December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by Alan Penny 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The other night I heard that some of the rules for selling stock have been changed to allow companies to sell stock directly to investors. I have been thinking that this may have the potential to support an interesting system. Imagine "Portfolio Accounts" with a debit-card like access method. Instead of paying for an item at a store with money or credit you use your Portfolio-Account card and buy the item with shares/micro-shares of stock. Stock brokers may offer this type of service in response the competition of companies bypassing them. Stock brokers could setup services that mediate between transactions calculating trades and values "on-the-fly" (anonymity could be tricky to build into this system). If the company you worked for paid you with stock instead of money this would complete the loop. Portfolio Accounts could be "cashed out" but if they have all of the attributes of money and don't suffer from inflation why not keep your stock invested. This also has the interesting feature of avoiding all taxes. Until you "cash out" your account you would not have to pay taxes, if you never need cash out your account, you never need to pay taxes. I suspect that our friendly governments would try to "correct" this "problem" in the long run if they can. Steven Weller writes: [snip] > > In such a system, where does credit come in? If I have a certificate that > is worth X, then does the recipient know that it's from my "credit card"? > How do I obtain credit, and in what form does it exist? > Could credit be supported by distributed futures market system? > > Furthermore, how do we assess the value of real physical things in a system > like this? If you had a stock transaction mediated economy the "currency" in this system would be backed buy the goods and services produced by companies issuing stock. You could view stock in this system as private currencies, and there would be thousands of competing currencies. I have been thinking that this might be a viable path to denationalized currencies. Stock certificates could be based on crytographic verification protocols. If all the stock in this system were 'bearer-based' (i.e., you posess it you own it) you could also support cash-like anonymity as well. > > > -- > Steven Weller <Windsor Consulting Group> +1 502 454 0054 (voice) > OS-9 Consultancy and Software +1 502 451 5935 (fax) > Finger for public key 00 02 3C 2F 83 76 D3 77 2A 95 E8 90 94 9A 9D 74 > http://iglou.com/windsorgrp stevenw(a)iglou.com or realtime(a)well.sf.ca.us > > Cordially, [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Public pgp-key: email penny(a)tyrell.net with subject as 'send pgp-key' ] [ My opinions are mine. I have scored 90% on the the Turing Test. ] [ Alan Penny, penny(a)tyrell.net ]

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Linux brutessl client
by Sam Quigley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi. I've been able to compile a working brutessl 1.02 cllient under linux and gcc 2.7.0, but I get abysmal search speeds. My system is a pentium 60, which, according to the docs, ought to have a speed of something over 14100 kps (that's what a 486dx2/66 with no rotate left macro gets). brutessl -t reports that my system can do 11200 keys per second. Is there any obvious reason this number is so much lower than expected? I'm reasonably certain gcc implemets a rotl macro, but I don't know how to make use of it -- has anyone out there gotten assembly.c to compile under gcc? Finally, are there any additional optimizations for pentium machines available? thanks, -sq

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Shared secrets and corporations in Cyberspace.
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How can collective entities hold keys? Corporations derive their cohesion partly from realspace coercion, and partly by trust based on face to face interactions among the participants, and partly from their brand name. Trusts derive their cohesion primarily from trust, again based on face to face interaction. A cyberspace corporation would derive its cohesion primarily from its name identification and the public key associated with its brand name. Consumers would presumably wish there financial instruments to be signed to the public key of Megacorp life insurance, rather than Megacorp's insurance saleman, for fear that otherwise their funds might go astray, or they might get bad software, etc, and the private key corresponding to that public key will sign the employees paycheques. If a cyberspace corporation does not have a valued brand name it is likely to disintegrate into its components, in the way that some realspace corporations did in the boisterous early days of silicon valley. But this creates a problem of "owning the corporation". If one man knows the corporations secret key, he can pretty much tell the shareholders to go take a hike. If two men know the secret key, it probably will not remain secret much longer. One solution is to use truenames, rather than keys as the "real identity" -- set up financial transaction software so that it considers that any key signed by a proper authority certifying the key to be the key of Megacorp is a valid Megacorp key, that all such keys are equivalent, and that the authority will only issue keys to one entity called Megacorp. Then when folk start fighting over who is the real Megacorp, the authority resolves the dispute by conventional means. Current proposals for transaction software are based on truenames and trees-of-trust. This is not too bad as long as we have a forest, not a single tree, but still, one would like to have some arrangement whereby a large number of people could share a single key, and can buy and sell interests in that key, whereby we can have the mechanisms of shared ownership without the need for an external authority to enforce it. Obviously trusts will work fine in Cyberspace, but trusts are by their nature small and undemocratic. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:01 PM 8/22/95 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: > It's easy > to see how a combination of certification technology and cryptographically > anonymous voting protocols allow the direct election of a company's board > members without proxies -- another hierarchical device -- for instance. It is not so easy for me to see how such protocols allow the shareholders to control the company's keys if the CEO tells the shareholders to go and stick their heads in a bucket. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Brute SSL Challenge
by David Neal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just skip this silly little message if you know enough to optimize the brutessl code. Didn't know of a better place to put this, so please no flames. Hopefully everyone on here is accomplished enough to know optimizing the brutessl code helps immensely. If not, well I used gcc -O6 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -finline-functions -c search.c gcc -O6 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -finline-functions -o brutessl \ brutessl.c search.o To go from 5,000 keys per second to 10,100 keys per second.

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Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:10 AM 8/24/95, Alan Penny wrote: >The other night I heard that some of the rules for selling stock have >been changed to allow companies to sell stock directly to investors. >I have been thinking that this may have the potential to support an >interesting system. My company sold stock to me directly, through a Stock Participation Plan and an Incentive Stock Option Plan. >Imagine "Portfolio Accounts" with a debit-card like access method. I use a debit card which directly accesses my stock account. More on this in a moment. >Instead of paying for an item at a store with money or credit you use >your Portfolio-Account card and buy the item with shares/micro-shares >of stock. Stock brokers may offer this type of service in response the >competition of companies bypassing them. Stock brokers could setup >services that mediate between transactions calculating trades and values >"on-the-fly" (anonymity could be tricky to build into this system). This is where it breaks down. Stock prices are denominated in dollars (or the local currency, as applicable). And local purchases are denominated in dollars. Nobody pays "one microMicrosoft" for a loaf of bread. They pay $1. And Microsoft stock sells for $100, not 100 loaves of bread. >If the company you worked for paid you with stock instead of money this >would complete the loop. The IRS and other tax authorities have this one figured out: barter economies are not generally a way to avoid taxes. >This also has the interesting feature of avoiding all taxes. Until you >"cash out" your account you would not have to pay taxes, if you never >need cash out your account, you never need to pay taxes. I suspect that >our friendly governments would try to "correct" this "problem" in the >long run if they can. If you are paid in barter for some service, taxes are still owed, based on the estimated value of services rendered. By the way, a simpler example than all this talk of partial shares of companies is simply to talk about paying each other in gold, or oil, or any other commodities. Try to convince the IRS that taxes are not owed because one was paid in ounces of gold instead of dollars. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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