e.g. identifying a serial number | that could be looked up from warranty records. A bullet can't be tied to a gun's serial number, but that doesn't make it useless to examine bullets. | It's not clear that they work at all with inkjet printers, | and changing ink cartridges is even more common than | changing laser printer cartridges. The technique is based on variations in dot pattern that ultimately come down to small variations in mechanical parts, usually the gears that drive the paper. Laser printer cartridges are deliberately designed so that (just about) all moving/wearing parts are part of the cartridge. So most variations in the results are necessarily tied to the cartridge. That's not true for ink jets. While the paper describing all this isn't yet available, from what is published I don't think they are making any claims about inkjets, just laser printers. However, they seem to believe the same general approach - look for variations due to variations in manufacture that don't produce artifacts that are visible to the naked eye, so don't need to be and hence are not controlled - would work. Whether the source of the variation would be in the ink cartridge or in the fixed mechanicals, who can say at this point. | If you're sloppy, | you've probably got a bunch of partly-used cartridges around, | so even if you want to print out a bunch of ransom notes | or whatever, you don't even have to go to Kinko's | to get them to be different. | | If printer makers want to build in watermarking to | make everything they print traceable, the way many of them | check for documents that look like money and don't print them, | they could hide patterns that survive cartridge changes | (would you notice a few inverted pixels on a 600x600dpi printout?) Actually, this would probably be noticable in certain pictures. But slight variations in pixel spacing - which is what these guys look for - is not visible. (In fact, the origin of this work seems to have been work in the opposite direction: Early laser printers had a problem with banding, due to periodic variations in paper movement causing variations in pixel spacing. The trick was to find out how much variation you could allow without visible artifacts and then get to that level cheaply. But there is still plenty of variation left for appropriate software to find.) You could probably play games with pixel sizes, too. | But even then, inkjet printers are dirt cheap; | when they're on sale, they're essentially a free enclosure | in a box of overpriced printer cartridges, | so even of the printer wants to rat out the user and | it's not easy to change the serial number PROM, | you can just replace the printer. One could say the same about most physical objects that end up being used for identification. You would think that fibers would be useless for identification, for example - you can always throw out the clothing you were wearing and buy a new tee shirt. Still ... the real world has a great deal of inertia. -- Jerry
Do you know anyone looking for a Cryptography position?
I guess the bubble's over officially, now... :-). Cheers, RAH --- begin forwarded text Subject: Do you know anyone looking for a Cryptography position? Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 11:57:55 -0600 Thread-Topic: Do you know anyone looking for a Cryptography position? Thread-Index: AcS3l34xPxGr3MdESyqZMKBsAyGhZQ== From: Lori Lister [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear R.A., I am a technical recruiter, looking of for a Senior Security Engineer / Cryptography expert for an outstanding client of mine in Colorado. Your name has come up as someone strong in cryptography so I was wondering if you might know anyone who is looking for a full-time position in cryptography and who may be interested in a new opportunity? I am looking for a security engineer with strong experience in developing systems using a variety of standards (RSA, DES, AES, and/or PKI). Additional experience with DRM would be a plus, but is not required. This is a visionary position so the most important piece is in-depth and broad-based practical knowledge of the standards and their uses in high-tech systems. This is an outstanding opportunity for the right person - hands-on and leadership opportunity in a great company with super benefits and work on the cutting edge of very exciting technology developments. Please feel free to pass on my information or to contact me direct if you know of anyone who might be interested. This is message is being sent directly to you and is not intended as SPAM in any way. You have not been added to any mailing lists and your information has not been shared. If you do not wish to receive any further emails from Vita Group, Inc., please let me know and I will make sure that you do not. Thank you very much! Lori A. Lister, President Vita Group, Inc. - bringing life to business! Recruiting Services for IT, Engineering Biotech Ph: 303.465.4944 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.vitagroup.com/ Our mission is to always provide professional, ethical, and honest services. --- end forwarded text -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: e-gold
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 5:32 PM -0400 10/20/04, Somebody wrote: How much do you know about the e-gold crew? I've sent them a couple of queries and I've gotten answers back that haven't been very pleasing. The short story is that they're a Jesus-is-coming-and-boy-is-he-pissed pre-millennium gold transaction startup, and the millennium came and went sans datequake and/or rapture. Good news is they're good businessmen after all, they're making money, and they've honored their internet transactions for more than a dozen years. They even pre-date the commercial net by a few years. Bad news is when they ever do go sideways one of the partners is a tax-lawyer from, er, heck, (the money partner is an oncologist; they met in a bible-study class... not, um, the end of the world, Rockefeller was a bible-thumping baptist, remember...) and the russian-doll puzzle of domiciles subsidiaries and governance documents goes through about six countries including Nevis, Bermunda, etc., not to mention separate gold depository accounts around the world. The long story is, well, long. I trust 'em to do the gold transactions. It's not cheap, though. It's gold, it needs to be stored, and there are storage charges. You need a currency-exchange provider, to get money into and out of the system. The ones I like most