From: Adam Shostack <adam@lighthouse.homeport.org>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 21:03:31 +0800
To: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: Let the Snake Oil Flow
In-Reply-To: <ad5232581a02100494c9@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <199602230206.VAA12870@homeport.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


	While I'd never disagree with my good buddy Tim, let me tell
you all about the neatest medial hack since anesthesia, TMS, or
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation!

	This astounding use of magnetic fields can stimulate or deaden
nerves through the skull!  Its being used right now in research
hospitals to create functional mappings of the human brain!

	An experiment I witnessed involved a volunteer who had his
cold nerves turned off by placing a small probe over his head.  He was
completely unable to feel the cold of an ice cube placed on his bare
skin!

	Snake oil?  No.  Its really out there, and is has real
possibilites.  But how is the lay person to tell?  With a car, you can
see if it turns on.  With a replacement for anesthetics, you can
decide if it works pretty easily.  "Can you tell that I just cut your
arm?"  But with crypto, you need to wade through the excellent, but
quite long, sci.crypt FAQ, if you even find a pointer to it. 

	Altavista comes back with 48000 hits when asked for Crypto.
"Introduction to cryptography" is a more tolerable 100 documents, but
how to know which are good, and which are snake oil?  The reputation
software to help filter is lacking.

	So, I see a value to flaming the snake oil salesmen loudly,
today.  Not that we shouldn't let the market handle the situation, but
part of that market is that crypto enthusiasts (aka cypherpunks) will
flame the snake oil salesmen.  Not that other issues you mention (such
as the behinds the scenes deals) aren't important, but in the face of
no information, we can't discuss that much.


Adam

Timothy C. May wrote:

| Well, it seems to me that letting some real snake oil out there could be a
| Good Thing. Being the Neo-Calvinist Darwinist that I am, I set that anyone
| who puts valuable information into "PowerPads" and "Stream-of-Consciousness
| Ciphers" pretty much deserves what he or she gets. I am not losing any
| sleep that Snake Oil Enterprises is hyping a conceptually flawed system.

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume