Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Jan 14, 2004, at 3:51 PM, bgt wrote: On Wed, 2004-01-14 at 14:15, cubic-dog wrote: On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, bgt wrote: ... Anyway... "be productive or be deported" does not constitute I don't think I said that, you put it in quotes, implying I did. It's an okay paraphrase though, so we'll take it like that. Yes, it was intended as a paraphrase. More like I said, without regard to what you DEALT for, the is no impetus on the "man" to pay what was agreed to. If you don't like it, you will be deported. This does a nice job of creating For currently illegal immigrants, you're right: the contract (the agreement to do x work for y money is a contract, however informal) is illegal and so unenforceable. This leaves these workers open to theft by "stiffing" as you put it. Most workers are paid bimonthly, and many are paid weekly. Some day laborers are even paid daily. This makes the "float" a maximum of a couple of weeks, and more likely a week or less. Any laborer who has not been paid can walk away and be out the week or less in pay. (Personally, I would not want to be an employer who stiffed a Mexican...one might find one's tires slashed or one's daughter's throat slashed ear to ear...or just a bullet in the dark. This kind of "stiffing" such as you two are debating almost never happens, for various good reasons. The guest worker program will legalize these immigrants (for a period of time), so the contract will be legal and become enforceable. Why do you think the guest worker program will make it worse in this regard for currently illegal immigrants? This is the weakest objection to this program I've heard yet. The wholesale opening of the door to those who "cut in line" (ahead of those from England, Denmark, Romania, India, etc. who waited patiently in line by submitting their immigration requests) is deplorable. Either open the borders or not, but surely don't reward those who cut in line. Oh, and the march of 2.5 million Mexicans and Latins from the south is already underway...they got the message the last time when the Simpson-Mazzoli "one time amnesty, just this one time!" happened, and millions more arrived. Now that the new Mexican immigration is happening, several million more will arrive. By the way, there is no acceptable hospital in the region near me because "legal but won't pay their bills" Mexicans have utterly swamped the W*ts*nv*ll* Community Hospital. It is unable to collect from those who show up at its emergency room (and must be treated, by law) that it is now running short on so many things that it is not safe to use. (They'll probably threaten to sue me, so I'll disguise the above name.) I'd favor letting all in who want to get in, provided nobody demands that I pay for any services for them. Any services, not just "few" services. There are a couple of billion in the world who would gladly come to America if the borders were open...I'm not exaggerating at all. Between 1 and 2 billion, at least. Let them come. But let them starve when 950 million of them find no work and a limit to charity by the do-gooder minority. Let piles of their corpses fertilize our crops...it's why God made bulldozers. --Tim May "Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" --Unknown Usenet Poster
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Jan 13, 2004, at 8:41 AM, Steve Schear wrote: At 11:23 PM 1/12/2004, Tim May wrote: During the Carnivore debate, I argued that mandatory placement of computer agents in systems was equivalent to quartering troops: < http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg03198.html> "The Third Amendment, about quartering troops, is seldom-applied. "But if I own a computer and I rent out accounts to others and the FBI comes to me and says "We are putting a Carnivore computer in your place," how else can this be interpreted _except_ as a violation of the Third?" This was from July, 2000. I believe it also came up in earlier discussions, including in a panel I was on with Michael Froomkin at a CFP in 1995. I could assume this also applies to the the TCPS (if it is ever required) and FCC's new mandate that DTV video devices sold in the U.S. after December 31, 2004 include a 'cop' inside to enforce compliance with the broadcast flag. In its purest form, I think not. If Alice is told that she must place some device in something she owns, which was the example with Carnivore, then the Third applies (she has been told to "quarter troops," abstractly, in her home). If, however, Bob is told that in order to build television sets or VCRs he must include various noise suppression devices, as he must, or closed-captioning features, as he must, or the V-chip (as I believe he must, though I never hear of it being talked about, as we all figured would be the case), or the Macrovision devices (as may be the case), then this is a matter of regulation of those devices. Whether Alice then _chooses_ to buy such devices with "troops already living in them," abstractly speaking, is her choice. Now the manufacturer may have a claim, but government regulation of manufacturers has been going on for a very long time, and unless a manufacturer can claim that the devices must be in his own home or operated in his premises, he cannot make a very strong case that _he_ is the one being affected by the quartering. The pure form of the Third (in this abstract sense) is when government knocks on one's door and says "Here is something you must put inside your house." By the way, there have been a bunch of cases where residents of a neighborhood were ordered to leave so that SWAT teams could be in their houses to monitor a nearby house where a hostage situation had developed. (It is possible that in each house they occupied they received uncoerced permission to occupy the houses, but I don't think this was always the case; however, I can't cite a concrete case of this. Maybe Lexis has one.) If this takeover of houses to launch a raid is not a "black letter law" case of the government quartering troops in residences, nothing is. Exigent circumstance, perhaps, but so was King George's need to quarter his troops. --Tim May ""Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." --Patrick Henry
Inviting the vampires into the house
By the way, something else from that ACLU site I cited (and sighted): --begin excerpt-- IN YOUR HOME 1. If the police knock and ask to enter your home, you don't have to admit them unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. 2. However, in some emergency situations (like when a person is screaming for help inside, or when the police are chasing someone) officers are allowed to enter and search your home without a warrant. 3. If you are arrested, the police can search you and the area close by. If you are in a building, "close by" usually means just the room you are in. --end excerpt-- This is why one should _never_ invite cops into a house, even for a chat. They may use nearly any grounds to make an "arrest" (again, arrest does not necessarily mean a booking, or a formal charging, just an arrest of one's freedom to move about or leave). Once an arrest has been made, they may then search the premises (as above) based on this arrest. And anything they see in other areas "in plain sight," such as bottles of pills or a rifle case, etc., may be used to expand the search. I've also heard it reported that it is _easier_ for cops to arrest a person if he steps _outside_ his house. Not sure why, but it may have to do with some reptilian brain memory of "a man's home is his castle" or even to court precedent related to the above example. In other words, arresting a person in his home opens the home up to warrantless searches "so avoid this if possible." It seems to me the ideal balance is then this: -- if cops knock and one decides to answer the door rather than hole up or shoot it out, then: -- talk to them from inside the home -- don't invite them in -- and don't step out -- keep them on the outside and oneself on the inside Of course, answering the door and, after hearing what their business is (it might be something unrelated to one's own legal status, such as a warning about an impending flood, etc.), one can and probably _should_ say "I have nothing to say to you." Then they can make the next move, either escalating things to an arrest or presenting a duly-signed search warrant (which one can check...and my idea of "checking" would mean closing my door and calling the court house to verify that the named judge did in fact sign a warrant for my addressthis is what "duly signed" can only mean, that the presentee gets to check it). (I would never say "Talk to my lawyer" for two reasons. First, I don't keep a lawyer on retainer or even know the name of one. Second, lawyers bill by the quarter hour...I recall in the case of a probate matter I was involved in, that merely phoning the lawyer to ask a simple question showed up as a $75 charge on his probate fee bill. And this guy was just a probate lawyer shlub, not even a highly paid Jew criminal lawyer! There is no way I will let a nosy cop run up a tab with some shyster.) --Tim May "The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Jan 12, 2004, at 10:55 AM, bgt wrote: On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 01:26, Tim May wrote: Have you done this since 9/11? I know that in my [red]neck of the woods, I would without question be spending a few days in the system for this. That's what sniper rifles with low light scopes are for: kill one or both or all of the cops who arrested you in this way. Cops who abuse the criminal system and violate constitutional rights blatantly have earned killing. This has probably been mentioned here before, but another interesting approach is what justicefiles.org used to do (I'm not sure what the status of the site is, it seems to be down now). They collected the names of police officers (particularly ones known to be abusive of their authority) in King County, WA and published that + all public information they could find on them (including SSN's, addresses, phone numbers, etc). Of course the police tried to take the site down but the court upheld the site's right to publish any publicly available information about the cops (I believe they excepted the SSN's). The First Amendment is quite clear about prior restraint and censorship. Not only is it legal for "The Progressive" to publish details of how to make a hydrogen bomb, and for the "New York Times" to publish the Pentagon Papers, but it is legal to publish SS numbers when they become available. Now civil actions are another can of worms, and Bill Gates, for example, may sue somebody for publishing his SS number. Or I may sue the U.S. Marshal's Service for illegally using my SS number as a legal ID (which my SS card, still in my possession from when I got it in 1969) says is to be used for tax and Social Security purposes ONLY and MAY NOT be used for identifcation) and letting it circulate over the Net. But such civil suits--by Gates, by cops, by me--are NOT the same as prior restraint on publishing words. (Though of course this is only the _theory_. The fact that all of the Bill of Rights, except perhaps the Third, have been violated by the Evildoers in government is well-known.) --Tim May
Arrest and Identification
Reminder about talking to cops, being stopped and held by cops, being told to produce ID, etc. As there's much of the old chatter here about these issues, I dug up the ACLU card that is recommended to be carried by all persons. Or read and understood. Here's a Web version. A PDF version for efficient printing is also available: <http://archive.aclu.org/issues/criminal/bustcardtext.html> A couple of paragraphs relevant to the current discussion about whether being stopped for question is "arrest," whether ID is required to be carried, etc.: --begin excerpt 2. You don't have to answer a police officer's questions, but you must show your driver's license and registration when stopped in a car. In other situations, you can't legally be arrested for refusing to identify yourself to a police officer. 3. You don't have to consent to any search of yourself, your car or your house. If you DO consent to a search, it can affect your rights later in court. If the police say they have a search warrant, ASK TO SEE IT. 4. Do not interfere with, or obstruct the police -- you can be arrested for it. IF YOU ARE STOPPED FOR QUESTIONING 1. It's not a crime to refuse to answer questions, but refusing to answer can make the police suspicious about you. You can't be arrested merely for refusing to identify yourself on the street. 2. Police may "pat-down" your clothing if they suspect a concealed weapon. Don't physically resist, but make it clear that you don't consent to any further search. 3. Ask if you are under arrest. If you are, you have a right to know why. --end excerpt-- --Tim May "'I'm sorry that Tim is being a bother again. He has a long history of being obnoxious and threatening. So far, he has not broken any laws. We have talked to the authorities about him on numerous occasions. They have chosen to watch but not act. Please feel free to notify me f he does anything that is beyond rude and actually violates any laws and I will immediately inform the authorities. Thank You Don Fredrickson
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Jan 12, 2004, at 10:40 AM, bgt wrote: On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 01:07, Tim May wrote: On Jan 11, 2004, at 2:12 PM, bgt wrote: On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 13:57, Tim May wrote: I don't know if he did, but of course there is no requirement in the U.S. that citizen-units either carry or present ID. Unless they are driving a car or operating a few selected classes of heavy machinery. Many states do have laws allowing the police to detain a person for a period of time (varies by state) to ascertain the identity of that person, if they have reasonable suspicion that they are involved in a a crime. Duh. Yes, "arrests" are allowed, and have been in all states and in all Perhaps I wasn't very clear. That is (in many states, probably not all), a cop may stop (detain) someone on "reasonable suspicion", but it would still be illegal to arrest the person (since this would require "probably cause"). This has come up various times on the Net. I'm not a lawyer, but I take "arrest" to mean "not free to move on." As in a state of arrest (cognate to rest), arrested motion, arrested development. Hence the common question: "Am I under arrest?," with the follow-up: "If not, then I'll be on my way." Arrest is not the same thing as being booked, of course. Many who are arrested are never booked. Arrest, to this nonlawyer, is when a cop tells me I am not free to move as I wish, that he will handcuff me or worse if I try to move away from him. I expect our millions of lawyers and hundreds of billions of court hours have produced a range of definitions, from "the cop wants to know why you're reading a particular magazine, and will cuff you if you give him any lip" to "all black men within a 5 block radius are being detained for questioning, but are not under formal arrest" to "you're under arrest, put your hands behind your back" to shooting first and Mirandizing the corpse. I am under arrest if I am in an arrested state of movement, that is, not free to move as I wish. In these states, at this point the person is required by law to identify himself, and in some states even to provide proof of identification. If the person cannot or will not do this, it is legal in those states (though as we know, blatantly unconstitutional) to further detain or even arrest the person until their identity can be determined. Again, people need to read up on the Lawson case. And absent an internal travel passport, there is no requirement to carry ID. That some states haven't heard about the Lawson case, or the Fourth Amendment, is no excuse. You must mean /mandatory/ "state ID". Every state I've lived in have State ID's that are (voluntarily) issued to residents that can't get or don't want a driver's license. All of these states grant their ID the same status as a driver's license for identification purposes (anywhere that accepts driver's license as valid ID must also accept the state ID). As I said, there is no requirement to carry ID except when doing certain things (like driving). Whether some or most states will issue licenses to those who don't or can't drive is irrelevant: they are not REQUIRED to be carried, so not having one cannot possibly be a crime. Read up on the Lawson case in San Diego. (Thanks Steve for the links). I provided "Lawson" and "San Diego." Plenty of stuff to find hundreds of discussions. I favor giving unique information sufficient in a Google search, not providing pre-digested search URLs. --Tim May "We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter- day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability." --George H. W. Bush, "A World Transformed", 1998
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Jan 11, 2004, at 2:12 PM, bgt wrote: On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 13:57, Tim May wrote: I don't know if he did, but of course there is no requirement in the U.S. that citizen-units either carry or present ID. Unless they are driving a car or operating a few selected classes of heavy machinery. Many states do have laws allowing the police to detain a person for a period of time (varies by state) to ascertain the identity of that person, if they have reasonable suspicion that they are involved in a a crime. Duh. Yes, "arrests" are allowed, and have been in all states and in all territories since the beginning of things. The alternative to what you say is that all would remain free until their actual conviction and sentencing. I'm not aware of any laws that specifically require a person to actually carry ID, but when I was stopped in NV several years ago, walking back to my home from a nearby grocery store at about 3am, supposedly because a 7-11 nearby had just been robbed, I was told that if I did not present a valid state ID I would be arrested, taken to the precinct HQ, fingerprinted, and held until I could be positively ID'd. There are driver's licenses, for driving. And there are passports, for entering the U.S. (and other countries, but we don't care about that issue here). Those neither driving nor attempting to enter the U.S. need carry no such pieces of documentation. There is no "national ID," nor even "state ID." Period. Read up on the Lawson case in San Diego. --Tim May "As my father told me long ago, the objective is not to convince someone with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which he later convinces himself." -- David Friedman
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Jan 11, 2004, at 11:18 AM, Steve Schear wrote: At 06:53 PM 1/10/2004, Steve Furlong wrote: On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 19:02, J.A. Terranson wrote: > What good is a Jury when the "judge" can pick and choose which arguments and > evidence you can provide in support of your case? I've occasionally handed out pamphlets on jury nullification outside the local county courthouse. Never been arrested for it, but I've caught a raft of shit from cops. The cops were acting, presumably, under direction from the judges or maybe the DA. Those guys just hate jurors thinking for themselves, you know. Did you carry and present ID? steve I don't know if he did, but of course there is no requirement in the U.S. that citizen-units either carry or present ID. Unless they are driving a car or operating a few selected classes of heavy machinery. When I was surrounded by some cops who accused me of planting a bomb to blow up Reichsminister Clinton and his family, I refuse to "show them some ID." I also refused to let them look in my bag. Despite their bluster, they had no grounds for their belief, no grounds for a Terry stop search of my papers, and no grounds to arrest me. So they neither searched my papers forcibly nor arrested me. They did, however, order me to leave the grounds of Stanford University, almost making me late for a talk before Margaret Rader's cyberspace law class, scheduled long, long before the First Fascist scheduled _his_ trip to Stanford. --Tim May
Re: Canada issues levy on non-removable memory (for MP3 players)
On Jan 11, 2004, at 8:24 AM, Adam wrote: I know this story is quite a bit old, but I really have to wonder how legal this levy is. http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/news/c20032004nr-e.html "The Board also sets for the first time a levy on non-removable memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders (such as MP3 players) at $2 for each recorder with a memory capacity of up to 1 Gigabyte (Gb), $15 for each recorder with memory capacity of more than 1 Gb and up to 10 Gbs, and $25 for each recorder with memory capacity of more than 10 GBs." It just seems to me to be a bit sketchy to tax intended illegal usage. I mean, that'd be like taxing condoms b/c of prostitution. Would something like this go over in the US? I wonder ... It already has, many times. Directly parallel to the Canadian tax is the tax on blank media for music recording, part of the Home Recording Act of 1991. (Or close to that year...Google for details if interested.) This tax was placed on blanks ostensibly to recompense recording artists for taped music. Less directly parallel, but certain "sin taxes," are the various and very high taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, etc. And the exorbitant "luxury taxes" on various expensive things like certain kinds of jewelry, yachts, expensive cars, etc. And various shakedowns of casinos with special taxes, such as Schwarz nigger's "demand" that Indian casinos in California "share their profits" with the state to help with the deficit. And various collectivists and fascists have proposed taxes on ammunition, ostensibly to recompense victims for being shot. (Ignoring the fact that what it would do is penalize those who practice, shooting 200 or more rounds at a trip to the range, while having no effect on the typical gangsta negro or Mexican with less than one box of ammo to his name, but still using his "piece" to shoot several people. The recreational shooter ends up paying 99.9% of the tax, the gangsta pays a dollar or two per box.) The point is, the U.S. taxes what political animals call "sin" quite a bit. --Tim May
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Jan 9, 2004, at 10:17 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Its hard to square the Founder's purpose of providing the common citizen, through a militia (which a National Guard), with an effective physical deterrent to governmental tyranny with many restrictions on the type of weapons a citizen in good standing may keep and bear. Though allowing the guy next door to own a nuke or a F-15 may be going too far, its not unreasonable for any of us to keep and bear any arm that our police forces (including S.W.A.T. teams) field. Where does this "citizen in good standing" stuff come from? I see it a lot from what I will call "weak Second Amendment" supporters. They talk about "good citizens" and "law-abiding citizens" as having Second Amendment rights. If someone has been apprehended and convicted and imprisoned for a real crime, then of course various of their normal rights are no longer in forced. If, however, they are out of prison then all of their rights, including speech, religion, assembly, firearms, due process, security of their possessions and property, speedy trial, blah blah blah are of course in force. As a felon, which I am, do I not have First Amendment rights? As a felon, and certainly not a citizen in good standing, have I lost my other rights? To all who say "Yes," including most of the Eurotrash collectivists here, I say your legacy shall be smoke. Tens of millions, perhaps billions, need to be sent up the chimneys. --Tim May "The great object is that every man be armed and everyone who is able may have a gun." --Patrick Henry "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." --Alexander Hamilton
So many statists
On Jan 3, 2004, at 3:01 PM, bgt wrote: (Jeez, I just recently got back onto this list after a several-year hiatus. How the hell did so many statists ever get the idea that ubiquitous cryptography would ever further their goals? Or are they just here to distract us with statism vs liberty type political debates so we can't get any real work done??) Most of those now posting (and maybe most of those subscribed, but I am only speculating) are various eurotrash lefties and anti-globalist activists who decided that "crypto is cool" after their anti-corporate, anti-choice rallies in Seattle, Milano, and other cities shut down by the Yippie marches and barricades. I assume they figured that since they were using PGP to communicate with their fellow anti-capitalists, that crypto must be cool (I'm not sure if they favor the negro term, "bad," or the traditional term, "good," so I'll use the term of my generation, "cool.") Are they confused? Yep. Welcome to the Gen X and Gen Y (and soon) the Gen Z world. Crypto be bad, dog! This nigga be bouncin'! I'm actually glad to see that Cypherpunks nodes are winding down, that we no longer have monthly meetings, and that the Movement is ending. Better that than to see it hijacked by the eurotrash lefties, New York collectivists, and anti-globalist warriors against free trade. --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.
Re: Education Be For Whitey
On Jan 3, 2004, at 9:23 AM, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 10:41 PM 1/2/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: And until the Liberatarian utopia you speak of comes to pass, One could close all public schools and voucher tomorrow. I came up with a plan which is workable immediately and which does not require substantive changes: Put a partition down the middle of a school building. One side is "Blue," the other side is "Red." Blue and Red have different academic orientations, different goals. What the goals are and how they are set might arise in different ways, e.g., by a vote of parents, or the backgrounds of the teachers in each, and so on. Not so important. What is important is what follows. As the Blue and Red sides evolve, with perhaps one focusing on academic excellence and the other on "social skills," parents could move their children between the sides (say, on a semester by semester basis, to reduce thrashing). As the sizes of the Blue and Red sizes change, the partition would be moved. This gives "policy choice" within a particular school building, which is a lot less expensive than busing students long distances to get to "magnet" schools (science, performing arts, crack dealing, etc.). --Tim May "They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote." --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to impose a police state
Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Jan 2, 2004, at 12:03 AM, Tim May wrote:
So Kennedy's liberals scratched their heads and came up with a new
plan. "Relief" would be converted to a series of state and national
programs, no longer handled locally. And the bad connotations of
"relief" would be changed by the new and positive name "entitlement."
