At 4:27 PM -0700 7/15/96, Mark O. Aldrich wrote:
One of the blessings of c'punks was that it was not 'worthy' of the time of several professional flame-baiters who are fairly well-known on the 'Net, in particular, David Sternlight. Now, however, that seems to have changed. If everyone thought things were weird around here with Detweiler, just wait until you see DS's stuff....
And another thing. The reason I've not joined this group earlier had nothing to do with "worthy". It was because after discussion a year or so ago, Tim May suggested to me via e-mail that it would just generate a lot of controversy, at a time when people were so polarized that they couldn't hear each other and thus my presence here would serve no useful purpose. I took Tim's advice and stayed out. I thought that by now the more extreme dogmatists among you would have matured, especially given the evidence generated by the real world about how things are and are going if nothing rational and effective is done to stop it. Some of you have met me at Crypto and found I'm not the devil incarnate. Some of you know that we share many (but not all) policy views in common. The presenting symptom for my joining now was a copy of a post by an MIT professor I respect to this group, which a colleague sent me. Perhaps I was too hasty in my belief that we can begin to hear each other. David