Re: current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ??

2004-04-11 Thread Joe Schmoe

--- "Riad S. Wahby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> view.  Apparently he's still to be found posting on
> various Usenet
> groups.  RAH knows more about this than I do.

That's the other question I had ... I keep hearing
about alt.cypherpunks, but there is nothing there -
regardless of whether I look through google groups or
other news2web or news2mail translations,
alt.cypherpunks is totally dead - maybe 1-2 posts per
month, and most of them test posts or garbage, and
this goes back at least for the last year...

Is there some secret or alternate news feed that has
the real list, or is alt.cyperpunks just dead ?

__
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2004-04-11 Thread Penalizing R. Twila



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Sleep soundly and awake rested! 47

2004-04-11 Thread Salvador Burt

Sexuality is easily the most discussed topic in the documentary. The film "Go Fish" featuring lesbian couples in everyday life complete with graphic sex scenes is juxtaposed with Gyllenhaal's performance as the submissive half of an S&M relationship in "Secretary."
The session at the AU's Addis Ababa headquarters on Thursday is expected to elect a speaker and decide a location for the parliament's permanent home -- key contenders areSouth Africa and Egypt after Libya withdrew its offer to host the assembly.



Usnubcribee.Herre
The four-week moving average of new claims, which irons out the volatility of the weekly data, slipped to 344,000 from a revised 346,000 the prior week. The four-week average was the lowest since 336,500 in the week of Jan. 27, 2001. 
Alpha Oumar Konare, chairman of the AU's executive the AU Commission, is banking on the AU parliament, a peace and security council modelled on the U.N. Security Council and an African human rights court to strengthen the AU's effectiveness.



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2004-04-11 Thread postmaster
Network Associates WebShield SMTP V4.5 MR1a on fgcu-tuna detected virus
W32/[EMAIL PROTECTED] in attachment document_full.pif from <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and it 
was Cleaned
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Undeliverable Mail

2004-04-11 Thread Postmaster
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BAAAkAEAAAQAAG5YAAACAAAQAAAQABAAABAQ
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AABAAADALmRhdGEAIHABAAAUQgAAQAAAwAAA






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Re: BBC: File-sharing to bypass censorship

2004-04-11 Thread Eric Cordian
Eugen Leitl pastes:

> File-sharing to bypass censorship

> By Tracey Logan 
> BBC Go Digital presenter

> If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography,
> then it's possible to track it down and close it down 

> Ross Anderson, Cambridge University

I think the problem here is that material which John Ashcroft, Jerry
Falwell, and Pat Robertson think is wicked, may not be what Ross Anderson
or I think is wicked.  After all, to some people Howard Stern is
disgusting and obscene.  To others, he is merely witty and slightly
burlesque.

> Prof Anderson believes those fears are overstated. He argued that web 
> watchdogs like the Internet Watch Foundation, which monitors internet-based 
> child abuse, would provide the necessary policing functions.

Well, it's good to know Professor Anderson values the opinion of an
organization that won't even use the term "child pornography" to refer to
the things that offend Ashcroft, Falwell, and Robertson, but demands
everyone use terms like "pictures of children being abused" and "child
abuse pictures."

As those who flog the Sex Abuse Agenda are well aware, 90% of successful
propaganda is owning the vocabulary.  I am reminded of the changing of the
term "statutory rape" to "child rape" a few years ago, which I am sure we
will all agree is a less than accurate description of a 20 year old who
has consensual sex with a streetwise 17 year old crack whore.

I think Hakin Bey's suggestion that plastering pictures of naked children 
everywhere is a great form of political theatre has merit.  All the right 
wing crackpots will have to hide in their homes to avoid having strokes, 
and the well-balanced representatives of the Forces of Reason can finally 
live their lives in peace and quiet. 

Perhaps we can have Public Service Announcements by the Coalition for a 
Prude-Free AmeriKKKa.

"This is Timmy.  This is TImmy's cock.  This is Timmy's cock in Billy's 
mouth.  Any questions?"

