attila@primenet.com wrote:
good, solid statement of purpose which too few of us practice. it is general human nature to be protective (usually in a jealous sense) of our nurtured opinions. However, that is not an excuse to be abusive of another.
Unfortunatly the "too few of us practice" line could have read 'too few of us on cypherpunks practice'. Crypto has really been suffused by noise on this list badly. One of the reasons I origionaly signed on this list was that it was a really happening place for crypto & cypherpunk-ish "values" (as it were), and other venues were just "too noisey". I recently, out of dispair, checked some of the 'other' venues, and found them to have 90% more crypto related stuff. It's rather sad, too much freak ranting & political bs, and too little crypto.
It is one thing to be vituperatively demonstrative, another to criticize anothers view point by epithetical allegorations, and another, with careful consideration, to disagree with _civilized_ clinically definable examples which delineate your viewport.
When it comes to the Dennings, (I speak of Mr. & Mrs., they are fairly blissfully married.) they are two people who are some of the MOST flameproof that I have ever seen. Rank insults are NOT going to get anyone anywhere with them, except to possibly increase their sense of persecution. Peter Denning is not a very popular guy with everyone where he works to say the least, and has suffered some absolutly withering attacks for HIS politics at George Mason university, to a degree that makes even the most intense crap I've seen tossed around Cypherpunks look contemptibly childish. In a nutshell, all this anti-denning ranting on here is bush league, amateur hour, kiddie stuff compared to what they've gotten elsewhere for different reasons. (Well marginaly, they're facists, and that is pretty much a shared theme with their politics in multiple arenas) If you're one of the people who's written with that slant on this thread and is going "but"... Trust me, you're both unimpressive and non-competative on the insult-the-dennings front. As an example, Peter had his face pasted over that of Hitler's in a poster that was widely circulated on the GMU campus (that imfamous shot of Hitler & Mussolini arm in arm, with Mr. M. being another prof.) by anonymous types who were seeking (I guess <rolls his eyes>) to piss him off in reply to some of his more extreme academic political positions. If you want to accomplish something, I'd reccomend developing REAL-WORLD arguments to their facisim, and working on making THOSE withering, rather than wasting time with _talentless_ insults. Yes the Dennings are scary folks who would be right at home in 1941 Germany, but no, insults arn't going to even break wind in their direction... You need to do _far_ better. (with apoligies to attila, who all this was NOT directed at) Tim Scanlon