It's kind of funny that you posted this now, because at the moment I'm actually hacking on the last level of Stripe's Capture the Flag with Low of Solipsism, L's theme, Kira's theme, Near's theme, and Zetsubou Billy looping in the background.
As a side note, has anyone else considered the possibility that it's entirely possible that Light could have simply set up a server which would schedule his victims' deaths for a certain randomised time, then at that time pull up an image of them on X and print their name on one page of the death note which was set up to be indefinitely recycled within the same printer?
At that point it'd have been trivial for him to set up a simple password-protected REST interface which would accept POST requests of victims' names/pictures, and he could have even done all his future recruiting through Tor without taking the risk of using physical mail (and eventually facilitating the recruitment of a local "Kira" in every country, possibly vetting through social media comment histories in a similar fashion to the way he evaluated Mikami).
This setup wouldn't necessarily have been possible, but the wording of the Death Note looks like it might have allowed for it (contingent on how strictly it defined "mind"). At the very least, printing through electronic media would have been worth an experiment.
Assuming the server were reasonably secure, and he'd taken appropriate steps to scale as time passed, the very fact of all that ink on one page would have made it completely illegible, and thus inconclusive evidence. Then, he could have just performed any Kira actions from a virtual machine with an encrypted filesystem, eventually ceasing any direct killings as his army increased in size. It would have scaled beautifully, and he'd have been almost perfectly anonymous.
To put the icing on the cake, if he didn't want to put in so much grunt work, he could have simply configured his server to automatically hook into every well-maintained reputable public listing of convicted violent criminals (as well as listings like the website of America's Most Wanted) and then forgotten about the whole thing. And hell, if the whole thing is automated, why not just put in a line of code that marks each death as being at the hands of the most likely intelligence agency? It would have achieved the same chilling effect ("OMG THE CIA IS KILLING EVERY CRIMINAL IN THE WORLD NOW!"), and thus the same goal, without even realistically risking his own livelihood.
As I recall, part of the rules of the Death Note was that the user has to picture the face of the victim as they write the name, so they have to have a name and a face to kill. I assume a printer doesn't manage to do that, although I do suspect at times that some printers are fairly malevolent.
".. would accept POST requests of victims' names/pictures ... at that time pull up an image of them on X and print their name on one page of the death note ..." (emphasis added)
Like I said, this depends on a bit of a loose definition of "mind", so it might not have worked at all.
Here is the exact wording of the rule in question: "This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person’s face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected."
It specifically appeals to the (somewhat hazy) concept of mind, which would imply the prerequisite of some sort of sentience. However, the rules are not absolute, but rather based on Ryuk's imperfect interpretation (Ryuk didn't know a priori how certain experiments would turn out, like writing causes of death before names with the FBI agents); thus, the use of "mind" itself isn't so important, as it merely implies that Ryuk's experience is limited to sentient beings, which should be obvious.
In other words, there isn't any way to know whether a death note could be used in this way without testing it on a "real" death note (or having the authors write canonical material on it).
I agree that there's not any way to know for sure. I guess I saw the "mind" thing a different way; that it has to be a sentient being thinking about it, but obviously we can't know without one to test on :)
But he wanted the world to know that there was a Kira. His ambition was to be the God of the world. He could anonymously send instructions to the world to do what he wanted only if people knew there was a Kira.
Yeah, that would be a strong disincentive to frame the CIA, since his goal morphed pretty early on from fixing the world to becoming a god. For a more prudent and altruistic death note user, that particular strategy could have fit well into the automation idea.
E-gads, Brain, brilliant! Wait. No. All of the printers I've ever administered would have one of those postscript errors where they print randomly forever and end up killing everyone on earth.
As a side note, has anyone else considered the possibility that it's entirely possible that Light could have simply set up a server which would schedule his victims' deaths for a certain randomised time, then at that time pull up an image of them on X and print their name on one page of the death note which was set up to be indefinitely recycled within the same printer?
At that point it'd have been trivial for him to set up a simple password-protected REST interface which would accept POST requests of victims' names/pictures, and he could have even done all his future recruiting through Tor without taking the risk of using physical mail (and eventually facilitating the recruitment of a local "Kira" in every country, possibly vetting through social media comment histories in a similar fashion to the way he evaluated Mikami).
This setup wouldn't necessarily have been possible, but the wording of the Death Note looks like it might have allowed for it (contingent on how strictly it defined "mind"). At the very least, printing through electronic media would have been worth an experiment.
Assuming the server were reasonably secure, and he'd taken appropriate steps to scale as time passed, the very fact of all that ink on one page would have made it completely illegible, and thus inconclusive evidence. Then, he could have just performed any Kira actions from a virtual machine with an encrypted filesystem, eventually ceasing any direct killings as his army increased in size. It would have scaled beautifully, and he'd have been almost perfectly anonymous.
To put the icing on the cake, if he didn't want to put in so much grunt work, he could have simply configured his server to automatically hook into every well-maintained reputable public listing of convicted violent criminals (as well as listings like the website of America's Most Wanted) and then forgotten about the whole thing. And hell, if the whole thing is automated, why not just put in a line of code that marks each death as being at the hands of the most likely intelligence agency? It would have achieved the same chilling effect ("OMG THE CIA IS KILLING EVERY CRIMINAL IN THE WORLD NOW!"), and thus the same goal, without even realistically risking his own livelihood.