Re: Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella (fwd)

2002-08-11 Thread R. A. Hettinga

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

At 4:12 AM + on 8/11/02, David Wagner wrote:


 I hope I don't need to point out that always using the same exit
 remailer does *not* prove that he is using just one hop.  One can
 hold the exit remailer fixed while varying other hops in the path.
 Your question seems to be based on a mistaken assumption about how
 remailers work.

Sorry to give that impression, and, as much as I respect you, and
James Donald, who also makes the same assertion about me, both of you
would be wrong in assuming that I don't know how remailers work, at
least in principle. While I haven't ever built a remailer, I *have*
used them on occasion, and I did edit Sameer Parekh's excellent
introduction to anonymous remailers for one of the first issues of
First Monday, when I was on the editorial board there in the middle
1990's.


That said, I would be willing to bet a (very :-)) nominal amount that
the esteemed Mr. AAARG! is, or was, in fact, using one hop, at most,
though to prove the bet out would be difficult thing to do.

In fact, to add further insult to his street cred, or at least kick
some dust on his patent-leather penny-loafers, I wouldn't be
surprised if the remailer is his own, though that would probably be
too stupid even for him to do, and I'm not going to waste my time
rooting out, even at a first pass, who runs the AAARG! remailer. I
just say I wouldn't be surprised, is all. :-).


At the foundation, then, my point is still the same one that I
started with: the same, well, idiots, tend use the same outbound
remailer hops, usually to the exclusion of all other remailer nodes,
and, oddly enough, to the exclusion of all other users of that
particular remailer. It becomes quite easy then to filter them out,
which is, frankly, nice, at least as far as I'm concerned. Besides
Mr. AAARG!, another user of a certain Austrian remailer node comes to
mind. Both of those gentlemen, if I were to only charitably call them
such, do not vary their output remailers, much less do other
potentially clueful things, like actually sign their messages, for
instance.


Obviously all this might have to do with finding enough working
remailers to string together, and, of course, the lack of genuinely
any easy to use mixmaster clients out there, even now, and not for
actually trying, using a whole bunch of money in a couple of cases. I
suppose, given the use of lots of remailers as a platform to heckle
ostensibly reasonable discussion from the back benches, if not to
actually stalk online and send poison-pen email, it's easy to find
their difficulty of use a blessing; though like most people who care
about such things, it doesn't help the cause of ubiquitous internet
privacy too much. Maybe we need cash, or something. Someday. :-).



Ultimately, I think it boils down to genuine gall. If someone like
Mr. AAARG! would actually endeavor to instruct the residents of the
cryptography list, or even cypherpunks :-), of the utility of shoving
a particularly egregious bit of technological emetic down our
collective throats, or even the throat of the general public, one
would think he would have a better clue about remailer hygiene when
he treated us to his current round of venturi-vaporised drivel.

So, Mr. AARG! is, probably, just some advanced-degree moke who works
at Intel, or is a Waveoid, or other such Wintel digital rights
management IP-control fellow traveller, and, given the paucity of
his nocturnal emissions from behind the Great Oz's Green Velvet
Curtain, or, better, the elementary answers people here are forced to
use to explain more rudimentary things than remailer operations to
him, probably helps me, just a smidge, with my assertion about his
probable clueless use of the remailer network.


Cheers,
RAH

-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: PGP 7.5

iQA/AwUBPVX8J8PxH8jf3ohaEQJ0MgCgv3PLVPALWxBzYhkTfINn8jC3WkoAoJ+g
nkXbBBPv5oaQVL4qTSP+T0Fu
=zqRj
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'




Re: Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella (fwd)

2002-08-11 Thread R. A. Hettinga

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

At 9:15 AM +0200 on 8/10/02, Eugen Leitl wrote:


 I don't try to filter, but to join several sources. Anonymous is an
 idiot,  but at least an intelligent one. I can't leave him out
 without creating a  skewed picture of what is going on.

No offense meant, of course.

To make sure I don't miss stuff like that is why I subscribe to your
list anyway, even though I'm also subscribed to most of your sources.
It is also why I was glad you caught something he said that
confirmed, precisely, why he's still in my killfile. :-). I don't
need to raise my blood pressure more than necessary.

[Ob Cypherpunks: Seriously, folks. How clueful can someone be who
clearly doesn't know how to use more than one remailer hop, as proven
by the fact that he's always coming out of the *same* remailer all
the time? Even more important, nobody *else* uses that remailer,
which is why killfiling the idiot works so well to begin with...]

Anyway, on this list in particular, I've found that what any number
of smart people say about what the idiot du jour says is much more
interesting than what the actual idiot says himself, which is why he
can safely reside in a killfile.

(Having said more than my share of stupid things here myself in 8
years here, and being no stranger to the odd killfile myself :-), I'm
sure lots of peoples' irony meters are pegged, but, by definition,
those folks can go fuck themselves, I figure. :-).)

Cheers,
RAH

-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: PGP 7.5

iQA/AwUBPVV2YsPxH8jf3ohaEQI0mQCeIvBppfM6c2HfCQAyjlLn3w0UCfkAoIA8
NObxG1Bk8BPLraIx3LrjnJbL
=dg+p
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'




Re: Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella (fwd)

2002-08-11 Thread David Wagner

R. A. Hettinga wrote:
[Ob Cypherpunks: Seriously, folks. How clueful can someone be who
clearly doesn't know how to use more than one remailer hop, as proven
by the fact that he's always coming out of the *same* remailer all
the time?

I hope I don't need to point out that always using the same exit remailer
does *not* prove that he is using just one hop.  One can hold the exit
remailer fixed while varying other hops in the path.  Your question
seems to be based on a mistaken assumption about how remailers work.




Re: Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella (fwd)

2002-08-10 Thread Eugen Leitl

I don't try to filter, but to join several sources. Anonymous is an idiot, 
but at least an intelligent one. I can't leave him out without creating a 
skewed picture of what is going on.

On Fri, 9 Aug 2002, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

 At 1:03 AM +0200 on 8/10/02, Some anonymous, and now apparently
 innumerate, idiot in my killfile got himself forwarded to Mr. Leitl's
 cream of cypherpunks list:




Re: Thanks, Lucky, for helping to kill gnutella (fwd)

2002-08-09 Thread R. A. Hettinga

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

At 1:03 AM +0200 on 8/10/02, Some anonymous, and now apparently
innumerate, idiot in my killfile got himself forwarded to Mr. Leitl's
cream of cypherpunks list:


 They will protect us from being able
 to extend trust across the network.

As Dan Geer and Carl Ellison have reminded us on these lists and
elsewhere, there is no such thing as trust, on the net, or anywhere
else.

There is only risk.


Go learn some finance before you attempt to abstract emotion into the
quantifiable.

Actual numerate, thinking, people gave up on that nonsense in the
1970's, and the guys who proved the idiocy of trust, showing, like
LaGrange said to Napoleon about god, that the capital markets had no
need that hypothesis, Sire ended up winning a Nobel for that proof
the 1990's*.

Cheers,
RAH
*The fact that Scholes and Merton eventually ended up betting on
equity volatility like it was actually predictable and got their
asses handed to them for their efforts is beside the point, of
course. :-).

-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: PGP 7.5

iQA/AwUBPVRgRsPxH8jf3ohaEQIu3gCg0V9JIHnMRJ2GW+aJ1xSEHi5ETcYAn1Db
BgR2WiAxNt/zGx5Iy+uRG+Ws
=JEmi
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'