From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Well, I was not invited to join the elite and secret coderpunks list, but I still have some thoughts on coding and, especially, on the opportunities offered by Java.
As far as I know, the coderpunks list is neither secret nor elite. I joined it about a month ago, andd there wasn't any problem. Just send mail to majordomo@toad.com saying "subscribe coderpunks". It's just as easy as cypherpunks. According to majordomo, coderpunks has 355 subscribers, compared to 1284 for cypherpunks. These numbers are hardly representative of an elite list. The biggest difference between the lists is volume. Some days coderpunks gets a dozen or more messages, but for the last two or three days for example there haven't been any at all. The other difference of course is that coderpunks is for technical discussions. Where philosophy comes up it is more in terms of issues of security and reliability than politics. I do share Tim's concern about the political views of coderpunks subscribers. Despite the "punks" in the name it seems to be somewhat more of a mainstream group. Nevertheless I am determined to act as though the group favors unlimited access to privacy tools by individuals and to post under that assumption. If it comes to the point that someone complains there may have to be some air clearing but I don't think it's likely to come up. If the archives at hks.net ever come back people could take a look and see if they would be interested in subscribing. Mostly the discussions are pretty dry. A lot of them are on specific issues that are of interest probably to only a few people. It remains to be seen really whether the list can sustain itself. This has been the problem in the past with offspring lists. Cypherpunks continues to have a lot of vitality. What I object to most is the back and forth arguments people get into. I don't mind reading one message off-topic, but to have the thread drag on for days, with dozens of messages, is wasteful. People should just make their points and let them stand. They shouldn't feel they have to keep coming back and refuting the other guy. Hal