The Catheter and the Blizzard
The obvious example is Unix, in its variants including Linux, despite the attempt by SCO to collect $1000 per CPU or whatever silly number they have floated in their lawsuits. Anyone discussing this particular bit of corporate hallucination is encouraged to put Frank Zappa's Penguin in Bondage track on their phonograph...
Re: more SSH MITM
-- On 7 Sep 2003 at 7:00, Thomas Shaddack wrote: Central certification authority has its risks and advantages. Remembering the fingerprints of known keys and alerting for the new or changed ones has its advantages too. Why we shouldn't have it all? Why there couldn't be a system that would keep the database of known keys and report changes and new keys, like SSH does, and at the same give the possibility to sign the keys by several CAs? Effectively turning the hierarchy with potentially vulnerable top to a much-less-vulnerable web structure? Ideally a client that mediates interactions should get trust information from all relevant sources, and flag the user when there is something unusual about an interaction. However the more sources, the harder it is for mere software to figure out what is meaningful and relevant, and therefore the greater the risk that one will wind up continually throwing irrelevant dialog boxes at the user, which the user eventually learns to click through and ignore. It is hard to do what you propose. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG McThKMMEVOKkdz4RWIcbMuoi2/6QWYqfbndp1rrO 4NHj3GqtByVC9gs20vzoMmlt0cJTw1eJUCwsGHG/S
Charted death of cypherpunks
http://recall.archive.org/?query=cypherpunkssearch=goafterMonth=1afterYear=1996beforeMonth=TodaybeforeYear=%A0 (the above URL should be all in one line, of course) = end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
a study in efectiveness of medication in Corralitos area
http://recall.archive.org/?query=tim+maysearch=goafterMonth=1afterYear=1996beforeMonth=TodaybeforeYear=%A0
[cdr] Social Hack sets off security flappers.(and that just may be the point.)
Customs Minister Chris Ellison has signalled an independent review of Customs' security following the theft of two computer servers at Sydney Airport last week. The government has been embarrassed by the revelation that thieves posed as computer technicians to steal the computers from Australian Customs Service facilities at the airport. I will also be announcing an independent review of Customs security shortly and the form of that will be announced in a few days' time, Senator Ellison told ABC TV. He said the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the secretive Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) and Customs were investigating the theft. There has been a misrepresentation in the press as to what was actually taken, he said. For a start, there weren't thousands of confidential files taken and we've ascertained that there weren't sensitive details relating to Customs officials ... taken either. ASIO and the AFP did not complain to Customs about this matter. Senator Ellison said the two servers were to enable communication across the Customs network. We are concerned about it, we are investigating the matter but I think that to speculate whilst there is an investigation going would be inappropriate. He would not deny that the theft was terrorist-related. To assume things in this environment is very dangerous. We have the AFP and DSD on the job. They have reported to me the progress of the investigation. I'm happy with that. I'm not going to speculate as to the motive of the thief concerned, who was involved. http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7200178%255E15306,00.html
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 08:39 PM, Steve Schear wrote: At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote: - Original Message - From: Steve Schear [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [anonymous funding of politicians] Comments? Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from. Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it. Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive. Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described yesterday? The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members. Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel bypasses the nominal name-stripping. --Tim May According to the FBI, there's a new wrinkle in prostitution: suburban teenage girls are now selling their white asses at the mall to make money to spend at the mall. .. Now, you see, the joke here, of course, is on White America, which always felt superior to blacks, and showed that with their feet, moving out of urban areas. White flight, they called it. Whites feared blacks. They feared if they raised their kids around blacks, the blacks would turn their daughters and prostitutes. And now, through the miracle of MTV, damned if it didn't work out that way! --Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO, 15 August 2003
CAPPS II -- The Latest Red Scare
The new Transportation Security Administration system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger's identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information. Passengers will be assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- based in part on their city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase. Most people will be coded green and sail through. But up to 8 percent of passengers who board the nation's 26,000 daily flights will be coded yellow and will undergo additional screening at the checkpoint, according to people familiar with the program. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled red and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=1802ncid=1802e=2u=/ washpost/20030909/ts_washpost/a45434_2003sep8 Charming. Now people face arrest (Washington Post story claim) for merely be tagged as a Red. Get tagged as a Red, perhaps based on intelligence like Usenet postings, mailing list activity, political activity, and airlines are ordered to bar use of their services. And arrest follows. I know the ACLU is already having a field day with this. I wonder what the charges justifying arrest will be? Your honor, this man was flagged Red by our computers. We request one million dollars bail. He's a flight riskcough. No wonder the airlines are facing bankruptcy. Except Big Brother is bailing them out, semi-nationalizing them (probably giving big pieces of control to Halliburton and other Bush crony companies...even Hitler was not this transparent). --Tim May Join the boycott against Delta Airlines for their support of the Big Brotherish CAPPS II citizen-unit tracking program. http://www.boycottdelta.org http://boycottdelta.org/images/deltaeyebanner.gif With our help, Delta Airlines may be joining United and US Air in the bankruptcy scrap heap.
