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From: primer@huma1.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re:  Everything you've always wanted to know about sex.1
Message-ID: <1463@husc6.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Mar-87 14:07:44 EST
Article-I.D.: husc6.1463
Posted: Sat Mar 21 14:07:44 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Mar-87 21:44:40 EST
References: <8703210457.AA06760@sun7.ads.arpa>
Sender: news@husc6.UUCP
Reply-To: primer@huma1.UUCP (Jeremy Primer)
Organization: Harvard Math Department
Lines: 24

In article <8703210457.AA06760@sun7.ads.arpa>
neville@sun7.ads.ARPA (Neville Newman) writes to RMS:

>The fact of the matter is that by encouraging distribution of this
>(EMACS) code to the entire net-connected world, you are in a position
>of respon- sibility.  i doubt that you would ever intentionally put a
>trojan horse program in an EMACS dist that uses the CRT scan to blind
>a user, or shut down cooling circuits if the code found itself in use
>at a reactor installation.  The same kind of damage is inflicted on
>individuals and society by that type of irresponsibility as with the
>distribution of this "humor".

This is not true.  Newman has not shown that sex.1 damaged
anything, other than some tender sensibilities.  This is
definitely not "the same kind of damage" as the wholesale
destructiveness he refers to; sex.1 is just puckish.

I understand what Newman was trying to say with this
hyperbole, and I disrespectfully disagree with him.  Many of
us have an impulse to wreak havoc in the world, and sex.1
pokes fun at precisely that.
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Jeremy Primer, Dept of Mathematics, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA 02138
..!harvard!huma1!primer primer@huma1.harvard.edu primer@harvma1.bitnet