[local] Report onPortland Cpunks meeting

[Alan Olsen <alano@teleport.com>]

The physical Cypherpunks meeting in Portland occured on the 20th of January.
No big name Cypherpunks we involved in the manufacture of this meeting.
(Well, maybe next time...)

It pretty much went like a first meeting...  We had about 11 people or so
attend.  (Hard to tell in a coffee shop if people are attending or just
wondering what the heck is going on.)

The participation from the group was very positive.  Those who did attend
were quite willing to participate.  Those of you who did not show up missed
a good meeting... and free coffee drinks from the Habit.  (The Habit
Internet Cafe was having their one year aniversary and was giving away free
coffe as part of the event.)

Some of the happenings (in no particular order):

Bruce Baugh handed out the information he has been collecting on remailer
timings and mail to new gateways.  The information was pretty useful.  He
had sent out a group of ten messages to each remailer through a nym server.
The results were at odds with the published times.  Certain sites either
dropped large percentages of messages or delivered them about 8-9 days late.
Others which were rated at the bottom of the list on the regular timing list
were the most reliable in Bruce's tests.

Neal McBurnett talked about his Java program that generates statistics on
the PGP "web of trust".  The information he gave was pretty surprising.
(Fewer keys exist in the keyservers than I believed.) I encoraged Neal to
post his findings to the list. (Hint! Hint!)  I will not try to explain the
stats from memory...

I gave a report on the status of the PGP 3.0 API.  (Of which Derek Atkins
was kind enough to send me for the meeting.  Thanks Derek!)

There was a key signing.  It was a bit rough as for many of us it was our
first key signing.  (I think Neal was the only person who had been to an
organized key signing.)  Still, it went fairly well.  Only a couple of
people brought their key fingerprints on disk instead of paper.  As of
today, I have only recieved signed keys back from a couple of people
though...  The next key signing will be done a bit differently.  (Live and
learn.)  There was also a suggestion for a nym signing at some point.

There was a discussion of entropy which devolved into entropy. The
definitions of entropy varied widely depending on the background of the
individuals involved.  (Or just general smartassedness...  My definition of
entropy was "A urilogical condition".)

There was alot of just general discussion of crypto and current events.  A
good time was had by all.  (At least I have not had any complaints.)

One of the other topics discussed was a Portland-Cypherpunks mailing list
for keeping people informed on local activities.  This will probibly be put
into place sometime soon...  There will also be upcoming meetings as I have
had a number of people inquiring about the posibility.

Well, that is about all I can remember at this point...  (At least with not
enough caffiene in me.)

Others who were there can probibly comment.
  
Alan Olsen -- alano@teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction
        `finger -l alano@teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key 
              http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ 
       "Is the operating system half NT or half full?"