Re: Transport, the near future
At 04:17 AM 2/5/2003 +, Peter Fairbrother wrote: me again. Space transport: I like the two-stage-to-orbit solution for humans, with the booster stage piloted. The maths works well. I don't know about scramjets etc for the booster, but a few rockets would do, with an aero fuselage to take off and land. Using current airline technology mostly. Safe. Cheap. If the second stage isn't reusable as a second stage (or if eg just the engines are) that's okay too. Things like tanks are useful in orbit, hell anything, any mass, is useful there. SSTO is pride, not economics (assuming at least a low-to-medium demand). But there ain't a company anywhere that's going to put up the dosh if NASA and the US insists on being the best... My preference is the space elevator. In simple terms, the space elevator is a ribbon with one end attached to the Earth's surface and the other end in space beyond geosynchronous orbit (35,800 km altitude). The competing forces of gravity at the lower end, and outward centripetal acceleration at the farther end, keep the ribbon under tension and stationary over a single position on Earth. This ribbon, once deployed, can be ascended by mechanical means to Earth orbit. If a climber proceeds to the far end of the ribbon and releases, it would have sufficient energy to escape from Earth's gravity and travel to the Moon, Mars, Venus and the asteroids. http://www.highliftsystems.com/ Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. -- Richard P. Feynman
Re: mail weirdness
On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 10:03:28PM -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: Well, of all the email lists I'm on, yours is the only posting that does what it does on a group reply. Like, why doesn't my group send a copy to you? And why does it pick up [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put it in the To: line? And I don't see how it could be my mutt that's changing yours, and only yours, in this fashion. The only thing I can think of is that my mutt is smart enough to know that cypherpunks is a list and realizes that since I'm on it, I don't need to be copied on replies to all! That could explain this header: Mail-Followup-To: Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED], Harmon Seaver [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your mutt parses that properly. But it's been a few years since I configured mutt, and this is just a guess. Others might have more intelligent speculation. -Declan
Re: Putting the NSA Data Overwrite Standard Legend to Death... (fwd)
Thomas Shaddack [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Second, where did the number 7 really come from? From the OSI 7-layer model, which took it from the fact that the number 7 is sacred to a certain tribe in Borneo (see The Elements of Networking Style, by Mike Padlipsky). Peter.
Re: Transport, the near future
Steve Schear wrote: My preference is the space elevator. In simple terms, the space elevator is a ribbon with one end attached to the Earth's surface and the other end in space beyond geosynchronous orbit (35,800 km altitude). The competing forces of gravity at the lower end, and outward centripetal acceleration at the farther end, keep the ribbon under tension and stationary over a single position on Earth. This ribbon, once deployed, can be ascended by mechanical means to Earth orbit. If a climber proceeds to the far end of the ribbon and releases, it would have sufficient energy to escape from Earth's gravity and travel to the Moon, Mars, Venus and the asteroids. http://www.highliftsystems.com/ Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. -- Richard P. Feynman It's a nice idea, but it needs a tensile-strength-to-mass ratio equivalent to holding a girl and her mother up by a single thread of her 10 denier stockings. Not easy to achieve. You'd need carbon nanotubes or the like, and at the moment we can't build it. You also need 45,000 km or so of tether. Expensive. Huge investment, fragile. Unrealistic, imo. Rotating tethers on the other hand can use hi-test fishing line. Really, no kidding. You only need a few hundred km, or at most a few thousand km, of tether. Cheap. There are two types, landing takeup and hypersonic takeup. They work a bit like this (here goes a try at some ascii art...) [] orbiting mass-- \ \ rotating tether \ \ -\ space atmosphere earth (on this scale a space elevator cable would be roughly six feet long) The tether, whose centre of gravity is in a fairly low orbit, dips it's end into the earth's atmosphere every so often. Hypersonic takeup tethers catch a 'plane flying at hypersonic speeds in the upper atmosphere, and landing takeup tethers reach the surface. The energy/momentum is replaced by sending current through the tether as it passes through the Earth's magnetic field. Hypersonic takeup tethers are better studied, even the rendezvous techniques apparently work, and can use fishing line except for the short length that enters the upper atmosphere (it would melt). They use a mesh-like tether structure to avoid catastrophic damage from meteorites etc (a patented, but IMO obvious, idea). Landing tethers sort of cast the line a bit ahead, like a fisherman; it hits the ground, is tied on to the spaceship (good knots!) and then the line and the spaceship are dragged up. No-one really has studied them much (except me, and I'm not telling yet), but the strength (and length) of line needed is _much_ (order of mag+) less than a space elevator. And you don't need a hypersonic 'plane. You can also fling things away from the tether when they're going away from the Earth. Can get any (reasonable) speed you like. -- Peter Fairbrother
The Crypto Gardening Guide and Planting Tips
After much procrastination I recently put the Crypto Gardening Guide and Planting Tips online at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/crypto_guide.txt, this may be of interest to readers. From the introduction: There has been a great deal of difficulty experienced in getting research performed by cryptographers in the last decade or so (beyond basic algorithms such as SHA and AES) applied in practice. The reason for this is that cryptographers don't work on things that implementors need because it's not cool, and implementors don't use what cryptographers design because it's not useful or sufficiently aligned with real-world considerations to be practical. As a result, security standards are being created with mechanisms that have had little or no security analysis, often homebrew mechanisms or the standards editor's pet scheme. The problem is a lack of communication: Cryptographers often don't seem aware of the real-world constraints that their design will need to work within in order to be successfully deployed. The intent of this document is to cover some of those real-world constraints for cryptographers, to point out problems that their designs will run into when attempts are made to deploy them. Also included is a motivational list of extremely uncool problems that implementors have been building ad-hoc solutions for since no formal ones exist. Peter.
