From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 18:54:07 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Let the Snake Oil Flow
Message-ID: <ad5285b81e0210042b99@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 4:22 AM 2/23/96, sameer wrote:
>        All valid points, but when the likes of Nathaniel Borenstein &
>his cohorts use the failures of snake oil to discredit all
>cryptography, then we have a problem. (Not to say that Netscape is
>selling snake oil... but I figure that FV would capitalize on a snake
>oil failure to further their anti-cryptography agenda just as they
>have used the Netscape RNG bug)

Please don't misunderstand...I'm not _approving_ of snake oil, just
suggesting that maybe the list shouldn't go into paroxysms every time
someone reveals their Captain Midnight Decoder Ring crypto system.

Sci.crypt used to be wracked with such issues...I don't look at it much
these days, so I don't know if it still is. But the Cypherpunks list has
become the de facto place to debate new crypto systems, which we can look
at as an achievement as well as a curse, so it's inevitable that new
flavors of snake oil will be sold here every few weeks.

--Tim May

THE X-ON CONGRESS:  INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT, by Steve
Russell, American Reporter Correspondent....You motherfuckers in Congress
have dropped over the edge of the earth this time... "the sorriest bunch
of cocksuckers ever to sell out the First Amendment" or suggesting that
"the only reason to run for Congress these days is to suck the lobbyists'
dicks and fuck the people who sent you there," ....any more than I care
for the language you shitheads have forced me to use in this
essay...Let's talk about this fucking indecent language bullshit.