I look forward to a world without patents, so I'm afraid all that waffle about obtaining a worldwide government-enforced-monopoly merely made me sigh a bit.
Jim Bell <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't quite know why I received the message below, but I am >answering (including [email protected]) since it seems a good time >to do so given the humorous connection to my isotopically-modified >optical fiber invention. And, I would like to make a request, indeed >an offer. > > A few weeks ago, when I re-appeared on cypherpunks.org, I pointed >out that my patent application was recently (mid-July 2013) published >by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). See >http://www.freepatentsonline.com/WO2013101261A1.html This is an >invention that I thought of in December 2008, stuck in a prison cell at >USP Tucson: I realized that much of the index of refraction of >ordinary silica (which is about 1.46; of that amount above an index of >1.000) was due to the presence of Si-29 atoms. (Si-29 is the only >naturally-existing silicon atom with an 'electromagnetic spin', due to >its unpaired neutron circulating in the nucleus.) I concluded that by >dramatically reducing the proportion of Si-29 atoms, which amount to >about 4.67% atom/atom in ordinary silicon, it would be possible to make >silica with a much-lower index of refraction: Probably between 1.10 >and 1.02, but the amount is uncertain. > One big advantage of this fiber will be a far-higher 'velocity >factor', approaching 0.90-0.98 of 'c', where 'c' is physicist-speak for >the speed of light in a vacuum, compared with ordinary silicon optical >fibers with a velocity factor of 1/1.46, or 0.685 of 'c'. This will >amount to a dramatically-faster signal velocity. While not quite as >fast as line-of-sight microwave, or neutrino-beams piercing the earth, >it would be significant. > > Other advantages will be a >reduction in optical loss by perhaps a factor of 10x (from perhaps 0.19 >db/km in existing fibers to 0.019 db/km), a reduction of optical >dispersion by a similar factor of 10x, and an increase in useable >optical bandwidth from 50 nanometers wavelength (1510-1560 nm) to 800 >nm (1000-1800 nm). (The practical limit on fiber tends to be the >limitation on the gain-bandwidth of EDFA's; Erbium-Doped Fiber >Amplifiers >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erbium_doped_fiber_amplifier#Erbium-doped_fiber_amplifiers > ). > > Shortly I will begin preparing a prototype for this fiber, which >will cost between $200-250K. (USD). I have received a committment for >this amount. However, having filed for a US Patent (specifically, a >PCT or 'Patent Cooperation Treaty' filing), it will be necessary to >file for many dozens more 'national-stage' patents: The way patents >work, around the world, is that a person must file for a patent in each >nation around the world that he desires to have patent-protection in. >A national-stage patent costs about $10,000. Generally, the reasoning >is that an inventor should file for a patent in any country: >1. Where a significant amount of the invention will be made. >2. Where a significant amount of the invention will be used. > If I assume that the royalty per meter of fiber is $0.25/meter (25 >American cents per meter), it would be worth filing for a patent if the >amount of fiber made or used is $10,000/$0.25, or 40,000 meters of >fiber. This would be about 1.1 kilometers of cable that has 36 fibers >in it. Obviously, even the smallest country would use enough fiber to >justify obtaining a patent. > > There are 148 PCT-signatory countries. >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_cooperation_treaty I would like >to obtain, at the very least, national-stage patents in at least 40 >nations, probably 80 nations, and possibly as much as 120 nations. >That would cost about $400,000, $800,000, or $1.2 million. (USD). I >have considered raising the money by means of a Kickstarter campaign, >but that site is oriented to collecting donations of money: It is >specifically prohibited that a project proponent promise a financial >return on such a contribution. But I'm not looking for a handout: I'm >looking for a loan which will be paid back. Perhaps that's called a >'bond'? > How would it be paid back? Corning says that 300 billion meters of >fiber were manufactured in about 2012. If I get a market-share of 10%, >that's 30 billion meters per year. At a royalty of, say, $0.25 per >meter of fiber, that would be $7.5 billion per year. With even a tiny >fraction of such a value, I could pay a huge return on a loan to >finance these national-stage patent applications. I see nothing wrong >with a 3x return: $3 returned for each dollar loaned, probably within >1-2 years. Does this sound interesting? > Jim Bell > > > > > >________________________________ > From: Peter Todd <[email protected]> >To: Ittay <[email protected]> >Cc: Bitcoin Dev <[email protected]>; Gavin >Andresen <[email protected]>; Emin Gün Sirer ><[email protected]> >Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2013 11:56 AM >Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP proposal - patch to raise >selfish mining threshold. > > >On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 12:43:15PM -0500, Ittay wrote: >> On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Peter Todd <[email protected]> >wrote: >> >> > On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 12:05:41PM -0500, Peter Todd wrote: >> > > On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 11:56:53AM -0500, Ittay wrote: >> > >> > Oh, and I don't want to give the wrong impression: there's no need >to >> > rush to get this problem fixed. Even if someone wanted to launch an >> > attack right now, with a fair amount of > resources, there's a lot of >> > counter-measures based on human > intervention that can definitely stop >> > the attack in the short-term >> >> >> The attack can be easily hidden. And be sure that before today, >today, >> and after today, very smart people are at their computer planning >attacks >> on Bitcoin. Exploits must be published and fixed FAST. > >Not this exploit. > >Here's a perfectly plausible worst-case scenario, that could be >happening right now: RAND High Frequency Trading Corp (a subsidiary of >General Evil) has a globe-spanning low-latency network of fiber, >line-of-sight microwave, and some experimental line-of-site neutrino >links criss-crossing the globe. They can get data to and from any point >on this planet faster than anyone else. Of course, in addition > to their >spectacular network they have an immense amount of computing power, as >well as exotic overclocked liquid nitrogen bathed CPU's that run at >clockspeeds double what commercial > hardware can do; in short, they have >access to scalar performance no-one else has. Of course, they like to >keep a healthy reserve so, 99% of all this fancy gear is constantly >idle. Whatever, they can afford it. > >RAND just hired a bunch of fresh MIT graduates, the best of the best. >Problem is the best of the best tends to make not so best mistakes, so >RAND figures a Training Exercise is in order. Fortunately for them the >NSA (a >subsidiary of General Evil) slipped a rootkit into my keyboard a week >or >so ago - probably that time when I woke up in that farmers field with a >*splitting* headache - and are reading what I'm typing right now. > >I go on to explain how an excellent training exercise for these fresh >MIT graduates would be to implement this nifty > attack some Cornell >researchers came up with. It's really simple, elegant even, but to do >it >best what you really want is the kind of low-latency network > a >high-frequency-trading corporation would have. I then point out how a >good training exercise ideally is done in a scenario where there is >genuine risk and reward, but where the worst-case consequences are >manageable - new hires to tend to screw up. (I then go on to explain my >analog electronics background, and squeeze in some forced anecdote >about >how I blew up something worth a lot of money owned by my employers at >some point in the distant past) > >Unfortunately for the operators of BTC Guild, one of these new MIT >grads >happens to have a: passed General Evil's psych screening with flying >colors, and b: have spent too much time around the MIT Kidnappng Club. >He decides it'd be easier to just kidnap the guy running BTC Guild than >fill out the > paperwork to borrow RAND's FPGA cluster, so he does. > >As expected the attack runs smoothly: with 30% of the hashing power, >neutrino burst generator/encoders's rigged > around the globe to fire the >moment another pool gets a block, and the odd DoS attack for fun, they >quickly make a mockery of the Bitcoin network, reducing every other >miners profitability to zero in minutes. The other miners don't have a >hope: they're blocks have to travel the long way, along the surface of >the earth, while RAND's blocks shave off important milliseconds by >taking the direct route. > > >Of course, this doesn't go unnoticed, er, eventualy: 12 hours later the >operators of GHash.IO, Eligius, slush, Bitminter, Eclipse and ASICMiner >open their groggy eyes and mutter something about how that simulcast >Tuesday party really shouldn't have had an open bar... or so much coke. > >They don't even notice that the team from BTC Guild > has vanished, but >they do notice a YouTube video of Gavin right on bitcoin.org doing his >best Spock impression, er, I mean appealing for calm and promising that >Top Men are > working on the issue of empty blocks as we speak. Meanwhile >CNN's top headline reads "IS THIS THE END OF BITCOIN?!?!" > >It takes another hour for the Aspirin's to finally kick in, but >eventually get all get on IRC