ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:

...

While I appreciate your...uh...appreciation, let me remind you that part of my "pronouncements" are that the current political and social system is sick. Many people around here seem to agree with this assessment. What I advocate is a comparatively simple change in the rules that could have the effect of vastly changing the way things are done. Whether these changes are in "the best interests of the inhabitants of this nation" is still an open question, and many people have agreed with me on this matter.

Since corrupt officials are likely to have more anonymous cash that phreedom phighters, guess who will win.

Also, think about this: lots of people have someone they'd like to assassinate but do not actually do it because of lack of anonymity and associated hassles (like dealing with assassins non-anonymously, abundance of traces, possible confession of the assassin and so on). With your assassination clearinghouse these hassles go away. I think it would present an excellent prospect for reducing the population.

Igor, have you ever read novels about British life in 18th century? (I'm using this as an example because every good Russian reads them. :-) Have you noticed how exaggeratedly polite they were to each other, in comparison to Americans today? Do you know why? Because back then, every gentle person was armed and might use violence in sufficiently provoked. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

On Sun, 9 Jun 1996 ichudov@algebra.com wrote: Fascinating stuff about polite gun-owners deleted.

If we think about anonymous computer contractors and anonymous employers, the interesting question is how to maintain reputations and how to check references.

I think it comes down to "who watches the watchers". Do you trust Business Week's ratings of so and so management consultant? Do you trust The Cypherpunk Guide To Business Magazines's ratings of Business Week's ratings of consultants? How about Joe Usenet's assessment of the above on misc.stocks.slander? This begins to resemble the problem of the pgp Web of Trust. This problem already exists in the non-anonymous flesh-and-paper world. Who do you trust to tell you who to trust (and so on)? Do you trust journalists who take ad money? Presumably, once a decent profit model evolves for net publishing, there will be some incentive for customers to give you their opinions, and for others to gather them. Do you have a clear path of trust (or faith or some other quality) proceeding either to them or to their stated customers? I forsee many variations of trust webs to determine the quality of ratings. Eg. I am 50% in agreement with Hal's taste in ice cream, 10% in agreement with Declan's and 75% with the Economist's. I have signed this with my key. Do the math to see how much you trust my assessment of Tim Horton's chocolate pecan fudge. You decide how to do the math. Tim and Hal had some really nice articles on this last month ---Begin PGC Comment--- KeyID 0xF00 C1: Payment-Statement: I have not been payed to make the above endorsement. C2: Coercion-Statement: I have not been coerced into making the above statement ---Begin PGC Signature--- 13235097u13251-9233u5v123rsdf;lkhjs -882351932u4v ---End PGc Signature--- Pretty Good Commentary is a copyrighted trademark of KeyID 0xF00 ---End PGC Comment--- Reminds me that I should grab an AI book real soon now. Another thing one could use is a pseudonymous open-booking protocol (I didn't read Eric's post, so I don't know if it's any good) to determine if alleged customers are the real article. Offhand, I'd venture a guess that we'd see the above problem again, which hints at the importance of a good generalized trust or agreement calculus (and calculator) for formalized comments. I don't want to imagine how bad the traffic will get on IETF mailing lists to standardize trust comments.

ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:

Actually, here in Oklahoma almost everyone has a gun (not that they use them though, but many carry). Incidentally, everyone including most down to earth truckers is exceedingly polite. When I went to NYC first time, I was shocked how less polite people were in comparison with Oklahomans.

Are the folks in Flushing, NY or around Avenue of the Americas allowed to possess firearms? :)

I'm not quite in Flushing, but: it's possible to keep one at home, but a carry licence is impossible.

Russians in Russia are even less polite, and guns are outlawed.

Russians in Russia are very polite to boys wearing leather and riding BMW's. New Yorkers are sometimes polite to black men wearing lots of gold jewelry. Maybe they suspect something.

Maybe your hint really makes sense and after initial depopulation the citizens will use different, more considerate, ways of dealing with each other.

I think it would take very few 'depopulation' incidents to improve manners. Humans, like rats, are very good at learning from others' mistakes.

Or, alternatively, maybe people will hide behind anonymity most of the time to avoid becoming vistims of jimbell's clearinghouse. Really, it is very hard to assasssinate username@alpha.c2.org, although it is possible to hire nyms to write programs and pay them hard earned digicash.

There are some very interesting discussions in Bruno Solnik's book I mentioned about the worth of anonymity v. reputation in financial markets. I wonder if it would be possible for government officials to hide behind anonymity. Everyone will hate a certain gov't official, but no one will know who s/he is?

If we think about anonymous computer contractors and anonymous employers, the interesting question is how to maintain reputations and how to check references.

That's an interesting question - want to think about a protocol? --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

On Sun, 9 Jun 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

I think it would take very few 'depopulation' incidents to improve manners. Humans, like rats, are very good at learning from others' mistakes.

A brief survey of history reveals that humans are more anxious to repeat the mistakes of their peers and forebearers than to learn from them. It's not that they don't learn, but fail to pass the wisdom on to their progeny. Not to mention that the average retention span is quite low. Or you could exhume the old argument that stupid people shouldn't breed. :-) ...Paul

On Sat, 8 Jun 1996, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:

jim bell wrote:

...

While I appreciate your...uh...appreciation, let me remind you that part of my "pronouncements" are that the current political and social system is are in "the best interests of the inhabitants of this nation" is still an open question, and many people have agreed with me on this matter.

Since corrupt officials are likely to have more anonymous cash that phreedom phighters, guess who will win.

There are more phreedom phighters, and their assets aren't as public as the officials.

