Re: Blood, Bullets, Bombs and Bandwidth
On 2005-10-22T01:51:50-0400, R.A. Hettinga wrote: --- begin forwarded text Tyler and Jayme left Iraq in May 2005. The Arbil office failed; there wasn't enough business in Kurdistan. They moved to London, where Tyler still works for SSI. His time in Iraq has transformed him to the extent that, like Ryan, he doesn't think he can ever move back to the USA. His years of living hyperintensely, carrying a gun, building an organization from scratch in a war zone, have distanced him from his home. His friends seem to him to have stagnated. Their concerns seem trivial. And living with real, known, tangible danger has bred contempt for what he calls America's culture of fear. Tyler likes the high-speed lifestyle so much that he ditched it and moved to London? I doubt he's carrying a gun there. -- The six phases of a project: I. Enthusiasm. IV. Search for the Guilty. II. Disillusionment. V. Punishment of the Innocent. III. Panic.VI. Praise Honor for the Nonparticipants.
Multiple passports?
If I apply for a new one now, and then apply for a another one once the gov starts RFID-enabling them, will the first one be invalidated? Or can I have two passports, the one without RFID to use, and the one with RFID to play with? -- The six phases of a project: I. Enthusiasm. IV. Search for the Guilty. II. Disillusionment. V. Punishment of the Innocent. III. Panic.VI. Praise Honor for the Nonparticipants.
Re: [PracticalSecurity] Anonymity - great technology but hardly used
On 2005-10-26T08:21:08+0200, Stephan Neuhaus wrote: cyphrpunk wrote: The main threat to this illegal but widely practiced activity is legal action by copyright holders against individual traders. The only effective protection against these threats is the barrier that could be provided by anonymity. An effective, anonymous file sharing network would see rapid adoption and would be the number one driver for widespread use of anonymity. If I thought I was being ripped off by anonymous file sharing, I'd try to push legislation that would mandate registering beforehand any download volume exceeding x per month. Downloaded more than x per month but not registered? Then you'll have to lay open your traffic, including encryption keys. The reasoning would be that most people won't have any legitimate business downloading more than x per month. By adjusting x, you can make a strong case. Once you get this enacted, you first get the ones with huge download volumes; then you lower x and repeat until the number of false positives gets too embarassing. This legislation would also require mandatory reporting by ISPs of subscribers' traffic patterns? Most people don't have any legitimate business writing for public consumption on blogs. Most people don't have any legitimate business owning cars that can go over 75MPH. Most people don't have any legitimate business for owning more scary-looking black rifles. If you tried to push this hypothetical legislation, you'd end up on some cypherpunk's to-kill list. Of course, those threats are all hot-air. Has anyone who's life has been threatened on cypherpunks-l (since Jim Bell) gotten so much as a scratch at the hands of a threatener? -- This is not the grand arena.
Re: [Politech] More on Barney lawyer yearning to hack copyright infringers' sites [ip]
On 2005-10-19T10:37:55-0700, Declan McCullagh wrote: Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/10/17/barney-lawyer-recommends/ Responses: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/10/19/more-on-barney/ Some of the first-round responses mentioned the iniquities involved in attacking hosted sites, but what if the site that appears to be involved in copyright infringement isn't? There is no assurance that the suspect IP address isn't forwarding illegal (outgoing) traffic from some other machine, or that it doesn't forward incoming traffic to some other machine. Suppose someone has a wireless firewall appliance set up to forward a number of common ports to an interior server. Attacking a suspect IP results in an attack on an uninvolved interior server. The copyright violation might be some unauthorized person connecting through a wireless gateway, so the owner of the interior server might not be in any way connected to the copyright violation. Suppose someone is running a web proxy. An attack on a suspect IP address results in an attack on the machine running the web proxy. An open web proxy, while it may violate an ISP contract, is not illegal, and by itself the proxy is not connected to any illegal activity (except maybe in China, etc.). Suppose someone is involved in copyright infringement, but forwards all incoming connections on certain ports [while dropping traffic to the rest...] to an IP address associated with the Chinese Embassy. Is it clear who's responsible when a copyright holder ends up attacking a Chinese computer? Even if the person who set up the port forwarding is responsible for _connections_ to the Chinese Embassy made as a result, does that make him responsible for willful attacks conducted by copyright holders? If copyright hackers get immunity as long as they attack the public IP address that appears to be distributing copyrighted material, the consequences will be much worse than those of DMCA take-down provisions. ISPs everywhere would police their own networks with a vengeance to mitigate the risk that some copyright holder would find something first, attack the ISP, and cause major damage (not to mention subsequent loss of customers). At least with the DMCA, ISPs get notified and have a chance to act before something bad happens, which generally means low levels of in-house policing.
Re: Judy Miller needing killing
On 2005-10-19T19:59:18+, Gil Hamilton wrote: Reporters should have no rights the rest of us don't have. It's hard to imagine the framers of the constitution approving an amendment that said freedom of the press is granted to all those who first apply for and receive permission from the government. Blame the framers. They separately enumerated freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which suggests at least a little bit that freedom of the press includes something extra. -- Do you know what your sin is?
Re: Wired on Secrecy Power Sinks Patent Case
On 2005-09-20T12:14:13-0400, Tyler Durden wrote: Very interesting CPunks reading, for a variety of reasons. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68894,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1 I'm sick of this mosaic theory being used to justify preventing access to unclassified information. -- War is the father of all and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus DK-53
Re: /. [Intel Adds DRM to New Chips]
On 2005-05-28T21:53:52+0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/28/1718200 Posted by: Zonk, on 2005-05-28 17:37:00 from the get-you-where-you-live dept. Badluck writes Microsoft and the entertainment industry's holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard has moved a step closer with Intel Corp. now embedding [1]digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chipset. Officially launched worldwide on the May 26, the new offerings come [2]DRM -enabled and will, at least in theory, allow copyright holders to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted materials from the motherboard rather than through the operating system as is currently the case... [3]The Inquirer has the story as well. Is slashdot really a news source? How about posting one of the articles cited instead. -- Unable to correct the source of the indignity to the Negro, [the Phoenix, AZ public accommodations law prohibiting racial discrimination] redresses the situation by placing a separate indignity on the proprietor. ... The unwanted customer and the disliked proprietor are left glowering at one another across the lunch counter. -William Strom Rehnquist, 1964-06-15
Re: /. [GPS-tracked Clothing]
On 2005-05-29T18:46:43+0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/29/1547234 Posted by: CmdrTaco, on 2005-05-29 16:07:00 from the finally-i-have-to-ask-why dept. [1]Anil Kandangath writes A Japanese firm has shown off new technology that enables GPS units to be embedded [2]in clothing that will enable the wearer to be tracked continuously. The device is thin enough to be tacked on unobtrusively and is powered by a thin watch battery. As opposed to a thick watch battery? It is also capable of taking biometric measurements and [3]transmitting them PCs and handheld devices. Is that english? I don't think the device transmits PCs and handheld devices to biometric measurements. Though marketed as a device to enable people to keep track of spouses, how long before such technology becomes intrusive in our lives? Like tracking your spouse is ok?. What a world! I know that isn't english, and it's only marginally coherent. I would much rather read a summary written by someone literate. References 1. http://www.ecogito.net/anil I don't see it. 2. http://forgetmenotpanties.contagiousmedia.org/ 3. http://forgetmenotpanties.contagiousmedia.org/sensatech.html Uh huh. This looks like a joke or a scam. Even if it's not, I have a hard time believing that a girlfriend/wife/daughter is not going to notice that in her panties, and I doubt sufficiently miniaturized GPS receivers could be made for so little money. Perhaps that's why Anil seems to have removed the entry in his blog? Do you now understand why I hate redistribution of slashdot stories? -- Unable to correct the source of the indignity to the Negro, [the Phoenix, AZ public accommodations law prohibiting racial discrimination] redresses the situation by placing a separate indignity on the proprietor. ... The unwanted customer and the disliked proprietor are left glowering at one another across the lunch counter. -William Strom Rehnquist, 1964-06-15
google maps and latitude, longitude
For anyone who doesn't already know, there are several ways to get google maps to display a latitude/longitude. You can enter them in the query box like so: 35.5N 115.5W or 35.5,-115.5 (I think they added those within the last week or two.) Or you can use the original method, a GET-style form (I don't know whether POST works): form id=gooform action=http://maps.google.com/maps; method=get style=margin: 2px; input type=text value= name=q size=30 maxlength=512 / (lat,long input type=text value=33.835,-116.99 name=ll size=14 /) (span input type=text value=.001,.001 name=spn size=9 /) (type input type=text value=k name=t size=1 /) input type=submit value=Go / /form which translates into http://maps.google.com/maps?q=ll=33.835%2C-116.99spn=.001%2C.001t=k -- Unable to correct the source of the indignity to the Negro, [the Phoenix, AZ public accommodations law prohibiting racial discrimination] redresses the situation by placing a separate indignity on the proprietor. ... The unwanted customer and the disliked proprietor are left glowering at one another across the lunch counter. -William Strom Rehnquist, 1964-06-15
Re: Anonymous Site Registration
On 2005-05-26T13:17:38-0400, Tyler Durden wrote: OK, what's the best way to put up a website anonymously? Tor? It's not immune from traffic analysis, but it's nearly the best you can do to hide the server's location/isp from clients. Let's assume that it has nothing to do with national security...the Feds aren't interested. BUT, let's assume that the existence and/or content of the website would probably direct a decent amount of law-suits. Hosting in a country that would laugh at lawsuits, like Sealand? Presumably there's no way to hide the ISP from the world, but one should hopefully be able to hide oneself and make legal action basically useless. Egold + fake address for registering agency seems a little problematic. You can try, but good physical anonymity for commerce is difficult unless you construct a fake identity good enough that you can use it to open bank accounts... without leaving any compromising fingerprints that your bank can turn over to the authorities. And there's the question of updating the site... Tor+rsync? -- Unable to correct the source of the indignity to the Negro, [the Phoenix, AZ public accommodations law prohibiting racial discrimination] redresses the situation by placing a separate indignity on the proprietor. ... The unwanted customer and the disliked proprietor are left glowering at one another across the lunch counter. -William Strom Rehnquist, 1964-06-15
Re: Zero knowledge( ab )
On 2005-05-09T12:28:25-0400, Adam Back wrote: There is a simple protocol for this described in Schneier's Applied Crypto if you have one handy... (If I recall the application he illustrates with is: it allows two people to securely compare salary (which is larger) without either party divulging their specific salary to each other or to a trusted intermediary). Adam On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 06:00:58AM -0700, Sarad AV wrote: hi, If user A has the integer a and user B has the integer b, can a zero knowledge proof be developed to show that ab,ab or a=b. I don't recall that particular protocol in AC, but it's a mistake to call such a thing zero-knowledge, since it mandatorily leaks ~1.585 bits of information (the first time) about the other person's integer. Perform it enough with enough different integers on your side, and you'll be able to discover the other person's integer. There's the round-table of people who want to know what their average salary is, but that only works if there are more than two people and no two are in collusion. (one person generates a random number, adds that to salary, gives only the sum to the next person. Everyone else simply adds their salary and passes it on. It gets back to the originator who subtracts out the random number and divides by the number of people. Hence it doesn't work with 2 people. Technically, the two-person salary comparison isn't zero-knowledge either, which explains why I didn't find it in the zero-knowledge chapter (or maybe I've lost my ability to skim technical books). Once you know the average, you know something about your salary compared with both the overall average and the average of everyone else. You know that nobody can make any more than the sum. The trouble is that you don't know how many bits of information the other person _doesn't_ have about your salary. If they know you make either A, B, or C, running the protocol Adam mentions and choosing the middle salary will reveal the other person's exact salary.
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
On 2005-05-09T19:55:26+, Justin wrote: What do we need security for? We need security because a lot of people hate the U.S., and because we won't close our borders, and Apparently I have not learned any lessons from the follies of a certain California governor. By close the borders, I mean secure the borders against illegal immigration. I have no interest in doing away with immigration.
Re: [IP] Real ID = National ID (fwd from dave@farber.net)
On 2005-05-09T12:22:22-0700, cypherpunk wrote: We already have de facto national ID in the form of our state driver's licenses. They are accepted at face value at all 50 states as well as by the federal government. Real ID would rationalize the issuing procedures and require a certain minimum of verification. Without it we have security that is only as strong as the weakest state's policies. States should be free to regulate DRIVERS however they want. The DL was not meant to be an ID card, and if it was that intent was unconstitutional. The entire DL scheme may be unconstitutional anyway, but oh well. What do we need security for? We need security because a lot of people hate the U.S., and because we won't close our borders, and because society has become too diverse. There is a significant correlation between cultural diversity/proximity and social unrest. That does not require people of different races; put white klansmen next to white members of the Black Panthers and you have the same thing. None of those three core problems will be solved by RealID. Therefore, while RealID may make some difference at the margins, it cannot be very effective.
Re: Jesus Christ Meets Your Papers Please (fwd)
On 2005-05-10T08:53:31-0500, J.A. Terranson wrote: If you think this is stupid, just wait till the Real ID Act takes effect. There is already a Jesus Christ living in D.C. If it's legal for someone named Jesus Christ to move to D.C., it should be legal for a D.C. resident or no-longer resident to change his name to Jesus Christ. It's not technically an equal protection issue, but it strikes me as being some sort of discrimination. That doesn't stop a lot of states from passing discriminatory laws, though, as long as the particular discrimination being sought isn't listed in the CRA. Jesus Christ - (202) 543-9498 - , Washington, DC 20001 and other states: Jesus Christ - (310) 458-9440 - 1328 Euclid St, Santa Monica, CA 90404 Jesus A Christ - (207) 374-2175 - 19 Harborview Ct, Blue Hill, ME 04614 This may be the Jesus Christ in question: Jesus Christ - (304) 897-7727 - , Lost City, WV 26810 http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/05/10/jesus.lawsuit.ap/index.html Jesus Christ in legal battle to get license Tuesday, May 10, 2005 Posted: 7:58 AM EDT (1158 GMT) CHARLESTON, West Virginia (AP) -- Even Jesus Christ can't circumvent the rules for getting a driver's license in West Virginia. ... Described by his attorney as a white-haired businessman in his mid-50s, Christ is moving to West Virginia to enjoy a slower lifestyle. He bought property near Lost River, about 100 miles west of Washington, and has a U.S. passport, Social Security card and Washington driver's license bearing the name Jesus Christ. But he still falls short of West Virginia title and license transfer requirements because his Florida birth certificate has his original name on it and he has been unable to obtain an official name change in Washington. I don't understand this. Washington D.C. doesn't handle birth certificates for people born in Florida. All of his federal documentation lists Jesus Christ as his name. Why is the problem in D.C.? It seems to me to be a little late for the brainless in Washington to try to put a lid on this. They should have done that when he got his SS card, passport, or driver's license. I'm somewhat interested in how he got his SS card, passport, and drivers license in a different name than was on his birth certificate. If he's only been using the name for 17 years, that puts both acquisitions at 1988 or later. Maybe decades before that it would have been possible, but how could he have gotten away with it so recently?
Re: AP For Starvation Judge
On 2005-03-26T22:35:23-0800, Eric Cordian wrote: Justin writes: Artificially feeding her against her wishes and/or the wishes of her husband (whose wishes have precedence over the wishes of her parents -- if you don't like that, get that law changed) is sick. I think we have to divide things we do for disabled people into care and heroic medical measures. I consider a feeding tube to fall into the former category. I like to think that care is doing what the patient wants. If the patient is uncommunicative (following a balloon with her eyes .5 times out of 1000 doesn't qualify as communication imho), the legal decision-maker can end any treatment. That which we may do to ourselves, if we are functioning, exceeds that which we may require others to do to us if we are not. I can deny myself food, water, and air, for instance. I cannot instruct others to deny me those things if I am rendered incapable of making my own decisions. Okay; I accept that. We can assault ourselves, but we cannot waiver in advance another's legal culpability if they assault us. She is not functioning, however. Her rights and the rights of her legal representative are the same. Anything that she could have requested in a living will can be requested by her legal representative, her husband. There is no reason for the feeding tube to be removed at all. It is not That depends on her condition. If she is merely a brainstem attached to a beating heart and a bunch of tissue, there are clear reasons for ending this spectacle. Utilitarian: she's using medical resources that could help people who have a chance at recovery. Utilitarian: the spectacle is diverting time and attention of citizens who should be focusing on increasing their personal wealth, and by extension the GDP. Out of sight, out of mind. Once she's dead, people will quickly become less distracted as the media can only run stories in her wake for so long. Ethical: She wouldn't want to live like this (the court's accepted this, but it's still disputed). Ethical: We don't want to see her live like this (which morphs into she wouldn't want US to suffer like this). I don't think this one's disputed, though Michael may take that view for financial reasons. If Terri were able to be spoon fed by an attendant, would the judge have then ordered spoon and attendant withdrawal? Would the papers report that the spoon is keeping her alive artificially? Can she recover to sentience, or is she merely a braindead automaton capable of swallowing? If I have a living will (in writing or by the decision of a legal proxy) that restricts certain kinds of treatment, you're more than happy to see doctors violate that and keep me alive as long as someone on Earth is willing to pay? Well, I would argue that you do not have a legal right to demand others restrict your air, food, and water, unless they need to be delivered in invasive uncomfortable ways that reduce your human dignity. So I don't get to define my own notion of human dignity? That is not the way any sane legal or medical system should work. I suppose you don't believe in euthanasia either? I think euthanasia is fine if the patient is suffering horribly, has all their marbles, and has less than six months to linger from a terminal illness. Three arbitrary thresholds. Two subjective: horrible suffering and all their marbles; one of them objective: 6 months. Terri Schiavo meets none of these criteria. Explain why your criteria matter and how the subjective ones are to be applied, and I might care. I certainly don't support the right of an adulterous spouse who swore up and down at the malpractice trial that he only wanted to care for his wife for the rest of her natural life, and who didn't mention her wish to not go on until 7 years after her brain injury, to have his brain-damaged wife starved and dehydrated to death solely on his say-so, absent any written indication of her wishes. What, you've never changed your mind about anything? She's been effectively braindead for over a decade. This could be a case of moving on emotionally. Terri's parents supported the adultery, based on news reports I've seen. I'm not saying it's morally right for him to cheat on her, but I take a very dim view of any State involvement in marriage. As far as I'm concerned, the marriage granted him the right to represent Terri in a situation like this, just as if they executed a medical power of attorney and never got married. I consider the marriage contract fully severable. His cheating on her doesn't materially affect any contractual aspect of the marriage, so unless she's around to get divorced, he can still legally represent her. -- Unable to correct the source of the indignity to the Negro, [the Phoenix, AZ public accommodations law prohibiting racial discrimination] redresses the situation by placing a separate indignity on the proprietor
Re: AP For Starvation Judge
On 2005-03-26T11:04:46-0800, Eric Cordian wrote: This just in from CNN: [FBI agents have arrested a North Carolina man on suspicion of soliciting offers over the Internet to kill Michael Schiavo and Judge Greer. Richard Alan Meywes of Fairview is accused of offering $250,000 for the killing of Schiavo and another $50,000 for the the elimination of the judge who ruled against Terri.] I wonder how much it is going to cost the taxpayers for the round the clock army this judge is going to need to protect his sorry life for the remainder of it. If the judge's decision had been the opposite, there might be a bounty on his head for that, too. If you're saying that fundie Christians are more pathologically violent than either the areligous or the more progressive religious, I'd agree there. -- Unable to correct the source of the indignity to the Negro, [the Phoenix, AZ public accomodations law prohibiting racial discrimination] redresses the situation by placing a separate indignity on the proprietor. ... The unwanted customer and the disliked proprietor are left glowering at one another across the lunch counter. --William H. Rehnquist, 1964-06-15
Re: AP For Starvation Judge
On 2005-03-26T20:05:14-0800, Eric Cordian wrote: Justin writes: If the judge's decision had been the opposite, there might be a bounty on his head for that, too. Somehow letting someone who has lived 15 years with a significant brain injury live out the rest of their normal life span just doesn't provoke people the same way dehydrating and starving them does. She is a corpse with a heartbeat. Artificially feeding her against her wishes and/or the wishes of her husband (whose wishes have precedence over the wishes of her parents -- if you don't like that, get that law changed) is sick. She has become a doll for her parents, who are too immature to grasp the concepts of life, death, and dignity. Presumably they're still stuck on God and selfishness. If you're saying that fundie Christians are more pathologically violent than either the areligous or the more progressive religious, I'd agree there. I don't believe in the existence of a supernatural, but I certainly wouldn't take water and food away from any human with a functioning brain stem, particularly when there are people to whom that person's life has meaning, and who are willing to provide them with care. If I have a living will (in writing or by the decision of a legal proxy) that restricts certain kinds of treatment, you're more than happy to see doctors violate that and keep me alive as long as someone on Earth is willing to pay? (Even if Terry's parents weren't willing or able to pay originally -- I don't know, and haven't investigated that aspect of the case -- if they manage to keep her alive, they'll probably get enough donations to keep her alive for millenia.) That is not the way any sane legal or medical system should work. I suppose you don't believe in euthanasia either? It would seem to be inconsistent if you did. How can someone choose to die if anyone else can veto that choice? The interesting political lesson here is that one stubborn judge, and his pals who band together to support him, can defy the will of the President of the United States, the Governor of the State of Florida, and a majority of both houses of Congress. Thankfully, Neither Jeb nor George nor the U.S. Congress have any jurisdiction over this whatsoever. The courts do. Of the three equal branches of government, the unelected branch is more equal than the other two. Of course, we've known that since Marbury vs Madison. That is of course true, but not because of the decisions so far in this case. The law allows her spouse to decide what artificial means should be used to keep her alive. If you don't like it, again, lobby for a change to the law. The strong control the weak. The majority controls the minority. All we have here is a governmental system originally set up by the majority (maybe... at least no internal faction opposed it until 1860), where some people managed to get into positions of influence within the governmental machine despite having unpopular beliefs. I find it amusing that the Republican-dominated national Congress wants Terry kept alive, while Scalia has been quoted as saying, Mere factual innocent is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached. Republicans in general can't get anything right because their belief system is less coherent than any other. At least the supreme court didn't reverse the decision... not yet, at least. That's only because some of the Republicans are not-so-conservative and they all know the decision would be affirmed. Taking the case would just waste time. -- Unable to correct the source of the indignity to the Negro, [the Phoenix, AZ public accomodations law prohibiting racial discrimination] redresses the situation by placing a separate indignity on the proprietor. ... The unwanted customer and the disliked proprietor are left glowering at one another across the lunch counter. --William H. Rehnquist, 1964-06-15
Re: End of a cypherpunk era?
On 2005-03-06T00:03:01+0100, Anonymous wrote: Ian Grigg writes at http://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000381.html: : Is this the end of an era, a defining cypherpunk moment? It doesn't make much sense to renounce your U.S. citizenship if your relatives, who you care about and who you want to visit, still live there. What did Vince Cate expect? He wants to be free to enter the U.S. temporarily, but doesn't want to be a citizen of a country the U.S. deems sufficiently similar to itself? From the American State's perspective, he is dangerous. He is a near-anarchist, and individuals with that kind of status threaten the existence of the U.S. -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
On 2005-03-03T11:52:59+, ken wrote: Chat is already higher volume (I read somewhere) in raw quantity of messages sent than email. I suspect you don't get much traffic. The beauty of a non-real-time store-and-forward system like smtp (or SMS, or oldstyle conferencing systems with off-line readers) is precisely that it can be automated. I don't have to see mail I don't want. You don't have to see IMs you don't want, either. You can refuse them from people not on your buddy list. A fate for email is that as spam grows to take over more of the share of the shrinking pie, but consumes more of the bandwidth A higher proportion of the snail-mail I get is junk than the email. A higher proportion of the landline phone calls I get are junk. At least 4 out of 5 calls, maybe 9 out of 10. Email is doing quite well. With 3 or 4 RBL blacklists, greylisting, and making sure senders don't ehlo with my ip address, I don't even have to use dspam or Spamassassin I get so little spam. A serious proportion of the rootkits and so on that have been plaguing us for the last few years involves chat instant messaging so on. I'd block it at the boundary firewall. People who use it should just learn how to use mail. They'd get through more. Chat is for functional illiterates. Learn to read at adult speed and you'll prefer mail. Why should they put up with being limited to someone else's typing speed? I don't think email will disappear either, but IM is good for 2-way conversations. Helping someone debug a problem via email gets tedious very quickly. Strangely enough, a good number of people I've talked to over the phone have had their IQ drop by about 100 points when I start using a phonetic alphabet to spell things. I usually end up having to repeat the phonetic spelling several times; it's really strange. IM eliminates that whole problem. Unless communicating in a standard, often-spoken language, phones lose their utility. There's a place for both IM and email. I agree, though, that IM may suffer from a poor S/N ratio. -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
palm beach HIV
Given the release of Palm Beach HIV+ patient information via accidental attachment to a widely-distributed email, should agencies with access to confidential information implement mandatory access control and role-based security so that, barring problems with the RBAC/MAC software, confidential data cannot be accessed by roles that have external network access? http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-paidslist21feb21,0,1753763.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines I haven't found the list yet, but I found this: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2005/02/11/a20a_cramercol_0211.html In Palm Beach County, one of every 35 blacks is HIV-positive. That is compared with one of every 492 whites. Calling Tim May! Calling Tim May! -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
MIME stripping
On 2005-02-21T22:40:03+0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: Yes, complain to the Al-Q. node maintainer. The same code which strips my digital signatures also wrap the lines. Really? http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=start=0scoring=denc_author=8NH-JhofCMh-TnQo0KXFjppET7C1dSi2gjvQCgNblIvwKtcqeQ; http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=start=0scoring=denc_author=8NH-JhofCMh-TnQo0KXFjppET7C1dSi2gjvQCgNblIvwKtcqeQ; -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936 pgp8pg0P7TPy8.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: What is a cypherpunk?
On 2005-02-16T13:31:14-0500, Steve Thompson wrote: --- R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] Property is like rights. We create it inherently, because we're human, it is not bestowed upon us by someone else. Particularly if that property is stolen from someone else at tax-time. But as long as property rights are generally considered to be a tenet and characteristic of society, excuses for officiated theft, for instance, merely put a veneer of legitimacy over certain kinds of theft. I doubt that RMS will ever be framed, arrested and thrown in to the gulag, his property confiscated; but for someone like myself, that is certainly an option, eh? Is there a difference between property rights in a society like a pride of lions, and property rights that are respected independent of social status? Or are they essentially the same? They seem to be different, but I can't articulate why. Obviously the latter needs enforcement, possibly courts, etc., but I can't identify a more innate difference, other than simply as I described it -- property rights depending on social status, and property rights not depending on social status. I don't think any society has ever managed to construct a pure property rights system where nobody has any advantage. Without government it's the strong. With government, government agents have an advantage, and rich people have an advantage because they can hire smart lawyers to get unfair court decisions. So maybe this is just silly, in which case I believe even more strongly that formal status-independent property rights are not the basis of government. -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
Re: What is a cypherpunk?
