Pat Farrel wrote:
Cypherpunks will continue. I'm not so sure about the cypherpunks list.
Without T.C. May, I'm not so sure either, unless somebody else could take up his role as inofficial moderator. In the past, whenever the list has gone astray, T.C.'s analytical posts have set things straight, calmed down flamers and defined the relevance of various topics (to the cp agenda). This kind of moderation, mostly set by example without annoying hardly anyone, is not so easy to do. Completely unmoderated (in this sense), the cp-list might become just another sci.crypt, talk.politics. crypto or alt.security.pgp. And without the visionary posts by T.C. May, the cp-list would be a lot poorer. Certainly, there are other frequent posters with visions, but T.C. May's long and deep penetration into the consequences of true anonymity or pseudonymity has yet to be equalled on the list. (Other verbal and experienced cp's, like Eric H., Perry M. and Hal F., among others, of course have their own sectors of expertize, no less vital or important.) Appendix: The recent boom in signed posts to the cp-list is uninteresting to me. If an argument is good I don't care if the pseudonymous identity (or true, in the sense of a physical identity matching the name in a fingerprint file or whatever) is forged. I would care if an impostor tried to give out disinformation in the name of, for example, Eric H. But I'm sure I would notice the difference. Amamda W.'s latest example of what MIME could be used for was interesting. The only thing that came through to me (Pine 3.91 on a Unix shell account over Ethernet to a Reflection for Windows client) was an underscored 'on' in red pixels. What a wonderful instrument for SHOUTING. Mats