Also, think about this: lots of people have someone they'd like to assassinate but do not actually do it because of lack of anonymity and associated hassles (like dealing with assassins non-anonymously, abundance of traces, possible confession of the assassin and so on).

Most people don't kill because they have a built in psychological block (call it morals if you wish) against killing in cold blood. This is what makes people like snipers so puzzling and in some sense romantic to the average person. They _can't_ at a deep level consider calmly and dispassonately blowing anothers brains all over the wall. Most murders in this country are either down in the heat of passion, by psychotics/ sociopaths or by professionals, who usually fall into one of the previous catagories. It is almost ridicoulously simple to kill someone in a relatively untraceable fashion. Any person of average intelligence can do a little research (say about 3 hours at a decent (non-chicago) library) and spend an hour or two in thought and come up with a way to target a non- to moderately public figure with out getting caught. I can give you 4 right off the top of my head that have a reasonable chance of sucess, and very little chance of discovery. People like *A* president, or similar high profile fiugre would be much tougher target, but by no means impossible. Contracting with a "professional killer" is really very silly as I would bet many of them are unreliable and untrustworthy (outside of Mafia/Gang related killers--they are (IANAE) more like soldiers, doing it for "country"-- than freelance assians.) There may be professional hitmen that are reliable, but they tend to be out of the price range of normal people. Life ain't TV. Petro, Christopher C. petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow@crash.suba.com

On Tue, 11 Jun 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:

snow <snow@smoke.suba.com> writes: ...

...

It is almost ridicoulously simple to kill someone in a relatively untraceable fashion. Any person of average intelligence can do a little research (say about 3 hours at a decent (non-chicago) library) and spend an hour or two in thought and come up with a way to target a non- to moderately public figure with out getting caught. I can give you 4 right off the top of my head that have a reasonable chance of sucess, and very little chance of discovery.

Please do - thank you.

With purely academic interest,

These methods assume a reasonable amount of stealth and intelligence on the part of the murder, meaning things like choosing the appropriate time of day to carry out the attack. Also notice that some of these methods cause more "collateral" damage than others. These are also not particluarly suited to a highly placed political victim. Those (as noted) take more work. Remember AT ALL TIMES That you MUST be worried about forensic evidence. Hair, skin, finger prints, blood etc. TAKE PRECAUTIONS. Also note that I have never tried any of these, nor has anyone I know--at least to my knowlege. They seem like they would work, but are not, of course, guarenteed to work. Some generic advise that generally applies in all circumstances: 1) Get scruffy before hand if possible. Don't shave or wash/comb your hair or bush your teeth. Wear _decent_ clothes aquired from a second hand store in colors you don't normally wear (don't deliberately clash, it is too obvious). If you normally wear shoes, wear boots and vice versa. Of course dispose of the clothing as soon as possible after the event, and clean yourself up to whatever is normal for you. Don't bother growning a beard, it takes too long, and it's sudden appearance and removal could be questioned. 1) Wire/tape 6 to 8 large cans of hair spray around the tail pipe ofvictims car. This assumes 3 things-- 1) Victim drives, 2) You have access to Victims car (best time is around 4 or 5 in the morning) 3) You are sure that the victim will be in the car. Most hairspray is at least somewhat flamable, and when heated by a tail pipe will go off like a bomb. Thourghly clean the cans before hand to remove any possible remaining prints and/or other forensic evidence. This works best in a suburb or a rural area where a) people are less likely to be out and about at night, and b) are more likely to own and regularly use an automobile. 2) Aquire a .22 caliber air pistol, clean thoroughly. Get a cigar and boil it down to get a small amount of "pure" nicoteen. This is a decently potent poison. Pack a portion of this into the cup end of a pellet. Wear latex gloves On a busy street approach your victim from behind as he/she is walking. Shoot him/her (expose the pellet gun as little as possible. Keep walking steadily. Randomly turn corners, dropping the gun in the trash at the first opportunity. Gloves a couple of blocks later. This would work best in a LARGE city. I don't know if you can get a guarenteed lethal dose of nicoteen into that cup, but you could substitute a more lethal poison at a risk of more tracability. This assumes that there are no cops in the immediate area. It works on the idea that the small sound of a pellet gun going off will be lost in the general traffic noise, and that people will be more attentive to the victim than to random people. 3) This one is definately NOT for the squemish, or the weak. If the victim lives alone, or is likely to be alone at home for a length of time, enter the home. Kill the victim using some sort of poison or other bloodless method (strangulation, breaking the neck etc) Carry the body to the bathroom and drain as much blood from the body as possible. This may take a while, so use the time to strip as much flesh from the bones as possible, being careful NOT to mess up the place any more than necessary, as you will have to clean it. If the victim has a garbage disposal, run as much of the flesh down it as possible. When as much blood and flesh has been disoposed of as possible, put the rest in small trash bags. Wash _everything_ as much as possible. Put these trash bags into a second set of trash bags. Put these trash bags into used military duffel bags purchased (one at a time) at different military surplus stores. If you have been able to get most of the flesh off, it would take much, and with most of the blood gone, the weight will be gone, so you should be able to carry the rest of the body off. Deposit the different body parts around the city/state in random dumpsters etc. The wider you spread the parts the better. 4) Turn your victim into the BAFT as the leader of an "End time" right wing gun owning Cult preaching tax evasion & armed revolt against the Zionist occupation government. Ok, I could think of 4 last night, but one slipped my mind tonight. Before anyone kicks off into my ass about this, for four years of my life I was paid to be prepared to kill at any time, and boredom can lead to some very strange conversations. Petro, Christopher C. petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow@crash.suba.com