At 11:16 AM 2/18/97 -0500, Alec wrote:
A friend, who, in the CP tradition requested to remain anonymous, and I were doing an informal analysis of those subjects/topics which over the past year generated the most discussion and, by implication, interest on the CP list. Since the list at that time was reportedly unmoderated, we felt some weight should be given to members' interests/desires as measured by their posts, regardless of the applicability to the list topic.
With the exceptions of AP (oh so clearly way off-topic),
Quite to the contrary, AP is NOT "oh so clearly way off-topic." First AP, as I've sketched it uses many of the encryption/digital-signature/verification techniques which are often discussed here and are essentially universally agreed as being on-topic. Secondly, the _PROSPECT_ of AP (or, if you'd like, more generally, the whole field of cryptoanarchy, which disables the State by making it unnecessary and powerless) would be and probably is most of the motivation for the various "let's control encryption" proposals that the US government and others have pushed over the last few years. On the other hand, it is equally clear that while AP is "on-topic," nevertheless it is quite distinctly distasteful to a few people around here who seem to believe that the _political_ and _technical" implications of good encryption can be kept safely separated. It is obvious that you are one of those people. It is equally obvious that you are not honest enough to admit that. So rather than say merely "I don't like it" you try to embellish your claims with "oh so clearly way off-topic." Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com