Money handed out to various folks would be their "entitlement,"
something they were _owed_. Other related names would be "social
services" and, of course, liberal mention of "children" and
"nutrition." Ergo programs like WIC ("Women, Infants, and Children").
Ergo, "Head Start."
And I should have elaborated on the family system effects of the new
welfare system: since the "entitlements" were not given to families
with husbands in the household, this made marriage a bad idea for those
wanting to get welfare.
A young girl could go from the bottom of the pecking order in her
household to the top in her own apartment, with an income from welfare
that increased with each baby she had. So we had the spectacle of
14-year-old girls being given their own apartments by Big Brother, paid
for with taxes taken from working suckers.
The effects of this are so corrosive as to practically be unexplainable
to normal people: households solely dependent on handouts from
government, fathers completely absent (except in sneak visits), a
disrespect for those who work, the boys in the household anxious to
hang out on the streets below rather than be with Momma, the crime that
comes from this kind of hanging out, self-loathing (it seems likely)
that leads to lashing out at "whitey," and a perpetuating cycle as the
young girls seek to get their own "cribs" so the process can repeat and
expand.
This is why so many black families today are into their third or even
fourth generation of welfare life.
By the way, part of the reason Kennedy wanted to "remove the stigma of
relief" was because the decade of the 1950s had been especially bad for
the urban poor. Many blacks had moved from farms in the south to cities
like Washington, New York, Cincinnati, Oakland, Chicago, etc. Partly
they had moved to work in factories during the war, partly because
automation on the farms had displaced manual laborers, partly because
they heard of the success of other blacks who had moved north.
But they were moving into the cities just as the whites were leaving.
(And the whites were not leaving because the blacks were coming
in...rather, the new jobs were increasingly in the suburbs, and as
highways and freeways and ring roads were built around cities, and as
cars became plentiful, and as families grew, many of the city-born
whites were moving into the massive new subdivisions being built out in
the suburbs.)
So the blacks got to the inner cities with mostly only manual labor
skills, just as such jobs were vanishing under automation and through a
shift to the suburbs.
Now what government _should have done_ circa the early 1960s is this:
Nothing. Except to cut taxes to encourage even more business, and to
maybe point out to blacks that they should slow down their move to the
cities. (By the way, the same move to the cities was happening in other
countries, which is why Mexico City now has something like 20 million
residents, most of them very poor.)
But instead of letting the dice fall where they may, letting the bad
effects discourage other blacks from moving to the cities, Kennedy set
his advisors to the problem of solving "urban poverty." They expanded
welfare and entitlements, ostensibly because America "could afford it"
(the 1950s having been a prosperous period).
Precisely the wrong thing to do. It encouraged even more blacks to
flock to the cities, and once started, once established, the welfare
spigot could not be turned off, could not be denied to the newcomers.
Whoops.
And none of the planners, I expect, saw the effects of the law of
unintended consequences, that they would disincentive blacks from
seeking hard jobs, that multigenerational welfare would become the
norm, and that blacks would be seen by those doing so well in the
rapidly-expanding, prosperous suburbs as some kind of throwback to
plantation life. The various "demands" by black leaders, the reverse
racism ("honkie mofo"), the whole hatred for learning ("reading be for
whitey") all combined with the welfare state in these cities to create
this gutterization of the negro.
Even when the full magnitude of this developing train wreck was obvious
even to the liberals, they didn't pull back from the brink and say
"Let's stop this train wreck." Nope, they said the problem was "not
enough money." So benefits were expanded in the 1970s, with more
Medicare, Medical, larger payments...the idea was to
Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Jan 1, 2004, at 8:20 PM, J.A. Terranson wrote: Tim May wrote... In conclusion, your Bedford-Stuy student who doesn't see the point to studying math will never be a math researcher, or a physicist, or a chemist, or anything else of that sort. So no point in trying to convince him to study his math. Why the BedSty student Tim? Perhaps because I was replying to "Tyler Durden," where he wrote: "I'll tell you a story. Back in the late 1980s I taught at a notorious HS in Bedford Stuyvesant. 90% of my students were black." You liberals see "racism" even when people reply to the points raised by others. --Tim May
Fwd: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
I composed and sent this message, and one following it, last night. Lne.com has not yet forwarded either, 10 hours later. I checked Eric's message and he said new _subscriptions_ will no longer be accepted after 04-01-01 and mail will no no longer be forwarded after 04-01-15. Perhaps he is halting operations early. All things must end. Begin forwarded message: From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: January 2, 2004 12:03:39 AM PST To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey On Jan 1, 2004, at 10:06 PM, Riad S. Wahby wrote: "J.A. Terranson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Why the BedSty student Tim? Uhh, read more carefully. He was responding to a specific point from Tyler Durden. You have some incredible moments of lucidity and insight, and occasionally, we are the lucky recipients of these fleeting events - but then, just as sure as the sun coming over the horizon every morning of every day, you slip back into the pseudo-intellectual racist crap. What's wit dat? I don't think Tim is racist as such. He hates everyone equally. :-) But seriously, calling it racism seems wrong-headed. Racism is "I hate black people because they're black." Tim hates (some, most, all?) black people because he percieves them as benefitting unfairly from his hard work. I'm pretty sure, all other things being equal, he wouldn't hate a black person who, through his own hard work and without taking a penny from the government, turned himself into a successful, tax-paying "source." Or, at least, I'm not convinced he would hate such a person, which is to say I'm not convinced he's a racist. I admire many negroes. Shelby Steele, who wrote "The Content of our Character," for example. And Thomas Sowell, an even more prolific author (and Stanford professor). And Niger Innes (son of the lefty Roy Innes...a lot of children of 60s liberal negroes are now libertarian or conservative, e.g., Adam Clayton Powell's son). And Clarence Thomas (who has argued forcefully that the Supremes ought to do a very thorough review of gun laws, with the hint that the right decision would be to restore the Second Amendment to first class status). And a bunch of others, including Ward Connerly, of California, who has been leading the effort to have "race" removed as the basis for _any_ government actions, including hiring quotas, special admissions requirements for negroes and Asians (at opposite ends of the test score spectrum), and so on. I don't admire the politics of Condie Rice and Colin Powell, but there is little doubt that they are accomplished, bright people. My problem is that negroes are 80% in solidarity on a bunch of disgusting, anti-liberty things: affirmative action, racial quotas, minority setasides (but not for successful minorities--they want limits on the number of Asians admitted to UC schools), welfare, increased benefits, etc. Further, they, as a whole, have a "plantation mentality": always demanding that Massa in the Big White House give them more stuff. Instead of excelling and grabbing the stuff for themselves, as Chinese and Korean and Indian people have done in America, they think setasides and quotas and special favoritism is "owed" to them. I used to not care much about what they did or thought. When I entered college in 1970 I expected to mix with a bunch of different sorts of people. What I found was that the negroes all sat at the same tables in the dining halls, that whites who sat near them were chased off, and that we non-blacks, including Asians, Indians, South Americans, whites, etc., could mix with each other, but not with the "Panthers." And they ghettoized themselves into "Black Studies," which they had "demanded" a couple of years earlier and had just gotten in 1969. In 1972 they formed various militant groups on campus. One obnoxious woman named Judy became the student association president. When she didn't like a decision, she ordered the Panthers, her enforcers, to bar the doors and not let anyone out until the decision was reversed. It was. I am not exaggerating. I included this, and the theft of ASU funds, and the henchmen, and similar leftist actions by others (including the MeCHA "Aztlanos"), in a letter to the Regents of the University of California. It was published in the school newspaper, in a full-paged spread, and I got replies from the governor of the state, Ronald Reagan. I met with the Chancellor and he agreed that the situation at the campus was deplorable, but that in the interests of keeping the peace with the negroes and Mexicans, given the time (1973), there was little they could do. He promised that his office was looking into the allegations and already knew about most of them. When I joined Intel in 1974, I saw plenty of Chinese,
Fwd: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
Second of the items lne.com never sent to the list (that I have seen,
9-10 hours later).
Begin forwarded message:
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: January 2, 2004 1:02:20 AM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Jan 2, 2004, at 12:03 AM, Tim May wrote:
So Kennedy's liberals scratched their heads and came up with a new
plan. "Relief" would be converted to a series of state and national
programs, no longer handled locally. And the bad connotations of
"relief" would be changed by the new and positive name "entitlement."
Money handed out to various folks would be their "entitlement,"
something they were _owed_. Other related names would be "social
services" and, of course, liberal mention of "children" and
"nutrition." Ergo programs like WIC ("Women, Infants, and Children").
Ergo, "Head Start."
And I should have elaborated on the family system effects of the new
welfare system: since the "entitlements" were not given to families
with husbands in the household, this made marriage a bad idea for
those wanting to get welfare.
A young girl could go from the bottom of the pecking order in her
household to the top in her own apartment, with an income from welfare
that increased with each baby she had. So we had the spectacle of
14-year-old girls being given their own apartments by Big Brother,
paid for with taxes taken from working suckers.
The effects of this are so corrosive as to practically be
unexplainable to normal people: households solely dependent on
handouts from government, fathers completely absent (except in sneak
visits), a disrespect for those who work, the boys in the household
anxious to hang out on the streets below rather than be with Momma,
the crime that comes from this kind of hanging out, self-loathing (it
seems likely) that leads to lashing out at "whitey," and a
perpetuating cycle as the young girls seek to get their own "cribs" so
the process can repeat and expand.
This is why so many black families today are into their third or even
fourth generation of welfare life.
By the way, part of the reason Kennedy wanted to "remove the stigma of
relief" was because the decade of the 1950s had been especially bad
for the urban poor. Many blacks had moved from farms in the south to
cities like Washington, New York, Cincinnati, Oakland, Chicago, etc.
Partly they had moved to work in factories during the war, partly
because automation on the farms had displaced manual laborers, partly
because they heard of the success of other blacks who had moved north.
But they were moving into the cities just as the whites were leaving.
(And the whites were not leaving because the blacks were coming
in...rather, the new jobs were increasingly in the suburbs, and as
highways and freeways and ring roads were built around cities, and as
cars became plentiful, and as families grew, many of the city-born
whites were moving into the massive new subdivisions being built out
in the suburbs.)
So the blacks got to the inner cities with mostly only manual labor
skills, just as such jobs were vanishing under automation and through
a shift to the suburbs.
Now what government _should have done_ circa the early 1960s is this:
Nothing. Except to cut taxes to encourage even more business, and to
maybe point out to blacks that they should slow down their move to the
cities. (By the way, the same move to the cities was happening in
other countries, which is why Mexico City now has something like 20
million residents, most of them very poor.)
But instead of letting the dice fall where they may, letting the bad
effects discourage other blacks from moving to the cities, Kennedy set
his advisors to the problem of solving "urban poverty." They expanded
welfare and entitlements, ostensibly because America "could afford it"
(the 1950s having been a prosperous period).
Precisely the wrong thing to do. It encouraged even more blacks to
flock to the cities, and once started, once established, the welfare
spigot could not be turned off, could not be denied to the newcomers.
Whoops.
And none of the planners, I expect, saw the effects of the law of
unintended consequences, that they would disincentive blacks from
seeking hard jobs, that multigenerational welfare would become the
norm, and that blacks would be seen by those doing so well in the
rapidly-expanding, prosperous suburbs as some kind of throwback to
plantation life. The various "demands" by black leaders, the reverse
racism ("honkie mofo"), the whole hatred for learning ("reading be for
whitey") all combined with the welfare state in these cities to create
this gutterization of the negro.
Even when the full magnitude of this developing train wreck was
obvious even to the liberals
Re: Sources and Sinks
On Jan 1, 2004, at 8:26 PM, Justin wrote:
Tim May (2004-01-02 02:42Z) wrote:
Bob, a crack addict collecting "disability" or welfare or other
government freebies, works 0% of his time for the government/society.
("Dat not true. I gots to stands in line to get my check increased!")
Do those who have previously been in the workforce, in your opinion,
have the right to reclaim through welfare any amount up to that they've
paid through taxes to the entity providing welfare/unemployment? Or is
all unemployment money Pluto's fruit?
No, as there is no "fund" that this money is in. Once taxes are paid
in, the money has gone out to crack addicts, Halliburton, welfare
whores (excuse me, "hoes"), foreign dictators like Mubarek and Sharon,
and so on.
In fact, the estimated overall debt is something like $30-40 trillion.
I've outlined how this number is arrived at a few times in the past. As
there are about 100 million tax filers in the U.S.--the other 175
million being children, spouses, prisoners, welfare recipients, illegal
aliens, non-filers, etc.--a simple calculation shows the average
indebtedness per tax filer is around $300,000 or more. This is far, far
beyond what the average household owns in total. Because the U.S. has
been "charging it" for the past 40 years. Quibblers will say we can
reduce this indebtedness by selling off government-owned lands, which
would be a good start. Or be taxing corporations more, but this still
ends up with the individual tax filers, ultimately. Or by devaluing the
dollar dramatically, which is the likeliest strategy the kleptocrats
will follow, after gettting enough advance warning to get their own
assets out of dollar-denominated vehicles.
So, you see, there IS NO FUND one can withdraw money from.
Anyone claiming new welfare benefits requires even more thefts from
those still working.
Just because money was stolen from you doesn't give you any right to
steal from me.
--Tim May
Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Jan 1, 2004, at 7:44 PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote: On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, Tim May wrote: A few moments of thought will show the connection between replicators and general assemblers. A general assembler can make another general assembler, hence all general assemblers are replicators. And in fact this is necessary to make mechanosynthesis nanotech viable, as otherwise it takes all the multibillion dollar wafer fabs in the world, if they could make nanoscale things, to make some scum on the bottom of a test tube. Or a few-dollar fermentation tanks with suitable bacteria, once its genome is tweaked in required way. Who ever said that the nanoparticles we need can't be proteins or organic molecules with required shape/properties? If viral particles can self-assemble from host-cell-synthetized proteins, if complicated structures like bacterial propulsion systems - or even whole plants - can be formed, why not nanomechanical systems? Why bother with assembling machines when they could be grown? I hope I didn't screw up my understanding of "nanosynthesis". If it is "build anything you want by telling the general assembler", then this won't work and would need a lab; but for mass-producing nnoparticles, eg. surface coatings or elements for camera or memory arrays, biotech should be good enough. Which is why I was careful to say "mechanosynthesis" and even to qualify the type of replicator as "Drexler-style." We've had systems which can replicate in 25 minutes or so for as long as we've existed. But making bread is not the same thing as making computers, or Boeing 747s, or non-bread kinds of food. Specialized biologicals making specialized things is probably where "nanotechnology" will be a commercial success, but it just ain't real nanotech. --Tim May
Sources and Sinks
The jabber about how poor people are actually paying for the successful
is beyond belief. All sorts of arguments are being made about how poor
people somehow pay for the infrastructure the wealthy exploit.
And the chestnut about how tax breaks aid the wealth disproportionately
is once again brought out.
(Yeah, if Alice was paying $50K in taxes and the taxes are cut to $40K
she "benefits more" than Bob the Wino who got no tax benefits because
he paid no taxes. Which misses the point about Alice's high taxes in
the first place.)
This is why the "Tax Freedom Day" approach is more useful. Tax freedom
day is of course the day when the average American or Brit or whatever
has stopped working for the government and has the rest of his income
for himself. For most years, this is estimated to around May-June. That
is, for almost half of a year a typical taxpayer is working for the
government.
Not a perfect measure, as it averages together folks of various tax
brackets, including the many in America who pay nothing (but it doesn't
assign a negative number to those who receive "net net" money from the
government). And it fails to take into account the double taxation
which a business owner faces: roughly a 50% tax on his profits, then
when the profits are disbursed to the owners of the corporation,
another 35-45% tax bite. For a business owner, he is effectively
working for the government for the first 70% of every year. Which means
only October-December is he working for his own interests.
Jabber about how poor people are actually receiving fewer tax benefits
than rich people misses the point of who's working for whom.
Alice, an engineer or pharmacist or perhaps a small business owner,
works between 40% and 70% of her time to pay money into government.
Bob, a crack addict collecting "disability" or welfare or other
government freebies, works 0% of his time for the government/society.
("Dat not true. I gots to stands in line to get my check increased!")
Alice is a source, Bob is a sink. Talk about how Alice gets benefits
ignores the fact that she's working for the government for a big chunk
of her life. Bob is not. Alice is a slave for the government, and
"society," so that Bob can lounge in his mobile home watching ESPN and
collecting a monthly check.
(I'd like to know why all of the folks here in California who are
getting "benefits" and "services" are not at my door on Saturday
morning to help me with my yard work. I'd like to know why finding
reliable yard workers has become nearly impossible in the past couple
of decades. "Will work for food" signs are a fucking joke...try hiring
one of those layabouts to actually do some work for food and watch the
sneers, or watch them threatening to fake a work injury if a shakedown
fee is not given to them. These people should be put in lime pits.)
When you hear John Young and Tyler Durden nattering about the "persons
of privilege" are reaping the rewards of a benificent government, think
about Alice and Bob and ask yourself who'se doing the real work. Ask
who're the sources and who're the sinks.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his
need...and I've got a game to watch on satellite...and where's my
check?"
