If the cops found my wife cut to pieces with a butcher knife, and thought that I hid the butcher knife in my sock drawer, they had better have means of searching my sock drawer. Searching the data on my computer is no different.
Nonsense.
The bloody knife in your sock drawer is a murder weapon - it is direct evidence of a real crime. The data on your computer cannot kill anyone. The most likely thing they're looking for is dirty picture or unapproved knowledge; at best, they may find indirect supporting evidence of real crimes; maybe your diary entry where you planned to kill your wife.
But while it would be hard (though not impossible) for someone to fake your fingerprints on a knife, it would be trivial for any hacker to fake data on your computer. Digital evidence is automatically questionable.
If you're convinced that the warrant system sucks, then give us a viable alternative.
Some suggested improvements:
Warrants shall be issued only for the investigation of crimes involving force, theft, or fraud. Eliminating drug searches would take care of the majority of abuses.
False testimony by an officer to obtain a warrant is a felony with a life sentance, no parole. False testimony by a civilian in support of a warrant is a felony with a ten year sentance.
No warrants based on anonymous testimony, or that of criminals testifing in exchange for reduced charges or sentencing.
An end to "no-knock" blitzkreig-style searches.
Warrants require the signature of two judges.
The government pays heavy restitution to the suspect if a search finds nothing.
Only a limited number of warrants can be granted to a police agency per year.
After the warrant is issued, but before it is executed, the officers and judges record all the evidence and reasoning that led to the issue. These records are available for public review, and are reviewed regularly by a civilian control and oversight board chosen by neighborhood groups.
A judge who issues more than n warrants for fruitless searches is removed from the bench.
Would you take apart your typewriter? how about painting your phone, or rearranging the buttons on it??
Sure, if it made me more comfortable or "productive", and was reversible so that the next poor sap who had to use it could set it as he/she liked it.
I remember an officemate of mine who took apart and rebuilt his chair so that it reclined a little bit, the way he liked it.(OTOH...he works at M$ now...hmmm...)
if the police busted in to interrupt a back rub it would be law-suite city, especially in sue crazy America. Until these divices get better, fear of making a multi-million dollar law suite would keep most police departments from using such a device in this way.
Sue the police? Yeah, good luck.
If the cops get the address wrong, bust down your door, trash your house and scare the shit out of your family - guess what? No one's liable. They don't even have to replace the door.
Make no mistake: the USA is a police state. If you happen to be a middle class, mostly law abiding citizen of European descent odds are it won't decide to crushr you. But if it does, forget about it. You have little legal recourse to defend yourself against the state.
It's ain't the tech. It's the fact that's in the hands of the people who brought you COINTELPRO, MK-ULTRA, the enemies list, the War on (some) Drugs, the Waco massacre, the CDA...need I go on?
It's not a question of what they could do with it. It's the fact the we know what they're going to do with it.
Of course, the other dumb bastards don't want to die for their country either. So they either a) develop similar tech (even if they have to steal it from us), taking us to a new arms race; or b) resort to the threat of "terrorism" (yeah, like there's a form of warfare that's not based on terror?) to discourage us from using high technology against them.
(In other words, if you're threatening me with a weapon I'm either going to get one myself or I'm going to fight you in as absolutely dirty a manner as I know how.)
I'd like to point out that there's always the radical idea of spending less resources on finding ways to kill each other and more on figuring out ways to build a just, peaceful, and sustainable world.
Also next time you see a animal rights fanatic, take a *good* look at thier shoes, belt, purse and wallet. Then feel free to point out their hypocrisy.
Before you get all excited over my "leather" jacket or belt - they ain't really leather, although several people have been fooled. See my Leather Alterniteves FAQ.
If you seek logical arguments for AR, check the following:
It's perfectly legit to have Javascript form validation. As long as you also have the same form validation on the server side that your forms still work for people who turn off Javascript.
Exactly. And then the Javascript validation becomes redundant, right? I suppose you could have the Javascript send an extra flag that says, "Hey, I already checked this", with the intent that the server would then skip validation; but if your server's doing anything interesting, it can't afford to trust the client and has to recheck the data anyway.
