Hey! More BS.

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

 >>Hey, Protestantism gave us the "priesthood of all believers",
and if that's too much work, the ULC will ordain you for $20.
The Internet lets everybody be a journalist, or at least a political 
commentator.
Won't be a problem getting either of those jobs :-)
(However, as many people have discovered with acting or Internet startup,
 >>getting a job in the field is easy, but getting a *paying* job is 
tougher...)

I'm interested in the peyote priesthood.(Im already an entertainment 
journalist) I do want confessional box privileges.(20c?)
Who needs a paying job and why do *you* do *this*? Protwhateverthefuck 
sounds like a real drag Man.

 >>The Internet lets everybody be a journalist, or at least a political 
commentator.

You do love to smell your own farts ,dont you. Still it lets everybody be 
an assassin or at least a *predictor*.
Thanks bill,thanks a hell of a lot.




Shockwave Rider

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

My tovarich Vulture tells me the 23 kiloton skidoo is in position.The 
camouflage extends to in-situ radiation!
The only thing to catch this polar scud will be runaway global warming.Get 
out of Dodge!
she's also angling for the OBL reward and is flying to Egypt to pace out 
one of the new finds in the valley of the kings.

PS.In case you think she's full of it,scroll some of her *predictions* at 
indymedia.

This type of jabberwockery must surely wipe out the fascist United States 
as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 
The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, 
associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those 
people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place...




Re: Cypherpunk Ban

2001-12-18 Thread Petro

On Monday, December 17, 2001, at 10:30 AM, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> jya>>I don't recall the rationale used by the USPO to forbid CJ from
> posting to cypherpunks. Anybody know the answer to that?
> Since when is it unusual to forbid parolees from associating with
> unsavory and immoral characters?

Given the neighborhoods most parolees live in, forbidding them 
contact with "unsavory and immoral characters" is often impossible.
--
"Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are
half-wits."--Chris Klein




Re: Uzbekistan Eyewitnesses See Dozens of US Casualties

2001-12-18 Thread Petro

On Monday, December 17, 2001, at 09:17 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
James A. Donald:
>>> The dogs bark but the caravan moves on. In the US, unlike
>>> most other countries, there is still sufficient freedom
>>> of speech that soldiers cannot go missing without it
>>> becoming widely known.  The US army does underreport
>>> wounded, and minimize the severity of wounds, but dead is
>>> dead.
> On 16 Dec 2001, at 22:48, Petro wrote:
>> Of course, sometimes soldiers who die in a place they
>> weren't supposed to be come up missing in "training
>> accidents" somewhere else.
>
> The US, unlike the countries whose system so many prefer to
> impose on the US, has sufficient freedom of speech that that
> cannot happen without causing grave embarrassment.  Recollect
> that dying in battle gives very different honors,
> compensation etc.  If if the army falsified the circumstances
> of a soldier's death there would be mutiny in the ranks.

Depends on the soldier and the "war" they are fighting.

Not all soldiers fight for honors, and some units 
understand/believe that certain fights in certain places are worth not 
getting all that much attention. I'm not saying that in *this* war that 
would happen, there is no need. The American public knows we are in this 
war, and they understand that there will be some casualties.
>
> The low death rates in recent conflicts have made some people
> suspicious.  How can the US army get casualty ratio of
> something like ten thousand to one, when fighting against
> people with comparable weapons?  And if the US is made of
> supermen, why did it suffer heavy casualties in Vietnam and
> Korea?

Because in Korea and Vietnam we were fighting the enemies fight 
with largely the the same level of technology (yes, we had better 
technology, but not *that* much better).

We are also fighting smarter these days.

> In my judgment the big change is the change from a conscript
> army, a slave army, to a warrior army.  Firstly this makes
> the soldiers more valuable to the officers, since deaths cost
> the army big money.  Every casualty means that the pay and
> benefits have to be considerably higher.  In a free market,
> the burden of hazardous employment falls on the employer, so
> the employer has an incentive to provide safe employment.
> Secondly, the apparatus of coercion that attempts to force
> conscripts to fight against their will frequently forces them
> into danger that a competent warrior would never have gone
> into, or would promptly have left.

Not that I disagree much with this, but there is also the issue 
that the American public is much more sensitive to losses than in Korea 
or Vietnam. "We" are not  as naive as we used to be, and we don't trust 
Uncle nearly as much.

This makes those at the top more careful about objectives and methods.


--
"Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you deal with are
half-wits."--Chris Klein




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2001-12-18 Thread asoiau1632

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Re: MY APPOLOGIES TO ALL CYPHERPUNKS - WAS Re: Returned mail:

2001-12-18 Thread Eric Murray

On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 09:04:46AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> All nite long i've been spammed by the account [EMAIL PROTECTED]  I'm
> sure we've all seen the numerous messages on here.
> 
> Anyway - my autoresponder has been responding to these messages and as a
> result a number of bounced email ended up redirected to the
> cypherpunks lists.
 
Actually, I only got the originals.  It looks like the mail kept going
through the CDR nodes because one of them was re-sending it.
Its hard to tell from the headers, but I think it's minder.net.

If your autobounce was just feeding back the message that you receive
with no changes (error headers, etc) to minder then you might have been
the cause.  Otherwise, there's some other problem.
(if you didn't see it because you're subscribed to a filtering CDR
that filtered them, it was about 400 copies of spam).

Either way, you shouldnt set up an autobounce that can reply to a list.
Please fix it so it won't do that.

Eric


> I have recently /dev/null all email from [EMAIL PROTECTED] - so the
> bounces should stop soon.
> 
> regards
> joe
> 
> On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Mail Delivery Subsystem wrote:
> 
> > The original message was received at Tue, 18 Dec 2001 08:41:04 -0500
> > from locust.minder.net [216.254.113.229]
> > 
> >- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -
> > "|exec /usr/bin/procmail"
> > (expanded from: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
> > 
> >- Transcript of session follows -
> > 554 Too many hops 26 (25 max): from <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> via 
>locust.minder.net, to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > 
> 
> -- 
> The dot.GOD Registry, Limited
> 
> http://www.dot-god.com/




Re: MY APPOLOGIES TO ALL CYPHERPUNKS - WAS Re: Returned mail:

2001-12-18 Thread !Dr. Joe Baptista

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Eric Murray wrote:

> the cause.  Otherwise, there's some other problem.
> (if you didn't see it because you're subscribed to a filtering CDR
> that filtered them, it was about 400 copies of spam).

wow busy little beaver.  i think isaw about 100 of those before i filtered
them on this end.

> 
> Either way, you shouldnt set up an autobounce that can reply to a list.
> Please fix it so it won't do that.

had a look at it - the autoresponder was sending to the list owner at
minder - not the actual list.

normally it's a very well behaved autoresponder and only responds once to
a new email address - ignores lists.  But It was sending the list owner a
new reponse each time the spam was recived.

regards
joe
Joe Baptista

http://www.dot-god.com/

The dot.GOD Registry, Limited




Re: CNN.com on Remailers

2001-12-18 Thread David Honig

At 06:56 PM 12/17/01 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
>On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Trei, Peter wrote:
>
>> Yes, I have read the letter - they need to treat input from known remailers
>> differently due to worries over spam and flooding attacks, so they treat 
>> other known remailers as priviliged sources of high volume traffic.

Can't spam be repelled by not forwarding email not encrypted to
the remailer's key?  

>> This does not invalidate my point - that such special treatment could lead
>> a remop into legal problems. We have two different problems, with mutually
>> undesirable solutions.
>
>If the sending node doesn't know about the destination node, how does it
>konw where to send the traffic (even if the sender provides the address)?
>The reality is that the remailers must 'know' of each other one way or
>another. Simply being part of a 'remailer network' (anonymous or not)
>tends to already put one in a 'conspiratorial' situation.

Isn't it sufficient for a remailer node to publicly broadcast
its existance (and the protocols it handles)?  This seems to work
and there is no cooperation required --just a one-way broadcast.

Mere advertising is not evidence of a conspiracy.





 






  







Re: Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts

2001-12-18 Thread Declan McCullagh

Why wouldn't an original typeface be covered under U.S. copyright laws?

-Declan

At 10:12 AM 12/18/2001 -0800, David Honig wrote:
>IIRC fonts are not copyrightable in the US, but are elsewhere, yes?
>
>Assuming that's correct, then an algorithmic font (eg Postscript) could be
>turned into an albeit large static set of pixels which wouldn't be
>copyrightable in the US.




Re: Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts

2001-12-18 Thread David Honig

At 07:35 PM 12/17/01 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
>"ATM" is "Adobe Type Manager".  Linotype is a big font house.
>Intellectual Property laws for fonts are normally even stranger than for 
>regular material,
>but if any of these are in Postscript, they're also programs,
>so there may be DMCA issues, and there's obviously some contractual
>relationship with Adobe that lets them copyright implementations.

IIRC fonts are not copyrightable in the US, but are elsewhere, yes?

Assuming that's correct, then an algorithmic font (eg Postscript) could be
turned into an albeit large static set of pixels which wouldn't be
copyrightable in the US.




Oregon Link to 9-11?

2001-12-18 Thread John Young

Fox News reports that a senator from Oregon says
there is a link of the state to 9-11. No other details
provided by the senator. Anybody know more about
this or have a link?

