RE: George Will: Taking the streets back
Uh...lemmee guess...Force monopolies? No wait, I think the word micro occurs on line 36 and then the word payment appears on line 78... -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: osint@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: George Will: Taking the streets back Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 09:13:31 -0500 http://www.townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/printgw20050224.shtml Townhall.com Taking the streets back George Will (back to web version) | Send February 24, 2005 CHICAGO -- He looks like the actor Wilfred Brimley -- round as a beach ball; grandfatherly gray mustache -- but Philip J. Cline, this city's police superintendent, is, like his city, hard as a baseball. And as they say in baseball, he puts up numbers. Actually, he and his officers have driven some crucial numbers down. Last year homicides reached a 38-year low of 448, 25 percent below 2003's total of 600, which was lower than the 2002 and 2001 totals of 654 and 668. Nationally, homicides declined steadily after the peak of dealer-on-dealer violence in the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early '90s. But the decline was slow in Chicago, where in 2001, 2002 and 2003 it ranked second, first and second among cities in the number of murders, not just the murder rate. In the last third of the 20th century, Chicago violence killed more than 28,000 people -- the population of many Illinois towns. In an American city, as in Baghdad, which is about the size of Chicago, the key to policing against violence is intelligence and other cooperation from a population that trusts the police. Which means, Cline says, replacing random patrols with strategic deployments of officers. He says 50 percent of Chicago's homicides are gang-related. Gang membership, now an estimated 65,000 strong, used to be a rite of passage for young men. Now it is increasingly a career choice for men turning the gangs into business organizations selling drugs and investing the proceeds in, among other things, real estate. One-third of the drug customers are suburbanites. Video on a police department laptop displays facets of the problem. One clip shows dealers giving away, in broad daylight, free samples to droves of potential customers. Another clip shows mass marketing as customers, again in midday, are walked, in groups of several dozen, across a street to a playground to make their purchases. Another clip shows a violent felon being released from Joliet prison, heading for Chicago but first visiting Indiana, thereby violating his terms of release. He was rearrested two hours out of prison. ``A land speed record,'' says Cline. Fewer than 10 percent of Chicago murder victims are white. And as a mordant student of murder says, ``There's always a correlation between homicides and ice cream trucks.'' Most victims are killed in hot weather, from May to October, mostly in July and August, when people are mingling -- and often drinking -- on stoops and street corners, and are irritable. The crime-infested Robert Taylor high-rise housing projects on the South Side have been closed and the Cabrini-Green project on the near North Side is being closed, which means a jostling for social space among displaced drug dealers. Cline says there were about 100 open-air drug markets in the city last year. Police closed about half of them, producing more displacements as markets opened elsewhere in the city. This process is frustrating but constructive because it means some slowing of the drug trade. But it can also cause an uptick in violence as dealers contest desirable turf. Cline says that when 100 markets are each pulling in $5,000 a day, serious money is at stake. Some of the money buys the guns that settle struggles for turf. Last year police seized 10,509 guns -- 29 a day. They probably will seize as many this year; they did in 2003. But this is not an exercise in bailing the ocean: Stiff sentences for gun possession, and stiffer ones for firing a gun, put a high price tag on regarding a gun as fashion necessity for the well-accessorized young man. Last year about 18,000 of the inmates released from Illinois prisons came back to Chicago; perhaps 25,000 will this year. Some of the returning convicts come home expecting to reclaim their shares of the drug business. Some of the younger dealers will decide it is easier to kill them than accommodate them. A new ``shot spotter'' technology can detect the trajectory of a bullet and direct a camera that scans 360 degrees. Soon there will be 80 such cameras watching strategic intersections. There is nothing surreptitious about this -- indeed, the cameras have blue lights and Chicago Police Department logos. The CPD wants dealers to know the area is being watched. The cost of the cameras is paid by seized assets from dealers. So, Cline says contentedly, ``they're paying to surveil themselves.'' Cline says the message to the neighborhoods is: ``We will take the corner back. You must
TCPA: RIP
Good presentation. I liked the boot diagrams quite a bit. Prediction (and remember you heard it here first): TCPA will fail. Oh it'll see some spot uses, don't get me wrong. These spot uses might even remain for a while. But the good thing is that Microsoft is probably going to have to carry the ball on this one, and they'll think they have a few iterations to iron out the bugs. But users will defect in droves as all sorts of unexpected and wacky things start to happen and they'll defect in droves. Right about then even some of the studios are going to begin to understand that by choking off the spigot they'll be choking their own product flow which will have to increasingly compete with independents (who can distribute music over the internet just as easily as SONY can). So some genius will make a convincing enough boardroom presentation showing that the additional revenues they gain through TCPA is far more than overset by the effective loss of advertising. That realization will hit just as the general public starts learning what TCPA is and why their computer is as buggy and crashy as it was during the Windows 95 days. Boo hoo. -TD
Re: Code name Killer Rabbit: New Sub Can Tap Undersea Cables
No! Undersea? Do you take a copy of EVERYTHING and send it back? That might have been more feasible in the old days, but when a single fiber can run 64 wavelength optically amplified 10 Gig traffic, I really really doubt it. Or at least, this would require an undertaking large enough that I doubt they could hide it. If they select some traffic then we have to ask, how do they select the traffic? Even there the mind boggles thinking about the kinds of gear necessary. I suspect it's a combination of all sorts of stuff...remember too that all that traffic has to land somewhere, so theoretically they can access a good deal of it terrestrially. What you might see, therefore, is a sheath coming out of, say Iran, is tapped for fibers that proceed on to other unfriendly nations, and a copy of the traffic pulled back to some nearby land-based station in a friendly country (so that lots of amplifiers aren't needed). I'd bet you do see the occasional Variola suitcase, though, requiring a sub visit once in a while. But I bet they avoid this kind of thing as much as possible, given the traffic volumes. -TD From: Matt Crawford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: crypto cryptography@metzdowd.com CC: osint@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Code name Killer Rabbit: New Sub Can Tap Undersea Cables Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 12:33:56 -0600 On Feb 18, 2005, at 19:47, R.A. Hettinga wrote: It does continue to be something of a puzzle as to how they get this stuff back to home base, said John Pike, a military expert at GlobalSecurity.org. I should think that in many cases, they can simply lease a fiber in the same cable. What could be simpler?
Re: Code name Killer Rabbit: New Sub Can Tap Undersea Cables
DWDM certainly makes it more complicated. Of course, that same technology allows them to send much more back. (Regarding the single OC-3 mentioned previously.) Well, DISTANCE makes it more complicated first of all. You need undersea repeaters and/or OFAs in order to get traffic from most parts of the ocean back to land, and the NSA will in many cases not want nor be able to use the host service providers' OFAs. This would mean they'd have to install their own, and I doubt they're going to just plop on their own regeneration site on the outside of a civilian cable. Hum. In some parts of the ocean they must almost certainly have their own cable and then couple stolen traffic into it. I'd bet there also must exist some mini-Echelons on some Islands somewhere (like Majorca or the Azores) where they do some grooming and listening. -TD
RE: Code name Killer Rabbit: New Sub Can Tap Undersea Cables
When I was in Telecom we audited pieces of an undersea NSA network that was based on OC-3 ATM. It had some odd components, however, including reflective-mode LiNBO3 modulators and even acousto-optic modulators. (Actually, one of the components started dying which put them into a near-frenzy...it turned out we had someone who happened to know the designer of that very piece and so understood the failure mode completely.) My theory is that they were multiplexing their OC-3-collected information back over the same set of fibers the intelligence came from, or else re-routed it to another friendly cable nearby. These days, however, a la Variola I don't think that a single OC-3 will do even for specially-selected traffic, so they must do something different now (unless, of course, that OC-3 was just their OAMP/control network, which is entirely possible). -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: osint@yahoogroups.com, cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Code name Killer Rabbit: New Sub Can Tap Undersea Cables Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 20:47:02 -0500 http://wcbs880.com/topstories/topstories_story_049165912.html/resources_storyPrintableView WCBS 880 | wcbs880.com Experts: New Sub Can Tap Undersea Cables * USS Jimmy Carter Will Be Based In Washington State Feb 18, 2005 4:55 pm US/Eastern The USS Jimmy Carter, set to join the nation's submarine fleet on Saturday, will have some special capabilities, intelligence experts say: It will be able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them. The Navy does not acknowledge the $3.2 billion submarine, the third and last of the Seawolf class of attack subs, has this capability. That's going to be classified in nature, said Kevin Sykes, a Navy spokesman. You're not going to get anybody to talk to you about that. But intelligence community watchdogs have little doubt: The previous submarine that performed the mission, the USS Parche, was retired last fall. That would only happen if a new one was on the way. Like the Parche, the Carter was extensively modified from its basic design, given a $923 million hull extension that allows it to house technicians and gear to perform the cable-tapping and other secret missions, experts say. The Carter's hull, at 453 feet, is 100 feet longer than the other two subs in the Seawolf class. The submarine is basically going to have as its major function intelligence gathering, said James Bamford, author of two books on the National Security Agency. Navy public information touts some of the Carter's special abilities: In the extended hull section, the boat can provide berths for up to 50 special operations troops, like Navy SEALs. It has an ocean interface that serves as a sort of hangar bay for smaller vehicles and drones to launch and return. It has the usual complement of torpedo tubes and Tomahawk cruise missiles, and it will also serve as a platform for researching new technologies useful on submarines. The Carter, like other submarines, will also have the ability to eavesdrop on communications-what the military calls signals intelligence-passed through the airwaves, experts say. But its ability to tap undersea fiber-optic cables may be unique in the fleet. Communications worldwide are increasingly transmitted solely through fiber-optic lines, rather than through satellites and radios. The capacity of fiber optics is so much greater than other communications media or technologies, and it's also immune to the stick-up-an-attenna type of eavesdropping, said Jeffrey Richelson, an expert on intelligence technologies. To listen to fiber-optic transmissions, intelligence operatives must physically place a tap somewhere along the route. If the stations that receive and transmit the communications along the lines are on foreign soil or otherwise inaccessible, tapping the line is the only way to eavesdrop on it. The intelligence experts admit there is much that is open to speculation, such as how the information recorded at a fiber-optic tap would get to analysts at the National Security Agency for review. During the 1970s, a U.S. submarine placed a tap on an undersea cable along the Soviet Pacific coast, and subs had to return every few months to pick up the tapes. The mission was ultimately betrayed by a spy, and the recording device is now at the KGB museum in Moscow. If U.S. subs still must return every so often to collect the communications, the taps won't provide speedy warnings, particularly against imminent terrorist attacks. It does continue to be something of a puzzle as to how they get this stuff back to home base, said John Pike, a military expert at GlobalSecurity.org. Some experts suggest the taps may somehow transmit their information, using an antenna or buoy-but those modifications are easier to discover and disable than a tap attached to the cable on the ocean floor. Unless they have some new method of relaying the information, it doesn't serve
Re: palm beach HIV
Sheeit...I'm starting to think May was no longer all that interested in the Crypto stuff...seems he really just wanted to rant and terrify the clueless... -TD From: Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: palm beach HIV Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:53:29 +0100 On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 08:25:47PM +, Justin wrote: Calling Tim May! Calling Tim May! You rang? http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=start=0scoring=denc_author=8NH-JhoA AAAfCMh-TnQo0KXFjppET7C1dSi2gjvQCgNblIvwKtcqeQ -- 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 [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
RE: [osint] Switzerland Repatriates $458m to Nigeria
Greetings Good Sir: I have a business propisition for you. I am the president of Nigeria and I am trying to obtain $458m in accounts in Switzerland that were previously owned by the late General Sani Abacha. However, in order to release these funds I will need a local representative. In exchange for your services I am prepared to pay you 2.5% of the amount reclaimed. Please contact me at your soonest convenience. I am sure we can make an equitable arrangement that will benefit us both. God Bless you and your family. (forwarded by Tyler Durden) From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [osint] Switzerland Repatriates $458m to Nigeria Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:34:06 -0500 --- begin forwarded text To: Bruce Tefft [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thread-Index: AcUVCpcZCIoZtD6dRp62Gatn1nTR2g== From: Bruce Tefft [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mailing-List: list osint@yahoogroups.com; contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Delivered-To: mailing list osint@yahoogroups.com Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 11:06:28 -0500 Subject: [osint] Switzerland Repatriates $458m to Nigeria Reply-To: osint@yahoogroups.com http://allafrica.com/stories/200502170075.html Switzerland Repatriates $458m to Nigeria This http://allafrica.com/publishers.html?passed_name=This%20Daypassed_location =Lagos Day (Lagos) February 17, 2005 Posted to the web February 17, 2005 Kunle Aderinokun Abuja FG to start drawing funds in March The Federal Government yesterday announced that the Swiss government has approved the repatriation of $458 million, being bulk of the $505 million of public fund stashed away in various private bank accounts in that country by the late General Sani Abacha and his family. Making this disclosure yesterday in Abuja at the instance of Swiss Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. Pierre Helg, Finance Ministe Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the fund will be transferred into the International Bank for Settlement (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, and that Nigeria will be able to withdraw the money by the end of March this year. Okonjo-Iweala, who said the Swiss authorities did not attach any condition for the repatriation of the siphoned monies, said the release was sequel to the judgment of the Swiss Federal Court, which ruled that the Swiss authorities may return assets of obviously criminal origin to Nigeria even without a court decision in the country concerned. The finance minister said President Olusegun Obasanjo since assumption of office had vigorously and relentlessly pursued return of the funds with the help of the National Security Adviser and herself. Noting that with this development, Switzerland has earned a positive status as the first country to return funds illegally placed by the Abacha family, Okonjo-Iweala said the Federal Government is indeed grateful to the government of Switzerland for the principled and focused manner in which it has pursued this just cause. We hope that the Swiss example at both the political and judicial level will show the way for other countries where our national resources have been illegally transferred. Switzerland's policy on this issue is a clear sign that crime does not pay. Nigeria is ready to work with other governments to achieved the repatriation of other funds which were siphoned out of the country illegally, she added. She recalled that Obasanjo had on behalf of the administration made a commitment to the Swiss government that the Abacha loots will be used for developmental projects in health and education as well as for infrastructure (roads, electricity and water supply) for the benefit of Nigerians. This, she pointed out, is of course, very much in keeping with the priorities of the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), the nation's blue-print for reducing poverty, creating wealth and generating employment. She stated that after receiving the assurances of the Swiss authorities that the funds will be released , the federal government had decided to factor most of the Abacha funds into the 2004 budget so that the urgent challenges of providing infrastructure and social services to our people would not be delayed. This is to ensure that our programmes which are on-going are adequately funded. According to her, the Federal Government had distributed the recovered $505 million looted funds in the 2004 budget as: rural electrification, $170million (N21.70billion); priority economic roads, $140 million (N18.60billion); primary health care vaccination programme, $80 million (N10.83 billion); support to secondary and basic education, $60 million (N7.74 billion); and portable water and rural irrigation, $50 million (N6.20 billion). In his remarks, the Swiss ambassador to Nigeria, Helg said Switzerland possesses an efficient set of legal instruments to defend itself against the inflow of illegal assets, and to recognize, block and return them to their rightful owners. He noted that the recent decision of the Federal Supreme Court will strengthen the deterrent effect
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Wrong. We already solved this problem on Cypherpunks a while back. A spammer will have to pay to send you spam, trusted emails do not. You'll have a settable Spam-barrier which determines how much a spammer has to pay in order to lob spam over your barrier (you can set it to 'infinite' of course). A new, non-spam mailer can request that their payment be returned upon receipt, but they'll have to include the payment unless you were expecting them. This way, the only 3rd parties are those that validate the micropayments. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:29:05 -0500 Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Well, basically it's pretty simple. Someone will eventually recognize that the idea has a lot of economic potential and they'll go to Sand Hill and get some venture funds. 6 months later you'll be able to sign up for Spam Mail. Eventually the idea will spread and Spammers, who are already squeezed via Men With Guns, will start running out of options and so will be willing to pay, for instance, 1 cent per email. After that, of course, the price will likely go up, except for crummier demographics that are willing to read email for 1 cent/spam. Actually, this points to why Spam is Spam...Spam is Spam because it has zero correlation to what you want. Look at Vogue, etc...it's a $10 magazine consisting mostly of advertisements, but they're the advertisements women want. Pay-to-Spam will work precisely because it will force Spammers to become actual marketers, delivering the right messages to the right demographics..in that context the Price to send spam is a precise measure of Spammers lack-of-marketing savvy and/or information. Hell, if they're good enough at it they'll probably get women to pay THEM to spam 'em. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:12:59 -0500 And how do you fund all this, make it attain an economic life of its own? That's the big problem with all micropayment schemes. They sound good until you try to work the business plan, then they prove themselves impossible because it costs 2c to handle each penny. And more if issues such as collections and enforcement (e.g., against frauds) is taken into account. This is why, for example, we have a postal system which manages postage, rather than some scheme whereby every paper mail recipient charges every paper mail sender etc etc etc. On February 16, 2005 at 12:38 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tyler Durden) wrote: Wrong. We already solved this problem on Cypherpunks a while back. A spammer will have to pay to send you spam, trusted emails do not. You'll have a settable Spam-barrier which determines how much a spammer has to pay in order to lob spam over your barrier (you can set it to 'infinite' of course). A new, non-spam mailer can request that their payment be returned upon receipt, but they'll have to include the payment unless you were expecting them. This way, the only 3rd parties are those that validate the micropayments. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:29:05 -0500 Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo* -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com
Re: [FoRK] Google (fwd from rst@ai.mit.edu)
But I think you'd still need a securely pseudonymous throwaway email address to set up the gmail account. And the lack of searches on that cookie would let them know, at least, that they're dealing with a privacy freak. Hum...I've been thinking about that...seems to me one could set up anonymity using even Hotmail and Yahoo by a careful selection of completely improbably emails addresses. The timing might be tricky, though: 1. Think up two email addresses no one would have utilized...a random list of letters and numbers. 2. Go to Yahoo mail and sign up using one the email addresses. Plug in the other as the 'reference' and point it at, say, hotmail. 3. Open another browser to hotmail, do the reverse. 4. Hit send. 5. Hit send. This should cause the two email accounts to reference each other. Mightn't this work? If not, perhaps there's some way to delay one of the emails. -TD
Re: RSA Conference, and BA Cypherpunks
How 'bout laying siege to May's compound as a Cypherpunk 'team-building' excersize? -TD From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Trei, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], cryptography@metzdowd.com Subject: Re: RSA Conference, and BA Cypherpunks Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 17:19:30 -0600 (CST) On Mon, 7 Feb 2005, Trei, Peter wrote: Once again, the RSA Conference is upon us, and many of the corrospondents on these lists will be in San Francisco. I'd like to see if anyone is interested in getting together. We've done this before. Yeah, but can we eat food, drink beer, shoot drugs and screw expensive hookers at Tim May's compound? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF Quadriplegics think before they write stupid pointless shit...because they have to type everything with their noses. http://www.tshirthell.com/
RE: What is a cypherpunk?