I did see a very nice use of Javascript today, though. The page had links to a whole bunch of large images, and moving the mouse cursor over a link brought up a thumbnail of the image. This made the page download faster, since you didn't have to grab thumbnails for all images - just the ones whose description interested you. And most importantly, the site would work just fine without the scripting.
Unfortunately, I think that makes a grand total of about three sites I've seen that use Javascript well. B-
Agreed! Javascript, as generally used, sucks - it serves no useful purpose and bloats pages, extending download times. Requiring Javascript to navigate a site is inexcusable.
The browser is supposed to be a thin client. You want a site that has to do some data crunching, don't offload it on my Pentium 90 or my friend's 486 (yes, beleive it or not we don't all run 500 MHz PIII's with full T1 feeds), do it on your massively studly server box.
The reason help desks get so many calls isn't cause people are stupid.. it's because technologies designed to make stuff "user friendly" only inhibit users from learning how to solve problems themselves.
Dammit, SirSlud, it's really annoying when someone else crystalizes a thought that's been banging around in my own head for years, in a better and clearer manner than I ever could.
Somebody moderate that comment up. And everybody heed this fellow's advice.
Sagan's book may be fiction, but if you look long enough you *will* find a circle embedded in PI. You will also find all the works of Shakespere encoded in ascii (as well as EBCDIC somewhere else in the sequence).The infinite monkeys are hard at work inside PI.
I don't think that's necessarily true. The digits of pi are not random. If I understand correctly, in an infinite random string we would eventually see all finite substrings, but that's not necessaruly true for a non-random non-repeating string. For example, even though the following decimal never repeats or terminates
Things were always informal with a small group, and we never had to worry about miscommunication. With a big team the plan you described sounds like a good one to me.
Of course, I think they should always start with a couple hours around a white board.
Folks keep mentioning the whiteboard. Yeah, yeah, fine place to start, but doesn't help a damn bit when someone comes on the project a year later. Even if you have one of those fancy boards that can print a copy, the end result ususaly doesn't make sense if you weren't in on the discussion. (Next time you walk into a conference room with something scribbled on the board, see how much of it you can figure out!)
I've worked on projects with documentation out the wazoo (a B3-targeted trusted operating system base ), with no docs but good comments, and with no docs and useless comments. (Anyone who comments "x++;" with "/* add one to x */" needs to be severely beaten about the head, shoulders, and typing fingers with a copy of the ANSI C specs.) Too much documentation is almost as bad as none at all, and poorly written docs can be worse! Based on my experience, my advice is:
Lose the MSWord!!!!!!! No data of any relevance should ever be stored in a proprietary format, especially one that can introduce macro viruses and leak unintended data. Use plain text and HTML (LaTeX can also work well, if you're Unix-geeky enough, and I look forward to seeing what XML may offer here) and GIFs or Postscript for pretty pictures if need be, and put your docs on a local web server. This also makes you platform independent.
Source control is essential for both code and docs. So is some kind of bug/change tracking. I'd avoid "integrated" solutions and pick the best individual components for your needs. I like CVS and GNATS.
Don't make either system hard to use. Give senior developers the access rights needed to fix problems - don't limit it to one or two designated source control people. A bad source control setup can waste days of programmer time very quickly.
There's basically four things that need to be documented for a software component: requirements, high level design, low level design, and interface.
Requirements. For the system as a whole, and perhaps for large components, we ask - what does it have to do? Document reqs up front in a collabrative process that includes developers.
Once requirements are frozen, they are frozen - that should be clear in the contract, if applicable. The only exception should be clarification of existing reqs. Avoid creeping featuritis. (IMHO, developers really need to start standing up on this point. Sometimes, we have to tell management "No, you can't have this." If speaking the truth and standing up for good development principals gets you in hot water, maybe it's time to walk.)
High level design. From an outside perpective, what is this thing? What does it do? What does it model? What is the abstraction that it implements? This should also be documented by developers before coding begins, in separate documents. The design may change as development progresses and the problem becomes better understood, and these docs must be kept current. If you're heavy into OOD, this is where your object diagrams and such go.
HLDs are very important for new people coming on to a project, or for developers taking over a new component, to get up to speed. Creating them also helps develop encapsulation and data hiding.
Low level design. How does it do what it does? What other components does it use or talk to? The key question is, what does someone developing or maintaining this module need to know about it?
