From: aba@atlas.ex.ac.uk
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 95 09:22:27 PDT
To: dlv@bwalk.dm.com
Subject: Re: CYPHERPUNK considered harmful
Message-ID: <15408.9509161506@exe.dcs.exeter.ac.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
> Anything posted to the main cypherpunks mailing list and the
> spun-off mailing lists (steganogrpahy, remailers, nym servers, etc)
> could be posted to the newsgroup by maiking one of the mail2news
> gateways a subscriber.

Not sure that would be a good idea, then the news group would *be*
cypherpunks, and the cypherpunks list would have effectively become a
USENET newsgroup (albiet with some mail2news stuff behind).  For me
part of the fun of cypherpunks is that things get discussed here which
don't get discussed anywhere else, things happen here 1st, rc4 leak,
that kind of thing, if it's happening crypto wise, it's on
cypherpunks.

You might lose some of the community feel to it if it was gated
straight to a USENET group, I mean at that point the majordomo list
server would have become a news2mail gateway.

I was thinking more that you would have a separate newsgroup, but
perhaps my feelings are more of the elitist stuff Peter was referring
to, still I see no need to change a good thing, can't the two co-exist
separately, Peter's stated aims didn't co-incide with my perception of
the cypherpunks lists goals.  ie the list (modulo cpunks write code
wars) seems to me to be about people who share the common goal of free
crypto for everyone, discussing how to go about this, writing code to
help it happen, and analysis of what the government is up to where it
infringes on cypherpunk goals.  I think Peter's goals sounded more
amenable to a forum which was a) easily accessible, and b) had a
stated aim of a kind of cypherpunk technology transfer forum.

Perhaps I am being eliteist, so shoot me, but I like cypherpunks the
list the way it is!

For your convenience reading cpunks there are a couple of solutions to
the deluge of mail problem: there used to be a nntp server at
nntp.hks.net which nntp served cypherpunks as a newsgroup (I haven't
used this in a while as it appeared to be down or empty or somthing
for a while), there are filters which you can set up to put all cpunks
traffic in a separate mbox, and there are a couple of digest forms of
cpunks around also.  The filter won't help your down load time, the
digest (I think Hal offers / was offering an encrypted digest which
would also be compressed) and the nntp server might.

> > Reckon cypherpunks as a group has enough readers to hmm, push through
> > a vote for group creation, if the majority thought it was a useful
> > exercise.  A group soley for what?  cypherpunks technology, social
> 
> No vote is needed to create an alt.group: something like
> 'alt.security.cypherpunks' or 'alt.privacy.cypherpunks'. Just post a proposal
> to alt.config, post many articles seconding the proposal, let it be discussed
> for a week, then issue a newgroup.

Me, I quite like the cypherpunk name, I reckon it would be best from a
distribution pov to get a big8 group, as you discuss.

> To create a newsgroup in the 'big 8' (comp., sci., etc) one needs to
> deal with unpleasant control freaks like group-advice, news.groups,
> and David Lawrence.  It takes up to 6 months. On the other hand,
> many sites that have Usenet have comp.* but not alt.*. Their users
> would still have to use the mailing lists or find another site. To
> create something like comp.security.cypherpunks (I think this would
> be the most appropriate place, since there's already c.s.announce,
> c.s.misc, and c.s.firewalls), talk to the group-advice cabal.

I'll let other people argue about newsgroups names.

Adam