are ice-gold http://www.icegold.com, in, of all places, Estonia (Latvia???). Jim Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED], a former cypherpunk, is a good guy, and e-gold's original internet evangelist, and has been with them for about 10 years. Another reputable gold-transaction outfit is Goldmoney http://www.goldmoney.com. They're just plain-old-fashioned gold-bugs from the old school. You know, a financial calamity around the corner but it's okay, because we're gonna get rich. :-). Seriously, James Turk, the founder there has been a gold bug since the heyday of the Oil Embargo. He used to work at Citibank in the far east, back in the day. And, instead of down in Florida somewhere as it is for E-Gold, GoldMoney's office is in midtown, even if the gold's at ViaMAT in London and the domicile's the Channel Islands, Jersey, I think. Turk's been in the gold bug business so long that he *patented* the whole idea of electronic gold transactions way back when, submarined it until e-gold was hauling it down, and is now collecting royalties. Of course, you know me. I'm not much into the whole commodities-as-money thing, I'd rather do bearer forms of depository-held collateral, like, say, dollars -- or the SP. :-). So, what kind of problems are you having? Cheers, RAH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQXf+IcPxH8jf3ohaEQLjQgCeKov2foDmbcM85OazHKhLtryDO6oAn38c 5hZceFFv23q5HYFFIOdciEUK =+GW1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- - 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: e-gold
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 10:17 AM -0400 10/21/04, Somebody wrote: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So, what kind of problems are you having? I can't seem to figure out how one deposits or removes gold from e-gold. They got out of the business of exchanging other forms of money into e-gold a long time ago. Think of them more as an on-line book-entry central securities depository, ala DTC http://www.dtc.org/dtcpublic/html/, CREST http://www.crestco.co.uk (now apparently part of Euroclear http://euroclear.com), etc. The minute they got out of the business and spun their own exchange department off into its own firm, literally tens of companies, if not hundreds since, popped up and started competing. As far as E-Gold was concerned, it was a hell of a lot better than taking in people's Kruggerands etc., and turning it into debits and credits into a database, and the size of their reserves went up accordingly. Imagine being an individual investor in the US, going to DTC and trying to figure out what they do or whether you can do business with them. Same problem with E-Gold, anymore. Actually, CREST *does*, last time I looked at them, have retail accounts, so maybe they're more applicable than the strictly-institutional DTC. The companies that do the in/out exchange (for a fee) are now called exchange providers. There are lots of them, and they range from professional, like IceGold http://www.icegold.com, who I talked about, to, well, anyone who'll take your check in the mail, wait for it to clear, and then click you some gold to your e-gold account. The big ones do more different kinds of money from wires to credit cards etc., but not PayPal, because it's against the PayPal user agreement to buy and sell securities. PayPal freezes exchange provider accounts whenever they show up. In the meantime, expect to wait for the money you send them to completely and irrevocably clear before you see an increase in the account at E-Gold. They post no information on that at all, and when I've asked them, they've more or less evaded the question. An operation like this, if it was on the up and up, would have to be taking bailments and permitting removals of gold on a frequent basis, but they're apparently set up to do nothing of the kind. See above. They're taking large wholesale in/out orders only, mostly from the aforementioned exchange providers, who then click you retail amounts of E-Gold for a fee, sometimes less than E-Gold would on a hypothetical retail rate, sometimes less, depending on how they gold's moving that day. Their online examiner shows exactly the same amount of gold in the system over a very extended period of time -- call it $25M worth -- and shows perhaps $1.5M a day in transactions. That transaction level is surprisingly high given that no gold comes into or out of the system at all so far as I can tell. See above. The transaction level is surprisingly high given the transaction costs as well, but remember what I said about storing gold, etc., and, of course, the fact that they're doing book-entry transactions and their attendant, non-repudiation, auditing, etc., costs. Overall, I'm wondering a lot about whether there is funny business of some sort going on -- but I can't tell what the nature of the funny business might be. I don't think so. If you count up all the fees, they're making enough money on the throughput, storage, in/out exchange fees, and so on. Since they're only handling the depository management function anymore, they don't have nearly as much overhead as you would think. The larger and better firms in this business, like E-Gold and Goldmoney, have sufficiently complicated arrangements with their storage firms, governments where they're domiciled, and so on, that there is probably sufficient oversight for all this. They are doing book-entry trades, remember. They have to call the cops for enforcement themselves if someone rips *them* off somewhere. E-Gold and Goldmoney's officers are US citizens residing and working, for the most part, on US soil. Everyone knows who they are and where they are. We're a long way from TCMay's Cryptopia here, um, Toto. Obviously, caveat emptor, and all that. There's always lots of risk in any kind of financial intermediary business, up to, and including the risk that the entrepreneurs dodging off with the reserve assets, and all you have in terms of risk prediction -- in the absence of financial controls -- is what David Hume called constant conjunction: they are honest today, were honest yesterday, and every other day so far, so we can, in theory, expect them to be honest tomorrow. As for the lack of growth of the reserve pool, after bursting internet bubbles, terrorism attacks, and wars on same, the bloom is certainly off the rose. We're way past the whizzy, holy cow, we can do *gold* transactions, on the *internet*, isn't that *kewl* stage, and the business is now cruising along on the people who actually