--Tim May
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm
to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant." --John Stuart Mill
Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
I'll comment on the sociology after commenting on the physics: (actually, looking over your sociology, I see it's just more of the liberal whine and sleaze, so I won't bother commenting on it again) On Jan 1, 2004, at 6:34 PM, Tyler Durden wrote: Tim May wrote... Then your education in physics about von Neumann is sorely lacking. Von Neumann spend part of several years investigating self-replicating machines, using some ideas of Ulam and others. Well-covered in the cellular automata literature. As you can probably tell, I've never read many secondary or tertiary sources. (ie, as a physicist I've always considered it of dubious usefulness to read ABOUT physics...) I've only read the few more famous von Neumann journal articles I've come across w.r.t. cellular automata...I actually thought he had only written two or three, and I don't remember his ideas of self-replicating machines as including something like a GA, but then again it's easily possible I didn't pick up on the ramifications of what I was reading (which is granted when I was much younger). The last refuge of the scoundrel is to dismiss stuff as "secondary and tertiary sources," sort of like the fakers I used to meet in college who nattered on about having learned their physics from Newton's "Principia" instead of from secondary and tertiary sources. I encountered von Neumann's work on self-replicating machines when I was in high school (*). It came up in connection with the Fermi paradox and in issues of life (this was before the term "artificial life" was au courant...I was at the first A-LIFE Conference in '87...von Neumann couldn't make it). (* And no, I don't know mean my high school teachers taught us about von Neumann machines. 97% of the science I knew by the time I graduated from high school I'd learned on my own, from the usual "secondary and tertiary sources.") A few moments of thought will show the connection between replicators and general assemblers. A general assembler can make another general assembler, hence all general assemblers are replicators. And in fact this is necessary to make mechanosynthesis nanotech viable, as otherwise it takes all the multibillion dollar wafer fabs in the world, if they could make nanoscale things, to make some scum on the bottom of a test tube. GAs only start to become possible after the replication problem has been solved (which it has not, despite claims about self-reproducing software structures and train sets and the like). If you are not aware of basic developments, recall Wittgenstein's maxim: "Whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent." --Tim May "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Jan 1, 2004, at 12:50 PM, Tyler Durden wrote: Tim May wrote... First, please stop including the full text of the message you are replying to. Learn to use an editor, whether you ultimately top-post or bottom-post to edited fragments. I actually do this for a reason. If I'm not doing a line-by-line response (or sometimes even if I am), I want the original post from which I am excerpting to be visible, so that it can be referred to and determined I am not taking this particular quote out of context. The world has had well over ten years to adjust to using editors to supply sufficient context. However, the fact is that the school system sucks. It's a joke. Repeat offenders get bounced from school to school, wrecking classes and the environment everywhere they go. As "demanded" by the negroes and their Jew "speaker-to-negroes" handlers. (A high school teacher of mine pointed out that when someone "demands" something, reach for your gun. She left teaching not long after.) Teachers in most states have 25 classroom hours a week, a number matched nowhere in the world (as far as I've ever heard), and THAT'S in addition to homeroom and other duties. The cirriculum is a silly joke, watered down and watered down so that only someone who never shows up couldn't graduate. (And in black schools you'd be suprised how many times I've heard 'these kids can't learn...don't try'.) Because the Jews and negroes have demanded that all students be taught stuff they obviously will never use. Most innerr city mutants should be taught practical skills, not abstract stuff their previous education has been bereft of. So your whole "burnoff of the eaters" theme misses one critical element: direct contact with kids. If you yourself had seen and met kids you KNEW might actually have quite a talent for math, YES EVEN YOU might be tempted to give a crap, and see if just one or two might somehow be inspiried merely to do some homework. This is particularly true when you realize that you actually LIKE some of these kids, which are as fully human as you are, by the way. I don't give a shit whether they're "fully human" or not. I only care that they stop stealing from me, that liberal Jews stop saying that my taxes have to be increased to support these "fully human" bags of shit. The parallel I like is one we developed (in Ted Kaehler's nanotechnology study group in the early 90s) for looking at what a society and economy might look like where the costs of material production are as close to zero as one might imagine. That is, a society with full-blown general assemblers, i.e., von Neumann replicators at the molecular, mechano-synthesis, Drexler-type scale. How would goods be produced and sold? How would markets exist/ I don't remember reading any von Neumann where he discusses the idea of "general assemblers"I'm still not convinced the general physics of that idea works out, and I believe Freeman Dyson has had some similar doubts. But despite that there's a point here... Then your education in physics about von Neumann is sorely lacking. Von Neumann spend part of several years investigating self-replicating machines, using some ideas of Ulam and others. Well-covered in the cellular automata literature. In science fiction, one will find the general assembler literally referred to as the von Neumann probe. Cf. 35-year old fiction by Saberhagen on "Berserkers," or slightly more recent fiction by Roger Macbride Allen and others, for example. Von Neumann machines are more than just non-functional bottleneck machines. As for nanotech, I wasn't endorsing it, just noting the context. My skepticism is noted in Crandall's book on nanotech. * The society we are heading towards is one of an increasingly sharp division between the "skilled and in demand" end of the spectrum and the bulk of droids who have few skills in demand. I've also witnessed this trend, but I currently believe it only holds in certain segments. There are various "craft" industries (as I call them) where this equation seems to be held in suspension. Like it or not, hip hop is one of those, though I suppose you could argue that the number of hip-hop 'artists' that make it is tiny compared to the audience. But the point is that in a craft industry, we're really referring to specific and local tastes, as opposed to Darwinian selection (ie, the 'most fit'). In a craft there may be room for many to contribute. (Other examples of craft industries are US high-end audio, the wine industry, high-end marijuana, organic foods and cheeses, and the current German-centered board game renassaiance.) What's desired in such an envornment is not necessarily the best/fastest/brightest, but somethin
Re: Skeptical about claim that stamp creation burns out modern CPUs
On Jan 1, 2004, at 2:35 PM, Eric S. Johansson wrote: Tim May wrote: I'm skeptical of this claim. A lot of Intel and AMD and similar machines are running full-tilt, "24/7." To wit, Beowulf-type clusters, the Macintosh G5 cluster that is now rated third fasted in the world, and so on. None of these machines is reported to be burning up literally. Likewise, a lot of home and corporate users are running background tasks which are at 100% CPU utilization. I will admit to a degree of skepticism myself even though I am describing overheating as a likely outcome. But what is your actual evidence, as opposed to your belief that overheating is a likely outcome? I have said that I know of many machines (tens of thousands of CPUs, and probably many more I don't know about directly) which are running CPU-bound applications 24/7. I have heard of no "burning up literally" cases with the many Beowulf clusters, supercomputers, and 24/7 home or business screensavers and crunching apps, so I suspect they are not common. If you have actual evidence, as opposed to "likely outcome" speculations, please present the evidence. First, if you lose a fan on an Intel CPU of at least Pentium III generation or an AMD equivalent, you will lose your CPU to thermal overload. This is a well-known and well-documented problem. One question is can stamp work thermally overload and damage a CPU. Second question is how much stamp work can you do without thermally overloading the CPU. This is true whether one is running Office or a stamp program. You are just repeating a general point about losing a fan, not about stamp generation per se. Boxer fan lifetimes are usually about comparable to hard drive lifetimes, which also kill a particular machine. You are not presenting anything new here, and the association with stamp generation is nonexistent. Large clusters have more careful thermal engineering applied to them than probably most of the zombies out there. I have seen one Beowulf cluster constructed out of standard 1U chassis, motherboards, fans etc. and frequently 10 percent of the systems are down at any one time. The vast majority of the failures have been due to thermal problems. Most clusters use exactly the same air-cooled machines as are available from Dell, Sun, Apple, etc. In fact, the blades and rackmount systems are precisely those available from Dell, Sun, Apple, etc. You are presenting no evidence, just hypothesizing that your stamp protocol somehow burns out more CPUs than render farms do, than Mersenne prime apps to, than financial simulations do, etc. Yet you present no actual numbers. so, will we see a Pentium IV spontaneously ignite like a third tier heavy-metal group in a Rhode Island nightclub? No, you're right, we won't. I think it's safe to say we will see increasing unreliability, power supply failures, and failures of microelectronics due to increased thermal load. Which is good enough for my purposes. Evidence is desirable, belief is just belief. --Tim May "That government is best which governs not at all." --Henry David Thoreau
Re: Skeptical about claim that stamp creation burns out modern CPUs
On Jan 1, 2004, at 11:56 AM, Riad S. Wahby wrote: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Now I grant you that I haven't tested CPUs in this way in many years. But I am skeptical that recent CPUs are substantially different than past CPUs. I would like to see some actual reports of "burned literally" CPUs. I've never seen a "burned literally" CPU, but I have tracked the demise of an AMD K6 (or K6-2, can't remember now) from hot carrier effects. If all processors were made like that one, you would see a lot more load-induced failures. Just so. A lot of games are close to being CPU-bound, plus the screensavers used as Mersenne prime finders and the like, and there are few reports of house fires caused by the CPU being smoked. When I did reliability stuff for Intel, CPUs failed, but mostly not in ways that had them catching on fire, as the stamp guy is suggesting is common for stamp generation. --Tim May #1. Sanhedrin 59a: "Murdering Goyim (Gentiles) is like killing a wild animal." #2. Aboda Sarah 37a: "A Gentile girl who is three years old can be violated." #3. Yebamoth 11b: "Sexual intercourse with a little girl is permitted if she is three years of age." #4. Abodah Zara 26b: "Even the best of the Gentiles should be killed." #5. Yebamoth 98a: "All gentile children are animals." #6. Schulchan Aruch, Johre Deah, 122: "A Jew is forbidden to drink from a glass of wine which a Gentile has touched, because the touch has made the wine unclean." #7. Baba Necia 114, 6: "The Jews are human beings, but the nations of the world are not human beings but beasts."
Re: Quantum Loop Gravity Be For Whitey
On Jan 1, 2004, at 8:51 AM, Tyler Durden wrote: I'll tell you a story. Back in the late 1980s I taught at a notorious HS in Bedford Stuyvesant. 90% of my students were black. I regarded few of them as stupid, but almost none of them saw the point of studying math...they just didn't see how it could benefit them, and they said this to me on a regular basis. First, please stop including the full text of the message you are replying to. Learn to use an editor, whether you ultimately top-post or bottom-post to edited fragments. Second, we are fast-moving toward a society and economy where only those who _wanted_ to study math and science by the time they were in high school will have anything more than a menial, makework job. Now whether they go the full course and get a college degree or advanced degree is not so much the point as it is that they were intrinsically interested. So if a kid in high school can't see the "benefit" of studying math, he shouldn't be. It's as simple as that. The parallel I like is one we developed (in Ted Kaehler's nanotechnology study group in the early 90s) for looking at what a society and economy might look like where the costs of material production are as close to zero as one might imagine. That is, a society with full-blown general assemblers, i.e., von Neumann replicators at the molecular, mechano-synthesis, Drexler-type scale. How would goods be produced and sold? How would markets exist/ The analogy I drew, in an essay, and that Howard Landman, Ted Kaehler, Mike Korns, and others added to was this: * We already have an example of an entire town and an entire industry where essentially the costs of material production are nearly zero. * Namely, Hollywood. Film stock is essentially free...bits even more so. Cameras remain expensive, but are vastly less so than they were a decade ago. Basically, everything material in Hollywood is nearly free. What is expensive is the creative talent, the know-how, the ensembles of actors and directors and writers and all. (And writing is itself a perfect example of material abundance. All of the money is in the writing and distribution, virtually none of it in the materials, or in the low skill segment.) Which is why some writers and some Hollywood types make tens of millions a year and most don't. * The society we are heading towards is one of an increasingly sharp division between the "skilled and in demand" end of the spectrum and the bulk of droids who have few skills in demand. (I argued this, circa 1991-2, to a bunch of people who basically bought the line that technology would bring wealth to the masses, blah blah. I argued that yes, the masses would have great material goods, just as the masses today have color tvs in their cribs. But the big money would elude them. Libertarian rhetoric about everybody being wealthy is only meaningful in the sense that even the poorest today are wealthy by Roman or Middle Ages or even Renaissance standards. But the split between those with talents in demand--the Peter Jacksons, the Stephen Kings, the Tim Berners-Lees, etc. and the "reading be for whitey" and "I don't see any benefit to studying math" vast bulk will widen.) Much more could be said on this. I recall I wrote some long articles along these lines in the early years of the list. In conclusion, your Bedford-Stuy student who doesn't see the point to studying math will never be a math researcher, or a physicist, or a chemist, or anything else of that sort. So no point in trying to convince him to study his math. It's like convincing a kid to start writing so he'll stand a chance of being the next Stephen King: if he needs convincing, he won't be. The burnoff of useless eaters will be glorious. --Tim May
Re: Vengeance Libertarianism and Hot Black Chicks
On Dec 31, 2003, at 5:53 PM, Tyler Durden wrote: PS: Is there any comment that Mr May would like to profer on the issue of having been rejected by some hot black tail back in the day? (ie, aside from "I'd like to see you are your infant children stripped of epidermis and dipped in seasalt") First, please stop including the entire message you are responding to, plus the parts you comment on. I dislike editing other people's sloppiness as much as I dislike paying for their breeding choices. Second, your comment above merits no response. --Tim May
Skeptical about claim that stamp creation burns out modern CPUs
On Jan 1, 2004, at 8:13 AM, Eric S. Johansson wrote: actually, we mean burned literally. the stamp creation process raises the temperature of the CPU. Most systems are not build for full tilt computational load. They do not have the ventilation necessary for reliable operation. So, they may get by with the first 8-12 hours of stamp generation (i.e. roughly 2000-3000 stamps per machine) but the machine reliability after that time will degrade as the heat builds up. Feel free to run this experiment yourself. Take a cheat machine from your local chop shop, run hashcash in an infinite loop, and wait for the smoke detector to go off. there is nothing quite like waking up to the smell of freshly roasted Intel. I'm skeptical of this claim. A lot of Intel and AMD and similar machines are running full-tilt, "24/7." To wit, Beowulf-type clusters, the Macintosh G5 cluster that is now rated third fasted in the world, and so on. None of these machines is reported to be burning up literally. Likewise, a lot of home and corporate users are running background tasks which are at 100% CPU utilization. (Examples abound, from render farms to financial modeling to... Friends of mine run a bunch of 2 and 3 GHz Pentium 4 machines in CPU-bound apps, and they run them 24/7. (Their company, Invest by Agents, analyzes tens of thousands of stocks. They use ordinary Dells and have had no catastrophic "burned literally" failures.) Further, junction-to-case temperature in a ceramic package has a time constant of tens of seconds, meaning, the case temperature reaches something like 98% of its equilibrium value (as wattage reaches, say, 60 watts, or whatever), in tens of seconds. (For basic material and physics reasons...I used to make many of these measurements when I was at Intel, and nothing in the recent packaging has changed the physics of heat flow much.) We also used to run CPUs at 125 C ambient, under operating conditions, for weeks at a time. Here the junction temperature was upwards of 185 C. Failures occurred in various ways, usually do to electromigration and things like that. Almost never was there any kind of "fire." Just "burnout," which is a generic name but has nothing of course to do with "burning" in the chemical sense. Now I grant you that I haven't tested CPUs in this way in many years. But I am skeptical that recent CPUs are substantially different than past CPUs. I would like to see some actual reports of "burned literally" CPUs. By the way, I have run some apps on my Macintosh 1 GHz CPU which are CPU-bound. No burn ups. I'd like to see some support for the claim that running a stamp creation process is more likely to burn up a modern machine than all of these apps running financial modeling, render farms, and supercomputer clusters are doing. Until then, render me skeptical. --Tim May
Vengeance Libertarianism
On Dec 30, 2003, at 10:01 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (This space reserved for former Marxist and now neocon standard-bearer James Donald to foam that I am a Saddam lover and a supporter of Chomsky.) I will say that I was a a former marxist. This is not to bow at the feet of some better method, nor to trivialize the past. My awakening, as it were, actually happened here, for better or worse. Tim, Hal, Lucky, Uni and to some extent Detweiler all helped form my view. More than a few others. This was back in '93, mostly. At least, the founding, for me was then. I know some things happened later (I saw Uni present his Coke Presentation in 2002 for the first time), and I became concerned with business, or at least companies that wanted cash, and to be a business later. I never went through a Marxist phase, never even came close. This despite entering college in 1970, this despite going to a school where the dominant paradigm was leftist (UC Santa Barbara). I occasionally wonder what my perspective might be had I ever held leftist, collectivist thoughts. Oh well, I'll never know. Thirty years ago I _was_ more charitable about the various groups which claim to have been aggrieved, and I dutifully referred to negroes as "blacks," argued earnestly with doubting leftists about the importance of the profit motive, cited semi-leftists who had reasonable things to say about capitalism and liberty and the Constitution. But over the years, as I have seen a huge chunk of money taken from me at gunpoint and given to welfare skanks, inner city negro mutants, gay activist buttfucker San Francisco queer groups, foreign nations with dictators like Hussein (both of them), Mubarek, Amin, Meir, Rabin, and a hundred others, and as education has declined while the pigeons demand more handouts...I have become what I call a "vengeance libertarian." While certain theoreticians of 30 years argued for silly ideas about how how it is "immoral" to land on another's balcony while falling from a building, because the property rights had not been negotiated, and thus argued that even self-defense is fraught with moral problems, another camp of us were developing the idea that vengeance is good, that crypto anarchy will not only let some of us "withdraw from the system," a la Galt's Gulch, but also it will let us execute justice on those who stole from us. For every negro welfare momma who took money for the past number of years, tell her to pay it all back, with compounded interest, or face time in a labor camp to repay what she stole. And if she cannot, or will not, which is ovewhelmingly likely, harvest her organs (if any takers can be found) and send the leftovers up the smokestacks. Ditto for the queers who have collected "public health" funds to pay for their sodomy. (I have no issue with their choices of partners, except that the diseases they contract via their habits, and their inability to work, is their problem, not mine. And not any corporations, except by the choice of that corporation.) Vengeance libertarianism is the rational kind. It will result in 20-40 million of the leeches, the bums, the minority grifters, the so-called aggrieved, the winos, the addicts, all being sent up the chimneys. Hitler had only minor reasons to go after the Jews (many of them had manipulated the economy to favor Jews while also preaching a "no defense" loser strategy to their untermenschen), we have much more reason to go after the tens of millions of underpeople who have been using their thugs in government to steal from us. We have much more justification today to liquidate the parsites than Hitler ever had. As for government, I estimate that 99% of those in Congress and government agencies in the past 40 years have earned killing. Of current Congressvarmints, only two seem to be not guilty. Of low-level employees, a bunch are just willing dweebs, and may be able to work off their debts in a labor camp for a decade or two. But probably the cleaner solution is just to do a thermonuclear cauterization of the region surrounding Washington and start fresh from there with a very limited government that honors the Constitution instead of catering to negroes and queers and welfare addicts. Crypto anarchy will make delivering justice to tens of millions a reality. The world will learn a lesson when we burn off these criminals. --Tim May "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice."--Barry Goldwater
Re: [IP] FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers
On Dec 30, 2003, at 7:30 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: My first thought on reading this was that it was from The Onion, but its real. I guess being well-informed is now a cause for suspicion, as it was in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Well, they've been working on the mountains of skulls in Iraq (of course, we have to destroy the country in order to save the country), so going after eyeglass wearers, the college-educated, and those who watch PBS is the logical next step. Today's news is that analysts are saying a successful prosecution of Saddam on "war crimes" is going to be nearly impossible, given that he was a sovereign leader attacked by a foreign power and that none of the "WMD" were found (not that having WMD has been grounds for war crimes convictions, else the U.S., U.S.S.R., P.R.C., U.K., France, Zionist Entity, and numerous other states would have been prosecuted.). So, I expect that even as I write CIA toxins experts are preparing what will make Saddam go away the quiet way. Look for him to go "of natural causes" before any War Crimes Tribunal can ever actually happen. (This space reserved for former Marxist and now neocon standard-bearer James Donald to foam that I am a Saddam lover and a supporter of Chomsky.) --Tim May, who owns both a Farmer's Almanac and a Rand-McNally Atlas (apparently the illiterates who recorded the Maximum Leader's thoughts on the dangers of "almanacs" may have gotten the two confused, we are now hearing, and the order for the droids to search for "almanacs" apparently got confused...so now they're looking for evildoers who have either of these banned books)
Re: [camram-spam] Re: Microsoft publicly announces Penny Black PoW postage project
(I have removed the various other mailing lists. People, please stop cross-posting to all of Hettinga's lists, plus Perrypunks, plus this CAM-RAM list.) On Dec 30, 2003, at 7:11 PM, Bill Stewart wrote: At 07:46 PM 12/30/2003 +, Richard Clayton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [what about mailing lists] Obviously you'd have to whitelist anybody's list you're joining if you don't want your spam filters to robo-discard it. I never understand why people think spam is a technical problem :( let alone a cryptographic one :-( The reason it's partly a cryptographic problem is forgeries. Once everybody starts whitelisting, spammers are going to start forging headers to pretend to come from big mailing lists and popular machines and authors, so now you'll not only need to whitelist Dave Farber or Declan McCullough if you read their lists, or Bob Hettinga if you're Tim (:-), you'll need to verify the signature so that you can discard the forgeries that pretend to be from them. I don't have to whitelist anyone. If mail doesn't get to me, less junk to read. I certainly won't be running some "Pennyblacknet" scam promulgated by Microsoft. This "pennyblack" silliness fails utterly to address the basic ontological issue: that bits in transit are not being charged by the carriers (if by their own choice, fine, but mostly it's because systems were set up in a socialist scheme to ensure "free transport"...now that the free transport means millions of e-mails are charged nothing, they want the acapitalist system fixed, they hope, with either government laws or silliness about using memory speeds to compute stamp numbers...silliness). I haven't looked closely at the Pennyblack scheme, but I expect cleverness with caches and background tasks will fix things. For example, maybe people with idle CPU/memory time will sell their time to spammers, at suitably close-to-zero rates. (Essentially equivalent to Joe Sixpack selling his machine as a spam machine, which is probably likely, and still cheap for the sender.) Fixing the fundamental market distortion is the best approach to pursue. Not my problem. --Tim May
Re: [camram-spam] Re: Microsoft publicly announces Penny Black PoW postage project
On Dec 30, 2003, at 1:01 PM, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 7:46 PM + 12/30/03, Richard Clayton wrote: where does our esteemed moderator get _his_ stamps from ? A whitelist for my friends, etc... We're not moderated. Get used to it. Or are people _again_ spamming the Cypherpunks list with crap from half a dozen of their "moderated" lists? As for white lists, I'm all for them, though the coloreds keep trying to get government to force them out of business. --Tim May
Re: unsub from lne
On Dec 29, 2003, at 9:42 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote: Hmm, maybe Eric needs to undo his spam filter so people can unsub from lne.com. I just tried to, but it was rejected as undeliverable "spam". Tried sending it thru a remailer but don't know if majordomo will go for that. An unsubscribe command sent to the lne.com administrivia address was rejected as spam? I find that hard to believe, as that is one of the normal commands, ones which the lne regular message lists. Perhaps you tried to send an unsubscribe message to the actual lne.com list site, rather than the administrivia address. Check which address you mailed to. --Tim May
Re: Singers jailed for lyrics
On Dec 27, 2003, at 10:40 AM, Michael Kalus wrote: That you have extremists who will use the past as the main argument for their reasoning can be clearly seen by your own views. There is no difference between people like you and jews (or any other extreme zealot) who tries to push his or her own agenda. There is in fact a _very_ important difference, one you should think carefully about: the issue of force. In Germany, men with guns arrest those who sing songs which are not PC. I have no such power to use force to arrest those who use words I don't like. This is the essence of liberty. It's all about the initiation of force, versus free choice. In a free system, those who don't want to see swastikas or here "prejudiced" speech will take steps to avoid concerts where such symbols or words are used, will use the "OFF" switch on their radios and televisions when such symbols or speech appears, and will avoid visiting Web sites which offend them. Choice. And responsibility. They may even hire others to act as watchdogs or censors to screen material which may offend them. This is what ratings systems are all about. And closed communities. And voluntary associations. However, in a free society they may not use guns or force to stop what other people are reading or viewing or singing. Think about it. Carefully. Read up on some of the basics. You are on the wrong mailing list if you are as statist as you appear to be. --Tim May
Re: Singers jailed for lyrics
On Dec 27, 2003, at 6:53 AM, Tyler Durden wrote: "All symbols that are related to Nazism. One of the reasons (if not the reason) why they banned "Wolfenstein 3D"." Interesting. So even if the swatsika is protrayed as a bad thing (to the point of practically being a bullseye) it's banned. So...can you have swastikas in Textbooks? Perhaps 100 years from now the Holocaust will be forgotten. Of course, that'll make Tim May happy because then it could happen all over again. Nonsense. The problem with the Holocaust was not because people were expressing their opinions about Jews, their habits, etc., or having "un-PC" thoughts about their neighbors. In fact, the so-called anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1920s and 30s was less pronounced than in other European countries, notably France. The issue with the Holocaust, as with the suppression of the Kulaks in Soviet Russia, as with the forced starvation of entire provinces of tens of millions of people by Mao, was directly attributable to STATE POWER. In other words, the problem was that Hitler, Eichmann, Goebbels, etc. could have their bureaucrats meet at Wansee to implement the Final Solution. In a decentralized political system, one with constitutional protections for speech, movement, association, gun ownership, property accumulation, etc., such "purges" and "pogroms" and "final solutions" are much more difficult to carry out. And had the Jews spent more time on self-defense, on matters martial instead of matters Talmudic, they might not have been such easy pickings and gone so readily into the cattle cars headed east. By the way, practically speaking, banning the swastika and outlawing any expression of admiration for Hitler just makes these things more attractive to young kids. Duh. --Tim May, who counts more on the Constitution to limit the power of government (though these limits are falling, year by year) than he does in some ban on putting swastikas in books or on armbands #1. Sanhedrin 59a: "Murdering Goyim (Gentiles) is like killing a wild animal." #2. Aboda Sarah 37a: "A Gentile girl who is three years old can be violated." #3. Yebamoth 11b: "Sexual intercourse with a little girl is permitted if she is three years of age." #4. Abodah Zara 26b: "Even the best of the Gentiles should be killed." #5. Yebamoth 98a: "All gentile children are animals." #6. Schulchan Aruch, Johre Deah, 122: "A Jew is forbidden to drink from a glass of wine which a Gentile has touched, because the touch has made the wine unclean." #7. Baba Necia 114, 6: "The Jews are human beings, but the nations of the world are not human beings but beasts."
