From: daw@boston.CS.Berkeley.EDU (David A Wagner)
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 06:20:25 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: [NOISE] Borenstein's Fatal Spam
Message-ID: <199601312154.QAA13453@bb.hks.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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In article <pgpmoose.199602010813.60849@paganini.sydney.sterling.com>,
Greg Rose <Greg_Rose@sydney.sterling.com> wrote:
> A number of people have written words to the
> effect of:
>   First Virtual, you lost a lot of ground with me.
>   (sounds like others feel the same way, too).
> 
> I disagree. I think there is a big difference
> between "knowing theoretically that X, Y and Z
> are possible" and "look, I have a program that
> does X, Y and Z in a certain order, and very
> fast, and surprisingly successfully, and this has
> major implications for the banking community".
     [...]
> I think most of the problem here is that we heard
> about it in media words first, and in a reasoned
> argument second. That's life. 

Ok.  Fair enough.  Good points.

Personally, what I found most distasteful about FV's post was their
conclusions, not their experimental procedure.

I agree that their keyboard-sniffer lends more evidence to the well-known
argument that, to make good use of crypto, you need secure endpoint machines.

I disagree when FV concludes that this makes crypto useless.  Instead, I'd
contend we just need to work to secure our endpoints better; then we can do
all sorts of neat stuff with crypto.

I found their conclusions to be academically displeasing.  But I guess
that's what happens when you're trying to sell a product...

- -- Dave Wagner

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