F|Adam Shostack writes: |# Good question, but a quick modification allows for effective |# bootstrapping. If I want to start consulting for Amalgameted |# Consolodated, I can offer them a 10 free questions deal to bootstrap |# things with. Mallet can only cheat if my offer was broadcast. F|Wei Dai writes: |> This scheme doesn't quite work. (Let's call Amalgameted Bob, to keep |> names short.) Bob can create a new, unlinkable pseudonym and give the same |> offer to Carol under the new pseudonym. Then, Bob acts as Mallet and |> passes messages back and forth between Alice and Carol. F|If all Alice's prospective customers are also resellers on the side, then I |agree that she has a problem. But how realistic is a market scenario in which |a new supplier cannot positively identify some legitimate end consumers of a |product or service ? (I'm ignoring cases in which the market for the |product or service is only just being forged.) This strikes me as rather |implausible, although I don't claim to have devoted a great deal of thought |to it. Hey, Wei, you overlooked something rather simple: suppose Alice wasn't any good? Or suppose she was good, in general, but came up wrong at a bad time? Whereas she might have corrected it in time if it had been her client and she had direct access, Mallet gets hit broadside out of ignorance-- and the resulting delay from the extra link in the chain could easily be enough to ruin him. :----------:----------:----------:----------:----------:----------:----- : furi@the-matrix.com | pgp-public-key@demon.co.uk | LIVE LION ALERT : 2.6.2 1024/C1225CE1 | 38 11 7C 59 FB F3 7C C0 F7 E9 67 1F AF B8 2D 94 PGP: When it's none of their damned business. --- þ SPEED 2.00 #2640 þ