Wonder if this has anything to do with ISTAC.gov the
CIA station allegedly in Bend, OR. ISTAC has been
visiting Cryptome over the past few days, which is
either a new friend who saw my grand jury testimony
about the station, read the trial transcript, has been 
perusing i-net archives, is a front for Safeweb or
Privsec, or a federal sniffer spoofing ISTAC and
setting poisoned bait.

ISTAC, a national department of the CIA, according to
anonymous, does interception work, and has at least
two stations, one eastern US and the one in Bend, OR.

Scott Mueller, according to his sworn testimony, has 
nothing to do with his namesake cut-out.

Listen, this may be a vicious rumor, but I was told yesterday
there is a site on the Net, or a newsgroup message, which 
claims that Cryptome is the most reviled Web site among 
intel agencies. Has anybody seen this hard sought highest 
of praise? Need that for a long-sought motto, ad banner,
tatoo, singalong, Xmas card to an in-law.




Re: Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts

2001-12-18 Thread Duncan Frissell

I thought everyone knew.  Fonts aren't copyrightable.  Font *names* are.
The reverse of the norm.  With a story or novel the body of text is
copyrightable, the title isn't.

DCF

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> Why wouldn't an original typeface be covered under U.S. copyright laws?
>
> -Declan
>
> At 10:12 AM 12/18/2001 -0800, David Honig wrote:
> >IIRC fonts are not copyrightable in the US, but are elsewhere, yes?
> >
> >Assuming that's correct, then an algorithmic font (eg Postscript) could be
> >turned into an albeit large static set of pixels which wouldn't be
> >copyrightable in the US.




Re: Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts

2001-12-18 Thread Declan McCullagh

Bitmapped fonts may not be copyrightable in the U.S., but Postscript/vector 
fonts certainly are:

http://news.cnet.com/news/0,1,0-1005-200-326302,00.html
>In a case that pitted Adobe Systems
>against a small software company in Florida, U.S. District Judge Ronald
>Whyte of San Jose, California, ruled that computer fonts are no different
>from other kinds of software, and enjoy full copyright protection.

See the font FAQ:
http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_13.htm
>  scalable fonts are, in the opinion of the Copyright Office,
>computer programs, and as such are copyrightable

-Declan

At 01:44 PM 12/18/2001 -0500, Duncan Frissell wrote:

>I thought everyone knew.  Fonts aren't copyrightable.  Font *names* are.
>The reverse of the norm.  With a story or novel the body of text is
>copyrightable, the title isn't.
>
>DCF
>
>On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
> > Why wouldn't an original typeface be covered under U.S. copyright laws?
> >
> > -Declan
> >
> > At 10:12 AM 12/18/2001 -0800, David Honig wrote:
> > >IIRC fonts are not copyrightable in the US, but are elsewhere, yes?
> > >
> > >Assuming that's correct, then an algorithmic font (eg Postscript) could be
> > >turned into an albeit large static set of pixels which wouldn't be
> > >copyrightable in the US.




CIA in NYC

2001-12-18 Thread John Young

The report a while back in the NY Times on the secret
CIA station located in 7 World Trade Center, claimed
its primary role was to surveil UN members and staff.
And its cover was the Secret Service office in the
building (which also housed NYC's Emergency
Operations).

Couple of things on that. The building, which was only
a few years old, is reported to have collapsed due to
high heat of oil storage tanks, a small tank on the upper
floor to serve NYC Emergency Operations, and an
unsually large tank in the basement. The building owner,
Larry Silverstein, who leased the WTC towers, says
the basement tank was for emergency power. Period.

However, while many buildings have emergency power
systems, few have the size of tanks in 7 WTC. Which may
indicate that the building housed a variety of operations
needing uninterruptable power, and which, in turn, could
explain why NYC put its emergency operations center
there despite public ridicule for putting it on a high floor,
of a glass walled building, next to a likely terrorist
target.

Moreover, it is unlikely that the purpose of the CIA station
was only that made public to the Times. More likely is
that the public story is a cover for what the station did.

One possibility is that it engaged in communication
interceptions, if not transmissions to agents as well, and 
could have made use of the antennas atop WTC 1, or 
antennas cloaked by the public antennas.

Now whether bin Laden, or whoever planned the attack,
knew of this, or suspected it, could enrich the speculation
about why the towers were targeted.

Certainly it would take no comsec genius to perform
analysis of what was coming and going atop the towers,
or that may have been going on under cover of the
tower's emissions. All the public emissions could have
been discounted and the remainder subject to detailed
scrutiny.

Perhaps the ordinary mujahadeen couldn't do that kind
of analysis but certainly a slew of other nations could.
As well as private comsec companies, of which there
are dozens in NYC peddling their services to US and
foreign clients.

So, if the CIA was surveilling these private security
companies, along with the comms of the UN members,
it may well be that countersurveillance picked up the
snoops and the information was peddled to assassins
or used to justify engaging hit squads to take out the
transgressors.

Finally, oil storage tanks are required by building and
fire codes to have especially durable fire-proofed enclosures,
the design based on the size of the tank and any expected
worse case scenario. At least this is the case when a
facility is subject to municipal regulations. Which we 
know the WTC was not. Whether the Center's unusual
vulnerability attacted the attack is a fair question.

But don't expect any findings to be made public is this
is the case, for that might require delving into which
operations in the Center invited retaliation by those
who had been attacked by them.




Chuck Schumer wants to invade privacy of gun buyers, open NICS database

2001-12-18 Thread Declan McCullagh

- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -

From: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: FC: Chuck Schumer wants to invade privacy of gun buyers, open NICS
  database
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 12:22:53 -0500
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1
X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/

Thanks to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), one of our great champions of privacy, 
private property, and limited government, any American buying a gun from a 
dealer or other licensed seller may have their name permanently embedded in 
the FBI's NICS database.

Currently federal law (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/922.html) 
orders the FBI to "destroy all records" of a gun purchase that is approved 
as lawful. Naturally those champions of individual liberty at the FBI and 
Justice Department have creatively interpreted this straightforward 
requirement -- to mean precisely the opposite of what the law says. Thus 
records have been kept for a period of 90 to 180 days.

Schumer's bill would "allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to access 
NICS audit log records for the purpose of responding to an inquiry from any 
federal, state, or local law enforcement agency in connection with a civil 
or criminal law enforcement investigation." Seems to me that would let the 
FBI access and store records of the vast bulk of firearm purchasers from 
this point on, if this bill were to become law. Here's the text of 
Schumer's proposal:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:s.01788:

Naturally the section reducing the privacy of lawabiding Americans is 
titled "privacy protection." Glad to know that Schumer hasn't lost his touch.

-Declan

(Note: Not all U.S. firearm purchases must go through a dealer who checks 
in with the NICS database. Private sales are still, for now, allowed 
without federal records kept.)

***

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200112\NAT20011217a.html

Senators Propose 'Gun Owner Registration'
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Congressional Bureau Chief
December 17, 2001
Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants the
Department of Justice to keep personal data on law-abiding gun buyers
from the National Instant Check System (NICS), and to offer the
information for unlimited use by state and local agencies.
National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre
called the move "gun owner registration, plain and simple."
Making good on a promise he made during a Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing December 6, Schumer introduced the "Use NICS in Terrorist
Investigations Act" (S. 1788) after Attorney General John Ashcroft
refused to allow the FBI access to NICS records of lawful gun
purchases.

***

CENTER-RIGHT, a free weeklyish e-newsletter of centrist, conservative, and 
libertarian ideas

Issue 187, Dec 10, 2001




"Terrorism and Guns: Ashcroft's 'coddling' of gun owners,"

by Dave Kopel (http://www.davekopel.com), Independence Institute,

and Prof. Glenn Reynolds (http://www.instapundit.com), Univ. of Tennessee

from the National Review Online, Dec. 17, 2001,

http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel121701.shtml



Attorney General John Ashcroft has come under fire for what Boston Globe 
columnist Tom Oliphant calls "coddling" gun owners.  Oliphant's attack was 
the latest round in the concerted assault on Ashcroft's Second Amendment 
positions, which started this spring when Ashcroft announced his view 
(since supported by the recent U.S. Court of Appeals decision in United 
States v. Emerson, 
http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/99/99-10331-cr0.htm) that the 
Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms.

Ashcroft's stance was consistent with that of the attorneys general for 
Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson, 
among others (http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel052901.shtml).  It 
was also consistent with most Supreme Court statements citing the Second 
Amendment, including everything the Rehnquist Court has ever said 
(http://www.davekopel.com/2A/LawRev/35FinalPartOne.htm).

Ashcroft's view mirrored repeated congressional declarations of the 
individual right to arms -- including in the Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1866, 
the Property Requisition Act of 1941, and the Firearms Owners' Protection 
Act of 1986.  It's also compatible with a wide variety of gun controls, as 
demonstrated by the Court of Appeals decision in Emerson, which ruled that 
the particular federal gun law at issue did not violate the Second Amendment.