Well, I agree with the general gist of this post though not it's specific application. OK...a Cypherpunk ultimately believes that technology and, in particular, crypto give us the defacto (though, as you point out, not dejure) right to certain levels of self-determination and that this 'right' is ultimately exerted indepedent of any governing bodies. In the end, most likely despite any governing bodies. Moreover, it has been argued (in general fairly well, I think) that attempting to exert one's 'rights' through a 'democratically elected' mob is rarely much more than mob rule. We have voted to ransack your home. OK, that I think is well understood. BUT, an essentially Cypherpunkly philosophy does not preclude any kind of action in the legal/governing realm, particularly when it's recognized that said government can easily make it very difficult to live the way one wants. In other words, if Kodos is promising to start curfew laws and make possession or use of crypto a crime, I'll probably vote for Kang in the dim hopes this'll make a difference. Things get sticky when you start talking private sector...unlike most Cypherpunks I don't subscribe to the doctrine that, Private=Good=Proto-anarchy...Halliburton is a quasi-government entitity, AFAIC, the CEO of which 'needs killing' ASAP. In the US Private industry has a way of entangling it's interests with that of the Feds, and vice versa, so I don't see any a priori argument against establishing some kind of rear guard policy to watch the merger and possibly vote once in a while. With Palladium it's easy to see the Feds one day busting down your doors when they find out you broke open the lock box and tore out their little citzen-monitoring daemon inside, which they put in there working with Microsoft. With respect to TCPA, however, I happen to agree with you. IN particular, I think most people will put 2 and 2 together and remember that it was Microsoft in the first place that (in effect) caused a lot of the security problems we see. Watch mass scale defections from Microsoft the moment they try a lock-box approach...or rather, the moment the first big hack/trojan/DoS attack occurs leveraging the comfy protection of TCPA. -TD From: Anonymous [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: What is a cypherpunk? Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 22:12:16 +0100 (CET) Justin writes: No, I want the right to fair use of material I buy. If someone sells DRM-only material, I won't buy it at anything approaching non-DRM prices. In some cases, I won't buy it at all. Well, that's fine, nobody's forcing you to buy anything. But try to think about this from a cypherpunk perspective. Fair use is a government oriented concept. Cypherpunks generally distrust the collectivist wisdom of Big Brother governments. What fair use amounts to is an intrustion of government regulation into a private contractual arrangement. It is saying that two people cannot contract away the right to excerpt a work for purposes of commentary or criticism. It says that such contracts are invalid and unenforceable. Now, maybe you think that is good. Maybe you think minimum wage is good, a similar imposition of government regulation to prevent certain forms of contracts. Maybe you think that free speech codes are good. Maybe you support all kinds of government regulations that happen to agree with your ideological preferences. If so, you are not a cypherpunk. May I ask, what the hell are you doing here? Cypherpunks support the right and ability of people to live their own lives independent of government control. This is the concept of crypto anarchy. See that word? Anarchy - it means absence of government. It means freedom to make your own rules. But part of the modern concept of anarchy is that ownership of the self implies the ability to make contracts and agreements to limit your own actions. A true anarchic condition is one in which people are absolutely free to make whatever contracts they choose. They can even make evil, immoral, wicked contracts that people like you do not approve of. They can be racists, like Tim May. They can avoid paying their taxes. They can take less money than minimum wage for their work. They can practice law or medicine without a license. And yes, they can agree to DRM restrictions and contract away their so-called fair use rights. One of the saddest things I've seen on this list, and I've seen it many times, is when people say that the laws of their country give them the right to ignore certain contractual elements that they have agreed to. They think that it's morally right for them to ignore DRM or limitations on fair use, because their government said so. I can't describe how appalling I consider this view. That anyone, in this day and age, could consider _government_ as an arbiter of morality is so utterly bizarre as to be incredible. And yet not only is this view common, it is even expressed here on this list, among
RE: Jim Bell WMD Threat
Some of that is actually pretty funny, like Mixed in with food served to ex-girlfriend. It really boils down to drumming up a stable gig for yourself. -TD From: John Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Jim Bell WMD Threat Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 19:43:52 -0800 The FBI continues to claim Jim Bell is a WMD threat despite having no case against him except in the media, but that conforms to current FBI/DHS policy of fictionalizing homeland threats. http://www.edgewood.army.mil/downloads/bwirp/mdc_appendix_b02.pdf See page 16. This document was initially prepared in June 2002, updated in June 2003.
Re: Le no-no
Yes and don't forget..the middle east won't be a source of enemies -forever-...what'll we do with all those weapons? Ah yes...the Chinese are apparently on the backburner. -TD From: Dave Howe [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Email List: Cypherpunks [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Le no-no Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 01:11:38 + Tyler Durden wrote: Huh? There are IBM laptops with dedicated crypto chips? Although I don't claim to be any kind of an expert, I think this has to be wrong. Anyone know any different? well, certainly some thinkpads have encryption of the hard drive; if you take the hard drive out and try to read it on another system, you find the drive contains garbage - if and only if you have a bios and startup password set. the same password is used for both startup access and drive encryption. I suspect it is more that they are looking for a reason to block this sale, and this is the first one they thought of. exactly why they would like to do this is beyond me - possibly MS would like IBM to still be tied to them by Windows contracts, or possibly just someone in government doesn't like the idea of THE IBM PC being a chinese company.
RE: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
ANyone familiar with computer architectures and chips able to answer this question: That chip...is it likely to be an ASIC or is there already such a thing as a security network processor? (ie, a cheaper network processor that only handles security apps, etc...) Or could it be an FPGA? -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 15:59:59 -0500 http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110727370814142368,00.html The Wall Street Journal February 1, 2005 11:04 a.m. EST Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs By GARY MCWILLIAMS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL February 1, 2005 11:04 a.m. HOUSTON -- Dell Inc. today is expected to add its support to an industry effort to beef up desktop and notebook PC security by installing a dedicated chip that adds security and privacy-specific features, according to people familiar with its plans. Dell will disclose plans to add the security features known as the Trusted Computing Module on all its personal computers. Its support comes in the wake of similar endorsements by PC industry giants Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. The technology has been promoted by an industry organization called the Trusted Computing Group. The company is also expected to unveil new network PCs. -- - 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: MPAA files new film-swapping suits
That's an interesting point. They seem to be attacking at precisely the correct rate to forcibly evolve P2P systems to be completely invulnerable to such efforts. Hum. Perhaps Tim May works for MPAA? Nah... he wasn't THAT bright, was he? -TD From: Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: MPAA files new film-swapping suits Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 21:59:15 + http://news.com.com/2102-1030_3-5551903.html?tag=st.util.print Hollywood studios filed a second round of lawsuits against online movie-swappers on Wednesday, stepping up legal pressure on the file-trading community. As much as I'd like to be upset, they are driving innovation of p2p software. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. --Heraclitus (Kahn.83/D-K.53)
RE: Terrorists don't let terrorists use Skype
Well, I think Skype is also truly Peer to Peer, no? It doesn't go through some centralized switch or server. That means it can only be monitored at the endpoints, even when it's unencrypted. -Emory From: Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Terrorists don't let terrorists use Skype Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 15:02:56 +0100 From: Adam Shostack [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:48:12 -0500 To: David Wagner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com Subject: Re: Simson Garfinkel analyses Skype - Open Society Institute From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thu Jan 27 01:04:39 2005 User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2i On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 08:33:41PM -0800, David Wagner wrote: | In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] you write: | Voice Over Internet Protocol and Skype Security | Simson L. Garfinkel | http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/articles_publications/articles/ security_20050107/OSI_Skype5.pdf | | Is Skype secure? | | The answer appears to be, no one knows. The report accurately reports | that because the security mechanisms in Skype are secret, it is impossible | to analyze meaningfully its security. Most of the discussion of the | potential risks and questions seems quite good to me. | | But in one or two places the report says things like A conversation on | Skype is vastly more private than a traditional analog or ISDN telephone | and Skype is more secure than today's VoIP systems. I don't see any | basis for statements like this. Unfortunately, I guess these sorts of | statements have to be viewed as blind guesswork. Those claims probably | should have been omitted from the report, in my opinion -- there is | really no evidence either way. Fortunately, these statements are the | exception and only appear in one or two places in the report. The basis for these statements is what the other systems don't do. My Vonage VOIP phone has exactly zero security. It uses the SIP-TLS port, without encryption. It doesn't encrypt anything. So, its easy to be more secure than that. So, while it may be bad cryptography, it is still better than the alternatives. Unfortunately. Adam - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Forwarded message from Peter Gutmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Gutmann) Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 05:00:29 +1300 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com Subject: Re: Simson Garfinkel analyses Skype - Open Society Institute David Wagner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Is Skype secure? The answer appears to be, no one knows. There have been other posts about this in the past, even though they use known algorithms the way they use them is completely homebrew and horribly insecure: Raw, unpadded RSA, no message authentication, no key verification, no replay protection, etc etc etc. It's pretty much a textbook example of the problems covered in the writeup I did on security issues in homebrew VPNs last year. (Having said that, the P2P portion of Skype is quite nice, it's just the security area that's lacking. Since the developers are P2P people, that's somewhat understandable). Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - End forwarded message - -- 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 [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
RE: Ronald McDonald's SS
Were you pissed when you found out? -TD From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Ronald McDonald's SS Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 14:51:07 -0800 -- On 24 Jan 2005 at 10:34, Tyler Durden wrote: Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq (news - web sites), Well hell, it's doing such a good job already it should definitely be expanded! Note that the main enemy it is aimed against is the CIA, and it's existence was successfully kept secret from the CIA for this time. (For had the CIA detected it, they would have instantly leaked the information, the same way they have leaked so much other stuff.) --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KsFrtFSMHXcDohroqAdPG4sz0/zlWutoJnTTVx33 4RrZF0Pj1rWQ7L2OUmPyd0vZu4myhO+ICGi7PHb+j
RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder
If, in a capital case, where the money to pay public defenders is usually maximally available, and the appeals process, checks, and cross-checks are the more thorough than in any non-capital prosecution, you STILL get at least a 33% error rate, then what is the wrongfull conviction rate in non-capital cases, where there are far fewer appeals, and public defenders are paid a pittance? And of course there's the fairly obvious point that lots of those in prison correctly are there for drug-related crimes. Said crimes would almost completely dissappear and drug usage would drop if many of those drugs were legalized and taxed. But God forbid that happen because what would all those policemen do for a living? Prison workers? Judges? -TD From: Trei, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Steve Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:01:26 -0500 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Steve Thompson Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 12:13 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder --- Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [airport security] More indications of an emerging 'Brazil' scenario, as opposed to a hyper-intelligent super-fascist state. As if. There already is a kind of intelligent super-fascist state in place thoughout much of society. My bugbears of the moment are the police and courts, so you get my take on how they are organised so as to be 'intelligent' without seeming so -- which further enables a whole lot of fraud to masqerade as process and incompetence. The super-fascist part comes about because the system avoids public accountability while also somehow evading any sort of reasonable standard of performance. What's the error rate, that is the false arrest, prosecution, and/or conviction rate of a Western countries' judiciary and police divitions? If it's even ten percent, and it's probably much higher, then there is no reason to respect the operation and perpetuation of the system. One chilling data point. Remember a few years ago the (pro death penalty) governor of Illinois suspended all the death sentences in has state? The reason being was that with the introduction of DNA testing, 1/3 of the people on death row were found to be innocent. I don't know how many other innocents the state planned to murder, but presumably there were some cases where DNA evidence was not available. If, in a capital case, where the money to pay public defenders is usually maximally available, and the appeals process, checks, and cross-checks are the more thorough than in any non-capital prosecution, you STILL get at least a 33% error rate, then what is the wrongfull conviction rate in non-capital cases, where there are far fewer appeals, and public defenders are paid a pittance? Peter Trei
RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder
More indications of an emerging 'Brazil' scenario, as opposed to a hyper-intelligent super-fascist state. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED], osint@yahoogroups.com Subject: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 22:19:25 -0500 http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110661076703534640,00.html The Wall Street Journal January 25, 2005 THE MIDDLE SEAT By SCOTT MCCARTNEY Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder More Travelers Are Stopped For 'Secondary' Checks; A Missed Flight to Atlanta January 25, 2005 The frequency of secondary security screening at airports has increased, and complaints are soaring. Roughly one in every seven passengers is now tagged for secondary screening -- a special search in which an airport screener runs a metal-detecting wand around a traveler's body, then pats down the passenger and searches through bags -- according to the Transportation Security Administration. Currently, 10% to 15% of passengers are picked randomly before boarding passes are issued, the TSA says. An additional number -- the TSA won't say how many -- are selected by the government's generic profiling system, where buying a one-way ticket, paying cash or other factors can earn you extra screening. And more travelers are picked by TSA screeners who spot suspicious bulges or shapes under clothing. It's fair to say the frequency of secondary screening has gone up, says TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter. Screeners have greater discretion. That may explain why passenger complaints about screening have roughly doubled every month since August. According to numbers compiled by the TSA and reported to the Department of Transportation, 83 travelers complained about screening in August, then 150 in September and 385 in October. By November, the last month reported, complaints had skyrocketed to 652. To be sure, increased use of pat-down procedures in late September after terrorists smuggled bombs aboard two planes in Russia undoubtedly boosted those numbers, though many of those complaints were categorized as courtesy issues, not screening, in the data TSA reports to the DOT. There were 115 courtesy complaints filed with the DOT in September, then 690 in October. By November, the number of courtesy complaints receded to 218. Yet the increased traveler anger at secondary screening hasn't receded. Road warriors complain bitterly about the arbitrary nature of the screening -- many get singled out for one leg of a trip, but not another. For Douglas Downing, a secondary-screening problem resulted in a canceled trip. Mr. Downing was flying from Seattle to Atlanta last fall. He went through security routinely and sat at the gate an hour ahead of his flight's departure. As he boarded, a Delta Air Lines employee noticed that his boarding pass, marked with , hadn't been cleared by the TSA. He was sent back to the security checkpoint. By the time he got screened and returned to the gate, the flight had departed. Delta offered a later flight, but his schedule was so tight he had to cancel the trip. Delta did refund the ticket, even though the airline said it was the TSA's mistake not to catch the screening code. TSA officials blamed Delta. TSA screeners often blame airlines, according to frequent travelers. Ask a screener why you got picked for screening, and they often say the airline does the selection and questions should be directed to the airline. But airlines say they shouldn't be blamed, since they are only running the TSA's programs, and the TSA's Ms. von Walter concurs. I wouldn't go so far as to say we're blaming them, she said. Perhaps some screeners are misinformed in those cases. She also says the TSA isn't sure why screening complaints have risen so sharply since August, although the agency says it may be the result of greater TSA advertising of its contact center (e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] or call 1-866-289-9673). If you do get picked, here is how it happened. The TSA requires airlines to pick 10% to 15% of travelers at random. Airlines can de-select a passenger picked at random, such as a child, officials say. In addition, the government's current passenger-profiling system, called Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS, picks out passengers. The system, which resides in or communicates with each airline's reservation computers, gives you a score based largely on how you bought your ticket. Airline officials say the TSA has changed the different weightings given various factors, and certain markets may have higher programmed rates for selectees. Passenger lists also are checked against the TSA's list of suspicious names, which has included rather common names and even names of U.S. senators. Interestingly, airline gate agents who see suspicious-looking passengers can no longer flag them for security. Some ticket-counter agents did flag several hijackers for extra security on Sept. 11, 2001, and were
RE: Ronald McDonald's SS
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq (news - web sites), Well hell, it's doing such a good job already it should definitely be expanded! -TD From: Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Ronald McDonald's SS Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:15:07 +0100 I'm sure in due time they'll just start calling it Strategic Support, period. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=1802u=/washpost/20050123/ts_washpo st/a29414_2005jan22printer=1 Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain Sun Jan 23, 1:14 AM ET By Barton Gellman, Washington Post Staff Writer The Pentagon (news - web sites), expanding into the CIA (news - web sites)'s historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post. The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his near total dependence on CIA for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces. Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq (news - web sites), Afghanistan (news - web sites) and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia. Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed. The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the full spectrum of humint operations, according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include notorious figures whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed. Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats. The Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering and analyzing intelligence, often in concert with the CIA, and news reports over more than a year have described Rumsfeld's drive for more and better human intelligence. But the creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld's asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before. Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article. Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using reprogrammed funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA. Rumsfeld's dissatisfaction with the CIA's operations directorate, and his determination to build what amounts in some respects to a rival service, follows struggles with then-CIA Director George J. Tenet over intelligence collection priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pentagon officials said the CIA naturally has interests that differ from those of military commanders, but they also criticized its operations directorate as understaffed, slow-moving and risk-averse. A recurring phrase in internal Pentagon documents is the requirement for a human intelligence branch directly responsive to tasking from SecDef, or Rumsfeld. The new unit's performance in the field -- and its latest commander, reserve Army Col. George Waldroup -- are controversial among those involved in the closely held program. Pentagon officials acknowledged that Waldroup and many of those brought quickly into his service lack the experience and training typical of intelligence officers and special operators. In his civilian career as a federal manager, according to a Justice Department (news - web sites) inspector general's report, Waldroup was at the center of a 1996
Securing Wireless Apps Webinar from Unstrung
Should be of interest to someone on this list. -TD Dear Colleague, As an industry professional, you may be interested to know about an upcoming online event being presented by Unstrung (www.unstrung.com), the worldwide source for analysis of the wireless economy. This free Web seminar - Securing Wireless Apps in Financial, Government Military Markets - will evaluate recent progress in a critical market. Keeping information out of the hands of interlopers is an important task for any net manager - but it's critical for those with the responsibility for keeping financial, governmental, and military applications secure. Security issues continue to be the main concern holding back widespread wireless adoption in these environments. During this presentation we'll focus on: - The critical role of security in these vertical markets - why does it matter? - Potential effects of wireless network attacks in each market - The diverse security demands of these three markets - Case studies of deployments in each market and lessons learned Join us on Thursday, January 27, at 2:00 p.m. New York / 7:00 p.m. London time, for this live Webinar sponsored by Bluesocket, Fortress Technologies, and Proxim. Everyone who attends the Webinar will receive a free Unstrung T-shirt. Click here for a look: http://img.lightreading.com/unstrung/unstrung_shirt.gif You can sign up for this event via this link: http://metacast.agora.com/link.asp?m=23288s=4936527l=0 We hope to see you there!
Re: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption
Well, I think you've been a little too harsh on Scientific American. In the past a lot of the best articles were written by the pioneers in their fields. In fact, it's where I believe Wittfield and Diffie wrote a great piece on their work. And don't expect anyone (not even a math major) to go grab a quantum mechanics textbook and be able to get anything out of it. One would really need to have done the classical coursework in order to understand it (or at least to know enough to be spurised by it). And if you don't have the math then forget about it. Meanwhile, it IS possible to write intelligently on quantum entanglement, EPR and Aharnov-Bohm, and it's been done by Sci-Am, Penrose, Kaku and plenty of others. -TD From: Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:23:35 + On 2005-01-20T12:16:34+0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: Scientific American has little clue, as usual (see their nanotechnology retraction). How could they possibly get clue? Scientists don't want to write pop-sci articles for a living. It's impossible to condense most current research down to digestible kernels that the masses can understand. SciAm should close down, requiring those who care about science to learn enough about it to read science journals. Professors who can teach a QM course well in a semester are rare enough. I doubt any one of them could write a 5000 word article on quantum entanglement that would be intelligible to the average cretinous American who wants to seem smart by reading Sci-Am. If they want to be smart, they can start by picking up an undergrad-level book on QM. But that requires much effort to read, unlike a glossy 5000 word article. Journalism should not be a college major. Journalists in the main know little about how to write and interview, and less about the topics they write on. They don't understand that being able to write (and in many cases even that ability is in serious doubt) doesn't qualify them to write on any topic they choose. Many journalists aren't qualified to write on anything, not even journalism. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. --Heraclitus (Kahn.83/D-K.53)
RE: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption
What do you mean? By a physical fiber switch? That's certainly possible, though you'd need a very good condition switch to be able to do it. I'd bet if that switch switched a lot, the QCrypto channel would eventually be unusable. If you're talking about a WDM element or passive splitter or other purely optical component, then you'd need some kind of error correction (in the digital domain) in order to overcome the fact that many of the photons will not choose to go in the direction you want. In the long run I think we'll see some small proliferation, but given the level of integration and how well current coding schemes work, I'd guess this will remain a niche unless there's a major breakthrough in factoring. -TD From: Trei, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:47:38 -0500 I've actually seen these devices in operation. The thing that impressed me most was that the path need not be a single fiber from end to end - you can maintain quantum state across a switchable fiber junction. This means you are no longer limited to a single pair of boxes talking to each other. True, the SciAm article doesn't address a lot of issues, but the fact remains that this technology is interesting and important. Peter Trei -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 6:17 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption Scientific American has little clue, as usual (see their nanotechnology retraction). Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/20/0358215 Posted by: samzenpus, on 2005-01-20 06:35:00 from the just-try-and-break-it dept. [1]prostoalex writes Scientific American claims that [2]advances in commercially available quantum encryption might obsolete the existing factorization-based solutions: The National Security Agency or one of the Federal Reserve banks can now buy a quantum-cryptographic system from two small companies - and more products are on the way. This new method of encryption represents the first major commercial implementation for what has become known as quantum information science, which blends quantum mechanics and information theory. The ultimate technology to emerge from the field may be a quantum computer so powerful that the only way to protect against its prodigious code-breaking capability may be to deploy quantum-cryptographic techniques.
