On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 07:06 PM, Mike Rosing wrote: > On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Tim May wrote: > >> Physics-wise, it's a jiveass fantasy. No way are there "micro-strips" >> readable from a distance in today's currency, and very likely not in >> the >> next 20 years. (I don't dispute that a careful lab setup could maybe >> read a note at a few meters, in a properly-shielded environment, >> without >> any shieding between note and detectors, and with enough time and >> tuning. But a wad of bills, folded, stuffed, and with little time to >> make the detection...an altogether different kettle of fish.) >> >> Further, placing the notes in a simple aluminum foil pouch, or a wallet >> with equivalent lining, would cut any detectable signals by maybe 30-50 >> dB. > > That solves the theives problem :-) And you wouldn't need a wad, that's > the whole point. You'd just need 1. It could transfer money just > like a > smart card.
I must've missed the setup for this thread...I assumed the talk was of the standard "detector threads in our money" paranoia. From your description, it sounds like you're talking about a smart card variant. Why would it be set to "broadcast amount" or anything remotely like this? No smartcard protocol has this, nobody in their right mind would propose it as an interesting protocol (not even the Chaumian "untraceable road toll" transponders). Smartcards or stored value wallets will obviously not be set, voluntarily or knowingly to broadcast their contents, nor to be interrogated by outsiders. Simple access control, ZKIPS, etc. I'll go back to lurking, as this "thread," so to speak, is not interesting to me. (More interesting is reading Chris Hillman's page with his Categorical Primer on it, http://www.math.washington.edu/~hillman/papers.html. And to BL and JA, I downloaded O'CAML and picked up a couple of ML texts--I sense a pun on Mac Lane in "ML for the Working Programmer." Just read Egan's "Quarantine," so the Hilbert vectors are coruscating tonight.) A couple of last comments: > > But I'll grant it's science fiction at this point. Maybe a smart card > that has the weight of a gold coin with some thickness to it would work > better. For the filthy rich, make the outside real gold! The rest of > us > can use brass. > > I still think the basic problem is simple - how do you trust the bits? > If > the actual computations are done inside a secure box, most people will > trust it. There will always be people who try to beat the system, but > it'll take a lot of technology, and they'll do it often enough to get > caught (most theives simply don't want to pass up a good deal when they > invent one :-) The actual structure of the box doesn't matter - a > floppy > cloth bill or thick coin is still a computer. Who makes and distributes > it is what matters. > > Patience, persistence, truth, > Dr. mike > Frankly, this is a remarkably naive level of understanding of digital money. Have you read any of Chaum's papers? Have you thought deeply about the issues? --Tim May "You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." - -Michael Shirley
