starrd writes:
On Thu, 7 Sep 1995, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Was this really needed?
Yes, it is my bet that there are some patriots in this list.
Pardon, but I don't care. There are also several socialists on this list. Shall I help them out by posting a long tract on the labor theory of value? There are several religious christians here. Shall we begin to discuss the divinity of Jesus? There are also some Jews here -- we could have a bunch of religious debates, and the atheists could kick in some mud, too. There are lots of folks here who wear shoes -- perhaps we could discuss the merits of different brands.
The desire to protect one's privacy is a very "patriot" thiung to want to do.
But this isn't a list for "patriot"s.
CyPherpunks appears to be a lot of peole who are against big brothert government, and quite probably for restoring the constitution...am I right?
Cypherpunks is a list for people interested in cryptography and its impact on privacy, law, society, etc. It is not a list for people to discuss libertarianism, socialism, constitutionalism, whether the president has just flown over you ranch in a black helicopter, whether the CIA was responsible for brainwashing your pet rat Algernon, whether David Koresh was the messiah, or how many members of the Federal Protective Service it takes to change a paper shredder. There are lots of places to discuss these topics on the net. There is only Cypherpunks for discussing the overall impact of cryptography on society, and this is a fairly good place to discuss crypto algorithms and the like because it is (amazingly) fairly high s/n compared to, say, sci.crypt. Please help out by not polluting one of the few places to discuss these issues with stuff you can talk about anywhere. Perry