Is cryptography where security took the wrong branch?

[Eric Rescorla]

Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com> writes:
> Eric Rescorla wrote:
> > > Maybe, maybe not. You've never heard of price inelasticity?
> 
> 
> You haven't established anything beyond some apparent
> intention to consider inelasticity, as if it is some
> superior magic property we have to do battle with.

Ian, The situation is really simple:

You wrote:

"The other thing to be aware of is that ecommerce itself
is being stinted badly by the server and browser limits.
There's little doubt that because servers and browsers
made poorly contrived decisions on certificates, they
increased the overall risks to the net by reducing the
deployment, and probably reduced the revenue flow for
certificate providers by a factor of 2-5."

I asked you where you got the factor of 2-5 and you waved your hands a
lot and didn't really provide any real answer. As it happens, I'm
extremely familiar with the set of techniques that one would use in order
to derive a number like this and it's quite apparent that you
haven't used any of them. As a consequence, there's no reason to take
your estimate as anything other than some number that you pulled out
of the air.

None of this is to say that it's not potentially worth trying to
change things and see if it makes a difference.  What I object to,
however, is quantitative claims made without evidence, which is what
you have been doing here.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com