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Re: The Crypto Winter
by Neil Johnson 18 Nov '01

18 Nov '01

Economics 101 for those who don't/won't check the archives: The fundamental problem is Trust. The basic concept of money is to act as a proxy for the exchange of goods and services. Say a farmer needs medical attention and a doctor wants pork chops. Without "money" the farmer would have to pay the doctor with 100 bushels of grain (a good) for the doctor's expertise (a service). The doctor would then have to use the grain to pay another farmer for a pig, a butcher to kill it, and on and on. Obviously this is extremely inefficient (What's the farmer and doctor to do if the doctor already has a ton of grain, but really wants pork chops ?) "Money" allows the doctor to buy what he wants without transporting and storing a ton of grain, and without having to make several exchanges to finally get what he wants. BUT, This only works if everyone involved TRUSTS that the money's proxy value is stable, meaning that the value X mount of grain = Y dollars = Z number of pork chops remains relatively fixed over time (at least for the short-term of the transactions involved). In the past, this trust was facilitated by utilizing materials that were scarce and could not be obtained easily (gold, sliver, gems, pearls .etc.). To further improve efficiency this trust became based on scarce documents ( by virtue of not easily duplicated ) first representing an amount of the scarce materials mentioned above, and eventually becoming based on trust in the institution managing it (bank, government, etc.). Today, we are at the point where even the documents don't even need to exist, the value is represented as numbers in a computer somewhere. We just believe that when we use an ATM or a credit card that we will be provided the goods and services we desire. However, this trust is still mainly based on faith in the stability of a government ( with banks being granted a "license" to utilize that trust). In order for digital currency to become common place it must earn the same level of trust that existing money systems have. The problem is that the government has no interest in creating that trust and in fact has a bigger interest in preventing that trust from forming. So how do we develop this trust for digital cash ? Digicash tried tying back to the trust of existing money systems (unsuccessfully). E-gold, digi-gold, etc. are trying to tie back to the trust of scarce materials (the jury's still out, however they still risk problems with government interference). It would seem to me that digital cash would be better off not being tied either of these trust systems, but somehow develop it's own. Currently the only viable solution I'm aware of is an electronic version of "scarcity" by using unique serial numbers (using blinding techniques to preserve anonymity). However, this requires a "central authority" (either on-line or via smart cards) in order to determine whether the serial number has been already utilized and thus no longer has value. This requires that the users trust this authority to do its job. The "free-market" solution is to have many central authorities and allow users to decide which ones to trust. Authorities that maintain/improve trust will succeed, those that don't will fail. Much like banks long ago issued their own currencies. However, this won't provide the sort of ubiquitous trust that "Joe Six-Pack" is going to expect today. I don't know what the solution is, but I believe resolving this issue is the next breakthrough cypherpunks will need. -Neil

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by �� 18 Nov '01

18 Nov '01

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RE: Monkeywrenching airport security
by David Honig 18 Nov '01

18 Nov '01

At 11:51 AM 11/18/01 +0100, Eugene Leitl wrote: >> >gardeners have gotten hassled and delayed because of trace amounts of >> >ammonia-based fertilizers on their person and effects. If you plan to fly, > >Salts are different from traces of uncombusted nitrocellulose deposited on >any surface of a nearby gun being fired. KNO3 is of interest to airport security eg in gunpowder. Similar salts are in fertilizer. Ergo the caution. Also, some of us have had a black powder addiction at one time. >Nitroglycerin is not volatile, is present in large dilution (~0.1%) in >small quanitities (pharma bottle). Ditto nitrate salts in a water >solution. If you just took an angina pill I imagine the mechanical noses can detect it on your hands or things you touch immediately afterwards. >I think you should be able to get a good positive if you'd fire several >rounds of vanilla smokeless with baggage surface being near the muzzle >of the gun. Or blackpowder (or noncorrosive powder substitutes).. or wore that clothing when setting off firecrackers... Try it sometime, if you're unafraid of winding up in a >database. :-) I've found that transporting computer parts (motherboard) in >hand luggage can suffice to trigger swabbing (if you're really bored you >can discuss detection of Semtex traces with airport security). Not out of San Jose Intl... but discussing Semtex (tm) could get you federal charges in the states... Actually I have seen someone set off the sniffer, the local airline rep came over, they chatted briefly, the person was on their way, maybe 30 extra seconds taken. San Jose again. > Of course, best solution is using human >factors to not have your stuff being screened at all. "Love work, hate domination, and do not let your name come to the attention of the ruling powers." -Talmud/Sayings of the Fathers

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by FunnyMoney 18 Nov '01

18 Nov '01

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Re: The Crypto Winter
by Tim May 18 Nov '01

