[OT] why was private gold ownership made illegal in the US?
-- On 3 Jul 2002 at 2:36, Anonymous wrote: At the time, the U.S. faced a significant chance of a Communist/Socialist revolution such as had been seen in several other countries. Class warfare was widespread, The high point of support for socialism among the masses in the US was the 1870s, give or take a couple of decades. By 1900 socialists around the world had given up all hope of genuinely revolutionary seizure of power, and were pursuing conspiratorial paths. The 1930s was the high point of support for socialism among the intellectuals, the privileged, and the elite. Their efforts to foist their preferences on the American masses met with resounding hostility and reluctance. Not only was there no danger of a socialist revolution, in the US or anywhere else, but in the US the leadership's attempts to force socialism down peoples throats met stubborn resistance. There was more mass support for socialism in other countries, but no socialist revolutions in those countries, nor any danger of such revolt. There were socialist coups, and conspiratorial seizures of power by socialists in other countries. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3x+jv+MnH33X3HSDdYMeLIgT55+H4ekUhpOMDJDS 2vKGDwf7SNzlVqX8Hi5qcbp51h1c6SSx0sz6gRDeI
Re: Hollywood Hackers
-- On 29 Jul 2002 at 14:25, Duncan Frissell wrote: Congressman Wants to Let Entertainment Industry Get Into Your Computer Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., formally proposed legislation that would give the industry unprecedented new authority to secretly hack into consumers' computers or knock them off-line entirely if they are caught downloading copyrighted material. I've been reading things like this for a while but I wonder how practical such an attack would be. They won't be able to hack into computers with reasonable firewalls and while they might try DOS attacks, upstream connectivity suppliers might object. Under current P2P software they may be able to do a little hacking but the opposition will rewrite the software to block. DOS attacks and phony file uploads can be defeated with digital signatures and reputation systems (including third party certification). Another problem -- Napster had 55 million customers. That's a lot of people to attack. I don't think Hollywood has the troops. The plan, already implemented, is to flood file sharing systems with bogus files or broken files. The solution, not yet implemented, is to attach digital signatures to files, and have the file sharing software recognize certain signatures as good or bad. This involves scaling problems that have not yet been thought through or implemented. As files get copied around, they would accrete ever more digitally signed blessings. The signatures should be arbitrary nyms, as in Kong, not true names. The files could also accrete digitally signed discommendations, though such files would probably propagate considerably less. When we approve a file, all the people who approved it already get added to our trust list, thus helping us select files, and we are told that so and so got added to our list of people who recommend good files. This gives people an incentive to rate files, since rating files gives them the ability to take advantage of other people's ratings. If onr discommendd a file, those who discommend it are added to our trust list, and those who commended it to our distrust list. If, as will frequently happen, there is a conflict, we are told that so and so commended so many files we like, and so many files we dislike, so how should future commendations and discommendations from him be handled. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG /q4tip27WhKCNEPO0JVoN0d2y8NqKSNyWSZ2yo8T 2mpKzWKpHGt5yFiUzlZZD//qHoWgv8n1ZFJzoJ2l9
Re: Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA
-- On 29 Jul 2002 at 15:35, AARG! Anonymous wrote: both Palladium and TCPA deny that they are designed to restrict what applications you run. The TPM FAQ at http://www.trustedcomputing.org/docs/TPM_QA_071802.pdf reads They deny that intent, but physically they have that capability. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ElmZA5NX6jAmhPu1EDT8Zl7D+IeQTSI/z1oo4lSn 2qoSIC6KSr2LFLWyxZEETG/27dEy3yOWEnRtXzHy9
Re: Hollywood Hackers
-- On 31 Jul 2002 at 11:01, Eugen Leitl wrote: The issue of node reputation is completely orthogonal to the document hashes not colliding. Reputation based systems are useful, because document URI http://localhost:4711/f70539bb32961f3d7dba42a9c51442c1218a9100 doesn't say what's in there. A claim needs to be backed by someone (preferably anonymous) with a good reputation trail. Indeed, but the only working nym based reputation system is that hosted by Ebay. Web of trust is not really used much, and Verisign sucks. My proposal was to implement a nym based reputation system for approving content, rather than to assume such a system already exists. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG n2qkcxSdV2kJT9y6SyQ2iP7hz+Loj0n1HsBec+jV 2F6qbHlOzuO9Od/r5ZvGa0vDhRSmH/+EjFcQI8Wtc
Re: Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA
-- 29 Jul 2002 at 15:35, AARG! Anonymous wrote: both Palladium and TCPA deny that they are designed to restrict what applications you run. James A. Donald: They deny that intent, but physically they have that capability. On 31 Jul 2002 at 16:10, Nicko van Someren wrote: And all kitchen knives are murder weapons. No problem if I also have a kitchen knife. TCPA and Palladium give someone else super root privileges on my machine, and TAKE THOSE PRIVILEGES AWAY FROM ME. All claims that they will not do this are not claims that they will not do this, but are merely claims that the possessor of super root privilege on my machine is going to be a very very nice guy, unlike my wickedly piratical and incompetently trojan horse running self. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XQHdtzqDInBFsDcorfDvqJYRHTRhEBsM9eMJIH+w 2+o4WjsTSV8RDUO7k3c71T9v9JQKwZGZC54BqW6DQ
Re: Hollywood Hackers
-- James A. Donald: The plan, already implemented, is to flood file sharing systems with bogus files or broken files. The solution, not yet implemented, is to attach digital signatures to files, and have the file sharing software recognize certain signatures as good or bad. Eugen Leitl This is completely unnecessary if you address the document with a cryptohash. An URI like http://localhost:4711/f70539bb32961f3d7dba42a9c51442c1218a9100 can only adress a particular document. And then the hollywood hackers flood the system with bogus descriptions of the content identified by the crypto hashes. We still need to implement a reputation system against a hollywood hacker attack, even if we address content by cryptohash, as indeed we should. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG MZ8I0lLVaSkDBqA1K8OWTh4DR9ESyzcVVpf1x4pT 259CijIJardotArHx0YBUaCUfOceX+5jOYxtQ+fXi
Re: Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA
-- On 31 Jul 2002 at 23:45, AARG! Anonymous wrote: So TCPA and Palladium could restrict which software you could run. They aren't designed to do so, but the design could be changed and restrictions added. Their design, and the institutions and software to be designed around them, is disturbingly similar to what would be needed to restrict what software we could run. TCPA institutions and infrastructure are much the same as SSSCA institutions and infrastructure. According to Microsoft, the end user can turn the palladium hardware off, and the computer will still boot. As long as that is true, it is an end user option and no one can object. But this is not what the content providers want. They want that if you disable the Fritz chip, the computer does not boot. What they want is that it shall be illegal to sell a computer capable of booting if the Fritz chip is disabled. If I have to give superroot powers to Joe in order to run Joe's software or play Joe's content, fair enough. But the hardware and institutions to implement this are disturbingly similar to the hardware and institutions needed to implement the rule that I have to give superroot powers to Joe in order to play Peter's software or content.. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG FQhKMpDHys7gyFWenHCK9p7+Xfh1DwpaqGKcztxk 20jFdJDiigV/b1fmHBudici59omqc/Ze0zXBVvQLk
Re: Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA
-- On 2 Aug 2002 at 0:36, David Wagner wrote: For instance, suppose that, thanks to TCPA/Palladium, Microsoft could design Office 2005 so that it is impossible for StarOffice and other clones to read files created in Office 2005. Would some users object? In an anarchic society, or under a government that did not define and defend IP, TCPA/Palladium would probably give roughly the right amount of protection to intellectual property by technical means in place of legal means. Chances are that the thinking behind Palladium is not Let us sell out to the Hollywood lobby but rather Let us make those !@#$$%^ commie chinese pay for their *^%$## software. Of course, in a society with both legal and technical protection of IP, the likely outcome is oppressive artificial monopolies sustained both by technology and state power. I would certainly much prefer TCPA/Palladium in place of existing IP law. What I fear is that instead legislation and technology will each reinforce the other. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG R66NXPp5xZNDYn98jcVqH5q22ikRRFR3evv5xfwF 2PNka92tYm9+/iBKaR+IcOoDA8BwXZlwcPD18Ogw8
TCPA
-- In an anarchist society, or in a world where government had given up on copyright and intellectual property, TCPA/Palladium would be a great thing, a really good substitute for law, much more effectual, much cheaper, and much less dangerous than law. In a world where we have anticircumvention laws and ever growing patent and copyright silliness, it seems a dangerously powerful addition to law. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 6FaJusAR8fMsVvaFm9l3vbuyiQwio/YrBFLpyT6c 2Db/Fk0MeNi3mjdoDTo2IGzHeelYts0/xqiEjUFmA
RE: Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA
-- On 2 Aug 2002 at 10:43, Trei, Peter wrote: Since the position argued involves nothing which would invoke the malign interest of government powers or corporate legal departments, it's not that. I can only think of two reasons why our corrospondent may have decided to go undercover... I can think of two innocuous reasons, though the real reason is probably something else altogether: 1. Defending copyright enforcement is extremely unpopular because it seemingly puts you on the side of the hollywood cabal, but in fact TCPA/Paladium, if it works as described, and if it is not integrated with legal enforcement, does not over reach in the fashion that most recent intellectual property legislation, and most recent policy decisions by the patent office over reach. 2.. Legal departments are full of people who are, among their many other grievious faults, technologically illiterate. Therefore when an insider is talking about something, they cannot tell when he is leaking inside information or not, and tend to have kittens, because they have to trust him (being unable to tell if he is leaking information covered by NDA), and are constitutionally incapable of trusting anyone. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Alf9R2ZVGqWkLhwWX2H6TBqHOunrj2Fbxy+U0ORV 2uPGI4gMDt1fTQkV1820PO3xWmAWPiaS0DqrbmobN
RE: Challenge to David Wagner on TCPA
-- On 2 Aug 2002 at 14:36, Trei, Peter wrote: OK, It's 2004, I'm an IT Admin, and I've converted my corporation over to TCPA/Palladium machines. My Head of Marketing has his TCPA/Palladium desktop's hard drive jam-packed with corporate confidential documents he's been actively working on - sales projections, product plans, pricing schemes. They're all sealed files. His machine crashes - the MB burns out. He wants to recover the data. HoM: I want to recover my data. Me: OK: We'll pull the HD, and get the data off it. HoM: Good - mount it as a secondary HD in my new system. Me: That isn't going to work now we have TCPA and Palladium. HoM: Well, what do you have to do? Me: Oh, it's simple. We encrypt the data under Intel's TPME key, and send it off to Intel. Since Intel has all the keys, they can unseal all your data to plaintext, copy it, and then re-seal it for your new system. It only costs $1/Mb. HoM: Let me get this straight - the only way to recover this data is to let Intel have a copy, AND pay them for it? Me: Um... Yes. I think MS might be involved as well, if your were using Word. HoM: You are *so* dead. Obviously it is insane to use keys that you do not yourself control to keep secrets. That, however, is not the purpose of TCPA/Palladium as envisaged by Microsoft. The intent is that Peter can sell Paul software or content that will only run on ONE computer for ONE time period.. When the motherboard emits blue smoke, or the time runs out, whichever happens first, Paul has to buy new software. If prices are lowered accordingly, this might be acceptable. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 4Mqj1ia6DD0EYpdLMEd7al35eTYefnvhcFesBlMz 25n9obdfhvRVxEkY4YtWw7BuFxrOKgTtfI1Dp8uAA
Re: Other uses of TCPA
-- On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Nomen Nescio wrote: As an exercise, try thinking of ways you could use TCPA to promote good guy applications. What could you do in a P2P network if you could trust that all participants were running approved software? And if you I can only see one application for voluntary TCPA, and that is the application it was designed to perform: Make it possible run software or content which is encrypted so that it will only run on one computer for one time period. All the other proposed uses, both good and evil, seem improbably cumbersome, or easier to do in some other fashion. There are quite a few extremely evil uses it would be good for, but they would only be feasible if enforced by legislation -- otherwise people would turn the chip off, or tear it out. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Hzs0OpVc+bwQiFEZnMNE2zMLAXiYjMNrOWpH9WIb 2vvlvOjPeQH/ua0E9NnfeVaLvRGnxGuIvKZGcMZdN
Re: Other uses of TCPA
-- James Donald writes: I can only see one application for voluntary TCPA, and that is the application it was designed to perform: Make it possible run software or content which is encrypted so that it will only run on one computer for one time period. On 3 Aug 2002 at 20:10, Nomen Nescio wrote: You've said this a few times, and while it is a plausible goal of the designers, I don't actually see this specific capability in the TCPA spec, nor is it mentioned in the Palladium white paper. Think about it. For TCPA, you'd have to have the software as a blob which is encrypted to some key that is locked in the TPM. But the problem is that the endorsement key is never leaked except to the Privacy CA (Lots of similarly untintellible stuff deleted) You have lost me, I have no idea why you think what you are talking about might be relevant to my assertion. The TPM has its own secret key, it makes the corresponding public key widely available to everyone, and its own internal good known time. So when your customer's payment goes through, you then send him a copy of your stuff encrypted to his TPM, a copy which only his TPM can make use of. Your code, which the TPM decrypts and executes, looks at the known good time, and if the user is out of time, refuses to play. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 8QGEo4ptd7TD5d7duyz9XkOw+th0YEG9sllM8ix 2P2uZVncMpARxQd6P5V9cXLh97ZLpgi0tHH7LyVfB
Re: TCPA/Palladium -- likely future implications
-- On 9 Aug 2002 at 17:15, AARG! Anonymous wrote: to understand it you need a true picture of TCPA rather than the false one which so many cypherpunks have been promoting. As TCPA is currently vaporware, projections of what it will be, and how it will be used are judgments, and are not capable of being true or false, though they can be plausible or implausible. Even with the best will in the world, and I do not think the people behind this have the best will in the world, there is an inherent conflict between tamper resistance and general purpose programmability. To prevent me from getting at the bits as they are sent to my sound card or my video card, the entire computer, not just the dongle, has to be somewhat tamper resistant, which is going to make the entire computer somewhat less general purpose and programmable, thus less useful. The people behind TCPA might want to do something more evil than you say they want to do, if they want to do what you say they want to do they might be prevented by law enforcement which wants something considerably more far reaching and evil, and if they want to do it, and law enforcement refrains from reaching out and taking hold of their work, they still may be unable to do it for technical reasons. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG D7ZUyyAS+7CybaH0GT3tHg1AkzcF/LVYQwXbtqgP 2HBjGwLqIOW1MEoFDnzCH6heRfW1MNGv1jXMIvtwb
Re: TCPA and Open Source
-- On 13 Aug 2002 at 0:05, AARG! Anonymous wrote: The point is that while this is a form of signed code, it's not something which gives the TPM control over what OS can boot. Instead, the VCs are used to report to third party challengers (on remote systems) what the system configuration of this system is supposed to be, along with what it actually is. It does however, enable the state to control what OS one can boot if one wishes to access the internet. It does not seem to me that the TPM is likely to give hollywood what it wants, unless it is backed by such state enforcement. Furthermore, since the TPM gets first whack at boot up, a simple code download to the TPM could change the meaning of the signature, so that the machine will not boot unless running a state authorized operating system. It could well happen that TPM machines become required to go on the internet, and then later only certain operating systems are permitted on the internet, and then later the required operating system upgrades the TPM software so that only authorized operating systems boot at all. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG H/t91jm8hq5pLR2AdFYi2lRoV9AKYBZ7WqqJmKFe 2/IFQaW0fl6ec+TL3iMKMxD6Y0ulGDK7RwqTVJlBQ
Re: trade-offs of secure programming with Palladium (Re: Palladium: technical limits and implications)
-- On 12 Aug 2002 at 16:32, Tim Dierks wrote: I'm sure that the whole system is secure in theory, but I believe that it cannot be securely implemented in practice and that the implied constraints on use usability will be unpalatable to consumers and vendors. Or to say the same thing more pithily, if it really is going to be voluntary, it really is not going to give hollywood what they want. If really gives hollywood what they want, it is really going to have to be forced down people's throats. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG q/bTmZrGsVk2BT9JgumhMqvjDmyIbiElvtidl9aP 2/0CXfo6fzHCxpa+SX8o8Jzvyb71S0KzgBs0gDRhN
Re: Spam blocklists?
