Tim wrote:

It may be time for me to move on. More than 2 years on this list, since the B.C. period, may be too long.

I'm fed up with fighting these battles, and no doubt many of you are fed up with seeing contentious pitched battles. Cypherpunks is increasingly a forum of strutting and posturing about who has the most powerful tools, who is spending more of their lives staying at the bleeding edge of technology. Depressing.

Nobody is posturing or bragging. Perhaps I should have learned more programming, to help advance the cause, but everybody has their talent and programming isn't mine. Nonetheless, even if you don't like the messagers, listen to the message with an open mind. This is not a flame war. No insults. No critisism of a person.

The consensus of the active posters in this latest thread (Perry, Amanda, Lucky, Jim, others) is that I am a hopeless fuddy-duddy, unwilling to begin posting in the latest modality.

(Funny, Netnews is still 99.999983% plain ASCII, by message count, and nobody advocating a more advanced scheme is actually _using_ such ne plus ultra formats here on this list. If it's so easy, and so 'punkly correct, why not?)

If I thought that your were a hopless case and beyond learning, I wouldn't spend so much time posting on this topic. It would be uncalled for to post messages here in MIME. This list is about thought exchange and the type of thought exchange that we do here can be done just fine in ASCII. The same is true for most of netnews. That doesn't mean that a different newsreader wouldn't make it easier on you. Have you ever tried Newswatcher? Have you noticed that the latest software updates posted to USNET are just a mouse click away? Can you honestly say that you don't like Newswatcher better than tin?

Jim McCoy wrote:

...

If you are truly interested in making strong encryption easy and transparent to the vast majority of the users of future communications systems you should be leading the MIME charge, not holding everyone back...

I don't care for this imputation that my views on communicating with the list are somehow holding others back. Or that discussing these issues is inconsistent with being "truly interested in making strong encryption easy and transparent."

Just different ways of trying to make you see the light.

Bluntly, I'm fucking sick and tired of these cheap shots and personal innuendos. Maybe it's the "young guns" syndrome, with a codger like me whose first Net account was in 1972 being a ripe target for the newest pistoleros with their .486-caliber Linux boxes in their holsters.

Whatever, I'm fed up.

I don't see any cheap shots or personal inuendos. All I see are a lot of folks who like you and wish to help you as you helped them. You have said that you don't want any help. That is your right, but understand that unless you adopt some of the new tools the world will leave you behind. We all have learned a lot from you (at least I have) and we know that the sooner you start seriously using the new stuff the sooner you will help improving it by your _constructive_ criticism. Enjoy your vaccation <I mean it>. -- Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.