Actually, I'm going to somewhat reverse direction and _encourage_ Kent Borg to continue on with his card playing idea. Not that my message a short while ago was condemning it, just pointing out that one must motivate people to use something (or, even better, cater to their natural motivations). The "castor oil" approach rarely works. (For those younger than about 35, castor oil was once touted as being "good for you." Actually, it has faded out before my time, but the cultural effluvia of my childhood covered it.) Kent writes:

Easy. Three quick ones.

Kent is showing the classic signs of infatuation with a new idea. Which is good. The problem, which I'll get back to later, is that this enthusiasm usually fades....this has been the experience on our list.

2) Games are very important. (Quick: Name 10-industries which are bigger. ... Betcha ya made at least one mistake.)

I don't know, but so what? Lots of things are classed as games. Gambling is big, but so are a lot of other things. Nick Szabo, no longer of this list, was once very hot on creating the "Internet Casino." I have been, too, in an abstract sense...crypto gambling as a legal "cover" for crypto protocols, since around 1989. But I've not worked on these protocols, so I claim no credit. (By the way, an imnplementation of mental poker would be useful. Once people got the idea, though, they'd probably stop playing. A lot of games are "funny onces," to again cite 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.')

3) A simple game of cards is very non-threatening. It doesn't smack of anarchists or revolutionaries or anything frightening like that. Those words scare a lot of people. This is politics man, these things matter.

Kent is ranting here, which is good. But this still won't make people play your game.

Also, remember who suggested this (today): I am a user interface freak. The effort is in the protocol, the user never sees it, she only notices that she can now be part of the World Wide Duplicate Bridge Tournament that she heard about on All Things Considered.

The effort in building the protocol? I love that stuff.

I agree the protocols are the interesting part. This is why, despite my cynicism about people actually playing this game, I encourage Kent to continue. A recurring problem we all have is one of initional wide-eyed, ranting enthusiasm, resulting in the idea being the thread du jour for a couple of days, followed by....silence. And nothingness. (I won't embarrass or anger anyone here by mentioning recent examples. There are of course various reasons things don't take off, or even clear the launching tower.)

The effort in writing the software? I like that stuff somewhat--but there is possible *profit* here, I might not have to write more than the crude 0.9 version. Some game company might finally bring down ITAR. (Now that is economic might.)

A huge issue. The cryptographic primitives needs are poorly implemented, in my opinion. "Bit commitment" is one good example. The papers on mental poker and secret sharing are not filled with code examples, to say the least! It took 10-12 years to get widely available examples of something so semantically simple as RSA, and digital cash remains in a sorry state. The Crypto Proceedings (to answer Kent's earlier question: the Crypto books for 1985-87 are widely available in technical bookstores--Computer Literacy, Stanford, many other stores--and directly from Springer-Verlag, for about $60-80 apiece, in paperback) provide a few mathematical details, but conversion to C code is iffy. Ask Bruce Schneier. Complicated protocols will need building blocks--C++ classes, Smalltalk objects and methods, whatever. Henry Strickland is working on a TCL toolkit (TCL the Ousterhout/Berkeley package, not the Symantec product of the same TLA name). I'm interested in object-oriented protocol building blocks, and spoke on this at the last physical Cypherpunks meeting. Kent Borg could make a real contribution by implementing the several protcols for card games. I don't think it'll be easy, but it could be rewarding. It has not been done, generally. (Beware of "faking" parts of the protocols with a GUI facade such as game designer might be tempted to use...the underlying protocols must be extremely robust.)

The effort in CPU time or communication bandwidth? Shit! We are talking a world of digital video, for christsakes! What's a few computrons and bauds burnt to deal a hand of go-fish?

Slow communication has worked well for games of skill like Go and chess, but an IRC-type speed would most likely be needed to keep interest up in all the card games I've seen.

Is there a flavor of effort I forgot?

The most consistently lacking flavor of effort in these kinds of enthusiasms is--drum roll--sustained interest. If this becomes an abiding interest of Kent, progress could be made, perhaps in as short as a year or so. (Beware of slapping together a Potemkin village facade of a demo.) Hence my encouragement that he stick with this. Implementing even a cryptographically-secure penny matching game would be a start. Kent, just don't get caught too much up in fantasies about Donald Trump buying the algorithm...a _lot_ of work has to be done first. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."