'robert' and his 'hipcrime' web site

[Matthew Ghio]

Moltar Ramone <jlasser at rwd.goucher.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Sep 1996, John Anonymous MacDonald wrote:
[snip]
> > So basically this guy is a mathematician/artist trying
> > to pretend he's an anarchist.
> 
> Like... oh... I dunno... una-something... :-)  To be an "anarchist" has 
> nothing to do with violence, necessarily, though.  Ghandi was an 
> anarchist, of course, as are many other people (such as myself) who 
> disclaim violence as a tactic.
> 
> > So we have a guy, probably with an education in mathematics, who likes
> > abstract art.  Not what would generally be considered a political figure.
> > But there's something else there - something that doesn't want to be seen,
> > something that is very strongly law&order, something that doesn't
> > understand the anarchy of the net, and fears it.
> 
> Disagree strongly.  Are you aware of the source of the name 'hipcrime'?  
> It's from John Brunner's novel _Stand_On_Zanzibar_ (A _great_ book, btw), 
> and describes a cynical, hipster-societal dropout philosophy (or at least 
> style) that is inclined to look at people as no more than sheep. Applying 
> this to the 'net populace is perhaps (I hesitate somewhat to apply the 
> term) misanthropic, but not necessarily law & order.  Again, unabomber 
> comparisons are obvious.

I'm not so sure about that.  I suspect in Kaczynski's case it was attention
deficit disorder and/or severe depression that drove him out into the woods
where no one would bother him - he didn't like interruptions and shunned
visitors.  Kaczynski blamed "leftists" and "technologists" for his ills and
primarally (though not exclusively) took out his rage on them.

This guy is just plain arrogent.  He believes he's right, and if you don't
agree with him and let him do whatever he wants, then to him you are
unimportant scum.  ("weak-minded soul" to quote him directly.)

What I don't understand is, why he bothered attacking the remailers.  Since
he obviously knows how to forge mail headers and write unix cgi scripts,
and he wasn't trying to conceal the source address, using the remailers
did him no good.  Also, he could have just downloaded the remailer software
and run it.  So maybe he really is Co$...