Re: US Postal Public Key

[Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>]

frissell@panix.com (Duncan Frissell) writes:

>What is the most important character in the above paragraph?

>The 's' in 'authorities.'  It means no monopoly.

Yes, towards the end they made it clear that this was not intended to
be a monopolized certification hierarchy, but one of many.  There was
even a reference to "peer-to-peer" certification, which I thought might
refer to a web of trust.

It's not nice to make fun of the Post Office; they're such an easy target.
But I couldn't help finding that the archaic all-caps format and the little
"^G" characters by the bulleted points reminded me of the old 110-baud
ASR-33 clankety teletypes I used in college, with each little bulleted
point going "ding", "ding", as it printed out (^G being the bell character
in ASCII).  It didn't exactly bring to mind the streamlined new PO the
speaker wanted to convey.

Hal