From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 14:56:39 +0800
To: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: noise levels
In-Reply-To: <ad69acd619021004de89@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <199603112321.SAA29939@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Timothy C. May writes:
> At 4:55 PM 3/11/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> >Noise levels have been rising fast again. I encourage people to think
> >about whether things are on topic before they post.
> >
> 
> I again encourage Perry to consider learning how to use filters.

I again point out that without artificial intelligence, filtering is
very difficult. I already filter, but at best this eliminates about
one third to one half of the noise. The rest would require that the
filters actually understand the messages, which they cannot.

> While I happen to be uninterested in many of the topics being discussed, I
> realize that one man's noise is another man's signal.

Why have thousands of mailing lists and newsgroups on the internet if
everything belongs everywhere? Why not just have one big one and
"filter"?

The answer is obvious. It wouldn't work.

> Besides, the C coders and crypto mavens created their own protected list,
> the Coderpunks list, and this is where Perry and others can presumably find
> the high S/N discussion of Java, Diffie-Hellman, applets, DES, and memory
> leaks that he so craves.

I see we are becoming contemptuous of those who actually write pay
attention to the nuts and bolts of cryptography, eh?

Tim, why don't you go off with Jim Bell and the rest and start a
mailing list devoted to nothing but random chit-chat?

Perry