Moltar Ramone <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu> wrote:
On Wed, 11 Sep 1996, John Anonymous MacDonald wrote: [snip]
So basically this guy is a mathematician/artist trying to pretend he's an anarchist.
Like... oh... I dunno... una-something... :-) To be an "anarchist" has nothing to do with violence, necessarily, though. Ghandi was an anarchist, of course, as are many other people (such as myself) who disclaim violence as a tactic.
So we have a guy, probably with an education in mathematics, who likes abstract art. Not what would generally be considered a political figure. But there's something else there - something that doesn't want to be seen, something that is very strongly law&order, something that doesn't understand the anarchy of the net, and fears it.
Disagree strongly. Are you aware of the source of the name 'hipcrime'? It's from John Brunner's novel _Stand_On_Zanzibar_ (A _great_ book, btw), and describes a cynical, hipster-societal dropout philosophy (or at least style) that is inclined to look at people as no more than sheep. Applying this to the 'net populace is perhaps (I hesitate somewhat to apply the term) misanthropic, but not necessarily law & order. Again, unabomber comparisons are obvious.
I'm not so sure about that. I suspect in Kaczynski's case it was attention deficit disorder and/or severe depression that drove him out into the woods where no one would bother him - he didn't like interruptions and shunned visitors. Kaczynski blamed "leftists" and "technologists" for his ills and primarally (though not exclusively) took out his rage on them. This guy is just plain arrogent. He believes he's right, and if you don't agree with him and let him do whatever he wants, then to him you are unimportant scum. ("weak-minded soul" to quote him directly.) What I don't understand is, why he bothered attacking the remailers. Since he obviously knows how to forge mail headers and write unix cgi scripts, and he wasn't trying to conceal the source address, using the remailers did him no good. Also, he could have just downloaded the remailer software and run it. So maybe he really is Co$...