Because this changes rapidly in the course of development, and shouldn't have to be known to other modules, I think this is best kept with the code in function and module headers (structured comment blocks).
Interface. APIs, message structures, data types, etcetera. What does someone using this module need to know about it? I think that the definitive version of this information is also best kept in function and module headers, and extracted into documents at stable points in development.
Having a tech writer around to make the grammar pretty and deal with the formatting is a very, very good thing.
Code reviews. Formally or informally, have developers look at each other's code to check for problems and make sure that it is documented and maintainable.
Someday, you will have to explain what you code. It's much more accurate, useful, and pleasant to do it up front and get it out of the way then to have people come to you with annoying questions later on when you've moved on to other, more interesting things. (A friend of mine once compared the design and documentation process to foreplay...it helps get you excited about getting down to the coding.)
If you can't explain your code, you shouldn't create it in the first place.
What is the moral basis of the authority of the State? Why should we participate in electoral politics rather than abolishing them entirely?
Because at this point, if you abolish the State you'll just get a new one - probably worse - to take it's place.
What do you think people would do if we all woke up tommorow to find that all vestiges of government had disappeared - that the police, army, Congress, courts, state and local legistatures, governors, mayors, and bureaucrats were gone without a trace? Bet you a nickel they'd get together and elect a whole new set. And if they didn't, some "strongman" would move in and set up his own state.
Government may or may not be necessary, but at this point in human development it's inevitable. (In the long run, what we need is Zenarchy: "As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.") Meantime, best we can do is make the state harmless as possible. A constitutional democratic republic is a pretty good shot at that; unfortunately, we've moving away from that towards authoritarian theocracy and corporate plutocracy.
He's stated that if elected, he would issue and Executive Order to prevent Wiccans from performing their celebrations in the military.
Well, his daddy said that atheists shouldn't be considered citizens, because "this is one nation under God." I suppose on religious liberty, it's like father, like son. Ah, family values...
What we need is a political version of the LART. A Legislative Attitude Readjustment Tool, with which to beat some sense into these idiots.
Citizens who find themselves in the minority on many political issues have found the Internet a very valuable tool to organize, share information, and make their views known to the mainstream.
Now it seems that the federal government is trying to censor such discussion. For example, we have the "Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999", which would criminalize many discussions of drug policy.
I believe that you can't have a meaningful discussion on, for instance, the sentancing guidelines for possession of crack vs. powder cocaine without an understanding of how crack is made. Thus, my drug policy site has such information.
Trying to censor "dirty" bits is bad enough, but to censor political discussion is utterly abhorant. Political censorship is a life-and-death issue - people will fight, kill, and die for free speech. What, short of bullets, is it going to take to stop the cybercensors? (Or should I just go buy more bullets while I still can?)
Any other techies gravitate towards non-(computer)techie friends?
Yes, very much so. In fact, even my techie friends are almost all folks I met thru non-techie connections - karate, music, poetry, paganism, or mutual friends.
Never have dated a geek girl, though there have been a few I would have tried for if they hadn't been in relationships already.
If he is stupid enough to believe Pepsi offered it, somebody should own up to the responsibility of seeing him safely isolated from society.
Um, Pepsi did offer it. They didn't mean to offer it - but I didn't mean to type "=" instead of "==" in that buggy code I wrote. The fellow who bought all the point took advantage of Pepsi's mistake the same way a good hacker takes advantage of software misfeatures.
In legal matters as in code, you're stuck with what you say or write, not with what you mean to say or write.
I recall reading about a slightly similar case with the old Burma Shave company. For those who don't know, their gimmick was sets of roadside signs with advertizing poetry on them. One was "Free! Free! / A trip to Mars / For a thousand / Empty jars / -Burma Shave"
Sure enough, someone collected a thousand empty jars. IIRC, Burma Shave ended up sending him and his family on a vacation to a city called Marz in Germany.
I have friends in Law Enforcement, and the trick is.. they are all fine people, who think of the greater good. Not Hitler types who want to infringe rights at every turn.
Ah, but those who would destroy freedom always think they're acting for the "greater good". McCarthy was quite sincere. COINTELPROers really believed that Martin Luther King was a dangerous subversive. Even Hitler and Stalin though they were doing the right thing.
Didn't Justice Brandeis say something about how the greatest danger to liberty comes from well-meaning men?
