Re: [linux-elitists] LOCAL Stanford University: face down the DMCA enforcers (fwd)
on Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 12:08:43AM -0500, Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I suspect would be silly to stage an anti-DMCA protest against an invited speaker to that Stanford class. Lessig, Gilmore, Barlow, Farber, and Stallman have been speakers (and I'm scheduled to be in the spring lineup). Gilmore and others have also been audience members. The CPRM lecture was attended by John, myself, and other concerned community members. At the very least, it makes sense to find out more about the program and have a cordial conversation with the organizers before rushing to stage a demonstration. Activist-hours are a scarce resource; use them prudently, carefully, and wisely. The forums are *open to the public*. A proportionate response is both expected and apprpriate. Why should a presentation at this venue be any different from protests of immoral principles or activities in any other context? Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What Part of Gestalt don't you understand? Moderator, Free Software Law Discussion mailing list: http://lists.alt.org/mailman/listinfo/fsl-discuss/
Re: [linux-elitists] LOCAL Stanford University: face down the DMCA enforcers (fwd)
on Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 12:08:43AM -0500, Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I suspect would be silly to stage an anti-DMCA protest against an invited speaker to that Stanford class. Lessig, Gilmore, Barlow, Farber, and Stallman have been speakers (and I'm scheduled to be in the spring lineup). Gilmore and others have also been audience members. The CPRM lecture was attended by John, myself, and other concerned community members. At the very least, it makes sense to find out more about the program and have a cordial conversation with the organizers before rushing to stage a demonstration. Activist-hours are a scarce resource; use them prudently, carefully, and wisely. The forums are *open to the public*. A proportionate response is both expected and apprpriate. Why should a presentation at this venue be any different from protests of immoral principles or activities in any other context? Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What Part of Gestalt don't you understand? Moderator, Free Software Law Discussion mailing list: http://lists.alt.org/mailman/listinfo/fsl-discuss/
Suit shuts down Indian Trust for security upgrade (was Re: Slashdot | U.S. Department of Interior Ordered Offline)
on Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 10:19:47PM -0600, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: http://slashdot.org/articles/01/12/07/0223216.shtml That's pretty poor reporting even for the combination of Choate Slashdot. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011205/pl/indian_money_2.html Wednesday December 5 8:27 PM ET Judge Shuts Down Indian Trust System By ROBERT GEHRKE, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - A judge acted Wednesday to protect hundreds of millions of dollars in a government-run trust fund for American Indians that has been found to be at risk of security breaches. The emergency order came a day after a report detailed how easily a court-appointed investigator was able to hack into the accounting system at the Interior Department and manipulate financial data. The government computer system is essentially a bank that manages $500 million a year in royalties from land owned by 300,000 American Indians. But U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said that Interior's system had no firewalls to prevent intrusions, systems to detect hackers, or auditing methods to determine if account information had been manipulated. ``You don't expect a thief to leave a calling card?'' Lamberth asked Justice Department (news - web sites) attorney Matt Fader. Fader said Interior Secretary Gale Norton had already ordered all Internet access to the system terminated while firewalls are installed. Naturally, the private sector does far better. I couldn't think of a California pension management company that had similarly poor data security procedures. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html msg12356/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: slavery in New Jersey
on Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 05:39:24AM -, Dr. Evil ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Could people on this list please learn to format stories that they post here so we can read them? How hard could that be? Unfortunately, the usual response is for Tim May to take a bead on you for being altruistic and helpful to humanity. I've taken to reflowing stuff locally. My bounces to list were not well received. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Antivirus software will ignore FBI spyware: solutions
on Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 01:12:53PM -0800, Tim May ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Some interesting tips (bottome of this message) for detecting FBI/SS snoopware that NAI/McAfee is now assisting the FBI in installing. I especially like the idea of type hundreds of random key strokes and see which files increase in size. (Or just look for any file size changes, as most of us type tens of thousands of keystrokes per day.) Defeat: create a log buffer file of fixed size, logged activity changes its contents, but not the size of the file. E.g.: a filesystem image file under GNU/Linux. Techniques could be used to maintain a constant global MD5 checksum to defeat other detection attempts. Manipulating file create/modify times is trivial under most OSs. Most users of PGP take no steps to secure key materials. (I plead guilty, too.) Most of us are used to immediate access, and we want crypto integrated with our mail. The notion of going to a locked safe, taking out the laptop or removable hard drive, ensuring an air gap between the decoding system and the Net, and checking for keyloggers and hostile code, and so on, is foreign to most of us. These measures can be taken for specific, high-security, messages. Risk profiles are not isomorphic in all circumstances. The dongle idea (e.g., Dallas Semiconductor buttons, etc.) has been around for a long time. Many of which are woefully poorly designed. Zimmerman at ALS spoke of one in which the key was stored in cleartext within the dongle, don't recall the specific device. Here's a new twist: the Apple iPod music player. I just got one. A 4.6 GB hard disk (Toshiba 1.8). Hooks up via Firewire/IEEE 1394, with the link recharging the battery and auto-linking. The disk can also be mounted as a standard Firewire disk. Meaning, it could be used to store key material and even be used for PGP scratch operations. The increased security comes from its small size (easy to lock up) and because I usually have it with me when I am away from home. This makes sneak and peek searches and plants of malicious code less useful. Not a complete solution. Crypto hygiene and all. The iPod's definitely an attractive target for portable computing, it's also fairly robust (I bounced the demo off the hardwood floor of Apple's Palo Alto store from about 4-5 ft.). It appears you're just using it for storage purposes. Note that this still requires trusting the environment to which the iPod is attached. Various handhelds, particularly running an advanced OS (e.g.: GNU/Linux), would be similarly attractive devices, readily kept on ones person at most times, and support encrypted filesystems or files. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Cattle Herding... (was Re: in praise of gold)
on Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 05:21:07PM -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On 23 Nov 2001, at 19:13, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Pecunia, the latin word for money, comes from the Etruscian pecu, meaning, cow. Cheers, RAH And of course the German word for money is Gelt, which means Gold. Cows might have served well as currency for primitives like the Etruscans, but can you imagine using them today? I took a bus this morning, the fair was 1.10 and I only had paper money so they ripped me off 90 cents. But if I was an Etruscan, they would've taken my whole cow! No, actually, you probably came out about $1.60 ahead. Farebox recovery -- the amount of a transit system's expenses that are covered by direct rider payments -- tends about 30% - 40% of expenses. This varies widely, a sparsely-attended rural service might rate 10% returns, typical suburban service 15-20%, a well-served metro transit system might come as high as 50-55%. You're also neglecting the possibility that the fare might not have been a whole cow, but just cost you an arm and a leg. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: HDCP break and DMCA
on Sun, Nov 25, 2001 at 01:23:42PM -0800, Tim May ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Sunday, November 25, 2001, at 01:09 PM, Eric Cordian wrote: Why don't people copy paperback books? Because it is cheaper to buy them. Not because the paperback book copyright police threaten you with life in prison. Why don't people copy hardback books? Answer: they do! Go to any large copying center near a university and look for professor packs or HistCon 101 Course Materials consisting of copied material out of various textbooks, hard and soft. The deal is that the student takes the professor pack over to a copy machine and runs off a copy of each of the, for example, 400 pages. The student pays $20 or so and saves himself having to buy 10 books to read one or two chapters or sections out of each. The students are happy, the copy shop is happy, the professor is happy, and only the publishers and authors are unhappy. First: this is somewhat orthogonal: - Only a portion of the book is being copied. This makes the reproduction cost significantly different from the sale cost of the authorized book. - Materials from many sources are being assimilated, raising total costs; and the holding period for the materials is generally short (the duration of a quarter or semester). Production-quality bindings and archive-quality paper aren't required. Second: where exactly is this occuring? You seem to indicate smaller shops. I worked at Kinko's during the period 1989 - 1992, largely serving UC Davis. This was during the period Kinko's was involved in a large copyright infringement suit (Basic Books v. Kinko's, ultimately lost by Kinko's to the tune of US$1.3m) over the issue of Professor Publishing, the coursepack preparation service. As Tim indicated, this was a core of Kinko's business model from the company's founding in Santa Barbara in the early 1970s. Kinko's, at least, of major copy centers, has significantly revised its processes, both securing copyright clearance on more (most?) of the materials, and deemphasizing the role of Professor Publishing within Kinko's. At the time I left the company, there was a strong awareness for all employees about making unauthorized copies (and you'll occasionally hear stories about people who're denied service to copy materials they own), at least when this is done behind the counter. What customers did in the self-serve area was largely unregulated. This was very common here in Santa Cruz, as recently as several years ago when I was doing a lot of copying of my own papers. Care to name any of the shops at which this was occuring? Kinko's, AlphaGraphics (are they still around?), and other high-profile repro shops tend to have fairly strong policies regarding unauthorized copying. The same tends to extend to copy centers run by colleges and universities. Smaller, privately held shops tend to play faster and looser. There were signs up about not violating copyright law, but these professor packs were in clear violation. (Yeah, someone may say Maybe the professors made an arrangement with the publishers and authors. I give this a vanishingly small chance of being the case in more than 2% of all such course materials packs.) In the case of Kinko's, the covered materials were most if not all in my experience, with a sheet listing clearances added to packs by the time I'd left. There's also the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC: http://www.copyright.com/), formed in the 1970s, which has played a significant role in recent photocopy copyright infringement claims as, as its existence has removed any excuse for unauthorized copying (Paul Goldstein, _Copyright's Highway_, Hill Wang, 1994). Peace. Tim May excepted. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
on Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 12:24:31AM -0800, Tim May ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Friday, November 16, 2001, at 08:20 PM, !Dr. Joe Baptista wrote: Anyone on this planet can build a nuclear device. So the only issue in building the device is the will to die for a cause. And the only thing I find unfortunate in all of this is that there are so many causes that people are willing to die for. And war will not make those reasons go away - it will only encourage them. It's really _not_ this easy. It took China and India a while before they successfully tested an A-bomb (many years after they had the raw materials from their reactor programs). It may have taken the South Africans and Israelis a few years after getting materials, too. So, why didn't they just hammer U-235 into stainless steel mixing bowls and do it the way anyone on this planet can build a nuclear device, one wonders. This analysis neglects consideration of several points: - Nation-states (even authoritarian ones) will likely want to create both a sustained program, not merely crank out a few crude nukes, and preserve the talent involved. One-offs are almost always easier to complete than a production effort, but the lowered total cost is offset by a higher unit cost. The terrorist organization can accomplish its goals with crude tactics and marginally effective devices. Credible military threat isn't as simple. - Credible military weapons have minimum requirements of both efficacy -- efficient use of supercritical energy -- and predictability -- having the damned thing go off in the silo / bunker / hanger / munitions dump rather than the chosen target isn't particularly useful. Tighter constraints = Longer fulfillment time. The original US project, as described by Feynman, involved much radiation exposure and high risks of criticality incidents at Oak Ridge, some of which are documented in his biographical essay collections. The Hanford reservation is still a glowing waste zone, much of which greatly postdates a fairly deep understanding of radiation hazards. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: [free-sklyarov] OT: [postmaster@eth.net: Mail Delivery Status Notification]
on Fri, Nov 16, 2001 at 08:49:47AM -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Fri, 16 Nov 2001, A. Melon wrote: Would someone please inform the recipient listed in the bounce message below, and his/her postmaster that GPG signatures in RFC 2015 MIME encoded form are not hazardous attachements? Yeah, that's me. snip DishnetDSL SENDER NOTIFICATION snip has been stripped of all/certain attachments by DishnetDSL Mail server due to security reasons. DishnetDSL allows only the following attachments: 1. .doc Maybe safe, depending on what produced it, and who recieves it. 2. .txt 3. .xls Oh yeah, *thats* secure! 4. .ppt 5. .pdf Usually OK, but... There are some PDF exploits I've heard of, not sure if they're theoretical or not. Postscript itself is not immune, as it's an executable format itself. There's discussion I've heard of Postscript exploits which would be resident in printer networks. Powerpoint's also got its problems. ZIP is a panapoly which encompasses a whole slew of formats. And even good old .TXT is not secure if my understanding of MSFT filehandling is right. Associate .TXT with MS Word, add a .TXT extension to a MS Word file with a macro virus, and you're back to the root problem. A similar issue exists with RTF files if they're opened by MS Word by default -- the extension determines the application, but not the method(s) used for opening the file. I'm of the opinion that MIME has its uses. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html msg10912/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
WashPost: DoJ to monitor lawyer's calls
innocuous at first glance. How is the 'taint team' going to know if something a person says to a lawyer is part of the mosaic or not without sharing it with others? This seems to be a useless safeguard. What if they think what they overhear is in code? Martin said monitoring of witnesses and others who have not been convicted would be particularly outrageous. Murphy, who is director of the ACLU's Washington national office, agreed, saying, the idea that this could be happening to innocent people is really disturbing. A lawyer's effectiveness, she added, can be dramatically diminished if the government is listening in, making a client fearful of disclosing all that the attorney needs to know to mount a forceful defense. The attorney-client eavesdropping authority is an addition to the special administrative measures the government has imposed on certain inmates since the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. They include solitary confinement, interception of mail and restrictions on visitors and telephone calls. But until Ashcroft signed the new regulation, they were limited to 120-day periods. Now, all such steps can be ordered for a year at a time and renewed indefinitely at one-year intervals. Those under special measure regimes include Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind sheik convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, convicted of conspiracy to blow up 12 civilian jumbo jets; Eyad Ismail and Ramzi Yousef, two others convicted in the WTC bombing; Wadih Hage, convicted of conspiring to kill Americans around the world; and Mohammed Saddiq Odeh and Mohamed Rashed Daoud Owhali, who were convicted in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. At a trial last June, an Algerian witness said Rahman issued a fatwa or religious ruling from prison, telling followers to fight Americans and hit their interests everywhere. Staff researcher Lynn Davis contributed to this report. ) 2001 The Washington Post Company -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Security-by-credential or security-by-inspection
on Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 03:58:04PM -0500, Trei, Peter ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Tim May[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote The confusion Nomen Nescio shows in thinking that an is-a-person government tracking system fixes the airline security problem is common these days. It's the same confusion that causes many to think national I.D. cards will fix current pressing problems. They won't. This is the same security ticket problem that shows up in computer security with malicious actors obtaining passwords or other access permissions. ... I've been thinking along these lines myself - Tim got to the post first. There are two points I'd like to make. 1. The reasons which are publicly aired for installing the current 'security' regime are (in my considered opinion) NOT the actually reasons. US airlines insisting on IDs which match tickets has nothing to do with airline security, and everything to do with extracting as much cash as possible from the public. Before the Pan Am 800 accident, when people were freeer, there was a secondary market in airline tickets which the original purchasers could not, for one reason or another, use. If you bought a non-refundable return ticket, and then could not use it, you could sell it to someone who did want to travel on those dates to that location. The price varied, but was less than the cost to the repurchaser of buying a ticket from the airline. ... It's got nothing to do with security. ...and, as previously reported here, an age-old practice: It's an older practice than you'd think. I just ran across the following while looking at some IBM history, regarding the Hollerith Card: http://www4.wittenberg.edu/academics/mathcomp/bjsdir/history0.shtml Hollerith claimed he got [the punched data card] idea from punch photograph cards used by rail road officials. Used to prevent the theft of railroad tickets from passengers, conductors would record the physical characteristics of the ticket owner (e.g. eye color, hair color) by punching specially marked areas on the edge of the card. Hollerith used holes punched through the card, not on the edge of the card. Maybe someone should propose a three strikes law for suicide terror attacks. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Minneapolis, Nov 15: Fwd: [free-sklyarov] Bruce Schneier talk
on Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 09:34:36AM -0600, Jim Crumley ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Students for Fair Copyright[1] is pleased to announce Bruce Schneier's talk[2] about the DMCA on Thursday, November 15th at 7:00 in room 2-690 of the Moos Tower on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus. This is the third lecture in our continuing series: Reclaiming the Public Domain: Intellectual Property in the Digital Millennium. More details about the talk, including a link to a map to Moos Tower, are available at the press release link below. 1. http://faircopyright.org/ 2. http://faircopyright.org/press/schneier.html -- Jim Crumley |Free Dmitry Sklyarov! [EMAIL PROTECTED] |http://faircopyright.org/ Work: 612 624-6804 or -0378 |http://freesklyarov.org/ ___ free-sklyarov mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://zork.net/mailman/listinfo/free-sklyarov -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: FW: Damn ! I wish I'd though ot fhis myself
on Sun, Nov 04, 2001 at 02:39:52PM -0800, Sandy Sandfort ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: C'punks, Friend of mine sent me this. I like the poetic justice of it. Terminal velocity of dust is pretty low. Reports are that the bulk of the WTC debris are same. There are structural components from the base of the towers, and debris from neigboring buildings, which are more substantial. Frankly, a modicum of HE attached to a guided device is more effective ordinance. There's a poetic sense to this, but not much military practicality. S a n d y A Good Idea! All of the rubble from New York ... all the huge blocks of concrete and steel, the old busted up computers, refrigerators, hot water heaters, air conditioners, fire trucks, broken glass, etc., should be shoveled into C130's and C5A's, flown over Iraq and Afghanistan and dropped from 32,000 feet. A Frigidaire can do a heck of a lot of damage from 5 miles up. With each assault, we can drop pamphlets: Greetings, from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center! The next day it would read, ...from the 109th floor... Then the 108th, etc., etc. After 110 days of this, I can't imagine there would be much left standing on the ground. Can't you just see the headlines: WORLD TRADE CENTER STRIKES BACK! What wonderful irony this would be, and think how much money we wouldn't have to spend on new bombs or missiles! Not to mention the 100-million tons diverted from the New York City landfill. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Napster execs needing culling
on Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 10:56:20PM -, Anonymous ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Tue, 30 Oct 2001 17:29:58 -0600 (CST), Jim Choate wrote: I'll Fed-Ex an invoice to Hillary Rosen immediately for all the air he's using up! Hey I just 'farm' the air, I don't ask anyone to breath it! She. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Transperancy Spray?
on Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 10:23:55PM -0800, Max Inux ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Well, I was watching CNN and it looks like the Postal workers now are armed with a new weapon.. Against terror of course. THe whole cant read someone elses mail thing is out the window it looks like, they can spray this go on the letter and read through the envelope.. It seems implausable but its CNN, they dont lie right? well ANYWAYS, I now have a nice stash of black construction paper... That's been around quite the while: http://www.google.com/search?q=envelope%20transparent%20spray http://www.countdown.org/end/big_brother_13.htm Source: Robert Uhlig, Electronic Telegraph Date: 3rd March, 2001 [We've got mail] An aerosol spray that makes unopened envelopes transparent so that the contents can be read has been invented. You spray it on and it temporarily makes the envelope clear, said Robert Schlegel, vice-president of the makers, Mistral Security, of Maryland. It leaves an odor for 10 to 15 minutes, but there is no smudging of ink, no stain, no evidence at all. The envelope is transparent for a few minutes and you can respray it hundreds of times without leaving any stain. I'd heard of use of same by CIA going back maybe ten years, if not longer. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
NOTAM: GA prohibited w/in 10 miles of nuke plants
Copied from a friend, generally reliable. NOTAMs are eventually posted to a few publicly available sites: !FDC 1/1763 FDC PART 1 OF 6 TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS OVER NUCLEAR SITES. FOR REASONS OF NATIONAL SECURITY. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL NOVEMBER 07, 2001 0500 UTC. PURSUANT TO TITLE 14 CFR SECTIONS 91.139, EMERGENCY AIR TRAFFIC RULES AND 99.7 SPECIAL SECURITY INSTRUCTIONS. ALL GENERAL AVIATION FLIGHT OPERATIONS ARE PROHIBITED WITHIN A 10 NAUTICAL MILES RADIUS OF AND BELOW 18000 FEET MSL OVER THE BELOW LISTED NUCLEAR SITES EXCEPT FOR MEDEVAC, LAW ENFORCEMENT, RESCUE/RECOVERY, EMERGENCY EVACUATION AND FIRE FIGHTING OPERATIONS WHEN AUTHORIZED BY ATC: He continues: I've got no idea what the hell they're doing, but damn, a GA plane wouldn't do more than scratch the friggen concrete on a nuke plant. (It was wondered what a plane crash would do, so a F-4 Phantom II was rammed into a containment wall at 600+ MPH, it penetrated 2.5 inches. (Its a 6 foot wall). G. Insane restrictions. Bullyboys in uniforms pushing around, people held illegally. Sounds like the feds are treating the current credible threat as broad and shutting down all options. Anyone care to posit a scenario in which GA could threaten a nuke? Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Soothe or alarm: What is weaponized anthrax?
