A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online

Steve Schear s.schear at comcast.net
Fri Jul 25 09:50:47 PDT 2003


At 00:46 2003-07-25 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 07:12 PM, Steve Furlong wrote:
>
>>On Thursday 24 July 2003 15:50, Tim May wrote:
>>
>>>In fact, "digicash" strongly suggests David Chaum's "Digicash,"
>>
>>That assumes the reader or listener has heard of Digicash, or of Chaum.
>>Not an assumption I'd be comfortable making.
>
>Agreed, making the assumption that readers here have heard of Chaum or 
>understand the basic idea of blinded transactions (or dining 
>cryptographers, or oblivious transfer, or any of the other building 
>blocks) is no longer warranted. I expect many of the persyns of peircing 
>now spewing on the list are, like, thinking "that's, like, _so_ nineties."
>
>As for thinking very general readers or listeners, those not even on the 
>list, are capable of understanding Chaum or Digicash, that's a fool's 
>errand. The average nontechnical person knows nothing about how crypto 
>works, and attempting to explain a DC-Net or a blinded transfer is no more 
>useful to them than just telling them the currency is based on "magic beans."

I've used the graphics and explanations that were in Digicash's Users Guide 
with non-technicals to great effect.  They portrayed blinding using 
envelope, wax seal and wax token.  The token was placed in the envelope and 
sent to the mint.  The envelope represented the blinding function performed 
by the user's SW.  The wax seal: the mint's digital signature pressed onto 
the envelope and "by pressure" into the enclosed coin which has not been 
seen by the mint.  And the wax token, once removed from the envelope, the 
un-blinded coin.

steve  





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