Ashcroft was, however, out of step with the antigun groups, who recognize 
that a meaningful Second Amendment makes it impossible to ban guns across 
the board.  For the same reason, the attorney general was out of step with 
the position of the Clinton/Gore/Reno administratio

RE: CIA in NYC

2001-12-18 Thread Trei, Peter

> Young[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> 
> 
> The report a while back in the NY Times on the secret
> CIA station located in 7 World Trade Center, claimed
> its primary role was to surveil UN members and staff.
> And its cover was the Secret Service office in the
> building (which also housed NYC's Emergency
> Operations).
[...]

> Now whether bin Laden, or whoever planned the attack,
> knew of this, or suspected it, could enrich the speculation
> about why the towers were targeted.
> 
[...]

> But don't expect any findings to be made public is this
> is the case, for that might require delving into which
> operations in the Center invited retaliation by those
> who had been attacked by them.
> 
John:

Remember to apply Occam's razor occasionally. The WTC
towers were one of the best known landmarks around the 
world, were filled with people, stood well clear of the 
surrounding buildings, and symbolized the globalization/
Americanization of the world UBL hates.

The WTC towers were (from UBLs presumed viewpoint)
about the best US targets he could have picked, simply from
a PR, ideology, and practicality standpoint. The presence 
of a CIA office in a neighbouring building was not required 
to make the WTC towers target #1.

I used to work at 101 Barclay Street, across the street from
WTC #7. I watched it going up from my office window. I hated
the building - it blocked my view south. 101 Barclay seems to
have survived with little damage, possibly because WTC7 
shielded it from the falling debris of #1 & #2, and later #7
fell almost staight down.

Peter Trei











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Re: CIA in NYC

2001-12-18 Thread Peter Wayner

>Moreover, it is unlikely that the purpose of the CIA station
>was only that made public to the Times. More likely is
>that the public story is a cover for what the station did.

I went to a meeting in the WTC this spring. It took a half hour to 
get through security because they had to type all kinds of details 
into some computer and take my picture with a camera. It all seemed 
like a preposterous amount of security and rigamarole even after the 
93 bombing. If they really cared about stopping attacks like that, 
they would do a better job guarding the garage and keeping track of 
the surveillance tapes after the fact.

On the floor of my meeting, though, I figured out what was probably 
going on. The floor held a number of offices including several branch 
offices of foreign banks. These weren't for passbook customers making 
deposits. They were the kind used to do big deals. My guess is that 
someone used the databases and photos of those coming and going for 
intelligence purposes.

Perhaps there was something more a foot too, but the concentration of 
financial deal making seems high enough to be worth the effort. The 
UN can be a 60+ minute drive by car.

-Peter




Re: CIA in NYC

2001-12-18 Thread David Honig

At 02:06 PM 12/18/01 -0800, John Young wrote:
>Couple of things on that. The building, which was only
>a few years old, is reported to have collapsed due to
>high heat of oil storage tanks, a small tank on the upper
>floor to serve NYC Emergency Operations, and an
>unsually large tank in the basement. The building owner,
>Larry Silverstein, who leased the WTC towers, says
>the basement tank was for emergency power. Period.

A EM shielded room (think TEMPEST) might look like an
overly large metal tank; might even be designed to look like that.




Re: Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts

2001-12-18 Thread georgemw

On 18 Dec 2001, at 13:52, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> Bitmapped fonts may not be copyrightable in the U.S., but Postscript/vector 
> fonts certainly are:
> 
> http://news.cnet.com/news/0,1,0-1005-200-326302,00.html
> >In a case that pitted Adobe Systems
> >against a small software company in Florida, U.S. District Judge Ronald
> >Whyte of San Jose, California, ruled that computer fonts are no different
> >from other kinds of software, and enjoy full copyright protection.
> 

Interesting article.  However, it appears that it's not the fonts themselves 
that are copyrightable, but rather the "code"
that draws them.  From the same article:

The fact that a computer program produces unprotectable typefaces 
does not make the computer program itself unprotectable," Whyte wrote 
in the decision, issued earlier this week. Font designers "make creative 
choices as to what points to select based on the image in front of them 
on the computer screen."
 

The judge explicitly states that the typefaces themselves are not
copyrightable,  and implies that other "code" which produces the same
effect would not be covered by the  copyright. Further, if it could be
shown that there really aren't any creative decisions being made
here, that any code that produces the same effect would have to
be essentially the same code, then presumably the judge's
decision would be overturned. I'm not being sarcastic with the
"presumably" here, so please ridicule me for my naivate, I need that
every now and then.

Personally, I think the judge is an idiot, that the amount of "creativity"
in deciding what reference points to use to vectorize a font is
about equal to the amount of "creativity" required to decide what
color to make the oceans on a world map, but I'm sure there are
fraphic design people who would vehemently disagree; "of course it
should be blue, but what exact shade of blue?"

 
> >I thought everyone knew.  Fonts aren't copyrightable.  Font *names* are.
> >The reverse of the norm.  With a story or novel the body of text is
> >copyrightable, the title isn't.
> >

Are you sure the font name isn't a trademark rather than a copyright?
That would seem to make a lot more sense, although come
to think of it, neither seems to make much sense.

> >DCF

George




Re: Oregon Link to 9-11?

2001-12-18 Thread John Young

Answering myself on the Bend Or matter:

Somebody reports that Bend is the location of
an imagery downlink facility for the spooks, the
point from which fiber optic cable is linked to
Russia and the Far East, and where NSA and NRO
operate facilities. And provided a possible source
of more information on this. Report to follow.

That Scott Mueller had nothing to do with any
of these operations is not the question he was
asked by Robb London, merely was he associated
with the CIA. No connection at all, he swore.




Re: CIA in NYC

2001-12-18 Thread John Young

Answering myself on what the CIA was and is up to
in NYC:

Somebody in the counter-surveillance world says 
keep at it, you're on the right track.

Look, we fools got nothing to offer except an open
spittoon. Spit here.




Re: CNN.com on Remailers

2001-12-18 Thread Faustine

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

From: "Faustine" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Marcel wrote:

>Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them did have nightmares about the
> Constitution. Not as a piece of paper dancing around on Mickey Mouse legs or
> whatever the hell you're getting at, but as an idea repersenting the rule
> of law that was going to lead to them being jailed for murder. Which
> unfortunately never happened, but so it goes.

>>Thanks for proving my point. (For the intellectually impaired: the
>>Constitution never DOES anything. Your magical belief in its virtues is
>>equivalent to pagan's beliefs in idols: they accomplish nothing. A law must
>>be backed by force - and it's the FORCE that does this or that, not the
>>law.)

Of course. I'm not disagreeing with you here at all-- and in fact, I made a
similar point in a discussion here a week or so ago.  The rule of law is 
worthless without a mechanism to back it up; what could be more obvious? But
without it the weak, stupid, moral and isolated are entirely at the mercy of
the strong, clever, ruthless and organized. 

Without the Constitution, the government would be nothing more (and no better
than) an incredibly powerful gang. You think there's abuse of power now, what
do you suppose would happen with no law to stand in their way of stamping out
whoever they damn well pleased? If there were no law and you opposed such a 
monstrous supergang, do you really expect you would come out ahead? Or even stay
alive? How? Serious questions. 


>>I'm not objecting to the language; English is fine. I'm objecting to
>>delusions. Laws don't ACT, no matter what language you're using.

I never said they did: through the mechanism of the judicial system (backed up
by the aptly named "law enforcement") they serve as a check on people acting to
destroy society. The Founders had it right all along, you can't blame them for
the complete hash subsequent administrations made of the American system. 


>You should rely more on your guns and less on your papers.

Isn't that precisely what all corrupt, evil and tyrranical police and statist
government officials everywhere say? 

I'm sure Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and every two-bit petty dictator since the
beginning of time would agree with you.


~Faustine.



***

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that
will reach to himself.

- -Thomas Paine

-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its 
affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version)

iQA/AwUBPB+vo/g5Tuca7bfvEQLSFACcCuN0NM2UEWtPkgou4xXppoAXyisAn33d
CLiHC5fnhluRssyTeCE9XGzr
=ISWp
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RE: CIA in NYC

2001-12-18 Thread Gil Hamilton

Peter Trei writes:
> > Young[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]

> > Now whether bin Laden, or whoever planned the attack,
> > knew of this, or suspected it, could enrich the speculation
> > about why the towers were targeted.

>Remember to apply Occam's razor occasionally. The WTC
>towers were one of the best known landmarks around the world, were filled 
>with people, stood well clear of the surrounding buildings, and symbolized 
>the globalization/
>Americanization of the world UBL hates.
>
>The WTC towers were (from UBLs presumed viewpoint)
>about the best US targets he could have picked, simply from
>a PR, ideology, and practicality standpoint. The presence of a CIA office 
>in a neighbouring building was not required to make the WTC towers target 
>#1.

Brings to mind something my 10-year old pointed out to me soon after
9/11.  He likes to play computer war games in the Command and Conquer
/ Red Alert series.  Apparently, when you're playing the bad guys
in one of the games and attacking the US, one of your first
assignments is to wipe out the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Wonder if UBL is getting royalties from the game manufacturer?

- GH


_
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.




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Re: Oregon Link to 9-11?

2001-12-18 Thread Declan McCullagh

On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 01:39:00PM -0800, John Young wrote:
> Scott Mueller, according to his sworn testimony, has 
> nothing to do with his namesake cut-out.

