[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: LET'S MEET DIMITRI
On Thu, 10 Oct 1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote:
> I am hereby pledging US$100 towards a fund to fly Dimitri to the
> SF Bay area for a Cypherpunk meeting. I certainly would like to
> meet a real cryptographer, and I'm sure many of you would too.
> We should throw in a hotel room and local transportation as well.
> I want Dimitri to be our featured speaker--his choice of topic,
> of course.
It's strange that all this stuff with Dimitri has reached the level that
it has. I don't know how many CPers finally made it for INFOWARCON in DC
last month, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that, in addition to
myself, there were several others, including Dimitri. In fact, Dimitri
and I sat together with Eric Hughes and a couple of other list members
during lunch one day.
I am afraid that, for those of you who do not know him and are expecting
some ranting tyrant, you're going to be rather disappointed. He was
soft-spoken, almost difficult to hear, sometimes, it seemed, even rather
shy. He made numerous insightful comments on any number of topics, was a
pleasant conversationalist, and, in fact, acted like a gentleman in ever
instance when I saw or spoke with him. To meet him solely in person,
you'd be impressed with his obviously diverse education and background,
and rather quiet disposition. As anti-climactic as it may be, he was
actually a nice, unassuming fellow with a sense of humor and a
pleasant demeanor. Hell, he even had decent table manners.
Which is why, for the life of me, I can't understand how all these
postings from him are coming from the same human being. The man I met
seemed incapable of such rage, bitterness and utter detestation. It's as
much Jekyll/Hyde as I've ever seen between on and off line personas.
Oh, well - maybe there really _are_ that many people for whom life on the
screen is lived through some distortion or parallel of who and what they
are. I like the realspace Dimitri much better, and I certainly don't want
to dissuade anyone from contributing, nor would I seek to scuttle a free
trip to S.F for Dimitri, but some mysteries are best left undiscovered. If
it's high-stakes entertainment you seek, you may find that you prefer the
character to the actor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
|And if Dole wins and dies in office, they| Mark Aldrich |
|could just pickle him and no one would | GRCI INFOSEC Engineering |
|notice. It wouldn't be the first time we| [email protected] |
|had a dill-dole running the country. | [email protected]|
| -- Alan Olsen | |
|_______________________________________________________________________|
|The author is PGP Empowered. Public key at: finger [email protected] |
| The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author |
| and my employer gets no credit for them whatsoever. |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------