-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Major Variola (ret) wrote:

I didn't doubt that it was. However, my caveat remains true, and you haven't proved anything additional.

Let me know when you're in the Jasper, Georgia area and we'll have a few beers. :-)

An entity claiming that name, and claiming to be not-a-bot, and apparently controlling the DNS entry at the server I checked today for fexl.com today, has signed a message. Yep, I believe [1] that.

That about sums up my digital identity, yes. The real Patrick is tied up in the cellar and I forced him to tell me his password. As the de Vere and Marlowe scholars might say, the works of Shakespeare were not written by Shakespeare, but by somebody else using that name. Not to compare myself with Shakespeare. All too often my words are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Like now.

I'm not picking on you. Neither am I trying to be a dick; skeptical socratics sometimes appear so. Check the archives for extended discussion as to what, exactly, signing proves.

Will do, thanks. I have plenty of reading ahead of me.

On the other hand, *whatever* entity has been signing these messages collects the reputations associated with them *more reliably*[1] than merely posting under your name. ...

Well said. I find it utterly amazing that mere sequences of bits can accomplish this.

Maybe you're a 14 year old girl pretending to be an FBI agent pretending to be a cryptographer :-)

Oh God, so it's that obvious? I'm devastated.

Making the leap from key-holder to meatspace entity is unsound unless something in meatspace demonstrates it.

All this talk about meatspace suggests we should have some spare ribs with those beers. Of course, writing style and personality can help expose private key hijacking and impersonation somewhat, though even that can be counterfeited. I can recognize a post by JP May with my eyes squinted, just looking at the shapes of the letters and paragraphs. But I bet I could do an utterly, mind-bogglingly good impersonation if I tried.

You're all bits from here.

BE the bits. - -- Patrick http://fexl.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 iQA/AwUBPqn7ilA7g7bodUwLEQIOBACg3TZd5QDrTRZrAfbQp5mL3zOmCSMAmweL SAuFYI7/FFp5ykM+uteVkrsZ =kNeU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----