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"



Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies

2004-04-11 Thread Eugen Leitl
On Sun, Apr 11, 2004 at 12:29:11AM +0100, Jim Dixon wrote:

> A "tree" as the term is used in mathematics and computer science has a

A tree as the term is used in a human language refers to a shape. Ditto
mesh. Have you seen a fisherman's net? Do you think a fisherman or a weaver
uses a mathematical formalism when referring to a specific, familiar shape?
The graph (not a mathematical term, that) I pointed you to did remind you
of...?

http://research.lumeta.com/ches/map/gallery/wired.gif

> single root.  A continuum has an infinite number of points in it.  A grid

Use your imagination. Crosslinking a tree results in a mesh. Are you familiar
with polymer crosslinking? Can you imagine a crosslinked tree, that is
halfway between a tree, and a mesh? I knew you could. 

> ... none of these terms has anything much to do with one another.

I'm sorry I'm confusing you with interdisciplinary language. Unfortunately,
I'm not going to lapse into formal definitions of new terms, if these can be
informally explained in downstream text.
 
> I don't know why you introduce hypergrids.  But you might consult a

You're using "don't know" a lot. 

I recognize the symptoms by now. Occasionally, I run into people who're into
heavy formalism & domination. I've almost never been able to communicate
effectively with such people, but I'm going to try anyway. 

I use the term hypergrid/hyperlattice/hypermesh as a generic term for higher 
dimensional
networks which have a specific connection locality pattern, if mapped to 2d and 3d
space. Namely, that the connection density decays with distance (in terms of
distance to the current reference node). The higher the dimensionality, the
larger the total number of links. The more random defects (missing edges) in the
network, the less orthogonal it looks. A hypercube is an instance of a pretty
orthogonal high-dimensional network. Its makeup is fractal, which is visible
in the connectivity matrix. A hypergrid is an orthogonalized hypercube.

You can plot (project) hypercube and hypergrid connectivities on 2d and 3d arrays of
nodes. If the length of the array edges is a power of 2 you'll get a specific
connectivity distribution pattern, reaching outwards orthogonally in
distances which are doubling in each step.

I generalize this by relaxing the 2^n distance constrant and by allowing
connectivity other than orthogonal, including defectivity. The connection
density still decays exponentially with distance.

Less fuzzy now?

> mathematical dictionary - the term seems irrelevant to the current
> discussion.

Trust me, it's not.
 
> > > A geodesic is a minimal path in whatever geometry you are talking about.
> >
> > The geometry on Earth surface is anything but whatever. Way above, with nodes
> > in mutual plain view, it's plain old Einstein-Minkowski (basically Euclidian,
> > with relativistic corrections).
> 
> "The geometry on Earth surface is anything but whatever"?  Sorry,

Now you're refusing to parse English, too. I'm not going to diagram it for
you, look at above cited passage. 

> this makes no sense.  However, a geodesic remains a path of minimal
> length in the geometry under consideration.  Or so it was when I last
> did some reading in finite dimensional metric spaces.

Look outside the window. Does this look like a finite dimensional metric
space to you? Are you familiar with geodesy? Are you familiar with the term
geodesic as used by ship captains and pilots? It has nothing whatsoever to do
with spacetime curvature. You can't travel nor signal through Earth bulk, so
you have to route your signals around the spherical obstacle. One you're
sufficiently far removed, it's line of sight in a device cloud (a satellite
constellation).
 
> > I'm claiming peering arrangement evolve to make optimal use of given physical
> > cabling. This is quick.
> 
> As the term is normally used, "peering" is the settlement-free exchange of
> trafic between autonomous systems (ASNs). "Settlement-free" means that no
> consideration ($$$) is paid.  This has bugger all to do with cabling.

Peered traffic is exchanged over a point. It is frequently called a nexus.
The traffic needs a physical connection to pass through the nexus. Traffic
requires infrastructure, which costs money to buy and to run. Unnecessary
traffic and suboptimal topology incurs unnecessary costs. Current layout is
done by people, and is a political process. Traffic laid out by agorics
within a protocol adjusts in realtime. Because this is not being done now,
this means such protocols will be invented and deployed. They will outcompete
the legacy approach. It doesn't take a genius to make that trivial forecast.
 
> Peering arrangements generally involve legal departments, and rarely
> change once inked.

The worse for them. Computers can negotiate, too, and a lot quicker than
people.
 
> In the real world, peering policies normally reflect a mixture of common
> sense and total misunderstanding of what the Internet is about.  Some
> netw

You will be realy happy with cd-cheaap software! ;-) segregate

2004-04-11 Thread Angela Whitman


"It's a very rare holiday still for men to be given the opportunity to go into a woman's psyche and see the world and the existential experience of life through her eyes," actress Tilda Swinton says during the documentary.





Directors and actresses speak candidly about body image, nude scenes, age and the tendency to glorify sex scenes.
GPRA requires federal agencies to develop strategic plans with long-term goals and objectives, annual plans with outcome-oriented goals linked to the long-term goals, and annual reports in which they evaluate their success in meeting those goals. According to the GAO report, more federal managers are using strategic planning and goals as outlined by GPRA.




Windows XP Professional will be only $39.95 !!! retort

2004-04-11 Thread Vince Carpenter


Each of the AU members has the same five-person representation in the 265-member assembly. MPs are picked from each state's national parliament. Thursday's session will have only 195 members since to date only 39 countries have ratified the protocol setting up the pan-African body.
Suspected terrorists and violent criminals would be designated as red and forbidden to fly. Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening. The vast majority would be designated green and allowed through routine screening. 





The Partners in Business program at the Utah State University College of Business will present its 21st annual human resources seminar March 31-April 1 at the Ellen Eccles Conference Center. 
Beyond privacy issues, the airlines say there are questions about how the government plans to implement CAPPS II. May said that 70 percent of airline reservations now are made through third parties such as travel agents and computerized reservation systems. 
But some economists worry that structural changes in the job market, including technological advances and a growing appetite for cheap offshore labor, will keep hiring muted in 2004.
Though it usually takes a while for unemployment to fall once the economy's started growing again -- since employers are hesitant to start hiring until they believe the recovery is for real.




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2004-04-11 Thread Unbar M. Kindling



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BBC: File-sharing to bypass censorship

2004-04-11 Thread Eugen Leitl

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3611227.stm

File-sharing to bypass censorship

By Tracey Logan 
BBC Go Digital presenter

The net could be humming with news, rather pop, swappers

By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music,
eliminating censorship of any kind.

This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer
(P2P) file-sharing, Cambridge University's Professor Ross Anderson.

In his vision, people around the world would post stories via anonymous P2P
services like those used to swap songs.

They would cover issues currently ignored by the major news services, said
Prof Anderson.

"Currently, only news that's reckoned to be of interest to Americans and
Western Europeans will be syndicated because that's where the money is," he
told the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital.

"But if something happens in Peru that's of interest to viewers in China and
Japan, it won't get anything like the priority for syndication.

"If you can break the grip of the news syndication services and allow the
news collector to talk to the radio station or local newspaper then you can
have much more efficient communications."

'Impossible to censor'

To enable this, Prof Anderson proposes a new and improved version of Usenet,
the internet news service.

  If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography,
then it's possible to track it down and close it down 

Ross Anderson, Cambridge University

But what of fears that the infrastructure that allows such ad hoc news
networks to grow might also be abused by criminals and terrorists?

Prof Anderson believes those fears are overstated. He argued that web
watchdogs like the Internet Watch Foundation, which monitors internet-based
child abuse, would provide the necessary policing functions.

This would require a high level of international agreement to be effective.

"The effect of peer-to-peer networks will be to make censorship difficult, if
not impossible," said Prof Anderson.

"If there's material that everyone agrees is wicked, like child pornography,
then it's possible to track it down and close it down. But if there's
material that only one government says is wicked then, I'm sorry, but that's
their tough luck".

Political obstacles

Commenting on Prof Anderson's ideas, technology analyst Bill Thompson
welcomed the idea of new publishing tools that will weaken the grip on news
of major news organisations.

