I think gmaxwell is wrong on Darkcoin because the coinjoin model is centralised whereas Darkcoin has decentralised coinjoin. So, I can't see that it is pointless. His support for ring signatures is academic in the sense of "nice in theory but frankly not workable in real life". Those that have experience ring sigs know how buggy and alpha the software. Therefore, for those of us living in the real world - go the darkcoin.  Gmaxwell and his bitcoin devs should realise that the IRS has already mapped out all significant bitcoin addresses to social security numbers, whilst they talk debate the alpha tech of ring sigs but yet are doing NOTHING to fix. The bitcoin dev team are looking more pathetic to me everyday.