Re: technical issues of the list

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 10:53 PM -0700 11/15/97, Jenaer Mixmaster Anonserver (actually Zooko,
actually B.) wrote:

>Issues:
>
>
>1.  Robustness.  Usenet wins.
>2.  Efficiency.  Usenet loses, but perhaps some kind of hack
>     could be implemented combining mail and news delivery for
>     greater efficiency without losing robustness?  I'm not
>     familiar with NNTP.

Many mailing lists are now hosted on Web sites. (There's probably some
widely-available code for setting this up, as I'm seeing more and more of
these Web forums.)

A Web site for the list has certain advantages:

a. archiving becomes transparent

(There is, by the way, a project simmering along to put the 5 years of
Cypherpunks traffic on a Web site....)

b. Web sites can be mirrored around the world

(With some technical issues of latency, synchronization, and "lock time,"
e.g., what happens to articles posted to one site while another site is
being mirrored? I/O thrashing could become a problem. I don't know if much
work has been done on Web site mirroring when the sites are being updated
or changed many times an hour. It's a variant of the airline reservation
problems...I have to assume someone has solved this cleanly.)

c. Web sites can also carry ancillary stuff, like code for programs, long
documents, etc.

(I just added a 6.4 GB drive to my system for the astounding price of $440.
Even cheaper deals may exist.)

d. having all CP traffic on a Web site, organized by thread name, author,
date, etc., as such archived lists routinely seem to be, would make it easy
to generate "the Cypherpunks CD-ROM." Wouldn't it be great to have the 5
years' worth of traffic on a single CD-ROM? (Or two, or three, if that's
what it takes.)

e. Web sites are easily "distributed" just by having URL pointers.

And so on...

>3.  Access control.  Usenet is too easy to get in to.  We need
>     to discourage clueless newbies from bothering us.  This
>     too could be hacked, e.g. set up a PGP cancel bot which
>     only allows PGP signed posts.  (This has many other
>     convenient benefits such as encouraging nyms, and
>     preventing spam.)

I'm skeptical of this "speed bump" approach. After all, our current
subscription process hasn't exactly stopped clueless newbies from wandering
in, has it?

A better approach is to encourage wider participation, with individual
readers becoming merciless with their filters.

(I'd hate to lose my Eudora Pro filtering capabilities, but progress is
progress. And some of the browsers and whatnot can probably be set to mark
for "reputation capital" and the like. If not, this would be a good project
for someone to tackle.)

(More on this: We must avoid the kind of "centralized reputation registry"
that some architects seem to prefer. This defeats the whole idea of people
making their own choices. Something very decentralized, like the Web of
Trust. But even more so. I don't want my name in the data base saying whom
I want to read and whom I don't, unless as a piece of side information. If
this point is not clear, and there's interest in this whole project, I'll
elaborate in more detail.)


>Regards,
>
>Zooko
>

Glad to see B. posting on this topic.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."