From: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 19:18:47 +0800
Subject: No Subject
Message-ID: <QQadzw27893.199602221112@relay3.UU.NET>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 01:11 PM 2/21/96 -0800, tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote:

>* Coderpunks -- number theory, DES, Haval, C/C++/Java, IETF and TCP/IP
>stuff, digital signatures, crypto libraries and APIs, Diffie-Hellman,
>BSAFE, RSAREF, etc.
>
>* Cypherpunks -- nuclear bomb triggers, why women are more free under the
>will of Allah than in Western decadent societies, movie reviews, SS
>Obergruppenfuhrer Zimmermann, Zambian newspapers, alien bases in
>Antarctica, Himalayan treks, etc.

Pretty much, yep. The only part of this that really annoys me is that there
isn't currently any real place to talk about actual crypto matters from a
user's point of view.

Sure, I can carve out space for myself on my own Web pages to talk about the
things that interest/concern me - and I have - but it's tough to find
anyplace to _learn_ in any way except random experimentation. And sure, if I
could read C well enough to puzzle through the remailer code and had the
UNIX knowledge necessary to compile and run one myself, for instance, I
could answer all my questions about remailer operation. But I don't. And I
wish I didn't have to. Unfortunately, there seems to be a huge gap between
the tiny handful of people who create the stuff and the bulk of us who are
merely interested in using it.

At this point, I acknowledge that I'm reinventing Alan's screed about how
"cypherpunks teach" should be as true as "cypherpunks write code". If more
people don't work on bridging the aforementioned gap, smart people of good
will who happen to be occupied enough with other things not to be able (or
interested) to become themselves good programmers and cryptographers are SOL.
 

-- 
Bruce Baugh
bruce@aracnet.com
http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce