At 7:00 AM +0000 on 6/22/00, lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote on cypherpunks:
> [Not to be forwarded by Robert Hettinga]
<Cosby-as-Noah> RIIIIGHT....</C-N>
[Sure, Anonymous. Tell me your name and I won't forward your stuff.
It's not like someone's going to *reply* to you or anything, hmmm? :-). I
don't forward Tim's stuff because *he* gets the reply directly if somebody
has a question he's already answered 5 years ago, and it pisses him off.
Same goes for other people here who request it. Can't happen with *you*,
now, can it, anonymous, hmmm? The remailer stops that problem rather cold.
Sheesh. The cost of anything, anonymous remailers included, is the foregone
alternative. It's not like your boss, or your wife, or somebody, is going
to find out you said it, foregoing you income -- or even wedded bliss -- to
have your opinions forwarded around anyway...]
Anyway, anonymous, I absolutely agree with you about the cost of the first
penny being a factory, (with ZKS' Adam Back's misappellation of MicroMint
as Millicent being addressed in, and probably crossed in the email with, my
own comment on Adam's missive.)
Though, unfortunately for MicroMint even, people like Nicko Van Someren, of
NCipher, seem to think that they *can* do signature-based micropayments as
cheaply as MicroMint, or cheaper. They point all kinds of bad stuff with
MicroMint:
1.) Moore's law kills the MicroMint Arms Race, in that newer processors
than the MicroMint's are cheaper, though that doesn't take into account all
the deliberately complicating factors (hidden predicates, vaguely
non-standard chipware, etc.) that gets you a leg up on the competition
until rev the MicroMint again.
2.) The economics of forgery gives you 100 percent profit, and the profits
of underwriting are, heh, 85 basis points, gross; of course, that's the
same as it has always been, and pointing at the altitude of an airplane
doesn't mean you can't fly.
3.) The storage cost of, say, 128 bit coins, and larger coins for
*smaller* values, gives you storage headaches, forcing conversion into
other protocols, which complicate the security mode, though that's just
something else to calculate, cryptography being economics same as it ever
was. And more stuff like this.
Nonetheless, it seems counterintuitive to me that RSA etc., can cost less
in opportunity cost than, say, the average coin-generation cost in
MicroMint. But Nicko's got a PhD. from somewhere in OxBridge, and I don't,
:-), so I'll wait to see what he publishes on all this, and what others,
(like Drs. Rivest and Shamir themselves?), say in reply to that...
Frankly, I could have used you *last* night, anonymous, when one of my own
people took advantage of my jetlag over here in Edinburgh, and tried to
convince me that the forger just had to get *one* token right to get money
for nothing etc., and, of course, I forgot that the cost of the *first*
token in MicroMint is the driving function of the entire cost proposition,
and, mistakenly, in a fit of fatigue-ridden, caffiene sodden dispair, told
him to go ask Adi about it.
In hindsight, I can't remember how many tims I've said the line "it takes a
factory to make a penny" out there on the hustings, and yet I, um, forgot
to remember that last night. Hell, now that I think about it, I've said it
to *Nicko* himself, and more than once...
Remind me not to argue with people smarter than I am when I've not slept
for 40 hours? :-).
So, until further notice, I think I'll keep my definition of micropayment
by token-generation protocol (cryptographic function collisions for
micropayments, signatures for anything above that), instead of, say
double-spending method (probabalistic vs. universal testing).
Cheers,
RAH
Who keeps getting into arguments with smarter and smarter people these days...
--
-----------------
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'