and start trying to resolve the issue - >seems that whenever any of them produce a block, somehow by incredible >coincidence someone else finds another block first. After a few rounds >of this they're getting suspicious. (if they weren't all so hung-over >they might have also found suspicious the fact that whenever they found >a block they saw a sudden blue flash - Cherenkov radiation emitted when >those neutrino's interacted with the vitreous humour in their eyeballs) > >It's quickly realized that "somehow" BTC Guild isn't affected... >GHash.IO and > Eligius, 22% and 13% of the hashing power respectively, >decide to try a little experiment: they peer to each other and only >each >other through an encrypted tunnel > and... hey, no more lucky blocks! >slush, 7% of the hashing power is invited to the peering group next, >followed by Bitminter, 6%, and Eclipse, 2%, and finally ASICMiner, 1%, >for a grand total of... 51% of the hashing power! > >Of course, just creating blocks isn't useful for users, they need to be >distributed too, so someone quickly writes up a "one-way firewall" >patch >that allows the group's blocks to propagate to the rest of the network. >Blocks created by anyone else are ignored. > >It takes a few more hours, but eventually the attacker seems to run out >of blocks, and transaction processing returns to normal, albeit a >little >slow. (20 min block average) Of course, soon there's a 3,000 post >thread >on bitcointalk complaining about the "centralized pool > cartel", but >somehow life goes on. > >The next day Gavin goes on CNN, and gives a lovely interview about how >the past two days events show how the strength of > the Bitcoin network is >in the community. For balance they interview this annoying "Peter Todd" >guy from "Keep Bitcoin Free!" who blathers on about how relying on >altruism or something will doom the Bitcoin network in the long run. >After the interview Gavin respectfully points out that maybe next time >they find a so called "developer" with a ratio of bitcointalk posts to >actual lines of code in the Bitcoin git repository better than one >hundred to one. The producer just wishes that "Mike Hearn" guy was >available; at least he's got a sense of fashion, sheesh! > > >Anyway, I'm out of space for my little story, but yeah, the ending >involves a group of now-rich pool operators who decide to start a large >financial services and data networking company, oh, > and time-travel... > > >> Nevertheless, I agree that, as you say, we must not rush it. Look at >the >> BIP, find if we missed anything, and let's > discuss it. > >Indeed. > >Quite seriously, your attack is a serious long-term risk, but in the >short term the social dynamics of Bitcoin are such that it's just not a >show-stopping risk. At worst some miners will lose a bunch of money - >that's something that's happened before with the March chain fork, and >sure enough Bitcoin survived just fine. > >> > In addition, keep in mind >> > that this attack is very easy to detect, so if one is actually >launched >> > we will know immediately and can start taking direct >counter-measures at >> > that time. >> > >> >> Not really. Please see the discussion section in our paper. > >You can hide *who* is the > attacker - you can't hide the fact that an >attack is happening if done on a meaningful scale. > >> > That Gregory Maxwell so quickly identified a flaw in this proposed >> > solution suggests we should proceed > carefully. >> > >> >> There is no flaw. You were just reiterating that the solution does >not give >> us the 51% percent security you thought you had before. We showed >that >> we're not getting this back, I'm afraid. > >That's not what we're concerned about - what we're concerned about is >that your BIP doesn't discuss the issue, and you didn't seem to be >aware >of it. That suggests that the analysis is incomplete. There's no >pressing need to rush changes, as explained above by example, so we're >best off understanding the issue thoroughly first. > >There's a whole spectrum of potential solutions that haven't been >discussed - I myself have two approaches I'm working on that may solve >this problem in ways you > haven't (publicly) considered. I'm sure there >are many others out there. > >-- >'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org >00000000000000005144f6a7109b9f8543880a0a5f85a054ec53966bc2daa24c >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers >Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models. >Explore >techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the >most >from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and >register >http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60136231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk >_______________________________________________ >Bitcoin-development mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
