[cap-talk] manageable entropy (was: Firefox breaks the principle of identifiability)

[Jed at Webstart]

At 11:26 PM 2/7/2005, Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:
>By the way, as an optimization to writing down long strings of hex digits, 
>Darius Bacon recently showed me this:
>
>http://www.tothink.com/mnemonic/
>
>It looks good!  Those 64-bit phrases seem to be quite as memorizable as a 
>7-digit phone number.  How exciting!  :-)

I'm just curious about the circumstances where people believe typing in 
long numbers like certificate fingerprints
will be necessary.  If one starts with a strictly analog means of 
communication like a billboard or
an analog television signal then it seems to me using the old analog means 
of protection (trademarks and
laws against their violation for example) are the appropriate means.  If 
one is communicating digitally
then I see no need since the fingerprint can be communicated without being 
visible to a person.  Sure,
as computer hackers we may sometimes at least look at such long numbers, 
but I don't see any need to
do so in the long run - at least for this business of communicating 
trust.  Does anybody else?

--Jed http://www.webstart.com/jed/