On 2005-02-16T13:18:16-0500, Steve Thompson wrote: --- Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2005-02-15T13:23:37-0500, Steve Thompson wrote: --- James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] As governments were created to smash property rights, they are always everywhere necessarily the enemy of those with property, and the greatest enemy of those with the most property. Uh-huh. Perhaps you are using the term 'government' in a way that is not common to most writers of modern American English? I think it's fair to say that governments initially formed to protect property rights (although we have no historical record of such a government because it must have been before recorded history began). As I said, I think this is wrong. Mammals other than primates recognize property in a sense, but it depends entirely on social status. There is no recognition of property rights independent of social position. If a lion loses a fight, he loses all his property. Chimp and gorilla communities have the beginnings of monarchy. Yet they don't care about religion, and their conception of property rights still derives from their position in the social ladder. If not primates, do any animals besides humans recognize property rights independent of social position? I think it's fair to say that governments were initially, and still largely remain today, the public formalisation of religious rule applied to the civil sphere of existence. It's more complicated than that, but generally speaking, somewhat disparate religious populations (protestant, catholic, jew, etc.) accepted the fiction of secular civil governance when in reality religious groups have tended to dominate the shape and direction of civil government, while professing to remain at arms-length. I think it's fair to say that religion post-dates government, at least informal government. Maybe the first monarchs/oligarchs came up with religious schemes to keep the peons in line, but I would think that was incidental, as was the notion of property rights. Both property rights and religion depend heavily on the ability for communication, but monarchy can be established without it. All the monarch needs is a big stick and an instinctual understanding of some of the principles much later described by our good Italian friend Niccolo M. 'Fiction' is the operative term here, and I contend that nowhere is this more evident in the closed world of clandestine affairs -- civilian OR military. Religion has always been about 'powerful' and educated in-sect sub-populations organising civil and intellectuall affairs in such a way I think it's fair to say that religion may be more important than property rights for keeping people in line. But I think they're both incidental. When democratic states inevitably fold into tyranny, some of those restrictions remain. Right now most states have a strange mix of property rights protections (e.g. the Berne convention and the DMCA) and property rights usurpations (e.g. no right to own certain weapons; equal protection). Agreements and accords such as the Berne convention and the DCMA, to say nothing of human-rights legislation, are hobbled by the toothlessness of enforcement, pulic apathy to others' rights, and a load of convenient exceptions to such rules made for the agents of state. Okay. So it's fair to say, then, that we have compromises between property rights protections and other (perceived yet imaginary?) property rights protections. Which is really what it boils down to. There's no property rights usurpation without some motive behind it. And motives generally stem from wanting to redistribute property or deny it to another individual, group, or an entire nation. Sometimes that property is land (the excuse for such property redistribution or denial of ownership is called self determination), sometimes it is intellectual property (the excuse is information wants to be free)... sometimes it's explosives (they're TOO DANGEROUS, and only terrorists have them... are you a terrorist?). -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
Re: What is a cypherpunk?
On 2005-02-15T21:40:34+, Justin wrote: On 2005-02-15T13:23:37-0500, Steve Thompson wrote: --- James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] As governments were created to smash property rights, they are always everywhere necessarily the enemy of those with property, and the greatest enemy of those with the most property. Uh-huh. Perhaps you are using the term 'government' in a way that is not common to most writers of modern American English? I think it's fair to say that governments initially formed to protect property rights (although we have no historical record of such a government because it must have been before recorded history began). They then developed into monarchies which were only really set up to protect property rights of the ruler(s). It seems I've been brainwashed by classical political science. What I wrote above doesn't make any sense. Judging from social dynamics and civil advancement in the animal kingdom, monarchies developed first and property rights were an afterthought. -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
Re: What is a cypherpunk?
On 2005-02-15T13:23:37-0500, Steve Thompson wrote: --- James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] As governments were created to smash property rights, they are always everywhere necessarily the enemy of those with property, and the greatest enemy of those with the most property. Uh-huh. Perhaps you are using the term 'government' in a way that is not common to most writers of modern American English? I think it's fair to say that governments initially formed to protect property rights (although we have no historical record of such a government because it must have been before recorded history began). They then developed into monarchies which were only really set up to protect property rights of the ruler(s). With the advent of various quasi-democratic forms of government, the law has been compromised insofar as it protects property rights. You no longer have a right to keep all your money (taxes), no longer have a right to grow 5' weeds in your front yard if you live in a city, and no longer have a right to own certain evil things at all, at least not without special governmental permission. There were analogous compromises in democratic Athens and quasi-democratic Rome. When democratic states inevitably fold into tyranny, some of those restrictions remain. Right now most states have a strange mix of property rights protections (e.g. the Berne convention and the DMCA) and property rights usurpations (e.g. no right to own certain weapons; equal protection). -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
Re: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
On 2005-02-03T22:25:28+0100, Anonymous wrote: The only people endangered by this capability are those who want to be able to lie. They want to agree to contracts and user agreements that, for example, require them to observe DRM restrictions and copyright laws, but then they want the power to go back on their word, to dishonor their commitment, and to lie about their promises. An honest man is 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. My fair use rights should not be held hostage by a stupid majority who support a DRM-only market. Maybe the market for music won't support DRM-only products, but I suspect the market for DVDs and low-sales books will. The result is that I won't be able to rip a season's worth of DVDs so I can watch them all without playing hot potato with the physical DVDs. I won't be able to avoid the 15-second copyright warnings, or the useless menu animations. Low-sales books may end up being DRM-only, and I _hate_ reading books on a screen. Since DRM-only rare books will satisfy some of the market, there will be even less pressure on physical book publishers to occasionally reprint them, thus forcing even more people to buy the DRM'd ebooks. I bought an ebook on amazon for $1.99 a couple months ago. The printed book was $20. It was very nearly the worst purchase of my life. I won't buy a similarly DRM'd ebook every again, for any amount. The hassle plus the restrictions aren't worth the $18 savings. -- 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: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
On 2005-02-04T23:28:56+0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 08:21:47PM +, Justin wrote: They managed with the HTDV broadcast flag mandate. If I film off a HDTV screen with a HDTV camera (or just do single-frame with a good professional camera) will the flag be preserved? I don't think so, I think the flag is in the bitstream and doesn't affect visual output at all. You still run into significant quality loss trying to get around it that way. The point is that HDTV is a popular consumer technology, and the MPAA and TV networks alone managed to hijack it. -- 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: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
On 2005-02-04T14:30:48-0500, Mark Allen Earnest wrote: The government was not able to get the Clipper chip passed and that was backed with the horror stories of rampant pedophilia, terrorism, and organized crime. Do you honestly believe they will be able to destroy open source, linux, independent software development, and the like with just the fear of movie piracy, mp3 sharing, and such? Do you really think they are willing to piss off large sections of the voting population, the tech segment of the economy, universities, small businesses, and the rest of the world just because the MPAA and RIAA don't like customers owning devices they do not control? They managed with the HTDV broadcast flag mandate. -- 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: Scientists Work on Software to Scan Arabic
On 2005-01-28T20:03:22-0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Arabic-Software.html?oref=loginpagewanted=printposition= The New York Times January 27, 2005 Scientists Work on Software to Scan Arabic By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ``The whole Internet is skewed toward people who speak English,'' said Venu Govindaraju, director of the Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors at the University at Buffalo, where the software is being developed. Someone give that man a brain, and a cookie. I don't live near NY. The internet has nothing to do with scanning written/printed arabic texts. He obviously intended to squeeze a complaint about the internet into an article about scanning printed/written documents. The reason the internet is skewed is because these idiots want others to fix the internet to accommodate their languages. As a result, much of the non-western-language support in software is done by westerners, and so doesn't work. -- 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: Safeway Club Card Leads to Bogus Arson Arrest
On 2005-01-29T13:16:24+0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/030223 Posted by: michael, on 2005-01-29 11:03:00 from the if-you're-innocent-you-have-nothing-to-fear dept. [1]Richard M. Smith writes Tukwila, Washington firefighter, Philip Scott Lyons found out the hard way that supermarket loyalty cards come with a huge price. Lyons was arrested last August and charged with They do not verify the information you give them. They take the sheet of paper and give you a card. Make up a name, address, and phone number. If they ever discover the fraud (not in a legal sense) and disable the card, so what? Get another one. -- 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: MPAA files new film-swapping suits
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: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption
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: panix.com hijacked
On 2005-01-16T09:46:28-0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 01:32:46 EST, Henry Yen said: . panix.net usable as panix.com (marcotte) Sat Jan 15 10:44:57 2005 So let's see.. the users will see this when they log into shell.panix.net (since shell.panix.com is borked). Somehow that doesn't seem to help much. and the hijackers could be, potentially, running a box pretending to be shell.panix.com, gathering userids and passwds :( Object lesson in why using replayable passwords is not a good idea. Allah invented nonce-based password hashes and public key crypto for a reason. -- 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: Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun
On 2005-01-15T09:38:23+, Justin wrote: On 2005-01-14T15:42:18-0800, Bill Stewart wrote: Seems like scare-mongering to me, not a practical concern. Of course it's not a practical concern. Criminals already have access to handguns that will defeat common soft body armor. This media panic was instigated by a press release from the Violence Policy Center, which has evidently (for now) given up trying to pass a new assault weapon ban, and is instead finding new legislative targets. I didn't remember which group it was, and I guessed wrong. It wasn't the VPC. It was the Brady Campaign/MMM. http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=41691 -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun
On 2005-01-14T16:54:32-0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.wnbc.com/print/4075959/detail.html Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun I care? Well, perhaps I do... I should go pick one up before they're banned. The most shocking fact may be that the gun -- known as the five-seven -- is being marketed to the public, and it's completely legal The name is Five-seveN. It's made by Fabrique Nationale (FN). Allegedly the U.S. secret service likes the Five-seveN, along with the FN P90 (unavailable to civilians except title 2 firearms dealers because it's only made in a select-fire version). They both use the same 5.7mm rounds, which makes logistics easier. Of course, they also use MP5s and 9mm handguns... Other guns with civilian-legal armor-piercing ammo include the CZ-52, .223 pistols, and most all rifles. At a distance of 21 feet, Trumball police Sgt. Lenny Scinto fired the five-seven with the ammo sold legally to the public into a standard police vest. All three penetrated the vest. The real ammo penetrates CRISAT/PAGST armor at 100m and 300m respectively. Level 2 or 3a armor is really rather pathetic. Back in Trumball, Scinto said his officers would have to rethink how to protect the public and protect themselves. Police have no duty to protect the public. Anyway, most of the public doesn't walk around wearing vests, so protecting the public from these is no different than protecting them from other firearms. Protecting the police from these is no different than protecting them from rifles. Only trauma plates can stop pointy, high-velocity rounds. This is going to add a whole new dimension to training and tactics. With the penetration of these rounds, you're going to have to find something considerably heavier than we normally use for cover and concealment to stop this round, Scinto said. Cool, more LEOs instantly recognizable as beetles, having exoskeletons. I recommend Kafka's Metamorphoses to them as sociological grounding for what sort of reaction they can expect. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun
On 2005-01-14T15:42:18-0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 01:54 PM 1/14/2005, R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.wnbc.com/print/4075959/detail.html NEW YORK -- There is a nationwide alert to members of law enforcement regarding a new kind of handgun which can render a bulletproof vest useless, as first reported by NewsChannel 4's Scott Weinberger. ... The weapon is light, easily concealable and can fire 20 rounds in seconds without reloading. A couple of questions to the gunpunks out there... I've heard that rifles easily penetrate bullet-proof vests, and that vests are really only useful against average-to-small handguns and against shotguns. Is this accurate? There are various levels of body armor specified by the NIJ. In order of effectiveness (lower to higher): Levels IIa, II, IIIa, III, and IV. http://www.nlectc.org/txtfiles/BodyArmorStd/NIJSTD010103.html Level IV typically takes the form of a trauma plate and is put into a pouch in the front (and/or in the back) of soft body armor. III and IV are heavier, bulkier, and as a result aren't used as much. The NIJ standards are based on stopping standard bullets up to certain velocity limits (preventing them from going through the vest), _plus_ backface deformation limits. They put the vests over geletin, and the volume displaced by the vest when it absorbs the shot is measured and must be less than a specified limit. There is a lot of sentiment that this testing method is crap, and all that should matter is whether the bullet goes through the vest. Or at least that backface deformation should be less heavily emphasized. Then there are other specifications outside of the NIJ scheme; for instance, the there's PAGST and CRISAT body armor. I don't recall what they stand for. Any idea how much you can saw off a rifle and still have it penetrate typical cop vests? A lot. 5.56mm pistols (based on the AR-15 and available from olympic arms or bushmaster, among other manufacturers) are perfectly legal and will shoot through IIIa vests. The real jump up is between IIIa and III; the former mainly stops handgun rounds, while the latter allegedly stops standard .223 and .308 loads, but I'm not sure... before I looked it up just now, I thought only level IV trauma plates stopped .308. Cops typically wear level II or IIIa armor. And even trauma plates will not stop repeated hits to the same area. If you expect to be shot at with a rifle, you do not want to be out in the open where many hits are unavoidable. Ceramic plates weaken through chipping, and metal plates weaken through stress/deformation. (And I assume the 20 rounds in seconds is just a scary way to say it has a big magazine and you have to pull the trigger 20 times.) Of course. Otherwise it would be a machine gun, and new machine guns are not available to civilians... and haven't been since the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. The anti-gun forces try hard to associate the assault weapons ban expiry with the availability of machineguns. They are lying. Also, the police expressed worry that criminals might hear about these guns and then the cops would be in big trouble. This gun, the Five-seveN, has been available for years. What hasn't been available for years, I don't think, is the practice non-AP ammunition. And, of course, some FFLs (gun dealers) are unwilling to sell the Five-seveN to private citizens. Sounds silly to me - while some criminals might buy a cop-killer handgun for bragging rights, random criminals presumably only buy weapons useful for the scenarios they imagine being in, Other armor-piercing handguns include .223 pistols and the CZ 52; there are also nasty rounds, though generally unavailable, for 9mm handguns that will penetrate IIIa armor. Ordinary rounds at +P+ pressures may even do it. The Five-seveN bullets have a muzzle velocity about half-way between handgun bullet velocities and rifle bullet velocities. Given the round diameter (5.7mm) and the short barrel (compared to rifles) of the Five-seveN, it's essentially a rifle round. 5.56mm pistols fire rounds with nearly the same diameter, though they weigh more (5.7mm bullets are ~~30gr, standard 5.56mm is 55 or 62gr) and therefore require more powder to achieve the same velocities. Hence the longer cartridges for 5.56mm (I use .223 and 5.56 interchangably; they're technically not the same thing but close enough for government work). Most .223 pistols are based on the AR-15, so their magazines attach outside of the pistol grip and make them look scarier. That also makes them slightly less concealable, which is why they're not being attacked by the anti-gun forces. Perhaps the anti-gunners don't think they're legal. which is Saturday Night Specials for most applications, or whatever currently fashionable Mac10/Uzi/etc. for druglord armies that expect to be shooting at each other, or rifles for distance work and dual-use pickup-truck decoration. Uzis, MP5s, short-barrelled