FW: Securing Wireless Apps in Vertical Markets Webinar from Unstrung
Sometimes these webinars can be informative, sometimes they're thinly disguised marketing efforts (that can still have some small value, though). Dear Colleague, As an industry professional, you may be interested to know about an upcoming online event being presented by Unstrung (www.unstrung.com), the worldwide source for analysis of the wireless economy. This free Web seminar - Securing Wireless Apps in Financial, Government Military Markets - will evaluate recent progress in a critical market. Keeping information out of the hands of interlopers is an important task for any net manager - but it's critical for those with the responsibility for keeping financial, governmental, and military applications secure. Security issues continue to be the main concern holding back widespread wireless adoption in these environments. During this presentation we'll focus on: - The critical role of security in these vertical markets - why does it matter? - Potential effects of wireless network attacks in each market - The diverse security demands of these three markets - Case studies of deployments in each market and lessons learned Join us on Thursday, January 27, at 2:00 p.m. New York / 7:00 p.m. London time, for this live Webinar sponsored by Bluesocket and Proxim. To sign up for the Webinar, please register through the following link: http://metacast.agora.com/link.asp?m=23153s=4936527l=0 Hope to see you there! Unstrung If you wish to be taken off this list, simply reply to this message and include the word unsubscribe in the subject field - or visit the link provided below. You will be taken off automatically. http://www.lightreading.com/unsubscribe.asp?subscriberid=4936527 Light Reading Inc. 23 Leonard St. New York, NY 10013
Re: Searching with Images instead of Words
Expecting a front view of an image to match with a side view of the same image is impossible. They are both disjoint sets of information. If all the images are frontal images, we can match them with a hight probability, otherwise I doubt this technology has a future. You are applying pure logic to a very complex subject. I'd bet this is already routinely done by TLAs and whatnot, at least as a pre-screen before human photograph inspectors. The most obvious hole in your statement is with respect to 2D Spatial FFTs of the image...you can probably greatly increase your match probability via certain masking criteria applied to the 2D FFT. And from there there's lots of stuff that can be done with colors and other indirect stuff such as (perhaps) camera signatures in the photo (eg, If there's text that says Hamamatsu Synchroscan Streak Camera then don't bother doing the FFT--it ain't a picture of your dog). Look...a human being can recognize the side image of a person a lot of the time. There should be no reason this intelligence can't be encoded somehow. -TD
RE: To Tyler Durden
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT! THIS IS MY REAL NAME GODDAMMIT!!! Wait, I'm getting sleepy...gotta take a nap... -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: To Tyler Durden Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 19:02:14 -0800 TD, I just watched _Fight Club_ so I finally get your nym. (Here in low-earth geosynchronous orbit, content is delayed). Cool. I had thought it was your real name. Maj. Variola (ret)
RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
And we'll probably have many years of non-Smart-Gun type accidents...eg, Drunk guy at party put gun to his head and blew his own brains out, assuming it was a smart gun, or, trailer park momma gives gun to toddler assuming its a safe smart gun. -TD From: Trei, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED],R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED], cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:04:21 -0500 John Kelsey Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire By ANNE EISENBERG I just wonder what the false negative rates are. Seem like a gun that has a 1% chance of refusing to fire when you *really need it* might not be worth all that much. Similarly, one that you can't get to work if you've got a band-aid on your finger, or a cut on your hand, or whatever, loses a lot of its value. On the other hand, a gun that can't be made to go off by your toddler is a pretty huge win, assuming you're willing to trust the technology, but a 90% accuracy level sounds to me like 10% of the time, your three year old can, in fact, cause the thing to go off. That's not worth much, but maybe they'll get it better. And the suspect struggles with cop, gets gun, and shoots cop problem would definitely be helped by a guy that wouldn't go off for 90% of attackers. --John A remarkable number of police deaths are 'own gun' incidents, so the police do have a strong motivation to use 'smart guns' if they are reliable. In New Jersey, there is some kind of legislation in place to restrict sales to 'smart guns', once they exist. Other types would be banned. (Actually, getting a carry permit in NJ is already almost impossible, unless you're politically connected.) This particular model seems to rely on pressure sensors on the grip. This bothers me - under the stress of a gunfight, you're likely to have a somewhat different pattern than during the enrollment process. Many 'smart guns' also have big problems with issues which arise in real life gun fights - shooting from awkward positions behind cover, one-handed vs two-handed, weak hand (righthander using left hand, and vice versa, which can happen if dictated by cover or injury), point vs sighted shooting, and passing a gun to a disarmed partner. There are other systems which have been proposed; magnetic or RFID rings, fingerprint sensors, etc. The one thing that seems to be common to all of the 'smart gun' designs is that they are conceived by people with little experience in how guns are actually used. To look at a particularly ludicrous example, try http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm For a gun to work, it is just as important that it fires when it should, as that it does not fire when it shouldn't. A safety system which delays firing by even half a second, or which introduces a significant false rejection rate (and 1% is way over the line), is a positive hazard. When the police switch to smart guns, and have used them successfully for some time (say, a year at least) without problems, I'll beleive them ready for prime time. Peter Trei
RE: Police seek missing trucker, nickels
OK...most of the time I understanding the relevance of the emanations from RAH, but this one I don't get. What's the relevance? Choate nostalgia? -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Police seek missing trucker, nickels Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 10:44:25 -0500 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0501090059jan09,1,3129779,print.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed The Chicago Tribune Police seek missing trucker, nickels Advertisement Items compiled from Tribune news services January 9, 2005 MIAMI, FLORIDA -- A truck driver has disappeared with the 3.6 million nickels he was hauling to the Federal Reserve Bank in New Orleans, police said Friday. Angel Ricardo Mendoza, 43, picked up the coins, worth $180,000, Dec. 17 from the Federal Reserve in New Jersey and was supposed to haul the cargo--weighing 45,000 pounds--to New Orleans for a trucking company subcontracted by the Federal Reserve, police said. On Dec. 21, Mendoza's empty truck and trailer turned up at a truck stop in Ft. Pierce, Fla. Miami-Dade police, the FBI and the Federal Reserve police are investigating. We are concerned for his safety because he's missing, Miami-Dade Detective Randy Rossman said. -- - 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: California Bans a Large-Caliber Gun, and the Battle Is On
Well, I used to be pro gun-control prior to the Patriot Act. Guess the Patriot Act made me something of a Patriot. And come to think of it, Bowling for Columbine has the accidental affect of making it clear that Guns themselves are not the problem in the US. -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: California Bans a Large-Caliber Gun, and the Battle Is On Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 06:45:22 -0800 At 09:53 AM 1/4/05 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: Terri Carbaugh, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, had made his position clear during his campaign. It's a military-type weapon, Ms. Carbaugh said of the .50 BMG, and he believes the gun presents a clear and present danger to the general public. Ms C has earned herself a few hundred footpounds, or a few meters of rope and tree-rental. The Constitution explicitly protects our right to bear military (not animal-hunting) arms. -- An RPG a day keeps the occupiers away.
RE: 2004: The Year That Promised Email Authentication
I see RAHWEH is back from visiting the relatives... -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 2004: The Year That Promised Email Authentication Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 16:49:01 -0500 http://www.circleid.com/print/855_0_1_0/ CircleID 2004: The Year That Promised Email Authentication By: Yakov Shafranovich From CircleID Addressing Spam December 27, 2004 As the year comes to a close, it is important to reflect on what has been one of the major actions in the anti-spam arena this year: the quest for email authentication. With email often called the killer app of the Internet, it is important to reflect on any major changes proposed, or implemented that can affect that basic tool that many of us have become to rely on in our daily lives. And, while many of the debates involved myriads of specialized mailing lists, standards organizations, conferences and even some government agencies, it is important for the free and open source software (FOSS) community as well as the Internet community at large, to analyze and learn lessons from the events surrounding email authentication in 2004. THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST The quest for email authentication did not start from scratch. Authentication systems are a well known field in computer security, and have been researched for quite some time. Nevertheless, it is only during this past year that email authentication has gained a prominent push mainly due to the ever increasing spam problem. As well known, the original email architecture and protocols was not designed for an open network such as the Internet. Therefore, the original designers failed to predict the virtual tidal wave of junk email that took advantage of lack of authentication in the Internet email. As the result, a junk email filter is considered one of the essential tools any Internet citizen must have in his toolkit today. The push towards email authentication started in earnest with the publication of a proposal called RMX by a German engineer called Hadmut Danisch in early 2003. While other previous proposals have been published, none have gained any kind of traction. Hadmut's proposal on the other hand coincided with the opening of the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), which as an affiliate body of the IETF. The IETF created and currently maintains the Internet email standards, and an IETF affiliate was a logical body to work on addressing the spam problem on the Internet at large. Being that the ASRG brought together a sizable chunk of the anti-spam world, RMX gained more exposure that none of the previous work in the field ever had. What followed was a succession of proposals forked off the original RMX proposal until the spring of 2004 when most of them were basically confined to the dustbin of history together with RMX. In the end, only two proposals with any sizable following were left: Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Microsoft's Caller-ID. The author of SPF, Meng Wong, managed to attract a large community to his proposal, giving it a much larger deployed base than any competitor. In many ways this effort can be compared to some of the open source projects, except this time this was an open standard rather than a piece of software. On the other side of the ring, so to speak, was Microsoft which surprised the email world with their own proposal called Caller-ID at the RSA conference in early 2004. Eventually, the IETF agreed to consider standardization of email authentication by opening a working group called MARID in March of 2004. With the merger of SPF and Microsoft's new Sender-ID proposal, hopes were running high about the coming success of email authentication and the coming demise of spam. Yet, ironically this working group earned itself a record by being one of the shortest in the existence of the IETF - it has lasted a little over six months until being formally shutdown in September of 2004. ALL THAT IS GOLD DOES NOT GLITTER During the work of IETF's MARID group the quest for the email authentication begun to permeate circles outside the usual cadre of anti-spam geeks. Technology publications, and even the mass media have begun to take note of the efforts occurring on an obscure mailing list tucked away among 200 other even more obscure groups, prodded in many cases by the public relations spokesmen of various companies in the anti-spam space, including Microsoft. Yet in many ways that was one of the fatal blows to the group and any hope of a common standard for email authentication. Several major issues arose during the operation of the working group. The first major issue that has been bubbling beneath the surface was technical in nature. SPF has come from a group of proposals that worked with the parts of the email infrastructure that was unseen by most users. This included email servers that exchanged email among ISPs and were unseen. In the technical lingo this type of
Re: An interesting thread...Hacking Bluetooth
No way it's Dave Emory...they did an IP Traceroute and the guy appears to be in Germany. If you've listened to Emory's shows, you'd know from some of his technical statements that he most likely wouldn't be capable of this. I also simply can't imagine him bothering with something like this. On the other hand, the perpetrator of this hoax knows a decent amount about a variety of subjects (including technical ones). After sleeping on it, I'm starting to think he's actually some kind of German conspiracy 'theorist' who's actually been snooping the WiFi, etc...of some interesting locations. He probably saw a pattern and convinced himself he had to save the world. It's a very interesting thread to say the least. Forget whether Paul Wolfowitz has some Hidden Hand master plan...it'll probably make Dis-information History one day. -TD From: Eric Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: An interesting thread...Hacking Bluetooth Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 20:36:36 -0800 On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 09:48:01PM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: Oh no, it gets really interesting. He claims to be an ex-German TLA-type (how many Ls do German TLAs normally have?), and had advanced knowledge of 9/11. That's not super-implausible. [..] Me? I suspect he just pulled all this shit from David Emory's shows and then added some nice google tech searches. [..] I was hoping someone knew about this and had already hacked this hoax, If he sounds like Dave Emory, then there isn't much debunking that's required. Food for thought and grounds for further research, Eric
Re: An interesting thread...Hacking Bluetooth
Oh no, it gets really interesting. He claims to be an ex-German TLA-type (how many Ls do German TLAs normally have?), and had advanced knowledge of 9/11. That's not super-implausible. What's really interesting is that he claims the German TLAs have a new round of strong evidence showing that there's a nuke buried in Houston somewhere that's going to be set off on 12/27. He's tied in all sorts of shadowy agencies along with internal politcs causing the info not to be acted upon. Even that would be worthy of ignoring, but he's actually told this story extremely well, naming fairly obscure (but real) names in the intelligence community and so on. The guy's posts have actually made some serious waves on a bunch of boards. Me? I suspect he just pulled all this shit from David Emory's shows and then added some nice google tech searches. WiFi I know was cracked wide open a while back, and that wasn't exactly a secret (it's the reason for 802.11x). BUT, add knowledge of this to the conspiracy theories to the politics and you have a guy who has gone to great lengths to create an excellent hoax. Indeed, one can only imagine that the reason for something like this has to go way beyond mere hoaxing (eg, the guy's a neo-Nazi?) I was hoping someone knew about this and had already hacked this hoax, because so far I haven't seen anything that conclusively debunks this guy. -TD From: Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: An interesting thread...Hacking Bluetooth Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 23:36:58 +0100 On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 02:13:52PM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: Here4s another myth: you cannot hack bluetooth from a distance of more than 40 metres. Not true. My technical partner Felix can crack it at over half a kilometre. Which is why he enjoys driving around so much in areas The official record right now is 1.74 km: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/49907 http://trifinite.org/trifinite_stuff_bluebug.html#news No doubt you can do much better with a large dish, and good alignment, as well as a clear line of sight. where we know British, American, Israeli or Russian ops are living or working. The great thing about many German cities is that most affordable residences are within metres of the street anyway. Any comments? Bluetooth attacks aren't exactly new. No idea what else that tinfoil-hatted person is spouting. -- 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 [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
An interesting thread...Hacking Bluetooth
There's some guy (German Guy) spouting some coherent-sounding conspiracy theories over here: http://www.godlikeproductions.com/bbs/message.php?page=23topic=10message=54181mpage=1showdate=12/18/04 I wouldn't normally post something like this, but the guy's done a little bit of homework on a huge variety of topics, so it's really an excellent hoax, seen from a distance. Here's on thing giving me some doubts, though (but of course if this is true he may have just pulled it from Google somewhere): Here´s another myth: you cannot hack bluetooth from a distance of more than 40 metres. Not true. My technical partner Felix can crack it at over half a kilometre. Which is why he enjoys driving around so much in areas where we know British, American, Israeli or Russian ops are living or working. The great thing about many German cities is that most affordable residences are within metres of the street anyway. Any comments? -TD
Re: Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?
JAT wrote... You keep asserting this, but at the same time fail to provide an example. Please show how flying can easily be a requirement, not an option. One legitimate example will suffice. Later. (Actually, I didn't 'keep asserting this', but that's a separate matter) So, your position is that we should not take action now, because we may have to take the same action later? Well, that's a good point...I think I viewed your previous analysis on a more philosophical level (because that's how it was phrased), but when you put it this way it starts to make some sense. In other words, avoiding travel whenever possible will (when added to sheeple starting to do the same because of all the terible screening stories) eventually start putting some squeeze on the airlines. (But then again, DC has plenty of our tax dollars ready to bail out an incompetent set of airline managers.) It won't hurt at least. As for the former, I am suprised you even need examples...asking for them weakens your main point. There are plenty of examples to be had, and I'll give you an easy one. You're a hot looking, leggy and not super-bright saleschick that ALWAYS makes the sale in person (read: Big Bonuses), and much less frequently over the phone (read: failed sales quotas and eventual layoff). Your territory is Northwest meaning Oregon, NO Cal, Washington, Vancouver, and lots of those weird states over there like Idaho and whatnot. You can't possibly drive fast enough to make all your meetings in your territory. Will you... 1) Phone it in 2) Do some kind of lameass video conferencing 3) Fly 4) Get a job at McDonalds tiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktik RING! Times up...
Re: Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?
Well, there's a TINY little hole in your logic here... Scale of distance is the only difference. Either you support the system or you don't. I don't: I either drive to jobs (charging for mileage) or I pass on them, rather than take part in the police state that is todays air system. You have the very same choices. The argument eveyone is making here is that it is too much of an inconvenience (financial or otherwise), *not* to fly. Sorry, but that's just pure self-serving BS. For one, Flying can easily be a requirement, not an option. But that's besides the point here. The real point is that some Super-JAT could (5 years from now when there are ubiquitous highway checkpoints) argue that walking from NYC to Boston may be difficult but it IS possible. Or of course (after Tenent's vision for the internet is realized) You could simply Fedex those files, you don't need to use the internet ..and so on...it get silly after this though. -TD
Re: RAH's postings.
I actually found the mechanics' article quite interesting. I think it's what anarchy starts to look like in the real world...ie, there are still laws 'somewhere', but they end up functioning like a 'value add' or quality control. I've argued on numerous occasions that NYC already has some very anarchic elements. I also found it useful from a very practical persepctive...I've got good names to ask for in case I need some cheap (or discrete!) work done. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: RAH's postings. Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 13:04:34 -0500 At 10:23 AM -0500 12/21/04, Somebody wrote: What the hell does an article about gypsy mechanics have to do with cypherpunks? I plead anarchic markets, m'lord. Emerging phenomena, and all that, in spite all regulation to the contrary. Which was why I sent the traffic thing as well. No laws (or regulation) is better rules, in many interesting cases. It may be interesting to you, but it's off-topic, You may say that, I couldn't possibly comment. and voluminous. That's what your 'd' key is for. If that's not good enough, perhaps an addition to your kill-file is in order. Or you need assistance in creating a filter for your mailer? 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: Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?
