- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

17 Dec '03

It occurs to me that digital cash could be a collector's item. Paper money is widely collected, as are coins. I got a book out of the library on old American paper money, and many of the old bills are startlingly beautiful. Interestingly, the old money is still legal tender so there is a floor under the value of the bills that you collect. Until 1861, the U.S. did not issue any paper money, only coins. In those days, paper money was issued by private banks (usually with state charters). The money was backed by dollars, coins, which the bank owned. Unfortunately, capitalism is a dynamic system and in those days bank failures were no more unusual than corporate failures are today. When this happened, the bank's notes became worthless. Counterfeiting was also a big problem with the thousands of different banks issuing notes. It is interesting to speculate that digital cash might lead to an electronic system with some similarities to those old days. Collecting digital cash has some problems. Collectors are generally attracted to items that are beautiful, interesting, and rare. Digital cash is interesting enough, but its beauty is rather abstract. Rarity is also hard to evaluate; each individual note has a unique serial number, and what it has in common with other notes of its denomination is the bank key and the exponent. Uncirculated notes are generally more valuable than others in the paper world; with digital banknotes the only way to tell whether it has been "circulated" would be to have access to the bank's database of spent notes, to verify that the note had never been deposited. Rarity could be determined by the bank's key and exponent. The Magic Money system has a provision for the bank to periodically move to another set of exponents to represent the same denominations (in order to keep the size of the note database from growing too large). If banks would do this at regular intervals, then particularly the early issues would be relatively rare. One might even have an early banknote notarized (digitally timestamped) so that one could prove its value in later years. Beauty is harder to deal with. Strictly speaking, digital cash is invisible, consisting only of an information pattern in RAM chips or on a disk. The numbers which represent the cash can be printed out, though, and this representation could perhaps have some beauty. Unfortunately, in my opinion several lines of random hex digits are not beautiful. I have been working on ideas to display the information in digital cash in some other way that is more esthetic. It would be nice if the display somehow only worked for correctly signed cash notes, with forged cash not displaying anything nice. My general idea is to display a "fingerprint" of each individual banknote, something that is unique to that note and which has a sort of beauty. One idea I have worked on is to seed a 1-D cellular automaton with a bit pattern based on the digital cash. This seed is then processed by the CA algorithm to produce some pattern, with each row being a function of the previous row. My thought was to start the CA at the top and the bottom of the screen with the two different functions applied to the cash which should be equal if the cash validates (taking the number to the proper exponent on one hand, and applying the MD5 hash of the serial number on the other, for the case of magic money). Then we work inwards with the two seeds. Proper cash will produce a symmetrical pattern. By choosing good CA rules, the patterns will be different for each bill, some nicer than others, leading to attractive fractal-looking patterns for many bills. When you wanted to "look at your money" you could run the program on the digital cash. People might even trade for especially attractive bills. A similar idea is to use the cash as the basis for some fractal algorithm. Many fractals have the property that most of the plane is plain, while only a fraction looks really fractal. Digital cash has the property that when exponentiated it leads to a number most of whose bits are fixed but which has a small number of varying bits. If we had a mapping which took the fixed digicash bits onto the interesting parts of the fractal, then fake cash would not produce pretty pictures, while real cash would produce some part of a beautiful fractal. Again, you would have validation and beauty being tied together. I've been doing some experiments with the first idea, hoping to produce something nice. With a little more thought I hope to come up with a viewer for your Magic Money that will bring out its natural beauty and rarity. This will be a must for all serious collectors of digicash. Hal

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START YOUR OWN BUSINESS...
by ynter＠spica.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Senator Leahy's hearing
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Will you be covering this hearing on the important issue of the Clipper chip and our rights to privacy? It will be on March 18th, this Friday, at 10:30 am EST in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Hope you can tape it for rebroadcast if you can't cover it live. Please let me know your schedule as soon as possible as I would hate to miss it, and have lots of friends who I would like to advise of the time and date.

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Re: Scientologys Attempts
by danisch＠ira.uka.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> After reading the lawyer's threatening letter I tried to check out the > two newsgroups mentioned, and was told they do not exist. (This is not a > local filter here; Eskimo does not censor newsgroups.) They still exist at our local server (E.I.S.S., University of Karlsruhe, Germany) and contain messages (even from America). Seems as they were successfull in deleting the group at some servers. > So have they been > deleted? If so, by whom and how? Find out... > What is 'rmgroup' and The usenet method to remove groups. A special message with a control line in the header. > who has the > authority to remove alt. groups? Don't know... Hadmut

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Lotus Notes vs. the Web and the Net
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:23 AM 9/6/95, Pat Farrell wrote: >Of course, Corporate america loves Notes, which is why IBM bought it. > >Weak encryption for weak minds. It may also signal that Lotus Notes has peaked, as IBM has a knack for "buying at the top." Interestingly, the current issue of "Wired" (morphed Aryanized OJ) says that Lotus Notes is tired, and Web-based groupware is wired. On this one I agree...and I've said this here on this list. Local groups, such as university departments, corporate departments, even entire corporations, can use the Web/Net in ways similar to what Lotus Notes provides (using their own LANs, or even the Internet, with suitable security steps). Granted, Lotus Notes currently has more stuff oriented towards groupware (from what I've been reading for several years, as I'm not a user), but I'd expect a huge amount of work on Netscape and similar browsers, and other Net systems, will make the Web/Net a more common groupware platform. I don't know this is so, but this is where I'd bet money. No way would I pay $3 billion for Lotus Notes! --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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List Subscriptions / Re: Prior Restraint on Publishers
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: > By the way, which list address are you now subscribed to...I switched from > algebra. com to cyberpass.net, but now expect to see 2-3 hours delay before > posts appear. > > (This applies to others, too. I'm getting replies to my posts, when sent > directly to me, literally hours before seeing it on the list. Someone > mentioned subscribing to toad.com, which, to tell the truth, I thought had > vanished as a list origination site months ago.) If you subscribe to cypherpunks-unedited(a)toad.com you will get almost immediate receipt of toad.com posts much of the day. Algebra.com is generally only a short time lag behind, although this varies (and you get duplicates of the toad.com posts). The advantage of toad.com is that it gives you feedback as to the time-lag of the distributed lists. The advantages of the distributed lists is that you can change among them if one is temporarily having problems.

