Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Sorry. Everyone seems to be assuring me that I should know her and that she's a longtime friend of Eric's, but I must admit that I've no memory of anything she's done. I believe people who say she's the origin of the term "cypherpunk", but I must admit to still having no real knowledge of who this person is.
In any case, I apologize for my ignorance and will try be on less of a hair trigger in the future. However, following a long stream of Wired interviews of bizarrely marginal community members, I simply assumed this was Yet Another.
And I apologize to Perry for not being even more elliptic in my questioning of his language. It's jus that Jude is pretty well known out here, at least by the group that was at the early meetings, and so.... One thing I've found is that the electronic age has made me more careful about insulting specific people. The Kibo Effect, call it. (Hi, Kibo!) General insults, or political statements, are of course kosher, but making any kind of snide remarks about Joe Foobar, for example, will often result in these comments being fed to the at person. (I recently made some comments here on this list about a public Net person, whom I do not believe is or was subscribed...a few days later I got a note from this person objecting to my characterization of his views! I am assuming someone forwarded the traffic to him.) So, if I see a "marginal" person interviewed by "Wired," I am circumspect about commenting on them...they might be on the list, they might actually be doing something important, etc. (Like that unknown guy "Andreeson," or somesuch...I don't have any idea what he's done, and I never heard of him before last year, but all the hype-zines are putting him on their covers, so he must be doing something interesting :).) Anyway, many of the folks "Wired" and the other hype-zines interview are indeed strange and marginal. To be expected. There are only so many of the standard "talking heads" that can be interviewed (the stand-bys like Engelbart, Nelson, Toffler, Pournelle, etc.). Frankly, I'd rather see a story on "Zippies," about which I'd heard nothing substantive before, than Yet Another Ted Nelson Story, about which I've heard entirely too much over the past decade. (Not to insult Ted--Hi, Ted!--but there are only so many ways to tell the Xanadu story...time for new approaches.) I know some folks in the crypto/PGP community who were quite miffed that such "marginal" folks as Eric Hughes, John Gilmore, and I were featured on the cover of "Wired" 1.2 two years ago...they naturally saw themselves as being more worthy, as perhaps they were....such is life. The "credit assignment problem" in evolution and genetic programming remains a tough one. Finally, "Wired" is still mixing stories about flakes with seminal articles, such as the one on "FinCEN" a while back. That makes it still worth looking at, at least to me. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay