Re: censorship rears its head
Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I will look forward to watching the coverage. Do you plan to take out > just the censorious bitch Lynne Cheney, or also her censorious > husband and VP candidate? > > And then there's Al Gore (RAT) and his running mate (JEW RAT). > > (Subliminal messages brought to you by the Republican Party). > > Interesting that 3 out of the 4 top rats--Cheney, Gore, > Lieberman--have their own censorious attacks on speech, or have > spouses who lead such attacks. Lynne, Tipper, and Lieberman > himself. I wonder why Bush is being left out? Maybe it'll be like > Nixon in China: the only one of the four not calling for repeal of > the First Amendment will be the one who pulls the trigger. Some attorney (RAT) has filed suit against the entertainment industry over the shooting in Peduchah, Kentucky. Right now he's doing the talk radio circuit, trying to drum up support. (I suppose to cause such a public outcry that the judge feels strongarmed to rule in his favor, and to taint juries.) The central argument appears to be that the entertainment industry has marketted their products, which happen to contain violence and sex, to the people who are their biggest consumers: people under 18. But because they're under the magic age of 18, they apparently aren't responsible for blowing away their classmates; the computer game companies are. The quantity of bogus claims, lies, distortions, and general bullshit the guy was spreading is too large for me to list them all, and after a while they kind of blend into one big blob of bullshit anyway, but I'll go over some of the more notable ones. 1) Contrary to whatever this attorney and other power-hungry censors would like us all to believe, the fact that most of these school shooters have played violent video games and seen violent movies does not mean that the movies were to blame. "But *ALL* of them have!" Yeah, and all of them probably ate chicken at some point in the month before their rampages too. The fallacy is obvious. As far as I know, nobody has bothered to counter the obvious question: Isn't it more likely that the people who have a predisposition to violence just tend to be drawn to this media, especially considering that there are millions of people out there who use it but *aren't* killing people? 2) He quickly tried to make some point that when a child (again, defined as someone under 18, or 17, as the case may be) sees "violent or sexually-explicit" images, there is some change in the brain. So he mentions some Harvard University study, but doesn't bother to give a useable citation (journal name, author, date...), which, he claims, showed "increased blood flows to the amygdala" using MRI in "children," but not in adults. A) I have "increased blood flows" when I have a pulsating headache too. I have "increased blood flows" whenever my heart rate and blood pressure increase. I'm not a neurologist, but I'd figure that that doesn't mean anything neurologically. It dosen't even mean that there's enhanced activity in that region. B) Wouldn't it make more sense to just slip the subjects radioactive glucose, wait a few minutes, and then do a PET scan? That way you can actually tell which neurons are firing? (When a neuron generates an action potential, it doesn't use any energy. It uses it when it recovers. So when a neuron fires a lot, it sucks in a lot of glucose, which means that the radioactive glucose winds up in the neurons, which means that it's held there, which means that you can see it on a PET scan.) C) Neurological structure changes *do* occur. They occur when I watch violent and sexually-explicit movies. They also change when I sit on the toilet, eat food, do a math problem, listen to music, or walk across the room. It's called learning. The fact that neurological structure changes in people exposed to this is meaningless. Do a behavoral study, then it might have some validity. D) Why would you use an MRI in this case _at all_? E) Even increased activity does not imply psychological or neurological changes. It means that the neurons are firing. That's all. This indicates that either: A) The researchers were purposefully trying to obscure data. B) The stupid attorney, and by extension probably the stupid judge, is trying to pull one over on the intentionally-stupid jury and voluntarily-stupid public, by distorting a biomedical study. 3) When another attorney called in and challenged him with the obvious statement that it isn't the entertainment industry's problem but rather the shooter's and the shooter's parents, the plantiff's attorney retorted with a purposeful and direct distortion and asked: "It's the fault of the parents of the three little girls who were shot?" What happened after that was fairly unintelligable, while the plan
MP3.com yanks DeCSS sourcecode sung
MP3.com yanks song with illegal DVD-hacking code By Corey Grice Staff Writer, CNET News.com September 13, 2000, 7:25 p.m. PT Joseph Weckers song about a binary computer code wasnt exactly a chart-topper, but he doesnt think MP3.com should have banned it. The popular music Web site today removed the song, in which Wecker, sounding more than a little like a 1960s sit-in protester, sings a version of the banned computer code known as DeCSS. In an email to Wecker, MP3.com cited the nature of the music lyrics for the songs eradication. "Your song has either a song title or lyrics that are offensive or otherwise inappropriate," the company wrote. "Since there is a precedent holding (2600.com) culpable for posting the code, we felt it was in our best interest to remove it," an MP3.com spokesman said in an interview. