Other Directory Sites: SeekWonder | Directory Owners Forum
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:18:03
Mok-Kong Shen (mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de)
Thu, 14 Jan 1999 10:13:23 +0100
Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>
> Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de> writes:
> > Bruce Schneier wrote:
> > > Honestly, no. The suggestion in the first sentence of his response is a
> > > good one.
> > > Why post this? Why bother creating a stream cipher without the experience of
> > > design and analysis? What is the purpose?
> >
> > I suspect that you are in some sense continuing here your Memo
> > that we discussed quite a bit in sci.crypt.
>
> Mr. Shen, you have two choices here.
>
> One of them is to say, "okay, I'm an amateur, it would be good, if I
> want to understand this field, to read a lot, study, work hard, and
> learn".
>
> The other is to say "I'm just going to blunder about, invent my own
> terminology, take random stabs in the dark at inventing things, and
> hope that people will educate me by taking lots of time out of their
> busy lives to correct me when I could have just gone off and read a
> book or taken their advice the first out of fifty times I bothered
> them."
>
> Which do you think is going to be more successful here?
>
> ALL of us were once new to this field. However, most of us who've
> survived in it didn't start by trying your path. I suspect you aren't
> going to succeed in getting very far unless you try the other path.
It is certainly very nice of you to recommend to others how they
are most likely to succeed based on your exprience so that these
could be as good as you. However, acting in that way over-zielously
is evidently not appropriate. First of all there is no UNIVERSAL
recipe for success (otherwise everybody succeeds). Secondly, benefits
of 'enforcing' certain guidelines, while justified in primary
schools, appear to be of increasingly questionable value when applied
to classes of persons of increasingly higher age. Thirdly, even such
guidelines get modified with time, showing that they are not
absolutely infalliable. Fourthly, while laws are needed to maintain
an acceptable state of living in society, science thrives as a result
of freedom (cf. the middle age.)
Despite such (comparatively insignificant) phenomena as attempts
of certain governments to suppress publications in certain fields
on the claimed grounds of crime elimination, no control of discussions
in natural science disciplines is known to me in the modern times,
not even in totalitarian countries. Scientific discussions are
hence fundamentally free. Anybody can voice his opinions, be these
correct or false. Those who present false propositions will either
be shown to be wrong or else (in my opinion worse for them) simply
be ignored by the public. This is a ubiquitous natural selection
process, through which genuine and good scientific results emerge and
the false arguments perish.
One is certainly free to invest much of one's time to demonstrate
the blunders of others (and this is certainly to be appreciated).
Equally free is one, however, to voice one's arbitrarily opinions,
provided that one is convinced of their truth (though maybe incorrect
in fact) and provided that there is no personal insult expressed (both
provisions are on moral grounds only). In the particular case of
internet discussions, I have seen certain negative aspects of this
liberty, as evidenced by spams, the use of impolite (even very bad)
words, sidetracking (I mean the intentional diversion of the
attention of the public from the original topic) and chatting (one
honourable person once even openly admitted this), etc. But these
could be considered a tolerable evil in the face of the benefits that
accrue from rapid communications of ideas as a whole (despite the
intermingled bad ideas). For sci-groups, those with the postfix
'research' are monitored to some degree but the rest are to my
knowledge entirely free as long as there is no extremely severe
conflict with the charters. For the present list my personal impression
is that the list owner has been exercising the right amount of
monitoring, liberal, fair and correct.
In scientific journals, referees sieve away the chaffs for the
convenience of the readers, who on the other hand pay money for
the service obtained. On the internet, this is virtually not
present. In return, there is no subscribing fees to the groups or
mailing lists. This may be considered by some as vice but is
in reality a virtue for the wide dissemination and concretization
(including correction/prunning) of ideas. In fact it is well-known
that the almost undreamed-of rate of expansion of the internet is
because of one single and simple reason: There is no centralized
authority to exercise control over the whole community. Almost
everything depends on cooperation and self-imposed (as against
foreign enforced) disciplines. I am quite sure that barely anyone
forty years ago would have ever believed that this unprecedented
liberalism would not have lead to a total chaos.
Based on the above said, I am not of the opinion that it is
beneficial for the majority of the subsribers of the list that
certain restrictions be imposed in the sense you evidently have
in mind. Nor do I consider it to be good that someone takes up
the position of a stringent teacher in school (in the connotation
of the German word 'Lehrmeister'). On the other hand I personally
don't feel disturbed at all even if someone would say what I may or
may not eat and drink this evening, since I consider this to be his
freedom. But let me say once again that anyone who find annoying to
read my publications can easily avoid these though a few simple mouse
movements on seeing my name appearing on the title lines of the
viewer. (I heard there is also software to automatically discard
undesired messages.) Of course the list owner can act through his
monitoring function. From my experiences and observations up till
now and the nature of the contents of my posts I am however confident
that he will continue on his course of fairness and liberalism.
M. K. Shen
________________
P.S. Yesterday I announced a revision of my original article with
changed title (removal of the term that is deemed by most to be
inappropriate). I am not sure being able to finish that today,
since I want to do a major rework. In the other case I'll post it
on Monday.
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:18:03