Re: ID Rules Exist, But Can't Be Seen

2004-10-06 Thread Bob Jonkman 
This is what Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] said
about ID Rules Exist, But Can't Be Seen on 30 Sep 2004 at 17:06

 For instance, is it indeed possible that revealing this rule would
 pose an additional security risk? If such a rule exists (and it does)
 then hijackers obviously already know about it. Could this rule also
 reveal some deeper secrets about how hijackers can be detected? I
 seriously doubt it.

There's some wonderful Sicilian Reasoning in that: We can't reveal the rule because 
the Bad Guys would figure out what we're looking for.  But the Bad Guys already know 
what we're looking for, but we'll keep the rule secret anyway because we know they 
know what we're looking for. The thing is, the Bad Guys know that too...

Re: Email tapping by ISPs, forwarder addresses, and crypto proxies

2004-08-01 Thread Bob Jonkman 
This is what J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] said
about Re: Email tapping by ISPs, forwarde on 24 Jul 2004 at 18:44

 
 On Sat, 24 Jul 2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
 
  There might be blind cypherpunks, we don't discriminate[1],
 
 There Is No We.
 
  [1] the original phone phreaks were blind,
 
 This is a ridiculous statement, and even worse, leaks information
 about your nym: [young enough to have not been there].
 
 You are thinking of Joe Whistler Joe Egressia (sp?), and the kid
 form New York whose names escape me at the moment.  These two do not
 even com close to the original phone phreaks were blind.  More like
 at least two of the original batch of phreaks were blind.

Or are you thinking of the Three Blind Phreaks, profiled in Wired 
magazine earlier this year?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/phreaks.html


--Bob.

Re: Fact checking

2004-04-29 Thread Bob Jonkman 
This is what Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] said
about Re: Fact checking on 28 Apr 2004 at 19:37

  Make sure there's a handy abstain option for those who want to get
  the point across about lack of choice, and maybe a space to say why,
  too. Then stick the (anonymous) reasons up in a publicly-viewable
  space and eh, instant feedback.
 
 There is an abstention option.  The poll administrator checks off your
 name when you show up, so someone knows that you voted.  You don't
 have to choose anyone on your ballot.  You can either toss it in the
 garbage on your way out, or draw pictographs derogatory to politicians
 on non-critical areas of the ballot before feeding it to the
 fiber-starved voting machine.

But then the ballot is spoiled, and not counted.

In Canada we have the option to decline to vote.  Go to the polling station, 
register 
your name, take the ballot, then tell the clerk that you decline to vote.  This 
indicates that you believe that no-one on the ballot is a suitable candidate for 
office.  The ballot is counted, but none of the candidates gets a vote.  

This ensures that you don't accidentally elect an unsuitable candidate with a protest 
vote, ie. selecting the lesser of two evils.  By declining to vote you elect neither 
of 
the two evils.

I'm not sure what happens when there are more declined ballots than votes for a 
candidate. Certainly it should draw some media attention to the option of declining to 
vote -- I find that very few people know about it.  It sure caused a stir at our 
polling booth!  

-- -- -- --
Bob Jonkman

Re: nettime PlayFair Sarovar

2004-04-20 Thread Bob Jonkman 
That seemed short-lived.  Both links to the Playfair project at Sarovar are dead: 
http://sarovar.org/projects/playfair/ and http://playfair.sarovar.org/  The search 
function doesn't come up with anything either...

Has there been any further news on this?

--Bob.



This is what R. A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] said
about nettime PlayFair   Sarovar on 12 Apr 2004 at 13:42

 
 --- begin forwarded text
 
 
 To: nettime [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 From: kevin lahoda [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: nettime PlayFair   Sarovar
 Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 14:51:11 -0400
 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Reply-To: kevin lahoda [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
 Sarovar.org is India's first portal to host projects under Free/Open
 source licenses. It is located in Trivandrum, India and hosted at
 Asianet data center. Sarovar.org is customised, installed and
 maintained by Linuxense as part of their community services and
 sponsored by River Valley Technologies.
 
  From Sarovar's  http://sarovar.org/  Latest News: After a short
 vacation thanks to a Cease and Desist letter from Apple, we're back
 online. Many thanks to Sarovar for hosting us..  -PlayFair 
 
 Sarovar now hosts The PlayFair project  http://playfair.sarovar.org/
  which SourceForge has declined in order to avoid tangling with
 Apple's decision to go DMCA on their ass 
 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/09/1554203 . Like something
 from a Gibson novel, I wouldn't doubt if Sarovar rises to meet more
 than another of these occasions in the near future.
 
 And so, we have more contentious open source code hosted outside of
 the US in order to circumvent unfavorable legal processes.
 
 Offtshoring in itself is not all that new (another example: 
 http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/honeyd/ ). Here is how this one
 gets interesting:  A big guy - Apple, goes a little sour, another
 (kind of) big guy - SourceForge, takes the easy route, and then an
 offshore repository stands in.
 
 With all of this, one thing that should not be ignored is that
 SourceForge should be shamed for not holding itself stronger. In a way
 SourceForge's decline of PlayFair and non-usage of the Safe Harbor
 Provision Act  http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/  is an admit
 of defeat and a failure to stand up for one's (community's) rights.
 
 What comes out of this?
 
 Well, maybe Apple wins because they avoid a chance of being tarnished.
 Imagine what consumer level acknowledgment of the reality of Apple
 marketing a clean yet gritty 'Garage Band' motif (with all that punk
 rock implies) while at the same time sleeping with DRM, recently RIAA,
 and now DMCA, could entail... One can easily see that Apple is dancing
 itself into a bit of a gamble. But then again, what does an Ipod
 zombie care about these acronyms anyway?
 
 What does SourceForge get? Not much. This only makes it easier for
 them to weasle out of the next situation that comes up. Not to mention
 they also missed a good chance to join PlayFair in telling Apple
 what's what.
 
 k
 
 http://sarovar.org/ http://sarovar.org/projects/playfair/
 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/09/1554203
 http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/
 http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/honeyd/
 
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/09/playfair_dmca_takedown/
 
 
 
 
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 --- end forwarded text
 
 
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 -
 R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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