On Mar 6, 2014, at 11:19 AM, John Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxxx> 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.