At 7:33 PM -0500 8/17/04, Declan McCullagh wrote:

One is enough. Less is more. Let's eliminate redundancy, thus eliminating redundancy.

-- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

At 7:33 PM -0500 8/17/04, Declan McCullagh wrote:

One is enough. Less is more. Let's eliminate redundancy, thus eliminating redundancy.

Yawn. "Let's" piss up a rope, shall we? Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

At 8:58 PM -0500 8/17/04, Declan McCullagh wrote:

I hadn't noticed. How uncharacteristic of him. Never would have guessed.

...and my mother dresses me funny? You can do better than that, Declan -- if you do say so yourself. Self-important git. -RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004, Declan McCullagh wrote:

Sigh. RAH has descended to the level of a net.kook.

Never would have guessed.

-Declan

Since when is on-topic crossposting an issue here? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden - - - "There aught to be limits to freedom!" George Bush - - - Which one scares you more?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 1:40 AM -0400 8/18/04, Declan McCullagh trots out the Cypherpunk Purity Test, among other tasty bits of speciousness:

At 01:02 AM 8/18/2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:

...

Since when is on-topic crossposting an issue here?

Since forever.

To elucidate this a bit, Declan believes in this obscure WELL.nonsense called "you own your own words". No. Seriously. *Nobody* can forward *anything* you say, *anywhere* on the net, without your permission. On the net. Without your permission. Pardon me. Almost 10 years after I heard of it, my stomach still hurts from laughing at this ignorant blend of "communitarian" hippy-logic and 19th century industrial-age legal nostrum. Hint, Declan: the definition of property, especially digital property in an age of perfect digital copies on a ubiquitous geodesic :-) internetwork, is that it's sitting, preferably encrypted, on my hard drive. The, um, bald, fact is, once it's there, I can send it, anywhere on the net, whenever I feel like it, without your "permission". Declan's actual subtext in this case is that he's written this nice summary article on ... wait... where do you work this week, Declan? Time Magazine? No. Not there anymore. Wired, right? No, not there either. Oh, that's it, CNET. Still there, right? CNET probably can't hire enough fact-checkers, so you're probably safe there for a while until the cacophony of protests from your misquoted article subjects rises above a dull roar. Reminds me of a cartoon in Tom Wolfe's "Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Currier and Vine" about the Guy Who Peaked Too Soon. Anyway, as usual, Declan has, dutifully, one imagines, ground out something he wants you to read instead of seeing (mostly relevant :-)) first sources in more or less real-time, on this list where you read it, instead of interrupting your flow to click around on the web for it. This way, though, he "owns" the words, you see. And, obviously, if you click the link, provided here as a courtesy, <http://zdnet.com.com/2102-1105_2-5313655.html?tag=printthis>, he gets paid more money. Sooner or later. Or at least they might pay his way to more conferences, like they used to during the Clinton Internet Bubble :-). Maybe. Anyway, maybe if we all click it a lot of times, Dear Declan might sit down, shut up, and move that sock from his trousers to his pie-hole. By the way, the reason I didn't send *that* article to the list, too - -- before he pissed on my shoes -- is that he whines at you offline about it. And, before this, I took pity on the once-richer-now-poorer erst-ink-stained wretch. Fuck that. I expect to be getting a phone call from CNET's lawyers for copyright violations under COPA, or whatever, now, as a result, but what the hell.

Since before either of us joined the list (and I first started reading a decade ago).

Here we go, folks. The ol' cypherpunks purity trick. "My tenure on these lists longer than yours." Or, "I've been voting libertarian longer than you have." Or, "I play on Cato's Invisible Foot and you don't." Or, "I can dry-jack a Mossberg, or Nikon Coolpix, or whatever, faster than you can." Or whatever. For the record, I've been here since March or April of 1994. Whatever. This list, and it's lineal predecessors, is long past the time when cutting edge cryptography was discussed here for the first time instead of somewhere else. So, periodically, the tree of cypherpunks must be watered with the blood of other lists. Or something. :-) In the meantime, remember that Declan's main purpose here is to sniff around for stories. Which is fine, until he starts pretending he's Tim May (I knew Tim May -- he wished I didn't -- and, Mr. McCullagh you're... Oh, forget it), or, paradoxically for cypherpunks, that he owns the list somehow, and that, like Mighty Mouse, he's here to save the day and play list.policeman.

It's a matter of politeness and degree.

True enough. And, frankly, I've respected both of those in what I've sent here over the years. The only people who've complained, at least until I've explained myself to their satisfaction, have been "professionals" who "owned their own words" and got scooped. If one can consider forwarding something important from cryptography to this list to be "scooping" the CNET Political Editor in Chief. Or whatever they say he is these days.

A pointer to a discussion archived on the web is more useful than dozens of forwarded messages.

Hey, I have an idea! Why don't I write a script crossposting everything from sci.crypt to cypherpunks! How about a few dozen other "on-topic" newsgroups and mailing lists too?

Go ahead. Are you going to reformat them for legibility first, if necessary? Are you going to personally decide, in *your* opinion, what's worth forwarding and what isn't? Are you going to be topical? More to the point, Declan, are you going to do it in such a way that the residents of the list actually *use* in further discussion? Or are you going to do it to "prove" that, reductio ad absurdum, *any* forwards are equivalent to *all* forwards? I thought not. Hey, I got an idea, myself. Let's just close down the list and do it *all* on the web? Maybe CNET can stick pop-up ads in our faces for the privilege, Declan an up his click-count, and CNET will send him to the Black Rock Desert, or Bora-Bora, or the Crimea, or wherever, for some conference or other. Or a Senate hearing. Or whatever. I mean, who needs that pesky 'd' key, anyway? In the meantime, Declan, own *these* words: don't be a putz. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQSNXn8PxH8jf3ohaEQJwTQCg+hpBwCoGQryuoJAdyYP4awO3nDYAoLKa UKwhmMOEdC2q2yA/JLjIbFuV =fO4K -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

At 10:03 PM -0500 8/17/04, Declan McCullagh wrote:

Sigh. RAH has descended to the level of a net.kook.

Never would have guessed.

You've exactly the same used the same rhetorical device twice now. Are you just lazy, or, more likely, have you just peaked too soon? How does it feel to be someone whose best years are a decade behind him, Declan? You are *sooo* boring. RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'