Wasn't that the real estate agent who actually -- gasp! -- was a
licensed real estate agent?

http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.2001.04.09-2001.04.15/msg00156.html

-Declan




Encrypted Distributed Filesystem With Linux?

2001-12-18 Thread Jei

With over > 2GB in size and on 2.4 Linux kernels?

Say, an 80gb filesystem image that is encrypted with XXX over
a loop device YYY to a filesystem image that resides on ZZZ.

Is there any way to do this or something similar to it?

I browsed the net but PPDD + CODA doesn't quite seem to get me there.
Neither does SFS or CFS or TCFS or any of the other alternatives I found.

The freenet clones seem all too insecure and freenet is 
just a piece of java code. Not suitable for any *real* use.

All links and suggestions are very welcome..




Re: CNN.com on Remailers

2001-12-18 Thread Meyer Wolfsheim

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, David Honig wrote:

> Can't spam be repelled by not forwarding email not encrypted to
> the remailer's key?

Who is to say that spammers won't use remailer clients that automatically
encrypt to the remailers' keys?

Using remailer clients should be *easy*. Saying "this is too hard for the
average spammer to figure out" isn't acceptable.


-MW-




George Mason's groaning in his grave

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues00/may00/mason.html

in September 1787 as the delegates to the Constitutional Convention 
gathered at the State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia to sign 
the new Constitution. Only three present refused to add their names. One of 
them was the Virginian George Mason. Because the Constitution created a 
federal government he felt might be too powerful, and because it did not 
end the slave trade and did not contain a bill of rights, he withheld his 
support from the document he had played so large a role in crafting.
In 1776, Mason, then 51, had been appointed to a committee charged with 
drafting a "Declaration of Rights" for Virginia. From the writings of 
English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), Mason had come to 
a then-radical insight: that a republic had to begin with the formal, 
legally binding commitment that individuals had inalienable rights that 
were superior to any government.
One other committee member did play a significant role: Mason's young 
friend James Madison, who kept his (and Mason's) friend Thomas Jefferson 
apprised of Mason's progress in drafting the declaration. Mason's work 
began, "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have 
certain inherent rights...namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with 
the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining 
happiness and safety." Jefferson's U.S. Declaration of Independence 
included the immortal words of what may be the most famous political 
statement in history: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of 
Happiness."

In 1787, toward the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 
Mason proposed that a bill of rights preface the Constitution, but his 
proposal was defeated. When he refused to sign the new Constitution, his 
decision baffled some and alienated others, including his old friend, 
George Washington. Mason's stand nonetheless had its effect. At the first 
session of the first Congress, Madison introduced a Bill of Rights that 
paralleled Mason's Declaration of Rights of 1776.

Abstract of an article by Stephan A. Schwartz, originally published in the 
May 2000 issue of Smithsonian. All rights reserved. Please read."To few 
realise the vast debt we owe george mason." harry s truman.




RE: CIA in NYC

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

BACKGROUND.LONGISH.The Best Enemies Money Can Buy
by Michael C. Ruppert 3:25am Wed Dec 19 '01

 From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden  Insider Connections and 
the Bush Familys Partnership with Killers of Americans
The article is very well researched and highly recommended, although a 
little too long in my opinion. I've read the book referred to in the 
article below, George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. 
Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, and recommend it for anybody who wants to know 
the truth about George Bush senior.

Please read my published article about the cancer indu$try
"The Cancer Racket"
Thank you and merry Christmas. Gavin Phillips.

The Best Enemies Money Can Buy

 From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden  Insider Connections and 
the Bush Familys Partnership with Killers of Americans

Brown Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle Group

By

Michael C. Ruppert
Click Here

[) Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The 
Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. May be reprinted or distributed 
for non-profit purposes only.]

FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center 
and the Pentagon, major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential 
alternative media alike have begun to focus attention on Bush family 
connections and a long history of arming and financing Americas attackers 
in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the 
Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well 
as a host of reports from so-called alternative news sources have begun to 
focus attention on the Bush familys proffr-making role in creating and 
arming our enemies.

The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of 
these relationships that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the 
press, Congress and the American people.

In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and 
chemical weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries 
with reasons to oppose the United States -- the Bush Administration is 
following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the concept of 
brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of 
both the Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take 
appropriate action. Moreover  and I am not the first to say this  if a 
national security priority is to seize the financial assets of those who 
support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home.

--- Adolph Hitler Meticulous research, including U.S. government records 
from the era, along with contemporaneous news stories from the New York 
Times and other papers is presented in the 1992 book entitled, George 
Bush, The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, 
Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at 
http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from 
Chapter II of this essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always 
agree with conclusions reached by the Executive Intelligence Review, or its 
founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single flaw in any of their 
factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this 
history is essential to understanding our era.]

George W. Bushs grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of 
the investment bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 
1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell Harriman, the 
Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans and the Fords 
who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph 
Hitlers rise to power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for 
the SS and SA channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott Bush, 
through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, Nazi banker 
Fritz Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German 
Steel Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. 
Farben, used the Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money 
to the Nazis and to manage their American interests. The profits from those 
investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is universally 
regarded as having been Hitlers private banker and ultimate owner of the 
Union Bank Corporation.

Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the 
Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line -- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that 
funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitlers storm troopers in the 
1920s.

According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, In May 1933, just after the Hitler 
regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the 
coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The Harriman 
International Company was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and 
individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the Uni

STOCKPLAY NEWSLETTER - NRGE

2001-12-18 Thread goentarzan
Title: STOCKPLAY - NU ELECTRIC CORPORATION







  

   


  
STOCKPLAY
  - NU ELECTRIC CORPORATION
  Symbol: NRGE
  Exchange: OTCBB
Recent Price: .51
  2001 Price Range: .31 - 1.89
  Shares Outstanding: 5.7 million
  Estimated Float: 1.4 million
  The last time
  Stockplay sent out a profile on Nu Electric was in May of this year. In a
  few days, the stock more then tripled, rising from .56 to 1.89. NRGE has
  now drifted back to the same price level that has proven to be an
  excellent support area many times over the years. Looking at the 3 year
  stock chart, (see below) we see that NRGE went from 50 cents to $2.00 in
  the spring of 1999, and went from under .50 to 2.75 a few months later,
  and then rallied a third time after our recent write-up.
  To review
  chart: 
  
  Click Here
  Meanwhile, the
  fundamental news has improved for the company. On October 31, the
  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that they would accept a
  new tougher arsenic standard for drinking water. Nu Electric's Clean Water
  Technologies division has licensed a patented process to remove arsenic
  that was developed at the University of South Florida (USF). This past
  Friday, NRGE announced that they had paid their first royalty check to USF
  to continue their relationship. 
  It is also positive
  that NRGE has a small number of outstanding shares, with a tiny float of
  only 1.4 million. The company has
  no debt, insiders own about 40%, and they are an SEC reporting
  company. In addition to the Clean Water buyout, (in 1999) they also
  acquired Zorax, Inc., which has a patent-pending technology developed at
  Johns Hopkins University to extract cryptosporidium and giardia from
  drinking water.  
  The stock market plunge that followed the September 11th
  trading halt brought prices down to their lows for the year. Now that the
  "weak hands" have dumped, look for a recovery among the lower priced
  stocks like NRGE.
  To subscribe to
  future communication: 
  Click Here
  To unsubscribe from future communication: 
  Click Here
  DISCLAIMER:
  This profile is not a solicitation to buy or sell, and this does not
  purport to be a complete analysis of the company mentioned. Nothing in
  this Newsletter should be construed as investment advice. Purchase of this
  stock may be considered speculative, and may result in the loss of some or
  all of any investment made. An affiliate of Nu Electric Corp. paid a fee
  of  ten thousand dollars to IMSC Inc. for the circulation of the
  Stockplay Newsletter. Affiliates of Nu Electric Corp may buy or sell
  shares at any time prior, during or after the dissemination of this
  report. Detailed information about NuElectric Corp. may be obtained
  on-line at various financial web sites. To read additional aspects of
  disclaimer: 
  Click Here
   

  


  
  

  










RE: CIA in NYC

2001-12-18 Thread Anonymous

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Trei, Peter wrote:

> I used to work at 101 Barclay Street, across the street from
> WTC #7. I watched it going up from my office window. I hated
> the building - it blocked my view south.

Hate is a strong word. Be careful, Peter; John will think you had 
something to do with the business of it falling down.