Re: Ridge Wants Fingerprints in Passports
On 2005-01-13T17:46:39-0800, Bill Stewart wrote: He's smearing his sticky fingerprints all over everything else, and now he wants them in our passports? Oughtta learn to keep his hands to himself. Fine with me if the first person to get a new biometric passport gets Ridge's fingers as part of the deal -- to verify for the world that the prints are valid. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Florida man faces bioweapon charge
On 2005-01-13T17:48:13-0800, Eric Cordian wrote: RAH pastes: She said that on at least one occasion he showed her something he had purchased via the Internet and expressed concern that if their cat inadvertently ate enough of it, the cat would die, according to the affidavit. Obviously this news story is the grand prize winner in an innuendo contest. The article also neglects to mention FEDERAL AGENCIES' pet KILL ratio. I'm not sure about cats specifically, but dog killing is quite popular. The FBI is still investigating who sent two letters that contained ricin in 2003 through the U.S. postal system. Those letters contained threats and complaints about labor regulations in the trucking industry. Evidently the kid was in possession of Envelopes of Mass Destruction as well as castor beans, guns, and books. Envelopes! Everyone knows that civilized people communicate via instant/text message or email (insofar as they are distinct). We have no need for these ENVELOPES, which as well as being used to send toxins to KILL LAW-ABIDING TAXPAYERS also cause untold annual economic damage from paper-cut-caused hospital visits. In 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and journalist in London, died after a man attacked him with an umbrella that had been rigged to inject a ricin pellet under his skin. And WTF does this have to do with the guy with the castor beans? I spot the beginnings of yet another war. Please excuse me while I go bury my umbrellas. PATRIOTS use hooded raincoats. We have no NEED for barbaric and dangerous implements like UMBRELLAS. Looks like Ricin Theatre has joined Anthrax Theatre in the armory of Weapons of Mass Deception. You forgot the guns! The GUNS! Those terrible and bloody implements of death ARE totally unnecessary! Never mind that they're PERFECTLY LEGAL and they don't make ricin (excuse me, castor beans) any more deadly. He still had guns! -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
On 2005-01-11T10:07:22-0500, Trei, Peter wrote: Justin wrote: I don't believe the article when it says that smart guns are useless if stolen. What do they have, a tamper-proof memory chip storing a 128-bit reprogramming authorization key that must be input via computer before allowing a new person to be authorized? And what's to stop a criminal from ripping out all the circuitry and the safety it engages? The 'stolen gun' problems most of the so-called 'smart gun' proposals are trying to address are the situation when a cop's own gun is taken from him and immediately used against him, or a kid finding one in a drawer. A determined and resourceful person can, given time, defeat them all. from the article: Guns taken from a home during a robbery would be rendered useless, too. The South African Smart gun... http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm Totally useless. Failure modes and various other complaints: -cannot connect to cellular network -cannot receive GPS signal -out of batteries -laser diode craps out -fingerprint scanner takes more than 0 time to use. -ammunition is more expensive -window in ammunition can be dirty or fogged, causing failure -any sort of case failure will probably destroy the electronics -will never be as small as subcompact firearms -if smartcard is stolen, gun won't fire (other smart guns use rings) -all the electronic tracing capability requires gun/ammo registration I'd almost rather have a taser. What assurance do I have that the circuitry won't malfunction and fire when I don't want it to? What if a HERF gun can not only render the gun useless, but make it fire as well? -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
On 2005-01-10T15:42:47-0500, Tyler Durden wrote: 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. Some gun accidents are suicides reported as such to avoid embarrassment to the family. Similarly, I think a few of the gun accidents involving real children, which are extremely rare to begin with, go like this... Son, why don't you take this gun and pretend to go shoot daddy? It's not loaded. Or, Son, why don't you take the gun, put it to your head, and pull the trigger? It's not loaded. I don't believe the article when it says that smart guns are useless if stolen. What do they have, a tamper-proof memory chip storing a 128-bit reprogramming authorization key that must be input via computer before allowing a new person to be authorized? And what's to stop a criminal from ripping out all the circuitry and the safety it engages? -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
On 2005-01-10T15:04:21-0500, Trei, Peter wrote: 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 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. The NJ law specifically exempts the police from the smart gun requirement (which for civilians goes into effect in 2007 or 2008). Regardless, the legislature doesn't need to get involved for law enforcement to change their weapons policy and require smart guns. False positives may also present a problem. If the only way to get an acceptable identification rate (99%, for instance) is to create a 50% false positive rate for unauthorized users, that's reduces utilitarian benefit by half. Batteries go dead. Solder joints break. Transistors and capacitors go bad. Pressure sensors jam. This is not the kind of technology I want in something that absolutely, positively has to go boom if I want it to. For handguns, I'll stick with pure mechanical mechanisms, thanks. Smart guns are a ploy to raise the cost of guns, make them require more maintenance, annoy owners, and as a result decrease gun ownership. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: California Bans a Large-Caliber Gun, and the Battle Is On
On 2005-01-08T12:54:25-0500, Tyler Durden wrote: What else would the PATRIOT act do? That's a particularly malicious That was scarcasm. psychological trick on the part of the miserable bastards who named it. It doesn't so much matter that it's obvious. Somehow, I don't think the bastards were hoping for the kind of Patriotism I have in mind: Large caliber guns to protect our constitutional freedoms, or at least to make it damn costly for individuals to carry out orders trying to take them away. It's the socially conservative public at large who have fallen prey to the association between the PATRIOT act and patriotism. I did not intend to suggest that you or most other cypherpunks members have. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: California Bans a Large-Caliber Gun, and the Battle Is On
On 2005-01-06T12:06:40-0500, Tyler Durden wrote: Well, I used to be pro gun-control prior to the Patriot Act. Guess the Patriot Act made me something of a Patriot. What else would the PATRIOT act do? That's a particularly malicious psychological trick on the part of the miserable bastards who named it. It doesn't so much matter that it's obvious. I should like to take this opportunity to remind that it's an acronym, and therefore is properly written in all caps. The taboo against YELLING should carry over to the acronym, making people subconsciously dislike it. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
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?
On 2004-12-21T10:38:10-0600, J.A. Terranson wrote: On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: 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. I expect that eventually in this context would == (hours to [one or two] days) Academic. Everyone will not boycott, so the time frame will increase. (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. Even DC can't bail out *all* the airlines. That kind of boycott *would* hurt, and hurt badly. And *fast*. Never play chicken with the federal government. They can bail out all the airlines (minus one: they don't need to bail out Southwest Airlines). They'd just need to raise taxes or increase the debt, neither of which is a major impediment. 1) Phone it in 2) Do some kind of lameass video conferencing 3) Fly 4) Get a job at McDonalds First of all, this is a *great* example of why flying is an *option*, and not a requirement. That said, option number 4 is the obvious choice - however, our leggy bimbo's mileage may vary. This is a bit misleading. The leggy bimbo can choose option 4 if she's not smart enough to do something else... like _local_ sales, or even starting up a psychic reading shop and making lots of money from other bimbos.
Re: pgp global directory bugged instructions
On 2004-12-16T05:50:22-0500, Adam Back wrote: So PGP are now running a pgp key server which attempts to consolidate the inforamtion from the existing key servers, but screen it by ability to receive email at the address. ... So here's the problem: it does not mention anything about checking that this is your fingerprint. What about the fact that they're tying key validity to valid email addresses, when the two have nothing to do with each other? A key does not need to have an associated email address, or the latter could be purposely incorrect. If this is their idea of key verification, they're going to exclude perfectly legitimate keys from this new database.
Re: Do 'Ocean's Twelve'-Style Heists Really Happen?
On 2004-12-15T10:14:14-0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: This popped up in my bearer filter this morning... Cheers, RAH --- http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1494863/12142004/story.jhtml MTV.com - Movies - News 12.14.2004 9:03 PM EST Reel To Real: Do 'Ocean's Twelve'-Style Heists Really Happen? Sometimes, but the real-life criminals can't possibly be as hot as George Clooney and Brad Pitt. http://home.earthlink.net/~kinnopio/news/news040922.htm (it's gone, but google still has it cached) The Bank Job will have Statham playing a real-life bank robber. The plot is based on the true story of Britain's biggest bank robbery ever: In 1971 the Baker Street bank in London was robbed, no arrests were ever made, and none of the money was ever found. It's a story that hasn't been told in 30 years because of a government-issued gag order. The incident is also discussed briefly here: http://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/ross_bell.htm There is some doubt whether the heist was real... if it did happen, it's been covered up for so long that finding any real proof would be difficult. It could be a scam just to make money off of a movie.
Re: Mixmaster is dead, long live wardriving
On 2004-12-11T06:48:41-0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 09:47 PM 12/10/04 -0800, Joseph Ashwood wrote: Now we're back to the MixMaster argument. Mixmaster was meant to be a Napster-level popular app for emailing, but people just don't care about anonymity. Mixmaster is the most godawful complex thing to use, much less administer, around. Even Jack B Nymble is complex. It needs a simple luser interface and something to piggyback servers on. Not necessarily. Mixmaster is trivial to use with Mutt. 1. Compile Mixmaster 2. Put the binary in some directory somewhere. 3. Configure Mutt with --with-mixmaster (sadly not enabled by default) 4. add the line 'set mixmaster=/location/to/bin/mixmaster' to .muttrc 5. mkdir ~user/Mix/ 6. Add a script to crontab that does: cd ~user/Mix/ mv -f mlist.txt mlist.txt.old wget -q http://stats.melontraffickers.com/mlist.txt mv -f rlist.txt rlist.txt.old wget -q http://stats.melontraffickers.com/rlist.txt mv -f pubring.mix pubring.mix.old wget -q http://stats.melontraffickers.com/pubring.mix mv -f type2.list type2.list.old wget -q http://stats.melontraffickers.com/type2.list mv -f pubring.asc pubring.asc.old wget -q http://stats.melontraffickers.com/pgp-all.asc mv -f pgp-all.asc pubring.asc 6.5. And run it once for good measure. 7. When sending email, at the summary page just before sending, hit 'M'.
Re: Insurrectionist covers
On 2004-12-10T15:50:22-0500, Steve Thompson wrote: --- R.W. (Bob) Erickson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve Thompson wrote: --- R.W. (Bob) Erickson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Colouring outside the lines] Yes, you have a point there.I guess a better cover would be as local coordinator of Neighborhood Watch c.f. Take back the night, et. cetera. (And put it where?) Anyhow, isn't insurrection illegal or something? ISTR reading about the natural right of the corrupt state to exist unconditionally, and it's obligation to crush any question of change for any reason. The structure of the state in fact defines its identity as a 'person'; and since changeing the state structure could be viewed as the murder of the state's personality, the state has the right, nay, obligation to preserve its identity unchanged. (Isn't this pretty much polysci 101 material?) Not typically. The idea that the state has its own identity is obvious, because it has a name -- the state. It is clearly an atomic entity, in the same sense as a beehive or ant colony (to borrow unapologetically from R. Dawkins). However, discussion of the state as an singular entity that acts to preserve itself is typically delayed until study of Leviathan. Then it's expanded when studying Kant's theory of International Relations. Those are typically 2nd-year courses, at a minimum. IR is typically 3rd or 4th year, but Leviathan is discussed in any number of classes, just not polysci 101.
Re: primes as far as the eye can see, discrete continua
On 2004-12-08T11:10:28-0500, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: Tyler Durden wrote: 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. differing by 2. The _Science_ article is behind their paid-subscription wall, so I can't look at the source, but I'm not sure if this is the right paper, but it's what I was looking at: http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/math.NT/0404188 (linked from http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~bjg23/preprints.html)
Re: primes as far as the eye can see, discrete continua
On 2004-12-08T10:30:22-0500, Tyler Durden wrote: From: Major Variola (ret) [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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. 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. True for N=1 trivially, because it's easily proven that there are infinitely many primes. (For a set of primes S, find the product of them all and add 1. The result is obviously not divisible by any prime in S, so it's either a prime or a composite that factors into at least two smaller primes not in S. Either way, add the new prime(s) to S, and repeat.) I looked at B. Green's paper, but got lost around page 10 (of 50). He apparently proves that there are arbitrarily long progressions of primes. From that, you can cut some such arbitrarily long progression of primes into k-length progressions, and as N-infinity, you end up approaching an infinite number of k-length progressions. It's even easier (conceptually) if you accept two different progressions that have different spacing. for instance, when N=3, 5,11,17 17,23,29 31,37,43 would be a set of equal-spacing progressions. 5,11,17 17,53,89 would be a set of unequal-spacing progressions. Different progressions have different spacings. The paper was giving me a headache so I don't want to try to figure out which he meant. Clearly, the former is stronger.
Re: Tin Foil Passports?
On 2004-11-27T06:36:24-0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 09:13 AM 11/27/04 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0026222 Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-27 05:05:00 low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.' Don't they know that the whole tinfoil hat thing is supposed to be a joke? What is most poignant about this post is the lack of education of /. authors. Don't they teach Maxwell any more? Is Faraday just the guy who said ... Standardized education. We can't have anyone teaching to the 50th percentile, even assuming the median teen-citizen can handle basic calculus and EM. Teachers must teach one or two sigmas below that level, and anyone who gets hyperactive in such an inane educational environment is malfunctioning and requires medication. There has always been an uneducated class. These days, its members can be found in gangs, sitting at home watching TV and drinking beer, or hanging out on slashdot writing open-source software. -- People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. --Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Diapsalmata
Re: Collateral damage?