Post-CD, of course, the problem is moot. Every version of the Linux that made it onto a CD will be around for 100 years or more, somewhere, for instance.
I believe that CDs are turning out to be not nearly as durable as expected - many are becoming unreadable after only a few years. And finding a CD reader may be very difficult 100 years from now when everyone's using data crystals or DNA storage or who knows what.
Recovering old data isn't trivial. About a year ago I talked with a fellow who was involved in a project to analyse old Landsat data, in an attempt to get a baseline for climate change info. The data was stored on magnetic tape that had been warehoused for something like 25 years. They had to get tape drives from scrap merchants, and go thru a laborous process to restore the tapes - slowly baking the tape to drive out moisture they had absorbed over the years, and scaping them with sapphire-edged blades to remove acculmated gunk.
On a more personal scale, I've got several 5.25 floppies (360k format) worth of old BBS philes and posts that may never get read again, just because of the hassle.
Post-CD, of course, the problem is moot. Every version of the Linux that made it onto a CD will be around for 100 years or more, somewhere, for instance.
I believe that CDs are turning out to be not nearly as durable as expected - many are becoming unreadable after only a few years. And finding a CD reader may be very difficult 100 years from now when everyone's using data crystals or DNA storage or who knows what.
Recoving old data isn't trivial. About a year ago I talked with a fellow who was involved in a project to analyse old Landsat data, in an attempt to get a baseline for climate change info. The data was stored on magnetic tape that had been warehoused for something like 25 years. They had to get tape drives from scrap merchants, and go thru a laborous process to restore the tapes - slowly baking the tape to drive out moisture they had absorbed over the years, and scaping them with sapphire-edged blades to remove acculmated gunk.
On a more personal scale, I've got several 5.25 floppies (360k format) worth of old BBS philes and posts that may never get read again, just because of the hassle.
The logical solution might be to privatize the schools and libraries.
Right. Visions of The Simpsons: "Addition - brought to you by Pepsi(tm)!"
I'd trade a dozen bum-ridden public libraries for a Blockbuster Books with 100 copies of each bestseller, guaranteed in stock...
Try finding a good movie at Blockbuster, rather than whatever lowest-common-denominator tripe has just been released on video. Oh, and you do know about their corporate censorship policies, right? (And that they drug test their employees...yeah, what a threat to safety it would be if the clerk at the video store was a stoner: "Dude, you really ought to rent this Cheech & Chong movie, it's way cool!")
... and private schools have ALWAYS been better than public ones.
No, not always. Not in Baltimore County, 1975 to 1987. At least, the public schools I went to (McCormick Elementry, Perry Hall MS, Perry Hall HS) were better than the local private Catholic schools. Kids would transfer in from Catholic school and be a year behind us.
The currently-fashionable bashing of public schools ignores the fact that school systems can differ radically from county to county.
Folks have set up "cypherpunks" accounts on many of these registration-required websites. (My favorite is the cypherpunks login on the Amtrak website...)
Slashdot Mirror
The bloody knife in your sock drawer is a murder weapon - it is direct evidence of a real crime. The data on your computer cannot kill anyone. The most likely thing they're looking for is dirty picture or unapproved knowledge; at best, they may find indirect supporting evidence of real crimes; maybe your diary entry where you planned to kill your wife.
But while it would be hard (though not impossible) for someone to fake your fingerprints on a knife, it would be trivial for any hacker to fake data on your computer. Digital evidence is automatically questionable.
Some suggested improvements:- Warrants shall be issued only for the investigation of crimes involving force, theft, or fraud. Eliminating drug searches would take care of the majority of abuses.
- False testimony by an officer to obtain a warrant is a felony with a life sentance, no parole. False testimony by a civilian in support of a warrant is a felony with a ten year sentance.
- No warrants based on anonymous testimony, or that of criminals testifing in exchange for reduced charges or sentencing.
- An end to "no-knock" blitzkreig-style searches.
- Warrants require the signature of two judges.
- The government pays heavy restitution to the suspect if a search finds nothing.
- Only a limited number of warrants can be granted to a police agency per year.
- After the warrant is issued, but before it is executed, the officers and judges record all the evidence and reasoning that led to the issue. These records are available for public review, and are reviewed regularly by a civilian control and oversight board chosen by neighborhood groups.
