DC-Nets and Noise

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 12:40 AM 1/17/96, s1018954@aix2.uottawa.ca wrote:

>(Speaking of sublists, whatever happenned to the DC-net list mentioned in
>the cyphernomicon? Is this a figment of my imagination or was there any code
>written that I might partake of? Btw, why call it a DC network when it is
>really a ring? Maybe I haven't taken a good enough look at the protocol.
>Dinner calls. :> )

Without consulting the Cyphernomicon, my memory is that there were two main
proposals for a DC-Net (Dining Cryptographers Net) mailing list. The first
was by Yanek Martinson, a Russian emigre, circa 1992. The second was by Jim
McCoy, of Austin.

Yanek I have not heard from in a few years. Jim McCoy has also not been
active on our list in at least a year, maybe longer. I recently heard from
Doug Barnes that Jim may be coming to the Bay Area, so things may change.
Neither of these proposed mailing lists seemed to have gotten to a critical
mass.

There are many reasons why mailing lists and subgroups fade out. DC-Nets
are a hard thing to pull off (anyone see any working versions lately?),
about as hard to pull off as true digital cash; and with less economic
benefit, less incentive to do the work. So, I can't say I am, or was,
surprised that such mailing lists atrophied.

An equally interesting question is why the Cypherpunks list has kept on
growing in size, given the nontechnical digressions that some subscribers
so object to. My view, shared by others I think, is that too technical a
list will atrophy...only a handful of folks are usually competent to
contribute, and so message volume drops to only a few messages a day, then
a few per week, then it fades out altogether.

The "noise" that some decry may help to keep lists vital.

(In any case, even for those who disagree, modern filtering techniques make
it trivial for the "gurus" to filter out all messages except by the several
of themselves, so I've never understood the point about how the list must
purge itself of "noise.")

--Tim May




We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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