On 2004-11-08T20:42:33-0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: How does this change if I'm a child whose trust fund contains the stock? Or if I hold a mutual fund I inherited with a little Exxon stock What part of collateral damage don't you understand? Yep. When we shoot at people we think are terrorists and they turn out to be an innocent Iraqis, we're acting maliciously and we want to turn Iraq in to an American empire. When radial islamists attack us and hit U.S. citizens many of whose only connection to the government is voting biennially, it's collateral damage. -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
On 2004-11-08T10:09:41-0500, John Kelsey wrote: Kerry spent essentially no time talking about the creepy implications of the Jose Padilla case (isn't he still being held incommunicado, pending filing in the right district?), or the US government's use of torture in the war on terror despite treaties and the basic obligations of civilized people not to do that crap. Padilla is still in the naval brig in SC, I suppose. The media seems to think he's still there, or at least thought so as of mid-September. They might be trying to do to him what they did to Hamdi, who's in Saudi Arabia as of a month ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaser_Hamdi#Release http://www.mail-archive.com/conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu/thrd2.html (search for Hamdi, there are 8-10 messages about it) I don't know if Padilla has dual citizenship, so there may not be another country that would take him. Apparent citizen-less individuals (mostly citizens of other countries who won't re-accept them when the U.S. tries to deport them) end up being incarcerated indefinitely by the INS. -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
On 2004-11-06T16:39:41+0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 08:46:17AM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict the American people as being complicit in the crime known as Operation Of course. What kind of question is that? Regardless of voting fraud, about half of US has voted for four more years of the same. Guilty. Not true. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/voter.turnout.ap/ [Curtis] Gans puts the total turnout at nearly 120 million people. That represents just under 60% of eligible voters... 120m * 100%/60% = 200 million eligible voters (The U.S. population according to census.gov was 290,809,777 as of 2003-07-01 http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/ Bush Vote: 59,459,765 Let's generously round that up to 65 million. 65m/200m = 32.5% of eligible voters voted for Bush 65m/290.8m = 22.4% of the U.S. population voted for Bush I can't find an accurate number of registered voters, but one article suggests 15% of registered voters don't vote. That means there are probably around 141m registered voters. Bush didn't even win majority support from /those/. 65m/141m = 46% of registered voters voted for Bush -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard
Supreme Court Issues
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/politics/07court.html?partner=ALTAVISTA1pagewanted=print We're going to get some extremist anti-abortion, pro-internment, anti-1A, anti-4A, anti-5A, anti-14A, right-wing wacko. Imagine Ashcroft as Chief Justice. I really hope I'm wrong. What happens when the Chief Justice is dead? Can someone close to him (like his secretary) pull the strings on his corpose and send in his votes indefinitely, without his being in attendance during the conferences, receiving case briefs from his law clerks, or attending oral arguments? In the two weeks that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, has been treated for a serious form of thyroid cancer, life at the court has proceeded without a sense of crisis. The judicial function is shared by eight other people, with Justice John Paul Stevens, the senior associate justice, presiding over courtroom sessions and the justices' private conferences. The administrative tasks are carried out, as they usually are under the chief justice's direction, by his administrative assistant, Sally M. Rider, a former federal prosecutor and State Department lawyer. These arrangements can continue almost indefinitely. Nonetheless, as it has become evident that Chief Justice Rehnquist will not be returning soon, a sense of sadness and uncertainty has spread throughout the court and into the wider community of federal judges who have received no more information than the general public about the chief justice's condition and prospects. Judges have refrained from calling either Chief Justice Rehnquist or Ms. Rider. I don't have the nerve, one judge who has worked closely with the chief justice said Friday. The vibes I get just aren't good. A judge who did call the chief justice's chambers in anticipation of a visit to Washington was steered away from visiting his home in Arlington, Va. The justices have sent notes, but it is not clear whether any have seen or even talked to him. Information from official channels has been minimal. The court's press office would not say whether the chief justice was present for the justices' regular Friday morning conference, at which they review new cases and decide which to grant. (He was not.) Nor would the press office say whether, if he did not attend, he sent in his votes. (He did.) The chief justice, it appears, has functioned as his own press officer. Surely a professional would have cautioned him, on the day it was announced that he had just undergone a tracheotomy, against making a public promise to be back at work in a week. Every cancer specialist whom reporters consulted after the announcement found that prediction highly implausible. And when the chief justice found on Monday that he could not fulfill the promise, he subtly but unmistakably indicated that the error had been his own and not his doctors': According to my doctors, my plan to return to the office today was too optimistic. Chief Justice Rehnquist's statement on Monday said that he was receiving radiation and chemotherapy on an outpatient basis. Both the aggressive treatment and the observations of those who have seen him in recent weeks suggest that the disease is advanced and rapidly progressing. A judge who attended a meeting with him in late September said the chief justice looked well and spoke without the hoarseness that was apparent by the time the court's new term began Oct. 4; a spreading thyroid tumor can impinge on the nerves that control the vocal cords. By mid-October, one court employee who saw the chief justice in his street clothes was struck by his frailty. That robe can hide a lot, this employee said. The court will hear arguments in this coming week and then again in the two weeks following the Thanksgiving weekend. It will then go on recess until Jan. 10. During that substantial interval, people at the court now appear to think, the chief justice will have a chance to assess his situation and decide whether to retire. Although there seems to be widespread public confusion on this point - memories have faded in the 18 years since Chief Justice Rehnquist's contentious confirmation hearing - a chief justice must be separately nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, even if the person is already sitting on the Supreme Court. If the president wants to choose a sitting justice, he can pick any of them, without regard to seniority. Historically, promotion from within has been the exception; only 5 of the 16 chief justices previously served as associate justices, including Chief Justice Rehnquist, who spent his first 14 years on the court as an associate before President Ronald Reagan offered him a promotion in 1986. The timing of his illness, more than two months before the start of the 109th Congress, raises another prospect: that of a recess appointment to the court. The Constitution gives the president the power to make
Re: Donald's Job Description
On 2004-10-25T22:32:48+0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 03:20:28PM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: *Nobody* was a counterbalance to Tim, me or anyone else. Simple fact, no matter how much he pissed on my shoes, or anyone else's. What's he up to these days? It seems he got tired of of USENET, too Maybe an assassin got past his home defense network?
Re: Foreign Travelers Face Fingerprints and Jet Lag
On 2004-10-03T13:32:36-0500, J.A. Terranson wrote: The US *is* the Fourth Reich. Personally, I will take what comes. -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard
Re: potential new IETF WG on anonymous IPSec
On 2004-09-17T19:27:09-0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 06:20 AM 9/17/04 +, Justin wrote: On 2004-09-16T20:11:56-0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 02:17 PM 9/16/04 -0700, Joe Touch wrote: Except that certs need to be signed by authorities that are trusted. Name one. Oh, come on. Nothing can be absolutely trusted. How much security is enough? Aren't the DOD CAs trusted enough for your tastes? Of course, 'tis problematic for civilians to get certs from there. DoD certs are good enough for DoD slaves. Hospital certs are good enough for their employees. Joe's Bait Und Tackle certs are good enough for Joe's employees. Do you think that Verislime is good enough for you? No, verislime is not good enough for me, for ethical reasons, not security reasons. What's good enough for most businesses is anything that keeps customers from seeing self-signed cert warnings. Given the choice, I'd pick geotrust over no-thawte or verislime. The only reason they're in business is because of browser warnings. It has nothing to do with physical security offered by the CA, or threat models, or anything of that sort. For e-commerce, nobody needs high security. Anyone using a high-credit-limit account online without a liability limit in case of account theft is a moron. -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard
Re: potential new IETF WG on anonymous IPSec
On 2004-09-16T20:11:56-0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 02:17 PM 9/16/04 -0700, Joe Touch wrote: Except that certs need to be signed by authorities that are trusted. Name one. Oh, come on. Nothing can be absolutely trusted. How much security is enough? Aren't the DOD CAs trusted enough for your tastes? Of course, 'tis problematic for civilians to get certs from there.
Re: Flying with Libertarian Hawks
On 2004-09-10T12:02:12-0400, Tyler Durden wrote: Damn right. 'Conservative' means agreeing with the most vocal proponents of the current right wing apparatchiks. It seems to have little or no relationship to fiscally conservative ideas. Aren't the most vocal proponents of right-wing policies the Republican apparatchiks themselves? I think the most vocal proponents of is redundant. Left wing now refers to anyone who disagrees with the 'Conservatives', even if said left wing policies are practically identical to those of the 'right'. The notion of right-wing and left-wing as an axis/dimension is garbage. I think anyone who votes Republican is right-wing and anyone who votes Democrat is left-wing. There is no remotely accurate one-dimensional political scale, and left-wing or right-wing voting doesn't imply anything about a person's views on the two-dimensional (personal vs economic liberty) scale that seems to be in these days.
Re: Tilting at the Ballot Box
On 2004-08-30T17:40:25-0700, Steve Schear wrote: At 05:23 AM 8/30/2004, Justin wrote: Are States geopolitical distortions as well? Are countries? If you're going to propose an alternate system, please clearly identify 1) the voting pool, and 2) what they're voting for. If the pool is voting for a party instead of individuals, how does a winning party pick representatives? Is that selection method fair? While this is certainly a value judgement, almost every other nation thinks so. Even if we used it here, the fate of legislation would still be determined by the dominant party in the Senate, which would still rarely if ever admit 3rd parties, and by the president's veto. I assume you're criticizing only House election procedures because that's the only thing that can be attacked without completely restructuring the federal legislature. If it were possible, would you prefer to see nation-wide proportional representation if it included mandatory geographical distribution requirements like those you described? -- When in our age we hear these words: It will be judged by the result--then we know at once with whom we have the honor of speaking. Those who talk this way are a numerous type whom I shall designate under the common name of assistant professors. -- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Wong tr.), III, 112
Re: Tilting at the Ballot Box
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2004-08-25T11:25:09-0700, Steve Schear wrote: At 09:18 AM 8/25/2004, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/print/0,17925,683182,00.html Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - Printable Version - Tilting at the Ballot Box Entrepreneur David Chaum's e-money venture flopped. Now he wants to fix electronic voting. For once, is the brilliant inventor right on time? By John Heilemann, September 2004 Issue Like a shoemaker who only has hammers in his toolkit, Chaum is trying to fix the wrong problem. The problems with voting in the U.S. aren't current or even potential fraud at the ballot box its a complete lack of proportional representation. Is this solvable? Chaum is solving a problem that evidently can be solved. Perhaps once those problems are solved it will be easier to direct public attention at other more fundamental problems with our representative democracy. Hey Dude, Where's My Rep? The rallying cry of American Colonists was No Taxation Without Representation. Although U.S politicians frequently present their political system as some paragon of representative democracy, I am unaware of any country since the Civil War adopting this winner-take-all, gerrymandered, model. Almost all opted for a parliamentary system with proportional representation. Today, unless you vote either Republican or Democrat you are effectively denied representation. Almost no independent candidates are ever elected to U.S. state, not alone federal office, even though in other democracies some would surely have gotten members of their party seated. If one accepts that the American Colonists were right to refuse to pay taxes to the British Crown until they received representation then why should today's independent voters pay state and federal taxes? You have a strange notion of what the Colonists meant by that phrase. You do have representation. The fact that your representatives are not the ones you wanted is irrelevant. Presidential elections are a mess, though. Most states' selection of electors for presidential selection may violate the intent of the Constitution's writers; the electors for most states were originally selected by legislators. The winning-party-take-all system in most states does seem to violate the intent of election mechanics. Notably, there is a difference between having 3 electors and having 1 elector with 3/538 of a say in president selection. The current system may be too much like the latter. IMO, your complaint about gerrymandering is valid. There are a variety of formulaic ways to ensure voting district compactness. See e.g. http://www.hmdc.harvard.edu/micah_altman/disab.shtml Nevertheless, there is a fundamental inconsistency between two requirements that everyone seems to want: 1) coherent voting districts 2) equal-population voting districts. No matter what criteria are used for creating equal-population voting districts, there are always going to be multiple ways to choose them, so someone will always complain. It's the same sort of thing as voting procedure itself; there are multiple ways to conduct a democratic election. The fact that most of the population is unaware of the alternatives (in the case that no option gets a majority: 1st/2nd/3rd choices, run-offs, no run-offs, etc.) doesn't mean they're any less serious. Perfectly democratic elections run by different rules have different results. It's amazing anyone even bothers to complain about the y2k election when there are issues like this lurking under the bridge. Clearly, no matter what you do, there are problems. If the district size is 1 million, there's a city of 499k and a city of 1501k, what then? The city of 499k is screwed unless there's a nearby population center with similar culture. Even then, the numbers won't be equitable, and someone, somewhere will whine about lack of representation. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBLxcunH0ZJUVoUkMRAoOkAKCTrRtElXZa6lR6lGV1u3rQ6xSh9ACgms0X A//TbqG+hh5pGMLNuKrTlkI= =e/Cp -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Tilting at the Ballot Box
