-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
A further reply to Mr. Robichaux, who I paraphrase, "The more I have problems with the DigiCash beta, the better First Virutal looks."
Doug, you must be talking to my dad; he's Mr. Robichaux. Having inadvertently offended the Digicash people in my previous message, let me see if I can give equal time to what's wrong with FV in this message.
Some problems with this:
1) It is, after all, a Beta Test. Many companies limit participation in such tests quite arbitrarily. Also, remember, DigiCash (to the best of my knowledge) is not going into the digital bank business itself, but rather through licensees. Aside from Paul, who is very PR oriented, it is primarily a group of quite talented young programmers who are, while answering your letters, trying to come out with new versions of the code.
Maybe it's just me. As a beta-shop owner, I expect to have Digicash work with me when I have problems, concerns, or questions. Marcel, Paul, and others at Digicash were very helpful during the incubation period. My chief concern at this point is that there's no way for me to get paid, and no publicly available date for same. I didn't suggest that Stefan Brands, or anyone else, was being denied access to the trial. I have no evidence to suggest any explanation for his complaint, Hal Finney's, or mine-- other than that the Digicash folks are very, very busy.
2) A group of us went over the First Virtual stuff in detail last night over fajitas, and were practically rolling on the floor with laughter. Basically they have an attitude of "Crypto is too hard, people won't want to use it." So instead, each transaction consists of an e-mail exchange which is converted ultimately into credit card transactions The exposure time for the merchant is on the order of _90 days_. All fraud, etc., is on the head of the merchant.
I think their attitude is that crypto's not _necessary_. I disagree; Nathaniel Borenstein has already been taken to task on www-buyinfo for that view. Their API supports TCP/IP transactions, so the mail exchange is between the FV server and the buyer. The very fact that FV has a set of terms and conditions that mention exposure time, responsibility for fraud, and so on tells me that their system is more fully fielded. I know, I know; ecash is in beta. That's fine. I still want to be able to sell things _now_.
The bottom line here is that FV has a system which is much more sluggish than the DigiCash system, even though it doesn't use "hard" crypto. It is far from anonymous, and the transactions are trivially reversible. This is actually a _design goal_ in their "Soylent Green", er, "Simple Green" proposed standard. It is completely inappropriate for hard goods of significant value, and its minimum transaction cost is high enough to rule out its applicability for very small transactions. Even if used for purely informational goods, if an undercapitalized info service becomes popular, it will sink beneath the waves while waiting for payment.
All of the above is true. You can't use FV for hard goods, the minimum transaction cost rules out microtransactions, and the payment hang time is too long. On the other hand, I can't use ecash for hard goods. I have no idea what the transaction costs will be, and there's no way for sellers to get paid _at all_.
As near as I can tell, FV's technology was developed by people who wanted to implement their pet philosophy about Internet commerce (customer should examine info first, then commit to paying, all transactions reversible, cryptography and anonymity are bad, secure transactions are not possible on the net, etc.), rather than anything bordering on an Internet cash-like system.
You're right here, too. I happen to agree with the portion about allowing try-before-you-buy access; in some cases that is a very valuable way to gain market and mindshare. Remember the "Macintosh Test Drive" in 1985?
So, I ask, First Virtual is looking better and better for doing _what_? Until they deal with the interface problem (get a decent client, rather than relying exclusively on e-mail), I think they're not even going to be adequate for getting shareware-scale proceeds from putting up a cool Web page.
Not. Read their web pages. There's a TCP/IP API, which I'm using. The only mail exchange is from the FV server to the customer and back again. As Hal pointed out, there are valid reasons to support systems other than the Digicash e-wallet. After all, there will be offline ecash, right? First Virtual's chief advantage is that I can get paid. No fooling with clearing, scalability, or anything else-- people can buy my products. - -Paul Robichaux - -- Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG | Good software engineering doesn't reduce the perobich@ingr.com | amount of work you put into a product; it just Not speaking for Intergraph. | redistributes it differently. ### http://www.intergraph.com ### -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLt9NY6fb4pLe9tolAQFYgAP8C5KfpLyvpqv5KVEquMKIKC+HOgWcOLKt dCc5sW55toRwrNBihALPFy4p40Fi8uZclIUgcNTyICnogof0WzSAnkAv+GRq8Ear ePuqqEQX0N1iWFaLlvIxVt4ALrtic4lE8O4GhE/xEl2ecBz5UR6haieGJDAhW4k4 kJZTMyAgKNI= =nDr0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----