As some will recall, about 3 years ago, I started a thread entitled
"'Cypherpunks' considered harmful" suggesting we needed to find a
new title for the mailing list. Tim objected quite vehemently, as
I recall.
I think I proposed 'crypto-enthusiasts' or something like that.
"The Secret Admirers", the name of a generally parallel group
in Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" is even more apt, with it's
overloaded shades of meaning.
Peter Trei
(a subscriber to the cypherpunks mailing list, an admirer of
secrecy, but not a 'cypherpunk').
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim May [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2000 12:49 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Vin McLellan & Charles Mudd On Denial of Service Attacks
At 8:48 AM -0800 3/4/00, Steve Mynott wrote:
>I would have thought the very name "cypherpunks" suggests list
>sympathies lie more on the "hacker" side then on those of
>self-professed security experts.
>
>On Fri, Mar 03, 2000 at 07:30:24PM -0500, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
>> When cypherpunks was founded, most of the readers on the list were
actively
>> involved in computer security. I strongly suspect that most readers of
the
>> list today are hacker 'wannabees', certainly this was the case when I
>> stopped reading the list on a regular basis two years ago (although much
of
>> the material posted by the people I used to follow on the list is
>> crossposted or forwarded to me so in effect what I do read probably
closely
>> resembles the original.)
More to the point, Phillip Hallam-Baker is simply _wrong_ in his
asssertions above, about the founding period of the list.
As to the throwaway line about "most readers of the list today are hacker
'wannabees,'" this tells us all we need to know.
--Tim May
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
