Re: Seeing Both Sides

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 8:59 PM -0700 11/22/97, Robert Hettinga wrote:

>Hell, 1984 is still behind schedule, and, frankly, it'll never happen,
>because the PERT chart for it is a spaghetti bowl, and because people are
>out there, right now, writing code instead of putting a few hundred rounds
>a week through their ARs and Glocks, holing up in the mountains, throwing
>(metaphoric) rocks at the local gendarmarie, and keeping their lawyers on
>hot-standby.

Spare us the "writing code instead of" appeals to some sort of guilt. The
moral equivalent of "unlike you, I have a _life_." Or the German war guilt
posters, "What have _You_ done for the War today?"

Not many people are "writing code," at least not _interesting_ code, at
least not recently. A lot of reworkings of basic crypto, a lot of
mindnumbingly boring SET crapola, but not a lot of truly interesting stuff.
The remailers, the implementations of digital cash...a lot of those who did
this at one time are now off working at real companies. Unfortunately, they
appear to be mostly buried in corporate projects of little interest to
causes of any importance. (I certainly don't blame them for working for
Verisign, or Cybercash, or whatever.)

Several days ago you listed some number of projects or articles or such
you're working on, and claimed this proved your Greater Worth to the Cause.

I'm happy for you that you believe this to be the case.

In several of your rants you have repeatedly fallen into this pattern of
attempting to lay a guilt trip on me, suggesting, variously, that I should
be sending you money for your dreams, or that I should be funding other
people, or that I should be "doing something."

I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I think I do it pretty well, Certainly
better than learning C or C++ and becoming YACC (Yet Another C Coder). No
insult to C coders, but at age 45, after making a bundle of money doing
physics and AI,  and retiring eleven years ago, I hardly think training
myself at this point to be a C journeyman is what I want to do with my life.

(Nor, as I have said several times, to no avail, am I hot to "fund a
startup." So don't repeat your pleas on this score, either.)

So, as I have said before, knock off on the moralizing about what I should
be doing and about how I'm Not Doing Enough for the Cause. Your moralizing
reminds me of Detweiler, who had an unnatural fixation on me and my exact
words and how my words were torturing him and on and on.

Get a life. Preferably, your own.

Oh, and as for your typically Hettingian "writing code instead of putting a
few hundred rounds a week through their ARs and Glocks" insult, you'd be
surprised to know who I ran into at the Los Altos Gun Range this afternoon.
And to think he was shooting an AR when he could have been coding "for the
Cause"!

Deep down, you're still basically a liberal.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."