Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
At 2:15 PM +0100 7/26/03, Peter Fairbrother wrote: Personally I prefer to hit reply, ie with a Reply-To: header set to the list (confusing, eg!). That way, if I want to reply to the list (which is my default preference) then the sender of the mail I'm replying to doesn't get two copies. But then I use OE... Since the toad days, cypherpunks has been reply to sender... Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
One point being overlooked here is digital versus physical anonymity. The funky ATM (what, does it smell or something?) will allow you to (among other things) stick in some cash and let someone else withdraw it using a password which you have sent him out of band (according to the patent - which I've actually read, more than anyone else here can say). This will allow for digital anonymity in the sense that there is no account information associated with the transaction. Now, it's true that ATMs take pictures of people, so you don't have full physical anonymity. But given the limited reliability of facial recognition systems, especially if you take simple precautions like wearing a hat and tilting your head down, you can have de facto very strong anonymity putting money into or taking it out of an ATM. The mere fact that it takes your picture doesn't mean that much. It's also true that the amount of cash that could be practically transfered in this way is limited to a few thousand dollars at most, given that the machines will probably only accept and dispense twenty dollar bills or equivalent. Nevertheless such payments would be a good start. The ability to pay or receive a few thousand dollars, untraceably, would enable a number of interesting applications involving freedom of speech and action. Writing custom software or providing sensitive information could be funded at these levels. The point which has been mostly overlooked is that this article was nothing but vapor, based on the issuance of a patent. There's a huge barrier between the idea and the implementation. A cash-transfer ATM would be a true boon to cypherpunk goals, but it is doubtful whether such a system will be allowed to exist in today's world.
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 11:16 AM, Sampo Syreeni wrote: On 2003-07-23, Sunder uttered: If you want to do electronic payments that are non-anonymous you can simply use a credit card or debit card (or something like paypal, egold), or for larger quanitities you can do wire transfers - so why would we need yet another a non-anonymous cash that isn't cash? I only objected to the notion that all digicash needs to be anonymous in order to be desirable. I didn't say this particular system amounts to desirable weak digicash. To that end it would likely make far more sense in the short term e.g. to marry Visa Electronic to PayPal. In the long term multiple cooperating PayPal-like entities could then be used to build mixnets, making the digicash strongly anonymous. This continuing confusion, by many people, about what digicash is shows the problem with using nonspecific terms. In fact, digicash strongly suggests David Chaum's Digicash, not some name for all forms of credit cards, ATMs, debit cards, PayPal, wire transfer, Mondex, and a scad of other systems that may use bits and electronic signals. Conventionally, on this list and in the press about digital cash, digital cash means something which has the untraceable and/or anonymous features of cash while being transferred digitally. It is NOT a Visa system or a PayPal account or a wire instruction to the Cayman Islands. I choose not to call untraceable/anonymous digital cash by any of the marketing-oriented catchwords like Digicash, BearerBucks, E-coins, MeterMoney, whatever. So, I strongly agree with your point that not all electronic forms of money need to be anonymous (untraceable) in order to be useful. HOWEVER, our interest is in the untraceable/anonymous. There are no doubt active groups discussing PayPal, VISA, MasterCard, DiscoverCard, etc. But they have nothing to do with Cypherpunks. We should also fight the use of sloppy language in the press when mundane electronic funds transfer systems are called digital cash. --Tim May
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 03:17 PM, Sampo Syreeni wrote: On 2003-07-24, Tim May uttered: HOWEVER, our interest is in the untraceable/anonymous. Duh! You were gibbering about how digicash includes PayPal, ATMs, Visa, and other forms of transfers which are only digital in that computers are used. You need to think carefully about what blinding is all about. Calling Visa and PayPal digicash shows fundamental ignorance. Nitwit. But very typical of the new generation of rilly, rilly dumb cypherpunks. --Tim May
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
Some lurker unwilling to comment on the public list sent me this. I didn't notice it wasn't intended for the list until I had already written a reply and was preparing to send it. So I have altered the name. --Tim On Friday, July 25, 2003, at 01:07 PM, SOMEONE wrote: 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. Readers on the cypherpunks list? They should be able to understand it, or at least they should have heard of it. They may have _heard_ of it, but to most of them (I t hink) it's just some magical incantations which they don't quite believe anyway. I stopped any efforts to explain the true importance of electronic/digital money/cash a long time ago. A waste of time. Not too surprising, as getting even the basic idea requires some passing familiarity with things like how RSA works. When I read Chaum's 1985 CACM paper I already knew about RSA and hard directions for problems (trapdoor functions), and yet I still had to read and reread the paper and draw little pictures for myself. That's a shame. The 1985 paper isn't on-line afaik, and I've only read second-hand versions. First, my stopped any efforts...a long time ago was a comment directed at what the OP was talking about: explaining digital money to the masses. For example, at parties or other meatspace gatherings. Online explanations--here, for example--are another matter. Second, the many online explanations from the CP list, circa 1992-94, are readily findable. Let me go check(20 seconds pass...)