-- On 14 Aug 2002 at 4:36, Peter Fairbrother wrote: For instance, limiting the number of recipients of an email (the cryptogeek system I'm working on [m-o-o-t] just allows one), or limiting the number of emails one IP can send per day (adjusted for number of users). There was an EU proposal to force spammers (who are not always unwanted) to put [ADV] in the Subject: line, with appropriate penalties if they failed to, but it didn't happen (and we got long-term traffic data retention instead). I don't know offhand how to do it, but having unelected and unaccountable people (making the conditions for) stopping my email is unacceptable. Solution is obvious and has been known for a long time Integrate payment with email. If anyone not on your approved list wants to send you mail, they have to pay you x, where x is a trivial sum, say a cent or two. Spammers wind up sending huge amounts of mail to unmonitored mailboxes, which will make spamming unprofitable. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG DIY+MmmrLQhijrJvvUennc4PKuW3ydzF1s8Phfvc 2thHL52WvLYLBuy1gMvfbs8U1toNuUIIWvvhnySCw
Re: TCPA not virtualizable during ownership change
-- On 15 Aug 2002 at 15:26, AARG! Anonymous wrote: Basically I agree with Adam's analysis. At this point I think he understands the spec equally as well as I do. He has a good point about the Privacy CA key being another security weakness that could break the whole system. It would be good to consider how exactly that problem could be eliminated using more sophisticated crypto. Lucky claims to have pointed this out two years ago, proposed more sophisticated crypto, and received a hostile reception. Which leads me to suspect that the capability of the powerful to break the system is a designed in feature. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG JjoH8U8qZ1eOdT/yGjfV7Xz9andBZPeYWaOLC+NP 2/OJG2MZSnAqcyuvUsNZTsQAcffGGST6LJ7e9vFbK
Re: onsite service on Sealand
-- On 27 Aug 2002 at 13:36, Ryan Lackey wrote: If a customer hypothetically calls and wants a complete security analysis done on a server, and doesn't follow the replace the drives in the working system with new ones, do a restore from snapshot or reinstall, and do anaysis later option, we're not responsible for any delays. A little while ago, it seemed that cypherpunks was dead. There was nothing on it except for spam from Nigeria, commies, and lunatics. Now I am reading email from various people who appear to be making their living using cryptography in ways that undermine the state, and who deal with the various practical real world problems involved in such a living. I find these troubles very encouraging. The fact that people encounter such predictable troubles shows they are really doing what they talk about, and when they encounter these problems, they seem to proceed with competent and effectual solutions. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HcJC+F+nHfocXB5cx8e5xihyUc8zIRgYkHIA9rSH 2z7Vmfw8yreIdTJ88bYCphFaZUo4LPvcMHFy7EKYb
Re: S/MIME in Outlook -- fucked.
-- On 3 Sep 2002 at 11:16, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote: I encourage everyone to send Bill Gates an email from himself. =) = = Vendor Notification Status Microsoft knows about this, of course, but isn't even sure whether to call this a 'vulnerability'. Right. While the immediate bug is in Microsoft IE and Outlook, this exploit is also a reflection of the contorted mess that is the certificate structure and the public key infrastructure, and of the fact that Verisign is not doing its job. (This exploit only works if one starts with a legitimate verisign certificate for a web site, it does not work if one starts with a legitimate Thawte certificate.) Microsoft unambiguously screwed up, but the infrastructure made it easy to screw up, and difficult and expensive to get things right. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 2S6sg825yJSZ69s23KyOvpaHYYQYbgoRuPl2j1JZ 24hZwF+YmQMFl2hK8LOkiesmNrg+xJ0ZdA1qPUzQU
Re: Saturday meeting/BBQ/party--last minute comments
-- On 11 Sep 2002 at 9:07, Tim May wrote: Last Minute Comments: * Meeting/BBQ/Party at Tim May's house, Saturday, September 14th, 1 p.m. onwards. Formal agenda to start promptly at 2 p.m. * I've had a lot of confirmations (not required, except for lurkers and strangers) from a lot of people, so PARKING is OFFICIALLY BECOMING A PROBLEM. I live at the top of a hill serviced by a one-lane road going from the valley floor up several hundred feet to my driveway above. I have had parties where about 15 cars were in one of several places: -- my own parking lot, handling about 4-5 cars besides my own 2. -- my driveway, handling about 4-6 more cars, depending on whether they block others! -- the side of the road at the very top of the hill, handling 3-5 other cars -- the rest, I'm not sure where they parked! I observed Tim's place. His estimate of the parking situation seems optimistic to me, though doubtless he knows the situation better than I do. Be prepared for a considerable walk and/or frequent car rearrangements, and unscheduled delay in leaving. Tim's house is on a long, one lane track, somewhat east of the back of beyond. You recall the house in the cartoon Courage, the cowardly dog? Now imagine that same house, and rotate the landscape seventy degrees so that the house is stapled to the side of a mountain and the road dug into the side of a mountain. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 6wLay9FqSokQWYJ9KA94MevETkNtbnDry7fxHbD8 2+d7YG2eU5+wxXOCENNyvul+Im5tPQ3C6FI8UQzNF
RE: Cryptogram: Palladium Only for DRM
-- On 19 Sep 2002 at 11:13, AARG! Anonymous wrote: Of course, those like Lucky who believe that trusted computing technology is evil incarnate are presumably rejoicing at this news. Microsoft's patent will limit the application of this technology. And the really crazy people are the ones who say that Palladium is evil, but Microsoft is being unfair in not licensing their patent widely! The evil of DRM, like the evils of guns, depends on who has the gun and who has not. If only certain privileged people have guns, and the rest of us are disarmed, then guns are evil indeed. If trusted computing means that certain special people have ring -1 access to my computer, and I do not, and those certain special people are people I do not trust ... --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9qfOgx4DuD39ZV1os+Mk6SzsJp3A6f8e/S94djUj 41XdHA+e/zdxPCIroQznM5ILiFBEOUSYYagF5KQkb
Re: What good are smartcard readers for PCs
-- James A. Donald Increasingly however, we see smartcard interfaces sold for PCs. What for, I wonder? On 24 Sep 2002 at 1:41, Bill Stewart wrote: I'm not convinced that the number of people selling them is closely related to the number of people buying; this could be another field like PKIs where the marketeers and cool business plans never succeeded at getting customers to use them. On 24 Sep 2002 at 19:12, Peter Gutmann wrote: Companies buy a few readers for their developers who write software to work with the cards. [...] Eventually the clients discover how much of a bitch they are to work with [] users decide to live with software-only crypto until the smart card scene is a bit more mature. Given that n_users n_card_vendors, this situation can keep going for quite some time. I have found that the administrative costs of PKI are intolerable. End users do not really understand crypto, and so will fuck up. Only engineers can really control a PKI certificate, and for the most part they just do not. In principle the thingness of a smartcard should reduce administrative costs to a low level -- they should supposedly act like a purse, a key, a credit card, hence near zero user training required. The simulated thingness created by cryptographic cleverness should be manifested to the user as physical thingness of the card. Suppose, for example, we had working Chaumian digicash. Now imagine how much trouble the average end user is going to get into with backups, and with moving digicash from one computer to another. If all unused Chaumian tokens live in a smartcard, one might expect the problem to vanish. The purselike character of the card sustains the coin like character of Chaumian tokens. Of course if one has to supply the correct driver for the smart card, then the administration problem reappears. USB smartcard interfaces could solve this problem. Just plug them in, and bingo, it should just go. Ummh, wait a moment, go where, do what? What happens when one plugs in a USB smartcard interface? Still, making crypto embodied in smart cards intelligible to the masses would seem to be a soluble problem, even if not yet solved, whereas software only crypto is always going to boggle the masses. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG UpBeNFF1UW7r7Fw8pVMxQG+xJ3mwsngHIp62BxL6 4D+u3ZM5e1JbeYAKaQ4dhOQrlZ42vq05cfz83rnCZ
Re: What good are smartcard readers for PCs
-- On 25 Sep 2002 at 18:36, Neil Johnson wrote: Hey don't forget you can still buy a smart card reader from that most cypherpunkish of babes BRITNEY SPEARS ! Only $30 ! https://www.visiblevisitors.com/mltest/order_form.asp A previous poster suggested that the smart card industry had usuability problems. If these guys are selling to that market, they must have solved those problems -- or believe that they have. On 24 Sep 2002 at 19:12, Peter Gutmann wrote: Eventually the clients discover how much of a bitch they are to work with [] users decide to live with software-only crypto until the smart card scene is a bit more mature. Smartflash is supposed to be plug and play, no installation, no configuration. You just plug it into a usb port, poke your card into the reader and a browser window pops up, and takes you to the web page for that smartcard. If any software is needed, then it is in the form of activeX component, which means that the only installation interface is Do you trust this software from so-and-so? When Chaumian money comes into wide use, I think that for most end users we will have to stash all unused tokens inside smartcards. However, because of the critical mass problem, initial deployment for small payments cannot rely on such means, though initial deployment for large payments could. Unfortunately, deployment of uncrippled chaumian cash for large payments is likely to be illegal in most jurisdictions. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG zA52k2I/yOV3JjdMnqwOFMq4Io7yMmdhp7IVzbUE 48lR0zT5ZoHjtDYfcW0+xmlo00w3DS04U9nsJblFq
Re: What good are smartcard readers for PCs
-- Neil Johnson wrote: Hey don't forget you can still buy a smart card reader from that most cypherpunkish of babes BRITNEY SPEARS ! Only $30 ! https://www.visiblevisitors.com/mltest/order_form.asp James A. Donald: A previous poster suggested that the smart card industry had usuability problems. If these guys are selling to that market, they must have solved those problems -- or believe that they have. Peter Gutmann wrote: All they're doing is reading a URL off a USB dongle (technically a 256-byte I2C memory card plugged into a reader, but in effect the combination is a USB dongle). That's a no-brainer, I can do that with two wires taped to the card contacts and poked into the PC's parallel port, and around 50 bytes of code on the PC. If all they were doing is reading the URL, presumably you can already get to the site without owning the smartcard. I believe the card cryptographically proves its presence to the site to show that the user is authorized to hit the site. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG pTZSolt9/2ZzWLDufFApvlnFJTl7qJ+k/1P6N4E5 4+/ztYC9AfVoSBhBwjbH0ljx00WVl9cpQ4D/Kw7Ze
What good are smartcard readers for PCs
-- On 27 Sep 2002 at 19:53, Harmon Seaver wrote: Forget the pencils and pens, just ban paper. The Chinese empire did in fact take that measure, making paper a government monopoly, prohibiting private production and use of paper, private knowledge of how to produce paper, and castrating all paper makers to reduce the risk of the technology of paper making being passed from father to son, or through pillow talk. Some barbarian pirates eventually stole one of the government's paper making eunuchs, and the technology got loose again in lands beyond the empire's control, particularly the west. A later chinese emperor issued the encyclopedia of all knowledge, which was intended to stimulate the growth of knowledge, but an elephant cannot help but trample the grass. The actual effect of the encyclopedia was to prohibit all knowledge that was not in the encyclopedia. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG UZr0jvF3hsrDzZ/URGjiGNl8cw1jEQbsuJt2Vxm6 4P3p+Y/yI2jWvQGZ0O5aHI//rcxIXncZJqgHA4VdK
Re: smartcards
-- James A. Donald: When Chaumian money comes into wide use, I think that for most end users we will have to stash all unused tokens inside smartcards. However, because of the critical mass problem, initial deployment for small payments cannot rely on such means, though initial deployment for large payments could. Someone: Here in Hong Kong, contactless Octopus smartcards (based on the Sony FeliCa device) are well established for paying fares on buses, ferries and subways, and also for small transactions with vending machines, convenience stores and supermarkets. The implementation is definitely non-Chaumian (it's based on symmetric encryption using shared secrets for both mutual authentication and secure transfer of value) but the cards can be purchased and reloaded with cash. Alas, the system does not allow uploads of value to banks or peer-to-peer transfers, as Mondex did. Critical mass is no problem if a payment mechanism is backed by the big boys, but the big boys want a mechanism for transferring value where only a few giant corporations who are in bed with the state receive transaction payments, a system that divides the economy into a tiny number of actors, the big corporations, who alone take action, plan and produce, and huge number of passive consumer zombies. We would like a system which treats those making and receiving payments as peers, which makes critical mass a considerably more difficult problem. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG +QZmFHKyDPKB9S60+rLQsOzIgeGk4o2tjKPzSX+8 4ROdV+LJ4M5hm4HiXOxPfEhStMMRfi09HNAiWbEKa