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has filed lawsuits seeking to outlaw the code, calling it a hack of its DVD encryption scheme aimed at making and distributing illegal copies of digital films. A federal judge in New York last month agreed, banning hacker publication 2600.com from publishing or linking to the code online. The song, called DeCSS.MP3, offers an English-language rendition of computer code that, depending on whom you ask, is either a harmless exercise in experimental software engineering or a missile aimed at the heart of Hollywood. Either way, DeCSS has become a flash point in the head-on collision between digital technologies and copyright owners, much as Napster has for the music industry. The programmers who wrote the code insist DeCSS was designed to play legally purchased movie DVDs on computers running the Linux operating system--a format not supported by the movie industry. They say the code is a form of speech and is protected by the First Amendment--a claim many DeCSS supporters have rushed to validate by churning out artistic and other nonfunctioning works based on the DeCSS source code. Wecker said he sang the DeCSS code as a way to attract attention to the issue. "Its gone one step too far," Wecker said. "Its illegal to photocopy a copyrighted poem. But now its like it has become illegal to tell someone how the Xerox works." Other protesters have published portions of DeCSS on T-shirts and have recorded dramatic readings of the code. Some have used the code to create images in graphics files. Pro-DeCSS supporters say these demonstrations dont contain the full source code necessary to decode a DVD, a popular digital home movie format. "I find it very disturbing that I live in a country where singing source code may be technically illegal--kind of chilling," Wecker said. "My song is just like the T-shirts. The T-shirts dont even have enough code to decode a DVD." MP3.com, meanwhile, is wrestling with its own copyright troubles. A federal judge last week found that the company willfully infringed the copyrights of Universal Music Group in creating an online database of some 80,000 CDs for use with its My.MP3.com music locker service. The company could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
fun and games with SDMI
Linux users say SDMI contest a trick By Lisa M. Bowman, ZDNet News Some Linux lovers say the record industry is using them as a free consulting service to improve SDMI encryption. Some members of the Linux community are rejecting the record industrys request to help it create a more secure technical lock on its digital music. The Linux Journal is sponsoring a boycott of the Secure Digital Music Initiative hacking challenge, which starts Friday and promises to pay $10,000 to any hacker who strips out the watermark from a digital song. SDMI is a technology initiative launched by the record companies to crack down on piracy. In the coming weeks, SDMI will try out a variety of security measures, with plans to eventually adopt a hacker-tested technology that will prevent people from playing bootleg songs on SDMI-compatible hardware. However, some Linux lovers say the record industry is only using the hackers as a "free consulting" service to help it crack down on legal uses of music in the future, in an attempt to exert unprecedented control over when and where people play songs. The Linux Journal is urging readers to sign a letter saying they wont play along. "Thanks, SDMI, but no thanks. I wont do your dirty work for you," the letter states. "I will not help test programs or devices that violate privacy or interfere with the right of fair use." People who sign the letter will agree that they will never make a bootleg copy of a recording, but will only play one copy at a time in different devices, an action thats legal under the concept of fair use, but may be hard to follow in these days of rampant digital file swapping. In a sense, the open sharing of information that has allowed the Linux community to mushroom is directly at odds with the motives of traditional entertainment companies, which want to lock down their content. PR stunt Ironically, the entertainment industry in the past has sued people whove tried to reverse engineer their encryption technology -- the same act SDMI is now asking them to perform during the hacking contest. Linux Journal technical editor Don Marti, one of the boycotts organizers, said the goal is to thwart what he called "SDMIs PR stunt." "Why are freedom-loving people supposed to do free consulting work for an organization that wants to take away our freedom?" he asked. SDMI officials were not immediately available for comment.
film c meltdown imminent
The authors of FlasKMPEG have come across a program called FlasKMPEG DeCSS. We want to express very clearly that such program or any other derived from the original is no way related with the official FlasKMPEG project in any way. FlasKMPEG sources are available under the GPL license and its totally out of our responsibility the legal implications caused by the modifications or variations from other developers performed over our code. http://www.citeweb.com/flaskmpeg/
Re: Lee Free - Judge Apologizes For Government's Conduct
At 4:04 AM -0400 9/14/00, Bill Stewart wrote: > >Tim May wrote: >>... >>> Lee spent 9 months in solitary confinement and lost significant >>> salary and retirement benefits. > >That's why it was critical that Lee be guilty of *something*, >at least one charge, so he doesn't have a strong position for >suing the Feds for big bucks individually and organizationally. >He may still have some ability to do that, but I'd be surprised >if the plea bargain deal didn't address it somehow, even if it's >not in the part that's in the press. > >>> This makes it a moral requirement that former Defense Secretary >>> William Perry face a similar period of confinement and similar loss >>> of benefits. Perry has acknowledged downloading top secrets to his >>> home computer and leaving codeword material where his family, >>> housekeepers, and other visitors could have found and copied it. > >Was that Perry, or Deutch? I think I saw recently that Deutch _is_ >getting his wrist slapped somewhat hard now. You may be right. It may be Deutch, not Perry. I get those two guys confused all the time. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
RE: Is kerberos broken? cpunk
