From: Anonymous lo14 <nobody@lo14.wroc.pl>
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 12:59:19 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:
Message-ID: <bef845b0ecca21ff8860c404f6d17a10@anonymous>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Paul H. Merrill wrote:

>1.  There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Nice cliche. Unfortunately, it doesn't say anything at all.

>2.  So if the quoted material is included it's bad and if it is not
>included it's bad. I think I see the general idea.  Use the rules
>appropriate for complaining about whoever you want to complain about.

You got it half right. If quoted material is included, it's good. If no
quoted material is included, it's bad. If quoted material is included but it
uses the '<< >>' style, it's bad. If a few hundred lines are quoted and six
added, it's bad. This was explained to you twice; once in the post you're 
responding to, and once in that posting with the AOL quotes. You're 
conveniently ignoring that and you're playing dumb with regard to network
etiquette. Maybe you aren't just pretending.

AOL users originally didn't quote at all, they claimed because of software
constraints. AOL users complained and used the fact that their ISP was lame
as an excuse for not getting another one. Other net users complained. AOL 
responded by using the '<< >>' quoting style, which was effectively giving 
the rest of the net the bird. 

If AOL didn't cater to every moron out there, and if AOL didn't keep running
stupid ads with claims like "AOL is the Internet!", and if AOL wasn't
sending things like requests for Real Player all over the net, and if AOL 
didn't do things to deliberately piss everyone else off, they'd have a much 
better reputation. Maybe the first two can be written off as simple 
marketting, and maybe the third can be written off as the results of that 
marketting, but there is no excuse for the fourth. All four of those are
what gets AOL flamed, kill filed, ignored, insulted, and shunned.

>3.  And what I said was along the lines of most were justified, but some
>showed his lack of clues.  Merely being incomprehensible to a person
>means little if the person is a little clue-shy.  Badly written is a bad
>thing.

There were one or two which may have been questionable. The rest of them
fell into his criteria quite well. That's unless you want to claim that
requests for stickers, CDs, and the rest actually express some subtle
political point other than to say "I'm a moron." I ensure you, if "We're
morons" was the point the AOL posters in question were trying to make, their
message came through quite well. Maybe "you got it?" was actually a secret
code.

>> > > I don't know which is worse. At least the people flaming the AOL wimps are
>> > > funny.
>> >
>> > If funny is all you want, may I recommend rec.humor.funny and, in case
>> > you are up on no current events but Clinton, rec.humor.funny.reruns.
>>
>> No, I want a Cypherpunks list which discusses political issues,
>> cryptography, and things related to that. Since this is the Cypherpunks
>> list, we aren't going to censor on the basis of content or origin point.
>>
>And the general degradation of our society to the level that taking the
>moral ground is something to be ridiculed is not a political issue?

I was refering to the spam from AOL, Sixdegrees, the "child molestor"
spammers, and their like. The responses to that, including your's, are 
political speech like you describe. What you're being ridiculed for is, 
almost without fail, defending every AOL weenie and spam site which comes 
onto this list. 

The child molestor spammers may be able to claim that it isn't their fault
because they're using lame software, but if they use swiss cheese they
shouldn't be surprised when the holes are exploited. I'm not saying it's
very ethical to exploit them, but it isn't surprising.

Paul, with regard to the rest of this, it's obvious that you're either
trolling or are yourself severely clue-shy, and you aren't worth a response 
anymore. Your #2 is proof enough of that. #3 is pretty good evidence too.