I posted on this question Oct 21, saying: [Rep Frist's (R-TN) comment] leads one to question the descriptions of anthrax as weaponized and non-weaponized, particularly as there are several dimensions of weaponization. The lesser is spore size, with 5 micron being the preferred form for inducing inhalation anthrax. The greater is antibiotic resistance, and it appears that this is the criterion on which statements of non-weaponized anthrax are being made. Truth seems to be that resistance is secondary to spore size given the difficulty of treating advanced cases of inhalation anthrax. My suggestion to the press would be to disaggregate the term weaponized to its components: inhalable, and antibiotic resistant. This provides the public with more useful information: the bacterium is or is not a grave infection threat (inhalable), and the bacterium is or is not treatable (resistant). This is actionable information: inhalable, but nonresistant, anthrax means that individuals should be aware of respiratory illness symptoms and submit for early diagnosis and/or treatment. Today's SF Chronicle reports: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/10/28/MN188786.DTLt ype=printable When it comes to describing anthrax, it is as if they are speaking different languages. Weapons-grade material, Gephardt, the House Democratic leader from Missouri, told reporters this week, describing the potency of the anthrax in a letter opened in Daschle's office. Common variety, Senate Majority Leader Daschle from South Dakota said of the same white powder. Scientists say both are right. The material was weapons grade, in the sense that it was finely milled and aerosolized to make it easier to infiltrate a victim's lungs. At the same time, it was a common variety that was not genetically altered, making it fully treatable with common antibiotics. So which statement is more responsible? [...] I don't think 'weaponized' has any medical or scientific value, [Ridge] explained late this week. It seems to have different meanings . . . to different people. The discrepancy in labeling the potency of the poison is a perfect illustration of the challenges confronting authorities as they try to communicate complex, evolving and grim information on live television, often on an hourly basis. The failure to use precise language can have fatal consequences. On Oct. 18, three days after Daschle's letter was opened, Postmaster General John Potter invited the press into a mail facility in southeast Washington, and told the assembled reporters and workers that there is only a minute chance that anthrax spores could have escaped from envelopes and harmed postal workers. Today, Potter is on a 60-day dose of antibiotics. So are the reporters and anyone else who attended the news conference, including Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams and his 80-year-old mother. Two workers at the facility have since died. Authorities knew at the time that the refined spores were highly potent, but based on previous experience in New Jersey and Florida, had no reason to believe they would contaminate the Washington mail house. And they wanted to calm anxious postal workers. The administration has been forthright in making information known as soon as information is available, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. It is the nature of this type of attack involving anthrax that information develops over time. Nevertheless, there is frustration from those who feel that soft words intended to soothe might instead lull people into a false sense of complacency. I think we've got to stop parsing words and trying to be anything other than accurate about what this is, Gephardt said of the biological attack on the Capitol. This is highly sophisticated material. It is small in size and it aerosolizes, and so you've got to be careful in the way it can be handled. I believe people are smart. If you arm them (people) with accurate information, you have a better chance of preventing successful attacks, Gephardt said. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Why Plan-9?
on Fri, Oct 26, 2001 at 08:35:36PM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: Being 'first' doesn't imply they were 'alone'. You misrepresent reality to your own end. Define your market or relevant niche, with specificity. Computers intended for single-user interactive processing. The problem I've got with this response is that Unix and GNU/Linux aren't computers, they're operating systems. Unix was written to run on those computers that didn't exist, largely the PDP 7 and 11. I was seeing the market as the *operating systems* running on these computers. While I'll concede that Unix and GNU/Linux probably drove hardware, the fact is that both emerged in environments where there were existing OSs running, almost always preinstalled, on the hardware of choice for each system: RSX-11D, TWENEX, VMS. The Jargon file has TWENEX users migrating to Unix in the 1980s. For larger systms, VM/CMS still has its fans. I guess the question would be: what other OSs were popular in research environments at the time? What benefits did Unix offer? What timeframe are we discussing? Again, public availability of Unix seems to have come after 1974. A new class of machines was coming out (my first machine was a PDP 8e running BASIC) and while there were plenty of tools they tended to be vertical in intent or else not general purpose enough for this sort of computing. Look at the first couple of years of Byte or Dr. Dobb's for more specific examples (remember Godbout?) in the personal computer market. As I've indicated, I'm not as old as you think I am. Unix and I are close to the same age. My real awareness starts in the early to mid 1980s, some exceptions. Incidentally, if you want to remenisce, there's a DEC timeline here: http://www.montagar.com/dfwcug/VMS_HTML/timeline/1964-3.htm http://www.montagar.com/dfwcug/VMS_HTML/timeline/DECHISTORY.HTM Which happens to be one of the primary reasons Unix was developed, there were no realistic choices in the market for this paradigm. So a solution can trotting along. I'm unconvinced. Again, the PDP series, notably the '7 '11, as well as the HP 3000, stand out in searches as significant mini systems of the day. I have to assume they included operating systems. And again, GNU/Linux emerged in a universe of PC operating systems: DOS, Macintosh, OS/2, Xenix, Minix, BSDi. In both cases, the newcomer (Unix/Linux) emerged as a technically inferior system, but (rapidly or otherwise) outpaced its competition due to architecture, licensing, and social factors. Regarding your comment (two posts back) that Linux was coincident with the Internet: yes, I agree that this was a formative factor. I have no doubt that if Linus hadn't come along, another solution would have emerged, the time was ripe. GNU/Linux happened to be best-of-breed. We're facing the same sort of thing today with respect to 'grid computing' and such. All the current OS'es (Linux incl.) are focused on the old style of solutions. We'll also find that our current views of what IP means will be found to be as antiquated. References? -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: Senate approves USA Act, sends to Bush, Ashcroft vows new era
on Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 02:31:42PM -0400, Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Attorney General John Ashcroft Prepared Remarks for the US Mayors Conference October 25, 2001 ... Within days of the September 11 attacks, we launched this anti_terrorism offensive to prevent new attacks on our homeland. To date, our anti_terrorism offensive has arrested or detained nearly 1,000 individuals as part of the September 11 terrorism investigation. Those who violated the law remain in custody. Taking suspected terrorists in violation of the law off the streets and keeping them locked up is our clear strategy to prevent terrorism within our borders. Conviction without trial? The following sentence also parses ambiguously. Is that taking suspected terrorists, who are in violation of the law, off the streets..., or taking, in violation of the law, suspected terrorists off the streets...? Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: USPS: glowing by leaps and bounds
on Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 08:31:38AM -0700, David Honig ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 04:23 AM 10/23/01 -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: Any pointers on packaging for photographic and/or magnetic media through mail to survive irradiation equipment? How about the magstrips on all those credit cards issued through the mail? Forget that, how about seeds and seedlings? What will Burpee do? OTOH, futures for nuclear winter wheat are strong. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Where the torture never stops..
on Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 07:12:13PM -0700, John Young ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: These procedures were described in exquisite detail during the USA v. bin Laden et al trial earlier this year: http://cryptome.org/usa-v-ubl-dt.htm Use the search on Cryptome to find the transcripts describing the comb attack. http://cryptome.org/usa-v-ubl-72.htm Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Why Plan-9?
on Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 09:53:35PM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: This entire view misses the(!) one most important component of Unix's (and Linux's) success, they were first. Not hardly. I wasn't keeping notes when KR were designing their gaming platform, but history seems to recall OS/360, Multics, TICO, ITS, VMS. A bit of quick Googling suggests the PDP-7 had its own native operating system (the PDP-11 certainly did), certainly more than what a couple of guys hanging around a broom closet could hammer out in a few days. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Ken Olsen was selling VAXs running VMS and complaining bitterly about snake oil (I guess there's a bunch of snakes out there). However, to quote someone's response to Tim May in this list recently, I'm just one of the dilettants posting here out of ignorance for some free research on the part of the rest of you. Someone who was around at the time is going to have a better answer than me. When Linus started Linux, he was bootstrapping with Minix, and trying to get around its limitations. For PC Unix, there was alread Xenix and one or more of the very forgettably named SCO products (not Xenix). The Jolitzesi were wresting BSD from Berkeley. FSF had been working on the HURD since 1983 (originally as TRIX), in fits and starts. By the time Larry McVoy wrote The Sourceware Operating System Proposal in 1993, it still wasn't clear whether or not FreeBSD or Linux was the cart to hitch the horse to. http://www.redhat.com/knowledgebase/otherwhitepapers/whitepaper_freeunix.html The ultimate success of Linux doesn't have a single factor -- it meets most of the marks set in the exerpt I posted from KP, I'd argue that licensing played a role, as did the fact it wasn't encumbered by the ATT/UCB lawsuits, and most people give Linus himself strong credits for his project management skills and personality. Topics covered extensively elsewhere. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: Why Plan-9 licensing?
on Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 08:30:19PM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Sun, 21 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: Summer, June/July, IIRC. I've done a couple of look-ups since. There's been little additional news or information (I'm not saying none, I'm saying little). OpenBSD, a relatively little-known free 'nix, gets rather more press and community coverage. You need to be on the mailing list. There is almost constant changes. You can also visit the wiki link at Bell Labs for the most current info. I'll stop by. proposed licenses and terms. I'm rather convinced that novelty, all else being equal, is bad. Can't disagree more. Care to expand (off list if you wish). It's an area of interest. Nutshell argument: license interactions are factorial. Interaction complexity reduces overall value of a codebase, and tends to marginalize minority licenses. By various methods (Debian package listings, Sourceforge projects), the GPL or LPGL are applied to some 84% of free software. A tally from January of this year: Of the roughly 8,800 listed projects with a license on SourceForge: 8,384 are based on an OSI approved license. 208 are based on an other or proprietary license. 235 are public domain. Of the OSI licenses, the breakdown is as follows (note that results may vary daily as projects are added and removed): GNU GPL:6,178 74% GNP LGPL: 844 10% BSD: 4806% Artistic: 3024% MozPL:1141% MIT: 1101% Python:781% QPL: 601% zlib/libpng: 461% IBM-PL:101% MITRE (CVW):40% As mentioned, 84% of projects are licensed under the GPL. Compatibly licensed projects include software under the BSD (revised) terms, MIT, Artistic, and Python (most recent) licenses. Major QPL projects are licensed compatibly with the GPL. Major MozPL projects are licensed compatibly with the GPL. Given some room for variance (there are non-compatible BSD, and MozPL projects), some 90-95% of projects are likely licensed under terms compatible with the GNU GPL. Noncompatibility puts you in a rather small mindshare camp, with a serious sacrifice of network effects (Metcalfe's Law). This does assume that a project's intent is to become relatively widely used and supported by broad mindshare. As these are among the principle technical advantages offered by free software / open source, it's not an advantage to discard lightly. Per the FSF's analysis, Plan 9 is, again, not open source, free software, or GPL compatible. This is a significant strategic handicap. Moreover, the bulk of terms in the Plan 9 license serve the corporate interests of the software's owner -- there's little quid pro quo for the developer or community. This is typical of corporate licenses, particularly first drafts. The evolution of IBM's own Jikes licensing is instructive. If the code exists for its own purposes, it may not matter. From a broader community perspective, you could do better. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: Karsten M. Self shows himself to be clueless, again
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 on Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 10:26:55PM -0700, Tim May ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Sunday, October 21, 2001, at 06:34 PM, Karsten M. Self wrote: gpg: Invalid passphrase; please try again ... -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- ... Jesus fucking Christ, if you're going to subject us to all of your PGP, GPG, GnuPG1.0.6 crud, at least get your fucking password straight, you fucking moron. gpg: Invalid passphrase: please try again... Fucking creep. Where's that sniper rifle, Bob? Dammit Tim, this is *my* cornfield. So, let's get this straight: - RFC 2015 encoded, striped by lne: fucking moron. - Clearsigned: fucking moron. Hey: Tim's internally consistent! Peace. - -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE708DsOEeIn1XyubARAviYAKCCjmxkxecXYyP9wv+ahehp8z1dOQCeNSYO BuBAhI2nsTt7vzi+NhHt/F4= =K980 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Why Plan-9 licensing?
on Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 02:20:34AM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Sun, 21 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: Nutshell argument: license interactions are factorial. How so? Proof? Sorry. Combinatorial. Not quite as extreme. From a legal standpoint, interactions of all combinations of licenses must be considered. The interesting cases usually reduce to a much smaller number. The trend in free software licensing has been strong reluctance to accepting novel licenses. A strong case for benefit is generally requested, many licenses boil down to ego, corporate politics, or failure to understand free software / open source concepts -- the licenses simply aren't either, again, Plan 9 is a case in point. There's also been a tendency among major projects to seek compatibility (usually through dual or multiple licensing) with the GPL, Sun and Mozilla being two cases in point. Interaction complexity reduces overall value of a codebase, and tends to marginalize minority licenses. Interaction for who, the author or the user? Interaction between licenses. It's more overhead for the developer to deal with. Case in point: Tom's Root/Boot. GNU/Linux on a floppy, 1.77 MB. Licenses themselves comprised some 50KB, significant for this task. Terms for compliance that require license and binary to occupy the same media in use are not acceptable for the technical task (fortunately none of the major free software licenses require this). OpenBSD has eliminated several packages from Donald J. Bernstein due to his licensing clauses, despite their being technically excellent (if non standards compliant) software. Any number of proposals cross the OSI's door which exclude specific types of use or transfer. It's too much overhead for developers to consider most of these, they'll stick to a half-dozen or so known (or highly similar) licenses. Again, GPL, LGPL, BSD/MIT, and Mozilla cover a broad range of strategic interests. All license start out in the minority. It's a competition in a way. What are you competing for? What characteristics of a license will win the competition? This isn't software domination, it's more a protocol for collaborative development. Once you've got that nailed down, stop dicking with the damned lawyers, and start writing code. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: Additional Anthrax Deaths Suspected
on Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 12:14:29PM -0700, Eric Cordian ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Tim wrote: Looks like the toast and goner comments are right on...as expected. I've been watching a press conference of D.C. politicos, mayor and company, on CNN. Looks like several inhalational anthrax cases confirmed, and *two deaths* of postal workers over the weekend with suspicious symptoms and test results. (Don't know if one of them is the postal worker already diagnosed with inhalational anthrax since last Friday...it's possible this is one of the people. Sounds like the two deaths were of others, though, with anthrax only being suspected post mortem.) Yes, this is very worrisome. I've been waiting for the day when we have less anthrax cases than the day before, and apparently we've not seen the peak yet. antrax: n. AKA mailsorter's disease (Future dictionary entry) There is a vaccine for anthrax. It's not generally distributed, though military and vetinary personnel may receive it. The CDC's fact sheet states that it requires six doses (three at two week intervals, then six months), protects against cutaneous and inhalation anthrax, and requires an annual booster. There are some risks of the vaccine, though exposure risks are higher, the worst is a sever allergic reaction, observed in less than 1 in 100,000 doses. Might it make sense to vaccinate mailroom personnel? Like high-end routers on the 'Net, this is where the current delivery mechanism is bottlenecked. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Additional Anthrax Deaths Suspected
on Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 02:36:58PM -0700, Karsten M. Self ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: The CDC's fact sheet Memo to self: include URLs. http://www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/VIS/vis-anthrax.pdf Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Retribution not enough
on Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 04:58:54PM -0700, David Honig ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 01:17 PM 10/22/01 -0700, Steve Schear wrote: One of the great long term hopes for nanotechnology is the cornucopia or StarTrek replicator, a device which can manufacture from raw materials and information a broad variety of consumables and hard goods. If it ever does come about and is not something centrally controlled and monitored a 'la Stephenson's Diamond Age, it could usher in an age of individual sovereignty the likes of which the world as not known since its transition from hunter gatherer to agriculture. It might also spell the end of economy. steve Replicators exist. They're called computers. They can only replicate bits, but they do so well enough to make Jack Valenti mess his diapers. As to the end of the economy, see Schneier (et al?)'s _Street Performer Protocol_ (IIRC) paper. But you knew that. Better yet: energy can't be replicated. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Farm Out! (was Re: Retribution not enough)
on Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 05:39:08PM -0400, Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Now if only some handy, self-effacing volunteer would come along and repost your ill-formatted message wrapped at 72 columns, perhaps with a severe admonition about the proper forms of netiquette, my day would be complete. That's wishful thinking, Declan. After, all, this is a capatilist society. What's in it for me? [1] | Steve Furlong wrote: | | Then let them. A self-sufficient subsistence farmer won't be bothered by | the trade his neighbors are carrying out. [1] His farm can be a | neolithic bubble as the world progresses. | | What? You're talking nonsense here. Of course they make part of their | living selling crops --- what's all the bs about forging his own | metals etc. Total straw man arguement. The point was that they aren't | starving for one thing, and, if it were up to them, they'd stay put. | | Look, I'll try to explain it in terms that perhaps even a city boy like | you can understand. You don't have to go to the 3rd world, just go talk | to small american family farmers. There are thousands of them out there | who simply don't care that they aren't making lots of money -- the | important thing is that they can keep their farms and do their own | thing. What's wrong with that? | | You know what destroyed the small family farm in this country? Education | -- ag schools and the county extension agent. Funded, for the most part, | by large chemical companies. The old story of the country bumpkin | getting conned by the city-slicker salesman. Kids went off to ag school, | came home and told Dad to do things the modern way, factory farming | with modern chemicals -- sure, go into debt, buy all those new tractors | and fancy equipment and we'll be rich. | | And then, of course, that little trick the Fed Reserve and the banks | pulled back in the 70's with manipulating the economy so that rural land | prices went thru the roof, farmers who had been mortgage free for | generations got duped into borrowing money on their land to buy that | fancy new equipment that the ag schools and extension agents told them | they needed, then bingo -- the Fed played some more tricks, land values | dropped back down, and a whole lot of farmers lost their land. | | Is that what you call free-market economics? I call it fascism -- state | and industry working in concert to whipsaw the masses and get more | control over peoples lives. People who were very free and independant | are suddenly wage slaves in the city because they listened to the | experts from industry and government. And got duped. | | I know one heck of a lot of people who much prefer living in rural | poverty to living in a city making big bucks. Although my wife and I | have been making a whole lot more money in recent years than we ever | thought we would, and live in a big fancy house in the city, we consider | it a serious mistake. Money isn't everything. We were one heck of a lot | happier when we earned about $4000.00 a year. We will soon rectify | that. Why make a bunch money and feed the fascist machine? | | One of my favorite cartoons was one of Snuffy Smith and his wife --- she | says Pa, the world is passing us by. Snuffy replies, It sure better! | Damn straight! | | Tune in, turn on, and drop out. Now that's real free market economics. | | | | If he _isn't_ self-sufficient, then he does care about the trade going | on around him. That's been the case forever, and new trade always | disrupts someone who was making his living with the way things were. | | And if he wants to make use of metal tools, then he'll have to exchange | as best he can for them. But, again, he's not self-sufficient, unless he | can dig and forge his own metals. Complaining that the world isn't the | way it was for Grandpa shouldn't get a sympathetic ear from anyone who | uses metals, plastics, or medicine, or who eats fresh produce out of | season. | | [1] Assuming they don't pollute him out of raising his crops or | livestock, tax or regulate his farm out of existence. | | -- | Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel |617-670-3793 | | Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly | while bad people will find a way around the laws. -- Plato | | -- | Harmon Seaver, MLIS | CyberShamanix | Work 920-203-9633 | Home 920-233-5820 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cybershamanix.com/resume.html Notes: 1. Gratuitous abuse from Tim May, of course. Back to the cornfield. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
Re: Why Plan-9?
on Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 06:29:16PM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Sun, 21 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: This says nothing about current development. Word I've heard (from someone tangentially involved with the project) was that the release was something of a desperation move. As someone who watches free software licences closely, the Plan 9 license is one of the more twisted bits of corporate-authored licenses. Not necessarially bad, but it reeks of compromise clauses speaking to internal battles. Rumor was that a codebase that had been stable for a couple of years saw a slew of commits in the weeks leading to the public release. ??? Plan 9 was released Open Source in 2000. Summer, June/July, IIRC. I've done a couple of look-ups since. There's been little additional news or information (I'm not saying none, I'm saying little). OpenBSD, a relatively little-known free 'nix, gets rather more press and community coverage. While there's nothing wrong with a small, dedicated core, I'm just commenting that there doesn't appear to be much broader appeal. The license is *not* OSI certified, nor is it considered Free Software by the FSF. shrug Ask me if I care. A fair number of people respect the opinions of the OSI and FSF, if only because they don't feel like combing through licensing terms themselves. I'm active on the OSI's license-discuss list, and see quite a few proposed licenses and terms. I'm rather convinced that novelty, all else being equal, is bad. Compellingly adventageous licensing language may be of some interest. The MozPL is the last license I'd consider to have provided this (it's a community-friendly mixed-mode copyleft + proprietary use license). Poor licensing choices are one of several key modes of failure for free software projects. If Plan 9 procedes forward, I expect to see another two or three significant licensing revisions. Read Lessigs Code. At my side. What specifically? - Filesystem is fully transitive, everything is treated like a file. This creates some unique opportunities to make publicly shared but privately maintaned resource pools. Hangar 18 is an attempt to do just this. What does this mean? How does this compare with, Transitive means that A mounts B, C mounts A and gets B free. Plan 9 does this, managed by a set of authorization layers for fine control, native. This means that when Hangar 18 goes online you can mount /hangar18 into your filespace (via Plan 9 or Linux NFS services) and you will get all the resources that Hangar 18 mounts through that point. ftp is a good example. In Plan 9 you 'mount' the ftp server to your file system. If you ever go out and walk that part of the file space tree and request a file it only then goes and gets it. You can control its lifetime (to manage disk space for example) via local cache controls. A 'lazy update' mechanism, very efficient of network and local resources. Interesting. Some similarity then with the autofs system under GNU/Linux, in which remote filesystems may be mounted by various methods, including FTP, though transitivity isn't generally included IIRC. - Encryption (currently DES, needs fixing) built right in. Built into what? The network layer. The traffic between any two Plan 9 boxes is encrypted with keys dependent upon the individual boxes (or larger classes if you desire) if the system is so configured. You can also use this to encrypt branches of your filesystem. Plan 9 provides SSH. Always or at discression? Again, possible with GNU/Linux, though not as trivial as desireable at present. But the passwords don't go across the network, therefore they're not 'used' in the conventional sense. Interesting. Somewhat like, say, SSH RSA key authentication, but at OS level? Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Instant Anthrax...test (was: Re: And another one bites the dust...)
gpg: Invalid passphrase; please try again ... -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 on Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 06:02:17PM -0700, David Honig ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 02:56 PM 10/21/01 -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: The media hype also tends to ignore the fact that anthrax is, in the forms detected to date, largely treatable. Gross attempts at containment (expensive) are less advisable than identification and treatment of exposed individuals (less expensive). Once the person has enough symptoms to seek treatment, I think they're toast. We'll see. Maybe all USPO workers will be given 60 days of Cipro. If they're the only ones to survive, the species is fucked. You clearly can't to wait for individuals to be symptomatic, you have to detect eposures. The point, however, is that exposure itself isn't a high risk given appropriate, timely, treatment. The Economist is now reporting on instant screening: http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=821937 Biological weapons Testing times Oct 18th 2001 From The Economist print edition Instant screening for anthrax is now possible [...] Unfortunately, the two established methods for identifying anthrax and other microbial contaminants involve time-consuming laboratory techniques. One is to try to culture an organism from the powder, and then subject it to a barrage of chemical tests to identify it. The other is to amplify and identify its DNA . The first takes days, and the second is a sophisticated technique that few laboratories are yet able to manage. So, even if the result is negative, chaos may already have been caused and the act of terrorism rewarded. A better solution would be to screen on the spot. And technology to do this is now available. It uses a test strip, costing $20, that looks like a pregnancy-detection kit. The Guardian Bio-Threat Alert System is a joint development by Alexeter Technologies, based in Wheeling, Illinois, and Tetracore, of Gaithersburg, Maryland. It takes 15 minutes to react to the presence of anthrax, and it is the only rapid field test now available. [...] Apologies if this was already posted here. Search of my inbox doesn't turn it up. Peace. - -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE703eMOEeIn1XyubARAkv8AJsGXp1TQp8Zy+CPWNLrtb34BeJBdQCfb470 tehhCnLmo1UbvUhPFE7o4Z0= =cjrt -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Clubbing in Fortress Amerika (fwd)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Life is a Cabaret, my friends. on Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 12:56:02PM -0700, Giovanna Imbesi ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Last night my friend and I stopped at a Venice club/bar. At the door they were doing the normal ID check, but then took my driver's license and swiped it into a little Palm-like device...and all the info popped up on the screen. I was startled, amused and outraged all at the same time. My friend knows the new owners of the building and told me that the owners had rented part of the upstairs space to a guy with a youth marketing company, also coincidentally a long-time friend of his. What are they doing with this information? I've been wondering what real implications a national ID card would present and here was a clear example of potential abuse. Is this even legal? Aren't they authorized to check date-of-birth but no more? Is it legal to retain the data? What data is stored in the magnetic stripe on a California driver's license - name, address, DOB, license #, and signature? On the way out I asked if we got our data back but only got a nervous laugh in reply. G. Giovanna Imbesi TuttoMedia http://www.tuttomedia.com 310-399-2800 [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This is the pho mailing list, managed by Majordomo 1.94.4. To send a message to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] To send a request to majordomo, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put your request in the body of the message (use request help for help). To unsubscribe from the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put unsubscribe pho in the body of the message. - -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE70dnAOEeIn1XyubARArMaAJ95uo4KZfqqkWj/RD8adX3PN1Z/vACfa9xA rLjWNMMw6+UefXhnRwN8x60= =tBCH -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Clubbing in Fortress Amerika (fwd)
on Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 05:48:44PM -0500, Harmon Seaver ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Dr. Evil wrote: Do different states use different formats for the data on the magstrip? Do all states even have magstrips? You know, I never even realized until right now that my DL has a mag strip. This is a new thing for WI, I think. Pretty sure my recent MN didn't have one. I guess the more interesting thing would be, before wiping it out, to figure out a way to read it. http://www.google.com/search?q=drivers+license+magnetic+stripe California, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin, notably. See also: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/13.18.html [From California SB 1447, 1992, the Privacy Act of 1992] SECTION 2: INFORMATION OBTAINED FROM DRIVER'S LICENSES This section requires the written consent of a consumer for a business entity to (1) sell information obtained from the consumer's driver's license or (2) use such information to advertise goods or services. The section is intended to cover instances where a consumer presents a driver's license or identification card for identification purposes during a business transaction. The section is not intended to prevent businesses from using driver's license information for business record-keeping, or for other purposes related to the transaction (i.e. authorizing a transaction). The section is not intended to change existing law with respect to the ability of businesses to obtain driver's license information from other sources (such as DMV records). The need for this section is heightened by the new magstripe drivers license developed by the Department of Motor Vehicles. This license has a magnetic stripe on the back which contains much of the information on the front of the license. The stripe will enable a business entity to store information contained on a driver's license simply by scanning the card through a reader. A publication by the Department of Motor Vehicles dated May 1991 (Department of Motor Vehicles Magnetic Stripe Drivers License/Identification Card) states that using point of sale (POS) readers and printers, the business community can electronically record the DL [driver's license] /ID number on receipts and business records. The publication notes that magnetic stripe readers are readily available, relatively low in cost, and are already available in many retail outlets. However, a merchant might access much more than the driver's license/ID number; the publication notes that readers have been produced, and market available readers can be modified that will read the three tracks of information contained on the California card. According to the publication, the tracks contain information such as license type, name, address, sex, hair-color, eye-color, height, weight, restrictions, issue date. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: stupid anthrax q: would microwaving your snail mail help?
