Re: Sternlight on C'punks

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

At 1:26 AM 7/16/96, David Sternlight wrote:

>And another thing. The reason I've not joined this group earlier had
>nothing to do with "worthy". It was because after discussion a year or so
>ago, Tim May suggested to me via e-mail that it would just generate a lot
>of controversy, at a time when people were so polarized that they couldn't
>hear each other and thus my presence here would serve no useful purpose.  I
>took Tim's advice and stayed out.

Hmmmhhh...I don't recall the context of our discussion. Certainly I would
not discourage anyone from joining who really wanted to. (I also might have
said that list views were fairly well-set, and that few minds would be
changed by debating certain core issues. Again, I don't recall the context
of my remarks to David.)

In any case, I certainly welcome David Sternlight to our list. I have not
often agreed with all or even many of his points, and I feel he is often
abrasive (but, aren't a lot of us?), but I don't think he "wrecked" any
newsgroups, much less sci.crypt. (But I've been away from sci.crypt and
talk.politics.crypto for quite some time....)

There were some flames, which I mostly ignored. Also, a peculiar kind of
flame war dealt with endless speculations about his "motives." Utter
nonsense, from careful reading of his views. That is, to insinuate that he
is an agent of the NSA or the Bilderberger Grand Conspiracy merely because
he (then) argued that Clipper was not as bad as most of us thought it
was...well, that's just nonsensical.

>The presenting symptom for my joining now was a copy of a post by an MIT
>professor I respect to this group, which a colleague sent me. Perhaps I was
>too hasty in my belief that we can begin to hear each other.

As a point of information, many outsiders copy our list on crypto-related
things for whatever reasons, without actually being contributors to
ordinary discussions (or perhaps without even being subscribers).

A decision to remain subscribed should be based more on what is seen on a
daily basis than on what occasionally comes over the transom from MIT.

--Tim May

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