From: an31122@anon.penet.fi
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 03:18:07 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Words, words, words
Message-ID: <9310281013.AA23863@anon.penet.fi>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Fellow cpunks, 
	I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I enjoy a bit of flame
war.  I genuinely do not care what happens to Mr. BatGuano ("if that
IS your name"), so a clever insult once in a while is fun to read.  If
Detweiler really IS Boxx, so what?  If he says that you're a moron, so
what?  If someone creates a second name to use when they're mad and
want to flame, that's their business.  What's important is the ideas
in someones head, not the name they use.  While I'm interested in
dining cryptographers, I also find it enlightening to listen to Tim
May or Duncan Frissell talk politics.  I don't see any reason to limit
this list to discussions of random number generators.  It would be a
terrible waste to ignore the collected wisdom and experience of the
group because it was marginally off topic.  If people would have
simply ignored Detweiler rather than answering his tomes, he would
have gone away sooner.
	It only takes a few lines to see whether a post will be
interesting or not.  If not, DON'T READ IT.  Forget it, trash it,
delete it.  Most importantly, don't get upset about it.  It's just
words; they can't hurt you.  I give Detweiler a paragraph or two.  We
all know who is worth listening to and who isn't.  Once you've figured
out what Detweiler, rjc, or Boxx have to say, don't bother reading
them anymore.  That's all there is to it.
	My point, I guess, is that net.talk isn't all that different
from real.talk.  There are real people on the other end of the line,
regardless of the names that they use.  Some are worth listening to,
some are not.  It's not hard to tell them apart, and not hard to
ignore the wierdos.  Talk of censoring people, charging for posts, or
sharply defining the scope of the group all seem to make things worse
rather than better.  It's silly to talk of the way that things "should
be".  It's far more productive (and easier!) to figure out how to get
what you want from the way that they already are.

				See you in the Zone,
				Tyrone Slothrop (RocketMan)
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