[hashcash] Re: Length of recent X-Hashcash cookies?
- From: "David Mertz, Ph.D." <mertz@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: hashcash@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 15:34:31 -0500
On Dec 15, 2004, at 2:30 PM, Simon Josefsson wrote:
Hi. I have been using X-Hashcash for a while, but the recent cookies
are long (>80 characters), which look quite ugly.
Yeah... I found this as well.
In the Python implementation I wrote, I use more-or-less the "shortest
tokens that obey the spec." I use a short-ish default salt, and start
my counter at one hex digit, only adding more if needed to find a
match. That makes for variable length tokens for the same resource, of
course, but a fixed length isn't anywhere in the spec (and moreover,
resources obviously differ in length, hence so do complete tokens).
It would be nice if the C version had a similar option to use "shortest
possible tokens"... at least a non-default switch.
PPS. How about renaming X-Hashcash: to Hashcash:? The 'X-' prefix
also look ugly, and was only discussed in RFC 822, not in the current
RFC 2822.
I disagree on this. Even if 2822 doesn't mandate it, the use of X-
prefix "special" headers is widespread, even ubiquitous. I like
hashcash, of course, but we should be nice to the header namespace.
How would you like it if MS started renaming those awful 'X-TNEF'
headers as 'TNEF' (whatever either means), or even if Spam Assassin
used simply 'Spam' instead of 'X-Spam'. The X- is a nice filter for
optional or non-mandated RFC2822 headers.
Yours, David...
---
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