-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [Note that the Harvard Club is now "business casual". No more jackets and ties... --RAH] The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Zulfikar Ramzan, Financial Cryptographer, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Dr. Nicko Van Someren, Financial Cryptographer, Chief Technology Officer, nCipher PLC, "Aspen" vs. "Hancock": Minting Millidollars for Streaming Cash Tuesday, November 7th, 2000 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA Zulfikar Ramzan is currently a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he works with the Cryptography and Information Security research group. At MIT, he works under the supervision of Professor Ronald Rivest, co-inventor of the RSA public-key cryptosystem and the Micromint micropayment protocol. He has authored a number of publications in the field of cryptography and has presented his research at various conferences in his field [including the International Conference on Financial Cryptography --RAH]. He holds a number of patents in data security, and some of his work is being considered for use in several national and international standards in the wireless communications industry. Mr. Ramzan has worked in cryptographic algorithm and protocol design with the Wireless Secure Communications group at Lucent Technologies. Upon graduation, Mr. Ramzan will join Lucira Technologies. Dr Nicko van Someren co-founded nCipher in 1996. As Chief Technology Officer Nicko leads nCipher's research team and directs the technical development of nCipher products. From 1993 to 1996, Nicko was Technical Director and co-founder of ANT Limited, where he developed hardware products and application software. Before that, he was employed as a Researcher by Xerox EuroPARC and as a Software Engineer by Atari Research and Perihelion Software Limited. Nicko has almost 20 years' experience in cryptography, software and hardware product development, and holds a Doctorate and First Class degree in Computer Science from Trinity College, Cambridge, UK. Zully Ramzan will talk about the proposed design of Aspen: a practical Micromint implementation for IBUC, the Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation. In addition to going over the basic underlying protocols, he will discuss the various design and parameter choices. He will also examine the practical ramifications of these decisions. Thereafter he will discuss potential modifications and extensions that may be of use for future implementations of Aspen. The ideas he will present are based on discussions with Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir, the two co-inventors of Micromint. Nicko van Someren will then talk about the practical problems surrounding the implementation of a MicroMint. He will consider the engineering issues along with the economic issues and look at how the nature of MicroMint mandates various unhelpful deployment issues. He will also consider alternatives to MicroMint which aim to solve these issues. [Including a signature-based solution IBUC is calling, for lack of a better moniker, "Hancock", which would be about 100 times cheaper to prototype, much less get to market, and streaming cash on the wire in 3-6 months. :-) --RAH] Want to know what IBUC's going to do *now*? Come to the November DCSB meeting and find out. Appropriately enough, this meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Election Day, Tuesday, November 7th, 2000, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $35.00. This price includes lunch, room rental, A/V hardware if necessary, and the speakers' lunch. The Harvard Club has relaxed its dress code, which is now "business casual", meaning no sneakers or jeans. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your meal if the Club finds you in violation of what's left of its dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, November 4th, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $35.00. Please include your e-mail address so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Upcoming speakers for DCSB are: December TBA TBD Ted Byfield Decentralized DNS Control TBD Scott Moskowitz Watermarking and Bluespike As you can see, :-), we are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, are a principal in digital commerce, and would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Committee, care of Robert Hettinga, . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to