Such P2P systems, he said, would give everybody a voice and allow personal
testimonies to come out.

But the technology that makes those publishing tools accessible to everyone
and sufficiently user-friendly will take longer to develop than Prof Anderson
thinks, added Mr Thompson.

Prof Anderson's vision underestimates the political obstacles in the way of
such developments, he said, and the question of censorship had not been
clearly thought through.

"Once you build the technology to break censorship, you've broken censorship
- even of the things you want censored," said Mr Thompson.

"Saying you can then control some parts of it, like images of child abuse, is
being wilfully optimistic. And that's something that peer to peer advocates
have to face."

-- 
Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl
__
ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net


pgp0.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: On Needing Killing

2004-04-11 Thread Major Variola (ret)
At 05:38 AM 4/11/04 -0400, An Metet wrote:
>> And the responsibles need killing.
>
>No, they don't.
>
>There are two alternative solutions to the problem of restrictions on
>information flow, or more generally restrictions on any sort of
voluntary
>and cooperative activity.  One is to use force to fight back, even to
>the point of killing the perpetrators.  This is what you are advocating

>when you say they "need killing".

When faced with force, you reply with force when you can.

>The other is to evade the restrictions.  This does not involve killing,

>force, or violence of any sort.  Cryptography is an ideal tool for this

>purpose.  It allows people to communicate and exchange data even when
>outsiders want them to stop.  Via digital cash they can even contract
>together, and buy and sell information and services.  BlackNet is
intended
>to be an example of how this could work.

Correct.  But the existence of technical means for playing with bits and

hiding from oppression does not change the ethics of the material world.

When the State's otherwise legitimate monopoly on force is abused
the appropriate response is not to hope the oppressors go away.

When the Jews were put in the ghettos, an abuse of State force,
the appropriate response was more than merely publishing anonymous
flyers
or mumbling in secret languages.  There are times when agents have
earned killing.

Blacknet is a robust archive for words, immune to force
(by State or private actors), but merely words.

-
"How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things
have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to
make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?"
--Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Gulag Archipelago




Re: On Needing Killing

2004-04-11 Thread Riad S. Wahby
An Metet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This stuff should be Cypherpunks 101.

...along with Assassination Politics.  I've always taken "X needs
killing" to be a statement to the effect that same had earned himself
an AP-style contract, if only such a thing existed.

While your point is good, inasmuch as it's important to realize that
many illegitimate restrictions on liberty can be circumvented with
cpunk technologies, there are other ramifications that are just as
meaningful.  With widespread adoption of cpunk technologies comes the
demonopolization of force, the anonymity necessary for AP-style
contract markets, &c.  It's inevitable---even if {you, the government,
whomever} doesn't like the idea of such uses of cpunk technologies---
that these things will spring up.  After all, there will likely be
great demand for them, and cpunk tech will have enabled them in just
the same way it's enabled circumvention of other restrictions on
liberty.

It's useful to be reminded what the cpunks will have wrought.  Like it
or not, "needs killing" is likely to remain a fixture around here.

-- 
Riad Wahby
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
MIT VI-2 M.Eng



Re: current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ??

2004-04-11 Thread J.A. Terranson

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004, Riad S. Wahby wrote:

> The part I find unfortunate is that, along with his less tactful
> points, gone are his insightful ones.

This is the point I was trying to make (by reposting his latest "insight").
We all have those ghosts we'd like to see dead.  Hell, I've got more than
most, and maybe even as many as Tim, but if there isn't - even occasionally -
another thought being expressed that "Up the chimneys with X", what's the
point of listening?

CP is certianly less for the missing May.  But the currently posting May
isn't worth listening to.

-- 
"How do you change anything, except stand in one place
and scream and scream and scream and then make more people
come and stand in that place and scream and scream and scream?"

Sally Fields



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2004-04-11 Thread Evincing C. Asynchronously



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Re: VPN VoIP

2004-04-11 Thread Shawn K. Quinn
On Saturday 2004 April 10 12:12, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> Should I stick with Linux (there's /dev/random and VPN support in
> current kernels for the C3 Padlock engine, right?) with SELinux or
> try OpenBSD for a firewall type machine with hardware crypto support?

