[azernik]

To start with - I absolutely agree with you about what should be done now. I just thought it was worth explaining why the system came to be the way it is now.

And i don't mean to imply that the computer scientists of yesteryear were somehow more honest people. It's just a lot less likely for someone to cheat in a group of a few hundred, where everyone is at most one degree of social separation from everyone else, and everyone is in any case very similar in background. Harder to screw over someone you see at all the conferences than some random stranger online, and if you do there will be social, not just legal, consequences.