Transport, the near future
me again. Space transport: I like the two-stage-to-orbit solution for humans, with the booster stage piloted. The maths works well. I don't know about scramjets etc for the booster, but a few rockets would do, with an aero fuselage to take off and land. Using current airline technology mostly. Safe. Cheap. If the second stage isn't reusable as a second stage (or if eg just the engines are) that's okay too. Things like tanks are useful in orbit, hell anything, any mass, is useful there. SSTO is pride, not economics (assuming at least a low-to-medium demand). But there ain't a company anywhere that's going to put up the dosh if NASA and the US insists on being the best... Another I like is tether systems, but not yet. The low-orbit rotating tethers with hypersonic collection (the tip of a rotating tether, whose overall CoG moves at orbital speeds, collects the spacecraft-to-be at mach 10 or so in the upper atmosphere) are a bit fraught, but doable with near-modern-day tech (modern economic materials ok, but patented!). A bit further on you might have a tether that reaches the ground... so a rope falls down from space, you grab on, and it yanks you up to orbit! Yeah!!! And light gas guns for cargo, perhaps with a mag assist. A two-ton payload gas-gun would cost $4bn to $6bn to build, then about $6,000 per ton launched, excluding capital costs. Figures are mine, about 5 years old. I suspect there are those who could do better, but aren't saying. I suppose you could even put one on the Ecuadorean plains, pointing up to the mountains near Quito, and have the needed 300km runup and low-gee for passengers (if it's on the equator you can schedule shots much better, eg every 30 minutes). Personal transport: Cars are okay, but I hate driving unless it's too fast for transport purposes. Suppose we have a mix of trains and cars - even the Stephenson's Rocket trials thought of carrying personal carriages on trains. If there was power and computer control available then people's individual cars could travel on the same lines as trains, but without needing an engine - or a schedule - or a train - or a driver - or a driving lcence - ar road accidents. Great when you're pissed and just want to say Home George (as a kid we actually had a chauffeur called George Cole, but I called him Coley, not George). The macho Tim's of this world could also have fuel tanks on their cars, so thay could go where they liked (and if there was a strike, or the power failed, it wouldn't matter that much. Redundancy. Also you could get to places not on the regular network). Expensive in infrastructure terms, especially in the US. In the EU it might be better, as there are more railways already. But not cheap.
Re: Putting the NSA Data Overwrite Standard Legend to Death... (fwd)
From the OSI 7-layer model, which took it from the fact that the number 7 is It's simpler than that. Russians wanted 6, americans 8. = end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: Duh, transport
On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 01:56:22AM +, Peter Fairbrother wrote: Railways: Euro railways are better than US - but in at least the UK there is compulsory purchase, when they grab your land and pay you very little for it, in order to build them. And too much government is involved. Yeah, the same with highways (and airports, for that matter) here. The WI DOT is the states biggest boondogle, with prisons second. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: mail weirdness
On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 09:18:25PM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 08:53:58AM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: Declan's postings are usually either normal postings to cypherpunks or else posted to his politech list (most of which have Subject: FC something.) I'm subscribed to politech, so I haven't had any weirdness when replying. Yep. I use Eudora and mutt and haven't changed my mail setup in quite a while. (For Politech, I use majordomo and have had FC: prepended since 1996 or so.) Suspect, self-defensively, that I'm not the source of any weirdness. :) Well, of all the email lists I'm on, yours is the only posting that does what it does on a group reply. Like, why doesn't my group send a copy to you? And why does it pick up [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put it in the To: line? And I don't see how it could be my mutt that's changing yours, and only yours, in this fashion. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: Putting the NSA Data Overwrite Standard Legend to Death...
