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bluesky - Re: freenet

bluesky AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: g'o'tz ohnesorge <gohnesorge AT lh-computertechnik.de>
  • To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems <bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: freenet
  • Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 11:41:22 +0200


Josh wrote:

> That was very helpful. We made a lot of progress...
>
> Thank you
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bram Cohen [mailto:bram AT gawth.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 5:55 PM
> To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems
> Subject: Re: freenet
>
> On Fri, 10 Aug 2001, Josh wrote:
>
> > However, if you guys could tell me if they are using a credit card for a
> > form of identification, I'd appreciate it.
>
> Am I the only one who fell over laughing when they read this?
>
> -Bram Cohen
>
> "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
> -- John Maynard Keynes

Maybe I can help out with a few hints:

a) Credit card fraud makes several times more money change owners than do bank
raids.

b) There's credit card number generator programs available (on the net, on
BBSs,
among the h4><0r community, wherever ..) that make a seemingly valid CC number
for you - mostly used to get free access to pr0n sites, I'd guess. The reason
that this is at all possible is that CC numbers are really not even remotely
secure identification numbers, but random numbers with an identity problem
(the
teacher will draw a smily in my homework book for this clever expression). A
CC
number is a hash of the owners name (or even only length of that), the
expiration date, and a serial number. That they're able to get away with that
and most other thin
gs that are referred to as security measures in the world of
American business, roots in the widely lamented fact that mathematics is the
best kept secret in the American educational system, even more than how to
avoid
pregnancies. (Sorry for the bashing, nearly all Americans I got to know on the
net a really well educated and also very smart people, but as a whole the
opposite seems to be available widely enough to allow for commercial mining.)

c) If one of your main goals, as in Freenet and a bunch of other distributed
systems, is to prevent censorship, and for that reason also ensure that access
is as anonymous as humanly or mathematically possible, then using a CC number
that you have to acquire by means of showing your ID card to a commercial
venture known for making their customer information database available for
free
to the governement and for cash to everyone else, can only be perceived as a
hideous attempt at standup comedy.

And there's another story that came to my mind regarding the attitude to need
to
leave your CC number around everywhere, and treat everything as someone else's
property that you have to pay for over and over at every corner. It's a poem
which most kids in Germany over the past decades had to learn some time,
about a
guy named Mr. Ribbeck of Ribbeck in Havelland:

In short, he had a fruit tree (birnbaum) in his garden, and given the age of
the
poem, those very sweet fruits were newly introduced to the area in what now
is,
I think, northern Poland, and thus probably still quite expensive. This guy
had
a habit of giving those fruits away to kids who came by his house. Some time
he
got old, and knew what would soon happen. He also knew that his son to inherit
the house and garden would not go on to give fruits away to kids. So he
demanded
that upon his burial, one such fruit was to be placed upon his grave. Some
years
later, a new fruit tree had grown in the grave yard, where everyone could go
and
pick a fruit for free.

Not sure what the message in tha
t could be ..







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