On 2004-08-27T13:14:47-0700, Steve Schear wrote: At 04:12 AM 8/27/2004, you wrote: On 2004-08-25T11:25:09-0700, Steve Schear wrote: Like a shoemaker who only has hammers in his toolkit, Chaum is trying to fix the wrong problem. The problems with voting in the U.S. aren't current or even potential fraud at the ballot box its a complete lack of proportional representation. Is this solvable? Chaum is solving a problem that evidently can be solved. Perhaps once those problems are solved it will be easier to direct public attention at other more fundamental problems with our representative democracy. Why would u guess this? These problems have been around since almost the founding of the republic. What? I just said that without the distraction of outright voting fraud, voters may become more aware of the more subtle and more serious issues with democratic voting systems. You have a strange notion of what the Colonists meant by that phrase. You do have representation. The fact that your representatives are not the ones you wanted is irrelevant. The Colonists had representatives too, its just that they were chosen by King George :) As I understand it (I wasn't there, but perhaps you were), their complaint was that their representatives weren't from the region they claimed to represent, and that they weren't chosen democratically. You and I have no such claim. I can't claim lack of representation just because my fellow citizens are idiots who subscribe to the Libertarian or Socialist or Zoroastrian platform yet vote for a Republican or Democrat. The fact that 'my' representatives are not the ones I wanted nor any of the independent independent party voters wanted is paramount. What you or I want has nothing to do with it. I don't get to redefine election procedure whenever my preferred candidate doesn't win an election. I'm not voting for either Bush or Kerry. Neither represents my views. No matter who wins, the winner is my president and my representative. I can't claim otherwise. The best I can do is blame all the idiot voters who cling to party-ID as if it were their only hope of survival. Representation is about interests and ideology. If a significant segment of voters don't get anyone to represent these interests and ideologies bad things can happen (e.g., they can become radicalized). Representation can be an important outlet for these disenfranchised voters. Well, one district in TX managed to elect someone who's decent - Ron Paul. It's possible. The fact that libertarians or fascists everywhere don't get their candidates elected has more to do with the fact that they vote Republican or Democrat because a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. Blame the morons in the electorate for not electing representatives that mirror their views. That's where the blame lies. What do you want? Do you want everyone to vote Democrat, Libertarian or Republican, then apportion the House of Representatives and the Senate appropriately? Who picks the representatives? The reason we don't have any socialists or libertarians or fascists in Congress is that not a single district votes for one. The U.S. has this fixation on voting for one of the two major parties. Other countries do not; that's why some of them have multi-(3+)-party representation in their parliaments. Incidentally, some northeastern state allows each congressional district to pick one elector, and the State as a whole picks two. (Electors = Senators + House Reps). If you're complaining about presidential elector selection, that blame lies with the States; the States dictate how their electors are chosen. IMO, your complaint about gerrymandering is valid. There are a variety of formulaic ways to ensure voting district compactness. See e.g. http://www.hmdc.harvard.edu/micah_altman/disab.shtml Clearly, no matter what you do, there are problems. If the district size is 1 million, there's a city of 499k and a city of 1501k, what then? The city of 499k is screwed unless there's a nearby population center with similar culture. Even then, the numbers won't be equitable, and someone, somewhere will whine about lack of representation. The problem is that use of voting districts seems to have always resulted in gerrymandering in our political system. A proportional system can eliminate these geopolitical distortions. State and Federal House of Reps. are proportional. (Yeah, I know Nebraska is unicameral, excuse the generalization). What part of the System isn't proportional other than most States' selection of presidential electors? -- When in our age we hear these words: It will be judged by the result--then we know at once with whom we have the honor of speaking. Those who talk this way are a numerous type whom I shall designate under the common name of assistant professors. -- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Wong tr.), III, 112
Re: Another John Young Sighting
On 2004-08-25T10:28:34-0400, Sunder wrote: All Hail Cthulhu! Why worship the lesser evil? Vote for Cthulhu! Why vote for the lesser evil? You're saying Cthulhu is a greater evil than Bush? Mr. Three Purple Hearts is fairly evil as well. I don't know whether he surpasses Cthulhu though. -- When in our age we hear these words: It will be judged by the result--then we know at once with whom we have the honor of speaking. Those who talk this way are a numerous type whom I shall designate under the common name of assistant professors. -- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Wong tr.), III, 112
Re: Mexico Atty. General gets microchipped (fwd)
On 2004-07-25T13:44:39-0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 10:20:44PM -0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote: No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God. -GW Bush Do you have a good cite for that? One source attributes it to George Bush I, not Bush II. I've seen it more than once identified as a quote by Bush I (GHWB, #41). http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/ghwbush.htm The quote was (allegedly) reported by Robert I. Sherman of the American Atheist News Journal, at an informal outdoor news conference at O'Hare on August 27, 1987. -- When in our age we hear these words: It will be judged by the result--then we know at once with whom we have the honor of speaking. Those who talk this way are a numerous type whom I shall designate under the common name of assistant professors. -- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Wong tr.), III, 112
Texas oil refineries, a White Van, and Al Qaeda
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/415877|top|07-19-2004::15:07|reuters.html Jul 19, 2:57 PM (ET) HOUSTON (Reuters) - Law enforcement officials said on Monday they are looking for a man seen taking pictures of two refineries in Texas City, Texas. Texas City, located on the Texas Gulf coast about 30 miles south of Houston, has three refineries including the largest U.S. plant operated by BP Plc., which is the third-largest U.S. refinery, processing 470,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The man, described as white with dark hair, was seen taking pictures outside the refineries, all located on the same highway, at about 5 p.m. CDT on Saturday, said Bruce Clawson, emergency management and homeland security director for Texas City. While it is not illegal to take pictures of a refinery from a highway or street, officials would like to talk to the man to find out his reason for taking the photographs. This is based on the idea that al Qaeda does its homework, Clawson said. That's not to say we don't have enough home-grown idiots already who might want to do something. The man was seen driving a white van. Valero Energy Corp. operates a 243,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in Texas City. Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, a joint venture between Marathon Oil Corp., and Ashland Inc., operates a 76,000 bpd refinery in Texas City. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has repeatedly warned refiners that they are possible targets for would-be terrorists. U.S. refinery security officials say their security guards regularly report people observing or taking pictures of refineries. During the Independence Day holiday, ExxonMobil Corp. tightened security at the largest U.S. refinery, the 538,000 bpd plant in Baytown, Texas, 30 miles east of Houston, because of general warnings about possible terrorist activity. -- When in our age we hear these words: It will be judged by the result--then we know at once with whom we have the honor of speaking. Those who talk this way are a numerous type whom I shall designate under the common name of assistant professors. -- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Wong tr.), III, 112
Re: Texas oil refineries, a White Van, and Al Qaeda
On 2004-07-20T21:47:31+0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote: The person in question was just somebody with a weakness for industrial architecture. You're missing the big picture: A light-skinned person with dark hair, a camera, a white van and an oil refinery, all in Shrub's home state. That's a bona fide threat to national security if I've ever heard one, yet people like you are suggesting we let it slide! Viper! Getteth thee back to the deserts of the middle east where you belong. The DHS has done a lot to make me ashamed of being an American. I can't believe how stupid my new guardians are. It was probably some photo-journalist working on an expose of Shrub's crooked/failed oil dealings. -- When in our age we hear these words: It will be judged by the result--then we know at once with whom we have the honor of speaking. Those who talk this way are a numerous type whom I shall designate under the common name of assistant professors. -- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Wong tr.), III, 112
Re: Querying SSL/TLS capabilities of SMTP servers
This one should work better. The last one had string comparison
problems.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use IO::Select;
use IO::Socket;
use Net::DNS;
$ehloname = mail.senate.gov;
$timeout = 15;
$dlevel = 0;
sub debug {
(my $str, my $mlevel) = @_;
if ($mlevel = $dlevel) { print DEBUG $str; }
}
sub checkmailtls {
my ($domain, $mpri, $mrelay) = @_;
my $proto = smtp;
my $hastls = no-tls;
my @flags;
my $mhost = IO::Socket::INET-new (
Proto = tcp, PeerAddr = $mrelay,
PeerPort = 25, Timeout = 10
);
if (! defined $mhost) {
print $domain $mpri $mrelay noconnect\n;
return;
}
debug(opened connection to $mrelay\n, 1);
$sel = IO::Select-new($mhost);
@readable = $sel-can_read($timeout); # magic number
if ($#readable == -1) {
print $domain $mpri $mrelay timeout-a\n;
goto OUT;
}
$greeting .= $mhost; # there's only one handle; we know which it is.
debug(greeting: $greeting, 2);
if ($greeting =~ /[\\*]{8}/) {
$proto = smtp;
push (@flags, filtered);
}
if ($greeting =~ /\b(esmtp|postfix|exim|sendmail)\b/i) {
debug(setting esmtp (greet)!\n, 1);
$proto = esmtp;
debug(found esmtp-indicator in greeting\n, 1);
}
print $mhost EHLO $ehloname\r\n;
print $mhost QUIT\r\n;
if (! (@readable = $sel-can_read($timeout))) {
print $domain $mpri $mrelay timeout-b\n;
goto OUT;
}
while ($mhost) { #$sel-can_read(0)) {
chomp;
debug(loop-recv: $_\n, 2);
if (/^5[0-9]{2}/) {
if ($proto =~ /^esmtp/) {
push(@flags, lies);
$proto = smtp;
}
$hastls = no-tls;
last;
}
if (/STARTTLS/) {
if ($proto =~ /^smtp/) {
debug(setting esmtp (stls)!\n, 1);
$proto = esmtp;
push(@flags, nobproto);
}
$hastls = adv-tls;
last;
}
}
print $domain $mpri $mrelay $proto $hastls @flags\n;
# try again just in case the remote host didn't notice the first one
print $mhost QUIT\r\n;
OUT:
close $mhost;
debug(closed connection to $mrelay\n, 1);
}
### begin
if ($#ARGV = 0) {
for ($i = 0; $i = $#ARGV; $i++) { push (@hostfifo, $ARGV[$i]); }
} else {
while () { chomp; push (@hostfifo, $_); }
}
while ($domain = shift(@hostfifo)) {
my @mx = mx($domain);
if ($#mx == -1) {
checkmailtls($domain, A, $domain);
} else {
foreach $record (@mx) {
my $mrelay = $record-exchange;
my $mpri = $record-preference;
checkmailtls($domain, $mpri, $mrelay);
}
}
}
Re: Querying SSL/TLS capabilities of SMTP servers
On 2004-07-08T17:50:57+0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
I cobbled up together a small bash shell script that does this. It lists
the MX records for a domain, and then tries to connect to each of them,
issue an EHLO command, disconnect, then list the output of the server,
..
Or, in perl... though I wonder if there's a way to get capabilities with
Net::SMTP. Might make this cleaner.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use IO::Socket;
use Net::DNS;
for ($i = 0; $i = $#ARGV; $i++) {
my @mx = mx($ARGV[$i]);
foreach $record (@mx) {
my $hastls = 0;
my $mhost = IO::Socket::INET-new (
Proto = tcp,
PeerAddr = $record-exchange,
PeerPort = 25,
Timeout = 10
);
print $mhost EHLO I-love-my-country.whitehouse.gov\n;
print $mhost QUIT\n;
while ($mhost) {
if (/STARTTLS/) {
$hastls = 1;
last;
}
}
print $ARGV[$i] . $record-preference . . $record-exchange;
print $hastls ? adv-tls\n : no-tls\n;
close $mhost;
}
}
Re: UBL is George Washington
On 2004-07-05T21:32:16+0200, Anonymous wrote: Major Variola (ret) writes: The yanks did not wear regular uniforms and did not march in rows in open fields like Gentlemen. Asymmetric warfare means not playing by *their* rules. But asymm warfare has to accomplish its goal. It's not being very successful. The only people who are siding with al-qaeda are those whose brains are already mush -statist socialists, to be precise. If al qaeda Who cares who sides with Al Qaeda? They're not keeping track of their sympathizers. It's foreign policy change, social change (reform perhaps?), and volunteers for martyrdom they want, not rhetorical support. bombed government buildings or targetted the private residences or offices of government officials, they might get more sympathy, from me at least. The WTC and the pentagon were specific, well-thought-out targets. The plane that crashed in PA was headed to the Capitol. If you're so eager to see Al Qaeda blow up better targets, why not suggest a few? Destroying an pair of buildings and killing thousands of citizens -most of whom couldn't give an accurate account of U.S. forces distribution in the MidEast- is not a step forward. As everyone else pointed out, Even though the 9/11 attacks may not have garnered your support, it accomplished other objectives.