Wackenhutt west of Cabazon and the new "Aussi KGB"

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

New powers 'create Aussie KGB'
 From AAP
19dec01
GIVING spy agency ASIO wide-ranging powers to fight terrorism would turn it 
into Australia's own KGB, civil libertarians have argued.
Draft laws endorsed by cabinet yesterday include giving ASIO officers the 
power to detain people for 48 hours without a lawyer if they are suspected 
of having information about potential terrorist attacks.
Civil Liberties Council spokesman Cameron Murphy today said the Government 
plan was unwarranted, and likened the resulting organisation to the Russian 
secret police of the Cold War.
"They (the Government) haven't demonstrated that there's public need for 
the powers and they really are going to turn ASIO into a secret police," he 
told Channel Seven.
"The last time we saw these sort of powers being given to an ASIO or 
intelligence service was like the KGB - it's that severe."
Cabinet also agreed to make terrorism and fundraising for terrorists 
punishable by life imprisonment, and to crack down on financial transactions.
Attorney-General Daryl Williams said the new measures were recommended by a 
top-level security review following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 
the US.
Mr Murphy said that while there were immediate concerns over terrorism, the 
Government was proposing ASIO keep its powers indefinitely.
"We need to be very careful of that because once the imminent crisis is 
over in terrorism what we'll find is that ASIO's attention will focus on 
innocent members of the Australian public," he said.
"A response is necessary, but this is too much of a response ... the 
Government is going the whole hog and giving them too much power."
A plan to allow ASIO to open unread e-mail also targeted innocent people, 
Mr Murphy said.
"The powers are inappropriate and I don't think we can trust an 
organisation like ASIO with these sort of powers."
He said security services such as ASIO had used the September 11 terrorist 
attacks as an opportunity to make a "grab for power".
Labor has supported most of the measures, but said it would move for a 
parliamentary inquiry into the new ASIO powers, which the Australian 
Democrats and Greens have labelled draconian.
Wackenhuts wacked.
Detainees riot again
 From AAP
19dec01
WOOMERA Detention Centre in South Australia is on "red alert" after inmates 
rioted for a second night.
Authorities used tear gas to disperse a group of detainees at the facility 
who lit a fire and attacked a perimeter fence late last night, a Department 
of Immigration spokeswoman said.
That followed explosions and fires at the centre on Monday night, when 
hundreds of detainees rioted over the allocation of visas.
"There was a further fire in the main compound at the centre (last night)," 
the immigration spokeswoman said early this morning.
"There was also a significant number of detainees that entered what we call 
the sterile zone (between the inner and outer perimeter fences).
"That group of detainees would not obey a direction to return to their 
accommodation."
The spokeswoman said the detainees were attacking a perimeter fence and had 
to be subdued using tear gas.
It was unclear how much damage was done, or how many detainees were involved.
All detainees were returned to the accommodation blocks by 12.30am (AEDT).
But the spokeswoman said the atmosphere was extremely tense with security 
forces standing "on red alert".
Additional security has been imposed at the isolated facility, and Port 
Augusta police said they had sent a crew to the centre, about 160 
kilometres away.
The fire in the main compound was reportedly extinguished by detainees not 
involved in the riot, the spokeswoman said.
In the previous night's attack, witnesses described "huge" explosions, 
flames 10 metres high and fires from one end of the centre to the other in 
the most serious incident at the facility since a mass break-out about 18 
months ago.
Fifteen buildings were set alight and four completely destroyed during the 
riot.
KGB,Red Alerts,jamesd,HELP!




spam and Remailers

2001-12-18 Thread georgemw

On 18 Dec 2001, at 14:42, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, David Honig wrote:
> 
> > Can't spam be repelled by not forwarding email not encrypted to
> > the remailer's key?
> 
> Who is to say that spammers won't use remailer clients that automatically
> encrypt to the remailers' keys?
> 
Wouldn't it HAVE to do that if they want their spam forwarded?
I mean, doesn't the remailer perform one layer of decryption
to find the address that it's supposed to next forward the message 
to?

Say, what IS the situation with spam and remailers anyway?
are spammers really trying to use the mixmaster network to
send lots of spam, or is it more like that the remailers get sent lots 
of spam and have to filter it out because it would take too
long to process?  I mean, does spam follow the protocol?  

> Using remailer clients should be *easy*. Saying "this is too hard for the
> average spammer to figure out" isn't acceptable.
> 
> 

You know what else should be easy?  Setting up and running a 
remailer! So why shouldn't an ambitious spammer set up his
own remailer server? Or better yet, a whole bunch of them?
Except instead of sending dummy traffic, it sends spam.
This is actually a really good thing from remailer security,
because a dummy message that ends up telling
some fool about russian porn sites ot nigerian graft opportunities is 
much more befuddling to an attacker than one
that just disappers, right?

George  

> -MW-




Nazi dwarf,tom cruise,in singapore.Scientologist City.

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

http://theage.com.au/entertainment/2001/12/19/FFXKJ94KCVC.html

Tom Cruise says Hollywood will stop internet thieves
Wednesday 19 December 2001
People who download movies off the internet are "thieves" who threaten the 
potential of the film industry, Tom Cruise said yesterday.

People who support fascistic *religions TM ,should be struck by cruise 
missiles says proffr safe in nicoles own country,au

http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/Scientology_cases/20010622_eff_henson_pr.html




Re: Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts

2001-12-18 Thread David Honig

At 12:04 PM 12/18/01 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>Interesting article.  However, it appears that it's not the fonts themselves 
>that are copyrightable, but rather the "code"
>that draws them.  From the same article:

This is what I remembered (from this list BTW) and why I suggested that the
bitmaps that the program generates are not protected in the US.




Re: CNN.com on Remailers

2001-12-18 Thread David Honig

At 02:42 PM 12/18/01 -0800, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote:
>On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, David Honig wrote:
>
>> Can't spam be repelled by not forwarding email not encrypted to
>> the remailer's key?
>
>Who is to say that spammers won't use remailer clients that automatically
>encrypt to the remailers' keys?

Yes they could.  

>
>Using remailer clients should be *easy*. Saying "this is too hard for the
>average spammer to figure out" isn't acceptable.

The most commonly held point of view that I've
perceived on this list is that spammers are too lazy/stupid
to do this -or even add a simple string token to a line.

That may of course be wrong or in some cases any unexploited weakness
is unacceptable.

.

As far as "flood" attacks on *any* node goes, you have to throttle
at the routers.  I think the ping attacks on yahoo of yesteryear
showed this.

Cheers




Wired on e-gold

2001-12-18 Thread Nomen Nescio

The January, 2002 issue of Wired has an article on e-gold, the online
payment system founded by retired oncologist Douglas Jackson.

Much of the article discusses e-gold's misguided effort to link
up with Islamic fundamentalists who want to overthrow capitalism.
They are setting up a spinoff, e-dinar, for use in the Muslim world.
This brilliant marketing tactic is not going too well even by the
modest standards of what passes for success around the e-gold offices,
especially since 9/11.

Of course the cypherpunk interest in e-gold revolves around its vaunted
privacy protection.  The article provides a much-needed dose of reality to
those who still harbor fantasies that e-gold is interested in protecting
the privacy of its customers.  Those who participated in the fractious
debates between e-gold founders and its customers in the early days
will remember the company's sniff of dismissal at "elite ivovy-tower"
arguments in favor of its privacy.  Alaskan attorney Daniel J. Boone in
particular made a number of principled appeals to e-gold officials to
hold to their early promises of privacy protection, to no avail.

Here is what the article has to say about the use of e-gold by pyramid
schemes (euphemistically caled HYIPs, high-yield investment programs):

> For his part, Jackson vigorously denies HYIPs account for anything
> approaching a substantial portion of e-gold traffic.  "These are
> piddly-ass little things," he says.  "When you actually run one of
> these things down, they're pathetic."  Still, he concedes, they're a PR
> liability, and he and his staff have been working hard to squeeze them
> out of the system.  They've instituted "know your customer" rules to
> identify suspected swindlers, and they've cooperated amicably with law
> enforcement.  When SEC staffers came to G&SR's offices last May to review
> the accounts of one of the biggest e-gold schemes ever - the self-styled
> "Christian-based humanitarian organization" E-Biz Ventures, shut down
> after allegedly inflicting losses of $8.5 million on investors - they
> were welcomed with coffee, bagels, and a conference room of their own.
> J. Chris Condren, the attorney charged with recovering E-Biz investors'
> money, has only good things to say about e-gold.  "They've answered
> every question we've asked them, they've responded to every subpoena,
> every request for information."

Jackson is lying about the unimportance of HYIPs.  Independent e-gold
vendors estimate 30, 50 or as much as 90 percent of e-gold transactions
go into pyramid scams, and the largest single holding in the system
belongs to a shut-down Ponzi.  But more importantly, we can plainly
see the company's anti-privacy policies in action.  Any business has a
basic philosophy, implicit or explicit, and their actions reflect and
reveal that philosophy.  Jackson and e-gold only pay lip service to the
goals of financial privacy.  Their actions reveal their true feelings:
that privacy just gets in the way of business success.

It seems hard to believe that a currency which aims to attract
libertarians and "gold bugs" would put customer privacy at such a
low priority.  And no doubt these policies account in part for the slow
growth rate of the currency compared to successful ventures like PayPal.
Nevertheless this should be a cautionary tale for any payment system
which purports to offer privacy as a selling point.

Criminals love privacy, they love anonymity.  Remailer operators soon find
that a substantial majority of the messages they send contain nothing
but harrassment and threats.  Few customers use anonymity services
for positive purposes, to protect their privacy while engaging in
legitimate activities.  With most people, if they have nothing to hide,
they don't hide it.  Only paranoids and extremists will adopt anonymity
technologies without nefarious purposes in mind.  Anyone proposing to
offer new services for privacy and anonymity should be prepared to deal
with the onslaught of criminals who will use the system for bad ends.