on Sun, Oct 14, 2001 at 04:11:16PM -0400, sunder ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: This is a stupid question but as I'm not a biologist, I'll ask it anyway and risk looking foolish... Would it help to microwave your mail if you don't know where it came from and you're sure it doesn't contain an objects? i.e. it's not a CD you've ordered from Amazon. :) This suggestion turned up on Kuro5hin, a web discussion site (Slashdot's baby brother): If you want to sterilize your mail, simply place the unopened envelope on an ironing board and place a damp, thin cloth on top of it. Then iron it. Yes, iron it. Just like you would iron your pants. The damp heat will kill any bacteria, including anthrax, inside the envelope, and you will be safe. http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/10/18/44222/299/16#16 Probably more accessible to most of the population (and workplaces) than claves, pressure cookers, or irradiation equipment. Anyone have thoughts or (?) knowledge on efficacy, or guidelines on how long the heating should last for decontamination? The obvious terrorist counter-countermeasure would be to add a heat-activated agent to the weapon. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: stupid anthrax q: would microwaving your snail mail help?
on Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 07:27:18AM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: This suggestion turned up on Kuro5hin, a web discussion site (Slashdot's baby brother): If you want to sterilize your mail, simply place the unopened envelope on an ironing board and place a damp, thin cloth on top of it. Then iron it. Yes, iron it. Just like you would iron your pants. The damp heat will kill any bacteria, including anthrax, inside the envelope, and you will be safe. http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/10/18/44222/299/16#16 Probably more accessible to most of the population (and workplaces) than claves, pressure cookers, or irradiation equipment. Anyone have thoughts or (?) knowledge on efficacy, or guidelines on how long the heating should last for decontamination? Sounds like somebody doesn't do their own washing/ironing :) I bathe regularly. All else is gloss. The steam in an iron doesn't get anywhere that hot, it'd ruin the clothes. /me retreats to iron w/ thermometer. Black and Decker Light 'n' Easy iron, cotton dishtowl (folded quarto), Good Cook dial thermometer inserted under top fold. With four minutes' preheat, temperature is off the scale (220°F), extrapolating, it looks to be 270°-280°F. After about two minutes, there's a slight yellowing of the dishtowel. Also an iron will have steam escaping around the edges (when you hit the steam button especially) and this has the potential to spread un-heated spores into the atmosphere. The filtration offered by an envelope and moistened towel should minimize this. References online suggest that claving cycles are ~2h at 140°C+. A WHO document on animal carcass processing suggests rendering cycles range from 10-60 minutes, though whether or not this is sufficient to disinfect the carcasses isn't clear from a quick read. http://www.who.int/emc-documents/zoonoses/docs/whoemczdi986.html I'd say that for paranoics with a low risk threshhold, ten minutes of steam might provide some assurance. And neatly creased correspondence. It's a bit hard on the pre-approved credit cards though. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: stupid anthrax q: would microwaving your snail mail help?
on Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 03:13:02PM -0700, Karsten M. Self ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: on Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 07:27:18AM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: This suggestion turned up on Kuro5hin, a web discussion site (Slashdot's baby brother): If you want to sterilize your mail, simply place the unopened envelope on an ironing board and place a damp, thin cloth on top of it. Then iron it. Yes, iron it. Just like you would iron your pants. The damp heat will kill any bacteria, including anthrax, inside the envelope, and you will be safe. http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/10/18/44222/299/16#16 Probably more accessible to most of the population (and workplaces) than claves, pressure cookers, or irradiation equipment. Anyone have thoughts or (?) knowledge on efficacy, or guidelines on how long the heating should last for decontamination? Sounds like somebody doesn't do their own washing/ironing :) I bathe regularly. All else is gloss. The steam in an iron doesn't get anywhere that hot, it'd ruin the clothes. /me retreats to iron w/ thermometer. Black and Decker Light 'n' Easy iron, cotton dishtowl (folded quarto), Good Cook dial thermometer inserted under top fold. With four minutes' preheat, temperature is off the scale (2200F), extrapolating, it looks to be 2700-2800F. After about two minutes, there's a slight yellowing of the dishtowel. Above mistranslates ISO-8859-1 encoded \260 (octal), the degree sign, as a zero. Temperatures should read 220 F, 270 F, and 280 F, not thousands of degrees. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: Inflation
on Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 04:41:28PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Greg Broiles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : At 03:13 PM 10/19/2001 -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: /me retreats to iron w/ thermometer. Black and Decker Light 'n' Easy iron, cotton dishtowl (folded quarto), Good Cook dial thermometer inserted under top fold. With four minutes' preheat, temperature is off the scale (2200F), extrapolating, it looks to be 2700-2800F. After about two minutes, there's a slight yellowing of the dishtowel. Is it possible you're off by a factor of 10 here? I am very skeptical that you have an iron which heats up to 2200 or 2700 degrees Fahrenheit. I would expect a little more than a slight yellowing of the dish towel at those temperatures, unless you have asbestos dish towels you use along with your superheated iron. -- Greg Broiles [EMAIL PROTECTED] We have found and closed the thing you watch us with. -- New Delhi street kids Kind of like using one of those ugly red lab hot air guns to dry your hair, eh? Definitely an honest mistake. As previously posted, an iso-8859-1 to ASCII encoding error. The degree symbol was converted to a zero. Divide values by 10. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Nifty secret bank system
on Wed, Oct 03, 2001 at 03:25:33PM -0700, Steve Schear ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 06:30 PM 10/3/2001 +0100, CDR Anonymizer wrote: http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/international/03LAUN.html lo-tech, trust-based, stable and fully functional since antiquity. I like it :-) You'll notice the cost of money transfers using this private system are well below international bank wires. If governments want to reduce/eliminate this illicit competition they should fully underwrite the cost of international wires below a certain threshold (say $10,000). For some, cost of transfer is a secondary consideration to secrecy, and possibly sufficient to keep a significant underground network active. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: USG pulls 'sensitive' info off net
on Wed, Oct 03, 2001 at 11:00:04AM -0400, Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Oct 03, 2001 at 06:38:05AM -0700, Khoder bin Hakkin wrote: Must've never heard of caching.. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-100301safe.story Inevitable next step: Enterprising cypherpunk registers censoredfedinfo.org, hunts through google's cache, posts everything there, etc. Note that there are a relatively small number of Googles on the Net. This is a point that was brought forth pointedly at John Wharton's ee380 seminar at Stanford last spring, during Rhonda Hauben's seminar Usenet and the Usenet Archives The Challenges of Building a Collaborative Technical Community http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/010523.html Specifically, the Usenet community became used to the Deja News archives, to the extent that many independent archives of specific newsgroups or collections of groups were deactivated, relying instead on Deja. While comprehensive archives are useful, *single* comprehensive archives present a point of failure and control. The Net would be advised to develop multiple Google alternatives. And I say this as quite the fan of Google Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: cryptome down ?
on Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 07:11:19PM -0500, Neil Johnson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I tried to get to cryptome, but it appears to be down. Any info ? Works from here. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: [FREE] stratfor (fwd)
on Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 08:37:30AM -0700, Subcommander Bob ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 04:08 PM 9/30/01 -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: This is IMHO naive. Have you ever been in a brawl? Have you ever been in a brawl where one side (or both) has friends? Balkans, just before WWI. Poison gas followed that one (too). ...let's look at the bright side. Afghanistan isn't a Balkan state Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: America needs therapy
on Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 11:57:18AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On 1 Oct 2001, at 11:05, Eric Murray wrote: Not to mention things like travel delays due to road congestion ($46.5 to $174.6 billion), which not only would still exist with electric cars, but is a cost ALREADY paid by automobile users. To call something like that a hidden subsidy of the oil industry should be enough to get this study rejected by a reesponsible reviewer. Electric vehicles are far more efficient idlers than ICE vehicles. Idling is essentially paying the oil companies for the privilege of sitting still. It's not an inconsequential cost. Other congestion costs are not as attributable to oil, but direct combustion is. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: NYPOST.COM World News: DATA POURING IN FASTER THAN NSA CAN DECIPHER IT By GREG SEIGLE
on Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 07:28:56AM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/5334.htm A suggestion I've made before in other circles: Open source the data. There are clearly a few wrinkles to be worked out, but there are some inflection points that can be used to define the task: - Open sources intelligence -- data gathered from publicly available data -- may be distributed without fear of compromising sources. - Court-of-law doctrines don't apply: there's no need to tell the truth, the whole truth, or nothing but the truth. Information can be selectively withheld. Disinformation may be submitted. Details may be distorted. Scenarios may be projected for the purpose of analyzing possible outcomes. - Covert intelligence may also be selectively leaked, with or without intentional modifications and/or origin masking. - The leaks need not be made under the auspices of the US (or allied) intelligence services, but could be injected anonymously or pseudonymously into existing discussions on Usenet, Webboards, mailing lists, Internet indices such as Google, the press, or other channels. One of the natural problems is identifying *useful* discussion forthcoming. Some existing channels have meaningful ways of idnetifying useful or more meaningful content (proxies such as user tracking, or direct measures such as moderation, preference indication, or collaborative filtering). One of the first discussions I had with a friend following the 9/11 attacks was the similarities between terrorist organization and the free software movement: decentralized operations which are difficult to locate and/or isolate. On reflection, I decided that the distinctions were more meaningful. One of the great strengths (and a frequent criticism) of the free software community is that it is *so* open and deliberative. In particular, organized criticism or oposition often finds itself buried under an onslaught of response. Witness many journalists with a Microsoft bent and their complaints of the seething unwashed GNU/Linux hoards, or this past weekends conclusive denunciation of W3C for proposing and promoting a highly free-software unfriendly licensing policy. By contrast, the opponents of free software must communicate out of band, covertly. One of the advantages of the forces opposed to terrorism is that a very large portion (though granted: not all) of their communications can be free and open. This increases pathways of intelligence analysis and discovery. Worth considering? Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: Just Say So?
on Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 01:24:29PM -0700, Tim May ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: When confronted with calls to Do something! or We can't just stand by and watch!, I think of one word: So? There's an alternative formulation: Don't just do something. Stand there. The gist is the same. Senseless activity isn't justified by virtue of being activity. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Text of Ashcroft Anti-Terrorism act?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Does anyone know if the updated text of the proposed Anti-Terrorism act has been published? The NYT reports Ashcroft urging a vote by next week: http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/10/01/national/01SECU.html No substance on the bill itself. Peace. - -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE7uPSwOEeIn1XyubARAhlOAJ9nwMEbAflsEosg6gbGHTXDT6vb5QCdHFk9 cdcIK3NoTCMTUi6tkBno+U0= =Xlov -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [FREE] stratfor (fwd)
on Sun, Sep 30, 2001 at 05:55:50PM -0400, James B. DiGriz ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: dict.org cites Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913): War War, n. OE. AS. werre; akin to OHG. werra scandal, ... 1. A contest between nations or states, carried on by force, ... Note: As war is the contest of nations or states, it always implies that such contest is authorized by the monarch or the sovereign power of the nation. Which neatly gets you into the problem of what to call a civil war. I've had this discussion with several European friends. Seems there's a few definitions of war to be found, even in standard dictionaries. Not all refer to nations or states. Others may note that a nation is not identical to a state. There are stateless nations (e.g.: Palestine), and states which are host to people of several nations (e.g.: the Swiss Federation). I use the somewhat informal, though largely conformant, definitions of: Nation: a group of people identified by common culture, language, beliefs, or institutions. (my own distilation) War: armed hostilities, especially between nations. (The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary). One of the most asinine arguments I've heard to date was a commentator on the BBC/PRI The World radio program a couple of weeks back. Her statement was that by calling this a war, the US was validating the deaths at the WTC/P5 attacks as casualties of war. Bollox. Deaths aren't justified or not. What declaring war (formally or otherwise) does is put both combatents and other parties on notice (as the US was most decidedly not prior to the attacks) that there is a state of armed hostilities. Actions supportive of the (admittedly ill defined) enemy may be construed as acts of war against the US. And innocents are best advised to stay out of the hot zone. Peace. By any means. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: [FREE] stratfor (fwd)
on Sun, Sep 30, 2001 at 04:11:21PM -0400, James B. DiGriz ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Declan McCullagh wrote: The Washington Times ran a stratfor.com article (as a news article, like the paper would run Reuters or AP) yesterday. I haven't visited their website, but what I read yesterday is quite interesting. -Declan What I find interesting is how we can have a war without a Congressional declaration, which out of practical if not legal necessity requires something at least approximating a foreign power as the enemy. It would be extremely helpful if there were some overt state action or at least a smoking gun to publicly identify such party. As the US President is CinC of the US armed forces, he may deploy these forces as he sees fit. However, Congress holds the purse strings, and the impeachment vote. My understanding is that the War Powers Act, passed in the wake of the SouthEast Asia Disagreement of 1965-1975, limits such deployments to 30 or 90 days. I have to admit being somewhat confused myself over just what distinctions there are between a formal declaration, and a vote of support such as we saw following the 9/11 attacks. I believe a formal declaration would entail far more Presidential support and powers, resources for the military, including likely more sweeping restrictions on civil liberties. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: [FREE] stratfor (fwd)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 on Sun, Sep 30, 2001 at 03:45:07PM -0700, Steve Schear ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 03:25 PM 9/30/2001 -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: One of the most asinine arguments I've heard to date was a commentator on the BBC/PRI The World radio program a couple of weeks back. Her statement was that by calling this a war, the US was validating the deaths at the WTC/P5 attacks as casualties of war. Bollox. Deaths aren't justified or not. What declaring war (formally or otherwise) does is put both combatents and other parties on notice (as the US was most decidedly not prior to the attacks) that there is a state of armed hostilities. Actions supportive of the (admittedly ill defined) enemy may be construed as acts of war against the US. And innocents are best advised to stay out of the hot zone. This is IMHO naive. Have you ever been in a brawl? Have you ever been in a brawl where one side (or both) has friends? Unlike most silver screen fights my experience is that the first person to get in a good one usually decks the opponent and its over. If the first one to throw the punch can sneak up on the opponent or create over confidence in the other party by getting them to think that no violent reply will be forthcoming if attacked (in New York we called that sucker punching) then the odds of success are that much more increased. The Art of War is still a good source of combat advice. Sucker punching tends to violate the norms of honorable conduct. If you down the first guy, but have to deal with three of his friends, the issue becomes a bit less clear cut. Concepts of unfair advantage tend to escalate: sucker punches lead to friends, knives, back alleys, and/or heat. That's more or less where the perps of the 9/11 attacks find themselves at the moment. The other side of the argument is the bee'n'the bull theory. Sure, the bee can get in the first lick, but you've now got one pissed-off bull. If your sucker punch *doesn't* land the fellow, you've got consequences to deal with. I'd say the US is currently stung, but by no means hurting in any diminished-capacity sense of the word. This doesn't strike be as good strategic thinking on our oponents' part. I did make a halfhearted attempt to search through TAoW looking at strategic guidelines. I'll give it another shot and see what I turn up. Peace. - -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE7t6X8OEeIn1XyubARApr5AJwPUGhTsll52UypCfAqua/WFAssIQCfUy1Z iPG8lP8cqvwHdGTseIKXBc4= =tMHU -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Call for Presentations: CODECON 2002
developers from each team. These developers may then individually demonstrate their applications, followed by discussion among the panel and QA with the other attendees as to differences in design goals, implementation, and other aspects of the systems. If we receive multiple submissions from related projects for papers or demos, we may suggest to the presenters that they combine into a panel. Additionally, presenters are free to submit jointly as a pre-selected panel. There is some flexibility in requirements and formats for presentations; please enquire if you would like to use an alternate form. FORMAT OF PRESENTATIONS (public session) On the afternoon of Sunday 17 February, we will set aside a substantial amount of time for 5 minute-or-less project public session presentations. Other events on this day, including panels and main presentations, will be targeted at members of the press and public, so brief presentations on Sunday will reach a wide audience. Presenters from the first two days who wish to make an additional public session presentation may do so. SUBMISSION DETAILS Presentations must be performed by one of the active developers on the project. That's the rule -- no code, no mike. Multiple people may be involved in a presentation. You do get in free if you're part of a presentation even if you don't speak during it, so creativity (within reason) is encouraged. The workshop language is English, for both presentations and papers. Ideally, demonstrations should be usable by attendees with 802.11b connected devices either via a web interface, or locally on Windows, UNIX-like, or MacOS platforms. Cross-platform applications are most desirable. Our venue may be 21+. If you are submitting and are under 21, please advise the program committee; we may consider alternate venues for one or more days of the event. If you have a specific day on which you would prefer to present, please advise us. Main workshop submissions should include in the plain-text body of email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] the following information: - Name of presenter - Name of others involved in project attending conference - Title of presentation - Brief summary of topic - URL or attachment of example code (must be received by the final submission deadline) - Brief project history - Brief summary of demo, or abstract of paper - Any other details considered relevant Public session submissions should include in the plain-text body of email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] the following information: - Name of presenter - Title of presentation - Brief summary of topic - URL or attachment with example code - Any other details PROGRAM COMMITTEE Bram Cohen, BitTorrent Dan Egnor, ofb.net Jered Floyd, Permabit Ian Grigg, Systemics Ryan Lackey, HavenCo Don Marti, LinuxJournal Guido Sanchez, New Hack City Bill Stewart, ATT Brandon Wiley, Freenet Jamie Zawinski, DNA Lounge COSTS Recognizing that many of the developers of the most interesting cypherpunk applications are unable to afford accommodations and other expenses in San Francisco, CodeCon will attempt to locate housing and otherwise assist with issues for presenters on a case-by-case basis. Please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] if your submission is accepted but you require assistance to attend. SPONSORSHIP If your organization is interested in sponsoring CodeCon, we would love to hear from you. In particular, we are looking for sponsors for social meals and parties on any of the three days of the conference, as well as sponsors of the conference as a whole, prizes or awards for quality presentations, and assistance with transportation or accommodation for presenters with limited resources. If you might be interested in sponsoring any of these aspects, please contact the conference organizers at [EMAIL PROTECTED] QUESTIONS If you have questions about CodeCon, or would like to contact the organizers, please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note this address is only for questions and administrative requests, and not for workshop presentation submissions. - -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http
Re: MIME-encoded PGP / GPG signatures (again)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 on Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 01:24:44PM -0700, Meyer Wolfsheim ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: ... For the most part, Mutt is an excellent email client. However, I'm actually going to correct myself, and say that it *is* Mutt that doesn't play well with others in this case. I have no problem with Mutt favoring RFC 2015/3156 for PGP handling. As someone else recently pointed out on one of the GnuPG lists, the flaw is in Mutt's inability to do normal PGP messages. What's normal PGP messages? There is an option to clearsign by default. I've elected not to do this. Peace. - -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE7skPmOEeIn1XyubARAg7WAJ9/iuaFoqSYcKjmp5SagNADWYx2EwCeJty9 abqIir0y+FgzH56WyAcjRww= =l8hU -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Democracy is our enemy
on Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 03:22:34AM -, Anonymous ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Thomas Leavitt writes: There was an article the other day about the terrorists, which made the point that capitalism and fundamentalism were much alike, in that both share a distrust of democracy. I can think of a number of differences as well. The same can be said for the cypherpunks. No wonder that so many here have expressed vitriolic criticism of the U.S. government response (which has been almost zero), while there has been little mention of the horrific evil of the terrorist acts themselves. As trolls go, about a 6.5. Terrorists are not in a direct position to deprive us of rights to privacy, free speech, encryption, and computing platforms. Should their cause prevail I've no doubt access to such freedoms would be far starker than under any regime pledged to the US Constitution, with little recourse for appeal. There is little on-charter discussion possible of the terrorists. There may be speculation of methods they did (or didn't) use. Outcomes of their actions are going to generally be abhorred. The response of the US and other govnerments worldwide is a different issue. These are largely institutions of or answerable to their peoples. There's also a long tradition in democratic (both proper democracies and republican governments) political experience of making rash decisions, often curtailing the freedoms of democracy. I see no problem with focussing discussion on these matters. The philosophical connection becomes even clearer with the frequent statements by cypherpunks that those who disagree need killing, IMVAO we're cut from manifold different weaves of cloth. None of us speaks for all, self included. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Expectation of privacy in public?