For a firewall, I'd recommend OpenBSD over just about anything else. 
Unless of course, there is hardware you need to use that isn't 
supported under OpenBSD.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn



Ppvogvmnf di.scoun.t scripts

2004-04-11 Thread francesco spreng


 epersonal  decretons  flipull  fivs  dolphinum
 

 
 
 
 

Drfop me
nijansama hild gere
In some Government offices the clerks, upon arrival in the morning, have to
sign their names in an "attendance book". This book provides space for
signature, time of arrival, and "remarks." Ten minutes after the hour and
official draws a red line under the last arrival's name, and all those
coming subsequently are expected to furnish an explanation of their
tardiness in the "remarks" column.When a real "London particular" occurs the
number "below the line" is legion; the first of them writes: "Delayed by
fog," and the rest scribble a "ditto".One morning -- a foggy one -- Mr.
Jones became a proud father; but even this only caused him to be about
eleven minutes late. Proudly he wrote in explanation: "Wife had twins,"
which was followed in due course by the usual string of "ditto's".
Sir William Thompson was very deaf but he did not like people to know this.
One evening he had invited several friends to dinner, and while they were
sitting at the table, one of the friends told a funny story. Everyone
laughed, and Sir William, who had laughed as loud as anyone, said, "That was
a very funny joke, but I know a funnier one. Would you like to hear it?"
They all said they would, so Sir William began his story. When it ended,
everyone laughed louder than ever and Sir William smiled happily. But he
didn't know the reason for their laughter. He had told the very same story
that his friend had just told.
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had a seven-year-old boy named Pat. Now Mrs. Taylor was
expecting another child.Pat had seen babies in other people's houses and had
not liked them very much, so he was not delighted about the news that there
was soon going to be one in his house too.One evening Mr. and Mrs. Taylor
were making plans for the baby's arrival. "This house won't be big enough
for use all when the baby comes," said Mr. Taylor.Pat came into the room
just then and said, "What are you talking about?""We were saying that we'll
have to move to another house now, because the new baby's coming," his
mother answered."It's no use," said Pat hopelessly, "He'll follow us
there."
onceler1zihlangene03ezinomdla .





Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies - the internet is a tree.

2004-04-11 Thread Bill Stewart

> It's a tree
 No, it's not a tree
>>> I thought we were sort of an autonomous collective!
>> Watery marketers lobbing Powerpoints is no basis for a form of architecture
> Network engineers spend a lot of time making sure that their networks, and
> the Internet, are not trees.  Multiple peering and transit relationships
> make the network robust - and cyclic.
The core of the current Internet routing architecture in the US
is a couple of dozen "Tier 1" providers who almost all interconnect with 
each other,
with each pair almost always connected in more than two places
(usually an East Coast and a West Coast location plus others.)
- Most of the Tier 2 providers are connected to at least two upstreams,
either both Tier 1 or a Tier 1 and a Tier 2.
- There's no well-defined boundary between Tier 2 and Tier 3,
but the Tier 3 types of folks may not be as diverse.
- Some big hosting companies are owned by Tier 1 carriers,
and may just get connectivity from their parent company,
but it usually still has physically diverse connections to diverse switches.
- Many other hosting companies are independent of the carriers,
and tend to have feeds from multiple carriers (usually multiple Tier 1
for the big players).
- Many big end-user companies have multiple large internet feeds
from multiple carriers; even small companies with a couple of T1s
often try to get some diversity (in which case the ISP run by the
local telco is often one of their providers.)
- If you want physically diverse access to your building,
you usually need to buy at least a couple of T3s -
some local telcos will still do diverse T1 access, but most don't,
or else they have it in their tariff rate but *your* street doesn't have it.

