On Mar 6, 2014, at 11:19 AM, John Levine <johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com> wrote:
I suppose, but he's been around long enough that he really shouldn't
have been surprised.
He took it pretty well—I was the one who was embarrassed.
Personally, I'd have tolerated the talk a lot
better if he opened the kimono a wee bit and told us how he was
planning to do digital signatures everywhere in a way that scaled,
worked for people who aren't megageeks, etc. It's not like it's news
to anyone here that signatures are dandy if you can get stuff signed
in the first place.
Yeah, it was frustrating that he didn't go deeper into what he had in mind.
Also frustrating that he thinks what he described is patent-worthy, given all
the prior discussions of similar technology in the existing literature.
On a more positive note, the first talk wasn't flashy, but it was a
nice overview of the issues that people will need to deal with in
succesful online payments system. It was, for example, helpful to me
when he pointed out that a remarkable number of electronic payments
are already among people who don't have bank accounts and aren't
likely to have one any time soon.
The first talk was great. I found it quite useful, even though I already know
quite a bit about electronic payments online. It could have been aimed at a
little more knowledgable audience—a lot of it was review for me, but it was
still good and worth doing.