Re: Libraries - Re: LogJam
Tim May wrote: > We've been hearing this jive for several decades. "Librarians will > become more important." > > In my experience, it just ain't so. The human effort in communicating > a request is greater than simply searching. With two notable classes > of exceptions: I don't quite think so either, however let's take into account the broadening of the subject. the librarians' education today includes even some programming. most likely, they'll be the people who do the cataloging and database functions while you use some computerized search engine to sift through it. but any search engine relies either on the meaningfullness of full-text search, which is questionable, or on some kind of catalogue, even if it's just META keywords. in the later case, the better the catalogue is done, the better your search results. > Second, when the user is unfamiliar with the library or its > cataloging methods. "Where would I find reports on DSL installation > options for my community?" I'd like to add third, when the user doesn't know enough about his topic to do a meaningful search. it occasionally happens to everyone, I think, that you look for something, but can't find it since you're looking for the wrong keywords. > Just my view, of course. same here. :) we'll see.
Re: reverse engineered censorlist taken down
Frog wrote: > Ultimately, a serverless adaptive network should be designed, where each > end-user machine acts as a message store & relay, with protocols that can > keep the system alive with a minimum number of online nodes present. > No, I don't know how to do this, yet. But I'll figure it out. several proposals for something like that float around. cypherspace (http://www.cypherspace.org/) has links to most of them.
RE: Libraries - Re: LogJam
Tom Vogt wrote: > cataloging and database functions while you use some > computerized search > engine to sift through it. but any search engine relies either on the > meaningfullness of full-text search, which is questionable, or on some > kind of catalogue, even if it's just META keywords. in the later case, > the better the catalogue is done, the better your search results. I guess you're new to the list -- the late Gerard Salton proved in 1971 that even the best hand-indexing can't compete with a search engine that supports relevancy ranking, a thesaurus, and user feedback. The complete bibliographic reference is below my .signature. [Jeez, I'm starting to feel like Tim, here -- "check the archives, Luke"...] == Mark Leighton Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics [EMAIL PROTECTED] Indianapolis, IN "Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is 'Don't Tread on Me'" Salton, Gerard (1971). A New Comparison Between Conventional Indexing (MEDLARS) and Automatic Text Processing (SMART). Cornell University Computer Science Technical Report CS TR71-115, http://cs-tr.cs.cornell.edu:80/Dienst/UI/2.0/Describe/ncstrl.cornell%2f TR71-115>
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Subject: Boiling FrogCards Friday March 10 10:07 AM ET Internet Pirate Code Sparks Bank Card Alert By Catherine Bremer PARIS (Reuters) - France prepared for a wave of petty bank card fraud after officials admitted on Friday that a trick posted on the Internet showing how to forge cards could work. The security-code busting formula, posted anonymously on the Internet, did not put people's bank accounts at risk of being emptied, the Cartes Bancaires interbank payment system group said. But it could be used to make cards for transactions such as buying train tickets, paying parking meters or toll booths, Cartes Bancaires spokesman Herve de Lacotte told Reuters. ``For the first time in 10 years, a lock has been sprung,'' he said. ``But springing a lock will not necessarily open the door and let you in. There is a theoretical risk of fraud but the problem concerns banks, not consumers or shops,'' he said. Newspapers leapt on the story, quoting experts as saying the complex 96-digit code could be used to forge three in four of France's 34 million bank cards. Headlines like ``Chip card secret out'' left anyone with a bank card wondering whether their money was safe and triggered a furious response from consumer groups. ``Consumers have been paying for bank cards that aren't even secure. They've been cheated and lied to,'' said Eric April, Secretary-General of the AFOC consumer group. However, Lacotte said the scare stories were over-the-top. Despite claims to the contrary, he said, extra security measures meant cards made with the stolen code could not be used in cash dispensers, to make shop purchases or for expensive goods. Cards issued since last autumn had added security which meant the pirate formula would not work for them, he added. SCSSI, the government body in charge of information security systems, urged banks to replace older cards with updated ones. ``Banks must launch a large-scale operation fast to improve chip cards, which will mean replacing millions of cards and card readers,'' SCSSI chief Jean-Louis Desvignes told the Paris daily Liberation. Computer whizzkid Serge Humpich, who set alarm bells ringing when he first cracked the algorithm three years ago, said that, armed with a chip card kit which can be bought for around $370, pirates could be turning out false bank cards within weeks. ``Decrypting the code was easy enough. A few weeks from now dozens of false cards are going to appear,'' he told Liberation. Humpich, who was landed with a 10-month suspended prison term for discovering the trick, claimed at the time it could have earned him $2,000 in cash every 15 minutes as well as countless holidays and goods paid for by card.