Re: Singers jailed for lyrics
On Dec 27, 2003, at 7:52 AM, Michael Kalus wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 27-Dec-03, at 9:53 AM, Tyler Durden wrote: "All symbols that are related to Nazism. One of the reasons (if not the reason) why they banned "Wolfenstein 3D"." Interesting. So even if the swatsika is protrayed as a bad thing (to the point of practically being a bullseye) it's banned. So...can you have swastikas in Textbooks? Perhaps 100 years from now the Holocaust will be forgotten. Of course, that'll make Tim May happy because then it could happen all over again. So a question for you: If I want to write a book on the history of the swastika, or teach about the holocuast in Germany, do I need a license or something? (And let's just assume I have a "politically correct" view.) To my understanding Historical documents are exempt from this. Jew groups have "demanded" that Microsoft modify its symbol font sets to remove swastikas. Part of a CNN report on this flap: "The swastika, which was made infamous by Nazi Germany, was included in Microsoft's "Bookshelf Symbol 7" font. That font was derived from a Japanese font set, said Microsoft Office product manager Simon Marks. "Microsoft said it will release other tools at a later date to remove only the offending characters. "A form of the swastika has been used in the Buddhist religion to symbolize the feet or footprints of the Buddha. The symbol, which was also used widely in the ancient world including Mesopotamia, Scandinavia, India and the Americas, became common in China and Japan with the spread of Buddhism." So, the racialist demands of a sect of dreidl-spinning weirdos is now being used to affect even academic scholarship: the day will soon be upon where swastikas are removed even from Buddhist, Scandinavian, Indian, etc. texts, and where scholars who wish to write about them must blank out they symbol and refer to it as the "s symbol," analogous to the way negroes freely call other negroes "niggers" and "niggaz" and "nigga hoes," but "demand" that whites refer to the words as "the n word." Now that the Jews dominate Germany once again, time for book burning of any book which offends the Jews? --Tim May
Re: Singers jailed for lyrics
On Dec 26, 2003, at 4:48 PM, Michael Kalus wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 The German law clearly defines what is hate speech. It is not an easy task as you can see in a six month trial. Germany, or any State that restricts words or thought, needs a regime change with extreme prejudice. Then I guess you better start liberating the world. Pretty much any country in the world has a law against hate speech. Some do, some don't. The U.S., for all its oft-cited faults, doesn't. It's not a violation of any national or state (California) law to argue that negroes are monkeys, that Germany's main failure was to miss getting the last 100K Jews (the main cause of their problems today, as the dreidl-spinners yammer about Nazism while arguing for socialism), and so on. One or two states in the U.S. tried to implement "hate speech" laws, but the Supremes, in a rare moment when the negroes and Jews were outnumbered, said "Go back and read the First Amendment, you fucking dweebs and Hebes." Certain symbols (e.g. Swastika) are forbidden as well. Are there exceptions for Buddhists and Amerinds? Moron. All symbols that are related to Nazism. One of the reasons (if not the reason) why they banned "Wolfenstein 3D". You've been brainwashed by your Yid masters. The swastika goes back to very, very old Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist symbology. Hitler read about it in some magazine and adopted it as his own. You make me sick. I hope the ovens are fired up again and you are sent to one for a nice, long, _very_ hot shower. --Tim May
Re: I am anti war. You lot support Saddam
On Dec 23, 2003, at 3:07 PM, Jamie Lawrence wrote: On Mon, 22 Dec 2003, James A. Donald wrote: James A. Donald; You have just told us that poor little Saddam is a victim. Incorrect. I said no such thing, and you're being a twit by attempting to credit me with such statements. Your repeated attempts to impute opinions to others that they don't actually hold, really, is pathetic and boring. Chomsky lies. You repeat the sentiments of Chomsky and thus you are support Chomsky and are thus a liar and a supporter of the KGB High Command and a lap dog of the running dogs of the Kremlin. As it stands, you seem only capable of attempting to impute motives to others that you imagine they might hold, based on wildy improbable chains of cause and effect in philosophical arguments and obscure cause and effect based on international relations in the '60s, bundled together with some sort of New American Century twine about how if we don't kill all the "ragheads" (your words, not mine), we'll be enslaved or worse. You obviously endorse the views of George McGovern and other pinko(e)s who wish to pervert our precious bodily fluids. As far as your babbling and frothing about how I and many others must be Saddam supporters, you're just not making any sense, intentionally ignoring what people say, and just generally acting like a fool. If you want to do something other than bat at strawmen and denounce the commies you keep seeing in your bedsheets, then please, begin to do so. Otherwise... Tim nailed it: you're just a statist who found a new god. Chomsky lies. and you are obviously a sock puppet for the Trilateralist Bilderbergers. --Tim May, who has noticed for a long time that the cadence and even the phrasing that James Donald uses is remarkably like the cadence of those who used to talk about "the running dogs of capitalism." But he uses replacement phrases like "sock puppets of the KGB" instead. Which I guess shows that his indoctrination ran deep, though he is now ostensibly infiltrating the libertarian fringe.
Re: U.S. in violation of Geneva convention?
On Dec 15, 2003, at 5:36 PM, Anonymous wrote: I am not sure I agree. I am no expert on this however. I saw several people commenting the issue of Geneva convention on CNN during the day. Also I saw an expert on this field from another country commenting on the issue stating that it was a clear violation of the convention. In either of these interviews were there any discussion on whether it didn't apply to this specific case due to what clothings he happened to wear or whattever. I got the impression that it was clear that the U.S. treatment wasn't fully appropriate. The U.S. would have screamed up and down in front of the U.N. and threatened severe reprisals if a U.S. prisoner were to have his (or her) mouth, hair, and medical exam televised by the Iranians, Syrians, Serbians, Iraqis, Panamanians, or any of the other nations we have gone to war with. There are specific clauses which refer to not publically humiliating a prisoner. I'm surprised the Agitprop Division didn't show video of Saddam taking his first dump while in custody. Saddam is not a good guy. But this went beyond the pale. I hope the next time a U.S. fighter is captured he is shown publically humiliated, with an Iranian or Syrian or French doctor forcing his mouth open and checking his hair for lice. The U.S. would be in no position to complain. (But they would, of course.) But, what can one expect of a country which refers to its own terrorists who blow up commercial Cuban planes as "freedom fighters" and to Palestinians seeking to expel the Zionist Jew invaders as "terrorists"? We are in Wonderland and the Republicrats are the Mad Hatters. --Tim May "We are at war with Oceania. We have always been at war with Oceania." "We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia." "We are at war with Iraq. We have always been at war with Iraq. "We are at war with France. We have always been at war with France."
Re: Idea: Simplified TEMPEST-shielded unit (speculative proposal)
On Dec 14, 2003, at 8:33 PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote: TEMPEST shielding is fairly esoteric (at least for non-EM-specialists) field. But potentially could be made easier by simplifying the problem. If we won't want to shield the user interface (eg. we want just a cryptographic processor), we may put the device into a solid metal case without holes, battery-powered, with the seams in the case covered with eg. adhesive copper tape. The input and output can be mediated by fibers, whose ports can be the only holes, fraction of millimeter in diameter, carefully shielded, in the otherwise seamless well-grounded box. There are potential cooling problems, as there are no ventilation holes in the enclosure; this can be alleviated by using one side of the box as a large passive cooler, eventually with an externally mounted fan with separate power supply. If magnetic shielding is required as well, the box could be made of permalloy or other material with similar magnetic properties. I am not sure how to shield a display. Maybe taking an LCD, bolting it on the shielded box, and cover it with a fine wire mesh and possibly metalized glass? Using LCD with high response time of the individual pixels also dramatically reduces the value of eventual optical emissions. I worked inside a Faraday cage in a physic lab for several months. And, later, I did experiments in and around Faraday cages. Shielding is fairly easy to measure. (Using portable radios and televisions, or even using the Software-Defined Radio as a low-cost spectrum analyzer.) My advice? Skip all of the nonsense about building special laptops or computers and special displays with mesh grids over the displays. Those who are _casually_ interested will not replace their existing Mac Powerbooks or Dell laptops with this metal box monster. Instead, devise a metal mesh bag that one climbs into to use whichever laptop is of interest. To reduce costs, most of the bag can be metallized fabric that is not mesh, with only part of it being mesh, for breathability. (Perhaps the head region, to minimize claustrophobia and to allow audio and visual communication with others nearby.) I would imagine a durable-enough metallized fabric bag could be constructed for under a few hundred dollars, which is surely cheaper for most to use than designing a custom laptop or desktop. Or consider heads-up LCD glasses. These have been available for PCs and gamers for a few years (longer in more experimental forms, of course, dating back to the VR days of the late 80s). Sony has had a couple of models, and so have others. Some have video resolutions (PAL, NTSC), some have VGA resolutions. Perfectly adequate for displaying crypto results and requesting input. These very probably radiate little. But of course a lightweight hood, a la the above mesh bag, would drop the emissions by some other goodly amount of dB. Experiments necessary, of course. Interface to a laptop or PC could be as you described it, with shielded cables. Or just use a small PC (Poqet, etc.) and move the keyboard and CPU under the draped hood. Leakage out the bottom, hence the earlier proposal for a full bag, like a sleeping bag. --Tim May
The silliness of those who argue that gold is the key to untraceability
On Dec 12, 2003, at 5:59 PM, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 11 Dec 2003 at 21:00, Neil Johnson wrote: Even Ayn Rand weaves this into "Atlas Shrugged" where the competitors of Reardon Steel get the government to try and force him to give them his formula for his high-strength steel because it's putting them out business and "unfair". Ah yes, recall big steel corporations talking about 'fair trade" in recent weeks. Tim has been implying that I am a pinko, gold nut, and randroid, which sort of hints that Ayn Rand is too pink for him. Rand supported taxes for the space program and for support of big business. So, yes, she was very pinkoid. And like Rand, you have the same delusions about what's possible and what's not. Your notion that "a gold atom cannot be distinguished from another" has anything important to do with issues at the crypto and traceability layers is symptomatic of this delusion. Hint: the alleged traceability of Federal Reserve Notes at the serial number level has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with traceability of payments and the reasons we need digital money. When a person deposits $10,000 and then writes a check to another person, or wires money, or withdraws cash, and so and so forth, do you think some record of the serial numbers was the means by which this transaction was traced? Your foolish faith that "E-gold" is some significant step "because gold atoms look like all other gold atoms, because there is only one stable isotope of gold" is embematic of the delusions which the gold bugs and offshore platform silly people have. And people wonder why the wrong issues are being worked on. --Tim May
Re: [linux-elitists] Monday 15 Dec: first all-Open Source System-on-Chip (fwd from schoen@loyalty.org)
On Dec 12, 2003, at 5:58 PM, J.A. Terranson wrote: On Fri, 12 Dec 2003, Tim May wrote: On Dec 12, 2003, at 12:16 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: - Forwarded message from Seth David Schoen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - From: Seth David Schoen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 23:32:31 -0800 To: Jason Spence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please STOP forwarding traffic from other lists to the CP list. Why don't you just filter it Tim: the rest of are capable of making our own reading decisions. And so why don't you just filter _my_ comments, twit? It's bad enough that that Eugene Leitl has made himself the new Choate, now you have made yourself the new Detweiler. --Tim May
Re: [linux-elitists] Monday 15 Dec: first all-Open Source System-on-Chip (fwd from schoen@loyalty.org)
On Dec 12, 2003, at 12:16 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: - Forwarded message from Seth David Schoen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - From: Seth David Schoen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 23:32:31 -0800 To: Jason Spence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please STOP forwarding traffic from other lists to the CP list. --Tim May
Re: ALTA/DMT privacy
On Dec 11, 2003, at 11:54 AM, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 10 Dec 2003 at 19:31, Tim May wrote: I receive several messages a month saying I need to re-verify information with an E-gold account (which I never recall establishing, by the way). These are messagers from scammers. e-gold never sends out email. E-gold was never even slightly interesting to me for reasons I talked about a few years ago--the notion that a bar of gold moving between shelves in someone's hotel room in Barbados or Guyana or wherever is equivalent to untraceability is silly Randroid idol-worship raised to the fourth power. Every atom of gold is identical to every other atom of gold. There is only one stable isotope. E-gold does not provide untraceability -- but gold does. Where tax authorities get people is in the transfer _in to_ and _out of_ certain kinds of accounts, be they Cayman Island or Swiss bank accounts, whatever. The issue with opening a Swiss bank account and wiring money into it, or depositing Federal Reserve Notes into it has NOTHING to do with FRNs having serial numbers and hence being traceable. The issue is with their own reporting to the IRS (these days) and to stops in place to stop the wiring of said money or the transport of said FRNs. What *form* the "item of value" is inside the bank, be it gold bars or Spanish doubloons or stacks of $20 bills or diamonds, is unimportant. In fact, for all intents and purposes the "item of value" inside the bank can be marks in a ledger book, which is effectively the situation today. (It is true that what is stored inside a bank, be it gold coins or Federal Reserve Notes, becomes important if and when enough depositors ask for their money in that particular form. But this is an issue of believing the bank does in fact store gold dust or doubloons or FRNs, not anything about the intrinsic untraceability of such things!) In other words, any bank except for "U-Stor-It-Yourself" safe deposit systems, is basically a black box with beliefs by I/O users about how likely it is to behave according to its specifications. That some of the gold fetishists here keep perpetuating this deep misunderstanding of the issues is...unsurprising. --Tim May
Re: Is Matel Stalinist?
On Dec 11, 2003, at 1:56 AM, ken wrote: Corporations have sales tracking software out the wazoo. If it sells, they buy more and sell them. Sounds like they're doing precisely what their owners want them to do. Yes, but, it might be that a corporation makes more money for its owners by centralising and systematising and reducing the local autonomy of business units. It's a lot easier to manage a thousand identical stores than a hundred unique ones. So from "Tyler Durden's"'s POV there might be more responsiveness from an independent store than a chain. Though like you said, that doesn't seem to apply to books. Might to food though. I doubt it applies to food, either. If my local grocery store runs low on "Spam," say, they will order more. This is why they track items with POS terminals and UPC labels (largely replacing the inventory people who used to be seen in the aisles counting items and entering them into a small computer or, earlier, onto an inventory log sheet). It makes no sense to "lump" or "consolidate" all of the stores into one lump calculation and then issue order to "send more Spam in this amount to each store." Not only does it not make sense, but clearly this would cause pileups at _some_ stores (too much Spam) and shortages at _other_ stores (still not enough Spam, even with the latest "send more Spam to all stores" order. The fact that neither shortages nor pileups (that I can see) are apparent at any of the stores I visit, and that all of them use UPC and POS methods for _all_ sales of ordered products, is consistent with the reorder method described earlier. I repeat: the "despised by anti-capitalists" Borders store has a deeper and broader inventory of books than the "cherished by Greens and locals" locall-owned bookstore. And they also use UPC and POS and reorder books dynamically. (For another list I've been discussing lazy evaluation languages, like Miranda and Haskell, and like Scheme can be "forced" to do, and the similarities between demand-driven evaluation of partial results and the obviously demand-driven inventory practices of modern businesses is striking. There's an essay here for some political thinker, along the lines of Phil Salin's "Wealth of Kitchens" essay drawing parallels between free markets and object-oriented systems.) --Tim May
Re: ALTA/DMT privacy [was: Re: (No Subject)]
On Dec 10, 2003, at 6:20 PM, Bill Stewart wrote: On 10 Dec 2003 at 15:19, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > E-gold and other DGCs do not do much if any due diligence in > checking account holder identification Unfortunately, they also don't due much if any due diligence in identifying themselves in messages to real or potential customers, so it's extremely difficult to determine if I've gotten any administrative messages that really _were_ from them as opposed to the N fraudsters sending out mail asking you to log in to e-g0ld.com or whatever fake page lets them steal your egold account number and password so they can drain your balance. A policy of PGP-signing all their messages using a key that's published on their web pages would be a good start, though it's still possible to trick some fraction of people into accepting the wrong keys. For now, my basic assumption is that any communications I receive that purport to be from them are a fraud, and it's frustrating that there's no good mechanism for reporting that to e-gold. I receive several messages a month saying I need to re-verify information with an E-gold account (which I never recall establishing, by the way). If I ever determine that E-Gold personnel have faked an account on my behalf, or are complicit in any way with stealing from me, I will of course think that killing their children, their parents, and them is moral. E-gold was never even slightly interesting to me for reasons I talked about a few years ago--the notion that a bar of gold moving between shelves in someone's hotel room in Barbados or Guyana or wherever is equivalent to untraceability is silly Randroid idol-worship raised to the fourth power. The scandals reported--and not meaniingfully rebutted--several years ago confirm to me the whole thing is some Randroid fantasy built on sand. --Tim May --Tim May "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001
Re: Speaking of Reason
On Dec 9, 2003, at 8:46 PM, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: On Tuesday 09 December 2003 19:57, Eric Murray wrote: Ok, bye! Eric (just to make it crystal clear, Tim's going in my _personal_ killfile) Shit, mine too. I really don't get what's happened to Tim. He used to be a great resource. Now he's even forgotten how to troll well. Good riddance. You've never contributed an iota to this list. --Tim May
Re: Speaking of Reason
On Dec 9, 2003, at 4:57 PM, Eric Murray wrote: On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 03:05:29PM -0800, Tim May wrote: Since Eric Murray has expressed distaste with my views I pretty much agree with your views, minus the racism and misogny. On days that the brilliant thoughtful Tim posts, I'm in awe. When Tim the asshole posts, I'm disgusted. Unfortunately these days the latter Tim isn't letting the former Tim near the keyboard very often. Fuck you dead. Fuck all of you Bolshies dead. Ok, bye! Eric (just to make it crystal clear, Tim's going in my _personal_ killfile) I hope he killfiles me in his lne.com files, as I am fed up with these Bolshies, fellow travellers, censors, and "why haven't you done more for the Cause!" whiners. --Tim May
Re: Got.net and its narcing out of its customers
On Dec 9, 2003, at 12:07 PM, Anatoly Vorobey wrote: On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 01:57:00PM -0500, Duncan Frissell wrote: Then one of them claimed he had arranged to have my account yanked, for "violation of the DMCA." He claimed he had sent copies of my "criminal" admissions to Got.net, to the RIAA, to "law enforcement" (shudder!), and so on. I gather that the denizens of alt.video.dvd have yet to read the Betamax case. Perhaps they should expand their reading before they opine on the state of IP law. He was just trolling, being intentionally vague so that they'd assume he was copying from one DVD to another. Which they did, and which they raved about. There isn't any profound insight to be derived from a tired old picture of a newsgroup being provoked by trolling. No, not a conventional troll. Disinformation was being spread about how "making a copy of something" is the "same as stealing." Some of the apologists for DMCA were saying that anyone who copies a CD is the same as a shoplifter. I casually volunteered that I made an average of one DVD of a Hollywood movie per day. The kneejerks by the apologists for DMCA were illuminating, including the claim that the RIAA would be "investigating" this as a case of piracy. Frankly, I had hope for one of the several hundred lawsuits the RIAA has been tossing out like confetti (including to people who have never owned a computer...sounds like some due diligence malpractice cases are in order). Even better would be a process server trespassing on my property...no point in having a pig farm if you have nothing to throw to the pigs. The revelation that Don Frederickson is one of those who needs to be dealt with eventually was rewarding. --Tim May "You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." - -Michael Shirley
Re: Is Matel Stalinist?