Re: Speech May Not Be Free, but It's Refundable

2001-12-18 Thread Sunder


On Sun, 9 Dec 2001, Jim Choate wrote:

> On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Sunder wrote:
> 
> > Ok, then I propose to surround your property from any vantage point on
> > public land, and setup gigantic speakers from which I would recite very
> > loud speeches in your direction at 3:00am.
> 
> No public land in the area that isn't managed by the city, you'll need to
> get permission from the public to use it. We also have a amplified music
> ordinance so you'd have to shutdown between midnite and 6am anyway.

But it's free speech, not music, regardless of amplification, so how does
the ordinance apply?
 
> > As I would be on public land and excercising my freedom of speech, you
> > couldn't do anything as that would be censorship.
> 
> Not at all, you're still annoying the community at large.

But in your world, there's nothing anyone can do to stop me, because if
they were to do so, they'd violate my freedom of speech.  If the
constitution applies to all Americans, then only a Russian or other
non-American could tell me to shut the fuck up. 

Acording to your statement two sentences down from this one, you can't do
shit to stop me as you're an American and the Constitution applies to all
Americans.

> > Or are you ready to submit that "Congress shall make no law ... freedom of 
> > expression" only applies to Congress?
> 
> No, the Constitution applies to all Americans.

But the 1st ammendment doesn't say "No American shall make no laws
limiting the freedom of the press, etc." It says "Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or
the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances." 

Hence the distinction.  There in lies your error and lack of
understanding.  

And this is why on private property the property owner decides what is and
isn't allowed.  This is why on public property that belongs to a specific
state or city Congress has nothing to do with it, and the owner may decide
on the rules of the house: "Amendment X The powers not delegated to the
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

So now by muttering something about city ordinances about amplified music
and certain hours, you've just admited that entities other than Congress
may pass laws, and that Freedom of speech can be limited by any other
entity, including: the states, cities, and individuals.


And therefore your message below is completely wrong.  Congratulations,
you've just proven yourself wrong:

Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 13:49:49 -0600 (CST)
From: Jim Choate <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: CDR: Re: Speech May Not Be Free, but It's Refundable

On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, David Honig wrote:

> > Speech May Not Be Free, but It's Refundable
>
> Its not censorship if its not the government.

Bullshit. Any time ANY(!!!) party interferes with your free expression it
is censorship.


-

The above are your words, you've said them.  Congratulations, you've just
contradicted yourself, and therefore are wrong.  Again.  Gee, what a
surprise.


--Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---
 + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\
  \|/  :aren't security.  A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\
<--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you   \/|\/
  /|\  :masked killer, but  |don't email them, or put them on a web  \|/
 + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sunder.net 






Re: MS DRM OS

2001-12-18 Thread Graham Lally

Ralph Wallis wrote:

> On Monday, 17 Dec 2001 at 07:58, Michael Motyka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>>Could someone who knows more than I do explain to me why this MS "IP" is
>>anything other than making the owner of a PC unable to have root access
>>to their own hardware/OS? If so it seems to be an idea unworthy of
>>protection from lawyers and men with guns.
>>
> 
> A more correct analogy is with speed limiters on cars.


On your own roads. And the car maker tells you where you can go to. And 
which route you have to take. And where you can end up. And then forces 
you to pay for a map.


If the patent hasn't been picked up by the courts yet, then why not? 
*If* the SSSCA were to come into effect (and I have heard little about 
it for several months now... biding its time?), then surely all other 
OSes (subject to legal boundaries) would be prevented by the patent from 
implementing the requirements in the bill?

...and to appease the pedanty, it's hard to have a /more/ correct 
analogy when there was no analogy in the first place. There, got it out 
of my system...

.g

-- 
"Sometimes I use google instead of pants."




Re: AP Al quim

2001-12-18 Thread Sunder


So from your reply, I'll assume the answer to my "So are you finally
evolving?" question is still No.

I, and everyone in the world, is aware that commerce != capitalism, and
that you are avoiding the question.  As there are no CACL promoters
(except in Choate') it is not possible for them to suppose
otherwise.  Even in Choate' CACL promoters are aware that commerce !=
capitalism.

Capitalism is of course the system that allows commerce to happen.  
Commerce is not legally possible in a communist or fascist system as such
a system does not allow private ownership.

You still have avoided the question of the ants and the grasshopper.  To
quote you again:

> And no, a meritocracy isn't disriminatory. You get what you put into it,
> not what somebody else thinks it's worth.

So by this answer you are stating that the grasshopper merits death and
the ants merit survival.  There is no amount of twisting you can perform
to escape this, other than a retraction of your statements.

As such a system (a meritocracy) necessitates the reward of those who
perform work and the demise of those who do not, socialism does not fit in
here.  You don't get a C- and get to pass in a meritocracy.  You work and
survive, or don't and die.

One good example of a meritocratic system is capitalism.  You work or you
have money, you make money, you get to buy food, you get to buy/rent
shelter, you get to attract mates and thus propagate.  You don't work and
you have no money, you don't get to survive.

Therefore by your statement above that you have no problem with a
meritocracy, and my statement that capitalism is a meritocracy, you have
to agree that you also have no problem with capitalism.

Notice, I did not say greed.

Nor does Merriam Webster mention greed in the definition of capitalism.
See www.m-w.com

Main Entry: cap7i7tal7ism 
Pronunciation:  'ka-p&-t&l-"iz-&m, 'kap-t&l-, British also k&-'pi-t&l-
Function:   noun
Date:   1877
: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of
capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and
by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined
mainly by competition in a free market




--Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---
 + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\
  \|/  :aren't security.  A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\
<--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you   \/|\/
  /|\  :masked killer, but  |don't email them, or put them on a web  \|/
 + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sunder.net 

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Jim Choate wrote:

> On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Sunder wrote:
> 
> > So now you're saying that the very thing you've had a problem in the past
> > with because it's capitalism is now a good thing. So are you finally
> > evolving?

> 
> I don't have a problem with commerce per se. Capitalism I do have a
> problem with, greed <> good.
> 
> Commerce <> Capitalism (which will come as a shock to a lot of CACL
> promoters when/if they ever realize it).
> 
> 
>  --
> 
> 
>  Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind.
> 
>  Bumper Sticker
> 
>The Armadillo Group   ,::;::-.  James Choate
>Austin, Tx   /:'/ ``::>/|/  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>www.ssz.com.',  `/( e\  512-451-7087
>-~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
> 
> 








Everyone a remailer:Everyone a mint:Everyone an assassin predictor

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

http://www.spammimic.com/ is a commercial example of a good use to put 
spam.Like steggin' pron.the hide in the herd idea.Its a shame larry ellison 
chose the dark side.Oracle sized remailers could be useful to speed the 
crypto-revolution.
He used to make sense on the 'network as computer',then he must have 
twigged that would lead to his demise.
In the developing labyrinth progress will be slower,but sure,toward 
distributed,P-P,encrypted,alternate OS plug ins that will
accomplish all we seek to achieve.

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie.
We can neither live nor pity, nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
--The Secret of the Machines-- Rudyard Kipling




Re: Wired on e-gold

2001-12-18 Thread georgemw

On 19 Dec 2001, at 1:30, Nomen Nescio wrote:


> Of course the cypherpunk interest in e-gold revolves around its vaunted
> privacy protection.  The article provides a much-needed dose of reality to
> those who still harbor fantasies that e-gold is interested in protecting
> the privacy of its customers.  Those who participated in the fractious
> debates between e-gold founders and its customers in the early days
> will remember the company's sniff of dismissal at "elite ivovy-tower"
> arguments in favor of its privacy.  Alaskan attorney Daniel J. Boone in
> particular made a number of principled appeals to e-gold officials to
> hold to their early promises of privacy protection, to no avail.
> 

Which illustrates why "cypherpunks write code".  Promises to 
protect your privacy aren't worth much. particularly when the
people who have the authority to enforce contracts are the ones
trying to get your info in the first place.

The only way to have good confidence that someone 
won't give out your personal info is if they don't have
your info. 


> Jackson is lying about the unimportance of HYIPs.  Independent e-gold
> vendors estimate 30, 50 or as much as 90 percent of e-gold transactions
> go into pyramid scams, and the largest single holding in the system
> belongs to a shut-down Ponzi.  

I'd ask for a source, but I really don't care that much.  Although 
would like to say that I suspect using "transactions" as
a metric is itself probably misleading.  It's like the dot bombs that
would have a volume of twice the number of outstanding shares
every day, yet 90% of the stock was never publically
traded. You could say the average share traded twice a day,
but that would be highly misleading. I'm not a real gold bug,
really I'm not, but I could play one fairly convincingly if I wanted to.
Gold bugs don't do a whole lot of transactions, they hold
their gold. Commodities traders and gold bugs are very different
animals, but if they wanted to appeal to commodities traders,
they should've called it e-pork-bellies.  If the idea was to
appeal to suckers trying to get rich quick,
maybe e-Hillary-Clinton-Cattle-futures. 



> Criminals love privacy, they love anonymity.  

They love their own privacy, but hate other peoples'.
A thief would be very disappointed if he had no way of
knowing who was rich and who was poor.  How would he know
whom to profitably rob? A thief would love to know
who had guns and who didn't. Then he'd know whom
he could rob safely.  

