On Tuesday, April 29, 2003, at 04:20 AM, A.Melon wrote:

...

Most of these changes have passed the cypherpunks by. All the P2P work, file sharing, Freenet, IIRC, weblogs, WiFi, open source, open spectrum; for the most part it's as if none of this exists, in the world of the cypherpunks.

weblogs?

http://invisiblog.com/

Rebutting Mr. Anonymous, the dyspeptic original poster, with specific, single examples of where he is wrong only helps make his argument seem plausible. Every one of his examples where he claims "none of this exists, in the world of the cypherpunks" can be rebutted by many examples. I make no claim that we invented all of these things, though in several of the instances we were the first to use them, the first to talk about them, and even the actual inventors of some of them. * P2P -- BlackNet was operational in 1993. Remailers were used for file sharing even before then. One of the few books on P2P discusses several Cypherpunks and their effects. We may not have coined the term "P2P," but we sure were talking about peer-to-peer and "everyone a remailer" and "everyone a mint" long before P2P became the darling of venture capitalists for a few short dot com boom quarters! In any case, Napster, Kazaa, Freenet, Morpheus, etc. have been talked about many times here. Sure, we don't run the list based on P2P (unless the distributed CP list is considered P2P, which it could be, in which case we've been doing it since before Napster existed), but we know non-hierarchical, flat, first class object systems like nobody's business. * File sharing -- Covered above. And don't forget the release of RC4 on our list. And the Mykotronx docs. And so on. MojoNation was based on distributed file sharing, for backups, etc. (Before Cypherpunks, I worked to help Dave Ross and Jim Bennett develop their ideas for a distributed, file sharing back up system. This was in 1990.) * Freenet -- Covered above. Many here know Ian Clarke. Many here, present or past, have themselves worked on systems superior to Freenet. (MojoNation, Vines/Tarzan, BitTorrent, etc.) And many Cypherpunks worked at present or in the past for companies working in this area (C2Net, now owned by Red Hat, The Anonymizer, Zero Knowledge, MojoNation, etc.). To argue that we are uninvolved with one particular system, Freenet, is misleading in the extreme. * IIRC -- ? Sure, I guess. Those who like them, use them. People set up CP relay chats some years ago. I checked in and found the usual babble. Those who like it, use it. By the way, Cypherpunks (mainly Hugh Daniel) set up a 3-way DES-encrypted virtual meeting between Mountain View, Cambridge (MA), and Northern Virginia. This was back in 1994. Impressive. * Weblogs -- They're there for those who want them. Our mailing list is not a blog, for the obvious reasons that blogs are mostly just extended rants with hypertext pointers. Like newspaper columns. Boring technology, been around for years. (I've been reading John Baez's blog on mathematical physics for more than 10 years now: <http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/TWF.html>. Of course, he didn't call it a blog when he started, nor does he call it a blog now. But it for sure is. Likewise, Dave Winer didn't call his early systems blogs, but I've been using his tools for well over a decade, including his hypertext outline processor, MORE. * WiFi -- give me a fucking break! Wirelesss connections abound at CP meetings. And we were some of the earliest users of the Metricom wireless modems, circa 1995, with a special deal offered by some Metricom founders. Seeing laptops Metricomed to search engines for instant answers from the crowd was impressive, circa 1996-7. It still is. It is true that wireless connections are not being used for remailers, a topic I wrote about extensively in 1992-3, and is covered in my Cyphernomicon, and is even mentioned in my 1988 Manifesto. The reasons are manyfold why wireless connections are not common for such uses (mostly, lack of density where the wireless benefits would appear). * Open Source -- Mr. Anonymous is either ignorant or is being deliberately deceptive. PGP was distributed around the world via the efforts of several Cypherpunks, including Lucky Green, using open source models, with source code distributed at "open meetings, open to all." Ditto for several other systems, including remailer code, mint code, etc. * Open Spectrum -- This is even more laughable. I guess Mr. Anonymous doesn't follow the work of Eric and Steve on GNU Radio, the open source, open spectrum effort. Actual demos, including to a stunned FCC (from what I hear). Funded by Cypherpunks, designed by Cypherpunks, built by Cypherpunks, used by Cypherpunks. And at the September meeting at my house we also heard from the Aetherwire ultrawideband folks. His laundry list of things we are unaware of or uninvolved with is laughable. --Tim May