blech, network problems lost a post i made earlier today. about micropayments privacy / motivational issues regarding some comments seth at aigeek made. but i’m too lazy to type it all back up. some cool links on google: anonymous micropayments, untraceable electronic cash, digital cash). paypal is a digital cash system that people have been adapting recently as an adhoc micropayment system. millicent is a real micropayment system, and has been running in japan but hasn’t debuted in the us (tech specs). ecash bought the digicash patents and has launched in germany. ecash allows blind transactions, and basically functions as digital money (the financial institution deploys ecash, which can be used w/ enabled merchants or for p2p (person to person) transactions). ideally, ecash would integrate a full micropayment system, retaining blind transaction functionality, but incorporating micropayment system functionality (content handling (pricing/delivery), etc.).
installed aolserver. was relatively painless. much less so than wrapping my head around ridiculous tcl syntax. oh wait, i already bitched about that. python otoh makes a lot more sense.