User talk:Sandy Harris

Welcome!
Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at CZ:Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list (do join!) and the blog. Please also join the workgroup mailing list(s) that concern your particular interests. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forums is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any constable for help, too. Me, for instance! Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! D. Matt Innis 10:40, 22 December 2007 (CST)

hi and welcome
Hi Sandy, Welcome to the Citizendium, and thanks for editing in the Computers Workgroup.Pat Palmer 20:38, 22 December 2007 (CST)

forums
Sandy, re: your enquiry on my user page, I believe the forums have been phased out, and people are encouraged to use the mailing lists instead. You might also post on the Computers Workgroup talk page if you have a suggestion for work someone might want to do.Pat Palmer 11:57, 28 December 2007 (CST)
 * Pat, I don't know where you got that idea -- the Forums are VERY active! I think, in fact, that that is where just about all of the discussions are going on.... Hayford Peirce 12:30, 28 December 2007 (CST)

I can clarify this. For general project discussion, the forums are the place to go. For discussion of workgroup-specific issues, go to CZ:Mailing lists. There are still workgroup-specific boards, but they are now discouraged... --Larry Sanger 12:34, 28 December 2007 (CST)


 * So far, after a dozen or so attempts on several different days, I've been completely unable to reach any forums. I suspect the Great Firewall of China is blocking them. Sandy Harris 12:43, 28 December 2007 (CST)


 * Still not accessible to me. Fine if I use a proxy, so it seems clear the Great Firewall has blocked them. Of course I can bypass that, but I am not willing to do so routinely. It slows performance a good deal and creates risks -- to me since it may be illegal under local laws and to others since if I over-use a bypass technique, the Chinese gov't are more likely to catch on and block that technique.


 * So I will use forums only if I think something I could do there is very important. Sandy Harris 09:59, 10 October 2008 (CDT)


 * Today they work. Sandy Harris 05:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I've extracted part of the broader discussion, to prepare a draft of the first navigation idea to go into the formal CZ Proposal system. See User:Howard C. Berkowitz > Strong Articles. I've gotten some feedback in email that I'll try to put in later tonight, or tomorrow. Hopefully, it can start in the Proposals system sometime next week. Howard C. Berkowitz 05:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * And today they are not accessible except through a proxy. Sandy Harris 10:01, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

one-time pad
Hi! Thanks for your notice. I've changed the status accordingly and left a note on the talk page so that the copyright issue is clear. Please note that imported articles are supposed to be improved here. The external content just copied from elsewhere and not developed further on Citizendium sooner or later gets deleted. An article that is improved becomes CZ_Live; still, it retains a notice about the original source (BTW, you may be interested in adding such a note at the bottom of your article). Cheers! Aleksander Stos 10:19, 17 January 2008 (CST)

Comment on CZ:Bold Moves addition
Moved from CZ:Bold Moves (which is just a log, not a discussion forum):
 * Sandy, I am unclear about what you're trying to do - and what is One-time pad is all about? Can you help me?  And welcome to CZ, by the way! Stephen Ewen 02:44, 21 March 2008 (CDT)

Network architectural models
I appreciate your mentioning concerns on the talk page before making major changes. Now, since I wrote some of the articles in question, my "authority" as a Computers Workgroup editor cannot be asserted, due to conflict of interest.

Nevertheless, we really do need to discuss certain things on article talk pages. First, a great many real-world network architects and protocol designers really wish, for very specific reasons, that the OSI model be discarded as a teaching tool. It introduces many obsolete concepts or things that are just wrong, especially when the teacher tries to force incompatible Internet concepts into it. There is more relevance, at least with respect to telephony, to considering the SS7/ATM model, with due regard that even there, SIGTRAN is moving SS7 to an IP framework, and, while optical communications are very much alive, ATM itself is more historical; its assumptions involved some technological dead ends that, for example, did not predict that extremely fast routers do not need fixed-length cells.

I've commented on one example under VPN. Again, it may be a good idea to stress that not all models are PPVPN, but the terminology from PPVPN is useful and quite general in the IETF.

Howard C. Berkowitz 13:17, 1 August 2008 (CDT)

Existing VENONA article
There was already a substantial article, VENONA, before you deleted my reference to the primary source in cipher, and then created Venona. Please stop deleting citations and redirecting away from existing work. I have asked for assistance from the Constabulary.

I have indeed cited some of my own outside work on Citizendium, but I put prominent disclaimers on the talk page or referred only to peer-reviewed published material. There is no obvious peer review of the external material that you wrote. If you want to cite your own research, one way to do so is under the signed articles subpage. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:29, 2 August 2008 (CDT)


 * I am not "being silly" about having citations in relevant places; I am following consensus practices about putting references where they are relevant. If you don't think pseudorandom numbers are relevant to one-time pads, I'm not sure quite what to say -- except this is the sort of thing that tends to be an Editor call on CZ. It might be useful for you to discuss this with another Computers Workgroup editor, or a Constable. Do you understand that a workgroup editor has some content responsibility? Howard C. Berkowitz 21:57, 2 August 2008 (CDT)


 * Do not move citations without consensus, or when a relevant Editor states they are relevant in the place they are, unless you get a Constable or uninvolved Editor to mediate and/or arbitrate the matter. This is not Wikipedia, and we do not get into edit wars. I have added citations, where I felt they were appropriate, in my judgment as an Editor. I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish besides confrontation. This is a sincere attempt to improve quality, but you seem unwilling to consider any opinion other than your own; I'd rather not have to see this enforced by a constable. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:13, 2 August 2008 (CDT)

