At 01:15 PM 11/11/95 -0800, Simon Spero <ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu> wrote:

As for real time-release - how about just using conventional encryption, and require it to be brute-forced? ..... Moore's law .....

Moore's law is really unpredictable - you can't be sure if the rate of increase will go up or down, which could affect brute-force time by a factor of 1000 pretty easily, especially if it suddenly becomes convenient to do something your crypto-algorithm happens to use. Also, there's a cost problem - a large brute-force project which requires N years to crack either needs to be ferociously expensive, or else it's easy for somebody to put a bunch of machines together to crack it faster. For anything that requires that level of paranoia, Moore's law probably makes the timing too unpredictable. It probably makes a lot more sense to just do contractual solutions, with secret-sharing protocols to minimize the effects of cheating, bankrupt service providers, and accidents. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281