Re: smartcards
-- On 30 Jan 2050 at 32:210, Steve Thompson wrote: I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned cell-phones as a digital cash platform.[] The problem is that phone software is (to my knowledge) all closed-source and running on proprietary hardware. What's the liklihood of manufacturers opening up their phones for third-party code? An open platform would be a combined cell phone and palm top computer. Lots of people are trying to move this -- so far without wide acceptance. Paypal's original vision was that people would use palm pilots with IR. If phones developed palm pilot capabilities, this vision would become more useful. I think combining the palm pilot with the cell phone is more feasible once we develop a good voice controlled computer, after the fashion of startrek, which may be some time off. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG z0mctqiLain3vlXnFZTOy5PEVJIwCeg0x7zxl4RQ 4DWhd8THkIxyeHtI7sSA5O1d9IKi7WwGZVh6roOOb
What email encryption is actually in use?
-- What email encryption is actually in use? When I get a PGP encrypted message, I usually cannot read it -- it is sent to my dud key or something somehow goes wrong. When I send a PGP encrypted message in reply, stating the problem, I seldom receive an answer, suggesting that the recipient cannot decrypt my message either. Kong encrypted messages usually work, because there is only one version of the program, and key management is damn near non existent by design, since my experience as key manager for various companies shows that in practice keys just do not get managed. After I release the next upgrade, doubtless fewer messages will work. The most widely deployed encryption is of course that which is in outlook -- which we now know to be broken, since impersonation is trivial, making it fortunate that seemingly no one uses it. Repeating the question, so that it does not get lost in the rant. To the extent that real people are using digitally signed and or encrypted messages for real purposes, what is the dominant technology, or is use so sporadic that no network effect is functioning, so nothing can be said to be dominant? The chief barrier to use of outlook's email encryption, aside from the fact that is broken, is the intolerable cost and inconvenience of certificate management. We have tools to construct any certificates we damn well please, though the root signatures will not be recognized unless the user chooses to put them in. Is it practical for a particular group, for example a corporation or a conspiracy, to whip up its own damned root certificate, without buggering around with verisign? (Of course fixing Microsoft's design errors is never useful, since they will rebreak their products in new ways that are more ingenious and harder to fix.) I intended to sign this using Network Associates command line pgp, only to discover that pgp -sa file produced unintellible gibberish, that could only be made sense of by pgp, so that no one would be able to read it without first checking my signature. I suggest that network associates should have hired me as UI design manager, or failing, that, hired the dog from down the street as UI design manager. Presumably the theory underlying this brilliant design decision was that in the bad old days, a file produced under unix woudl not verify under windows because of trivial differences such as the fact the whitespace is expressed slightly differently. Here is a better fix, one that I implemented in Kong: Define several signature types with the default signature type ignoring those aspects of the message that are difficult for the user to notice, so that if a message looks pretty much the same to the user, it has the same signature, by, for example, canonicalizing whitespace and single line breaks, and treating the hard space (0xA0) the same as the soft space. (0x20), and so on and so forth. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG OmUO5eB/pLnuFIgCU2splCvKO4x0U1Ik31pVFPaU 49B5UrVKc5ETzoxGcfl+q9ltoh61l4ncSyE+R5h6P
What email encryption is actually in use?
-- James A. Donald: We have tools to construct any certificates we damn well please, Joseph Ashwood: The same applies everywhere, in fact in your beloved Kong, the situation is worse because the identities can't be managed. You are unfamiliar with Kong. The situation is better, because it is designed to be used in the fashion that all other existing alternatives actually are used in practice. James A. Donald: I intended to sign this using Network Associates command line pgp, only to discover that pgp -sa file produced unintellible gibberish, that could only be made sense of by pgp, so that no one would be able to read it without first checking my signature. Joseph Ashwood: Which would of course demonstrate once more that you have no clue how to use PGP. It also demonstrates what is probably your primary source of I can't decrypt it you are using a rather old version of PGP. In fact my version is network associates version 6.5.8, which can supposedly decrypt any valid pgp message, and your rant would be considerably more impressive if you signed your message with a PGP signature. Doubtless you could sign it -- eventually, after a bit of trying, after you had spent about as much time farting around as I did. The proclamation that PGP is usable would have been much more impressive in a message that actually used it. James A. Donald: Here is a better fix, one that I implemented in Kong: Define several signature types with the default signature type ignoring those aspects of the message that are difficult for the user to notice, so that if a message looks pretty much the same to the user, it has the same signature, by, for example, canonicalizing whitespace and single line breaks, and treating the hard space (0xA0) the same as the soft space. (0x20), and so on and so forth. Joseph Ashwood: So it's going to be broken by design. These are critical errors that will eliminate any semblance of security in your program. You are full of shit. I challenge you to fool my canonicalization algorithm by modifying a message to as to change the apparent meaning while preserving the signature, or by producing a message that verifies as signed by me, while in fact a meaningfully different message to any that was genuinely signed by me. Let see you doing some work to back up your empty words. The source code for my canonicalization code is on the the net. If you say it is broken, break it! --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG nfNdl11zVV+oWKMTt0l79zrcrelHalABSBwKeib2 4Ts9fALHrytq8hR6Dhue492m/1vO+fYHy4Kqa6dkQ
Clarification of challenge to Joseph Ashwood:
-- James A. Donald: (ranting on the user hostility of PGP) Presumably the theory underlying this brilliant design decision was that in the bad old days, a [signed clear text file signed] under unix would not verify under windows because of trivial differences such as the fact the whitespace is expressed slightly differently. Here is a better fix, one that I implemented in Kong: Define several signature types with the default signature type ignoring those aspects of the message that are difficult for the user to notice, so that if a message looks pretty much the same to the user, it has the same signature, by, for example, canonicalizing whitespace and single line breaks, and treating the hard space (0xA0) the same as the soft space. (0x20), and so on and so forth. Joseph Ashwood: So it's going to be broken by design. These are critical errors that will eliminate any semblance of security in your program. James A. Donald: I challenge you to fool my canonicalization algorithm by modifying a message to as to change the apparent meaning while preserving the signature, or by producing a message that verifies as signed by me, while in fact a meaningfully different message to any that was genuinely signed by me. Let see you doing some work to back up your empty words. The source code for my canonicalization code is on the net. If you say it is broken, break it! To clarify, Kong works by checking a signature against the message, and against other messages in its database. Its job is not to identify the true James Donald, but to keep the different people claiming to be James Donald clearly separated. Thus Kong would be broken if such separation could be obfuscated or confused. Any program attempting to determine whether Bob is someone's true name is attempting to do something that computers cannot do, hence the intolerable certificate management problems of software that attempts to do that. Three quarters of the user hostility of other programs comes from their attempt to support true names, and the rest comes from the cleartext signature problem. Kong fixes both problems. Joseph Ashwood must produce a message that is meaningfully different from any of the numerous messages that I have sent to cypherpunks, but which verifies as sent by the same person who sent past messages. Thus for Kong to be broken one must store a past message from that proflic poster supposed called James Donald, in the Kong database, and bring up a new message hacked up by Joseph Ashwood, and have Kong display in the signature verification screen The signature in this document matches the signature on another document signed by James A. Donald. Do you wish to view this document. While Kong display a document meaningfully different from any that was posted by James A. Donald. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG gQcEhL/Zl68mNm0WaeG7zRK5M+/3qbaE0t84hURH 4st/8mhjCyBBCy1Ganf3ud6SNdzLZtUChQQbTA6SO
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
-- James A. Donald: I intended to sign this using Network Associates command line pgp, [6.5.8]only to discover that pgp -sa file produced unintellible gibberish, that could only be made sense of by pgp, so that no one would be able to read it without first checking my signature. David Howe you made a minor config error - you need to make sure clearsign is enabled. James A. Donald: I suggest that network associates should have hired me as UI design manager, or failing, that, hired the dog from down the street as UI design manager. David Howe It's command line. Most cyphergeeks like command line tools powerful and cryptic :) We also like the most common uses to be *on* the command line. If the option is not on the command line, it is *not* powerful and it is a little too cryptic. The pgp.cfg file is empty by default on my machine, the cfg file options are nowhere documented, clearsigning is nowhere documented, and Clearsign=on did not work. In the last generally useful version of pgp (pgp 2.6.2) pgp -sa gave clear signing, but it was unusable, because trivial differences, such as the unix/windows difference on carriage returns would cause the signature check to fail. Because there were so many false negatives, no one would check clearsigned signatures. I conjecture that in pgp 6.5.8 they have addressed this problem by making clear signatures as inaccessible as possible, rather than by fixing it. I could get clearsigning by telling my pgp 6.5.8 to be compatible with 2.6.2, but I have already discovered that 2.6.2 clear signing was hopelessly broken. Had clear signing worked, then everyone with a valuable domain name would have used the pgp interface to control their domain names, to ensure that one's domain name could not be hijacked, as so many domain names have been. This would have created a massive base of pgp users. However, due to architectural defects in pgp, design bugs rather than coding bugs, this use of pgp was broken, and so was seldom used, and eventually ceased to work entirely. Presumably there was no maintenance on the pgp inteface to domain name control, because no one was using it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG MUiyRJ8PRbLCXnVMWCpeKvsn5GdOlAB9t6O7K0Hb 4GBcVbBHZFN0vg8apVt35e9Y2khaPdgrM+Y6uOys6
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
-- James A. Donald: I intended to sign this using Network Associates command line pgp, [6.5.8]only to discover that pgp -sa file produced unintellible gibberish, that could only be made sense of by pgp, so that no one would be able to read it without first checking my signature. David Howe you made a minor config error - you need to make sure clearsign is enabled. Not so. It turns out the command line is now different in PGP 6.5.8. It is now pgp -sta to clearsign, instead of pgp -sa. (Needless to say the t option does not appear in pgp -h The clearsigning now seems to work a lot better than I recall the clearsigning working in pgp 2.6.2. They now do some canonicalization, or perhaps they guess lots of variants until one checks out. Perhaps they hid the clear signing because it used not to work, but having fixed it they failed to unhide it? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 1lGJioukjvNCaM/LetfJVNPifdGblhZNTs+GarH2 4RFyr8DSgY3BrltZeP3treEOdb186ZDQzE/S3NYLI
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
-- Once you start using it, it becomes part of hte pattern by wich other people identify you. On 2 Oct 2002 at 9:52, David Howe wrote: Exactly the intention, yes :) Just for the sake of it (anyone who cares will have seen my signature enough times by now) I will sign this one :) And PGP tells me signature not checked, key does not meet validity threshold So I said to myself, OK, I will sign David Howe's key on my keyring to tell myself that this is the David Howe who posts on cypherpunks, though of course, pgp gives us merely a single variable trust, which can have no easy connection to the question what do you actually know about this particular David Howe?. (What we really would like is a database of communications indexed by key, so that we could see this communication in the context of past communications with the David Howe that used the same key.) I attempt to sign David Howes key, whereupon PGP gives the highly uninformative error message: Key signature error. It seems that I get similarly uninformative errors whenever I tried to use PGP. And that folks, is at least one of the reasons why end user crypto is not widespread. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3XIIjDu4swm4B8omsJgkQJcu1Op4/sNb2XkGf18B 4F9ZT3OQag+pZrW134bJdhLT3EeX1wOFqJzi1WJQ5