o to over in the Valley are vast collections of books as well. This is the real reason why the smaller stores are complaining. Exactly what was heard 60 years ago when "supermarkets" came to town and the small grocery stores faced competition. Exactly what was heard 30 years ago when Wal-Mart and their type came to town and the small "five and dime" stores faced competition. Corporations have sales tracking software out the wazoo. If it sells, they buy more and sell them. Sounds like they're doing precisely what their owners want them to do. But nobody seems to notice...we're completely used to being passive cogs in a big, fat machine-state. So in a sense, it's gone way beyond 'repression'...no need for that rat-cage around our heads anymore. You silly Bolshies are obviously on the wrong list if you think strong crypto is going to help your cause. Feh. --Tim May --Tim May "The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat
Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
On Dec 7, 2003, at 6:54 PM, Greg Newby wrote: On Sun, Dec 07, 2003 at 07:37:26PM -0800, John Young wrote: ... What I like about the ring-in-the-flesh crowd is their pleasure in grossing out the stodgers. Makes me wish I still had that knack instead of only the memories. Hey, John -- wear some of that shit, and I promise to be grossed out. But seriously, has anyone considered that maybe the problem is Tim May? His hate-filled ignorance is a real impediment to anyone who might otherwise be interested in "the cause." His spews are pretty distasteful, and to him, anyone who didn't start cp a zillion years ago is just an ankle biter come-lately. Fuck off and die, along with all of your fellow travellers. You have contributed _nothing_ here. I've only been on the list for 3 years, but I'd say that things were a lot more interesting before (In-) Choat jumped ship. In your three years here, nothing. And a big "fuck you, too" to anyone who thinks otherwise. -- Greg I hope you and your family are some of the first of the tens of millions who will die in the Great Burnoff of Useless Eaters. --Tim May "Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound"
Strong Crypto is about the Burnoff of Useless Eaters
Duh. No one is holding a gun to their heads (the anti-globalist lefties, including many here on this list, argue otherwise...they are wrong). People are free to buy processors from Motorola, IBM, NEC, Fujitsu, AMD, Thompson, TI, etc. I watched Intel's competitors try to wrest control of Intel's dominance in several ways: -- there was the Japanese TRON project, massively-funded by the Japanese government and supported by NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and all of the other giants of the Japanese chip industry (remember when the Japanese were seen as 1- feet tall and invincible and how they would swallow up Intel as well as Pebble Beach?) -- there was the consortium of DEC, MIPS, Compaq, and a bunch of other companies to come up with the "industry-standard alternative" to Intel, AMD, Harris, and others in the x86 camp. (BTW, where were the antitrust regulators when this collusive attempt to drive a wedge into Intel's dominance was being hatched? Answer: government ignores what it chooses to ignore and persecutes what it chooses to persecute.) -- and each of Intel's direct competitors were, without the collusions above, fighting intensely to displace Intel. Had one of them succeeded, as easily might have been case in some alternate history, the anti-globalist lefties would now be arguing for the break-ups of Motorola and Sun so that poor little Intel and Microsoft could be given a fighting chance. And so on, for all of the examples. Don't like Ford? Don't buy from Ford. Think McDonald's is "too global"? Don't eat at McDonald's. Companies are not permanent. They rise and fall, they come and go. In fact, of the Dow 30 Industrials, the very measure of Giant Corporation capitalism, take a look at how many of those on the list several decades ago are still on the list. Twenty years ago the anti-globalists (such as they were back then, before lefties discovered this as their new raison d'etre) would have been nattering about the need to break up Digital Equipment Corporation, which utterly dominated the corporate minicomputer market (crushing the likes of Data General and even IBM, which was seen as a dinosaur). But DEC got absorbed in Compaq, a company which barely existed back then, and then Compaq got absorbed into H-P, which is struggling. Joseph Schumpeter called this the process of "creative destructionism," the process of companies forming, evolving, dissipating, dissolving, the surviving staff and ideas (memes) forming new companies, new ensembles. Long after Boeing and Airbus are gone, new aircraft and spacecraft companies will form. Long after Intel and IBM are gone, new electronics and nanotech companies will form. The difference between corporations and governments is vast. Governments don't give choices. Governments don't allow competition. Governments enslave people and send them to fight wars with other governments. That the "anti-globalists" have lost sight of this and are instead holding their silly rallies and marches to "stop job export to China" and "force a living wage" and "break up Microsoft" shows they have nothing whatsoever in common with what strong crypto and untraceable communication and digital money will do. The official protests against the WTO natter about unfair wage practices in the so-called developing world, but the real issue is just what it has always been with protectionism. News flash to all the lefties on this list who think these technologies will somehow bring about the socialist paradise they want to see: strong crypto means no government goon can take money from those who work and save and give it to others who failed to study, work, and save. Programs like "welfare/AFDC/WICC/social programs" boondoggles. It may mean, if we are lucky, the death and burn-off of tens of millions of useless eaters. This will be a GOOD THING. Of course, those who choose to participate in the new digital economy will do well. To paraphrase the saying, "On the Net, no one knows you're colored." This is what strong crypto and a "True Names" world means. Do the math. For all the lefties here, you should've known this for years and years. Enough of us have talked about it. And it was obvious to me in the early days (which predate CP by several years, of course (cf. the "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," 1988) that strong crypto would usher in a world where no liberal traitor like John Kennedy could steal my money to send to some negroes in Washington so they could buy more malt liquor and breed more "chilluns." Good riddance to bad rubbish. The Crypto Revolution will burn off tens of millions of useless eaters. --Tim May
Re: cypherpunks discussions
On Dec 8, 2003, at 11:13 PM, Sarad AV wrote: hi, Asking questions is part of learning. Unless one learns how is he expected to participate and make once in a while intelliget discussions? 1. You never contribute anything that indicates you have actually learned. 2. Your questions, such as the ones I gave as examples of your recent ones, are phrased as if they were lifted directly from algebra and number theory books. The conclusions are obvious. You are either a bot or a noob. Give noobs some space and time to learn and over time they will contribute to the list. Yep, a noob, whatever that is. Start contributing or leave. You've been posting textbook paragraphs and asking us to fill in the next line for way too many months. --Tim May
Re: cypherpunks discussions
On Dec 9, 2003, at 4:57 AM, John Young wrote: Nomen Nescio wrote: I find it strange that some people here so often wants to intimidate those that dares to ask some questions. Eric put it very well in his post about dicksizewar. Very true indeed. I find it very *l*a*m*e* to all the time tell people to RTFM when something comes up that happened to be have been dealt with like five years ago. Brain rot is the cause of impatience with what is mistakenly perceived to be repetition of old stuff. But brain rot leads to wars which pointlessly kill young people by the thousands, so watch out believing what the brain pre-dead spout as wisdom. PLONK. I've had it with years of these e.e. cummings bits of zero content. --Tim May
Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
letter about prime numbers and bit commitment? Laughable, for various reasons. News flash: I have no desire to write on a deadline. I write when I feel like writing. And a good chunk of what I write gets spidered by Google. What can be more satisfying than that? --Tim May Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.
Got.net and its narcing out of its customers
On Dec 8, 2003, at 1:15 PM, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 01:59:26PM -0800, Tim May wrote: This actually fits in with something Lessig is widely known for, his "technology-custom-law" trichotomy (*). (* He may call it something different...I haven't checked in a while. I was reading some of David Friedman's articles over the weekend and noticed that he also used the same trichotomy, predating Lessig. "I'm sorry that Tim is being a bother again. He has a long history of being obnoxious and threatening. So far, he has not broken any laws. We have talked to the authorities about him on numerous occasions. They have chosen to watch but not act. Please feel free to notify me if he does anything that is beyond rude and actually violates any laws and I will immediately inform the authorities." Thank You Don Frederickson (co-owner and CEO of got.net, Santa Cruz) When did Don Fredderickson write this? -Declan You can Google Groups for any of the unique text to find it, and the context. Or, here's the thread (search on my name for the exact spot, or go to August 22nd): <http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&safe=off&threadm=220820032357238678%25timcmay%40removethis.got.net&rn um=1&prev=/ groups%3Fq%3Dfrederickson%2Bgot%2Btim%26hl%3Den%26lr%3Dlang_en%26ie%3DUT F-8%26oe%3DUTF -8%26safe%3Doff%26selm%3D220820032357238678%2525timcmay%2540removethis.g ot.net%26rnum%3D1> Searching GG on "don frederickson got tim" is maybe more reliable than pasting this URL. (If you are asking did Don write this on or about the 22nd?, I assume so, of course, as this is when this "Kal" nym was foaming and threatening to get my account yanked and have the cops raid my house.) It happened in one of the "movies" groups (rec.arts.current-movies), when the thread was on DVD copy protection and the (claimed) illegality of making DVDs of movies. I explained how I was cheerfully making an average of a DVD a day of my favorite current movies. A couple of "nyms" went ballistic and foamed that they had forwarded my "admissions" to the RIAA and how I would face civil penalties and jail time, oh my! Then one of them claimed he had arranged to have my account yanked, for "violation of the DMCA." He claimed he had sent copies of my "criminal" admissions to Got.net, to the RIAA, to "law enforcement" (shudder!), and so on. The owner of Got.net replied to him and the above got posted (not by me). I consider Don Frederickson despicable, and stupid. To not bother before understanding the context of the thread and say, basically, "Yes, we have narced out this customer to law enforcement, but they are just watching" is reprehensible. The earlier owners/operators of Got.net took the stance that what people said on Usenet or on mailing lists was of no interest to them, save for a few carefully-spelled-out TOS issues (like spam). The new owner apparently thinks it's his job to narc out his customers to law enforcement and then to tell others who are not even his customers that he has done so. Were I the litigious sort, I might contemplate suing. (I haven't quit Got.net yet mainly because I am evaluating options for broadband in my rural location. Currently, DSL is about half a mile away, so may arrive soon--when it does I expect I will get it. Cablemodem is available to the top of my hill, but not down my long driveway, and the cable company will not allow me to either string my own lines or mount a WiFi or IR or similar atop the telephone pole. (My utilities are underground, but were laid when the house was built, circa 1976. No cable lines. Which is one reason I got a satellite dish, DirecTV, shortly after moving in. And, yes, I have looked at satellite broadband options like DirectLink...not impressive at all.) And the "Pringles can" approach is not something I want to spend my time engineering or debugging.) My hunch is that Frederickson and Got.net have been forwarding copies of some of my e-mail to "law enforcement," which would have put them in violation of the ECPA, except that after 9/11 and the Patriot Act and all these actions are now considered just good corporate citizenship. --Tim May
Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
On Dec 7, 2003, at 7:15 PM, James A. Donald wrote: And, as many have noted, very few of the "kids" today are libertarians (either small L or large L). When you were a teenager, everyone thought that Ho Chi Minh was the greatest, had a picture of Che Guevera on their wall, and thought the Soviet Union was going to win. Nonsense. "Everyone" did not think this. Far from it. YAF was going strong back then. Of 8 of us who rented a place, 6 were fairly extreme libertarians, one was confused but went along, and one was apolitical. (One of these guys wore a dollar sign pin and subscribed to Nathaniel Branden's newsletter.) This, was, by the way, when we were 18-20 years old. The Libertarian Party started at about this time, in 1972, and nearly all of the volunteers, spear carriers, etc. were in their 20s. This is very well known. (And today most of the LP volunteers and spear carriers are in their 40s and 50s. A correlation here.) I would say that the kids of today are a damned lot more libertarian than when you and I were kids. Quite likely you, as you have said you were a Marxist. I never went through such a phase, having started reading Heinlein and that crowd when I was around 11 or so. It always seemed self-evidently silly to think that "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" could be taken seriously by anybody. And I remember taking some cheer that day in November, 1963 when the Big Government guy was zapped. My family left the U.S. that afternoon and did not return for 13 months. I was a Goldwater supporter in 1964, when I was 12. (Goldwater was way too liberal for me in many ways, but he was against the "Civil Rights Act" and other such Marxist nonsense, so I supported him. I didn't care for his Vietnam views, except I agreed with him we should either fight to win it very, very decisively, or get out. Still think most of the baldies of today, with rings through their noses, marching against Coca Cola and Intel and Big Business, and arguing for affirmative action are "more libertarian"? Again, apparently more so than you. In any case, saying "everyone thought that Ho Chi Minh was the greatest" is silly. This shows up in the fact that protests against global capitalism draw vast crowds of young people, and even several subscribers to our list have nattered on about the dangers of globalism and free trade. The cartoonist in "reason" (or perhaps "liberty" not sure which) depicts these protests as being dominated by old farts about your and my age, with the young folk in reluctant tow. I suspect if you and he attended the same demo, he would see a crowd of old farts, and you would see a crowd of young punks with nose rings. This is certainly so. But it doesn't dispute my point. In fact, it supports it. My generation was very active, on all sides. The droids born after about 1980 are mainly followers. Probably what the nose rings are for. --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.
Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19
rs with their bald heads, their piercings, their Linux geek talk, I have almost nothing in common with them. And, as many have noted, very few of the "kids" today are libertarians (either small L or large L). This was the fertile ground Cypherpunks started in (myself, Gilmore, Stewart, Sandfort, etc., whether or not they called themselves libertarians or not). This shows up in the fact that protests against global capitalism draw vast crowds of young people, and even several subscribers to our list have nattered on about the dangers of globalism and free trade. In other words, politically-speaking, Cypherpunks is out of tune with what most twentysomethings seem to believe. --Tim May "As my father told me long ago, the objective is not to convince someone with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which he later convinces himself." -- David Friedman
Re: Larry Lessig on ending anonymity through "identity escrow"
On Dec 5, 2003, at 3:53 PM, Tim May wrote: Back to the cost issue. Prof. Lessig argues that voluntary identity escrow systems should be "encouraged." How/ Through nattering to people about how they ought to use a more expensive, less flexible system which exposes them to possible danger and which costs them more to use than the stronger alternative? Ha! Or "encouraged" in the sense of using state power to make stronger systems illegal or artificially taxed at higher rates? Why doesn't the U.S.G. just set up a "Big Brother Remailer" with the kind of identity escrow proposed? Let's then see how many freedom fighters working for the overthrow of the U.S. government use it. Let's see how many critics of the Church of Scientology, threatened with lawsuits and "legal warrants," use it. Let's see how much child porn gets traded on it. And there are so many other points, long discussed here (1992-present), which Lessig's proposal would run into: * what if someone, like me, forwards items sent untraceably to me? (The Lessig Escrow remailer does not even know it is from me, or forwarded by me, unless and until he gets a "legal warrant" to open the contents...too late, then.) (If passing on a comment from another is illegal, on what basis? A remailer is just as easily seen as an "editor" or "re-commenter.") * if government controls remailers, what of those plotting against government? Is Jefferson supposed to use the King's remailers? * if the systems Lessig thinks should be "encouraged" are in fact set up--and no doubt some such systems already exist--how can they know that they are not themselves being used as part of a chain which includes traditionally-untraceable (CP, Mix remailers) upstream? Without looking, using their ostensible "legal warrants," a Big Brother Remailer has no way of knowing that the messages sent through from "Tim" were not just the messages of others. BTW, an argument I heard years ago from a proponent of an identity escrow system, long before Lessig, was that this approach would be blocked by making "Tim" responsible for all words or messages flowing into an IE remailer, even those he could not read (because they had been encrypted). The idea is to stop this chaining attack by making each user responsible for checking all the way back. In other words, for an IE system to work, competitors must be banned. Which is the same conclusion reached via other paths. (And, though IANAL, even I know that making "Tim" legally responsible even for messages he has no way of knowing fails the "scienter" test. Absent a ban on encryption, what "Tim " has done in passing along to "Larry's Remailer" a message which actually arrived from a non-IE remailer is nothing more than passing along something he was given. He has no knowledge of the contents (scienter requirement) and is not breaking any laws, absent a ban on competitors to IE remailers.) Anyway, this was hashed out many times in the early 90s and shortly after the very similar proposal for Clipper and other similar forms of key escrow. I have nothing against Lessig, but it bugs me that he's considered by some to be one of the Great Cyberspace Thinkers when his ideas are so easily dismissed...and were argued on both sides so many years ago. Larry Lessig ought to read, and think deeply about, the first ten years of traffic on the Cypherpunks list. Especially the first five years. --Tim May
Re: Larry Lessig on ending anonymity through "identity escrow"
DO NOT FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ANY OTHER LISTS. I AM GETTING TIRED OF SEEING CYPHERPUNKS JUST BE THE DUMPING GROUND FOR STUFF FROM OTHER LISTS. In almost all foreseeable cases, a system which allows identity escrow _cost more_ than a system which does not. This is analogous to the increased costs of a identity-based money system over an immediate-clearing, non-identity-based system. As an example, consider the network of CP or Mixmaster sorts of remailers. To package a payload through N remailers is a relatively easy thing for a a sender to do. But to arrange for propagation of "escrowed identity" at each (or most) of these N remailer nodes is costly. Any of these N remailers, in K different countries/jurisdictions, may use the "legal warrant" access method to open the identity escrow. For example, Finland in the Scientology/NOTS case...Finland surely would have used their "legal warrant" method had such an option existed. This is part of a larger issue, a philosophical one, about who controls "legal warrants." The Jew can be killed by using legal warrants, in Third Reich Germany. The libertarian in Soviet Russia. The pornographer in Canada. And nearly anyone who deviates from the official line in these beknighted states of america: smut peddlers, drug legalization advocates, supporters of Russia vs. Chechnya prior to 9/11, supporters of Chechnya vs. Russia after 9/11, liberators of Diebold documents showing the weakness of their voting machines, and so on and on. See my 1995-6 list of our enemies (Catholics, Whigs, Mormons, Communists...) for a very long list of those for whom "identity escrow" would have meant death or imprisonment in these beknighted states. Back to the cost issue. Prof. Lessig argues that voluntary identity escrow systems should be "encouraged." How/ Through nattering to people about how they ought to use a more expensive, less flexible system which exposes them to possible danger and which costs them more to use than the stronger alternative? Ha! Or "encouraged" in the sense of using state power to make stronger systems illegal or artificially taxed at higher rates? Why doesn't the U.S.G. just set up a "Big Brother Remailer" with the kind of identity escrow proposed? Let's then see how many freedom fighters working for the overthrow of the U.S. government use it. Let's see how many critics of the Church of Scientology, threatened with lawsuits and "legal warrants," use it. Let's see how much child porn gets traded on it. --Tim May
Re: Non-Withholding Employer Simkanin Trial Ends: Mistrial (fwd)
On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:39 PM, J.A. Terranson wrote: Note the line: "the Court denied Simkanin the opportunity present any expert defense witnesses or legal evidence". This is what our country has come to. Secret courts; incarceration with no lawyers, trials, or even charges; "trials" where the defendants are prohibited from presenting any evidence; "Sneak & Peek" secret searches... "The Terrorists" have indeed won: they are running this asylum. This has been the norm in American jurisprudence for many decades. Judges routinely decide which "theories of the case" may be presented and which may not. They dictate the language used, the witnesses called, even the legal precedents cited. For this list, we need look no further than a list contributor and meeting attendee from the mid-90s: Keith Henson. Google on Keith's case with the Church of Scientology and read about his conviction in a Riverside, California courtroom. Keith and his lawyers were prevented by order of the judge from presenting their defense. Basically, he was muzzled. And not because he was acting up in court or screaming obscenities. Rather, the Court decided he could neither bring up past behavior by the COS nor could he argue to the jury that saying he had a "Tom Cruise missile" aimed at the Gold Base facility was obviously a joke and that he did not in fact have any way to possess a cruise missile, Tom Cruise or otherwise. Welcome to the Beknighted States of America, where the "free press" is muzzled (or arrested, as in the New American Republic in Baghdad), where judges lay down a narrow track of allowable arguments in a court room, and where the police and government are no longer bound by the precise document which was created to bind them, the Bill of Rights. --Tim May
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:10 AM, BillyGOTO wrote: I have no problem with this free choice contract. You can't sell your vote for the same reason that Djinni don't grant wishes for "more wishes". A silly comment. I take it you're saying "Because the rules don't allow it." Or something similar to this. The "rules" are precisely what we are discussing. And "vote buying" is much more widespread than what happens at the lowest level we happen to be talking about here, where Alice is paid $10 to vote for some particular candidate. In fact, vote buying is much more common and more dangerous at the level of political representatives. Appealing to "the rules" (what your Djinni state as the rules) is nonproductive. Payoffs and kickbacks can be declared illegal, but they continue to happen in various ways. You, in the rest of your comments, show yourself to be one of the many tens of millions who probably need to be sent up the chimneys for their crimes. Liberty's a mental chore, isn't it? Maybe I just don't understand Liberty. I need to meditate on it for a while. I'll use your image of tens of millions of "criminals" going up in smoke (myself included) as a starting point. PS: Is support of vote buying consistent with rejection of Democracy? Liberty is characterized in the .sig below: ""Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" -- Ben Franklin
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 25, 2003, at 5:05 PM, BillyGOTO wrote: On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 03:26:18PM -0800, Tim May wrote: (I fully support vote buying and selling, needless to say. Simple right to make a contract.) What's your take on this situation, then: BOSS: Get in that booth and vote Kennedy or I'll fire you. Take this expensive camera with you so you can't pull any funny business. I have no problem with this free choice contract. You, in the rest of your comments, show yourself to be one of the many tens of millions who probably need to be sent up the chimneys for their crimes. Liberty's a mental chore, isn't it? --Tim May "You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." - -Michael Shirley
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 25, 2003, at 11:21 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: Tim May [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 25, 2003, at 9:56 AM, Sunder wrote: Um, last I checked, phone cameras have really shitty resolution, usually less than 320x200. Even so, you'd need MUCH higher resolution, say 3-5Mpixels to be able to read text on a printout in a picture. Add focus and aiming issues, and this just won't work unless you carry a good camera into the booth with you. 1. Vinnie the Votebuyer knows the _layout_ of the ballot. He only needs to see that the correct box is punched/marked. Or that the screen version has been checked. I realize you big city types (yes, Tim, Corralitos is big compared to my little burg) have full scale voting booths with curtains (I used the big mechanical machines when I lived in Manhatten), but out here in the sticks, the 'voting booth' is a little standing desk affair with 18 inch privacy shields on 3 sides. If someone tried to take a photo of their ballot in one of those it would be instantly obvious. All I want is a system which is not more easily screwed around with then paper ballots. Have some imagination - you could, for example, set things up so the voter, and only the voter, can see the screen and/or paper receipt while voting, but still make it impossible to use a camera without being detected. But how could a restriction on gargoyling oneself be constitutional? If Alice wishes to record her surroundings, including the ballot and/or touchscreen she just voted with, this is her business. (I fully support vote buying and selling, needless to say. Simple right to make a contract.) I wasn't endorsing the practicality of people trying to use digital cameras of any sort in any kind of voting booth, just addressing the claim that cellphone cameras don't have enough resolution. Even 320 x 240 has more than enough resolution to show which boxes have been checked, or to mostly give a usable image with a printed receipt. As for creating tamper-resistant and unforgeable and nonrepudiable voting systems, this is a hard problem. For ontological reasons (who controls machine code, etc.). I start with the canonical model of a very hard to manipulate system: blackballing (voting with black or white stones or balls). Given ontological limits on containers (hard to teleport stones into or out of a container), given ontological limits on number of stones one can hold, and so on (I'll leave it open for readers to ponder the process of blackball voting), this is a fairly robust system. (One can imagine schemes whereby the container is on a scale, showing the weight. This detects double voting for a candidate. One lets each person approach the container, reach into his pocket, and then place one stone into the container (which he of course cannot see into, nor can he remove any stone). If the scale increments by the correct amount, e.g, 3.6 grams, then one is fairly sure no double voting has occurred. And if the voter kept his fist clenched, he as strong assurance that no one else saw whether he was depositing a black stone or a white stone into the container. Then if the stones are counted in front of witnesses, 675 black stones vs. 431 white stones is a fairly robust and trusted outcome. Details would include ensuring that one person voted only once (usual trick: indelible dye on arm when stones issued, witnesses present, etc. Attacks would include the Ruling Party depositing extra stones, etc. And consolidating the distributed results has the usual weaknesses.) Things get much more problematic as soon as this is electronified, computerized, as the normal "ontological" constraints evaporate. Stones can vanish, teleport, be miscounted, suddenly appear, etc. Designing a system which is both robust (all the crypto buzzwords about nonforgeability, satisfaction of is-a-person or one-person constraints, visibility, etc.) and which is also comprehensible to people who are, frankly, unable to correctly punch a paper ballot for Al Gore, is a challenge. I'm not sure either Joe Sixpack in Bakersfield or Irma Yenta in Palm Beach want to spend time learning about "all-or-nothing-disclosure" and "vote commitment protocols." I know about David Chaum's system. He has gotten interested in this problem. I am not interested in this problem. Moreover, I think working on electronic voting only encourages the political process (though implementing wide computer voting and then having more of the "winning totals posted before polls close" exposures of shenanigans might be useful in undermining support for the concept of democracy, which would be a good thing.) I don't say it's not a security problem worth thinking about. It reminds me a lot of the capabilities stuff, including Granovetter diagrams and boundaries. Probably a nice category theory outlook on voting lur
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 25, 2003, at 9:56 AM, Sunder wrote: Um, last I checked, phone cameras have really shitty resolution, usually less than 320x200. Even so, you'd need MUCH higher resolution, say 3-5Mpixels to be able to read text on a printout in a picture. Add focus and aiming issues, and this just won't work unless you carry a good camera into the booth with you. 1. Vinnie the Votebuyer knows the _layout_ of the ballot. He only needs to see that the correct box is punched/marked. Or that the screen version has been checked. Pretty easy to see that "Bush" has been marked instead of "Gore." (For a conventional ballot. For a printed receipt is likely in the extreme that the text will be large, at least for the results.) 2. I don't know about cellphone cameras, but my 1996-vintage one megapixel camera has more than enough resolution, even at the "not so great" setting (about 360 x 500) to pick up text very well. (I used it to snap photos of some things with labels attached, for insurance reasons.) 3. If Vinnie is serious about this votebuying (I'm not even slightly convinced this would happen nationally, for obvious logistical and "who cares?" reasons, plus the inability of Palm Beach Jews to punch a conventional ballot, let alone work a digital camera and send the images to Vinnie), he can provide a camera he knows will do the job. Google shows that as of May 2003 the high-end cellphone cameras use CCDs with 640 x 480. This will become the baseline within a short time, certainly long before any of the "receipt" electronic voting systems are widely deployed. (e.g., this article at <http://www.what-cellphone.com/articles/200305/ 200305_Easy_Snapping.php>) But the resolution of today's very inexpensive digital cameras, and probably those in today's cellphone cameras, is more than enough to handle a ballot or reasonable-font receipt. --Tim May
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 24, 2003, at 8:26 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 11/24/2003 11:12:38 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I expect there may be some good solutions to this issue, but I haven't yet seen them discussed here or on other fora I run across. What part of "I expect there may be" was unclear to you? --Tim May "The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." -- Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789
Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)
On Nov 24, 2003, at 3:52 PM, Bill Frantz wrote: At 2:30 PM -0800 11/24/03, Major Variola (ret) wrote: At 01:04 PM 11/24/03 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote: Thats not how it works. The idea is that you make your choices on the machine, and when you lock them in, two things happen: They are electronically recorded in the device for the normal count, and also, a paper receipt is printed. The voter checks the receipt to see if it accurately records his choices, and then is required to put it in a ballot box retained at the polling site. If there's a need for a recount, the paper receipts can be checked. I imagine a well designed system might show the paper receipt through a window, but not let it be handled, to prevent serial fraud. Vinny the Votebuyer pays you if you send a picture of your face adjacent to the committed receipt, even if you can't touch it. [more deleted] It depends on what happens to the receipt when you say commit. It could automatically go into the ballot box without delay, so you can't take such a photo. If it goes in without any delay, without any chance for Suzie the Sheeple to examine it, then why bother at all? Simply issue an "assurance" to Suzie that her ballot was duly copied to an adjacent memory store or counting box. When she says "Then why did you people even bother?," just shrug and say "They told us to do it." As Major Variola said a few messages ago, as soon as human eyes can see it, machines and cameras and cellphones and eavesdroppers and Vinnie the Votebuyer can see it. I expect there may be some good solutions to this issue, but I haven't yet seen them discussed here or on other fora I run across. And since encouraging the democrats has never been a priority for me, I haven't spent much time worrying about how to improve democratic elections. And since a person should be completely free to sell his or her vote, 99% of the measures to stop vote-buying are bogus on general principles. --Tim May --Tim May, Occupied America "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
Re: e voting
On Nov 24, 2003, at 9:51 AM, cubic-dog wrote: On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Major Variola (ret.) wrote: Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is expected to announce today that as of 2006, all electronic voting machines in California must be able to produce a paper printout that voters can check to make sure their votes are properly recorded. Great! Now when I sell my vote, I can produce this reciept for payment! What a perfect system! Umm, weren't voter "receipts" outlawed some time back because of this exact issue? But it will allow unions to enforce compliance in the collective union vote. And wives can "hold out" unless hubby produces the proof that he vote for the feminista-approved candidate. Voting receipts really open up the democratic process. Of course, for those who think the problem with the West is too much democracy, not a good thing. --Tim May
Re: e voting
On Nov 21, 2003, at 10:12 AM, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: On Friday 21 November 2003 12:19, Tim May wrote: On Nov 21, 2003, at 8:16 AM, Major Variola (ret.) wrote: Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is expected to announce today that as of 2006, all electronic voting machines in California must be able to produce a paper printout that voters can check to make sure their votes are properly recorded. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me- shelley21nov21,1,847438.story? coll=la-headlines-california Without the ability to (untraceably, unlinkably, of course) verify that this vote is "in the vote total," and that no votes other than those who actually voted, are in the vote total, this is all meaningless. Quite true. But given the fact that we don't have that ability *now*, what exactly is the difference? Other than streamlining and centralizing the present distributed corruption? The point being that this "electronic voting" is just "syntactic sugar," superficial glitter. None of the interesting and robust foundations from crypto are being used. (Not that I am necessarily advocating this.) For the next ten years there will be endless babble on television about "the revolution of electronic voting," when in fact it's just a g-job to give voting machine companies some new business. --Tim May
Re: e voting
On Nov 21, 2003, at 8:16 AM, Major Variola (ret.) wrote: Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is expected to announce today that as of 2006, all electronic voting machines in California must be able to produce a paper printout that voters can check to make sure their votes are properly recorded. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shelley21nov21,1,847438.story? coll=la-headlines-california Without the ability to (untraceably, unlinkably, of course) verify that this vote is "in the vote total," and that no votes other than those who actually voted, are in the vote total, this is all meaningless. I could rig a simple hack where a voter submits his ballot, which drops into a shredder even as a little printer is printing out his "proof" that he voted and that his vote was "accepted." It's blather to satisfy the sheeple. Besides, I expect what will happen is that an electronic voting system will be deployed and will be shut down by someone claiming a patent was issued to them "for the idea of electronic voting." Until Diebold pays off the Patent Office and the earlier idea is reviewed and found lacking. Face it, we are about to become an electronic kleptocracy. (There will also be some good hacks to scare the inner city welfare mutants into thinking the electronic machines will either track their votes, making them more likely to vote for the Establishment, or will steal their souls. I sense great possibilities here for disinformation.) --Tim May
Re: Ashcroft's bake sale, no questions allowed, gvt-issued photo ID required
On Nov 19, 2003, at 8:38 AM, Declan McCullagh wrote: PRESS GUIDANCE WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003 ATTORNEY GENERAL NOTE: Media must enter the Department at the center entrance on Constitution Avenue, N.W., between Ninth and Tenth Street. ALL media MUST PRESENT GOVERNMENT-ISSUED PHOTO ID (such as driver's license) as well as VALID MEDIA CREDENTIALS. A mult-box will be available. Press inquiries regarding logistics should be directed to Heather Cutchens at (202) 532-5403. "VALID MEDIA CREDENTIALS." Nice to know the AG is enforcing reporter licensing. --Tim May
Re: MacOS X (Panther) FileVault
On Nov 12, 2003, at 7:13 PM, Marshall Clow wrote: At 6:18 PM -0800 11/12/03, Tim May wrote: A big hit was "Etherpeg," from www.etherpeg.com, which intercepts packets over a WiFi network and reconstructs the packets into JPEG images (if they exist). Since most of the Macs in the audience were on a local WiFi/"AirPort" network, arranged ad hoc, the output was put up on the LCD projector during one of the main talks. Images of naked chicks, oh my! This was done for the hack contest at MacHack 2001, also. [ I have no idea if that was the first time, either. ] The following year (2002) it was enhanced to return fake banner ads, since machines on the "local" net could certainly answer before "ads.doubleclick.com" could. :-) I didn't mean to give any impression that it was done by the HC attendees, just that it was a big hit. And since there were 30-50 Macs and PCs in the audience, with many on the ad hoc WiFi/AirPort network, and many links to the outside, there were a _lot_ of JPEGs whizzing by. Sometimes a blizzard of dozens per second, sometimes just a few per second. The dynamics were interesting, too. The JPEGs started out being from porn sites, then became related to whatever the speaker was talking about. For example, if someone mentioned the evening's keynote speaker, Don Norman, a bunch of sites and photos related to him would appear (about 10 seconds later). If someone mentioned snow on the roads (near Yosemite), weather maps would appear. --Tim May
Campaign contribution limits and soft money...law of unintended consequences
So the Dems who sought "campaign finance reform," via "McCain-Feingold" (*) are now trying to get an exception to allow George Soros to spend his "soft money" to help Dems. It seems the "legally collected" $160 million war chest that Shrub has collected is scaring the Dems, who have raised vastly less. They are looking with lust at the coffers of Soros and others, except the "campaign finance reform" laws they got passed are a problem... (* McCain is officially a Republican, but is actually deeply statist and is to the left of Ted Kennedy on many things) The Constitutional principle is crystal clear on all of these "limits on speech": there ain't none. If Tim May wants to speak out, buy ads, write articles, hire others to speak out, he can. Ditto for George Soros. Ditto for anyone else. Period. The fact that the Supreme Court has not said "Just what part of the First Amendment have you not read?" and struck down the laws is symptomatic of the sick adhocracy we now live in. I cannot wait for the mushroom cloud over D.C. --Tim May "Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound"
Re: Gestapo harasses John Young, appeals to patriotism, told to fuck off
On Nov 8, 2003, at 11:06 AM, Anonymous wrote: Cryptome received a visit today from FBI Special Agents Todd Renner and Christopher Kelly from the FBI Counterterrorism Office in New York, 26 Federal Plaza, telephone 212) 384-1000. Both agents presented official ID and business cards. Good stuff. Pigs getting concerned about cryptome means they are scared. I don't understand how this "Anonymous" can title a post with the phrase "told to fuck off" when John Young's account clearly said that he allowed the Feebs to enter his area and even had them sitting on either side of him. I cannot claim to know what I would do, or will do, if Feds ever visit my home, but I hope I will have the presence of mind to tell them to: a) get off my property b) or to arrest me In either case, talking to them will not help. The way the Reichssecuritat is getting convictions these days is to charge sheeple with "lying to Federal agents." Nothing in the Constitution allows compelled speech, except under limited (and I think unconstitutional) cases involving grand juries ordering a person to speak. (Or where use or blanket immunity has been granted, again, probably an unconstitutional measure, as it is compelling potentially self-incriminating evidence which may very well be used in either another case or be twisted to provide a basis for another case.) I hope I will have the self-presence to say "You are trespassing. Get off my property, right now!" Cooperating with cops snooping around looking for either thoughtcrime or "terrorist aid and support" is a lose, a big lose. Speculating wildly, the real target may be John Young himself. And nearly anything he said to these narcs may be construed, by them and by their malleable DAs, as "lying to a Federal investigator." People should not talk to the Feds. If the Feds come calling, refer them to one's lawyer. For those who don't have a lawyer on retainer, tell them that you need to consult with a lawyer first. Whether you do or you don't is beside the point. The point is to not talk to them. "Lying to a Federal investigator" is how they probably hope to get Cryptome shut down and John's kind of dissent quelled. --Tim May
Re: Panther's FileVault can damage data
On Friday, November 7, 2003, at 07:52 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: In case you've been using Apple OS X 10.3 (Panther)'s FileVault (Rijndael128 on ~/) there's a yet unfixed bug. Answer no if requested to regain lost disk space in encrypted directory[1] Notice that while the screen lock buffer overrun has been fixed, there are still unresolved issues with it[2] [1]http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/33769.html [2]http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/8912 It's astounding to me that that Apple failed to do basic QC on its major new release. The problem with the Firewire 800 drives using the Oxford 922 chips is inexcusable. Did Apple never bother to run the new version of OS X with drives made by vendors other than Apple? (I'm assuming here the Firewire 800 problem is not present in Apple drives, about which I am not 100% convinced.) Apple should've had a team of testers running the new 10.3 version, as with each new version, on a variety of machine configurations, keeping careful track of incompatibilities and gotchas. That something so gross as trashing external drives (the very popular ones from LaCie and others) went unnoticed is just plain inexcusable. I have a perfectly new copy of "Panther" OS X 10.3 sitting ready to be installed on the machine I am on right now. But I won't install it until Apple does its QC. And since I'm still on a dial-up connection and cannot easily download 100 MB of "updated" versions, I plan to contact Apple when the new fix is released and tell them to send me a new CD-ROM. As an Apple shareholder since 1984, this really sucks. What does Apple think they are, Microsoft? --Tim May
Re: [s-t] needle in haystack digest #3 (fwd from Nick.Barnes@pobox.com)
On Thursday, November 6, 2003, at 09:56 PM, Riad S. Wahby wrote: "Major Variola (ret)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: At 08:22 PM 11/6/03 -0800, Tim May wrote: I heard ten years ago that the National Semi fab on-site was a lowly 2-micron fab. Which was enough for keying material. And rad-hard circuits for their buddies at the NRO. Probably not on a CMOS process, though. For the most part, rad-hard==bipolar, even nowadays. Most ULSI today is BiCMOS, but Intel, Harris, and a bunch of others were making rad-hard CMOS nearly 20 years ago. The 80C86 rad hard part was and is used in a lot of critical apps. True enough, a project I consulted on picked the AMD 2901 for the Galileo Jupiter mission, and it was bipolar. And of course the concern with shrinking geometries has moved from "suntan" effects (long exposure) to SEUs. And here the advantages mostly are with SOI (as they were with SOS and SOI when I started working on SEUs in 1977). --Tim May
Re: "If you DON'T use encryption, you help the terrorists win"
On Monday, October 27, 2003, at 08:50 AM, Tyler Durden wrote: "Basically they say things like "If you think the government can't break all the encryption schemes that we have, you're nuts." This guy was a math major too, so he understands the principles of crypto." Basically, the answer was hinted at by another poster. For anyone who doesn't trust the government, the point to make is that crypto use is currently a red flag. Last year I went through great pains on this list to point out that right now the gubmint probably doesn't even need to break most encrypted messages in order to know something's up. This is only possible because outside of a coporate context few individuals use encryption. If everybody uses encryption, then it matters MUCH less if the government can break any one message. What costs us pennies to encrypt may cost them thousands to break. That's the assymmetry we asyms can exploit. That's where we need to depart from a Tim May lone wolf approach to your friendly, smiling America-loving flag-waving cypherpunks: "If you don't use encryption then you help the terrorists win". I have no patience with "If _EVERYBODY_ did foo, then" arguments. Contrary to what many of the newcomers (last 5 years) here have argued, crypto anarchy was never about converting the world to one true political system--it was, and is, about those motivated to do so to find ways to drop out of the system and find ways to sabotage the various politicians and socialists and minorities using government to steal from them. Finding ways to destroy large nests of socialists and minority welfare mutants is of course consistent with this individualist approach. But silliness about "if everybody used encryption, then..." is just that, silliness. "First we convert the world to our viewpoint" is an empty philosophy. "Tyler Durden," you have never shown a trace of sophistication or cleverness in the several months you have been on this list. --Tim May
Re: NSA Turns To Commercial Software For Encryption
On Sunday, October 26, 2003, at 07:37 PM, Neil Johnson wrote:
I dunno know. It comes down to which of the following slogans you
believe.