(4) Lastly, as to your cesarian, fuck you and your wife, and her cesearean. We don't give a shit about your personal problems, just like you don't care about ours. Sure, it makes for a pulpy little story, but when you get right down to it, do we really care? No. Because, again, you helped to create this beast you are now bitching about, and after it bit you, you *continued to fly*, and thereby feed it some more. Funny how most Americans only wake up after it happens to them. Case in point? How 'bout that proud-n-patriotic lady in Farenheit 911? As far as I could tell, prior to her son's death she was all in favor of the Attack on Iraq and even encouraged her son to serve (I hate that fucking word)...the only thing that changed her mind was that HER son was killed (the piles of dead Iraqis in their own country didn't matter and hell nor did the other dead US soldiers). So when she was hanging around in front of the White House I didn't have a hell of a lot of sympathy. -TD From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There? Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 10:53:26 -0600 (CST) Several points come to mind: (1) Mr. Monahan seems to think that lies on police reports are an artifact of 9/11. Welcome to the real world Mr. Monahan. (2) Monahan, and those like him who continue to fly, have nobody to blame but themselves: if you continue to feed these assholes by buying those tickets, then you have it coming: simple economics. If people refuse to fly, this will stop. (3) As to the ACLU, again, welcome to the real world. Many of us have been down that road before you Mr. Monahan - while the ACLU is not a bad thing per se, they are a lot like the cops and courts: they are not there for any one individual, there are there for the big picture. And the Big Picture requires money, which means you must be a minority (since how can anyone of the majority ever be oppressed?). In a nutshell, Fuck The ACLU. (4) Lastly, as to your cesarian, fuck you and your wife, and her cesearean. We don't give a shit about your personal problems, just like you don't care about ours. Sure, it makes for a pulpy little story, but when you get right down to it, do we really care? No. Because, again, you helped to create this beast you are now bitching about, and after it bit you, you *continued to fly*, and thereby feed it some more. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF Civilization is in a tailspin - everything is backwards, everything is upside down- doctors destroy health, psychiatrists destroy minds, lawyers destroy justice, the major media destroy information, governments destroy freedom and religions destroy spirituality - yet it is claimed to be healthy, just, informed, free and spiritual. We live in a social system whose community, wealth, love and life is derived from alienation, poverty, self-hate and medical murder - yet we tell ourselves that it is biologically and ecologically sustainable. The Bush plan to screen whole US population for mental illness clearly indicates that mental illness starts at the top. Rev Dr Michael Ellner On Sun, 19 Dec 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 10:25:32 -0500 From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There? http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/monahan1.html LewRockwell.com Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There? by Nicholas Monahan ? ?? ?? ?? This morning I'll be escorting my wife to the hospital, where the doctors will perform a caesarean section to remove our first child. She didn't want to do it this way - neither of us did - but sometimes the Fates decide otherwise. The Fates or, in our case, government employees. On the morning of October 26th Mary and I entered Portland International Airport, en route to the Las Vegas wedding of one of my best friends. Although we live in Los Angeles, we'd been in Oregon working on a film, and up to that point had had nothing but praise to shower on the city of Portland, a refreshing change of pace from our own suffocating metropolis. At the security checkpoint I was led aside for the inspection that's all the rage at airports these days. My shoes were removed. I was told to take off my sweater, then to fold over the waistband of my pants. My baseball hat, hastily jammed on my head at 5 AM, was removed and assiduously examined (Anything could be in here, sir, I was told, after I asked what I could hide in a baseball hat. Yeah. Anything.) Soon I was standing on one foot,
Re: [Antisocial] Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theorist
..They have computers, they're tappin' phone lines, you know that ain't allowed.. Zappa...Heads...Crimson? A profile is emerging here! Either that or you recently broke into your dad's vinyl collection... -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Antisocial] Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theorist Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 22:13:21 -0800 At 06:12 AM 12/19/04 +0100, Anonymous wrote: Major Variola typed: PS: heard some fedscum mention 'militia and other terrorists' the other day, what would Gen George W think? which fedscum, do you have a mentionable source, c.? I haven't found the source, I recall that I heard it. Might have been a quickie comment on eg the Crystal Cathedral shooter. (Their depressed music conductor who alas didn't take Schuller out.) reminds of the Reno quote, They have computers and... other weapons of mass destruction. ..They have computers, they're tappin' phone lines, you know that ain't allowed..
RE: [Antisocial] Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theorist Offers $100,000 Prize (fwd)
I am a patriot fighting the real traitors who are destroying our democracy. I resent it when they call me delusional, he said. Tee hee hee... From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Antisocial] Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theorist Offers $100,000 Prize (fwd) Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:16:08 -0600 (CST) Thursday, Dec. 16, 2004 Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theorist Offers $100,000 Prize NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jimmy Walter has spent more than $3 million promoting a conspiracy theory the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were an inside job and he is offering more cash to anyone who proves him wrong. The millionaire activist is so convinced of a government cover-up he is offering a $100,000 reward to any engineering student who can prove the World Trade Center buildings crashed the way the government says. Of course, we expect no winners, Walter, 57, heir to an $11 million fortune from his father's home building business, said in a telephone interview from California on Wednesday. He said a panel of expert engineers would judge submissions from the students. Next month, he also launches a nationwide contest seeking alternative theories from college and high school students about why New York's World Trade Center collapsed. The contest offers $10,000 to the best alternative theory, with 100 runner-up awards of $1,000. Winners will be chosen next June. The World Trade Center's twin towers were destroyed after hijackers slammed two commercial airliners into them. The attack in New York killed 2,749 people. Various official investigations give no credence to Walter's theory. A Sept. 11 commission spokesman did not return calls seeking comment. Walter insists there had to be explosives planted in the twin towers to cause them to fall as they did, and also rejects the official explanation for the damage done at the Pentagon. We have all the proof, said Walter, citing videotapes and testimony from witnesses. It wasn't 19 screw-ups from Saudi Arabia who couldn't pass flight school who defeated the United States with a set of box cutters, he said. He dismissed the official Sept. 11 commission report, saying, I don't trust any of these 'facts.' Walter has spent millions of dollars to bolster support for his case, running full-page ads in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and Newsweek, as well as alternative newspapers and 30-second TV spots. He points to a Zogby poll he commissioned last summer that showed 66 percent of New Yorkers wanted the 9/11 investigation reopened. Walter has spent about 30 percent of his net worth on his efforts. I am a patriot fighting the real traitors who are destroying our democracy. I resent it when they call me delusional, he said.
Re: Steve Thompson
No, it was I who laid claim to stoopidity. However, as for... My tentative analysis of the PR intent prompted me to stop reading the weekly in question as I have no interest in wasting my time with such unimportant drivel. In my case, I feel there are much better things to spend time on -- as interesting as watching the PR spin might be as viewed from a cultural-anthropological perspective. When the intent of the PR is obviously banal (eg, sell movie tickets) then I agree that analysis is a waste of time. When there's a suspicious pattern of misinformation, the (ultimate) intent of which is unknown, than analysis equals consciously understanding that something shifty is afoot. Otherwise, one's opinions about the slandered change every so slightly, no matter how much we may dismiss such slander on the verbal/conscious level. I consider it no coincidence too that we had that recent little Jew-hater-baiting post from the same remailer. Someone is poking Cypherpunks for the fun of it, or as part of their job description. Remember, tiny impulses at a system's natural frequencies (ie, eigenvalues) will eventually cause that system to dis-integrate. Then again, as none of you are hot chicks I won't necessarily binge-purge if Cypherpunks collapses in a fit of Twilight Zone-ish infighting. -TD From: Steve Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Steve Thompson Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:43:26 -0500 (EST) Alright. Time for a little 'fun'. --- R.W. (Bob) Erickson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Tyler Durden wrote: Something occurred to me...it probably occurred to others already but I am a stoopid Cypherpunk, don't forget. I like the nomenclature of AI: it makes for an interesting tool in the analysis of day-to-day interpersonal relations. Here, for instance, I am in the habit of making a mental note of the above as a frame axiom, one which is intended to influence the state of the fluents that might be said to accompany this message, or which are intended to be assumed by it. So, Mr. Erickson here wishes to assert and emphasise that he is a stupid cypherpunk, a proposition that may or may not conflict with extant fluents held by readers of Cypherpunks. Or, put another way, it might conflict (or be designed to conflict) with frame axioms that Mr. Erickson knows or suspects to be held by his audience. Without knowing the internal mental state of Cypherpunks' subscription base, and without knowing the frame within which Mr. Erickson is operatiing (either his 'global' frame, or the 'local' frame of convenience that he may have adopted), it is nearly impossible to infer what he or she is intending by writing a statement like I am a stoopid Cypherpunk when its banality might suggest to some that it is blatantly insincere. There's really nowhere to take this digression, what with the limited information that is available in context, and so we can only speculate as to what relation Mr. Erickson's possible stoopidity has to the topic at hand, which is (if we are to take the message at face value), that he is concerned with a complaint about a bad eBay sale, which is the responsibility of someone using the name Steve Thompson, and which was made to Cypherpunks (a known spook-haven[1]), via an anonymous message that appears to have been sent through a cypherpunks remailer. Anyone think it a TINY bit odd that someone with a fairly mundane complaint about bad computer gear would know to come in on an anonymous remailer? Yes, it is quite odd. My first thought was that they had gotten burned by a Steve Thompson (maybe the same, maybe not) did a google search and came across Cypherpunks and then tossed in a couple of stinky posts. That condition may satisfy the principle of least hypothesis, which has much to recommend it, but is it really the likely scenario? But it seems a little farfetched to me that such a person would also have bothered (by accident) reading about the anonymous remailers and then use one. Without a detailed psychological workup on the person who sent the message, the question is largely indeterminate. Perhaps the person making the complaint was coincidentally familiar with anonymous remailers prior to their interaction with eBay. So...the complainer must have already been aware of remailers and Mr Thompson's contribution to Cypherpunks. I am not sure whether that conclusion is supported by the data available at this time. Kind of interesting. To someone who is genuinely 'stoopid', perhaps. -TD Somebody has been experimenting with reputation cracking Did you just happen to notice? I have informally noted a number of messages in which the authors purport to present information that seeks to damage or modify another's reputation, using a variety of subtle language- and psychology-oriented special effects. Whether one puts stock in the veracity of each instance is probably a matter of personal preference; expediency and convenience
Steve Thompson
Something occurred to me...it probably occurred to others already but I am a stoopid Cypherpunk, don't forget. Anyone think it a TINY bit odd that someone with a fairly mundane complaint about bad computer gear would know to come in on an anonymous remailer? My first thought was that they had gotten burned by a Steve Thompson (maybe the same, maybe not) did a google search and came across Cypherpunks and then tossed in a couple of stinky posts. But it seems a little farfetched to me that such a person would also have bothered (by accident) reading about the anonymous remailers and then use one. So...the complainer must have already been aware of remailers and Mr Thompson's contribution to Cypherpunks. Kind of interesting. -TD
Re: Word Of the Subgenius...
Oh no, I fully understood those arguments and conceeded that in certain scenarios such ethnic groups might experience disproportionate amounts of impact. However, when we start talking about actively putting them up the chimneys, then we've moved into making such ethnic groups targets. Hey...there's nothing saying a smart person can't end up a racist. However, it is to be expected that a smart racist will have particularly clever arguments to justify such racism. In addition, I suspect that some of our more robust inner-city dwellers might actually adapt quite quickly to such scenarios. As for trailer trash, however... -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Word Of the Subgenius... Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 19:01:04 -0800 At 11:21 AM 12/9/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: Well, May seemed to try to make the case that all of those useles eaters were in large part responsible for the very existence of the state, and that collapse of the state meant the inevitable downfall of huge numbers of minorities (why he focused on them as opposed to white trailer trash I don't know). But he was definitely advocating that racist viewpoints fall naturally out of a crypto-anarchic approach. Tyler: A rational person has to admit that many parasitic folks of all albedos are able to exist because they occupy a govt-funded niche. Without a welfare govt, those people would either 1. subsist on private (ie voluntary) charity, 2. become useful by necessity 3. die of starvation 4. die during attempts to coerce others with violence. Depending on your beliefs about human demographics/nature, you will assign variable percentages to these outcomes. It *is* racist to think that genotypes in each bin will differ *IFF* you *don't* ascribe this outcome to culture associated with genotypes. But culturism is not racism, its recognition of how behavior and evolution work. I subscribe to and will defend culturism. (I speak for myself, not TM (tm), though I may or may not be a duly appointed pope of the church of strong cryptography; though recently I've been trending towards being an Earthquaker, who believes in tectonics, esp. during seismic events. Our vatican is in Parkfield BTW :-)
Re: punkly current events
And don't forget...Spam is a good thing as long as it doesn't clog the Mixmaster bandwidth. -TD From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: punkly current events Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 13:19:26 -0600 (CST) On Fri, 10 Dec 2004, Eugen Leitl wrote: If mixter won't survive, it's due to spammers, and malware spreaders. I disagree. Except for the early days, spammers have been little more than a low volume nuisance on Mix. What killed mix was it's complexity - Joe Blow can't figure out how to use it, and new reops have a hell of a time getting a node running (with pingers and other required tools). Take away complexity, and Mix *could* flourish - in spite of the fedz. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF Civilization is in a tailspin - everything is backwards, everything is upside down- doctors destroy health, psychiatrists destroy minds, lawyers destroy justice, the major media destroy information, governments destroy freedom and religions destroy spirituality - yet it is claimed to be healthy, just, informed, free and spiritual. We live in a social system whose community, wealth, love and life is derived from alienation, poverty, self-hate and medical murder - yet we tell ourselves that it is biologically and ecologically sustainable. The Bush plan to screen whole US population for mental illness clearly indicates that mental illness starts at the top. Rev Dr Michael Ellner
Re: Word Of the Subgenius...
If you also consider the fact that I have been variously poisoned in recent years with everything from sedatives to stimulants to hormones to psychoactive compounds to low-level hallucinogens, and as well have been subjected to uncounted appeals to my subconscious in the main through the use of direct and indirect sexually exploitative imagery and encounters, you might get the idea that consistent literary output is simply not in the offing. Sounds like a fuckin' party, if you ask me! Quit bogartin' that J... -TD From: Steve Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Word Of the Subgenius... Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 20:19:06 -0500 (EST) --- John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [May] Maybe, maybe not. The thing I always find interesting and annoying about Tim May's posts is that he's sometimes making really clearly thought out, intelligent points, and other times spewing out nonsense so crazy you can't believe it's coming from the same person. It's also clear he's often yanking peoples' chains, often by saying the most offensive thing he can think of. But once in awhile, even amidst the crazy rantings about useless eaters and ovens, he'll toss out something that shows some deep, coherent thought about some issue in a new and fascinating direction. That paragraph could easily be modified to make it a commentary on my posting habits, or indeed, on my general presentation from day to day. So, I will comment. On a pseudo-random but cyclic schedule, I am harassed, provoked, or otherwise experience incidents of aggression of one sort or another. This affects my mood and general state of mind to varying degrees. Furthermore, I do not have consistent dietary intake, nor do I live in an environment which allows or provides privacy, security, or consistency save that which I impose with the expenditure of a great deal of effort and patience. If you also consider the fact that I have been variously poisoned in recent years with everything from sedatives to stimulants to hormones to psychoactive compounds to low-level hallucinogens, and as well have been subjected to uncounted appeals to my subconscious in the main through the use of direct and indirect sexually exploitative imagery and encounters, you might get the idea that consistent literary output is simply not in the offing. Before anyone goes to the trouble of suggesting that I discuss matters with the police, I'll save them the bother. The police have entirely failed to allow my allegations the courtesy of a hearing. Not even once. I belive that those who have not merely dirties their own hands in some way, are too chikenshit to recognise some of the more subtle criminality that goes on in this country. Or they may be intimidated by the kind of agency[1] that has invoved itself in the kind of clandestine activity that is at issue. Add in the fact that I've been dealing with _some_ sort of malicious and interfereing bullshit for quite a few years without any sincere assistance of any sort beyond the odd informational giveaway of dubious provenance, and you might well conclude that whatever else is going on, I'm not a happy camper. Perhaps my inconsistent presentation mimics the inconclusive partial criterion for certain classical mental afflictions. This is convenient as such afflictions are conveniently viewed by the layman and professional alike as having an origin that is entirely internal to the individual in question. However, I have quite a bit of evidence of varying grades that support my position rather well. Time will tell, perhaps, the true nature of the matter in a fashion that leaves no doubt in the mind of the uninvolved spectator. But in the interim, that will have to stand as my overbrief outline of the reason why I exhibit inconsistency in writing, speech, and action. I am simply way too busy dealing with what can in one way be viewed as a chronic and personalised denial of service attack. Perhaps Tim May has an entirely different set of factors influencing his online behaviour. You will have to ask him to explain his circumstances, and hope that he consents to it. As for my case, I do not really wish to make it a topic of discussion on the Cypherpunks list. The law enforecement (and perhipheral) personnel who have involvement in my affairs, for whatever reason, are (and should be) fully aware of the external influences on my psychology. They have the investigative tools and authority to make definitive findings of fact, and to take corrective action should they find incidents of criminal liability, but as yet have refused to do so. And *that* is another matter entirely. Regards, Steve [1] general sense of the term. I'm not referring to, say, the CIA specifically in this instance. __ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
Re: Word Of the Subgenius...