- A judge who issues more than n warrants for fruitless searches is removed from the bench.
Just a few ideas off the top of my head.I remember an officemate of mine who took apart and rebuilt his chair so that it reclined a little bit, the way he liked it.(OTOH...he works at M$ now...hmmm...)
If the cops get the address wrong, bust down your door, trash your house and scare the shit out of your family - guess what? No one's liable. They don't even have to replace the door.
Make no mistake: the USA is a police state. If you happen to be a middle class, mostly law abiding citizen of European descent odds are it won't decide to crushr you. But if it does, forget about it. You have little legal recourse to defend yourself against the state.
It's not a question of what they could do with it. It's the fact the we know what they're going to do with it.
(In other words, if you're threatening me with a weapon I'm either going to get one myself or I'm going to fight you in as absolutely dirty a manner as I know how.)
I'd like to point out that there's always the radical idea of spending less resources on finding ways to kill each other and more on figuring out ways to build a just, peaceful, and sustainable world.
If you seek logical arguments for AR, check the following:
I did see a very nice use of Javascript today, though. The page had links to a whole bunch of large images, and moving the mouse cursor over a link brought up a thumbnail of the image. This made the page download faster, since you didn't have to grab thumbnails for all images - just the ones whose description interested you. And most importantly, the site would work just fine without the scripting.
Unfortunately, I think that makes a grand total of about three sites I've seen that use Javascript well. B-
Circus animals are horribly abused - especially elephants. See the PETA website for details.
The browser is supposed to be a thin client. You want a site that has to do some data crunching, don't offload it on my Pentium 90 or my friend's 486 (yes, beleive it or not we don't all run 500 MHz PIII's with full T1 feeds), do it on your massively studly server box.
Somebody moderate that comment up. And everybody heed this fellow's advice.
0.123456789011223344556677889900111222333444555666 777888999....
the string "4321" never appears. The digits of pi don't come as easy as those of the number above, but they are deterministic, not random.
I've worked on projects with documentation out the wazoo (a B3-targeted trusted operating system base ), with no docs but good comments, and with no docs and useless comments. (Anyone who comments "x++;" with "/* add one to x */" needs to be severely beaten about the head, shoulders, and typing fingers with a copy of the ANSI C specs.) Too much documentation is almost as bad as none at all, and poorly written docs can be worse! Based on my experience, my advice is:
- Lose the MSWord!!!!!!! No data of any relevance should ever be stored in a proprietary format, especially one that can introduce macro viruses and leak unintended data. Use plain text and HTML (LaTeX can also work well, if you're Unix-geeky enough, and I look forward to seeing what XML may offer here) and GIFs or Postscript for pretty pictures if need be, and put your docs on a local web server. This also makes you platform independent.
- Source control is essential for both code and docs. So is some kind of bug/change tracking. I'd avoid "integrated" solutions and pick the best individual components for your needs. I like CVS and GNATS.
- There's basically four things that need to be documented for a software component: requirements, high level design, low level design, and interface.
- Code reviews. Formally or informally, have developers look at each other's code to check for problems and make sure that it is documented and maintainable.
Someday, you will have to explain what you code. It's much more accurate, useful, and pleasant to do it up front and get it out of the way then to have people come to you with annoying questions later on when you've moved on to other, more interesting things. (A friend of mine once compared the design and documentation process to foreplay...it helps get you excited about getting down to the coding.)Don't make either system hard to use. Give senior developers the access rights needed to fix problems - don't limit it to one or two designated source control people. A bad source control setup can waste days of programmer time very quickly.
- Requirements. For the system as a whole, and perhaps for large components, we ask - what does it have to do? Document reqs up front in a collabrative process that includes developers.
- High level design. From an outside perpective, what is this thing? What does it do? What does it model? What is the abstraction that it implements? This should also be documented by developers before coding begins, in separate documents. The design may change as development progresses and the problem becomes better understood, and these docs must be kept current. If you're heavy into OOD, this is where your object diagrams and such go.
- Low level design. How does it do what it does? What other components does it use or talk to? The key question is, what does someone developing or maintaining this module need to know about it?
- Interface. APIs, message structures, data types, etcetera. What does someone using this module need to know about it? I think that the definitive version of this information is also best kept in function and module headers, and extracted into documents at stable points in development.
Having a tech writer around to make the grammar pretty and deal with the formatting is a very, very good thing.Once requirements are frozen, they are frozen - that should be clear in the contract, if applicable. The only exception should be clarification of existing reqs. Avoid creeping featuritis. (IMHO, developers really need to start standing up on this point. Sometimes, we have to tell management "No, you can't have this." If speaking the truth and standing up for good development principals gets you in hot water, maybe it's time to walk.)
HLDs are very important for new people coming on to a project, or for developers taking over a new component, to get up to speed. Creating them also helps develop encapsulation and data hiding.
Because this changes rapidly in the course of development, and shouldn't have to be known to other modules, I think this is best kept with the code in function and module headers (structured comment blocks).
If you can't explain your code, you shouldn't create it in the first place.
What do you think people would do if we all woke up tommorow to find that all vestiges of government had disappeared - that the police, army, Congress, courts, state and local legistatures, governors, mayors, and bureaucrats were gone without a trace? Bet you a nickel they'd get together and elect a whole new set. And if they didn't, some "strongman" would move in and set up his own state.
Government may or may not be necessary, but at this point in human development it's inevitable. (In the long run, what we need is Zenarchy: "As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.") Meantime, best we can do is make the state harmless as possible. A constitutional democratic republic is a pretty good shot at that; unfortunately, we've moving away from that towards authoritarian theocracy and corporate plutocracy.
What we need is a political version of the LART. A Legislative Attitude Readjustment Tool, with which to beat some sense into these idiots.
Now it seems that the federal government is trying to censor such discussion. For example, we have the "Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999", which would criminalize many discussions of drug policy.
I believe that you can't have a meaningful discussion on, for instance, the sentancing guidelines for possession of crack vs. powder cocaine without an understanding of how crack is made. Thus, my drug policy site has such information.
Trying to censor "dirty" bits is bad enough, but to censor political discussion is utterly abhorant. Political censorship is a life-and-death issue - people will fight, kill, and die for free speech. What, short of bullets, is it going to take to stop the cybercensors? (Or should I just go buy more bullets while I still can?)
Never have dated a geek girl, though there have been a few I would have tried for if they hadn't been in relationships already.
In legal matters as in code, you're stuck with what you say or write, not with what you mean to say or write.
I recall reading about a slightly similar case with the old Burma Shave company. For those who don't know, their gimmick was sets of roadside signs with advertizing poetry on them. One was "Free! Free! / A trip to Mars / For a thousand / Empty jars / -Burma Shave"
Sure enough, someone collected a thousand empty jars. IIRC, Burma Shave ended up sending him and his family on a vacation to a city called Marz in Germany.
Didn't Justice Brandeis say something about how the greatest danger to liberty comes from well-meaning men?
No one ever sets out to be an evil tyrant.
Recovering old data isn't trivial. About a year ago I talked with a fellow who was involved in a project to analyse old Landsat data, in an attempt to get a baseline for climate change info. The data was stored on magnetic tape that had been warehoused for something like 25 years. They had to get tape drives from scrap merchants, and go thru a laborous process to restore the tapes - slowly baking the tape to drive out moisture they had absorbed over the years, and scaping them with sapphire-edged blades to remove acculmated gunk.
On a more personal scale, I've got several 5.25 floppies (360k format) worth of old BBS philes and posts that may never get read again, just because of the hassle.
Recoving old data isn't trivial. About a year ago I talked with a fellow who was involved in a project to analyse old Landsat data, in an attempt to get a baseline for climate change info. The data was stored on magnetic tape that had been warehoused for something like 25 years. They had to get tape drives from scrap merchants, and go thru a laborous process to restore the tapes - slowly baking the tape to drive out moisture they had absorbed over the years, and scaping them with sapphire-edged blades to remove acculmated gunk.
On a more personal scale, I've got several 5.25 floppies (360k format) worth of old BBS philes and posts that may never get read again, just because of the hassle.
The currently-fashionable bashing of public schools ignores the fact that school systems can differ radically from county to county.
login: cypherpunks
password: cypherpunks
Folks have set up "cypherpunks" accounts on many of these registration-required websites. (My favorite is the cypherpunks login on the Amtrak website...)