From: Amara Graps (Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de)
Date: Fri May 11 2001 - 04:39:15 MDT
(No hope, Jim...)
From: Jim Fehlinger (fehlinger@home.com),Thu May 10 2001
>Yes, I gather that there was a certain atmosphere of paranoia
>in those days (perhaps not surprising, since Perry Metzger
>is extremely interested in cryptography).
"paranoia" is a bit strong word though.
>It seems that feeling about the 1991-1995 privacy agreement
>still runs strong. I wonder if early posts could be cleared
>by **content** -- e.g., excluding discussions of cryptography
>and other sensitive (potentially incriminating) topics?
Too large of a task, too sensitive. I think that I probably violated
it with my extropians light-bulbs jokes renewal from last year and the
Reputations listing (for which I apologize, if I stepped on anyone's
toes). I have my own private archive (saved what I thought was most
valuable to me) of the extropians list from that time.
BTW, the person that you may have the hardest time is with Tim May,
more than Perry.
The list atmosphere at that time was the way that it was because it
was a private, closed list: that atmosphere fostered the intensity of
the low-noise discussions. People felt secure that discussions on any
topic, (for example, all aspects of social communities, cryptography,
chemical substances, etc. etc) could be made without repercussions
from the outside. I sincerely doubt that some of those discussions
would have occurred if folks thought their words would be open to the
world to read 10 years later. (I know that *I* would have posted
with different writing style, different topics, if I had thought
my old words would be public.)
Amara
--
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Amara Graps | Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik
Interplanetary Dust Group | Saupfercheckweg 1
+49-6221-516-543 | 69117 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de * http://galileo.mpi-hd.mpg.de/~graps
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"Never fight an inanimate object." - P. J. O'Rourke
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