In my family there's a famous story told of a particular musician who was busted on marijuana possession. His defense: But your honor...it was only lemonade. -TD From: Steve Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Word Of the Subgenius... Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:31:34 -0500 (EST) --- Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] Sounds like a fuckin' party, if you ask me! Quit bogartin' that J... Oh, sure. It wasn't all bad. Just ask the chick who is known in certain circles as Nefertiti. (That's her code-name). We had an excellent time together; or at least we did until the wheels fell off... But that's a story for another day. While we're speaking of pot, I should note that the grass available in this neck of the woods is substandard at best. What with all the illegal suburban grow-ops in Toronto, you'd think one would be able to buy half-decent weed from time to time. But no... It's all crap. Regards, Steve __ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
RE: Blinky Rides Again: RCMP suspect al-Qaida messages
Maybe, but I think it would be very hard to write a general-purpose stego detector, without knowing the techniques used for encoding the message. And if you know the distribution of your cover channel as well as your attacker, or can generate lots of values from that distribution even if you can'd describe it, you can encode messages in a way that provably can't be detected, down to the quality of your random number generator and the difficulty of guessing your key. Well, the first thing to remember is that Arabic more or less has a built-in method for distributing covert information...kind of like Hebrew, an Arabic word can be viewed in terms of a subset of consonants...for specific groupings there are lots of well-known associated words with the same letters. I'd bet a careful examination of bin Laden communiques will reveal the existence of pointers to such special words...the initated will know how to pull out those words and use them as passwords, etc... As for the sophistication of Al Qaeda software, remember we're probably not talking about a very centrally-organized group. Their members are scattered in all sorts of socio-eco-bandwidth environments so that off-the-shelf (where shelf=internet) stuff is going to be common. Remember too that broad categories of Stego can apparently be detected by FFT (someone here posted a link to a paper describing that). Put that and all sorts of other routines looking for specific Stego signatures inot a Variola suitcase and I bet they (NSA, though not police) can pull out practically anything they want to. BUT...that probably doesn't do them a ton of good...the plaintext will be in Arabic, it will speak symbolically, and maybe use some even more clever techniques for info obfscuration. As for the 'semaphore' theory I consider that likely...lots of info will be sent out-of-band (ie, verbally) and Stego'd info will perhaps be triggers or possibly meeting coordinates. Maybe an account number every now and then (VERY easy to hide using Arabic letter-numerals). -TD I imagine this as something much like a virus scanner. Look for known stego programs, and also for signatures of known stegp programs. Really good programs might be impossible to find without doing, say, a password search. But it's worth noting that AQ has to do key management just like the rest of us, and that's hard when you are communicating with a lot of different people. If your stego is password-protected, some terrorist's laptop is going to have a post-it note on the screen with the password. ... -TD --John Kelsey
Re: tangled context probe
Well, when you put it that way, that changes everything. All is now clear. Please continue downloading the syntactic mappings of random neural firing...I'm using your output to seed a random number generator. Oh, and don't forget to cc Choate. -TD From: R.W. (Bob) Erickson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: tangled context probe Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:27:08 -0500 Tyler Durden wrote: As to the crypto relevance: context Arranged signals can be anything at all. If you don't share the context of the communicators, you have no idea what they convey in their conversation about the whether. That's a stretch. Soon you'll say that Post-modernist literary theory is Cypherpunkish content because it deals with 'context'. I suggest you take up your theories with Mr Choate and the Dallas Cypherpunk(s). In that 'context' your posts will appear lucid. -TD No, all that european bs is only relevent because it adds to the piling evidence of irrationality. Whats the connect between irrationality an C-punks? Well aside from colorful characters its also key to any understanding of the minimum mass mind. There are policy implications inherent in innate incomplitence and compliance. There are also important ecconomic understandings that hinge upon understanding irrational choices c.f hyperbolic discounting, aka matching theory. There are also techie implications: The human semantic competency is hackable --bob
Re: tangled context probe
As to the crypto relevance: context Arranged signals can be anything at all. If you don't share the context of the communicators, you have no idea what they convey in their conversation about the whether. That's a stretch. Soon you'll say that Post-modernist literary theory is Cypherpunkish content because it deals with 'context'. I suggest you take up your theories with Mr Choate and the Dallas Cypherpunk(s). In that 'context' your posts will appear lucid. -TD From: R.W. (Bob) Erickson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Roy M. Silvernail [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: tangled context probe Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 11:29:21 -0500 Roy M. Silvernail wrote: R.W. (Bob) Erickson wrote: (curious thing about this spew, it keeps disappearing into the bit bucket, Yawn. Roboposting this babble doesn't really increase its chances of getting read. I work through JY because I know there's uranium in that ore. But I'm about 2 posts away from ensconcing RWBE in my procmail file next to TM, choate and proffr. OK, it was just an unknown context for me.. My sincere apologies for subjecting you to a decrease in signal to noise. I know that I have to work on my presentation. Without sufficient introduction anything new is indistinguishable from cracked pottery. The synthetic perspective I am toying with is built upon some premises from cogsci In my opinion there are real strategic implications in the modern scientific perception of the individual as a tangle of competing interests. Self interest is one of given principles. In so far as the self is a personal mythology, and the irrationality of sheep hood is built in, I think three could be policy implications. As to the crypto relevance: context Arranged signals can be anything at all. If you don't share the context of the communicators, you have no idea what they convey in their conversation about the whether. Once again, I plead stupidity for the duplicates I will do penance --bob
Re: primes as far as the eye can see, discrete continua
So the obvious question is, does this speed up the cracking capabilities of computers? On the surface, I'd say no, but then again I'm no computational science expert. (I say no because any of the primes used in X-bitlength encryption are already known, and these strings of primes aren't going to be used any more frequently than any random batch of primes.) -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: primes as far as the eye can see, discrete continua Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 21:37:52 -0800 copied under fair use only because Roy put in the research... NUMBER THEORY: Proof Promises Progress in Prime Progressions Barry Cipra The theorem that Ben Green and Terence Tao set out to prove would have been impressive enough. Instead, the two mathematicians wound up with a stunning breakthrough in the theory of prime numbers. At least that's the preliminary assessment of experts who are looking at their complicated 50-page proof. Green, who is currently at the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Tao of the University of California (UC), Los Angeles, began working 2 years ago on the problem of arithmetic progressions of primes: sequences of primes (numbers divisible only by themselves and 1) that differ by a constant amount. One such sequence is 13, 43, 73, and 103, which differ by 30. In 1939, Dutch mathematician Johannes van der Corput proved that there are an infinite number of arithmetic progressions of primes with three terms, such as 3, 5, 7 or 31, 37, 43. Green and Tao hoped to prove the same result for four-term progressions. The theorem they got, though, proved the result for prime progressions of all lengths. It's a very, very spectacular achievement, says Green's former adviser, Timothy Gowers of the University of Cambridge, who received the 1998 Fields Medal, the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize, for work on related problems. Ronald Graham, a combinatorialist at UC San Diego, agrees. It's just amazing, he says. It's such a big jump from what came before. Green and Tao started with a 1975 theorem by Endre Szemeridi of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Szemeridi proved that arithmetic progressions of all lengths crop up in any positive fraction of the integers--basically, any subset of integers whose ratio to the whole set doesn't dwindle away to zero as the numbers get larger and larger. The primes don't qualify, because they thin out too rapidly with increasing size. So Green and Tao set out to show that Szemeridi's theorem still holds when the integers are replaced with a smaller set of numbers with special properties, and then to prove that the primes constitute a positive fraction of that set. Prime suspect. Arithmetic progressions such as this 10-prime sequence are infinitely abundant, if a new proof holds up. To build their set, they applied a branch of mathematics known as ergodic theory (loosely speaking, a theory of mixing or averaging) to mathematical objects called pseudorandom numbers. Pseudorandom numbers are not truly random, because they are generated by rules, but they behave as random numbers do for certain mathematical purposes. Using these tools, Green and Tao constructed a pseudorandom set of primes and almost primes, numbers with relatively few prime factors compared to their size. The last step, establishing the primes as a positive fraction of their pseudorandom set, proved elusive. Then Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the University of Montreal, pointed Green to some results by Dan Goldston of San Jose State University in California and Cem Yildirim of Bo_gazigi University in Istanbul, Turkey. Goldston and Yildirim had developed techniques for studying the size of gaps between primes, work that culminated last year in a dramatic breakthrough in the subject--or so they thought. Closer inspection, by Granville among others, undercut their main result (Science, 4 April 2003, p. 32; 16 May 2003, p. 1066), although Goldston and Yildirim have since salvaged a less far-ranging finding. But some of the mathematical machinery that these two had set up proved to be tailor-made for Green and Tao's research. They had actually proven exactly what we needed, Tao says. The paper, which has been submitted to the Annals of Mathematics, is many months from acceptance. The problem with a quick assessment of it is that it straddles two areas, Granville says. All of the number theorists who've looked at it feel that the number-theory half is pretty simple and the ergodic theory is daunting, and the ergodic theorists who've looked at it have thought that the ergodic theory is pretty simple and the number theory is daunting. Even if a mistake does show up, Granville says, they've certainly succeeded in bringing in new ideas of real import into the subject. And if the proof
Re: Word Of the Subgenius...
If you think those are anarchist ideas, you've missed the main ideas about anarchy and anarcho-capitalism and such. Anarchism isn't about getting rid of the _current_ people in charge, it's about getting rid of _having_ people be in charge. Well, May seemed to try to make the case that all of those useles eaters were in large part responsible for the very existence of the state, and that collapse of the state meant the inevitable downfall of huge numbers of minorities (why he focused on them as opposed to white trailer trash I don't know). But he was definitely advocating that racist viewpoints fall naturally out of a crypto-anarchic approach. -TD
RE: Blinky Rides Again: RCMP suspect al-Qaida messages
Oh, general cluelessness doesn't suprise me. What suprises me is that the writer of the original article seemed to believe that Stego was a new development. Those cops you taught...do you think they were stupid enough to assume that, because this was their first time hearing about Stego, that Al Qaeda was only starting to use it right then? (I assume the answer is 'no'...they'll be smart enough at least to recognize that this was something around for a while that they were unaware of). NSA folks, on the other hand, I would assume have a soft version of a Variola Stego suitcase...able to quickly detect the presence of pretty much any kind of stego and then perform some tests to determine what kind was used. I bet they've been aware of Al Qaeda stego for a long time...that's probably the kind of thing they are very very good at. In the end it probably comes down to Arabic, however, and that language has many built-in ways of deflecting the uninitiated. I'd bet even NSA has a hard time understanding an Arabic language message, even after they de-stego and translate it. -TD From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Blinky Rides Again: RCMP suspect al-Qaida messages Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 12:19:55 -0600 (CST) On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: What a fuckin' joke. You mean they're only now realizing that Al-Qaeda could use stego? Do they think they're stupid? Nah...certainly the NSA are fully prepared to handle this. I doubt it's much of a development at all to those in the know. -TD As recently as two years ago, I had a classroom full of cops (mostly fedz from various well-known alphabets) who knew *nothing* about stego. And I mean *NOTHING*. They got a pretty shallow intro: here's a picture, and here's the secret message inside it, followed by an hour of theory and how-to's using the simplest of tools - every single one of them was just blown away. Actually, that's not true - the Postal Inspectors were bored, but everyone _else_ was floored. While the various alphabets have had a few years to get up to speed, the idea that they are still 99% ignorant does not surprise me in the least. //Alif -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF Civilization is in a tailspin - everything is backwards, everything is upside down- doctors destroy health, psychiatrists destroy minds, lawyers destroy justice, the major media destroy information, governments destroy freedom and religions destroy spirituality - yet it is claimed to be healthy, just, informed, free and spiritual. We live in a social system whose community, wealth, love and life is derived from alienation, poverty, self-hate and medical murder - yet we tell ourselves that it is biologically and ecologically sustainable. The Bush plan to screen whole US population for mental illness clearly indicates that mental illness starts at the top. Rev Dr Michael Ellner
RE: primes as far as the eye can see, discrete continua
What about where N=1? I don't understand. You can only have an infinite number (or number of progressions) where the number of numbers in a number is inifinite. -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: primes as far as the eye can see, discrete continua Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 19:45:24 -0800 Saw in a recent _Science_ that Ben Green of Cambridge proved that for any N, there are an infinite number of evenly spaced progressions of primes that are N numbers long. He got a prize for that. Damn straight. Now back to the decline of the neo-roman empire...
RE: Supremes need hanging
Yes, this batch seems to sway in the collective wind. Which actually suprised me...despite the source of appointment of Suter, I remember reading at the time about his track record somewhere and was actually under the impression that he was a very 'conservative' interpreter of Constitutional law...and by conservative I mean really does not stray from clear precedent unless it's called for...he actually seemed to have some kind of weird integrity. But I was wrong. Where's the coal... -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Supremes need hanging Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 20:16:54 -0800 At 07:37 PM 12/7/04 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/v-pfriendly/story/259512p-222307c.html Klan's unmasked for city protests The hoods hiding under the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan will have to show their faces if they want to protest in New York City, the Supreme Court decided yesterday. Anonymity is as american as the BoR. The supremes need thermal chimney ascension for their deriliction of sworn duty.
Re: Word Of the Subgenius...
But once in awhile, even amidst the crazy rantings about useless eaters and ovens, he'll toss out something that shows some deep, coherent thought about some issue in a new and fascinating direction. Agreed. Though even his racisism seemed to have some kind of half-baked thought behind it. Or at least, baked just enough to deflect most of those not fully prepared to assail it. -TD From: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Word Of the Subgenius... Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 09:17:30 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: Steve Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Dec 7, 2004 1:26 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Word Of the Subgenius... ... Tim May has probably gotten all strange in the last few years, living in his remote hilltop home, waiting to see the end that will not come since the y2k crisis turned out to be nothing more than a financial boondoggle for the companies that believed all the hype. Maybe, maybe not. The thing I always find interesting and annoying about Tim May's posts is that he's sometimes making really clearly thought out, intelligent points, and other times spewing out nonsense so crazy you can't believe it's coming from the same person. It's also clear he's often yanking peoples' chains, often by saying the most offensive thing he can think of. But once in awhile, even amidst the crazy rantings about useless eaters and ovens, he'll toss out something that shows some deep, coherent thought about some issue in a new and fascinating direction. ... Steve --John
Re: Word Of the Subgenius...
Bonus question: Who is the author of the origin question that inspired the copycats? Well, I remember May posting it but I don't think he was the ultimate author. I suspect whoever posted it recently in fact dug it out of the archives and re-posted it, a particularly lame maneuver if so. OR...perhaps ole' May is gettin' a little lonely out there! -TD
Re: Word Of the Subgenius...RAHWEH
Random racist ranting is also required. There are some racist assholes currently posting on cpunks, but none have quite the May flavor. Yes, in comparison with May they are basically poseurs. Oh, and in light of the Bob conversation, shouldn't we be describing 'RAH' (a Bob) as 'RAHWEH'? -TD
RE: Liquidnet: Anonymous institutional transactions
Holy Shit! I point I made back in the May days was that a Blacknet able to accept anonymous trades would really have a major impact on the business world. Imagine getting early wind of some acquisition and then you could start trading on that? That would eliminate a lot of the bullshit 'arbitrage' such deals are often made out of, based on the rest of the world not knowing. For the deal to make sense, it could only survive on the basis of really being accretive to both companies. This can't possibly be too anonymous, though. But one wonders if clever endpoints might be able to augment Liquidnet's own anonymity a bit! -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Liquidnet: Anonymous institutional transactions Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 18:48:55 -0500 http://www.liquidnet.com/company/ The Company Why Use Liquidnet Membership News and Stats Careers Contact Us About Liquidnet :: Senior Management :: Board of Directors :: Liquidnet Europe Liquidnet is successfully redefining institutional trading. Launched in April 2001, Liquidnet was built exclusively for institutional trading. After only three years, we are now ranked as one of the top 14 largest NYSE institutional brokers and the 15th largest NASDAQ broker* respectively. The Liquidnet global community has grown to represent more than $6.8 trillion in equity assets under management. Liquidnet's unique model brings natural buyers and sellers together and enables them to anonymously negotiate trades among each other, without intermediaries or information leaks. Liquidnet's institutional Members trade large blocks of small-, mid- and large-cap stocks easily, efficiently and with little to no market impact costs. The result is the industry-leading average execution size of more than 42,000 shares since inception, with 50% of all executions done at the mid-point and 92% done within the spread. Liquidnet, Inc. is a registered broker/dealer, headquartered in New York City. Liquidnet Europe Limited is regulated by the Financial Services Authority and is headquartered in London. * Based on Plexus Group analysis (03Q3 - 04Q2) November 29, 1999 Liquidnet Holdings, Inc. founded January 10, 2000 Liquidnet, Inc. founded April 10, 2001 Liquidnet launches in the United States with 38 Member firms April 16, 2001 Liquidnet completes first week of trading with an average execution size of 86,000 shares June 12, 2001 Liquidnet Europe Ltd. founded October 23, 2001 Liquidnet executes its 500-millionth share March 8, 2002 Liquidnet signs first European Member April 4, 2002 Liquidnet executes its one-billionth share June 3, 2002 100th Member firm goes live August 2002 Liquidnet recognized by Plexus Group as one of the largest institutional brokers for NYSE-listed stocks November 2002 Liquidnet recognized by Plexus Group as one of the largest institutional brokers for NASDAQ stocks November 20, 2002 Liquidnet Europe launches, providing fund managers with access to six global markets - UK, French, German, Swiss, Dutch and US December 31, 2002 Liquidnet ends year with 136 live Members and completes strongest quarter to date, executing 426 million shares January 30, 2003 Liquidnet executes its two-billionth share October 14, 2003 Liquidnet executes its largest single US equities trade to date -- 2.83 million shares. November, 2003 Liquidnet ranked as the 5th and 10th least expensive trading venue for NYSE and Nasdaq stocks, respectively, by Elkins/McSherry. December 16, 2003 Value traded in Liquidnet since inception reaches $100 billion. December 22, 2003 Liquidnet breaks its single day record for US volume, executing nearly 29.5 million shares. January, 2004 Liquidnet ranked as one of the Top 20 largest NYSE brokers in the Plexus Group universe of 1,500 brokers. January 21, 2004 July 29, 2004 October 21, 2004 Liquidnet breaks its single day record for US volume, executing more than 30 million shares. Liquidnet brings anonymous block trading to Canada Liquidnet Honored as the 5th Fastest Growing Private Company in America by INC. MAGAZINE and THE fastest growing private Financial Services company. -- - 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: Tenet calls for Internet security
The national press, including United Press International (UPI), were excluded from yesterday's event, at Mr. Tenet's request, organizers said. I guess that summarizes his 'vision' better than anything he actually said. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Tenet calls for Internet security Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 20:57:27 -0500 Now... Try not to laugh, here... MMMGGGPPPFBWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Heh... Yes, well... Sorry about that. Carry on. Cheers, RAH --- http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041201-114750-6381r The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Tenet calls for Internet security By Shaun Waterman UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Published December 2, 2004 Former CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called a potential Achilles' heel. I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability, he told an information-technology security conference in Washington, but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control. The former CIA director said telecommunications -- and specifically the Internet -- are a back door through which terrorists and other enemies of the United States could attack the country, even though great strides have been made in securing the physical infrastructure. The Internet represents a potential Achilles' heel for our financial stability and physical security if the networks we are creating are not protected, Mr. Tenet said. He said known adversaries, including intelligence services, military organizations and non-state actors, are researching information attacks against the United States. Within the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security has the lead role in protecting the Internet from terrorism. But the department's head of cyber-security recently quit amid reports that he had clashed with his superiors. Mr. Tenet, who retired in July as director of the CIA after seven years, warned that al Qaeda remains a sophisticated group, even though its first-tier leadership largely has been destroyed. It is undoubtedly mapping vulnerabilities and weaknesses in our telecommunications networks, he said. Mr. Tenet pointed out that the modernization of key industries in the United States is making them more vulnerable by connecting them with an Internet that is open to attack. The way the Internet was built might be part of the problem, he said. Its open architecture allows Web surfing, but that openness makes the system vulnerable, Mr. Tenet said. Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said. Mr. Tenet called for industry to lead the way by establishing and enforcing security standards. Products need to be delivered to government and private-sector customers with a new level of security and risk management already built in. The national press, including United Press International (UPI), were excluded from yesterday's event, at Mr. Tenet's request, organizers said. -- - 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: Optical Tempest FAQ
Well, the first one's a little Hey this is scary give us some grant money-ish. This has zero impact on real-world telecom systems in terms of detecting actual payloads BUT detecting some of the management channel info (via the external DS1 management channel) could actually matter in some cases. I'm still waiting for someone to put a trojan into the telecom control channels causing them to randomly reprovision themselves. That could have an impact that far exceeds mere PR... -TD From: Chris Kuethe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Chris Kuethe [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Optical Tempest FAQ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 23:39:33 -0700 On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 01:01:57 -0500, Dave Emery [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... In fact the greater hazard may sometimes be from red, yellow or green LEDs on the front of equipment that are directly driven with real data in order to allow troubleshooting - recovering data from one of those at a distance using a good telescope may be possible and most people don't think of the gentle flicker of the LED as carrying actual information that could be intercepted. Like this classic. Was just as much fun to reread as it was the first time. :) http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:YdHPMAbPMeAJ:www.applied-math.org/optical_tempest.pdf+black+tape+over+modem+lights+tempesthl=enclient=firefox http://www.applied-math.org/optical_tempest.pdf -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?
RE: Optical Tempest FAQ
Interesting. Contrary to what I thought (or what has been discussed here), only a 'scalar' of detected light is needed, not a vector. In other words, merely measuring overall radiated intensity over time seems to be sufficient to recover the message. This means that certain types of diffusive materials will not necessarily mitigate against this kind of eavesdropping. However, his discussion would indicate that the various practical concerns and limitations probably limit this to very niche-type applications...I'd bet that it's very rare when such a trechnique is both needed as well as useful, given the time, the subject and the place. -TD From: Sunder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Optical Tempest FAQ Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 10:27:04 -0500 (est) http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/emsec/optical-faq.html Along with tips and examples. Enjoy, and don't use a CRT in the dark. :-) --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. -
Re: geographically removed? eHalal
Variola: By Halal (are you getting this term confused with that for Islamic version of Kosher? I think the name is similar but not this) Do you mean that system of monetary transfers whereby local services are exchanged in place of direct cash transfer? (In other words, if I want to sell something abroad the money is actually wired to a 3rd party who appears to the authorities not to have anything to do with any purchasing...this person then obtains services or perhaps local cash in lieu of the money he transferred. The system seems to operate largely on trusted intermediaries, along with a series of barters...) Well, this system may technically be illegal, but it's done all the time in the wilds of Queens, both by middle easterners as well as South Americans, and I see little that could be done to stop it. Even the feds can't keep up with bugging all the Dominican brothels on Roosevelt Avenue. It is, in effect, an analog Blacknet, though transactions are of course probably limited to the low 5-figure range without some kind of big tipoff, but I'm sure the locals are fully aware of the threshold values. The only way are true police state could crack down would be to nuke Queens, which they might actually allow Al Qaeda to do if they chose to (seems like Al Qaeda could come in handy for a lot of things...Oh, where did that baddie bin Laden go...guess we'll never find him...) -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: geographically removed? eHalal Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:36:39 -0800 At 10:33 PM 11/28/04 -0500, Steve Furlong wrote: I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. Halal was deemed a terrorist weapon, and contrary to the treasury's policies, game over.
RE: Jewish wholy words..
No. Technically speaking, only the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible, written by Moses) are technically scripture...everything else is commentary. -TD From: Nomen Nescio [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Jewish wholy words.. Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 19:30:05 +0100 (CET) Is it true that the jews have these texts in their scriptures? #1. Sanhedrin 59a: Murdering Goyim (Gentiles) is like killing a wild animal. #2. Aboda Sarah 37a: A Gentile girl who is three years old can be violated. #3. Yebamoth 11b: Sexual intercourse with a little girl is permitted if she is three years of age. #4. Abodah Zara 26b: Even the best of the Gentiles should be killed. #5. Yebamoth 98a: All gentile children are animals. #6. Schulchan Aruch, Johre Deah, 122: A Jew is forbidden to drink from a glass of wine which a Gentile has touched, because the touch has made the wine unclean. #7. Baba Necia 114, 6: The Jews are human beings, but the nations of the world are not human beings but beasts.
