R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)

Steve Schear s.schear at comcast.net
Fri Jul 25 16:47:18 PDT 2003


At 15:52 2003-07-25 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
>On Friday 25 July 2003 11:40, Steve Schear wrote:
> > ... Now that many are un-
> > or under-employed there still doesn't seem to be any activity by
> > those active on this list in this critical infrastructure area.
>
>In some sense, we have enough code.  Code exists that can be deployed.  It
>may have to go thru the same evolutionary stages the P2P software is going
>thru (Napster to Kazza to ???) as security problems become serious, but it
>is deployed now.
>
>What we don't have is:
>
>* Patent licenses

Not necessary.  Remember, blinding is implemented solely at the client 
end.  I'm sure once a useable, open source, non-blinded client is available 
there will be parties available to add the 50 lines or so of blinding 
code.  Alternatively, since the blinding patent is not recognized in many 
well-connected Net countries the code could legally be released from one of 
them, so that the user selects blinding based on jurisdiction and interest.

>* Easy to use code

By any reasonable measure we DOI OT have a useable, even by techies, for a 
blinded digital cash system.  The closest thing I'm aware of is Lucrative 
but it still hasn't reached the alpha demo phase for client and server 
SW.  Contributions by competent list members are keenly invited to "finish" 
the infrastructure code if not help deploy a real test mint and financial 
institution.

>* Users
>
>Techies can work on the ease of use issue, but patent licenses take time
>and/or money, and users take marketing and sales.

EBay spent almost nothing in its first years.  None of the Digital Gold 
Currencies have spent much at all for these purposes, yet they have 
100,000s of active accounts and around $30 million in gold bars backing 
their monies.  Only word of mouth, the best advertising, is required for a 
really needed product/service with a workable business model.  I think many 
techies have been flimflammed by the VCs and CEO-types who couldn't 
bootstrap a venture if their lives depended on it.

steve


"Il dulce far niente"  The sweetness of doing nothing
My unemployment motto 





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