Why cypherpunks are 'stalled', IMHO

[jet@netcom.com (J. Eric Townsend)]

I just got a 15k mail message from one Dave Banisar that consisted of
wire news clippings, only one of which had anything even vaguely
related to cryptogrophy.

*This* is why pepole drop off the list so often.  (Or don't show up at
meetings, thinking they'll be as noisy?).  If it's just more of the
general computer geek/privacy/libertarian stuff all over again, the
same crud that flows in such volumes on the libertarian list, and a
couple of other lists I've had the misfortune to be on, people will go
away.  (In particular, evoting, pranks to prove points, general
ranting.)

Let's try a little self-restraint, perhaps?  Or take discussions
off-list, or to the appropriate list?  Maybe if the list were more
hard-core crypto (and less noisy), more people would be on the list,
and more research types might be willing to be on the list.
mp-render, the massively parallel rendering list, has high content,
low volume, and some of the top folks in the biz on the list available
for discussion.  I'm sure if myself and a few other starting going on
at length about how cool Pixar's juice-box commercial was, there'd be
a lot of people unsubscribing...

Luckly, I have a mailer that supports 'kill', so I can easily blast
through multiple rounds of whether evoting is the End of the World.
:-) But I've worked with plenty of researchers (and been in the
position myself) where getting more than a few email messages a day is
a big pain in the ass.  Lots of people *doing* things don't put the
effort into making 'the net' as much a part of their lives as some of
the people here.  Hell, my boss at NASA was still reading their mail
with /bin/mail until I pointed them at elm.  Can you imagine getting
30-40 messages a day, and having to wade through them with /bin/mail?
(I watch my gf do this, I think she's nutz and on about a dozen too
many mailing lists.)

Granted, I've only made on c-punk meeting (travel and illness have
interfered with my other attempts), and the code I'm working on will
only be able to run on a machine with limited numbers (only 50 or so
built), so maybe I'm in the 'not doing so much' part.  (I'm not
immune to Off-Topic disease, either. :-)
 
--
jet@netcom.com -- J. Eric Townsend -- '92 R100R: "CLACKER"
"Either what you've said is so vague that it's meaningless or I disagreee
 with you completely." -- Tom Maddox