RE: Quantum key distribution
Andrew Hammond, a vice president of MagiQ, estimates that the market for QKD systems will reach $200 million within a few years, and one day could hit $1 billion annually. What an idiot. OK, it's basically a marketing guy's job to make up all kinds of BS, but any reasonably comptetant marketing guy knows to make up BS that someone will actually BELIEVE. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Quantum key distribution Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 12:29:31 -0500 http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-10/iss-6/p22.html - The Industrial Physicist ?Quantum key distribution Data carrying photons may be transmitted by laser and detected in such a way that any interference will be noted by Jennifer Ouellette pdf version of this article Computing's exponential increase in power requires setting the bar always higher to secure electronicdata transmissions from would-be hackers. The ideal solution would transmit data in quantum bits, but truly quantum information processing may lie decades away. Therefore, several companies have focused on bringing one aspect of quantum communications to market- quantum key distribution (QKD), used to exchange secret keys that protect data during transmission. Two companies, MagiQ Technologies (New York, NY) and ID Quantique (Geneva, Switzerland), have released commercial QKD systems, and several others plan to enter the marketplace within two years. Figure 1. When blue light is pumped into a nonlinear crystal, entangled photon pairs (imaged here as a red beam with the aid of a diode laser) emerge at an angle of 30 to the blue beam, and the beams are sent into single-mode fibers to be detected. Because the entangled photons know each other, any interference will result in a mismatch when the two beams are compared. (University of Vienna/Volker Steger) There is a continuous war between code makers and code breakers, says Alexei Trifonov, chief scientist with MagiQ. Cryptologists devise more difficult coding schemes, only to have them broken. Quantum cryptography has the potential to end that cycle. This is important to national security and modern electronic business transactions, which transmit credit card numbers and other sensitive information in encrypted form. The Department of Defense (DoD) currently funds several quantum-cryptography projects as part of a $20.6 million initiative in quantum information. Globally, public and private sources will fund about $50 million in quantum-cryptography work over the next several years. Andrew Hammond, a vice president of MagiQ, estimates that the market for QKD systems will reach $200 million within a few years, and one day could hit $1 billion annually. Key types QKD was proposed roughly 20 years ago, but its premise rests on the formulation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in 1927. The very act of observing or measuring a particle-such as a photon in a data stream-changes its behavior (Figure 1). Any moving photon can have one of four orientations: vertical, horizontal, or diagonal in either direction. A standard laser can be modified to emit single photons, each with a particular orientation. Would-be hackers (eavesdroppers in cryptography parlance) can record the orientations with photon detectors, but doing so changes the orientation of some photons-and, thus, alerts the sender and receiver of a compromised transmission. An encryption key-the code needed to encrypt or decipher a message-consists of a string of random bits. Such a key is useless unless it is completely random, known only to the communicating parties, and changed regularly. In the one-time-pad approach, the key length must equal the message length, and it should be used only once. In theory, this makes the encrypted message secure, but problems arise in practice. In the real world, keys must be exchanged by a CD-ROM or some other physical means, which makes keys susceptible to interception. Reusing a key gives code breakers the opportunity to find patterns in the encrypted data that might reveal the key. Historically, the Soviet Union's accidental duplication of one-time-pad pages allowed U.S. cryptanalysts to unmask the spy Klaus Fuchs in 1949. Rather than one-time-pad keys, many data-transmission security systems today use public-key cryptography, which relies on very long prime numbers to transmit keys. A typical public-key encryption scheme uses two keys. The first is a public key, available to anyone with access to the global registry of public keys, and the message is encrypted with it. The second is private, accessible only to the receiver. Both keys are needed to unscramble a message. The system's primary weakness is that a powerful computer could use the public key to learn the private key (see The Industrial Physicist, August 2000, pp. 29-33). Quantum key distribution A key distributed using quantum cryptography would be almost impossible to steal because QKD systems continually and randomly generate new
RE: geographically removed?
Variola wrote... Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. This is why there are carnivore boxen aplenty. The knurls on the police-state knob are getting worn, it is cranked up so frequently now. Useful resistance comes from asymmetric physical feedback such as experienced in Lebanon, S. Arabia, off the coast of Yemen, in a few embassies somewhere in africa, in the trains of Madrid, Okla city, and some degenerate US east coast cities a few years back, the latter indicating that geographically removed is less important, and the only incident that Joe Voter is likely to remember. Until the next one, of course; Joe's buffer is not terribly capacious. Well, perhaps. Then again, consider though primordial blacknet systems currently labeled P2P. They don't currently present a big problem to Group-of-Bandits X, but it does cause some of their bigger enablers (ie, the record industry) to bitch a bit. As a result, they are turning up the pressure slowly, but only just fast enough for such systems to proliferate while evolving a nice protective coating (despite all the recent lawsuits). By the time these systems represent a destabilising influence (ie, you can pay someone for a file over anonymous swarmed P2P) it'll be too late. In short, Group-of-Bandits X is a group of bandits precisely because they couldn't survive otherwise...ie, they're not smart enough. They'll eventually go the way of the dodo, though they can prolong their exodus somewhat through drastic means. The OBL route, however, does seem to have its merits and is historically quite effective (Algeria, Iraq...). A little too messy for my tastes, however, and blowing up the building I work in won't be worth the number of virgins I'd have coming to me. -TD
Re: geographically removed?
Steve Furlong wrote... I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. The sellers pay the intermediary, who takes a piece of the action to act basically as an insurer of the vendor's good faith. If there's a problem with the service or merchandise and the vendor won't make good, the intermediary is responsible for making the buyer whole. There's nothing particularly unreasonable about this, from a risk persepctive. In fact, credit card companies already work like this more or less...they can afford to protect cardmembers from Fraud precisely because of the economies of scale. As for the card industry itself, it is already reputation based. People pay up not because they're afraid to get arrested or litigated against, but because they want to preserve their Reputation with the Rating agencies (real deadbeats don't care about their reputation, and most of the money they spend is never recovered.) -TD
RE: Oswald
Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he offed the sex drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did. I dunno...seems like the man had his priorities straight, at leastimagine bonin Marilyn Monroe high to the gills on painkillers and speed...come ON, gotta love the guy. Funny, though, how the American public idolizes and fetishizes that guy...George W would have slaughtered commie JFK in the last couple of elections. It seems we can't get enough of star-spangled myths. Anyone seen Born on the 4th Of July? The opening scene of a pastel American flag waving in the breeze is absolutely brilliant, given the rest of the film (I'm thinking this is John Young's favorite film!) -TD
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
James A Donald wrote... What made it a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war, but diminuition of civil war. The problem was that the Taliban was damn near victorious. If the US government had maintained the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11 Well, that's not particularly convincing. First of all, even during the Taliban's reign there were plenty of warlords that ran some regions of Afghanistan. More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door to the like of the Taliban, as long as they offer some kind of peace. The period between Soviet withdrawal and the Taliban was uglier than practically anything imaginable...one batch of warlords would take over, killing the men loyal to the previous batch and raping the women, and then another batch would take over and do the same thing. When the Taliban came in to power, they seemed to offer some stability, albeit at a price. And I'd bet a lot of people in the shoes of the Afghanis would have been willing to pay that price. Such is the long-term consequence of an ill-thought out invasion by the US in Iraq OOPS I mean the Soviets in Afghanistan. They bet that all their power and their ultimate inevitable desitny as freers of the workers of the world should easily overcome the local will to control their own destiny (plus a few stingers of course). -TD
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
James A Donald wrote... And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? And the answer is: 9/11 sucked. Oh wait, I guess I have to explain that. After the Soviets were pushed out of Afghanistan the place became a veritable breeding ground for all sorts of virulent strains of Islam, warlords, and so on. Iraq would likely denigrate into the same, eventually launching similarly nice little activities. -TD
Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally fall, then the cold war will be over. That war was won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) by the inherent failures of communism itself, not because the US Government was some kind of champion of freedom. As I've gone to pains to point out, I think a good (though not unassailable case) can be made showing that the US probably slowed down free market development in certain places. Hell--East Asian communism might rightfully be blamed on the outcome of World War I and the need to create some kind of anti-western hegemony. A libertarian might possibly look at the US Government and it's legions of Conservatives as being a sort of tag-along (at best) or leech, grabbing a ride on the back of certain industries and (of course) championing them against other technologies (eg, defense, oil, autos...). Of course, neocons will turn red at the notion that they promote a very strong form of government intervention into private industry... As for... Heck, when China's current gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're already starting to have private property. So much for communal ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be in the coffin. Don't count it. Capitalism, like communism, will likely take on it's own particularly Chinese flavor when hitting the high Refractive Index of that culture. China's population will near 1.5 Billion before it starts to shrink again, so don't look for real estate to be a perpetual contract for a century or two, if ever. Private Property in general (outside of real estate) has of course existed in China for decades now. -TD
Re: Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy)
James Donald wrote... Bullshit. Everyone knew that which the regime decided they must know. And if true, which I very much doubt, you are not only arguing that Qin's legalism was a different thing than communism/nazism, This is where the Simplistic Grid comes in. The momentum of Chinese culture will oalways outlive any short-term despotism, and the Chinese on many levels know this. When it comes to China, even some of the Han-dominated areas are incredibly difficult to get to, and when you start talking about Southern parts of Yunnan, most parts of Tibet, and places like Qinhai and Xinjiang, the idea of a lightening-fast and efficient despotism starts to sound dubious. Indeed, these areas are only barely under Beijing control today. It's also a main reason why Burma and the Golden triangle find it very easy to ship heroin overland through China to Hong Kong rather than go at it via a more direct route. When, during the great leap forward, Peking commanded unreasonable grain requisitions from the provinces, *all* provinces contributed, and *all* provinces suffered starvation. Anhui and central China suffered far more than other parts of China. I'd guess that 70% of the deaths due to starvation during 58 to about 64 occurred in that part of Central China. The obvious reasons were: 1) Proximity and easy communicatuion with Beijing, and 2) Large tracts of previously arable land (ie, you don't bother exerting despotism over an area that can't do much anyway). you are also arguing that Mao's communism was a different thing than Stalin's communism. No, I am arguing that Chinese communism was a different thing from Soviet commusim, for the precise reason that the weight of Chinese history would be fairly quick to erase Chinese commusim. Any China hand could have predicted exactly that, and indeed that's precisely what happened. Our decision to back the far-more corrupt Chiang regime all the way to 1973 or whenever, was a major blunder, if for no other reason then to accelerate the isolation of the Soviets. Mao would have been very hip to the manuever, and I bet would have welcomed it (The Soviets were never very useful to the Chinese communists). In other words, even a smart rabid anti-communist should have recognized that backing Mao's Bandits was at some point obvious, but most were far too blinded by their ideology to see that. The same thing's happening with Iraq and Iran. Iran's making overtures that we consistently ignore because were too darned dumb and power-oriented to see the opportunity. -TD Both used ruthless terror to establish extraordinary control over a far flung empire that had formerly been ruled by relatively light hand, and then used that extraordinary control to extort extraordinary resources from the peasantry. The difference between Stalin's frequent references to the poor peasants (who were supposedly carrying out the liquidation of the kulaks in revolutionary zeal) and Mao's similar references is merely that Mao was more thorough in creating the simulation of a mass movement. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG xGYJrVMJ5Hx9Dgyly/Lt7Vk6TKJAugVqAcp3+7mq 4rvMXJ51mdk2UqHkU40M50T9s5aAMzX99JW0hQGT/
RE: Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red
That's the thing that sucks. The US's Liberals are almost as fascisistic as the clouds of middle-counrty hillbillies. I figured that out as a Brooklyn HS teacher when I realized the true meaning of an oft-repeated phrase of the time: STAY IN SCHOOL. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 22:16:19 -0500 Mostly because I sent his Declaration of Expulsion here... It's entirely possible that, absent a physical threat to keep the country together, we have all the necessary ingredients to go the way of the Soviet Union someday, and devolve. Cheers, RAH -- http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?print=yesid=5750 HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red by Mike Thompson Posted Nov 12, 2004 Twenty-four hours after the dramatic U.S. presidential-election results were validated, Human Events Online published my essay (which I had been hatching for two weeks), Declaration of Expulsion, a slightly satiric proposal to kick out of the Union the 12 most liberal states, either to join the People's Socialist Dominion of Canada or, on their own, go straight to Hell. Within hours (and I do not claim that my piece was a causal effect), liberal voices formed into an enthusiastic chorus for roughly the same idea: Democrat gurus Lawrence O'Donnell and Robert Beckel, as angry talking heads on two separate TV news shows, taunted the newly solid-Republican South (all states of which actually are overfed welfare clients of the affluent, heavily taxed North, huffed O'Donnell) to secede, for the second time since 1860; The reliably opportunistic Internet erupted with I Seceded T-shirts for sale, plus the mocking map of a 31-Red-state nation called Jesusland, and An e-mail rapidly circulating among liberals touted creation of the country of American Coastopia, whose upscale Atlantic- and Pacific-rim inhabitants joyfully would (what else?) fly over Fly-Over Country to get away from rednecks in Oklahoma and homophobic knuckle-draggers in Wyoming. Then came confirmation of the growing fascination for dividing what once was one nation indivisible, when Manhattan-based liberal talk-show host Alan Colmes invited me to be a guest for 15 minutes on his late-night radio program. My on-air 15 minutes of fame would mushroom into 45 minutes of defamation: Why are you so intolerant of liberals? asked Herr Colmes, who apparently had forgotten that he was supposed to ask me when I had stopped beating my wife. I explained to him factually that more liberals than conservatives publicly are advocating dissolution of the Union, and that the issue, in either event, is not intolerance but rather insolubility--that is, there is no middle ground, no compromise possible on most CultureWar issues. That's exactly what intolerance is! asserted the intolerant talkmeister. Listen carefully, Alan, I urged. If you want Congress to pass a 10-dollar minimum wage and I want an eight-dollar cap, it's possible for us to compromise at nine dollars. But how do we compromise on abortion? Shall we kill only half as many babies? How do we compromise on gay marriage? Shall we allow a lesbian to marry a lesbian but forbid a man to marry a man? There are too many of these insoluble differences between the Red states and the Blue states. I can't believe how intolerant you are! screamed Alan. Soon a self-identified lesbian called in breathlessly to confess intense fear of intolerant Red states. (Why, I thought, was she phoning a radio show in the middle of the night instead of her local 911 operator?) The perceptive host again verbally pounced on me, his guest, who safely lives in the brimstone warmth of Red Florida: Do you think, Mr. Thompson, that this woman is evil or immoral? Alan, I have no idea who the woman is, I answered. I have just met her anonymously over the phone. All I know is that she has made a bad choice of lifestyle, because lesbians have a documented higher rate of alcoholism, a higher rate of mental problems and a higher rate of suicide than heterosexual women. Alan, who apparently is aurally challenged, now was in the full-boost stage of liberal ballistics: What do you mean, this woman RAPES other women? You are filled with hate! How DARE you say such a thing! Rape? I asked, flabbergasted. I said RATE--as in 'suicide rate.' RATE--as in 'alcoholism rate'! Please listen to me, Alan. Is your phone bad? With no apology to his mystified guest, Alan disconnected the lesbian's call and radically changed the subject: Do you think John Kerry is a traitor? Yes, Alan. One who commits treason, I observed coolly, by definition is a traitor. Kerry went to Paris and consulted with our Communist Vietnam enemies, not with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Subsequently, Kerry publicly endorsed the outrageous Communist 'peace plan,' not his own country's plan. In uniform, Kerry during the
Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy)
My delusion is evidently widely shared: I did a google search for legalism. http://tinyurl.com/56n2m The first link, and many of the subsequent links, equated legalism with totalitarianism, or concluded that legalism resulted in totalitarianism. Wow! A GOOGLE search did you say? Well I'm convinced. When a provincial commander marched fresh conscripts from place A to place B, he would do it in the time alloted, and be there on the date specified, or the Ch'in emperor would cut his head off. Well kind of. But even Qin Shr Huang Di knew that you couldn't force-march soldiers from Xian to Suzhou in 4 days. And the remotest parts of China at that time (the borders are far larger now, of course) weren't any closer than a month or two, no matter what the orders. (Qin Shr Huang probably was no idiot...if it was physically impossible then he could not gain power.) It is the cut-his-head off bit, and the minute and overly detailed instructions concocted by a far away bureaucracy, that made it a modern totalitarianism. You seem to be thinking that I am arguing that Qin Shr Huang was not a despot. However, comparisons to modern totalitarian states are filled with Pol Pot's Cambodia was, like Ch'in dynasty china, decentralized in that they had twenty thousand separate killing fields, but was, like Ch'in dynasty china, highly centralized in that the man digging a ditch dug it along a line drawn by a man far away who had never seen the ground that was being dug. Well, this was difficult given that there were probably a good number of Qin Shr Huang's 'subjects' that didn't even know they were subjects until well after Qin Shr Huang died. Camodia is just a TEENSY bit smaller than China. Now the reason this excersize is not completely futile is that it's pretty clear that the notion of a Despot is very different from place to place. If push comes to shove, I of course will probabluy agree that most of the leaders you claim were despots probably were (though I'd bet my list is MUCH larger than yours). However, the nature, reasons, and byproducts of any particular instance of despotism very hugely...trying to pack them all into one simplistic grid is a formula for...Iraq II, come to think of it. Without understanding the details on their own terms, you're liable to get the locals a little upset with you if you try to force-fix their problems. -TD
Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks
Ah. A fellow knowledgeable China-hand. As far as I'm concerned, what Kung Tze does ca 5 BCE is really consdolidate and codify a large and diverse body of practices and beliefs under a fairly unified set of ethical ideas. In that sense, the Legalists were merely a refocusing of the same general body of mores, etc...into a somewhat different direction. One might call it a competing school to Kung Tze de Jiao Xun, but I would argue only because, at that time, Kung Tze authority as it's known today was by no means completely established. But in a sense, the early legalists weren't a HECK of a lot different from Confucious. As for Mr Donald's ramblings, the are in which they most closely approach reality is where filial obedience to the emperor is developed as an extension to his ethical system, but even here there are significant differences. For one, that filial loyalty is not portrayed as being ultimately political, but almost an extension of family (which is why the emperor was known as the Son of Heaven). Also, and this is fairly Cypherpunkish, unlike in the west the notin of Emperor was not ultimately a genetic one. That is, there's a Mandate of Heaven, and when the mandate of heaven is removed from an Emperor and his line, it's time to bum-rush his show, which was done on a regular basis in China. As for the Taoists this comment by Mr Donald is almost completely nonsensical. -TD From: Enzo Michelangeli [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 17:53:07 +0800 Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks Tyler Durden Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:56:08 -0800 Oh No Way overly simplistic. Also, you are comparing apples to bushels of wheat. [James Donald:] However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied themselves with pagans and wiccans... WOW! I'll skip the obvious comments and ask, In which centuries are you suggesting this applies? Now? If so, you are clearly NOT talking about mainland China. Please re-define the centuries/epochs during which you believe this to have been true, and then maybe I'll bother responding. Actually, that doesn't apply to any century. The ancient philosophical school that inspired Mao Zedong was actually Legalism, which provided the theoretic foundations to the absolutist rule of Qin Shi Huangdi (to whom Mao liked to compare himself). Mao, as many other Chinese reformers and writers of the early XX Century, hated Confucianism as symbol of China's ancien regime and decay. Which is why the campaign against Zhou En-lai of 1974-75 had an anti-Confucian theme (see e.g. the posters at http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/plpk.html ) Legalists and Qin Shi Huangdi himself were pretty nasty types, and their domination saw widespread confiscation of books, ridiculously harsh rule (arriving late to work could bring the death penalty!) and large-scale assassination or rivals: several Confucian philosophers were buried alive. The ruthless methods of the Qin dinasty ultimately resulted in its downfall: it only lasted one and half decade (221 - 206 BC), half of what Maoism did. By comparison, Confucianism was remarkably enlightened, which is also why Voltaire expressed a good opinion of it. Some Confucian philosophers like Mencius (372-289 AC) were early theorists of people's sovereignty: The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest [...] When a prince endangers the altars of the spirits of the land and grain, he is changed, and another appointed in his place. [Mencius, Book 7: http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/mencius27.html ] ...and of the right to tyrannicide, justified by the loss of legitimacy brought by misrule: The king said, 'May a minister then put his sovereign to death?' Mencius said, 'He who outrages the benevolence proper to his nature, is called a robber; he who outrages righteousness, is called a ruffian. The robber and ruffian we call a mere fellow. [Mencius, Book 1: http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/mencius04.html ] Enzo
Re: Cell Phone Jammer?