...yep, I just found hundreds of summary articles from various authors, including myself, Eric Hughes, Hal Finney, Doug Barnes, Ian Goldberg, and many others. There is no shortage of explanations of this stuff. In one of my articles, in fact, I make the same point about how the various boring versions of electronic money are not very important: The focus here is on true, untraceable digital cash, offering both payer and payee untraceability (anonymity). Mundane digital money, exemplified by on-line banking, ATM cards, smartcards, etc., is not interesting or important for CFP purposes. Payer-untraceable (but payee-traceable) digital cash can also be interesting, but not nearly as interesting and important as fully untraceable digital cash. There are many articles on why this is so. But, frankly, anyone who cannot see this from first principles probably is not ever going to get it. Third, regarding the CACM article, it's been liberated and made available online more than a few times. Try search engines. I know the Information Liberation Front (ILF) was actively liberating various of the key papers in the early months of the CP list...and these are mostly archived and searchable. And of course Chaum's original 1985 description has been redone many times, in later papers by him and others, etc. And I don't think it works at all, anyway... As it's been demonstrated to work, technically, this is a weird statement. Existence proofs are powerful. If you mean that Bank of America and Mastercard are not offering Chaum-style instruments, and so on, then this is not the same thing as saying the ideas don't work. --Tim May
Re: R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)
Oh, like Uday and Qusay, you can't kill this immortal fucker, nobody got the guts to plow a TOW in it. Instead, thousands of gutless have hari-kiried by exiting the battle for well.com nutlick where the dead live in perfect, silent synchrony, so that is a no-brain, no-work option. Sit still, children, repeat this. Hell, start a DOA mail list to bitch about how stupid people are outside of old folks cess-suck. Read yourself sitting on a one-holer. Nothing wrong with cypherpunks that couldn't be cured, as ever, by more fresh young meat totally ignorant and not giving a shit about how it used to be, only hot to throw slop at what's puked by the wizened, the reputable, the stuffed with here's how it's meant to be. Now that revulsion against whoever has truth by tail is a dim memory of what cpunks was meant to be, was now and again, not a place for boozy glory days telling a sanitized tale of what never happened. Pontificators are usually hooted off the list, save for a few protected species taxidermied for darts. The old days, don't believe them, cypherpunks was and is toxic to serious makeovers and shutdowns and lock-outs, and, never forget that PLONKS are cries of shut the fuck up and listen to me. Pluck the PLONKS, if you don't get them you aint earning your stay. PLONKERS little-man your wee-wees. Hiccups a fogey one hand hanging on the bar rail, the other rooting the floor vomit for a chawtabaccy cud ricochet from the spit bucket. ]=; Uday
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
If the digicash isn't anonymous, it's worthless. I'd argue to the contrary. First, most people have nothing to hide. The folks will want digicash for reasons other than anonymity, as argued You are misusing the term cash. What you are describing are essentially internet debit cards. While it is attractive to insert word cash into any harebrained net money scheme, exactly because of positive associations with CASH, it is misleading and deceptive. Cash means off-line clearing and anonymous. If it is complicated to understand, open your wallet, take a banknote out of it and ponder what it is for a minute. = end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Steve Furlong wrote: On Monday 21 July 2003 01:12, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://nytimes.com/2003/07/21/technology/21PATE.html?pagewanted=prin tposition= A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online I worked on a commercial digital money system a few years ago. One of their business models was almost identical to Amos': stick cash in a kiosk to get electronic money. It'd be interesting to see how that system plays with Amos' patent. It's not going to be anonymous at all. Remember, ATM's are always protected by cameras. If the digicash isn't anonymous, it's worthless. (I won't be able to observe directly, as I was fired from that company because I'm an incompetent slacker (boss's view) or because the boss was a jack-booted jackass (my view).) Shit happens. Just be happy you're not working at IBM. It was leaked that they're outsourcing to India, etc... see: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10613 --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of /|\ \|/ :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\ --*--:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech. \/|\/ /|\ :Found to date: 0. Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.\|/ + v + : The look on Sadam's face - priceless! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sunder.net
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 10:25:59AM -0400, Sunder wrote: On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Steve Furlong wrote: (I won't be able to observe directly, as I was fired from that company because I'm an incompetent slacker (boss's view) or because the boss was a jack-booted jackass (my view).) Shit happens. Just be happy you're not working at IBM. It was leaked that they're outsourcing to India, etc... see: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10613 Remember when the manufacturing jobs starting going south and they said don't worry, this is an information economy now, and they'll all be information workers? Not that I believed that at all, but now that all the information jobs are going south (or rather east and west), what are they claiming people will do here? Other than work at Hardee's, I mean. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Monday 21 July 2003 01:12, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://nytimes.com/2003/07/21/technology/21PATE.html?pagewanted=prin tposition= A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online I worked on a commercial digital money system a few years ago. One of their business models was almost identical to Amos': stick cash in a kiosk to get electronic money. It'd be interesting to see how that system plays with Amos' patent. (I won't be able to observe directly, as I was fired from that company because I'm an incompetent slacker (boss's view) or because the boss was a jack-booted jackass (my view).) -- Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all! -- Rep. Henry Waxman
