Re: [Taler] minor changes

[Christian Grothoff]

On 10/14/2015 02:01 PM, Jeff Burdges wrote:
> On Wed, 2015-10-14 at 10:13 +0200, Christian Grothoff wrote:
>> Jeff, if you "make" (by force or suggestion) users "wait" before
>> spending for some 'fixed' time, you achieve nothing as the adversary
>> can just deduct that amount of time.
> 
> That's exactly what I said.

Ok, then you confused me ;-),

>> Now, we could generate a random number, say between 0 and 3600s and
>> "force" a delay in that range.  But this will limit usability and
>> complicate implementations --- and possibly for little benefit as the
>> users may still in practice hold the cash for days or weeks, 
>> especially with withdrawals happening in the background (which is 
>> likely our initial deployment model).
> 
> That's a bad idea too.  We should not force anything, not even
> randomly.   We want Taler to be usable as a payment system and not
> annoying.

Agreed!

>> IMO, the only real safety there will be is safety in numbers, i.e. 
>> many users
> 
> No.  It's clearly bad to take money out and immediately spend it, so
> that should be discouraged.  The question is how.
> 
> It'd be nice if the mint to earns interest on the money in people's
> wallet too, not sure if that's realistic.

Well, given that modern economics seems to trend towards *negative*
interest rates, I'm not sure we want to bank on that ;-).

>> Anyway, my central conclusion has been: yes, we may want to try to
>> educate users about the importance of "carrying" a balance (don't
>> withdraw and spend immediately), but we shouldn't bother to enforce
>> it.
> 
> Yes, but this education should appear in the interface, not merely in
> some documentation that nobody reads.  

Well, just putting it "in the interface" won't be easy. I mean, we could
put it into the terms of service, that way, it's guaranteed to be in the
interface and not to be read ;-).

Realistically speaking, I think the best option is to put it into
edu-promotional articles so that people hear about such caveats at the
same time when they're being enticed to use the software.