deployment problems (Re: About payee untraceability ...)
Mark Fisher writes: > [...] we as a people will regain some of our lost privacy through > crypto anarchy. We may all have to wait until the current crop of > patents expire to see some of the results of crypto anarchy, I see the biggest barrier will be working through the maze of banking regulations, and barriers to entry from the banking industry itself in getting an interface between the existing banking infrastructure and any payer and/or payee anonymous ecash systems. This is why I find things like hashcash and Wei Dai's b-money interesting ... they try to work without a direct interface to the banking system. Adam
Re: Anonymous remailers on SportsNight
> On SportsNight (the best show you're not watching, according to TV > guide), there was a reference to anonymous remailers this past Tuesday. > Is this the first mention in pop culture? Maybe the first one on TV, but remailers have been mentioned in various pieces of fiction, for example: | This month (May 1998) in the literary journal "Playboy", there is a short | fiction piece by Brendan DuBois entitled "Netmail". The story involves a | case of blackmail using a nymserver which is very similar to | anon.penet.fi, but transplanted just across the water to Sweden | (anon.service.se). Even child porno pics get worked in. | | Oh, there are pictures, too, for those who don't like fiction. and of course Stephenson's book.
Re: Anonymous remailers on SportsNight
At 9:13 PM -0500 3/10/00, Secret Squirrel wrote: > > On SportsNight (the best show you're not watching, according to TV >> guide), there was a reference to anonymous remailers this past Tuesday. >> Is this the first mention in pop culture? > >Maybe the first one on TV, but remailers have been mentioned in >various pieces of fiction, for example: > >| This month (May 1998) in the literary journal "Playboy", there is a short >| fiction piece by Brendan DuBois entitled "Netmail". The story involves a >| case of blackmail using a nymserver which is very similar to >| anon.penet.fi, but transplanted just across the water to Sweden >| (anon.service.se). Even child porno pics get worked in. >| >| Oh, there are pictures, too, for those who don't like fiction. > >and of course Stephenson's book. There have also been more-than-trivial mentions in _several_ other novels. I don't recall all of them...possibly Payne Harrison's "Black Cipher," though I don't plan to comb through it for references. Two that I recall for sure are: Paul Erdman's recent novel, "The Set-Up." The American banker sets up contacts through Cypherpunks-style remailers to protect his safety. (Erdman is of course famous for such novels as "The Crash of '79" and "The Silver Bears." He was imprisoned by the Swiss in the mid-70s and now lives in Sonoma County.) The other is Eric Harry, in the novels "Protect and Defend" and "Invasion." In both novels, characters make use of anonymous remailers. (Eric Harry wrote the excellent "Arc Light," about a war between the U.S. and Russia, and an interesting SF novel, "Society of Mind." The two most recent novels mentioned above are extremely detailed--perhaps too detailed--accounts of wars in China and with China invading the U.S. I'm reading "Invasion" right now, and it is too implausible to enjoy fully.) While on the subject of novels, the most interesting novel I've read in a couple of years is Greg Egan's "Permutation City." --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: The price of bread in Romania
>X-Loop: openpgp.net >From: Jim Choate <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Ever hear of Esperanto? > >Yeah. What was your point? The top of his head? -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ** If the courts started interpreting the Second Amendment the way they interpret the First, we'd have a right to bear nuclear arms by now.--Ann Coulter