As Jim and others have said, it's extremely not tree-like -
we want to maximize the number of careless drunken backhoe drivers
it takes to take down our circuits, as well as maximizing the
number of equipment failures and operator mistakes it takes,
and trying to minimize the damage any problem causes.
DNS's namespace is tree-like, but the actual implementation of the
DNS name server networks is very forested and meshy.
The biggest problems are all at layer 9.



Re: Spy agency launches recruiting campaign

2004-04-11 Thread Bill Stewart
At 08:52 PM 4/10/2004, R. A. Hettinga wrote:



Posted on Sat, Apr. 10, 2004

Spy agency launches recruiting campaign

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The highly secretive National Security Agency is looking to
hire 7,500 workers over the next five years in the spy agency's largest
recruiting campaign since the 1980s.


When I was in college, the NSA recruiting posted had a note
somebody'd added to the bottom saying
"If you're interested, don't call us - we already know about you"
and somebody else's version of that was
"If you're interested, just phone your mom, and we'll get back to you".


On Needing Killing

2004-04-11 Thread An Metet
Major Variola writes:
> I don't know about your anecdote, but Mr. May's original point
> was that the law *requires* companies to forget.   Which is
> of course an illegitimate intrusion of the state into private affairs.
>
> And the responsibles need killing.

No, they don't.

There are two alternative solutions to the problem of restrictions on
information flow, or more generally restrictions on any sort of voluntary
and cooperative activity.  One is to use force to fight back, even to
the point of killing the perpetrators.  This is what you are advocating
when you say they "need killing".

The other is to evade the restrictions.  This does not involve killing,
force, or violence of any sort.  Cryptography is an ideal tool for this
purpose.  It allows people to communicate and exchange data even when
outsiders want them to stop.  Via digital cash they can even contract
together, and buy and sell information and services.  BlackNet is intended
to be an example of how this could work.

The point is that BlackNet and other early Cypherpunk concepts
were intended to be based on the second approach, that of avoiding
restrictions via cryptographic protections.  BlackNet does not seek out
and kill people who try to shut it down.  It simply continues to exist
and operate, very profitably, despite the efforts of its opponents.

In a world where things like BlackNet can exist, the people who want to
stop it don't need to be killed, because their actions are ineffective.
We don't kill the crazy men who rant and rave in parks and on sidewalks.
We may pity them, we may even try to help them, but we don't kill them.
Similarly, if Cypherpunk technology succeeds, those who try to stop
communication from occuring will be no more important or effective in
achieving their goals.

This stuff should be Cypherpunks 101.  Not even that; it should be
Kindergarten for Cypherpunks.  Re-read (or read for the first time!) the
Cryptoanarchist Manifesto.  There's nothing in there about killing
those responsible for restricting freedom.  Rather, the entire essay
is about how the new technologies will allow people to communicate and
interact with privacy and security.  The same is true of the Cypherpunk's
Manifesto; again, it is about using software to defend privacy with
cryptographic anonymity.  There's no bloodlust in either of these essays.
These were the founding documents of the Cypherpunk movement.

It was only after many years that some Cypherpunks took a detour into
advocacy of violence.  In large part this was due to the influence of
Tim May, who as time went by became increasingly bitter and hateful.
Perhaps he had personal disappointments; in particular it seemed that
the failure of his more apocalyptic Y2K predictions was an embarrassment
which he took to covering with bluster and rage.

May became a loud, authoritative and dominating voice calling for violent
retribution against government agents or anyone whom he saw as a threat
or enemy.  Inevitably, he brought into the list people who felt the same
way, and drove away many who could not stand the anger and hatred which
were being expressed so openly.  His increasingly common racist rhetoric,
whether sincere or merely provocative, played a further role in sending
away some and, sadly, drawing in others.

The community changed, until today Cypherpunks are known as a community
which sees that its enemies "need killing".  It's almost a defining
characteristic.  The original goals of cryptoanarchy, privacy, anonymity,
reputation systems, and efforts to explore the underlying technology,
are largely forgotten.

But now it seems that there might be an opportunity for change.  With the
departure of Tim May, a cloud seems to have lifted.  Perhaps it will
be possible to reinvigorate the community, to give it new purpose and
new goals.  At a minimum, can we try to move beyond defining ourselves by
how many enemies we think "need killing"?  That was never what Cypherpunks
were supposed to be about.