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
-- James A. Donald wrote: And PGP tells me signature not checked, key does not meet validity threshold On 2 Oct 2002 at 20:40, Dave Howe wrote: what version are you on? pgp 6.5.8 command line version. The actual problem was that there was no such key in my key ring, but error messages gave me no hint of that. So having determined the problem, I dutifully went to the key server, and encountered yet another stream of problems related to the keyserver and windows, that made it impossible to download the key, but that is another story. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG C+pOgajD+X0+ZJN6MxG/jTvWMW4WWcSPAO/u5ONp 41dEFaucvzVF+ulAPaijTMkhlW/C+virFHh06hHrM
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
-- On 2 Oct 2002 at 16:19, Adam Shostack wrote: Whats wrong with PGP sigs is that going on 9 full years after I generated my first pgp key, my mom still can't use the stuff. The fact that your mum cannot use the stuff is only half the problem. I am a computer expert, a key administrator, someone who has been paid to write cryptographic code, and half the time I cannot use pgp. Of course, I have had real occasion to use this stuff so rarely that I suspect your mother would never use it no matter how user friendly. The lack of demand may have something to do with Hettinga's rant, that all cryptography is financial cryptography. As I am fond of pointing out, envelopes were first invented to contain records of goods and payments. People use encryption when money is at stake. If people start routinely making binding deals on the internet, they will soon routinely use encryption. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Yek7NX953gkX+mwOcaRKW13pMWVzckXtQLHH7Oqt 45E6Pq+EKfccaEUOQLWtfPKtgE9yfk5u/o8MMv4HG
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
-- Adam Shostack wrote: Whats wrong with PGP sigs is that going on 9 full years after I generated my first pgp key, my mom still can't use the stuff. On 3 Oct 2002 at 17:33, Ben Laurie wrote: Mozilla+enigmail+gpg. It just works. If we had client side encryption that just works we would be seeing a few more signed messages on this list, and those that appear, would actually be checked. Send an unnecessarily encrypted message to Tim and he wil probably threaten to shoot you. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 2Xas831JtcVC2arD+2zXouy3o82ZsDYT6VWbi0g 4LoqK+b3poXgDltScDKS3wl1UILcpvnNaumqELJhn
Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
-- James A. Donald wrote: If we had client side encryption that just works we would be seeing a few more signed messages on this list, and those that appear, would actually be checked. Send an unnecessarily encrypted message to Tim and he will probably threaten to shoot you. Ben Laurie wrote: Why would I want to sign a message to this list? Then all the people who read this list, were they to receive a communication from you, they would know it was the same Ben Laurie who posts to this list. Of course, if you were in the habit of posting suggestions to this list that you break the law, this might be a bad idea, but to the best of my recollection, you do not. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG camCoW1VxLtKI1Q8U87Pid9dPFLuYKXqZMqDPd6y 4BIPT6xmk2CLc9m90mQsQOrs/2issShK6u9NJ42zf
Independent News
-- The whole idea is to try and stop something like the Bali bomb happening. On 23 Oct 2002 at 11:10, Major Variola (ret) wrote: The correct patch should be applied to US foreign policy Don't think we can blame US foreign policy for the Bali bombing. Probably relates more to Australian foreign policy and Singaporean internal policy. Indonesian muslims were sponsoring terror against Timorese. Australia let that pass as long as Fretilin was communist, but when Fretilin swore off communism, Australia intervened, thereby gaining a vital strategic advantage, in that Timor is an unsinkable aircraft carrier covering the approaches to Australia. This had the effect of rolling back Muslim rule, something that Bin Laden has told us is a no-no. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG YyO99qL0+xsoa0JPIh9Tbof+WkATG5PpWoiy6s5v 4BRkFiGmL+8i6uxcMBHxQEfXZE6OccbPl+ouoG1Jy
Re: internet radio - broadcast without incurring royalty fees
-- On 24 Oct 2002 at 20:32, Morlock Elloi wrote: Napster clones, kazaa, gnutella et al. rely on end-users to upload stuff. These end users simply have no bandwidth available for that. Cheapo DSL lines have hundred or few hundreds of kbit/sec unguaranteed upload capacity. No one is going to pay T1 to serve free stuff in breach of copyright laws. The net result is - and anyone can try it for themselves - that average success rate is less than 40%, the speed is miserable - most of the time it takes hour or more for 5-6 minute mp3, and then you need to be lucky so that content matches the title. I am a really big fan of Buffy. A cute chick, lots of violence and killing, and a bit of sex, what more can one ask for in a TV show? Recently due to family crisis, I missed a couple of shows. So, using usenet, I downloaded the two one hour shows that I missed. I had no problem getting them, the download ran in the background. It did not seem to take an unreasonably long time, though I did not bother to time it. I started the download, proceeded to do other things, and when I remembered to check, the download was done. So I then watched the shows. The image and sound quality was excellent, the ads had been deleted. The stories were rattling good. Loved the bit where buffy says I am the law, and picks up a great big naked sword and stalks off to apply the instant death penalty, while Xander flutters about ineffectually being deeply caring and emotional and having deep moral debates about the use of violence. I have never downloaded a tv show off the internet before. Everything just worked, no fuss, unlike some encryption programs I could mention. While there always will be pathological cases that will spend tens of hours online to get few mp3s for free (that is, until local telco decides that flat rate is no more viable), for most napsters are unusable. My experience is that the mass media are doomed. This stuff works just great for me. I have stopped downloading music until I organize the music I already have. Napster was just great, worked with no fuss. Maybe the Napster clones are not as good, but my experience with downloading TV shows suggests that piracy is working better than ever. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG w5c01d6+NpDvLdLI2X6Jg5z8F2yx1pwhncy3yMYK 4b/esfa1UycmFgStXtluIkq+6g1XHHb8MMWOMZOkk
Re: internet radio - broadcast without incurring royalty fees
-- James A. Donald: my experience with downloading TV shows suggests that piracy is working better than ever. Major Variola This wasn't piracy, it was time-shifting. When the ads were deleted, it ceased to be time shifting. In any case, the point I intended to make was that Buffy was one hundred times bigger than a typical MP3, yet the software and hardware had no problems. If the internet can handle one hour tv shows without working up a sweat, digital convergence is getting real close. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XYP6QY+S9r3ndihIQTukA67fRiwrn6l5ZpkvrArT 4M1UwSPjw71Nqox9g8XKDugMA/eyyeDoNJSWRDhBZ
Re: Clarification of challenge to Joseph Ashwood:
-- Joseph Ashwood: So it's going to be broken by design. These are critical errors that will eliminate any semblance of security in your program. James A. Donald: I challenge you to fool my canonicalization algorithm by modifying a message to as to change the apparent meaning while preserving the signature, or by producing a message that verifies as signed by me, while in fact a meaningfully different message to any that was genuinely signed by me. Joseph Ashwood: That's easy, remember that you didn't limit the challenge to text files. It should be a fairly simple matter to create a JPEG file with a number of 0xA0 and 0x20 bytes, by simply swapping the value of those byte one can create a file that will pass your verification, but will obviously be corrupt. Your canonicalization is clearly and fatally flawed. If so easy, do it. Joseph Ashwood must produce a message that is meaningfully different from any of the numerous messages that I have sent to cypherpunks, but which verifies as sent by the same person who sent past messages. Thus for Kong to be broken one must store a past message from that proflic poster supposed called James Donald, in the Kong database, and bring up a new message hacked up by Joseph Ashwood, and have Kong display in the signature verification screen Joseph Ashwood: To verify that I would of course have to download and install Kong, In other words, you are blowing smoke, and know full well you are blowing smoke. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG H1Nbd40fMEd0QoHFng2hEcuA2a/BP07ab+GOBowZ 4HIcNbSdMF02EWVm52VJqtj0Jas+Wmq/SZ/UyT0uq
Re: New Protection for 802.11
-- Reading the Wifi report, http://www.weca.net/OpenSection/pdf/Wi- Fi_Protected_Access_Overview.pdf it seems their customers stampeded them and demanded that the security hole be fixed, fixed a damned lot sooner than they intended to fix it. I am struck the contrast between the seemingly strong demand for wifi security, compared to the almost complete absence of demand for email security. Why is it so? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG IWe4JFeDeor04Pxb96ZsQ7xX+JAwxSs8HQfoAeG5 4rQX6tgLhAvAwLjF+SXlRswSmphBhw4cOXLe9Y4r5
RE: Did you *really* zeroize that key?
-- On 7 Nov 2002 at 16:36, Trei, Peter wrote: The 'volatile' keyword seems to have poorly defined behaviour. Volatile memory typically both receives input from outside the abstract machine, and generates output outside the abstract machine. Indeed the expected reason to write to volatile memory is because it generates effects outside the abstract machine. If the optimizer ever optimizes away a write to volatile memory, device drivers will fail. Most device drivers are written in C. If anyone ever produces a C compiler in which volatile does not do what we want, not only are they out of spec, but smoke will start coming out of hardware when the device drivers are recompiled. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG kEh2eDIEzpFnafz1M2n+bEgPvpgJoMG5yeNBElma 4DJ2e1VU89ubCetOzWnz76JuUZBdhHHlg/JLf9Xju
Re: Yodels, new anonymous e-currency
-- On 12 Nov 2002 at 8:50, Nomen Nescio wrote: According to this link, http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/11/11/4183/2039, a new form of digital cash called yodels is being offered anonymously: [...] Supposedly, then, this is cash which can be transferred anonymously via IIP or Freenet. Leaving aside the question of trusting an anonymous bank (trust takes time), the sticking point for ecash is how to transfer between yodels and other currencies. Without transferability, what gives yodels their value? Alleged attempts to introduce internet currencies have a ninety percent humbug and fraud rate. If his currency works well enough that one can buy addresses with it, this indicates a somewhat surprising level of success. I will check out his currency, and see what there is to see. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 46Ibm86cvcVoir/f4dSSPwM2gYCtHcpTds+N+jJq 4psLxBq0RMZOakFcGiILu6K8f4B1x/f6awQoD8K5c
Re: Yodels, new anonymous e-currency
-- On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Nomen Nescio wrote: According to this link, http://www.infoanarchy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/11/11/4183/2039 a new form of digital cash called yodels is being offered anonymously: On 12 Nov 2002 at 7:31, Steve Schear wrote: Correct they are a bearer share issuer, like the Digicash licensees before them. They claim to hold value denominated in some units of account (in their case DMT) as their asset backing. The challenge for Yodel will come in convincing potential users that: DMTs have sustainable value, that Yodel is really fully backed by DMTs, that Yodel's operators can be trusted not to abscond with the value exchanged for Yodels or refuse to exchange them for DMTs at some future time. All while reamining anonymous. A pretty tall order I should think. Pseudonymous, not anonymous. What is a corporation but a nym? Any swindling you can do with a pseudonym, you can do with a corporation. At least initially, many Yodel users may want only to use them mainly as a mixmaster between DMT accounts. With e-gold, one can perform one's mixing in a furnace. With DMT, cryptographic mixes are the only practical solution. Problem is that most users will not understand cryptographic mixing, whereas they do understand a furnace. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 50wZVsHzWVCcQBwTOHonjfe6YktnJgFEe7CRcnOu 4qPIe4UB2pjTm4BTLInH60M2fku9pH217a/zFX8Jc
Re: Yodels, new anonymous e-currency
The Yodel does not have a web site where yodels can be converted into some other form of money, and other forms of money converted into Yodels. Instead it has an IIRC bot. Use of this bot is described at http://yodel.deep-ice.com/bankbot.html This means a command line interface, to do banking transactions. This of course greatly reduced the work required to implement the Yodel, but will greatly limit the acceptability of the Yodel.