ECC: "Our algorithm is so good it has been licensed by the NSA".
or
RSA: "Our algorithm is so good that the NSA tried to prevent it's
publication,
had it classified as a munition and export controlled, tried to get the
government to ban it in favor of a key escrow system, arrested and
harassed a
programmer for implementing an program using it, etc."
Depending on the orientation of your tin foil hat, either one can mean
the
algorithm is good or has a backdoor. Oh, the fodder for conspiracy
theorists.
Other theories:
It's always in NSA's interest to make sure that the current "in vogue"
crypto
system require licensing even if it is a commercial license. At least
it
limits it's use in Open Source and Free Software.
Or my theory:
Part of outsourcing.
I hear yawning. But there's more to outsourcing than simplistic notions
that outsourcing lets the Pentagon (and NSA, CIA, etc.) save money:
-- outsourcing puts the Beltway Bandits into the loop
-- outside suppliers are a place for senior NSA cryptographers and
managers to go when they have maxed out their GS-17 benefits
("sheep-dipping" agents is another avenue for them to work in private
industry)
-- outside suppliers are less accountable to Congress, are insulated in
various well-known ways
This is not just something out of a Grisham thriller, with a Crystal
City corporation funneling NSA money into a Cayman account...this is
the Brave New World of hollowing out the official agencies and moving
their functions to Halliburton, Wackenhut, TRW, TIS/NAI, and the legion
of Beltway Bandit subcontractors all around D.C.
(When I left the D.C. area in 1970 the practice was in full swing, and
even my father went to a Bandit in Rockville when he left the U.S.
Navy, doing the same job but both better paid and less accountable. And
he wasn't even a spook.)
Put it this way, if Dick Cheney had worked for the NSA before going
into private practice for his 8 years out of government, he'd want to
go to a place like Certicom. And then return to government and help
mandate that his former company's products be the Official Standard.
Follow the money.
--Tim May
Re: "If you didn't pay for it, you've stolen it!"
On Friday, October 24, 2003, at 02:04 PM, BillyGOTO wrote: On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 02:14:03PM -0400, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: Major Variola writes: What *is* a library? 1. A library is legal. A library needn't be licensed by any state entity. 2. Thus, I can declare my computer a library. The only requirement is that I own a license to what I lend, and that only 1 user exercise that license at a time. That is what a library is. Well stated. Not really. Libraries have to pay more than we do for their subscriptions. Be careful using the phrase "have to" in any discussion of legal issues. Does government force libraries to pay more for some subscriptions? Not to my knowledge. Do some publishers have different rates for individuals versus libraries and other institutions? Yes. Are libraries required by law to reimburse authors and publishers when they allow books and magazines to be looked at by patrons or checked out by them? No laws that I know of. In short, some publishers charge some customers more, and others less. In this sense, an Intel or a Carnegie Public Library "has to" pay higher rates to these particular publishers, but this is certainly not germane to issues of legality of libraries. --Tim May
"If you use encryption, you help the terrorists win"
I predict we'll soon be seeing a new thought control campaign with this theme, that "if you use encryption, you help the terrorists win." Similar to the heavy advertising (paid for by Big Brother, and hence by money stolen from taxpayers) with the theme that lighting up a doobie helps Osama, that taking an Oxycontin (sorry, Rush!) is equivalent to flying a plane into the World Trade Center. Why encryption? Why now? Perhaps Eric B. can comment on the status of encrypted cellphones, of whichever flavor, but it occurs to me that some people in Iraq desperately need them. I refer of course to those trying to expell the American soldiers occupying their cities and, as Anne Coulter put it and as senior Army officials agree, "occupy their country, take their oil, and convert them all to Christianity." You see, the landlines and central offices were largely wiped out in the War for Oil. So what is now going in is what makes sense for nearly all developing--or flattened--countries: cellphones. The U.S. had plans for the contracts to deploy cellphones to go to American companies, but the local puppets must have had no fear of the Americans, as they went with a better bribe: mostly Arabic cellphone providers will deploy the initial system. And of course this is why there are a lot of subcontractors with ties to the NSA, DIA, ASA, etc. now in Iraq monitoring communications. (Partly to track down Saddam's whereabouts, as he may use a cellphone, if he's careless. Recall the tale of Pablo Escobar.) So, what would happen if even 5% of the cellphones were encrypted with a sufficiently-strong system (Eric's 3DES would presumably be enough)? And if not encrypted cellphones, encryption of the usual sort, over networks. I wonder what would happen to someone found carrying copies of PGP into Iraq? (Which is not to say copies are not already widely circulating, or readily downloadable, etc.) It seems clear to me that the puppet state of Iraq (maybe we could dub it "The Puppet Republic of Iraq"?) will not allow significant use of encrypted cellphones, or perhaps even encryption over networks. If the daily attacks on the crusaders continue to rise, and there appears to be some kind of coordination, the intelligence agencies will be called to task on why they are not intercepting (or jamming) the coordination channels. If the expected attacks in Saudi Arabia and other soft targets happen on schedule in the next few weeks, we might even see reintroduction of crypto ban proposals inside the U.S. We should not assume the war for crypto is won. --Tim May "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." --Alexander Fraser Tyler
Re: "If you didn't pay for it, you've stolen it!"
On Friday, October 24, 2003, at 08:14 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote: On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 10:43:22PM -0700, Tim May wrote: TM: the last two paragraphs were of course added by me. But the point is still valid, that much of Hollywood's claims about "illegal listening" are not really any different from "reading without buying" books and magazines in libraries. The more urgent issue is this crap Not to mention all the CDs and movies available in libraries. What's the difference in borrowing CDs from a library and taking them home and taping or mp3ing them and getting them from the net? None, and in fact I have made my own DAT and CD copies of many hundreds of CDs I borrowed. I also burn an average one DVD per day, of movies and suchlike. about corporations buying time in public schools. If I had a kid in a school and it was proposed that Nike, Time-Warner, Coke, or Intel would be buying teaching time, I'd tell them to stop it pretty fucking quick or face the Mother of All Columbines. Or even worse the practice of Coke, Pepsi, et al paying money to the school for exclusive rights to market their product. Also sort of like what M$ did in schools and colleges -- gave them some free computers on the condition that all competing software be removed from computer labs. Not surprising at all that megacorps now want to buy teaching time in schools. In Japan the megacorp have long run their own schools for workers kids to ensure the loyalty of their future workers. This last point I have no problem with, provided Megacorp pays all the costs for its own schools. In fact, I support bringing back indentured servitude. The problem is when a "public school," which taxpayers have been ordered to pay for, becomes the fiefdom of a corporation. If a child is compelled to attend school, as he is, he may not be compelled to watch commercials or listen to corporate pitches. --Tim May "Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat." --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
"If you didn't pay for it, you've stolen it!"
Hollywood Preaches Anti-Piracy to Schools Thu Oct 23, 3:09 PM ET By RON HARRIS, Associated Press Writer SAN FRANCISCO - As part of its campaign to thwart online music and movie piracy, Hollywood is now reaching into school classrooms with a program that denounces file-sharing and offers prizes for students and teachers who spread the word about Internet theft. The Motion Picture Association of America paid $100,000 to deliver its anti-piracy message to 900,000 students nationwide in grades 5-9 over the next two years, according to Junior Achievement Inc., which is implementing the program using volunteer teachers from the business sector. "What's the Diff?: A Guide to Digital Citizenship" launched last week with a lesson plan that aims to keep kids away from Internet services like Kazaa that let users trade digital songs and film clips: "If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it." The program appears to be working, with students in dozens of middle schools announcing that they will not enter their school libraries. Said one student: "These libraries let lots of kids read the same books...that's like Kazaa lets lots of people listen to songs!" Another one added that they are joining a Christian Coalition program to shut down parties that other students run. "They are, like, letting kidz listen to music and stuff," said one banner-toting teenybopper. TM: the last two paragraphs were of course added by me. But the point is still valid, that much of Hollywood's claims about "illegal listening" are not really any different from "reading without buying" books and magazines in libraries. The more urgent issue is this crap about corporations buying time in public schools. If I had a kid in a school and it was proposed that Nike, Time-Warner, Coke, or Intel would be buying teaching time, I'd tell them to stop it pretty fucking quick or face the Mother of All Columbines. --Tim May
Re: Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd on Final Passage of Iraq
On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 03:21 PM, Steve Schear wrote: [For all the good it will do, one of the few Senators to stingingly rebuff the Administration's Iraq position and demand for tribute to support their further misadventures. However, there are equally large lies and tribute being supported by Byrd and others upon which they are silent. Besides its easy to be clamorous when you're vote isn't the key vote denying someone as powerful as the President. Just more political rhetoric.] Senate Floor Remarks Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd on Final Passage of Iraq Supplemental Appropriations Bill http://byrd.senate.gov/byrd_speeches/byrd_speeches_2003october/ byrd_speeches>_2003october_list/byrd_speeches_2003october_list_3.html Byrd has stolen vast amounts of money to support his cronies. The number of "slave-lives" (via taxation) to build the "Robert Byrd Memorial Memorials" is in the high tens of thousands. according to Tribunal Watch, the watchdog group keeping tabs on the high crimes of everyone in government. Byrd dislikes the Bush War because he couldn't get in on any of the Halliburon, Bechtel, Zapata, and Wackenhut largesse. His hopes were dashed when West Virginia was passed-over for the site of Camp X-Ray and when, worst of all, WVa was not selected as the processing center for Iraqis to pay their taxes through. He'd been counting on his usual rakeoff. --Tim May "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
Re: clicking on ads = funding terrorists
On Tuesday, October 14, 2003, at 02:10 AM, Bill Stewart wrote: Subject: US State Department extends FTO list to include Internet sites http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031010-112733-8086r.htm Excerpted from politech. Consider the 1st Amend implications, and how clicking on a banner ad (which automatically would pay the source site) makes you a terrorist supporter. Got assets? Depends on how they get paid for the ads - if anybody still pays per view rather than per click-through, even looking at the site could count, at least if your local Feds listen to John Ashcroft. Such a case (of an individual being charged for clicking on a banner ad) will never go to trial, but if it did, an obvious defense would be that those who click on an ad are not the ones _paying_ any money to anyone. They lack "agency." And any argument that the act of clicking on a site or ad for "Kach" induces _others_ to pay money to Kach and hence is some kind of conspiracy to fund Kach would be laughed out of court. This year. Maybe not in three years, however, at the rate we are descending into Wonderland. --Tim May
Re: Software protection scheme may boost new game sales (fwd)
On Saturday, October 11, 2003, at 12:09 PM, Sunder wrote: Yawn... This is no different than any of the copy protection schemes employed in the 1980's on then popular home computers such as the commodore 64. Hindsight is 20/20 and recalls, all of these were broken within weeks if not months. "Nibbler" copiers and other programs were quickly built that allowed the breaking of all of these systems. All sorts of "error" sectors, duplicate tracks, half tracks, extra tracks, extra sectors, non-standard sized sectors, tracks written at different speeds, erroneous checksums, hidden data, and other sorts of weird bits were employed. All were broken. None survived the ages. In the end, the companies that employed copy protection only managed to piss off customers who lost their only copy of the software, and created a market for the copiers and crackers. The crackers won, the software companies lost. In fact, the companies that made copying software got a lot of business (and hence stayed in business, funded more copying work, etc.) from _fully legal customers_ who wanted to ensure that they had backups of critical software. Everybody I knew had "Copyiipc" from Central Point Software in Portland, OR. They were not copying games, they were copying critical disks with their CAD, spreadsheed, accounting, and other business apps on them. Yeah, sometimes these people gave copies to friends. Who often bought the program if their businesses would benefit (manuals, support, updates, etc.). But the main reason was for ensurance (not a word, but it fits with ensure vs. insure). Few of the companies of that era are still in business today. CEO's, Vulture Capitalists, and others who have an interest in such schemes would do well to invest some time in learning about that time, and the results, for their investments, and dollars will go the same way... the way of the brontosaurus, the trilobite, and the dodo. As the saying goes, the lessons of the past are learned anew by each generation... --Tim May
Re: DC Security Geeks Talk: Analysis of an Electronic Voting System
On Friday, September 26, 2003, at 06:42 AM, Ed Reed wrote: Grisham might be better - it's the legal wrangling that would tie up people's imagination, more than the technical. "Major Variola (ret)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 9/25/2003 12:46:13 PM >>> At 02:48 PM 9/24/03 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: <http://www.cryptonomicon.net/ modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=463> Cryptonomicon.Net - Talk: Analysis of an Electronic Voting System Someone needs to inject a story about e-voting fraud into the popular imagination. Is Tom Clancy available? Maybe an anonymous, detailed, plausible, (but secretly fictional) blog describing how someone did this in their podunk county... then "leak" this to a news reporter.. Failure to be *able* to assure that this *didn't* happen in that podunk county would make an important point. There have already been reports of "electronic votes" being reported, mysteriously, before the election precincts closed. We know the results are often fixed, but reporting the results before the polls are closed sorts of makes the point obvious even to the sheeple. But, like the current hullaballoo about spam and telemarketing, the larger issues are not being discussed. Providing more sound bites about why Washington needs to be more successfully targeted by Al Qaida, with a lot more destruction than the paltry efforts we saw on 9/11, is boring. The focus of this list in recent months on political lobbying activities is wrong-headed. We need to be working on ways to make Big Brother powerless, either through technology or through destroying his nests and his tens of millions of helpers. The death of twenty million enablers and welfare addicts will be a very good thing. Burn, corpses, burn!! --Tim May
Re: Inferno: Akila Al-Hashimi assassinated (fwd)
On Thursday, September 25, 2003, at 10:56 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: Jim Choate[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 11:06:45 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Inferno: Akila Al-Hashimi assassinated A representative on the US appointed Governing Council in Iraq has died of wounds from an assassination attempt this past Saturday. She was one of three women representatives on the 25-member council. Strangely enough, we are only hearing word of this assassination attempt today in the West; now that she has in fact died it is newsworthy, I suppose? Or perhaps just inconcealable. I don't have much trust in the US media, but this is nonsense. The assasination attempt was covered by the NYT among others. I heard about it on the radio at the weekend, and it was on Yahoo News. Peter Trei --- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/international/middleeast/21IRAQ.html BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 20 - In the first attempt to assassinate a member of Iraq's interim government, nine gunmen this morning shot and critically wounded Akila al-Hashemi, one of three women on the governing body, as she was being driven to work by a driver and three bodyguards. Her shooting was widely reported when it happened a few days ago, on CNN, leading newspapers, and presumably on other networks. One of her bodyguards was killed, and her brother was either injured or killed, I don't recall. Lots of footage of her planning to be the first useful idiot, er, politician, to serve in both the U.S.-funded Saddam regime and the U.S.-funded post-Saddam regime. Perhaps these networks and newspapers are not carried on Choate Prime, the parallel world that is strangely different from our own. --Tim May
Re: Drunken US Troops Kill Rare Tiger
On Monday, September 22, 2003, at 02:19 PM, Sunder wrote: They *ALL* promise freedom, democracy, and development. It's voting for someone who delivers thems instead of opression, fascism, and theft that's the problem. Anyone who claims to deliver "democracy, and development" needs to be assassinated. As for delivering "freedom," they can butt out of the election as a first step. --Tim May
Liquidating the Mud People
On Saturday, September 20, 2003, at 06:27 PM, Eric Cordian wrote: News services are reporting that US Troops, who have been holding regular drunken parties at the Baghdad Zoo, have shot and killed the Zoo's rare Bengal tiger. It seems not only civilians are in danger from US Troops in the Occupied Iraqi Territories. Even the Evil Baathists had the sense and respect to keep the zoos and other institutions running. Now that the cowboys and good ole boys have taken over, it's target practice on civilians and shooting caged tigers. And worse things. And we are paying an average of $3000 per year per taxpayer, charged to our collective credit cards of course, to pay for Dick Cheney's company to grow richer, for George Bush's oil interests to benefit, and for the creation of a state more inimical to American interests than anything a guy living in the mountains of Afghanistan could ever have imagined. Which was probably the intent all along for those who support and benefit from the National Security State. But, the other side of me is chortling. A clusterfuck which is unfolding nicely. Deaths of imperialist soldiers on a daily basis, thefts of the electoral process by their Democrap opponents back home, more unwinding of U.S. support, and the growing prospects for some true strikes at the heartland. What's not to like? (Just steer clear of the major population centers which are pawns in this game.) Me, I don't fly on Jet CIA Blue or Delta Delta Operations, or any other of the Big Brother-controlled airlines. (And now they are financially suffering and want citizen-unit taxes to bail them out...any airline which takes tax subsidies deserves to have its airplanes blown out of the skyKA_BOOM.) And I rarely leave Santa Cruz these days. And I keep my claymores in good shape and my perimeter alarms armed. This fascist and communist nation has danced to the tune of the Mud People too long. --Tim May
Re: Versign creates man-in-the-middle attack on DNS
On Monday, September 15, 2003, at 07:24 PM, Neil Johnson wrote: Just a few hours ago Versign modified the Internet's root DNS servers to respond to ANY DNS lookup that doesn't resolve in a real hostname to return the IP address of one their servers where they claim to have a search engine. For example, if you access http://www.thisisjunk55666.com , you will get a Verisign page, not a "Host can not be found error". This means that many anti-spam checks will fail among other issues. They will also intercept mail to mistyped email hosts (They claim to reject the mail, but not after having collected the From and To address). This really bites. I didn't get a Verisign page...I go the usual error. "Could not open the page http://www.thisisjunk55666.com/ because the server www.thisisjunk55666.com could not be found." --Tim May "We are at war with Oceania. We have always been at war with Oceania." "We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia." "We are at war with Iraq. We have always been at war with Iraq. "We are at war with France. We have always been at war with France."
Re: Another Cypherpunks Investigation?