> -- > From: David Honig[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 11:26 PM > To: Trei, Peter; Multiple recipients of list > Subject: RE: Is kerberos broken? cpunk > > At 11:06 AM 9/13/00 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote: > >Here's an example of a good passphrase: > > > >"David grossly underestimates the ability of homo sapiens to memorize > >and exactly reproduce long texts. An examination of American > >high school students ability to perform the Gettysburg Address is a > >good counterexample." > > > >222 bytes, more or less. Even if we assume only 1bit of entropy per > >character (it's ordinary english), that's a pretty tough space to search. > >It's a safe bet that those two sentences have never been placed > >together in all of human history before now, so there's no dictionary > >to check. > > > >The problem is not that passphrases *can't* be made secure - > >the problem is that most people are unwilling to use good ones. > > > >Peter Trei > > Well I'm flattered :-) and impressed. I would be more impressed if > e.g., you actually used such an entropic phrase, in real life. Of course, > we don't > expect you reveal the actual length of your 'phrase. > My passphrases are of substantial length. As for enterprise logins, 'we have a solution to that problem' :-) http://www.rsasecurity.com/products/securid/ > I think you have convinced me, reinforcing something I've learned and > propogated: convenience over security. You have also reinforced something > that fits with what I know of cog sci, and which gets to the limits of H. > sapiens: you can only remember large things if they're structured > 'meaningfully'. Kasparov can't remember *random* chessboards better than > you, only real ones. > > DH, CSEE & Cog Sci '86 > It's interesting - structure reduces the entropy by making things predictable, but also makes them capable of memorization, despite non-trivial amounts of remnant entropy. Peter
Tpage Newsletter - A Leader in Global B2B Trade
Title: Tpage.com Newsletter If you don't want to receive new offers and business news from Tpage, please click here. Tpage.com Home Tpage Directory | Offer board | Showroom | Business Community Tpage Features Company Directory Search Engine Tpost Tpage Offer Board Tpage Showroom Business Community Cool Mart Meet the High Tech of New Items at Good Prices ! Hot Items Direct Drive Mouse (Ball-less 2000) *Not ball mouse *Not optical mouse *Low price *Semi-permanent life time Touch Panel PC(PL-M64P) *6.4" *Mini Type *Dimension: 230*200*90 (W*H*D) About Us Tpage Global Executive Profiles Strategic Partners Global Alliance Press Release [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Sir or Madam: Greetings from Tpage! Come to Tpage! You will be able to meet over 1,200,000 of buyers and sellers! We are writing to inform you about Tpage.com. Tpage.com provides value-added services to global companies enabling them to promote and develop trade in the B2B International Market. Tpage is a B2B Portal with the most powerful company directory and trade leads search engine in the industry. What this means for global traders, like yourself, is that Tpage is the single most comprehensive source to find and post trade leads, research markets and competitors and obtain a global presence for your business on the Internet. Tpage offers a full battery of tools custom tailored to make trading simplified and more efficient.
Re: domestic bioterrorism incident in FLA school
"William H. Geiger III" wrote: > >Subject: domestic bioterrorism incident in FLA school > > >Middle school student arrested in > > poisoning > > Exactly how do you get "domestic bioterrorism" from a rather simplistic poisoning? by requiring a catchy headline, I'd guess.
Re: censorship rears its hypocritical head
>Lieberman: Entertainment Must >Police Itself or Else >By Kalpana Srinivasan >Associated Press Writer > >WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Joe Lieberman decried a >"culture of carnage" surrounding Americas young >people and told a Senate committee Wednesday that >the government should stop the marketing of violent >movies, music and video games to children if the >industry fails to police itself. > http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGI11ED63DC.html Yep - all those commercials for "Be All You Can Be, Join The Army" and "Join The Navy, See The World, Meet Interesting People and Kill Them", and "Army Reserve - Spend Saturdays Keeping In Practice as a Trained Killer" and all the war movies the Pentagon helps get made, and "COPS" tv shows, and "The Drug War - Fix Moral and Health Problems By Declaring War" and its related "Job Training and Practical Entrepreneurism For Inner-City Youth" program, both of which teach kids that violence is a good way to relate to your neighbor - in some cities, the training extends to franchising opportunities, starting your own "Young Crips" neighborhood chapter. There's also the "Starve Young Children By Economic Blockade" programs for ridding the world of Hitler-of-the-year candidates that's worked so well, and the "Be Afraid - Make More Anthrax Vaccine Before Terrorists Use It" gigs. The government really *should* stop marketing those violent programs. Themselves. Before they mess with the (really large) motes in the movie businesses' eyes. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
Re: Lee Free - Judge Apologizes For Government's Conduct
>Tim May wrote: >... >> Lee spent 9 months in solitary confinement and lost significant >> salary and retirement benefits. That's why it was critical that Lee be guilty of *something*, at least one charge, so he doesn't have a strong position for suing the Feds for big bucks individually and organizationally. He may still have some ability to do that, but I'd be surprised if the plea bargain deal didn't address it somehow, even if it's not in the part that's in the press. >> This makes it a moral requirement that former Defense Secretary >> William Perry face a similar period of confinement and similar loss >> of benefits. Perry has acknowledged downloading top secrets to his >> home computer and leaving codeword material where his family, >> housekeepers, and other visitors could have found and copied it. Was that Perry, or Deutch? I think I saw recently that Deutch _is_ getting his wrist slapped somewhat hard now. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
surveillance tech lists?
Can anyone reccomend any email lists for discussing surveillance technology? tia