>Remailer operators soon find
> that a substantial majority of the messages they send contain nothing
> but harrassment and threats.  

No they don't; remailer operators never get a clue what "a
substantial majority of the messages they send contain".
Rather, the only time they'll be made aware of what message they
carry contain is 1) if they're the last hop and 2) there's a complaint.
Only a tiny minority of messages will have both apply.


>Few customers use anonymity services
> for positive purposes, to protect their privacy while engaging in
> legitimate activities.  With most people, if they have nothing to hide,
> they don't hide it.  

Total and unmitigated bullshit. In fact, everyone who isn't
an exhibitionist is hiding stuff most of the time, and most
of them are performing a public service in doing so.

>Only paranoids and extremists will adopt anonymity
> technologies without nefarious purposes in mind.  Anyone proposing to
> offer new services for privacy and anonymity should be prepared to deal
> with the onslaught of criminals who will use the system for bad ends.
> 
> 
This is backwards.  The reason that nobody insists, for example,
that Blockbuster not sell lists of what moves they've checked out
is not that they wouldn't care if this was done, but rather that
it wouldn't occur to them that such a thing might happen in the
first place. It is not true that only somone with a "nefarious purpose"
in mind would want that list kept confidential; rather, only somone
with a nefarious purpose would try to obtain such a list
on someone else in the first place. 

George




Wired on e-gold

2001-12-18 Thread Faustine

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Nomen Nescio wrote:

(snip)

>With most people, if they have nothing to hide, they don't hide it.

Why are you posting this from behind a remailer?


>Only paranoids and extremists will adopt anonymity
>technologies without nefarious purposes in mind. 

So why are you posting from behind a remailer?
Which of your slurs are you willing to apply to yourself?


> Anyone proposing to offer new services for privacy and anonymity should be 
> prepared to deal with the onslaught of criminals who will use the system for
> bad ends.

Why are you posting from behind a remailer?

Hypocrisy isn't pretty.


~Faustine.



***

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that
will reach to himself.

- --Thomas Paine

-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its 
affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version)

iQA/AwUBPB/xi/g5Tuca7bfvEQJnEwCgt0+BccWxGdBFYckrzsB58rCNPjwAn1wS
SBYVZQfjmiYGH9x9TWYBWUd+
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Re: MS DRM OS

2001-12-18 Thread georgemw

On 19 Dec 2001, at 0:38, Graham Lally wrote:

> Ralph Wallis wrote:

> If the patent hasn't been picked up by the courts yet, then why not? 
> *If* the SSSCA were to come into effect (and I have heard little about 
> it for several months now... biding its time?),

I suspect that someone has pointed out to the sponsors how 
completely insane the SSSCA as drafted is, and they're
trying to figure out if it's possible to redraft the thing in
such a way that it retains its essence yet does not
outlaw electric toasters.  It's not. 

> then surely all other 
> OSes (subject to legal boundaries) would be prevented by the patent from 
> implementing the requirements in the bill?
> 

Nah; it just means that anyone making any electrical or mechanical
device for the next twenty years would have to pay Microsoft 
royalties.

> ...and to appease the pedanty, it's hard to have a /more/ correct 
> analogy when there was no analogy in the first place. 

"Surely "is analogous to" is a reflective relation?

>There, got it out 
> of my system...
> 
> .g
> 
George
> -- 
> "Sometimes I use google instead of pants."




Re: Wired on e-gold

2001-12-18 Thread Steve Schear

At 01:30 AM 12/19/2001 +0100, Nomen Nescio wrote:

>
>
>Criminals love privacy, they love anonymity.  Remailer operators soon find
>that a substantial majority of the messages they send contain nothing
>but harrassment and threats.  Few customers use anonymity services
>for positive purposes, to protect their privacy while engaging in
>legitimate activities.  With most people, if they have nothing to hide,
>they don't hide it.  Only paranoids and extremists will adopt anonymity
>technologies without nefarious purposes in mind.  Anyone proposing to
>offer new services for privacy and anonymity should be prepared to deal
>with the onslaught of criminals who will use the system for bad ends.

One would assume then that most governments are paranoids, extremists and 
criminals since the use of privacy/secrecy and even anonymity technologies 
are stock and trade in some of their agencies.

steve




MS DRM OS Begets SSSCA

2001-12-18 Thread John Young

SSSCA is far from dead, it may have a good chance
of enactment according to Mike Godwin's essay today,
"Coming Soon: Hollywood Versus the Internet:"

  http://cryptome.org/mpaa-v-net-mg.htm

Here are his opening paragraphs:

"If you have a fast computer and a fast connection to the 
Internet, you make Hollywood nervous. And Tinseltown is 
nervous not because of what you're doing now, but because 
of what you *might* do -- grab digital Hollywood content
with your computer and broadcast it over the Internet.

Which is why Hollywood, along with other content companies, 
from book publishers to the music industry, has begun a
campaign to stop you from ever being able to do such a 
thing -- even though you may have no intention of becoming 
a copyright "pirate." That campaign has pitted corporate 
giants like Disney and Fox against corporate giants like 
Microsoft and IBM, but the resulting war over the shape 
of future digital technology may end up with us computer
users suffering the "collateral damage."

As music-software designer and entrepreneur Selene 
Makarios puts it, this campaign represents "little less than 
an attempt to outlaw general-purpose computers."

Let's get one thing straight -- when I say there's war looming 
in cyberspace over copyright, I'm not talking about the 
struggle between copyright holders and copyright "pirates" 
who distribute unlicensed copies of creative works for 
free over the Internet. Maybe you loved Napster or maybe 
you hated it, but the right to start a Napster, or to infringe 
copyright and get away with it, is not what's at issue here. 
And in a sense it's a distraction from what the real war is.

What I'm talking about instead is the war between the content 
industries (call them "the Content Faction") and the 
information-technology industries -- call the latter "the Tech 
Faction." That faction includes not only computer makers, 
software makers, and related digital-device manufacturers 
(think CD burners and MP3 players and Cisco routers). 
Allied with the Content Faction are the consumer-electronics 
makers -- the folks who build your VCRs and DVD players 
and boomboxes. The Tech Faction, which makes smarter, 
more programmabale devices and technologies than the 
consumer-electronics guys do, may count among their allies 
many cable companies and even telephone companies.

But what's the "collateral damage," exactly? Perhaps the 
most likely scenario is this: at some near-future date - perhaps 
as early as 2010 - individuals may no longer be able to do the 
kinds of things they routinely do with their digital tools in 2001. 
They may no longer be able, for example, to move music
or video files around easily from one of their computers to 
another (even if the other is just a few feet away in the same 
house), or to personal digital assistants. Their music 
collections, reduced to MP3s, may be moveable to a limited 
extent; unless their digital hardware doesn't allow it. The 
digital videos they shot in 1999 may be unplayable on their 
desktop and laptop computers -- or even on other devices -- 
in 2009.

And if they're programmers, trying to come up with the next 
great version of the Linux operating system, for example, 
they may find their development efforts put them at risk of 
criminal and civil penalties if the tools they develop are 
inadequately protective of copyright interests. Indeed, their
sons and daughters in grade-school computer classes may 
face similar risks, if the broadest of the changes now being 
proposed becomes law."




Test

2001-12-18 Thread Jim Choate


1, 2, 3

 --


 Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind.

 Bumper Sticker

   The Armadillo Group   ,::;::-.  James Choate
   Austin, Tx   /:'/ ``::>/|/  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   www.ssz.com.',  `/( e\  512-451-7087
   -~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-





RE: Wired on e-gold,

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

Ive seen a good story somewhere on the e-dinar,if it was protected with 
world wide AP/PGP served by huge remailing networks it could be the 
one.Nomen RUN! The end is nigh.
The other story this year (its not 2002 yet numbnuts) to raise a smile was 
the keystone Kops raid by the SS.Easy to see what freaks them 
out...Everyfuckinthing! Suckers! If anyone in that goon squads got any 
sense they'll put some lead in prime rib.
You dont want to catch mad cow disease do 
you?KILLTHEPRESIDENTINUNTRACABLEENCRYPTIONITSINVISIBLE.
My superintelligent rats in the W/house tell me they are getting fat on 
pork cracklings and gingerbread and its dead boring after El Bubba.

 >>Hypocrisy isn't pretty. ~Faustine.

God you must be one butt ugly Hoe.




Re: Libertarian Party considered harmful

2001-12-18 Thread Matthew Gaylor

At 8:04 PM -0800 12/18/01, Tim May wrote:
>(If it matters to anyone, I voted for John Hospers in 1972 and I 
>debated the Nolan Chart wth that very guy. Lots of libertoonians 
>here in California. I met David Friedman in 1974. I tend to call 
>myself a libertarian, when I'm not calling myself an 
>anarcho-capitalist, but the Libertarian Party qua Party is utterly 
>irrelevant and boring. Lots of nerdy clerks nattering about natural 
>rights and quoting Rothbard. Gag!)

I can always count on you living in the past- Please not another 
rendition of back in the good ole' days of cypherpunks... But who's 
saying the LP isn't irrelevant and boring?  And what does the current 
National Review vs Reason Magazine squabble have to do with them?