On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Peter Gutmann wrote: Thomas Shaddack [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Second, where did the number 7 really come from? From the OSI 7-layer model, which took it from the fact that the number 7 is sacred to a certain tribe in Borneo (see The Elements of Networking Style, by Mike Padlipsky). Probably more likely Seven plus or minus 2, a classic paper in cognitive psychology that talks about short term memory (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/). It turns out that 5-9 is the range of items people can keep in short term memory. Along the way, it seems like seven plus or minus 2 has also become a design guideline in some parts of the user interface community.
Re: mail weirdness
On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 01:05:04AM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 10:03:28PM -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: Well, of all the email lists I'm on, yours is the only posting that does what it does on a group reply. Like, why doesn't my group send a copy to you? And why does it pick up [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put it in the To: line? And I don't see how it could be my mutt that's changing yours, and only yours, in this fashion. The only thing I can think of is that my mutt is smart enough to know that cypherpunks is a list and realizes that since I'm on it, I don't need to be copied on replies to all! That could explain this header: Mail-Followup-To: Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED], Harmon Seaver [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your mutt parses that properly. But it's been a few years since I configured mutt, and this is just a guess. Others might have more intelligent speculation. Huh, that's interesting. I just looked in .muttrc and it's got set followup_to=yes but it doesn't seem to be doing anything that I've ever noticed before, in fact never really paid attention to that mail-followup-to line in the header until now. I'll have to check that out more. thanks -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: [IP] Open Source TCPA driver and white papers (fwd)
On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, AARG! Anonymous wrote: The main features of TCPA are: - key storage The IBM TPM does this part. - secure boot - sealing - remote attestation It does *not* do these parts. That's why IBM wants the TPM != TCPA to be loud and clear. That's why the RIAA can't expect it to solve their problem. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
Re: Feds pull plug on suspicious cyberwarfare .gov site
On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Declan McCullagh wrote: Wonder if any current .gov domains are owned by individuals pulling a prank? -Declan Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 08:46:20 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FC: Feds pull plug on suspicious cyberwarfare .gov site I've placed a mirror of AONN.gov here: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/aonn/ I followed down the page and found a name, then googled for it. Check this out and laugh your butt off! http://www.manhunt.com/features/html/89.shtml Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
Re: Transport, the near future
At 08:31 AM 2/5/2003 +, Peter Fairbrother wrote: It's a nice idea, but it needs a tensile-strength-to-mass ratio equivalent to holding a girl and her mother up by a single thread of her 10 denier stockings. Not easy to achieve. You'd need carbon nanotubes or the like, and at the moment we can't build it. You also need 45,000 km or so of tether. Expensive. Huge investment, fragile. Unrealistic, imo. Rotating tethers on the other hand can use hi-test fishing line. Really, no kidding. You only need a few hundred km, or at most a few thousand km, of tether. Cheap. There are two types, landing takeup and hypersonic takeup. They work a bit like this (here goes a try at some ascii art...) Thank's for the excellent explanation. I believe you may find this firm's work of particular significance http://www.tethers.com/ steve
Re: Feds pull plug on suspicious cyberwarfare .gov site
On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 07:48:13AM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote: I followed down the page and found a name, then googled for it. Check this out and laugh your butt off! http://www.manhunt.com/features/html/89.shtml Yep. My favorite URLs of the day are below. -Declan --- http://www.flash.net/~manniac/aonndsi.htm AONN DSI classified ops are unseen like Wonder Woman's invisible jets. http://www.manhunt.com/features/html/89.shtml AONN is looking to expand its influence... Hip-Hop is supposed to be universal. Hip-Hop is supposed to be everything-spacetime. Hip Hop is an entity that was sent here to ultimately destroy the enemy. Hip-Hop is international communications exchange mixed in with beats and melodies. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B55XTO/qid=1043818610/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-9430374-2023268?v=glances=musicn=507846 Two ambitious young rappers with Snohomish County ties have started an organization that they hope will propel Pacific Northwest rappers... http://www.cafeshops.com/aonn/ AONN Records Merchandise http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Washington_State_Original_Artists/ AONN Records Presents: The November 12 Projekt. Artists were selected from among those who proved to have exceptional performance statistics. http://online.securityfocus.com/news/2028/comment/17813 ultimately rebel against Big Brother and destroy the system as we presently know it to be. http://www.zyn.com/flcfw/POA/ (since deleted) AONN beyond state- of-the-art approach streamlines vast government information systems and allows for end product to be delivered in a mere fraction of the normal continuum of space-time. http://www.totse.com/bbs/Forum8/HTML/000501.html I recently surpassed Kevin Mitnick, Captain Zap and all the Hall of Famers and became the #1 Hacker in the history of the United States of America
