MacGAK: Tim has a snit. Again.

[Robert Hettinga]

At 11:20 pm -0400 10/3/96, Timothy C. May wrote:

> My comments here are not vitriolic, just factual. Clearly, while the
> "guerilla" crypto meeting was happening, the higher-ups were selling out
> their customers and going much further than they needed to in ensuring a
> Big Brother State.

Indeed. Welcome to the club, Tim.

I'm reminded of all those c'punk meetings at places like Sun, or SGI, or
any of several Bay Area landmark firms, all of whom have managements full
of people who think they're "doing the right thing" by helping the Feds spy
on us all. That's okay. Cypherpunks, some of them, anyway, write code. And
so, your point is?


> (BTW, in response to my "the surveillance system for the rest of us"
> comment, Andrew Loewenstern sent me a note in which he contrasted Apple's
> "1984" commercial with the current reality.)

Talking about people's private mail in the third person, Tim? It seems I'm
not the only one guilty of such stuff. At least I don't post names with the
opinions, though I shouldn't have posted anything in the first place. If
you remember, it is something which I apologized to the list for at the
time. It was late. I was tired. And, I might add, you were pissing on my
shoes. Fortunately, I wear my seaboots around here, given our past history
on this list.


> This is the epitome of armchair psychoananalysis. How can you _possibly_
> know what I thought about things? Jeez.

Nope. Can't tell what you think, Tim. Just an opinion. I'm just engaging in
a little constant conjunction; to take a leaf from Mr. Hume's book. That
is, however right he may be most of the time, Tim May seems to have an ego
the size of the Hindenburg, and he can be just about as inflamatory, when
he says he's been slighted. If you get in the way of that ego at all,
regardless of your facts, he will flame you to your shorts. Happens every
time. Impute causality however you want. The phenomena are clearly linked.

Must be what happens when you're holed up out in the woods all day with
nothing to keep you company but a mailing list.

> Who cares? Such comparisons are odious. I responded to Vinnie, not to the
> "us" implied in "we asked," and the matter would've remained between Vinnie
> and me had he not shared our e-mail with you and had you not then gone into
> one of your  "free association" rants. Recall that even Vinnie was highly
> critical of this performance.

Depends on what you call "highly". It seems that if you hadn't gone into a
towering snit, he probably wouldn't have said anything, because I was
right. And, my point still stands. You were behaving childishly. Both to
Vinnie then, to the list then, and to me and the list now.

By the way, "we", Vinnie and I, are the people who put MacCrypto together.
Admittedly, Vinnie did all the work, but it was ever thus. :-). You say, X
is important, we should do it, Vinnie says fine, let's do X, and Vinnie
makes it happen. I've never worked with anyone quite like that before. It's
very refreshing...


Frankly, Tim, you could have just let it pass, or at least have been more
of an adult about it, constitutionally impossible though that might be for
you. Inadvertantly, your churlishness probably increased the attendance at
the MacCrypto conference. So, thanks anyway. *I* certainly got lots of
positive comments about our interchange. ;-).


> Fuck off, to be blunt. You've got to learn to start making actual points,
> and not trying to show your writing chops from the Hunter S. Thompson
> Correspondence School of Creative Writing.

Ah. Tim, are you *jealous*? Of me? Aw, shucks...  And *your* mother wears
army boots, too.


However, in case you missed them, probably because the blood vessels in
your eyes were busy hemoraging, I *did* make several points. Allow me to
summarize again. They are:

1. Tim's lashing out at Apple because he feels slighted by not being
invited first to keynote the MacCrypto conference, though he was in fact
invited first, which makes it all mildly ironic, if not humorous.

2. Instead of Tim, Phil Zimmermann *did* speak at MacCrypto, which Phil
probably regrets, given the current Mac-GAK flap.

3. Apple's Ms. Hancock, whether or not she's "doing the right thing" by
helping the Feds spy on us all, or whether she just thinks corporate, but
not government, key "recovery" is, by itself, okay, has clearly stuck her
foot in her mouth, in the much same way that Mr. Barksdale(?) of Netscape
did last year. Unfortunately, Apple probably won't be as quick to react as
Netscape was, because, as an industrial corporation -- like Microsoft --
Apple may live *on* the net, but it is certainly certainly not *in* the
net, like Netscape, or you, or I am, Tim.

4. I expect that the people in the Macintosh Crypto community, and the Mac
internet community in general, will do their best to disabuse her of any
notions she may have in regard to GAK. It has already started to happen.

5. A lot of real good work was done at MacCrypto, which was a resounding
success, despite Tim's early efforts to piss all over it, which he seems to
be carrying forward to the present. No problem. That's what seaboots are
for.


> Fuck off. Back into my killfile you go.

Ah. A waste of a good summary. Oh, well. :-).

It's interesting to note that the only person who is supposed to be in your
killfile is Perry Metzger, even though you respond to him anyway,
especially when he says something which offends your vanity. So, such a
killfiling claim is probably dubious.  Since such luminaries as VZNuri, Dr.
Vulis, and Jim Bell are *not* in your killfile, evidenced by your
voluminous replies to them, your killfiling me can't be much of a threat,
on its face, or, for that matter, to my reputation here on cypherpunks,
even. ;-).

And, no, Tim, *I'm* not going to put you in my killfile, because *almost*
always, though it's becoming harder to see for all the fulminatory
theatrics, you're spot on.

I believe that, for some reason, I got off on the wrong foot with you from
my very first posting, more than two years ago last June. Your nasty crack
about the MacCrypto conference is just one of a series of personal
fusilades in what seems to be an ongoing pissfight. I bet you wouldn't have
given MacCrypto a passing thought, otherwise. The cost of doing business on
cypherpunks, I suppose. One gets used to it.

So, have a nice day, Tim, and don't forget your seaboots. It's getting wet
out here. Again.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga





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Robert Hettinga (rah at shipwright.com)
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