Enough!

["Philippe_D_Nave" <pdn@dwroll.dw.att.com>]

Hello, all!
 
The Detweiler-flaming is getting out of hand, folks.
 
Some of you have individual gripes with him, and I recognize your right to
carry on conversations via e-mail, but I (for one) am thoroughly sick of
looking at this latest wave of gratuitous harassment. There are plenty
of arenas that provide this sort of entertainment; if the best you can do
with your Internet access is send 'nyah-nyah-nyah' messages, I suggest
that you log into some local PC bulletin boards and flame away. (Those 
of you with multiple personalities and/or avatars can flame yourselves;
you'll get better response time that way anyway. <grin>). The death threats
are particularly infantile, regardless of whether or not they were meant
as some sort of obscure joke.
 
The reason coffee houses don't normally have bouncers is that they normally
don't _need_ them; in our case, I hope we can move past this disruptive 
behavior and keep the coffee house crowd from permanently polarizing into
opposing camps. If that happens, I think we'll lose whatever benefit there
is to be had from this sort of forum.

I appeal to all of us to reconsider the motives that led us to the 'punks
to start with - are we 'cypherpunks' who 'write code' and 'have fun,' or
are we just 'punks' who try to impress one another with how vicious we can
be? There is a big difference.

Newbies : If you think that there is stature to be gained by joining in 
this sorry spectacle, think again. The only place you can gain respect by
abusing someone else is a street gang (or the U.S. Congress, perhaps).

........................................................................
Philippe D. Nave, Jr.   | The person who does not use message encryption
pdn@dwroll.dw.att.com   | will soon be at the mercy of those who DO...
Denver, Colorado USA    | PGP public key: by arrangement.