On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 09:50:24PM +0100, Nomen Nescio wrote:
Just keep in mind that AP is a joke among knowledgeable technologists for its unworkability, but a wonderful joke on those who believe it's anything more than a taunt. Total bullshit again. Sure, AP requires anonymous digital cash, but so do most other elements of the cypherpunk vision.
No, no. AP is funny because it's impracticeable. One does not find an assassin exclusively by tracing who paid him to kill. One can (and often does) find him because he makes a mistake in the act of commiting the crime. Which, if I'm reading my history right, is what's hampered the noisy proponents of AP up to this point already. The point is that Bell's theory does a really good job of sorting out the business end of assassination, but it does nothing for actually teaching people how to kill. More importantly, it doesn't teach people how to avoid getting caught. Killing one person, especially a public official, pisses a whole bunch of people off. Those people have a tendency to come find their buddy's killer. No kind of real or threatened assassination can weaken a government in which a majority of the governed people believe. It can only make it seem more righteous and be more strong. -- gabriel rosenkoetter gr@eclipsed.net [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]