18 Nov '01

On Sunday, November 18, 2001, at 01:53 PM, Faustine wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Faustine wrote: > Tim wrote: > >> Getting away fron digital cash for a moment, If you'd care to point me >> to any examples of crypto companies really focused and committed to >> developing >> applications that are commercially appealing to Joe Sixpack AOLuser, >> I'd be interested to hear about them. > >>> SSL/RSA built into every financial transaction with the common >>> browsers. >>> Visit Amazon, Ebay, etc., and note the secure connections. >>> User-transpaperent, of course, but then, of course, this is precisely >>> what a "Joe Sixpack AOLuser" [SIC] application _must_ be. Your quoting software (?) is still broken. You have the order wrong. > > You know as well as I do that the real push for improving transaction > security > is coming from commercial interests, not demand by the average user. You asked for an example, I gave a good one. As for who is asking for this, this is hard to say. Is the security of a bank vault being "asked for" by "commercial interests" or by "customers"? > I'm a neo-Schopenhauerian Cynic-Stoic eudaimonist. Which is entirely > beside the > point that if you or I were trying to _make money_ selling crypto > directly to > average home users, we certainly ought to put some real effort into > hiring > people who know what average home users really want and are comfortable > with. This was done _extensively_ by the PGP/NAI people and by others. They had staffs of people designing products, designing boxes for sale at computer stores, etc. You keep showing your basic unawareness of the past. > Even with a whole laundry list of reasons behind the recent troubles > (i.e. failures) of ZKS and Network Associates, I don't think you ought > to > dismiss the "intelligence divide" problem out of hand. Maybe you can, > but I > think it's still worth considering. Then contribute something more than saying that other people are not doing what they should be doing. Companies have been trying to convince the home computer user that they should be encrypting for years. Doesn't wrok. And for not very surprising reasons. Same thing seen in the home security business, backups, etc. (The average user doesn't make any backups. The average homeowner doesn't do any more to secure his house than what it came with. In other words, "the defaults." ) > >>> As usual, you just bullshit about things you obviously know little >>> about. Do some serious reading, get up to speed. > > As usual, you round things off with an rallying cry of > "whippersnapper!!!" > No problem, I know the drill. You keep chanting about "whippersnapper!" I have no idea how old you are...you could very well be one of those menopausal women who go back to grad school after being kicked out of the house...though usually they end up studying to become psychobabblers. Your problem is not your age, it's your ignorance of core issues. I suspect you are willfully uneducable. --Tim May "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." --Robert A. Heinlein

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Cookbooks and Pigs (Was Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device)
by Anonymous 18 Nov '01

18 Nov '01

Tim wrote: > The bomb instructions Joe provided are as accurate as most recipes in > "The Anarchist Cookbook." > > (A book my local Sheriff's Department banned in 1970.) How did the Sheriff's Department manage to do this?

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Re: The Crypto Winter
by Major Variola (ret) 18 Nov '01

18 Nov '01

At 09:59 PM 11/17/01 -0800, Tim May wrote: > >As for me, I'm a neo-Calvinist Nietzscheian. It is of little concern to >me whether crypto is dumbed-down to the point where Mr. Rogers uses it. Mr Rodgers is mourning the death of Mr. McFeely the speedy delivery man who succumbed to anthrax... There is a rumor that one of the teletubbies has an STU in his belly. Oscar the Grouch is on the FBI's watch list. ------- Druids worship trees. Reformed Druids worship shrubs and trees. Zen Druids worship imaginary trees.

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Re: Who keeps a good list of Web anonymizers ? (fwd)
by Eugene Leitl 18 Nov '01

18 Nov '01

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 08:27:13 +0530 From: Udhay Shankar N <udhay(a)pobox.com> To: Russell Turpin <deafbox(a)hotmail.com>, fork(a)xent.com Subject: Re: Who keeps a good list of Web anonymizers ? At 05:30 PM 11/15/01 +0000, Russell Turpin wrote: >Of the traditional three on which I've relied, one doesn't >handle https, the second is no longer free, and the third >is so overused that it is useless during business hours. This list is incomplete and some links are definitely dead (I have checked all the links, just not for the past several months), but it is a good starting point. http://www.safeweb.com/ http://www.in.tum.de/~pircher/anonymouse/ http://www.anonymizer.com/ http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/ http://www.idzap.com/ http://www.rewebber.de/ http://www.rewebber.com/ http://www.anon.de/ http://www.siegesoft.com/services/siegesurfer.htm http://www.webfringe.com/anon/ http://www.the-cloak.com/ HTH, Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) God is silent. Now if we can only get Man to shut up. http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

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