From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Sun, 5 Nov 1995 11:17:52 +0800
To: Rich Graves <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: That's not what I wrote!
Message-ID: <acc1683f23021004b7dd@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Some of you may think this is a trivial correction, but I think it
important, albeit bizarre:


At 2:41 AM 11/5/95, Rich Graves wrote:
>On Sat, 4 Nov 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:

>> Rich's (or Chris') points are admirable, but getting more and more
>> irrelevant by the day. The notion of unlinking identity and authorization
>> by separate pieces of identification is another form of "security through
>> obscurity."

No, that is NOT what I wrote. It has been changed, with no indication that
it is not what I wrote.

If you check my original you'll find that what I wrote was:

---

Chris's (or Chris') points are admirable, but getting more and more
irrelevant by the day. The notion of unlinking identity and authorization
by separate pieces of identification is another form of "security through
obscurity."

---

I can guess why Rich "corrected" my post, but he was in error for at least
two reasons. First, because he didn't indicate that he'd corrected me.
Second, because my item did not need correction.

I originally wrote "Chris's," referring to Chris Hibbert, and then thought
about the grammatical rules about forming possessives out of words ending
in "s," and so I added the alternative "(or Chris')".

Perhaps a minor point, and not one I'll lose sleep over, but I think it a
bad thing to _ever_ correct the words of another in quoted material without
indicating so. Editors who worry about typos and misspellings in quoted
material usually put a "[sic]" in the text, mainly, I think, to let
themselves off the hook for letting an error through. (Though I think
another reason is to show graphically the igorance [sic] of the quoted
author.)

This point about Rich's post should not distract from his good comments
that I responded to (or the points in the post that contained this
correction, points I have not yet read).

--Tim May

Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."