Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Thread Morons -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pezz who wrote (9386)	4/16/2000 11:41:00 AM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12810

Seriously, pezz, it is possible to know something of lorrie's history and to have responded with concern and an attempt to help--only to have come eventually and regretfully to the conclusion that she is playing a game here on SI that is notably unfunny. Meanwhile, she has managed to frighten a number of people and waste the time of many more, all the while throwing out utterly absurd personal accusations that she refuses to retract--accusations about some of the very people who would be most likely to help her if there were anything but smoke that she offered by way of explanation or description. This is the behavior of a thread moron.

To: pezz who wrote (9386)	4/16/2000 1:01:00 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 12810

pezz, Much of what she says is possible and in fact exists. Much of what she has says is impossible. The surveillance stuff can be done on a very limited and focused basis...However, the one thing that I have seen her assert that would cause her to be a "target" of surveillance is impossible. And that is specifically monitoring and filtering for keywords that are sent out over the internet. There are two reasons for this; 1. processing power 2. Packet diversity. 1. Processing power - quite simply stated, if every packet that was sent out over the internet or email was filtered for subversive keywords, the internet would slow down to the point of non-functionality. 2. Packet Diversity - (this is the more important point) The idea that a word goes out over the internet in its native form is simply wrong. In other words, if I type in the word "bomb", those letters are not sent across the internet, instead, a bunch of 1s and 0s are sent across that represent the individual letters. So let's say that 11010011 represents "bomb", then of course we have the control codes for bold and italics and font, etc...now we have 10100101110100110011001101 (I am making these up, I don't really know the codes for the letters or the control codes). So now we have the word "Bomb" in bold text. Now that packet can be sent out in different formats such as mime or binhex so now we have to add a bunch more ones and zeros on both sides. 110010010010001110011100111010010111010011001100110110001100 110001000111001001111101111 And moving down the communications stack, let's say that it is sent out as an TCP/IP packet. More ones and zeros 111000111000101010101010001110001111100100100100011100111001 110100101110100110011001101100011001100010001110010011111011 111011010101010001010001111100111010101010101 and then sent over an ATM network. More ones and zeros. 101010000111010100111110100101110100110011001101111000111000 101010101010001110001111100100100100011100111001110100101110 100110011001101100011001100010001110010011111011111011010101 010001010001111100111010101010101101001011101001100110011011 0101100011100011001 But the thing is, that each of these things is a variable. It doesn't have to go out as TCP/IP packet, it can go out as a UDP packet and it doesn't have to go out over an ATM network, it can go out as native IP, or Frame Relay or X.25. Each variable would have a different set of ones and zeros, and here is the important part, you can have repetitions of the same pattern of ones that can mean completely different things based on where the are located in the string. My point is that unless someone does something that very specifically causes someone to look at each and every packet that is sent from their specific location, there is no way that typing in a word, or a series of words, will ever be detected. Of course, if that person is frequenting the "Free Timothy McVie" website, they can be traced by their IP address, but when I type "Free Timothy McVie" I have absolutely zero concern about someone being able to figure out that I typed in those words by what is sent out over the internet, let alone figure out that it was me that typed them. I don't know any of Lorrie Coey's history. I was only vaguely aware of her existence on SI before she came to the "Why do Gurus Spontaneously Combust" thread. And when I pointed out to her that the thread wasn't talking about her, I suddenly became part of her conspiracy. Whatever her history is and whether or not somebody has her under surveillance, her accusations, insinuations and badgering of me were and are way out of line and based completely in falsehood. And you supported her in all of this on this thread. JXM