on Mon, Sep 24, 2001 at 07:16:03AM +0200, Anonymous ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: For the lawyers and lawyer larvae out there... In an article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian this week, there is an article about MUNI's policy of making audio recordings of passengers. quote Nathan Ballard of the City Attorney's Office told the Bay Guardian that they were well aware of the policy and approved it. There are no expectations of privacy in public, he said. Ballard asserted that the policy was constitutional and did not fall under any wiretapping laws. When asked if all of the vehicles that employ this surveillance policy post signs to inform passengers that their conversations are being recorded, he said, This policy does not require signs. /quote Frankly, if I'm sitting in the back of an empty bus, talking to the person next to me, it's my opinion that there certainly is a reasonable expection of privacy. Does anyone more qualified than I care to tell me why I'm right or wrong? Jeffrey Rosen's _The Unwanted Gaze: the destruction of privacy in America_ is a good general read on this topic, and is generally recommended. It doesn't cover the issue of privacy in public in depth, though the issue is really more one of moving anonymously (or at least largely unrecorded) through public spaces. Rosen does discuss privacy at home and at work, and in cyberspace. The index doesn't specifically list public spaces, though there's some discussion of anonymity. Brandeis and Warren wrote a law review article in 1890 in the _Harvard Law Review_. Rosen does touch on expectations of privacy in public spaces: In _The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera describes how the police destroyed an important figure of the Prague Spring by recording his conversations with a friend and then broadcasting them as a radio serial. The other interesting discussion is of the Olmstead case (the original wiretap case). I would raise objections on the basis of the Fourth and Forteenth Amendments. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: CDR Anonymizer cpunks_anon@einstein.ssz.com ?
on Sun, Sep 23, 2001 at 12:23:27AM -0700, Tim May ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Saturday, September 22, 2001, at 11:44 PM, Karsten M. Self wrote: IF you are a United States Citizen or Resident and YOU HAVE SUFFERED A FINANCIAL LOSS write Financial Loss - Contact Me ASAP on the documents you have received and Fax them to the Task Force at 202-406-6930 and give Your telephone number(s). A Secret Service Agent will call you back as soon as possible to discuss the matter with you (don't worry, you're Not in any trouble). Or you can just use the Short Form: I'm a greedy fool ... ...neatly sidestepping the fact that fraud is a crime, stupidity isn't. Relevance, please. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: CDR Anonymizer cpunks_anon@einstein.ssz.com ?
on Sat, Sep 22, 2001 at 08:32:46PM -0700, CDR Anonymizer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: The cypherpunks list received yet another copy of the Nigerian Corrupt Official's Bank Account scam spam. No surprise, though lne.com's filters usually block them. The interesting thing was that this claims to be sent by the CDR Anonymizer [EMAIL PROTECTED] FYI, info on the scam. This is the tenth instance I've seen this year. Please feel free to distribute the following if you encounter the scam on other NGs or mailing lists. I've compiled a set of rants (frequently repeated essays/posts) at http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Download/rant-o-matic.tar.gz This is an example of the Nigerian Scam, also called 419 Letters, or just plain 419. Most 419 letters and emails originate from or are traceable back to Nigeria. However, some originate from other nations, mostly also West African nations such as Ghana, Togo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast ( Cote D'Ivoire ) etc. It's the current wrinkle of a decades-old scam that nets tens of millions of dollars per year, and may be the third largest industry in Nigeria. The 419 Coalition believes that it is the elites from which successive governments of Nigeria have been drawn who are the scammers. Expect little cooperation from Nigerian authorities. Information in this notice is compiled from various sources, links below. Keep reading for reporting information. The Scam operates as follows: the target receives an unsolicited fax, email, or letter concerning Nigeria containing either a money laundering or other illegal proposal OR you may receive a Legal and Legitimate business proposal by normal means. Invariably, the proposition involves resources which are somehow locked up: oil or other invoice problems, a bequest, money cleaning, or misallocated funds. At some point, the victim is asked to pay up front an Advance Fee of some sort. If the victim pays the Fee, there are many Complications which require still more advance payments until the victim either quits, runs out of money, or both. To report the scam: If you are a United States Citizen or Resident and have suffered NO Financial Loss, write No Financial Loss - For Your Database on the documents you received and Fax them to the US Secret Service Task Force handling Scam matters at 202-406-6930. Documents may be emailed to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject: No Loss -- 419 Scam IF you are a United States Citizen or Resident and YOU HAVE SUFFERED A FINANCIAL LOSS write Financial Loss - Contact Me ASAP on the documents you have received and Fax them to the Task Force at 202-406-6930 and give Your telephone number(s). A Secret Service Agent will call you back as soon as possible to discuss the matter with you (don't worry, you're Not in any trouble). (Above from http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/index.htm) Other countries have their own reporting methods, see above for more info. Additional information: Google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=nigeria+scam Federal Republic of Nigeria, Embassy: http://www.embassy.org/embassies/ng.html Sierra Leone: Nigerian 419 Scam: http://www.sierra-leone.org/scams.html Sample letters are archives as no's 01 - 33: http://www.sierra-leone.org/scam01.html - http://www.sierra-leone.org/scam33.html Nigeria Scam Letter Archive http://www.scamorama.com/ Nigeria - The 419 Coalition Website http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/index.htm U.S. Postal Authorities crack down on Nigerian Spam http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/pressrel.htm Nigeria - The 419 Coalition Website http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/index.htm Urban Legends: Nigerian Scam http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/scams/nigeria.htm Salon: I crave your distinguished indulgence (and all your cash) http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/08/07/419scams/print.html Nigerian 419 Scam Game Over! http://home.pacbell.net/jpaladin/ Book describes how the scam plays out. Thank you. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
419 letter (was Re: CDR Anonymizer cpunks_anon@einstein.ssz.com ?)
on Sun, Sep 23, 2001 at 07:35:58AM -0400, Steve Furlong ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Karsten M. Self wrote: ...neatly sidestepping the fact that fraud is a crime, stupidity isn't. Stupidity _is_ a natural crime. Mommy states have attempted to repeal that law, but succeed mainly in redirecting the costs of stupidity from the stupid to society as a whole. Oh. So it *is* legitmate to swindle senile dowagers of their investments? Interesting sidelight of my 419 research: one likely target are Utah Mormans: - Helpful intentions. - Not averse to making a buck. - Highly insulated from the real world. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
(off-list) Re: Cypherpunks List Info
on Sun, Sep 23, 2001 at 08:00:00PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Cypherpunks Distributed Remailers list info. Last updated: 8/22/01 This message is also available at http://www.lne.com/cpunk Instructions on unsubscribing from the list can be found below. The Cypherpunks list is a mailing list for discussing cryptography and its effect on soceity. It is not a moderated list (but see exceptions ^^^ sp: society. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
Re: Preparedness (ultralight attack on statue of liberty)
on Sat, Sep 22, 2001 at 08:08:06AM -0700, David Honig ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 09:45 PM 9/21/01 -0700, Tim May wrote: Any attack with VX or similar nerve gas would kill tens of thousands fairly quickly. Gas masks of no use, due to lack of coverage of all exposed skin, and leakage. Gas masks mainly useful for mustard gas, that sort of thing. Leakage yes, but I think a lot of people get sick or die (eg in a subway attack) because of inhaling the gas phase. Of course if you touch the liquid you're toast. I'd think an alkali decontaminizing layer in the filter would help with the nerve agents. You fail to understand. Nerve gas is absorbed through the skin. A containment suit is required, a gas mask, alkali or otherwise, is worthless of itself. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: PGP author under fire for terrorist use of crypto
on Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 01:12:27PM -0400, Matthew Gaylor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 12:57:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Craig Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: PGP author under fire for terrorist use of crypto Matt: Don't know if this is of interest or not. It appears that Phil Zimmermann is taking heat directly over the whole crypto - terrorist thing. Details at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1234-2001Sep20.html Terrorism is the art of what's now known as asymmetric warfare. It uses the enemy's own strengths against itself. With the very barest of resources: a few score operatives, basic training, minimal communications. It can achieve impressive amounts of damage, particularly against soft targets, taken unawares. My own assessment of 9/11 is that the attacks were likely only 1/3 to 1/4 effective. Three of four known aircraft reached their targets. A fourth was disabled by an unarmed, unprepared, civilian force. Appearances are that another two to four aircraft were originally planned to be involveed in the attacks, as well as other possible incidents based on other modalities. The truth is that within an hour of the initial incidents, the country was on a war footing. Stories now indicate that Air Force fighter intercepts were scrambled against the two planes targeted for the WTC and were 12 minutes from intercept at the time of the attacks. Shoot-to-kill appears to have been ordered against Flight 93. Warnings are now circulating for possible incidents on Saturday. Our resources were used against us: aircraft, freedoms, communications networks, cars, highways. Crypto is yet another tool. It may be used for good or evil, and in balance I suspect it does far more good than otherwise. Phil has no more cause than any of the rest of us to feel regret. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Pentagon said to eye nuclear attack against terrorists
on Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 11:14:08PM -0500, Jim Choate ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20010920a6.htm Speculation intended for third-party consumption, largely in the vicinity of 44.500 E, 33.300 N. -- Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of Gestalt don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html PGP signature
