Re: On topic!
On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Tim May wrote: > We all noted that most Cypherpunks physical meetings are in about this > range, of 20 to 30 attendees, and that the mailing list has ranged from > a few hundred to about 500 distinct, real subscribers for most of the > list's existence. Though the epicenter of the movement is presumably still in the Bay Area, a number of us are overseas, and not wealthy enough to hop into a plane on a whim. I would presume most of the atendees were local, or semi-local (say, from SoCal).
Re: On topic!
On Monday, October 14, 2002, at 02:24 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Tim May wrote: > >> We all noted that most Cypherpunks physical meetings are in about this >> range, of 20 to 30 attendees, and that the mailing list has ranged >> from >> a few hundred to about 500 distinct, real subscribers for most of the >> list's existence. > > Though the epicenter of the movement is presumably still in the Bay > Area, > a number of us are overseas, and not wealthy enough to hop into a > plane on > a whim. I would presume most of the atendees were local, or semi-local > (say, from SoCal). Yes, but this is not inconsistent in any way with the point I was making. In fact, it's a major reason for the point. > > --Tim May "The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat
Re: On topic!
On Sunday, October 13, 2002, at 01:16 AM, Ryan Sorensen wrote: > Talking to someone who was at the legendary cypherpunks anniversary > bbq. > He brought up the fact that someone there was talking about "private > hedonistic cells" (any errors are mine, not his, and whoever talked > about this, if they have any more thoughts on the matter, please feel > free to email me.) That was Eric Hughes. His notion, briefly, is that many effective groups operate with about 20-40 known-to-each-other local cells and with about 10 times that many overall members. While there are many mega-organizations with tens of thousands or even tens of millions of members (AARP, Sierra Club, Democrats, etc.), the effective size for actual communication and action tends to be a lot smaller. We all noted that most Cypherpunks physical meetings are in about this range, of 20 to 30 attendees, and that the mailing list has ranged from a few hundred to about 500 distinct, real subscribers for most of the list's existence. Profound or obvious? I guess you had to be there. --Tim May
On topic!
Talking to someone who was at the legendary cypherpunks anniversary bbq. He brought up the fact that someone there was talking about "private hedonistic cells" (any errors are mine, not his, and whoever talked about this, if they have any more thoughts on the matter, please feel free to email me.) Brought this to mind. Identity Based Encryption schemes. Fairly unworkable on the global scale for a number of reasons. Shrink the space. Say a small group. Split the secret for the key issuer, probably using a k-of-n scheme, where any new member needs k people to give k pieces of the new secret key to the new member. Transparent encryption to group members. Use broadcast encryption things for mail to group members, or subsets thereof. Open problems: Can you have an easily extensible k-of-n scheme? Or even an n-of-n? Key problem here being the fact that the former scheme is still valid, just ignore the fact that there's a new member. k would obviously be configurable based on group policies, number needed to instantiate a new member, and all that good stuff. What else can you do with a formulation like this? What else would be -useful- given a formulation like this? Proofs of membership to the outside? To other group members? Anonymity inside the group? Conditional anonymity subject to open by k (not necessarily the same k as before) members? Homogoneous front to the outside world? Internal cash? Group-generated random schemes? Mental poker put to some purpose? -- All that is not strictly forbidden is now mandatory.
