Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 28509, member: 57463&quot;]Actually, I wrote a book about cryptography about 20 years ago. It went through three editions and as a result, I was on the cypherpunks maillist just as the WWW was being invented.&nbsp; I used to close all my emails with my PGP public key and stuff like that.&nbsp; Also, I just finished Sylvia Naser&#039;s <i>Beautiful Mind</i> about John Forbes Nash. (I watched the Ron Howard movie a few times, but it is really a different treatment, entirely.)&nbsp; That brings up strategies of competition and conflict.&nbsp; All of that is to say that my opinion is going be a bit different.</p><p><br /></p><p>1.&nbsp; You mean to say, of course, not &quot;what he will take for the coin&quot; but perhaps &quot;what he paid for the coin.&quot; As has been pointed out, you really do not know for sure what the code means, or how old it is.&nbsp; Assume that it is some kind lower bound, though.</p><p><br /></p><p>2. Is it ethical to break a code?&nbsp; Yes.</p><p><br /></p><p>3. Is is all right to call the dealer outright with the knowledge?&nbsp; Well, even if that works, it can only work once.&nbsp; The best way to handle the knowledge is to include it in your matrix of bargaining strategies.&nbsp; How well you bargain face-to-face is perhaps not as quantifiable as Von Neumann and Nash might have liked to believe.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>One of the serious problems I have with the online world is that it cannot prepare you for the bourse floor.&nbsp; Dealers who only put stuff up on electronic auctions and collectors who only buy there are not learning anything they can use in person.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>State Department codebreaker Herbert O. Yardley wrote <i>Education of a Poker Player</i>.&nbsp; Poker has nothing to with numerical odds and everything to do with who you are inside. So, too, with numismatic markets.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in