Re: Shuffling to the sound of the Morlocks' dinner bell
On 2004-06-27T18:26:05-0500, J.A. Terranson wrote: On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, R. A. Hettinga wrote: snip All because you don't want to throw away your vote -- and register your disapproval with that state of affairs -- by voting for a guy who would make you feel decent and clean. In *any* election other than the one we face this November, I would agree with this 100%. But this time, I just can't. I fear the re-appointment of Bush more than any other political event. That the author of this is willing to overlook that he is knowingly helping to keep Bush in office, trampling those rights he claims to so cherish, totally negates his argument. But your vote will never make a difference in a presidential election. No such election has ever turned on one vote in any state, and it's not likely to. Trying to convince everyone to vote for Kerry is your prerogative, but if _you_ vote for Kerry in November while believing Badnarik is the best choice, you are wasting your vote. When it comes down to you and the ballot, vote your conscience. There's no quantum entanglement between your ballot and anyone else's. Obviously you may already believe all that and you may be agitating for Kerry precisely for those reasons. However, I don't like either Kerry or Bush so I have no problem explaining why you're stated position is wrong. -- Once you knew, you'd claim her, and I didn't want that. Not your decision to make. Yes, but it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. She deserved to be born with a clean slate. - Beatrix; Bill; Kill Bill V.2
Re: Shuffling to the sound of the Morlocks' dinner bell
On 2004-06-27T17:53:05-0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Jun-27-Sun-2004/opinion/24127406.html I will vote for a candidate who -- if he had his way -- would [...] pull us out of the deadly, illegal and unconstitutional war in Iraq; and put the U.S. military back to work tracking down the real culprits of Sept. 11. Just because it's a deadly (what war isn't?) and illegal (Bush's lawyers would take issue with that) doesn't mean the proper course of action is to leave. Right or wrong, we created this mess. We now bear some responsibility for cleaning it up. Once everything is cleaned up, he's right: we should leave immediately. Have we yet fixed the pipelines that terrorists have blown up because of our presence in Iraq? At which point, if we can find them, you think it would be OK to just kill them? I asked the candidate last week. Sure, Badnarik said. Sounds about right to me. For some strange value of real culprits, perhaps. 19 of the real culprits are already dead, and who knows how many with some knowledge of the attacks are already in prison. From what I've heard about the way the cells operated, Atta had primary control over the details of the plan. Osama just had to approve it. Osama probably deserves to die for his role in various attacks, but is he a real culprit of 9/11? -- Once you knew, you'd claim her, and I didn't want that. Not your decision to make. Yes, but it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Beatrix; Bill ...Kill Bill Vol. 2
Re: [IP] When police ask your name, you must give it, Supreme Court says (fwd from dave@farber.net)
On 2004-06-22T02:52:15-0400, Gabriel Rocha wrote: On Jun 21 2004, Steve Schear wrote: | Not a problem. Its legal to use any name you wish, including those that | use gyphs and sounds which cannot be represented by standard Roman and | non-Roman alphabets (as is common in some African tribes). So, those that | wish to avoid this data base nightmare can legally adopt name which does | not conform. Well, in principle this is a nice screw you method. But in practice... well, if you have to write down your name because the sound doesn't exist or can't be pronounced, you're that much more singled out eh... And for those of us who wish to travel, well, passports become difficult to manage I suspect. I am quite surprised with this ruling actually (I haven't yet read the specifics) but the first impression of it says that this does not bode well for opponents of the War on Terrorism (tm) or for anyone who doesn't like the great big database in the sky... Yes, we're screwed, but not because of the name requirement. Soon we will have to recite our citizenship number whenever a police officer, I mean pig, is investigating an investigation and asks us to identify ourselves. The supreme court will uphold that requirement for the same reason they just upheld the NV law. The number itself is not incriminating, and the State has a substantial interest in knowing who you are -- you may need medicating, or you may owe the government money, or you may have violated any number of illegitimate laws and therefore need reeducating in a federal prison. -- Once you knew, you'd claim her, and I didn't want that. Not your decision to make. Yes, but it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Beatrix; Bill ...Kill Bill Vol. 2
Re: [IP] When police ask your name, you must give it, Supreme Court says (fwd from dave@farber.net)
On 2004-06-21T22:38:01-0700, Steve Schear wrote: Not a problem. Its legal to use any name you wish, including those that use gyphs and sounds which cannot be represented by standard Roman and non-Roman alphabets (as is common in some African tribes). So, those that wish to avoid this data base nightmare can legally adopt name which does not conform. Don't citizens have to have an english-alphabet transliteration of their name to use for legal purposes (birth certificate, green card, social security record)? Everyone should change their legal names to Agent Smith. Is there a list of the other 20 states with stop-and-identify laws? The DMV differentiates same-name people by SSN, right? Is it very far-fetched to imagine that state courts and federal appeals courts will uphold state laws requiring SSN disclosure for identification purposes? After all, the Supreme Court didn't rule this way for fun; they ruled this way because they think that citizen have a duty to reveal their identity to police. If a name isn't enough to do so, I would think a SSN would be required. Maybe the 9th circuit will be safe from mandatory SSN disclosure during Terry stops, but I doubt any other circuits will be. The Supremes can't want to hear another case of this sort in the near future. They just cranked up the temperature; if they crank it up again too soon the frogs may notice they're about to boil. -- Once you knew, you'd claim her, and I didn't want that. Not your decision to make. Yes, but it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Beatrix; Bill ...Kill Bill Vol. 2
(fwd) The Merits in Newdow
Christ. The U.S. is now officially a Christian nation. - Forwarded message from Marty Lederman [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 11:56:31 -0400 To: Conlawprof List; Law Religion issues for Law Academics List Subject: The Merits in Newdow The collection of concurrences on the merits are quite interesting. The Chief's opinion adopts the SG's argument -- darn-near-preposterous, IMHO (and that of Justice Thomas!) -- that the Pledge is OK in schools because under God is not endorsement of any religion, but instead a simple recognition of the fact [that] '[f]rom the time of our earliest history our peoples and our institutions have reflected the traditional concept that our Nation was founded on a fundamental belief in God.' Justice O'Connor joins the Chief's opinion, but writes separately to suggest that the Pledge in schools is ok only because of a confluence of four factors that will virtually never again appear in combination in any other case. This result derives directly from pages 24-29 of the amicus brief that Doug Laycock wrote: http://goldsteinhowe.com/blog/files/newdow.laycock.pdf. Justice Thomas concludes -- correctly, in my view, see http://www.goldsteinhowe.com/blog/files/Newdow%20Final%20Brief.pdf -- that if Lee v. Weisman was correctly decided, then public schools may not lead students in daily recitation of the words under God. Thomas, however, would overrule Lee. http://supct.law.cornell.edu:8080/supct/html/02-1624.ZS.html - End forwarded message -
Re: War ain't beanbag....What the Fuck?
On 2004-06-13T17:50:43-0400, Tyler Durden wrote: RAH wrote... I'd like to hear how children who werent old enough to pronounce the colour were 'reds' who were rightly tortured (apparently) in your view, as well as the many women raped and tortured at the hands of SOA graduates. Funny how liberals always do the debits and not the credits in these grotesque calculations. Shall we count the several-orders-of-magnitude number of starved (*and* butchered) children in various Marxist paradises around the world, too? I thought not. It wouldn't be fair. Holy shit, Hettinga. Most of the time you make some sense. This ain't one of 'em. So, in other words, if Salvador Allende is democractically elected in a foreign country, then it's OK for the US to send agents and train torturers and then assasinate their leader? This is a complete nonsequitur He's pro-free-market, not pro-democracy. What Mr. Free Market doesn't want to state outright is that a pure free market economy is anarchy, because every law will impact the way businesses do business. logically. The fact that The Marxists would have killed even more is irrelevant. As someone who seems to espouse a more or less deterministic viewpoint vis economics and crypto-anarchy, you yourself should support a notion of letting them figure things out on their own. A majority screwing up a country is not letting them figure things out on their own. Maybe we should have let the Japanese figure things out by themselves once they surrendered? Germany? No funds to rebuild France. Oh, I want to live in *that* world, where we may not have won the cold war. More than this, this is the exact thinking that has caused us all sorts of problem. The best (and most obvious) examples are Vietnam and China. Both of these countries repeatedly kicked our ass in several theaters and then went through a brief socliaist period. In both cases, socialism is practically gone. Had we instead been smart with Mao and China (who we sent I haven't lived in China, but my impression of the country leads me to believe otherwise. If it's not *quite* socialist, it's fascist. In the end, China ended up being a major capitalist country, and our As above, this doesn't seem right. Hong Kong might be a major capitalist center of operations, but Hong Kong is not really China, socioeconomically speaking. involvement against the Chicoms only slowed this process down. We're making a similar mistake in Iraq, and we New Yorkers will probably pay for it again (if Tyler Durden stops posting after WTC#2 comes tumbling down, you'll know what happened. I'll try to post one more time from under the rubble if I can sniff a WiFi hotspot.) God damned idiots, both the designers/builders and anyone who would work in it without taking precautions. Anyone in WTC2 who cares about living should buy a dozen real climbing ropes or go learn to skydive and then how to BASE jump. And pray 5 times a day that the plane crashes into some *other* floor. I'd imagine it'd be a bit tricky to get a descender past the knots in a chain of ropes, and air currents around buildings make a safe landing improbable for any but the most experienced BASE jumpers. Accordingly, there was some whining in Oct '01 on dropzone.com about how morons would jump with an executive parachute whenever they smell burnt toast, but I think that's a great way to clean the pool. Maybe some clever person could change the WTC2 mains frequency to 70 or 80 herz to facilitate that (as well as overheating Tyler's computer to let him know that the End is near). ciel bleu! -- Not your decision to make. Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Bill, Beatrix; Kill Bill Vol. 2
Re: Reverse Scamming 419ers
On 2004-06-11T20:22:33-0400, Tyler Durden wrote: Well, burn down my unabomber shack! Have we smoked out Tim May? As much as his one-sided thinking pisses me off sometimes I miss the sheer fuck you of it. From: Tim [EMAIL PROTECTED] If so, it's quite a clever disguise. User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) -- Not your decision to make. Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Bill, Beatrix; Kill Bill Vol. 2
Re: Swindle these guys?
On 2004-06-09T12:39:31-0400, Tyler Durden wrote: Since an important theme in Cypherpunks is anonymous transactions, I'm wondering if there isn't some way we can't reverse-swindle folks like this, perhaps by getting them to wire into an egold account or something. Supposedly, they perform an ACH into an account, get you to withdraw the funds, give them their cut, and then they reverse the ACH causing your bank to try to collect from you. Is that what they do? I've been under the impression that they never transfer you any money, that they just request incidental expenses which gullible idiots view as an investment against their cut of the X million promised. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ach I can't believe an ODFI would allow you to withdraw that much money before the RDFI is no longer able to perform a return. A few times, I've tried requesting several thousand dollars expenses to investigate setting up the necessary account. Nobody's so much as replied to that proposition. -- Not your decision to make. Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Bill, Beatrix; Kill Bill Vol. 2
Iraq developments
Politics in action... acting president of the Iraqi council is assassinated; coalition finds small amounts of sarin released from an exploding shell in Iraq. What's next, we steal all their remaining chemical weapons and bring them and our military home? -- Not your decision to make. Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Bill, Beatrix; Kill Bill Vol. 2
Re: Can Skype be wiretapped by the authorities? (fwd from em@em.no-ip.com)
John Young (2004-05-11 00:09Z) wrote: Brian Dunbar wrote: Like it matters. Do you really think that the government would really allow Intel and AMD to sell CPUs that didn't have tiny transmitters in them? Your CPU is actually transmitting every instruction it executes to the satellites. That's a subtle bit of humor, right? Whenever this truth is repeated, first revealed here in 1992 by a person who worked at Intel in its early days when it was desperate for government contracts, it is taken to be humorous. ... What remains of this story on the Internet is a bowderlized version of the original truth, sometimes commingled with Tempest apochryphia -- Truth like this? Forwarded From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Dec 17 23:17:14 2003 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Timothy C. May) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 10:50:25 PST To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Trapdoors Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain How do we know the proposed legislation wasn't just a smoke screen? Isn't it possible that the Feds have already compromised Intel or MicroSoft? Is there some way to be sure that the new 486 chip running your computer isn't recording each PGP or RSA private key you generate? Sandy has discovered the deep dark secret of crypto! I worked for Intel from 1974 to 1986 and can confirm this to be the case. Every crypto key is secretly recorded by Intel microprocessors. Motorola processors do not yet record keys, which I why use a Macintosh. The specific instruction is the so-called NSA instruction which John Gilmore identified some time ago. Sun Microsystems was ordered by the NSA to redesign their chips to capture keys, which is why the SPARC processor was introduced. SPARC stands for Sun Processor Allowing Remote Capture. Once the keys have been captured and stored on the user's hard disk (notice how the drives occasionally turn on a night?), they are forwarded to the NSA and National Surveillance Organization by screen saver programs, like After Dark, which were actually written by the Berkeley Microsystems cut-out operation of the NSO. Real hackers don't use cutesy screen saver programs. This new automated system is much more convenient than the previous system, where the FBI and NSO had to break into homes and offices in order to retrieve the keys the Intel processors had recorded. End -- Not your decision to make. Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Bill, Beatrix; Kill Bill Vol. 2
Re: Fact checking
Damian Gerow (2004-04-29 02:07Z) wrote: Thus spake Justin [28/04/04 15:41]: : Requiring that adults vote is a terrible idea. While being deathly ill... Proxy vote. I did it for two 'invalid' relatives this year. I hadn't looked it up before, but it seems most countries with compulsory voting have exemptions for debilitating conditions. Assuming that's the sort of scheme you're proposing, proxy voting is unnecessary. Besides, this isn't requiring them to vote. Semantics. If you're thrown in jail for failing to vote, is that a voting requirement? If you're threatened by a gangster with a machine gun, is that a requirement? Very few countries throw people in jail for failing to vote. Most states either fine violators or revoke their suffrage. IDEA.int considers that compulsory voting. You don't. http://www.idea.int/voter_turnout/Compulsory_Voting.htm : The above proposal only requires 33% turnout among current non-voters. : While that's certainly an improvement (by your metric), it doesn't : resolve the core issues. Not in the first year, no. And not in the second year, nor in the third. But in the fourth, you'll see a drastic drop in the number of apathetic voters -- the ones who don't care. Your plan would split current rare- or non-voters into two categories, the ones who are banned from voting due to apathy, and a second group whose members want to preserve future voting ability. I would guess that the latter would end up voting in Presidential elections, and would only care about the presidential candidates. That might make things worse, since such idiotic, uninformed voters might vote along party lines in other races on the same ballot. We have enough party-line voters at the moment. We don't need any more. Australia has mandatory voting. I think that's what you're arguing against I'm arguing against any sort of coercion - whether it's a loss of rights, being stuffed in a prison, or being beaten with a stick. You consider voting in Australia to be mandatory? The punishment is a fine, different from loss of suffrage but not necessarily more serious. : Make sure there's a handy abstain option for those who want to get : the point across about lack of choice, and maybe a space to say why, : too. Then stick the (anonymous) reasons up in a publicly-viewable : space and eh, instant feedback. This was apparently a set-up. Most places have abstention options of one sort or another. It doesn't matter that much how you abstain, whether you can tell them to keep the ballot, whether you can feed blank ballots into the machines, or whether you have to mark something. What do you gain by forcing people to go to the polls to mark abstain, eat their ballots, or otherwise effectively abstain after showing up? It would be a lot more logical to require voting if abstention wasn't an option, though there are still serious problems with mandatory voting. You seem intent on allowing people to express disinterest in who wins, but for some unknown reason you want their disinterest to be expressed within an arbitrarily-designed framework rather than allowing them the flexibility to vote, show up and abstain, or stay home. I suspect there's much disagreement as to whether abstention is included in the concept of voting. -- Not your decision to make. Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Bill, Beatrix
Re: Fact checking
Thomas Shaddack (2004-04-28 18:32Z) wrote: What won't hurt could be making them liable for their promises, as they can be considered to be a contract with the voters. With specific penalties for not delivering the results in the specified timeframe. Presidents don't pass laws. Presidential campaigns would be reduced to issues that are mutable (vulnerable?) to executive orders. Individual candidates for federal office can't pass laws either. You want to hold a Senator liable when his compatriots (even if they form the majority) don't support everything your senator supports? Nobody who understands the basics of U.S. government construction could possibly believe that a candidate's promise is a guarantee. It is merely a statement of ideology. What then, consequences for not attempting to effect promises? Who's to judge? -- Not your decision to make. Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Bill and Beatrix
Re: Fact checking
Graham Lally (2004-04-28 14:47Z) wrote: Damian Gerow wrote: I don't see any way to educate the mass public. Indeed, why bother? How about a system that removes your right to vote if you haven't exercised it in the last 3 elections? Requiring that adults vote is a terrible idea. While being deathly ill or otherwise unable to vote for three consecutive federal elections is extremely unlikely, the fact remains that failure to vote is not indicative of lack of desire to vote. The above proposal only requires 33% turnout among current non-voters. While that's certainly an improvement (by your metric), it doesn't resolve the core issues. If not voting is the sin you seek to prevent, why settle for 33 percent? If it is dumb voters you're trying to eliminate, requiring them to drive their dumb asses to the polls isn't going to make then any smarter or more informed. It might even increase stupid voting patterns by encouraging dumb people to form cliques. They won't want to appear dumb to their friends as a result of voting for the wrong person, and groupthink is bad for elections. Make sure there's a handy abstain option for those who want to get the point across about lack of choice, and maybe a space to say why, too. Then stick the (anonymous) reasons up in a publicly-viewable space and eh, instant feedback. There is an abstention option. The poll administrator checks off your name when you show up, so someone knows that you voted. You don't have to choose anyone on your ballot. You can either toss it in the garbage on your way out, or draw pictographs derogatory to politicians on non-critical areas of the ballot before feeding it to the fiber-starved voting machine. -- Not your decision to make. Yes. But it's the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. - Bill and Beatrix
Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail
Dave Howe (2004-04-13 14:11Z) wrote: Justin wrote: It's not just a private interaction between two consenting parties. It's a contract that grants power to a third party eliminating traditional legal guarantees of quasi-privacy in communication from sender to recipient, one of which is not a party to the contract. There's no guarantee the average sender would know that mail to gmail is intercepted and parsed. And this differs from normal mail how? most free email services add advert footers, and many email servers offer virus and spam filtering via just such a parsing method. the Google I'm not concerned with the advertising itself. My concern is that the Gmail service would provide an unacceptable level of detail on message content to whoever's monitoring the advertisement logs.
