At 3:03 PM 10/14/95, s1018954@aix2.uottawa.ca wrote:

On Sat, 14 Oct 1995, Dr. Frederick B. Cohen wrote:

...

I have a better idea. How about an open market in break-in software. We crack Netscape and offer the crack code to the highest bidder. Bids start at US$25K per hole. For the insult, Netscape has to outbid the competition by a factor of 2 to get the details of the hole. Here's how it works:

Funny that you mention it, the other mailing list (or rather set of lists) I'm on is devoted to a just such market system. The Idea Futures home page is at http://if.arc.ab.ca/~jamesm/IF/IF.shtml. You'll find a few familiar faces.

Robin Hanson, who developed (so far as I know) the modern focus on idea futures, was an active Bay Area person. His interests parallel ours, and I think he was on the CP list for a while back in '92. (Some of his game theory simulations--on betting markets and preference-revealing--were a main inspiration for the "Crypto Anarchy Game" I put on at the first Cypherpunks meeting in '92.) --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@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."