Regards,   Matt-


**
Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues
Send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words subscribe FA
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**




Matthew Gaylor has it ass backward

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

http://ri.xu.org/arbalest/alembic2c.html

"The Libertarian as Conservative." To me this is so obvious that I am hard 
put to find something to say to people who still think libertarianism has 
something to do with liberty. A libertarian is just a Republican who takes 
drugs. I'd have preferred a more controversial topic like "The Myth of the 
Penile Orgasm." But since my attendance here is subsidized by the esteemed 
distributor of a veritable reference library on mayhem and dirty tricks, I 
can't just take the conch and go rogue. I will indeed mutilate the sacred 
cow which is libertarianism, as ordered, but I'll administer a few hard 
lefts to the right in my own way. And I don't mean the easy way. I could 
just point to the laissez-faire Trilateralism of the Libertarian Party, 
then leave and go look for a party. It doesn't take long to say that if you 
fight fire with fire, you'll get burned.

If that were all I came up with, somebody would up and say that the LP has 
lapsed from the libertarian faith, just as Christians have in- sisted that 
their behavior over the last 1900 years or so shouldn't be held against 
Christianity. There are Libertarians who try to retrieve libertarianism 
from the Libertarian Party just as there are Christians who try to reclaim 
Christianity from Christendom and communists (I've tried to myself) who try 
to save Communism from the Communist parties and states. They (and I) meant 
well but we lost. Libertarianism is party-archist fringe-rightism just as 
socialism is what Eastern European dissidents call "real socialism," i.e., 
the real-life state-socialism of queues, quotas, corruption and coercion. 
But I choose not to knock down this libertarian strawman-qua-man who's 
blowing over anyway. A wing of the Reaganist Right has obviously 
appropriated, with suspect selectivity, such libertarian themes as 
deregulation and voluntarism. Ideologues indignate that Reagan has 
travestied their principles. Tough sh7t! I notice that it's their 
principles, not mine, that he found suitable to travesty. This kind of 
quarrel doesn't interest me. My reasons for regarding libertarianism as 
conservative run deeper than that.

My target is what Libertarians have in common  with each other, and with 
their ostensible enemies. Libertarians serve the state all the better 
because they declaim against it. At bottom, they want what it wants. But 
you can't want what the state wants without wanting the state, for what the 
state wants is the conditions in which it flourish- es. My (unfriendly) 
approach to modern society is to regard it as an integrated totality. Silly 
doctrinaire theories which regard the state as a parasitic excrescence on 
society cannot explain its centuries-long persistence, its ongoing 
encroachment upon what was previously market terrain, or its acceptance by 
the overwhelming majority of people including its demonstrable victims.

A far more plausible theory is that the state and (at least) this form of 
society have a symbiotic (however sordid) interdependence, that the state 
and such institutions as the market and the nuclear family are, in several 
ways, modes of hierarchy and control. Their articulation is not always 
harmonious but they share a common interest in consigning their conflicts 
to elite or expert resolution. To demonize state authoritarianism while 
ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in 
the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism 
at its worst. And yet (to quote the most vociferous of radical 
Libertarians, Professor Murray Rothbard) there is nothing un-libertarian 
about "organization, hierarchy, wage-work, granting of funds by libertarian 
millionaires, and a libertarian party." Indeed. That is why libertarianism 
is just conservatism with a rationalist/positivist veneer.

Libertarians render a service to the state which only they can provide. For 
all their complaints about its illicit extensions they concede, in their 
lucid moments, that the state rules far more by consent than by coercion  
which is to say, on present-state "libertarian" terms the state doesn't 
rule at all, it merely carries out the tacit or explicit terms of its 
contracts. If it seems contradictory to say that coercion is consensual, 
the contradiction is in the world, not in the expression, and can't 
adequately be rendered except by dialectical discourse. One-dimensional 
syllogistics can't do justice to a world largely lacking in the virtue. If 
your language lacks poetry and paradox, it's unequal to the task of 
accounting for actuality. Otherwise anything radically new is literally 
unspeakable. The scholastic "A = A" logic created by the Catholic Church 
which the Libertarians inherited, unquestioned, from the Randites is just 
as constrictively conservative as the Newspeak of Orwell's 1984.

The state commands, for the most part, only because it commands popular 
support. It is (and should be) 

Re: Speech May Not Be Free, but It's Refundable

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

Extract...>>attempted suicide punishable by death. There are other examples 
of similar, but not as ludicrous, legal situations where the only person 
being impacted is the person acting, but it's still illegal. Joe

If the point is to minimize coercion  and maximize freedom to play loud 
music and off yrself in any number of ways I highly ricomend *open source* 
AP."Making suicide pay since the ides of march 2001."

Choate,ex. >>...very few follow the CACL philosophy therefore it must not 
be 'true'). <<

Its disgustingly *true* here and at wired,CATO,etc.
Its worth staking to an antsnest and checking on occasionally.)




Questions for the list.RE.Quantum Encryption.

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

 From D.McCullogh.

As I understand it, Weyl's original gauge theory allowed for the
possibility that length scale can change from point to point.

Has there been any modern work on Weyl's theory? In particular,
is it possible to develop a quantum version? Another question:
is it possible that something interesting (perhaps GR) could
result from Weyl's theory through spontaneous symmetry breaking?

What's interesting about Weyl's theory is that classically
(ignoring quantum mechanics) there is no good reason for physics
to have a preferred length scale. What sets the length scale for
material objects seems to be the Bohr radius,

 r_b = hbar^2/(m e^2)

So that makes me think that perhaps quantum corrections to Weyl's
theory might break his gauge symmetry.
END
Could be on to something here D. Especially ignoring quantum mechanics! 
What do youse all think?




Apologist for the Police State: Goldberg On Ashcroft

2001-12-18 Thread Matthew Gaylor

[Note from Matthew Gaylor:  US Attorney General John Ashcroft said 
"to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost 
liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for 
they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give 
ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They 
encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.". 
Lost liberty is exactly the term a rational patriotic American would 
use to describe the intrusive power grab that is occurring in 
America.  National Review Online Editor Jonah Goldberg asks liberals 
to stop comparing Ashcroft to McCarthy.  A better exercise would be 
to start comparing police state apologist Jonah Goldberg and John 
Ashcroft to totalitarians 
.  For the full 
text of Ashcroft's statement go to 
.]

Jonah Goldberg can be reached at ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).




townhall.com

Jonah Goldberg

December 19, 2001

Liberals: Stop comparing Ashcroft to McCarthy

Like everyone else, I'd moved on from the public debates over 
military tribunals, racial profiling, detentions, etc. But, 
unfortunately, like crabgrass that feeds on inattention, a liberal 
canard has been growing wildly in the absence of public debate.

That's the trouble with liberal canards. You have to pull them out by 
the roots when they're young, otherwise they spread all over, 
crowding out everything else until they become accepted as actual 
facts.

The canard I'm talking about is this idea that Attorney General John 
Ashcroft is some sort of McCarthyite. Recall, if you will, a few 
weeks ago the Senate Judiciary Committee invited the attorney general 
to explain himself.

[...]

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Re: MS DRM OS Begets SSSCA

2001-12-18 Thread mattd

jya>>I think Mike is trying to describe the worst case scenario to arouse 
opposition. Bear in mind that the Content Faction (and maybe the Tech 
Faction) want to control the world, not just the US. All countries are 
targets for SSSCA and DMCA through copyright treaties and other control 
regimes.<<

Like the WTO and NWO? Fingerprint the planet,pascal? Man the barricades! 
BYO gasmask and molotovs.

 >>Just a few days ago the last country needed to enforce the WIPO 
Copyright Treaty signed on. WIPO is the global version of DMCA. And the 
Hague Convention is meeting shortly to set up the legal framework to 
enforce the various global treaties on protecting intellectual property. 
Sure, there will continue to be gray and black markets in software but 
criminalization of circumvention devices will put some youngsters (and 
oldsters) in jail, as we see looming from the recent warez raids.<<

I suspect they were a warmup for the big palmer raids looming for all 
anarchists,especially crypto-anarchists.AP NOW!

 >>The MPAA and co-conspirators are dirty fighters and nobody should expect 
to merely ignore them, thinking that loosening of crypto controls is a 
model. They know that precedent and are determined to do what governments 
could not. <<

Well the anarcho-capitalists here say,thats OK,as long as its not the 
STATE! Hey dont arrest me,Im a capitalist!

 >>Question is, as ever, what about the programmers within the factions who 
are needed to carry out the wishes of the bosses. In this, crypto could be 
a bellweather, for showing how the technicians learned to outwit the 
others. But are technical folks more susceptible these days to bribery of 
swell life styles than the crypto-rebels were? Or better, are there 
well-endowed, smarter than most, Factioners who do not want to be part of 
hegemonic putridity?<<

Dont form a union,timmy doesnt like unions,dont go outside,thats 
undignified.stay home rub oil on your gunbarrel and whinge.All traitors 
should be shot.

 >>We'll see what the Factions offer the liberators to keep
them hard at work, happy to be protected intellectual property
slaves. None of whom would waste a second here
except to pick up intelligence for blowing upholes.

Indeed.The cypherpunks may be like the blacks in the war of independence 
were.FREEDOM!