Re: Fornicalia Lawmaker Moves to Block Gmail
Riad S. Wahby (2004-04-13 01:49Z) wrote: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/nm/20040412/wr_nm/tech_google_dc_1 A private interaction between two consenting parties has absolutely nothing to do with the state, period. The bitch supporting this shit should be removed from office forthwith. It's not just a private interaction between two consenting parties. It's a contract that grants power to a third party eliminating traditional legal guarantees of quasi-privacy in communication from sender to recipient, one of which is not a party to the contract. There's no guarantee the average sender would know that mail to gmail is intercepted and parsed. -- You took my gun. It's just your word against mine! Not necessarily. -Bernie vs Tom, Miller's Crossing
Re: On Needing Killing
Major Variola (ret) (2004-04-11 16:42Z) wrote: Blacknet is a robust archive for words, immune to force (by State or private actors), but merely words. With all due respect to the principle of freedom of speech and all that, I think that cypherpunks, and people in general, give far too little respect to words, as if words are a vague, unimportant, and remote link in the chain of causation of acts or failure-to-acts. I don't see anything wrong with Orwell's view that words control the future's view of history. His certainly have. I think mass anonymity and cypherpunk-ish society aren't themselves motive forces on the level of the _contents_ of some anonymous speech that would be facilitated by those institutions. That's the whole point, right? What would be the use of cypherpunk society if the speech and data havens it allowed were merely words? I'm unconvinced that there isn't a deterministic component to the speech-action transition. Even though the results of some speech may be extraordinarily terrible, restrictions on free speech are artifacts of previous, equally terrible free speech that has achieved a foothold in government. -- You took my gun. It's just your word against mine! Not necessarily. -Bernie vs Tom, Miller's Crossing
Re: BBC: File-sharing to bypass censorship
Harmon Seaver (2004-04-11 20:05Z) wrote: This is insane -- on what basis, under what Constitutional authority, does the state get to decide that the christer marriage vows are sacred and legal, and a pagan or indig taking to wife isn't? This is one nation under God (the Christian God), or haven't you noticed? If the Christian Right thinks God doesn't like something, it's not Constitutionally protected. -- You took my gun. It's just your word against mine! Not necessarily. -Bernie vs Tom, Miller's Crossing
Re: Powell admits mobile weapons factory scam
J.A. Terranson (2004-04-03 22:22Z) wrote: On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Justin wrote: The intelligence, even if it was originally true, may have been leaked and then the mobile (and other) weapons factories and storage destroyed. The intended result would have been the current situation, with the Bush administration and intel community looking like idiots and the soft on terror Democrats having a foreign policy advantage in Nov 2004. Has it not occurred to you that having Powell make the first statement may be designed to avoid having Bush make the [obvious and needed] statement? [...CIA manufactured intel under Bush's orders...] Of course that's a possibility. I don't think the CIA is that corrupt. I think the failure to consider the three options I set out (and undoubtedly others I haven't) is a more likely reason for finding believable intel than orders from above to manufacture intel. Didn't they even name a source or two for their mobile weapons lab information? While that's no guarantee the claimed source(s) exist, it lends credibility to alternatives that don't require such a vast conspiracy, alternatives that wouldn't create such a political nightmare. I prefer to believe that the CIA is incompetent rather than dishonest. The fact that they're using Jennifer Garner to try to recruit people seems to bolster my theory. -- You took my gun. It's just your word against mine! Not necessarily. -Bernie vs Tom, Miller's Crossing
David Kelly's suspicious death
Harmon Seaver (2004-04-03 22:44Z) wrote: Here's another meme on the issue: U.S. Unloading WMD in Iraq In addition, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has emphasized that the U.S. and British intelligence agencies issued false reports on Iraq leading to the U.S. attack. Meanwhile, the suspicious death of weapons inspector David Kelly is also an unresolved issue in Britain. Everyone knows that he committed suicide. Just like Vince Foster. Incidentally, last Tuesday the Supreme Court ruled that the Vince Foster death-scene photos are not subject to FOIA requests. Kennedy even cited _Antigone_ as reason to protect already-taken death-scene photos of a scandal-embroiled public official (p. 9). The claimed rationale was that people requesting such photos must have some evidence (presumably a witness who claims knowledge that Foster was murdered) rather than just an unsubstantiated hunch. Otherwise, says Kennedy, privacy interests of the family outweigh public right to know. It's amusing the Supreme Court is unwilling to extend it's fear of appearance of corruption to cases like this. It's also amusing that they can't seem to find any difference between FOIA requests for death-scene photos of a public official mixed up in a scandal and, as Kennedy suggests, FOIA requests by murderers of death-scene photos of their victims, private citizens. The Appeals court had ordered the release of four of the (11?) pictures. NARA v. Favish - 02-954 - 2004-03-30 http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03slipopinion.html -- You took my gun. It's just your word against mine! Not necessarily. -Bernie vs Tom, Miller's Crossing
Re: Liquid Natural Flatulence
R. A. Hettinga (2004-03-31 16:41Z) wrote: At 10:26 AM -0500 3/31/04, Trei, Peter wrote: * Evaporating LPG (liquids do not 'sublimate')... As for sublimate, when you toss a cup of boiling water into the air at extremely cold temperatures it converts straight into a gas, all at once. That's what I was talking about. A chemist I bumped into with that story called it sublimation, and when I said I thought sublimate was meant for solids only, he said no, that instantaneous conversion to a gas is sublimation whether origin state is a solid or liquid. I very seriously doubt that. That chemist sounds full of shit. Boiling, evaporation, condensation, sublimation, melting, and freezing have nothing to do with the speed at which the phase change occurs. They refer to the qualitative aspect of state changes, notably the beginning, (transition,) and ending states. Sublimation is solid-gas with no intervening liquid state, that state being impossible due to prevailing pressure/temperature conditions. Haven't you ever seen a phase diagram? Furthermore, can you please explain how boiling water could change phase into a gas all at once? It takes energy for a compound to change to gas state, genius. Where's it going to get that energy, particularly when the surrounding air is at extremely cold temperatures? No macro-level events happen instantaneously in any reasonable sense of the word. Increase in atomic motion can only happen due to applied forces, and acceleration takes time. Even if one of those damned 50MT Russian thermonuclear bombs went off 100m away, a glass of water wouldn't vaporize instantaneously. -- If you don't do this thing, you won't be in any shape to walk out of here. Would that be physically, or just a mental state? -Caspar vs Tom, Miller's Crossing
Re: Sttop Spreading Hatred
Tyler Durden (2004-03-29 14:50Z) wrote: As for May, I don't miss his killing, but I definitely miss his edge and occasional insite. Insight. Don't ask who pissed in my wheaties. -- If you don't do this thing, you won't be in any shape to walk out of here. Would that be physically, or just a mental state? -Caspar vs Tom, Miller's Crossing
Re: corporate vs. state
R. A. Hettinga (2004-03-26 12:41Z) wrote: At 7:20 AM + 3/26/04, Justin wrote: Those nasty latin words are ceteris paribus. Thank you. On a network full of experts the price of error is bandwidth. There's no reason to get all sarcastic. For all I knew you could have unintentionally mistyped it, the error not reflecting on your knowledge but on your keyboard. I'd just rather some ignorant boob doesn't read that and start using the incorrect form. Hell, there are legions of morons using in nomine patri, et fili, et spiritu sancti because they think they heard that in Boondock Saints. -- If you don't do this thing, you won't be in any shape to walk out of here. Would that be physically, or just a mental state? -Caspar v. Tom, Miller's Crossing
Re: 'Special skills draft' on drawing board
R. A. Hettinga (2004-03-14 23:42Z) wrote: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/13/MNG905K1BC1.DTLtype=printable Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System, said planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts had begun last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas. A targeted registration and draft is is strictly in the planning stage, said Flahavan, adding that the whole thing is driven by what appears to be the more pressing and relevant need today -- the deficit in language and computer experts. Computer experts? In-crip-shin? Dig-a-tail? I don't KNO3 nothin'. Donald Fauntleroy Duckfeld ought to be planning a draft of philosopher-ayatollahs. -- That woman deserves her revenge... and... we deserve to die. -- Budd, Kill Bill
Re: If You Want to Protect A Security Secret, Make Sure It's Public
R. A. Hettinga (2004-03-15 02:07Z) wrote: http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB107930573476054980,00.html If You Want to Protect A Security Secret, Make Sure It's Public What is terrible article titles for $500, Alex? -- That woman deserves her revenge... and... we deserve to die. -- Budd, Kill Bill
Re: research paper
Sandy Harris (2004-03-04 01:48Z) wrote: someone wrote: I'm currently doing a research paper, with the topic of cryptography being essiantial for society, ... I was wondering if there where any particular books, websites, ... One web page with a lot of links: http://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-2.05/doc/politics.html The cypherpunks FAQ link referenced on the online.offshore.com.ai/security/ page (linked from the above page) is broken (the oberlin copy has vanished, apparently). Here are good ones: http://www2.pro-ns.net/~crypto/cyphernomicon.html http://www.cyphernet.org/cyphernomicon/cyphernomicon.contents.html http://www.spinnaker.com/crypt/cyphernomicon/ http://koeln.ccc.de/archiv/cyphernomicon/ http://www.koot.biz/docs/cyphernomicon/cyphernomicon.html http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/6805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/cyphernomicon/ On another note... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_C._May -- That woman deserves her revenge, and... we deserve to die. -Budd, Kill Bill
Re: [Users] Announce: FreeS/WAN Project Ending
Thomas Shaddack (2004-03-02 02:49Z) wrote: It was a good project. Hope somebody picks up the torch and keeps it burning, possibly even brighter. And for anyone unhappy with the linux 2.6 implementation, this forked just a few months ago: http://www.openswan.org/ -- That woman deserves her revenge, and... we deserve to die. -Budd, Kill Bill
Re: Windows source leaked?
Steve Furlong (2004-02-13 22:34Z) wrote: Eric is correct in his reply to MV's article. Joe Programmer isn't necessarily obligated not to look at leaked trade secrets, but if he implements anything remotely related to the leaked secret, he and his employers or customers are subject to being sued for using the secret. Case law on point? I don't think that is true at all. Trade secrets that are leaked are no longer trade secrets. I think the issue would be copyright and/or patent violation. I seem to recall something about copyright periods for trade secrets not beginning until the secret is released, a similar situation being patents issued to the NSA or other TLAs... they only start ticking when the patent is revealed. So trade secrets offer a copyright advantage. Obviously, if you can locate the persons who released a trade secret, you can probably sue them because they're probably under contract. But suing random people who happened to have looked at trade secrets and implemented similar non-patented code? Sounds shaky. -- No humanitarian endeavor can ever fill the void left by my past crimes. -Sloane
Re: Lunar Colony
Pete Capelli (2004-01-15 20:12Z) wrote: Of course, bankrupting the U.S. and getting a base on the moon are both useful objectives. With no financially viable country owning the lunar outpost, things could get quite interesting. Can't we just match this up with the 60% of the federal budget taken up by social security and medicare/medicaid by launching all the recipients of those programs to the moon? Yeah, taking the matching funds concept to a new height might not be a bad idea.
Re: Lunar Colony
Trei, Peter (2004-01-15 21:39Z) wrote: Does anyone think it will take less than trillions of dollars to establish a moon base? The more realistic numbers I've heard are $400 billion for a moon base, double that for a Mars mission. I don't know the incremental cost to sustain the moonbase. Realistic? I haven't seen moon base defined yet. $400 billion for ISS-on-the-Moon, sure. $400 billion for a useful Moon base? I doubt it, but I admit my $1T+ guess is just as arbitrary. It could be $100B if NASA forces a bunch of engineers to work for no pay, if we steal resources from 3rd world countries, and if we staff the mission with Islamic astronauts who don't have any problem dying. It could also be $10T, depending on what Moon Base really means. Interesting OpEd piece in the NYT today pointing out that a manned Mars expedition becomes *much* more affordable if no return trip is planned. This is obvious. More affordable, but more risk. We might end up with a bunch of dead Mars colonist-hopefuls. Frankly, I'd like to see Mars terraformed - start by diverting a comet or two to strike it and thicken the atmosphere so things warm to the point where only respirators and warm clothing are needed instead of spacesuits. How could we possibly divert comets accurately, or even reliably? How would a comet impact help the situation?
Re: Sources and Sinks
Tim May (2004-01-02 02:42Z) wrote: Bob, a crack addict collecting disability or welfare or other government freebies, works 0% of his time for the government/society. (Dat not true. I gots to stands in line to get my check increased!) Do those who have previously been in the workforce, in your opinion, have the right to reclaim through welfare any amount up to that they've paid through taxes to the entity providing welfare/unemployment? Or is all unemployment money Pluto's fruit?
