Re: Schneier's source code

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Rishab Ghosh wrote:

> > * we also have fragments of C code accumulated and laboriously
> > developed by Bruce Schneier. How many of us have bought the C code book
> > and used the code?                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> As far as I know, there's the book, Applied Crypto, and the source code on disk.
> Are you referring to the C code within the same book, the disk, or a book of

That was a typo on my part. There is no separate "book" of code, just
the diskettes.

Someone in Cypherpunks has a novel solution: print code in the most
easily OCRable font---I think the suggestion was that OCR-A and OCR-B,
or somesuch, are optimized for this (one would think so from the
names, but I had thought they had something to do with the magnetic
ink printing on checks...).

I'm sure Schneier would be entertain the idea of a special
"exportable" version of his code in which purchasers paid the $30 he
charges and received a loose-leaf book of very neatly and precisely
printed code, ready for easy OCRing.

And why not make it error-correctable? That is, provide a printed
version that can be scanned, OCRed, then error-corrected for any minor
character recognition errors? It may not be "human-readable," (*) but
it's _printed_ and that meets the letter of the law.

(*) And I can imagine human-readable versions that have the ECC stuff
at the end of each line, or in a block below, or whatever. But this
would not be the standard, of course.


--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."