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
At 09:28 AM 9/9/2003 -0700, Tim May wrote: On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 08:39 PM, Steve Schear wrote: At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote: - Original Message - From: Steve Schear [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [anonymous funding of politicians] Comments? Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from. Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it. Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive. Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described yesterday? The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members. Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel bypasses the nominal name-stripping. Sorry, I replied to this but apparently forgot to cc cypherpunks Limiting each individual contribution to fixed amounts (say $1, $5, $10, $20 and $100) should close that loophole. --Tim May According to the FBI, there's a new wrinkle in prostitution: suburban teenage girls are now selling their white asses at the mall to make money to spend at the mall. I guess I must not look like a potential client 'cause no young 'ho ever came up to me and solicited for a 'party'. steve A foolish Constitutional inconsistency is the hobgoblin of freedom, adored by judges and demagogue statesmen. - Steve Schear
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 11:47 AM, Steve Schear wrote: At 09:28 AM 9/9/2003 -0700, Tim May wrote: Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described yesterday? The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members. Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel bypasses the nominal name-stripping. Sorry, I replied to this but apparently forgot to cc cypherpunks On this topic, I very strongly suggest to people that they not carry on conversations on both open lists and moderated lists. Also, I thought Perrypunks was a no politics, crypto only list? Debating how to do campaign finance reform is heavily political, and very light on cryptography, math, etc. Limiting each individual contribution to fixed amounts (say $1, $5, $10, $20 and $100) should close that loophole. There are too many loopholes to close. You also don't address the other point I raised, that if an untraceable campaign contribution system is in fact unlinkable to the donor, then Warren Buffett is able to donate $10 million, all in unlinkable contributions. (Nothing wrong with this, of course, but it sure does contradict the only small contributions intent of the various statist rules about campaigns.) So, why work on a system which is guaranteed to fail, by its nature? And guaranteed to fail for social reasons, when it is pointed out that inner city negroes rarely have access to PCs or digital money systems and that the system thus skews toward techies and those with computers? --Tim May --Tim May Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity. --Robert A. Heinlein
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 09:58 AM, ken wrote: Tim May wrote: In any case, campaign finance reform is essentially uninteresting and statist. Yes Tim, but as we happen to live in places where states make laws and employ men with guns to hurt us if we disobey those laws then we do have an interest (in the other sense) in who gets to run the organs of the state. If you live next to the zoo you may be uninterested in the design of the lion's cage but you sure as hell aren't disinterested in it. I wouldn't want to live near a death camp, either, but that doesn't mean I would think designing better gas chambers is a noble or interesting thing to do (well, maybe for ten million or so statists and inner city welfare mutants, but that's for another post). Designing systems to thwart free speech is not noble, and not very interesting. (Campaign finance laws are thwartings of free speech, clearly.) --Tim May That government is best which governs not at all. --Henry David Thoreau
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
Tim May wrote: In any case, campaign finance reform is essentially uninteresting and statist. Yes Tim, but as we happen to live in places where states make laws and employ men with guns to hurt us if we disobey those laws then we do have an interest (in the other sense) in who gets to run the organs of the state. If you live next to the zoo you may be uninterested in the design of the lion's cage but you sure as hell aren't disinterested in it.
Your papers please [what color is John Gilmore?]
Most people will be coded green and sail through. But up to 8 percent of passengers who board the nation's 26,000 daily flights will be coded yellow and will undergo additional screening at the checkpoint, according to people familiar with the program. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled red and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45434-2003Sep8?language=printer
Re: Your papers please [what color is John Gilmore?]
What color is John? He's Tie-Dyed, of course... You were expecting a single category they knew what to do with? Major Variola (ret.) wrote: Most people will be coded green and sail through. But up to 8 percent of passengers who board the nation's 26,000 daily flights will be coded yellow and will undergo additional screening at the checkpoint, according to people familiar with the program. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled red and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45434-2003Sep8?language=printer
Re: cats
At 08:12 AM 9/9/03 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote: On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:15:31AM -0700, Tim May wrote: Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat. --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11 Cats always have an alpha cat. And they often have pissing contests to determine the pecking order. This is just as true of house cats as it is of lions. First, many cats (e.g., mountain lions) do not form social groups beyond the mother raising the cubs. Female African lions reportedly do hang out together. Second, if you examine the context of the original post, the statement was a metaphor about leaderless (anarchic) assemblies such as this list. In particular, the Feds (dogs) haven't historically understood that this list is the equivalent of a grad lounge or spontaneous beach party: there are multiple conversations, no one is moderating or otherwise choreographing squat. When cats encounter each other by chance, they may assert dominance, (linguistic pissing contests are not unheard of here :-) but their lives are not structured around following, or smelling the higher-up's ass. --- While acknowledging himself an Anarchist, he does not state to what branch of the organization he belongs ---Discussing Leon Czolgosz' shooting of President William McKinley
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
At 06:31 PM 9/9/2003 +0200, Amir Herzberg wrote: Steve suggested (see below) that anonymous cash may be useful to hide the identities of contributors from the party/candidate they contribute to. I'm afraid this won't work: e-cash protocols are not trying to prevent a `covert channel` between the payer and payee, e.g. via the choice of random numbers or amounts. Furthermore even if the e-cash system had such a feature, it would be of little help, since (a) there will be plenty of other ways the payer can convince the payee that it made the contribution and (b) in reality, candidates will have to return the favors even without knowing for sure they got the money - kind of `risk management` - I'm not sure what we want is to allow big contributors to gain favors while not really making as big a contribution as they promised... I think that is exactly what we want. When multiple, creditable, contributors approach a candidate (who have different, perhaps opposing agendas) and tell them they have made substantial contributions to the campaign what will the candidate do when the bank account figures don't add up and it comes time for delivering on requests from these contributors? You know that once special interests understand that the candidates can't tell who contributed many attempt to cheat. The result could be to greatly reduce special interest campaign contributions and their power in government. It could make for an interesting study in game theory. steve A foolish Constitutional inconsistency is the hobgoblin of freedom, adored by judges and demagogue statesmen. - Steve Schear
Attention Sheeple
Saw this while browsing the Web this morning. I loved it. http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/donahue/donahue2.html - Want to See the World Implode by Jim Donahue I'd like to see some real hell unleashed in the upcoming year. I want a briefcase full of weaponized toxins to explode in front of the New York Stock Exchange. I want to see political assassinations take place all over Amerika, melee assassinations, live on television during a press conference. I want power outages to roll their way through the countryside, from Boston to D.C. to Miami to Dallas to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Seattle and back again. I want the economy to collapse into a pile of green ashes. I want 401(k) plans and IRAs and mutual fund investments to disappear. I want the twelve Federal Reserve Bank branches to go up in flames. I want new laws, more laws, bigger laws. I want laws that prohibit smoking in public, in private, on the high seas, and on the moon. I want drug laws that will put a high school student in the electric chair for smoking a joint. .. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
cats
On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 11:15:31AM -0700, Tim May wrote: Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat. --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11 Cats always have an alpha cat. And they often have pissing contests to determine the pecking order. This is just as true of house cats as it is of lions. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: Cathedra and the Bizarre: Why Free Stuff is Good
Tim Philosophizes: All of the interesting languages now generating a lot of buzz, and substantial communities, are essentially free. Or non-profit, or open source, or whatever one wishes to call them. Some examples: I believe Free to be very different than Open Source, particularly open source under viral licensing agreements like the GPL. My perfect example of free software is the quadratic formula. I don't have to pay anyone to use it. I may use it for any purpose whatsoever, including commercial applications. Using it does not obligate me in any way, or legally encumber any product which includes it. The knowlege of it is so widespread that were it to be lost, someone would quickly reconstruct it and spread it around again. IT has lots of free things. Most computer science is free. I don't have to mail Andrew Tanenbaum a check if I write an OS, even if I use his book to design it. Knuth's books are free. etc... I'm a big fan of free. Free works. Free is like Pandora's box. Once opened, the stuff cannot be put back in. Ever. I am less of a fan of schemes like the GPL, which seek to impose a set of contagious terms on anything touched by the knowlege. But free