Poker
-- Internet Poker is a big money activity. A major problem with this activity is that the site can choose to allow certain privileged players to cheat. In principle it should be possible to create poker playing software where the server cannot cheat, but it is not obvious to me how this can be done. Does anyone know of a cheat proof algorithm? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG d4omBF08eFWhHQd6CDKVp4lJjfAS5GR56iMNcbAA 4XIes5IiykHpRT31kmyvZJTH0pPeUGMmBmORhd56d
Re: Fwd: [fc] list of papers accepted to FC'03
-- On 15 Nov 2002 at 10:55, IanG wrote: List of papers accepted to FC'03 I see pretty much a standard list of crypto papers here, albeit crypto with a waving of finance salt. Theory of what could be implemented has run well ahead of what has in fact been implemented. This has doubtless reduced enthusiasm for the theory. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XmqKAbnJ3zxWonUYjLQTEauIWVuczMy3fiZXjszK 4BOXbFJHRJ+piLFRffQdmB84zd8OiOgRKr7wytw+r
RE: Where's Osama? (Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who's next)
-- On 14 Nov 2002 at 14:47, Andrew John Lopata wrote: I'm no expert, but a friend of mine in the military suggested that invading Iraq now would be a lot different than the Gulf War. He said that urban combat, which will be necessary to depose Hussein, is the most difficult and dangerous type of combat there is. The last time the US engaged in urban combat, Somalia, US troops took significant casualties, and innocent bystanders suffered enormous casualties. In Afghanistan, urban combat was avoided by three a dimensional envelopment. The enemy inside the city was threatened by ground troops outside the city, from the sky, and by subversion from within the city. It was this final threat, subversion from within, combined with containment from above and around, that provoked capitulation. This third element, subversion from within, may well be unachievable in Iraq, or if it is achievable, the regular army not very deft at getting it done. For the Iraq war to be completed without enormous civilian casualties, massive destruction of infrastructure, and intolerable US casualties, successful political warfare is likely to be essential. There is no readily available alternate government to install in Hussein's place. The resulting destabilization in the region will likely result in a U.S. military presense in the country for a much longer time than in the Gulf War. When the US defeated Nazi germany, the nazi government was largely obliterated, and the remaining apparatus of government mostly signed up with the German communist party, which had been the second largest party before the nazis, and which was subservient to the Soviet Union. Thus the US eventually had to suppress every vestige of German government and foster a new government from nothing. It took about five years for a plausibly German government to get its hands on the reins of power, and few more years for it to get rid of the institutions and apparatus of nazism. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG AoQslZIvueBx4Zn3xjfrmZVppIjzS70PWbcba9wQ 4QY9/UCaEXMTq2ePACwR96pH+xkCwMdSGqYXRuXaA
Re: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who's ne
-- On 19 Nov 2002 at 12:02, Kevin Elliott wrote: If you read between the lines of US history, you'll discover that America did not begin to succeed in the war until late in the war when the troops had become better trained and disciplined. This is not my interpretation. Rather, the American *never* succeeded in conventional warfare. The British were able to march hither and yon, destroying whatever they chose, and killing whoever got in their way. However this cost them, and it did not bring them political control. After marching up and down and back and forth, and losing lots of men in the process, they eventually gave up. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 8rJK0TzKk1D62GWmAZ6vUvsi4CeZZEc5RL+nY/pG 4uNqMiU5DCnLXIoq1IVsaQobFOgZedKfb3qFuXYdl
RE: OPPOSE THE WAR! We are going to ruin Iraq to get the oil. Who 's ne
-- On 19 Nov 2002 at 15:45, Tyler Durden wrote: Mikey: I would suggest tangling with Chomsky for a bit. Start with... http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11ItemID=2 312 Chomsky is a liar. His citations are mostly fraudulent, and he has at one time or another defended every bloodthirsty tyranny, every reign of terror, with the possible exception of North Korea. His words sound bombastic, yet they equivocate, pointing in two directions at once. This is the text equivalent of someone who talks loud and very fast while unable to meet your eye. I recommend you check out my Chomsky web page: Chomsky lies http://www.jim.com/Chomsdis.htm --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 5U6Z7xMp4zTN7LYnZeRTOkIV+P8krIJAvwxGPmE3 4EkYXklGNdtijKPek7gdRsTyzwt1PLpWiSTSKliuv
Re: Photographer Arrested For Taking Pictures Of Vice President'S Hotel
-- On 9 Dec 2002 at 9:17, Tim May wrote: Anyone in the U.S. can be declared an enemy combatant and vanished away from lawyers, habeas corpus, the 6th Amendment, and any semblance of the system of liberty we sort of had at one time. So far this has only been applied to people who are obviously hostile muslim terrorist wannabees, but the program will be steadily expanded. Indeed, part of the homeland security act already aims at people who make cartridges (reloaders), who will in due course be dealt with by the extrajudicial means provided for in the homeland security act. In general wars lead to a major temporary reduction in liberty, but a smaller permanent reduction in liberty. Unfortunately the war on terror will probably never end, so there will be no recovery. The government is on perfectly good constitutional ground when it claims that the army can do as it pleases on or near the battlefield. Trouble is, with terrorism or guerrilla war, the battlefield is arguably everywhere. We need a declaration of victory that will push the battlefield to somewhere far away. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG FLOmVFJWOQBqPSg63zjCLyzrGNzmKNAwje/jqRal 4BI7xjE+ItnxvhioCvggkQ6IREbp21mrBxAIeCBcg
Re: Extradition, Snatching,and the Danger of Traveling to Other Countries
-- On Sun, 15 Dec 2002, Sarad AV wrote: Firstly,they cannot be exterminated.There is no proof of identity as we may have in our countries and no body will ask for it either,since most don't have one. The Taliban would have cut their beard and hair and mixed up with civilian population,while troops can go searching for orthodox civilians with a taliban look,making it hard to hunt them down.Once/if the international troops leave afghan,there are over hundred factions,who will keep fighting among themselves for 'land' and the taliban will be back. There have always been a hundred factions quarreling over land in Afganistan. The level of violence was tolerable to Afghans and outsiders. What went wrong with the Taliban is that one faction, with outside aid from international islamicists, managed to actually get most of the land. US policy was to restore the status quo ante in Afghanistan, put things back the way they were before the Soviet invasion. It seems to have succeeded well enough, and there is no reason to suppose it will be any less stable than it was. The future of Afghanistan will probably be no less violent than it was before the Soviet invasion, but no more violent that it was before the Soviet invasion. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG k2IMyoZuE05D4VVX0FkW1hRQSzvJRDmLhlhwppHX 4+V+mECM7CjCVvLuL1WVl7q6w8saodTqAtyPLDY7v
Re: Verdict's in: Elcomsoft NOT GUILTY of criminal DMCA violations
On 17 Dec 2002 at 16:43, Steve Schear wrote: [I'm more convinced than ever that nullification figured into the verdict. If so, bravo for the jury. steve] Both the defense and the prosecution sought to make the facts clear and understandable to the jury. So the defense was betting on nullification.
Re: To Marcel Popescu On the Interventionist pseudo-Libs
-- On 18 Dec 2002 at 9:50, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Yeah, the Objectivists (TM) seem to have been taken over by militant zionist interventionists too. Of all the advanced states, Israel is arguably the one that accords least with Objectivist ideals. It is nominally socialist in land and quite a lot of other stuff. Of course if you are Jewish, that socialism can be set aside -- and is set aside to a greater or lesser extent for most Jews, though some Jews find it a lot easier to have a nominally socialist state treat stuff they care about as private property than other Jews. Objectivists having orgasms over Israel because it is supposedly a liberal democracy is rather like communists having orgasms over Cuba because it was supposedly egalitarian. It is also entertaining that the socialism of Israel is, like the socialism of the Sandinistas, a lot more socialist for ethnic groups that are hated than ethnic groups that are favored, which reminds me of the argument I sometimes hear from socialists about West Germany -- that all Germans were evil hateful nazi murderers, and therefore should have had a socialist economy imposed on them. But I ramble and digress. To get back on point, if those who purport to be objectivists are also militant zionist interventionists, we should not take their supposed objectivist ideals too seriously. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG z6cMJ26RNdOfjBLQ98HcwFLdNTnpcyr6pXXAMyQK 4tzr0wMoswCmhku2MWXFlT4ncUNcScZtE4v7JMJS4
RE: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- Disney doesn't have the power to tell me what I may eat or smoke, except in their parks and on their property. On 20 Dec 2002 at 10:24, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: Now, imagine a Disney owning the whole of the land of the USA, and having armed forces the size of the USA. If a single corporation owned everything, then it would be a socialist government. If the US government was socialist, if it owned all or nearly all of the means of production. it would behave the same way all other socialist governments have acted -- it would engage in terror and mass murder. The fact that Disney, and lots of other groups own various small things makes me free. Voting does not make me free. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qikI/Zvu3HswGlLSZkKaevQ3pU6OY28ELljC0Jbd 4cAxIRdESGs/ZREaCsKc0sn3T8IF21aiD8Wwoy3Os
Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- On 20 Dec 2002 at 19:26, William Warren wrote: voting keeps you free..voting is our way of controlling and shaping the government. No matter who you vote for, a politician always gets elected. Those who do not exercise this duty do not deserve to complain about what goes on. By voting, you give the appearance of consent to what the government does to you. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG xmBBW56MrvFmh7U6fPSMDbyYqa+PTDPhTlRLmwmD 4cHSTvSFFo32sjmnBGPqe0vLtp3CfQhXyVLccQaXm
Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, December 15, 2002
-- William Warren voting keeps you free..voting is our way of controlling and shaping the government. In http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_19/PT hy_Chap_19.html David Friedman explains why democracy does not work. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG EE2kJk6NPO8w6BAmEjpZ3C4Ebd+deCFguLnVxSim 4l1W1bAjtNXV2/66RWaY7NrrWziR17QbWSWW4V9Ib
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
-- On 23 Dec 2002 at 21:23, Tim May wrote: Inasmuch as we cannot even build a machine which even remotely resembles a bat, or even an ant, the inability to simulate/understand/be a bat is not surprising. There is no mapping currently feasable between my internal states and a bat's. Even if we are made of relays or transistors. On the other hand, our inability to emulate a nematode, or the a portion of the retina, is grounds for concern. This does not indicate that the mystery is QM, but does suggest that there is some mystery -- some special quality either of individual neurons or very small networks of neurons that we have not yet grasped. It is unsurprising that with current computing power we should be unable to emulate an ant, but inability to emulate a nematode is troubling. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG s086giCwtcqu7XeskLWGWB1/rNYzhJZkH8XFagKR 48Gxb+aU0UhySFtRSBas+3fCnJhul0WOmmsY1eX0F
Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory
-- James A. Donald: It is unsurprising that with current computing power we should be unable to emulate an ant, but inability to emulate a nematode is troubling. Eugen Leitl The crunch power is there. We're lacking a good enough model, and empirical data to feed that nonexisting model. Every neuron's connection to every other cell is known, and yet the model does not run a worm. Every cell is mapped, but what these cells are doing is frequently unclear. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Vi3n3btgbJznuLwaZFHG2QzHC4WzqYUTP2PXc1eL 4iyLwSpYDYCB4gyr/ya7n2q23kHsZQmGXE2z7SUkD
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
-- On 8 Jan 2003 at 16:54, Thomas Shaddack wrote: In Japan, people are already wearing face masks frequently, ie. during the flu season. If such cultural shift happens here as well, we have partial protection against the face-recognition cams. In today's Vietnam women commonly dress like Ninjas, completely covering every square inch of skin. Even the eyes are covered with dark glasses. The costume however is tight, covering the face but revealing the figure. Men's fashions, however, change at the speed of glaciers, so there is little chance of that becoming acceptable for men. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG eeK7Lx/2xa/jMsqP3nKuxuq4g/yRmQtaTm/6pzMG 4WNfeWcezvgs7vrhiCTz68qRAGREiuHgqil78zrNJ
Re: Question on Mixmaster
-- On 12 Jan 2003 at 20:12, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: I've known about Mixmaster for years, but only just now finally downloaded and installed it (Mixmaster 2.9.0). Does anyone know where I can find documentation on how to actually use it? It is intolerably painful to use Mixmaster by hand. Download quicksilver, which is a wrapper around Mixmaster. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG SOzCf2IlFaRP9bX1C0CNSyBqZtT2LHJw6xVNbuQg 42jEIkLSj0DRPCGqFJuNhf6tC8RHusnbDZzvJzdg5
