Subject: Re: KeyID as left vs right substring of fingerprint

From: [email-masked] (Bodo Moeller)
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 16:45:48 +0200 (CEST)

L. Sassaman <[email-masked]>:

> [...]  Expanding from the right is less natural to users whose language
> reads from left to right, in my opinion.

Have you used a telephone lately?

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From: "L. Sassaman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 13:37:49 -0700 (PDT)

> Have you used a telephone lately?

That's a non sequitor if I have ever seen one...

__

L. Sassaman

System Administrator                |  "If you chose not to decide, 
Technology Consultant               |  you still have made a choice" 
icq.. 10735603                      |  
pgp.. finger://ns.quickie.net/rabbi |                    --Rush

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 11:16:25 +0900

From: "L. Sassaman" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: KeyID as left vs right substring of fingerprint
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 13:37:49 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 

i didn't understand the remark about the telephone.  does it have to
do w/ a touch pad or display or numbers on a screen?

perhaps the original poster could elaborate?

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From: [email-masked] (Bodo Moeller)
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 07:59:55 +0200

> That's a non sequitor if I have ever seen one...

Dialing certain postfixes of a given phone number can work, dialing
any prefix won't.  That is, phone numbers expand from the right.
I haven't yet heard of anyone complaing about this on the grounds that
thear language reads from left to right.

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From: "L. Sassaman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 00:07:57 -0700 (PDT)

> thear language reads from left to right.

That's an invalid analogy. Telephone prefixes exist so that phone numbers
can be grouped seperately. There is no such grouping with OpenPGP key
ideas -- all key ids are members of one group. In a left to right
most-significant-bit key id expansion, if the 32 or 64 bits you provided
weren't enough, you could keep adding more until a match was found. In a
left to right least-signification-bit expansion, you would have to start
over with the new information.

This is all academic, however, since I think we decided that changing this
now would be worse than leaving it the way it is.

__

L. Sassaman