From: Ray Cromwell <rjc@clark.net>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 95 22:32:46 PDT
To: tcmay@sensemedia.net (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: Appropriate Topics?
In-Reply-To: <ac46a6d9010210043f4a@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <199508040532.BAA08605@clark.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 
> At 8:35 PM 8/3/95, Ray Cromwell wrote:
> 
> >> Good idea.
> >>
> >> I would have some suggestions, but first
> >> an important question:
> >>
> >> Is it to be discussed on the Cypherpunks list?
> >
> >  I don't see why not. It's related to crypto, and it's related to
> >writing code. Or has the cypherpunks list degenerated into an arena
> >where the top subjects are the Waco hearings, paranoid government/NSA
> >rumors, US vs German censorhip, and irrelevent political messages?
> 
> As I see things, talking about Ray's ideas for an object-oriented crypto
> library is a big part of what this list is for. (Ditto for Wei Dai's code,
> for Hal's code, and so on.)
> 
> However, it's a mistake to think that the _only_ thing appropriate for the
> list is talking about code (of either kind). Not that Ray said this.

  Right, I wasn't saying that. I was being sarcastic. I have my mailbox
filled up everyday by noisey messages like that PBS under the
Republican's post (which is old, I saw it months ago), discussions of
the newest conspiracy behind the Randy Weaver incident, etc, without
uttering a peep. I just hit 'd' and go on. So I post a message about
crypto and coding, and all of a sudden I get accused of not being
on topic. I obviously put some time and thought into my message,
I experienced a weird sort of ironic feeling when I saw the comment
(about being off topic) Kinda like, "what is this world coming too
when an annoying 800 line policy analysis forward, and discussions
of the OJ trial are considered 'signal'"

 I don't think the only valuable contribution to c'punks is writing code,
in fact, I'm not writing code, I'm discussing theoretical abstractions.
All kinds of posting types from t-shirts, to meetings, to
political activism are valuable. In order to write code, you must
think about and discuss what you are going to write first.  In order
to fight politically, you must have discussion and debate. What I don't
think is valuable are these massive forwards, subscriptions of cypherpunks
to Web servers, and 2-line followups with snide remarks.

  Decrease the entropy. ;-)


-Ray