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- Article: 1 of alt.whistleblowing
From [email protected] Tue Jun 15 20:15:47 MDT 1993
Article: 12 of alt.whistleblowing
Common net usage is to put a "smiley" after something that isn't
to be taken seriously. It looks like :-) or :) or any of
numerous variants, such as ;-) . It is typically used after
statements such as
Uh, excuse me, but alcohol is not a drug, its a beverage.
Smileys are recommended after any statement that is not meant in
total seriousness, even ones that ordinary people would have no trouble
understanding. This is because Internet articles are occasionally seen
by lawyers or real-estate agents. :-)
And one complaint about some anonymous e-mail net-police-wannabee.
> course I'm not really associated with alt.whistleblowers at all in the
> grand cyberspatial scheme of things, I feel a smidgeon of personal
> responsibility for the group. Are you paying attention? Have you seen
> my promises there and on the cypherpunk list to create the FAQ?
...And this promise was what I was hoping for, and had appearantly not seen any
results. If you are doing this, then fine, but I haven't seen it yet and that
was what I was commenting about.
>
> So far, IMHO, the traffic has mostly been very high-caliber and even
> spectacular. A lady named Karen Lofstrom reported how her boss at a
> Hawaii university misused ~$100,000 in funds and work of public
> employees on his private company -- from NSA grant money -- starting a
> long thread of sympathetic responses (she alluded to this earlier on
> sci.crypt I believe but expanded it beautifully in alt.whistleblower).
> We have other interesting revelations so far too. There are messages
> pointing out a private `whistleblowing support organization' and how to
> contact them.
Yes, and we had *eight* messages debating whether or not alchohol was a drug!
> Your message, upon rereading it, makes me extremely exasperated. It
I'm sorry you feel this way. If you truely are mantaining a FAQ for this list,
you need to simply post it more often. It expires too rapidly here.
> reconfirms my suspicion that a large part of traffic on this list and
> tactics in the Cypherpunk arsenal are to just give lip service to
> interesting ideas but leave the messy and laborious detail work to
I don't think I fit in this catagory....
> others. Despite plenty of great fireworks on this list, I have seen no
> tangible contributions from others on the whistleblowing project other
> than Miron Cuperman's gracious effort to create the group (despite
> grandiose reassurances to the contrary), and Julf's immediate support
And I supported you, if you remember. In fact, I had changed my mind about it
since you brought up some valid points in favor of creating A.WB.
> of it, two individuals who are already highly active and motivated
> outside of their cypherpunk involvement. Furthermore, I've encountered
> many extremely frustrating obstructions here. I've seen great
> accomplishments by individuals who call themselves `cypherpunks' but
> none by well-orchestrated collections of them.
Well, do you have any suggestions?
>
> This is not to discourage positive effort in the future by anyone on
> this list on the whistleblower project or anything else. It is to
> suggest that the Cypherpunks are so intensely individualistic as to
> preclude group projects and large-scale cooperation, and that this is a
> serious obstacle to enacting meaningful, critical change on the agenda.
> (Go ahead, flame me and ask what I've done for everyone lately --- I
> won't respond. That is not the spirit of my words.)
Flame you? Na, I did that above. I completely agree with this paragraph.
> The statement that makes my blood boil violently is the following:
>
> >We helped
> >create this group, we ought to help keep it worth reading. ;^)
>
> How is it that `we' created this group? All I've seen here is
> voluminous verbiage (yes, mine included). I appreciate the call to
> arms and cooperation, but I've tried it here before with impoverished,
That wasn't meant to take credit. I was indeed a call to arms, and I'm sorry
to hear about your previous experiences.
> negligible, and excruciatingly painful results. How long ago did you
> join the list? I've already posted ways for cypherpunks to help out on
> the whistleblowing newsgroup. The simplest way is to just go there and
> post something useful or assimilate existing traffic into something useful.
I started about January. I'll post as soon as I have anything worth posting.
> Mr. Diehl, the following is not a personal request. On behalf of the
> hundreds of people who read the cypherpunks list, I humbly ask you (and
> remind all other cypherpunks) to put the tiniest greater effort into
> your postings to the mailing list that, like all others, take the time
> of everyone to sort in their mailbox, and make every effort to direct
> messages through personal email where appropriate. I've asked you
> before politely in private email to no response, or apparently, effect.
I make it a practice to flame in the same environment in which I am flamed. I'd
like you to remember that you used 394 lines to reply to my 20 line message.
Now, is that what you meant by being brief and not waisting people's time? I
hope not. Further discussion along this thread via email.
> It is only in the rarest of occasions I will ever put forth such a
> request, and an even more unusual case to go public with it. I
> appreciated your volunteering to do the email survey but turning around
> with the final summary and admitting yourself that you're `too lazy to
> tabulate results' I find highly annoying (what is the point?), and I
> think does a disservice to the people who took the time to respond
> (including myself).
Really? The survey was actually a (clever) way of satisfying my own curiosity.
I wanted to know what kinds of systems I'd be developing for if I was to try
to develope anything of interest to this group. My poll was very unscientific.
None of the resulting statistics would be valid. The actuall tally wouldn't
necessarily be representitive of the actuall composition of this group. The
sheer variety of platforms was the whole point of my poll, a point you seem to
have missed.
I deleted your (interesting and pointting) posts as per your request above. Yes,
there has been some good stuff, but you have to admit there has been some sludge
I was unaware that you had a FAQ. All this means is that you should post it
more often! That's all I ask! My original message wasn't a flame. It was
simply a call for someone to (help?) finish what we (cypherpunks) have started.
I wish you wouldn't take this so personally. And, BTW, WRT bandwidth, I read
mail at 2400 baud; I well understand the importance of brevity. ;^)
No hard feelings? Laters.
+-----------------------+-----------------------------+---------+
| J. Michael Diehl ;-) | I thought I was wrong once. | PGP KEY |
| [email protected] | But, I was mistaken. |available|
| [email protected] | | Ask Me! |
| (505) 299-2282 +-----------------------------+---------+
| |
+------"I'm just looking for the opportunity to be -------------+
| Politically Incorrect!" <Me> |
+-----If codes are outlawed, only criminals wil have codes.-----+
+----Is Big Brother in your phone? If you don't know, ask me---+