Three Cheers for the State - RAH RAH RAH

R. A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Tue Apr 22 11:46:53 PDT 2003


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At 5:39 PM -0700 4/21/03, Tim May accused me of pissing in his
personal catbox:

>First, Bob should cut back on his massive cross-posting to his
>several  self-centered groups (including new ones to me: "Philodex
>Clips" and  "dgcchat").

Ah. Theoretically, that's a claim made in the absence of data, at
least as far as Mr. May is concerned, because, last time looked, I
was in his killfile. Which might still be the case, because,
inevitably, when someone replies to something I send to cypherpunks,
Tim flames away. :-). Oddly enough, Patrick's
libertarian/anarchocapitalist ideological purity flame was actually
an original message, which probably proves the point. 

So, I plead guilty of creating new mailing list, m'lord, though the
idea for the new list not exactly new. Philodox Clips is an attempt
to put all the forwarded stuff into one list, like I used to do with
the now 5-year-defunct e$pam list, only with, heh, more scope. :-).
As a firehose of firehoses, it's probably not useful in its present
form, but copyright law prevents turning it into a web-archive or an
RSS feed. Besides, I'm going to do it anyway, and, apparently, *some*
people want to look at it, including Patrick, :-), so I might as well
put it in, heh, one place.


However, dgcchat at lists.goldmoney.com isn't mine. It's an unmoderated
discussion list ostensibly about digital gold currencies hosted, but
not controlled by, GoldMoney.com. It's where lots of the original
libertarian/anarchocapitalist (hence Patrick's "purity" flame) e-gold
types went after several interesting, not to mention litigious,
events occurred on and around the original e-gold discussion list,
resulting in an unfortunate over-moderation of same. [Think what
precipitated the demise of the old cypherpunks list at toad.com, and
you'll get something of an idea.]


>Second, those from other lists who give their hero his 

Well, somebody *did* call me a "hyperactive genius saint from the
future" once, but I attribute that to, um, misplaced enthusiasm.
Certainly the only genius saint from the future *I* know is Tim May,
who, by all accounts, is not hyperactive, per se...

>"props" (a negro 
>term now being used by many negro wannabees) should do so on lists 
>other than Cypherpunks.

...though certainly racist, if not in fact, then in deliberate
affect.


>Third, I wonder when Bob will stop proliferating "digibucks" and 
>"bearer settlement" and "e$" and "Philodex Clips" and all of his
>other  lists and instead actually _work on_ his "fractally geodesic 
>multi-centered emergent global clearing" 

That's "functionally anonymous instantaneous internet bearer
transactions executing, clearing, and settling on ubiquitous geodesic
internetworks", to you, Tim. :-).

Besides, none of the above is mine, after all. "Anonymous" is David
Chaum. "Geodesic Networks" is Peter Huber. Digital bearer
transactions is Nick Szabo. "Immediate and final clearing" is Eric
Hughes. "Functionally", and "ubiquitous" I leave as an exercise for
the reader. I just stuck it all together in the right order.

Nonetheless, I do agree that Making Shit Happen is Hard, even in the
best of times. Guilty as charged 'mlord. But Tim knew that, like
everything else he currently knows, in 1992. :-). Officially, IBUC is
a going concern, but only just. Last revenue was a year ago, and last
real revenue was in July 2001. We've got more unpaid bills than
Carter's has pills, and we haven't made an interest payment on our
outstanding bonds in a year either. I'm living proof that
bootstrapping in the absence of revenue is not nearly as easy as it
looks. :-). I am looking at ways to generate revenue other ways
(which is why the Philodox site is probably going to be retooled, if
we can figure out what for or how to do it) to pay both IBUC's bills,
and to pay for new stuff to do. Not much luck there, yet, either.
Making Shit Happen is Hard, these days, in particular.

I'm too stubborn, if not stupid, :-), to quit, though. Of course,
it's hard to tell whether I've quit or not given the present pace of
things. One of the more humorous definitions of insanity is
persistent behavior in the absence of evidence to the contrary, and
it's starting to feel like it applies, but that can be said of
several people we all know. :-).

>b.s. Unless his real career 
>is, as many suspect, just endless self-promotion using  the latest 
>snake oil buzzwords.

It's amazing to me how many people insult others by describing
themselves.

'nuff said.

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at 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'





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