On Saturday, September 13, 2003, at 10:36 AM, Tyler Durden wrote: Tim May wrote... "The questions being asked of Jim may have to do with the Feds making the only prosecution they can make: that those passing on such threats via mailing lists are somehow guilty of some crime. This is just speculation on my part." I thought the Feds questions to Jim Choate had more to do with anti-spam enforcement Assuming this is not some silly joke comment, First, the Feds have no significant "anti-spam enforcement" role. Anti-spam laws, such as they exist now, are not being criminally enforced, hence a DOJ role is unlikely. Second, the Pennsylvania connection is unlikely for an anti-spam action, even if some poor soul in Penn. got spammed via a subscription list (meaning, likely no basis for complaint!). Third, nothing in Choate's message mentioned spam or anything in detail. So why you would think the issue was related to "anti-spam enforcement" is a mystery to me. Fourth, the search results I got were pretty convincing to me that a direct death threat was leveled against a government official, by name. The message even referred to waiting for her as she jogged by (or somesuch language, see the posting about Mary Beth Buchanan for details). The Feds take these kinds of posts a _lot_ more seriously than they do anti-spam measures, which likely don't even have the status of being actual criminal laws, at least not yet. And the recipients of a mailing list have no basis for claiming they were spammed through a list they voluntarily signed up for. Q.E.D. --Tim May "I think the root of the problem is that we tend to organize ourselves into tribes. Then people in the tribe are our friends, and people outside are our enemies. I think it happens like this: Someone uses Perl, and likes it, and then they use it some more. But then something strange happens. They start to identify themselves with Perl, as if Perl were part of their body, or vice versa. They're part of the Big Perl Tribe. They want other people to join the Tribe. If they meet someone who doesn't like Perl, it's an insult to the Tribe and a personal affront to them." --Mark Dominus, "Why I Hate Advocacy," 2000
Re: Another Cypherpunks Investigation?
On Friday, September 12, 2003, at 06:32 AM, Jim Choate wrote: Hi, I had an interesting experience yesterday. I got to talk to a person claiming to be with the DoJ in Philly (if memory serves). Apparently they are investigating one or more posts in the Aug. time frame for something. They were interested in a subpeona regarding technical information about the list. The person didn't make it clear exactly who they were investigating. The questions were focused on how the mailing list worked and where there was editorial opportunity. They were also interested in mail and network logs for that time frame (which I don't normally keep past 3-4 days). I was very carefull to explain that IP spoofing was easy to do so that the veracity or reliability of the logs was in question. I'm deciding not to provide the persons name and contact info since I'm not sure what the effect would be. I requested they talk with my lawyer in regards to future information and that I wasn't interested in getting involved. That's about all I have on the topic at this time. I was curious about which messages in August could be of interest. Seeing none (via the lne.com feed I am subscribed to), I searched via Google for various articles mentioning "cypherpunks" and variations on "philadelphia," "pittsburgh," and "pennsylvania." And I narrowed the search to posts in July and August. I got some almost immediate hits (no pun intended). I've made it easy for anyone to find them via Google. Search on this search string: pittsburgh "professor rat" Search also on some of the names in the first article which pops up, i.e., on: "Mary Beth Buchanan" My comment is that this "Professor Rat," whose posts I have not seen for as long as lne.com has been my feed, is probably in some real difficulty. His posts are very direct threats, not veiled in any of the vague, political "politicians ought to be given a fair trial and then hanged" or even the "I hope Washington is nuked" sorts. (One rule of thumb I use is to never, ever use actual names of burrowcrats. Except for a few at the top, I don't even make any effort to remember the names. It's hard to be charged with making a direct, credible threat when no specific person is either named or alluded to.) Were he in the U.S., I'd expect he'd face serious charges. Being that he's in Australia, as far as I know, I doubt extradition will occur. And even if he were prosecuted, by Oz or by the U.S., his various articles indicate "mental disturbance" could be a winning defense, with him ordered to get back on his Prozac or Zoloft or whatever. The questions being asked of Jim may have to do with the Feds making the only prosecution they can make: that those passing on such threats via mailing lists are somehow guilty of some crime. This is just speculation on my part. If so, the case may hinge on issues of "common carrier" status. Also, I believe Congress passed a bill explicitly saying that sysops are not liable for the e-mail passing through their systems...Declan will likely have the latest on this. Anyway, I'll bet good money this is the series of messages in question. Nothing else I have seen either rises to this level or seems to involve Pennsylvania in any significant way. --Tim May
Re: Fatherland Security agents above the law?
On Thursday, September 11, 2003, at 08:36 AM, Major Variola (ret.) wrote: U.S. agents also sought, without warrant or subpoena, to obtain ABCNEWS field tapes. Two agents showed up at night at the San Diego home of a freelance cameraman, Jeff Freeman, who worked on the project. "They first identified themselves as FBI agents, which it turns out they weren't," said Freeman. "They wanted to know if I still had the tapes I had shot for ABC and if I could turn them over." http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/Primetime/sept11_uranium030910.html The whole story, ranging from the depleted uranium to the reporters being "concerned" (that it got through), to the "this is very serious...we will look into filing smuggling charges" to the "we want the tapes" nonsense. A bunch of points: * depleted uranium (DU) is essentially pure U-238, with very low specific activity (decay rate); removal of the 2-3% of the higher specific activity U-235 lessens the overall decay rate of the original metal substantially. * it is very easily shielded. True, the gammas are fairly penetrating, but can be shielded in various easy ways. (For example, sailboat keels are often made of lead...simply drill some holes in the keel, put the DU in the holes, cap the holes with lead. And sailboat keels are deep underwater, making even use of a gamma ray spectrometer a chore. For that matter, some high tech keels now use DU. DUh, so to speak.) * the reaction of the reporters to what they did was "Look, we managed to get some dangerous uranium in through one of millions of shipping containers entering the U.S. at Long Beach!" No analysis. * the reaction of the bureaucrats was unsurprising: declare that the crime is being looked into, round up all the parties for questioning, mutter darkly about how the U.S. Attorney may prosecute, natter about national security, flash some phony credentials, detain a few scientists, then move on to the next manufactured hype crisis. All very typical and why the National Security State is such a sick joke. --Tim May
Re: unintended consequences: Davis recall leads to US internal passports
On Wednesday, September 10, 2003, at 02:02 PM, Major Variola (ret) wrote: I've read that to enter a Fed building you need "ID". I'm curious what happens if you haven't got it. Adrian Lamo had his card. I'm currently ignoring the conscription notices I get from the local jury droids; if I *volunteer* someday (after reviewing fija.org) I'll be sure to be without ID. Ironically, I was preparing myself for such an eventuality. I even Googled for reports on "jury "i.d."" and similar variants. I found no reports of legal hassles for people not having I.D. when called for for grand or petit jury duty, or for otherwise being ordered to enter a government building. I was called for jury duty--admittedly a County of California building, not a Federal Protectorate building. But I had a hunch they might ask for "proof" that I was the person called, or not let me into the court room without I.D., etc. I was mentally preparing to leave my D.L. and wallet back in my car (or even to take a bus for a few blocks, without license) and then tell the guarddroids: "No, I don't have a Driver's License...I'm not in my car right now, as you can see. My Driver's License is for when I'm _driving_." My plan was not to file a Gilmore-type lawsuit, just respond to any demands for I.D. with a shrug. And then a departure, with the names of the guarddroids noted so I could later tell the authorities that I am not required to carry I.D. except when entering the U.S., driving a vehicle, and a few other similar things. My younger brother, who has been on various juries, told me they never asked for any I.D. (He's a registered Republican and has been called several times in his adult life. I'm a registered Libertarian and have not actually been called to serve since 1973, when I was still registered Republican. I smell something fishy.) In any case, I was in the last "group" (31 of 31) which had to phone the courthouse to see if we were to be actually told to be present physically. The last couple of groups got excused. So my 30-year record of not serving on a jury has been upheld. NIB magnets are probably overkill, but it was the first and last useful swipe my license's magstrip will see... By the way, in case others didn't hear about this, smart card readers are apparently now considered "paraphernalia." Or at least grounds for expensive lawsuits (until those filing suit are countersued successfully). It seems a couple of subscribers to a satellite t.v. service (who shall remain nameless, as it is my provider and they probably Google for mentions of their name) bought a smart card reader/writer. Big Satellite Company sent them a lawsuit, claiming they were pirating Big Satellite Co's smartcards. All without any proof, at least none unveiled so far. The two guys said they are hobbyists and have "legitimate" reasons to buy openly available smart card reader/writers. (And they really don't have to say _what_ they are doing or planning to do with the card readers. Unless the gadgets are actually declared illegal, they are legal to own. And Big Sat Co has to have actual evidence, not mere suspicion. Of course, they are free to cancel the satellite service for these two guys.) "Buy a smart card reader, go to jail." --Tim May "According to the FBI, there's a new wrinkle in prostitution: suburban teenage girls are now selling their white asses at the mall to make money to spend at the mall. ... Now, you see, the joke here, of course, is on White America, which always felt superior to blacks, and showed that with their feet, moving out of urban areas. "White flight," they called it. Whites feared blacks. They feared if they raised their kids around blacks, the blacks would turn their daughters and prostitutes. And now, through the miracle of MTV, damned if it didn't work out that way! " --Bill Maher, "Real Time with Bill Maher," HBO, 15 August 2003
Re: unintended consequences: Davis recall leads to US internal passports
On Wednesday, September 10, 2003, at 03:38 PM, Bill Stewart wrote: But if you're ignoring jury conscription notices at times that it's not seriously interfering with your business activities, you should go check out FIJA.org. Remember that under the common law, a juror has the power and responsibility to judge the law as well as the facts of the case, even though judges and clerks will generally tell you otherwise. This means that if somebody's on trial for prohibition violations, you can and should vote Not Guilty if you think Prohibition is a bad law. That's a large part of how the Fugitive Slave Laws got overturned, and helped with the demise of alcohol prohibition. Of course, if a court figures out that you understand this, and doesn't immediately decide that you're not their type of juror, they'll probably stick you on traffic accident cases or something where there's no moral principle of state-vs-citizen conflict, just a boring who-hit-whose-car kind of conflict. How would they even know one's views on this thing you're talking about? (I'm not sure I know the name of this thing you're talking about, especially because I decided a long time ago not to carefully investigate this thing you're talking about, and especially not to carefully remember the name of this thing you're talking about, just so that I could honestly shrug and say "No, I don't know what that thing you're talking about is about.") Also, my experience in 1973 with a jury trial (the last time I was registered Republican, the last time I served on a jury) was that the jurors were of course selected for a specific trial. I don't think your model works, where they quiz the prospective jurors and then shunt the un-PC off to traffic court. Basically, one doesn't have to answer _any_ questions until voir dire for the specific case has begun. And then it's best to just play dumb about that thing you mentioned, or find a reason to mention that thing you talked about if one's intent is to be immediately drop-kicked out of the jury pool. (Which ends one's involvement...there is no "stick you on traffic accident cases" exception.) But that thing you mentioned is curious...I seem to have forgotten about it already. --Tim May ""Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." --Patrick Henry
Re: unintended consequences: Davis recall leads to US internal passports
On Wednesday, September 10, 2003, at 09:38 AM, Major Variola (ret.) wrote: Licenses as IDs at airports questioned WASHINGTON Federal officials and lawmakers raised serious concerns Tuesday about the continued use of driver's licenses at airports and U.S. borders in light of California's new law allowing illegal immigrants to obtain the widely accepted means of identification. "If driver's licenses are given to people who are illegally in the country, then that puts extra burdens and difficulties on our inspectors at the border," Hutchinson said. "If you don't have integrity in the driver's licenses that are issued, then it really undermines the whole premise of allowing U.S. citizens to travel abroad and come back with limited proof of U.S. citizenship, without a passport." There has never been any "integrity" (in OS/capabilities/verification terms) in the driver's license issuance. Not in any of the three states I have requested and gotten DLs in has there ever been the slightest attempt to verify who I say I am (lacking is-a-person credentials, this would be difficult anyway). The wisdom of using driver's licenses for identification was also questioned Tuesday in a congressional watchdog report that found that fraudulent licenses are passing muster at airports, border crossings and motor-vehicle offices. The full report by the General Accounting Office has been classified for security reasons. But in public testimony prepared for the Senate Finance Committee, Robert Cramer, director of GAO's office of special investigations, warned about relying on driver's licenses for identification. Davis had refused to sign such a law before, citing homeland security concerns. His about-face was questioned by some as a move to garner support in the Latino community. Our first Mexican governor expects to add an estimated 525,000 former illegal aliens to the Democrap voter base in California. BTW, having briefly volunteered at a "register to vote" table a while back, I can assure you all that we never asked for any ID whatsoever upon taking the completed forms, that many of those who registered were obviously too recent in arrival in the U.S. to be legally qualifed to be citizens, let alone voters, and that many of those I "registered" (*) had essentially no knowledge of anything political. (* I did not actually "register" them...that happens somewhere back when the form I collected from them is processed by the DP center and entered into the big computer. Do the staffers in Sacramento make efforts to verify addresses or to cross-check with Immigration and Naturalization? Do you want to buy a bridge? Once the forms are sent in, registration is a foregone conclusion.) --Tim May
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 11:47 AM, Steve Schear wrote: At 09:28 AM 9/9/2003 -0700, Tim May wrote: Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described yesterday? "The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members." Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel bypasses the nominal name-stripping. Sorry, I replied to this but apparently forgot to cc cypherpunks On this topic, I very strongly suggest to people that they not carry on conversations on both open lists and moderated lists. Also, I thought Perrypunks was a "no politics, crypto only" list? Debating how to do campaign finance reform is heavily political, and very light on cryptography, math, etc. Limiting each individual contribution to fixed amounts (say $1, $5, $10, $20 and $100) should close that loophole. There are too many loopholes to close. You also don't address the other point I raised, that if an "untraceable campaign contribution system" is in fact unlinkable to the donor, then Warren Buffett is able to donate $10 million, all in "unlinkable" contributions. (Nothing wrong with this, of course, but it sure does contradict the "only small contributions" intent of the various statist rules about campaigns.) So, why work on a system which is guaranteed to fail, by its nature? And guaranteed to fail for social reasons, when it is pointed out that inner city negroes rarely have access to PCs or digital money systems and that the system thus skews toward techies and those with computers? --Tim May --Tim May "Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." --Robert A. Heinlein
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 08:39 PM, Steve Schear wrote: At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote: - Original Message - From: "Steve Schear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [anonymous funding of politicians] > Comments? Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it. Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive. Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described yesterday? "The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members." Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel bypasses the nominal name-stripping. --Tim May "According to the FBI, there's a new wrinkle in prostitution: suburban teenage girls are now selling their white asses at the mall to make money to spend at the mall. ... Now, you see, the joke here, of course, is on White America, which always felt superior to blacks, and showed that with their feet, moving out of urban areas. "White flight," they called it. Whites feared blacks. They feared if they raised their kids around blacks, the blacks would turn their daughters and prostitutes. And now, through the miracle of MTV, damned if it didn't work out that way! " --Bill Maher, "Real Time with Bill Maher," HBO, 15 August 2003
CAPPS II -- The Latest "Red Scare"
"The new Transportation Security Administration system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger's identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information. Passengers will be assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- based in part on their city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase. "Most people will be coded green and sail through. But up to 8 percent of passengers who board the nation's 26,000 daily flights will be coded "yellow" and will undergo additional screening at the checkpoint, according to people familiar with the program. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled "red" and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested." <http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&ncid=1802&e=2&u=/ washpost/20030909/ts_washpost/a45434_2003sep8> Charming. Now people face "arrest" (Washington Post story claim) for merely be tagged as a Red. Get tagged as a Red, perhaps based on "intelligence" like Usenet postings, mailing list activity, political activity, and airlines are ordered to bar use of their services. And arrest follows. I know the ACLU is already having a field day with this. I wonder what the charges justifying arrest will be? "Your honor, this man was flagged "Red" by our computers. We request one million dollars bail. He's a flight riskcough." No wonder the airlines are facing bankruptcy. Except Big Brother is bailing them out, semi-nationalizing them (probably giving big pieces of control to Halliburton and other Bush crony companies...even Hitler was not this transparent). --Tim May Join the boycott against Delta Airlines for their support of the Big Brotherish "CAPPS II" citizen-unit tracking program. http://www.boycottdelta.org http://boycottdelta.org/images/deltaeyebanner.gif With our help, Delta Airlines may be joining United and US Air in the bankruptcy scrap heap.
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
On Tuesday, September 9, 2003, at 09:58 AM, ken wrote: Tim May wrote: In any case, campaign finance reform is essentially uninteresting and statist. Yes Tim, but as we happen to live in places where states make laws and employ men with guns to hurt us if we disobey those laws then we do have an interest (in the other sense) in who gets to run the organs of the state. If you live next to the zoo you may be uninterested in the design of the lion's cage but you sure as hell aren't disinterested in it. I wouldn't want to live near a death camp, either, but that doesn't mean I would think designing better gas chambers is a noble or interesting thing to do (well, maybe for ten million or so statists and inner city welfare mutants, but that's for another post). Designing systems to thwart free speech is not noble, and not very interesting. (Campaign finance laws are thwartings of free speech, clearly.) --Tim May "That government is best which governs not at all." --Henry David Thoreau
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 10:11 AM, Steve Schear wrote: Everyone knows that money is the life blood of politics. The topic of campaign finance reform in the U.S. has been on and off the front burner of the major media, for decades. Although the ability of citizens and corporations to support the candidates and parties of their choice can be a positive political force, the ability of political contributors to buy access and influence legislation is probably the major source of governmental corruption. Despite some, apparently, honest efforts at limiting these legal payoffs there has been little real progress. The challenge is to encourage "neutral" campaign contributions. Perhaps technology could lend a hand. One of the features of Chaimian digital cash is unlinkability. Normally, this has been viewed from the perspective of the payer and payee not wishing to be linked to a transaction. But it also follows that that the payee can be prevented from learning the identity of the payee even if they wished. Since the final payee in politics is either the candidate or the party, this lack of knowledge could make it much more difficult for the money to be involved in influence peddling and quid pro quo back room deals. By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore entitled to special treatment. Comments? All a contributor who wishes to be "credited" with having contributed has to do is "encode" his identity or that of his organization in the _amount_ of the contribution. This can be done out-of-band, even posted on a Website: "Remember, gun owners! Show your support by contributing _exactly_ $91.37 to the candidates we recommend." The pile of contributions of $91.37 would be just as sure (actually, only about 99% sure, for obvious statistical reasons) an indication of what the campaign donations were about as having a name attached. (Sort of a higher-precision parallel to the practice of paying soldiers with $2 bills so that local merchants would really understand just how important the local military base was to their business.) And if the system is unlinkable, then of course the contributions need not be N contributions from N different people. They could be N contributions of "91.37" from one contributor, a contributor who sends the politician an out-of-band (e-mail) message telling him exactly what to expect. There are other ways to thwart this idea. And this use of digital cash got talked about a lot here several years ago. Having Big Brother run a "mix" where all such unlinkable contributions are pooled and then disbursed is an obvious fix (but then no need for digital cash...ordinary checks and money orders and cash accomplish the same thing, once Big Brother is the one holding and disbursing the cash). Also, it will never fly for just general social reasons. Not only would such a system also be usable for untraceable payoffs (a feature for our kind of people, but a problem for some others), but the complaint would be heard that the computer-illiterate would not have equal access, blah blah. Also, the issue with campaign reform has And needless to say, the entire concept of "campaign reform" is profoundly contrary to the Bill of Rights. Everyone involved in limiting political speech via "campaign reform" deserves to be tried and hanged. I'd really hate to see a digital cash company firebombed because of its involvement with the forces of darkness. In any case, campaign finance reform is essentially uninteresting and statist. --Tim May "Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat." --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
Using Virus/Worm comments to implicate others
Reading about the Romanian student arrested today for allegedly releasing one of the "Blaster" variants, I was struck by how easy it would be to "bring a shitstorm down" on someone by inserting comments into the virus code. --excerpt-- Second Suspect Arrested for Internet Virus Wed Sep 3, 5:54 PM ET By JIM KRANE, AP Technology Writer Police in Romania on Wednesday arrested a 24-year-old former student in connection with a computer-crippling Internet worm, according to a computer security company that aided police. ... Company analysts traced Ciobanu through some Romanian-language text inside the virus that eventually led them to a Web page containing Ciobanu's home address and telephone number, Vicol said. ... --end excerpt-- Tim again: This is not the first time an arrest has been made based on comments in virus/worm code. Sometimes the comments are about professors, sometimes about girlfriends, sometimes about local food and other trivia. It would be easy to implicate someone, for at least the initial months of house arrest (as with Parsons, the American kid also arrested for an alleged Blaster release), by scattering incriminating comments. Getting incriminating evidence onto their home or office computers is not as easy, but we can all think of ways this could be done. Absent verifiable signatures on such code (who would sign such a thing with a traceably sig?), conviction may be difficult. A charged person could claim he was "set up." Still, acquittal is months or years down the road, after great expense. I'll bet we see something along these lines soon. --Tim May "They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote." --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to impose a police state
