Re: Brands excluded from digicash beta

[paul@poboy.b17c.ingr.com (Paul Robichaux)]

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> A further reply to Mr. Robichaux, who I paraphrase, "The more I 
> have problems with the DigiCash beta, the better First Virutal
> looks."

Doug, you must be talking to my dad; he's Mr. Robichaux. Having
inadvertently offended the Digicash people in my previous message, let
me see if I can give equal time to what's wrong with FV in this
message.

> Some problems with this:

> 1) It is, after all, a Beta Test. Many companies limit 
>    participation in such tests quite arbitrarily. Also,
>    remember, DigiCash (to the best of my knowledge) is
>    not going into the digital bank business itself, but
>    rather through licensees. Aside from Paul, who is very
>    PR oriented, it is primarily a group of quite talented
>    young programmers who are, while answering your letters,
>    trying to come out with new versions of the code. 

Maybe it's just me. As a beta-shop owner, I expect to have Digicash
work with me when I have problems, concerns, or questions. Marcel,
Paul, and others at Digicash were very helpful during the incubation
period. My chief concern at this point is that there's no way for me
to get paid, and no publicly available date for same.

I didn't suggest that Stefan Brands, or anyone else, was being denied
access to the trial. I have no evidence to suggest any explanation for
his complaint, Hal Finney's, or mine-- other than that the Digicash
folks are very, very busy.

> 2) A group of us went over the First Virtual stuff in detail
>    last night over fajitas, and were practically rolling on 
>    the floor with laughter. Basically they have an attitude 
>    of "Crypto is too hard, people won't want to use it." So
>    instead, each transaction consists of an e-mail exchange
>    which is converted ultimately into credit card transactions
>    The exposure time for the merchant is on the order of _90 
>    days_. All fraud, etc., is on the head of the merchant.

I think their attitude is that crypto's not _necessary_. I disagree;
Nathaniel Borenstein has already been taken to task on www-buyinfo for
that view. Their API supports TCP/IP transactions, so the mail
exchange is between the FV server and the buyer.

The very fact that FV has a set of terms and conditions that mention
exposure time, responsibility for fraud, and so on tells me that their
system is more fully fielded. I know, I know; ecash is in beta. That's
fine. I still want to be able to sell things _now_.

>    The bottom line here is that FV has a system which is
>    much more sluggish than the DigiCash system, even though
>    it doesn't use "hard" crypto. It is far from anonymous, and
>    the transactions are trivially reversible. This is actually
>    a _design goal_ in their "Soylent Green", er, "Simple Green"
>    proposed standard. It is completely inappropriate for hard
>    goods of significant value, and its minimum transaction cost
>    is high enough to rule out its applicability for very small
>    transactions. Even if used for purely informational goods,
>    if an undercapitalized info service becomes popular, it will
>    sink beneath the waves while waiting for payment.

All of the above is true. You can't use FV for hard goods, the minimum
transaction cost rules out microtransactions, and the payment hang
time is too long. 

On the other hand, I can't use ecash for hard goods. I have no idea
what the transaction costs will be, and there's no way for sellers to
get paid _at all_.

>    As near as I can tell, FV's technology was developed by people
>    who wanted to implement their pet philosophy about Internet 
>    commerce (customer should examine info first, then commit to 
>    paying, all transactions reversible, cryptography and anonymity 
>    are bad, secure transactions are not possible on the net, etc.),
>    rather than anything bordering on an Internet cash-like system.

You're right here, too. I happen to agree with the portion about
allowing try-before-you-buy access; in some cases that is a very
valuable way to gain market and mindshare. Remember the "Macintosh
Test Drive" in 1985?

>    So, I ask, First Virtual is looking better and better for doing
>    _what_?  Until they deal with the interface problem (get a decent
>    client, rather than relying exclusively on e-mail), I think 
>    they're not even going to be adequate for getting shareware-scale
>    proceeds from putting up a cool Web page.

Not. Read their web pages. There's a TCP/IP API, which I'm using. The
only mail exchange is from the FV server to the customer and back
again. As Hal pointed out, there are valid reasons to support systems
other than the Digicash e-wallet. After all, there will be offline
ecash, right?

First Virtual's chief advantage is that I can get paid. No fooling
with clearing, scalability, or anything else-- people can buy my
products.

- -Paul Robichaux

- -- 
Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG       | Good software engineering doesn't reduce the 
perobich@ingr.com            | amount of work you put into a product; it just 
Not speaking for Intergraph. | redistributes it differently.
		  ### http://www.intergraph.com ###

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