From: Jim choate <ravage@bga.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 94 13:05:57 PDT
To: ebrandt@jarthur.cs.hmc.edu (Eli Brandt)
Subject: Re: (fwd) Re: BSD random() - any good (source included)
In-Reply-To: <9407081854.AA23741@toad.com>
Message-ID: <199407082005.PAA05361@zoom.bga.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> 
> First, how were they crypto-related?  They dealt with statistical tests
> for distinguishing good crypto-weak RNGs from bad ones.  Anything that
> even hopes to be a strong RNG will pass this sort of tests.
>
Even in your rebuttal you use 'crypto-weak' implying they are crpypto
related. I would appreciate a clarification on exactly what c-punks
means by 'crypto related'....

Seems perfectly clear to me, but obviously there is a major difference of
opinion here.

> Second, if people don't have Usenet, telnet, or ftp access (any of which
> could have been used to retrieve these articles), they can get accounts
> that do what they want.  If you want to tide them over in the interim,
> you could post a pointer to sci.math, with the comment that you would be
> happy to mail a copy to anyone who can't get the articles by other means.
>
Yes, I could do that if I were so inclined. I am not. Seems to me that just
forwarding it and letting that be that is a much better way than filling up
the mailing list with bitches about what you think somebody else should do.
Bottem line is that at this point there is no clear cut 'standard' that I 
have seen agreed on. Hell, I haven't even seen any discussion over it beyond
a bunch of polemics over what people like and don't like, which are not 
in any way necessarily related to what people need or want. One of the 
biggest problems w/ the list at this point is the range of expertise that
is present. With such a broad experience base almost any post is going to
piss somebody off. The real question is whether it is worth the time to 
reply to them (in general I hold it isn't) rather than just hitting 'd'
(which I recommend if you don't like it) and forgetting (even forgoing the
obviously popular habit of acidic replies). 

If you look at this rationaly all the discussion about pedophilia, eff,
nsa policy, etc. is really not directly related to crypto and coding. If
the main theme of this list is really 'c-punks write code' then my 
forwarding of the rng discussion (w/ code) is more appropriate to the topics
at hand than any of this other stuff. A very good analogy of how this type
of logic inversion is prevelant is the move to ban guns (no, I do NOT
want any replies to this particular topic, it is for example only!!!!)
by looking at the 2nd Amendment. If taken logicaly the reason for the 
amendment is to allow individuals to protect themselves against all
threats including the government. If followed through then any move to 
ban military weapons is un-constitutional and moves to ban non-military 
weapons are constitution - obviously not the tact taken.

The bottem line is it was crypto related, was in reference to source code,
and therefore fit the charter of this group.


>    Eli   ebrandt@hmc.edu
> 
>