Well, I googled up a whole batch, but I was wondering if anyone had had their grubby little hands on one of these things and could recommend one. Also, I know the standards are very different in Europe as compared to the US. And also, does a 'regular' jammer also jam CDMA signals? (CDMA was actually invented by Heddy Lamar to avoid jamming!) -TD From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Gutmann) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cell Phone Jammer? Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:08:18 +1300 Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Anyone know from first-hand experience about cellphone jammers? I need... 1) A nice little portable, and Try the SH066PL, a nice portable that looks exactly like a cellphone, it's one of the few portables I know of. 2) A higher-powered one that can black out cell phone calls within, say, 50 to 100 feet of a moving vehicle. Google is your friend, there are tons of these around, with varying degrees of sophistication. These are definitely not portable, taking several amps at 6-12V to power them. None of them are exactly cheap. Peter.
Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks
Mr Donald's comments are almost completely nonsensical. or rather, they vaguely reflect some aspects of reality glimpsed through a really fucked up mirror while on bad crack. Probably Mr Donald is referring to something he saw on TV about China's response (or relative lack of response) to Japan's Meiji Restoration. China definitely did not respond to foregin ideas of industrialization and technology like the Japanese did. (Or at least, not at the time!) But it should be remembered that China did slowly and steadily evolve it's technology, and was well ahead of the western world until the Enlightenment. However, blaming the Chinese response to the Meiji restoration on officially unsanctioned thought illustrates a complete cluelessness about China. During that time Chinese intellectuals (which at the time meant practically anyone who had any kind of an education) regularly debating notions of Ti Yung, or the tension between what is esentially Chinese vs what's useful from the Western World (and by the 1860s it was starting to become clear that the west had some advanced ideas). This is far more than a top-down dictatorship in the Stalinist sense, just as the Cultural Revolution was for more than a bunch of teenagers obeying orders. In the end, a simplistic (though not clueless) argument could be made that China decided to remain Chinese rather than embrace what would have been a big disruption to their way of life. As it turned out, the 20th century (and the Japanese) more or less forced this new way of life on them. Hell..come to think of it, the closest precedent to the US invasion of Iraq might be the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. -TD From: ken [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: cypherpunks [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 15:40:27 + China stagnated because no thought other than official thought occurred. And when was this stagnation? And what were the reasons China did not stagnate for the previous thousand years?
Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks
That is the revisionist version - that china was a free and capitalist society, therefore freedom is not enough to ensure modernity and industrialization - a proposition as ludicrous as similar accounts of more recently existent despotic states. I can't tell if you're arguing me with or just yourself. You seem to equate disagreement with your assessment with a viewpoint that is completely opposite. To say that China was despotic would, on average, be accurate. But then again, one must remember that a form of despotism where the despots are months away is very different from modern forms of despotism. Today's China is in some ways similar to China during many dynasties. The emperor sleeps some insect with a big, fat stinger awakens him and then he gets mad, swats it, and then goes back to sleep. When the locals are fairly certain the emperor is sleeping soundly, they go about their business. Call it despotism if you want, but really it's essentially Chinese. -TD
Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks
Ah. This is an interesting point. The Qing were 1) Manchus (ie, not Han Chinese)...they were basically a foreign occupation that stuck around for a while; and 2) (Nominally Tibetan) Buddhists. Although they of course adhered to the larger Confucian notions, they in many ways deviated from mainstream Confucian beliefs. Also, you need to get more specific about WHEN during the Qing dynasty you believed this occurred. During the 19th century this is most certainly NOT true, and there are many famous naval battles that occurred between the British and the Chinese navies (in fact, the famous Stone Boat in the Summer palace was built using funds that were supposed to pay for real ships). But perhaps you meant ocean-going boat ownership by private individuals, and that is certainly something that was a BIG no-no during many epochs of Chinese civilization. And indeed, this is probably precisely why the Chinese had to defend themselves from British attack, rather than the other way around. But this has nothing to do with Confucianism per se, but is more directly related to good old traditional Chinese xenophobia. In the end, Chinese unification was probably a devil's bargain. It created a far more stable nation, but at the cost of human freedom. But it's not precisely like this was imposed on the populace from without...that it was successful at all in a place as large and remote as China is a testimony to Chinese dislike of Wai Guo culture. -TD From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: cypherpunks [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:11:09 -0800 -- ken wrote: And when was this stagnation? R.A. Hettinga wrote: Two words: Ming Navy For those who need more words, the Qing Dynasty forbade ownership or building of ocean going vessels, on pain of death - the early equivalent of the iron curtain. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Iw7Wkew4KTQWmS2lvvIMd7+fR3rWAWagnqJ4cF0k 4Ee4DcVaw474VQFVRrwVAXR4XZSXiaNtRuKXYpsBo
Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks
OK, Mr Donald. You clearly imagine the China of 2,500 years ago to operate like a modern 20th century nation-state. You need to rethink this, given a few simple facts: 1. There were no telephones during Confucious' time. 2. Several provinces of China are larger than all of Western Europe. Even a very high-priority message could take months to propagate. 3. Control' of China 2500 years ago was almost nonexistent. It was a geographically, ethnically, and linguistically diverse set of quasi-nation-states. To even imagine them to be anything like a modern nation state indicates you are extrapolating your bizarre little philosophical universe well beyond the breaking point. (But then again, that wasn't too hard!) 4. Event the early Ryu-Jya (Legalists) were nothing like what you imagine modern laws to be. In fact, their activity probably centers on creating an established set of standardized weights (ie, for weighing food and whatnot). Law in early China was NOTHING like what you imagine it to be, and was a higly decentralized affair. Indeed, modern China is rapidly 'deteriorated' into the same. As for... Which is a commie nazi way of saying that the the Confucians were not a heck of a lot different from the legalists - and the legalists set up an early version of the standard highly centralized totalitarian terror state, which doubtless appears quite enlightened to the likes of Tyler Durden. Again, you seem to visualize me as (-1) times yourself, or basically your old commie self. The point I continue to harp on (and that you fail to understand) is that, despite how well one may argue that one sees reality 'objectively' (and others don't), completely alternate viewpoints are possible and very often held by others throughout the world. An action like the US in Iraq (irregardless of what you believe the objective reality to be) is futile precisely because it only re-inforces the world view of the locals (ie, that the US is a giant, bullying oppressive regime that has stuck it's big dick into the holy land and needs force to remove it). In other words, perception is often reality, and until you (and others like you) accept that, then we'll continue to have bloodbath after bloodbath, initated by 'Christian' and 'Islamic' true believers alike. -TD From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:41:20 -0800 -- On 12 Nov 2004 at 9:51, Tyler Durden wrote: As far as I'm concerned, what Kung Tze does ca 5 BCE is really consdolidate and codify a large and diverse body of practices and beliefs under a fairly unified set of ethical ideas. In that sense, the Legalists were merely a refocusing of the same general body of mores, etc...into a somewhat different direction. One might call it a competing school to Kung Tze de Jiao Xun, but I would argue only because, at that time, Kung Tze authority as it's known today was by no means completely established. But in a sense, the early legalists weren't a HECK of a lot different from Confucious. Which is a commie nazi way of saying that the the Confucians were not a heck of a lot different from the legalists - and the legalists set up an early version of the standard highly centralized totalitarian terror state, which doubtless appears quite enlightened to the likes of Tyler Durden. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG k9Dumf7XMAhNCRDuxNd2aKQtrN2PqD2p2l3TDcjw 4SMVqw0LGnr3oZKU5v0WQpooJ4tKHdZvNiokzj2e9
Arafat's last thoughts...
Damn! Just when this scrabbly beard was finally starting to grow in!
RE: The Full Chomsky
Now I certainly don't agree with a lot of Chomsky, bvut this dude clearly has an axe to grind. For instance, After 9/11, he was more concerned about a fictitious famine in Afghanistan than about the nearly 3,000 incinerated in The World Trade Center attacks. What a fucking idiot. The 3000 were already dead, the 'famine' was about-to-be. A Chomsky nut could say Chomsky helped avert complete catastrophe (though there apparently was a decent amount of famine after all, but nothing like 3MM.) But this misses the point. Mr Donald will no doubt chime in yammering on about Chomsky's lies, but that also misses the point. Chomsky makes very strong arguments supporting a very different view of world events, and he often quotes primary and secondary sources. If you are going to disagree with Chomsky (and in many areas I do), then you've got to actually get off your lazy ass and look up the sources and do some f-in' homework. Only then are you qualified to refute him. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Full Chomsky Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:20:43 -0500 http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/c-e/chapin/2004/chapin111004.htm MensNewsDaily.com The Full Chomsky November 10, 2004 by Bernard Chapin Question: How could a linguist working as a college professor have omniscient insight regarding the inner-workings of the American government and exclusive knowledge concerning the hidden motivations of every government official in our nation's history? Answer: There's no way he could. Yet, such common sense does little to refute the fact that Noam Chomsky is one of the ten most quoted figures in the humanities. He has published screed after screed deconstructing American foreign policy positions and never has given any indication that his insinuations may somehow be limited by lack of connections or first hand evidence (or, in some cases, any evidence whatsoever). Since the 1960s, he has fully played the role of Wizard Professor and created an entire library's worth of pseudo-academic smog . Until recently, there have been few antidotes for his morass of accusations and allegations, but now we have The Anti-Chomsky Reader, edited by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, which offers purchasers the service of deconstructing the deconstructor. Once you've finished reading it, you'll be highly grateful as Chomsky's lies are so pervasive and counter-intuitive that it's a wonder anyone but the paranoid ever read him in the first place. The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a compilation of essays outlining and refuting the travesties that the M.I.T. linguist has passed off as truth. It does not confine itself to politics alone. Substantial space is given to the analysis of his scholarly publications in linguistics. These are addressed in two chapters called, A Corrupted Linguistics and Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me. In the area of his chosen field, many have given him an intellectual pass but this work does not. His linguistic ideas may be as spurious as his political tomes. All sources give him initial credit for his core academic assumption about the biological basis of grammar, but it seems that he has engaged in little in the way of scientifically verifiable work over the course of the last fifty years. Chomsky's creative terminology dazzles admirers but his new theories inevitably amount to nothing Overall, the compendium leaves no region of his reputation left unexamined. Anti-Americanism is central to his worldview. He never sees this nation as being superior to any other. At best, we mirror the pathologies of totalitarian states. We can discern this clearly in Stephen Morris's Whitewashing Dictatorship in Communist Vietnam and Cambodia. The author sums up Chomsky's fetish for defending the Vietnamese and Democratic Kampuchea aptly when he argues that, As a radical political ideologue, he is crippled by an intense emotional commitment to the cause of anti-Americanism. Operating on the principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend,' he wholeheartedly embraced the struggle of two of the world's most ruthlessly brutal regimes. Chomsky's hopes for mankind are vested in murderous revolutionaries and not in his own nation. It is our nation, and never the Khmer Rouge, which gives its citizens the freedom to vote, the freedom to trade, and, most obviously, the freedom to spread the type of sedition that Noam Chomsky has been disseminating for close to 40 years. He does not limit himself to Asia, however. The professor has constantly minimized the acts of many totalitarian states. Chomsky regarded Soviet control of eastern Europe, when compared to the American presence in Vietnam, as being practically a paradise We see a man who cares far more about Holocaust deniers than the six million who were exterminated in gas chambers or desolate Russian ravines. After 9/11, he was more concerned about a fictitious famine in Afghanistan than about the nearly 3,000 incinerated in
Cell Phone Jammer?
Anyone know from first-hand experience about cellphone jammers? I need... 1) A nice little portable, and 2) A higher-powered one that can black out cell phone calls within, say, 50 to 100 feet of a moving vehicle. -TD
RE: China's wealthy bypass the banks
Fascinating. And typical of the unusual Chinese seesaw that has occurred throuout the aeons between hyper-strict centralized control and something approaching a lite version of anarchy. There's no good mapping of this into Western ideas of fascism, marxism, and economics. Interesting too that there's a ganster base in Wenzhou. This is precisely where the young Chiang Kai Shek consolidated his power early on as a local gangster/warlord. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 16:10:52 -0500 http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/09/business/yuan.html China's wealthy bypass the banks By Keith Bradsher The New York Times Wednesday, November 10, 2004 WENZHOU, China The Wenzhou stir-fry is not a dish you eat. But it is giving indigestion to Chinese regulators and could prove troublesome to many investors worldwide, from New York money managers, Pennsylvania steelworkers and Midwestern farmers to Australian miners. Here in this freewheeling city at the forefront of capitalism in China, the dish is prepared when a group of wealthy friends pool millions of dollars' worth of Chinese yuan and put them into a hot investment like Shanghai real estate, where they are stirred and flipped for a hefty profit. The friends often lend each other large amounts on the strength of a handshake and a handwritten IOU. Both sides then go to an automated teller machine or bank branch to transfer the money, which is then withdrawn from the bank. Or sometimes they do it the old-fashioned way: exchanging burlap sacks stuffed with cash. The worry for Chinese regulators is that everyone in China will start cooking the Wenzhou stir-fry and do it outside the banking system. In the last few months, borrowing and lending across the rest of China is looking more and more like what is taking place in Wenzhou. The growth of this shadow banking system poses a stiff challenge to China's state-owned banks, already burdened with bad debt, and makes it harder for the nation's leaders to steer a fast-growing economy. The problem starts with China's low interest rates. More and more families with savings have been snubbing 2 percent interest on bank deposits for the double-digit returns from lending large amounts on their own. They lend to real estate speculators or to small businesses without the political connections to obtain loans from the banks. Not only is the informal lending rate higher, but the income from that lending, because it is semilegal at best, is not taxed. For fear of shame, ostracism and the occasional threat from thugs, borrowers are more likely to pay back these loans than those from the big banks. Tao Dong, chief China economist at Credit Suisse First Boston, calculates that Chinese citizens withdrew $12 billion to $17 billion from their bank deposits in August and September. The outflow turned into a flood last month, reaching an estimated $120 billion, or more than 3 percent of all deposits at the country's financial institutions. If the bank withdrawals are not stemmed in the months ahead, Tao warned, this potentially could be a huge risk for financial stability and even social stability. And with China now accounting for more than a quarter of the world's steel production and nearly a fifth of soybean production, as well as some of the largest initial public offerings of stock, any shaking of financial confidence here could ripple quickly through markets in the United States and elsewhere. For instance, if the steel girders now being lifted into place by hundreds of tower cranes in big cities across China are no longer needed, that would produce a worldwide glut of steel and push down prices. On Oct. 28, when China's central bank raised interest rates for one-year loans and deposits by a little more than a quarter of a percentage point, it cited a need to keep money in the banking system. Higher official rates should reduce external cycling of credit funds, the bank said in a statement. Eswar Prasad, the chief of the China division of the International Monetary Fund, expressed concern about bank withdrawals in a speech in Hong Kong three days before the central bank acted. The main Chinese banks have fairly substantial reserves, but they need those reserves to cover huge write-offs of bad debts some day. The hub of informal lending in China is here in Wenzhou, 370 kilometers, or 230 miles, south of Shanghai. Some of China's first experiments with the free market began here in the late 1970s, and the result has been a flourishing economy together with sometimes questionable business dealings. Depending on how raw they like their capitalism, people elsewhere in China describe Wenzhou as either a center of financial innovation or a den of loan sharks. But increasingly, Wenzhou is also a microcosm of the kind of large-scale yet informal financial dealings now going on across the
Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks
Oh No Way overly simplistic. Also, you are comparing apples to bushels of wheat. However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied themselves with pagans and wiccans... WOW! I'll skip the obvious comments and ask, In which centuries are you suggesting this applies? Now? If so, you are clearly NOT talking about mainland China. Please re-define the centuries/epochs during which you believe this to have been true, and then maybe I'll bother responding. -TD
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
JAT wrote... This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 million people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly awaiting their Trip Up The Chimneys. A...I need a cigarette. But I suspect it's far more likely that some large batch of USA-ians will end up having a surprise meeting with Allah as the result of a big ole stinky dirty bomb. And with Iraq II we'll have an endless supply of suicide bombers ready to deliver. The only drawback is that there's a solid chance it'll be set off a few hundred feet from where I work. Ah well. Dems da breaks. We had a good run. -TD _ On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
Holy Crap! Am I on crack? I think I agree with everything here! However... (James Donald wrote...) I cannot understand why you Bush haters are so excited about this election when on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Kerry promised to continue all Bush's policies only more effectually. That's basically why Kerry lost. He didn't seem to challenge anything Bush did, only the way he carried things out. That means the republicans successfully caused any debate to happen on their terms. Kerry's willingness to kowtow to the idea of a benevolent invasion of Iraq just made him seem like a scumbag to me, no matter what he actually believed. However, there are some things that Bush did that, symbolically at least, he should have been drummed out for. The fact that he won and with large voter turnout is more or less a vindication of his crimes. It means that Bush won't be afraid of doing even more, and then the countless mountains of hillbillies out there will watch his back and take the inevitable bullet or two for him. Well, every people deserve the government they get, and these hillbillies are no exception. Bush will dominate them, take away their rights, make them poor and scared, and they'll deserve every bit of it. (Where's a Tim May rant when you need one?) -TD _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Your source code, for sale
Oh, I assumed that this verification 'layer' was disjoint from the e$ layer. In other words, you might have a 3rd party e$ issuer, but after that they shouldn't be necessaryor, there's a different 3rd party for the verification process. I think that's reasonable, but of course one could argue what's the point if you already need a 3rd party for the e$. But I think that's a disjoint set of issues. -TD From: Ben Laurie [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Your source code, for sale Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 11:50:28 + Tyler Durden wrote: What if I block the outbound release the money message after I unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have usable product and you don't have usable money. Well, yes, but this would be a very significant step forward from the current situation. As t--infinity the vast majority of non-payments are going to be for the purpose of greed. If the payment is already 'gone', then you need a whole different set of motives for wanting to screw somebody even if you get nothing out of it. So in other words, you have at least solved the payment problem to the first order, with no 3rd party. With fancier mechanisms I would think you can solve it to 2nd order too. How do you make the payment already gone without using a third party? _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Your source code, for sale
Well, I guess once you need a 3rd party for the e$, it's only going to make sense that the issuer offer a value added service like you're talking about. A 3rd party verifier is probably going to be too costly. But I'm not 100% convinced that you HAVE TO have a 3rd party verifier, but it's looking like that's what's going to make sense 99% of the time anyway. -TD From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Hal Finney) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Your source code, for sale Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:51:24 -0800 (PST) Ben Laurie writes: How do you make the payment already gone without using a third party? Of course there has to be a third party in the form of the currency issuer. If it is someone like e-gold, they could do as I suggested and add a feature where the buyer could transfer funds irrevocably into an escrow account which would be jointly controlled by the buyer and the seller. This way the payment is already gone from the POV of the buyer and if the seller completes the transaction, the buyer has less incentive to cheat him. In the case of an ecash mint, a simple method would be for the seller to give the buyer a proto-coin, that is, the value to be signed at the mint, but in blinded form. The buyer could take this to the mint and pay to get it signed. The resulting value is no good to the buyer because he doesn't know the blinding factors, so from his POV the money (he paid to get it signed) is already gone. He can prove to the seller that he did it by using the Guillou-Quisquater protocol to prove in ZK that he knows the mint's signature on the value the seller gave him. The seller thereby knows that the buyer's costs are sunk, and so the seller is motivated to complete the transaction. The buyer has nothing to lose and might as well pay the seller by giving him the signed value from the mint, which the seller can unblind and (provably, verifiably) be able to deposit. Hal _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
