On Wed, 27 Nov 96 19:57:27 EST, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: Yes. On the Internet it may not be immediately evident that the other side of the debate is represented by clueless juveniles with whom you simply wouldn't talk in a physical encounter. Trying to explain the need for key Or people who act like clueless juveniles on the net, while seeming to be nice, rational adults in real life. I hear you fit that description fairly well (I, of course, can only speak for the online side).
I must admit that I am at a loss to understand the heat which Dorothy Denning generates on the Cypherpunks list, which seems to be second only to the heat generated by posting recipes for roast feline in rec.pets.cats.
I've seen other people abused on this mailing list - usually, whoever knows more about cryptography then the regular "lynch mob". "Knows more" == "rants endlessly about how the letters "Q.E.D." and some nonsense about hot air balloons render a cryptosystem unbreakable." I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Denning in person and I asked her about her views on GAK. Her responses made a lot of sense to me. Most businesses, if they thought about it, would prohibit their employers from having information on company computers encrypted so the owner of the computer can't read them. This is just good business sense. Of course it is. And they can do this, today, without any legislation! I believe the commercial version of PGP (Business Edition?) has support for this. This is, of course, totally unrelated to GAK (unless you consider people to be the property of their government, I suppose). This mailing list suffers from the presence of several mentally disturbed juveniles who a) are clearly ignorant of cryptography (e.g. rant about brute force attacks on OTP); b) are cognizant of their utter ignorance and stupidity; c) are envious of anyone who does know what s/he's talking about. d) rant endlessly about Tim May. e) put "(fart)" or "(spit)" after every other word. f) rant about John Gilmore's alleged sexual preferences. (I seem to recall something about Tsutomu Shimomura "stealing" his girlfriend??) g) continually bring up Paul Bradley's "brute forcing a OTP" post, which was quite clearly a simple misunderstanding. [and h) probably rant about me for a while now. Prove me wrong.] So, they feel compelled to harrass anyone who's smarter / more knowledgeable than they are (sometimes using the anonymous remailers) in Ah! That explains the "Timmy (fart) May" posts! *Now* I get it! The continuing verbal abuse of Dr. Denning is no different from the abuse previously heaped on Fred Cohen or David Sternlight or yours truly. The only "continuing verbal abuse" I've seen on this list is you and those "Freedom Knight" twits abusing Tim May and John Gilmore. -- Paul Foley <mycroft@actrix.gen.nz> --- PGPmail preferred PGP key ID 0x1CA3386D available from keyservers fingerprint = 4A 76 83 D8 99 BC ED 33 C5 02 81 C9 BF 7A 91 E8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.