From: kentborg@world.std.com (Kent Borg)
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 94 23:24:05 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  Card Playing Protocol?
Message-ID: <199407170623.AA29265@world.std.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


hughes@ah.com wrote some interesting stuff:
>Duplicate games won't work

Damn!  People are paying attention.  It was an off-hand remark.  Any
bells and whistles along those lines are certainly banned from any
early version.

>There is a non-crypto issue of how one finds playing partners without
>a central server.

My mind wandered to that very point this very morning.  The simplist
way to find players is the same we currently find email addresses: the
hard way.  Type in the addresses of the other players.  (Assuming the
software is already running on those nodes, those players would not
have to retype the other addresses, accepting the invitation to play
would be more like a single "click".)

I think anything more elaborate along these lines is a candidate for
banning from 1.0.  (One problem is that the "I'm looking for a
game."-problem is at least as big and interesting as building a deck
of cards.)

>I would strongly suggest the separation of the communications, user
>presentation, and decision parts of the client software.

And that is one of the wonderful sort of engineering problems I love:
keeping the different parts clear of each other's private parts yet
still considerate of their desires and needs.

>client software

My instinct is for a peer-to-peer design.  Yes, they will serve each
other cards, etc., but I would like to avoid the user confusion of
having two different sorts of software needed.  (At a comms protocol
level there might always be a single server per game--I don't know
yet--but I would like to hide that sort of stuff from users.)


-kb, the Kent who will be driving to Pasadena early in the morning,
but not to watch soccer.


--
Kent Borg                                                  +1 (617) 776-6899
kentborg@world.std.com                                
kentborg@aol.com                                      
          Proud to claim 35:00 hours of TV viewing so far in 1994!