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
-- On 13 Jan 2003 at 12:30, Todd Boyle wrote: What *was* your point in redistributing the nigger killing post from Cypherpunks, in the digital bearer settlement list? Does that have something to do with digital cash, or enhance your IBUC business somehow? Maybe, increasing traffic by being cool and shocking? Tim May pulled people's legs -- some sucker took it seriously, so someone decided to pull a little harder to see how much a sucker would swallow. The hunting post was obviously a joke, as the final line made clear. The real joke was that some readers would fail to see that the first line was a joke, would believe that cypherpunks really do go hunting black people. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG VZWpdVuMGJXwD+8kUsrx9HO13zFp6hwvFIsezAEw 414DzHlNJd+xhIFwTZwjjprhbh3YCmMrWCkNV4SM5
Re: Security cameras are getting smart -- and scary
-- On 14 Jan 2003 at 21:48, Tyler Durden wrote: My thought was that James is some kind of Fed. I suspect Chomsky is one guy they most don't want around these days. His accusations on the Chomsky dis website were technicalities and hair-splitting, even somantic. Liar: Chomsky claimed that : : such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, : : the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of : : Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided : : analyses by highly qualified specialists who have : : studied the full range of evidence available, and : : who concluded that executions have numbered at most : : in the thousands But in fact the at most is Chomsky's lie, not present in the articles he cited. Someone who read the economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review at the time would rather have concluded that the death rate from brutality and mistreatment was many hundreds of thousands, likely over a million, and that the executions proabbly numbered at least a hundred thousand or so. According to Chomsky these highly qualified specialists also made :: repeated discoveries that massacre reports were :: false. Of course no such discoveries are to be found in the material he cites, and his article appeared shortly after the massacres reported by the refugees were devastatingly confirmed by when such a massacre occurred on the border. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Hbp33+OpO++a/lQY1xLV9c3yccNAe3n+c3apD50B 4tlZyjrzU1UNgJfno/6lepfIRPdedtsG1UAQ8tRVn
Re: Petro's catch-22 incorrect (Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants)
-- On 18 Jan 2003 at 10:01, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote: The terrorists have made it pretty clear what their gripe with the U.S. Government is, and it has nothing to do with trade, the American lifestyle, or the elusive freedoms that Americans supposedly enjoy. It has everything to do with US troops stationed in nearly every country in the world (specifically, Saudi Arabia), That was one indictment of many. Another indictment was the crusades. Bin Laden seemed most strongly upset about the reconquest of of what we call Spain, but which muslims call by another name. In the most recent communique (which may not be Osama Bin Laden but his successor pretending to be him) he gave a Leninist rant that the arabs are poor because the rich countries are rich, espousing the Marxist argument that simply being a citizen of a wealthy country is a crime deserving of death. This makes me suspect that the original Bin Laden is now a grease smear on some Afghan rocks, since the original Bin Laden was a Heideggerean, and would spit on any Marxist unless that Marxist was dying of thirst in the desert. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG sV5AglG+l7RX7GtAdr2sqFU4waW0+YXAMUKk12Nm 4LvMyqqmmLejQafyYLGOpTioRrPohNzS4GFkFqk6Y
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- On 20 Jan 2003 at 7:20, Harmon Seaver wrote: It's hard to tell from the US media reports what's really going on. Is the nation-wide strike a strike of the workers or just a lockout of the workers by the companies opposed to Chaves? Given his popularity with the lower class, it's difficult to understand why they would be striking against him. It is a strike. You can tell by the fact that Chavez has been trolling poorer latin American countries, in particular Brazil, to recruit guest workers to do scab labor. However he recently discovered that many of these guest workers, though they theoretically have the skills of those they are supposed to replace, do not actually have the skills. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG kwfJU4cOdKICpZB82NV/SqXAxmw3TVvx9Mj+s73N 4qKieDYF+J3ghbatlXw9fpFG6hLJOwipHAEQ+/QjK
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- Harmon Seaver: Well, but only a strike of the executives and some technicians. Not of the general workers. James A. Donald: When they bring out the army against the strikers as well as foreign scab labor, it is the workers. Harmon Seaver: Nope, not a chance. Most of the people out on strike were executives Then why the army? It's pretty clear by now that last Spring's attempted coup and the current strike was all engineered by the CIA and the current whitehouse scum. Then why the army and the guest worker scab laborers? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HF32U1ydzozTdZ6i7yRo/SgdkaZuGDrT5P2V9z6i 4YTrwmYIFejPLVEGKL7Y3nFQ6Mg+g07DVuTLLqTN2
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- Harmon Seaver: Well, but only a strike of the executives and some technicians. Not of the general workers. James A. Donald: When they bring out the army against the strikers as well as foreign scab labor, it is the workers. Harmon Seaver: Nope, not a chance. Most of the people out on strike were executives James A. Donald: Then why the army? Harmon Seaver: Why not the army? If it was only the executives and a handful of highly qualified specialists, you would not need the army. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG fQ/byy7jedqE9oGHEXqKrfXHoCvauj3bVa72KMSa 4PWFvnoRJp9TevLqmWauGP6Xq+IgM3/kHhET6aqGD
Re: Atlas Shrugs in Venezuela
-- On 23 Jan 2003 at 9:48, Harmon Seaver wrote: On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 09:38:47AM -0800, James A. Donald wrote: If it was only the executives and a handful of highly qualified specialists, you would not need the army. Of course you would. Look, once again, this isn't a normal strike, this is a conspiracy of traitors working with an evil foreign power to overthrow a legitimate government. Perhaps they are exercising their will over the facilities of production and distribution by CIA microwaves beamed into people's brains :-) Don't we all know that that CNN, et al, are going to do everything possible to minimize an anti-corporate leader? No, we do not know that. Recall live from Baghdad. Recall Ted Turner's declaration that he is a socialist. Radosh lists him as one of his fellow radicals. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9oeXHSnCgD5NmMmb8PrREjcnC1LEpeQCYyDS5ef2 4cnSq5ZshJsZCa5hpwa9OJurd0GHVS0jozg8GR8Na
Re: Palm Pilot Handshake
-- On 28 Jan 2003 at 20:54, Tyler Durden wrote: Yo! Anyone out there in codeville know if the following is possible? I'd like to be able digitally shake hands using a Palm Pilot. Is this possible? What I mean is, Let's say some disgruntled and generic crypto-kook (let's call him, say,...'Tyler Durden') has been signing his (tiring) cyber-missives with a public key. And now let's say there's some guy at a party claiming to be that very same Tyler Durden, but you're not so sure (this real-life Tyler Durden is WAY too much of an obvious chick-magnet to be the same guy that posts on the Internet). BUT, you happen to have your Palm Pilot(TM), and so does he. So you both both engage the little hand-shaking app on your PP (using Tyler Durden's public key) and there's verification. Yep. Same dude. (You then procede to prostrate yourself before this obvious godlet, stating I'm not worthy, Sire.) This can be done without a palm pilot. Normally the flesh and blood Tyler Durden would reveal knowledge of information sent encrypted to the net Tyler Durden, or vice versa. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG +OfNblhcCuKIKF5MFg7gpgfNLhp99TtnhvtpjA6D 4yJKSl2sqFg6P1vGn5ClsKRon31LJE1uCGdVuiQEE
Re: CDR: US health care,a winner for Hillary in 04?
On 28 Jan 2003 at 19:46, Marc de Piolenc wrote: PS - the infant mortality statistics are bogus; they are a record-keeping artefact. Other countries (notably Sweden, to which the USA is always being compared) don't count a child as born until it has reached a certain age (three weeks in Sweden). Guess when most infant deaths occur? Interesting datum. Could you give a source for this. If true, needs wide publicity, since we web search for infant mortality and Sweden gives a zillion hits, all saying what you would expect.
Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
-- On 30 Jan 2003 at 11:31, Eugen Leitl wrote: I'm not arguing pro strong state. I'm merely saying that the tax funded ivory tower RD is complementary in scope to privately funded research. If 95% of it is wasted (and lacking libertarian drive in Euland it's bound to stay that way for quite a while), it's still nice to see a percent or two to go into bluesky research. You will notice a disproportionate amount of blue sky research comes from countries that are highly capitalist. Thus Switzerland is roughly comparable to Sweden in size and wealth, but we see quite a bit of blue sky research coming out of Swizterland, not much from Sweden. Since blue sky research is a public good, only governments can efficiently produce blue sky research. Does not follow, however, that governments *will* efficiently produce blue sky research, and on the available evidence, they do not. There are several mechanisms that lead companies to produce and publish interesting data -- one is to make a name for themselves, as in the human genome project, another his that they like to employ scientists that have published interesting research findings, which means that their scientists want to publish interesting research findings. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG vj9XFJICkQyBZHtzNbSmc+aK6sW4+dfeCW2jBsxp 4SNzRPDCqDY1oqcXuKPS207CG2oaSOsRAObNR7CKl
Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
-- On 30 Jan 2003 at 12:16, Harmon Seaver wrote: I'll have to find the studies, but it was the same oil geologists (not enviros) who used the same model to accurately predict the peak of US oil production who did the one on world oil production. Not true. Rather, what happened is that there have been thousands of overly pessimistic estimates, and one overly optimistic estimate for US oil production (an over reaction to past low side errors) , and everyone who makes implausibly pessimistic estimates for world oil production likes to associate themselves with those who disagreed with the one overly optimistic estimate -- but the association is thin. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 8af9YKuTzIfi6eW+kuKC5iSQr1ItRdPJmiiqa7oK 40um9WOOe1GxHnczql5Bykr/viCnjY0+DHauSAK8v
Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power
-- These geologists very accurately predicted the peaking of oil production in the US, Completely false. These geologists are not Hubbert, nor did they very accurately predict the peaking of oil in the US, nor do they use Hubbert's methodology, though they claim to. Rather, they are people who would like to associate themselves with Hubbert these geologists are not the successors to Hubbert, but the successors to LImits to Growth, and the club of Rome, who predicted total exhaustion of oil supplies and ensuing economic collapse in the 1980s. Hubbert estimated the amount of oil remaining from the logistic curves. Those who claim to be his successors assert that there is X amount of oil remaining, and then fit the logistic curve to match X. That is the club of rome technique, which is the opposite of the Hubbert technique. Hubbert predicts oil reserves from observed success in finding oil. Doomsayers predict failure to find oil from alleged oil reserves. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG C9e+ZUPyVGI4wbdMUNNKXWkQWaRXRTL/Nu+zv66g 4tjmevo5q83abI8gkC1baI1odUsQH0a8O86Tquf+1
RE: The Wimps of War
-- Steve wrote quoting: PAUL KRUGMAN And though you don't hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush's staying power a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won't do what is needed to rebuild Iraq is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States. On 12 Feb 2003 at 1:21, Lucky Green wrote: And this matters how? Why would Bush, or for that matter the Europeans, care about rebuilding (what?) in Iraq? Other than the minimum investments required to prevent the population from rising up against their future leaders, why should the U.S. concern itself with making investments in Iraq not directly related to creating and maintaining oil extraction and transport facilities? The arabs hunger for development and modernity. In the past they absorbed the worst poisons spewed by western universities, socialism and anti-imperialist nationalism, and attempted to apply them, with predictably disastrous results, Then they healthily came to reject these foolish and dangerous ideas, and attempted to return to their roots, with results that were bad for us as well as them. The theory of the democratic imperialists is to export better ideas at gunpoint. It is far from clear that this will work, even if tried honestly and vigorously -- we are running into a bit of trouble applying it in Kosovo. It is also far from clear that the US has the necessary will and virtue to apply it in Iraq. The Germans and the French are not very keen on doing it at all, but realizing that position is unpopular, instead say they doubt the US will to do it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3cgDYFmaaqwoNleSbHMta+Lh1jBHPKeYH8milYX4 4Jd1XwS8ngV1yW9WaN7beF2CZS5t7tXSXrmZDptBR
Re: M Stands for Moron? You gotta be kidding...