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Are we 'Safe' yet?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why does it always seem that when my supply of Prozac is dangerously low, the people on the cypherpunks list who pay attention to what is happening in the outside world decide to deluge the list with a variety of posts reminding me how many reasons I have to be depressed about the creeping tyranny and corresponding usurpment of human rights that is threatening my right to the pursuit of drug-induced happiness? Even more depressing is the realization that I am a cloistered type of individual who has little contact with the outside world, and that this probably indicates that I am only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the atrocities being commited in the name of government. Aren't we safe, yet? With the thousands of laws that have been generated for our protection over the last few years, shouldn't we be *more* safe now, rather than *less* safe? Since our safety seems to depend on the erosion of our Constitutional rights, could the problem be that our rights aren't being eroded *fast* enough? Should we be pressing the government for immediate suspension of *all* of our Constitutional rights, so that we can achieve total safety *immediately*? Or should I go hide out at my family's cabin at Ruby Ridge until the government has finally made the rest of the world safe for me? A CypherPunk Enquirer subscriber Oppressed Minds Want To Know

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Re: PGP5i supports RSA keys?
by Feanor 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Aug 24, 21:25, Anonymous wrote: } Subject: Re: PGP5i supports RSA keys? > Bill Stewart <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com> writes: > > > ... > > but there's also really no need for keys longer than 2048 bits unless > > some radical algorithmic breakthrough happens. (Computer hardware > > breakthroughs aren't relevant; the exponential behaviour of the > > algorithms mean that a few extra bits makes any device that fits > > on the planet still too small.) 1024 bits is probably enough, > > but maybe not, depending on how long you need to keep something secret > > and how much technology improves doing your lifetime. > > Sorry, but computer hardware performance is increasing exponentially, > but the difficulty of factoring is subexponential in the length of the > number. TWAK! Barring a _severe_ breakthrough in the entire nature of computing, you still need at least 1 atom to store one bit of information. It would take more computing power than all the atoms in the world, with the ability to store 1 bit on a atom and other dazzling feats of miniaturization, to crack a 2048 bit key barring algorithmic breakthrough. I'm sorry, but barring the severe breakthrough mentioned, Moore's Law will break when we are storing single atoms as bits. Or perhaps single electrons (spin, but how the hell do you hold them in place for reading??), but the point still stands. Quantum computing might fill the void, but then, quantum computing might make all Crypto thus far irrelevant anyways.

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Music Boulevard 2nd Anniversary News Flash
by manager＠musicblvd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Netscape & future developments
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 10:42:50 -0800 >From: wbarr(a)leland.stanford.edu (William P. Barr) >To: apple-internet-providers(a)medraut.apple.com >Subject: Netscape & future developments >Message-ID: <v01510101ab41b9ba4234(a)[36.8.0.140]> > >Hello All, > >I just attended a talk given by Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, >and he had several interesting things to say that you all might be >interested in. > >First off, Netscape plans to make the API to it's browser available to 3rd >party developers in the near future. With a list of over 1300 things users >want added to the browser, he believes that other developers will be much >more effective at filling the demand. Could this move spawn the "Visual >Basic" of the internet? Perhaps ... > >Second, Netscape has formed some key partnerships. Most notably, DEC and >Sun will be redistributing Netscape server software through its channels. >It has also created an alliance with Bank Of America and Mastercard for >secured cash transactions. Netscape is also providing all the servers for >MCI's www services. > >Third, he said that by the end of this year, secured transactions will no >longer be rare. Currently the model of a transaction is: > > Customer ---> Merchant ---> Card Issuer > >The new model will be: > > Customer ---> Card Issuer ---> Merchant > >This new model requires that you only have to trust your card issuer and >the communications link from your machine to theirs. The Card Issuer will >then verify the credit and notify the merchant of the validity of the >purchase. There are two major ramifications: First, you no longer have to >worry about the integrity of the merchant; second, this will allow card >issuers to change the rules for giving merchant status to businesses. Marc >predicted that by the end of the year, getting merchant status from several >major card issuing banks will greatly simiplified, allowing dozens of >businesses/services to spring up on the net, almost overnight. > >Finally, he said that the company is in the process of settling on a >distributor to get the browser into the retail store-fronts. > >If you have any more questions, just ask. > >Bill > >********************************************* >*William P. Barr (415) 723-6632 (work)* >*Multimedia Coordinator (415) 725-7398 (fax) * >*Stanford Computer Forum >* >*ERL 448/450 wbarr(a)cs.stanford.edu (business)* >*Stanford, CA, 94305-4055 wbarr(a)leland.stanford.edu (leisure)* >*USA "My opinion is mine and only mine* >********************************************* > ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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