From: tallpaul@pipeline.com (tallpaul)
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 22:47:13 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: A little skepticism over $60 billion
Message-ID: <199601091428.JAA16977@pipe9.nyc.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Jan 08, 1996 21:16:20, 'Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>' quoted
dang@netcom.com's post about a S.F. Examiner story, to wit: 
 
 
>> 
>>NEW YORK U.S. companies will lose as much as 30 percent of the $200  
>>billion in U.S. computer system sales expected 
> 
 
B. Stewart went on to remark: 
 
>OK, so crypto export laws will cost.... 
 
The phrase "as much as" does not mean "will," as in: 
 
"Lose as much as 14 pounds this month with the newly discovered miracle
diet...." or 
 
"Studies show as many as 1 in 4 students will be raped while ...." 
 
The phrases use weasel words that say little about the real nature of the
real world. How much money will companies *likely* lose, how many *likely*
pounds lost, how many *likely* rapes? None of the "studies" say. 
 
Assuming the studies are reliable in the first place, the only thing the
weasel words state accurately is the potential maximum, E.G. 
 
"You can starve yourself all you want and the universe will die a heat
death before any human being will ever lose more than 14 pounds on our diet
and you may not lose anything...." or 
 
"No matter how much we fudge with the English language's definition of
'rape' for political reasons, we can't get estimates above 1 in 4 ...." 
 
Now we know that U.S. companies will lose something off the government's
anti-export policies. But will we really see 30% of sales lost by
purchasing agents saying "Gee, we'd like to buy IBM mainframe's and Dell
micros and Windows and unix but we won't because there is no secure
encryption program in the world that will run on the IBM or U.S. micros or
under the U.S. OS's"? 
 
Let's fight the export laws over exporting quality crypto without accepting
advertising hype from any industry. 
 
-- 
     -- tallpaul 
     -- Any political analysis that fits on a bumper sticker is wrong.