-- On 13 Feb 2003 at 16:51, Eric Cordian wrote: If the small scale structure of the universe isn't manifold-like, then a theory which says it is an 11-dimensional manifold is not a great leap over a theory which says it is a 4-dimensional manifold. As one approaches the plank length, the structure of space time will become more like fractal quantum foam, with an increasingly complex topology. Therefore, at distances comparable with the plank length, spacetime will not have a definite dimensionality. It might be that in the limit of very small distances, it becomes eleven dimensional, or it might be that the description of spacetime at distances smaller than the plank length cannot be given any definite dimensionality. The measure of the usefulness of a new theory is the increment in predictive power over the prior way of thinking about it. Not how many pages you can cover with indecipherable equations that are Friggin' Hard. The shape of standard particle physics suggests that all of what we think of as physical law is the result of spontaneous symmetry breaking, merely a particular solution to a set of highly non linear equations, that have an infinite number of possible solutions, most of which correspond to universes nothing like our own -- that at sufficiently small scales and sufficiently high energies we encounter a metaphysics, capable of generating an infinite variety of systems of physical law. Suppose we had the ultimate theory of everything handed to us on a platter by supercilious aliens. In order to test it we first would have to find the solution, out of an infinite number of solutions, that corresponds to the normal physics of the universe. It seems likely that just finding the solution that corresponds to our vacuum would be very difficult indeed. Suppose we had the theory of everything, and suppose we could solve it, and suppose we could manipulte energies trillions of trillions of times larger than those we can now manipulate, with precision trillions of trillions of times larger than we can now control. Then we could remake a small region of space time to have physical laws that we might find more convenient for some purposes. All of this, however, seems hard. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ok+QpWKWbKVF8q5f7HW4Ghw4PpqAPEr2FG3ocN2v 4Bd0OSE0YuN4HkOpXceSnWYuUaZou9XXgseFFRkXv
Re: Blood for Oil (was The Pig Boy was really squealing today
So the US killed a lot of people there, so as to spread respect for freedom and democracy, and installed another dictator without elections, or any plan for elections The current leader was elected, not in accordance with western democratic norms that some people want to impose of Afghans at gunpoint, but in accordance with Afghan democratic norms.
RE: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minoritie s
-- On 20 Feb 2003 at 16:09, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote: Ah yeah, the good old front against communists. Some people haven't learned that political views aren't what makes one a bastard. Commies *must* be bad, you see ? Too much capitalism is as bad as too much communism. Highly capitalist nations do not murder millions. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG LS0PPszrbHPaadDyv9OpkI1d4Tym+mjxMyowVUMa 4dEsfuHBg8G0mXDn/U8FBak0jzB4WFSXGPt/n1Lt9
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
-- On 21 Feb 2003 at 11:13, Tyler Durden wrote: However, one way to see the situation is more of a buy-off. Arguably, the government plunders in order to pay off welfare society, because if they didn't the masses would rise up and kill off the system But among reasonably capitalist societies, those with least welfare, for example Hong Kong, are in the least danger of political disturbance from the poor, whereas those with the highest welfare, in particular france, are frequently on the edge of revolution. High welfare state countries tend to have high permanent unemployment, so there are lots of able people who cannot get jobs, who therefore become revolutionaries, lots of able people who have jobs they hate but cannot change -- which is why in America going postal has come to mean an explosion of destructive rage -- post office employees are well paid, but of such low competence they cannot get well paid jobs elsewhere, so they are trapped. Secondly in high welfare state countries, by definition, wealth is politally distributed, leading to correspondingly high levels of organized group violence, as frequently illustrated in France. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG U48sX6NjfrRrL9phB4/+EDmv+60I2TdKVSEEAb4a 4+X/X9IOWyzrFjI3Sd2AdJhWeQ1dYpT72RgMVDgm4
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minoritie s
-- James A. Donald Highly capitalist nations do not murder millions. On 21 Feb 2003 at 17:09, David Howe wrote: but their highly capitalist companies sometimes do. Don't be silly. You have been reading too much Lenin. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG qQotsl6wN3i4RMqlTN1JTdpA5gU7wC9mp4Gj2fVs 4WN+iLzobxHF9dI56LAcJhpMotMMgyrx983tvS7YA
Re: The burn-off of Tom Veil
-- On 23 Feb 2003 at 15:55, Tyler Durden wrote: With respect to the Cambodia issue, Chomsky is pointing out how US agit-prop and media take advantage of our lack of certainty with respect to the real numbers. Originally Chomsky lied about Cambodia, to deny the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. He changed his tune after the Soviet Union changed their tune. Chomsky estimates that only 800,000 are verifiable via publically accessible documentation. Chomsky originally claimed thousands, not tens of thousands, a statement he attributed to highly qualified specialists although the people he cited were too cautious to make the claim he attributed to them. As for the Cambodia issue, I think the US government's complicity in 'inadvertently' bringing the KR into power is a good precedent for what we're doing in the Middle East. Originally, Chomsky claimed that the Khmer Rouge were rebuilding Cambodia, that they were comparable to the french resistance, that the stories of massacres had been repeatedly discovered to be false, and so on and so forth. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG TF+XPgep9hB6HF8pL+yRUVdu6a9ckBKBghjWDY6S 4fZOVskt09IN81+t/M242V4VkWHdcJA35Af5Em3ET
Re: Ethnomathematics
-- On 25 Feb 2003 at 23:58, Sarad AV wrote: Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematics which takes into consideration the culture in which mathematics arises. Mathematics is often associated with the study of universals. When we speak of universals, however, it is important to recognize that often something we think of as universal is merely universal to those who share our cultural and historical perspectives. Doubtless among Margaret Mead's happy fun loving socialist free love practicing Samoans, three plus three equalled four. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG v+NaePzhJvBgWFvKEiBLJz6Xkkcnk4Si7pg+h+Gd 4dztWvm+OzZ43IaSm6G69uaLLisWXr4ltulX/X5tE
Re: Who Owns the News
-- On 2 Mar 2003 at 1:00, Bill Stewart wrote: Most of the national talk shows on radio are either conservatives or ranting right wingers or sports shows (which don't count.) The ranters get some mileage out of insulting people for a while, trying to keep finding new people to hate and insult, but it gets old after a while, and now that there's no longer a Clinton Administration supplying easy targets, it's hard to sustain. You take for granted that news shows are to the right of their audience. This does not seem to be the case. Fox has determined the political views of the typical person who is interested in news, and Fox is dead center on that demographic. If O'Reilly is neither right nor left, but instead balanced, even if far from fair, then existent talk shows are fairly representative of their audience, about equally split between right and left, which of course makes them all extreme right wing as compared to most of the people who run the news. As to which side is spewing rage and hatred, try googling for references to Ann Coulter. Anne laughs at her opponents. I get the feeling that they would put me in the gulag if they could, along with most of their audience. Similarly recall the debate between Chagnon and his various opponents. The joke so often made about feminists is also very much applicable to those than in the America call themselves liberals. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG gs4XF9FlWtm8J1QfFNuWUi7Oq6NmCglTocpcIxAG 44Ui+eIfir//QVw+66bb3d5P+L4iWlBIkDXQFVERa
Re: Who Owns the News
-- On 1 Mar 2003 at 11:25, Eric Cordian wrote: FOX recently fired two reporters after they refused to change the facts of a news story. Fox said to them, We paid $13 billion for these stations, and we'll tell you what the news is. In a unanimous decision, the 2nd District Court of Appeals overturned a $425,000 jury award to another FOX reporter who was fired after refusing to alter the facts of a story. THe judge ruled FOX had a right to lie, deceive, and mislead. MSNBC just fired Phil Donahue after a marketing report outlined a nightmare scenario in which MSNBC was perceived as giving a forum to anti-war sentiment while all other networks were engaged in patriotic flag-waving. You are making all this crap up. For example Donahue was fired because few were watching him sneer at them. Liberals cannot succeed in talk shows because they hate and despise their audience. He was getting about one quarter the audience of the competion. The nightmare scenario that MSNBC was so alarmed by was that no one was watching him vomit hatred over his audience. Much the same for all your other stories When CNN tried to cover the Palestinian side of the Mideast Conflict, Israel threatened to drop CNN and pick up FOX instead. CNN caved instantly. All CNN copy is now required to be reviewed by upper management in Atlanta before broadcast, and anything that isn't pro-Israel is killed. Funny. Some time ago I saw some Israelis murder a Palestinian kid on numerous stations, Fox among them. Channel surfing last night I saw bits of a long boring documentary where the camera followed various Palestinians around in their daily lives, depicting the distressing effect on the Palestinians of various Israeli collective punishments. Not sure what station it was on. Terribly earnest public good stuff. Sure the press is biased, but there is plenty of stuff that is very far from pro Israel, even on channels that are openly pro Israel, such as Fox. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG mmaHCD9F1B++2Aq7X7ytnGlqgDM6kFzF3Ua7X2Ke 4bHENQyj656gmwUnwj85NQSorfvZ2KiZtsroyXrdv
Re: Give cheese to france?
-- On 8 Mar 2003 at 2:44, Anonymous wrote: But let's cut to the chase. Assume that all private grocery store owners want to exclude people from their stores. Now assume that 100% of them agree that effective Tuesday, only those people who have a receipt for a $100 or more donation to George W Bush (or Hillary Clinton, whatever) may enter their property to shop for groceries. The difference between private property owners doing this, and the governemnt doing this is that 100% of private property owners are NOT going to agree on anything. The 100% assumption presupposes that the capitalists are like the state, a single entity with a single will, in which case it is obvious that simply replacing the will of the capitalists with the will of the people would be a vast improvement, rather than slavery terror and mass murder. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HgEdYNVKv2tU/toXy+I4n7ghSLCNWUPXGAeW1QBT 4k9jI77S/WhRm+irKmtf3wrOpbIQpPsFLWh2y5bwz
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
-- On 7 Mar 2003 at 12:46, Tyler Durden wrote: Let's take one of my famous extreme examples. Let's say a section of the New Jersey Turnpike gets turned over to a private company, which now owns and operates this section. So...now let's say I'm black. NO! Let's say I'm blond-haired and blue eyed, and the asshole in the squad car doesn't like that, because his wife's been bangin' a surfer. So...he should be able to toss me off the freeway just because of the way I look? (Or the way I'm dressed or the car I drive or whatever.) The turnpike is a hard problem, sincve you have a clash between two legitimate rights -- the right to wall people out, against the right not to be walled in. The mall is not a hard problem, any more than the nightclub is a problem. Do you have a problem with a night club turning away those it feels would clash with the theme? Let us suppose, instead of a small number of big roads (where such a thing as the new Jersey Turnpike is the sole vital way of getting from A to B), a rather illogical stitched together maze of small roads -- much like the internet, where paths tend to ramble in not very direct fashion, the kind of road system an anarchic society, where roads were not made according to any central plan, would produce. Then, there would be no problem with one particular turnpike operator turning away blacks, or turning away whites. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG j6r53OQ7j4k1SqdtDWsWdOebG2XED5sN/423GSxD 4tlIUPZ+1lsAuFtEOwpEqrbUmzsGZVc9i4A6Rpm9E
Re: Give cheese to france?
