(Sorry Perry, I just couldn't resist :-> ) On Tue, 16 Jan 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Sorry, but no.
If you know that your posting is off topic, you shouldn't be posting it, period. Reply in private or some such. The S to N ratio in these parts is dropping rapidly, and its largely the fault of people who think "just one more off topic post can't hurt". One person doing it causes little damage, but unfortunately dozens upon dozens feel the urge every day. What is a toad machine?
In the spirit of John's evolutionary programming post, I submit that cypherpunks and all its components (on topic posts, jya's news reports, sheer paranoia, clueless newbies wanting to join or leave, Klaus! VFP, flamewars, perryflames...) constitute a dynamic and evolving optimizing computational (enough fuzzy words for you?) system of which we are the calculators. Think of toad.com as an input/output box to interface us cells(not to mention a strange attractor for every cook on the net). We have a topic (or goal) of cryptography and anonymity, codewriters to give us something other than politics to talk about, a persistent random noise function to increase diversity, and Perry as a factor of noise limitation. Obviously massively parallel. Is this a genetic algorithm, a semantic net, or some other model? I dunno. As I hear the *plonking* sound of killfiles closing in on me and my inane post, I wonder...where will it go? A topic for further study. ;-)