Re: Hierarchy, Force Monopoly, and Geodesic Societies - the internet is a tree.

2004-04-11 Thread Jim Dixon
On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, sunder wrote:

> > Yes.  I know what a tree is, and I am quite familiar with structure of
> > the Internet.  These very pretty pictures certainly look like the Internet
> > I am familiar with, but don't resemble trees.
>
> It is a tree. I'll give you a hint.  Think of this:
>
> "God is like an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and
> circumference nowhere."  Nicholas of Cusa.

Let me give you a hint: a tree is an acyclic graph.

The Internet shown in Eugen's pretty pictures is defined by BGP4 peerings
between autonomous systems.  It is highly cyclic, because everyone wants
it that way.

As a network, a tree is a delicate structure: any break in links fragments
the network.

Network engineers spend a lot of time making sure that their networks, and
the Internet, are not trees.  Multiple peering and transit relationships
make the network robust - and cyclic.

--
Jim Dixon  [EMAIL PROTECTED]   tel +44 117 982 0786  mobile +44 797 373 7881
http://jxcl.sourceforge.net   Java unit test coverage
http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure



Re: current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ??

2004-04-11 Thread Riad S. Wahby
"J.A. Terranson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Unfortunate?  I don't know.  Tim's gone a little whacko over the last few
> years, and it doesn't look like his meds are doing crap for him:
> [snip]

It's true, Tim does seem to harbor an awful lot of anger towards
certain groups, but while I don't agree with it, he's entitled to his
opinion.

The part I find unfortunate is that, along with his less tactful
points, gone are his insightful ones.

-- 
Riad Wahby
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
MIT VI-2 M.Eng



Re: current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ??

2004-04-11 Thread Riad S. Wahby
Joe Schmoe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1. any comments on this level of spam and bounces,
> etc., I saw from minder - does al-qeada use a more
> LNE-like processor ?

Well, as the list maintainer I see a lot of bounces &c, but (unless
something is seriously wrong with my setup) no one else does.

> 2. Was tim may being filtered from minder, or is he
> just gone now ?

I talked to him a little bit after lne went down; he said he wasn't
interested in posting to the list any more.  Quite unfortunate, in my
view.  Apparently he's still to be found posting on various Usenet
groups.  RAH knows more about this than I do.

-- 
Riad Wahby
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
MIT VI-2 M.Eng



Re: current status of cypherpunks, tim may, etc. ??

2004-04-11 Thread J.A. Terranson

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004, Riad S. Wahby wrote:

> > 2. Was tim may being filtered from minder, or is he
> > just gone now ?
>
> I talked to him a little bit after lne went down; he said he wasn't
> interested in posting to the list any more.  Quite unfortunate, in my
> view.  Apparently he's still to be found posting on various Usenet
> groups.

Unfortunate?  I don't know.  Tim's gone a little whacko over the last few
years, and it doesn't look like his meds are doing crap for him:


NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 01:59:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Details Magazine publishes outrageous anti-Asian, anti-gay
feature
Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 23:59:43 -0700
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups:
ba.general,la.general,nyc.general,soc.culture.asian.american,scruz.general,misc.survivalism
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Whitney
McNally <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I decided to do something funny and hopefully constructive about the
> details magazine controversy.
>
> www.whitneymcnally.com

"Nigger, or Thief?"

Is there really a difference?

Thirty years ago, even more, I was prepared to give the negro a chance.
Now, so many years later, so many excuses later, so many crimes later,
I say we ought to either give passage back to Biafra and Ruwanda and
other hellholes for those negroes who request it, or charge those who
remain for the benefits of white civilization we gave them over the
past few hundred years.

And for those who have been on welfare, or AFDC, or WICC, or any of the
giveaway subsidies to the negro, they must pay back what they took from
working people, with interest, or be sent up the chimneys. Their
choice.

The negro has stolen from the European for way too long.


--Tim May