-- James A. Donald: The difference between private property owners doing this, and the governemnt doing this is that 100% of private property owners are NOT going to agree on anything. On 9 Mar 2003 at 8:36, Thomas Shaddack wrote: This presumes the existence of significant amount of (at least potentially) competing private owners - then it is valid argument. However, there is the growing trend of mergers and consolidations, producing megacorporations and limiting the number of said owners. Comie fantasy. That theory is Marx's monopoly capitalism. Commies have been loudly announcing Marx's prophecies to be coming true, even though after 1910 they no longer took the prophecies seriously themselves. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG pn7EKC9aBTqrOyM4bzwtwFZtOdqAOmXvvbLxZrlA 4YfWL2n2mbdOvyx1+q5PrE3PPyZbwP/aYDT7In7J4
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- On 19 Mar 2003 at 14:53, Tyler Durden wrote: I agree the above would be bullshit if it weren't on some occasions demonstrably true. After the US helped get the Taliban rolling (through providing them with stingers and other weapons as well as subversive opps training to knock out the soviets), The Taliban did not exist back then. The guys the US aided were for the most part, the guys that are running Afghanistan now. The major recipients of US aid, for example the lion of Afghanistan were the people the Taliban murdered. The story you are telling is part of a big commie lie -- that the US aided the bigoted Taliban against the elightened communists who created a constitutional democracy where every man and every women have a vote, and universal education and health care were guaranteed, etc. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 7RHG6436iyu0CEZRgLVbrRD6e9vztOYBLPDj87tj 47sltWxQU907jJOEeQwyKRWdG0+3Gl04FmdgDHSqa
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- The Taliban did not exist back then. The guys the US aided were for the most part, the guys that are running Afghanistan now. The major recipients of US aid, for example the lion of Afghanistan were the people the Taliban murdered. On 20 Mar 2003 at 8:16, Mike Rosing wrote: The Talib's have been around for more than a century. The British fought them in the late 1800's in their first try to conquer Afghanistan. The British did not fight Sunni islamic fundamentalists. The Taliban belongs to a sect that has never had a large following in Afghanistan, which is part of the reason why they drove out much of the Afghan population. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 53Wyhn5mvmbLsfCa8xeusjGGTFC0Ynkauohr4Uov 4nszIWnEYzkvcoHX0K/dqcsoCOCdvV1NwFasx3H/G
Re: When is iraq expected to fall.
-- On 19 Mar 2003 at 22:55, Sarad AV wrote: how long does US analysts expect iraq to be completely occupied by US and allied troops? No definite plans, but Rumsfeld is thinking of an occupation force of 75 000 for several years. Some want the kind of occupation where any time any Iraqi utters a racist slur, the marines take him away for sensitivity training, which would require about 200 000, whereas Rumsfeld has in mind an occupation more like Afghanistan, where so long as the rivers run with water, not blood, we pat ourselves on the back and count it a job well done. Of course, all this assumes the war goes smoothly -- with a kill ratio of a thousand to one. There is widespread failure to appreciate how remarkable such kill ratios are. If it is merely one hundred to one, the war will be perceived as a defeat, and if it is merely ten to one, it actually will be a defeat. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG pXZ8V7ZVSnZEJTIAOWVcd7RvKnGDxic8agd6TY6o 453h7nDyLl5QIvUPrVvYm1kEJJ/vJpfXSwkzd8wbm
Re: CDR: Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- On 23 Mar 2003 at 8:09, Jamie Lawrence wrote: Hey, what do you guys want? Not only are we not very useful, but, hell, I don't think we've been *communist* since at least the first attempt around at asian nations. Oh, wait. Commie means not like me. Commie is an explanation for the fact that hostile lies about US allies who fought communists are usually accompanied by favorable lies about the Soviet Union and its servants. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 2k9j5EK5Y4xNHQyHIAHgfLEiBFSDcgpeGajUQCOX 4+j+jTZ2GtM5shPO9ERgehUNxAfGbwxxmz4PJ1VFo
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- On 23 Mar 2003 at 17:39, Mike Rosing wrote: What they *can't* do is destroy small armies. So the Persians, Talibs and other muslim groups that have a grudge against the US will bleed them to death one soldier at a time. The US is not bleeding in Afghanistan. Iraq, like the french and unlike Afghanistan, has a long history of rolling over for tyrants foreign and domestic and begging for the tummy to be tickled, so the comparatively light hand of the US should lead to little friction. Assuming the war is as short and victorious as seems likely from events so far, Iraqi resistance wil not be one of the problems that results. Of course the war is far from over yet, but once it is over, it will indeed be over -- as the war in Afghanistan, against people far tougher and more determined, is over. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KtUZvg8HqIFOjO7TntiUtvJukF5ylhS4ToL3G4SJ 4r/cJgkx4X+dQYBr41/4Z/r/mWGlutzeNbOJsgwUk
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- Mike Rosing: The US technology is orders of magnitude better, they can easily destroy large armies. Harmon Seaver: Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage, which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. No one (except the US military which hopes to rule an intact Iraq) least of all the protestors, care how many Iraqis get killed. Who recollects how many Iraqis were killed the last time around? Furthermore, the plan appears to be to take cities as they were taken in Afghanistan, by laying seige to them and fostering revolt from within, a process that in Afghanistan took cities with very few civilian casualties. This is already working in the North, where the US has allies on the ground. It is not yet working the the South, indeed it failed conspicuously and embarrassingly, but it is early days yet -- we shall see. Rome was not burnt in a day. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG CEot0/Fv5upkisp2OkrlJ7HOSs54PKAvATPS9MMh 4yzGvQnbJbVyDJ/tpJS7TGIrVyZ/9wVT0lt6W2p9a
Re: Journalists, Diplomats, Others Urged to Evacuate City
-- Ken Brown: But there certainly was some assistance from the US to the Taliban. US They didn't buy those 500 Stingers in Kmart James A. Donald: Commie lies. At the beginning of the recent Afghan war the US estimated the Taliban had at most fifty stingers. During the war it became apparent that they had far fewer, probably only the twelve that Hekmatyar gave them. Tyler Durden 1. What makes these lies as you claim commie? Do you think that by impugning US policy in the region we are by implication stating that the forced exit of the Soviets was bad? Yes. The demonization of US allies in Afghanistan is usually accompanied by a whitewash of the Soviet regime they were fighting -- as for example in the much repeated lie that the US intervened in Afghanistan before the Soviets did -- see the post http://groups.google.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ing.google.com for Nathan Folkert's response to this lie. Quite saying commie all the time. All the commies are dead, except for 1 in Cuba and a couple of really old guys in rural China. Yet oddly, I encounter the ideology and program of Pol Pot every day in the newsgroups. Dan Clore is still defending the Khmer Rouge, and G*rd*n assures us we have no way of knowing that Kim in North Korea has done anything wrong, people are still arguing that Stalin's efforts to subdue Greece was a spontaneous uprising of the oppressed Greek masses against their fascist overlords, and that Stalin's alliance with Hitler was forced on him by the planned imperialist aggression of Britain and the US. 2. You knowledge of history is as shoddy as your ability to spot communists and their lies. The CIA actively recruited and trained Isalmic religious students and helped build and arm the Taliban. The Taliban did not exist until long after the CIA had entirely forgotten about Afghanistan. As the enemies of the Taliban pointed out frequently and vigorously, the people who became the Taliban had no freedom fighter credentials, had not fought against the Soviet Union. Since they had not fought against the Soviets they had not received aid from the US. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Xr+mXsZhgSN1VunXmTNlLq6WqQMj7FBTXHVmf9cG 4eeh8LJgnQvPDD/UTHjbkqVEnW+ciCAm09E3q9vA1
Re:Liberation party express concern over war
-- On 22 Mar 2003 at 2:00, Sarad AV wrote: Starting a war with saudi is a simple thing.How ever unless they don't find enough oil in iraq,they will turn onto KSA. How ever Saudi with Mecca and Madina is a dangerous country to attack.Saudi will surely take it as a war on muslims and the impact of that is severe.Saudi is the holy country.Its not like attaking iraq. Saudi arabia has vastly less power, than Iraq, and there is real evidence implicating it in terrorism, unlike Iraq. The reason the US does not attack it despite its subsidies to terrorists is because they have been kissing US ass while simultaneously kissing terrorist ass. It is embarrassing to attack someone who loudly proclaims I am on your side, even if one is inclined to doubt the sincerity of these loud proclamations. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG i69sCTK4xl9bzZuwXZNoM7SqxuK3sIovKZBGTCpg 4nm9I8mKvQEzSj94Huk5OMSVE7LSIZiBJSfR0QW5L
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- Harmon Seaver: Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage, which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. James A. Donald: No one (except the US military which hopes to rule an intact Iraq) least of all the protestors, care how many Iraqis get killed. Who recollects how many Iraqis were killed the last time around? On 23 Mar 2003 at 23:36, Bill Stewart wrote: I got thrown off of Federal property for holding a sign about it near the entrance when there was a pro-war rally going on. OK, you recollect how many Iraqis were killed the last time around. However tons of collateral damage is not going to crucify Bush and Blair, and to suggest that it would is to treat virtue as weakness. I am enraged whenever I see people speaking as if the US desire to avoid civilian casualties was a form of weakness, a manifestation of weakness and fear This view, this interpretation of US behavior, is so widespread that perhaps the most effectual thing the US could do to prevent future random terror attacks is to round up one hundred million. innocents and slaughter the lot. Everyone loved the commies for doing that, so if the US wants to be loved, perhaps it needs to do the same. If the US trys to avoid civilian casualties, this is not out of fear and weakness. Indeed, when we observe the recent past, it seems that it is failure to commit sufficient murder that provokes these attacks. The US does not suffer bad consequences from killing innocents, but from its failure to kill sufficient innocents. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Hu6ELr3jUIu3oEIpUP+J4+eT2MmE73JlaP2gGpR3 4KKD7h+egCTl5Lbm/b7SZ67vmhXn3fpWObKHp2b2Y
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- James A. Donald: If the US trys to avoid civilian casualties, this is not out of fear and weakness. Indeed, when we observe the recent past, it seems that it is failure to commit sufficient murder that provokes these attacks. On 24 Mar 2003 at 17:41, Eugen Leitl wrote: This is dire lunacy. Currently US is perceived as an agressor by the majority of the world, Exactly so. If the US murdered as many people as those it is perceived as aggressing against, then, like the Soviet Union, it would no longer be perceived as the aggressor, no matter how many people it subjugated or countries it invaded. It would get a free pass for its crimes, as the Soviet Union did. Recall that the he Soviet Union was slaughtering Muslims in enormous numbers, and today's Russia continues to murder them in numbers vastly greater than comparatively modest murders that Israel commits, and no one thought to launch terror attacks on the Soviet Union. There are a few terror attacks on todays Russia, but far fewer than on Israel. What is the moral? The moral is, murder more innocents, suffer less terror, less protests. Does anyone recall a protest against the Soviet Union when it was murdering Muslims by the trainload? If today's Russia murdered as many innocents as the former Soviet Union, they would have no terror problem at all. If you do not murder women and children, people think you are weak. So they attack. The more Iraqi children the US napalms, the safer every US resident who works in a tall building will be, and less our cities will be troubled with protests. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ZrkGvOGLQpALrU1KE9QX1mfd34aksVSnAZZd+OeA 4jz+JQJq45RkQt+yyCz+4rOM/aJdGQKZrYYsZTmp8
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- On 24 Mar 2003 at 22:05, Declan McCullagh wrote: I fear that's right. We have substantially increased our number of enemies capable of causing us serious damage (and have the requiste means, motive, and opportunity) Observe the marked decline in terrorist acts. Recollect that 9/11 was the second attempt to bring down the two towers and one of many large scale terrorist acts directed at Americans. Since Afghanistan, there have been no comparable attempts. The Australians got a bit of terror for their actions in East Timor, whereupon they threatened the Indonesians that if they did not clean up Indonesia, the Australians would do it for them. Since then, they have had no further significant problems either. All of the terrorists, and most of the protestors, think that if one do not kill innocents, it is a sign of weakness, and they strike at weakness. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG SKftD3iO5jEjgK/DD7/KHtmYPRg6AxRM6VoCCMVd 4EwomPyztP4ywyl/PXmpq8ssvNutxjj3lMHHPmEb2
Re: Things are looking better all the time
-- Declan McCullagh: what you say may be true (but hardly moral) if (a) all the innocents from that nation or ethnic group can be killed and (b) it can be kept quiet or other nations don't care. No need to keep it quiet. The French would kiss our feet as they kissed the feet of the Nazis. The New York Times glories in a pulitzer prize received for laudatory reporting of similar activities by the communists, and would doubtless drop its present anti war stance for similarly laudatory reporting. Indeed, to keep it quiet would be useless. Were the US to burn every Iraqi child alive, the intent and purpose would be to have everyone strongly suspect, so that the world would learn to let sleeping giants lie. Similar tactics were repeatedly employed throughout the the twentieth century, and were invariably highly effective, and welcomed everywhere in the finest universities, amongst the very best people, and the most prestigious publications, with glowing praise. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 3ugzZZGkxDJMCzgCZSym0TNHDvLJtovGA0GdGNLC 4eZu4NvyASZJK56sH1lBkFMLUv6ARCl1r7M/m6epB