Re: \Touching shuttle debris may cause bad spirits
At 12:38 PM 2/4/03 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not necessarily. It is a well documented phenomenon that people show up at hospitals with even some seemingly real conditions whenever there is a particular panic in the media, even in cases where it is simply not possible that they were made sick by the incident. Well, in a large population, there's also a certain fraction of people who are sick for other reasons--food poisoning, say, or coming down with the flu. If you tell all those people you've just been exposed to dangerous chemicals that may make you ill, it's not a surprise if some of those people assume they're sick because of the dangerous space chemicals, rather than because of that potato salad they had at the picnic last Sunday. ... Jay --John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
A secure government
Removal of sensitive information, locking down of websites, securing otherwise accessible points of data. The .gov and .mil talk of cyber-homeland-defense-strategy blah doesn't make much sense, at least not from the admittedly media-derived POV I get. In amongst the proposals for screening people, ratting out neighbours, the whole shebang, the only active preventative measures I can see being taken are more laws, and more forces to enforce them. Sure, I've heard the talk that government agencies should examine the data available to the public, and then hide it all, but there's a distinct lack of serious consideration with regards to secure communications attached to the same systems. The view I get fed all the time is that crypto is, on the whole, in the hands of the terrorists, the anti-patriots, the paedophiles, et al. That it is a bad thing. People using it should surrender keys to the government, if you're encrypting mails then you should be viewed as having something to hide... Interfaces and usability aside, there's an air that only the wrong need ciphers. History as we see it backs this up to an extent, in the fact that secrets are presented as something in the hands of the enemy to be broken as a tool of war. Unbroken ciphers as a home tool don't seem to generate much interest. The fact of the matter is that most people don't have anything to hide, and so even if the interface was the most intuitive ever, they probably still wouldn't use it. Extra step, and all that. But it just seems stange to me that the government in all their paranoia haven't announced nationwide plans to start encrypting all government communications, to implement federal-, nay industrial-spanning secure infrastructures. In my proletarianism, maybe I'm just blind to it. Have people in sensitive positions of power actually seen an increase in taking this seriously? Is it already in such a state? The security of simple things such as .mil webpages and IP'd resources certainly doesn't convince. Or are they really not bothered, and just want to make a good headline? Further, if such a scheme were announced, could this conceivably introduce cryptotech as part of a mainstream process? Necessity is the mother of invention, and in such times, necessity is what people say it is and sell it as. As a safeguard against nations' security and/or economy, should we look to paranoid industries as the first step towards a secure, anonymous society? Hum, just me thinking aloud anyway. Apologies if this is in the archives.. crypto + govenment throws up a few results...
Bush's new plan for wealth transfer
TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES: I am pleased to transmit a legislative proposal to establish the Millennium Challenge Account and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Also transmitted is a section-by-section analysis. The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) represents a new approach to providing and delivering development assistance. This new compact for development breaks with the past by tying increased assistance to performance and creating new accountability for all nations. This proposal implements my commitment to increase current levels of core development assistance by 50 percent over the next 3 years, thus providing an annual increase of $5 billion by fiscal year 2006. To be eligible for this new assistance, countries must demonstrate commitment to three standards -- ruling justly, investing in their people, and encouraging economic freedom. Given this commitment, and the link between financial accountability and development success, special attention will be given to fighting corruption. The goal of the Millennium Challenge Account initiative is to reduce poverty by significantly increasing economic growth in recipient countries through a variety of targeted investments. The MCA will be administered by a new, small Government corporation, called the Millennium Challenge Corporation, designed to support innovative strategies and to ensure accountability for measurable results. The Corporation will be supervised by a Board of Directors chaired by the Secretary of State and composed of other Cabinet-level officials. The Corporation will be led by a Chief Executive Officer appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. This proposal provides the Corporation with flexible authorities to optimize program implementation, contracting, and personnel selection while pursuing innovative strategies. The Millennium Challenge Account initiative recognizes the need for country ownership, financial oversight, and accountability for results to ensure effective assistance. We cannot accept permanent poverty in a world of progress. The MCA will provide people in developing nations the tools they need to seize the opportunities of the global economy. I urge the prompt and favorable consideration of this legislation. GEORGE W. BUSH