arises for some reasons which are readily-understandable to Hayekians and Randians and those interested in markets and capitalism: * the creators are anticipating rewards _other_ than salaries from employers, e.g., True scientific inquiry is always driven purely by intellectual curiosity. Salary is just how you eat and pay the bills. Understanding the essential nature of apparently complex things is its own reward. -- fame (Yes, I am Guido) Yes, I am Paracelsus. Would you believe I've been cooking this large vat of feces for 6 months? -- job opportunities (I wrote Digital Datawhaque, the leading open source frobbolizer) I showed the correspondence between Tarot Trumps and Paths on the Tree of Life. -- publish or perish I wrote the Copronomicon. -- simple pleasure or some mission (applies to several Cypherpunks projects...) We must stop discrimination against Druids. Of course my point here is that with minor exceptions, most really great innovations are unappreciated by the public, and may in fact go unappreciated by all but a very small number of people working in ones subspecialty at the time they are announced. So I think the non-tangible rewards from employers argument for innovation fails. Smart people do innovative things because of their intrinsic coolness, even if no one else in the world can appreciate them. The large communities, and probable large adoptions by corporations later, are in the free stuff areas. I don't even think the important defining characteristic is that the thing be open source. The important thing is free. Free as in no hassles, no licenses, play around, copy it for your friends, write about it without fears of being contacted by lawyers, and so on. Free. Unencumbered. (Yeah, there are various kinds of licenses having to do with whether products based on the freebie can be sold for profit. If you can't do whatever you like with it, it's not free. Period. Just the obvious one: any digital money system needs to be free, or open source, to be widely adopted by our kind of people. Secure anonymous digital money will never win out over easy to use, good buddies with Homeland Security systems like Paypal in the wide adoption Olympics. This is a dead horse that continues to be beaten on this list. Had David Chaum, a man I respect a great deal, freely published and distributed his ideas, he would likely today have a lot more fame and fortune. Chaum's ideas were the JPEG Arithmetic Coding of the digital money spec. They suffered from two faults. One, they had legal restrictions. Two, other things that were almost as good didn't have legal restrictions. If Chaum wanted fame and fortune, he should have started eBay. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: Cathedra and the Bizarre: Why Free Stuff is Good
-- On 7 Sep 2003 at 12:49, Eric Cordian wrote: Secure anonymous digital money will never win out over easy to use, good buddies with Homeland Security systems like Paypal in the wide adoption Olympics. Non anonymous digital money is inherently reversible. For many purposes, this is a good thing. For other purposes, damn near intolerable. Reversibility imposes large costs on issuer, buyer, and seller. Reversibility imposes on all participants not merely the possibility of tracking identity, but the necessity to track identity, which is expensive and a major pain in the ass. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG w43FmWVSVxGrGkglKwhrbDlYPv+GcqZ9RzftUTCi 4nRt4abzGjha5XY7VEVcS7IDx7m9vN9VBDIRElHh7
Re: CAPPS II -- The Latest Red Scare
On Tuesday 09 September 2003 16:47, Tyler Durden wrote: Stop expressing yourself and everything will be OK. Shut up, keep your head down and stay with the pack. All hail mediocrity!
Re: CAPPS II -- The Latest Red Scare
Get tagged as a Red, perhaps based on intelligence like Usenet postings, mailing list activity, political activity, and airlines are ordered to bar use of their services. And arrest follows. Serves you right. You and your constant criticisms of our divine and God-appointed protectors and leaders will certainly cause your privileges to be revoked. And in case you haven't yet learned: Stop expressing yourself and everything will be OK. Shut up, keep your head down and stay with the pack. -TD From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: CAPPS II -- The Latest Red Scare Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2003 09:24:54 -0700 The new Transportation Security Administration system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger's identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information. Passengers will be assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- based in part on their city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase. Most people will be coded green and sail through. But up to 8 percent of passengers who board the nation's 26,000 daily flights will be coded yellow and will undergo additional screening at the checkpoint, according to people familiar with the program. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled red and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=1802ncid=1802e=2u=/ washpost/20030909/ts_washpost/a45434_2003sep8 Charming. Now people face arrest (Washington Post story claim) for merely be tagged as a Red. Get tagged as a Red, perhaps based on intelligence like Usenet postings, mailing list activity, political activity, and airlines are ordered to bar use of their services. And arrest follows. I know the ACLU is already having a field day with this. I wonder what the charges justifying arrest will be? Your honor, this man was flagged Red by our computers. We request one million dollars bail. He's a flight riskcough. No wonder the airlines are facing bankruptcy. Except Big Brother is bailing them out, semi-nationalizing them (probably giving big pieces of control to Halliburton and other Bush crony companies...even Hitler was not this transparent). --Tim May Join the boycott against Delta Airlines for their support of the Big Brotherish CAPPS II citizen-unit tracking program. http://www.boycottdelta.org http://boycottdelta.org/images/deltaeyebanner.gif With our help, Delta Airlines may be joining United and US Air in the bankruptcy scrap heap. _ Express yourself with MSN Messenger 6.0 -- download now! http://www.msnmessenger-download.com/tracking/reach_general
