At 1:26 PM 8/26/94 -0700, Hal wrote:
With Observers you can have off-line cash that is as secure as on-line but without the costs of on-line validation. As a vendor, which would you rather accept: off-line cash where you rely on legal sanctions to track down cheaters; on-line cash where you call the bank and verify it for every transaction; or off-line cash where you can validate it right there locally without checking with any bank? Depending on the costs which the Observer adds to the digital wallet, that latter choice might be the most attractive.
It might be said that you haven't a digital wallet without an Observer, if it's not horribly computation-intensive... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923