RE: The Values-Vote Myth
He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror. In other words, he won because some hillbilly was afraid that the guy at the local 7-11 was going to blow up his chicked farm. Those of us living close enough to Ground Zero to smell it back in those days are apprarently less than convinced. So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict the American people as being complicit in the crime known as Operation Freedom? (I notice everyone forgot about that name.) -TD _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Your source code, for sale
Ben Laurie made a lot of useful points. However,... Simultaneous release is (provably?) impossible without a trusted third party. I don't think I believe this. Or at least, I don't think it's true to the extent necessary to make the original application impossible. Consider: I send you money for naked photos of Geri Ryan (that Borg chick with the ASS-KICKING hips). The money is encapsulated...you can its there, but you can't get at it. You send me encapsulated photos, perhaps with thumbnails on the outside. I see the thumbnails and click to send the pre-release. You see the pre-release arrive and click the release for the photos. My photo-bundle receives the releases and opens, and then shoots off a message that activates the pre-release on your end, giving you the cash. Is a 3rd party necessary here? I don't see it, but then again I could be wrong. -TD _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Your source code, for sale
What if I block the outbound release the money message after I unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have usable product and you don't have usable money. Well, yes, but this would be a very significant step forward from the current situation. As t--infinity the vast majority of non-payments are going to be for the purpose of greed. If the payment is already 'gone', then you need a whole different set of motives for wanting to screw somebody even if you get nothing out of it. So in other words, you have at least solved the payment problem to the first order, with no 3rd party. With fancier mechanisms I would think you can solve it to 2nd order too. -TD _ Check out Election 2004 for up-to-date election news, plus voter tools and more! http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx
Re: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue
I dunno...a lot of it made sense to me. You don't have to be a Commie in order to believe that someone ELSE believes there's a class war, and that they gotta keep us black folks po', or else we'll soon be having sex with their wives and daughters and competing with their sons for decent jobs. And as long as that somebody else believes there's a class war, they're probably going to vote like there's one, and try to dupe as many others as they can into voting like there's one, and that they're in the in-crowd. And then of course they'll open a military base everynow and then to demonstrate their largesse. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John Young [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 13:15:48 -0500 At 1:05 PM -0800 11/5/04, John Young wrote: Bob, you know this is against list rules, everybody knows what's right, stop blue-baiting, you fucking nazi. :-) 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' _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
RE: Your source code, for sale
Hum. So my newbie-style question is, is there an eGold that can be verified, but not accessed, until a 'release' code is sent? In other words, say I'm buying some hacker-ed code and pay in egold. I don't want them to be able to 'cash' the gold until I have the code. Meanwhile, they will want to see that the gold is at least there, even if they can't cash it yet. Is there a way to send a 'release' to an eGold (or other) payment? Better yet, a double simultaneous release feature makes thing even more interesting. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Your source code, for sale Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 19:24:43 -0500 http://www.adtmag.com/print.asp?id=10225 - ADTmag.com Your source code, for sale By Mike Gunderloy Well, maybe not yet. But what does the future hold for those who consider their source code an important proprietary asset? Halloween this year featured more scary stuff than just ghosts and ghouls. It was also the day (at least in the Pacific time zone) when the Source Code Club posted their second Newsletter in a public Usenet group. Despite their innocent-sounding name, the Source Code Club is a group of hackers who are offering to sell the source to commercial products. Their current menu of source code for sale looks like this: * Cisco Pix 6.3.1 - $24,000 * Enterasys Dragon IDS - $19.200 * Napster - $12,000 They also claim to have the source code for many other packages that they haven't announced publicly. If you are requesting something from a Fortune 100 company, there is a good chance that we might already have it, they say. Now, you might think this business is blatantly illegal, and no doubt it is. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible. They're posting their newsletter to Usenet, probably from an Internet cafe somewhere, so that's not traceable. They'll take orders the same way, and require orders to be encrypted using their PGP key, which is at least reasonably unbreakable at the moment. (As of this writing, I don't see any encrypted messages posted to the newsgroup they use, though). For payment, they're using e-gold, which claims to protect the anonymity of its account holders. Now, it seems reasonably likely that the Source Code Club folks will eventually get caught; going up against Cisco's resources displays at least a strong conviction of invulnerability. But even if these guys get caught, there are deeper issues here. Ten years ago, no one could have dreamed of trying to set up such a business. Ten years from now, advances in cryptography, more forms of currency circulating on the Internet, and improvements in anonymity software are likely to make it impossible to catch a similar operation. What will it mean when hacker groups can in fact do business this way with impunity? First, it's important to note that the ability to sell wares anonymously won't necessarily imply the ability to get inventory. Your best defense against having your own source code leaked is to pay careful attention to its physical security. These days, if I were developing an important commercial product, I'd make sure there was no path between my development or build machines and the public Internet. Hackers can do lots of things, but they still can't leap over physical disconnections. Second, I'd use software that prevents temporary storage devices (like USB sticks) from connecting to the network, and keep CD and DVD burners out of the development boxes as well. It's also worth making sure that your business doesn't depend entirely on source code. While the intellectual property that goes into making software is certainly a valuable asset, it shouldn't be your only asset. Think about ancillary services like training, support, and customization in addition to simply selling software. Finally, note that the Source Code Club business model is based on taking advantage of people wanting to know what's in the software that they purchase. About the pix code, they say Many intelligence agencies/government organizations will want to know if those 1's and 0's in the pix image really are doing what was advertised. You must ask yourself how well you trust the pix images you download to your appliance from cisco.com. Microsoft (among other companies) has demonstrated how to remove this particular fear factor from customers: share your source code under controlled circumstances. That doesn't mean that you need to adapt an open source model, but when a big customer comes calling, why not walk their engineers through how things work and let them audit their own areas of concern? Given the shifting landscape of intellectual property, and the threat from groups such as the Source Code Club, these are matters you need to think about sooner rather than later. Otherwise you may wake up some morning and find that your major asset has vanished without your even knowing it was in danger. Mike Gunderloy, MCSE, MCSD
Re: This Memorable Day
2. Vietnam we lost by kicking their asses so badly that our campuses revolted, at the behest of a bunch of marxists. Whereupon we packed up, partied for about 15 years, and killed their communist sugar daddies in Moscow with just the *possibility* we could invent something strategic missile defense, they couldn't copy fast enough. Are you trollin' m'friend, or have you been smokin' James Donald's ground up toenails? -TD Mao accused the US of being a paper tiger, and there may be some truth to that. From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John Young [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: This Memorable Day Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 10:05:19 -0500 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 7:33 AM -0800 11/3/04, John Young wrote: The US has not won since WW2. Nope. Not at all. 1. Korea we lost by shoving the commies all the way up to the Yalu river. And then leaving them to fester behind a still-extant DMZ until they're almost enough of a nuisance, to lots of people, including the now-almost-former-communist Chinese to worry over. 2. Vietnam we lost by kicking their asses so badly that our campuses revolted, at the behest of a bunch of marxists. Whereupon we packed up, partied for about 15 years, and killed their communist sugar daddies in Moscow with just the *possibility* we could invent something strategic missile defense, they couldn't copy fast enough. The Cold War we lost by... Wait a minute. We didn't lose. See 1., and 2., above. That leaves us, what, John? Grenada? Panama? Hell, Columbia? Oh. Right. Lebanon. Tell ya what. Let's start the clock on this war at, say, the assasination of Bobby Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, include the Beiruit truck bombing by reference as a battle, and see how we stand in a decade or so, shall we? C'mon, John. Think faster, or something. Cheers, RAH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQYjzo8PxH8jf3ohaEQLrKACgpPVvDmuAS+ZE/9OAwZBAneLGztIAn2TK eVqIGmJf1iLvKLe55TuIgQYf =SOlw -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' _ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: This Memorable Day
Well, this may actually be less hard than we thought. Indeed, it's the one vaguely silver lining in this toxic cloud. Outsourcing to India will actually add a lot to world stability. Of course, we'll loose a lot of jobs in the process, but in the long run we'll eventually have another strong trading partner like Japan or France or the Dutch. Bush will sell us out to big business and all of the less-well-off will suffer like crazy in the process, but it will actually make things better in the long run. The only thing we need to worry about is not melting the ice caps in the process. -TD From: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Nomen Nescio [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: This Memorable Day Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:13:28 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: Nomen Nescio [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 3, 2004 6:50 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: This Memorable Day ... The only way to move towards a more friendly world is to make people feel they are able to share the wealth and prosperity of the world. As long as there is one single person anywhere in the world hungering to death there is still a basis for fundamentalism and all the problem that leads to. Ahh. So all we have to do to end terrorism is to end poverty, injustice, and inequality all over the world. *Phew*. I thought it was going to take something hard. --John _ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx
RE: Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy
That said, I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy. Come on! The bar slut has passed out on the pooltable and Bush's fratbrother Mr Kerry hasn't had his go yet... -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 14:37:28 -0400 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/opinion/01mon4.html?th=pagewanted=printposition= The New York Times November 1, 2004 EDITORIAL OBSERVER Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy By DOROTHY SAMUELS t is only inevitable, I suppose, that some big issues never make it onto the agenda of a presidential campaign, and other lesser issues, or total nonissues, somehow emerge instead. Electoral politics, as Americans are regularly being reminded these final hard-fought days before the election, is a brutal, messy business, not an antiseptic political science exercise. That said, I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy. President Bush's antipathy to open government continues to garner only a trivial level of attention compared with the pressing matters that seem to be engaging the country at the moment, including, in no particular order, the Red Sox, Iraq, terrorism, taxes and the mysterious iPod-size bulge visible under the back of Mr. Bush's suit jacket at the first debate. But the implications for a second term are ominous. Beyond undermining the constitutional system of checks and balances, undue secrecy is a proven formula for faulty White House decision-making and debilitating scandal. If former President Richard Nixon, the nation's last chief executive with a chronic imperial disdain for what Justice Louis Brandeis famously called the disinfecting power of sunlight, were alive today, I like to think he'd be advising Mr. Bush to choose another role model. As detailed in a telling new Congressional report, Mr. Bush's secrecy obsession - by now a widely recognized hallmark of his presidency - is truly out of hand. The 90-page report, matter-of-factly titled Secrecy in the Bush Administration, was released with little fanfare in September by Representative Henry Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, and one of the most outspoken critics of the Bush administration's steady descent into greater and greater secrecy. The objective was to catalog the myriad ways that President Bush and his appointees have undermined existing laws intended to advance public access to information, while taking an expansive view of laws that authorize the government to operate in secrecy, or to withhold certain information. Some of the instances the report cites are better known than others. Among the more notorious, of course, are the administration's ongoing refusal to disclose contacts between Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force and energy company executives, or to explain the involvement of Mr. Cheney's office in the awarding of huge sole-source contracts to Halliburton for Iraq reconstruction; the post-9/11 rush to embrace shameful, unconstitutional practices like secret detentions and trials; and the resistance and delay in turning over key documents sought by the Sept. 11 commission. The report lists many other troubling examples as well. Mr. Bush and his appointees have routinely impeded Congress's constitutionally prescribed oversight role by denying reasonable requests from senior members of Congressional committees for basic information. They forced a court fight over access to the Commerce Department's corrected census counts, for instance, withheld material relating to the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and stonewalled attempts to collect information on meetings and phone conversations between Karl Rove, the presidential adviser, and executives of firms in which he owned stock. The administration has also taken to treating as top secret documents previously available under the Freedom of Information Act - going so far as to reverse the landmark act's presumption in favor of disclosure and to encourage agencies to withhold a broad, hazily defined universe of sensitive but unclassified information. Under a phony banner of national security, Mr. Bush has reversed reasonable steps by the Clinton administration to narrow the government's capacity to classify documents. Aside from being extremely expensive, the predictably steep recent increase in decisions to classify information runs starkly counter to recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission geared to
RE: Musings on getting out the vote
And they seem to believe there's going to be a huge difference between Kang and Kodos. So far, the only things Kerry seems to have promised is that he'd be better at doing all the crazy shit Bush has dove into. So when they ask me (at the corner of Wall and Broadway), Are you a John Kerry Supporter, I reply, Well, 'supporter' is not the word I would use. And then I 'move on'. -TD From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: Musings on getting out the vote Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:42:41 -0600 (CST) rant Several weeks ago, a couple of MoveOn droids showed up at my door to take a survey. I told them that yes, I was a registered republican, and that yes, I was voting for Kerry, so fuck off. Last week, while I was away, they came back to check that [my wife] was still planning to vote for Kerry. Today, after two hours in line, after braving the lawyers with the republican stickers hovering over the line, and challenging voters who Seem A Little Dark For This Part Of Town, and casting my vote for the guy I hate the least [Kerry], we were walking to the car and were again accosted by a couple of *very pushy* MoveOn droids: Sir! Sir! Have you voted? Yes. Go away. Sir! Wait a minute! Have you been contacted by your MoveOn representative yet? (as he tries to physically insert himself between me and the street) Yes. Too many fucking times: get out of my fucking way! First of all, while I appreciate their willingness to help throw the angry little midget fuck in the whitehouse out on his ass, they are alienating people. I *guarantee* the sight of me fighting off the MoveOn people made a mental impression on the hundred plus people on line. Second, I signed up to drive folks to the polls today for a few hours, *with* MoveOn. I also came very close to saying fuckit - these assholes need an IMMEDIATE attitude adjustment, or they are going to help turn the vote *away* from their supposed goal. /rant -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! hthttp://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
RE: The plagues are Mosaic asymmetric attacks, not biological
Variola wrote... Again, the Mosaic approach of repeated asymmetric attacks on the Pharoah is what Al Q is up to. Eventually the Pharoah/US gets fed up and says fuck it. Maybe not this election, but eventually, and Al has time. GW has only 4 more years, at best, and Rummy Cheney are scheduled for a box in the ground pretty soon. Wolfy has more time, but after a few more kilocorpses will lose power with Joe Sixpack and Joe's post-Bush leader. I think that's pretty on the money. Terrorism doesn't actually need to affect any single Head Bandit, but after a regime change or two and a pullout occurs the new Bandit can say We meant to do that anyway. The French and Algeria is a great example. The Mosaic analogy was a good one, too, and not even original: See John Adams' The Death of Leon Klinghoffer and you'll know why it took so much heathaving Palestinians singing phrases from Exodus and Psalms was just a little too much for the music-funding establishment. It says a lot, however, that the guy still gets commissions. -TD Oh Kent! I'd be lying if I said my men didn't commit any crimes! -Homer Simpson Touche. -Kent Brockman From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The plagues are Mosaic asymmetric attacks, not biological Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 21:11:55 -0800 At 05:21 PM 10/31/04 -0800, John Young wrote: To state the obvious to Major Variola, CDC will have first indication of a devastating US attack, reported fragmentarily under its links to hospitals, clinics and physicians, against which the might military and law enforcement have no defenses. You thought I meant bio plagues?! Jeezus John, is your metaphorizer broken? Any bio hazard is accidental, or Detrick, not Osama. A *succession of attacks against the Empire* is what I mean, alluding to the Jews attacking the Pharaoh, until he let them alone.Pharoah=US, Moses=UBL, Jews=Moslems. Get your head around that one. News: The infectious biological attack will be an accident of the modularity and recombination of influenza on some chinese duck/pig/human farm. It will not be intentional but it will kill a lot before the vaccine can be produced, which takes ca. 6 mos.. See 1918 pandemic, and add jet airplanes. A recent _Science_ article described a model of this. You are one or two days away from that duck/pig/human incubator nowadays, no matter where you live. That will happen, but it won't be intentional. The geopoli implications will be fun, but UBL is not involved there. Observation: A non-infectious biological attack (eg anthrax which isn't infectious) is cheap, but not Al Q's preferred MO. They go for the special effects type attacks, simultaneous so you know its them. (Otherwise it could be a suicical egyptian, a rudder jerked too hard, a screw-jack improperly lubricated, the NTSC is very creative.) Of course the Ft Detrick folks enjoy sending the occasional sporulated letter to senators, but hey, their funding was running out, you do what you gotta do. Implementation: A chem attack is pretty nifty, and in many ways easier than fission or RDDs. Since there are so many chems moving around, and rad sources are so easy to detect, by virtue of the energy of the emissions, and controlled/surveilled materials. A tanker into a school is double the fun, its been years since Columbine, and the underbelly is itching for a scratch. (Again, you need to pull off 2 the same day.) I wonder if there is a school that enrolls only first born sons, that would be interesting to read about in your mosaic er netscape er IE browser, eh? Since your allusion-detector is broken, mosaic, get it? History: Let my people go and taking a beating only works if you have wannabe-moral brits who want to divest anyway and your name is Ghandi. Otherwise the biblical plagues, aka asymmetric attack, approach is guaranteed to work in the limit. All you need is enough popular support. Its there. It only took 200 dead marines and one bomb to evict us from Lebanon, maybe 50K corpses for S. Nam, don't know about N Korea, but do the math. .mil are disposable, but they have families that whine and vote. And the press is not *entirely* 0wn3d by the .gov, yet. Conclusion: Again, the Mosaic approach of repeated asymmetric attacks on the Pharoah is what Al Q is up to. Eventually the Pharoah/US gets fed up and says fuck it. Maybe not this election, but eventually, and Al has time. GW has only 4 more years, at best, and Rummy Cheney are scheduled for a box in the ground pretty soon. Wolfy has more time, but after a few more kilocorpses will lose power with Joe Sixpack and Joe's post-Bush leader. Operation Just Cause Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I have to ignore Egyptian/Hebrew history. Just because I live here doesn't mean I don't think the US deserves the treatment that any Empire deserves. Just because I'm an American doesn't mean I can't use sophisticated allusions. Just because I say Mosaic
RE: Osama's makeover
Yeah...wasn't there an X-Files that was similar? I remember someone picking up a photo of Sadam Hussein and the TLA-dude saying, Him? He was a truck driver in Detroit we found. Perhaps the reason Bush hasn't 'caught' bin Laden yet is because he thinks he (ie, Bush) will win the election. He does have Florida locked up... -TD From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Osama's makeover Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 21:23:19 -0700 At 05:23 PM 10/30/04 -0700, John Young wrote: Which returns to the Osama make-over. His nose looks much bigger, longer and wider, eyes closer together. The sage-of-the-desert color combination of his face and hands, beard, robe, hat and backdrop look as if it was shot in New Mexico, or maybe Israel pretending Lawrence of Arabia remake. And did you see the wire up his back and the earpiece? Or maybe its hard to get good tailors in Pakistan. _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
bin Laden gets a Promotion
GodDAMN George W is a dumb fuck. If the guy's IQ had broken the 3-digit barrier he might have figured out that by nearly directly replying to the new bin Laden video he's basically elevating bin Laden to a hostile head-of-state. OK you TLA snoops...surely some of you montioring this list must have noticed that? Where are Mr Asswipe's brilliant advisors? Isn't this kind of acknowledgement practically Rule 1 in your anti-terrorist manuals? Or do you tacitly cooperate for the sake of job security? (ie, bin Laden gains more followers--more terrorism--more need for laws and YOU guys.) And don't get me wrong, I think this image shift for bin Laden will probably end up being a good thing (ie, we stop fuckin' around over there), but unfortunately a bunch of us will probably end up getting blowed-up or whatever in the process. We know you're there so why not come in on an anonymous remailer and tell us how it feels to be you these days. -TD _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