I have commented at Cipher. Please remember to use the talk pages on these articles to avoid misunderstandings. Constable D. Matt Innis 08:48, 3 August 2008 (CDT)

It's a party, and you're invited!
Hi ! Your CZ Write-a-Thon MC here. Please head over to the Party Room and add yourself to the list of revelers in whatever category you think appropriate. Thanks for contributing! Aleta Curry 18:41, 6 August 2008 (CDT)

Starting some new material for cryptanalysis.
On the talk page for now -- I'll use a sandbox if it gets too big -- I'm doing some suggested basic text on "tactics" that go before strategy. They are quite basic, but a beginner may need them. Give me a little time to get out a rough draft: it's 1200 my time; I want to spend 30-60 minutes on this. I won't touch the main article until doing this. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:03, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

categories
At citizendium there is no need to manage the categories at the bottom of each page. We have a metadata page associated with each article; the one for ULTRA is at Template:ULTRA/Metadata. You'll notice that along with removing the categories from the article I made another edit to the metadata. That edit allows the subpages template to now place the correct categories on the article and all the subpages (notice the correct categories are still at the bottom of the page despite the fact I removed them). This has the advatange that we do not need to make many changes when we wish to add/change or remove a category. You can read more at CZ:Subpages. Chris Day 14:17, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I gave you the wrong link. The more informative one is at CZ:Using_the_Subpages_template. Chris Day 14:06, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Good work development
I know it's in flux, but I like what you are doing in moving some of the materiial from cryptographic snake oil to cryptography. You make the correct general point that some of this refers to security beyond cryptography.

As I think I've mentioned, I started an article, communications security, but am not happy with the title and have various thughts of developing it, with the clear intention that the article is about the goal and the abstract requirements (e.g., content confedentiality, atomic integrity). Now, those particular requires are most often met with cryptography (nods head in direction of covert channels, steganography, etc.).

There are, however, goals, more on the hardware side, that are minimally, if at all, implemented with cryptography, such as low-probability-of-intercept and direction finding. Yes, LPI can use a synchronized PRNG for frequency agility and spectrum spreading. Physical protection is very different for an antenna and a communications line.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are things like privilege levelsl, mandatory access control, etc., that are primcipally in software rather than the network or the transmission system. Again, they may make use of cryptography, as in digital certificates for authentication, but biometrics and multi-factor authentication need not depend on cryptography.

I think we need that unifying article &mdash; information assurance is one term that might fit, although I've never liked it. Information assurance, though, also picks up fault tolerance.

As I say, I'm frustrated and need some fresh eyes on it. Could you give me your opinion? If you think some of the non-cryptographic security material you are moving out of snake oil might fit better there, feel free to try to work them in.

The workgroups are getting very complex at this point -- mathematics and computers are pretty easy, but engineering, physics, law, and other fields touch. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:16, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you look at ..
Hi, I haven't forgotten this, just haven't had the time (yet) to give it enough attention to have something intelligent to say. If I can get done with Crash of 2008 I'll try and make time. J. Noel Chiappa 18:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

PS: Thanks for all the hard work; I haven't had much time for articles yet, I seem to be busy with other stuff, but maybe some day I can join in too. J. Noel Chiappa 18:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Your testimony
Please let us have it! --Larry Sanger 21:01, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Electronic probing
Sandy, I remember you asked whether there was a term used for active measures to tease out information useful for cryptanalysis, but I don't remember which talk page had it. Anyway, you might want to look at electronic warfare. It's different than what you described, but you might want to link to the heading/reference and build on it.

Personally, I would't think it too much like original research even to create as small article titled something like "cryptanalytic probing", link to the EW definition, and explain that the term introduced is an organizing article to pull together several non-obvious common threads. "Organizing article" isn't a wonderful term, but occasionally, the function, if not the name, is needed in a knowledge navigation structure. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:18, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Developing articles of interest
If you haven't seen them, there are two groups of articles that might tie to some of your interests, and be worth some cross-linking. User:David MacQuigg is doing a series of articles starting with Email system, and he has a special interest in authentication. There's also a series of articles, including group theory, by User:Richard Pinch, with topics that might tie to crypto algorithms. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi Sandy. Thanks for your interest in my articles under Email System, and the link to PGP.  I am the developer of ZCrypt, a little-known, but very secure secret-key system, so I have an interest also in cryptography.  I appreciate also your link to the Global Trust Register.  This has gotten me thinking about changing the title of my Registry of Internet Transmitters.  Although email is the main application, it could be used with any application needing to establish trust in a TCP-based transaction on the Internet. David MacQuigg 13:59, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm delighted to see this connection. While I can say I know a good deal about communications intelligence and information security, I don't pretend to be immersed in the details of modern cryptographic algorithms. If I can be more in the role of editing as one knowledgeable in the context and how a non-subspecialist would see the topics, that's more useful for everyone.


 * Me network engineer. Push bits and packets around. Some encrypted. Router not care unless in header; then link encryptor cares. Physical and electronic security &mdash; ah, those are equines of a different reflective wavelength. ;-) Howard C. Berkowitz 14:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)